The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (23 page)

On the sidewalk lining the student lot, a deep-voiced preacher hollers. He wears business-casual attire, his face a withered raisin beneath sun-bleached hair. As students walk by, his voice rises in a throaty vibrato: “You who dress like whores, you who dress like common sluts in the way of this fallen country, may the Lord God bring righteous punishment on you! You will know punishment for this, rutting like dogs outside the sacrament of marriage, without the blessing of your Lord! A baby has died for your ways, and now you will be seized by God's judgment until you repent! Worry not about your precious computers and bank accounts but about your souls, for in a few months, Jesus Christ will return and take the righteous with Him and leave the rest to burn! Repent, you sinners!”

Illa's not a believer, but as she passes this man, his condemnation makes her feel blushingly glad of her androgynous cargo pants and baggy top. Such a funny thing, shame, that in the scramble to avoid it, you forget who has the right to shame you in the first place. For her, for all the girls of Port Sabine High, it is not this perma-tanned man sweating in his cheap suit, and yet they shrink from him as if they are guilty of these sins and worse.

From time to time during the day, Illa looks out the windows lining the senior hallway to assess the scene across the street, the news vans that come and go, the police car that remains in place, its headlights tuned on the high school, watchful. Principal Long calls a mandatory meeting of all the school's girls, in order to discuss the new development in the LeBlanc Avenue case. When the bell rings to signal last period, Illa exits Physics and lets herself be borne alone on the tide of girls heading for the gym—the nobodies and the somebodies, the smart-mouthed and the shy, the big-breasted and the prepubescent, the lost girls and the confident ones. Nearby, a piercing laugh that goes on too long, until someone shushes the offender. Girls loud-talk about their weekends to demonstrate nonchalance, but Illa knows they're scared. She knows this because
she's
scared, and she's only made it to first base a single time.

It takes several minutes for the crowd to filter into the bleachers. How strange to gather like this, she thinks, just the girls. The last time they were brought together en masse was in fifth grade, when they watched a video called
Changing Bodies, Changing Selves,
and then it was only Illa's grade, not the whole school. Illa remembers Mrs. Darnell, one of the fifth-grade teachers, standing next to the VCR after the tape ended, saying,
Your life will change forever when you experience menarche, girls. You'll be women then, and you can expect people to treat you differently. Don't be afraid. It is a blessing, but it comes with many expectations.

But how will people know?
one girl asked.
If the bleeding is on the inside, how will they know to treat me different?
Mrs. Darnell just smiled a knowing smile and said,
Not to worry, dear. It will be obvious.
When she got her period at twelve, Illa spent the week terrified that every boy in school knew, bloodhounds on the scent of her hapless, maxi-pad-wearing rabbit.

Illa finds Mercy in the crowd and sits a row behind her. She looks pale and unhappy, her hair pulled back so tightly that Illa can see the skin puckering at the temples. It's the end of the day; gone are the sweet smells of vanilla lotions and berry body sprays from the morning, replaced by a more essential
themness
. It reminds Illa of the locker room after a tough practice, when the girls peel off their drenched clothing and walk around like hard-run derby horses, the small room filling with animal smells, the sour pheromones of sweat and blood and adrenaline.

On the gym floor, someone has erected a projector screen. Mrs. Ancelet, the health teacher, stands next to Mr. Long. Standing beside Mr. Long and Mrs. Ancelet, Chief McKinney practically dances, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Just then Annie Putnam jogs through the gym doors and bounds up the bleachers, where she slides in next to Mercy. Glancing over her shoulder, she catches sight of Illa and narrows her eyes.
Has she heard about me and Lennox?
Illa wonders.

Illa shifts her weight forward to try to hear their conversation over the noise of 250 girls whispering, sniffling, coughing.

“Chief looks like he's about to piss himself,” Annie says.

Mercy manages a wan smile, which quickly fades back into the perfect architecture of her face. “I feel sick over this whole thing,” she says.

“Everyone's so broken up about the baby, what about the mother? I mean, she was obviously too scared or poor to go to a real hospital . . .”

“I can't talk about this,” Mercy says, massaging her right temple as if she has a headache.

“You brought it up,” Annie says.

Mr. Long raises both hands and motions for silence. “Girls, girls, shhhhhh,” he says, tapping the cordless mic. “By now, you've probably heard about new evidence they discovered in the marsh behind the Market Basket.” They nod. Of course they've heard, the whole town has talked of nothing else for two days. “I thought we would take this opportunity to go over what happened. We'll let Chief McKinney take the lead.”

McKinney's speech is brief. He asks them to come talk to him or call the hotline if they know anything about the incident. He says they aren't in trouble, but does he think they're stupid? They know that emergency meetings called by the principal mean
someone
is in trouble. A crime has been committed, he says, and if they know anything, they're obliged to say. Not to seem too obvious, but have any of their friends been pregnant lately? Or gained weight over the last few months? Maybe they know someone who used to wear tight clothing but suddenly started to wear sweats? What about someone who's been depressed or not really herself lately?

“He just described pretty much every teenage girl ever,” someone behind Illa mumbles.

“We have a potential eyewitness,” Chief McKinney says, continuing to move back and forth on the balls of his feet like a prizefighter. “And he's given us cause to believe the culprit is a young woman around your age. That, coupled with the football sweatshirt, means that we are fairly certain it's a girl at this school.”

Illa's skin prickles as a murmur sweeps through the bleachers.

