An Education in Ruin

by Alexis Bass

  “Collins,” Theo says, louder this time.

  I hear someone say, “Whoa,” and glance over my shoulder to see Stewart standing there. Theo’s got a slight grimace on his face. I turn around again and see Anastasia and Jasper are there. I flinch in surprise. And then I feel a rush of mortification. What did they hear? Everything I said? Between the soft alternative playing over the speakers and the condensed sound of everyone talking, maybe they didn’t hear anything I was saying. I couldn’t even pick up on the sound of people approaching—I was as surprised when Theo came up to me earlier—so, really, how much could they have heard?

  According to the uneasy expression plaguing Anastasia’s face: everything. Stewart stares at me with wide eyes—he’s definitely drunk. Theo is giving me a one-shouldered shrug. Jasper is looking at his feet.

  “The acoustics in this restaurant are terrible,” I mutter before leaving.

  “Collins. You don’t have to run away,” Theo calls after me.

  I pretend I can’t hear him.

  Thirty-eight

  I hurry out of the restaurant, and instead of going to the closest bathroom, somewhere Anastasia could most definitely find me, I head to the other end of the lobby, toward the bathrooms by the east exit. Through the clear doors leading outside, I see that it’s snowing again, hard and heavy like before, slanted sideways from the wind.

  As I’d hoped, this bathroom is completely vacant. I slump down on the couch in the sitting area as one of Mimi’s favorite songs to sing with her girlfriends on karaoke night, “Eternal Flame,” plays lightly in the background.

  This is not how I’d planned to start the New Year’s Eve extravaganza. Not with Theo accusing me of having an agenda, spurring a rogue confession with no immediate indication of how Jasper feels about what he’d heard. I don’t know what to make of what I just learned either. Did Rosie know that my father’s relationship with Mrs. Mahoney was part of an agreement—something her whole family knows about? Or was she as in the dark about the real situation as the rest of the public? And if she was wrong about their affair, what else has she gotten wrong? What else might she not know?

  I decide to go back to the restaurant, face Jasper and the others. They’ll probably tease me. Jasper will hopefully greet me with a short, nervous laugh and the kind of smile that he can’t help. It makes my palms sweaty, thinking about what he’ll do now that he’s realized I know about our parents and that’s not something he has to worry about keeping from me any longer.

  I open the door to leave the bathroom and—he’s standing there, in front of the exit, the snow falling down in large clumps behind him. I smile. He came after me. He heard me say I was falling for him and he came after me.

  As I push the door open farther, I nearly crash into a large, tall man in a suit. It’s Rob James’s bodyguard. And he isn’t alone. Since he didn’t see me, I step back. I let the door swing closed, cracking it open just wide enough that I can see the two of them. Jasper and Rob. She’s in a long white dress with bell sleeves, a gold choker resting around her neck. Her hair is down and wild; her makeup is dark, with gold outlining her eyes.

  “Remember how it used to be?” she says to Jasper. “We did things for each other all the time—for no other reason than we wanted to. Because we wanted what was best for each other.”

  He looks away, shaking his head. “I told you already,” he says, his voice brusque and deflated. “I said I wasn’t going to say anything, and I meant it. You don’t have to worry.” For a second, when he looks at her, I see sadness in his eyes. A hint of longing. “I’m sorry. But I don’t want to talk or reminisce. I just want to move on and forget it ever happened.”

  She straightens, and any friendliness in her demeanor vanishes. “Thank you for letting me know that I don’t have to worry about what you’ll say when they question you during the deposition,” she says. “Keeping quiet is the least you can do.”

  “The least I can do?” An expression of complete astonishment covers his face.

  “Because you owe me, Jasper.” There’s madness in her voice. “Don’t forget that when you’re moving on. Don’t forget about all I’ve done for you, what I’ve risked for you when I didn’t have to.”

  “It’s impossible to forget, the way you keep holding it over my head.” He drops his tone like it’s hard for him to keep from yelling. “How long are you going to keep doing this?”

