2
It should be noted
that Sue Boschman was a very pretty girl.
Yes, she wore glasses, and was not as fastidious with her brunette hair
or worried about her clothing as much as others did. Sometimes she switched into the extra jeans
that were available, but most of the time she wore a navy blue skirt that came
to just above her knees. She always wore
a pair of penny loafers that were just beginning to wear out. That was an issue not fully faced up to, as
there were not as many extra shoes as they was clothing. The administration did its best to enforce a
no barefoot policy in the building, but was sometimes more lax out of
doors.
She wore the
washer with the industrial diamond on it on her wedding finger. I think in her mind they were husband and
wife. The ceremony they had planned was
just going to be a formality.
The thing that was
beautiful about Sue was, like Lisa, her bright and intelligent mind. I think that's what attracted Tom to
her. He just loved the way her mind
could go a mile a minute. Even if some
of her ideas were outlandish, they reflected a brilliant imagination and a
fiercely independent logic. Although I
didn't buy the conservative hysteria that surrounded it, at that point in time
I ground her belief that what we were experiencing might be a military
experiment gone awry, as credible as anything else I'd heard.
But all of that
was unraveling for Sue. She looked not
fit anymore, but thin and haggard. There
were dark circles under her eyes, and she had traded her skirt out, only
wearing jeans and a t-shirt she did not tuck in. She smelled funky, most likely not having
bathed since the tunnel collapse. Lisa
spent a lot of time with her, trying to get her talking, trying to help her
move forward.
I spent less time
with Lisa, partly as a consequence of the time she needed to spend with
Sue. I did not mind that all. I was worried about Sue as well. Also in the back of my mind was my meeting
with David Izzner. Yes, he clearly said
he was going to back off the two of us, but that didn't alleviate all my
concern.
One night, as I
sat nearby trying to write the next episode of The Sands of Loren (the little
soap opera felt more stupid to me than ever, but it was an important part of
helping to distract us and move forward, so like it or not, it was my small bit
to help), when I heard Lisa trying to talk Sue away from the abyss.
"I'm telling
you, Lisa, there is a reason they won't let us down there, "rattled Sue,
in a breathless conspiratorial tone.
"They don't want us to stumble into who're keeping us here. Tom was on the verge of opening up a way out,
and I don't think the explosion came from him."
"It was an
accident, Sue," said Lisa, trying to rationalize with her. "David Yankovich thought he knew what he
was doing with the explosions, but he didn't.
Tom knew that but couldn't stop him."
"Oh,
really? Well, if Tom knew that, why
didn't he stay further away from the site of the detonation? Why didn't he keep more people farther
back?"
"I think he
was just doing his best to make sure it worked.
Tom was a hero. You know
that. I'm sure he tried to do what he
could," reassured Lisa.
Sue looked at Lisa
as if she just wasn't getting it, as if she were missing the logic to a basic
algebra problem. "That's just it,
Lisa! Tom would have known how to
protect people. From David's detonation,
yes. But not the military when they
fired back to close up the opening we created."
"Well, I don't
really think that's what happened.
Nothing anyone has said has indicated that here was a second
explosion. None of the survivors saw
anything like that."
"Really? How do you know? Have you been done there? Has anyone besides administrators and staff
been down there? They won't let any
students go down there. Why do you think
that is? Because they're afraid of what
we'll find!"
Lisa was
puzzled. "What do you mean? You don't believe Principal Martin? I'm sure that he...."
"Hush!"
interrupted Sue. "His son is right
there! Sure, I like Lance, and he's your
boyfriend and all, but that's his father!
How do you know he's not in on it?"
I got up and told
Lisa I was leaving to go to the TV studio.
What Sue was saying was ridiculous, but I didn't want to inhibit their
conversation, or Lisa's opportunity to help her out. As difficult as it was, I felt like I had to
give them the space to work it out.
There were
innumerable conversations between them over the next couple of weeks. Sometimes Lisa would just hold her, sitting
silently together. At times Sue would
seem a little better, and at other times almost catatonic. And then she would
have almost manic states, animatedly insisting that we needed to go down into
the tunnels and find evidence that it was the military that trapped us.
On Thursday,
August 23rd, Lisa frantically came to me and Artie, upset that she could not
find Sue anywhere. We enlisted the aide
of my father and the administration, fearing where she had gone.
She was found
early the next day. She had slipped down
into the tunnels by herself. They found her at the very heart of the explosion
site, on a pile of rubble. She was
holding a bouquet of lilacs and wildflowers, purple and yellow, with green
grasses and brown twigs. When and where
she gathered them, we never knew.
Was she trying to
find a way out? Was she just getting
close to the place where she thought her lover had breathed last? We never really knew.
She laid there, a
slight smile on her face, her eyes open, seeing only whatever the dead
see. It was concluded that she
asphyxiated, but no one was quite sure how.
Was it suicide, or was she killed here?
If it was suicide, did she do it alone, or did she get help? The only thing Vice Principal Tate and his
investigators could conclude was that there were no other fresh footprints but
hers.
We had thought
that maybe with the tunnel collapse, the most horrible times were behind
us. We were wrong.
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