Confessions of a Murder Suspect

40

It felt like an eternity before I was extracted from the group cell and moved to a single cell for my safety. I felt sure Phil had done this somehow, and I loved him for it.

My private cell was as different from my bedroom in the Dakota as air is from ice. It was maybe five feet wide by six feet long, and furnished with a narrow, wooden slat for a cot. There was a toilet with no seat, and a caged fluorescent light outside my cell shot its death rays from high overhead.

Actually, things were looking up. At least I was alone.

I curled up on my sleeping board and at some point found myself thinking about the last time I had been left alone overnight in a dark, uncomfortable place. It was a chop in which I had to spend one night in the closet underneath the stairs. “Maybe you’ll learn to appreciate the comforts we’ve provided for you if they’re taken away,” Malcolm said. “Maybe you’ll reconsider your interest in so casually discarding the life that your mother and I have given you.”

My interest in discarding this life—well, that’s a topic worthy of another conversation.

I had always understood that our parents used reward and punishment to shape our characters. It was a dirty-dog shame that I’d gotten another Big Chop just hours before my parents died. I would never forget that they were angry and disappointed in me. If I had just kept my mouth shut, they might have left this earth with only good feelings about me in their hearts.

That’s if they actually had hearts, Tandy, said the little voice in my head—which was getting a lot louder the more time I spent in that god-awful place.

Of course they did, I thought.

Brains, yes. Hearts, debatable.

Still, they really knew how to make people happy. I turned my mind to the last Grande Gongo I’d won, the previous year. It was a spectacular prize: a trip to the west coast of Australia, where I swam with whale sharks over the Ningaloo Reef.

The whale sharks were totally awesome—so gentle and huge. I drifted along with one I called Oliphant for almost an hour. He was about thirty-five feet long, with leopard spots and three hundred rows of tiny teeth, perfect for sieving plankton out of the sea.

I was a tiny speck in scuba gear, and Oliphant was a rare and wonderful behemoth, like a living flying carpet beneath me. Can you imagine it? Whatever you’re imagining, double or triple it. That Grande Gongo was easily the highlight of my life.

My sister Katherine’s Grande Gongo was also a highlight of her life—and the end of it, too.