Image of Innocence

Bethany Knickerbocker

The beach still looked the same as it did the last time I was here, though in my memories the moon provided the only illumination. In the daylight, the stones in the sand glistened and gulls squawked overhead. Children shared boogie boards, and I wondered if they could feel the thickness in the air that I felt. It was my first time here since the last search party effort three years ago. Once I took some pictures today, I’d never come back. A week after her disappearance, they found her here at the state park. Reporters labelled us as the type of town where nothing ever happened. But I had been in my senior year of high school, so every prom dress purchase and college acceptance letter had Haylee and I passing notes with the excite

ment of children prancing on a playground. Real adult life was happening right in front of our eyes, and when Haylee started going out with Josiah, we became part of the crowd that hung out at the mall and went to the drive-in and smoked cigarettes in the school bathroom. I even had a secret admirer towards the end of the school year. In my slim locker, he’d leave sketchings of me and original poems scribbled on yellow lined paper. At the bottom of the page, he’d always draw a heart with a little smiley face inside. His notes never came during school hours. I’d check in between class periods, but he only left them in the mornings. I received his last note shortly after Haylee’s disappearance, Sorry about your friend. I’ll always be here for you. We all had too much to drink on that night. Since we were little girls, Haylee and I anticipated being part of the last high school class of the century. We’d wear poofy dresses to prom and pull the best prank on the school principal before graduating and eventually opening our bakery downtown. For once in our lives, we’d ignore the sign advising not to swim after sunset, and we’d leave our dresses on the sand as we waded into the water. I remember she was tipsy, but so was I. “Josiah will be in that tent all night,” I groaned, “you promised me we would swim.” The waves grabbed at our feet. “I don’t want to get in trouble, Mel. I could lose my scholarship.” “If you’d rather bang your boyfriend than spend time with me, you could have just said so.” I pushed past her so she wouldn’t see my tears ruin my makeup. With my camera, I took a picture of the spot where we’d stood. The lifeguard’s chair, the bathroom building, and the buoys hadn’t moved from the spaces in which my memory placed them. The search parties trampled all over this beach in the days after prom. I’d paged her twice a day. They never found her pager.

When I passed the campground, a family of four with a pickup truck and portable grill was where Haylee and I had set up our tent. I slept alone that night, and in the morning, Josiah seemed surprised not to find Haylee in the tent with me, claiming he’d also slept alone. I walked over to the building with three musty bathroom stalls inside. I photographed the pale pink porcelain sink where I’d brushed beer off my teeth. “I don’t know anything,” he pleaded with me over the telephone, maintaining steady eye contact through the glass partition between us. “The police are saying that you do, though. You have to.” He looked to the ceiling for a moment, his eyes glassy.” And you believe them?” “More than I believe you.” Tomorrow, I’d have to hold the Bible again and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The lawyers advised me not to stray from what I’d said the first time around. I wanted to tell them that if they’d just let more African Americans on the jury, there wouldn’t be a need for a second trial. Since my stint two years ago as the star witness, I went on to drop out of community college and then to drop out of culinary school. We were supposed to go to school together. My guidance counselor kept telling me to prepare for our friendship to change after high school, but I knew we would be friends for the rest of our lives. After Haylee’s death, all I’d done with my time was send Josiah to prison, but even that went wrong. Maybe if she was the one who survived that night, the bakery would be open by now. Our bakery was supposed to be down the road from this park. We’d decorate the walls with our seaglass collection and frost our cakes in pastels to match how the sunset looked across the water. The idea was to start small with local parties.

I would put up flyers at my church, and together we’d go mailbox to mailbox with advertisements. We would work our way up to baking big triple-tiered wedding cakes for rich women living in the city. A little girl ran into the bathroom, sand coating her thin legs. She slid into a stall and pulled down her swimsuit before climbing up on the toilet. I shoved my camera in my bag before her mom rushed in to close the squeaky stall door. I could only put it off for so long. Twenty paces past the picnic table and into the wooded area. From the spot, I could hear the waves. He returned her about a week after whisking her away. Nobody knew where he brought her before they found her here. It was just a ground, now. A ground with rotten dirt and rocks and twigs where Haylee’s body had been dumped, treated no different than a half eaten school lunch. They retrieved DNA samples from her remains. It appeared that two men had touched her. One inconclusive and one a match for Josiah. Sometimes I wondered about that second man, but if Josiah was telling the truth, they would have solved that mystery by now. The last person to see her alive, he couldn't even make an attempt at an alibi. His lawyers tried to say we just saw him as a criminal because of his skin color, but I knew he had it in him all along. “Can you identify that item for the court?” “It’s Haylee’s diary. She carried it with her everywhere.” “Can you read for the jurors the entry under March 14, 1999?” “Josiah and I celebrated our one month anniversary today. Mom and Dad were both at work, so I had the house to myself. I knew this when I invited him over. We kissed and... so much more. He’d been nagging me about it for a while. I didn’t think I would do it. Mel didn’t think I would do it. Yesterday I told myself that I wouldn’t, but I guess now that

