An Education in Ruin

by Alexis Bass

  “You know this is all more complicated than you think,” he says. He begs. “You know you don’t have to do this. All you have to do is stop. I know you, and I know this isn’t going to sit right with you. Go back on your word, forget the promises you made before you knew me, before you knew us.”

  But he can already see it in my eyes—because it’s true, he does know me—that I’m not going to stop. No matter how much it puts him at risk. I’ll make good on everything I swore I would do. Every last thing except for the millions of small, unspoken promises I made to him, each day that I spent getting to know him.

  Fifty-six

  Anastasia says she wants to be alone. Jasper says he’s going to bed early. I tell my dad and Rosie and Mimi that I’m too tired to get tea with them after the musical, and we make plans to meet for breakfast before they leave. I’m going to give my dad Theo’s laptop and tell him everything first thing in the morning. I’ll go to his room before we have breakfast with Mimi and Rosie.

  Around midnight, Theo texts and asks me to meet him in the tunnel.

  I have a new offer, Theo’s text says. And: You’re going to want to hear this.

  When I arrive in the tunnel, the chandelier is turned on. Theo is already there. He’s dressed in a jacket and pajamas like I am. We’re slow to meet in the middle.

  “I want to make a trade.” He takes a deep breath. “This month for the game, you and Jasper skipped the exchange because your parents came to town a day early and you wanted to have dinner with them.”

  I nod.

  He wipes his hands on his pants.

  “Since you missed it, your names got moved to the bottom of the list.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So you’re the loser this month, Collins. The drugs are your responsibility.”

  “But—” I close my eyes. I know exactly where he’s going with this. Every time Jasper or I get stuck with the drugs, Theo helps us out and keeps them for us so we don’t have to run the risk of them being discovered. “You wouldn’t, Theo.”

  He takes another deep breath. He doesn’t look at me as he says, “If you don’t give me back my computer, I’ll tell the faculty where the drugs are. I’ll tell them they’re yours.”

  He never once shared his hiding spots with me and I didn’t ask. And who’s to say he’d even put them in his typical safe spot, if he’s trying to get me busted for them? Maybe Jasper and Anastasia would vouch for me, explain the game and how Theo had access to the bag of pills and cocaine to set me up. But that’s part of the game—keeping it a secret. We could all get in trouble for having illegal substances on campus.

  “I’ll need my computer back tonight,” he says. He swallows hard. “Okay? Say you’ll agree, come on.”

  I look down at my hands, which have turned so cold I’m surprised they’re not blue or void of color altogether.

  “That’s the trade,” Theo says. “Give me my computer, I’ll keep the drugs hidden. If you don’t, I’ll turn you in. You’ll get kicked out of Rutherford.”

  He steps toward me, his hardened expression slipping.

  “Please take the trade, Collins.” There’s desperation in his voice. “Please. I don’t want to blow up my whole world. We can all go back to how it was before.”

  Back to when? Was it ever simple when all along, this is what we had lurking beneath the surface? Vials that we’d created ourselves that could be used to poison us.

  “If I do it,” I say, “then I need your help with something else.”

  Fifty-seven

  I’m groggy the next morning. I couldn’t sleep so I get up with the sun and take a long shower. After I’ve dried off and dressed, I notice Anastasia sitting at the vanity on the other side of the partition, brushing her hair. I’m surprised to see her up this early. But maybe she’s like me and couldn’t sleep either. She smiles at me and I take a seat on the bench next to her.

  “I just wanted to say again that I’m sorry I told Theo about your mom, your aunt,” she says. She rubs her nails together, like she’s nervous I won’t forgive her, and that breaks my heart a little since the whole reason I reached out to be her friend was because I had a hidden motive.

  “It’s okay. I know you tell Theo everything.” But after how angry she was with him last night, I wonder if that will still be the case.

  “Why did you tell Sebastian?” she says. “Why did you trust him and not … anyone else you were close with at Rutherford?”

  It’s not easy to admit, to say it out loud. Is it going to sound silly now that they know the truth and didn’t think less of me the way I thought they would?

  “I was ashamed, I guess. And I was scared it would make people see me differently. Sometimes it’s easiest to be open with people who can’t hurt you. Does that make any sense?”

  “Oh yes. That’s why most people make the mistake of telling me their dirty laundry,” Anastasia says. “That, and I have kind eyes.” I feel a wash of relief that Anastasia understands the reason I was afraid to talk about it—the reason I’m still afraid. “So I spoke to Theo,” she says. She slips on one of Theo’s sweatshirts over her camisole, and I can’t tell if she is mourning their friendship or on her way to forgiving him. “He says you guys came to an understanding and you gave him back his computer.”

  I nod.

  “Theo’s not a bad person.” She runs her fingers over the Stanford logo on the sweatshirt. “He was in a bad position. He did a bad thing. But he’s not—” She shakes her head. “He can’t do anything about his mom lying to your dad to secure financial help, or whatever. But he’s going to stop selling tips. He’s actually forced to stop because no one will trust them anymore after they said Rob would be accepting the proposal, and she didn’t. Even though all the other information he got from me was damn perfect.”

