“I’ve never done anything like this.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. You know what I mean. Hell, you’re so worried about your reputation and your position, you’d have to come clean to everybody in this town to feel safe, wouldn’t you? And if everyone knew . . . well, there’s legal jeopardy.”
“What are you saying? Are you threatening me?”
“You’ll do this for me, Ryan. You’ll do it or every single person in this town will know the one thing you don’t want them to know about you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Blake Norton and I met during our freshman year at Ferncroft College, a small liberal arts school in the rolling hills of central Kentucky with about two thousand students, thirty minutes away from Rossingville. We first got to know each other when we joined the same social club during the fall of our freshman year.
These social clubs weren’t really fraternities. Ferncroft didn’t allow the Greek system on its beautiful, stately Gothic Revival campus. The college took itself too seriously for that. They wanted to be like Harvard and Princeton. They wanted to be considered the “Ivy of the South.”
So, going all the way back to the school’s founding in the nineteenth century, students, both men and women, joined social clubs. Ostensibly, they were philanthropic organizations in which students raised money for worthy causes, volunteering their time on weekends and evenings at soup kitchens and blood drives and tutoring programs.
But the social club members engaged in all the things someone might associate with a fraternity or sorority. We drank. We held parties. We carried out elaborate pranks.
Our club was called the Sigil and Shield and, like all of the clubs at Ferncroft, it was coed. Had been since the nineteen sixties. And, during our time at Ferncroft and largely due to Blake’s influence, we became known as one of the hardest-partying clubs on campus.
We threw large blowouts for every occasion—Arbor Day, Groundhog Day, Easter, fall break, you name it. If someone farted or went to the bathroom, we threw a party. Everyone drank at these events. Everyone danced and yelled and let loose.
Sigil and Shield also made a big deal out of being exclusive. We admitted only the right kind of student, someone we all believed would fit in with the rest of us. Someone with the right degree of coolness, intellect, and ironic detachment. To that end, we made anyone wishing to join go through a rigorous series of tests.
In other words, we hazed.
We didn’t call it that, of course. Especially not after one of our rival clubs, the Kings and Queens, was disbanded by the university during our sophomore year when one of their pledges was rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
So we told our pledges we had to “interview” them.
We all knew what that meant. The pledges knew. The members knew. Even the administration knew. And they were willing to turn a blind eye as long as the tuition dollars rolled in and the enrollment stayed up. As long as the alums who went on to successful careers opened their checkbooks and gave back to the school.
Blake and I were never ringleaders in the club. We never bothered to run for or hold important positions. We went along for the parties and the fun, but otherwise we flew below the radar.
Aaron Knicely was an awkward kid who wanted to get into Sigil and Shield. Desperately. His desire to be one of us oozed out of every pore on his body.
He was a small kid, a freshman when we were seniors. His clothes never looked quite right. He never knew the right thing to say. At parties he stood around, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a nervous child.
He was never going to get into Sigil and Shield. Never. As soon as members laid eyes on him, they wrote him off.
But for some reason, he stuck around through the pledge process. He took whatever the members dished out and came back for more. He showed a lot of spine, to be honest, and while I never said it out loud to anyone else, I found myself with a growing sense of admiration for him.
The night before the official invitations to join went out, we spent one final evening with all the potential members. One more party, one more chance for those supplicants who the current members of Sigil and Shield were on the fence about to make the right impression.
The rest of what I have to tell you about that night I’ve had to reconstruct by talking to others, including Blake, and reading things in the news. To say I had too much to drink would be an understatement. I’m not sure I ever drank more in my life.
Or remembered less.
Snatches still come back to me.
I remember the party starting. I remember doing shots of tequila until I couldn’t see straight.
I remember dancing with . . . someone.
And I remember going outside. Blake and me and Aaron Knicely.
I know we had more tequila as we walked.
I know Aaron drank more than the rest of us. I know we egged him on.
I know we should have stopped. But we didn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Blake’s hand remained clamped on mine. The contact between our skin started to feel unpleasant, like I’d touched something cold and unknown in the dark.
But I didn’t pull away.
We remained connected in more ways than one.
“Let me ask you something,” he said, sounding casual. “Do you still make those nocturnal visits to the Steiners’ house you told me about? You must, right?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I wonder if they really don’t know it’s you,” he said, amused. “When they did that cheesy newspaper story, they claimed not to know who the Good Samaritan was. But if they thought about it, if they really looked into it, couldn’t they figure it out? When a crime is committed, the cops ask, ‘Who benefits?’ Well, who benefits from trying to buy off the Steiners?”
Blake didn’t know about Dawn. No one did. I’d gone from assuaging my guilt by giving money to the family to being blackmailed by Dawn. I was being squeezed like a piece of fruit. The small profits generated by the Pig had been mostly going to the Steiner family. What had started as a fun project with friends and a bit of a tax shelter—own a business, brew some beer—had turned into a wellspring for guilt and blackmail money. And now Dawn wanted a big, fat chunk I didn’t have.
And none of the money I’d given them had lifted the burden of guilt I carried. I still saw the accident in my dreams, still saw Maggie Steiner’s face. . . .
“People do good things for strangers every day,” I said. “It’s not an aberration.”
But Blake rambled on.
“The lucky thing for you is that Aaron couldn’t remember much of anything from that night,” Blake said. “He was wasted, and then he bashed his head so hard against the steering wheel, he was concussed, so the whole night was a blur. He knew he’d been at Sigil and Shield, which meant a one-year suspension for the club. We all had the fear of God put into us by the dean. I remember that.” He shook his head at the memory. “They chose to come down on the whole club rather than individuals. After all, Aaron wasn’t actually a member. . . .”