it’s done, it’s done.” “Thank you. Do you know what Haylee is referring to here?” “Josiah wanted to have sex, but I kept telling her to wait until she felt ready. I didn’t find out about this until a month later.” I took a photo of the patch of dirt where they found her, my tears wetting the camera. He was locked up now. Nothing would bring her back but at least I helped ruin his life. He couldn’t hurt anyone anymore than he already did. Manual strangulation is what I read in the newspaper. She let him kiss her and touch her all over but he wanted to take more from her. Her time and attention weren’t enough. He had to take the breath out of her body too. Whenever I passed his parents downtown, I’d look the other way. He was their only child, and they blamed me for the fact that nobody believed in his innocence. They did interviews about how the police and I were out to get Josiah. He was their sweet baby angel and he could never do anything wrong and I was drunk that night so could they really trust my word against his? I would have said what I said in court regardless of his skin color. He was the prime suspect for a reason. From the spot where Haylee was found, I could see where we’d pitched our cheap tents. The family of four with the pickup truck huddled over playing cards. The sound of their laughs carried over to me. The tightness of my neck was almost as painful as what I imagine Haylee felt. I wanted to scream at them. They ruined the sacredness of this place. It was the last space she and I shared alive. The town should have locked the park gates because nobody could enjoy themselves knowing what happened here. But even I, the star witness, didn’t know the details of that night. I spent it crying in my tent because my one friend left me and maybe if I’d tried harder to convince her to swim,

we could have had a good night and gone to bed with salt water in our hair. I walked away from her. I could have protected her, but I didn’t. Tomorrow, when the lawyers asked me to talk about that night, I’d tell nothing but the truth. But the whole truth was that I had expected plans we made when we were seven to suffice for her that night, and when she wanted something different I cried because I couldn’t have what she had. The closest I got was love letters on yellow lined paper, but that wasn’t the same as a real life boy to cuddle with me in the tent. She abandoned our plans that night, but really it was nothing new. She’d hang up on me early to call Josiah, and he became her lab partner in Chemistry, and whenever we walked on sidewalks, it was always the two of them leading me like some stray dog. I had no reason to hope that prom night would be any different. But the court didn’t care about all those details. I made my way back to my car. From the edge of the parking lot, I saw a neon paper sticking out from my windshield wipers. Just my luck that I’d get a parking ticket here. When I slipped it from its spot, I realized it was a sheet from a legal pad folded in half. I opened it, causing another bit of paper to slide out and land on the gravel ground. It was a Polaroid picture. I squinted at the image. In the center, a copy of the local newspaper read Graduating Class to Honor Lost Girl With Empty Chair. That was the first day that the search parties didn’t go out to look for Haylee. We were all too busy preparing for graduation that night. The next morning, I had experienced my first ever hangover. The day after, a lifeguard on the way to her smoke break found the body and I vomited for the second day in a row. Throughout the whole graduation ceremony I kept searching the crowds at the football field, expecting Haylee to emerge in her white graduation gown to claim her seat. We went through the pledge to the flag and the school anthem,

standing up and sitting down as one united class. Josiah sat directly in front of me, his head held high and proud on his broad shoulders. I should have strangled him with his tassel. Now, looking back at the Polaroid, I saw that the camera’s flash had illuminated a figure behind the newspaper. My hands shook too much for me to focus, but I knew exactly whose body I was looking at. She looked so small with Josiah’s football sweatshirt barely covering her pale skin. I turned to lean my back against the car. It felt hot, but I needed to shield myself as I scanned my surroundings. Families packed up minivans. On the beach, lifeguards ushered stragglers out of the water before sundown. He evaded the police for years. Of course he wouldn’t let me catch him. Tomorrow’s trial wouldn’t concern him, but he was right here all along. The police told me that if Josiah hurt Haylee in March, he’d have had no trouble hurting her in June. They said the inconclusive DNA was most likely Josiah’s, too, and I heard someone leave the tent but it only made sense if two people left the tent because Josiah couldn’t have spent the whole night in there and also killed Haylee. At the time it made sense, but Josiah was at graduation practice the day this photo was taken. I sat behind him. The person who took this photo knew where Haylee and I pitched our tent and he knew she and I wouldn’t look out for each other that night. In the weeks before prom, she was too busy with Josiah and I was too busy scouring old yearbooks for the identity of my secret admirer. He knew which locker was mine and he knew which car to leave the yellow lined paper on. I looked to the bottom of the paper, though I knew what I would see. A small heart with a smiley face.