“Sit down, please.”
Bleaker looked different. It wasn’t a total change but it was there. A few strands of hair had escaped her tightly wound bun. A groove had formed between her eyebrows. She held the corner of her lower lip between her teeth and clasped her hands with fingers tightly intertwined, moving them in a circular pattern back and forth as if trying to crush some small particle between her palms. It was an odd gesture that you couldn’t help but notice. I wondered if she thought of me as that small particle.
She stood to the side of her desk, which had a number of handwritten notes on it, unlike the last time I’d been summoned to her office, when her desk had been completely barren. Also, she said please this time. I sat in the same chair and waited for the interrogation to begin, imagining as I sat there what a defendant must feel like when the jury comes back to take their seats with a verdict in hand. Just a little slip of paper. Folded, inscrutable, the future foretold in a scrap no bigger than a loose-leaf page from a notebook. Innocuous and plain. Not a scroll, unfolded to the sound of trumpets blaring, with fanfare and pomp. So I waited. Tried to maintain a calm exterior. Ready to lie my teeth out if I had to.
“Miss Greenwood,” she began, calmly enough. “I . . . uh . . . I . . . well that is, I understand you’ve . . .”
She stopped and turned toward the window. The day had begun with gray clouds but now they were breaking up and patches of blue gave the afternoon a bright light, which often happens in the late fall, for brief hours during the shorter days. It was the kind of sky that makes you want to walk in the woods, leaves crunching underfoot, air crisp and clean. I remembered my aunt Judith saying when there was enough blue in a cloudy sky to cut out a pair of britches, it meant the day would turn clear and storms would be over.
“Miss Greenwood,” Bleaker began again. “Something has come up.”
There it was. She was going to grill me now. She just didn’t know how to open the subject. I sat mute, staring at her back and the changing sky beyond the window.
“Something of a serious nature.”
Now it seemed she was stalling for some reason. Before, she had started gunning for me right at the outset and never let up. What was all the hemming and hawing about now?
“Something, well, I would characterize it as quite serious.”
She stopped and turned to me. Were her eyes wet? I thought I must be mistaken but my eyesight was good and I could swear I saw glistening. She walked to her desk and pulled out a drawer, lifted a tissue, blew her nose slightly, and then dabbed at her eyes.
I was right. Bleaker crying. What the hell?
“I hope it is not serious. I hope it is a tempest in a teapot, so to speak. However I must ask you . . .”
She stopped again. And her hands started that crazy grinding with her fingers laced together. She sat down in her chair and her hands disappeared behind the desk, presumably onto her lap. She sniffed once and looked down at the papers on her desk.
“The deans had a meeting this morning,” she tried another tack. “With Mr. Williamson.”
A meeting with the headmaster and all the deans? Wow, they really were upset about that key.
“We have searched the school thoroughly. Every inch of it. And we have made inquiries of some other students. And we have come up empty handed at this point.”
If I had been anywhere else, I would have cracked up laughing. As if they actually expected to find a key somewhere on the campus, like some prep school Captain Queeg, endlessly searching for a mythical key. It was ludicrous but not really surprising.
“In the process of searching and questioning, your name came up and I have been asked by Mr. Williamson to make note of anything you may know.”
She still hadn’t asked me anything outright so I kept quiet. There was no reason to proffer any information. Let her sweat.
“As I stated, this is a very serious matter. So I’m asking if you know anything, that you please tell me now before something happens.”
Still, I sat mute.
“Does your silence mean you do not know anything?”
“That’s right,” I said as calmly and quietly as I could, although all I wanted to do was bust her one and then run.
“Because if anything happens to her, and you knew where she was, you would be as responsible as anyone.”
That sounded more like the Bleaker I knew. But wait a second.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. And I didn’t sound so calm this time.
“Why Moll’s disappearance, of course.” Her hands came back to her desk and she stacked some of the pieces of paper. This definitely was not the old Bleaker who would have shot back something like: “What else do you know?” so she could nail me with it.
“We’re all very worried. I understand from Eleanor DeLuca that you were in their room looking for Moll this morning. Moll wasn’t at breakfast and she missed all her morning classes. She never went to the infirmary. She seems to have evaporated. If we can’t find her . . .”
There was a curt rap on the door and it swung open. There stood Mr. Williamson.
It was my first encounter with him since I’d arrived at Foxhall.
“We understand,” he started, “that you and Moll were friends.”
At first I didn’t register this as a question. But he followed up with this.
“And that she did not have many friends yet, being new this year, while you seem to have been accepted well and are liked by many of the students. We understand that coming into a school like Foxhall can be quite difficult in the sophomore year. I expect that you and Moll being the only two new sophomores created a bond between you.”
As he said this, he raised his eyebrows expectantly and leaned back against Bleaker’s desk, his arms folded across his chest. He seemed to be holding himself back. It wasn’t a stance that made me feel like opening my heart to him so I kept my mouth shut. But it was beginning to feel less like an interrogation and more like a fishing expedition where they thought I’d swallowed the fish. But what were they looking for from me? I certainly had no idea where to find Moll.
