The burlap sack was still dangling in the air, held by string and Professor Mannering’s fingers. I put my hand underneath and he let go, dropping it into my open palm. He reached out with both hands and closed my fingers around it.
“Congratulations, Josie Little,” Professor Mannering said. “You are now in possession of Edward Hunter’s Shuar shrunken head.”
“What the heck am I going to do with it?” I asked Roxanne the next morning. I was sitting on her bed, holding the shrunken head. Since taking possession the night before, I’d barely put the thing down, or stopped talking.
Roxanne leaned toward the bathroom mirror and swiped her lashes with navy blue mascara. “Give it to the administration?”
“Why would I do that?”
She shrugged. “Because they’d love to have it,” she mused. “They could put it on display in the main hall with a sign under it proclaiming that it only cost them one student.”
I burst out laughing. “You are positively evil.”
“Maybe.” Satisfied with her lashes, she pulled back from the mirror and turned in my direction. “But here’s the thing. Brookwood hasn’t exactly been on the best of terms with the Hunters since their legacy genius son died on campus. Giving back the head might change that.”
“Really?”
“Totally possible. It’s been half a century since Hunt died, and time heals. I’d be willing to bet that the Hunters want to be reunited with Brookwood as much as Brookwood wants to be reunited with them.”
This made total sense to me in a twisted way. All I had to do was hand the head over to the Brookwood administration.
Problem was, I didn’t want to. It seemed too easy. If it were the right thing to do, wouldn’t Professor Mannering have done it years ago?
I looked at the face in the jar—eyes and lips tied shut, as if it were in pain, as if it had a secret it was afraid to let out. I thought of Edward Hunter—bullied and manipulated. I wondered how, exactly, he died in the tunnels. Why he and his father didn’t get along. Edward Hunter II was an old man now. Was he full of regret?
I pictured Annette in that hospital bed, on her way home with her abusive mother. The mother we’d tried to escape. I’d thought that by bringing Annette here, by getting her away from Shannon, I’d be keeping her safe, setting her free. But now it seemed that maybe Annette was too broken inside to know how to be safe or free. She had wounds that were invisible—even to me.
Maybe the same was true of Edward Hunter.
I felt the warm glass against my fingertips. Poor Edward Hunter. Poor Annette.
“Are you all right?” Roxanne asked.
Annette is still alive, I reminded myself.
“Unclear,” I said, gazing at the long dark hair pooled in the bottom of the jar. It was so shiny, like black corn silk.
Professor Mannering hadn’t saved Edward Hunter, and I hadn’t saved Annette. Was it possible for one person to save another? I thought. Maybe, but only if that person wanted to be saved.
Did Annette want to be saved? I inhaled sharply as the question formed in my head, because I was utterly unable to answer it. And, I realized, it wasn’t my job to know. It wasn’t my problem to solve. It was Annette’s.
“This doesn’t belong to me or Brookwood,” I suddenly said.
Roxanne was at her desk now, loading up her book bag.
“Do you think I could send it to the Hunters myself?”
Roxanne tapped her finger on her chin. “That’s a little risky,” she said. “We’d have to figure out where to send it, and pray it arrives safely. And it probably wouldn’t help the school very much.” She turned to me, a mischievous smile spreading across her face. “Which is precisely why I like it.”
“Hey,” I said as he approached.
“Hey,” Penn said, his gait halting and awkward as he ambled up to me. He almost looked like someone else, even in his blue blazer and button-down, his red striped tie flapping a little in the cold. Vespers was starting any minute, but I’d asked him to meet me by the baseball field.
He drew close and stopped, waiting.
I’d had a hundred things to say to him, but now that he was standing in front of me, the words were suddenly stuck inside. I looked up at the curl hanging over his eye, and it was as if he’d just walked into my room, carrying my suitcases. As if I’d just arrived.
“Josie?” he said.
“Yeah, I’m in here somewhere,” I replied. “I just can’t figure out what to say to you.”
He half smiled. “Well, I know what to say to you,” he replied. “Josie, I’m sorry. Sorry for being a jerk. Sorry for kissing you. Sorry for fooling around with Annette.”
Ouch. Did he have to bring that up? The words You’re an asshole took shape in my head, but I didn’t say them aloud.
“We’d both been drinking, and she, well, she made the first move.”
My gaze moved past his shoulder to the blackened hole in the ground.
“That’s no excuse … I shouldn’t have … I should have just said no.”
