“I didn’t lie.”
“You sure didn’t tell me the truth.”
“I said Brookwood was crawling with Soleets. It is. I said they don’t give a damn about anyone else. They don’t. I said I hate them. I do.”
“You are one of them!”
“Not really.”
“Not really?” My voice was almost a shriek. “Wasn’t that your father who just walked out of here? The guy with the Brookwood tie and fancy gold watch? The president of the board of trustees?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And I should have told you, Josie. I know that. But I can’t change it now—I can only regret it. And it’s not like we get to choose where we come from, either. We just have to deal.”
That sort of stopped me, because it was true.
“And I am sorry. Even though it doesn’t erase anything. I should have told you. I wish I had told you. But it didn’t seem important at the time, and he’s not me—he’s my dad. We’re not the same person.”
Also, admittedly, true. And I couldn’t ignore the fact that Roxanne had been nothing but good to me since the day I arrived. She’d given me sound advice, had saved my butt with Lola No, and had listened when I needed to talk. She’d been a friend.
“What did your dad mean when he said he expects answers?” I asked, sitting down in my desk chair.
Roxanne ran a hand over her spiky hair. “He wants to know what happened in the tunnels.”
Even though I knew that—what else could it be?—I was really glad I was sitting down. “Why does he think you know?”
“He trained me to know, and to find out when I don’t. But I’m not telling. I’ll enjoy not telling. Let the board freak. Let the administration squirm. I don’t give a crap.”
I heard everything she said, but she seemed farther away than she actually was, and the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.
“What if I give a crap?” I asked.
“Are you thinking of turning yourself in?” she asked, incredulous. “Josie, don’t go there. It won’t do any good.”
“But I’m responsible.”
“How do you even know that? The utility system has needed an upgrade for years—decades, maybe. And most of the damage isn’t even close to where you were.” She gazed at me steadily. “Explosions in utility tunnels happen all the time. I’d bet my life it wasn’t your fault at all—you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I gazed at her, unconvinced.
“Turning yourself in won’t do any good, anyway.”
“It might keep me from feeling guilty for the rest of my life.”
“Guilty for what?”
I shrugged. At the moment, I wasn’t even sure.
“Will you feel okay about being sent back to Minnesota? Because that’s what would happen. They’d kick you out, and everything else would be exactly the same.”
“What everything else?”
“The mess that is Brookwood Academy,” she replied.
I waited.
“You know what I’m talking about, Josie. The board wanting perfection, the ridiculous competition, students drinking and doing drugs …” She paused for a minute, and then, “Some not knowing when to say when.” Her eyes softened and I felt mine start to well.
Roxanne got to her feet and gave me a hug. “This is bigger than you, Josie. It’s a tangled web of Soleetism. Let them drown in their own doctrine—they deserve it.”
I sniffled. “You are seriously harsh.”
Roxanne stepped back. “Maybe. But I also know what I’m talking about. I live this insanity.”
“What are you going to do about your dad?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “He’s been threatening me since I was three. He’ll be furious, but he’ll get over it.” She gazed out the window. “I’ve been disappointing him for years.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a dad like Hector Wylde. To have expectations placed on your shoulders the minute you were born. To come from privilege but reject it. What was it Penn had said that night in his room? That we spent most of our time trying to meet impossible expectations. That basically, no matter how hard we tried, we were never going to pull it off.
I suddenly felt very lucky to be a regular girl from a regular family. Or at least what I thought was regular. Nobody was putting pressure on me to perform, to excel, to be at the top. I was just … me.
Which, at the moment, was plenty.
“I think we should go back.” Roxanne’s voice drifted up from the bottom bunk, jarring me from restless doze to fully awake.
“Back where?” I asked, rolling over.
“To the jungle.”
Was she crazy? “There was an explosion down there, remember?”
“Lightning never strikes twice,” she reasoned.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a myth,” I said. “Besides, people have been combing the place for days.”
“We’ve got to make sure the head isn’t there.”
“I told you, I looked. It wasn’t there. And I repeat: People have been combing the place for days.”
“Didn’t you say you got creeped out pretty fast, and left?” She was like a dog with a bone.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But since when are you looking?”
“Since I found out what you’ve been up to. Since I found out that my sleazeball brother was telling the truth. Since I heard that a shrunken head might have been abandoned in the jungle. Since I—”
“I got it.” I peered at the ceiling, almost able to see Turtle Lake above my head.
Roxanne rolled out of bed and stood up, her head next to my pillow. “Look, the hot water is back on and they aren’t working in the tunnels anymore, which means the coast is clear down there. It’s … safe. Plus, we barely even have to go into the tunnels. We can approach it from the other side of the building.”
“And how do you propose we get to this other side?” I asked.
“Um, walk over there in the dark?” Roxanne didn’t miss a beat. “People roam around here all the time at night,” she said. “Just because you’ve been exploring the tunnels doesn’t mean you have a monopoly on after-dark escapades.”
Well, that was certainly a good point. One I could even verify with the pool party.
