Page 13 of The Snake in the Grass: The Prequel

Wifi on the Johnson farm was spotty, so I struggled to search social media for some sign of what Wally was talking about. I looked up “Silas Wilder” and got nothing of use; there was a Silas Wildes who played basketball in Kentucky and got all the hits.

So I tried “Silas Taylor Wilder”—again, nothing. Finally I searched “Coleridge scandal” and fell down a rabbit hole that led me to a blog called Legacies with the tagline: “How they get in, and what they leave behind. Covering scandals at private schools, prep schools, and boarding schools for almost a decade.”

The blog had been active up until 2017, at which point it went dark. That it’d been going on for so long surprised me; I thought blogs went the way of the dinosaur as soon as the first celebrity joined Twitter. But there were constant, in depth articles with a huge comments section, most of it anonymous.

Entries covered doping athletes, bribes to school officials made by rich parents, underground cults, underage drinking, and of course plenty of sex. The scandals covered both coasts and even a few prep schools in between, as well as the occasional post about a school in London or Sydney.

They were extensive, common, and absolutely breathtaking in that none of the people covered in any of the scandals seemed to get more than a little slap on the wrist and a brief suspension at worst.

It was hard to imagine all of this lying low for so many years, but the blog had gone dark just as accountability culture—and cancel culture—grew its legs. Maybe in a world of Weinsteins and Cosbys, a few handsy teenagers didn’t matter much.

But they did when they were the next leaders of the free world. Scrolling back to 2014 and beyond, I found plenty of people who were even now graduating with degrees and getting handed keys to the family fortunes. Here was a pharmaceutical company CEO whose greed started in a west coast prep school; there, a swindling entrepreneur who’d faked her grades with daddy’s money before she was even out of braces.

Seeing all of it, I didn’t have to imagine how the blog creator had gone other ways. Years had passed; whoever they were was probably long out of school by now. And nothing had come of any of the investigations or publications of scandals except popcorn-eating commentary by a couple hundred online strangers.

It was interesting stuff, but none of it would tell me what was going on with Silas. Coleridge was a two year academy for juniors and seniors heading off to college; anyone still there in 2017 would be gone by now.

As the storm grew to a deafening siren sound and we took shelter in the basement, I had one more brief moment of wifi on the stairs. So I did the thing I’d been dreading: I searched for my brother’s social media handle online.

A few tweets loaded before the signal went out.

I heard what @WildestBoy did at a party... why doesn’t the admin care? Oh right, diversity admissions for white trash.

LMAO Dean Simmons wants the poors to look good so he won’t kick a rapist like @wildestboy out

“Thorough investigation” my ass... did the administration even watch that video!!?? It’s clearly @wildestboy

My parents send me to Coleridge because it’s the best of the best. If it’s no better than public school what’s the point? Expel @wildestboy. Nut up or shut up, fucking cowards.

I didn’t scroll down to try to get the rest to load. Instead I tucked my phone into my pocket and joined the Johnsons, including Wally’s little sister Beth and his parents, at the scarred oak table in their basement. Candles were lit, a battery-powered lantern was turned on, and Beth started pulling out board games for us to play while we waited out the storm.

I glanced at Wally, who was fiddling to the controls on a radio with the volume turned down. Only static came through the speakers. “Any signs of him yet?”

“Not yet.” He pursed his lips, fussing with the antennas. “But like I said, I’m sure he’s safe in that Ranger station. Probably even safer than we are—it has concrete walls in the underground shelter.”

I murmured noises of agreement, but I wasn’t so sure. The frantic, animal part of me wanted to run out into the storm, funnel clouds be damned, and find Silas. That side insisted he was scared and alone out in the woods, certain to die without me at his side.

The rational side of me, that grew up with a brother who survived anything, knew that Wally was right. Silas had been headed in exactly that direction before we split up, and he wasn’t the type of fool to ignore a funnel cloud on the horizon. He was probably in some concrete basement, tipsy on beer and eating disgusting MREs.

I told myself he was nowhere near the tree.

I didn’t want to consider why he might go there.

* * *

The storm cleared suddenly, leaving only its destruction behind to prove that it had ever visited. Wally’s dad walked outside and held his phone up to the sky to get a signal and load the news. Grimly, he announced, “It touched down.”

“Where?”

“West of here.”

A lump formed in my throat. My family’s house was west of the Johnson ranch. I looked at Wally, and he headed towards his truck.

“C’mon,” he said as he opened the passenger side door for me and stepped aside, “let’s go see what’s still standing.”

As we drove down the road, at first it was a peaceful, familiar sight. Leaf litter scattered the asphalt in front of us; thin branches that had fallen on the road broke beneath Wally’s truck tires. The sky was turning from a dark and fierce color to a light grey, then a washed out blue covered by thin white clouds.

I’d seen Wayborne after a storm enough times to know that this was nothing new. There was mud on the ground; the trees looked bare without their extra leaves and branches. In a few places they’d been torn to bits by the descending tornado as it left its wrath behind, but that was nothing less than to be expected. It was like the world around us had been gently tossed then set back down again by a giant hand. There was a good chance that the tornado never even touched down on any residential streets.

---