Harvest of Ruins Read online

  “But nobody knows how…” That girl suddenly looked up and stared straight at Vinny. She had long, straight brown hair, unfortunate buck teeth and wore glasses.

  Vinny recognized her. Ivy called her Donkey.

  Donkey's big eyes stared straight at Vinny as she nudged one of her other friends.

  “The weekend night. You know. The party.” One of the friends, the other brunette with the crooked nose.

  The one Ivy called Mouse.

  The third friend, who wasn’t talking, was Mop Top, because she looked like a straight piece of wood with a big pile of hair dumped on top. Ivy had said if it wasn’t for the hair, Mop Top would have been Giraffe. That it was kind of a shame to not use animals for all three of them, but Mop Top’s hair was always such a huge, straggly mess, it stood out more than her lanky body.

  The others she remembered. Mop Top, she couldn’t forget.

  Ivy called them wannabes.

  “But, I mean, Adam Fields. He was totally hot. Why’d he do it?”

  Vinny felt her eyes widen. Adam was Ivy’s date at the party. Hadn’t they said something about the party?

  The party Ivy had ditched early, and lied to Vinny's mother about.

  “Drugs?”

  Vinny tried to inch closer so that she could hear what they were saying.

  “Found yesterday.”

  The first girl with the impending dental bills glanced at Vinny, moved closer to her friends and told them to shush.

  “Gunshot. That’s what I heard.”

  “…think he killed himself…”

  “Shhhhh!”

  That was when Vinny came crashing back to reality, both feet on the ground, heart in her throat as she spun in the direction of the person who’d said the words.

  A voice was speaking over the intercom, measured and controlled, soothing and reassuring, but doing nothing to help Vinny find her own inner calm. She swallowed, then gasped again. She felt as though the air was being sucked out from her nostrils even as she tried to pull it in and the faces around her turned sideways and slanted as she clutched at her chest before the veil of darkness reached out from behind her eyes and turned her world black.

  ***

  Hunter wondered if the dream was over. For a moment, she felt as though her body was falling through a vacuum in space, drifting through nothingness, and then a pinprick of light broke through the darkness, and another, and another, until she knew again she was seeing the world through Vinny’s eyes.

  Hearing Vinny's thoughts in her own head.

  ***

  Is this Heaven? Vinny wondered.

  All she could see was the brightness. A large circle of white. Where was she? It took a moment for her to realize she was lying down, that she was in a boring room painted with the dullest colors. Where she was, exactly, and how she’d gotten there eluded her. For a moment all was calm. Sounds were muffled and far away, foreign, and she felt nothing, until a raging whoosh welled up from somewhere inside her and struck her on the head with the force of a woodpecker. She felt as though something was trapped in her skull and trying to break out.

  Vinny started to sit up, groaned and reached for the back of her head as someone appeared beside her.

  “Don’t move too quickly.”

  Vinny squinted to try to bring the image into focus. “Ms. Woods?”

  The woman smiled. She was a decent-looking woman, in a plain way. Straight brown hair that was always pulled back into a ponytail, maybe an extra five or ten pounds on her frame, but nothing her height didn’t absorb. She never wore much makeup, but had naturally creamy skin. If it wasn’t for the slight dip in her nose and the high forehead that was accentuated by the lack of bangs, she might have been pretty. “Well, that’s a good sign. Maybe that bump on the noggin’ won’t do more than give you a headache.”

  Bump on the noggin’? Vinny knew the school nurse had a reputation for unusual phrases and sayings that the kids joked about, but that wasn’t what was on her mind.

  How did she get hit on the head?

  “Do you remember falling?”

  Vinny started to shake her head, then felt the woodpecker protest. She stopped.

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  A blink. Then she closed her eyes. Pinpricks of color against the black. This feeling in her stomach that was worse than a knot. Like she'd swallowed a brick and it pulled against the organ from the inside, threatening to tear through. A strange, unexplained awareness that it wasn’t from anything she’d eaten, that it wasn’t an illness. That something was wrong.

