An Education in Ruin

by Alexis Bass

  “You can’t count on anyone to believe in you except you,” she says. “And you is all you need.”

  Jasper gives another sigh for the ages.

  When Rob James is done with her speech, she gets a standing ovation. She announces, “Everyone will be getting an early copy of my book, The Inventor Inside You, out next week,” and gets even more cheers.

  The lobby and the front patio outside the auditorium have been transformed for another social hour. The entire area is decorated in gold and white—white linens over the cocktail tables, gold vases with white roses as centerpieces, white and gold balloons hanging off the railings. We’re served sparkling cider in champagne saucers and sugar cookies and cupcakes with white frosting and gold sprinkles.

  We’re all excited about being gifted her book and even more excited when we’re told she’ll be mingling at the social hour and will be happy to sign our copies. Jasper positions us at the table in the lobby that’s farthest away from everyone, practically around the corner from the event. No one argues about being this far off from the action, so to speak, but when we see Rob James has started making the rounds, no one wants to risk missing the chance to get her autograph, and all of us abandon Jasper and our cider and cookies at the no-man’s-land table to approach her.

  It’s true, she does smell like roses. She uses a gold Sharpie to write You are limitless into our books as she signs her name with a loopy signature. Rob James takes the time to make sure she spells our names right and looks directly into our eyes when we tell her we liked her speech. Up close, I can see how much foundation she has on and the few flakes from her mascara that have fallen onto her cheeks. Evidence of her humanness. It makes me like her even more.

  There’s a buzzing in the air reflective of how thrilled everyone is that she’s here. They’re inspired, too. I know I am. Even if I don’t have any big ideas like she does—yet. Her speech was about determination and believing in yourself and working hard. I get the hype. Her brilliant invention aside, I understand why so many people were ready to put money behind her, backing what she’s doing now with the Roba-Fix and all the things she’s sure to accomplish in the future. I see exactly what made my dad choose her as a good risk, what made him refer to Robames as a “sound decision,” even when it was in its earliest stages.

  As the evening winds down, Anastasia, Ariel, Theo, Stewart, Daiki, and I make our way back to our corner table where we left Jasper and our food. Jasper’s not at the table. He’s a few feet away, near the curve in the auditorium wall, talking reluctantly with Mr. Reis. Rob James approaches them from the opposite side, as though she must’ve stepped out for a moment and returned using a less public door. Mrs. Juniper also walks over to them; she greets Rob James, then pulls Mr. Reis to the side to tell him something. For those few seconds, it’s only Rob James and Jasper. She leans forward. She speaks quickly. Her eyes are wide and alive. He nods as she talks, hardly looking at her at first. But soon his eyes are locked on hers. She places a hand on his shoulder, and he jerks away from her in such a sudden movement that her bodyguard takes a few steps toward them. Mr. Reis and Mrs. Juniper are in a tizzy, for having not witnessed what’s happened but being completely aware that something has. Jasper walks away, right toward us, his back to the scene as if that will make him invisible and he’ll get out of any consequences that might come down on someone for being so rude and abrasive toward a guest speaker.

  “What the hell?” Theo says to him, grabbing him by the arm and steering him in closer to us, like our group can shield him, too. “You need to be careful,” Theo tells him quietly.

  Jasper is shaking his head when Mr. Reis approaches. “Jasper, can I see you for a moment?”

  We watch as Mr. Reis steers Jasper away and chastises him. Rob James steps toward them shaking her head, smiling that smile of hers. Soon enough, they are all smiling; Jasper’s smile is very clearly coerced.

  Theo breathes out in relief. Stewart and Daiki exchange a look. Jasper is dismissed and returns to us with his head down, his hands in his pockets.

  “That’s the kind of asinine behavior that could get you expelled,” Theo says.

  Jasper shakes his head. “I won’t be kicked out of Rutherford.”

  The music cuts out, and Mrs. Juniper announces that it’s time for us to return to our dorms.

