She started at the first name （Stephen Aaronson） and looked at each picture, all the way to Wesley Yu, reading each line of their inscriptions, taking notes on the references and inside jokes they made. After a few hours’ perusal, she had a headache that felt like an ice pick being jabbed between her eyes, and the names of her three suspects: Hal, the boy she believed had raped her; Brad Burlingham, the laughing, doll-boy redhead who’d held her down, and Daniel Rosen, the shorter, more slightly built boy, who’d been there, watching.
Diana stepped outside, letting the icy air cool her burning face. She drew it deep in her lungs. Then she went back inside, pulling out her notebook.
I Climbed Mount Katrina. Poe—Hal—had written that. So had Brad. Danny Rosen hadn’t, but several of the other boys in the class had made it part of their inscription. She paged through the yearbook, locating pictures of the Spring Fling, and saw one of the boys—Teddy Bloch—beside a tall blonde with feathered hair. She wore a white poufy dress, white flowers in a wrist corsage. “Ready” Teddy Bloch escorts St. Anne’s senior Katrina Detmer to the dance.
Googling “Katrina Detmer” and “St. Anne’s” gave her a Facebook page and a hometown, which, when googled, gave her an address and a telephone number. This time when Diana stepped outside, it had gotten dark, and her stomach was growling—she’d skipped breakfast and lunch. When she pulled out her phone, she saw seven missed calls from Michael. As she stared at the screen, another call came through.
Diana rejected the call, then sent a text. I’m fine. Just need to take care of something. I’ll be home as soon as I can.
She got in her car and drove into town, found a diner, made herself eat some soup and half of a grilled cheese sandwich. There was a fancy-looking inn at the center of town, the kind of place that looked like it had “Ye Olde” somewhere in its name, where Emlen parents probably came for graduation and well-heeled alums stayed for reunions. She decided she’d prefer sleeping in her car to staying there, but, luckily, there was a Hampton Inn at the edge of town. She got a room, took a long, hot shower, and changed into the clothes she’d packed—her favorite sweatpants and one of Michael’s plaid shirts, which was soft against her skin, and smelled like him. Thus fortified, she dialed Katrina Detmer, who lived in a suburb outside of St. Paul, Minnesota.
All through dinner, all through her shower, she’d tried to come up with a story. I’m a researcher. I’m a journalist. Or some version of the truth: I knew those boys the summer they graduated from Emlen. In the end, she went with the truth, which she relayed to Katrina Detmer as soon as she got the other woman on the phone.
“My name is Diana Scalzi. I worked on Cape Cod the summer of 1987. I met a bunch of Emlen graduates who were on vacation there.”
Katrina’s voice was low and husky, polite, but not especially warm. “Yes?”
Diana curled her toes into the hotel-room floor. “One of the boys assaulted me at a party on the beach.”
Diana could hear her blood pounding in her ears, in her temples. There was what felt like a very long pause. Then, angrily, Katrina said, “How did you get my name?”
“From their yearbook.”
“Excuse me?” Katrina’s voice had gotten louder.
“The boy who—the boy who raped me—his name is Henry Shoemaker.”
“Poe,” Katrina said immediately. “I never knew why they called him that. They all had those names. Raven and Bubs and Griff.”
“I read Henry’s yearbook entry, and he mentioned you by name. And so did a few of the other boys in the class,” Diana said.
“What did they write?”
Diana swallowed hard. “It isn’t—it’s not very nice.”
“You don’t say.” The other woman’s voice was hard-edged and scornful. “Look, either you tell me or I figure out how to get my hands on their yearbook.”
Diana swallowed hard. “They all wrote ‘I climbed Mount Katrina.’？”
Silence. Then Katrina demanded, “How many of them wrote that? And which ones?” Before Diana could answer, Katrina said, “How’d you find me, anyhow? Who are you again?”
Diana told her. “I saw the 1987 yearbook. You went to a dance with a boy named Teddy Bloch. There was a picture of the two of you, and your full name was in the caption. I just guessed that you were the Katrina in the…” Diana swallowed hard. “… other references.”