SIX
SPRING PARENTS’ WEEKEND WAS LIKE a carnival—minus the animal tents and fried dough. Evergreen and ivory balloons with the St. Anne’s crest were anchored to wrought iron benches and lampposts across campus. Sandwich-board signs stood outside all of the academic buildings, describing with the flair of travel brochures what happened inside. Teachers wore their college scarves over button-ups and blazers. There was even a bouncy castle set up outside the gym for the staff kids and visiting siblings.
I hated parents’ weekends. Not because my dad, Melissa, and my younger stepbrothers, Sam and AJ, could never make it, but because it felt like a three-day invasion, like I was a native in my habitat and all these tourists had dropped in to observe me. There were parents in classes: gray-haired and balding dads who struggled to fit in the polished wooden chairs, and pearl-wearing moms who perched on their edges. Younger brothers and sisters ran around the dining hall, hopped up on sugar and the freedom of not being the immediate focus of their parents’ attention. Grandparents were in the library, dorm common rooms, stable, gym, and greenhouse. The only place to escape to was the art studio.
The Saturday afternoon of that parents’ weekend, I had to weave around the groups of families that crowded the path to the art center. Everyone was moving too slowly, taking too many pictures, talking too loudly. I kept my eyes down, knowing I wouldn’t hear anyone call me. The past two years, I had received at least half a dozen invitations for lunch or dinner on parents’ weekends. Most were from friends who treated getting off campus like leaving for San Francisco, Seattle, or some other huge and glamorous city instead of just downtown Hyannis. But some of them were desperate pleas, as if the girls inviting me could not stand being alone with their parents for the time it took to choke down salads and sandwiches. But I had given up those friends.
That afternoon, for the first time since becoming part of Julia’s world, it felt strange to walk alone. Ignoring the path and walking across the grass so I could move quicker did little to ease the loneliness that hit me like a stomach pain that leaves you doubled over.
There was one invitation I dared to expect, but it was not delivered.
I saw Julia’s family arrive on campus that morning on my way to breakfast. And I swear even Dr. Mulcaster had stopped mid-conversation to watch as they slid out of a black town car.
Waiting for them on the sidewalk in front of Pembroke, Julia lunged for the door handle even before the car came to a full stop. A petite woman in a dark navy suit, her blond hair in a tight chignon at the nape of her neck and huge sunglasses covering half her face, jumped out of the driver’s side and ran around the car to hug her. A tall guy with curly hair held the door as a little girl hopped out of the backseat and attached herself to Julia’s side. The final person to emerge was a heavy-set woman with silver hair and high heels that would have been impossible for a woman half her age to walk in. Yet she moved from the car to the brick walk with the practiced balance of a beauty pageant contestant.
When Julia caught me watching she waved and mimicked throwing a noose over her head and pulling it tight. But she did not gesture me over. So I kept moving and tried to swallow my disappointment—but it was a tight fit down my throat.
I did not know the rules of our friendship yet. I only knew the boundaries.
The art center was the most hideous building on campus, an eyesore that had been designed, built, and paid for by a celebrity architect alumna. The roof was flat and constructed of reflective tin, and one side was covered with straw-like sticks of metal forming a faux barrier over the chipping brick. But inside the ceilings were high, and though the electric circuits were always blowing and the old radiators always put out too much heat in the winter, the art studio, a cluttered space with paint-splattered walls and a chipped cement floor, was a haven. A space as familiar to me as my childhood bedroom.
I kept the stereo playing whatever pop station the person who was there before me had left on and stretched dark goggles over my eyes to protect them from the heat of the small torch I planned to use with some stubborn metal. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Marsha, a sophomore, was working in the far corner. I waved at her before pulling on a pair of thick leather gloves.
I turned on the torch, felt that rush of heat against my cheeks, and some of the loneliness of walking by myself melted away.
I had been at work for only fifteen minutes when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Annoyed at the interruption, I pushed my goggles off so forcefully that they fell off the back of my head and hit the floor with a clunk.
