20. The Haydensboro Massacre #2
Olivia’s mood improves. She has been so consumed with studying for finals—she crammed all morning for pre-calc and chemistry—that she hasn’t felt a shred of the Christmas spirit until now.
They sit in a circle on the rug, Olivia next to Grady on one side and Cassie on the other so they can share the rosé. Is it okay that they took the rosé? Apparently so. Pippa is drinking something pale and fizzy—champagne?—from a coupe glass.
“Are we going to play duck-duck-goose?” Reed asks, draining one of his seltzers.
Pippa reaches into the drawer of one of the tables and produces a big fat joint.
Just as Tilly predicted, Olivia thinks. They’re going to drink and get high.
The joint makes its way around the circle.
Liam abstains, saying that weed makes him paranoid.
Olivia would like to do the same (she doesn’t need to kill any brain cells)—but when has Olivia ever resisted peer pressure?
Never, that’s when. She takes the joint from Cassie, inhales and holds the smoke for as long as she can, then manages to exhale without coughing.
She passes the joint to Grady, who declares it “extremely fine bud,” which makes Olivia want to die.
But in the next moment, Olivia feels her muscles relax, her anxiety melt away. The change is so dramatic, it feels like a yoke has been lifted. She takes another slug of rosé and thinks, Now what?
Now, Pippa announces, it’s time for a game called Circle of Truth. Like Truth or Dare without the dare.
“Everyone share one thing that nobody else knows about you,” Pippa says. She looks at Reed to her left. “You start, little man.”
Reed’s gaze is already glassy, clearly he is too stoned to protest because he says, “My father was married before he met my mom, and his first wife lost all her money to Freddy Delinn, the Ponzi scheme guy.” This probably counts as a family secret to Reed, but Olivia couldn’t care less.
Grady goes next. “I’m a virgin.”
“But maybe not for long,” Pippa says. “Right, Olivia?”
Olivia knows she should be mortified, but she’s so high, all she can do is laugh.
Cassie says, “I’ll go next. I lost my virginity to Hakeem Pryce.”
“Everybody knows that already,” Grady says.
Yes, Olivia thinks. Cassie losing her virginity to Hakeem came out on the Zip Zap app last year.
“I didn’t know that,” Pippa says. She leans in toward Cassie. “You fucked Taylor’s boyfriend? Really?”
“They were broken up,” Cassie says defensively.
Pippa claps her hands. She’s like some empress they’re all trying to please to avoid being executed. “Olivia, your turn.”
Olivia is also a virgin, though she won’t be admitting that here.
“My mother has no friends,” she says. “Except for me.” As soon as the words are out, Olivia realizes she’s made a tactical mistake.
Olivia has struggled to fit in the entire time she’s been at Tiffin, and now here she is, admitting that she has inherited the unlikable gene.
Pippa is quiet for a moment, and Olivia can only imagine her thinking how pathetic Olivia is. “I wish my mom and I were friends, but she’s a bitch-ass whore.” Pippa cackles. “Your turn, Liam.”
Liam pushes up his glasses. “I’m sober right now.”
“Bro, what?” Reed says.
Liam gets to his feet. “I’ll grab some more seltzers.” He leaves the shed.
Cassie is the only one brave enough to say what they’re all thinking. “What about you, Pippa?”
“What about me?” Pippa drains her champagne. “Well, for one thing, I didn’t climb Kilimanjaro.”
Olivia’s mouth no longer has the saliva required to form words. Pippa lied about Kilimanjaro?
Olivia gazes around the circle to see if anyone else is as shook as she is about this revelation.
(Nope, even Cassie Lee is just sort of vaguely smiling and bobbing her head.) To Olivia, climbing Kilimanjaro had defined Pippa—it made her seem unique, fierce, more substantive than your average mean girl.
Olivia realizes now how easy it was for Pippa to just make the whole thing up; because Pippa isn’t on social media, nobody expected pictures or proof. What the fuck?
Pippa says, “I got you all a Christmas present.” She reaches into the drawer again and pulls out two Baggies: One holds clear capsules and the other a light powder. “I have Molly and I have K.” She gropes around some more and produces a third bag filled with candy. “Also, gummies.”
Drug-drugs, Olivia thinks. Hard drugs (or maybe that’s just cocaine and heroin, she’s not sure).
But she is sure that she’s stupid for agreeing to come.
She should be at the Sink studying. What is she doing here?
When she looks at Grady, she’s overcome with guilt: She brought him into this drug den!
