by Lisa Lutz
There was no chance of snow that weekend. But I did admire Rupert’s ability to bend the concrete world to his will.
* * *
—
I followed Stoker Lane back to the square. As far as I looked, I couldn’t see another soul. The unpopulated campus looked as incongruous as a deserted shopping mall. Back at my apartment, I took a shower and then a nap.
It was sunset when I was finally awakened by someone knocking on the door. I staggered over groggily and opened it, expecting to see my mother.
Coach Keith walked past me without a word and drew open the curtain covering the window facing east into the woods. The light inside turned the glass into a mirror, making it impossible to see the landscape. He flicked off the closest lamp; our reflections vanished.
Keith pointed to a location in the distance.
Far off, I could see a dark figure in motion. It looked like someone swinging a baseball bat, only the bat was hitting a tree. It wasn’t until the tree began to list that I realized the bat was an ax. I looked closer, framing my eyes up against the glass. The person wielding the ax was Gemma.
“I liked that tree,” Keith said.
I stepped into my slippers and coat and ran down the stairs, out the back door, and across the field. As I approached, I could hear the hard labor of Gemma’s breaths and the thwack of her final swing. The tree sagged beyond repair; Gemma gave it the killing blow with one final side kick. She let the ax fall at her feet, spent from exhaustion.
I said her name.
Gemma turned to me, but her gaze remained unfocused.
“Why did you do that?” I said.
“Because I had to kill something.”
Gemma Russo
My anger felt immense and mythical. It felt like I could breathe fire and torch the school, or at least burn a few of the editors to a crisp. It was the kind of anger that makes the world look like an ugly kaleidoscope, splintered into so many pieces you don’t know what you’re looking at anymore.
Ms. Witt took the ax away, after I was done, when the tree lay dead on the ground.
Later I remembered that it was Witt’s mother who gave me the ax. Nastya was her name. I saw her last night drinking from our keg and figured out who she was. She was the cruel muse the boys had been talking about.
I had been running wind sprints up Scott Hill, trying to purge my rage or at least quiet it enough to make clear, calculated decisions. Running didn’t help. I slowed down at the end of the trailhead. I felt the choke of impending tears in my throat. I let out a scream. It felt like sandpaper on my vocal cords. I thought I was alone. Then I saw her.
I should have been embarrassed. If it were anyone else, I would have been. But she looked at me as if my wails were a perfectly normal mode of expression, like a smile or a laugh.
“Follow me,” she said.
I followed her around the back of campus to Rupert’s toolshed. She opened the door, removed an ax, and trudged through the grounds until she found a small birch tree and regarded the haggard branches. She picked at the bark and nodded with satisfaction. Then she gave me the ax.
“Here. This tree is whatever makes you scream. Chop it down and then you will feel better.”
She left me to it.
* * *
—
When I was done, Alex brought me into her apartment and made me a cup of tea. I told her what had happened. I left out Adam’s name. I can’t say why. I wasn’t protecting him. Maybe I was protecting myself; maybe I had envisioned a silent counterattack and wanted to maintain plausible deniability.
“Why do I feel this way? I didn’t do anything and I feel…ashamed.”
“Shame is cunning,” Ms. Witt said. “Even if the feeling doesn’t come from a rational place, it sticks. But that doesn’t mean it’s real.”
I was so angry I started crying. And then I got angrier because I was crying.
“This is so embarrassing,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because crying is weak,” I said.
“Why? Because girls cry more than boys?”
I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on gender stereotypes. I closed my eyes and took a few breaths until the tears stopped.
“I’m fine now,” I said. “All done.”
“You keep tamping down emotions, they’ll find another way to get out,” Witt said. “Be careful. Don’t make any impulsive moves. Be clear on what you want.”
* * *
—
What did I want? I wanted to know why someone had entered my name in the contest. Was it a warning to me or to Jonah? I knew it wasn’t him. He had no motive, nothing to prove, and nothing to gain. His standing at Stonebridge was cemented early on by the sexual legend of his older brother, Jason, the Wilt Chamberlain of Stonebridge. He had been with so many girls, rumor had it, he kept a spreadsheet of them, ranking their looks, evaluating their sexual performance, checking off the number of encounters, and highlighting areas that needed improvement. He could take an entire human being and reduce her to five columns.
But Jonah was not his brother. Jonah had a girlfriend at Wiley Academy for his first year at Stonebridge, while he rose up the social hierarchy under the auspices of his sibling. Jonah and what’shername broke up before sophomore year, which he kept to himself. He found it easier to stay out of the fray if he could use his relationship as a foil. By the time Jason graduated, Jonah was fully embedded as an editor, even though it was common knowledge that he never contributed to the vile union that was the Darkroom posse.
Jonah had it easy. He was good at things—just about every team sport, academics, even metal arts. And he knew how to get along with everyone without distancing himself from the power players. I always figured he was a mediocre student until I accidentally saw his report card. When I accused him of being a secret slummer, he just shrugged. That was the one time I realized he had a game, his own game. He was like the player who always suited up but never got on the field. No one could ever blame him for losing.
