“There are a lot of people out there, Sarge.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, like, two hundred.”
She could hear them all; the clattering of chairs as people took their seats in the assembly hall.
She was waiting in the wings behind, her presentation notes clutched in her hands, the sweat from her fingers smudging the ink.
Everyone else in her grade had done their capstone project presentations earlier in the week, to small classrooms of people. But the school thought it would be a good idea to turn Pip’s presentation into “a bit of an event,” as the principal had put it. Pip had been given no choice in the matter. The school had advertised it online and in the Fairview Mail. They’d invited members of the press to attend; Pip had seen a CNN van pull up earlier and the equipment and cameras unpacked.
“Are you nervous?” Ravi said.
“Are you asking obvious questions?”
When the Andie Bell story broke, it had been in the national newspapers and on TV stations for weeks. It was in the height of all that craziness that Pip had had her interview for Columbia. The two interviewers had recognized her from the news, swiping aside their notes of formal questions, asking her instead about the case. Her acceptance letter was one of the very first to come in.
Fairview’s secrets and mysteries had followed Pip so closely in those weeks she’d had to wear them like a new skin. Except the one that was buried deep down, the one she’d keep forever to save Cara. Her best friend who’d never once left Pip’s side in the hospital.
“Can I come over later?” Ravi asked her.
“Sure. Cara and Naomi are coming for dinner too.”
They heard a sharp patter of heels, and Mrs. Morgan appeared, fighting through the curtain.
“I think we’re just about ready when you are, Pippa.”
“OK, I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Well,” Ravi said when they were alone again, “I better go and take my seat.”
He smiled, put his hands on the back of her neck, fingers in her hair, and leaned in to press his forehead against hers. He’d told her before that he did it to take away half her sadness, half her headache, half her nerves before her Columbia interview. Because half less of a bad thing meant there was room for half good.
He kissed her, and she glowed with that feeling. The one with wings.
“You bring the rain down on them, Pip.”
“I will.”
“Oh,” he said, turning one last time before the door, “and don’t tell them the only reason you started this project was because you fancied me. You know, think of a more noble reason.”
“Get out of here.”
“Don’t feel bad. You couldn’t help yourself, I’m ravishing.” He grinned. “Get it? Ravi-shing. Ravi Singh.”
“Sign of a great joke, having to explain it,” she said. “Now go.”
She waited another minute, muttering the first lines of her speech under her breath. And then she walked out onstage.
People weren’t quite sure what to do. About half the audience started clapping politely, the news cameras panning to them, and the other half sat deadly still, a sea of eyes stalking her as she moved.
From the front row her dad stood up and whistled with his fingers, shouting: “Get ’em, Pips.” Her mom swiftly pulled him back down and exchanged a look with Nisha Singh, sitting beside her. Pip strode over to the principal’s lectern and flattened her speech down on top.
“Hi,” she said, and the microphone screeched, cutting through the silent room. Cameras clicked. “My name is Pip. And for my senior capstone project, I decided to solve a murder. I did not know that this project would put myself, my friends, and my family in danger, and would end up changing many lives. But what I do know”—she paused—“is that this town and the national media still don’t really understand what happened here at all. I am not the ‘prodigy student’ who found the truth for Andie Bell, keeping Sal Singh and his brother, Ravi, relegated to small sidenotes. This project began with Sal. To find the truth for him.”
Pip’s eyes found Stanley Forbes in the third row, scribbling away in an open notebook. She still wondered about him, him and the other names on her persons of interest list, the other lives and secrets that had crisscrossed this case. Fairview still had its mysteries, unturned stones, and unanswered questions. This town had too many dark corners; Pip had learned to accept she couldn’t shine a light into each and every one.
Stanley was sitting just behind her friends, Cara’s face absent among them. As brave as she had been through everything, she’d decided today would have been too hard for her.
“I couldn’t have fathomed,” Pip continued, “that when this project was over, it would end with four people in handcuffs and one being set free after five years in a makeshift prison cell. Elliot Ward has pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Sal Singh and to kidnapping in the first degree of Isla Jordan. His sentencing hearing is next week. Becca Bell will face trial later this year for the charge of criminally negligent homicide, illegal disposal of a dead body, and tampering with evidence. Max Hastings has been charged with four counts of sexual assault and two counts of rape, and will also be tried later this year. And Howard Bowers has pleaded guilty to the charge of possession with intent to sell.”
