“But that’s just more colonialism,” Marina objected. “I say she should be loyal to the culture she is studying. Otherwise, the people won’t trust her.”
“Or him,” Damon shot back.
“Can’t the anthropologist be loyal to both?” Penn asked.
I found myself shaking my head as things came into focus. “She can’t win,” I blurted.
Professor Mannering’s eyebrows shot upward. “Ms. Little?”
I felt my face flush as everyone turned in my direction. “Well, by definition, the anthropologist is part of the colony—she is a Westerner. So even if she can’t stand colonialism, she is still a part of it. Being an anthropologist puts her smack-dab in the middle of colonialism itself.”
Professor Mannering’s eyes flashed, and he nodded as the bell rang. “That, peoples, is precisely the anthropologist’s paradox. An extremely sticky situation, anthropology.” He smiled at us, as if this were good news. “Read the next chapter in A Companion to Latin American Anthropology, and be prepared to discuss your essential humanity!”
“Whatever that is,” Damon muttered.
I closed my notebook, feeling both embarrassed and proud for my exclamation—another paradox. They were everywhere, it seemed. Shoving all my stuff into my bag, I wished that, for just a little while, I could take a break from my humanity altogether.
After classes, I headed up to the fields to watch Annette run—my first visit to the competitive sports madness at Brookwood. I’d noticed week after week that, in the space of an hour, the school transformed from a place of higher learning into an athletic circus. Most of the student body suited up in Brookwood red and gold and headed out to the fields for an aggressive match of something or other. Teams from myriad other schools descended upon us right after lunch, dressed in their school colors and ready to tromp us (which, as it turned out, was often the case).
Thanks to (1) my general dislike for team sports and (2) the fact that Roxanne liked to spend her Saturday afternoons either in town eating doughnuts or working on her art, I had thus far avoided the sports scene.
Thanks to my screwup, I wouldn’t be spending the afternoon with Roxanne, which worked out in a weird way because Annette had asked me to come see her race. I’d quickly agreed. My essential humanity was telling me to be loyal, and I was also curious about this running business, especially after listening to Becca pep-talk Annette at breakfast and lunch all week about her 10,000-meter race—a longer distance for Annette—in their match against Brewster.
As I followed the pathway to the athletic center, I noted wryly that the field Roxanne and I sometimes crossed in pursuit of consuming alcohol and where I inadvertently drenched myself on my first day was now overrun with boys in uniform, chasing a soccer ball. At Brookwood, alcoholic and athletic events took place on the same stage (a tidbit that could not be found in the glossy pages of the school’s catalog). At the moment, Hank was in goal and Penn was playing striker. The few Brookwoodies who didn’t play sports stood on the sidelines, cheering, while a kid dressed as a wolverine, Brookwood’s mascot—those little animals on the Vespers ties weren’t bears after all—attempted to rile everyone up.
On the field, Penn was everywhere. I’d been on the sidelines of enough games to know which players were worth watching. A great player had a palpable relationship with the ball—seemed to know where it was headed before it had even been kicked, was there to greet it, and handled it as if it were an extension of his or her body. Penn was one of those players. I watched him, amazed, while he charged the opposing forward, stole the ball, took it upfield, faked a pass, and scored with a powerful kick to the corner—all as if he were strolling down the sidewalk. Impressive. I watched the other team’s goalie send the ball up the field before I spotted a cluster of female cross-country runners making their way through the 10,000-meter course. Oh crap, I was late. I stood on tiptoe, zeroing in on a pair of girls from Brewster, followed by Becca and …
“Go, Annette!” I shouted as her head came into view behind the crest of a grassy hill. She was running several body lengths behind Becca, who was stepping up her pace in a bid for the lead. Becca’s lips were pursed in a straight line, her face set with determination. Annette looked plain miserable.
“Go go go!” I cheered as the runners closed the gap between themselves and the finish line. I jogged toward them, panting within fifteen seconds and wondering for the hundredth time why Annette had chosen to do this.
