now.”
When Kelli spoke again, I could hear the tension in her voice. “Maybe tomorrow, Mary,” she said. “We could talk tomorrow.”
I saw Mary’s long hair toss right and left as she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t wait till tomorrow. I have to talk to you now.”
Miss Carver must have caught on to what was happening by then, because she tried to intervene, her voice very gentle, coaxing. “Mary, maybe you should just let Kelli get on home tonight. It’s awfully late, and I—”
“No,” Mary blurted out. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared fixedly at Miss Carver. “I want to talk to Kelli right now,” she said, the words coming rapidly, almost frantic. “I don’t want to wait. I have to know what’s going on.” Her head jerked to the left so that I knew she was now staring directly at Kelli. “Between you and Todd,” she said bluntly.
Kelli glanced nervously at Miss Carver, then back at Mary. “What do you want to know?” she asked, her voice suddenly calm and full of resolution, ready for whatever might happen, the voice of someone who had long ago determined not to be a coward.
Mary seemed momentarily silenced by the question, unable to respond. “Well, I mean … I just want …” she sputtered. “I just want to know what it is … what’s going on between you and Todd.”
Kelli did not hesitate in her answer, and even though I’d already guessed what was “going on” between Kelli and Todd, the frankness of her answer, the sheer candid admission she made at that moment, emptied me as nothing ever had or ever would again.
“Love,” she said.
The word struck me like a bullet in the head. I physically slumped against the wall of the auditorium when I heard her say it. Mary must have felt something similar, because her body stiffened, and the words she fired at Kelli were taut and bitter. “I wish you were dead,” she said.
Without consciously willing it, or even being able to control it, I heard my mind respond in a vehement hiss:
THAT IS WHAT MISS CARVER SAW, AND THAT IS WHAT SHE told Sheriff Stone when he came to talk to her at Choctaw High. But I am sure that she saw something else, too, saw not only the violent nature of Mary’s feelings toward Kelli, but my own simmering rage, the poisonous mood that came over me during the last two weeks of rehearsals, and perhaps even the way I sometimes looked at Kelli, as if I were trying to strangle her with my eyes. For I know that there were times when I stood offstage, watching Kelli go through her lines, when I must have fixed upon her with a murderous gaze, as if taking aim. I know it must have happened often, and I know that standing just across the stage from me, Miss Carver must have seen it. And so she spoke to me two weeks after Kelli had been found on Breakheart Hill, the two of us alone in her empty classroom, the windows open, a hot summer breeze rattling the metal blinds.
Lyle Gates had already been arrested, and the whole town knew about the incident at Cuffy’s, the name he’d called her there, then later how Luke had seen him walking up the mountain road only minutes after he’d dropped Kelli off at the crest of Breakheart Hill, and how later still Edith Sparks had seen him coming out of the woods at the crest of Breakheart Hill, wiping blood from his right hand, and finally how Sheriff Stone had found scratches on that same right hand when he’d come to talk to him a few days after Kelli had been found, scratches Lyle swore he’d made by hitting the side of an old woodshed after arguing on the phone with his wife, an act for which he could provide no witnesses.
We had a student assembly at the end of school that day, and Mr. Avery spoke about what had happened to Kelli, how terrible it was, what a “promising future” she’d had, and even about how dangerous it was for young girls to be in the woods alone.
When it was over I walked out of the auditorium with the other students, but before I made it down the stairs I heard Miss Carver calling me.
She was standing at the side door of the school, watching me stonily, as if she’d determined to go through with something she’d been considering for several days.
“I’d like to talk to you for a minute or two, Ben,” she said.
I stepped over to her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“In my classroom,” Miss Carver told me. Then she turned briskly and led me up the stairs.
It was late in the afternoon by then, and the heavy shadows of the empty desks and chairs spread like dark stains across the old wooden floor.
I walked to the front window and stared out. Far below me, I could see Todd Jeffries slumped against his car. He was shaking slightly, jerking his head left and right. Mary Diehl was at his side, as she had been continually for the last few days, valiantly trying to calm him down.
I heard the classroom door close softly behind me, then turned to see Miss Carver standing in front of it, as if determined to prevent me from suddenly bolting from the room. She was dressed in somber colors, her hair pulled back and pinned in a tight bun, and for the first time she looked like the lonely matron she was destined to become.
She said, “I guess you know that that man, Lyle Gates, has been arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I understand from Sheriff Stone that he has denied everything.” I nodded.
“He says he heard someone moaning in the woods, went to see about it and found Kelli.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Carver stared at me grimly, and I could tell that she was stalling, unsure not so much as to what she wanted to say, but how best to say it. “I think Sheriff Stone has a few doubts,” she said. “About whether Mr. Gates is really the one who did it, I mean.”
I remained silent, and for a moment Miss Carver let me dwell in that silence. “He can’t find much of a motive, except that incident at Cuffy’s. But that was over, wasn’t it, Ben?”
“I thought it was,” I told her.
“But what could have made it flare up again?” Miss Carver asked emphatically. “What could have made him go after Kelli again after all that time?”
I felt my fingers tighten, as if around the gray rope Kelli had handed to me that last time. “I don’t know,” I said.
Miss Carver seemed hardly to have heard my answer. “Sheriff Stone thinks Kelli was going to meet someone else that day. Someone who drove a car up that mining road at the bottom of Breakheart Hill.”
I remained silent.
“Someone she knew,” Miss Carver added pointedly, “someone who had more of a reason to hurt her than Lyle Gates did.” Her eyes darted toward the window, as if to prevent me from seeing the grim suspicion she could not keep out of them. “If you knew anything about what happened to Kelli, you’d tell the sheriff, wouldn’t you, Ben?”
In my mind, I saw Kelli turn toward me, her back to the dark green curtain, her eyes peering out over my shoulder, focused on someone else, with myself invisible to her. Then, in an instant, she was gone, and it was Eddie Smathers staring at me, his face floating bodilessly, like a pale leaf in a pool of black water, his eyes wide in amazement, his voice carrying the same astonishment.
“Wouldn’t you, Ben?” Miss Carver repeated, this time more insistently, with a hint of the suspicion that never left her in all the years to come. “If you knew anything about who might have done it, or why, you’d tell Sheriff Stone, wouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t answer, and so I simply stood motionlessly before her, my mind frantically searching for some way out. I could feel the rope in my hand again, the one Kelli had thrust toward me,
But I couldn’t do it.
“You would tell Sheriff Stone everything, wouldn’t you, Ben?” Miss Carver repeated.
I knew that I had to answer her, that I would not be able to get out of that room until I did. “Yes, ma’am, I would,” I said.
She did not believe me, and she made no effort to conceal that fact. Her eyes bored into me, and I saw the
