The policemen didn’t say anything. Dannon understood that their silence was deliberate, one intended to make him feel uncomfortable. Old Giff had once expounded on the possibilities of stillness, citing Kevin Spacey’s The Iceman Cometh, how powerful a pause could be after so much steady, constant talk, talk, talk. Despite this insight into his own manipulation, Dannon just couldn’t shut up. He loved to speak of Perri, relished the fact that he knew her, that he had something to offer.
“There was a lot of speculation over the past year. The divas-”
“Excuse me?”
“The bitchy popular girls. Anyway, they were always a little antagonistic toward Perri because she didn’t follow their dictates, you know? She wasn’t scared of them. But she was friends with Kat, who was, like, the queen of the school, so they left Perri alone. Until she and Kat stopped hanging out together, and then they started all these rumors.”
“Such as?”
“They were rumors. Bogus.”
“Still, it might have bothered Perri. Being gossiped about.”
“It didn’t. She was above that stuff.”
“Dannon.” The older cop was so much like his stepfather it was freaky. Like, right now, the way he placed his hands on his knees when he was trying to show he was very, very serious about something. His stepfather did that all the time. Hands on knees, Bill was getting serious. “Dannon, what did the girls-the divas-say about Perri?”
“They said she was gay, that she had fallen in love with Kat, and Kat had dropped her.”
“And that wasn’t true?”
“No.” He laughed, although he was sure that made him look weird, laughing. “If I’m sure of anything, it’s that Perri Kahn was not gay.”
“But did Kat say those things, too?”
“The only things Kat Hartigan said to me during almost ten years of school were ‘Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!’ and ‘Looking good, Dannon.”’
The older detective smiled at Dannon’s imitation of Kat, but he couldn’t know just how pitch-perfect it was. Dannon was an excellent mimic. He had cracked Perri up, imitating Kat and their principal and the diva crowd, among others.
“That’s basically what Kat Hartigan said to everyone. And that’s why she was popular. She was nice. Not two-faced. But kind of bland, too. Perri said she was banal.”
“And that’s why they weren’t friends anymore? Because Kat was boring?”
“Banal.” It was such an excellent word; Dannon couldn’t imagine settling for boring old “boring” when one could say “banal” instead. Maybe the cop didn’t know what it meant. “She said Kat was banal, and she had a point. No one can be that nice, you know? But Kat would never spread a rumor-not about Perri, not about anyone. Not her style. Then again, she didn’t stop it either.”
“What do you mean?”
“All she had to do was say why Perri was mad at her, instead of letting people gossip. She had that kind of power. But she wouldn’t.”
“And this made Perri angry, her refusal to stop the rumor?”
Dannon allowed himself a melodramatic sigh, only to be surprised by the surge of real emotion beneath it. “Perri didn’t give a shit what people said about her. She was beyond that.”
“Did you know she had a gun?”
Shit. He thought they had moved past that topic. “Um…”
“It wouldn’t be a crime, it doesn’t implicate you in any way. But we do want to establish without a doubt that Perri was the one who brought the gun to school. Did she show you the gun? Did she mention having one or how she came to get it?”
This was a trap. It had to be a trap. If he said yes, there would be more questions, questions he honestly couldn’t answer, but who would believe his ignorance of Perri’s plans once he admitted she had shown him the gun? And if he said yes and the Kahns found out he had known about the gun, they would never forgive him. Oh, he had tried to be strategic, tried to have it all ways-be a friend to Perri, keep her confidences while trying to protect her against her own self-destructive impulses. He was so smart he was stupid.
“Mom? Ma?”
His mother, who had been hovering nearby, appeared instantly. Dannon had many beefs with his mom, starting with his name-a gay boy should not be saddled with the brand name for a product that’s famous for having fruit on the bottom-and continuing through her marriage to his humorless idiot of a stepdad. But, ultimately, she was always there for him, in a way that no one else was. She might not believe in him the way Eloise Kahn did, but she always believed him, taking his side against everyone. Except his stepfather.
“What is it, honey?”
“I don’t want to talk to the police anymore. Do I have to?”
The good-looking one, Infante, stood. He was over six feet, and his five o’clock shadow gave him a menacing look, but his intent was clearly to charm. Hey, flirt with me, Dannon wanted to say. She’s taken, but I’m totally available.
“It’s always better for people to cooperate, ma’am. It’s a mistake for innocent people not to talk. Makes them look guilty.”
“Dannon isn’t guilty of anything.”
“So he should talk to us, don’t you think?” The detective continued to try to ply his handsomeness, but Dannon’s mother was indifferent to conventional charm tactics. She had said no to a lot of men before her second husband came along, and his main charm seemed to be his earning power. “You can sit in, ma’am, if it would make you feel better.”
“I don’t want to talk to them at all, Mom. I…I…” Dannon clutched his stomach, groaning. Oh, yes, he had missed his calling, staying behind the scenes. “I’m having that stomach thing again. You know how I get. I gotta go. I gotta go, or I’m going to shit my pants right here.”
He ran from the room, dashing into the powder room in the hall, where he didn’t turn on the light because it would trigger the exhaust fan, and he wanted to hear what was going on in the living room.
“He does have a sensitive tummy,” his mother said. “Always has. Dannon’s very sensitive. But I’m sure he doesn’t know anything about what happened at the school, close as he and Perri were. If he did, he would have confided in me. Dannon tells me everything.”
I did once, Mom. When had he stopped? Upon her remarriage? When he had finally come out, at least to himself? No, earlier than that, back in middle school, when a cruel girl had mocked him for having boobs. A girl who happened to be named Perri Kahn. That had been the day that Dannon realized there were things in his life his mother could not fix and that confiding such problems in her would only serve to make her feel sad and ineffectual. He had sucked it up, endured what a fat gay boy had to endure, made it through middle school and into high school, which was marginally kinder. By high school the groups had solidified, the territory had been meted out, and the warfare had subsided. High school had been fine for everyone but the most obvious misfits, the ones who courted trouble. Dannon kept his head down, his profile low.