  “Here. Slowly,” the nurse said as she eased Vinny up until she sat on the bed. The nurse helped her turn her body so that her feet hung over the side. Then she walked out of the room, picked something up off her desk and returned.

  “Take these.”

  Vinny accepted the small plastic cup with the pills and the accompanying water and downed them without asking what they were.

  She lifted her hand, which shook like the last leaf clinging to a tree in a fall storm, but other than the pain in her head, the strange feeling in her gut and the acidic taste in the back of her mouth, the rest of her body didn’t feel anything at all. Vinny touched her arm. She understood it was supposed to feel cool and clammy; that was what her fingers told her, but the arm she’d touched didn’t register the sensation. It felt different, removed, like she was touching a body that belonged to someone else.

  “She’s probably in shock,” the nurse said. Her voice was low. Whatever the nurse had said before that, Vinny hadn’t heard.

  Vinny looked around the room. Bland. Nondescript. White walls and a beige, tile floor. She sat on the bed in the center of the room. The nurse had stepped outside the door, which opened up into her office. The blinds on the observation window were open, and through the glass Vinny could see the nurse’s desk. In the nurse’s office the walls were lined with bookshelves. One of the shelves overflowed with teddy bears and dolls. A few of the upper shelves contained plants. The outer office was homier than the room she was stuck in, although Vinny suspected the plants were plastic.

  The nurse stood by the open door to the room Vinny was in. The door itself obscured her view and she couldn’t see who was on the other side of it.

  “I just need you to sign this,” the nurse said, “and you can take her home.”

  The nurse walked over to her desk. As she moved away from the door, Vinny’s mother followed.

  Mother didn’t glance through the door to see how her daughter was, or address her in any way.

  Her mother took a pen from the nurse, bent over the desk and signed the form. The nurse offered Vinny a sympathetic smile as she opened the door fully. Vinny could see the chairs against the wall by the door to the hallway. Her book bag sat on one of them, her jacket on another.

  When her mother finished she straightened up, set the pen down on the clipboard and turned. For the first time since her arrival she looked at Vinny.

  Why am I here? What happened? The thoughts were still swirling through Vinny’s mind, although they’d been overshadowed by her awareness of her mother’s presence.

  Mother didn’t have Lily with her. Why?

  “I-I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t know-”

  “It’s okay. I’ll take you home.”

  Mother’s eyes were wide instead of narrowed with anger. The corners of her mouth were pulled downward with sadness instead of curled into a sneer.

  Vinny slid off the bed. The nurse reached for her arm to help her steady herself.

  “Thank you,” Vinny murmured as she felt the nurse’s fingers slip away and she walked through the door to the main office. The smile she offered her mother was feeble, apologetic, and she imagined tinged with some of the fear she felt over what had happened.

  What had happened?

  “I gave her the painkillers. She’ll be stiff when they wear off.”

  She walked toward the chair but her mother walked briskly in front of her and picked up the
backpack. “I’ll get this,” Mother said as she passed Vinny her coat.

  Vinny started to put her first arm in the jacket and murmured, “Thanks” as she winced.

  “Here, let me,” Mother said. She walked around behind Vinny and eased the jacket up her arms one at a time and then walked around and pulled it up in front and straightened the collar.

  Vinny felt the urge to flinch at her mother’s brief touch, but when she’d tried to pull the coat on herself she’d felt the surge of prickles up her back and the scream of the muscles burning in protest. When she’d slid off the bed she’d felt the stiffness and tension in her body, sensations she’d been unaware of even when she first sat up on the bed.

  The woodpecker was resting, put to sleep by the painkillers the nurse had provided. Throughout the rest of her body, it felt as though a layer of skin had been peeled away, exposing raw nerves with each simple movement.