The image of Annette on the diving board flooded my brain, and I squeezed my eyes and pictured shrunken heads to force it away. I had to admit, part of me wanted to go back, to look again. To see what had happened down there. “Have you ever been in the tunnels?”
“No.”
It seemed totally ironic that the well-seasoned, knew-everything-about-Brookwood Roxanne had never been in the steam tunnels.
“They’re hot, filthy, and dangerous.” I considered telling her about the dead rat I’d encountered, then thought better of it.
“No, really? There’s no red carpet in there?” She started rummaging around in a dresser drawer. “Good thing I’ve got a lotta black,” she quipped. “Definitely the color for jumping out of dormitory windows.”
“This is madness,” I muttered.
“I can steal your covers if that’ll help.” Her voice was light with excitement.
I climbed down and pulled on a pair of dark jeans before packing the essentials in my backpack. Flashlights. Chalk. Water. Batteries.
Roxanne was giddy as we crept down the Cortland stairs, walking so close she bumped into me more than once. When we got to the first floor, I stepped to the side.
“You’re the chief window jumper,” I said. “You lead.”
She moved silently to the end of the hall and into an alcove with a window. Opening it, she pushed herself up onto her arms and swung a leg over the sill. She lowered herself until I could just see her face. Then she let go and jumped.
“Ooof,” she said, landing with a leafy rustle.
I stuck my head out the window. Roxanne was standing between the dorm and a boxwood hedge. “Here goes,” I muttered, f
ollowing suit. Forty seconds later, I landed with the same “ooof” and rustle. But we were out.
I’d never been outside on campus after lights, and it was exhilarating in a totally different way from the tunnels. Instead of feeling hot and sweaty, goose bumps rose on my arms and legs, and I felt decidedly free.
Roxanne stepped out from behind the bush and looked around. “It’s clear,” she said, waving me forward. We crossed the circle drive and snuck behind another row of hedges, our backs to the building.
“I grilled my brother,” she said. “There’s a grate in the ground next to the parking lot—we can get in through there.”
“It’s not bolted?”
“Not anymore!” she singsonged in a whisper.
I stared at her back. “Roxanne!”
“What?” she replied innocently. “We may as well put those art room tools to good use!”
I grimaced, thinking that maybe Penn had chosen the wrong girl to join his all-male posse. “And just when did you do all this recon?”
“After assembly. It wasn’t even that hard, actually. I had good cover, thanks to the meticulously pruned shrubbery.”
She rounded the corner of the building and we moved along the far side in the shadows, then made a dash for said shrubbery. When we got to the grate, she grabbed ahold and wriggled it free, then set it to the side. “Voilà!”
I considered the hot, filthy tunnels I’d had to navigate and the pile of rubble I’d had to dig through underground. This seemed impossibly easy by comparison. “Do we even know where this passageway goes?”
“We have a vague idea,” Roxanne said, grinning in the moonlight.
“Great,” I groused, climbing into the opening and down the ladder. Roxanne followed and pulled the grate back into place.
We climbed down about eight rungs, then stooped low in the passageway, which got taller as the floor sloped down. I shined my light farther down the tunnel, imagining what was over our heads.
“Hot,” Roxanne said.
I felt a little ill remembering how hot it had been the night of the explosion, and wondered if I had, in fact, gone completely insane. “This is actually tepid by tunnel standards.”
Roxanne let the beam of her light move slowly over the tunnel walls and floor, over the brick and mortar and the hissing pipes. “It is super creepy in here. I can’t believe you did this alone.”
I can’t believe I am doing it again. Was I brave, or stupid? The jury was obviously still out.
The tunnel grew narrower just before we came to a very short ladder. I climbed down and flashed my light over a small pile of construction debris that looked familiar. Bricks, old lumber, insulation …
“This is the kind of stuff I saw last night, just before I found—”
“What is that?” Roxanne shined her light on a crumbling section of wall. Hanging limply from an old nail was a wooden sign with an arrow. THE JUNGLE.
It was clear that the wire had rusted through and the sign had fallen—it pointed to the ground. I shined my light beyond the sign and saw it—the top of the pipe that led down to the jungle, and beyond that, the pile of rubble I’d come through the first time.
“Holy crap,” I said. “It’s right there.”
“Right where?” Roxanne asked.
“That hole,” I replied.
“That’s the jungle?”
“Uh-uh. The jungle is underneath it.”
“In the depths,” she murmured.
We picked our way past the rubble, and I swung my leg onto the first rung. “Here goes,” I said, and started down. Roxanne followed, nearly stepping on my hands. A moment later, we were both standing in the jungle.
“Welcome, ladies,” a raspy voice called through the darkness. I jumped, then whirled, shining my flashlight toward the cot.
“Holy shit,” Roxanne murmured.
Holy shit was right. Professor Mannering was lying on the cot. (Gross!) He sat up gingerly, swinging a leg to the floor. “Welcome to the jungle.”
I stood there, flabbergasted. What was my seventy-five-year-old anthropology professor doing in the depths of the steam tunnels?
“What are you doing here?” Roxanne blurted.