  “And you believe him? You really think he’ll stop?”

  “Of course,” she says. “He promised me.”

  It reminds me of what Rob said to me when she gave me the recording of Jasper cheating, when a promise was supposed to be good enough. I think of Rob James in a roomful of investors being told that her idea was the best idea they’d ever heard, of them actually listening to her the way that no one ever listens to young women with grand ideas, and how hard it would be to discover that your great idea will never come to fruition. She started by offering them a promise and they all believed her. But now they’ve caught her lying. Her word is shot. How will she ever get it back?

  Despite it all, Anastasia still sees Theo as someone she can count on, someone she wants to protect. They have years of friendship to fall back on. I’d guess she’s already tucking away this story to be retold in twenty years: Remember the time you used me for insider trading?

  I get the text from Theo that I was expecting. We’ll be ready for you in twenty.

  Okay, see you soon, I text back.

  I dry my hair and make my way to campus. It’s foggy this morning, the sky is gray and darker. The path is covered in dew and the wind is wild. It’s earlier than most Rutherford students get up on a Sunday, so I don’t see anyone else on the path, until I reach the end. Jasper is leaning against the gate near the opening leading to campus. He straightens as I approach.

  “Theo said he was meeting you, so I wanted to try to catch you on your way.”

  It’s a relief to see him after he didn’t answer my phone calls last night or return any of my texts. For a moment my heart swells, knowing he probably couldn’t sleep either, knowing he’s been here, waiting for me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back,” he says. “But I wanted to say this to you in person. It was selfish of me to get angry that you told something private to Sebastian and that you didn’t tell me. It’s just—” He shakes his head. “There’s no excuse. I was jealous because I knew you were keeping something from me, and I couldn’t understand why you’d want to tell him about it and not me. But it doesn’t matter. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  But it feels
like I do. Especially since there’s so much more I’m keeping from him.

  “It’s a strange thing to find out everything you knew about your family was a lie. I would fall apart every time I thought about it.”

  His eyes shift down to my hands like he knows they’re shaking even where they rest buried in my jacket pockets.

  “You can fall apart in front of me, you know,” he says.

  “It changed how I saw myself,” I say. “I was afraid it would change how you saw me, too.”

  I wonder if he thinks this is the last of the secrets between us or if he can feel that there are still others waiting to emerge.

  I pinch my eyes shut and tears creep out, down my cheeks. I hear the crunch of the gravel as he steps toward me. I feel his fingers brushing against my cheeks, and then his lips. When I open my eyes, he’s so close, right in front of me. I memorize his face. His eyes scrunch at the corners when he smiles his biggest smiles. There’s a spot above his lip that is constantly nicked, like he always hits that single place at the wrong angle. His eyes are a deep brown that makes me think of coffee and chocolate and the wet sand at the Rutherford beach, and I like them best staring at me in the early morning light. The way they are right now.

  I try to picture my life at Rutherford without him. What it would’ve been like if I didn’t have to worry about love—about proving that I can have it whenever I want it.

  It’s almost unfathomable how some relationships are held together. How easily they can be blown apart. I know enough to ruin Jasper, and he knows enough to ruin me, and all that keeps this together is trust. Trust that I don’t deserve.

  He leans forward and kisses me like he can tell that we don’t have time, like he knows it’s running out. He puts his hands on either side of my head and stares at me like he’s getting a last look.

  My kisses are to fill him up. They aren’t to promise anything, because they can’t; they never could.

  “I tricked you,” I say. “I tried to make you want me on purpose.”

  “That’s funny.” He gives me one of his slow smiles. “I thought I was the one who’d tricked you.”

  “But, listen—”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” he says.

  It’s easy to say it doesn’t matter now when he doesn’t know what I’m about to do. I start to talk, but my voice hitches.

  “I want to say something to you,” he says. But I shake my head—can’t tell him not to say it, because deep down, I want him to say it. I do and I don’t. If it’s I love you, this is the worst possible time. If it’s I love you, how will I respond?

  “Please,” he says like he’s begging me. I go still in his arms, except for the trembling that I can’t help. “I want you to know,” he whispers, pulling me to him. “There was nothing before you.”

  I kiss him one more time. And when it’s over, I take a deep breath, I brush away the last of my tears.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say. He leans in closer. He smiles. So much trust built up around us that he hears I have to tell you something and he’s not worried. He thinks that since he’s asked me to reveal more about myself to him, I’m finally doing it. He isn’t imagining that what I’ll tell him will betray him in the worst way. “When I met with Rob and she deleted the video, she also—she also sent me a copy.”

  He nods as his eyebrows lower; confusion covers his face. But I keep going. I owe him this, even if it ruins everything.

  “She said she recorded you because she wanted to know how far you’d go for her.”

  He frowns. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “Because you loved her.” He shakes his head. “Jasper, it’s okay. It’s okay that you loved her.”

  “No, it’s not,” he says, his voice getting cold. “Because how could I … how could I have loved someone who would do that to me.”