“Oh Jesus. Sorry. Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. I was just looking for the bathroom.” A boy about my height, maybe a little taller, stood just a foot away from me, his hand still reaching out from touching me. A pair of aviator sunglasses hid his eyes and his curly brown hair stuck out at all angles from his head like he had just taken off a winter hat.
“All girls’ school,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find a guy’s room yet.”
I tore my eyes away from his face. “Never surprise someone with a flame in her hand.” I shut off the torch, took off my gloves, and bent down to grab my goggles, hurriedly wiping the sweat off my face with my sleeve before I stood up.
“Yeah. Not the smartest thing I’ve done today. But might not be the dumbest either.” I could tell by the way he delivered the line that it was something he’d said before.
I hadn’t talked to a guy my age in weeks. I felt like I had to translate words before I could speak them. “There’s a bathroom . . . other side of the building. It says ‘faculty’ on it . . . you can just ignore that though. They won’t care on parents’ weekend.”
The boy moved toward my workbench. “Are these birds?” he asked, picking up one of the metal rods I had melted into a delicate v-like shape and taking his sunglasses off his face with his free hand. His eyes were mahogany dark.
“Do they look like birds to you?” I said, feeling a little less flushed now that we were talking art.
“They’re seagulls, aren’t they?”
“If you see seagulls, then they’re seagulls. If you think they’re pigeons or crabs or contortionists, then they can be those, too. That’s the beauty of it all, really.” I pushed the bandanna I had covering my hair back until it slid off the top of my head, remembering too late that the awful shade of blond and my brown roots were now exposed.
He looked up at me and grinned. His bottom teeth were slightly crooked, as if he’d had braces but couldn’t be bothered to wear them for long and so the teeth had shifted back. “Well I think they look like the seagulls my dad tries to get rid of every summer. They’re pretty, though.”
I grabbed one and studied it to stop myself from staring at him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet.”
“Hey, Charlotte,” Marsha called from the other side of the studio. She had moved from the corner and was perched on a radiator and looking out the large window that faced the library lawn. “Did you see the boat parked in front of Pembroke? You know whose car that is?”
Marsha had a Virginia accent as soft as warm honey and an interest in all things mechanical that could rival a NASCAR fan’s. Because we didn’t have an auto shop, she used the studio to weld parts together for a car she kept off campus.
I put down the metal and let my eyes drift once again to the boy’s face. He had the thickest lashes I had ever seen on a guy. A scar cut a thin triangle into his left eyebrow, making it look like it was slightly raised and he was just about ready to wink.
“Yeah. It’s Julia’s,” I called over my shoulder.
“Julia?” the guy said.
“Julia Buchanan,” I said. “She’s another junior girl. New this year.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
Marsha’s pudgy tan hands were pressed against the glass like a puppy’s paws in a pet store window. She whistled, then turned away from the window to look at us. “I hear the whole family’s tied up in the
Irish Mafia and that’s where they got all their money.”
“Really—” I started to say, but was interrupted.
“Actually, they’re all secretly working for the CIA or FBI,” the guy said as he winked at me. “I think I read it somewhere.”
“Really?” Marsha’s eyebrows couldn’t go any higher. Her drawl made “really” sound as stretched out as a bubblegum balloon. “Reaaaaalllllly?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “How else would they get a car like that?”
Marsha didn’t reply, but she twisted to look out the window again, her mouth slightly open.
“Not nice,” I hissed at him, trying to resist the smile tugging at my lips. Marsha was sweet, but way too gullible. The year before, someone had her convinced that Mrs. Kahn was a political refugee from North Korea. Marsha attempted to speak to her in Korean for months until Mrs. Kahn let her know she was born in Maine.
He looked down, then up at me. Still smiling. “You have lines all over your face from the thingies.” He reached as if to touch my face. “Right here.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Occupational hazard.” I stumbled back, pushing aside my torch and gloves to set the goggles on my workbench. “So you must be somebody’s brother? Cousin? Complete stranger sneaking on campus? Enjoying the carnival?”
