Without Annette
Page 23
Roxanne arched a dark eyebrow. “It’s not saved yet,” she intoned. “But we’re giving it our best shot.”
“Josie, hurry up!” Roxanne said. “Thornfeld called an emergency assembly during first period. He’s going to lecture us about the tunnels.”
I stood up and flushed. I hadn’t forgotten about the explosion, obviously, but hearing Roxanne say it out loud made me want to flush myself down the toilet all over again. Since I knew I wouldn’t fit, I cracked the bathroom door.
“Glad to see you’re still conscious in there.”
“I’d rather be unconscious,” I said, shivering. Thanks to the explosion, there was no heat or hot water in our dorm … and possibly the whole school. “Maybe I should follow Annette’s lead.” Oh God, that was terrible.
“That’s just what we need,” Roxanne said, shoving her books into her bag. “Another hospitalization.” She grabbed one of her extra messenger bags—the only one without paint all over it—and started loading my books into the main compartment. “Your backpack got pretty trashed, so I put it in a plastic bag in the back of the closet. We’ll have to get you a new one, but you can use this for now. Just try to keep it organized, will you? Your old pack was a disaster even before it got fried. Oh, and I’m giving you some mechanical pencils.”
“I despise mechanical pencils,” I replied, snatching the bag and slinging it over my shoulder. “Should we discuss the state of your dresser?”
“My dresser has nothing to do with art, schoolwork, or grades,” Roxanne retorted. “Besides, everyone needs a messy place. It’s practically a proven fact.”
“My entire life is a freaking messy place.”
“Not your entire life,” Roxanne insisted, “just most of it.” She paraded me back into the bathroom and parked me in front of the mirror. I eyed my reflection and gulped. My hair was a very messy place.
“No panicking,” she said, turning on the water and sticking my head under the icy stream. She toweled it, then squeezed a giant glob of gel into her hand and guided me to the toilet for a seat.
“Good luck,” I said grimly as her goopy hands came at me.
“Not luck, skill.” Her face was a mask of concentration, and the tip of her tongue was back in action. “And knowing when is enough.” She finger combed, gelled, and scrunched all at the same time. Then she pulled out an elastic headband and slipped it on. “Take a look.”
I did, and gasped. My hair looked good—really good. “How did you do that?”
Roxanne shrugged. “I’ve done some hair. Now let’s get out of here—assembly starts in six minutes.”
I silently thanked her for her omission of the word emergency and followed her down the hall. She moved so fast my heart was on overdrive before we even got to the pond.
“Can we slow down a little?”
Roxanne turned, incredulity all over her face. “You want to be late?”
I don’t want to go, I thought, saying nothing. Her question was clearly rhetorical.
The mood in the auditorium was somber and electric at once, and I was surprised by how quiet it was, given the number of people present. I tried to relax, to breathe, but my palms were so sweaty someone could have wrung them out. Our cross-campus dash hadn’t allowed time for instructions on how to get through this little event, but I knew enough to keep my head down—but not too far down—and act precisely the opposite of how I was feeling.
Thornfeld, Lola No, and Dean Austin, among others, were in an administrative huddle onstage. Lola No kept checking her watch and turning to see how many students had arrived, even though nearly everyone was already there. Finally, Thornfeld approached the lectern. “Please take your seats,” he said into the microphone. His voice sounded a lot like how I felt—fried.
The few stragglers settled into the velvet rows while Thornfeld waited patiently. He looked smaller than usual behind the lectern, as if he’d shrunk a size or two.
“As I’m sure many of you know, there is no heat or hot water on campus,” he said. “There was an explosion in one of the underground utility tunnels last night.” He spoke slowly and clearly, like a politician making an important speech. “Damage was sustained in the eastern section of the main building. While we are thankful that no one was hurt, we must consider the possibility that an unauthorized person may have been in the tunnels. This is, as you all know, strictly forbidden.” He shifted slightly, gazing out at us over the top of his glasses.
“The trustees are not going to like this,” Oscar said under his breath.
“Brookwood’s backbone is its Honor Code. At the beginning of each year, every one of us pledges to act with integrity, honesty, and respect. And yet it is quite clear that not everyone here is being honorable.” He lowered his eyes, waiting. When he raised his head again, I swear he was looking right at me. “Anyone who knows anything is expected to come forward.”
I inched downward a tiny bit, certain that I still smelled like smoke and subterranean whatever, that I may as well have had a sign that said, “It was me! I caused an explosion in the tunnels!”
Lola No leaned toward Dean Austin, whispering into his ear, and I held my breath.
“The east wing of the main building is off-limits to everyone until facilities and the fire department can make sure that the heating and electrical systems are functional and officials can complete a thorough investigation,” the headmaster said.
My eyes found Annette’s empty seat three rows up, wondering if she was already in Virginia Falls and whether I should call my mom and tell her I’d changed my mind—I wanted to come home, immediately.
Despite Roxanne’s assurances that I was in fact present, I don’t remember going to English or algebra after assembly. My body traveled to the humanities wing and then the science building, but it was as though I’d been anesthetized, as if I weren’t actually there. And then, out of the blue, I found myself in anthropology class, sitting next to Marina.