  On our way back, when we reach the hill, I take Jasper’s arm. He wasn’t expecting it, but he doesn’t pull away; he shifts so that I can get a better grip. Stewart notices us and this time manages to give Anastasia his arm before Theo. Daiki is at it again being the hero, a new girl on his arm for support up the hill. Ariel jumps ungracefully on Theo’s back, and he carries her through the crowd for a few seconds, as long as he can manage before one of the facility tells them to knock it off. I slow my pace, and Jasper matches it. Soon enough the others are ahead of us.

  “What happened back there? With you and Rob James?” I keep my voice low.

  Jasper is quiet for so long I don’t think he’s going to answer. For a second, I wonder if it was too bold for me to ask about that and if, instead of letting me discover more about him, it’ll push him even further away from me.

  “Anastasia didn’t tell you?” he says, his voice lighter than expected.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Theo might be the eyes and the ears of Rutherford, but Anastasia is the mouth.”

  He looks over my expression like he’s trying to see if I’m being honest about not knowing. His skepticism is intriguing. But then it clicks in my mind, all at once.

  “It’s Rob, isn’t it?” I blurt out. The way she touched him as she approached him, the way her lips moved so fast like she had a lot to say, the way her eyes got big and round; the way he was comfortable enough to jerk away from her. “She’s the girl you had your overview with.”

  “So Anastasia did tell you.”

  “Just about the hookup during your overview, not about who it was with. Things didn’t seem … pleasant between the two of you.” They seemed complicated. “It seems like you hate her.”

  “Would you believe it’s nothing but a good old-fashioned problem with authority?”

  “Sure.” But I shake my head. This makes him smile a little. “It didn’t end well?” Or did you react like that because you still like her? Rosie never told me what to do if the boy in question was unwilling and unable to fall in love with you because he was already in love with someone else.

  He takes his time. “Not really.”

  I have a lot of questions. But I can feel him closing off, sealing himself up. He rubs his eyes like the evening has exhausted him.

  Rob James is the exact kind of person I’d think would be kryptonite to Jasper.

  “I won’t say anything,” I tell him. Still trying to keep some semblance of trust between us.

  “Thanks,” he says. I’m not sure he believes me.

  This is the first true secret I’ve learned at Rutherford. Something real and hidden about Jasper Mahoney. There’s a bit of a scandal here. But the reveal of a young founder and CEO who hired her intern because she’d been secretly hooking up with him probably wouldn’t result in any repercussions for Jasper. Or any shame. He might even be lauded a hero, while she would be seen as unfair. And these are only rumors, without proof. Would Mrs. Mahoney care about protecting this? I don’t think so. It’s not enough. It’s not like Theo’s secret, that’s ripe for unraveling. Something that’s already been covered up.

  When I’ve got a grip on both of them—on Theo’s past, which can be used as a threat, and on Jasper’s heart, an asset when I have the power to break it—they will be vulnerable for different reasons.

  And there’ll be only one person who can save them.

  Ten

  “I know about Jasper and Rob James,” I announce to Anastasia and Ariel a few days later as we’re making our way back to the girls’ dormitory, when we’re far enough removed from others that the two of them might speak more freely about this topic.
/>   “He told you?” Anastasia is floored.

  “I figured it out. He made it pretty obvious with the way he was acting toward her after her speech. So I asked him, and he confirmed.”

  The reason I’m bringing this up now with them, instead of right after he confessed after the event, is because after much contemplation, I’ve decided that the best way to get information from Anastasia is to be direct, and I have a few pressing, unanswered questions about Rob and Jasper.

  “Crazy, right? But Theo will kill you if you say anything. It’s not a good look for Rob. Or for Jasper—not even with those curls and that bone structure,” Anastasia says. “It’s like nepotism or … what’s the word?”

  “Favoritism,” says Ariel.