“Any questions?” The chief scans the room. “You in the red sweatshirt,” he says, pointing to someone behind Illa. She strains to see who is brave or stupid enough to draw attention to herself at that moment. It's Ginny Collier, a junior, one of those smart-ass girls with colored streaks in her hair and big boobs that she hides beneath Alice in Chains and Korn T-shirts.

“Uh, yeah, Chief. I got a couple questions, the first being, wasn't it a football sweatshirt, so, like, why aren't all the football players here listening to this?”

“That's an excellent question,” he says, nodding. “In any investigation, we've got to start at the beginning, and when you're dealing with a baby, the mama is always the beginning.”

“And the second thing is, well, what if you just had a really shitty summer and ate Snickers all the time and got real fat but don't have nothing to do with that baby?”

Some snorts and stifled laughter.

“If you'll come see me after the assembly . . .” Chief said, his face flushed.

Ginny points a few rows in front of her. “Like Kelsey White up there, I mean, she can't help it, she's just big-boned . . .” The ensuing exclamations and groans drown her out, and in two quick leaps, Kelsey is in Ginny's face, her belly spilling over too-tight jeans as she lunges at her accuser.

“Girls!” Mr. Long hollers, but he's too far away to prevent Ginny's bloodied nose and the crimson handprint across Kelsey's pockmarked cheek. Once he does pry them apart, he admonishes them by saying that was no way for young ladies to behave, to which Ginny replies that as far as she can see, weren't none of them in that room ladies, just some titless girls. “Another word and you'll get corporal, I guarantee it,” he says, so she sullenly allows herself be led down the steps to the floor and escorted out of the gym by Mrs. Ancelet.

Mercy stands abruptly and starts picking her way down the bleachers. Girls seated nearby stare after her.

“Wait a sec,” Annie calls after her. “Mers!”

Illa wants to follow Mercy but stays seated, afraid of what Annie might say. Principal Long dismisses them to last period. On her way out, Illa stops in the locker room to see if Mercy has taken refuge there. The lights are off, the clock on the wall ticks loudly. She's about to walk through the door that leads back to the varsity lockers when Mercy shoulders through it, right arm crossed over her chest with the hand clamped on her left elbow like she's nursing an injury. Avoiding Illa's eyes, Mercy nods, then disappears into the gym. As the varsity door closes, the breath of air it releases smells strongly of vomit. When Illa checks the bathroom, one of the toilets is still running, the bowl filling with fresh water.

OVER THE NEXT
weeks, Illa busies herself with schoolwork, trying to keep her mind occupied until the season starts. Since the party, things have been awkward with Lennox. When he sees her, he goes into formal editor mode, talking about event coverage and editorial content. He's painstakingly earnest, as if she might misread irony as flirtation. But what did she expect? That she'd show up to the journalism room the next day to a five-course meal served by candlelight in the darkroom? It was a party, they'd had too much tequila, and Abby threatening to throw herself out the window had made everyone overemotional. Lennox's response was a sentimental one, and Illa is glad, because now she has the memory of that night, which glows like a golden egg hidden deep within her. What's interesting is that she's most disappointed over their lost camaraderie, the easy rapport they developed over the last several years working together. He was her only real friend, and now she might have screwed that up.

Still, from time to time, she finds herself overcome by the urge to fold herself into him again and take his tongue into her mouth, friendship be damned. When she gets this feeling, she exits to the darkroom to wait it out, chewing the inside of her cheek, trying not to imagine what would happen if he followed her, the way their naked bodies would look in the room's red light, the way his bare skin would feel against hers. God, she can't wait for college, when hopefully she can just get drunk and let a semi-stranger unburden her of her virginity. She's so confused, she can't even decide if she'd rather kiss Lennox or Mercy, for fuck's sake.

Around school, girls are wary of each other. Illa notices less PDA in the hallways, fewer dress-code violations. There are a few odd incidents, which Lennox reports in the “In Brief” section of
The Wave.
Medication starts to disappear from the nurse's office, first just the harmless stuff—ibuprofen and acetaminophen—but later, the prescription meds from the locked drawer where Mrs. Ancelet keeps them on hand for the students with various diagnoses—Ritalin and Vicodin and Xanax and Prozac.

In the bathrooms and the parking lot, girl fights break out with such regularity that Ms. Custer, the school counselor, takes to patrolling the grounds. More than once, Illa sees her walking back to her office between two sulky offenders, a hand placed on each girl's back. One morning in mid-September, Illa hears a rumor that Chief McKinney, after a series of false tips and skimpy leads, has begun calling girls in for questioning. Or, rather, one girl: Marilee Warren.

“I'd be so totally freaked out,” Illa hears a girl say from the bank of lockers next to hers as she gathers her books for morning classes.

“I know,” another girl answers. “Such a shame. She's so
pretty,
too. Now her life's ruined.”

“They're just questioning her, nerd.”

“Lucinda Warren got herself knocked up and thrown in the pregnancy trailer a few years back. Who knew being a slut was genetic?”

“Wonder who it'll be next.”

“My money's on Annie Putnam. Everyone knows that Purity Ball was a sham. I mean, come
on
! If you have to spend that much money to prove your virginity, something's fucked.”

“Yeah, and now she's all
I'm such a good girl,
and
I've got the certificate from the pussy police.
”

“Good
meaning she only gives head now.”

“You are such a bitch.”

Laughter as the girls' voices grow fainter down the hallway.