Guilt (Ezzy's Education: Part 31), by Garrett Murch
Verica Navratil felt like she had tried to swallow a football when she entered Ebbing High School Wednesday morning. Remember what Lucinda messaged last night: the cause is advancing and that’s all that matters. No one knows, so roll with it. She felt as though everyone was watching her. It’s only because I’m top deputy to the new president. People’s eyes look so pointy. She forced a smile, forced her head up, forced air in and out of her tight chest, and forced a smart gait as she made her way down the hallway with floors still wet from mopping. I hope I don’t see Lucinda. What would my parents think of me? Is that Kayla? Is my shirt on inside-out or something? Nope. Stop looking at me! She wiped sweat from her forehead and some of it slid to the corners of her eyes.
“Congratulations, Verica!” Dizzy Jabs approached. “How are you? I’ve been worried about you. You weren’t at the celebration of Lucinda last night.”
Verica kept walking as she replied, “I’ve been sick, that’s all. I’m okay. Go Justice.” I guess I can talk. Good to know.
Dizzy yelled after her, “The agenda goes into effect today. Sooo exciting!”
That must be why Officer Holmes is parked on the street this morning. Oh shoot, I still have beef jerky in my backpack. She wondered how she could discreetly dispose of the beef jerky, since red meat was no longer allowed in school except in the teachers’ and administrators’ room. Lucinda would probably let me keep it as long as it was hidden. Eh, I should throw it away.
“You Justice bitch,” a voice said. Verica turned to the voice.
Trendon Bravissimo, great. “Get away from me, Trendon.” On the gray t-shirt covering Trendon’s concave chest was a pin that read “Trunk, Inc.”
“Verica not America, you bummed you didn’t even get to use your ballot-changing plan?”
“Seriously, get lost, Trendon. There wasn’t any plan like that. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He really must not remember seeing me at the party. Thank god for alcohol. Her breathing became less of a challenge.
“Who’s going to make me?” Trendon got in Verica’s face, all 125 pounds of him.
Verica, her body even slighter than Trendon’s, thought of Officer Holmes. Shoot.
“Trendon! Step away from Verica, you shrimp.” A stern Ezzy Bello approached Trendon and Verica. “Now,” Ezzy said. She wore an army-green shirt and brown pants with brown boots. Her straightened hair dropped to just below her shoulders.
Oh my god, now I’m getting rescued by Ezzy Bello? She looks taller. Those boots are basically flats, though. What’s going on? Why does she look so tall?
“Whatever, Yellow Bello,” Trendon said.
Kelile Lewis appeared at Ezzy’s side. “You’re the coward, Little Trendon,” he said. “I suggest you leave. It won’t work out well for you if you stay.”
Trendon fled, yelling, “People like you won’t like having Lucinda in charge, Kelile!”
Verica’s moment of breathing easier proved to be short-lived. Am I having a panic attack?
How is this all happening? I’ve gotta get outta here. She bolted. Gone were her forced smile and her forced gait. She was compelled to keep looking in all directions as she struggled through the slippery hallway that never seemed to end. All of a sudden, she was upon Kayla Jennings, who was smiling at Link Conary.
Link said to Kayla, “Since you’re a smart athlete, you’d pick up fly fishing no problem. It takes a little brains.” Kayla’s glance at her made Verica’s heart palpitate. She placed her clammy palm on her chest. She tried to sprint down the hall but slowed down when her feet started slipping. Is everyone pretending they don’t know what I did? She ran until she reached her Chevy Malibu in the student parking lot. Standing outside her car, leaning a little on the door, she forced herself to inhale and exhale slowly, like in her yoga class. I’ve got to go see Trunk. The cool autumn breeze began drying her sweaty face and hands.
Verica looked at her phone. A new message from Lucinda read, “Where are you? You were supposed to be at my locker a minute and a half ago. Come. Now.” She stuffed her phone into her purse.
Verica drove with the windows down and the radio off. At the outskirts of town, she turned at a large oak tree on to the road Trunk lived on. About a mile down the road, she identified Trunk’s driveway when she saw the parked red pickup truck sporting a large American flag and an even larger Trunk flag, each waving in the breeze.
The lawn in front of the trailer had not been mowed for some time and the gravel driveway was half covered in long weeds. She parked and looked through the open garage doorway and at the trailer with some siding falling off it. Can I really tell him? I need to. But what if—The panic she had almost controlled now returned, and again she reminded herself to keep breathing. Not as bad as it was at school at least.
“I bet you thought I’d even have to give my jersey back,” said Trunk Langston, walking out from the garage into the driveway. He wore his football jersey over old jeans that had been cut into shorts. Verica noticed his feet and toenails atop his white rubber sandals were dirty.
“I need to talk to you, Trunk.”
“What do you want to say? Are you going to spill the beans on your ballot-changing plan since you don’t need it now?”
“There was never a ballot-changing plan.” My forehead feels cold.
“Yeah, whatever you say. Ever spent time in the slammer?”
Oh my god, does he know? “I have not, Trunk.” She resisted an impulse to touch her forehead.
