Heads or Tails
Part 2 of the "The Future Is Ours" Series
by Staci Kaufmann
August 1998 - November 2001
Regardless of where they went afterwards, his dreams always started the
same way.
He was in the truck with his father, on the last time they would make
this traditional 'moving trip', driving away from Parkersville, Kansas.
His father was making the usual 'well, dad, how fucked up is this new
town going to be?' jokes, but J.D. wasn't playing along. For the first time in
his life, he was looking back.
Noticing his son's indifference to his humor, Bud Dean glanced back and
saw the petite blonde standing on the side of the street.
"Hey dad, you never introduced your girlfriend."
J.D. sighed and turned away, staring straight ahead. "It doesn't matter
now, son."
Then the images changed. Sometimes he went back, seeing Adia again,
hearing their conversations in a different way now that he knew her secret.
Just as she knew his.
But many times he would also go forward, seeing the only other loose end
he'd ever left- Veronica Sawyer.
He didn't have to go into his dreams to 'see' either of the girls, but
that was where his pictures were clearest.
Tonight, he saw Veronica.
********
She was standing in the cafeteria at Westerburg High, slightly apart
from the 'Heathers', the three girls she mistakenly called her friends.
He watched as the small group played a trick on Martha Dunstock, an
overweight teenager who had been dubbed Martha Dumptruck by her sensitive and
mature peers. Veronica hadn't seemed very happy about the entire prank, but
she'd gone along.
When she'd caught his eye again, he'd given her his best 'shit happens'
shrug and then watched as she'd made her way away from the Heathers for a few
moments.
Interesting. Not the kind of shy outcast that he usually went for, but
in a way she inhabited both worlds. Students around here clearly worshipped her
right along with the Heathers, but she didn't quite seem to be part of the
group.
A really good actress, who was playing her own game with the Heathers?
A girl whose beauty had gotten her into the clique, but who was now trying to
get out because her soul was fighting against the confinement?
Or a teen who was too weak to take action against those she despised on
her own?
I'll take door number three, J.D. thought, as the dark-haired girl
approached his table.
"Greetings and salutations. You a Heather?"
He went to her that night, and she fell into her role so easily that
J.D. found himself wishing again for Adia, who probably would have laughed
outright at the mention of strip croquet.
He told himself that in this kind of situation, routine was the safest
thing. That surprises belonged in others' lives, not his own. He was the
bringer of chaos, not one of its victims.
J.D. recited all of that to himself as Veronica lay next to him,
talking.
And still he wished.
The next morning Veronica was an accomplice to murder. She'd gone
through all the emotions that he was used to . . . shock at Heather Chandler's
death, worry over what would happen because of the terrible 'accident', quick
acceptance of his apparently spur-of-the-moment idea to cover up their
involvement by making the popular girl's death seem like a suicide.
He'd had to keep from yawning as she helped him forge the note.
Together, they'd done away with two other students- Kurt Kelly and Ram
Sweeney. And they watched as Heather Duke cheerfully took Heather Chandler's
place. They bore sarcastic witness . . . and then things began to change.
He remembered when she had met his father. He'd used the opportunity to
tell her about his mother, to throw another piece of bait into the trap. He was
proud that he'd been able to remember to do that, considering the conversation
the three of them had had:
His dear old dad had displayed one of his many usual quirks as he
complained about people giving him trouble at his job. "Just like Kansas.
Remember fucking Kansas?"
As if they'd been gone for years instead of weeks. But that was always
how it was with his father. Once they drove out of a town, it became a distant
memory. And, as always, he played along.
"The one with the wheat, right?"
But despite the bait he'd dropped after the conversation, despite the
fact that up until then she'd played along perfectly, Veronica broke up with
him.
He hadn't been extremely worried. She wasn't the first one to have done
something like this, and all of the others had eventually come back.
She hadn't.
He'd thought of her, and he'd thought of Adia, and he'd decided that
maybe his judgment as to what people were going to do next had gone temporarily
off-kilter.
And he'd been angry at Veronica for a while, not so much because of the
breakup, but because of the extreme hypocrisy that she apparently couldn't even
see.
First there had been Heather.
"It's one thing to want someone out of your life, it's another thing to
serve them a wake-up cup full of liquid drainer."
Of course, if she hadn't wanted Heather out of her life, wouldn't she
have checked the cup again before they got to the blonde girl's room, just to
make sure? After all, the life of her supposed best friend had been at stake.
Even ignoring that mistake, there would have been no way that Veronica
would have let him cover up a actual accidental death. If she had been fully
telling the truth in her self-righteous talk, she would have called the police
and explained the entire prank-gone-wrong.
