TWO
Eve Straus hurried from the smoker toward the Bradley Arts Center. Justine Rubin. Maybe they could be friends. She looked like a fairy-tale version of Virginia Woolf. A rarefied kind of beauty, and maybe too particular for high school boys to observe. But then again, Bruce had pounced in two seconds.
Griswold. Eve recalled the fateful conversation she’d had with her parents, driving to the beach just a few blissful months ago.
“I’m not going back to Beaverton!” Eve had blurted out as her mother steered the car onto Montauk Highway. Her father turned around to stare at her in surprise. Her brother, Sandy, was blasting music on his Walkman, oblivious, gazing at the passing pines.
“What are you talking about?”
Eve tried to breathe. “Sorry, that came out wrong,” she stammered. “I can’t go back there, it’s . . .” She began to cry. Her father looked at her in confusion, while her mother stared stonily at the highway. Eve had been miserable at her all-girls school, but once she had realized it, the truth seemed obvious. She managed to calm herself enough to talk. “I hate Beaverton, they’ve got me in a corner . . .” Eve glanced out the window at a passing Winnebago, and back into her father’s bewildered face. “You try staying in a tiny all-girls school for your whole life!”
Frederick turned to Eve’s mother. “What about Griswold?”
Deirdre pursed her lips.
Boarding school? Frederick had gone to Griswold, and Eve had visited once. She recalled an imposing modern-arts complex, green fields, athletes. It was idyllic, terrifying, and perfect. Why had she not thought of it herself?
“I’m not sure we have the pull,” her mother said sotto voce.
Eve rolled her eyes. Of course her parents had the pull. Eve suddenly remembered that her childhood friend Clayton Bradley’s family had donated that arts center to the school. She also recalled that Clayton’s mother was a well-known painter—Eve’s mother talked about her work with reverence.
“I’ll make a call in the a.m.,” Frederick growled. Go, Dad, Eve had thought. Nobody was going to tell him he couldn’t get his kid into Griswold in September, certainly not his wife. Not even if it was already the middle of June.
Now here she was.
Eve mentally listed the reasons she had wanted to leave New York. Yes, she had felt trapped at Beaverton. The teachers were practically nuns and she had to wear an itchy wool kilt and a white blouse with puffy sleeves. It was like a fancy jail—the twenty-seven girls in her class even got their periods at the same time, like a stable of mares. And nobody could deny that Griswold was beautiful, with elegant Georgian buildings, big maple trees, and boys. Still, Eve had not expected the campus to be overrun with New England preppies wielding lacrosse sticks. Sweats were for sports, she felt like pointing out, not dinner. People frowned at Eve in her combat boots like she was a specimen in a jar.
In the city you were cool if you wore black and went to films with subtitles. Here you were a weirdo.
Eve spotted a familiar face heading toward her, Clayton Bradley himself.
“Hey! When did you get here?”
“A week ago,” Eve said, gesturing at the arts center. “Painting studio.”
“Oh great,” he frowned, “next you’ll turn out like my mother.”
“You grow up to be my parents, I’ll grow up to be yours.”
“Grass is always greener,” Clayton said, heading off with a wave. “Welcome to Griswold!”
Eve’s parents were art collectors, but Eve had decided long ago that she would be different. She wouldn’t buy art; she would make it. She would be a painter, and although perhaps not as famous as Clay’s mother, Barbara, at least she’d create rather than just acquire.
Eve’s boots squeaked on the concrete floor. She could see her canvas from the door. She had not dreamed it; her perspective was off.
She dropped her schoolbag beside the easel and stared at her painting. Leaning her head to one side she squinted at it, picked up her brush, and took a step back.
“Hi, cookie.”
David McClurken was right behind her in his motorcycle jacket.
“Want to borrow my burnt umber?”
Damn. He could tell she was botching the painting.
But his expression was earnest.
“I should just start over.”
