Page 74 of Poison Wood

“What about your classmates?”

“They went in it.”

“That night?”

“No.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Who called the police that night?”

“Johnny Adair.”

“And are you aware of what Johnny looked like when the police arrived?”

This part of the night is much clearer. I’d been awakened by red and blue lights flashing into our room. I was alone, and I snuck to the front stairs, where Summer and Kat were sitting, eavesdropping on what was happening downstairs.

“Yes.” Where is Erin going with this?

“Can you describe it to me?”

Johnny was pacing the floor below us. Martha Lee and B.O. were off to one side watching him while the police were trying to calm him down.

“He was covered in blood,” I say. “He kept saying he slipped and fell in it. That something bad happened in the cottage.”

“That must have been scary for you,” Erin says.

No one has ever said that to me before. Not even my father. And when I look back at that moment, I’m looking at it through the lens of a woman who has seen a lot worse than that. When I try to think of the lens I saw it through that night, a young girl’s, I can’t quite reach the emotions I must have felt. And I don’t want to.

I say nothing.

“Was Heather part of your close friend group?” Erin says.

Heat starts to rise in my cheeks. “No,” I say. “She wasn’t.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels important,” she says.

I glance at Carl. “Can I get a drink? What have you got over there?”

He hops off the stool in the kitchen area and opens the fridge. He pulls out a bottle of wine. “Chardonnay?”

I make a face. “Fine.”

He pours me a glass and brings it over. Then he sits next to me. I sip the wine and tell myself it’s better than nothing. I turn back to Erin.

“Heather was always an outsider. The girls at Poison Wood were mostly from Louisiana, a few from Texas, a couple from Arkansas. But Heather had come from California. Even so, she and I sort of connected since neither of us had a mom. We were in a study group with another girl, Lisbeth Warrington.” I pause, take another sip. “I kept our friendship a secret from the other girls.”

Erin looks back in her notes, then looks up at me. “I’d like to talk about Lisbeth and Halloween. There are a lot of rumors swirling around what happened that night. Can we talk about that?”

I nod. “I wasn’t egging Heather on to push Lisbeth.” I study the trembling wine glass in my hand. “I mean, I’m not a saint, but I didn’t do that. I liked Lisbeth. And so did Heather.” I look back up. “Lisbeth was a quiet girl. She wasn’t loud like the rest of us. Girls threatened suicide all the time at Poison Wood, like it was nothing. But Heather came to me one day and said Lisbeth didn’t want to be here anymore, and Heather was worried she wasn’t just talking about Poison Wood.” I shift on the sofa and exhale. “When Lisbeth ran to the graveyard the night we were going to prank the seniors, Heather gave me a look, and we just knew. I was screaming for Heather to go after her. I kept yelling ‘Get up there,’ but I meant in order to stop Lisbeth, not push her.”

Erin tries to touch my arm, but I move it away from her.