The Blackbird Season Read online

“Oh, I don’t know, Bridget. It’s a serious allegation. You know?” His glasses slid down to the end of his red nose and he twitched, twice, like a mouse. “They’re saying institutional assault now.”

  “What does that mean?” Bridget asked.

  “It means that Lucia is eighteen but it doesn’t matter. He was her teacher, it’s still rape.”

  Bridget balked. “Nate would never rape anyone.”

  Jane Blue, who taught gym (and whom all the boys called “blue balls,” although Bridget pretended not to know this), hung behind her, studying the bulletin board, her blond hair threaded into a thick braid. She inched closer.

  “I really can’t say, Bridget. I can’t go out on a limb, though, because what if it is, you know?” Dale shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like the Nate I know, but—”

  “Have you called him? Emailed him?”

  Dale shook his head. “I just want to let the school board and the police do their job. If Nate’s innocent, we’re all here for him. If he’s not . . . well . . .” Dale cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up. Squared his shoulders. Lowered his voice. “Bridge, you know, there’ve been rumors before, you know that, right?”

  “About Nate?” No she did not know that, she’d never heard one blessed word about him. He was Saint Nate, the baseball coach with the disabled son, the beautiful wife. These are all the things she’d ever heard about him. Everybody’s buddy. What a bunch of stupid hypocrites to say this now, oh we always knew. That was the way it went, right? In the paper—there was always something strange about that guy, he was just too nice. Is that where this was headed?

  “Just a few years ago. You know he’s on social media. I mean some of the teachers knew about it, but the administrators don’t. It’s not an outright rule yet, but it’s highly frowned upon. So the Nate we know wouldn’t necessarily sleep with a student, but he’d cross that line?” He shrugged. “He’s too close to them, you know? So anyway, it’s hard to be sure, that’s all.”

  “Give me a break, Dale.” She was about to leave, then stopped and turned around. “What rumors?”

  “What’s that now?” Dale played dumb.

  “You said there have been rumors before? What happened before?”

  “It was a few years ago, I don’t quite remember. Anyway, it wasn’t like this, but another student did lodge a complaint. He favored her, catered to her, that kind of thing. She wasn’t well liked, kind of like Lucia. I can’t remember her name, though.” Dale looked upward, like the answer might be scrawled above on the yellow-stained drop-ceiling tiles.

  “Robin Hendricks.” Jane said behind them. “Her name was Robin Hendricks.”

  Bridget turned and Jane smiled, her fingers coiling the end of her braid. “Everyone forgets about that girl. She had a ton of problems: drugs, a bad crowd, you name it. She graduated, though, thanks to her good pal Nate Winters. Pulled some strings, who knows? All I know is, the summer after she graduated, somebody saw them together at the Quarry Bar.”

  The Quarry Bar sat a few miles off Route Six, dilapidated, its neon signs hardly even lit up anymore. A place for drunks and hookups.

  “I never heard this part,” Dale interjected.

  “Oh sure, dancing to the jukebox. Not acting like teacher and student, that’s for sure. I don’t spread rumors much, and I don’t even know if it’s true, but I heard later that his boy took a header down the stairs that night. His poor wife sat in the ER all night long alone. My sister was a nurse on duty, so that part I know for a fact. Shame, really.” Jane shook her head, a feigned kind of sadness, and Bridget fisted her fingers in the pocket of her dress, her nails slicing into her palms. Jane was trotting out a dusty old rumor, playing it off as some kind of truth. Bridget remembered now, she’d heard it before, years ago, but it was right after Holden got sick and Gabe was diagnosed and they’d all been consumed, stuck in their own whirlpool lives, and some days it was all Bridget could do to take a breath deep enough to fill her lungs and stave off the starry, wheezy feeling of grief. She’d never known what to make of the rumor, but you couldn’t forget the fact that it was at least two and a half years old and Jane had a lot of nerve, that’s all.

  Across the room, Paula Hortense asked, “Do you smell smoke?”

  From out in the hallway, a girl began to scream.

