Echo Bridge (2 page)

“Okay,” I said, turning my face up for a kiss. “I trust you.” We climbed out of the car, and he went around back to his boys and the keg, while I went upstairs to find Melissa and Hilary.

Mel and Hil. To be honest, that day at Melissa’s house I thought we’d all go to off to college and I’d never talk to either of them again, but now that I know I
really
never will, I miss them a little. They were together so much you could be forgiven for thinking they were conjoined twins, although they didn’t look anything alike: Melissa was long and lean, with a year-round tan and cropped blonde highlights that never showed a hint of her dark roots, while Hilary had an unruly carrot top she was forever ironing flat and swishing over her shoulders and bad skin peeking through expertly applied make up. In my mental movie, they were played by two mediocre up-and-comers with pretty faces, great headshots, and resumes full of small parts in bad horror movies and those sad TV shows networks run in the summer when no one’s watching. Outside of high school, I might not have chosen Melissa or Hilary as friends. But they fluttered around Ted and his friends like the proverbial moths around a candle, so we’d naturally fallen in together when I started going out with Ted sophomore year. Besides, Melissa, at least, was fun sometimes.

They were upstairs in Melissa’s parents’ bedroom, taking shots of vodka and observing the party through the open French doors of the balcony that overlooked the deck and backyard. Melissa’s mother and stepfather were at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires for the weekend.

“Hi, bitch,” Melissa said, and poured me a shot. She was sitting on the floor, still wearing her field hockey uniform, though she’d taken off her shin guards.

“Hi,” I said, and took the shot. “How was your game?”

“Oh, whatever, the stupid junior on goal blew it. Not that anyone cares about field hockey.”

“True,” I said, pouring myself another shot. “How about you, Hil? Still trying to do away with urban blight?” If you didn’t play a sport at Belknap Country Day, you were required to do some other after-school activity. It guaranteed you would be a well-rounded college applicant. Hilary did community service at a soup kitchen and women’s shelter in Roxbury.

Hilary was lying on Melissa’s parents’ bed, aiming a remote at their flat screen, flipping channels with the sound off. “Ugh. I am so over it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Lucy’s Lunches does really important work. But if we don’t cut every piece of pie exactly the same size, or someone gets a single extra grape, those bitches totally freak out,” said Hilary. “Plus, the smell of that place is starting to make me gag.”

“Your generosity of spirit is inspiring,” I told her. I wandered over to Melissa’s mother’s vanity table and opened her jewelry box, holding different earrings up to my lobes in the lighted mirror.

“Did you have rehearsal?” asked Melissa. She shed her knee socks and scratched at the red welts the ribbing left behind.

“Doesn’t start till next week.” I picked up a tube of mascara from the vanity and marveled at the idea of my own mother with purple eyelashes. Then I leaned into the mirror and put some on.

We were performing
The Crucible
and I, as Country Day’s perennial star of the stage, had been cast as Abigail Williams. I was pleased: great play, great part, great opportunity to show off my chops for my application to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. An alumnus would attend the opening performance, which would serve as my admissions audition. As far as I was concerned, it was the only college worth attending in the entire world.

I would have liked to attend college, even for a semester.

As if reading my mind, Melissa said, “Don’t worry, Court. You’re a shoo-in for Tisch.” She wandered into her mother’s walk-in closet and shed her field hockey skirt and jersey, dropping them on the floor. She came out again wearing a sleeveless shift of camel suede with a lot of black fringe on the short skirt.

“What do you think about this for Revelry?” she asked. The Rivalry Revelry was our version of Homecoming: two days of matches against Green Hill Prep, capped off by a semi-formal dance.

“It’s hot,” said Hilary.

“It’s Phillip Lim,” said Melissa.

“That dress is wearing you,” I said. “It should be the other way around.” This was my mother’s phrase for clothes that were trendy but didn’t fit well.

“What does that even mean?” Melissa rolled her eyes and walked out onto the balcony.

I followed with the vodka bottle, and Hilary dropped the remote on the yellow satin comforter and joined us. The three of us leaned on our elbows against the railing and observed the party below. I set up the shot glasses and poured.