I refused to be honest with myself about how he made me feel. I never wore that devil pod, but I kept it in my pocket. I would sometimes feel comforted by the sharp wings and let the hollowed-out back leave a stamp on my thumb.
* * *
—
Jonah and I used to have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to the Darkroom. I never asked him to snitch on his friends, and he’d never tell anyone about us. That was fine for a while. But the lines were now drawn. Anyone who peacefully coexisted with the editors was an enemy of mine. It was time for Jonah to pick a side. I went to Jonah’s room and knocked on the door. I can’t remember the last time I’d done that. It must have been summer.
* * *
—
It was late. I’d woken him. Jonah was so alarmed by my sudden appearance, all he could manage was hey. I entered the room and shut the door behind me.
“What’s up?” he said.
“I want to know everything there is to know about the Dulcinea contest. I want to see how it’s scored. Is it like a tournament with brackets, girls going literally ‘head to head,’ or are there score sheets? Are we graded on a bell curve or with a point system? And I want to know who entered my name.”
Jonah’s jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed in anger. He was more surprised than I was and almost as angry.
“I never look at the Darkroom anymore. Fuck, I will kill him.”
“Kill who?”
“I don’t know! Whoever put your name up,” he said.
“Will you get me the information?”
“I’ll find out what I can and—”
“I just want information. Don’t defend my honor. Don’t tip them off. It needs to be business as usual. Got it?”
“Yeah. Got it.”
“You haven’t told anyone about
us, right?”
“What would I tell them? That I’m your bitch? Yeah, I’d just as soon keep that to myself.”
I moved toward him. It was the first time he’d ever retreated from me. But it was a small room; there wasn’t far to go. He looked sad and sweet. And I had always liked him. But I had my own game, my own set of rules that I needed in order to survive. In that moment, when the rules seemed more important than ever, I threw them out the window. I backed Jonah against the wall and kissed him on the lips. Even then he had the faint taste of those stupid cherry jawbreakers.
Norman Crowley
My mother wasn’t even a little bit sad when I told her I wasn’t coming home for Thanksgiving. She’d met a guy online. His name was Ron. Things were getting serious. She said something about me meeting him sometime but it was too soon. After she started fishing around about my plans, asking whether I’d want to go to Dad’s or not, I knew I could stay at Stonebridge. Without Ron, she’d have had an aneurysm if I’d chosen to spend Thanksgiving with my father and his new girlfriend.
I’d only spent a holiday at Stonebridge once before, during spring break my sophomore year. It was in the middle of my parents’ divorce, when they were contemplating a reconciliation and going to therapy three times a week. My mother thought they needed “alone time.” I think sex, or not having sex, was a big reason for their breakup—at least that’s what my dad said. I was happy to stay away that week. I was even happier that my father never mentioned their sex troubles again.
I expected to be lonely Thanksgiving week, but I wasn’t. It was kind of great, other than that really awful dinner. And most people hate Thanksgiving anyway. My point is, I wasn’t lonely. Come to think of it, I hardly had any time to myself.
Monday morning, I’d found a folded scrap of paper slipped under my door.
Milton Studio. 9:00 a.m. sharp.
It was eight-forty. I only had time for a quick shower and to grab a bite from Dahl. Jonah was sitting alone, eating cereal. He looked up and beckoned me with a nod.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, separating a banana from its bunch. “I have a—uh…”
I’m not a good liar.
“Hoops, later?” Jonah said.
I’m not a hoops player.
“Tennis and we’re on,” I said.
I’m not a tennis player either, but I’ve found I get less beat up in games that don’t involve personal contact. Jonah and I agreed to meet at two. I was now late for whatever was happening at Milton. Mel shouldn’t have expected me to show up at a specific time without prior warning. Yeah, I deduced it was Mel when I read the note. There weren’t any other credible options. I finished the banana on my way to the studio. I was still hungry.
Mel sat at a drafting table, papers splayed out in front of her.
“You’re late,” she said.
“If you wanted me to be here earlier, you should have given me more warning.”
“You would have been here earlier if you didn’t stop to get that banana from the dining hall.”
I was still holding the peel. Mel isn’t Big Brother. Not yet, at least.
“I was hungry,” I said.
“I made you breakfast,” Mel said, pointing at a cup of coffee and a paper bag sitting atop a file cabinet.
The coffee was lukewarm, but I definitely needed coffee for this. Inside the bag were a sandwich, an apple, and a bag of Mario’s Mix, which is an ever-changing “trail mix” based on dry to semidry pantry items that are about to expire.
“Have a seat,” Mel said, pointing at the chair facing her on the right side of the desk. It looked like the seat where witnesses give their statements in a police station.
I removed the sandwich from the bag. It was cut in quarters. I always cut my sandwich in quarters. I smelled peanut butter. I took a bite. Something chewy and sweet got stuck in my teeth. I asked Mel what kind of sandwich it was. Mel told me it was a peanut butter and prune sandwich. I asked her why she didn’t just use jelly, like a normal person, and she said that there were too many different jelly/jam varieties and she had no idea what I liked. Peanut butter and prune was something her grandmother made, and she thought I should have a more open mind.
