Twisted Fate Read online

  From: [email protected]

  Dear Dr. Adams,

  We’d like to thank you for all the help you’ve given Graham over the last year.

  As you know, he will be starting school again next week, and we are beginning to feel some trepidation. Kim has mentioned again the possibility of homeschooling—she would be able to stay home with him and has the credentials to teach him, and we feel they have as strong a relationship as a boy like Graham could have with a stepparent. We were wondering if you could advise us. I’m sure you understand our concerns, and I’m wondering if maybe this is the best route to take.

  I know you’ve said it’s important for him to get some socialization, and while we essentially agree, the fear and risk of reliving anything close to what happened in Virginia has made us very reticent. We’re concerned that his social life be a healthy one. We don’t want to see any more heartache.

  We’ve read the books you recommended about the benefits of combining drug regimens with talk therapy, and in theory we are fully ready to support Graham any way we can, but in practice it seems daunting.

  He’s still working on the Austin, and I’m planning on buying him another antique car for Christmas, which I think will also be therapeutic. And we’re getting him that better telescope he wanted. Trying to encourage his healthy preoccupations. His mechanical skills are really quite excellent, and the best times we have together are in the garage just tinkering. Or outside looking at the stars.

  We’ve tried harder than anyone to put the past behind us and invested as much as a family can in the health of our child. We’ve come a long way from last year. But I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t still afraid of my own son sometimes. I’m hoping that you can give us the best advice. We agree that his spending should be monitored, and there’s no need for him to have his own source of income at this point. He’s getting his usual allowance, and we make purchases for him. I’m happy to update you regularly as we make this transition.

  Also we know that there have been some advancements in the drug regimens since Graham was prescribed, and we’d like to make sure he’s on the best possible plan. Please let us know about any pharmaceuticals you think could make this time easier for him. Thank you again for your support.

  Best,

  David Copeland

  After that first day when we saw him out by his car, it seemed like he was always around. I would almost say lurking around but it was his own house, so I guess you’d just call it hanging out. Most of the time he was working on his fancy car or filming things.

  Once when I was practicing some tricks in the driveway he came over and asked if he could film me—you know, doing kick flips and simple stuff.

  I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “Do you skate?” He had the tall, lanky, hair-in-your-eyes look that kinda said skater, so it was a reasonable question.

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll break my neck.”

  I laughed and then skated over to him, stepped off the board. “Here,” I said. “Give it a try. You’ll be fine.”

  He smiled nervously and put his foot on the board. And when I looked up into his face, his eyes looked really funny. Like his pupils were huge. Big black disks in the center of blue. Whoa, I thought, maybe he will break his neck if he’s going to try skating all messed up on whatever he’s messed up on. He stepped onto the board and just stood there and that’s when I noticed Ally walking down the driveway carrying a wicker lunch basket.

  “My sister can do some good driveway tricks too,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, you should ask her about it sometime.”

  Ally sat on the low wall near the house and just watched us. She gave me a funny, skeptical look—the kind that said, “That boy can’t skate,” and I almost laughed out loud.

  Sometimes she could get that kind of look our father had where he would just stare blankly and then ask what kind of boats you’d sailed. Graham didn’t look like he could keep himself upright on a skateboard, so I doubted he had any sea legs. And things like sea legs were pretty important to Ally, who still sailed with our dad quite a bit.

  “So, um. How do I do it?” Graham asked.

  “Skate!” I said.

  He looked a little confused and then put his foot on the board and pushed along the pavement. The driveway sloped down and curved into the woods. By the time he had reached the end of the slope he had fallen off. He lay there on his back dramatically while I trudged down the driveway. Then I stood over him with my hands on my hips. He was gazing up into the sky with a weird look on his face, a half smile, his eyes drifting from left to right as they followed a cloud.

  I looked back at Ally, who was grinning and shaking her head. Then she headed back toward the woods with her basket to pick berries.

  I said “All right, captain head case, point taken. You cannot skate. Hand over the board.”

  I shrugged and hopped back on the board and skated around his body, then up the driveway and retrieved his camera from where he left it, handed it to him. But I get you, I thought. Behind those dilated eyes is a great big secret.

  I rode my blue vintage Schwinn along the winding coastal road to work, feeling the wind blowing my hair around my shoulders. My baby-blue helmet was buckled beneath my chin and I had on my powder-blue silk shirt Mom had bought me and my jean jacket, and my backpack was full of homework. Always so much homework. Sometimes I wished I could be like Sydney and never have to study. It’s not like I couldn’t get good grades, but I had to concentrate and work twice as hard as she did. I knew working hard was one of the best qualities a person could have, but I still felt dumb sometimes. It’s not easy to have a little sister who is so brainy.

  I thought about college applications while I rode. I hoped admissions at Emerson would appreciate how hard I’d been working, hoped it reflected in the transcripts I’d be sending. I knew that my recommendations would be good but worried about my grades in English and science, worried that my essay might be a little boring. I started working on it over the summer even though it wasn’t due for several months. I’d even shown it to Sydney—who had actually had some good suggestions and helped a lot. Guess Syd couldn’t wait for me to get out of the house, wanted to make sure she got me into school and away.

