ON MONDAY MORNING, I WOKE UP to a text alert that all public and private schools in Chicago were closed on account of the storm. Sighing happily, I rolled over and slept in for the first time in about three years. Around eleven I finally got up, ate some breakfast, and relocated to the couch, where I spent the rest of the day taking antibiotics and lounging under a pile of blankets. My mom was off work, and she sat on the other side of the couch from me while we watched Teen Mom 2. She didn’t mention the tattoo, but every once in a while I’d catch her looking over at me. “What?” I’d demand, but she’d just shake her head and look away. Which is pretty much the worst thing ever. At least if your mom is screaming at you, you know she hasn’t given up on you.
When I wasn’t sleeping or watching terribly awesome reality TV, I was reading A Farewell to Arms. Catherine Barkley had gotten pregnant, and even though she and Lieutenant Henry weren’t married they were still happy about it. My favorite part so far was how the two of them would try to put thoughts into each other’s heads while they were in different rooms of the hospital. Could that really work, if you were in love? I closed my eyes tightly, sat up on the couch, and tried it. I think I’m falling for you, Tino, I thought to him. I got the number you left in the book, but I don’t want to be the one who calls first. Here’s my number: call me. Call me right now. Please? I opened my eyes and stared at my phone screen, willing it to ring.
“Wendy?” My mom said. “Are you all right?”
I opened my eyes.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Sorry.” I put the phone down and turned back to Teen Mom 2.
I hadn’t heard a word from Kenzie or Emily or Sapphire since they’d shown up at the deli that Friday. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing them again at school on Tuesday. I was hoping we’d get another snow day, maybe even a couple, but that bastard Streets and Sanitation commissioner had made sure the streets were plowed in time for the schools to open as normal after just one day off.
When I walked into chapel the next morning, I glanced to the back of the room and saw the three of them sitting in their usual seats beneath the looming wooden statue of Saint Veronica. Sapphire was frantically copying someone’s homework, Emily was pretending to read a copy of 1984 but really just using it as a prop to hide her phone, and Kenzie was slouched with her feet up against the chair in front of her, her hand in a bag of corn chips, the picture of queenly calm.
I hurried down the middle of the aisle and found an open seat in the social no-man’s-land known as the freshman section. I sat down, bracing myself for a Pop-Tart to the back of the head.
A senior girl from Eucharistic Ministry Club stepped up to the lectern. “In the Name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Spirit who makes us free.” We all made the sign of the cross.
She read from the Book of Luke, and I half listened while outside, icicles dripped and melted beyond the blue-green light of the stained glass windows. As I stared ahead, Our Lady of Lourdes stared behind, like literal eyes in the back of my head. She saw my old crew all the way in the last row, watching me intently as they mouthed along to the prayers. She saw Alexis studying me, waiting to see if this time I’d tried harder. And she saw the freshmen on either side of me trying not to stare, wondering what tales of upperclassmen intrigue and betrayal had cast the popular junior with the notorious last name out among their lowly ranks. I bowed my head, ignoring all their wordless chatter, and tried to concentrate on my prayers.
“And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him. And Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”
We finished our prayers and the bell rang for first period. I threw my bag over my shoulder and hurried out the door, walking fast but not too fast. If Kenzie, who hated weakness, could see that I was afraid, her vengeance was bound to be even more vicious. I kept my eyes trained to the floor, moving quickly from the chapel through the Saints Corridor to the main staircase, sticking to crowded thoroughfares, and turned left at the languages hallway. My Spanish classroom was within my sight when I heard the neat clacking of high-heeled boots behind me. Maybe it’s not her, I thought, accelerating my pace as much as I dared. Maybe it’s a teacher. Teachers wear high heels. Well, some of them do. And then I smelled it—a wave of sickly sweet peach body splash. Here it comes. I held my breath.
“Hey, Wendy.” Kenzie fell into step beside me. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry about the other day.”
“Um,” I said. This was not what I had been expecting. Was this some kind of psychological warfare? I’d rather just get punched in the head.
