“I’m sorry, Fin,” he finally said, with an awful, sad look in his eyes. “I really am.”
Finny couldn’t wait for school to start again. It was probably the first time she’d ever felt that way. She had the idea that once she was back at school, once the machinery of her house was humming again, she would be a little freer to wander, to slip back into her own routines. She imagined phone calls to Earl, afternoon walks together. She looked forward to the first day of classes the way a traveler might look forward to a warm house after a long cold journey.
But the weekend before she was to go back to school, her father told her she was to pack a suitcase. “A change of plans,” he said. “We’ve been talking to the people at Thorndon. A boarding school. A very good one, actually. It’s in Massachusetts. They’ve agreed to take you in the middle of the year. I booked you a flight Monday. They’re just finishing their winter break.”
Finny’s mouth dropped open. She tried to think of words to fill the space, but all that came were empty breaths.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” Stanley said. “To make some changes. To get a new outlook, if you will.”
“I won’t,” Finny said.
“There’s not much of a choice, unfortunately,” Stanley said. “You’ve been testing the limits for a long time, Finny. And this took it too far. You just need a little time to get your priorities in order.”
“My priorities are in order.”
“A change in circumstances will be good,” her mother said. “A new setting always offers a young lady opportunities for growth. And besides, there really wasn’t anything else we could do, Finny. You didn’t leave us a choice.”
Finny was struck dumb by her mother’s words. Once again, she’d proven less than adequate in both her parents’ eyes, and she was paying for it. She didn’t know how to convince them of their mistake, so she cried and hollered and pleaded.
In the end, though, she packed her bag. Like her parents had said, there really wasn’t much of a choice.
She was still outraged by what her brother had done, telling on her, but she gave him a note she’d scrawled out to pass on to Earl as soon as Sylvan could. She saw now that her brother felt as horribly about what he’d done as she did, that he couldn’t have known what the consequences would be. And anyway, he was the closest she had to a friend in this house.
The note to Earl said: Sent to Thorndon School by my parents. Have to pack my bags and am leaving on Monday. I love you and I miss you and I will write to you as soon and as much as I can. Please don’t forget me.
Monday morning she left for Thorndon.
Chapter 5
First Impressions of the Thorndon School
The Thorndon School was nestled in a beautiful pocket of forest west of Boston, and from the cab window Finny could see shreds of snow along the sides of the driveway that led to it. The main building of the school was made of a kind of smoothed stone that had a blue-gray tint in the sun. Little crystals in the stones sparkled in the light. From the front, the building looked plain and square, with large windows that were darkened like sunglasses.
The cabdriver, whose pimply neck Finny had stared at the entire ride from the airport, dropped Finny by the front door, and she paid him, remembering to tip an extra dollar. The front door of the school opened when Finny pushed on it. It was a large wooden double door, with more of the tinted glass above each side. Finny wondered why they were so careful to tint all the glass, what could be so secret. When Finny got inside, the lobby of the school was so dark she could hardly see anything once the door swung shut behind her. The walls were made of gray brick, and there were some rectangular pillars that held up the ceiling. On her right a hallway extended into a shadowy space Finny couldn’t make out. A couple of exit signs provided the only light in the area where Finny stood, their green letters glowing like lamps in some medieval dungeon. Finny dropped her bags.
“Hello?” Finny said.
And then, to her surprise, a voice answered, “Hello.” The voice was distant enough to be her own echo, but it offered a much deeper and more resolute-sounding greeting than her own voice had. She couldn’t tell from which direction the voice came.
“Where are you?” Finny said.
“Who are you?” the voice said.
“I’m Finny.”
“Finny who?”
“Finny Short.”
“How old?”
“Fourteen.”
“From what state?”
“Maryland.”
There was a pause, and Finny wondered what the questioner had made of her answers. Then Finny heard a creak, and a door to her left and a little in front of her—which she hadn’t seen—opened. The door was down a couple of steps from where Finny stood, and now she heard someone coming up toward her, a determined footstep on each stair. She could make out some features of the figure that approached her: it was short and squat, with short hair, and it moved steadily and confidently. By the time the figure was close to Finny, illuminated by the green light of one of the exit signs, Finny was pretty sure it was a woman.
“Poplan,” the woman said in a rough voice.
Realizing this was probably the woman’s name, Finny said, “Finny,” once again, and held out her hand to shake, the way she’d been taught.
“Oh no,” Poplan said, “certainly not.”
They both looked down at Finny’s extended hand, which Finny soon dropped to her side again. It was cold in the building, and Finny crossed her arms in front of her.
“I hope you don’t think I just go around shaking unwashed hands willy-nilly.”
“I don’t know how you shake them,” Finny said.
“Really, common colds are among the most transmittable germs there are. You have to be vigilant,” Poplan said. “I refuse to fall victim to a cold that could have been prevented by simple hygiene.”
“Sorry, Miss Poplan,” Finny said again.
“What?”
“I said I was sorry, Miss Poplan. I won’t make the mistake again.”
“No, I mean what you called me. Miss Poplan. Don’t ever do that.”