  “Such a shock to us all,” her mother said. What else had her mother said? Vinny felt sucked inside her thoughts, inside her head, removed from where she was. She wanted to hear what they were saying. She needed to…

  What was the last thing that had happened before she woke up in the nurse's office? Mouse, Donkey and Mop Top in the hall. Something about Adam…

  “I don’t remember.”

  The voices stopped abruptly and Vinny sensed her mother and the nurse looking at her. The nurse was behind her, and her mother was to her side. “What happened to Adam?”

  The words hung there, unanswered for a moment. There was no movement in the room, no reaction from the two women. Nothing but the sense that all the raw nerves were being tucked in to bed, covered over by the effects of the pills she’d swallowed moments before, unable to overwhelm her body with pain at every movement.

  “Let’s get you home,” Mother said. She turned and opened the door to the hallway, held out an arm to indicate to Vinny that she should follow, and thanked Ms. Woods for her care.

  Vinny turned her head carefully and looked at the nurse. The large eyes were weighed down with worry and sorrow. Why was she so sad? Vinny was certain she’d be okay. Nobody had said otherwise, she wasn’t being taken to the hospital.

  She shuffled toward the door. It wasn’t the distant twinge of pulling muscles masked by the drugs in her system that caused her to move cautiously; she feared the prying eyes in the hallway, the curiosity, and worst of all, the knowing looks of those who may have seen what had happened to her, who knew what had triggered it and were waiting to offer pity or ridicule.

  Her gaze was on her feet as she stepped out of the nurse’s office. She felt her mother moving behind her, felt the light touch of fingers that brushed her back as she was guided through the throng of teenagers. Vinny could feel the number of people in the hallway, not moving, standing in clusters, whispering. Why weren’t they moving? She wondered what time it was and bent her wrist so that she could see the face of her watch.

  They should be in class.

  “Oh Evelyn.” She felt the person hug her, saw the blonde hair, smelled the familiar perfume. Heather stepped back and brushed a tear from her perfect cheek. “I’ll call you later.” Heather offered Vinny’s mother a smile. “Hi, Mrs. Shepherd.”

  Vinny looked at Heather and moved forward as she felt the increase in pressure from her mother’s hand, still on her back. She didn’t correct Heather’s assumption. Friends in name only, connected through Ivy. Heather didn’t know her. Didn’t know her mother was remarried.

  Before she’d lifted her head all she could see of the people in the hallway were their shoes and legs, which gave her little sense of who she was walking past. Now, she could see the clusters were of strangers and acquaintances, of those she knew well and those she didn’t know at all. There was no ridicule in their eyes, and she felt no shame. In that brief moment she felt strangely connected to all of them, as though they weren’t as unaware of her life as Heather obviously was, as though they understood each other and cared about one another. She felt as though she’d swallowed a toad that was stuck in her throat, that the faucet behind her eyes was broken and leaking hot water, pushed forward. The toad fell into her tummy and she gulped air as she exited through the front door of the school and started down the steps.

  That was when she heard the sharp intake of breath from her mother. Vinny looked over at her. The tight jaw and pale cheeks told Vinny all she needed to know.

  “Hi, Vinny.”

  ***

  Hunter felt her heart lurch up to her throat. She knew she was dreaming, knew she was still asleep and knew she was looking at herself through Vinny's eyes, but she was still locked in the power of the dream.

  Worse, she knew this was real. She remembered that day. The conversation with Vinny on the steps of the school. And now, under the blanket of her dreams she saw a world through Vinny’s eyes that she knew was real. Through Vinny’s eyes she saw herself.

  As hard as she tried, she couldn’t force her eyes to open, couldn’t make the dream end.

  ***

  As Vinny turned toward the sound of the voice, from the corner of her eye she saw her mother’s nostrils flare. Mother tossed her head and lifted her chin. Vinny tried to suck in a breath. Her stomach was stretched as tight as a trampoline and had sent that toad straight back up her throat.