  • • •

  By the time Bridget and the other teachers reached the hallway, a crowd of students had gathered. Bridget pushed her way through to where Lucia faced off against Riana Yardley. Riana, tall, stately, graceful, her black hair pulled tight against her scalp, her black eyes wide with terror, or maybe wonderment. Between them, a thin piece of loose-leaf, its edges browned and curling, a wisp of smoke spiraling to the ceiling. Lucia’s face was whiter than the paper. Bridget put a hand on Riana’s back, expecting warmth, but her skin, beneath the sheath of a netted Mt. Oanoke Raiders jersey, was cool to the touch. Bridget eyed the ceiling, the sprinklers, wondering if a the single curl of smoke would set them off.

  “What happened here?” Bridget inserted herself, her hand slicing the air, her authority heavier than she actually felt.

  “Crazy girl here accused me of planting a love note and then poof! The whole paper burst into flames. Like she’s Carrie from the movie, she’s gonna burn this place down.” Riana punched the air with a single pointed finger, red acrylic nails glittering in the sunbeam from the lone hallway window. The light filtered behind Lucia and her white hair looked orangey-red, backlit like a haloed angel. She looked on fire.

  Bridget glanced at Lucia, who stood shocked, her mouth slack and pale. Bridget realized for the first time that Lucia was wearing no makeup: no black-ringed eyes, no sticky, spokey eyelashes, no red lips. Nothing, just waxy skin shining like a baby’s bottom.

  “That’s impossible,” Paula said dumbly from behind Bridget.

  “I know. But that’s what happened. She opened her locker and turned to me and started screaming at me, that I did this—whatever this is—and the girl was pissed off.” Riana jutted out her chin, her hips swiveling. Her friends had gathered behind her: Josh Tempest, Kelsey Minnow. Andrew Evans, rawboned and sleepy, tilting to one side, a sly smile on his lips. Taylor huddled on the outside, between them, her eyes darting from Lucia to Riana, her pale pink tongue lapping at her mouth like a nervous cat. “Then, bam, the whole paper exploded like it was a firework.”

  “Lucia?” Bridget demanded, like this was one of Lucia’s tricks, one of her mean-streaked power plays. “You can’t have lighters in here.”

  Lighters. Bridget had seen them as she walked to the parking lot after school: Kelsey and Riana, their bodies languid against the brick side of the athletic building before track practice, the smoke seeping from their lips as they whispered behind cupped hands. The Pall Mall box matching the royal blue of their track shorts, peeking out of the side of Kelsey’s black lace bra. Bridget always thought that was backward; they’d run track and then smoke cigarettes, literally grinding all their hard work into the track dirt with the toes of their Adidas. In Mt. Oanoke, aside from the baseball players, nobody really took any sport seriously. It was all just something to do until they got out.

  Then Bridget thought of the flick, flick, flick of a lighter in class during her third period, when it was too much work to ferret out who the owner was because Bridget was too tired to do anything about it anyway.

  Bridget imagined, could envision clear as day, the quick snap of a lighter under Lucia’s paper. A spontaneous decision, borne from fear and power hunger, and maybe just a touch of revenge for what she did to Nate. The alliances snapped into place, clicking like a lock’s tumblers: Riana and Kelsey and Josh and Andrew. Andrew, Nate’s little protégé, his lackey.

  Dale sensed her hesitation and took one tenuous step forward, his arm outstretched ineffectually.

  “I don’t smoke,” Lucia finally said, her voice soft, watching the last coil of smoke meander upward toward the ceiling, mesmerized.

  “It’s just her.
A spell or something,” Kelsey screeched, her voice high and itchy, scratching at something inside Bridget, but Lucia stayed rooted to the spot. Never looking up, her eyes fixated. Unblinking.

  “Dude, that is fucked up.” Josh’s voice from the back, punctuated by a thick, mucid laugh.

  “What spell?” Bridget asked, the back of her brain twitching with the answer. Something Nate had said. She’s being bullied. Bridget looked at all their faces; they were blank, shiny. “Lucia, who was the note from?”

  She looked up into Bridget’s face, her eyes glassed over. “It didn’t say. Then it started burning.” She looked helpless, cheeks rouged with self-doubt.

  A love note, though? Kids sent texts now, Facebook messages, Instagram and Twitter DMs. They had a hundred ways to reach each other, during and after school, and none of them involved a pencil and piece of paper.

  “This place has been a nightmare ever since those goddamn birds,” Kelsey muttered, and elbowed Taylor for backup. Taylor smiled gamely, watched Lucia’s face. It never moved. Kelsey continued anyway, toeing the gray tile linoleum like it was dirt. “I bet you did that, too, right? How’d you kill all those little tiny black birds? Poison? Icicles through their brains like the papers say?”

