I slept, but my dreams only rehashed things. The photos on Geoff’s bed, the math problem of the bike in the woods. A train leaves Kansas City at 9:00 p.m., headed for the gym. How angry is the driver?
In the morning, I texted Fran: I have a quest for Jacob and Max. Could they time themselves, I asked, riding bikes from the gym to the old mattress spot? Could they avoid any newer paths? I didn’t explain.
Fran wrote back: Who on earth had a bike?? But sure! They need exercise!
It was cold now, and muddy, only a little snow. The conditions were about the same.
We had decided at the end of the night that Alder would fill in both Britt and the defense team. We knew it was a reach—we’d probably sound like lunatics—but Robbie had yet to testify, so maybe they could make something of it. And meanwhile, those of us who had nothing better to do could at least dig harder. I had ridiculous visions of finding a rusty bike in the woods, Robbie’s fingerprints and Thalia’s blood still on the handlebars.
The image I kept returning to was of a tangled necklace chain. In one of the more normal moments of my later childhood, my mother taught me to rub a chain with olive oil, then take a long, straight pin and start working on the tiniest of gaps, the place with the most give. Once one thing loosened, another could loosen, another. I always felt claustrophobic at the start. But over time I’d learned patience, learned the reward of breathing through my discomfort.
What I knew was that we’d found a gap in the knot. I didn’t know what else it would loosen up, and I didn’t want to pull too hard, but I knew if we finessed it, wiggled it gently, other things would follow.
Midday, Geoff and I took our laptops to Aroma Mocha and sat looking through the 1995 interview records for any details of the mattress party timeline, any mention of Robbie being there the whole time or of who walked together. The kids who’d been there listed all nineteen students at the mattress party, confirmed that they’d been drinking, talked about when they’d last seen Thalia. Nothing about how scattered they’d been on the trail.
The only time it came up, either as a question or an answer, was the State Police asking both Sakina and Bendt Jensen whether Robbie had been there the whole time. Sakina said that to the best of her recollection, he was. Bendt said that he assumed so. They asked Sakina if he could have left early and she said no, because she remembered him helping Stiles walk home on his bad leg. Mike Stiles, in his own interview, talked about Robbie and Dorian helping him back.
“It’s amazing,” Geoff said, “that they thought to ask if he left early, but not if he got there late.”
“Right. Because bad stuff happens late at night. Bad stuff happens after you’ve been drinking, not before.”
Alder texted: LOL, Amy was like, uh, thanks for the theory. She at least agreed it looked like bike mud!
Just as we were leaving, setting our empty cups on the counter, Fran texted back: Nine minutes for Jacob, twelve for Max w/ training wheels, if I got the spot right. J says he could do it faster if it weren’t so wet.
25
I deployed myself that night as a weapon. A spy, in the grand tradition of women who trade sex, or the promise of sex, for secrets. Only I was wearing pajama pants and a USC sweatshirt, and all I did was text Mike Stiles. I’m stir-crazy, I wrote. Need to talk to someone not on the fucking witness list. Drinks on balcony? It’s not too cold!
When I opened the door he looked composed, but as he stepped inside he flushed. He was aware, at least, that he was a married man entering a woman’s hotel room at night. We sat outside and drank whiskey out of the two ornate glasses from the ice bucket tray. We talked about Lola, about his tripping over their pronouns （he was working on it） and how they were doing at Baylor.
I couldn’t get out of my head the idea of Mike being there at that ski house when Dorian put Beth on the monitor. Mike maybe showing Dorian where the security camera was. Mike being part of the “all of them” who’d sat and watched. I couldn’t imagine it was something he was proud of. I wondered if he ever thought of it at all.
I waited till he’d refilled his glass to say, “This hearing is bringing up so much for me. All my adolescent insecurities. I wanted to leave that kid behind.” I felt guilty that I was basically quoting Beth here, but I’m not a creative liar.
“That’s funny. I never knew you were insecure. You weren’t trying to play the game, from what I remember. I mean that in a good way. You weren’t doing the whole teen magazine thing.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Just—the girls who’d all get the same haircut and try to sit on your lap in the library. They were insecure. You weren’t like that.”
Under most circumstances, I’d have called a man out on using “You’re not like other girls” as a compliment, but this wasn’t the moment. I looked straight at him and said, “I’ve always known what I like.”
An unoriginal line, but yes: His ears reddened, he started to say something and stopped.
It was too cold, so we moved inside—Mike in the flowery chair, pulled close to the bed so he could put his feet up in their woolly socks. I reclined on the too-many-pillows that the Calvin Inn provided and took my sweatshirt off. I’d put thought into the tank top I wore beneath.
“I bet you’re the only person from that ski crowd doing actual useful work now,” I said. “Isn’t everyone else basically just turning money into more money?”
He protested, but was clearly flattered. He swished his whiskey and said, “It’s hard to break that pattern of what your parents want. You think you have to earn at least as much as them. Then there were kids like Serenho who didn’t grow up with much. My grandfather and my dad worked their asses off and I get to have this comfortable life in academia, but there’s always the safety net.”
“Wait, I thought Serenho was loaded.” I took a sip to hide my shoddy acting.
He leaned in, secretive. “No way. He was on massive aid, and the last two years Rachel Popa’s family paid for him.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they could. I don’t know; he’s just a great guy. And he knew how to charm it up with people’s parents. Moms, especially. We’d rag on him, how he was suddenly so polite, like, That sweater really suits you, Mrs. Stiles.”
I could see it. He’d been so good with teachers, had the kind of casual relationships with them that meant when I’d show up early for ninth grade English he’d already be there, asking Mrs. Hoffnung how he could get this chocolate ice cream stain out of his favorite oxford.
“Wasn’t he always going on vacations with you all?”
“Sure. But we’d pay. We’d find ways, like a few of us would gather money for the keg and make sure he didn’t get hit up.”
I said, “I guess Thalia knew, obviously. That he was on aid.”
“Yeah, but he also never took her home to Vermont, you know? And her showing up later, she didn’t see him when he was wearing crap clothes and cheap skis. She only met him after he had all the stuff we’d given him.”
This stung. I’d never noticed that Robbie had dressed badly, maybe because he was a boy, and because even his “crap” clothes were still a step up from Indiana. That he’d undergone his own transformation, parallel to my raiding of Fran’s sisters’ closets, hurt. I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe I felt for him, or maybe I hated that his friends had elevated him to social stardom, when my own transformation, liberating as it was, had only distanced me further from most of my peers. But hadn’t my own friends held me up? Hadn’t I done fine?