Page 29 of What Boys Learn

I thought about my attitude yesterday, talking to Jack Mayfield, feeling stubbornly sure that Sidney’s death didn’t look like a suicide. But now that the details were coming to light, there was no pleasure in being right, only an anxious distaste for the specifics. Every new fact conjured up a new image. Izzy accepting a pill, maybe thinking it was no big deal, a recreational drug to try in the presence of this person—friend—whoever he was, not realizing she had an allergy. Sidney drinking tampered wine, not realizing someone had put a cocktail of ground-up drugs into it. Different girls, different situations, but drugs in each case, and an unidentified person. Maybe thesameperson.

“Anyway,” Rita said, “I think you should put it out of your mind for the day. Go for a swim. Say hi to Benjamin.”

The car was sweltering now, the black steering wheel soft and greasy feeling. I’d mishandled things, at work, at home, in life—now and before. I felt lightheaded and anxious every moment I tried to imagine why someone would have wanted to hurt Izzy or Sidney. It didn’t feel right to go into Dartmoor, just as it hadn’t felt right to be at home. Nothing felt right.

I stared numbly at my phone for a minute before texting Robert.You promised to call.

I waited, but there was no reply.

I texted Benjamin back.Sorry for taking so long.

I saw Benjamin was typing. Before his next message rolled in, I added:If you’re ready to go I could just give you a ride home. I don’t need to swim.

Come in, his reply read.Water’s warm.

12

When I entered Dartmoor, the young desk clerk was on the phone—an actual corded black phone so heavy and old it looked like it was from a 1950s movie. She waved away my driver’s license, grabbing for a clipboard and a pen that she pushed toward me as she continued to talk to someone else.

Two spots above the blank line, Benjamin had signed in as a guest of Rita. I scrawled my name, thinking of other pools and fitness centers I’ve visited, with their membership card scanners and their fancy entryways, complete with couches, electronic message boards, and flat-panel television sets. This reception vestibule looked like it hadn’t been freshened up since the Kennedy era.

Benjamin had no reference point for categories like uppermiddle class and new rich versus old money. I’d told him that lots of people try to look wealthy. But the people who have had money forever try to look poor. Rich kidsandtheir parents in our town wore scuffed-up shoes, weird golf pants, and polo shirts with worn collars. It was a preppy cliché, but I hadn’t grown up preppy, and Benj probably didn’t even know the word.

“Am I good to go?” I asked the desk clerk, who was still talking on the phone, head in a cabinet, rustling through some stacks of paper.

While her face was hidden behind the cupboard door, I scanned the sign-in sheet. No sign today of any Mayfields. I flipped the page to check out entries from previous days. Until Memorial Day, the pool had limited hours. There weren’t too many names. I spotted Benjamin’s name yesterday, and around the same time on Sunday and Saturday. Two lines above his Saturday sign-in was Isabella Scarlatti. In at 11:10 and out at 12:50. I was looking at the way she spent her last afternoon. I was also seeing, with my heart in my throat, that Benjamin had signed out directly after her, with the same time: 12:50, almost as if they were leaving together.

“Okay!” said the desk clerk, hanging up the phone. “Do you need anything?”

I absentmindedly massaged my cheek with my fingers. “A lock,” I said when it came to me. “Do you sell them?”

“No, sorry.”

“Do you have any extras to loan out?”

She smiled. “We used to. Let me see. I’ll check the back office.”

She was gone less than a minute. When she came back, I swallowed down a trace of bile and shifted my tote bag, wincing when I heard it crinkle. I was just buying time,until. Until what? Until I understood.

“Here you go,” she said, placing the lock in my hand. “Just drop it back when you’re done. Enjoy!”

I mirrored her expression, keeping the smile pasted on as I made my way into the women’s locker room, smelling that old familiar brew of chlorine, coconut-scented sunscreen, and fancy hair conditioner.

Then I saw the row of old lockers. Two of them, side by side, were decorated with black bows. Each one had a combination lock affixed, a swimming team Speedo hanging outside. The deaths were so recent. I supposed no one wanted to be the person to cut the locks off or remind family members they needed to retrieve the girls’ suits. It was too heartbreaking.

Looking around to confirm no one else had followed me into the changing room, I reached for the nearest neon-green swimsuit, and then for the one next to it. On first touch, the second one still felt damp. My stomach did a sickening drop again. As if a recent death was more horrible to imagine than one farther back in time. But it felt that way, as if the past was close enough to reach back and grab, before anything bad happened or before the next thing did.

My fingers lingered, touching the fabric, which wasn’t actually wet, just shiny. I thought of that moment at home—the wisp of satin, clenched in my fist. I got that old feeling, like it was my job to contain this, even ahead of understanding it.

She gave them to me. But also:She was using me.

When I shook my head clear, I automatically reached for the clonidine tablets I usually carried, but then I stopped, remembering I’d taken the last one from the small pill case I kept in my purse. The regular prescription bottle was back home, somewhere. The last time I’d seen it was during the move, and I hadn’t spotted it since, because I hadn’t had time to properly organize the recently unpacked toiletries, medicines, and first aid stuff. Some of it was in bathroom drawers, some in lidded plastic tubs in the hallway closet.

In place of a clonidine tablet, I tried some box breathing. In for four counts. Hold for four. Out for four. My only problem with box breathing is that I always wanted to stop in the middle. To hold for not just four, but longer than four. To make everything stop.

I allowed myself to picture the girls for a minute, the way I’d last seen each of them. Sidney, with her long blond hair and effortless, retro ’80s supermodel tan; she’d probably been born with highlights. Izzy with her black hair, sleepy eyes, and devilish smirk; more Aubrey Plaza than Sophia Loren, come to think of it.

Even when they weren’t in school uniform, they dressed the same, in a fashionably disheveled style: a men’s buttondown shirt slipped off one shoulder and tied at the waist, over a crop top. High-waisted jeans with shredded cuffs. An enormous set of neon hoop earrings that seemed to bounce from one girl to the other. The girls traded entire outfits. Lord knows they didn’t have to, given their wealth. What else did they share?