At the sink she splashed water on her face, dried off, checked her phone. Gareth was leaving with Emma Q for the open house. Be there soon, she texted back, then pushed out the bathroom door. The four women joined the Sunday rush on the Emerald Mall, the buzzing and milling hundreds, churning with youth and beauty. They turned left toward the mountains and moved hearselike through the crowd.
SIXTY-THREE
XANDER
After his sister dropped him at the curb, Xander went through the gate and into the schoolyard of Crystal Academy. He stood there for a while, getting the lay of the land, fingering his lower lip and trying to decide between the bouncy house and the sundae station.
While he considered his options, two familiar legs appeared at the entrance and then a head that belonged to Charlie Unsworth-Chaudhury. Charlie slid off the bouncy house platform, sweaty and grinning. Some little kids followed him out.
If the house wasn’t too lame for Charlie, then it definitely wasn’t too lame for Xander. He went up to the bulging front of the platform and hoisted himself through the entrance flaps and onto the rubber surface, rocking along to the leaps and rolls of the four other kids inside. He jumped too, tentatively at first, then with more purpose.
He landed on his butt. He bounced to his feet.
Tried it again. And again.
Butt.
Feet.
Butt.
Feet.
“Yo, Xander.”
Aidan, climbing in. He scrambled up to standing and took a test jump. Soon he was bouncing even higher than Xander, landing on his knees, back, legs, and every time coming up to his feet again. The other kids were loving it, how good he was, especially two girls with long ponytails that thrashed back and forth as they jumped. The two littler kids left and now it was just the four of them.
Aidan started throwing his head around. “You gotta shake it!” He nodded in an almost violent way that made his hair flop down over his face, back up over the top.
Xander thought: Doesn’t that hurt?
But the girls started imitating his movements, thrashing their heads like Aidan. They were giggling a lot, throwing their ponytails back and forth, thwacking their backs and chests with thick ropes of hair.
“Come on, Xander, do it!” Aidan yelled in his face, looking at him weirdly as they both bounced. “Your head. Just like this.”
Xander tried it. Just a little bit the first time, because it didn’t look comfortable. His head went forward, backward. Forward, backward. It was kind of fun. And kind of scary.
“Harder!” Aidan yelled. “You gotta let loose!”
More screeches from the girls, smears of wild whipping hair in the blue half-light of the bouncy house. Xander did it harder. Back, forth. Back, forth.
Then his glasses flew off and suddenly everything was smeared like fingerpaints.
“Wait!” he yelled. “My glasses!”
But no one responded. Just more bouncing, giggling, bouncing.
He went down to his knees, hands and forearms searching for them. “Guys, can you help?” he whimpered.
No one listened. But Xander could hear them bouncing, feel the easy power of their bodies going up and down above and around him, and all he could do was smack the roiling rubber.
Then he heard his glasses as they bounced on the smelly, quivering surface somewhere to his left. A tip-tip-tip above the heavier thuds of all the feet, like someone fingertipping on a drum.
He reached that way, fingers spread. The glasses grazed his hand as they leapt up. He grabbed for them, but they bounced away.
A few seconds later there was a bad crunching sound; a laugh.
“What was that?” Aidan said in a fake exaggerated voice. Because Xander was pretty sure Aidan knew exactly what that was. He’d seen the glasses and stomped them on purpose. But why?
The rubber churned and seethed around him, then Aidan was right next to Xander with his mouth to his ear. “Tell your sister she’s a slut,” he said, sounding like a high schooler, then he pushed Xander over.
“I’m outtie,” Aidan said loudly, jumping away. With a brittle laugh he took two very hard, blurry hops toward the flaps. The two girls followed him out.
Xander was alone in the bouncy house.
He continued his search, starting in the middle of the platform, spreading out in a panicky spiral, slapping at the rubber until at last, along the hemmed edge of the bouncy house floor, his fingers found a lens, and then a portion of broken-off rim, then the rest of his glasses. He wrapped all the pieces in the bottom of his shirt and pressed them to his stomach while scooting toward the exit. Out in the daylight the whole loud everything was a blur that smelled of cotton candy and grilling meat and tofu and the coconut sunscreen on someone passing by. Squinting didn’t help at all.
Xander closed his eyes, trying to remember the pattern of the schoolyard, how everything was laid out. The bouncy house, the sundae stand, the cotton candy cart, the stairs to the school. He opened his eyes, took three steps in what he thought was the right direction, and bumped into his sister.
“What happened to your glasses?” she demanded.
“Aidan broke them, on purpose.” Xander, squinting up, showed her the pieces. Tessa had her phone pointed at him. Filming again.
“Didn’t Mom take that away from you?”
“A girl has ways.” Tessa lowered the phone. “So where’s your project?”
“Inside.”
“Don’t you want to go find it?”
“I have to fix my glasses.”
She glanced at her phone again. “Shit,” she said under her breath.
“What?”
“It’s Beck. Come on, let’s go.” She pushed ahead of him through the crowd.
