“Attention!” Julia dropped her feet and pointed at a picture in the yearbook.
“Yeah. Volleyball.”
Julia shook her head. “Charlie, you’re hopeless.” She pushed her feet against the light display, ignoring that she lit up several buttons, in order to roll her chair closer to me. Her finger never left the page. “Look.”
Julia’s finger was on a black-and-white picture of the kitchen staff standing on the dining hall porch. I recognized Mrs. Peterson, the head cook, and a few others, but the rest were strangers to me. Mrs. Peterson’s hair was different: longer, swept into a ponytail instead of cropped close to her ears.
“How old is this yearbook? Everyone looks younger.”
“It’s from Gus’s freshman year, but that’s not important,” Julia whispered, even though we were at least thirty feet above anyone who could possibly hear us.
I glanced at the podium on the stage. My environmental studies teacher was talking now. The top of his hairless head shone in the stage lights. I knew I probably should listen, but I turned back to Julia instead. “So what’s so important about a shot of the kitchen staff?”
“Look at the truck in the background.”
It was huge and white with cartoon animals on the back and sides.
“The cow looks kind of like a dinosaur.”
“You are so out of it lately. Sebastian is rotting your brain.” Julia jabbed her finger at the page. “Look, Cross Family Farm. Gus’s boyfriend’s last name was Cross. David Cross. They must have met when he came to make a delivery at St. Anne’s. I knew his parents had a farm in Hyannis. It’s not that far from where we catch the ferry—but I never put together how they met.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed. Not because I was surprised at Julia’s find, but because it had taken me that long to realize that the truck was the same one that had been parked in front of Sebastian and me that day on the ferry. I took the yearbook from her without realizing I had reached for it. Same bright red. Same dented bumper and peeling lettering. It was definitely the same truck.
“Why—”
“Why is Mulcaster getting up?” Julia interrupted me. She stood so suddenly her chair rolled all the way to the back wall, hitting it with a thump.
I didn’t look up from the book. “Hmm.”
“Merde! She’s doing it!” Julia leaned against the control panel. “She’s reaching for the hat.”
That got my attention. “You think?” I stood beside her, my chair drifting back until it bumped hers.
“Look.” Julia pointed. “She’s got one hand under the podium and she’s been babbling about class attendance—”
“There it is!” I clapped as Dr. Mulcaster retrieved a huge hat, like the kind women wear to garden parties and horse races, from under the podium and stuck it on her head. She only wore that hat twice a year: once in the fall and then again in the winter. That awful, ugly hat, with its huge fake flowers and droopy brim, meant a day of canceled classes and no formal dinner. It meant no sports for the afternoon, no club period, and no study hall. It meant that the entire school, all five hundred of us, could do whatever we wanted on campus.
Julia and I were quiet long enough to hear her say, “Happy Headmistress’s Holiday!”
“Hallelujah!” Julia shimmied, her arms raised above her head. “I don’t have to take that English test. No stupid rec basketball. Fantastique!” She stopped dancing and put her hands on her hips. “We’ve got the whole rest of the day to do nothing. Anything.”
Below us, the auditorium was in pandemonium as girls and teachers cheered. Any announcements Dr. Mulcaster tried to make were lost in the noise of people pushing to get out the doors.
There were only a few stragglers left in the stands when I got my great idea. “Julia, this is perfect. We can go to the farm.”
“What?”
“David’s farm. We can go talk to his mom and dad. You said you wanted to know more about Gus. We can ask them about her. If she spent a lot of time there, they probably knew her really well. And it can’t be more than an hour—”
“Neither one of us has a car. We can’t.”
“We can borrow one. I’ll drive. Marsha won’t care. We’ll be back before check-in.”
“No.”
“Wait. What? Really?”
“Charlie, I don’t want to go.”
“But—”
“Please don’t make me explain.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I won’t make you explain. I was just trying—”
“I know. Merci. I know.”
You would think Dr. Mulcaster had said she was taking the whole school on a Caribbean cruise with all the shouting and music that pulsed out of the rooms in Campion Hall.
Julia shut the door right after I followed her into our room, muffling the chaos outside. She flopped down on her bed, not bothering to take off her shoes.
“So,” I said, picking up Aloysius, who had fallen out of her bag when she dropped it in the middle of the floor. “What do you want to do on our last Headmistress’s Holiday?”
Julia mumbled something incoherent.
“Great answer.” I shook Aloysius to dust him off and then put him on her desk chair. Why had I brought up the farm anyway? I sat on the edge of my bed wishing I could knead out the knot in my stomach with my fist.
Julia turned over to her side. “I said that I don’t really feel like doing much. Besides, il fait froid!”
This time I had a better, great idea.
I sat up. “You love the cold. Find your boots. We’re going to the dining hall.”
“I’m not—”
“Not for food—though we definitely need to grab stuff. For trays.”
Realization came across Julia’s face like the sun through a window blind being raised in the morning. “Really?”
Julia didn’t actually have boots, so I wore my heaviest sneakers and gave her mine. We had to stuff socks in the toes, and then I had to borrow a ski coat for her from a junior on the second floor. We walked—or waddled really; we were both wearing so many layers—to the dining hall, stuffed our pockets with cookies, and then, when we thought no faculty or staff were looking, slid trays under our coats.