“Not at all, it’s really close.” David pointed at the huge insect on the canvas. “The cockroach’s shell is tilted. Painting ovals in perspective is really hard. Mind if I give you a tip?”
Eve handed him her brush. David made a few quick strokes on the huge bug. Within moments it looked much better. He pointed at the spine of the painted book. “Don’t worry about getting the lettering just right, leave a little to mystery.” He grinned and handed back the brush.
“Thank you.” She wanted to touch his dark curls.
“You’re really improving.”
Eve resisted the urge to disagree. It wasn’t David’s fault he was so talented.
“For you,” he said, handing her an index card and a small brown paper bag. Before she could thank him again he moved to his easel.
David, in his black jeans and Joy Division T-shirt, didn’t blend in here either—side by side she and David would look like a pair of bats.
Eve turned the index card over. A spidery, elegant handwritten poem, in what looked like German. David took German? She’d known him only a few days, but already he struck her as a hopeless romantic. Eve put the card in her schoolbag and walked over to him. His canvas was abstract, with muted smeary black shapes on a gray background. It was good, really good.
“Thanks for your help,” Eve said. “See you at dinner?”
* * *
• • • • • • •
Tierney was in the Claverly common room, giggling with a few friends. None of them looked up as Justine walked past.
She went upstairs and opened the closet. Every hanger was full of Tierney’s clothes. Cotton shirtdresses, tailored button-downs, and cable-knit sweaters.
Justine remembered reading the Griswold packing list in horror. So many items, so few of which she had.
Even now, her face burned remembering shopping with her mother. It had been a steaming hot day and the air-conditioning in the Volvo had been broken for years, but Justine fiddled with the controls in hope, the way she always did. Cressida ignored her. Finally, Justine gave up and rolled down the window, hot air sweeping through the car like a sirocco.
When they arrived at Goodwill, Cressida threw open the door, and they were greeted with an arctic blast. Her mother immediately strode toward the women’s section.
Normally Justine loved a thrift shop, but unlike her favorite, Time Turns, Goodwill had the smell of decay and sadness. Justine headed to the men’s section. She chose a few vintagey-looking plaid shirts and a camel overcoat that had retained some of its genteel style. Then she went to find her mother.
Cressida had several dresses over one arm.
“The packing list doesn’t say I need a dress,” Justine said, as Cressida pulled out a flowery ankle-length piece and held it aloft. It looked like the kind of thing a folk singer would wear while strumming a guitar.
“Isn’t this divine? It would have been wonderful with your long hair.” Her mother gazed wistfully at the garment.
Last week Justine had chopped off her lovely blond tresses in favor of a trendy short do that was long on one side and short on the other. “Mom, it’s my hair.”
“As you have taken pains to demonstrate.”
Tierney had jammed her several suitcases of clothes into both bureaus, leaving only two drawers empty. Still, they were enough for Justine’s pathetic secondhand wardrobe.
Getting to her feet she spotted Tierney’s striped makeup kit. She poked her head out the door of their room and shot a furtive glance down the hall. Deserted.
Just a quick peek. The bag was on her side of the bureau anyway. She unzipped it to find a regular pharmacy of orange bottles: diazepam, ranitidine, and acyclovir. Three roller-ball lip glosses in glass tubes, a palette of sky-blue eye shadow, and a bottle of Lauren perfume. Justine had always longed for that fragrance. She spritzed her wrists, and again behind her ears. At the sound of giggles in the hall, she quickly closed the bag.
* * *
—
At suppertime, Justine walked across the footbridge that spanned the gorge separating Lower and Upper campus. Ferns waved from below, tall birches clustered next to the railing. She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Stanley, wearing a jacket covered in black ostrich feathers. Moth-eaten, it was like something from the costume closet of her father’s theater. Maybe Cressida hadn’t been completely mistaken, Stanley was about as far from a tennis champion as Justine could imagine.
He handed her a book. Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue.
