Buddy looked on with his plasticine face, his expression just slightly pained, just slightly knowing, just slightly anxious.
“Where did you find this?” asked Bicé, pushing the letter back into his hands. “Did Christian give it to you?”
He shook his head.
“Does Christian know about this?”
He shook his head again. Bicé took a deep breath. “You took it from her.”
Buddy’s nod was just barely perceptible.
“Oh, God,” said Bicé. She paced the room, thinking of what to do. Christian would be desperate to see this. He was already itching to run away. But she couldn’t leave just yet. She still had work to do.
Suddenly, Buddy looked scared, his gaze moving beyond Bicé. He pulled himself deeper into the corner and buried his face in the wall. A cool voice slithered in from behind the door. Whatever blood may have remained in Buddy’s veins froze in that instant. There was only one thing Buddy feared.
Bicé turned around. Madame Vileroy was standing there.
“Bicé, I want you to give me that letter.”
“No.”
“Bicé. Remember what happens if you don’t do what I say?”
Bicé shook with rage.
Madame Vileroy shot her a smile and held out her hand.
“I’m sorry, Buddy, but I have to take that,” Bicé said.
Buddy shook his head.
“Buddy, just give it to me.” Bicé leaned over and grabbed the letter from a whimpering Buddy. She whispered in his ear, “I’ll tell him what he needs to know. Just give it to me.”
Buddy let go of the letter. The governess tucked it into the pocket of her perfectly tailored jacket. “I see you’ve taken an interest in reading,” she said to Buddy, though he never looked directly into her face. Bicé wondered if this mindless shell of a man saw the same image that the rest of the world saw when he looked the lovely Nicola Vileroy in the face. Maybe he was the only one who could look past the trappings, into the true face of his torturer, a face that was not beautiful, but dark and hungry.
Vileroy strolled into the room casually, turning over small items as she walked, a pillow here, a textbook there. “What’s this?” she said when she came upon a notebook. She flipped through the pages. There was nothing but a few scribbled letters, shaky — not childlike — more timid, as if written by an aged, uncertain hand. An amnesiac relearning to write.
She turned to Buddy. “Tell me, what is it that you and Christian do with your time?”
He stood frozen. Bicé was confused. Has Christian stopped using Buddy for practice?
Madame Vileroy shut the book, tucked it under her arm, and left.
After a moment’s waiting, Bicé too turned and ran out of the room.
Before his big debate with Victoria Faust, Thomas was pacing back and forth in the lobby, wondering where on earth Belle could be. She’ll come, he thought, but looked at his watch and began pacing even faster.
“Hey, there,” came a sweet voice behind him.
Thomas turned with a huge grin on his face. “You made it,” he said, but stopped when he saw Lucy instead of Belle. She was dressed up a little too much for a debate tournament, but she looked good.
“Hi, Luce,” said Thomas. “What are you doing here?”
“Just wanted to support you. We’re still friends, right?”
“Of course,” said Thomas, relieved that she’d stopped ignoring him after the election day fiasco. Besides, if Belle wasn’t going to show, it would be nice to have a cheering section.
“They’re starting. Let’s go,” he said, putting a friendly arm around Lucy. Lucy leaned into the embrace and walked with him back into the auditorium.
“Mr. Goodman-Brown. You will take the affirmative side. You will be defending the following statement: It is ethical to disregard drug patents in order to provide affordable treatments to dying third-world patients. Ms. Faust, you will take the negative side.”
Awesome! Thomas said to himself. He looked around for Belle, but she still wasn’t there. Lucy smiled at him from the front row.
“Perfect,” Victoria said. “Negative is so much easier . . . right to property and all that . . .”
“Are you ready?” Madame Vileroy whispered.
“Please. I have a copy of all his arguments here.” She waved a stack of papers. “And I have the negative case he would have given if he were assigned negative.”
“You should probably go and pretend to take notes. He’s about to start.”
Victoria looked at the judge, eyeing her as she talked with Madame Vileroy. “Oh, right. I’ll go sit down.”
Thomas took the podium and started to speak. The timekeeper started his stopwatch. “This is not an issue of right to property but rather of the right to life. . . .”
“We have to leave for good,” Christian whispered to Bicé as they searched for Belle. After thirty minutes, Belle still hadn’t shown up at the tournament.
“No, I have to stay. I have to find out some things.”
“I don’t get it. What could be that important . . . Argh. Not again.” Christian kept getting text messages from Valentin to come hear the poem he was reading for the tournament. Finally, he decided to go back home to look for Belle. Something had to be wrong.
“Look, Bicé. I’m worried about leaving her there, in that house. You know the kind of stuff she has in that bathroom. I’m going to find her.”
“I’ll go with you.” Bicé crossed herself several times as she ran after Christian down the corridor.
As Christian fiddled with the lock on the main door of the apartment, Bicé heard Belle’s door slamming against its hinges. They could barely make out Belle’s screams through the rattling.
