Because a few times every hour I would get a call and no one would be on the other line.
I would answer. I would say, “Hello, hello?” And there would be nothing but silence and then a cold quiet click.
I responded to the call in the late afternoon. Shocked to hear it on the scanner. And I fully expected it to be some contractor who’d had too much to drink at Kelley’s Dockside Happy Hour. But it wasn’t. There was already a small crowd there. It was a chilly day, but bright, and the sun was just beginning to get low in the sky—reflecting out across the water. You never would have known on a day so normal and beautiful that something could go so horribly wrong. People never expect it, but in my experience, that’s when it happens.
I patrolled the harbor regularly and I’d been used to breaking up some or other nonsense, carpenters who had maybe a few too many, kids who were bothering the yacht owners with their music or smoking or skateboarding. But mostly I would be cruising by and making sure things were as they should be. And in Rockland, hell, in Rockland things usually were. People kept to themselves for the most part. Yeah, maybe the rich folks stay up in their neighborhoods or at the yacht club or country club or the golf course. Maybe us regular folks go down to the seaside public parks to grill and play baseball. Make picnics and let the kids play at the shore. What I’m saying is the town didn’t mingle a lot. There was a big old divide between the west and east side, but folks didn’t mean each other any harm. Not here.
I don’t know how to say this without just saying it. When strangers move to town, things get shaken up. People from away don’t quite fit in—not down at the park and not up at the golf course either. And you gotta wonder why they left where they were from in the first place. I knew it when I was in the ambulance staring down at that kid. This isn’t the kind of problem we have here, I thought to myself. This just isn’t the kind of thing we do. And I shoulda known. I shoulda known all along. I shoulda never dropped my guard, been charmed, been taken in. The fact was I saw it coming, I’d been warned. I might be just a small-town cop but I’ve been around the block and I knew the kinds of things that go on in this world.
I’d dragged bodies out of the water before—this is Maine and it gets cold and the water gets treacherous sometimes. There were tragedies for sure; drowning, boating while intoxicated, a suicide. But this. Nothing like it. I never had to show up at a parent’s doorstep and tell them the thing that would destroy their life.
Never. Not until that day.
I don’t know why I wanted Declan to spy on him. I guess I wanted to see what he was really like. At the time I didn’t have any information about him, just what I could observe by hanging around. And I have to admit I had a strong reaction whenever I thought of him or when anyone mentioned him. It wasn’t even so much that he was handsome—though he certainly was.
Honestly, I just think I was bored. Bored bored bored. Some days I actually feel like I’m trapped in the school. Like the place is really a jail. We’re forced by law to go there—to be there all day. It’s the closest thing to a prison there is. In fact it’s like the whole population actually has to go to prison first before they can enter society. Have to make sure we learn these arbitrary bullshit rules—make sure we won’t talk back, that we’ll follow orders. Once we prove that, once they’ve ruined our ability to even think for ourselves—then they let us go.
Declan was right about having to pretend we’re not in some tedious made-for-TV movie. It’s not like you really have to study. If you pay attention for even one minute you know what’s going on. I used to beg my parents to let me stay home and read something good instead of wasting my time at school, but then Ally liked school so much I’d just get dragged along with her—sucked into her idea about it. That didn’t last forever obviously but when I was young she’d always coax me to get up in the morning and tell me how much fun class was going to be.
After a while it was anything but fun. I’d be stuck sitting at my desk for hours and hours after I already got it, listening to some teacher who just has a BA from a shitty school and a teaching certificate from the state of Maine drone on and on and on and on instead of being outside skating or reading a good book or listening to music. School might be fine for Ally and her friends but not for me. Not for Declan and Becky either. And I had a feeling—not for Graham. Something about the way he looked at things made me feel like he was already done with whatever it was school was theoretically supposed to offer. Really done. Like he’d already been to college and had a job and two kids and been divorced and remarried and had become an alcoholic and was paying double alimony and child support even though he was just a kid. That’s how heavy his look was. He was weary and skittish and somehow weirdly confident; up to something, beaten down but unbeaten. And he was clearly on some kind of drugs. I mean clearly the kid was wasted half the time—or at least that’s the impression I got. Sometimes his pupils were dilated and sometimes they were little pinpricks.
“Don’t you think you’re giving this guy a little too much thought?” Declan very reasonably asked. “I mean, he sounds chill. I’m not really up for spying on some guy because you’ve got a crush. It doesn’t bother me; it shouldn’t bother you. Why don’t we just hang with him?”
This was classic Declan. Once he got high he was all philosophical about how “everything in the world is connected” and everyone is chill and we should all get along. And peace and love and God in the smallest drop of water blah blah blah.
“Yeah, a lot of thought,” Becky said, and then started laughing. “Too much thought.” She looked at us but couldn’t keep a straight face. “Is he yummy?” Then she laughed again. “Oh . . . wait . . . no . . . didn’t mean to say yummy . . . ,” she whispered to herself. “Is he . . . um . . . ?”
“He’s like some kind of teen idol,” I said, interrupting her weird digression. “It’s gross actually. Fancy car, fancy clothes, pretty golden hair, like he belongs in a catalog, except for all the other stuff I told you about. Y’know, how he looks like an old man kinda . . . all serious.” I could have gone on and on discussing the details but I got lost thinking about it and then I got distracted looking at the leaves moving gently in the wind.
“Definitely not your type,” Declan said, grinning, bringing me back to the conversation. “But he doesn’t sound like a creepy dweeb either.”
Becky laughed. She said, “Dweepy creeb.”
“He is!” I shouted. “Being from a catalog and being a creep are not mutually exclusive. They don’t cancel each other out, you can be one and still the other. You can—”
“We get it, we get it,” Declan said, waving his hands in front of my face. “It just seems weird of you to be so wrapped up in a guy like that when you only hung out with him once. I know you have your Spidey senses, Tate, but maybe they’re not working with this dude. I mean, think about who you really want to invest your energy in.” He leaned forward, smiled beatifically at me, and batted his eyelashes.
It was funny but I really didn’t want Declan to start going on and on about “energy,” which was a whole other lecture he liked to give when he was high. “Energy” and then, without fail, physics and string theory and YouTube videos of talking crows. Weed just made Declan more in awe of the world than he already was, which was saying something, and made him talk ten times as much, which could get pretty unbearable—especially if you were also a little effed-up.
I knew what he was getting at by the “my type” comment. Declan was “my type” and he knew it. He was the ranked chess champ of the county, had nearly a perfect score on his PSAT, and he dealt pot and read Dostoyevsky and Jane Austen. That’s who I want to be with. That’s who I want to run away and sleep on the beach with. That’s who I want to give it to and take it from. Not some weird kid from the south. I told myself that again to make sure I really got it. Declan, I thought. Declan, not Graham.