ALBRIGHT ACADEMY, AN ALL-BOYS PRIVATE school, looked like a private school from a movie, vaguely British, Todd had always thought, bricks and ivy on the outside and pristine marble, polished wood, and brass on the inside.
In the hall, three steps in from the front door, a huge crest was embedded in the black-and-white marble floor, the Albright crest: a shield with an eagle holding a sprig of something in one claw and a bar of gold in the other.
Todd always thought the bird looked like Scrooge McDuck’s evil eagle brother.
The main feature of the crest was the taboo against stepping on it.
Daniels and Greevy didn’t know about this taboo. Greevy stood, that morning, her salty snow-soaked detective shoes on the eagle’s beak, looking at the filigree and muttering, “The fuck.”
Greevy was wearing her leather coat, a button-down gray shirt, and black pants. Her hair still tied up but falling out of the elastic like she’d slept in her ponytail.
Daniels had a long wool coat on, a cashmere scarf that was just a shade darker than his coat. All charcoal wool underneath.
Greevy looked like a cop. Daniels looked like a lawyer.
When Todd first arrived at Albright, he was assigned a senior to show him the ropes. Every freshman got one. Todd’s was Doug Harper. Doug Harper, third generation Albright boy, had a face that looked like pizza dough and more red hair than Todd had ever seen on a human. Probably a full body of Irish setter red fur under his white button-down and gray slacks, not that Todd was picturing it or anything.
Doug Harper was not all that thrilled to be showing a scrawny freshman the ropes, even though, conceivably, it was his birthright.
Doug Harper told Todd that the hallway was haunted by a dead caretaker. If you stand on the crest, Doug told him, the ghost of the dead caretaker will follow you home and kill you in your sleep.
“He likes little pussy boys like you,” Doug sneered at Todd, as they stood in the hallway, next to the crest. “He’s gonna ram his broom handle up your ass.”
After he said it, Doug shoved Todd forward and tried to get him to fall on the crest. But Todd was catlike and he threw his body to the side, falling to the ground just shy of the crest.
Doug Harper graduated three years ago. But of course there were a hundred other Doug Harpers to take his place.
A clip-clop of little feet echoed through the hallway.
“Here he comes,” Greevy muttered, looking up. “Geez, guy LOOKS like a principal.”
Principal Spot moved across the floor in a series of tiny, crisp, quick steps that matched his little bald head and tiny face. His brown suit looked like it was made in a store that makes clothes for tiny principals. Spot stopped just short of the crest, like a diver lining up his toes to the edge of the diving board.
“Detectives,” he said, extending a little pink hand. “I am Principal Spot. Welcome to Albright Academy.”
Greevy shook his hand first. “Thank you,” she said.
Spot patted the brown folder in his left hand. “This is the complete record of Todd Mayer’s time in our school,” he said. “He was a longtime student, as perhaps you know. Of course if you have any questions, I am happy to be of any service.”
Spot looked up at the ceiling. “Obviously his death has come as an incredible shock.” He sighed. “A great loss for the whole school.”
Greevy took her notebook out of her pocket and tapped it in her palm. “We’d like to speak to all the students in his grade, today, and all the teaching staff who had him as a student,” she said. “And anyone else you think he was close to. Sports connections and clubs and so on.”
Spot nodded vigorously. “Certainly. I will be escorting you. We have four grade-twelve homerooms.”
Sweat ran down the side of Spot’s face and pooled in the divot between his neck and his once-crisp white collar.
Todd often wondered, when he saw Principal Spot mincing through the hallways, why someone like Spot became a principal. Because you could see in Spot, presumably even if you weren’t someone with Todd’s life experience, that he was someone people made fun of. Probably high school was hell for young Spot. He was an easy person to imitate, and many at Albright did a solid Principal Spot impersonation (though not Todd).
Why walk back into the fire? Revenge?
Greevy held her arm out. “After you,” she said.