  “Whatever it’s called, it’s got to be completely illegal,” Anastasia says. “Everyone thinks he got the internship for being smart and winning that quiz competition.” Ariel opens her mouth like she’s going to correct quiz competition and tell her it’s actually called a decathlon, then decides it’s not worth the energy. “But I think it’s really because they wanted to be together, and there was no other excuse for him to spend the summer in Connecticut than if he had a job at Robames headquarters.”

  “Were they, like, a couple?”

  “They were off and on, never public about it. Maybe it was just about hooking up, maybe it was more,” Anastasia says. “If Theo knew, he wasn’t very forthcoming about it. He’s naturally protective of Jasper. It’s so sweet and so annoying.”

  “Does Stewart ever talk about it?” I ask.

  We haven’t started eating dinner with Stewart like I’d hoped we’d start doing. But I caught Anastasia texting with him after field hockey, and after class today, we ran into him and Jasper in the halls and talked to them for at least two seconds before the bell rang. It’s slow progress, but I guess it’s still progress.

  “I don’t talk to Stewart about it! Seriously, Collins, it’s supposed to be a secret. Now that you know, you can’t go around telling people.”

  “Do you think he still likes her? Why was he so rude to her at the event?”

  “Oh, he hates her now, for sure,” Anastasia says. “According to Theo, Jasper even came home early from the internship. Whatever happened while he was there was the final knife in whatever they had going on for the past couple of years.” She smiles and pats my shoulder. “Your crush on Jasper is so cute. I dig it. Even if I don’t understand why you’d want to bother with boring, intense Jasper.”

  “Thanks.” Seems like the appropriate response. I also think she’s placating me. Like when Theo told me Jasper hated people and it sounded like a warning. My crush is cute because they don’t think I have a chance with him. They don’t think Jasper would want me when his type is superhuman Rob James.

  The thing they don’t know about me is this: I like proving people wrong.

  There’s no denying that Rosie’s tricks work, and Jasper is not going to be the exception. I’d wanted her techniques to work on Lucius Castle. I’d wanted to make him fall in love with me. He was in my grade at St. Paul’s, and no matter how much I complimented his car or told him I found the songs his band played at a coffee shop downtown every Wednesday night to be brilliant—and even recognized that the song called “Little Rainy Day” was about the afternoon he forgot to put the top on his convertible and it rained he didn’t feel the same way I did. Not even a little bit. He took Carly Gomez to prom, and I got the I like you so much as a friend spiel.

  Instead, my friend Pauly Mason fell in love with me. I mean, he never used the L word, and he was right not to since his feelings for me were entirely unrequited. I’d known Pauly since we were five and Mimi sold her goats’ milk to his mother, who owned an organic restaurant. Pauly was older by a year and good-looking, I guess. He was responsible and funny and kind. Pauly, like so many of us, felt lost. Lost for Pauly meant not knowing if he should live with his mom or his dad when he was old enough to have a say in his own custody and, most recently, being unsure if he wanted to leave the state for college and go to Ohio, where he’d received a scholarship, or stay close to be near his much younger half sisters. I could see it plain as day how Pauly would land on his feet whatever he decided. If he left, he wouldn’t disappear from his sisters’ lives; he’d call and video chat, and he could send birthday presents. If he stayed, he’d make the most of wherever he went. Either way, he was going to be great, and never lonely. He was easy to talk to and fun to be around, and he’d make friends fast.

  Right after he graduated, he tried to kiss me. He was polite about it, taking a moment to place a hand on my shoulder, leaning in slowly, saying, “Collins, this is why I like you.” In that instance, he was referring to some joke I’d made about the drones that swarmed the stadium to take panoramic views of his commencement ceremony. But I knew what had really happened. It was not the joke or my sparkling personality or the way I looked. He’d fallen in love with how I saw him. As someone thoughtful and good, who would be happy and successful and fulfilled no matter what future he chose. It was exactly like Rosie had said. I quieted his worst fears about himself because I believed in him. I looked at him in that moment before he went in for a kiss, his soft expression, the way he leaned toward me, and knew I could’ve taken anything from him that I wanted. Twenty dollars or a date to prom or the next five years.

