Weaver, page 2
“So, you are the one who planted it?” the officer continues. He tries to keep his tone neutral, but Eddie is pretty sure he hears a faint hint of admiration buried just beneath the suspicion.
“It was me, yeah.”
The officer pauses, tapping his pen against the paper in irregular beats.
“That photo . . . it was fairly harmless. Still, everyone read into it. Pretty cold move. Langford came out of it mostly intact, but his press secretary . . . that poor girl lost everything.”
“It worked,” Eddie replies coolly. “And don’t waste your sympathy on Kelly Connors. She doesn’t deserve it.”
“Didn’t you just say she was innocent?”
“She didn’t have an affair with her boss, no. But she is far from innocent. Remember, you’ve only gotten half of what you asked for. You wanted to know what I did and why I did it. You’re still missing the why.”
The pen stops on the paper, and the officer’s brow furrows.
“Fair enough,” he says. “Then let’s hear it. Why did she deserve to get dragged through the mud?”
THE GIRL ON THE STREET
GLEAMSDALE, 2009
“Sure you don’t want a splash of whiskey in that?”
Eddie looks up from the paper cup in his hands and raises an eyebrow.
“Pretty sure Jerry wouldn’t approve of that.”
“Suit yourself. If I had to stand in front of a classroom full of hormone-crazed teenagers every day, my morning coffee would get more than just a splash. That’s for sure.”
Eddie shrugs and smiles, even though that same joke has been told way too many times to still be funny. It’s practically a tradition on Wednesdays, when he starts work later and thus has time to buy—and consume—his coffee in his buddy’s grocery store.
Said buddy is Steve Parker. Same age as Eddie, although you wouldn’t know it at a glance. Many years of physical labor have left Steve a little hunched, and his dark hair is thinning fast.
Steve couldn’t care less, though. He still walks around sporting the same cocky grin he had back when they first met as teenagers. The same grin he is flashing now as he leans over the register and whispers:
“Besides, I promise you that old Principal Sharp has got a bottle or two of his own tucked away in his desk drawer. I should know. He buys them here.”
“You do realize he would tear your license in half if he ever heard you saying shit like that, right?”
“Doubt it,” Steve laughs, lifting a box of scented candles onto a display shelf on the back wall. “Jerry Sharp’s too . . . well, sharp for that. He would call Brenner, get the mayor to pull some strings.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Eddie replies, raising his paper cup. “Back scratching and under-the-table deals. Cheers to that.”
“Bottoms up.”
After finishing his coffee and wishing Steve a good day, Eddie leaves the store and heads out to his car.
The radio station is running a theme day—one-hit wonders of the nineties—which means he is belting out Chesney Hawkes’ The One and Only at the top of his lungs as he pulls out of the parking lot.
Is there any clearer sign it’s gonna be a good day? Not in his experience. The only real contestants would perhaps be Walking on Sunshine, but that’s gotta be . . . what? Ten years older? Definitely not a ‘nineties hit’. That much—
“Oh, fuck!”
He slams hard on the brakes, feels the front of the car dip, and hears the tires screech.
There’s a girl. Right in the middle of the road. One more second, maybe even half a second, and he would have hit her.
He starts rolling the window down, ready to yell at her—partly just to shake off the shock—but then stops short.
He knows her. It’s Molly Quill, one of his students.
With that realization comes others: Her blond hair is a mess, she is wobbling on her feet, and her cheeks are streaked with tears.
He fumbles for the hazard lights and yanks the shifter to Park way harder than necessary before pulling off his seatbelt and opening the door.
“Molly! Hey, Molly, are you okay?”
No reaction.
“Molly?”
Nope. Still nothing.
He steps fully out onto the road, slams the door shut behind him, and starts walking toward her.
“Molly, aren’t you supposed to be in school? What are you doing out here?”
At last, she turns her head and looks at him.
Red eyes. Bloated cheeks. He was right. She has been crying.
“I . . . I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver. I didn’t see you, I . . .”
“Never mind that. Molly. What happened to you?”
Her lips tremble, and she takes a step backward, as if he had threatened her instead of just asking a question. Or as if just thinking about the answer fills her with panic.
“N-nothing,” she stammers. You’d be challenged trying to find a more obvious lie.
“You sure?” Eddie asks. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
In truth, this is far from the first time he has seen tears on Molly’s face. She is a nice girl. The kind who color-codes her binders and always keeps her pencils perfectly sharpened. The kind who would apologize if someone bumps her chair. But she is also the kind that bullies tend to zero in on.
“I’m really sorry I stepped in front of your car, Mr. Weaver,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “But I . . . I’ve gotta go. I’m late. Doctor’s appointment.”
Another obvious lie. Eddie weighs his options—and then slowly nods.
“All right, Molly. You go on. See you tomorrow, yeah?”
Visibly relieved, she forces a stiff smile and tilts her head up and down.
“And, uh . . . take care of yourself, okay?” Eddie adds, but Molly has already turned her back and started walking away.
He watches silently as she half-jogs toward the crossing ahead, shoulders hunched up by her ears like she is trying to shrink out of sight.