The sledding hill wasn’t technically on campus, and we were technically not supposed to be there. Tray sledding had been forbidden my freshman year when a girl ended up in the hospital with a broken arm. I hadn’t been since. But it was my last Headmistress’s Holiday and Julia needed to smile and I needed to make things right again and let out the happiness that had bubbled in the core of me since New Year’s.
We weren’t the only ones with the great idea.
A group was already at the top of the hill, all seniors. Amy, Jacqueline, Rosalie, Piper, and Eun Sun, and three girls I recognized from English class and the fall musical all stood together in a huddle like a group of penguins gathered around an egg.
Their tight circle wasn’t surprising. It was cold. They were probably protecting their faces from the wind. What made me pause was that they were talking like they all hung out regularly instead of existing at opposite sides of the dining hall and quad.
In my shock, I dropped my tray and had to scramble down the hill after it.
“Smooth, Charlotte,” Piper shouted. I heard someone giggle as I started back up the hill, my eyes down so I wouldn’t have to deal with one of Piper’s drop-dead looks.
Julia, oblivious to the tension of our situation, or maybe defiant to it, ignored Piper as she walked by her, plunking her tray down to the left of the group and then plopping on top of it.
“Who wants to race?” she shouted, pushing her hat back off her forehead.
The group stopped talking.
“I’ll race,” said a girl in a green scarf. She placed her tray next to Julia’s. “What does the winner get?”
“She’s Queen of the Hill, of course,” Julia replied as she adjusted Aloysius so his nubby antlers weren’t caught in her pock
et zipper. “Ready?”
The girl nodded so vigorously that the pom-pom on her hat swung across her face.
“Un. Deux. Trois. Holy—” Julia’s laugh bounced off the snow. She hit a bump at the bottom of the hill, landing in a spectacular belly flop that made her look like she was making a facedown snow angel.
“That’s only a five,” Jacqueline yelled. “Terrible dismount.”
I glanced at her, almost dropping my tray again. She looked at me, readjusted her earmuffs, and might have even smiled.
Maybe a truce had been granted—at least for the day.
Julia took a bow, but she stood up with too much momentum and fell backward into a snowdrift. The group on the hill laughed, even Rosalie. Everyone laughed except for Piper. She stood off to the side, leaning against a tree, her expression gray but not entirely unhappy.
A girl from English class went down the hill. Jacqueline only gave her a four.
Amy went, sliding within feet of the trees at the bottom. She jumped off her tray and kept running. Jacqueline gave her a nine.
Rosalie and Eun Sun raced each other down the hill. Both sevens.
I went against the girl in the green scarf and skidded over a patch of ice that sent me sliding toward the small creek.
“That’s a five, Charlotte,” Jacqueline said.
I was so happy she used my name that I didn’t even care that my sneakers were soaking.
The time I raced Rosalie, I dragged my feet in the snow, letting her reach the bottom first. When she jumped off her sled, her arms raised in victory, she nodded at me as if she knew what I had done. I didn’t say anything. Recognizing each other was enough for one day.
We kept sledding until the cookies in our pockets were crumbs and the fading sky hinted at night.
It had been a good, crazy, great idea.
Since winter break, Sebastian had driven out from Cambridge at least once or twice a week to visit with me during the hour of freedom between the end of study hall and check-in. Boys weren’t allowed in the dorms, not even in winter, so sometimes we went to the art center, sometimes to the student lounge. But most of the time we stood outside because it was the only place we could be alone.
When he came to visit that night, both Julia and I were still high with adrenaline from sledding. I wanted to skip out to the oak tree where I knew he’d be waiting, but I stopped myself and tried instead not to walk too fast.
“Watch that you don’t get frozen stuck to each other!” Julia yelled out our window before slamming it shut and letting the curtain fall.
“So, your day obviously wasn’t exhausting enough,” Sebastian said, reaching for me and rubbing the sides of my arms. His breath came out in little clouds. “Julia looks like she’s dancing around your room. Look at her shadow.” He pointed toward our window.
I didn’t bother glancing. I wanted to look at him. No matter how many times he ended our phone calls with “See you tonight,” no matter how many little gifts he sent—a set of paints, an art magazine, flowers, and more flowers—or how many times he signed an email “Can’t wait to see you,” I didn’t fully trust he would really be there. I didn’t trust it until I could touch him, and once I touched him, I couldn’t take my hands off him.
“Charlie?” Sebastian said.
“Sorry. I think Julia got an extra handful of crack cookies when I wasn’t looking.”
“I don’t think crack makes you hyper.”
“No, they’re these real cookies. They only make them on Headmistress’s Holidays and they’re sooooo good, they’re addictive. So we call them crack cookies.” I was talking twice as fast as I normally would. It had been that good a day, and the sky was clear and the stars were like pinpricks of light against all that black, and even though my face was cold and my toes were still frozen from that afternoon, the rest of me was warm.
“Ah.” Sebastian wrapped his arms around me so tightly my own were pinned to my sides.
