“They’re good kids.” Yanuzzi’s face seemed softer than she remembered, a little more boyish. “Not like when I was in high school.”
“Tell me about it. My graduation night was insane. The little of it I can remember.”
“Oh, yeah?” The cop looked intrigued, as if he were seeing her in a new light. “You were a party girl, huh?”
“Not quite,” Liz told him, making a conscious decision to leave it at that, to spare him the details of that disastrous evening, the Southern Comfort and the tears, the fact that she’d made out with three different guys, none of whom she’d even liked, and then thrown up in Sandy Deaver’s kidney-shaped pool, thereby ensuring that her classmates would have at least one thing to remember her by at their upcoming twenty-fifth reunion. “I was just young and stupid.”
Yanuzzi nodded slowly, as though she’d said something profound.
“So were those kids who died,” he observed. “They were just young and stupid, too.”
THOSE KIDS who died.
Liz had been hearing about those kids for the past twelve years, ever since she’d moved to Gifford. The accident was fresh in everyone’s mind back then, five friends speeding in a Jeep on graduation night, open containers, no seatbelts. Good-looking, popular, three boys and two girls, never in any kind of trouble, just a terrible mistake, the kind kids make when they’re drunk and happy.
The memory of those kids was a dark cloud hanging over the town. You’d see people having a hushed conversation on a street corner, or a woman touching another woman’s arm in the Stop & Shop, or a man wiping away a tear while he pumped his gas, and you’d think, Those kids who died.
There were memorial services in the fall, the football season dedicated to the memory of the victims. Everywhere you went you saw their names soaped on the rear windows of cars, usually listed in alphabetical order, along with the date of their deaths, and the phrase IN LOVING MEMORY. The school district increased funding for drug and alcohol education; the cops cracked down hard on underage drinking. And on graduation night the following June, Gifford High held the first annual All-Night Party, a heavily supervised affair at which the graduates could celebrate in a safe, substance-free, vehicle-free environment. Parents loved the idea, and it turned out the kids liked it, too.
Over the past decade the All-Night Party had outgrown its sad origins, maturing into a beloved institution that was the source of genuine local pride. Each year’s cohort of junior parents vied to outdo their predecessors in the lavishness of the decorations and the novelty of the offerings — a Nerf-gun war, a circus trapeze, a climbing wall, sumo-wrestling suits, and, memorably, an enormous Moonwalk castle that had to be deflated well before dawn, due to highly credible reports of sexual shenanigans unfolding within remote inner chambers. More recently, the party had gone thematic — last year was Twilight and vampires, and the year before Harry Potter, complete with lightning-bolt face tattoos, a Sorting Hat, and a Quidditch tournament in the gym. For this year’s theme, the Committee had given serious thought to The Hunger Games — too depressing, they’d decided — before settling on Gifford Goes Hollywood, a more open-ended concept that accounted for both the red carpet outside and the lifelike Oscar statue that greeted Liz when she entered the building, an eight-foot, three-dimensional replica of the trophy with a sign taped to its base: FOR BEST PERFORMANCE BY A GRADUATING CLASS.
SALLY WAS manning the Volunteer Sign-In table along with Jeff Hammer, the presidente-for-life of the Gifford Youth Hockey Association, and a ubiquitous figure at local athletic and charitable events. Hammer didn’t bother to acknowledge Liz’s arrival — he’d been cold to her for the past several years, ever since Dana had quit a promising hockey career to focus on indoor soccer during the winter season — but Sally’s greeting was so warm Liz barely registered his snub.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she said, rising from her chair with a wan but sincere smile. She looked washed-out, as if she hadn’t slept for days. “You’re my hero.”
“Not a problem.” Liz leaned across the table for a quick hug and kiss. “How’s it going?”
“Great.”
Sally glanced at Hammer for confirmation, and he responded with a grudging nod. He was an unpleasantly handsome man with a mustache he couldn’t keep his fingers off.
“Kids are having a blast,” he admitted.
With the indifference of a clerk at the DMV, Hammer slid a blank name tag and a Sharpie in Liz’s direction. After a moment’s hesitation, she scrawled her married name — LIZ MERCATTO — and affixed the white rectangle to her shirt. At least this way everyone would know she was Dana’s mom, instead of some random adult who’d wandered in off the street.
“Ready?” Sally circled the table and took Liz by the arm. “They’re waiting for you at the Chilling Station.”
“The what?”
“It’s a place to relax and hang out, kind of away from it all. You know, if the kids need a little downtime. I think you’ll like it.”
They set off toward the distant clamor of the party, turning right at the library, heading down a long hallway paved with a galaxy of construction-paper stars, each one bearing the name of a graduate.
“This is our Walk of Fame,” Sally explained. “We stayed up until two-thirty cutting out the stars and writing the names. And then it took us all afternoon to arrange them on the floor.”
“How many are there?”
“Two hundred forty-three.” Liz could hear the pride in Sally’s voice. “But who’s counting, right?”
They veered apart, making way for a pack of pretty girls charging by in short skirts and high heels, each one taller and skinnier than the next, glammed up as if they were heading to a nightclub. Not a single member of the posse bothered to glance at Liz or Sally as they passed, let alone say, Hi or Excuse me.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Sally watched with a wistful expression as the girls clattered down the hallway, talking in loud, theatrical voices. “They have no idea how beautiful they are.”
Oh, they know, Liz thought. The world only reminds them every day.
“They probably think their butts are too big or their boobs are too small,” Sally continued. “That’s how I felt when I was their age. Like I could never measure up.”
“Me, too.” Liz decided not to mention that the feeling had never gone away. “All through high school I tried to be the last person out of the classroom after the bell rang. I didn’t want any boys walking behind me, snickering at my ass.”
The girls stopped midway down the hall to take cell-phone pictures of a star that must have belonged to one of them, or maybe to a boy they liked.
“They’re probably on some ridiculous carrot-stick diet,” Sally said. “But they’re perfect just the way they are, you know? That’s what I keep telling Jamie, but I can’t seem to get through to her.”
Liz nodded, not quite sure how they’d segued from the high-heeled hotties to the entirely different subject of Jamie, an Amazonian three-sport athlete who only ever seemed at home in sweats or a team uniform. Tony always referred to her as a “bruiser,” insisting that he meant it as a compliment.
“It’s hard being a girl,” Liz observed. “Doesn’t matter what you look like.”
“What about Dana? She have any issues like that? You know, body image or whatever?”
“Not really.” Liz flinched as two boys barreled past, one of them trying to bash the other in the head with a pink flotation noodle. They looked sweaty and slightly crazed. “She’s been lucky like that. Never had to worry about her weight or her complexion, none of it.”