by Alexis Bass
Does he suspect me? Would he have any reason to believe someone else in that circle wanted to expose Theo?
I try to look relaxed, flash them a grin, like it’s funny to me. But I don’t think I’m very convincing. The smiles they give me are full of pity. Except for Jasper, whose expression stays solemn with a hint of concern.
As we’re about to leave, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn to see Theo.
Oh no.
I grip the bottle tightly to stop myself from fidgeting. I remember to keep breathing. Nothing looks as guilty as someone holding their breath.
“Allow me,” he says.
“What?”
He nods to his hand, cupped to receive something. Low between us like he doesn’t want anyone else to see.
“Give me the drugs, Collins,” he says.
“But—?” I don’t understand why he’s taking the punishment from me.
“I’ll keep them in a safe place. So you don’t have to worry,” he says.
For a second, I think it has to be a trap. It’s a lot of power, letting him hide the pill bottle where he could easily set me up.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I can—I’ll keep them hidden.”
“Oh, just give them to him,” Anastasia says. She takes them out of my hand and passes them to Theo. “You’re already sort of losing it lately. One less thing to stress about. He’ll take care of them.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.”
Theo gives me a warm smile before he walks away.
“He does this for Jasper, too, whenever he loses,” Anastasia says, taking my arm as we start toward the girls’ dormitory.
I look back, before the boys disappear into the darkness of the narrowing tunnel. Jasper is looking back, too.
Eighteen
On Saturday, we’re up at the crack of dawn to take buses to play soccer and field hockey against a nearby boarding school. Many others study as we ride, but I feel myself getting carsick and have to stop even though these are three hours that I really don’t want to waste staring out the window.
At St. Paul’s, I was great on the field hockey team—not the best player, but a decent one. Here, lately, I’m barely passable for varsity. Sometimes they put second years in before me. Between this and my grades, it’s like my mind can’t do what I thought it could, and neither can my body. I lose the ball twice while I’m dribbling, three of my passes are intercepted, and the one shot I take misses. We win, no thanks to me, and cross the complex to watch the end of the boys’ soccer games. Sebastian owns this field for sure. Everything about how he plays is in contrast to the way Jasper plays. Sebastian looks like he’s having fun. Jasper is intense and concentrating. When time is almost out, Jasper is given a blue card and taken out of the game. Daiki signals to him to calm down, but even as he sits there, I can see him simmering. Anger and frustration building within him. Even when they win, his celebration isn’t sincere, like he’s thinking that even though they won, he still lost, because he didn’t play as well as he’d wanted to.
I still have no idea if he thinks I was the one who put the photo of Theo in the box, if he knows the truth behind it. But I have been avoiding him, just in case. It’s not hard to do. Without Anastasia seeking out Stewart’s company and with the game over with for the month, there’s not much reason for our paths to cross.
On the way back to Rutherford, the buses drop us off at a burger place to eat. Instead of going inside, I step to the side, let the others file out around me. I lean against the bus as they disappear into the restaurant. I’m exhausted from playing and overwhelmed thinking of all the calculus homework I still have to do. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on my feet against the ground, my back steady against the wall of the bus.
“Are you okay?”
I open my eyes and see Sebastian standing a few feet away. The rest of the soccer team trails into the burger joint. He looks a little banged up and sweaty, but in that very appealing sort of way.
“Yeah,” I say. “Had to catch my breath, I guess.”
“Are you coming?”
Through the windows, I can see the mob of Rutherford students filling the restaurant. I should go in and have a burger with all of them. I should celebrate our wins. But that’s what I’ve been doing since I got here. Taking the time to celebrate and socialize. Flirt. That’s how I’ve fallen behind. Right now I don’t have the luxury of trying to get closer to Jasper or getting the truth behind Theo’s NDA. Everything falls apart if I get kicked out of Rutherford.
“No,” I say. “I’m going to stay on the bus. I have a calculus test, and I’m way behind.”
He nods like he understands but still looks disappointed—which I really appreciate. “I guess I’ll leave you to it, then,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to be a distraction, Collins Pruitt.”
I smile as he walks away. I drag myself back onto the bus. Coach Steger brings me a burger, fries, and a drink and tells me she doesn’t mind if I stay in the bus to study but that I have to eat, and I thank her.
I work furiously, as fast as I can, before we leave, and I’ll have to put the books away to avoid getting sick. Maybe I’ll sleep. I’m sort of looking forward to it. But until then, I can feel the time passing too quickly, and me, moving through these equations at a snail’s pace.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a flicker of movement. I turn, thinking the whole team is on the way back, but it’s only someone on the bus parked parallel to ours. It’s Jasper—identifiable firstly by his long gait and curly hair, secondly by his face as he sits, tilts his head back, and stares at the ceiling before he sighs and gets out an economics book.