In the backyard, Marian Hayward and Selena Mitchell, whom everyone called the Glitter Girls because of the stupid sparkly makeup they both wore, were playing badminton. Benji Andrews, a junior who was on the soccer team with Ted, and Jake Hobart, who was Belknap’s number one skier, were sharing a joint in a pair of lawn chairs, watching. Benji’s girlfriend Lindsay Stevens lay in the grass with her bare feet propped up in his lap. A few guys were kicking at the brush beneath the trees at the edge of the yard, looking for kindling for the fire pit, which they’d light after dark. On the deck, Hogan Riley, whom everyone called Horse, was setting up Melissa’s stepfather’s poker table, and Hugh Marsden, Ted’s best friend, was manning the keg and talking to a gaggle of sophomore and junior girls whom Hilary, Melissa, and I hated on general principle—that general principle being that these girls were a lot like we were and were competition for the attention of our guy friends. Melissa hawked up a substantial loogie and managed to land it in a sophomore’s hair. None of her friends noticed, but Hugh did, and he looked up and winked at us as he refilled the girl’s cup.

Hugh motherfucking Marsden. That was how I would come to think of him, but that day on the balcony, with the sun slicing through the trees on its way down and Hugh grinning up at us, he was just another member of our crew. Hugh was a year older than we were because he’d been recruited for the BCD hockey team and made to repeat ninth grade when he moved down from Ontario. There were rumors he’d go pro after graduation instead of going to college. He was also quite the Romeo, which had always baffled me. He had that thick-necked build that’s borderline fat, and his dust-brown hairline was already receding in two points over his temples, which he tried to disguise by keeping his hair military short. I’d heard girls claim it was his personality that made him attractive, but that didn’t make much sense to me either at the time, and it sure as hell doesn’t now. In the movie in my head, Hugh was played by Ben Affleck, an actor whose appeal I understood on an intellectual level but didn’t personally feel in my gut. Hugh was kind of crude and often drank too much, but neither of these qualities made him stand out in our crowd. He wasn’t stupid, exactly, just lazy—except when it came to hockey. He was like somebody’s cut-up older brother. He was one of us.

“Whores,” Hilary said, glaring at the girls at the keg.

“Never mind them,” said Melissa. “Did you hear about Marian? She got caught fooling around with Lexi Rosenthal in the old dark room.”

“Sexy Lexi?” Hilary asked.

“The one and only,” said Melissa.

“People only call her that because she’s got big boobs,” I said lazily. I could relate, although Lexi had at least a cup size on me. I watched Marian and Selena wave their racquets around. Periodically, Jake Hobart would yell out “Shuttlecock!” and then chuckle.

“Well,” said Melissa. “Apparently Marian started hanging out in the dark room, because she can smoke pot there without getting busted. There’s a ventilation fan for chemicals or something. Sexy Lexi’s the only other person who’s ever in there. She still uses actual film.”

I would come to know Lexi Rosenthal rather well, but back then she was just this weird junior who didn’t have a lot of friends. She was pretty, with those round cheeks and sparkling eyes that make you think of a doll’s face, but people mostly called her Sexy Lexi because it rhymed, and then made up a reputation for her that fit the rhyme. In addition to being the last film photography hold-out in the digital age—our photo classes had been held in the computer lab for years—she was the editor of Belknap Country Day’s arts magazine,
Bards and Muses
, and the only orphan in our school. She lived with her grandfather.

“Poor Farah,” snorted Hilary. “If Lexi dumps her, she’ll only have her computers for company.”

Lexi Rosenthal’s best, and maybe only, friend was a girl named Farah Zarin. She was the lead student administrator for the Belknet, the intranet that was home to school-designated email accounts, online tools for classes, student club web pages, and special interest message boards. This got her a certain level of respect—we had to go to her when we forgot our passwords—but nobody thought it was very cool, except for the World of Warcraft geeks who spent all their free periods in the computer lab. Farah was totally their queen. She had mad programming skills, punk-rock patches on her messenger bag, and the spiky black hair, enormous brown eyes, and pointed elfin face of an anime character. Supposedly, she and Lexi were more than friends, although to my knowledge this was one of those rumors that had no evidentiary basis and people idly embroidered upon when they were bored.