“If Moll shared anything with you that might help us locate her—”Okay, here it comes, I thought. They think I know where she’s hiding out—fat chance—“you would be doing her a great favor. We don’t want any of our students in jeopardy.”
It finally dawned on me. They were scared. I slipped a glance at Bleaker. Her expression read pain and fear. This was a situation I certainly had never expected to be plugged into, let alone to be the one holding the power cord.
“I wish I could help but I have no idea where she is. I’m worried about her, too.” When I said the last part I looked directly at Bleaker. And I had to admit I felt a surge of pleasure to see her squirm, which she did, visibly shrinking back, her brow knit into a contorted version of its implacable norm.
THIRTY-TWO
Sixteen Days Left
ONCE AGAIN IT SEEMED THE ONLY PLACE I WANTED TO GO was Daria’s room. I didn’t know if she had a free period but I headed up to her hall anyway just in case. Williamson and Bleaker had kept me for half my English class so there was no reason to rush over to Bedford. When I got to Daria’s door, it was open. She and Brady and Jan were all in there, as if they’d been waiting for me again.
“So?” Brady shut the door and I sat down on Daria’s bed.
“We saw you go down to Bleaker’s office. What happened?” Jan asked. “What do they know? Did you tell them anything?”
“It wasn’t about the key,” I said. “It was about Moll. They’re scared to death because they can’t find her. Williamson came in, too.”
“He never gets involved in disciplinary stuff,” Jan said. “That’s creepy.”
“Did they grill you?” Daria asked.
“Not really. I mean they asked if I knew anything. They knew I went looking for her in the infirmary and that I went to her room and talked to Eleanor. They’re totally blindsided. Bleaker was crying.”
; “What?”
They all yelled at once and it was a moment to savor, a kind of triumph I had not expected, given the circumstances, but I guess at prep school, when you were thoroughly isolated from the real world, whatever that was, you took your notoriety wherever you could get it. So I must admit I was pretty pleased with myself at that moment.
“Tell us everything.” Daria moved in closer to me in a way that made me think I had shifted from a subordinate position to equal footing. Strange how pressure in one area pushed at another and I thought briefly that it must be some kind of law of physics but I had no idea which one.
During classes that afternoon, I had trouble concentrating, which was dangerous because we only had the next sixteen days to study, hand in papers, and take tests before the Christmas break. For seniors there was an enormous amount riding on these sixteen days because their college applications were due to mail in January. For the rest of us, it was crunch time, too. Sometimes it was hard to toe the line and concentrate on classes with all the social stuff going on. This was one of those times.
My thoughts kept wandering back to Mr. Williamson. During my classes and afterwards, I reconsidered that scene, and it began to dawn on me that Moll might really be in trouble. During dive practice, Daria sat next to me while we waited for our turns.
“So, I saw Tim before he went to practice.” Tim was a varsity basketball player and pretty good. Although, at six foot three, he was not nearly tall enough to be a contender beyond Foxhall. “They hauled him, Wes, Stocky, and a few others in for guidance. Ha. Guidance.”
“Did anyone blab?”
“No one has talked. I mean why would they? But I did find out what happened. See one of the little men had to replace a mattress in the boys’ dorm so he went to get one. Someone left a pair of boxers in there. And . . .” she looked around to make sure no one could hear us, “a condom wrapper. I mean, good God, who would be so stupid?”
“Maybe they heard someone and had to get out fast.”
“Maybe, but still, now it puts everyone in trouble. I bet it was Stocky. So they’ve changed the lock to a deadbolt and now no one will be able to get in there.”
“I bet you could still get in through one of the windows.” It was true. Since the mattress room was more than half underground, there were two window wells that you could climb down into without any trouble since they were only about three feet below the ground. There were shrubs in front of them and the windows opened in. Sometimes if a girl had the key, she would go to the mattress room first then open a window to let a boy in. But what about the girls? It would be harder for them to get into the mattress room from the outside through the window. “I doubt they know that the windows don’t lock.”
“Oh, you’re right. I’ll have to get someone to check that out.”
Naturally Daria was not going to check it out herself. She’d rope someone else into doing it. Probably Stocky.
“I’ll bet no one ever cleans those windows or even looks at them. The little men trim the shrubs but why would they get down into the window wells?”
Miss Alderton motioned to me so I stepped off the bleacher and went for my turn on the board. Surprisingly, even though my mind was a mile away, my dives went well and Miss Alderton was happy.
“You’re going to be fine at the meet this weekend,” she patted me on the back as I came out of the pool. “Nice work. Good practice today.” And then she said something that made me really start to worry. “I know you’ve spoken to Miss Bleaker and Mr. Williamson.” So it is all over the faculty by now. “And I just wanted to add how worried we all are. Especially Miss Bleaker. I understand there was some sort of exchange between Moll and her at the Monday night dance. It’s very unfortunate. But if you know anything at all—anything—you really must share it with someone. You won’t be in any trouble, I can assure you.”