  “For as long as I want,” she says. “Because I can still see it—how it could be for us—don’t you?”

  He shakes his head and covers his mouth. But he looks upset, sad all over again. “It’s too late, Roberta.”

  “It could be different for us in the future.” She reaches forward and grabs his hands. He lets her. He stares at her fingers gripping his. “When this is all behind us. If you don’t throw it all away. You’ll be at Dartmouth next year. And we could still use your brilliant mind at the company. You know I’ll always want you as close as—”

  “Stop. I can’t do this again; it’s too hard.” Jasper winces and lets go of her hands. He turns and walks quickly out the doors, into the storm.

  Her mouth drops open. She goes after him, pressing the door open and running outside. Her bodyguard follows. I leave the bathroom and rush to the door. I stare through the glass as Rob James reaches the end of the pavement and stops. She calls his name, but he keeps going. She throws her hands in the air as Jasper takes off through the trees, into the forest. Her bodyguard removes his jacket and holds it over her like an umbrella, trying to shield her from the snowfall. She clasps his arm, using it to support her as they move up the stairs, returning inside. She hugs herself against the cold and pinches her eyes closed as she cries.

  They walk inside, and Rob heads straight toward the bathroom. She stops when she sees me. She wipes away the mascara streaks her tears left slicing down her cheeks.

  “Collins,” she says. “I value honesty, so I hope you’ll know that I mean nothing but respect when I say don’t get too attached to him. You seem like a bright girl. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”

  She goes into the bathroom before I can respond.

  I stare outside at the pounding snow, the thicket of trees that Jasper disappeared through, and then I charge out into the storm after him.

  I hold up my dress to keep it from getting soaked by the snow on the ground and squint against the cold breeze that blows snowflakes directly in my face as I rush past the paved and shoveled part of the driveway, and into the forest after Jasper. He didn’t go too far, only a few feet through the dense trees to a small clearing.

  “Jasper?” I shout. It’s freezing, and my breath fogs back in my face. “Jasper, wait.”

  He’s pacing. He shakes out his hands. He rubs his neck as he trudges through the layers of snowfall. I hate that she was able to get under his skin—and hate most that she can still have such an effect on him.

  “Jasper, stop—” I put my hands on either side of him to keep him still. His fists are clenched. His eyes crazed with fury. Snowflakes are sticking to his eyelashes. They dot his hair and dust his shoulders.

  “I saw you and Rob—”

  “I was coming to find you,” he says, the words tearing out of him. “After you ran off. But she followed me, she cornered me, she—she’s never going to leave me alone.” His breath comes in and out in fast, quick bursts of steam against the cold air.

  “Jasper.” I squeeze his arms, trying to steady him. “You can’t let her do this to you.” Why can she still do this to you? “What happened with you and her? You said it was over, but if you need closure—”

  “I don’t need closure, I need to get away from her!” he explodes. “She’s a liar and a fraud, and she’s guilty of everything they’re accusing her of.” He shakes his head frantically. “And she’s going to get away with it!”

  “She’s lying to her investors?”

  Jasper nods, catching his breath.

  I’ve heard about other CEOs endangering their own career
s by embellishing their expected revenue. She was caught, and instead of making her pay, letting Rabames go to trial, my dad has found her an out, a way to save the company, everyone’s investments, with whatever is in his proposal. His eyes focus on mine through the snowfall. “I’m a liar and a fraud, too. I’m getting away with as much as she is. The truth is, I’m helping her. She’s all that stands between me and my future the same way that I’m all that stands between her and hers.”

  My teeth start to chatter, and a shudder runs through me as I take in what he’s saying—what I think he’s saying.

  He removes his jacket and tugs it around me, pulling me closer to him in the process. “Shit, it’s so cold,” he says. But neither of us move to leave, even as the snow belts down hard, blanketing the woods around us. When Rob cornered him by the bathrooms, he told her she didn’t have to worry about what he would disclose during his questioning. He said she was holding something over him. And now he’s confessed to me in the middle of this storm that he’s helping her. I think I understand what’s happening. Rob knows what he most regrets, whatever makes him want to take back every second he spent with her, and she’s using it against him to make sure he lies for her in the deposition.