THE CLIP
GLEAMSDALE, 2009
CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF!
YOUR MOM DOESN’T WORK HERE!
This message is scrawled in black marker on a sheet of paper taped above the sink in the teachers’ lounge at Gleamsdale High School—and as Eddie contemplates the irony of the sign itself being stained with three grimy coffee rings, the door opens behind him.
In walk two of his colleagues, Jennifer Miller and Joel Brooks, each with a coffee mug in hand and faces that really shouldn’t look that tired before lunchtime.
Jennifer—Jen, to most—is one of those teachers who balances sarcasm and compassion like two sides of the same coin. Today, however, she is radiating neither. She just looks pissed as she hip-slams the door and drops herself onto the couch.
Her companion, Joel—a caffeine-addicted history teacher infamous for his endless monologues about baseball—joins her with a weary sigh.
“We’ve got drama today, Weaver,” Jen groans before Eddie can even ask.
“What kind?”
“The nasty, calculated kind,” she says, waving her phone. “A video of a student is making the rounds.”
“One of yours, I think,” Joel adds. “Molly Quill. She is in your philosophy class, right?”
A chill runs down Eddie’s spine.
“What kind of video?”
“A group of the usual pissants told her they needed her to read lines for a group project,” Jen says. “Completely innocent stuff—they had written it out ahead of time. Then afterward, of course, the fuckers edit it to make it sound like she is saying disgusting things about herself. That she is gross. That nobody likes her. That she ought to just disappear.”
“Shit,” Eddie mutters into his coffee before taking a scalding sip. It burns going down.
"Yeah, shit,” Jen confirms. “And it’s not just some stupid little inside joke. They’re passing it around. It’s everywhere.”
She gets up from the couch, walks over, and holds her phone out to him.
Eddie doesn’t take it right away. He just stares at the image frozen on the screen.
Molly Quill, smiling behind a big white Play button, clearly unaware of what is coming.
He takes the phone, hits Play.
“Hi,” Molly says, looking nervously off-camera. “My name is Molly Quill, and I’m a student at Gleamsdale. I was asked to give my thoughts on the school’s cleanliness.”
Eddie glances at Jen, who gives a small nod. Here it comes.
“But first . . . I’d like to talk about . . . my own . . . cleanliness.”
The cuts are just as choppy and unnatural as the phrase, but it doesn’t matter. The intention—to humiliate the poor girl—is clear. And in that respect it works perfectly.
“My own . . . cleanliness,” Molly repeats in the exact same tone as before, “is pretty lacking in some areas . . . especially down below.”
Eddie puts a hand to his forehead and sighs. Jen meets his gaze and gives a subtle shake of her head.
“I’m . . . sticky and gross,” Molly says. “Stains everywhere. One time I even saw . . . mold in the basement.”
A short pause in which Molly once more glances nervously at someone outside the frame. Nervously, yes—but not upset. Whoever the cruel mastermind behind the video is, it’s clearly someone whose approval she desires. And Eddie has a damn good guess.
“I think the best solution would be for the student council and school board to work together to . . . send . . . me away. To make . . . me . . . disappear. Then the bathrooms would probably be way cleaner. Because I’m . . . sticky and gross . . . sticky and gross . . . sticky and gross.”
“Who did this?” Eddie growls through clenched teeth. “Was it Brenner?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Eddie looks up at Jen, who stops the video and slips her phone back into her pocket.
“Come on, Jen. Was it him?”
“We don’t know yet,” she repeats, her voice sharp and measured. Yet her eyes betray her. They tell Eddie that she has the same name at the top of her list of suspects as him.
Of course she does, Eddie thinks, setting his coffee down and walking toward the door. With something this vicious and calculated, it can only be one person.
“Deep breaths, Weaver.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t give me that crap. You know what I mean. You’ve got philosophy next period, and Roy Brenner is in that class.”
Eddie stares at her with a gaze he can’t quite strip of childish defiance. Then, with a sigh and a nod, he acknowledges defeat and leaves the teachers’ lounge.
It’s almost like there is an invisible switch on the floor just inside the classroom door. One that only responds to the shoe soles of an adult—and only on days like this, when there is drama, as Jen put it.
The switch does three things: it turns every student’s face toward the door, transforms their laughter and whispers into held breaths, and sends their smartphones slipping discreetly into their pockets.
Now they sit there. Watching him. Studying him. Waiting to see if he is gonna take part in the drama too.
Eddie isn’t. Not yet. First, he needs to study a few faces of his own.
Roy Brenner sits at the back, straddling his chair, hands laced behind his head. He’s smiling. Not a wide smile—not openly smug—but just a flicker in the corner of his mouth. Arrogant.
Next to him is Kelly Connors. She is Roy’s girlfriend, and like him, she is popular, bordering on flawless on the high school scale. Beautiful, rich—and cunning enough to walk the razor-thin line between queen and dictator.
Sitting there, legs crossed, head tilted at just the right angle, Kelly looks untouchable. Like she is above all of this. Above everyone—students and teachers alike.
However, there is a crack in the mask today.
Her eyes. They’re avoiding his. Not much. Not obviously. Just slight turns of her head. As though she doesn’t have the energy to meet his gaze. Or the courage.