“Can you believe it?” she asked. “I heard that there was damage all the way under the T.”
“No,” I replied honestly. “I can’t believe it.”
I watched Professor Mannering shuffle into the classroom, looking utterly unlike himself. He wore a faded blue T-shirt that my mother would have long ago relegated to the rag drawer, and his pants were wrinkled and saggy—he’d forgotten his belt. And he wasn’t even wearing his glasses.
“Today you are going to write a personal in-class essay,” he said bleakly. He walked to the whiteboard and wrote When is what you believe more important than what is true?
I stared at the question while blank sheets of 8-1/2 × 11 paper were passed around. When the paper was sitting in front of me, I stared some more. I wrote down my name and the question itself.
I wrote the truth, then erased it.
I wrote what I believe, then erased that.
When the bell rang, I had written each of those things a half dozen times, and had a hole in my paper. Nothing other than my name, the date, and the question remained. And I knew it wasn’t because of the mechanical pencil.
“That was weird,” Marina said as I shouldered the bag Roxanne had lent me.
“Yeah,” I agreed as we headed to the dining hall. Roxanne was waiting, and she nodded at Marina, as if she’d arranged my drop-off. Which she probably had.
“I’m not hungry,” I told her as she handed me a plate in the servery. It wasn’t even her lunch period—she was supposed to be in art.
“Not the point, but you know that already. I’m heading to the salad bar. Don’t come to our table until your plate is full of food.”
I stood in the middle of the servery wondering what to put on my plate, what I could possibly force myself to eat.
“Everything all right?”
I turned and saw Steve, who was standing at his usual lunchtime post—the grill.
“Who can tell?”
He regarded me from behind the counter. “Well, I’ve got some really good stuff today. Can I interest
you in grilled mahi with fresh mango salsa? Or maybe the pesto chicken?”
I swallowed.
“You don’t look so good, Josie.”
I don’t feel so good.
He set the serving spatula down and fished around in his apron pocket. “I’ve got something for you. At least, I think it’s for you.” He held out a tiny manila envelope. “I found it in the haunted house when we were cleaning up.”
“The haunted house?”
“My grandmother’s house,” he explained. “We haunt the first two floors every October.”
“Dracula …” I said, realizing Steve had been the ticket taker.
He nodded sheepishly. “It’s a dopey costume, but my grandmother loves it, and she lets us do the house, so …”
I tipped the envelope and a dirty gold chain and cracked pendant slid into my hand. I gasped. My opal necklace.
“I think someone stepped on it,” Steve said apologetically. “But I thought you might be able to have it repaired.”
I stared at the broken chain, at the jagged crack that ran across a corner of the iridescent stone, feeling tears gather in the corners of my eyes. I was standing in the Brookwood servery, holding my last piece of Annette. “How did you know it was mine?” I managed to get out.
“The opal is my grandmother’s birthstone, and I’ve always liked it. I noticed your necklace the first night at dinner.”
I closed my palm around the mangled piece of jewelry, swallowed, and slid it back into the envelope. “Thank you,” I rasped. “It means a lot to me.”
“I thought it might,” he murmured, and then, in his regular voice, “Can I put something on that plate of yours?”
Roxanne appeared at my side, carrying a tray with a giant salad on it. “She’ll take a piece of pesto chicken.”
I was pretty sure I was the barfy green color of the pesto, but didn’t object as Steve gave me a healthy serving.
“Thanks.” She stopped for two glasses of water and led me to a table in the corner, where I choked down yet another meal and tried to ignore the gossip that surrounded me. Which was pointless, of course. It wasn’t every day—or decade—that someone blew up part of the school. The whole community was abuzz.
After lunch, Roxanne looked me square in the face and told me she was going to go check it out. My stomach dropped.
“I just want to see the crime scene while there’s police action.”
“Are you crazy?”
She shrugged and got to her feet. “Maybe. Do you want to come or not?”
I knew I was going before I had a chance to exhale. “Yeah.”
We dropped our lunch dishes and headed into the bleak November air to gape at the blackened trees and scorched grass. At the charred vines covering the side of the main building. A manhole cover had blown open from pressure inside the tunnels, ripping a hole in the ground, and yellow CAUTION tape cordoned off the entire area.
It looked the precise opposite of the pictures in the catalog.
Roxanne and I were standing together, our breath spilling visibly into the cold, when Becca approached. Spotting me, she reached out and grabbed my wrist, yanking me toward her. Her turquoise eyes were wide-open, exhilarated. “Talk about a boon,” she said breathlessly. “Nothing like an explosion to take the pressure off. We can both heave a big fat sigh of relief.”
“Relief?”
“That the administration has a real disaster to deal with,” she explained. “Our potential mix-up with Annette is a tiny infraction compared to this. It’ll be as if Annette never binged and got shipped out of here. Like it never happened.”
Could she hear herself?
I had grown accustomed to Becca’s self-absorption, but still found myself speechless. Shipped out of here, like a lifeless commodity. Like a pallet of tomato paste, or toilet paper.
And yet as I looked over her shoulder at the black earth and withered vines and scorched bricks, I felt it. I tried to pretend I didn’t, because it was so awful. But I felt it—a tiny sliver of relief.