It was 10:00 a.m., forty minutes into first period. The halls were empty. Spot walked fast. The sound of Greevy’s shoes echoed as she stomped down the empty hallway. Wood floors and white walls. The pictures of graduating students of 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, faces so similar they blurred together like the dotted line down the middle of a highway.
Possibly the only time any of those boys could be considered inert, Todd had always thought, was when their confident smiles were behind glass.
Principal Spot veered left, past the same-smiles of the classes of 2001, 2002, and 2003, knocked on room 214, and opened the door. Homeroom 12C.
Todd’s homeroom.
Todd’s OLD homeroom.
Being a ghost takes getting used to.
As Spot and Daniels and Greevy entered the room, the sound of voices inside the classroom stopped dead. At the front of the class, Mr. Devoe looked up and stopped writing on the board. Twenty-four boys turned and watched as Greevy walked up to the teacher’s desk at the front of the class. Spot followed a few steps behind her.
It occurred to Todd that, if you didn’t know their names, know who only ate cheese for lunch, know who once shit himself in gym, who didn’t wear socks even though it’s part of the uniform and a sign of basic human decency, it was just twenty-four boys. Twenty-four boys, sitting silent in their perfectly straight rows of desks. A perfect square (minus one) of boys in uniform: dress shirts and pants, blue and gray striped ties, groomed heads and white shirts, sweaty faces. They looked at one another without moving, eyes clicking left and right.
Greevy cleared her throat. Daniels crossed his arms and leaned on the wall at the back of the classroom.
“Hey so, okay, so I’m Detective Greevy,” Greevy said as she sat half her butt on the corner of the teacher’s desk. “I’m here today with Detective Daniels; that’s him back there. I’m sure your teachers have told you by now that your fellow student Todd Mayer’s death is being investigated by police. Which means that we are trying to find out some more about what happened to him the night he died.”
It was so fucking quiet you could hear each individual blink, the soft sound of each breath. Everyone in the room picked a spot that wasn’t Greevy and focused on it.
Greevy adjusted herself on the desk. Waited.
A chair scooted and made a loud squeak. It was the kid who shit himself in gym class two years ago. A kid Todd often used as a touchstone to remember that horrible things happened to other people at Albright.
Greevy waited some more.
The kid who only ate cheese coughed.
Their ties were all tight around their necks today. Did someone spread the word that detectives were coming, Todd wondered. Or were they always this still?
Greevy looked out over the sea of faces. “The last information we have about Todd is that he left his house on the evening of Tuesday, January twentieth. Two nights ago. I want to talk to anyone who knows where he might have been going that night, anyone who heard from him or saw him that night. Or talked to him that day. Is there anything you know about what might have been going on with him? Something hard to talk about maybe?”
As if she’d pulled a string, bodies started moving. Boys turned their heads, looking, waiting for someone to say something. But no one did. Shoulders went up and heads went down.
Someone was bouncing his knee under his desk. Todd looked at him.
“Looks like you’re going to die with some frooozen balls, homo!”
Daniels pushed off the wall at the back of the class, walked up the aisle of desks. Crossing the invisible line between visitor and student. Invading their space. “I want you to really think, now. Did Todd say anything to anyone that seems like something we should know? Maybe it’s something that might not seem important, something small?”
Silence.
Daniels stopped in between desks. “You know, this is not a big school,” he said. “Just because you weren’t friends with him, doesn’t mean you didn’t hear something about what was going on with his life. And whatever you know is going to help us find out who hurt him. Anything out of the ordinary. Anything going on that could have involved Todd. Anything.”
A bunch of boys looked down. Shook their heads.
Greevy folded her arms over her chest. “This is not about getting in trouble or getting someone else in trouble. This is about a student at your school who has died. Right? Wouldn’t you want someone to speak up for you? Give your parents some peace of mind?”
Parent.
Earlier that morning, the detectives had stopped in to see Todd’s mother.
She met them at the door wearing a long, droopy sweater that she would normally never wear. Inside, the house was quiet except for the sound of his mother’s sisters, Lucy and Laura, who were huddled in the long, yellow-tiled kitchen, making coffee, putting things in cupboards, listening.