Granted, he never would have let her make it to the phone, but at least
there would have been honesty in her actions then.
But when he'd called Heather her worst enemy as well as her best friend,
Veronica had said, "Same difference." She'd admitted hating the other girl with
that sentence, but still didn't want to say the actual words- or own up to the
actions that the emotion had led her to.
And if that hadn't been bad enough, there were also Kurt and Ram.
He remembered the look on her face as she came to the realization that
Ram was dead, but she'd shot Kurt anyway- only to whine later that she didn't
want them dead.
Apparently, little Veronica Sawyer had never truly listened to the old
'actions speak louder than words' proverb.
Recalling the random information about her past she'd given him after
their less-than-conventional croquet game, he'd laughed at how all of this was
apparently coming from someone with a 'grand I.Q.'. If this was the best she
could come up with, he was surprised that she actually could decide what color
gloss to wear and how to hit three keggers before curfew without spontaneously
combusting.
She was just after the best of both worlds. She wanted the people she
hated out of her life, but she also wanted the right to complain about it
afterwards and take the moral high ground.
He supposed that thinking about all of that helped lead to his new plan.
Instead of dealing with students individually, he would do a collective job.
He'd had a backup plan for the backup plan, as well. He sure as hell
could never have been a Boy Scout, but he did believe fully in their motto.
Part of his plan had led him to 'team up' with Heather Duke, in a way.
He'd seen in her attitude towards him that she thought she was above him- that
she was fooling him somehow. More than likely, the brunette was planning to
take all the credit for his petition, use it to boost her ill-gotten popularity.
He'd wondered, amused, if she would have wanted to take the credit for
his plan if she knew what his final goal truly was.
But her perceptions didn't really matter. Because in reality, she was
the puppet- and she was too smarmy and self-involved to even feel him pulling
the strings.
It had been lucky for her that she was more useful to him alive than
dead.
The new plan, and its backup, had been going along smoothly- and then
Veronica had changed everything further by pretending to commit suicide.
He'd seen immediately that the noose was wrong, but he hadn't pointed it
out to her right then- although it would have been fucking hilarious to undo
that idiotic bedsheet and say, 'if you're gonna do this, let me show you how to
do it right'.
After all, since he'd decided to fully go with his backup plan, he
didn't need her anymore.
But he'd been curious as to what she was plotting. He knew that she
wouldn't involve the police- she was too deeply involved herself by now, and
also too rattled to come up with some kind of believable alibi.
So he'd told her. About the true backup plan. The bomb, the suicide
note/petition. And he'd gone down into the boiler room, wondering what she was
going to pull, or if she was just going to take the warning and stay home today.
That would be an irony that everyone else in Sherwood, Ohio would love.
He could see it now- dark-eyed Veronica, looking soulful on the evening news,
talking about how she'd just 'had a feeling' that she should stay home. . .
The gun had surprised him.
He'd had the fleeting thought that she wouldn't actually have the
backbone to shoot at him, but given the track record his predictions had had
lately, he'd ignored that thought and quickly disarmed her.
She'd responded by following him deeper into the boiler room a moment
later and confronting him again.
He'd been torn between being thoroughly pissed off at her and admiring
her sudden fortitude. He hadn't expected this much from her.
The scales had tilted heavily toward the 'pissed off' side when he'd
flipped her off . . . and she'd proven that she did indeed have the backbone to
shoot at him.
Even with that, when their fight was over and the bomb had been
disarmed, after Veronica had left the boiler room, thinking him dead, after he
had checked the device strapped to his chest to make sure that everything was in
proper working order and followed her outside, it had been the admiration he'd
expressed. She'd finally displayed the strength that had been hiding under
the holier-than-thou bullshit.
Then he'd told her that the slate was clean, and he'd pushed the button.
The device almost hadn't counted down like it should have. But that had
been solved by just applying the most straightforward solution- he'd hit it.
Everything had fallen into plan again after that. She'd gone back
inside, believing him dead, as everyone else would within the next five minutes,
even though they would never find his body.
********
He woke up, still seeing Veronica on the steps of Westerburg High- hair
a tangled mess, soot all over her face and clothes, a lit cigarette dangling
from her lips.
He was sure that she'd never quite known everything he'd meant by 'the
slate is clean'.
It meant that she had a new beginning. She could hold on to the
strength she'd shown when she'd actually stood by a conviction of hers for once,
or she could go back to her old ways.
And of course, it meant that he had a new beginning as well. After all,
a dead person didn't have to deal with all the problems inherent in setting off
a bomb on school property.
