Prep

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “Are you trying to kill me?” I asked.

  He scowled noncommittally.

  My heartbeat picked up. “If you try to, I’ll yell,” I said. “And they’ll turn around.” I gestured ahead. I was half‑bluffing‑probably I wouldn’t yell because it would be melodramatic. But I also might, because of how much I wanted to stay in the game.

  “It’s all kind of stupid,” Edmundo said. He mumbled his words, but I was listening intently. “I’m not that into it, you know?”

  “So you are trying to kill me?” I couldn’t believe that I’d been right‑as soon as I’d asked him, I’d realized he could easily have been headed to the library.

  “I don’t really care,” Edmundo mumbled. “You want to live, I won’t kill you. I don’t know why they play this.” He was barely making eye contact with me, and I wondered if it was all a setup‑he’d pretend not to care while inching closer, and then he’d pounce. But when I thought back to other times I’d noticed him around‑Edmundo was from Phoenix, he was (I was nearly sure) on scholarship, and he and his roommate, a rich zitty white kid from Boston named Philip Ivers, supposedly did nothing but play backgammon in their room‑it seemed like maybe Edmundo was always this shy and evasive. Certainly, he was an even more uncomfortable person than I was.

  “If you don’t care, then will you let me live?” I said. “Will you turn around? Or you just stay here, and I’ll keep walking.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Edmundo said. “You keep walking, fine.”

  When I told Conchita what had just happened, she said, “Edmundo has you? Edmundo Saldana?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  She had climbed onto the bike and was pedaling while I held on‑she had definitely made progress, even in just the first lesson. “No reason, really,” she said. “I’m in MSA with him.” MSA stood for Minority Student Alliance, and I knew practically nothing about the group, except that it met on Sunday nights.

  “You don’t have a crush on him, do you?” I asked.

  “On Edmundo? Are you for real?”

  “You just got kind of excited when I mentioned him.”

  “I don’t believe in crushes,” Conchita said. “What’s the point?”

  The question was unanswerable. What was the point of being a person, what was the point of breathing air?

  “Don’t tell me you have a crush on someone,” she said. She glanced at me, inadvertently turning her arms as she twisted her neck. The bike swerved to the left, and she quickly faced straight ahead again. “Who?” she said. “I won’t tell. I promise.”

  “I’m not telling someone who thinks all crushes are pointless.” In fact, I had never talked about Cross with anyone. I had not even said his name aloud since surprise holiday. But I had thought of him so often that sometimes when I saw him, it was weird‑real Cross, moving‑around Cross, Cross talking to his friends. He was the person I always thought of?

  Part of the reason I hadn’t talked about him was that it preserved his specialness, but another part was that I’d never before had an eager ear. “You really can’t tell anyone,” I said. “I’m serious.”

  “I would think you’d know you can trust me,” Conchita said, and she sounded hurt.

  “It’s Cross,” I said. “On surprise holiday‑”

  “Cross? You like Cross ?”

  “Conchita, do you want me to tell you this or not?”

  “Sorry.”

  “So it was surprise holiday,” I continued, “and we ended up in a‑what’s so wrong with liking Cross? Do you even know him?” I was strongly reminding myself of someone, but it took a few seconds to figure out that the someone was Dede.

  “He’s in my math class,” Conchita said. “He seems okay, but I’d imagine you liking someone more like‑maybe like Ian Schulman.”

  “I don’t even know who that is.”

  “He’s a sophomore who’s really good at art. He draws comic strips and stuff. And he wears black Converse sneakers.”

  “Are you sure that you don’t like him?”

  “I don’t have time to,” Conchita said. “Seeing as Edmundo and I are passionately in love.”

  In spite of myself, I laughed.

  “So go on,” she said. “It was surprise holiday and then what?”

  After I’d told her‑the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair‑she said, “Did he kiss you?”

  “John and Martin totally would have seen that,” I said, and as I felt myself implying that circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people‑for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

  “Wait a second,” Conchita said. “Cross has a girlfriend.”