“Not to get all TV movie or anything, but it was the five-year anniversary of my mom leaving. I was not ‘being my best self’ that day, as Ms. Bennett would say.”
“Okay,” I said. We had reached the door of my Spanish classroom, with its Picasso posters and scale model of Chichen Itza. Sister Agnes, who’d been writing subjunctive translations on the board, saw me hovering in the doorway.
“¿Señorita Boychuck?” She put a chalk-covered hand on her hip. “¿Vas a entrar o no?”
“Sí, Madre Agnes.”
I’d never been so happy to see a cranky old retired missionary who gave mountains of homework and over-pronounced her rolling r’s.
“I’d better go in,” I said.
“Okay. But let me just say one more thing. If you don’t want to be friends with us anymore, I get it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“No hard feelings?” She stuck out her hand. I hesitated. It seemed too good to be true, but I couldn’t figure out her angle. The bell was about to ring and Sister Agnes had commenced tapping her foot. When I shook Kenzie’s hand, she drew me toward her, enveloping me in her peach scent. Then, she kissed me on the cheek.
I’d only remember that detail afterward. I have to hand it her: I had no idea she could be so poetic.
She’d betrayed me with a kiss.
It happened later that afternoon, during US History. Mr. Winters was droning on about the Gilded Age, and I was jotting down notes while also watching Veronica the Vegan covertly picking her nose.
“Pardon the interruption.” Sister Dorothy’s voice crackled across the PA. “Would Wendy Boychuck please come down to the main office? Wendy Boychuck to the main office immediately, please.”
Mr. Winters, annoyed that his lecture had been interrupted, glanced over at me and nodded permission. I gathered up my books. What was this about? The only other time I’d been called down to the principal’s office was freshman year, when Sister Dorothy had to inform me that my tuition check had bounced. Nothing good ever happened in the principal’s office; everybody knew that.
Mr. Winters’s discussion of the role of railroad unions in the economic landscape of the 1870s faded as I closed the door softly behind me and stepped out into the hallway. My footsteps echoed down the Saints Corridor under the watchful gaze of all those long-dead women. Saint Maria Goretti peered out at me from behind the sheep she held clutched to her bosom. Saint Appolonia tumbled across the ceiling, frozen forever in the moment just after a Christian persecutor knocked her teeth out with a wooden club. Saint Agnes of Bohemia leered at me with her wide, red mouth. And Our Lady of Lourdes stood above my locker, the soft folds of her shawls painted by my mother’s own hand, her mouth drawn downward in a look of either sorrow or pity.
When I got to the principal’s office, Mrs. Lang, the receptionist, showed me to the door. I opened it and found Sister Dorothy sitting grimly at her desk beneath the giant velvet portrait of Jesus and the Sacred Heart. Sapphire, Emily, and Kenzie sat in a row in the chairs opposite her desk. And standing against the window were two police officers.
“Sit down, Wendy.” Sister Dorothy indicated the remaining open chair next to her desk. She did not smile at me. I moved to the chair on shaking legs and sat down, glancing over at my former friends, but they were all staring at their laps.
“Do you know why you’re here, Wendy?” Sister Dorothy was sitting up straight as a rail, her hands folded on her daily planner.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Sister.” I tried again to make eye contact with the other girls. But Kenzie, slumped in her chair looking almost bored, was busy methodically peeling away a layer of blue nail polish while Sapphire’s and Emily’s eyes remained trained to the patterns of their uniform skirts.
“Okay, then. Let me give you a hint. Do you know a boy named Ned Munro?”
Ned Munro. Ned Munro. The name was sort of familiar. And then I remembered: October. The mansion on the lake. Evan’s cousin with the orange hair and the shiny apple face.
“I’ve met him,” I said. “Once. Why?”
One of the police officers, a young guy, not much older than my brother, with flat blond hair and pale eyebrows, raised a finger in the air.
“I’ll take it from here, Sister, if you don’t mind,” he said.
Sister Dorothy nodded slightly, sat back in her big principal’s chair and watched me.