How fortunate.
J.D. got out of bed and picked up a pack of cigarettes, then stared out
the window of the small hotel room, gazing out over the city.
He hadn't tried anything else on the scale of the attempted destruction
of Westerburg High again. It was much better- and, admittedly, more
entertaining- to pick and choose individuals.
Besides, he'd decided soon after he'd left Sherwood, he'd had enough
chaos lately, what with the two most recent women in his life.
And, as it turned out, neither one had ever truly left him. If he
wasn't dreaming about Adia, he was dreaming about Veronica.
A shrink'd probably have a damn field day with that one.
His mouth quirked up into a smile, and he lit a cigarette as he
continued watching the night.
********
Veronica got out of bed, then paced around her bedroom for a few moments
before she swore quietly and yanked open her desk drawer, pulling out her diary
before doing a quick search for her monocle and a pen.
"Dear Diary,
I dreamed about him again. Goddammit, he is dead and has been for ten
years! Apparently I have to write that down more than once because my damned
brain won't pick up on it. J.D.'s in hell somewhere laughing about all this,
I'm sure . . . anyway, it's late. I'm going back to bed, and I am not going to
dream about that bastard again! Got it, subconscious?"
She slashed an angry signature, then shoved everything back into a
drawer and burrowed under her covers, trying to keep her mind off of a boy she'd
once known.
********
Adia stared up at her ceiling, knowing that she should try to get some
sleep.
She rarely did this anymore. But every once in a while it hit her, and
she wondered where he was now, what he looked like . . . who he was with?
All right, that particular thought could stay un-thought.
She knew that she could probably find him, if she really tried.
But she was scared. She didn't think that he'd been caught or killed-
after all, she was still all right- but that could just be too much optimism and
wishful thinking on her part. She wasn't exactly a big fan of the news programs
. . . something could have happened to him and she might not have heard about
it.
If she went digging now, what would she find?
Cursing herself for being a coward, she got out of bed and switched on
the light, finding a CD and putting it in her player, setting it for the second
song and then pushing play as she sat down on the end of her bed.
Sarah McLachlan's high, clear voice filled the room, and as Adia stared
blankly at the wall and listened to the words, she felt tears fill her eyes.
"The world around us disappears
It's just you and me on my island of hope
A breath between us could be miles
Let me surround you, my sea to your shore. . ."
She might find a devastating article, yes. But she might also find him.
And instead of doing something constructive, here she was sitting on her bed at
1:32 in the morning, crying.
Not only was she a coward, she was a maudlin coward.
Wonderful.
"Oh, and every time I'm close to you
There's too much I can't say
And you just walk away
And I forgot to tell you
I love you. . ."
********
The next morning Adia got up and stared at herself in the mirror. "You
look like hell," she told her reflection cheerfully. Then she walked into the
kitchen to find some breakfast.
When she'd woken up, her new decision had been firmly in her mind. It
was time to move.
She'd relocated since she'd graduated from Parkersville High- to New
York City. She'd had her fun here, but it was obviously time for a change.
"In more ways than one," she muttered, as she grabbed a box of cereal.
She promised herself that she had cried for the last time over what
she'd lost. Maybe he was still out there somewhere, maybe not.
Either way, she had graduated from high school in 1990. J.D. had been
out of her life for years. She wasn't a seventeen year-old outcast anymore; she
was a twenty-eight year-old woman.
And it was past time for her to stop regretting what could have been,
and start being happy for what she'd had.
After all, it wasn't every day that a murderess such as herself found a
kindred spirit.
With a laugh, she started thinking about what city she should visit.
She'd always thought that L.A. looked interesting. Or maybe Chicago or Detroit.
Of course, she needed to take care of a few last loose ends first. . . .
********
Several people whistled as Veronica came into the donut shop, and she
sighed. She'd known this was going to happen. She ignored them and went behind
the counter, where she saw her coworker grinning at her.
"What's the occasion?" Audrey asked.
"Nothing in particular," she answered. At least nothing that she was
going to explain to the other woman.
It had been more than a year since she'd had her last nightmare about
J.D. But still, she couldn't help but think that her new, short haircut had
something to do with him. Moving even further away from the image of the
Veronica Sawyer she'd been when he was in her life?
For God's sake, if she wasn't dreaming about him, he was showing up in
little decisions like how to cut her damned hair!
"Hey, you're not supposed to be scowling like that until at least 9:30,"
Audrey whispered, just before she turned to a customer. "Can I help you?"
The man leered at her. "Oh yeah, you definitely could."
Veronica sighed and walked off. So, the first idiotic lech of the
morning had arrived.