  Eleven

  “Collins, follow my lead,” Theo says to me in a low voice one evening in the upperclassman common room where I’d been sitting next to Anastasia and Ariel, waiting to see what kind of excuse Stewart would come up with to migrate over to Anastasia, something he does often. Waiting to see if Jasper would appear at all.

  “What—?”

  “You can ask questions later,” Ariel says.

  Anastasia gives me a large smile until Theo and Ariel glare at her and she purses her lips to cover it.

  “The correct response to anything I say from here on out is a simple nod,” Theo says.

  I give him what he wants, and instead of looking relieved, he sighs.

  “Follow me,” he says. “But don’t act like you’re following me.”

  I keep quiet the many, many questions I have about this; I nod.

  Theo gets up. I do the same. Theo rounds the front of the couch to leave, and I round the back. He crosses the rows of couches to exit out the side door, so I cut through the clusters of tables.

  Once we’re out in the dim hallway, Theo walks toward the bathrooms. I do the same. But before he reaches the restrooms, he makes a sharp turn. When I walk past, he’s unlocking the door and holding it open for me. It’s labeled Storage. As I enter the dark room, Theo turns on a dull light that fills the room with shadows, but it allows us to at least see a few feet in front of us. He walks past four tall shelves until we reach the far corner. From there, he pulls a cardboard box from the highest shelf.

  “Did you bring the earrings? Like Anastasia told you to?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Theo gestures for them impatiently as I reach into the pocket of my sweatshirt and pull out the two diamond studs my father bought me for my thirteenth birthday.

  “I thought she wanted to borrow them.”

  “Oh no,” he says. “She doesn’t want to borrow them. She wants to win them.”

  “Win them?” I hold them away from him. “Will you tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s better if you dive in headfirst. It’ll sound like a bad idea, but really, it’s not. You have to allow yourself to get addicted.”

  “Theo—what? Can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “That’s not how it’s usually done. You go in blindly or not at all.” He reaches into his own pocket and pulls out a gold watch. He tosses it in. “Trust me?”

  I peer into the box. There are a few other watches. A few impressive rings and pendant necklaces. A yellow bottle of prescription drugs and a Dior wallet. A pair of Gucci sunglasses. A roll of foreign cash. A bag of weed.

  “Fine.
” I set the velvet satchel containing my earrings into the box next to the sunglasses.

  Theo smiles. “You won’t be sorry. Or maybe you will be.”

  We hear the ticking of the door opening. A cascade of light comes into the room from the hallway.

  “Get down!” Theo whispers, and we huddle to the floor.

  The door shuts, and we listen as footsteps meander to the exact spot in the corner where Theo and I are hiding.

  “Damn it, Sebastian,” Theo says, standing up. I follow his lead and rise also. “This was our time slot.” He motions to both of us. “You weren’t supposed to leave yet.”

  “So I lost track of time.” He shrugs. His hands are in his pockets like he isn’t fazed at all. He looks me up and down in that way that I find insatiably flattering. “Hey, Collins Pruitt. You’re playing, too?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “We have to get out of here,” Theo says.

  “Jetting already?” Sebastian says.

  “Per his sparkling reputation, if anyone from faculty notices Sebastian is gone, they immediately suspect something is wrong and go on a hunt,” Theo explains to me, talking about Sebastian right in front of him.

  “At this point, I’m pretty good at sneaking around,” Sebastian says. “You don’t have to worry.”

  This reassurance only makes Theo panic more. “We have to go.”

  “If you insist,” Sebastian says. “Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave.” He looks at me as he says this. I don’t know if it’s the way the lighting in here cuts shadows across his jaw or if the smell of cleaning supplies is getting to me, but Sebastian is dreamy as ever. He’s flirting. With me. Even in this high-stress situation while Theo is glowering at him.

  Theo grabs my hand and spins me around.

  “Pull yourself together,” he mutters.

  We hear the door again. This time, it’s the clicking of the knob trying to turn against a locked door.

  “Shit,” Theo whispers.