“Ms. Boychuck, were you at a party at Ned’s family home a few months ago?”
“Yeah. I think it was in October.”
“Uh-huh.” He wrote something on his notepad. “Well, at that party, some very valuable memorabilia was stolen. You know anything about that?”
And suddenly everything made sense. The Abraham Lincoln silverware.
I swung around and stared at Sapphire, willed her to look up. Look at me, you fucking liar. You fucking coward. Instead, she fiddled with her hair and stared out the window at the cars rushing past the wrought-iron gates of Academy of the Sacred Heart.
“Ms. Boychuck? Do you hear me? Do you know anything about that?”
“No.”
The cops glanced at each other. The other one, older, with a belly that hung over his belt like a sack of flour, spoke up.
“A set of silverware. You don’t know anything about that?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He sighed, strummed his fingers on the windowsill. “Ms. Quintana?”
“Mm?” Kenzie looked up, sifting the piece of peeled blue polish onto the carpet of Sister Dorothy’s office.
“Show me your phone, please?”
As she handed him the phone, she finally looked at me, and her dark eyes were coldly triumphant. The cop held the phone in front of my face. There was a picture of me, sitting in the booth at Taco Burrito Queen, with a mountain of chicken nachos in front of me, holding one of the beautiful silver Abraham Lincoln forks aloft.
“Then how,” he asked, “do you explain this photo?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
“Well?” Sister Dorothy leaned forward in her seat. “Can you explain that photo or not?”
“Yes!” I exploded. “I was with them when they took it. When Kenzie dared Sapphire to do it, and then Sapphire did it. Remember?” I glared at Sapphire, but she continued to be fascinated by the plaid pattern of her skirt. I couldn’t stand it anymore, the way she sat there like a church mouse, her lips twitching. I reached over and smacked her, hard, on the arm. “Remember?” She winced and shrunk away.
“That is enough, Wendy,” Sister Dorothy roared, jumping up from her desk and nearly knocking over a jar full of pens. “I have to say, I expected more from you. An honors student. An A average. A girl who—”
“Whose father is Stephen Boychuck, the dirtiest cop in Chicago?” I interrupted. “Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? That’s why you believe them over me, isn’t it?” I could feel hot tears pricking my eyes. “Isn’t it?”
The blond cop looked at me with lizard-like calmness. His eyebrows were so light you could barely see them; it sort of made him look like an emoji.
“We’d like to search your locker,” he said. “If you’ll come with me, please.”
“Fine,” I said. “You want to see my physics notes? Maybe an old Dr Pepper can will crack the case? Let’s go!” I was shouting now, and I could see in the stillness with which Kenzie held her body that she was trying not to laugh. The cop held me by the arm and led me out of the office, with the other one following behind.
We walked down the Saints Corridor saying nothing. Their footsteps echoed heavily, so different from the more familiar sounds of running girls and the quick, efficient steps of the nuns. The saints were silent, watching, and so were all the girls in the classrooms that lined the corridor, craning their necks to see us as we passed, popular blond-haired Wendy Boychuck being led down the hallway by the police. Even the teachers were watching, and I knew what they were thinking: Like father, like daughter. We reached my locker. Our Lady of Lourdes watched as I spun the numbers of my combination. 07-08-08-17—my birthday and Kenzie’s birthdays combined, because she was always borrowing my locker to store her books since it was closer to her first period class, and this was the only way she could remember the combination.
Of course.
She knew my combination.
I knew even before I opened the locker that the silverware would be there. It was placed neatly on the metal shelf where I normally put my lunch and my lab goggles. The plastic case was a little banged up, several of the tines were bent, and a withered piece of ground beef still clung to one of the knives. My lunch and goggles had been thrown carelessly on top of the rest of my books at the bottom of my locker. They’d probably planted it there after chapel, while Kenzie was distracting me with her “no hard feelings” talk.
I didn’t see them take out the handcuffs, but when I heard the click, I knew exactly what it was. I’d heard that sound once before.