  With one hand holding his coat closed around me, I stretch out the other and grab his arm.

  “What does she have on you?” I say.

  He shakes his head, but I tighten my grip on him.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. I can see how scared he is, how this has been corroding him and he’s desperate to let it go, set the words free, the way I felt in his room other night, wishing I could tell him the truth about Mimi and Rosie and my dad and how I feel tricked and foolish and sad all at once.

  “I cheated in the decathlon,” he says, a stream of fog emerging as he lets the sentence out in one gasping breath. “That’s how I broke the record. That’s the reason I got an early acceptance into Dartmouth. That’s why I can’t say anything when I’m questioned for the lawsuit.”

  His eyes trace over my face, searching for clues about how I’m going to react. I can see that he’s very afraid of what I’ll do next, what I’ll say. But this is how it works, isn’t it? Falling for someone, trusting them with things you hardly trust yourself with.

  I know he wants me to speak, but at the same time, he’s scared of what I’ll tell him now that he’s revealed the worst thing he’s ever done and admitted it’s spiraling into something even worse. I unclench my grip around his arm and grab his freezing hand.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I say.

  Thirty-nine

  Drenched and shaking, Jasper and I take the elevator to the tenth floor. He gives me a spare set of pajamas from his drawer and tells me that I can have the first shower. But after I’ve thawed myself under the hot water and changed into the flannel pajamas, I find him in sweats sitting in front of a blazing fire. His pajamas are too big for me, and that makes them all the cozier. I roll up the bottoms so I don’t trip as I walk. He smiles when I join him on the couch. There are a few bags of junk food strewn out over the coffee table.

  “Since we missed dinner,” he says. Room service is undoubtedly not an option while the restaurant is busy catering for all the party guests, and Robames rented out the entire resort.

  The electric kettle beeps, and Jasper gets up and pours us two steaming cups of hot water, which we mix with hot chocolate. We hold the warm mugs close, letting them warm us as we sit in front of the fire.

  “About what I said at the party,” I say. “I don’t know how much you overheard—”

  “Collins—” he interrupts. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Not to me. I get it. How it’s been with us—it’s—I mean, I feel the same way.”

  Something swells inside me that I can’t quite place. Like relief or happiness—maybe both. He’s smiling at me, and I must be smiling back; I think I must’ve even smiled first. My mind is foggy, and my stomach is fluttery, but I still wait for some sort of self-satisfaction to burst within me. I was caught saying I was falling for him, and he admitted that he feels the same way. But there with the sweep of unbridled happiness, is a current of fear—this abrupt awareness that now that I have this, whatever it is, I could lose it. I’m supposed to gamble it.

  Jasper sighs. “I’m so glad you know about our parents.” He leans back, peeks at me through his curtain of curls. “And you don’t care?”

  “It’s a little weird.” He nods in agreement. “But not enough that I want to stop.”

  I take my first sip of hot chocolate and let out a moan as it hits my lips. He watches me and smiles. He sets down his mug, and I can see in his expression that he’s as happy as I am about our confessions but that he’s also aware of the distance between us because of what else he revealed tonight.

  “Tell me what happened,” I say.

  For a second, he stares at the fire and doesn’t say anything, and I worry that he’s already slipping away, locking up the things he hates about himself in case I’ll hate them, too. But then he turns toward me, letting his arm line the top of the couch, and I know he’s going to come clean about it all. The real reason she’s his biggest regret.

  “Rob was in town for the decathlon. I was in her hotel room the day before the competition, waiting for her to get back from some meetings and using her laptop because it had this new graphics program that I wanted to use to complete an assignment in my digital artistry and media language class. Right when I was getting started, I noticed the official questions for the decathlon, sitting there next to her laptop. I didn’t know how she got them—figured since she knew people on the committee they’d, I don’t know, given her a copy. It doesn’t make sense, thinking back on it, and I should’ve known it was a trick.”