For a moment we just stood like that, rocking back and forth on the crunchy snow. Our breath melding together in puffs of white. I wondered if we looked as happy in that instant as Gus and David looked in the photo on Gus’s shelves at Arcadia. I hoped so.
“Sebastian,” I said, remembering the trip Julia and I had not taken that day, “did you know Gus’s boyfriend had a farm nearby?”
He dropped his arms and started to pack a snowball with his bare hands. “Sure. I guess I knew it was kind of close.” He threw the snowball against the side of the oak tree so hard snow sprayed us both in the face. “Sorry.”
“Why . . . never mind,” I said, wiping my cheek off. “It’s not important.” I wasn’t going to ruin a perfect day.
“You’re a very odd girl. Who asks very random and odd questions,” Sebastian said as he packed another snowball with his red fingers. This one he threw at a car parked in the dorm driveway, missing it by a couple of feet. “There goes my baseball career.”
“And . . .” I said.
“And?”
“And that’s why . . .”
“That’s why what?”
“And that’s why you like me.” I tugged off my mittens and took his wet, cold hands in my own.
“Oh no, I like you because when you’re a big-deal artist I can tell people I used to make out with you. Maybe get on a reality—”
I kissed him to shut him up. And I kissed him because I’d wanted to kiss him since the last time we’d stopped.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: February 25
Subject: RISD, JULIA, Etc.
I spoke to my contact at RISD. They’ve got all your materials, including the reference letter I promised you.
Waiting is the hardest part. Don’t worry, kiddo, you’re a shoo-in.
Could you get Julia to finish up her Wellesley application? I told Teresa I’d ask. Knowing you’re on it will make life calmer in the office and on the home front.
I want you two to get out some more. Stop eating all that microwave junk. Sophie’s sending a gift card for that café near campus. It’ll go to your mailbox. Julia might lose it.
If you need anything, Charlie Girl, call my cell or leave a message with anyone at the foundation. They all know who you are.
Boom
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
“What do you want for your birthday?”
“Oh no, don’t try to distract me. We’re finishing your application tonight and then proofing your essay. All this is going in tomorrow.”
“When’d you become such a bore? Besides, I’m not even sure I want to go to college right away. I might take a year or two off.”
“Really?”
“So, what do you want for your birthday?”
“Are you asking as Julia or are you asking as Pip, Sebastian’s sister?”
“I am asking as a representative of the family.”
“That makes you sound like you work for the mob.”
“I kind of do.”
“Maybe we can do something quiet next time we go out to Arcadia. Sophie can make—”
“Quiet? Absolument pas. You’re turning eighteen.”
“Yeah, but my birthday falls during March break.”
“So we’ll celebrate here that Friday.”
“Campus is closed that Friday.”
“Exactement.”
TWENTY-ONE
THE LIBRARY WAS THE REASON a lot of girls came to St. Anne’s, or at least it was the reason their parents made them. It was a Gothic castle, an imposing structure that belonged in a European city. Inside was a mess of hidden corners, a sky-touching rotunda, and a vast basement that confused me every time I tried to find my way from one end to the other.
It was also one of the few buildings on campus that Julia and I hadn’t found our way into at night. The first Friday of spring break, three days before my actual birthday, it was almost disappointing how easy it was for us to sneak in.
Julia had propped open a
window in the reading room that morning. We tossed our backpacks through, the bottles in them clanking, then the sleeping bags, and lastly we climbed in ourselves. That was it.
There was no need to whisper. All the other students had left that afternoon, and only a handful of teachers stuck around campus. But there was something about the orderly rows of books, the burned smell of old pages, and the yellow haze of the security lights that demanded quiet.
“Viens par ici.” Julia gestured for me to follow her.
When we reached the rotunda, she took a right turn into the Art History stacks, and as soon as I stepped into the wood-paneled room I saw the three figures, one standing, two sitting, in a circle of light around a camping lantern.
Julia rushed ahead of me, threw down her sleeping bag, and sat on top of it.
“Happy birthday, Charlie!”
“Shhhhh. Do you want to get caught?” I recognized Jacqueline’s voice before I could completely make out her face. It wasn’t until I reached the end of the study tables that I realized who the others were: Amy and Rosalie.
“Oh, Julia,” I whispered, adjusting my sleeping bag against my side to buy myself some time. “Why, why, why did you invite them?” The night was going to be a disaster.
“Campus is deserted. Quit being a worrywart,” said Julia to Jacqueline. She rolled out her sleeping bag and lay down on it, splayed across the ground like a starfish.
Jacqueline crossed her arms and leaned against the old radiator behind her. The other girls were silent as Julia sat up and began to pull out the bottles that had been clanking in her backpack.
I shuffled forward and dropped my things near a row of encyclopedias.
“Hey,” I said, waving at the two cross-legged figures on the ground and the one standing by the window.
Jacqueline shrugged. “Happy birthday.”
We all listened to Julia set out cups, open bottles, and pour. From the stinging smell, I knew she wasn’t making fruit punch.
“Happy birthday, Charlotte,” Amy said, standing up to give me a quick hug, and that was all it took. Jacqueline hugged me, and then, after hesitating, Rosalie did, too.
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