“Let me out!” Belle shouted as she yanked on the knob. “Somebody let me out! Bicé! Bicé! Are you out there?” This was not how things were supposed to work. She had given Madame Vileroy as much as Victoria had. Why was Vileroy helping her so much?
Bicé and Christian walked into the apartment just in time to see Belle smash through the door with a chair.
“What are you doing?” Christian said in shock.
“What are you doing? I’ve been calling for help for an hour.”
Belle knew she had to get back before Victoria blindsided Thomas with all her stolen information. The tournament meant nothing to her. She just couldn’t stand the thought of Thomas being used like that by Victoria. Christian and the girls made it back just as Victoria was taking the podium. They waited in the back while Victoria smoothed out her papers and smiled to Thomas and the judges. She actually took the first twenty seconds of her time to thank the judges. The judges may have bought the act, but to someone who knew her as well as Belle did, her smile looked like a leer.
“I will respond to each of Mr. Goodman-Brown’s points in turn. Point one: Without the right to property, there would be no motive to work or innovate and we would fall into a state of communism. I would like to offer the following quotes from Adam Smith, George Washington, David Ricardo, Ronald Reagan, and the head of the WTO.”
“Wow, a bit dramatic, even for Vic . . .” Bicé mumbled to herself.
“Shh . . .” Belle nudged her sister. She was intently focused on seeing Thomas’s reaction.
As soon as Valentin finished reading, the crowd stood up and started clapping feverishly. All those weepy mothers and unstable teenage girls, Valentin thought. I could have been reading random excerpts from Bicé’s Kazak-English dictionary.
Charlotte had tears in her eyes. He’s looking right at me. I can’t believe he wrote that whole sonnet just for me.
“Point two: Contrary to my opponent’s statement, drug companies do have incentive to do their part for the poor. It’s good for public relations. I have here six consumer surveys indicating that customers are four times more likely to support a company that helps the poor . . .”
“PR? What about helping people?” said Bicé.
“I think she’s foaming at t
he mouth,” said Belle.
“Valentin, that was amazing.”
“Thanks.”
Valentin was distracted. A crowd of five girls and three moms had just gathered around him. They pushed Charlotte to the back.
“Where did you get the inspiration for that poem?”
“How long did it take to write?”
“Was it for anyone special?”
Charlotte caught Valentin’s eye, and her heart skipped a beat. Did he smile just then? Yes, I knew it. It was for me.
“No one in particular,” Valentin said casually.
Valentin stood on his toes and looked past the crowd at the door. “Hey, it’s Christian! Fantastic.” He pushed through to the back and almost walked right by Charlotte. He wouldn’t have stopped if she hadn’t called his name.
“Oh . . . hi, Charlotte. Love that sweater.” He started to walk off. Charlotte noticed the stack of papers, neatly folded in his hand. She could see his initials, VF, beautifully scripted at the bottom of each page. She wondered if any of those were written for her.
“So did you really mean what you said? That you didn’t write that poem for anyone?”
“Oh . . . no, of course not,” he said with a grin. “Gotta run now. Next round coming up and I’m starving.”
“I’ll get you something to eat if you want.”
“Ahh, you’re a doll.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Can you be back in five minutes?”
Bicé was so absorbed in what Victoria was saying that she didn’t notice Madame Vileroy standing behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Bicé, did you help Belle get here?”
“Don’t talk to me,” Bicé whispered.
“I thought it best that she stay at home.”
“She broke out on her own. Not that I have to explain . . .”
“Of course you do. You and I are friends, aren’t we?” Vileroy crooned.
“You’re not my friend.”
“We’ve been together for so long, Bicé Faust. I am your friend.”
Bicé shuddered at the sound of her own name. Somehow it sounded artificial now.
“You know so many languages,” goaded the governess. “And now you know who I am. Can you figure out my name?”
Bicé turned it all over in her head. I am your friend . . .
“I am Friend of Faust,” Bicé whispered and began translating to herself until she arrived at something. Me Fausto Philos — Mephistopheles.
It only took a second to regain her resolve. “Look, Nicola. I want to leave. I want out of this whole thing. Just let me go.”
“But you need me. I don’t have to remind you —”
“I’m not making any deals with you.”
“What’s important is the deal you’ve already made. The one you make every day.”
Bicé tried to look Nicola Vileroy in the eye. But she couldn’t hold her gaze.
“You need me,” said the demon-governess, “and we both know you’ll never leave.”
“Point three: The fact that a higher percentage of the dead would be poor is irrelevant.”
Christian sat in the back of the room for Valentin’s next reading. Charlotte had just run in with an iced coffee and three cakes from the coffee shop next door and was making her way to join Christian in the back. She looked flushed and sweaty.
“I can’t wait to hear the next one. He’s so talented. Did you know that he didn’t want to enter? He didn’t want anything to come between us . . .”
“Is that why you didn’t enter?” Christian asked with a look of sympathy. As far as he knew, Valentin had planned to enter this competition for months.
“Yep. And it was worth it. You shouldn’t have missed his first reading. It was amazing.”