Thirty yards from the finish, Becca sprinted past the girl from Brewster to win the race. I watched Annette try to muster up a strong finish, but it was all she could do to stumble across the line.
Jeez, I thought as I headed over with the water I’d brought for her. Annette was bent over, her hands on her knees, gasping.
“Are you okay?” Up close, she sounded a little like Darth Vader. “Water?” I held out the bottle I’d filled with water and ice back in the dorm.
“Ugh, no,” she said, pushing it away. “Too cold.”
Since when? I thought as she straightened. Her entire face was the color of cooked shrimp, her usual floaty ponytail stragglers superglued to the sides of her face.
“Here you go, runner girl,” Becca said, appearing behind us and handing Annette a water bottle filled with a pink liquid. She wiped her forehead on a towel and took a swig from her own. “Electrolytes are our friends.”
Still breathing hard, Annette took a long, gulping drink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and smiled weakly—she appeared to be recovering. But a second later, her face buckled and she doubled over again, puking all over the grass. Her teammates stepped back with remarkable speed, as if expecting it. Me? I just stood there stupidly while vomit cascaded onto my Converse. I noticed little pieces of chewed-up lettuce and sunflower seeds in the pile of slop (no pizza remnants in sight).
“Bummer,” a teammate said, wrinkling her nose.
“Nice.” Becca took another swig of electrolytes-are-our-friends. “You obviously pushed yourself to the limit.”
Seriously? Was the goal to barf your way through Brookwood? I pulled Annette’s ponytail away from her vomit-covered chin, wiping it on the edge of my shirt. “Are you all right?” I asked again.
Her eyes met mine and I was shocked to see that they were full of annoyance. She tugged her ponytail away before straightening and toweling her chin. “I’m totally fine,” she said, trying to laugh—the strange, high-pitched laugh I heard the night of Dress to Impress. “Just a little post-race puke.”
Lola No appeared at Annette’s side. “Decent race, Anderson,” she said, all business. “Ten thousand might be the distance for you. We need to work on pacing, though. You went out too fast.”
She glanced down at the patch of barf she was standing in. “And maybe go easy at the lunch buffet on race day,” she added, lifting her foot out of the glop with a little shake.
This is amazing coaching? I thought, remembering Becca’s soliloquy about Lola No’s cross-country leadership. But Annette’s expression was full of reverence, and aside from the pile of vomit on the grass, you’d never have known that she’d just tossed her cookies onto the field. “Thanks, Coach,” she replied. “I’ll do better next time.”
Meaning what, exactly? You’ll run until you fall down and can’t get up? Until you pass out?
Lola No nodded. “Excellent. Team meeting in five.” She wiped her shoe on a clean patch of grass.
Becca clinked her water bottle against Annette’s. “A one-three finish,” she noted. “Not too shabby.” She turned to me, her eyes gleaming with audacity. “And you said Annette doesn’t like to run.”
I held her gaze, dying to retaliate with She doesn’t. But regardless of whether or not that was true, it was becoming painfully clear that it wasn’t my place. My relationship with Annette had changed dramatically. She was no longer someone I was supposed to help, to stand up for.
She’d somehow become someone I was merely supposed to watch.
“The key to the what?” I asked, staring at the gold key in Sam’s hand. We were in Penn’s room at the tail end of a Saturday night poker match. I’d held my own but hadn’t raked it in—the cards weren’t there for me. Too busy being there for Sam, apparently.
“The vault,” Hank repeated. “In the library basement.”
“The one we tried to find the first week of school?”
“Yes, exactly,” Penn confirmed.
“And how did we get the key?”
“Sometimes it comes in handy to be the geeky rule-follower,” Sam said with a laugh, his eyes gleaming in the lamplight. “They never suspect you of anything.”
I looked out the window toward the library, which was, as usual, lit up like a beacon. The touchstone of the Brookwood campus, the catalog said. A place where students gather to study, research, read, and write.