“It’s not very pleasant, let me tell you. I just spent some time in one because, well, I still don’t know why. Somebody wanted to roofie Kayla and somehow I got blamed for it. I guess they put traces of the drug in my water bottle or something. I think even my lawyer believes I did it.”
Verica remained silent. He’s so deflated. I almost feel sorry for him.
“What are you doing here?” Trunk asked. “There’s no need to gloat. I’m going to end up just like him now.” Trunk pointed at the trailer. “Just what you wanted. For guys like me to end up like him.”
“No one wants that,” Verica said. Well, that’s not true, Lucinda probably does. “I have to tell you something.”
“Spit it out.”
“Trunk!” Blitzer Langston called from inside the trailer. His voice, booming by nature, fought with the phlegm in his throat.
“When are you going to the store? Make yourself useful if you wanna keep livin’ here on my dime.”
“Well, I, I—” Verica stuttered.
“I have to run to the store,” Trunk said. “Either spit it out right now or come with me.”
Verica looked at the siding falling off the trailer, at the rusty red pickup, at deflated Trunk Langston. “I’ll go with you.” I have to tell him. But what happens if I do? Do I go to the slammer? Could Lucinda stop it? Would she? As they drove to the store, after some initial silence, Verica said, “So what happened to Kayla on Friday night—” He can probably see me shaking.
“I thought you were going to tell me about your vote-changing scheme.”
Verica studied Trunk, his tired, angry face, the tear in his jersey, the vice grip his hands had on the steering wheel. “Well, I kind of—”
“Look, you must want to tell me what you were going to do with the ballots. Why else would you be here? How many votes were you able to switch? How much was I going to win by? Can’t you at least tell me that? You’re never going to tell me, are you?”
“It’s not that.” I can’t seem to spit it out. I have to.
Trunk pulled into the store parking lot. “Well, if it’s not that it can wait until I get back.” He got out of the truck, his door creaking when it opened and closed. He walked away.
Verica felt an urge to check her phone but resisted it. She stared at her shoes and the empty pack of cigarettes on the passenger floor. What if my parents knew everything I’ve done? What if they’d watched me do it all? They can’t ever know; they would disown me. I can’t tell Trunk. I have to tell him.
A minute later, Verica watched Trunk set a bag from the store in the bed of the truck, leaning it against the pole of the flag with his name on it. I’ll never understand how supporting Trunk is supposed to mean you love your country, unless you’re saying your country is terrible like him and you love that. But it’s the job of Justice to say how terrible the country is. They’re supposed to be the America-loving Patriots. He deserved it. Well. Nothing makes sense.
Trunk got back in the truck. “Okay, tell me,” he said. They drove off.
Verica looked at him, his dark eyes glaring at the road. Just tell him. Tell him, Verica. Do it.
Now! You have to. “Trunk, at the party on Friday, I put a roofie in your water bottle. It was meant for you, not for Kayla.” There, I did it. Wait, why did I tell him?
Trunk did not react immediately, but in a few seconds, he stepped on the gas as his face began to match the color of the truck. “What?” he roared, frightening Verica. He looked at her and the truck began veering into the oncoming lane. He returned to his lane in time to avoid an oncoming car. “You little—Why?”
Verica trembled. “We only wanted you to get a little tipsy so you would say stupid things. We were going to record them and use them against you. You would have looked drunk, and so we were going to call you a hypocrite since you say you don’t drink and that you never will.”
Trunk sped the truck up more. “You crazy, evil bitch!”
Verica’s arms shook from her shoulders. “We thought after people found out Lucinda wanted to ban football, that you were going to win. We needed to win, so we had to do something.”
“And that something was to drug Kayla Jennings and blame me?” The truck speedometer tacked over sixty miles per hour.
“We didn’t drug Kayla! It was innocent; we were just advancing Justice. It just—Well, it didn’t go exactly as planned.”
“Screw you and your justice. And now I bet you think I’m getting justice.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying—”
“You’re going to tell everyone at school, which is exactly where we’re headed after I drop this shit off for my dad.” Slowly, a huge grin took over Trunk’s face. “Trunk is back in business!”
“No!” Verica hollered. “You can’t. I can’t. I can’t tell anyone. Ever.”
“Oh, yes you can, and you will.”
Suddenly the prospect of going to jail and, worse, not getting into college, became real to Verica in a way it had failed to up until that point. That can’t happen. What am I doing here? “I will not!” she screamed.
“You can’t deny it now; you already told me.” Telephone poles passed by them quickly as the truck reached seventy-five miles per hour.
“Who do you think people will believe? You? Or me?” I’ve got him now. He knows the answer.
“You will tell them, and then you’re going to tell them every last detail about your plan to manipulate the ballots! You’ll spill the beans on ballots, you bitch!”
Trunk’s road fast approached. When he turned the steering wheel, the truck did not turn enough to make the corner. The giant oak tree on the corner of his road crashed through the truck’s driver’s side window. Both Verica and Trunk went dark. The troubled life of Trunk Langston ended.