Most Likely To Die. Lisa Jackson
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a bakery/café on Twenty-third Street, had hauled her to school in the Sweet Nothings delivery van. Kristen had been mortified to be dropped off in the rattletrap of a vehicle when Lindsay Farrell arrived in her father’s Porsche and even Rachel Alsace alighted from her mom’s vintage, but cool, Jeep.
Kristen had saved all the money she’d earned at the bakery, and the minute she turned sixteen and passed her driver’s license test, she bought a 1976 Volkswagen Super Beetle convertible with a dent in one fender and ninety thousand miles under its fan belt. Not in the same class as the Mercedes and BMWs that were parked in the school lot, but better than the stupid van. She’d been in heaven. Innocently unaware of what was to come.
Now, as the buildings of St. Elizabeth’s campus came into view, she felt a chill as cold as winter. The church was there, a massive stone structure with a high bell tower, and set back a bit, the attached convent, where once the nuns who had taught at the school had lived.
Kristen wondered if any of the sisters still resided beyond the thick gates. What had happened to Sister Clarice with her weak chin, rimless glasses, and bloodless lips? Or Sister Maureen with her apple cheeks and tittery laugh? She’d filled the classroom with flowers and always smelled of lilacs. What about the Reverend Mother, Sister Neva, who had been in her seventies twenty years earlier and had walked with a cane and thankfully had never been able to remember Kristen’s name? Were any of them alive? Did they still dwell behind the thick rock walls?
The rain began in earnest, covering the windshield and fogging its interior. Kristen turned the wipers higher and stared through the glass at the school. In the gloom, it seemed miraculously unchanged. Its broad portico, supported by stone pillars, still protected the heavy double doors leading to the main reception area. The building was two stories, faced with the same rock, brick and mortar as the church.
Kristen eased on the gas and inched closer, fighting the sensation that she shouldn’t be there, that she was trespassing into a faraway time and place that was no longer hers.
Her car crept forward and she recognized the gym, set back from the rest of the classrooms, its high, domed roof dwarfing the cafeteria next to it.
The gym. Venue to the doomed Valentine’s Day dance. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and wondered about the maze separating the gymnasium from the cloister. Was it still intact? Or hopelessly overgrown? Had the order had the hedges removed, hacked down to stumps after the tragedy, or had the laurel and arborvitae been shaped and manicured, the topiary sculptured as if nothing horrible had ever happened within the garden walls?
“This is nuts,” she told herself as she flipped up the hood of her jacket and grabbed a flashlight from the glove box. She cut the engine and stepped out of the car into the puddles and drizzle of the night, then walked toward the back of the school, stepping over a chain that barricaded the unused gym lot from the delivery alley. The pavement was pockmarked and rutted, but she followed it unerringly to the back of the gym, across a parking lot to the gardens.
The hedge was as she remembered…maybe a little less groomed, a few more weeds surrounding it, but it was there. It didn’t take too much imagination to remember that night, the music in the background, the smell of cigarette smoke, the horrifying sound of Lindsay’s scream and then the sight of Jake, his lifeless body slumped over the heavy arrow pinning him to the tree, the blood everywhere, dark against the trunk of the tree, pooling on the wet grass, staining the front of Jake’s tuxedo and smearing over Lindsay’s dress.
Oh, God, what was she thinking, coming back here to this dark place? She glanced up at the nunnery and saw a few lights glowing in the tracery windows. She swallowed hard as she saw a silhouette in one window, a movement of the blinds.
So what, Kristen?
Someone lives in that room, probably one of the old nuns. She was just walking past the window, lingering there with her Bible and rosary in hand, for crying out loud!
Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to freak yourself out?
She had no answer to that one, but she cut the beam of her flashlight and looked up at the window where the shadow passed and the lights were suddenly extinguished.
Either the person inside was going to bed, had left the room, or had decided to use the darkness to hide him or herself.
Now you’re really getting paranoid. Turn around and go home. Sit by the fire, have a glass of wine or decaf coffee with a shot of Kahlua and a dollop of whipped cream. Treat yourself, you’re alone tonight. No motherly responsibilities.
And still she walked forward, switching the flashlight back on, heading through the entrance to the maze where the walls of shrubbery closed in more tightly, the untended branches brushing against her shoulders, the oddly shaped topiary untrimmed and grotesque. The beam of her flashlight bobbed ahead, offering weak illumination.
What’re you doing out here? she asked herself, understanding subconsciously that this was simply something she had to do, an urge she couldn’t ignore, a driving force that made her squint against the rain and darkness. She caught sight of an old bench, then a fountain, and with each step in the squishy grass, she felt another drip of fear in her blood, an eerie feeling she tried to ignore.
You’re just on edge because you know you’re trespassing, that someone at the convent could see your light and put in a call to the police. What would you tell them, hmm? That you wanted to visit the place where the boy you loved in high school was murdered?
Turning one corner, she stopped short, a wall of branches cutting off her progress.
Odd, she thought, wondering at her misstep. She was certain she’d followed the correct path. A cold blast of wind cut through the heavy shrubbery and touched the back of her neck.
Turn around and go back to the car. For God’s sake, what’re you trying to prove?
Her skin was chilled, but she was going to finish this, whatever the hell it was. Shining the light on the ground, she did an about-face, following her own footprints where the grass was mashed down until she came to another forty-five-degree corner that she didn’t expect. Walking briskly, she found another dead end, another wall of foliage.
“Crap.” She must be more tense than she realized, and now she was more determined than ever. She backtracked again, retracing her steps. At the entrance, she shined her light on the edge of the maze and, seeing slightly smaller, less dense bushes interspersed with the older arborvitae and laurel, realized that the hedge had changed. The maze she’d known by heart had been restructured, and in the darkness, the newer shrubs changing the pathway were already nearly twenty years old and hard to distinguish from the older vegetation.
Perhaps the old tree where Jake had been killed had been cut down. There had been talk of making it a memorial, but Mother Superior had refused the suggestion, not wanting the tragic incident to mar the reputation of the campus or become a destination for the morbidly curious.
“We need to downplay this painful situation and pray for God’s understanding,” Mother Superior had told the student body on the Monday after Jake’s death. “The police have finished their investigation of the grounds and there is no need to sensationalize what happened, nor should we encourage those who are obsessed or curious about the tragedy. Those who want to pay their respects to the poor boy can do so at his grave site…”
It all came back to Kristen now as she walked along the hedgerows, trying to second-guess the new pathways. It took her nearly half an hour before she made the right succession of turns. Suddenly, she was in the center of the maze, the old oak tree still standing, branches naked and spreading in the gloomy night.
Kristen’s heart squeezed as she shined her light over the ground littered by branches. The statue of the Madonna was unscathed, bleached white as ever, hands lifted as if in supplication to God.
An unworldly chill ran through Kristen’s blood as clouds blocked the moon and rain peppered the ground. “Dear God,” she whispered, her hands clenching tight. Her throat closed and she felt hot tears mingle with the cold rain sliding down her cheeks. She imagined Jake as she’d last seen