And commit trespassing crimes, I added in my mind. But having a key was a little different. Having a key meant we had access, that we wouldn’t have to sneak through filthy, dead-rat-infested steam tunnels.
“We still need to take the tunnels, though.” Penn dashed my hopes in an instant. “Sometimes the doors are guarded, and the exterior door to the library has a trip-wired alarm system.”
I fingered my burn through my jeans. It had broken open and oozed before it scabbed over, despite my attempts at first aid. “Are you sure we can find it?”
“Ye of little faith,” Penn protested, counting out chips.
“We went wrong the last time we tried to find the library, and my run-in with Lola No wasn’t exactly my idea of a good time. I didn’t convince my parents to let me come here so I could get busted and shipped back home.”
“Relax,” Penn said. “Nobody is getting shipped home. We’re going to be careful. Besides, kicking students out is the last thing the administration wants to do.”
I pictured Lola No’s interrogating face. “Are you sure about that? It seems like that’s exactly what they want to do.”
“Seems is the operative word,” Penn replied. “They want to appear as though they’re out to bust us, to keep us in line. But student success is essential; it guarantees the respect, gratitude, and financial support of our parents—the continuation of the elite way of life.”
“Why did you come here?” Hank asked me, changing the subject as he slipped a deck of cards into its case.
If the question had come from one of the girls in my dorm, I might have been taken aback. But Hank’s expression revealed his curiosity—he actually wanted to know.
“To get away,” I replied honestly.
“I hear that,” Penn said. “The more distance between me and my parents, the better.”
“For us, it was Annette’s mother,” I told them. I hesitated, searching for the right words. “And I also thought Annette and I would be different here.”
Hank’s jaw momentarily opened before he pulled it closed, and Sam busied himself with his own money counting. They knew who Annette was, of course—they’d all been at the pool when I’d blurted out the word girlfriend. But I had no idea whether they’d talked about it, and they obviously weren’t comfortable talking about it with me. I wasn’t totally sure I felt comfortable talking about it with them, either, but had never been very good at holding back.
Penn’s elbows rested easily on his knees. “And are you?” he asked, studying my face with a boldness I didn’t expect.
I almost looked away, but didn’t. I almost didn’t answer, but thought that would be a cop-out. And I wasn’t ashamed of myself, or Annette, or why we’d come here. I was just, it seemed, perpetually confused. I’d thought that coming here, getting away from Shannon and Virginia Falls, would strengthen us. Instead, it seemed to be our undoing. “Yes,” I said, trying to keep the sadness out of my voice. Only not in the ways I’d hoped.
Sam counted out one- and five-dollar bills and handed over a small stack. “Your original twenty, plus seven fifty in winnings for tonight.”
Penn groaned and eyed his measly pile of bills. “There’s nothing little about her.”
I tucked the money into my pocket, searching for some resolve and knowing that I’d at least be able to contribute to the vodka kitty for room 316. I steered the conversation back to the steam tunnels. “Why, exactly, are we so bent on breaking into the library?”
The three boys exchanged glances, the room’s silence broken by a posse of dorm mates having a mini wrestling match in the hall.
“We’re looking for something,” Penn said.
I paused, then said it. “Something like a shrunken head?”
Sam clucked his tongue and shook his head, making his straight dark bangs swing from side to side.
“Yes, we are looking for the shrunken head,” Penn admitted.
“So you think it’s real.”
He shrugged. “I think looking is a lot more entertaining than not looking.” He leaned back in his chair. “Being at Brookwood isn’t exactly a picnic. We spend most of our time trying to meet expectations, many of which are impossible. We can’t ace every test and win every game. We can’t spend every minute studying or training or competing. We can’t win at all costs and always be decent human beings.”
“You make this place sound so inviting.”
Penn shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m a little jaded.”
“I thought we were looking because you can only do so many vodka shots and deal so many hands of poker on a Saturday night,” Hank said, stretching his legs across the coffee table.
“That, too,” Penn agreed.