An idea starts to form in Eddie’s mind. He walks to his desk, sets down his bag, and heads to the whiteboard, grabbing a red marker.
A chorus of squeaks—close to the sound of rubber soles on a gym floor—fills the room as he writes the day’s topic:
PLATO – THE INVISIBLE RING
“Didn’t we already finish him?” a kid asks in the second row, while others simply express their opinion with groans and sighs.
“Relax,” Eddie says. “We’re not reading any more old texts. It’ll just be the ethical discussion this time. Short version. The fun part.”
He turns back to the board and writes a single name beneath the title:
Gyges.
“More than two thousand years ago, Plato told a story about a man named Gyges who found a magical ring. When he turned it on his finger, it made him invisible.”
“Nice,” someone mutters.
“Gyges thought so too,” Eddie replies. “He realized he could do whatever he wanted without anyone knowing. So that was what he did. He seduced the queen, murdered the king, and seized the throne.”
Eddie pauses, and most of the guys use the moment to whisper in their friends’ ears. Probably something about how their first stop would be the girls’ locker room if they got their hands on a ring like that.
“Plato used this story to pose a philosophical question,” Eddie continues. “One that might be more relevant today than ever. He suggested that maybe people only act ethically correct because they’re afraid of consequences—not because it’s the right thing to do. So, indirectly, he’s asking us whether we would do the same. If no one could see or punish us, would we still do the right thing?”
“That’s stupid!”
“Hand in the air, Aron. How many times do I have to say it?”
Slowly, Aron raises his hand—but not before rolling his eyes.
“That’s stupid,” he repeats.
The comment isn’t particularly useful, and Eddie doesn’t expect anything profound to follow. Still, he gestures for Aron to explain.
“I just don’t get why we’re wasting time on some Lord of the Rings crap,” Aron says. “Magic rings aren’t real. Not then, not now.”
“True,” Eddie says. “But maybe something exists that works a bit like it. Can anybody guess what I’m thinking about? Something that can make us morally invisible today?”
A few hands rise cautiously. Roy’s hand, however, doesn’t hesitate. He raises it confidently, tilting a pencil back and forth between his fingers like a pendulum.
Eddie meets his eyes and gives him the floor with a nod.
“The internet,” Roy says. “Social media.”
“Go on.”
Roy smiles. Still not too wide, but enough to let Eddie know that he understands the challenge—and accepts it.
“Online, we can be totally anonymous. We can do all kinds of shit without consequences. It’s like having that ring.”
“Such as?”
“What do you mean?”
“All kinds of shit is a bit vague. Give us some examples.”
“Scammers stealing money from old people. Pedos tricking kids into sending pics. Fake news. People using filters, trying to look hot like me.”
That gets some laughs. Not from Eddie. He keeps his eyes locked on Roy’s face.
“So, people who manipulate others,” he says. “Interview them under false pretenses. Splice their words together to make them sound like something else and then share it online. No consequence. No punishment. Just a bunch of likes.”
Silence. The charged kind. The kind that tells Eddie that most—if not all—the students in the room know exactly what he is referring to.
Roy leans back. His chair creaks.
“Well, if it gets that many likes,” he says, “doesn’t that make it okay? Isn’t that . . . democracy? Majority rules, right?”
“Damn,” someone mutters from a corner of the classroom, and honestly, Eddie has to agree. It’s no secret that Roy Brenner can be a mean little tyrant who gets away with a lot, thanks to his dad’s influence in town. But this? This is next level cynicism.
“All I’m saying is, it depends on what you think right means,” Roy adds. “If Gyges got what he wanted and he didn’t get punished, then the ring did work. It proved that morality is just something we pretend to care about when people are watching.”
The words—and the smug grin that goes with them—make Eddie’s temples throb. If there had been even a shred of doubt in his mind before, it’s gone now. That little smug bastard is as guilty as sin.
And he knows he is going to get away with it, too, because there is no way to trace it back to him. And if all else fails, there is always the option of having Daddy make a quick call to the school principal to smooth things over.
“So, it’s okay to hurt others, as long as you don’t get caught?”
“People do it all the time.” Roy shrugs. “It’s called politics. And high school.”
“Plato believed that a person’s character—whether they are truly good—shows in what they do when no one is watching,” Eddie says. “Or when they think no one is watching.”
It only lasts a split second before it’s back in place, but Roy’s calm facade slips—and Eddie catches it. He sees who the young man’s steely gray eyes flicker toward.
Kelly Connors.
Aron Hanson.
His accomplices. But maybe also the key to taking him down.
“Well,” Eddie says, pulling a stack of papers from his bag. “That was a bit of a detour. Let’s move on to today’s actual assignment. I’ve got a short piece by Immanuel Kant for you to read. Afterward, we’ll be discussing his idea of the categorical imperative.”
He walks from desk to desk, handing out sheets. When he reaches Kelly’s, he slides the paper toward her with a noticeable pause.
“Kant can be a bit tricky,” he says. “He uses a lot of complex terms. But you can always come to me if you are struggling with something. I’m always ready to help.”