Finny thought she had made the mistake of calling her miss when she was really a doctor—a mistake Finny had made with her parents’ friends more than once. “I’m sorry, Dr. Poplan,” Finny tried.
“No, no, no,” Poplan said. “Just Poplan. Nothing else. No miss or missus or lady. Just Poplan. That’s all I’m ever called.”
“Are you my teacher?” Finny said.
Here Poplan laughed. She had a wheezy laugh, like someone who’d smoked for many years. She laughed a little longer than Finny expected someone could laugh about that question.
Then Poplan said, “No.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’m your dorm matron. Which means you’re going to live with me.”
Finny imagined this woman’s home like an extension of the dungeonlike space in which they now stood. “Do I get one phone call first?” Finny said.
Poplan didn’t register the joke. Instead, she walked very directly toward the wall to Finny’s left and snapped on a light switch. Two overhead lights flickered, then came awake, though the rest of the building remained in shadows. Finny could now see that Poplan had an ovular head, like an egg, and a very tall and thin nose, giving her a birdish look. Her hair, which was so many shades of gray that it looked like a painter had worked on it, wasn’t combed or finessed into any detectable style. It sat like a thatched roof on her head.
“We keep the lights off and the heat low during the breaks,” Poplan explained. “Saves energy.” Then she turned ninety degrees, with the definite direction of a soldier during a march, and said, “I’ll show you to your room.”
She picked up one of Finny’s bags and started walking into the dark hallway. Finny followed her, holding the other bag against her hip, struggling to keep up. “You know, they had a man to pick you up at the airport,” Poplan said as they walked.
“I know. I�
�m sorry,” Finny said again. “I looked for him, but he wasn’t there when my plane got in. We were very late. I took a cab.”
“I think he was in the bathroom when you landed. He came back and said you weren’t there. He thought you’d missed your flight.” Then Poplan laughed her long, wheezy laugh. “Scared the dickens out of him.”
They had to walk outside for a minute to get to the dorm, and the sudden cold gripped Finny. Poplan was only wearing a sweater, no jacket, but she didn’t seem to mind. She kept on her unshakeable path.
Fewer than a third of the students were boarders, Poplan told Finny, and it was a very small school to begin with, only fifty students in a class. The school went from eighth through twelfth grade, which meant that only about eighty girls were boarders. Finny would start in the second semester of the eighth-grade class—held back a year because the headmaster believed there was no substitute for a Thorndon education. Most of the eighth-grade girls were still getting their bearings anyway, Poplan said, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to slip in. The dorm Finny would sleep in, Pearlman, housed both eighth and ninth graders.
The dorm was much less striking than the school. It was a big brick house with about twenty rooms, most of them small and overheated, with gray-brown carpeting to hide stains. Poplan lived in a room on the ground floor, as did a few of the teachers. Finny’s room had two beds in it. There was a small window between the beds, and a desk and closet on each side.
“Your roommate is Judith,” Poplan said. “She’ll be back tomorrow. With all the other girls. They took you a day early so you could settle in.”
Then Poplan left Finny to herself. Finny spent the afternoon unpacking. She composed a letter to Earl about her new surroundings. I miss you already, she wrote. The school is very pretty but it’s lonely here without any people in it. And without you of course. But there’s a funny little woman who lives in the dorm and calls herself Poplan. I don’t know if it’s a first or a last name. (Who would name their child Poplan?) I’ll write you very soon, Earl. Love, Finny.
She folded the note and put it in an envelope she’d brought, but didn’t write Earl’s address on it because she was afraid someone would find it and ask about him.
She was curious about her new roommate, so she peeked into Judith’s closet. There was nothing surprising here—the usual sweaters and skirts and a couple of conservative dresses, all pastel blues and pinks. The only intriguing thing was a tube of black lipstick the girl kept on the top shelf of the dresser that was inside the closet. Finny opened the drawers of the dresser, and here she saw some interesting clothing. It was all black, even the stockings and underwear. The shirts had frills and lacy surfaces, and some of the pants were torn in ways that looked deliberate. It was as if two people shared this closet, one conservative, the other bold and exciting. Finny tried to imagine the girl who could wear both sets of clothing, and the only picture that came to mind was of Orthrus, the two-headed dog she’d learned about in Greek mythology. Oh, everything’s good, Mom, but my roommate’s an Orthrus.
She picked up the black lipstick to examine it more closely, and just as she did this, there was a knock on the door. Finny stuffed the lipstick into her pocket, not knowing what else to do, and then opened the door. Poplan was standing there, now wearing a shiny suit that looked like it was made of silk. It had some vines and flowers printed on it, and the kind of buttons you secure through loops of fabric.
“I always dress for dinner,” Poplan said.
“I do, too,” Finny said, and started off into the hall.
But before Finny got out the door, Poplan made a sound. Uh. A little catch in her throat. Finny stopped.
“Hands,” Poplan said, and nodded at Finny’s hands. “Don’t think that just because we’ve hit it off I’m going to fall victim to your germs.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“In life, you have to be vigilant,” Poplan said.