I watched Penn’s face, watched the corners of his eyes pinch together. He’d just summed up his Brookwood existence so easily, so simply. And yet we all knew that life at Brookwood wasn’t simple. Not for me, not for Annette, not for Penn. Not for anyone.
Penn stared blankly at the bottom of Hank’s shoes, but I could tell he wasn’t really with us—it was almost as though he’d gotten up from his chair and walked out the door. But then he was back, on his feet and pulling open the door to his closet, revealing a massive heap of clothes on the floor, above which hung three blazers (two navy blue and one brown herringbone) and several dress shirts in an impressively neat row. Half a dozen ties hung next to the shirts and jackets like towels on a rack, their V-tips aligning perfectly. Penn grabbed his tunnel pack from a hook and dug a long-sleeve shirt out of the pile.
“Is that your laundry?” I asked, noting the striking difference between the clothes on hangers and the giant jumble on the floor.
“My wardrobe,” Penn corrected, slinging the pack. “Are we ready, people?”
Five minutes later, Sam swung open the metal door in the basement, and the four of us stepped into the tunnels. The black maw of several weeks ago now seemed like a welcoming darkness, one in which I could disappear from everything that felt so complicated above. Somehow, when I was in the tunnels, it was as though I was no longer at Brookwood—all I had to do was follow the passageways and be careful not to trip or get burned.
“Hawkins Memorial Library, here we come,” Hank said, casting his headlamp beam beyond Sam into the blackened tunnel. Our order was reversed this time, with Sam in front, Hank second, me third, and Penn bringing up the rear. From the first steps away from the hatch, I could tell we were in a hurry. We didn’t actually move very fast, but there was an intent to this mission, some kind of purposeful reverence. We also branched off in a new direction fairly quickly.
“Lights are in less than an hour, so we’ve got to keep moving,” Penn said, reading my thoughts.
“Yes, General McCarthy,” Hank quipped.
“Somebody’s got to keep us on sched—”
“Shhh,” Sam said. I could hear voices above us—girls, it sounded like. Or a coed mix. “We’re under the café, which means we’re almost at the second junction.” Sam started forward again, slowly, his headlamp illuminating the darkness and bouncing off the cracked concrete walls. The pipes were on both sides in this section, and the usu
al cables lined one side. I was eyeing the floor warily when my nose collided with Hank’s shoulder blade. Half a second later, Penn’s chin bonked me in the back of the head.
“Junction,” Sam said.
“A little late there, Sammy,” Penn said in my ear as he clutched my arm for balance.
“Shit!” Hank howled. “Burn!”
“Sorry,” Sam said regretfully.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Think so.” I could tell Hank was wincing. I shined my light on his arm and saw an angry red slash just below his elbow.
“That’s gotta hurt.” I remembered the throb of my own blistered skin.
“Does, a little,” he admitted.
“Forty-eight minutes,” came the time toll from Penn.
Sam’s light fell on a plank that crossed a three-foot chasm in the floor, and a double-wide pipe covered with a web of smaller pipes and cables.
“That’s the junction?” I asked.
“See the tunnel behind it?” Sam asked.
“Um, yes,” I said. “But I also see several obstacles in front.”
“M’lady doesn’t want to walk the plank, boys,” Hank quipped.
“Watch it, Hanky,” I warned. “I’m not entirely above pelting an injured man.”
“Hanky,” Sam echoed. “I like it. We can call you Hanky-Panky.”
Hank whacked Sam on the shoulder. “Hey,” Sam objected. “No attacking the leader.”
“You can’t say it’s not appropriate, Hanky,” I pointed out.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hank objected halfheartedly as Penn’s guffaws filled the tunnel, dying in the dank.
Sam straightened and cleared his throat. “Dudes, we’ve got business to attend to,” he said. “Like getting behind that giant pipe.”
“Who are you calling a dude?”
“Fine. Dudes and Josie, we’ve got business to attend to.”
“What business?” Hank asked. “We’re just going to have to cram ourselves through.”
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