Chapter 42 #2
She usually picked up after a few dozen calls.
He called her landline because that phone number was in the school directory that was sent home with every family.
Henry presumed she, like him, was the only one home at the time.
After listening to the endless rings, she’d answer and, panic wavering in her voice, respond to his questions.
She never asked him anything back or initiated any conversations, but he thought she was just shy.
That was why she wouldn’t speak to him at school.
That was why she’d turned down his invitation to be his date for the homecoming dance.
But he thought they were building something—those questions, those answers, phone hot against his ear.
“She was scared of you,” his mom says gently, as though breaking bad news. As though it didn’t happen fourteen years ago. “She was too nice to ask you to stop.”
“Right.” Finally, he turns to face her. He wants to make her look at him. He wants to see if she’s going to bring up the dead squirrel.
The end of the school day, a stunning late-April day, students milling about outside.
Sarah and her friends were doing gymnastics in the open field near where the lacrosse team practiced, showing off, their laughter shrill, their backpacks piled in a heap.
The corpse was cold and stiff beneath his mother’s hand towel, and Henry will never forget the smell.
Swiftly, he unzipped Sarah’s backpack, then dropped it inside.
He looked up in time to watch her complete a roundoff, her shirt sliding down her bare stomach, arms reaching high, face resplendent.
He waited just out of sight, up the hill, back pressed against the brick wall, to listen for her scream.
“The next one was Candace Watson.”
“Wasson,” he corrects automatically.
His mother sighs. “She went to the principal. You picked the wrong girl that time. She told the principal you were stalking her.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You think that matters?” She’s impatient, incredulous.
“Not according to you. Automatic guilt when it comes to your son. No due process. No presumption of innocence. If Laurel had been accused of something like that, you never would have believed it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she says. “I never meant that, Henry. Whether you were stalking her or not, of course the school was going to side with her.”
Henry remembers her telling him that at the time, after she and his dad went to the school to meet with the principal.
He stayed home, eating ramen noodles and watching MTV, waiting for them to return, to impose his punishment.
She told him that he needed to stop. That the school wasn’t suspending him or taking any disciplinary action, but that if it happened again, they would.
Then it would be in his record. Colleges would find out about it.
Henry heard this loud and clear. Despite believing to his core that he’d done nothing wrong, that Candace had misinterpreted his affection, he understood that college was his best means for attaining independence.
He had to get into the college of his choosing, preferably with a scholarship so that he wouldn’t have to deal with student loans or asking his parents to make tuition payments he wasn’t sure they could afford.
He knew that Laurel had recently been accepted to a small private college in Pennsylvania, and that his parents had committed to covering the astronomical cost of that.
That was why he waited so patiently to impart Candace’s punishment.
The principal had been warned—he couldn’t do anything too obvious, too immediate.
By that point, people had social media accounts, and Henry’s aptitude for computers and the web was emerging.
It was simple for him to create the fake account, as untraceable as it could be, to message the school’s principal, her pathetic and nearly friendless account heavy with photos of her cats, and let her know that Candace Wasson had cheated during her AP Biology exam—look in the desk where she sat for the test, and you’ll find an answer sheet she left behind.
Days later, he noticed Candace slip into Calculus class a few minutes late, face damp and punched-looking, and he smiled to himself.
Her early admission to UPenn was rescinded, and Henry heard that she ended up attending community college for a year.
“I was so worried it would happen again,” his mother continues before he can speak.
“I held my breath for the rest of your years of high school, and the entire time you were away at college. And you never brought your girlfriends home, but I was so hopeful that you’d figured things out. I thought we were in the clear.”
Henry feels like she’s sliced straight through him, and there’s a strange sort of peace in the pain.
“But then, when you told us you’d been laid off and said you had to move back home, I knew.”
She stares at him, her eyes hard, and he studies her back, looking for some hint of love for him, for the person she created.
But he sees nothing that looks anything like love, and she says nothing more.
She doesn’t bring up Kelly, the dog that went missing.
Henry swallows. His mother’s chest rises and falls rapidly, and she looks dead sober now.
“What did you do?” she continues. She’s pleading, but he hears the flicker of self-righteousness. She’s so sure.
Henry blinks at her. He lets her squirm. He lets her think he’s considering telling her. But there’s nothing to tell. It was fate. It was only fair, what happened to Lacey.
He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says, matching the ice in her tone. “You’ve always seen the worst in me. What kind of mother does that?”
She opens her mouth, closes it again, and Henry feels good. It feels good to hurt her, and this proves that he’s right. He’s right about her, and he’s right about the wife.
He turns away again, and he steps onto the basement stairs. It’s childish, but he slams the door behind him.
Henry shuts and locks his bedroom door, then lies down on his bed. He closes his eyes and listens to his heart thumping, the rage and adrenaline pounding with every beat, and the roar of blood in his ears.
He tries to conjure the wife’s image to soothe himself. But he can’t. She’s become blurred and distant. He can’t picture the slope of her nose. He can’t see the shadow of her lashes against her cheeks. It’s been too long since he’s been close to her.
He didn’t realize that his mother had been keeping a list. Vivian. Sarah. Candace. Someone at work.
Henry has a list of his own. Vivian. Sarah. Candace. Kelly. Krista. Esther. Ashley. Lacey.
He was more careful with Kelly—her copper hair; fair, freckled skin. His mother never found out about her, nor those who came after. How his punishments became bolder and more apt. How still he hasn’t been caught.
The girls and the women he’s wanted to love, and to be loved by.
And now, the unhappy wife.
But she doesn’t belong there. That first time they spoke, she’d smiled at him. He made her laugh, and they talked about books.
There’s the pull of that thread; they have so much in common. It’s just her possessive husband, in the way. He’s surer than ever.