“Yeah, you should have,” I agreed. “But you didn’t.” Part of me wanted to punch him, to tell him he was a total jerk. Did he think he could get off this easy? But another part of me knew he wasn’t getting off easy, that nobody who paid attention did. And if there was one thing I knew about Penn McCarthy, it was that he paid attention.
Still, it would have been ridiculously easy to blame him for everything. To pretend that Annette had been mine until the night she ended up in his room. Except that wasn’t the truth—it was merely something I wanted to believe.
“There’s something you should know,” Penn said. “Something she said when we were together.”
I winced a little when he said that last word.
“It was that she didn’t want to be such a follower. That she wanted to be herself. But then she said she didn’t know who she was anymore.”
I closed my eyes and tried not to make that my fault.
“She said she wanted to be authentic, like you.”
My eyes shot open. “I’m not so authentic.”
“Also … we didn’t have sex. I couldn’t.” He looked away. “She’s not you.”
He did not just say that.
I glanced up at him, at his eyes, which were full of hurt. “It wasn’t bullshit, Josie,” he said quietly. “I totally, completely fell for you. Like it or not, you are authentic. Pretty much the most authentic person I know.”
And there it was again. It wasn’t bullshit. He saw me, and wanted me anyway. Maybe even loved me a little. I momentarily wished I wanted him back.
“A girl who authentically likes girls.”
“Well aware of that fact,” he said.
“I know how it feels to want something that’s impossible,” I offered. “I know how much it sucks.”
Penn ran a hand through his curls. “It sucks all right,” he agreed, his eyes clouding as he added, “but not as badly as Annette’s situation. She is a major mess.”
A slow, sickening feeling spread through me like water seeping into a moldy sponge. He was absolutely right—she was. And no matter what I’d told myself or had wanted to believe, the truth was that there was very little I could do to fix it.
I inhaled raggedly, trying to get the air in. When it came out again, it was a sob. Penn reached out and touched my arm, but didn’t try to talk me out of it. There was no I’m sorry, no It’s not your fault, no It will be okay. He was just there with me, propping me up with his proximity, while I gave in to my anguish. And somewhere in the midst of my tears and Penn’s quiet presence, I realized that, in spite of everything—or maybe because of everything—Penn was a friend. A real friend, and one I wanted to keep.
Finally, I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, pulling myself back together. “Ugh,” I said. “It’s too much.”
Penn held out a rumpled tissue. “Way too much.”
I took the tissue and blew my nose, feeling like I’d just been through the spin cycle, but al
so a little bit better. “I have something to show you.” I unzipped the small bag I was carrying, took out the burlap-covered jar, and unwrapped it. Cradling it in both hands, I held it out to Penn.
“Holy shit,” he breathed. “Is that the head?”
“That’s the head.”
“You’re carrying it around campus?”
I chuckled. “It’s an old trick Roxanne taught me—sometimes you can get away with things that aren’t expected.”
He took the jar gently, turning it. “So it is real.” He studied the leathered skin, the sealed eyes and lips, the still-shiny dark hair. “This is definitely the creepiest and coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” He flipped it over and read the bottom. “Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t, exactly. It sort of found me.”
“Really …” I could hear the question in his voice, the disbelief.
Just tell him. “Professor Mannering had it.”
“Mannering?”
“Yup.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope.”
“How’d he get it?”
“Edward Hunter gave it to him, essentially. He’s had it for fifty years.”
“How did … oh my God.” He did a quick calculation of years and slapped his forehead. “How did I not realize that Mannering and Edward Hunter were here at the same time?”
I shrugged. “It was Mannering’s first year here.”
“Yeah, but I should totally have known that.” He held the jar up to the dim light one last time before wrapping it in the burlap and handing it back. “Edward Hunter III was my grandfather’s best friend.”
“What?” The words circled in my brain, mixing with my own questions, and then, an odd sense of relief for the science geek who died too young. Hunt had a best friend, I thought. A real one.
“Do you have the address for Edward Hunter II?” I said.
“Sure,” Penn confirmed. “Our families have been friends for generations. Grandfather wasn’t here when Hunter died, though. He went to Sutton.”
“The rival school?”
“My maternal grandfather,” he said, half rolling his eyes. “The Watsons are a Sutton family.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I will ever understand this stuff.”
“That might make two of us,” Penn agreed.
I remembered the little rhino—Sutton’s mascot—sitting on the shelf above Penn’s desk, how Penn had declared that it wouldn’t go into a trophy case. It could only be his grandfather’s. “Is that why you were looking for the head? For your grandfather?”
