Even in Paradise

by Chelsey Philpot

  I let go of the frame, glanced at Rosalie, who shifted beneath her covers. I caught the window just as it began squeaking down again.

  “Charlie.” Julia was standing on her tiptoes in the soft soil. Behind her the leaves of the bushes glowed and dimmed in turn as clouds passed in front of the nearly full May moon.

  “Time. To. Have. An. Adventure?” Julia spoke like a drunk person pretending to be sober, enunciating her words as though it was the first time she had said any of them.

  I leaned out the window. “Adventure? Where?”

  She didn’t say anything but released her grip on the sill, curling her fingers at me in a “come here” gesture as she backed out of the bushes.

  “Jesus.” I sighed and bowed my head, pushing my fingers against my temples before sliding on a pair of pants from my floor and my sneakers. When I left the dorm, I was careful to stick a Vogue from the recycling bin against the lock.

  With a quick glance to the left and the right, I dashed around to the side of the dorm. It took my eyes adjusting to the bright moonlight for me to spot Julia leaning against the trunk of a large maple, twirling a leaf beneath her nose, one hand wrapped around what were once Aloysius’s antlers but were now just stubs. She was tapping a foot against the ground as if I had kept her waiting for hours.

  “Dépêchons-nous. We have to hurry. The night watch lady is on the other side of campus, so we’re in the clear,” she said. She started walking even before I reached her.

  “Julia.” I caught up to her in three strides. “Where are we going? I have my last Latin class tomorrow, and—”

  “La gloire se donne seulement à ceux qui l’ont toujours rêvée.”

  “I don’t know what that means, Julia.” She couldn’t see me run my fingers through my hair, but she had to hear my annoyance.

  “It means—” Julia stopped suddenly.

  “It means what?”

  “We’re going to go check out some stuff about Gus. The year’s almost done and . . .” She took a deep breath, pulling Aloysius toward her until his head rested under her nose. She whispered into his fur, “Please help, Charlie.” Her voice quivered on “help,” and that was all it took.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  So I turned off the smart part of me—the part of me that wanted to go back to my room, crawl into bed, and dream of a boy who was in college, and rich, and funny, and out of my league in so many, many ways. I followed her around the sides of buildings, trying to keep to the shadows as much as possible and running when we were out in the open.

  The admissions and alumnae building was a small cottage on the far side of campus. It reminded me of a gingerbread house, with its candy-pink paint and swoops of white window boxes that looked like vanilla frosting. The back door wasn’t locked—buildings on campus seldom were—but the door at the end of the entry hall wouldn’t budge.

  I was ready to turn around—to sneak back down the hall over the thick oriental carpets, out the door, and back across campus—but Julia was determined.

  “Charlie,” she whispered. “Boost me.” She pointed up at the slit of a ventilation window just above the door. It could not have been open more than a crack.

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll break yourself getting down on the other side.”

  “Charlie, please.”

  Even in what little light we had from the exit signs and the lampposts that lined the paths outside the buildings, I could see that tears had pooled in the corners of her eyes, threatening to overflow onto her cheeks. I sighed and bent on one knee. She wiped her face and then clamored onto my shoulders, and after her small hands were grasped around the top of the door I stood up, bracing myself against the wall, until she was able to swing one leg over, then the other, and drop as smoothly as a shadow to the other side. The door clicked open a moment later, revealing Julia with her arms held above her head in a V, her face a glowing red from the exit lights.

  “Ta-da!”

  “Shhhh,” I said, holding a finger to my lips.

  Julia mirrored my gesture, but did it with a smile, so I’d know she was making fun of me. She went into the office before she could see me scowling.

  The admissions office was cheerful and cozy. Wooden chairs in the St. Anne’s colors lined the walls of a small waiting area, where brochures and old yearbooks were displayed on a large wooden coffee table. When I had visited for my interview, my dad had sat bouncing his knee and tapping his cap against his leg while I folded brochures into origami swans. By the time I was called to the back room for my meeting with the head of admissions, he was pacing in the entry hall and I had created an entire glossy flock of birds.

  I grabbed a brochure and started folding it. Just one. “What are we doing here?” I asked after I tore the paper to make a square.

  “I’m going to look for Gus’s record,” Julia said. “It looks like you, however, are having arts and crafts time.”

  “Sorry.” I set down the swan in progress and joined Julia at the reception desk. “Old habit.”

  “You are so wonderfully strange,” Julia said as she began opening drawers. “Where do you think they keep the alumnae files?”

  I watched her riffle through the office supplies in the center drawer, which she left dangling open when she moved to the file cabinets behind it.

  “Well? Are you going to help?” She wrapped her fingers around a file cabinet handle. She had to jerk it several times to get the drawer to open.

  I stepped up to the desk and wiggled the drawer she had left open shut. “Julia, what exactly do you think you’re going to find out?”

  “Rien. Quelque chose. Tout.” She shuffled the files, glancing at the labels before shoving the drawer closed.

  “Meaning?”

  She didn’t look at me as she opened a new drawer, this one full of stationery with the St. Anne’s crest at the top and on the envelopes. “It doesn’t matter what I think we’re going to find. It matters what we find.”