Grady snatches up the bag of gummies. He pulls out a purple one shaped like a double helix with a line of colorful sprinkles winding around it.
“What’s this?” he asks, popping it into his mouth.
Reed has commandeered the Baggie of K, which Olivia is pretty sure is ketamine. Reed snorts a bump off the base of his thumb, then he passes the bag to Grady, who follows suit.
Perry Como sings “(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays,” and Olivia nearly starts to cry.
Her mother goes all out for Christmas—by which Olivia means she hires someone to decorate their house—and every year, Olivia and her parents go to the Holiday Pops, sitting front row because her father does business with Keith Lockhart.
Cassie holds the bag of Molly. She withdraws one capsule and hands the rest to Olivia.
“Here,” Pippa says. “I’ll show you how.” She opens a capsule onto her tongue, then sips from the bottle of rosé. Then she pops the empty capsule into her mouth and swallows that as well.
“Now, you both do it.” Pippa regards Olivia and Cassie like a schoolmarm. “Come on, ladies! Let’s get this party started.”
They’re all on the bed, the red velvet duvet has been flung to the floor, where it lies like a giant pool of blood.
Olivia and Grady start kissing in front of everyone, but Olivia doesn’t care; it feels like her anxiety has been surgically removed.
When Olivia pulls away—she needs to find some water—she sees that Reed Wheeler is at the bottom of the bed, lying between Pippa and Cassie Lee. And they’re both all over him. Whoa!
Is this an orgy? Olivia wonders. Maybe a baby orgy. When Grady tries to slip his hand up Olivia’s cashmere sweater, she swats it away. There’s no way she’s going any further with other people around.
She wonders what happened to Liam. The kitchen? Should she go look for him? She’s so, so thirsty… and suddenly so sleepy she can barely keep her eyes open.
Olivia is jolted awake by an earsplitting electronic beeping. The room is gauzy with smoke. Olivia sits up and sees flames licking the edge of the bedsheets. The bed is on fire!
Olivia rolls to the floor, her fall buffered by the polar bear rug. When she raises her head, she sees Pippa through the smoke, wrapped in the red comforter like the Queen of Hearts; she’s trying to douse the fire with what’s left of the rosé.
Cassie and Reed are down on their forearms, army-crawling toward the doors.
Olivia hears sirens growing closer as she looks around for her Golden Gooses—they’re brand-new and cost six hundred dollars, she’s not leaving here without them.
But then she hears yelling coming from outside, and in the next second, a fireman bursts through the barn doors.
“Get out!” he shouts.
My shoes, Olivia thinks, even though she knows she’s not supposed to care. She follows Cassie and Reed outside into the frozen muddy yard, barefoot.
Pippa grabs the fireman and says, “There’s someone else inside. He’s unresponsive.”
Oh my god, Olivia thinks. Grady!
The fireman charges into the shed and emerges holding Grady in his arms like a new bride. Grady’s head lolls back, his skin is gray.
“Oxygen!” the fireman calls. “And Narcan!”
There’s a blast from a fire extinguisher, which blankets the interior of the shed with fire retardant; it looks like fresh snowfall.
One of the ornaments from the chandelier falls and shatters on the floor, which Olivia thinks is an apt metaphor.
This afternoon went from something shiny and beautiful to something broken.
A woman paramedic helps Olivia lie down on a stretcher; she slaps an oxygen mask over Olivia’s face. Olivia hears Pippa cry out, “Is he going to die?”
Die? Olivia thinks. It’s pitch-black out and freezing; Olivia starts to shiver. Olivia invited Grady to this gathering. If he dies, it will be her fault. She tries to sit up, but the paramedic places a gentle hand on her chest. The paramedic is the age of Olivia’s mother. “Grady?” Olivia says.
“My name is Rachael.” The paramedic speaks in a slow, overly enunciated way, as though she’s a kindergarten teacher. “I need you to tell me what you kids took. So we can help your friend.”
Olivia starts to cry. “We drank and smoked some pot.” Pot is legal in Massachusetts, though not for teenagers.
“What else?” Rachael hands Olivia a bottle of water, and Olivia shucks off her mask and gulps it down. She has never been so thirsty in her life.
At that moment, the fireman emerges holding the Baggies: capsules, powder, gummies. “Molly,” he says. “Ketamine. And some kind of gummies. Psilocybin, is my guess.”
“Those aren’t mine,” Pippa says. In that moment, Olivia watches Pippa’s mystique crack and crumble like a plaster cast. She lied about climbing Kilimanjaro. Pippa Sacks is, possibly, even more insecure than Olivia herself.