Despite the fact that, as a ghost, Todd took up no space at all, the house seemed suddenly small. Or crowded. Maybe it was watching Greevy and Daniels squeeze through the narrow hallways lined with his mother’s bookcases full of romance novels and the old encyclopedias she collected. Maybe it was the way Daniels eventually perched on the faded purple loveseat in the living room, while Greevy took the chair by the window with the wool throw draped over the back.
This mix of things that used to populate his life, a crowd of objects that only went together because his mother put them all in the same room.
Todd wondered if the detectives were looking and deciding that this mix of stuff meant they knew something about Todd, while his mother offered them coffee. As she sat on the green couch with the pink flowers and the hole in the left cushion they covered with a throw pillow and told the detectives about the last time she saw Todd.
She told the detectives that Todd left the house that night at 8:30 p.m. She said that Todd told her he was going to see a movie at the Revue Cinema, at 9:00 p.m. Which is something Todd did a lot, the movie thing, by himself. He liked old movies, and the Revue. Eighties classics for $5. All-night Swedish film festivals for $4.
Ferris Bueller. Rear Window. Planet of the Apes. Dear Wendy.
Just Todd and a bunch of men in superhero T-shirts, quietly munching and watching. The smell of soap and popcorn. It was relaxing.
That night, Todd told his mother the movie ended at 11:00 p.m. Todd was supposed to be home at 11:30 p.m. If he caught the bus right after the movie, he could be home in twenty minutes. Thirty max.
At midnight, Todd’s mother called his cell phone and there was no answer. She called twelve times after that. Which was significant because very, very few people called Todd on his phone.
When Todd’s mother stopped talking, Daniels leaned over from his perch and said, “I know this is incredibly difficult, Mrs. Mayer. I know this is the worst thing that can happen to a person.”
Todd’s mother whispered that she hadn’t slept. It was a throaty whisper. Todd’s ghost felt it; it vibrated his nonexistent body like a bow sliding over a violin string, like the feeling when you run the pad of your finger over concrete. It was a strange sensation because it was the only sensation Todd’s ghost has felt since he stopped feeling anything.
Todd’s Aunt Lucy scampered into the living room from the kitchen and took Todd’s mother’s hand. Todd’s Aunt Lucy was the one paying for private school, because she worked in real estate instead of having kids. She used to call Todd “The Brain” and ask him about girlfriends. Todd’s Aunt Laura, who Todd didn’t like because she was kind of rude to his mom, he thought, came in with a plate of cookies no one ate.
Daniels looked up at the photo of Todd’s father, who died when Todd was five. It was a picture from a summer vacation when Todd was just a baby, one of those flared out sunny photos where you can’t really see anyone’s faces.
“He told me,” Todd’s mother said, softly, to the little china cat on the coffee table, “he told me he would be home right after the movie. He said he had studying to do.”
“He studied that late?” Daniels asked. “Good student, huh?”
“He was a good kid.” Todd’s mother’s voice was barely a whisper. “I called him the homework machine. He wanted to go to a good college. He wanted good grades.”
Todd’s mother fell into a sob, into the ample side of Aunt Lucy, who wrapped her arm around her.
Todd watched as Greevy and Daniels carefully set their coffee cups on their coasters, already inching back and away before Aunt Lucy stood and asked them if there was anything else they needed.
Not at the moment, they said. And they thanked her for her time. Again. And gave their condolences, again.
At the school, Daniels and Greevy went to all four homerooms, the same routine every time.
After each speech, Greevy handed a stack of her cards to every teacher.
“If you think of anything, anything, even if you don’t think it’s relevant, I want you to call us,” she told every class, holding up a card to show them she was leaving them behind. “This is how we find out what happened to Todd. We need your help.”
Every teacher in every homeroom took the cards and told Daniels that Todd was an incredibly gifted student.