That night they ate alone in the dining hall. It was a cavernous room, with brown tile floors, stone walls, and pillars. Again, Finny had the feeling that she’d entered a medieval dungeon. Their forks clattered against their plates in the echoey space. There had been meals left for them—cold sandwiches and pasta salad and fruit salad and brownies. Poplan ate the way she walked, with focus and determination. She hardly spoke during the whole meal, except once to tell Finny it was nice having company.
Finny assumed that after dinner they would go their separate ways, but Poplan proposed a game.
“Do you know Jenga?” Poplan asked.
When Finny told her she’d heard of it but never played, Poplan challenged her to a match.
Before beginning, they each washed their hands twice, under Poplan’s orders. It turned out that Jenga was Poplan’s favorite game, and she played it with a competitiveness and relish that Finny had never witnessed before in an adult. The game consisted of poking little wooden blocks out of a tower and then placing them back on top of the structure. The first to knock over the building lost. When it was Poplan’s turn, she winked and lined up her index finger at a block the way a marksman might aim at a bull’s-eye. She then dislodged the block with a series of deft little pokes, always keeping a finger ready on the other side, to poke the block back in the other direction should the tower begin to sway. Finally, when the block came free and Poplan had placed it on top of the tower, she let out a long, tortured breath, as if she’d just dismantled a bomb.
They played on the floor in Poplan’s room, which was decorated in a surprisingly feminine way. The bed was covered in a pink duvet, and there were china animals on the shelves and the desk, the types of items young girls might buy at the mall as presents for their mothers. Finny kept getting distracted by the animals’ faces, a collie’s sad eyes, a parrot’s rainbow beak, the arc of an elephant’s trunk, and in truth, they freaked Finny out. It was like being watched by a band of loony cartoon characters. She knocked over the tower.
“Aha!” Poplan screamed, and shook her fist victoriously.
“Damn,” Finny said.
“Don’t be discouraged,” Poplan said. “No one has ever beaten me in Jenga.”
“I think I need to go to sleep.”
“All right,” Poplan said, and she seemed a little disappointed. “But there’s one thing.”
“What is it?”
“I hate to do this on your first night. I’m very sorry, but I’ve had orders, and one must obey one’s superiors.” She looked down solemnly, but with obvious determination to complete the task she’d been given.
“What are you talking about?” Finny asked.
“Oh, my life, my life,” Poplan said, shaking her head, and then got up and went to her closet. She opened the door and, after digging around a moment, brought out a purple T-shirt with green lettering on it that Finny thought was the gaudiest thing she’d ever seen.
“Like I said,” Poplan continued, “I’m very sorry. But they said you have a tendency to sneak around.” She handed Finny the shirt.
“After talking to your father last week, Mrs. Barksdale—the principal—she thought it might be a good idea to give you something bright to wear.” And then Poplan added, in a softer voice that seemed to betray the first hint of reluctance in her, “Every night after eight.”
Finny looked down at the shirt. On the front, in letters the color of pea soup, it said: Thorndon School. And on the back, in a message that must have been botched by the printer, it read: Shorty Finn.
Chapter 6
Finny’s Incredible New Roommate
The girls began arriving the next afternoon. Finny was in her room with the door closed, and she heard them in the halls, banging doors and suitcases, chatting, making familiar comments to each other: “Oh, it was fine, but Brian turned out to be a jerk anyway.” “Do you have any more, because I’m all out?” “Kelly says she’s got big boobs but her ass is fat.” Finny listened to all of it, feeling tired at the prospect of making her appearance, all the smiles and handshakes. She hated
the idea of drawing all those hungry eyes to her, the scrutiny she was sure to receive. And then later, when she had to wear that stupid shirt: it would be humiliating.
But just as she thought of getting off the bed and going out into the hallway, the door of her room swung open.
A girl with a big black duffel came in and threw the bag down on the floor. “Oh, hey,” the girl said, shutting the door behind her. “You must be my roommate.”
“Finny,” Finny said.
“That’s an interesting name,” the girl said. “Is it Irish?”
“No,” Finny said, and couldn’t gather her thoughts to say anything more. The reason she was so scattered was that the girl who stood before her was beautiful. She wasn’t just cute or pretty, the way some of Finny’s classmates at home were. She had long blond hair that she kept back in a ponytail, tied up with a simple black band rather than the colorful, poofy ornaments other girls wore. She was tall, maybe four or five inches taller than Finny, and she had a bright, open expression, large eyes, a slightly wide jaw that somehow complimented her delicate nose and defined cheekbones, her plucky little chin. And she had breasts, full ones. She was actually more like a grown woman than a girl, and Finny could easily have imagined her on the arm of some handsome man in a suit.
“Oh,” the girl said now about Finny’s name. “Well, I like it anyway. I’m Judith.”
The instant Judith said her name, Finny remembered the lipstick she’d stashed in her pants pocket the day before. She felt a hot gulp of fear slide down her throat.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Finny said. And then: “I took your lipstick.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say, and she figured it would be better to get it out of the way early that she was a thief.
But Judith just laughed and flopped down on her bed across from Finny. “You mean the black one? Actually, I’m glad you took it. I meant to put it in my dresser before I left, but I forgot. They would have seen it.”
“Who?”
“Old Yeller. That’s what we call the principal, Mrs. Barksdale.”
Finny Page 5