I grabbed my towel and dried my face and hands then looked up at her.
“Honestly, I didn’t see Miss Bleaker talking to Moll at the dance. But I heard about it later and went to Moll’s room to talk to her. I figured she’d be, like, upset. I mean anyone would be, like, you know.”
“I know.”
She looked sympathetic, so I went on.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say anything, but this is really Miss Bleaker’s fault. I mean Moll is so sensitive and shy. She came to the dance because I encouraged her to. And she has a little crush on Donald Wingart and Miss Bleaker dressed her down right in front of him. I mean it must have been so humiliating for poor Moll. So I, like, went to her room and spoke to Eleanor DeLuca but she hadn’t seen Moll and didn’t know anything. She told me it’s like living with a phantom. Moll is just very isolated.”
She patted my shoulder again. “It’s certainly not your fault. Of course we don’t know yet what to think. Mr. Williamson has called Moll’s mother. Apparently Moll hasn’t called home. I can’t imagine where she could be.”
Not being able to even imagine where someone could be left your mind free to wander into dangerous and scary territory and that was what mine was beginning to do.
“Well, we have to find her soon. With Christmas break coming in less than three weeks, we don’t have much time left.”
“What happens if no one can find her?”
“I don’t know,” she said and then added, “but if it were up to me, I’d call the police.”
THIRTY-THREE
The City Never Sleeps
THE KEY CRISIS FADED, AND BY THURSDAY WE HADN’T HEARD any more about it. After all, it was only when they caught you in the act that you could be punished and, as long as everyone kept their cool and played dumb, no one could do the time for an unsolved crime. This late in the fall, almost winter now, the nights were too cold to try accessing the mattress room from outside through a window, and with Christmas break approaching we were all focused on tests and papers and just getting through the semester. A kind of bunker mentality set in as the days grew shorter and darkness arrived before the dinner bell. The sky was often gray now, and we wore jackets or coats going between classes.
Our last dive meet was coming up on Saturday, only eleven days before break. My skin was raw from the chlorine and hair dryer and getting in and out of the water, and I was looking forward to getting past Saturday. Although for me, Christmas break was another question mark about where my mother would be and where I would have to spend those two weeks. My father had called a few times, given me updates, but they didn’t remove the uncertainty and he sounded sad and lonely. He tried to be upbeat but I could tell he was suffering. Again, no space for me, no shoulder for my tears, no safe haven.
On Thursday night, Wes and I left study hall carrying our load of books and walked slowly along the path that led to all the dorms.
“Hey,” he said, twining my fingers in his, “since your father doesn’t know what’s happening with your mother by the time we leave for break, how about coming out to California with me?”
I stopped walking and turned to face him.
“Are you serious?”
“Of course. I asked my mom about it and she talked to my dad and they both said it would be wonderful.”
“Wonderful? They used that word?”
“Yes. Exactly what they said. Wonderful. My mom always does a big Christmas thing with all the relatives and some friends. I mean I know it’s California and everything, but we do celebrate the same holidays.” He was smiling, teasing me.
“I don’t know.” I hesitated because I was thinking of my father being alone at Christmas, not that the holiday meant anything particular to him but still . . .
“There would be other people staying at the house. We have a huge house, you know. My mom likes to have lots of people around for holidays. She’s really great. You’d like her.”
“Would she like me is the question?”
“How could anybody not like you?”
He put his arm around me and we started walking again. This was a dangerous thing to do. Some dean might
see us and haul me before a committee for guidance about displays of affection. But I didn’t care. When we got closer to Fox building, he took his arm away and whispered, “Gotta be careful. In just thirteen days you’ll be off demerit.”
“I know. Thanks for meeting me after all the study halls.”
“Hey, it’s worked out okay. My grades are going to be fine.”
“You still hoping for Stanford?”
“Yeah.”
“You still worried about the draft?”
“Yeah.”
“Next time my father calls I’ll ask him if it’s okay to go to California with you.”
“I wish I could kiss you.”
“When we get to California . . .”
I got to my hall just as the phone started to ring. At one end of each hall in Fox there was an ancient black phone on a little table. These phones could only receive calls and they all came through Mrs. W.’s switchboard. Each one had a short cord so you never had any privacy, which is why there was so much demand for the pay phone in the public hall downstairs. Whoever had the room nearest the phone table usually ran out to catch it because Mrs. W. would only let it ring five times before hanging up. She had other calls to route through and no patience for halls that would let the phone ring and ring endlessly.
“Hey, Greenwood, it’s for you,” Jenny Biddle called. Jenny’s room was closest to the phone and she was always annoyed to have to answer it. At our weekly hall meetings she complained that just because she’d been assigned that room didn’t make her a telephone runner and other people should have to answer it. She suggested a rotation but that never worked and Jenny got more calls than anyone else so she was trapped into answering it most of the time.
The Other New Girl Page 19