For a few minutes, I watch him. He seems relaxed. Maybe this is catching him at a good moment, when he’s calm like this, away from the crowd of people, dedicating himself to studying, which from what I can tell is his favorite hobby. I move to the row that lines up with the row he’s in and slide next to the window. In my notebook, I use a Sharpie to write out one of the equations that I know I did right in large dark letters. Underneath it, I write, I THINK I HAVE THE HANG OF IT NOW. I knock on the window and wait for him to look over at me. He’s at first irritated with the knocking, but when he sees me, he smiles. A good sign. I hold up the notebook and grin at him. He studies the equation and my message. Maybe he won’t get it—won’t even remember that he gave me an overview in calculus at the beginning of the year. But then he takes out his own notebook and starts scribbling something. I get excited waiting to see what he’s going to say next. Maybe this will show him that I’m similar to him in this regard—on the bus with my schoolwork instead of having a burger and celebrating. Maybe it will make him feel the slightest bit closer to me.
When he finishes, he holds up his notebook. It’s my equation except—different. Oh. He corrected it. So it wasn’t right after all. I write a new message to him and hold it up. He chuckles when he sees it. It’s just the word SHIT. He scribbles something in his notebook and holds it up against the window. It says, YOU WERE CLOSE.
Noises erupt from the front of the bus as the rest of the field hockey team crowds the seats. Jasper’s bus fills with the other soccer players.
When we arrive back at Rutherford, as we’re getting ready to haul our stuff back to the dorms, Jasper comes up to me. He passes me a folded piece of paper.
“What is this?” I ask. He shrugs, smiles, but doesn’t say anything.
I wait until I’m safely out of his view before I open the note. It’s the equation—an explanation of what was wrong. It sort of makes me smile, how sweet it is. Even if it’s a practical note. It feels unexpected.
That night, when I’m forced into bed at eleven o’clock, and still clueless in calculus and behind on my readings for English, and only five sentences into my essay on current pop culture as seen through the lens of generation X, I start to worry. Maybe I’m not cut out for this at all. Like, any of it. Not the academics. Not the rigorous schedule. Not living away from home. Not being with these kinds of people. Not getting the t
ruth out of someone. Not for making someone fall in love with me, no matter what Rosie said.
“How important is your father to you?” Rosie asked me that spring, when she was living us, right after I’d been accepted to Rutherford. We were out on the porch even though it was early in the season and still a little too cold to be out there. We were bundled in blankets and the sun was setting, turning the sky a mild orange. Mimi was out at the barn. This was the kind of place she’d always wanted to live since she was a child, when she’d dreamed of living off the land—that’s what she called it.
In case Rosie didn’t understand that my father was important to me, since her father wasn’t important to her, I answered, “Of course he is. He’s my favorite person in the whole world.”
“What about me?” she’d teased.
“Come on,” I said, rolling my eyes. She knew I loved her, that she was a favorite also. “Why are you asking me that?”
She shrugged. “He’s important to both of you, I know that.” By this, she meant Mimi and me. “But what would you do if you found out he was keeping something from you?”
“Something—like what?”
“Something about his personal life.”
“Oh. That’s none of my business.” I’d heard Mimi say this whenever pressed about why my dad lived in New York City, away from us, if he was dating, the places he was traveling. “Jake’s personal life is none of my business,” she’d say.
“What if he was in love?” Rosie said.
“Then good for him.” I wasn’t completely clueless. My dad was kind and charming and handsome—and single. I didn’t assume he never dated. I’d figured that if he did date, it was not something he wanted to flaunt in front of Mimi or me. Because what would be the point? And honestly, I never thought he’d get serious with someone because he was so busy with work and with, well, being a dad to me—a job that required travel and time; a job that he took very seriously.
“What if it’s changing him, messing with his head, and screwing with his priorities?”
I shrugged. Admittedly, I didn’t like what I was hearing. I wanted him to be happy, yes. But I also wanted to continue to see him whenever I wanted. I liked looking up from a field hockey game to see him cheering on the sidelines and staying up late with him watching TV and hearing him on a conference call in the guest room, which doubled as his office in the middle of the day, whenever he stayed with us, which was so often it was less of a guest room and more just his room. I liked waking up hearing him and Mimi talking softly in the kitchen over coffee. They had a real friendship, and it comforted me. I didn’t think he’d ever want to change what he had going with us. I didn’t think a girlfriend would ever get between him and me, or him and Mimi. But I’d also never had to consider it before.
“You know he helps out quite a bit financially with you and with Mimi. You don’t really think she makes much of a profit from those goats, do you?”
I didn’t answer her. I could hear the goats bleating from where we were sitting. Mimi loved her goats. She raised some of them for milk, some of them for their wool, some of them for children’s parties or for the goat yoga craze.
“You don’t think he’s going to support Mimi forever, do you? After you’re grown up and moved out? Especially if he has someone else he needs to support.”
I shrugged again because, like before, I’d never had to consider it.
“He’s important,” she said, “to you and to Mimi, and you have to fight for what’s important.”
“We don’t have to fight for Dad; he’s … he’s ours.” The only thing that made sense to me.
“Yes. That’s true. But sometimes fighting for someone means protecting them. It can also mean saving them.”
“Saving him from what? Some new girlfriend?” I pictured a woman who looked like Mimi but dressed in a fur coat and heels, who liked big cities and lived in a SoHo loft. Someone harmless. If she were really so important, we’d know about her. Until then, whoever she was, she was none of our business, and we were none of hers.