  “Enough, Kelsey.” Dale finally took charge. They’d all let Kelsey go on longer than they should have, their mouths hanging, and even Jane, usually forceful—she once dragged a sophomore down to Bachman’s by his dyed-blue hair because he accidentally-on-purpose grabbed her ass—was stunned silent. “Everyone. Back to lunch. Back to wherever you are supposed to be. The bell rang”—he checked his watch—“four minutes ago. Go. Now.” Dale, meek and sort of impotent, his pointy shoulders in his short-sleeved dress shirt, his rimless glasses, and Hush Puppy shoes that squeaked when he walked. But they listened and the hallway emptied. “Riana and Lucia, now, to Bachman’s office.” He put a hand on Riana’s bicep, steering her down the hall and Lucia followed, her gaze still empty and blank.

  Bridget couldn’t believe Lucia had come right back to school. Nate had only been suspended a few days ago. The rumor mill swirled and churned and spit Lucia back out on the other side, and something about the whole thing nagged at Bridget, pricking at some part of her: the fact that she would come right back to class like nothing happened. The teachers, although seemingly on Lucia’s side, made no move to comfort her or walk with her, and she trudged the long hallway, dragging behind Dale and Kelsey, her fingertips aimlessly skimming along the lockers, a faint humming in her throat. The half-charred remnant of a note fluttering between Dale’s long white fingers. She hadn’t seen him grab it.

  Bridget couldn’t help but study Taylor, who watched Lucia with a kind of dazed awe, her head pivoting back and forth between Lucia and Riana, but she made no move to catch up with her best friend. When Kelsey whispered something to her, she laughed, her head thrown back, and Andrew turned around, his mouth open.

  On instinct, Bridget jogged to catch up, reached out and pinched Riana’s elbow, spun her around, and the girl gurgled, sputtered with surprise. Bridget’s hand went lighting quick to Riana’s jeans pocket—one, then the other—and plucked out a clear hot-pink lighter, the safety broken off. She snapped it up once in Riana’s face with a smirk and Riana barely got out a hey! before Bridget fell back, following them down to Bachman’s office.

  It only made sense: Lucia found the note, started hollering at Riana, and Riana taught her a quick, mean little lesson with the snap, snap of her fingers.

  Bridget hustled next to Dale and his face whipped around and his eyes narrowed, almost like he wanted to scold her like a student. She snatched the small paper out of his hand, which was burned into a circle, a little slip of a thing.

  The writing was in bold, black Sharpie. It could have been written by anyone, intentionally disguised, all capital letters.

  It said everything you touch.

  CHAPTER 18

  Alecia, Christmas, 2012

  Nothing fit. A mother’s lament. Alecia was two years out of pregnancy and her breasts still spilled out of tops, her waist thick and straight. But now, standing in front of the full-length mirror, with Nate downstairs whistling, the air heady with his aftershave and steam from the shower—why couldn’t he turn on a vent fan? Anyway, now, finally, the extra weight bothered her. She tugged on her hair, straightening the kinky waves, wondering why it hadn’t bothered her before tonight. It was still all relatively new.

  Being a mom to a toddler was more work than any book had said it would be. The terrible twos had zapped the energy right out of her: the meltdowns, the tantrums, the sleep regression. Gabe was up all night again like a newborn and Alecia, tired and hungry and angry at Nate who snored comfortably from their bed, had been seeking refuge in 3 a.m. chocolate chip cookies. The days blurred by, Alecia nipping grilled cheese crusts off Gabe’s plate, and even once a whole half a sandwich off the floor after he threw it in refusal. She was too tired to make one for herself.

  But tonight, there was a party. The Tempests, Peter and Bea (that’s it, just Bea, not even short for anything), lived in the neighborhood behind the high school, near Bridget. Their house stood high on the hill, the largest in the development, the biggest pool, brown-and-tan stone, a five-car garage that would hold Alecia’s whole townhouse. The invitation was a coup. Even Bridget seemed awestruck when Alecia told her. Maybe awestruck is too strong a word: impressed. The Tempests were impressive. Two strapping teen boys, both baseball players, both blond, both toothy-grinned: Quentin, the eldest one, and Josh, his younger brother, who were left (albeit happily) home alone several weeks a year while Bea and Peter traveled. They had parties, of course, as warm-blooded teenage boys do, but not wild ones that showed up on the newspaper police blotter the next morning.