I got snarky when I was nervous.
He tapped his feet against the side of a paint cabinet before answering. “It beats Spring Fling day at my college. At least you guys get a bouncy castle. We get a popcorn machine and bad local bands playing on the commons.” He took a step closer to me. “Want to go check it out?”
“Bad local bands?”
“No, the bouncy castle.”
“Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s just for kids.”
“Yeah, but I bet you it doesn’t say that big kids are forbidden.”
“I thought you had to go to the bathroom.”
“Right. But as soon as I get back—” He was interrupted by a girl in a dress dashing through the studio door and attaching herself to his legs. She mumbled something incomprehensible into the back of his thighs.
The guy sighed and reached down to try to loosen her tentacle-like grip. “Oops, I can’t understand you when you mumble. How about coming out for air.”
The little girl muttered more into his legs, and he bent down to listen. “Fine.”
“My sister is a little shy and would like to know your name before—” Metal hitting cement stopped him short as his elbow knocked a pile of hollow rods to the ground. They clanked against the floor one by one by one.
He jumped back far enough that the little girl was forced to look up from his legs.
“Sebastian, what’d you do?” she asked.
“Wait, you’re Julia’s sister.” With her face free, I could see that she was the same little girl who had leaped out of the back of the town car. “Then you’re . . .” The nose. The brown eyes. Of course he was Julia’s brother.
“Sorry,” he said as he began collecting the rods from the floor. Even as he knelt to reach under the tool cabinet, Julia’s sister did not let go of his leg.
“You’re Julia’s brother,” I said.
“Yeah.” He stood up, setting a handful of rods on top of the counter. “Should have introduced myself. I’m Sebastian, and this monster is Cordelia, a.k.a. Oops.”
Cordelia buried her face again in his side, but I think she said, “Nice to meet you.”
“So do you actually know Julia?” he asked as he pushed the pile of rods back and then grabbed the final one from the floor, adding it to the pile with a wave. “Done.”
“I do. Why didn’t you say anything . . . about the car?” I wondered how much Julia had told them about me, if anything.
He tapped an uneven beat against his legs with his flat hands. “Wanted to see how far the joke would go. I always wanted to be in the mob.”
“I—”
“Okay. Detach.” He lifted Cordelia off his legs and onto his back. “Time to introduce.” He looked at me, pausing before asking, “What’s your name?”
“Charlotte,” I said. “But Julia calls me Charlie.”
He worked a phone I knew cost at least half as much as my laptop out of his back pocket and glanced down at it, his fingers skimming over the screen. “Well, Charlie, we are being summoned. Ready to meet the mobsters?”
I drew back from Sebastian’s side to follow at a slower pace as he approached Julia and the silver-haired woman in heels. They were standing under a giant oak tree that was out of view from the art center windows. I was just close enough to hear Sebastian call out, “Julia, Oops and I stumbled on one of your friends.”
Julia took her hands out of the older woman’s. When her eyes reached my own, I was surprised at what I saw there. She was angry.
Her expression and the way she wrapped her arms around her rib cage let me know that in following her brother, I had messed up. I should have stayed behind.
Sebastian, oblivious, jumped Cordelia higher up on his back and stood on the other side of the older woman. Four pairs of eyes now looked at me as I walked toward the oak tree.
“Mon petit canard, présente-moi à tes amies.” The silver-haired woman’s voice was as smooth and sweet as cake batter being poured into a pan.
Of course she was French.
“Désolée,” Julia said in response. “Nanny, this is my friend, Charlie. Charlie, this is Nanny. I mean, Sophie Girard.”
I shoved my hands in my shorts pockets, wishing I had thought to wash the streaks of soot off. When I reached the small group, Julia pivoted toward her brother.