“People most often need to be saved from their own hearts, from where they follow their heart when it’s bursting so full for someone that they can’t hear their head. They don’t always do what’s best or what’s right.”
“How do you know he’s in love, anyway?”
“I saw him when I was in New York.”
I almost asked, “When were you in New York?” but it would have been a silly question because Rosie was always everywhere. “He told you?” I said.
“He didn’t have to. I saw her. I saw them and the way they are together when they don’t think anyone can see them.”
I still didn’t understand. “Maybe it’s a good thing. It could be nice for him. I’m going to Rutherford, so maybe he needs this.” It hurt a little, thinking about how infrequently I’d get to see him when I was away. But I didn’t want Rosie to see this sadness in me. I wanted all the things she’d talked about when she’d convinced me to apply; I wanted something new. I wanted to show her I was as strong and capable as she thought I was.
“Collins,” she said. She was quiet for a while. “The woman he’s in love with is married.”
My first instinct was to defend him. He wouldn’t do that. There must be more to the story that we were missing. My dad has never been a liar. Or a cheater, for that matter.
“He can’t help it,” she said, leaning forward in a way that indicated that she could read how this news distressed me. “He’s a fool, and she’s a horrible person.”
But I knew my dad was not a fool; that he never could be. Not even for love.
She took my hands. “It’s going to ruin him. This situation is not good. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your father makes nothing but good investments and this woman’s family is drowning in debt. She has him wrapped around her little finger. The influence she has over him, it’s unnerving.”
“He’s not the kind of person who can be manipulated.” But I’ll admit a little doubt crept in.
She let go of my hands to readjust her blanket. I could tell she was getting annoyed that I wasn’t as offended by this news as she’d wanted me to be. “Well, whatever happens with him financially affects you and Mimi, too. You have to think about that.”
“Did you tell Mimi about her?”
“I did. But you know your Mimi. She’s not taking it seriously.”
I knew my dad was a good judge of business opportunities, and part of that is being a good judge of character. He’d told me this, and I’d seen him in action myself.
“It’s hard to believe he’d fall in love with a bad person,” I said.
“They do have one thing in common. It’s what binds them, makes someone like her irresistible to someone like him. Nothing is more important to this woman than her sons. She would sacrifice anything for them. That’s part of the problem, really—the lengths she’d go to ensuring they had the kind of future she thinks they deserve. Even if she doesn’t have the means to provide for them anymore.” Rosie leaned in closer to me, the blanket falling from around her shoulders. “Listen to me, Collins. I’m telling you about this because it’s not a small thing. And you’re the only one who can save him from himself.”
“If you’re so worried about this, why don’t you talk to him about it yourself?”
“I have. Believe me, I have.” She shook her head. “Don’t you get it? It’s too late to talk to him about it. He can’t believe she’d do anything to hurt him. He’s not thinking that his relationship with her will get in the way of what he can supply for you and Mimi. He trusts her; he doesn’t think she might threaten his reputation by exposing what they’ve done. He didn’t perform a risk analysis on falling in love, Collins! Love is already a risk; letting someone get that close to you, it’s the biggest risk of all. It leaves you most vulnerable. He knows that, and he knows the risks that come with falling for someone like her, and he let himself get involved with her anyway.” She pulled the blanket back aroun
d her. Her cheeks were pink from the chill. “By now, she probably knows all his deepest fears. Exactly how to wreck him, bribe him, or blackmail him, whatever it takes for her to get what she needs from him. Whatever it takes.”
It made my stomach flip, thinking of someone taking advantage of him. My dad was careful with how he conducted business. But people still accused him of things. Investigations were still conducted to confirm his moneymaking practices were legitimate. They always were and thus the press had never been involved. But one bad leak did have the potential to hurt him. And I didn’t think he’d like the public knowing he was involved with a married woman.
“He’s gone this far with it,” Rosie said. “There’ll be no going back for him. Not unless…” She stared at the barn. Mimi was on her way back, walking through the pasture in her rubber boots, pulling her sweater tighter around her, waving at us with hands covered in fingerless gloves.
“Not unless what?”
“Not unless something else was on the line.”
“Like what?” But I had an inkling. “Me?”
She stopped watching Mimi and turned to face me. “You.” She shrugged. “Or them.”
Nineteen
They say you have to know your weaknesses. Self-awareness or whatever. They say that when you know your weaknesses, you can better figure out how to use them as strengths.
One strength I already know I have: I do not give up very easily.
Jasper walks quickly down the hall. It’s hard to keep up with him and this brisk pace he keeps. He careens outside, getting ready to cut across the courtyard, by the time I reach him.
“Jasper, wait.” I practically have to yank on his backpack to get him to stop.
He whirls around and looks at me. The weather in Cashmere is starting to turn, and now dark clouds constantly hover over the forest. The ocean is always gray. It’s starting to rain lightly, and Jasper lowers his eyebrows, annoyed at having to stand here while the droplets fall on us.
“Hey,” I say. Smooth, Collins.