“Mel, what do you want?”
“Right,” she said. “Let’s get straight to business. Gabriel Smythe is a douchebag and, for a guy who fancies himself a class clown, decidedly unfunny. Don’t you agree?”
“I would agree,” I said, removing the smashed prune from my sandwich.
“So why would Jenna Trevor and Naomi Klein ever hook up with him? Plus, they’re best friends. Isn’t that gross?”
Mel had certainly made the most of her time inside the Darkroom.
“Gabe’s dad runs Lofton Arena. He can get tickets to any show there,” I said.
“Right. Fucking Jonas Brothers were there last year,” Mel said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Little-known fact: I actually threw up the first time I heard them.”
“Because of their music?” I said.
“I also had the flu, but still,” Mel said.
“Got it,” I said. “So you cracked the code?”
Mel snorted/laughed.
“It’s hardly rocket science. The first number is the school level, and the last digits are a numeric representation of the alphabet. To be honest, Norman, I was hoping it would be more complicated. Not even a Caesar cipher?”
“I had to keep it simple for those pinheads. You wouldn’t believe how challenging they found that numeric cipher.”
I should have kept my mouth shut instead of defending my codes.
Mel gave me one of those suspicious sidelong looks.
“I don’t even look inside the Darkroom, if I can help it,” I said.
“No,” Mel said. “You just keep it operational. Let’s talk about the birds. I think I’ve got it, but let me run it by you just to be sure. You can start out as one kind of bird and turn into another. I’ve seen sparrows turn into loons and owls turn into hawks. What’s that about?”
“A sparrow is young and pretty, or that’s what they think at first, before they hook up. Then something happens and they see another side.”
“So the loons are the crazy ones and the hawks are mean? And owls are nerds or something?”
I had just taken a bite of the sandwich, so I nodded my reply. She was close enough. Owls could be nerds. Or sometimes they were virgin hawks. I wasn’t prepared to scrutinize the nomenclature with her. Answering her questions took enough out of me.
Mel consulted the vast array of documents in front of her. She had that puzzled look she gets, which is a combo of anger and confusion. But it’s really adorable. Then I felt guilty because I had to question whether I was helping her because I liked her or because I thought it was the right thing to do. And then I felt uncomfortable because I remembered reading something that Mick wrote about her last year.
“I better get back,” I said, standing up.
“Sit down,” Mel said.
I sat down. Maybe I sat down because I wanted to help. Or I sat down because I’m always doing what other people tell me to do. I really don’t know.
“First of all,” Mel said, chewing on the end of her pen, “most of the really popular girls, the girls you’d think would be plastered all over the Darkroom, are nowhere in sight. Where are Rachel Rose, Hannah Rexall, Emelia Laird? Rachel, I’m guessing, would be 4Loon1818. Hannah may be 4Hawk818, and Emelia would have to be 4Sparrow512. But they’re not here.”
“You can’t tell anyone I’m helping you.”
“I won’t, Norman. You have my word. The site has a lot of portals, just numbered doors, password protected. What’s behind those doors?”
“Most of them are dummies. If you try to break in, they’ll kick you out of the system.”
“Why?”
“
It was practice, that’s all,” I said. “I was just working on cybersecurity measures.”
“So there’s nothing behind any of the doors?”
“They’re all dead ends, except thirteen,” I said.
“Thirteen? Why that number?”
“I don’t know. It was always behind door thirteen. It’s an old reference that I’ve never figured out,” I said.
“Everything I’m looking for is behind that door?”
“Are you sure you want to see it?” I said.
“That’s the whole point, Norman. The Dulcinea Award. So it’s door number thirteen I need to get into, right?”
I nodded.
“What kind of bird am I?” she said. “An owl? I think I’m an owl.”
“No,” I said. “There’s only one kind of bird behind that door.”
Ms. Witt
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Greg had a cocktail/mocktail party at his home for the senior orphans and the few members of staff who couldn’t find an excuse not to attend. Claude was out for obvious reasons; Finn was bogged down with revisions; Rupert and Mario were in charge of the freshman, sophomore, and junior orphans; and Primm was on vacation.
It was a motley crew that night. Greg in his tweed, my mother in a red cheongsam that never fails to spark flattery by anyone who has seen her in it fewer than five times. Buy another dress is generally what I say to my mother when I see her. Coach Keith wore his best corduroy trousers and a stretched-out brown cardigan with visible moth holes.
“Duuude,” Gemma said, sticking her finger through one of the holes, “the moths have won.”
The seniors took full advantage of the relaxed dress code to wear whatever suited their whim. Gemma wore leather pants and a black top with spaghetti straps, revealing the edge of a snake tattoo just below her shoulder blade. Mel had on a black skirt, boots, and a Ramones T-shirt, with a navy-blue velvet blazer. Norman wore regular clothes but tucked in his shirt for once. Jonah was in a well-tailored blue suit, no tie.