“Mummy had one of her headaches and she wanted to talk to Dr. Mulcaster before the trustees’ meeting, so it’s just me and Nanny now. Maybe you and Oops should go check on her.” Julia’s suggestion was more of a command. She kicked at a root, not needing to look at him to know he would do what she asked.
“No worries. I’m still on a quest for a bathroom anyway.” Sebastian saluted with one hand before hopping Cordelia higher up on his back again. “Charlie, nice to meet you. Oops,” he said as he bounced. “Say good-bye to Julia’s friend.”
In reply she mumbled something into his back and turned her head the other way. He raised his arms out as if to say, “What can you do?” and then started toward the headmistress’s house.
I watched him, smiling a little when he caught a foot on a divot and had to brace himself against a tree before starting out again.
Hands as soft as old leather on my cheeks brought my attention back to Julia and Sophie. The older woman held my face between her two hands, forcing me to bend so she would not have to reach so high and my eyes could meet her startling blue ones. “Tu es très belle. Et tu as été une très bonne amie pour Julia.”
I squirmed, but not enough to loosen her gentle hold. “Uh, Julia, can you explain to your grandmother that I don’t speak French? Well, I know a little. But that’s French-Canadian I pick up from my roommate and most of it is swear words.”
Julia snorted, and I saw her uncross her arms out of the corner of my eye. “Nanny’s not our grandmother. She was our nanny growing up. Now she’s Mummy’s secretary. She speaks perfect English, but prefers not to. Le français est plus élégant.”
“My apologies, sweet child. I just said that you were very beautiful.” She shook her head. “I am so used to speaking French with the family.” She dropped her hands from my face. “It makes me happy to know that you are here watching out for mon petit canard.”
“Well,” I said, “we watch out for each other.” My neck hurt from bending down.
Julia leaned against the tree trunk. Her long skirt was coated at the bottom with grass. When she looked at me her expression was a clear slate, indifferent. Our staring contest ended when a bunch of freshman girls and their families passed by talking loudly.
Sophie smiled at the group. Once they were some distance away, she patted my arm and stepped backward until she was shoulder to shoulder with Julia. “You must come visit
us on Nantucket, at Arcadia this summer. I’ll make clafouti.”
“Thanks.” I could still feel the press of her long fingers on my face. “That sounds really great.”
Julia softly but firmly grabbed Sophie’s elbow. “Well, we’d better go find Mummy. See you, Charlie.”
“Okay,” I said, but if Julia heard me she gave no indication. As she and Sophie walked away, I took Julia’s place against the trunk of the tree, watching them until they disappeared into the headmistress’s house.
CONTRA MUNDUM
“You’re pouting.”
“No I’m not.”
“Then why do you have that line between your eyebrows?”
“I’m trying to concentrate on the canvas and you’re distracting me.”
“Look. I’m sorry I didn’t want to introduce you to my family yet. I just . . . I wanted to keep you to myself a little while longer. That’s all. Je te voulais pour moi. You get it, right?”
I pretended to focus on mixing the right shade of blue.
“Right?”
I sighed. “I get it.”
“How do you say ‘just you and me’ in Latin?”
“Uh, the translation would be pretty bad, but there’s a phrase, contra mundum.”
“Contra mundum. What does it mean?”
“Roughly? ‘Against the world.’ Together against the world.”
“Contra mundum?”
“Contra mundum.”
SEVEN
WE ONLY HAD TWO WEEKS left in our junior year the night Julia and I got in trouble. I was still wide awake when she came to my window.
I had taken to creating sculptures in my head—ridiculous things built more out of air and hope than anything that would actually stay together—to help pass the time between waking and dreaming, but that night I wasn’t having any luck. My mind kept wandering back to the clumsy boy who also happened to be Julia’s brother.
Her tapping was soft at first, like the branches of a tree scraping against glass, but when I didn’t answer right away, she started pounding.
I jumped out of my bed and yanked the old warped window open. Her nose barely came to the sill, but her voice rang into the room. “Come on!”
Even in Paradise Page 4