If We Were Villains: A Novel

I found James at the top of the trailhead, just standing there, staring down the path like he couldn’t make himself take another step. If he heard me approach he didn’t react, and I waited behind him in twilight silence, unsure of what to do. An owl hooted somewhere in the treetops—perhaps the same owl from Saturday night.

“Do you think it’s a bit morbid?” he asked, without preamble, without even turning around. “Having the service on the beach.”

“I guess the music hall felt a little too … festive,” I said. “All that gold.”

“You’d think they’d have it as far away from the lake as possible.”

“Yeah.” I glanced back toward the Hall. It might have been Halloween again—James and I lurking like shadows under the trees—but the air was too cold, pressing against my skin like a flat steel blade. “I don’t trust it anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“First Halloween, now this,” I said, with a shrug he didn’t see. “It’s like the lake’s turned on us. Like there’s some naiad down there that we’ve pissed off. Maybe Meredith was right and we should have gone skinny-dipping at the start of term.” I didn’t realize how stupid it sounded until it was out of my mouth.

“Like some kind of pagan ritual?” James asked, turning his head so I could just see the side of his face, the curve of his cheek. “Good Lord, Oliver. Sleep with her if you must, but don’t let her get inside your head.”

“I’m not sleeping with her.” I could see that he was about to protest and added, “Not, you know, figuratively.”

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” he asked, and turned to face me—the movement deliberately casual, not convincing.

“What?”

“Whether it’s figurative.”

“I don’t understand.”

He raised his voice so it cut through the soft forest silence like a razor blade. “No, you must not, because I really don’t think you’re that sort of idiot.”

“James,” I said, too mystified to really be angry, “what are you talking about?”

He looked away. “You,” he said, staring off into the trees. “You and her.” He grimaced, as though saying the words together left a bad taste in his mouth. “Do you not understand how it looks, Oliver? It doesn’t matter if you are or are not actually sleeping with her—it looks bad.”

“What do you care how it looks?” I asked, forcing the show of indignation, more unnerved than anything else. His sarcasm was caustic, unfamiliar.

“I don’t,” he said. “I really don’t. I care about you, and what might happen if you carry on like this.”

“I don’t—”

“I know you don’t understand, you never do. Richard is dead.”

I glanced back toward the Hall again, the quadrate silhouette at the top of the hill. “It’s not like we killed him.”

“Don’t be naïve, Oliver, for once in your life. He’s been dead two days and his girlfriend’s already in bed with you every night?” He shook his head, thoughts tumbling out in a reckless, implacable rush. “People won’t like it. They’ll talk. They’ll gossip, that’s what people do.” He cupped his hand around one ear and said, “Open your ears; for which of you will stop / The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?”

My voice stuck in my throat, dry as chalk. “Why are you talking about this like we killed him?”

He grabbed the front of my jacket, like he wanted to throttle me. “Because it fucking looks like we might have. You think people won’t wonder whether someone might have pushed him? You keep sleeping with Meredith and they’ll think it was you.”

I stared at him, too surprised to move. His hand was the only solid thing, the brunt of his anger thrust against my chest in the shape of a fist. “James, the police—they’ve said, it was an accident. He hit his head,” I said. “He fell.”

He must have seen the fear in my face, because the hard lines around his eyes and mouth vanished, like someone had cut the right wire to defuse him before he went off. “Yes, of course he did.” He looked down, let go of my jacket, and brushed one hand across the front to smooth the wrinkles out. “I’m sorry, Oliver. Everything’s gone sideways.”

I offered an awkward shrug, still half trapped by my nervous paralysis. “It’s all right.”

“Forgive me?”

“Yeah,” I said, a split second too late. “Always.”