Christian listened as Valentin began reading. From the first moment, there was no question in his mind that Valentin would win. It was beautiful, heartfelt, and funny. It made him sad. Not just because he realized that he wasn’t as good, but because all this time, he had been going about things all wrong. He had never written anything good. He had just spent all his energy brooding over Valentin’s successes.
“In conclusion, patent infringement is stealing — even if it’s to help the poor. Even if there are some negative consequences, we live in a society made up of rights and rules. . . .”
Thomas was in shock. He looked over at the Marlowe debate coach with an expression of disbelief. “How — where did she get —?” Victoria’s rebuttals had been so on target, so perfectly tailored to what Thomas had said, that it was hard to believe it was just because she was a good debater. After all, there were only three minutes of prep time between their speeches. How could she have rewritten her speech to refute him point by point in three minutes? And all that data? How did she know?
Just as Thomas was mulling all this over, Victoria was smiling to the judges and leaving the podium. She walked past Thomas, leaned over, patted him on the back, and said, “So much for preparing like a lawyer, huh?” She held his gaze and waited for the words to sink in before she winked at Thomas and walked toward Madame Vileroy.
“Good job, my dear. You were brilliant,” Madame Vileroy said.
“Thanks, and the best part is that now he thinks it’s Belle’s fault.”
As soon as the round was over, Belle and Lucy both ran over to Thomas from opposite sides of the hall. He was listlessly shuffling papers on his desk.
“Hi. I’m so sorry I’m late. Don’t worry, you can totally bounce back from that,” said Belle.
“And you’re going to help him?” spat Lucy.
“Of course I am,” said Belle, looking at Thomas for support. He still hadn’t looked up from his papers. She reached for his hand, but he pulled it away so fast, she let out a yelp.
“Like you helped Victoria?” he finally said.
Belle’s heart stopped. Did he know? Did he finally feel what had happened to him that night?
“What are you talking about?”
“Belle, you told her my entire strategy. About the patent lawyer and all the arguments I was using. You’re the one who told her.”
“No . . .”
“Yeah, Thomas, I bet it was her,” Lucy said, jumping in.
“What’s worse is that you told her about my plans — about wanting to be a lawyer. No one else knew about that. You’re the only one who could have said anything.”
“No, Thomas. I didn’t tell her that. I swear.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
Valentin’s creative writing teacher pushed his way past the crowd to congratulate his student. Valentin’s poems had just won first place in the original compositions category, and everyone wanted to talk to the gifted young artist. Charlotte had to claw and trample her way to the front, where Christian was already congratulating Valentin.
“Hey, Charlotte,” Valentin said when she stumbled into him. “What did you think?
Christian felt sorry for Charlotte. Valentin had such a dismissive tone. But still, who could blame him? He didn’t like her. And he had been nice to her for so long.
“It was great! What was your inspiration for that one?” Charlotte fished.
“Nothing. Just came to me.”
Charlotte looked hurt, and upset, and generally confused. “OK, well, I have to go. What time are you going to pick me up tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“You know. The spring dance?”
“Uh . . . Charlotte, I asked someone . . .” Valentin racked his brain. Did I ask Charlotte? No, no, definitely not.
Charlotte’s lip quivered. “But you asked me.”
Oh, geez.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. I promised to go . . . with my sister. . . . She doesn’t have a date. And anyway . . . I’m sorry.”
Charlotte burst into tears and ran off. Christian just stood there waiting.
“Aren’t you going to go back . . . to fix that?” he asked Valentin.
“Fix what? There’s nothing to fix. It’s better not to lea
d her on.”
Belle was crying. “I didn’t tell her that. I promise.”
“Belle, can you leave him alone?” said Lucy.
“Yeah, please leave. I only get fifteen minutes to prepare my comeback.”
Belle wiped her face on her sleeve. Thomas was fidgeting again, and his voice grew louder as he spoke to her. He was already nervous, but sitting near Belle, he felt as if he were being pricked all over with pins and needles that sent an unpleasant tingling through his hands and feet.
“Well, that’s why I came. I want to help,” said Belle slowly, noticing his nervousness.
“I don’t cheat. And I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Thomas, just trust me. Yes, Vic cheated. Yes, she got a look at your strategy in advance. But I promise that I had nothing to do with it.” Lucy snorted. Belle went on, “And what I have here is a speech that evens the playing field. It’s all based on the stuff you found on your own, but she hasn’t seen this speech. It’s fair.”
“OK, let me see and then I’ll decide.”
“No. You have to promise that you won’t look at it until you’re about to give the speech.”
“Are you kidding?” said Lucy. “He’d be crazy to trust you now.”
Belle glanced over at Victoria, who was intently watching the three of them, with a mean look. She was always cheating. Belle couldn’t let Thomas read the speech now.
“You’re serious?” said Thomas. “You want me to go up there and read something I’ve never seen?”
“If you read it now, she’ll have time to — Never mind, just do it for me. What do you have to lose? I can’t imagine you have much in that file box that’ll help you win in less than” — Belle checked her watch — “ten minutes.”
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