Afterwards, Daniels and Greevy went to the principal’s office. Spot had run out to talk to a parent. Parents had been calling the school all day, Spot said, because there was a lot of misinformation going around. One parent thought Todd died on the school grounds. Because the news headlines said, “Boy Found Dead,” but it didn’t say where.
Daniels sat on the brown leather couch in Spot’s office. Greevy stood and stared at Spot’s desk.
It was one of those desks with a leather blotter built into the top. There was laptop and a picture in the far corner. She picked up the frame. It was photo of Spot and his dog.
“What do you think the dog’s name is?” She smirked.
“Doug.” Daniels flipped open Todd’s file on his lap. “So. No friends,” he said, scanning the papers inside.
“Apparently not.” Greevy frowned.
“Or scared friends,” Daniels said. “Nervous friends.”
“Possibly.”
“Enemies?” Daniels asked, turning a page. “Do seventeen-year-olds have enemies?”
“Sure.” Greevy’s voice landed like a hammer on metal.
Todd’s file was slim. It contained: a printed list of grades, a list of Todd’s extracurricular activities (one), a list of honors and awards, medical history. A few forms Todd’s mom signed for field trips: science center, aquarium, planetarium, museum of earth sciences.
“Badminton team,” Daniels noted, with what Todd decided to hear as respect.
Greevy sounded incredulous. “Badminton? Nice fucking school. Badminton team.”
Todd thought that was generous. He played three games before he found out what the badminton equipment was called: a cock. Technically a “shuttlecock,” but a cock nonetheless.
By grade ten, Todd knew better than to leave any openings, any vulnerabilities. So he quit the team.
“So Todd Mayer had no friends; he played badminton and got good grades.” Greevy sighed, pulling books out of Spot’s shelf and inspecting the titles.
“And he was in the Social Sciences Tutoring League.” Daniels looked at Greevy, eyebrow raised.
“They call it a fucking LEAGUE?”
Spot returned, even sweatier, and dropped behind his desk like a small bag of potatoes. “I hope your visits to the homerooms went well,” he said, brushing invisible crumbs off his desk.
“We didn’t get a lot from the students today,” Greevy answered. “But we’ll be back.”
Spot nodded vigorously. “Of course. Anything we can do. With parental consent where appropriate of course.”
“Can you tell me about the social studies tutoring program?” Daniels pointed at the file.
“Yes.” Spot planted his hands firmly on his desk. “It was a program started this year by Mr. McVeeter. It was intended as a way to get students to use peer support in improving their grades. Obviously, a great learning opportunity on both sides. We’re trying to move to more peer support programs, which was a challenge we put to our faculty last year. Colleges like them as an extracurricular, and it helps alleviate some of the pressure on the teaching staff.”
Spot paused and looked at Daniels and Greevy. Like he was suddenly unsure as to what he was supposed to be saying. Spot turned to his computer. “I can get you a list of the other students in the program if you like.”
“We’d like.” Greevy smiled. She was looking at his computer. “Is Mr. McVeeter, league director, in today? We’d like to speak to him as well.”
“Ah.” Spot looked up from his screen. “I’m afraid Mr. McVeeter called in sick this morning. Food poisoning. Some sort of chicken, I believe.”
Greevy scratched the name into her notebook. It looked like Mr. McVeeper in her scrawled handwriting.
Daniels pulled another piece of paper out of the file, a small square pink slip. “There’s an incident report in here,” he said. “Can you tell us about that?”
Todd had never actually seen an incident report in the flesh, although it was something he’d heard teachers threaten students with. It looked like one of the memos his mother used to keep around the house to write messages on.
Spot stopped typing. “That was before my time,” he said. “That would have been during the previous principal’s run, Principal Tek—”
Daniels cut in. “Would there be something you could pull up in your files? Since you weren’t present?”
Daniels stood and placed the pink slip on Spot’s desk.
Spot pulled it over with his little finger. “We are still implementing the online records so we don’t have everything up. But I will see if I can find some more information.”