“I could ask you ladies the same question,” he replied as he turned on a lantern and set it on the desk. “But in fact I am quite sure we are here for the same reason. Or at least, similar ones. Indeed, I suspect that our dual arrivals at this particular location on the Brookwood campus are interconnected.” I heard him sigh and then pull something out of a small satchel, setting it on the desk with a muffled, glassy clunk.
I shined my flashlight on the item, which was wrapped in burlap and gathered at one end. A piece of cotton string dangled from the top—part of the coarse cloth had slipped out of the knot, exposing a section of glass underneath. I blinked and stepped closer, trying to focus. Was that a nostril?
“What is that?” Roxanne asked, shining her light toward the desk.
Professor Mannering’s thin fingers reached out and tugged on the edge of the burlap, and the glass container slipped out, rolling sideways. He stopped it with his other hand and righted it.
“That, I’m afraid, is a shrunken head.”
“You had the head?” I blurted before I could stop myself. I could hear the accusation in my voice, and felt ashamed of it.
Professor Mannering pushed the jar toward me. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did.”
I looked at him, then the head, then back at him. I was too shocked to speak.
“And for a long time. Too long, in fact. But I told him I would retrieve it, that I would keep it safe.” His voice faltered. “And given what happened after that, it seemed the least I could do.”
“Told who?” Roxanne wanted to know.
“Edward Hunter, of course.” He nudged the jar toward me again. “Go ahead. Take a closer look.”
I picked up the jar and turned it slowly in my hand while Roxanne shined her light on it for added illumination, as if it were on exhibition at a museum. About the size of an orange, the face was a wrinkled, dark, leathery blue-brown and had tufts of long, very dark hair sprouting from its crown. The nose, lips, and eyes were sewn shut and tied with coarse cotton string that was repeatedly and ornately knotted. It was hideous and beautiful all at once.
“Freaky,” Roxanne said.
I turned the jar upside down. Written on the bottom, in faded black ink, were the words Shuar Tsantsa, September 14, 1942.
“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Professor Mannering said.
I felt the weight of the head in the small jar, which was growing warm from the heat of my hand. Part of me wanted to put it down, but another part refused. “Why did he give it to you?”
Professor Mannering shook his head. “He didn’t, exactly. He told me where he had hidden it. Edward was one of my very first students, and certainly my first star student. He had a brilliant mind, and I admired him. I suppose I was even in awe of him …” His voice trailed off. “I was young myself—just a boy, really. More like my students than the rest of the faculty.”
The oversize lips pressed against the inside of the jar, kissing my palm. I set the jar down with a shudder.
“I so wanted the boys to like me,” Professor Mannering went on. “And I didn’t know where the line between student and teacher was supposed to be. By the time I realized that some of my students were determined to have their own hallucinogenic parties, how they wanted to use Edward’s scientific talents for their own purposes, well … I was too late.” His words lingered in the air, and neither of us said anything for a long time. When I looked back at Professor Mannering, he had tears in his eyes.
“If I’d been wiser, I might have been able to intervene, to …” His voice wavered. “… save him.”
I reached out and put my hand over his. “It was a long time ago,” I said.
He nodded, then shook his head. “Indeed. But I only remember that when I am in front of a mirror and see an old man looking
back at me. If not for that, it would seem like yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you had it?” I asked quietly.
Professor Mannering balked. “What good would that have done?” he asked. “Edward had already died. His grandfather had already died. And he and his father, Edward Hunter II, never got along. He actually told me he came to Brookwood to escape his father.”
“I think a lot of us want to escape our fathers,” Roxanne said resignedly. This shook me a little, as it was also true about Penn. And if you added mothers, Annette, I thought with a pang.
Professor Mannering picked up the head and returned it to the burlap sack. “I came here a few nights ago to leave this here, quite certain that you would soon find it, Josephine. But someone interrupted me, so I had to depart the moment I arrived.”
“That was me,” I said.
“Ah, you were ahead of my projected schedule. Not surprising, really. At any rate, I returned as soon as the tunnels were safe again. Or at least relatively safe.” He paused to look me square in the face. “I assure you that I understand the allure of these tunnels. But the truth is that no one is safe down here.”
I nodded.
He held the burlap sack out to me. “I want you to take it.”
“What? No, I—”
“I want you to take it and decide where it should be. Except for the other night, I haven’t been down here since Edward died, and I won’t ever return. It is time for me to leave this place, to let go of Edward and his head, and of Brookwood.” He smiled ruefully. “I am ready to go,” he added, “now that I know the head is in safe hands.”
I felt a wave of panic. “What makes you think my hands are safe?”
“That is hard to explain. Perhaps because you were the first student in half a century to find your way here,” he said. “And by yourself, the first time,” he added with a nod toward Roxanne. “That takes a great deal of courage. But it is also because in spite of your wordless essay, I can see that you are not letting Brookwood change who you are, or what you believe. Which, given what was at stake and the truth that had to be faced, takes even more courage.” He coughed lightly. “I suppose, then, that it is the combination of factors, as so many things are.”
Without Annette Page 24