She thanked him, and stuffed it quickly in her bag. They walked in silence, Stanley’s feathers billowing in the breeze.
In contrast to the classic Georgian architecture of Lower, the buildings in this part of the school were asymmetrical concrete lumps from the seventies. “Pods for living and learning,” the brochure had read. Now they had cracks in the walls, and on the side of one someone had graffitied “MORGAN LIVES.”
Stanley pushed open the glass doors of the dining hall. “Be there in a sec,” Justine said, pausing in the cinder-block vestibule, pretending to tie her shoelace. She spent a moment examining the flyers tacked to a bulletin board: “Bassist Wanted,” “Typing by Tina,” “Join the Pep Squad!” Once Stanley was gone, Justine walked in. Scanning the sea of students, she spotted Eve with a group of kids by the massive windows.
Justine got into the line and realized she was behind Stanley.
“Should we sit with the maggots?” he asked, as their trays were filled with bowls of gooey spiral pasta.
“Who?”
“Those kids from New York.”
“Maggots?” Justine asked, glancing back into the dining room where she could see Eve speaking to a dark-haired boy, gesticulating.
“From the Big Apple?”
“Stan the Man!” the dark-haired boy called out, as they approached the table. “What’s with the getup?”
“Like it?” Stanley asked.
“You look like my grandmother.” He held out a hand to Justine. “Clayton Bradley. I go by Clay.” His handshake struck her as both oddly formal and charming. “These losers are Christina, Kitty, and Peter. I believe you know Eve. The guy with the headphones is Damon, but don’t bother talking to him. He isn’t listening.”
“Justine,” she said. She glanced at Christina, realizing she was the girl on Bruce’s lap at the smoker.
“Avoiding the sausage?” Clay pointed at her tray.
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“So’s my mom. Have you been one long?”
“Ever since I saw the sausage.”
Stanley giggled and covered his mouth. He reminded Justine of a boy in her class in public school; an eccentric outcast, he’d been beaten up by a bunch of thugs at school. He returned stitched up like Frankenstein. And the school had done nothing about it. Justine glanced around the room. With its high ceiling and wooden trusses, it reminded her of the barn her parents had renovated in Woodstock. It was impossible to imagine violence in a place like this.
Then Justine saw Bruce, sitting with some beefy jocks. He caught her eye and winked.
She quickly returned to her food but the pasta was barely edible. Next to her, Eve was doodling in a small notebook, sketching something like a spaceship.
Clay stood up. “Anybody want anything? I’m getting milk.”
“Some sausage for your girlfriend,” Peter said.
Clay ignored him and walked off.
“What’s his name again?” she whispered to Eve.
“Who?” Eve looked up from her sketchbook.
“Milk guy.”
“Clay Bradley. We grew up together.”
Justine asked, “Bradley, as in the Arts Center?” The modern centerpiece of the campus, featured in the brochure.
Eve nodded. “Yep. And it spells FUCK.”
“What does?”
“If you look at the building from the smoker, the parts spell FUCK.” Eve drew the letters in the air.
Justine decided she needed a closer look.
Clay came back and when he sat down Justine noticed his dark lashes matted against his ivory skin.
“Jesus, did you see Winkler? He’s on the warpath,” Christina said.
“I did,” Stanley said. “He tried to bust me at the smoker.”
“Me too,” Eve said, shaking the ink in her pen toward the tip.
“Was he the one with the clipboard?” Justine asked.
“He’s a god around here. Every sophomore gets him for English,” Stanley explained. “He teaches five sections, like an orchestra. He could have taught anywhere; he’s brilliant.”
“And hot,” Christina said.
“Even if he does look like a penis,” Eve said, looking up from her drawing.
They all stared at her.
“Here,” Eve said, and did a quick sketch. It looked like a mushroom, and then a head began to emerge. “See? The wispy hair, the scrunchy beard.”
“Winkler the Wanker,” Stanley said.