“Fine,” Xander mumbled, and wandered the blurry path.
SIXTY-FOUR
ROSE
They passed through the gate into the crowded schoolyard. “Where’s the bar?” Samantha quipped. No one laughed.
Rose looked around at the spectacle, her spirits sagging lower at the sheer number of potential students in attendance, surely only a small fraction of those still vying for a spot in the lower school. The parents milled around, showing their tight smiles, assessing, comparing.
“Oh! There’s Xander!” Lauren’s hand rocketed up just as Xander reached the top step and disappeared inside the building. “Why isn’t he wearing his glasses?” Lauren wondered aloud, then slipped away in pursuit.
They passed a sundae station, a long table already glopped and smeared with ice cream and spilled toppings, gooey jars of caramel, fudge, strawberry sauce. Two lines of parents and kids passed down either side.
“You want sprinkles, Brie? Can you put your own sprinkles on? Just one spoon. Good job!”
“Flu season’s over, so yeah, I’m doing this.”
“What, they couldn’t spring for organic maraschinos?”
“Sorry, Caden, the caramel sauce has high fructose corn syrup, so no, you can’t.”
They reached the bouncy house. Rose lifted the flap and peered inside. No Emmas, no twins, just a half-dozen littler kids. They pushed on past a line of gas grills laden with burgers and hot dogs, another labeled VEG ONLY!!!!!!! Portobello discs, veggie burgers, and squares of seared tofu sizzled over the flame.
A rank of benches shaded by an enormous sycamore defined the edge of the crowd. Azra stepped up on a bench. “The boys are probably on the basketball court,” she said, standing on tiptoe, peering through smoke billowing from the grills. She hopped down and her knuckles brushed Rose’s arm. “I’ll catch up with you guys inside.”
Rose watched glumly as Azra moved away. She had no wish to be alone with Samantha right now, but the Emmas were almost certainly together somewhere.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sam said as she sat.
“What?”
“Just, you know.” A hand thrown up, gesturing at the melee. Rose took the place next to her. “The craziness of all this. How crappy it’s made everything. How crappy it’s made me and Kev.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” said Rose, not meaning it.
“I’m just so embarrassed.” Her voice dropped. “What we’ve done to get her in? You don’t know the half of it. The way Kev conned them into a retest, the time and money we’ve invested in her portfolio. I mean, Born to Lead? I know I was blaming it all on Kev back there, but I’ve bought in too. And you know what, in the end? Z’s about as profoundly gifted as my big toe.”
“Samantha, that’s ridiculous. Emma Z is—”
“A smart, capable kid who’s comfortable in her own skin. But come on. Why are we trying so hard?”
Self-awareness, so rare from a Zellar.
Rose’s tongue felt suddenly heavy in her mouth, but when she spoke, her words were clear, strong, honest. “You know, Sam, I have a confession too.” It’s not too late. “Two confessions, actually.”
“Do tell,” Sam said with a pretty smirk, and Rose got a flash of their old closeness, the rush of intimacy she had once felt all the time around Samantha. It was muted now, with time and age, but could still give her a buzz.
“You remember that day you saw me on the Emerald Mall with Bitsy Leighton? You were getting a manicure.”
“You were all mysterious and befuddled. I figured it had to be something.”
“You have no idea.” Rose told her about the bogus study she had proposed, the cold treatment from Bitsy Leighton, the angry bafflement of her chair. “And now I’ve lost the chance to put in for a major grant from the NIH. I’ve set my lab back a few years in the administration’s eyes. All because of a desperate lie I told on the spur of the moment to give Q an edge. So.” She leaned back. “All you guys did was futz with Z’s application.”
Samantha looked at her fondly.
“What?” Rose said, actually enjoying the moment. Telling her friend about the debacle felt cleansing, almost restorative.
“It’s just so unlike you, Rose, to spin yourself into a web like this. You’re such a rational person it can be scary sometimes. The fact that you’d do something that batshit makes you seem, I don’t know.” She shrugged and smiled. “Human.”
They laughed together, the first deep, genuine laughter Rose had enjoyed with Samantha in a long time, and as they watched the anxious crowd a cool relief settled around her heart. The gifted school can be a blip in our lives, she told herself, if we let ourselves see it that way. Something to laugh about next Thanksgiving while the Emmas set the table and their mothers stand watching them, sharing a glass of sparkling wine.
Rose turned to her friend. “Speaking of honesty.” Her face was warm. Something deep in her wanted to break, or break out.
“The theme of the day,” Samantha said. “Mugs and all.”
“Right.” Rose cleared her throat. “There’s something else, and it’s kind of worse. So for Emma Q’s portfolio I—”
SQUEEEEEEEEEE!
They clapped their palms to their ears as a blaring whine erupted from the sound system in front of the school, amplified by remote speakers set up around the yard. The horrible sound persisted until a technician adjusted something, fixing the problem. As the feedback faded into a chorus of relieved laughs from the crowd, the two friends looked at each other. Rose remembered a certain moment long past, and saw the same recollection in the smile lines around Samantha’s eyes.