  I wished I could make out her expression. I picked a handful of paper clips off the desk and started hooking them together.

  For a minute, the only sounds were the buzz of the exit signs and the scratch of paper against paper as Julia knelt to the carpet and riffled through a file box on the floor.

  I waited.

  “I got to walk away and they didn’t. After the accident, Gus and David didn’t get to walk away.”

  “Julia, is that why—”

  “I cannot begin to explain how unfair that is.” Her back was to me and she was bent over the box, as if she was trying to protect it and make herself as small as possible at the same time.

  “Okay . . . let’s see what we find . . . I’ll go look in the back offices,” I said. I went down the hall that led to the office where I had had my interview. I wanted to give Julia her space.

  As I peeked in the various doors, I could hear Julia opening and closing drawers in the front.

  The room at the end of the hall was wall-to-wall file cabinets. It took me two minutes to find the drawers marked “B” and a matter of seconds to find Gus’s record. I shook the dust off the folder as I made my way back to the reception area.

  “Look,” I said, holding the file above my head.

  “Where was it?” Julia leaned forward across the reception desk, climbing half on top of it to snatch the manila folder from my hands.

  “There’s a room of cabinets in the back. I think it’s where they put all the records for students who . . .” I swallowed. “For all the alumnae. It’s another alumnae file room.”

  Julia flipped quickly through the slim folder. “There’s only three sheets of paper in here.”

  “That’s it? Didn’t she go here for four years?”

  Julia slapped the folder shut. “Yes, since she was a freshman. She was an honors student and the best one on the sailing team. She was more than three sheets of paper.” She sounded lik
e she was on the verge of tears again.

  “I bet . . . I bet they gave everything to your parents. After . . . after it happened.”

  Silence.

  “Look,” I said, gently taking the folder from her and opening it across the desk. “There’s plenty of info in here. The dorm she lived in. Her advisor. Her senior project. Sports stuff. This is really good.”

  “Ce n’est pas grand chose.”

  I didn’t bother her for a translation. The hunch of her shoulders told me all I needed to know. “Let’s go.”

  Julia shut the folder, tapped it against the desk, and nodded. We left all the doors open on our way out, which ended up being a good thing, because we had just let the outside door click shut behind us when Julia stopped so suddenly I ran into her.

  “I forgot Aloysius. Here.” She thrust the folder at me. “Hold this. I’ll be right back.”

  Not two seconds after Julia slid back into the building, I heard heavy footsteps slapping across asphalt.

  “Shoot!” I said, louder than I meant to.

  “Found him,” Julia said, flinging open the door hard enough to make it smack the side of the pink building.

  “Shhhh,” I hissed. But it was too late. The figure in the parking lot by the campus store turned and jogged our way.

  The door clicked shut, and at the same time a bright light blinded us. We stood there, each with one arm raised to shield our eyes and blinking like we had just stumbled into daylight. The moment the flashlight pointed to the ground, Julia grabbed the file from my arms, lifted up my sweatshirt, and shoved the folder down the back of my pants.

  “Julia—”

  “Ladies, I think you better come with me,” the night guard said. She patted her flashlight against her palm before standing with her hands on her well-padded hips.

  I couldn’t help it. The file scratching my back and making my underwear slide down, the lack of sleep, the guard’s ridiculous TV-cop stance, and even Julia’s ratty Aloysius were all of a sudden the funniest things in the world. And once I started giggling, I could feel Julia shaking beside me. I didn’t need to look at her to know she had lost it, too.

  “I’m glad you find this funny, ladies,” the guard said. “I’m sure your parents and Dr. Mulcaster won’t be so amused.” She began walking, knowing we had no choice but to follow.

  We both looked at the ground so we wouldn’t glance at each other and erupt again.

  I started after the guard first. When Julia caught up to me—Aloysius tucked under one arm—she slid her hand into mine and squeezed twice. Contra mundum. I squeezed back. Contra mundum.

  I lost weekend privileges for the rest of the year, was thrown back in supervised study hall and given two weeks of kitchen duty, and had to call home to explain what I’d done. My dad mumbled something about not telling Melissa.

  Julia got it worse. Dr. Mulcaster wanted to prove something with her. She got hit with everything they could throw at her—work detail, study hall, community service—but she didn’t get suspended, which is what mattered most.

  GUS’S FILE

  I had been too optimistic. The three sheets of paper in Gus’s folder didn’t tell us much at all.

  The first listed her advisor (Dr. Blanche all four years), senior classes (AP Calculus, AP English, Honors Spanish Four, Honors Environmental Science, and AP Art History), activities (Debate and Sailing Team), and dorm (Pembroke, which didn’t surprise me).

  The second described her senior project (poetry writing with Dr. Blanche).

  The third was a chart of colleges with thick checkmarks next to most of them—except for Harvard. The box next to Harvard was blacked out, and a huge red question mark was drawn off to the side.

  Harvard, question mark.