“I hear he’s a tough grader,” Clay said.
Justine watched him wipe the milk off his mouth. His lower lip was like a piece of pink candy. He looked up at her.
“I hope I’m in your section.”
He was a delicate and lovely creature.
“Hope we all are,” Eve agreed.
Just then she saw Tierney passing Bruce’s table. Tierney stopped and bent down to talk to him, her wheaty hair brushing his shoulder. Tierney giggled, and rested her hand on Bruce’s arm.
Eve nudged Justine, holding out her sketchbook. The mushroom Wanker now had a speech bubble that said “Eat Me.”
Justine laughed and glanced back in Bruce’s direction, but he was gone.
* * *
• • • • • • •
That evening Eve lay on her bed trying to decipher David’s poem. But the German revealed no clues. Who could she ask? Her mother spoke French, her friend India Clarkson was fluent in Italian.
Eve wondered what India was doing tonight in New York. Getting stoned, certainly, but then what?
She turned on her side and stared at Tabitha’s side of the dorm room. Tabitha’s mother had decorated it, and Eve had to admire the fully tricked-out Texan vibe. There was a lacy beige tablecloth tacked to the wall in loopy folds. Above, Mrs. Sparkman had hung gold-framed posters. The kitten holding on to a branch. Another, a view of a ranch with split-rail fences before a setting sun. The bed was piled high with blankets.
Eve recalled the letter Tabitha had written her over the summer, on scented paper. “Can’t wait to meet ya!!! We’re gonna be such good friends!!!” Each exclamation mark terminated in a bubble heart. The letter announced her most important details—cheerleader, only child, rodeo fan. And a boyfriend at Griswold, already. A junior. Impressive. Eyeing the twin beds, Eve wondered if she’d have to listen to them fooling around.
* * *
• • • • • • •
Justine squeezed Close-Up on her toothbrush and looked in the mirror. Being told she was beautiful all of her life still hadn’t convinced her. She knew better; she had sex appeal, not beauty. Other girls made boys fall in love with them. Not Justine; boys didn’t want her to be their girlfriend, they just wanted to fuck her.
Tierney’s reading lamp was on, and she was kneeling next to the bed in a plaid nightgown. What on earth was she doing, Justine wondered, a
s she climbed up the ladder and got under the covers with her teddy bear. She thought of mentioning the hangers and the bureau drawers, but why bother? She could hear Tierney muttering under her breath, and the bunk bed creak.
“Were you praying?” Justine asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Curious.”
“Don’t you say yours?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“That sucks,” Tierney said, and clicked off the light.
Justine lay staring at the ceiling, not remotely sleepy. It was only eleven and Justine was used to staying up until two or three. After theater openings, her parents threw big parties. One evening when she was nine she danced with Frank Langella. In the morning Cressida found her sleeping in a ball under the dining room table with lipstick smeared across her face.
“Do you always breathe so loudly?” Tierney asked.
“I have a deviated septum.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where the bone in the middle of your nose slants. It makes it hard to breathe.”
“Is that why you have a bump?”
“No. But if you look at my nose from below, you can see how crooked my nostrils are.”
“Let’s see,” Tierney said, clicking the light back on.
Justine leaned over the edge of the bed.
“Whoa! How do you even breathe?”
Justine slumped back on her pillow. “One day I’ll get my nose fixed.”
Tierney turned the light off again. “Good, then maybe you won’t sound like Amtrak.”
THREE
The ceiling of Mr. Winkler’s classroom was a honeycomb of concrete, with recessed lights set in the squares. Desks were arranged in rows, and by 8:25 Eve was already slouched in the front, legs out, combat boots crossed.
“Aren’t you the early bird,” Justine said, sliding into a chair.
“Sucking the big slimy worm.”
Justine opened the backpack she’d owned since seventh grade. Although it had sentimental value, she couldn’t help but gaze longingly at Eve’s brand-new one.
Age of Consent Page 2