And then I remembered that I was pretty sure I’d actually caused the disaster everyone was staring at, and the relief was gone, replaced by self-loathing. Nausea crawled up my throat and I raised the back of my forearm to my mouth, swallowing hard.
Nobody knows, I told myself. Nobody besides Roxanne has any idea you were even in there. And if there was one person I could trust at Brookwood, it was my roommate. I turned to look for her, realizing only then that she was gone. I couldn’t even be surprised—escaping Becca was one of her many talents.
Becca sidled away as easily as she’d yanked me toward her, and I stood in the cold with the taste of rancid chicken and pesto in my mouth, gaping like everyone else, trying to be like everyone else. Or at least anyone but myself. And then Penn was standing next to me, sharing my line of sight across the pond. He studied the scene with an expression I couldn’t read. Bewilderment, maybe, and something else. He didn’t say anything, just stood there, holding himself slightly away from me with a stiffness I didn’t recognize. A stiffness that didn’t suit him, didn’t suit us.
There is no us, I snapped at myself.
“This is intense,” Penn said abruptly. He wasn’t looking at me, exactly, but was definitely invading my peripheral—I could see that curl that half covered his left eye. I had the feeling he wasn’t talking about the blackened building or the gaping hole in the ground, either. Or at least not only those things.
And then he was looking at me. At my forehead, just above my right eye. He cocked his head, squinting, and I subconsciously touched the spot he was focused on, but didn’t turn to face him. What did he want from me?
“I’m sorry.”
The words were spoken so quietly I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him correctly. But when I saw the expression on his face, I knew he’d not only said them but meant them.
I felt a flash of empathy, followed by an internal explosion of fury. He was apologizing here, in public, among a mass of gawkers? And what was he sorry for, exactly? For kissing me? For fooling around with Annette?
Everyone kept telling me they were sorry, as if being sorry was all it took. Were those two little words supposed to make it all okay? Because they didn’t. It wasn’t. Not even close.
I could feel my face heating up despite the cold. “Save it,” I said, my voice cracking. Becca and her posse of Soleets were distracted, but not so far away that they were truly out of earshot. “Because I’m not.” I met his gaze. I must have been shooting daggers, because he stepped back, a little off-balance. I hoped he’d slip on a patch of ice but he caught himself, straightening, his face full of anguish. “Not even a little,” I added venomously.
I pushed past him and strode across the thin layer of snow to my dorm, the crunching under my feet matching the rhythm of my furious heart. The forty-nine steps to Cortland’s third floor felt like ten.
“I expect answers from you, period,” came a voice from inside my room. A man’s voice—one I didn’t recognize.
If I’d had a coherent thought, I might have waited quietly in the hall, listening. Getting a gauge. But my brain was obviously on a misfiring bender, because I pushed open the door instead.
A man I had never seen before was standing in the middle of our room with his back to me. He faced Roxanne, whom I couldn’t see but assumed was sitting on the bed. Tall and slender, the man had a full head of dark hair that was graying at the temples. He turned abruptly, his dark eyes sharp and angry. I watched his expression morph systematically into one of cordiality.
“You must be Josie,” he said with a tight smile. “Roxanne has told me much about you.” I couldn’t help noticing his tie, a band of dark red with miniature wolverines printed across it. A Brookwood tie.
Behind him, Roxanne looked decidedly distraught. I’d never really seen her flustered or stressed, I suddenly realized, even here in this crazy school, even with everything I’d thrown at her. Until that moment, I’d believed her to be unflappable.
“Nice to meet you.” The words president and board of trustees hung in the air like a cloud of gnats, thick and buzzing and nasty. I wondered precisely how and why my roommate—the one person I thought I could trust at Brookwood—had neglected to mention that her father was in charge of the people in charge around here. That he lorded over the administration. That he was the very embodiment of a Soleet. Roxanne’s dark eyes met mine squarely, but looked undeniably guilty.
“I’m clearly interrupting something,” I said. “I can come back.”
Hector Wylde, president of the board of trustees, shook his head. “No, no, we’ve finished our business for now, and I have a meeting with the headmaster.” He checked his gold watch and turned his presidential eyes to Roxanne. “I’ll expect to hear from you,” he told her. “Soon.”
He smiled his tight smile as he brushed past me toward the door. “Nice to meet you, Josie,” he said over his retreating shoulder.
The door closed behind him with a decisive click and we were alone with the cloud of gnats, which had invaded my head and were buzzing maniacally. “President of the board of trustees?” I said. “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Roxanne closed her eyes.
“Roxanne?”
She opened them. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh my fucking God!” I shouted. “If anyone else says that to me, I’m going to scream. Annette is sorry. Becca’s sorry. Penn is sorry. You’re sorry. Even the damned dean is sorry. And guess what? That whole pile of sorrys doesn’t change a thing. Penn still fooled around with my alcoholic mess of an ex-girlfriend whom, God help me, I think I still love. I still caused an explosion in the steam tunnels. And the one person I thought I could trust in this crazy petri dish of a school lied to me, on day one and every day after, about who she is.”