  “He wasn’t cheating,” I said, and we were turning around‑already, I had lost count of how many times Conchita had ridden up and down the road‑so it was possible for her to fix her gaze on me without fear of tilting. “He really wasn’t,” I said. “Kissing is cheating. Sitting next to someone in a taxi isn’t.”

  “Would you feel that way if you were Sophie Thruler?”

  She had turned the bike around completely and was facing north again. “Go,” I said. “Start pedaling.” The truth was that I rarely thought of Sophie. She was beautiful, she was a junior, and Cross may have been her boyfriend, but he could not possibly matter to her as he mattered to me. If they broke up, I suspected she’d be dating some other guy within a week. But I didn’t even want them to break up‑if Cross wasn’t going out with anyone, there’d be danger present in the glance of every other girl, in their proximity to him in chapel, their laughter during conversations. As long as he was off‑limits to me, he was off‑limits to the rest of the female population, too. “Never mind about Sophie,” I told Conchita. “The point is that now I’m hoping I’ll get Cross or he’ll get me for Assassin.”

  “I thought you can’t control who you get.”

  “True, but the game is getting exponentially smaller.” I had the fleeting thought that I might be using the word exponentially wrong and also that, in front of Conchita, it was okay; she was not judgmental. “The more people I kill, the better my chances of getting to him.”

  “You’re assuming he won’t get killed by someone else.”

  “I think he’s watching out. Anyway, aren’t you impressed by how I’m using Assassin as a means to an end? I’m being Machiavellian.” In the fall, all freshmen had read The Prince.

  “Mr. Brewster would be proud,” Conchita said. “And just think if you marry Cross‑maybe he’ll give you extra credit.”

  I looked at her, and she was smiling. And we both were sweating from the activity of the bike, and I could feel then how I had capitulated to Conchita. We were friends. She must have felt the same thing, because she said, “There’s something I want to ask you.”

  I knew what she would say. But I feigned oblivion. “What?”

  “I was thinking maybe we could room together next year.”

  I could picture it easily. In fact, I already had: Our room would have ruffly pink curtains, and I would eat all her food, and we’d listen to Bob Dylan while we studied. It wasn’t the worst scenario imaginable, but it made me uneasy. There was what we already had in common‑our dorkiness, our scholarships‑and also what we might grow to have in common. (I feared my own malleability.) I saw us staying in the dorm on Saturday nights, donning our pajamas early, ordering Chinese food, throwing water balloons at each other‑spazzing out. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to spazz out. I wanted to have boyfriends, I wanted my life to be sorrowful and complicated and unwholesome, at least a little unwholesome. “Wow,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it. I’d have to check on some stuff before I could say for sure.”

  “Stuff with Sin‑Jun?”

  I nodded. “What about Martha Porter?” I said. “Aren’t you guys pretty good friends?”

  “Martha is great. But her roommate, Elizabeth, was bulimic, and she didn’t come back after Christmas. Martha said she’s gotten so used to having a s
ingle she’ll probably request one again for next year.”

  So other people shared my ambivalence about rooming with Conchita; I wasn’t surprised.

  “Just let me know,” Conchita said. “The forms still aren’t due for a while. And in the meantime, my mom is coming to Boston this weekend, and I wanted to invite you to lunch with us on Saturday. I invited Martha, too.”

  Oddly enough, given that it was less than an hour away, I had never actually been to Boston‑I’d only passed through the city on the way to and from the airport, riding on an Ault bus. But now, when people back home asked how I liked it, I’d be able to give a real answer.

  “I’ve told my mom all about you,” Conchita said, and I couldn’t help wondering why Conchita was such a fan of mine, especially when no one else was. How had I charmed her so effortlessly, or less than effortlessly‑unwillingly even? Had it been my lack of interest, was the explanation really that simple and obvious?

  “I’ll try to live up to her expectations,” I said.