  “What do you mean a trick?”

  He chews on his lip before he continues. “I was working on my assignment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the decathlon questions. They were right there. And I kept thinking about what she’d said earlier that week, that if I did exceptionally well at the decathlon, it would make me a more feasible Robames intern candidate. She told me that if there were something incredible on my résumé that set me apart from the other applicants, we could spend the summer together and no one would think twice about it.”

  He was not only on the team that won the national decathlon, but he also broke records for questions answered correctly and the time it takes to complete the final round. A definite résumé booster.

  “So I did it; I looked at all the questions and spent the rest of the day figuring out the answers. When it was time to compete, I was more than ready. She was in the audience, and all I could think about was how impressive I must’ve looked to her—how I was really coming through for us so we could be together that summer. But also—” He shakes his head, and the way he glances away from me for a moment, I can tell this is the part he’s most ashamed of. “I also thought that maybe while she was watching me up there, she was thinking I was as smart or as quick on my feet or as magnanimous as she was. There was so much about her I didn’t see because of how I felt about her—this infatuation. But none of it was real. Not the way I felt about her and definitely not the way she claimed to feel about me. Everything she does is calculated. Because of course, she went out of her way to get those questions from the people she knew on the committee; of course, she planted them exactly where she knew I would find them. She was counting on me using them. She thought I would do anything to be with her, but she wanted to really make sure. She wanted assurance. Proof. So she’d know I wasn’t a liability. And she needed me to screw up so she’d have protection in case I ever became one.”

  Protection. “But—why?”

  “She wanted me to intern at Robames, working closely with her, but she knew I might question what I saw going on at the company. And that’s exactly what happened. I noticed very quickly that things weren’t right. I started thinking clearly; I started seeing her for who she really was—and for who she wasn’t.”
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  “But she can’t prove you cheated; it’d be her word against yours.”

  “She does have proof,” he says. “When I confronted her about some of the stuff I’d witnessed, questioned what she was doing at Robames, and told her I thought she was wrong and that I knew she’d been deceiving everyone, she showed me the recording. Her laptop camera had been on the whole time. It’s clear as day in the recording: me, flipping through the official questions of the decathlon.”

  “She set you up.”

  He nods. “She never really cared about me. I was only an opportunity to her. She saw me and knew I was someone she could control. Someone easy to manipulate. That’s the only reason I was appealing to her.”

  I think of the way she was crying after their fight and wonder if he’s got it right about this. If it was losing him she was crying over or if it was the fear of losing the company she’d built. If she only spoke to him about their future to ensure he didn’t change his mind about lying in the deposition.

  “That’s the only reason she wanted me at Robames. She thought I’d lie for her. And if I said I wouldn’t then she had a way to make me.” He leans forward and looks down.

  “Only because she threatened you.”

  “But I was an easy target. Walked happily into her trap.”

  “If the lawyers knew about how things were romantic between you and Rob, wouldn’t it discredit you, take you off the deposition list? Then you wouldn’t have to lie.”

  “She doesn’t want anyone to know about what happened with us. She’s always wanted it a secret, saying we’d make it public when I was in college, afraid she wouldn’t be taken seriously if her investors or colleagues knew about it.”

  “Since you’ve been at Hylift, she keeps trying to get you alone—”

  “Yes, exactly, alone. And it’s not to start things up with me again. All she wants is reassurance that I’m still afraid she’ll expose me, that I’ll lie for her. There’s no way to prove we were involved. Right now it’s nothing but rumors and hearsay. She graduated the semester after it started between us, and once she was gone from Rutherford, I only saw her once in a while. Our communication wasn’t consistent. She’d email me when she was near Cashmere or in Seattle visiting her uncle, and I’d email her if I was touring colleges in the east. We’d make plans to meet up. But it wouldn’t read like anything more than former classmates arranging to get together to catch up.”