  Behind her, Nate cleared his throat. Alecia met his eyes in the mirror and he gave her a sideways smile that always melted her heart, even when he said, “We have to go, you know. We’re going to be more than fashionably late.” Nate looked perfect: black pants, a button-down shirt, crisp belt, his hair gelled in soft waves.

  “This is a big deal. I don’t look right.”

  “You look beautiful. It’s not a big deal. It’s a party.” He rubbed his chin with his palm and covered his mouth and Alecia whipped around, swatting at the air. He was laughing at her. “A big deal is the house over by the lake that burned down last week and now four children don’t have a home. A big deal is that the polar ice caps are melting. A big deal is pancreatic cancer.” He raised his eyebrows at her and Alecia rolled her eyes.

  “I know this. I know. You’re right. Of course.” She tilted her head. “But also, low blow.” Because of course Holden was sick and Bridget was a disaster, and in the grand scheme of things, this party did not matter, not even a little bit.

  Except that it did. Perspective mattered, but so did acknowledging that the question of importance is personal and not discriminatory.

  “Well, I think you look amazing.” Nate held her wrist and pulled her toward him, kissed her neck.

  “This. Look, I’m a mess.” Alecia gestured to her cleavage, a bit more than just cleavage, a bit wobbly and spilling up and over, all the Lycra in the free world holding the rest of her into place, pushing everything up, up, up and over. She didn’t look sexy or bombshell. She looked fat. Wiggly, jiggly, uncomfortable and just plain fat. Her black sweater hugged in all the wrong places and the deep neckline was a joke. Her chest looked like a mogul run. “I have to change.”

  Nate bent down and kissed her chest, the swell of breast then the other. “Don’t you dare. I love this sweater.” He kissed her mouth, his tongue licked gently at her lips, and Alecia felt her legs wobble. His hands moved down her waist, to the soft bubble of pudge above her waistband.

  “Nate. Stop.” She pulled away, averting her eyes. “Where’s Gabe?”

  “Relax, he’s in his crib.” Nate shook his head, his brows knit in annoyance. “He’s fine.”

  “Nate! He can climb out of his
crib. You can’t leave him alone this long!”

  A crash and a wail from the other room and Alecia threw a pointed glare in Nate’s direction before she rushed to Gabe’s room. She listened to Nate’s heavy footsteps on the stairs; he hadn’t even followed her.

  • • •

  In the car, he was quiet. Alecia tried to hold his hand; his fingertips lay in her palm like a dead fish until she gave up and let it rest on the emergency brake between them. Gabe kicked his legs in the backseat, yelping a high pitch over and over, rhythmic and unrelenting on the ten-minute drive.

  “Gabe. Enough. This is a small car, buddy,” Nate said. “Don’t you think he should be talking by now?”

  “He talks, Nate. You just don’t pay attention to him.” Alecia wriggled in her seat, adjusting her sweater. Nate could be so dense, so rigid in his expectations. It irritated the living shit out of her.

  The Tempests’ house was lit up from the inside out, bright twinkling lights everywhere, their trees outlined in glittering white. Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” spilled into the driveway and the cars were parked all the way down the street, onto the next block. Alecia, Nate, and Gabe trudged across the front lawn, Gabe’s small mittened hand tucked into Alecia’s.

  Inside, people stood in groups, holding wine and martini glasses, laughing and talking over each other. Nate had told her that kids were invited but Alecia didn’t see any other kids.

  “The Winterses are here! So glad you could come!” Bea rushed up to them, her long blond hair flying behind her, glittering in a sequined top. Alecia was underdressed. A man in unassuming black pants and black shirt appeared and took their coats as Bea kissed both Alecia’s cheeks and squealed at Gabe. “Oh I just love this age, look how stinking cute he is.”

  He was cute: dark haired and fair skinned, he looked like a porcelain doll. He howled when Bea hugged him and she laughed. “Oh, kids.” She waved her hand in a circle. “ All the other kids are in the basement, or upstairs in the gym. He can go wherever,” displaying little understanding of a two-year-old’s capabilities. Alecia knelt down, rolling her eyes where Bea couldn’t see her, fixed Gabe’s hair where she’d ruffled it, and gave him a smile. His gaze fixated on the kitchen.