She looked at the clock. Only 8:00. Betsy's Donuts stayed open until
1:00. Then she could go home and work on her next article for the Fayenson
Times.
She'd wanted to be a journalist. But somehow, she'd never quite
pictured herself as a column writer for a small town paper who had to work at a
donut shop to help out her income.
Oh well, she thought, as she began to refill the coffee cups. At least
she wasn't stuck with cleanup. That thankless job went to Audrey.
She looked back at where the light-haired woman was still talking to the
lech. As she put things into a sack for him, he reached out for the end of her
long ponytail. She leaned away and deftly twitched her hair out of his reach.
He simply ignored the motion and asked for her name.
"Audrey Lorenzo."
He grinned, obviously thinking that he looked extremely suave. "Really?
You don't look like a Lorenzo."
Veronica quickly hid a smile as she started another pot of coffee. That
had been the wrong thing to say.
Audrey smiled sweetly at him. "What do you want me to do- put on some
bright red lipstick and a ruffled skirt?"
The lech actually had the good grace to flush.
"Maybe wear a fruit-basket hat on my head for good measure?"
"Okay, I'm sorry I said anything!"
"Thank you for the apology." She handed him his donuts. "That'll be
$2.87."
He stared at her for a moment. Her voice had never been anything but
calm and polite, brown eyes holding no visible trace of irritation. Veronica
hid a laugh behind a cough. . .
And was suddenly reminded of a time when she'd hid another laugh behind
a sob, in Pauline Fleming's classroom.
With a quick growl of annoyance, she went to the back room to say hello
to Betsy and fill out another segment of her time sheet.
Veronica had a habit of associating certain characteristics with certain
names. And oddly enough, many of the people she met fit the characteristics
she'd come up with.
Betsy was one of the few exceptions.
The name had always conjured up images of someone happy and maternal.
Her employer, on the other hand, was acidic, cold, and Veronica would
bet a year's salary that there wasn't a maternal bone in her scrawny body.
"Late, I see," Betsy snapped.
Veronica sighed again. She did that way too much at work. . . "No, I'm
not. I stopped out front for a few minutes to refill things and say hi to
Audrey."
The older woman just snorted and then gestured behind her. "Go
downstairs and bring up another box of spoons; we're running low."
With a nod and a smile, she walked past her boss. The second Betsy
couldn't see her anymore, however, Veronica frowned at the thought of going to
the basement.
She knew it was a childish, silly fear, but she hated going down steps
into dimly-lit rooms.
Of course, she thought as she walked over to the supply cabinet, she had
more reason than most to not appreciate things like basements- or boiler rooms.
Cursing under her breath as she picked up the box, she told herself to
quit thinking about Westerburg High and everything that had happened there.
It was over, J.D. was dead, no one had ever found out about her
involvement, and she had a brand new life now.
"Veronica! I meant get the spoons *today*!"
Albeit not a happy sparkly one.
********
Adia sat in front of the computer at the library, staring at the
newspaper article her search had brought up. She'd sifted through several
stories already, about the Big Bud Dean Construction Company, which had brought
up J.D. in one throwaway sentence or another.
And then a more recent one had a short biography section. That section
had mentioned how Bud Dean had lost both his wife and his son.
She'd frozen in her chair, reading the sentence over and over again,
praying that somehow her brain was misfiring, that the writer had made one hell
of a typo.
But he hadn't. And the next article she'd found detailed J.D.'s death.
It had happened in Sherwood- the town he'd moved to immediately after
leaving Parkersville. He'd killed himself by strapping a bomb to his chest and
then letting it count down.
Adia closed her eyes for a moment, trying not to picture that detail.
What the hell had happened? she wondered. It didn't make sense. She
could picture J.D. arranging others' suicides, not his own.
She forced herself to read the rest of the article. A fellow student,
who asked not to be named, had witnessed his death. Everyone was, naturally,
'shocked'. Some teacher/counselor woman named Pauline spoke at his funeral
about how "his suicide deeply affected all of us, and I hope that everyone will
learn from this tragedy and open themselves more fully to the joy of life, not
the sadness".
After closing the search window, she sat there for a few moments, her
hands holding the edge of the desk so tightly that her fingers went numb.
"You knew what you might find," she whispered. "Now get a hold of
yourself, dammit!"
She remained still, reminding herself of all the promises she'd made
before she left home to go on this cyber-search: That whatever she found, she
wouldn't suddenly pull up all her roots and go off looking for him; at the
moment, this was simply for curiosity's sake, not a mission. She wouldn't print
anything out- her aim wasn't to create a scrapbook. She wouldn't cry. And she
wouldn't cause any other kind of scene in public.