“Well, if they were ever together, I doubt they are now,” said Melissa. “Because Sexy Lexi, like, seduced Marian.
Plus
, Hugh said he ran into her at Echo Bridge a few weeks ago, and she practically fell to her knees and undid his pants with her teeth. She’s a total nympho.”

I was skeptical of that story even at the time. “I don’t know why you would believe anything Hugh says,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Have you heard his hockey hazing stories? That crap can’t be true.”

“Well, I know for a fact it’s true what he said about making Chip Horowitz eat an Oreo they all jerked it on.” Melissa shrugged and we tossed back a round of vodka. “Uh oh, Court. Looks like Ted’s about to lose his shirt.” Ted was sitting down at the poker table with Horse, his friend Will McKinley, and a junior named Sayre Matthews.

“I hate when they play cards,” pouted Hilary. “It pulls the whole focus of the party. We’re here to socialize,” she said, drawing out the word and slurring it a bit, “not to watch Horse take everyone’s money and have them get all pissy and sad about it.”

This did happen on occasion. Horse loved cards, and though I knew nothing about poker, the word was he was very good unless he was very drunk. It was hard to tell if he was drunk already from our spot on the balcony, but as he began to shuffle the cards, I realized that I was a bit drunk: the fun kind, when you’re all swagger and confidence, which lasts about five minutes before you wind up either sloppy or sober, depending on whether you have another drink or not.

“I’ll put a stop to that,” I said, and took one more shot and wiggled my hips to make the girls laugh. Then I went downstairs and climbed into Ted’s lap.

“Babe,” said Ted, unhooking my arms from around his neck. “It’s not a good time, see?” He tried to show me the two cards he had facedown in front of him, but I was not interested. In my vodka haze, and with Melissa and Hilary in the peanut gallery above, it suddenly seemed extremely important that I win over poker and break up the game by distracting Ted.

“Come on,” I whispered in his ear. His stubble tickled my lips, and I put a little breathy Marilyn in my voice. “Wouldn’t you rather come upstairs and play with me?”

“Later, Courtney,” he said, laughing. “We’ve got all night.” And he put his hands on my waist and lifted me off his lap. Which would have been no big deal, except that vodka makes my ego rather fragile, and it seemed utterly preposterous that my boyfriend, who had gleefully dispatched my virginity many months before, might find Horse Riley’s pocket money more interesting than me, his girlfriend, star of the BCD stage and just then wearing silk stockings and a garter belt under my black wool dress. So I squeezed his arm. “Ted,” I said. “I need to talk to you.” It was a little desperate, and like I said, I was a little drunk.

Ted cupped my face with one hand and kept the other on his cards. “You need a glass of water and a nap,” he said. “You go lie down in the guest room. I’ll come find you in a little while.” He patted my cheek and looked over my shoulder. “Hugh, get Court a soda or something.”

So I went upstairs to the guest room to pout until Ted came looking for me or I passed out, whichever happened first. Perhaps now is when you’re yelling at the screen, telling the starlet not to go into the basement. You aren’t wrong, but let me remind you: This was my best friend’s house, filled with people I’d known for years. If there was anywhere I thought I could let my guard down, this was it.

I was in the bathroom when I heard someone in the adjacent guest room.

“Ted?” I called through the door. I wasn’t on the toilet, only fixing my hair and trying to wipe away the mascara that inevitably smudged under my eyes after a few beers.

The bathroom door opened and there was Hugh with a can of Diet Coke. Hugh’s gray eyes were almost as pale as his white skin, which I’d always found a little startling.

“Hi, Hugh,” I said, reaching for the can. “Thanks for the DC.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and he caught me by the wrist and shoved me up against the sink. His lips mashed against mine. The can of soda dropped and hit my left foot, hard, before bouncing into a corner.

I twisted my face away, but he was squeezing my arms against my sides, and his legs pressed my own against the cabinet below the sink. My knees buckled.

“What the hell are you doing?” I said.

“Come on, C. I know your whole bombshell act,” he said. His breath was hot and beery on my neck. He slid one finger along what was, yes, a low-cut neckline, but not an open invitation. “I just saw you practically begging Ted for it.”

“Ted is my boyfriend,” I said. I tried not to breathe. I thought that if he got the impression I wasn’t going to fight him, he’d ease off a bit, and I’d be able to get to the door. I had to get downstairs, back to the crowd, back to Ted.