  “What’s wrong?” Her dad’s old partner stood on the front steps of the school, with her new partner. Vinny didn’t know him. Hunter’s eyes were wide with concern. Had something happened? Apparently. More than she knew, but nobody was talking. If she connected the dots in her mind she’d have to think she’d never see Adam again, and that couldn’t be… Could it?

  “Evelyn has been through enough today,” Mother said coldly. Vinny knew that tone.

  “Vinny,” Hunter reached out and touched her arm, “Adam was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

  Was.

  “I said she’s been through enough today.” Mother moved in front of Vinny.

  Hunter’s hand slipped away as she stepped back. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Vinny’s mother.

  “We may need to ask her some questions.” An official tone. Authoritative.

  The wrong tone to take with Vinny’s mother.

  “Not without my permission, you aren’t.” Mother turned to face Vinny and reached for her arm. “Come on, Evelyn. Let’s get you home.”

  “Mrs. Chadwick, I can appreciate that you think you’re acting in Vinny’s best interests,” Hunter’s partner said.

  “A boy from this school commits suicide and you think you’re helping by coming around, interrogating kids? They’re in shock. Vinny’s in shock.” Mother drew herself up and glared at the man in front of her. “If you don’t think it’s in Vinny’s best interests to go home and rest, then you’re an inconsiderate idiot.”

  “Rose,” Hunter said.

  Mother’s head snapped around and she stared at the woman.

  “This is a criminal investigation-” Hunter continued.

  “That has nothing to do with us,” Mother said.

  “Respectfully,” Hunter’s partner said, “we’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Evelyn’s father will hear about this.” Mother tugged on Vinny’s arm.

  "He already has."

  Rose Chadwick's nostrils flared. "Oh, I'm sure he has."

  Vinny stared at her mother. Mother was spitting fire mad. Madder than she had been when she’d grounded Vinny just a few days ago. She wondered, again, why she’d been grounded. Her mother had offered no explanation.

  Mother hadn’t said anything, so Vinny had no reason to think she knew what they’d been doing. No reason to think Mother suspected anything.

  She knew her mother despised her dad’s old partner. She knew why her parents had gotten divorced. Being caught between Hunter and Mother was the last place Vinny wanted to be.

  “I was at home,” Vinny said.

  “That’s enough, Evelyn. You don’t have to talk to her. Your stepfather will h
ave something to say about this.”

  “Why? I was at home. I’m grounded. Ivy came over and spent the night.”

  “Ivy Dorn?” Hunter asked. There was an eagerness in her voice, accompanied by a glance at her partner. Hunter rattled off an address. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  Vinny shook her head.

  “That’s where we found Adam. You’ve never been there?”

  “She answered your question already,” Mother said.

  The burning tears were streaming down Vinny’s face as she nodded. “I don’t even know what happened to Adam. Nobody will tell me.”

  Mother wrapped her arm around her daughter and moved beside her. “Do you see what you’ve done?” More of an accusation than a question.

  “There are other parents out there looking for answers. Try to think about how they feel right now,” Hunter said.

  Vinny heard the words. Her mother was moving her, down the stairs, past the detectives. Mother paused for a second and turned back.

  “You… What you did to me… You only care about yourself. You keep your family away from mine.”

  As her mother led her to the car Vinny glanced back at the steps to the school. The detectives stood there, watching them go.

  Adam? Suicide? Criminal investigation?

  You keep your family away from mine…

  Family?

  Just one of many questions she was certain her mother wouldn’t give her an answer to.

  THERE'S YOUR TROUBLE

  - Dixie Chicks -

  DS Hunter McKenna Testifying For The Prosecution

  - The Day After Adam Fields' Body Was Discovered -

  Once Hunter had been reminded she was still under oath and was seated, she took a sip of water. From the corner of her right eye, Hunter saw the jury watching her. She couldn't look in that direction.

  She avoided the gaze of her attorney, but felt as though she could feel him watching her.