“He wouldn’t tell me!” Lola said.
Alder said, “That means he was.” Then, “Oh my God, Britt, you have to look into all that! What if Thalia found out their secrets or something? That’s one of my theories. I have eight theories.”
Britt closed her eyes and smiled with only her mouth. She looked as numb as I felt.
“Ms. Kane,” Alder said, although most of them had taken me up on the invitation to call me Bodie, “what do you think happened? Hand to God?”
I took a long time to answer, navigating my still-spinning mind. I said, “You’ll have to stop recording first.” He obliged. I was careful, the way I spoke. Partly because I hadn’t articulated much of it to myself yet. “There’s a bunch of evidence against Omar that I can’t explain. But really they didn’t cast a very wide net. Personally, I think Britt is right that they missed important details, and they missed important people.”
“Wait!” Alder said. “Wait, you didn’t say that before! Like who?”
“There were close friends who weren’t in the woods. There was a girl named Puja Sharma who had a really strange mental health episode a few weeks later, and then she left school. There was this kid Max Krammen in Camelot, just a sketchball. I do not think either of them did anything; I just think those were people to look at.” There had been rumors that Max was the one who started the bingo card, although that seemed awfully ambitious for him. I said, as if this name weren’t any more important than the others, “There was a teacher named Denny Bloch.”
I wonder if you felt some twinge just then, of betrayal or guilt. Maybe I crossed your mind for no reason. Maybe a rooster crowed three times.
“He did Choristers and orchestra and Follies and spring musical and taught a few classes.”
Jamila said, “They had one person doing all that?”
“It was a different place. But he—Britt, you should look into him. He was married with kids, but I’m pretty sure they were having an affair, him and Thalia.” The kids’ jaws dropped, all but Britt’s. “Or—I mean he was preying on her. That’s not an affair.”
I hated how part of me—still!—held on to the notion that Thalia was, with full volition, choosing to sleep with you because you were young and everyone thought you were cute and it was a matter of status among her friends. But no. There was a line, a solid line, between Thalia and someone like Jasmine Wilde. A line of age, a line of agency. And there was a world of difference between you and Jerome.
I remembered Puja asking, right after I’d started rooming with Thalia, “Don’t you think she’s a little hoey?” I hadn’t understood the word, especially with her London accent, and I’d asked what she meant. “Hoey,” she said. “Like a ho.” I assumed this was a common word I’d missed. It remained part of my conception of Thalia. An adjective I would never hear used for anyone else.
Alder said, “Wait, I know who this is! It’s the guy onstage at the end of the Camelot video?” I nodded, although I wanted to know why Alder was asking the questions, rather than Britt, miserable next to him on the lavender settee.
Britt spoke, finally, in a monotone. “I know they interviewed him, but I don’t have any of the interview transcripts. Not that it matters now.”
Jamila let out a dramatic sigh from where she’d sprawled on the floor. She said, “Britt, I said what I said but you don’t have to pitch a tantrum.”
The other three grimaced but didn’t seem confused; whatever had happened, they’d been party to.
“I’d love to know why we’re doing Greek theater tonight,” I said.
A long silence that Lola finally filled: “Jamila made a joke,” they said, “about Harriet Beecher Stowe.”
It took me a second. “The author?”
“Like, that Britt was doing some white savior thing.”
“I was seriously just messing!” Jamila said. “Knock yourself out. Do what you want.”
Britt said, “That’s obviously not how you feel. And honestly, Jamila, I was mad, but I hear you and you’re right. This is not my story to tell.”
“Which is not what I said.”
I was in over my head, but I managed to ask Jamila if she wanted to voice her feelings.
She said, “My feelings are, I was kidding because I knew she’d freak out.”
I told Jamila that if she wanted to talk to me later in private, she was welcome to. I couldn’t tell if she was upset or not; I only understood half the dynamics in the room. My instinct in these situations is to sit back and listen and learn—but they were looking at me like I was supposed to solve it all. This was fragile, and these were fragile kids. And I felt derailed: I’d spilled this idea about you, and it had just vanished into a fog of adolescent angst and white guilt.
I said, “These are really important conversations to have, and maybe we could even weave them into the podcast. But we’re halfway through the class. Britt, I don’t know that it’s practical for you to change projects.”
Also: I found that I was as upset now at the thought of Britt stopping the podcast as I’d once been at her starting it. I needed her to keep prying. I couldn’t do it myself, what needed to be done; I needed to stand behind her.
“I know,” Britt said, and I worried we were about to have actual tears.
So I said, “Alder, can you pour me more coffee? Who wants more coffee? And you can tell us your theories.”
“Wait!” Lola said. “You were telling us your theory. You think the music guy did it?”
I hesitated. This was where things fell apart for me. I didn’t trust anything about you anymore, I believed you were involved, but I just couldn’t picture you bashing her head in. Why couldn’t I?
Because I knew you as a good teacher and an attentive father? Because you liked opera? Because you blushed so easily, and that made you seem sensitive? Because I’d fallen into the most obvious trap, finding it easier to imagine darker-complected Omar acting in anger?
I’d had time, of course, to get used to the idea of Omar as killer. I’d pictured him that way for the past twenty-three years, his mug shot and conviction overriding the fact that I knew him to be a sensitive person. Omar taught me how to tape my own ankle, the spring I twisted it. Omar taught the rowers alternate-nostril breathing for meditation. Omar was allergic to the dye in yellow Skittles, and rather than throw them away he’d leave a little bowl of just the yellow ones on his desk, for anyone to take.
My head was a mess. My throat felt raw, and I wondered if I’d made myself sick in the cold.
I said, “My point is, there were five hundred students on campus. There were dozens of faculty. And Britt is right that Omar’s the only one they really looked at.”
“Plus whatever staff, right?” Alder said. “Grounds crew and dining hall?”
Britt shook her head. She said, quietly, “No one who didn’t live on campus was still here. Except Omar and one security guy. The Crown Street exit had video, and the access road was closed for the night—so they knew every car coming or going. And then, I mean, I guess when the fire truck came for the smoke alarm, there were firefighters around. That seems like a stretch, though.”