  Killing time in the room before curfew‑Sin‑Jun wasn’t there, and Dede was napping, which probably meant she was planning to stay up late studying for a test‑I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror over Dede’s bureau, and it struck me suddenly that I didn’t look like someone who could win a schoolwide game. I wasn’t sure what such a person looked like‑just not like me. I had wavy brown hair and thin lips and thick eyebrows (not man‑thick but thick for a girl) and I knew I had an overly intense stare. “What are you looking at me for?” my mother would say when she was driving, or, at the kitchen table, “What? Is something in my teeth?” Sometimes I could even feel myself doing it, inspecting another person’s face when we were close together, but it was hard to stop‑where else was I supposed to set my eyes? It was even weirder if you never looked at the other person at all.

  I stepped closer to Dede’s mirror and peered at my skin, inspecting it for potential breakouts. I had turned my head and was scrutinizing the left side of my jaw when Dede said, in a muffled voice, “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If I don’t finish Latin,” she said, “it’ll be all watery.”

  “You’re asleep, Dede,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

  At curfew, Sin‑Jun and I stood in front of the kitchenette eating raw cookie dough. By the time everyone had checked in and announcements were finished, we were two thirds through the package, and I was beginning to feel sick. Amy Dennaker approached the refrigerator, took out a Diet Coke, and, while not looking at me, said, “McGrath thought it was really funny how you tried to kill him in chapel today. He’s so cocky.” There was something uncharacteristically conversational, almost friendly, in Amy’s tone. “Did you know his room is right below Alexis and Heidi’s?” she added, and I could tell because of how her voice had a bubble of happiness in it: Amy had a crush on McGrath.

  I passed the cookie dough back to Sin‑Jun, and she hesitated. “Maybe I’m not eating no more.”

  Amy was watching us.

  “Did you want some?” I asked and, even though it was Sin‑Jun’s, I held out the package.

  Amy dug out some dough with her middle finger and forefinger, and it struck me‑I had never considered it one way or the other‑that she was probably a person who did not wash her hands after going to the bathroom. “I’m on your side,” Amy said. “I say bring McGrath down.”

  So then she’d have something to tease him about, I thought. I wasn’t unsympathetic‑I understood machinations, the need for an excuse.

  “The problem is that his friends will be like bodyguards now,” I said.

  “True.” Amy nodded.

  “Maybe you crawling through his window while he sleeps,” Sin‑Jun said. “At night he has no bodyguard.”

  I laughed, and then my eyes met Amy’s. “I’d be breaking visitation,” I said. “I’d have to go before the disciplinary committee.”

  “You shouldn’t go in there‑” she began, and then I knew, I said, “Oh, like send down a threat? Or dangle something?”

  “Yeah, just make him nervous.”

  “I know what,” Sin‑Jun said brightly. “We use fishing pole!”

  “Where the hell would we find a fishing pole?” Though Amy sounded was scornful, I reminded myself that she was talking to us of her own volition.

  “There is some in basement,” Sin‑Jun said. “I have seen in storage.”

  “I know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Back by that metal locker.” The basement ran beneath several dorms, creating a through‑way rumored to be used by students who made illicit night visits to members of the opposite sex. “But we can’t go down there after curfew,” I said.

  “We ask Madame,” Sin‑Jun suggested.

  “Ask her?” Amy said.

  “It can’t hurt to try,” I said.

  When we knocked on the door to Madame Broussard’s apartment, she answered quickly. Neither Amy nor Sin‑Jun said anything, and I realized I was the leader by default. “Hi,” I said. “We have a question. This is kind of weird, but you know Assassin? And you know McGrath Mills? He’s my target, and we want to make him feel scared. Just as a joke. So I know it’s after ten, but we’re hoping‑”

  “We need to go down to the basement and get a fishing pole,” Amy said. “For two minutes. Can we?”

  “For what reason do you need a fishing pole?” Madame asked. Overall, she seemed far less surprised by our appearance at her door than I’d have anticipated.

  “We want to send something down to McGrath’s room, like a note,” I said. “He lives underneath Heidi and Alexis. But we’ll be quiet, and we won’t take very long.”