She only broke her rules slightly. Just before she got up and left, a
single tear fell to the wooden desktop.
********
J.D. rode out of the small town, towards whatever next happened to catch
his fancy.
He'd only stayed there for a couple of weeks; the longest he'd ever
stayed in one place after his 'death' at Westerburg had been seven months. He'd
been in small towns and sprawling cities. Sometimes he found people who needed
to be taken care of and sometimes he didn't.
This time he hadn't.
There was no one behind him on the motorcycle. Occasionally there would
be while he was still in town, a random woman who'd caught his attention for
some reason. A few times, he would play his old games with them.
It always worked like clockwork.
And the women, for one reason and another, always stayed behind. He
liked things better that way.
Basically.
He swore at the thought, and at the images that quickly followed it.
Yes, he was very meticulous when it came to his little 'hobby'. Yes, it
was only natural that his mind would keep returning to the only two he'd ever
really left behind.
The dreams had been tapering off. He knew that, given enough time, they
would probably stop altogether, or occur so rarely that he could easily ignore
them.
The question was- did he really want that to happen?
Although he might try to fool himself sometimes, worry about having his
true nature revealed was hardly the reason the two women kept invading his
thoughts.
Because despite her defiance at the end, Veronica wouldn't tell anyone
about him. She'd probably tried desperately to change her high school without
employing the most surefire method of doing so, then eventually given up and
gone on to Stanford or something.
And besides, there was no point in her going to the authorities. She
believed that he was dead.
Which was, he had to admit, one of the main reasons that he was insanely
curious as to what would happen if she saw him again.
And Adia had probably appreciated the chance encounter with a like
spirit, and was now either married with children, with her past firmly behind
her; still out there somewhere continuing with her own 'hobby'; or she was in
prison.
He was curious about her as well.
Swearing again, he pulled the motorcycle over to the side of the road
and then took a quarter out of his pocket.
Okay, he thought. Heads, you go find one of them again. Tails, you
just forget about them both and stop the damn pondering!
Heads.
He picked the quarter up and smiled.
Now, as to which one of them he should look for. . .
J.D. thought about that for a moment, then looked down at the quarter
consideringly and flipped it again.
********
The donut shop was crowded that morning, and J.D. carefully sidled up to
the last empty stool, which was at the far end of the counter.
Finding her had taken longer than he'd expected, but he didn't mind.
After all, it had been years; what was a few more months?
And when he'd found out where she was working, he'd had to laugh. Now,
looking around the cutely named but shabbily decorated Betsy's Donuts, he found
himself grinning again.
Then he saw her, hurrying around, completely oblivious to his presence.
She didn't look the same as he remembered, but he hadn't expected her
to. Her hair was different, for one thing, and trying to imagine the teenager
he'd known in the pink-and-white uniform she now wore, serving a line of abrupt
customers, only made him wonder again what she was doing here.
He supposed he'd find out soon enough.
But until then, he was content to sit here and watch her.
Veronica rang in another purchase and then turned around as Audrey spoke
to her.
"Hey, Veronica, I've got people waiting on sausage biscuits- can you get
those while I get their donuts?"
"Sure," Veronica said. "How many?"
"Two in one bag, one in another, and six in the third," Audrey said,
before she handed a box over to another customer. "Thank you. Have a nice
day."
Veronica left her coworker in charge of the line and opened the sausage
biscuit oven, grabbing a square of cloth to cover her hand before she pulled out
the tray.
Two, one, and six, she repeated in her head. She shook open a bag, and
the motion made the tray wobble. It also made the cloth slip, and when the tray
touched her fingers she instinctively let go of it. Then, just as
instinctively, she reached out with her other hand to grab it before it could
hit the floor.
The words 'bad idea, you idiot' flashed in her brain like red lightning
as her palm hit the hot metal. She instantly jerked back and cupped her injured
hand, trying to keep from swearing in front of the customers.
Absurdly, she heard her own voice in her mind then, from years before.
"I did not want them dead!"
She'd hurt her hand then as well, but it had been on purpose that day. .
.
"Goddammit!" she whispered, more because of the memories than the pain.
J.D. kept his eyes on her, smiling. This wasn't exactly what he'd come
in here for- he hadn't planned on revealing his presence this early- but the
opportunity was too wonderful to pass up.
He leaned across the counter, taking out a cigarette as he did so.
Veronica turned around just then, and her eyes widened as they locked on his.
"Greetings and salutations, darling. Got a light?"
Veronica fainted.