Page 20 of What Have You Done?

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no?’ Edward says.

‘Maybe,’ she says, feeling sick, ‘maybe it’s better if we don’t ask him. Let’s – let’s just assume it’s because of the curfew. He must be telling the truth about everything else.’

‘What? Shelby, we can’t just ignore this.’

‘Yes, we can. He’s lied before about things to avoid getting in trouble. You know that. About where he was, what time he got home. Teenage stuff. I’m sure this is no different.’ She turns and flees up the stairs, as if she’s running away.

Riley gets into the car beside her mother, closes the door, and says, ‘Go.’

Her mother backs out of the driveway, silent. She’s obviously waiting for her to tell her how it went. But Riley is churning inside; she suspects Cameron was lying. She’s having trouble catching her breath. If only she could talk to Diana. She starts to sob again. Her mother looks over at her anxiously. ‘Riley, what happened? What did he say?’

She pulls herself together and says, ‘He said he dropped her home at eleven, and everything was fine.’ She keeps her suspicions to herself; she doesn’t want her mother urging her to go back to the police. She says, ‘It’s just so fucking sad.’

When they arrive home, Riley goes directly to her bedroom and closes the door. She climbs onto her bed and stares at her cell phone. Finally, she texts Evan.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, 8 p.m.

I’ve been looking out the window at the moon from my bed. I have a desk where I do my homework, but when I’m writing I like to sit in bed leaning up against the headboard with my laptop, looking out. My room is at the back of the house, so it’s quiet out there. If you look out the front, onto the street, you can tell you’re in a small town, but when you look out the back, it’s like you’re already in the country. Just the darkness and the trees and the moon.

I’m trying to process everything, but it feels impossible. Last night at this time, Diana was alive. Now she’s dead and I miss her so much it physically hurts. Writing is the only thing that makes me feel better, somehow, when things are bad. I’m good at it; it’s my best subject.

Staring out the window at the darkness and the moon makes me think of how we used to hang out in the graveyard at night. We’d go there sometimes after the movies because we’re too young to get into bars. Too old to go right home after the movie let out. The last time was a couple of weeks ago. We’d been to see Bullet Train – the four of us. We stood around outside in the autumn chill wondering what to do next. It was a Friday night. Nobody was having a party, and we were at loose ends. And there was always that little bit of tension among us – that Cameron and Diana might want to go off on their own. But Diana was too nice to leave me and Riley in the lurch on a Friday night. She would include us until it got late, then she’d go off with Cameron after.

Cameron opened his jacket and showed us a small bottle of whiskey. Diana smiled up at him like he was some kind of hero. I had something too. I’d managed to steal something from my parents’ liquor cabinet. I wasn’t as lucky as Cameron, who had older friends to buy for him. I didn’t have a pint of Jack Daniel’s, but I had a water bottle full of stolen vodka that my parents wouldn’t notice. So I told them I had some vodka on me and Diana suggested we go to the graveyard.

She was the leader, and we all just automatically followed her. No one minded. She always had the best ideas. If anyone objected, she would have been completely flexible, but no one ever did. That night, we walked away from the bright lights of the movie theatre, the only one in town, along the sidewalk into the deepening darkness. Diana and Cameron were in front of me, and I saw how he kept his arm around her, how his hand would sometimes trail down to touch her bum.

The Fairhill United Church was at the end of the long main street on a corner, away from the stores and lights. It’s a very old, historic, wooden church, painted white, with an impressive steeple in the front and large double doors. There are trees all around and the cemetery is on the right-hand side and sweeps around to the back. It’s where we all went to Sunday school until we were old enough that our parents stopped making us go. None of us have parents who are particularly devout, but we’d go to church for the big occasions. Christmas, Easter. Weddings and funerals.

The church and graveyard are very old. The church was built in the late 1700s. The gravestones are interesting, some going back to that time. We used to play among them after Sunday school sometimes. And once in grade school we’d gone on a class visit for social studies when we were learning about the early settlers. I remember the teacher pointing out all the graves of very young children. The class was boisterous, a few of the kids fooling around, not listening, but I was one of the ones who was interested in what she had to say. I remember watching her, observing her mounting frustration.

The graveyard is different at night. It’s shrouded in mystery, and it seems to go on for ever. The trees – tall old maples, beeches, oaks – rustle in the dark. There was never anyone there at night, so it was our favourite place to drink.

That night two weeks ago was our last time there all together. It’s almost as if we had some feeling about what was going to happen. We weren’t as high spirited as usual. Normally when we drank, we’d get silly and goofy, but that night Diana seemed quiet as she and Cameron shared the Jack Daniel’s. Cameron seemed to be watching her. I shared my vodka with Riley. Somehow we started telling ghost stories.

There’s no end of ghost stories in Vermont. We’re known for them. Mrs Acosta just did a unit on them in English. We did ‘The Signal-Man’ by Charles Dickens, and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. We had a spirited discussion that night in the graveyard about whether it was ghosts that were torturing little Miles and Flora or whether the nanny was nuts.

‘Personally, I think the nanny was imagining it all,’ I said. That was the explanation I liked best. I didn’t believe in ghosts. I believed in psychology, and people, and motivations. I found the story fascinating.

‘Why are you so sure?’ Diana countered.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Cameron asked her, as if he were teasing her.

‘I just mean,’ she said to Cameron, ‘that maybe the writer intended it to be a ghost, in the story. Of course I don’t believe in ghosts.’ She gave him a playful shove.

I caught a glance between Riley and Diana that I didn’t understand. Maybe it was the vodka, but I was annoyed with Cameron. ‘You aren’t even in that class.’

He said, ‘So what? I’m still entitled to an opinion.’

‘But how do you explain it,’ Diana mused, ‘all the stories about ghosts? I don’t mean the literary ones, I mean the local ones, the things people say.’

‘Tell us a story, Diana,’ Riley urged. ‘You’re the best one at telling ghost stories.’ And she reached out to me for another swig from my vodka-filled water bottle.

Diana told us the story of Emily and the bridge. We’d all heard it before, but we always enjoyed listening to Diana’s stories, and her little embellishments.

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