  I think Syd and I were like two sides of the same coin. She wouldn’t work at anything that didn’t interest her but she had some kind of crazy memory for information. I would work at everything as hard as I could but things slipped my mind all the time. It was hard to keep hold of facts. I liked practical things better and I felt like there was always enough going on to keep me busy. I was like that since we were little. I often felt like Sydney did things and I just watched her do them and made sure she didn’t get hurt. For example she’d never wear a helmet if she was riding a bike. She almost never wore one when she was skating.

  That might seem brave, but another word for it is reckless—or maybe even stupid. I liked to have fun too, but I didn’t think the fun came from the possibility that you might get hurt. If Daddy said to put on a life jacket when we were on the boat and it was stormy, I put on a life jacket. I wore a helmet when I rode my bike. Syd thought things like that made me scared or wimpy, but I enjoyed what I did.

  I loved biking away on the hills or along the ocean and being alone and away from everyone, feeling free and smelling the salt air and thinking about nothing. I really did think about nothing. I’m not embarrassed to say it. It was a gift. Most people can’t stop thinking about who they are or what they’ll do or what people think about them but I could. I could stop thinking about upsetting things and think about nothing. I could accept the world just as it is and live in it just fine. When life gives you blueberries, bake blueberry muffins!

  I always thought one day, maybe when we’re older we’d become better friends and see how what we thought were opposite qualities actually complemented each other. Just like Mom’s and Dad’s.
/>   The leaves were just beginning to change color and the stunning yellows and flame reds whizzed past and crunched beneath my tires in the gutter. The breeze smelled like wood smoke and crisp fall air and it was still warm where it was sunny. I loved days like that. The bright hot sun and the high round clouds made me feel free, like I could do anything.

  When I arrived at Pine Grove, I locked my bike out front and then went in to say hi to Ginny. I would be changing linens for the first hour and then would relieve the other receptionist at the front desk. Maybe if there were few calls or little to do I’d get to do some schoolwork before biking back home. The place always smelled like vanilla candles and cinnamon, and the old wood was polished shiny and clean, and the wide plank floors creaked a little beneath the traditional braided rugs Ginny had bought down at the antiques market. The whole place was cozy and charming, like stepping into the past.

  The sofa in the lobby was also an antique and Ginny had made a log cabin quilt to throw over the arm. It all looked so perfect and made me happy we live in New England. I honestly couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d like to live. Rockland suited me fine and I was proud my family had lived there for generations; it seemed to make the memories all sweeter and deeper, all of us decades after decades going to the same schools, walking down the same roads.

  I looked out the windows at the beautiful ocean. It was always so quiet and peaceful there. I was lucky to get paid to sit in that pretty room. Work was usually fun and laid-back. A few guests checking in, a phone reservation or two. But that evening, there must have been something wrong with the telephone connections at the front desk, or maybe a wireless tower had gone down nearby.

  Because a few times every hour I would get a call and no one would be on the other line.

  I would answer. I would say, “Hello, hello?” And there would be nothing but silence and then a cold quiet click.

  I responded to the call in the late afternoon. Shocked to hear it on the scanner. And I fully expected it to be some contractor who’d had too much to drink at Kelley’s Dockside Happy Hour. But it wasn’t. There was already a small crowd there. It was a chilly day, but bright, and the sun was just beginning to get low in the sky—reflecting out across the water. You never would have known on a day so normal and beautiful that something could go so horribly wrong. People never expect it, but in my experience, that’s when it happens.

  I patrolled the harbor regularly and I’d been used to breaking up some or other nonsense, carpenters who had maybe a few too many, kids who were bothering the yacht owners with their music or smoking or skateboarding. But mostly I would be cruising by and making sure things were as they should be. And in Rockland, hell, in Rockland things usually were. People kept to themselves for the most part. Yeah, maybe the rich folks stay up in their neighborhoods or at the yacht club or country club or the golf course. Maybe us regular folks go down to the seaside public parks to grill and play baseball. Make picnics and let the kids play at the shore. What I’m saying is the town didn’t mingle a lot. There was a big old divide between the west and east side, but folks didn’t mean each other any harm. Not here.

  I don’t know how to say this without just saying it. When strangers move to town, things get shaken up. People from away don’t quite fit in—not down at the park and not up at the golf course either. And you gotta wonder why they left where they were from in the first place. I knew it when I was in the ambulance staring down at that kid. This isn’t the kind of problem we have here, I thought to myself. This just isn’t the kind of thing we do. And I shoulda known. I shoulda known all along. I shoulda never dropped my guard, been charmed, been taken in. The fact was I saw it coming, I’d been warned. I might be just a small-town cop but I’ve been around the block and I knew the kinds of things that go on in this world.

  I’d dragged bodies out of the water before—this is Maine and it gets cold and the water gets treacherous sometimes. There were tragedies for sure; drowning, boating while intoxicated, a suicide. But this. Nothing like it. I never had to show up at a parent’s doorstep and tell them the thing that would destroy their life.