She shuffled her notes and cleared her throat.
“So, why did the events of Friday, April 18, 2014, happen? The way I see it, there are a handful of people who carry the blame for what happened that night and the days following, morally if not all criminally. These are: Elliot Ward, Howard Bowers, Max Hastings, Becca Bell, Jason Bell, and do not forget, Andie herself. You have cast her as your beautiful victim and willfully overlook the other layers of her character, because they don’t comfortably fit your narrative. But this is the truth: Andie Bell was a bully who used emotional blackmail to get what she wanted. She sold drugs without care or regard for how they might be used. We will never know if she knew she was facilitating drug-assisted sexual assault, but when confronted with this truth by her own sister, she could not find it in herself to show compassion.
“And yet, when we look closer, behind this true Andie, we find a girl who was vulnerable and self-conscious. Andie grew up being taught by her father that the only value she had was in the way she looked and how strongly she was desired. Home for her was a place where she was criticized and belittled. Andie never got the chance to become the young woman she might have been away from that house, to decide for herself what made her valuable and what future she wanted.
“And though this story does have its monsters, I’ve found that it is not one that can be so easily divided into the good and the bad. In the end this was a story about people and their different shades of desperation, crashing up against each other. But there was one person who was good until the very end. And his name was Sal Singh.”
Pip looked up then, her eyes going straight to Ravi, sitting between his parents.
“The thing is,” she said, “I didn’t do this project alone, as the guidelines require. I couldn’t have done it on my own. So I guess you’re going to have to disqualify me.”
A few people gasped in the audience, Mrs. Morgan loudly among them. A few titters of laughter.
“I couldn’t have solved this case without Ravi Singh. In fact, I wouldn’t have survived it. So if anyone should speak about how kind Sal Singh was now that you’re all finally listening, it’s his brother.”
Ravi stared at her from his seat, his eyes wide in that telling-off way that she loved. But she knew he needed this. And he knew it too.
She beckoned with a tilt of her head, and Ravi got to his feet. Her dad stood up too, whistling with his fingers again and smacking his big hands loudly together. Some of the students in the audience joined in, clapping as Ravi jogged up the steps to the stage and walked over to the lectern.
Pip moved back from the microphone as Ravi joined her. He winked at her, and Pip felt a flash of pride as she watched him step up to the lectern, scratching the back of his head. He’d told her just yesterday that he was going to retake his school exams so he could go on to study law.
“Um…hi,” Ravi said, and the microphone screeched for him too. “I wasn’t expecting this, but it’s not every day a girl throws away a guaranteed A for you.” There was a quiet ripple of laughter. “But I guess I don’t need preparation to talk about Sal. I’ve been preparing for that nearly six years now. My brother wasn’t just a good person. He was one of the best. He was kind, exceptionally kind, always helping people, and nothing was ever too much trouble. He was selfless. I remember this one time when we were kids, I spilled chocolate milk all over the carpet, and Sal took the fall for me so I wouldn’t get in trouble. Sorry, Mom, guess you had to find out sometime.”
More chuckles from the audience.
“Sal was cheeky. And he had the most ridiculous laugh; you couldn’t help but join in. And, oh yeah, he used to spend hours drawing these comics for me to read in bed because I wasn’t a great sleeper. I still have them all. And damn was Sal clever. I know he would have done incredible things with his life, if it hadn’t been taken away from him. The world will never be as bright without him in it.” Ravi’s voice cracked. “And I wish I’d been able to tell him all this when he was alive. Tell him he was the best big brother anyone could ever wish for. But at least I can say it now on this stage and know that this time everyone will believe me.”
He looked back at Pip, his eyes shining, reaching out to her. She drew forward to stand with him, leaning into the microphone to say her final lines.
“But there was one final player in this story, Fairview, and it’s us. Collectively, we turned a beautiful life into the myth of a monster. We turned a family home into a ghost house. And from now on we must do better.”
Pip reached down behind the lectern for Ravi’s hand, sliding her fingers between his. Their entwined hands became a new living thing, her fingertips perfect against the dips in his knuckles, like they’d grown just that way to fit together.
“Any questions?”