  “You can’t help who you fall for,” I say, something I really believe. Something I hope he remembers. “She recorded you to spy on you, to see if she could trust you.”

  “Don’t let her manipulate you, too,” Jasper says. “She made the recording because she knew trust was something she couldn’t offer me when she’d built a billion-dollar company based on lies and false promises. She gave you the recording because she doesn’t understand trust. She wanted you to have something you could use against me like she did because she doesn’t understand that when you really care about someone, you don’t need proof that they care about you too.”

  “I deleted the recording,” I tell him. The second I left Rob in the common room, I deleted it. I didn’t think twice about it. All I cared about was getting rid of it, erasing it before Jasper knew it existed and was possibly within his grasp. I want him to know this, before I tell him the rest.

  He nods, a small smile on his lips, like he’s not surprised. Like he knew I would do the right thing when it comes to him. This is the kind of person I wish I could be. That’s the kind of relationship I wish we could have. It would be easier to keep pretending, but he deserves to know everything. The truth about why we’re here, the truth about why I’m meeting Theo.

  “I knew about our parents when I came to Rutherford. Everything I’ve done since I got here was to get close to you—and to Theo. I learned all about the two of you. I thought there was something to uncover about Theo. I thought he was hiding something horrible. When I found out what it was, I was going to use it to blackmail your mother.”

  His eyebrows spring up, and the rest of his face goes slack.

  “I don’t expect you to believe me, but she was using my father for money.” He looks down for a moment and I can’t tell if this is conceivable to him or if it’s so out of left field that my secrets are going to sound delusional. There’s a reason Mrs. Mahoney involved Theo and Jasper’s best friend in her insider trading scheme, but not Jasper. “I needed something that would hurt her, that I could use to threaten her with to get her to stay away from my father. I was told the best way to hurt her was through you and Theo.”

  He concentrates, taking it all in. The wind whips at our hair and sends a shiver through me that has me crossing my arms. Jasper steps forward like he wants to put his arms around me—what he would normally do to help warm me. But he puts his hands in his pockets. He looks toward the ocean as he asks, “And … why—what did you want from me?”

  It’s easier to tell him the truth, when he’s staring at the view instead of at me. “If I could convince you to love me, I could threaten to break your heart. Your mom would have to choose between your broken heart and my father’s.”

  Now when he turns to me, his expression is a mess of shock and disbelief. He takes another step back, away from me.

  “And? You’re still planning to blackmail her?”

  I nod because my throat is tight with nerves. It aches like I’m going to start crying again. I wish I could say I was calling it off, that I could come clean about this as if it were a mistake, a misunderstanding that brought us together but wouldn’t be able to tear us apart.

  “What do you have on Theo?” His voice is small. I never wanted to be the one to make him feel like this.

  “Not enough.”

  He nods and takes a breath to steady himself. “Well, you have me right where you want me. I guess your plan worked like a charm.”

  “No, it didn’t,” I say. “Because I never figured out how to make you fall in love with me without falling in love with you right back.”

  “So I lucked out, is what you’re saying?” He smiles, but it’s not nice. There are tears in his eyes.

  “I don’t want to do it,” I tell him, as if that matters. “But I don’t know what else to do to get my dad away from her.” It’s the only defense I have, except: “It won’t change what’s going on between us, because she’s not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I don’t mean to hesitate before I start nodding, but I do and he notices.

  “So if she
doesn’t agree, then what? You’re going to break up with me?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, telling him the truth. But he’s on a roll.

  “Better make sure this breakup stings harder than the last one! How much do you need me to suffer for this to properly affect my mother?” He’s looking at me like he’s moved past anger and on to disgust. “This is something your father knows, but my parents have never learned—when you go all in on a risk, you have to be willing to take a big loss. You have to be prepared to lose everything. And you are, aren’t you?”

  I shake my head, holding back my tears. The problem is, he’s right. I told him this not so I’d be absolved, but because I didn’t want to lie to him anymore. I didn’t want to come back from the meeting Theo set up for his mom and me this morning and smile at him like nothing was wrong, kiss him like I hadn’t just threatened my relationship with him to save my dad; even if it’s the only thing left I can do.

  “It doesn’t matter that this wager tips in my favor.” In our favor, I want to say. “It’s that you’re willing to take this chance in the first place—that you’re still going to take it.”

  “Whatever it takes to get my dad away from her.” I don’t tell him I wanted to prove I was lovable, that I wanted to have the kind of control that Rosie told me I could have. “Your mother is using him, and I have to break them up, and this is the only way I know how to do it.”

  He looks at me like he feels sorry for me. As if he can see that I’m like Rosie; that I made myself this way because I thought it would make me stronger, impenetrable the way I thought he and Theo were, along with everyone at Rutherford with bright futures and lush lives.

  “I know the kind of people my parents are,” he says. “I’m not going to argue with you about what my mother’s capable of when it comes to getting money. I’ll say whatever you want me to say, act however you want me to act.” He shakes his head, looks to the view once more before he stares at me. “But between you and me, you’ve lost your leverage, because you’ve already broken my heart.”