  “But if you do such a thing”‑Madame began, and I thought she was going to say, you will violate curfew. What she said instead was‑“McGrath will know he is your target.”

  “No, he knows already,” I said. “I tried to kill him when we were leaving chapel, and a bunch of his friends saw me.”

  “These were other junior boys?” It was astonishing‑Madame seemed genuinely interested.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mostly guys from his lacrosse team.”

  “Well.” Madame nodded her head once, decisively. “I think we teach these boys a lesson.”

  And then all three of us, Amy, Sin‑Jun, and I, were following her out of the common room and down the basement steps, and it turned out the fishing poles weren’t where we remembered, and we paused, momentarily stumped, and then I said, “We don’t need a fishing pole. We could just use a broom or something,” and we were climbing the stairs and crowding around the common room closet, then hurrying down the hall to Heidi’s and Alexis’s room and as we explained the idea again, this time with Madame joining in, their expressions shifted from confusion to amusement to enthusiasm, enthusiasm that seemed as abrupt and as weirdly sincere as our own.

  “You know what you should use is a pillowcase,” Heidi said. “Then you can write really big.” She rummaged in her laundry bag, and this seems distinctly Aultish to me now, the casual sacrifice of a pillowcase in the service of a joke. There was so little attention paid to the fact that pillowcases, like everything else, cost money. Heidi tossed it to me, and Alexis passed over a black marker.

  With the cap off, I paused. “What am I writing?”

  All of us were silent, a loaded, electric silence. “I know where you live,” Alexis suggested.

  “I see you when you’re sleeping,” Heidi said.

  “I smell your blood,” Amy said. “And it smells”‑she glanced at Madame‑“très délicieuse.”

  “We will not bring the French into this,” Madame said.

  “So far, I like ‘I see you when you’re sleeping’ the best,” I said. “But does that sound too Santa Clausy?”

  “I am always watching,” Sin‑Jun said.

  We looked at one another, the six of us‑it felt, with this number of people, not unlike a meeting convened to make a serious decision‑and as Heidi and Amy nodded, I said, �
�That’s good. It’s simple but creepy.”

  Amy moved several books off a desk so we could spread the pillowcase flat. Then I wrote, in capital letters, I’M ALWAYS WATCHING.

  “Draw an eyeball,” Heidi said.

  I made the almond shape, the iris and the pupil, the lashes on both the bottom and the top.

  “You must sign it as well,” Madame said.

  I hesitated. “With my name? Or no, what about‑” I wrote, Love, your assassin, and Sin‑Jun clapped. “It is perfect.”

  When we taped the pillowcase to the broomstick, it was obvious that it would work better with two poles; Alexis ran off and returned with a mop. Heidi lifted the screen and Amy and I‑I knew she wanted to be directly involved in the dangling, I could feel how focused she was on McGrath‑stuck our upper bodies out into the night. I was holding the broom upside down, clutching the neck of it near the bristles, and she was holding the mop. Light emanated from the window below us, which meant their shades weren’t down. Leaning over, Amy knocked the mop handle against the brick exterior of the building. “Yoo‑hoo,” she called. “Special delivery, boys.”

  Ten seconds passed. I felt a rising worry that neither McGrath nor his roommate, Spencer, would notice, and my apprehension was not even really for them but for us in the room, how our plan would have come to nothing. And then I heard shuffling down below, a few male voices. “Hey, Mills,” someone called, and a few seconds later, unmistakably, there was the sound of McGrath’s laughter. He poked his head out a window one over and twisted around, looking up at us.

  “Hey, baby,” Amy called. (I would never, ever have said Hey, baby to Cross Sugarman.)

  “Hi, McGrath,” I said.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” McGrath said. “Y’all are crazy.”

  Another guy stuck his head out and said‑not to us but to someone back in the room‑“This is hard‑core.” Behind me, Alexis and Heidi and Sin‑Jun and Madame crowded close. Heidi opened the other window, and after a moment she also was hanging outside the building.

  Then a third person‑there seemed to be a group in the guys’ room, too, at least three or four of them‑reached out and grabbed the pillowcase.