Sleepy was perhaps the most interesting, however. Not that he woke up. Please. But he sat at one of the picnic tables with his eyes closed and his face turned to the sun. Since I can see this at home, this was not what interested me. No, what interested me was what was going on beside Sleepy. And that was an incredibly good-looking boy who did nothing but stare straight ahead of him with a look of abject sadness on his face. Occasionally, girls would walk by – as girls will when there is a good-looking boy nearby – and say hi to him, and he'd tear his eyes away from the sea – which was what he was staring at – and say, "Oh, hi," to them before turning his gaze back to those hypnotic waves.
It occurred to me that Sleepy and his friend might very well be potheads. It would explain a lot about Sleepy.
But when I asked Cee Cee if she knew who the guy was, and whether or not he had a drug problem, she said, "Oh, that's Bryce Martinson. No, he's not on drugs. He's just sad, you know, 'cause his girlfriend died over the break."
"Really?" I chewed on my corn dog. The food service at the Mission Academy left a lot to be desired. I could see now why so many kids brought their own. Today's entree had been hot dogs. I am not kidding. Hot dogs. "How'd she die?"
"Put a bullet in her brain." Adam, the kid from the principal's office, had joined us. He was eating Cheetos from a giant bag he'd pulled from a leather backpack. A Louis Vuitton backpack, I might add. "Blew the back of her head away."
One of the horsey girls turned around, having overheard, and went, "God, Adam. How cold can you get?"
Adam shrugged. "Hey. I didn't like her when she was alive. I'm not gonna say I liked her now just because she's dead. In fact, if anything, I hate her more. I heard we're all going to have to do the Stations of the Cross for her on Wednesday."
"Right." Cee Cee looked disgusted. "We have to pray for her immortal soul since she committed suicide and is destined to burn in hell for all eternity now."
Adam looked thoughtful. "Really? I thought suicides went to Purgatory."
"No, stupid. Why do you think Monsignor Constantine won't let Kelly have her dumb memorial service? Suicide is a mortal sin. Monsignor Constantine won't allow a suicide to be memorialized in his church. He won't even let her parents bury her in consecrated ground." Cee Cee rolled her violet eyes. "I never liked Heather, but I hate Monsignor Constantine and his stupid rules even more. I'm thinking of doing an article about it, and calling it Father, Son, and the Holy Hypocrite."
The other girls tittered nervously. I waited until they were done and then I asked, "Why'd she kill herself?"
Adam looked bored. "Because of Bryce, of course. He broke up with her."
A pretty black girl named Bernadette, who towered over the rest of us at six feet, leaned down to whisper, "I heard he did it at the mall. Can you believe it?"
Another girl said, "Yeah, on Christmas Eve. They were Christmas shopping with each other, and she pointed to this diamond ring in the window at Bergdorf's, and was like, 'I want that.' And I guess he freaked – you know, it was clearly an engagement ring – and broke up with her on the spot."
"And so she went home and shot herself?" I found this story extremely far-fetched. When I'd asked Cee Cee where we were supposed to have lunch if, God forbid, it should happen to rain, she told me that everyone had to sit in their homeroom and eat, and the nuns brought out board games like Parcheesi for people to play. I was wondering if this story, like the one about rainy-day lunches, was an invention. Cee Cee was exactly the kind of girl who would get a kick out of lying to the new kid – not out of maliciousness, but just to amuse herself.
"Not then," Cee Cee said. "She tried to get back together with him for a while. She called him like every ten minutes, until finally his mother told her not to call anymore. Then she started sending him letters, telling him what she was going to do – you know, kill herself if he didn't get back together with her. When he didn't respond, she got her dad's forty-four and drove to Bryce's house and rang the bell."
Adam took up the narrative at this point, so I knew gore was probably going to be involved. "Yeah," he said, standing up so that he could act it, using a Cheeto as the gun. "The Martinsons were having a New Year's party – it was New Year's Eve – so they were home and everything. They opened up the door, and there was this crazy girl on their porch, with a gun to her head. She said if they didn't get Bryce, she was going to pull the trigger. But they couldn't get Bryce, because they'd sent him to Antigua – "
" – Hoping a little sun and surf would soothe his frazzled nerves," Cee Cee put in, "because, you know, he's got his college apps to worry about right now. He doesn't need to have the added pressure of a stalker."
Adam glared at her, and went on, holding the Cheeto to the side of his head. "Yeah, well, that was a gross error on the part of the Martinsons. As soon as she heard Bryce was out of the country, she pulled the trigger, and blew out the back of her skull, and bits of her brain and stuff stuck to the Christmas lights the Martinsons had strung up."
Everyone but me groaned at this particular detail. I had other things on my mind, however. "The empty chair in homeroom. The one by what's-her-name – Kelly. That was the dead girl's seat, wasn't it?"
Bernadette nodded. "Yeah. That's why we thought it was so weird when you walked past it. It was like you knew that that was where Heather had sat. We all thought maybe you were psychic or something – "
I didn't bother telling them that the reason I hadn't sat in Heather's seat had nothing whatsoever to do with being psychic. I didn't say anything, actually. I was thinking, Gee, Mom, nice of you to tell me why there was suddenly this space for me, when before the school had been too crowded to let in another new student.
I stared at Bryce. He was tanned from his trip to Antigua. He sat on the picnic table with his feet on the bench, his elbows on his knees, staring out at the Pacific. A gentle wind tugged at some of his sandy-blond hair.
He has no idea, I thought. He has no idea at all. He thinks his life was bad now? Just wait.
Just wait.