  EIGHT

  THERE WERE FEW PLACES I could be found on campus in June. If I wasn’t in class, I was fulfilling my work hours with the kitchen staff. If I wasn’t in the kitchen, I was in study hall. And if I wasn’t in study hall, I was trying to squeeze in time with Julia, who had her own punishment obligations. If I wasn’t in any of those places, then I was in my room, which was not a particularly great place to be.

  By the second day of finals, I was no longer able to ignore the fact that Rosalie was avoiding me. Since I’d snuck out with Julia, she’d only come into the room to swap her books between classes or to change before she went to crew practice. She stayed out until check-in, and then when she came in, she changed into PJs, opened a textbook, and read silently on her bed until lights out.

  The night before my physics exam, I reached my breaking point. It was 10:33, and I couldn’t get comfortable at my desk. My chair seat felt lumpy and one of the wheels kept squeaking. I couldn’t remember the equation for Coulomb’s law, and electric circuits were never going to make sense without Julia explaining them to me. I crossed my arms and put my head down on the open book on my desk. “You don’t like Julia Buchanan, do you?” I said into the pages.

  I heard Rosalie toss a book on the floor from where she was sitting on her bed. “I’m indifferent.”

  “No, you’re not. I can hear it in your voice you’re not.” I raised my head from my desk and slouched down in my chair, daring her to argue with me.

  “Fine.” She opened another book. “I don’t like the fact that you two are obsessed with each other. You’d never been in trouble before she got here, and now you’re on lockdown until the end of the year.”

  “I’m not obsessed.” I swung my chair from side to side.

  “If you’re not with her, you’re texting her, and when you’re not texting her, you stare at your phone like you hate it for not buzzing.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Whatever, Charlotte. You can spend your time with whoever you want. It’s none of my business.” She flipped through the pages of her book like they had offended her. “You were the one who asked me what I thought. Don’t get mad just because you don’t like the answer.”

  “Fine,” I said, opening up my laptop.

  “Fine,” Rosalie echoed.

  Later that night, when we were both pretending to be asleep, I whispered, “I’m still your friend.”

  Rosalie took a sharp breath in and then let it out in a low whistle. “You haven’t been acting like it.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I wish you would give Julia a chance, though. She’s really nice and funny and smart. She’s not like most of those girls she hangs out with. She’s not snotty at all, and she’s been through a lot. You know her older sister?”

  “The one who died?” Rosalie sounded like she was talking with her quilt over her mouth.

  I glanced across the room. She was facing the wall, her quilt pulled up to her ears.

  “She was here, at St. Anne’s. Julia’s curious about what she was like when she was in high school. That’s why we snuck out. We went to the alumnae house to see if we could find her file.”

  “The dead sister’s file?” Rosalie said as she turned over so she was facing me.

  “Yeah. I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell anyone that that’s what we were doing.” Suddenly my covers felt too warm. I kicked them off and pushed them over the bottom of the bed with my feet. “You can’t tell anyone.”

  “It sounds like you’re wrestling with a bear. What’d that blanket ever do to you?”

  “I got hot. Seriously, you can’t say anything.”

  “I’m not going to.” Rosalie propped herself up on her elbows. “Sounds like a classic case of survivor’s guilt.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Julia was in the car crash, too. Right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But she lived and her sister and the boyfriend died and now she’s trying to feel better about that by asking you to break into buildings and run around campus. Eh?”

  “Eh?”

  Rosalie sighed. “Don’t make fun of the ‘eh.’ Anyway, like I said, classic case of survivor’s guilt.”

  This time I sighed.

  “What?
I’m taking psychology with Mr. Campion.”

  “Yeah, because you think he’s sexy.”

  Rosalie giggled. “True. But I can’t help it if I learn something while I’m picturing him naked and naming our imaginary children.”

  “Gross.” I leaned over the edge of my bed, grabbed one of the slippers Julia had given me, and threw it across the room.

  “You bitch,” said Rosalie. “That hit me in the elbow.”

  “What happened to being a tough Canadian, eh?”

  Rosalie answered by chucking the slipper at my leg.

  “Ow!” I threw it back at her; then she tossed one of her pillows at me.

  When I didn’t have anything left to throw, I crossed the room to pick up my pillow. “Fine, I give up. But only because I’m a bigger person than you.”

  Rosalie tossed one of my slippers at my butt when I turned around to go back to my bed. “Now we’re done.”

  “That was totally against the rules of combat,” I said, but I was smiling when I finally fell asleep.

  AN UNNECESSARY GIFT

  Dear Charlotte,

  Mr. Buchanan and I feel terrible about the trouble Julia got you into. (Don’t worry. She told us sneaking out was her idea and that you went with her because you’re a good friend.)

  Please accept this token as an apology. We really do feel horrible.

  I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you over parents’ weekend, but Sophie said she invited you to Arcadia this summer. The whole family would love to have you!

  Until then . . .

  Sincerely yours,

  Teresa Buchanan

  The small box was wrapped in purple paper. The silver watch inside had a delicate oval face, Roman numerals, and a rich brown leather band.

  I had never owned a watch before, and I didn’t know if I could keep this one.

  LOCKDOWN

  J: Hope u like the watch! Lockdown is terrible!

  C: It’s amazing