The squeal of feedback over water, two Emmas bobbing, a chorus of babies screaming in the pool. A friendship built over eleven long years that seemed, in that moment, a single blur.
Almost nothing. Almost everything.
Rose started to speak, determined to push through, when the amplified voice of Bitsy Leighton broke in. She stood at a microphone stand on the school’s main staircase. “On behalf of the City of Crystal school board, our host today, I’d like to welcome you all to the Crystal Academy’s lower school for our inaugural open house.” She beamed over the hearty applause, owning her moment.
Rose tilted herself against the slatted back of the bench, and Samantha reclined with her. Settling in, they listened together, bare skin touching along their arms.
“Though not every deserving student in the Four Counties will attend Crystal Academy, we want our school to serve as a beacon for gifted education on the Front Range and throughout Colorado. And it’s in this spirit that we’ve invited our community here today to celebrate our children’s many gifts—and believe me, they are many. But first, our gifts to you! Great food going on the grills, a sundae bar just over there, a bouncy house for the little ones, and I’m told a taco truck from BeulahRitos will be pulling up in a few minutes.”
More clapping.
“But once you’re full and happy, please do come inside and look under the hood with us. Because we want to show you our wonderful school. How we’ve imagined it, how the spaces are laid out, what it will offer the students. The lower school incorporates the best practices in instructional design, the latest learning technologies aimed at enhancing the classroom experience for children from throughout the Four Counties.”
Bitsy clasped her hands. “And speaking of the children, we’re especially excited about the portfolio display.”
The what? Rose felt her breath hitch.
“We’ve spent hours over the last several days setting up, and now the building is full of your children’s work. Every student who passed into the second round has submitted a portfolio of excellence for the committee’s review. We’ve got budding mathematicians, scientists, dancers, equestrians, origamicists, artists, and engineers—a whole rainbow of talents displayed in our new facility.”
But instead of a rainbow Rose saw streaks of jagged red, and a dull ringing began in her skull. Not feedback this time: a steady droning between her ears, as if a rock had struck her head. A shudder rose from the base of her spine, from her sacrum, an almost sexual throbbing that shivered up her back and along her shoulder blades as Bitsy wrapped up her welcome speech.
Rose didn’t hear another word, the image of the trifold’s new header engraved on her conscience like an epitaph:
THE HORSE IN THE AMERICAN WEST
BY EMMA HOLLAND-QUINN
In one movement she rose from the bench and plunged into the crowd.
“Rose, where are you going?” Samantha called behind her.
But Rose was already gone.
SIXTY-FIVE
BECK
He pushed and nudged his way along the clogged hallway, looking inside each classroom in a desperate search for Tessa. He’d texted her probably five times that morning and again just now, but she still wasn’t answering his increasingly panicked messages.
Tessa, we need 2 talk
Call me pls
URGENT!! CALL ME!!!
But nothing.
He leaned into another classroom, scanned the dozen-odd kids and parents, pushed out. Next classroom, same thing.
Why would Tessa have posted a video like that, especially one so humiliating and messed up? And why would Azra—or, like, what was it about Beck that would make anyone believe—for instance his sons, and especially his ex-wife—that he could ever, ever be capable of something so, just—messed up and—fuck. What was wrong with everybody?
Because the credulity of the people he cared most about in the world, the lack of faith they’d have to have in Beck to make them think he’d messed with Tessa Frye? That was somehow worse than the bizarre accusation itself. To imagine them all out there just thinking this shit—not acceptable. And now, what, he was going to be called out for some pervy shit he didn’t even do?
He reached the foot of the staircase to the third floor. As he jogged up, each step seemed to clang with one syllable in a long, pained qu
estion thudding up through his head.
Why
me
what
the
hell
why
the
fuck
did
you
smoke
weed
and
drink
beer
with
a
top
less
six
teen
year
old
girl
in
a
Ja
cuz
zi
what
the
fuck
is
wrong
with
you?
“What is wrong with you?” he said aloud when he reached the top and had to take a lean to catch his breath.
But then with a shiver of self-disgust he saw it. The certainty lodged in his throat.
Not what was wrong with them—with Charlie and Azra and Gareth and anybody else who’d wondered about him and Tessa—but what was wrong with him. With Beck.
A lot of things. Money work marriage gut school parenting soccer anger anger anger. Sex drought. Money again. Gut again. Anger again.
His life had basically spun out of control. All of it. And if I can be so out of control about everything else, why should it be so hard for people to believe I lost control with Tessa?
That’s it. That’s fucking it right there, dumbass.
He twisted around with the top of his head against the wall until he was facing the third-floor hallway. He slapped his hot open palms on the surface, willing the cool stone to calm his raging thoughts.
So this was all about control, then. That’s what all of this had in common.
Control.
Losing it—
Getting it back?
The Gifted School Page 35