Echo Bridge

Chapter 5

That afternoon, I met Lexi in the juniors' parking lot, as promised. She drove an ancient Cadillac convertible of which I was a little jealous—it was straight out of La Dolce Vita (Palme d'Or, Cannes, 1960). We took the long way to her house, and she told me her story in a flat, frank voice while the two of us chain-smoked.

Just after school had started, a couple of weeks before the party at Melissa's house, Lexi went down to Echo Bridge with her camera. It had been a dry summer, and the Souhegan had shrunk down between its banks, allowing Lexi new vantage points for shots of the pilasters and arches. She was doing a photo essay on abandoned spaces.

Hugh had called down to her from the top of the bridge.

"He said he was on his way to play video games at Ted's house," she told me, shooting me a quick glance as she dragged heavily on a cigarette.

For the first time it occurred to me that Ted might know about the things Hugh had done. But that was impossible. Ted was a Boy Scout (metaphorically and literally—he claimed Eagle Scout was a pretty useful resume bullet, although I was skeptical); he never would have let anything like this happen to anybody, never mind me. It was true they were best friends, but it wasn't hard to imagine that Hugh had been hiding his proclivities from everyone. After all, I'd known Hugh for over three years, and though I had always thought he was kind of a dick, I never thought he was a monster. Before, anyway. So I just motioned for Lexi to go on.

Hugh had a joint on him and offered to share it with her. I knew this to be a part of Hugh's and Ted's Sunday video game routine, for Hugh, at least—Ted had never smoked pot in his life. Lexi had done all her homework the day before; her entire plan for the day was to wander around in the early fall sunshine and take pictures, an activity that she felt would be drastically improved by being stoned. So she took Hugh up on his offer and climbed the stone steps to join him.

"When we'd burned it halfway down," she said, "he put his hand on my back. I told him it wasn't going to happen. But he just looked at me and said, 'Yeah, it is.'" She shuddered against the car door.

Unlike me, Lexi had not been trying to hold her shattered self together in silence.

"I went to Farnsworth," she said. "He wouldn't do anything. Marian and I had already gotten caught in the dark room. He just sat back in his big leather chair and said, 'You see, Alexandra, reputation is everything. I hope you'll take that into consideration when you get a fresh start in college.'" She punched the steering wheel, hitting the horn accidentally, and the driver of the car up ahead flipped us off. "What a jackmonkey. I should screw every undergrad at Harvard and graduate summa cum laude just to prove him wrong."

"Harvard?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I have to get in first. But my grandfather is a classics professor there, which means it would be tuition-free."

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah, well. Not likely, with my being on Farnsworth's shit list now. Marian was so not worth it. But the worst part is, my supposed reputation has nothing to do with it. He just didn't want to bring disciplinary action against Hugh because he'd wind up having to kick him off the hockey team, if not out of school. Turns out alumni donations have a direct relationship to the hockey team's performance." She dug her nails into the steering wheel. "Which means he'd back Hugh if I went to the cops, probably."

The cops. Legal charges. These were scenes I had not yet staged in my head. Ted's possible reaction blotted out everything beyond the question of whether or not to tell him. But I had seen The Accused, for which Jodie Foster won her first Best Actress Oscar. I could imagine what would happen if Lexi came forward on her own. But if there were two of us...