  Never. Not until that day.

  I don’t know why I wanted Declan to spy on him. I guess I wanted to see what he was really like. At the time I didn’t have any information about him, just what I could observe by hanging around. And I have to admit I had a strong reaction whenever I thought of him or when anyone mentioned him. It wasn’t even so much that he was handsome—though he certainly was.

  Honestly, I just think I was bored. Bored bored bored. Some days I actually feel like I’m trapped in the school. Like the place is really a jail. We’re forced by law to go there—to be there all day. It’s the closest thing to a prison there is. In fact it’s like the whole population actually has to go to prison first before they can enter society. Have to make sure we learn these arbitrary bullshit rules—make sure we won’t talk back, that we’ll follow orders. Once we prove that, once they’ve ruined our ability to even think for ourselves—then they let us go.

  Declan was right about having to pretend we’re not in some tedious made-for-TV movie. It’s not like you really have to study. If you pay attention for even one minute you know what’s going on. I used to beg my parents to let me stay home and read something good instead of wasting my time at school, but then Ally liked school so much I’d just get dragged along with her—sucked into her idea about it. That didn’t last forever obviously but when I was young she’d always coax me to get up in the morning and tell me how much fun class was going to be.

  After a while it was anything but fun. I’d be stuck sitting at my desk for hours and hours after I already got it, listening to some teacher who just has a BA from a shitty school and a teaching certificate from the state of Maine drone on and on and on and on instead of being outside skating or reading a good book or listening to music. School might be fine for Ally and her friends but not for me. Not for Declan and Becky either. And I had a feeling—not for Graham. Something about the way he looked at things made me feel like he was already done with whatever it was school was theoretically supposed to offer. Really done. Like he’d already been to college and had a job and two kids and been divorced and remarried and had become an alcoholic and was paying double alimony and child support even though he was just a kid. That’s how heavy his look was. He was weary and skittish and somehow weirdly confident; up to something, beaten down but unbeaten. And he was clearly on some kind of drugs. I mean clearly the kid was wasted half the time—or at least that’s the impression I got. Sometimes his pupils were dilated and sometimes they were little pinpricks.

  “Don’t you think you’re giving this guy a little too much thought?” Declan very reasonably asked. “I mean, he sounds chill. I’m not really up for spying on some guy because you’ve got a crush. It doesn’t bother me; it shouldn’t bother you. Why don’t we just hang with him?”

  This was classic Declan. Once he got high he was all philosophical about how “everything in the world is connected” and everyone is chill and we should all get along. And peace and love and God in the smallest drop of water blah blah blah.

  “Yeah, a lot of thought,” Becky said, and then started laughing. “Too much thought.” She looked at us but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Is he yummy?” Then she laughed again. “Oh . . . wait . . . no . . . didn’t mean to say yummy . . . ,” she whispered to herself. “Is he . . . um . . . ?”

  “He’s like some kind of teen idol,” I said, interrupting her weird digression. “It’s gross actually. Fancy car, fancy clothes, pretty golden hair, like he belongs in a catalog, except for all the other stuff I told you about. Y’know, how he looks like an old man kinda . . . all serious.” I could have gone on and on discussing the details but I got lost thinking about it and then I got distracted looking at the leaves moving gently in the wind.

  “Definitely not your type,” Declan said, grinning, bringing me back to the conversation. “But he doesn’t sound like a creep
y dweeb either.”

  Becky laughed. She said, “Dweepy creeb.”

  “He is!” I shouted. “Being from a catalog and being a creep are not mutually exclusive. They don’t cancel each other out, you can be one and still the other. You can—”

  “We get it, we get it,” Declan said, waving his hands in front of my face. “It just seems weird of you to be so wrapped up in a guy like that when you only hung out with him once. I know you have your Spidey senses, Tate, but maybe they’re not working with this dude. I mean, think about who you really want to invest your energy in.” He leaned forward, smiled beatifically at me, and batted his eyelashes.

  It was funny but I really didn’t want Declan to start going on and on about “energy,” which was a whole other lecture he liked to give when he was high. “Energy” and then, without fail, physics and string theory and YouTube videos of talking crows. Weed just made Declan more in awe of the world than he already was, which was saying something, and made him talk ten times as much, which could get pretty unbearable—especially if you were also a little effed-up.

  I knew what he was getting at by the “my type” comment. Declan was “my type” and he knew it. He was the ranked chess champ of the county, had nearly a perfect score on his PSAT, and he dealt pot and read Dostoyevsky and Jane Austen. That’s who I want to be with. That’s who I want to run away and sleep on the beach with. That’s who I want to give it to and take it from. Not some weird kid from the south. I told myself that again to make sure I really got it. Declan, I thought. Declan, not Graham.

  But I had to admit there was some pull I felt from Graham. Like he knew something about me right away. Something other people ignored or just didn’t realize. There was a mystery about him that I wanted to understand. The way he laughed when he met me and Ally. The way he looked at Ally. Our fates were twisted. I knew it the minute he crossed into our yard and stood with the sun on his face beneath the pine tree.