Seconds later, Spot handed a printed page to Greevy. “The names of the students in the tutoring league. It appears there was only one tutor, which was Todd. Looks like there were only four being tutored: Chris Mattieu, Devon Marcus, Cameron Hill, and Mark Walker.”
“Small,” Greevy said.
“Pilot program,” Spot corrected, crisply. “I’m sure most of our students were doing fairly well in the humanities, with the exception of a handful, who were struggling. Mr. McVeeter is a very successful educator. We have a dedicated teaching staff here at Albright, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”
Daniels nodded. “I’m sure you do. We’d like to talk to all four boys.”
“Yes. It is Friday so our students who are team members might already have left.” Spot typed something else into his computer.“Yes, I’m afraid two of them have just left for a swim meet so they are no longer on campus. Do you want to talk to the other boys?”
Greevy and Daniels exchanged neutral looks.
“We’ll come back,” Daniels said. “Talk to them all together.”
Spot nodded. “In the meantime, anything you need…” He looked like he had to go to the bathroom, like he was holding it in or had been for hours. Days. “We can inform parents … I’m sorry, what should we inform our school parents?”
“You can tell them an investigation is underway and we are looking for information from students on Todd Mayer’s whereabouts on the night he disappeared,” Greevy said.
Later, in the car, Greevy lit a smoke and breathed a long sigh. It was cold and Daniels had the heat blasting as he rubbed his hands together. “You got one smoke and then that’s it. You’re killing me with that shit, Greevy.”
Greevy shook her head. “I feel like I’ve been staring at a brick wall of teenage boys all day.”
“Really fucking quiet teenage boys,” Daniels agreed. “With nothing to say about a kid they probably went to school with for years.”
“Yup.” Greevy exhaled a plume of smoke out the window.
“I’m putting my money on ‘Incident Report,’” Daniels said, pulling out of the lot.
Todd was a ghost and no longer had any money to bet.
Todd drifted out the window with the smoke of Greevy’s cigarette, up into the now gray sky. He was already getting used to being so much less than he was when he was alive. Maybe because there’s something in death that makes being nothing feel natural. Maybe because he had somehow always been a sort of figment. A slim file.
A slim file at a school like Albright was his accomplishment. Of course, he hadn’t considered that would make his murder investigation more difficult.
You don’t think about death, like that, when you’re alive. You think about surviving. And Todd was sure that everything he had done, everything he was, was helping him survive high school.
Except for that one thing. One mistake.
The last night of his life, when he walked out of his front door at 8:00 p.m.
Todd tried to remember what his mother looked like, tucking into the couch with her bag of pistachios to watch her favorite show about small-town crime.
“It’s freezing,” she said. “Take your mittens.”
Todd walked out the front door. At the end of the stone walk, he stopped. He knew his mom watched him from the window. It was snowing lightly. Todd held up his pink mittens for her to see. Mittens he made himself, which he kept hidden in his coat pockets when he was at school. Then he turned left and walked down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.
The Revue isn’t open on Tuesday. Which Todd’s mom didn’t know.
There was something about that night. Maybe he was just nervous. Todd remembered the feeling in his stomach, loose and cold like the snow.
That night it was colder than Todd thought it would be, air like a thousand knives. Todd remembered breathing in deeply, sucking as much cold air into his lungs as he could, filling himself with it, like splashing cold water on his face, bracing.
Just relax, okay?
Greevy turned on the radio. Led Zeppelin. Daniels rolled his eyes. “First cigarettes now this. You got ten minutes of this shit before I change it.”
Greevy bit her lip. “You think something’s going to come up, and it’s some random guy in the park? Cute kid like that? Alone at night? Looking for company?”
“Cute?” Daniels raised an eyebrow.
Cute was never how Todd saw himself, but then you learn a lot about yourself when you’re dead. When it’s clearly too late to do anything about it.
“You know,” Greevy grumbled, “young.”
Daniels paused at the stoplight.
Greevy tossed her smoke out the window. “Do you think it’s some random guy in the park?”
“No,” Daniels said, and he gunned the car through the slush of snow. “I don’t.”