“Yes, and the Hunters.” His eyes traveled the wall of the damaged building. “And also because, I don’t know, I guess I wanted something more out of being at Brookwood—something more than a diploma and admission to the right college.”
I felt the corners of my mouth rise. “You just might be authentic yourself, Penn McCarthy.”
“You think?”
“Absolutely.” I tucked the shrunken head into my bag and smiled up at him. We were ready to go to Vespers.
“Annette?” I said, unable to believe she’d answered the phone. I’d called a dozen times, hanging up every time Shannon’s voice had come at me, like a razor blade, over the telephone line.
“Josie, hi. Yes, it’s me. Have you been calling? Someone keeps calling and hanging up. Shannon says it’s you, trying to get to me.”
I gazed out the window at the pond while melancholy dripped into me. Because it was me calling, but not to get to her. Just the opposite. “Yes, it was me.” I hesitated, not quite sure what to say. After so many failed attempts, I really hadn’t expected to reach her. “I needed to talk to you.”
“Oh, Josie, I’m so glad you called. I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
A string of silence stretched between us.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, my heart heavy with knowing that saying those two words wouldn’t fix everything. Or anything, for that matter. But the truth was, I was sorry, for a lot of things.
“I miss you,” she said.
Had she heard me? I wondered as I waited for my heart to pound, my breath to catch—for Annette’s missing me to move into my body and make it react. Or for a sarcastic comment to come flying out of my mouth. Neither happened.
“Are you all right?”
A slow exhale made its way across the phone line. “I don’t know,” Annette said, her voice cracking. “I can’t believe I’m back in Virgina Falls, in this house, with my mom …” She shuddered, and I knew in unfortunate detail how her green eyes had just turned a shade closer to gray, how her bottom lip curved as it wobbled and she started to cry.
Say something! a voice in my head said. Make it better! But another voice reminded me that it wasn’t my job to make it better anymore, that really, it never was. Annette was caught in her own web, and I couldn’t get her out. She’d have to untangle herself.
So I didn’t say anything. I just waited quietly on the line, letting her cry. “Oh God,” she finally said, her voice a squeaky mess. “Can you believe how stupid I am?”
“You’re not stupid—you just have some stuff to figure out.” It was so strange. I’d felt terribly confused over the past couple of months but was really just finding my way. It was Annette who was getting lost.
“I don’t know how everything got so messed up.”
I wasn’t entirely sure myself. Was it me? Brookwood? Her mother? Herself? It’s all of it, I thought. It’s all of it, and a zillion other things. It’s life.
Annette sniffled. “Do you think I should try to come back?”
I didn’t. Not because I didn’t want her to—I actually wasn’t sure whether I did or didn’t—but because I thought maybe Lola No was right. Brookwood didn’t seem like a good place for Annette to be. “I don’t think you should decide now. I think you should focus on taking care of yourself. You and your dad have to figure out what to do about your mom. You can’t let her keep hurting you, Annette.”
“I know,” she said. “My aunt Sarah is coming to live with us for a while.” I could hear the hope in her voice. “But, Josie?”
“Yeah?”
“I think we died.”
I felt a giant wave of loss wash over me and into me, settling in my bones. I hadn’t put what had happened to us into those exact words but knew it was true as soon as I heard them. Whatever Annette and I had been, we weren’t anymore.
“Do you think I’m going to be okay?” she asked, her voice wavering.
I rolled away from the window, willing myself to tell the truth. “I can’t answer that,” I said. “But I know I believe in you.”
Mr. Edward Hunter II
942 Fifth Avenue, PH2
New York, NY 10075
November 9, 2015
Dear Mr. Hunter,
I believe the enclosed item belongs to you. It was found in an underground room at Brookwood Academy. I realize this will not bring back your son, but I hope it will bring you some peace nonetheless. It certainly is a remarkable object.
With Best Wishes,
Anonymous
I set the head in a box that Roxanne had absconded with from the mail center, cradling it in several layers of crumpled newspaper.
“It’s weird,” I said, “but I’m going to miss my little head.”
“Be glad it’s not a Little head,” Roxanne said with a tiny shudder. “That would be a bit gruesome.”
I laughed and silently said good-bye to the leathered face and tied features before closing the box flaps and taping it securely. Carefully copying the address Penn had gotten for me, in indistinguishable block letters, I addressed the mailing label and stuck it on, using Penn’s home address as the return and covering it with a piece of packing tape, just to be safe.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t go with FedEx?” I asked for the tenth time.
“Uh-huh. We’re going old-school, just like the recipient. My mom’s gallery sends original USPS registered insured all the time�
��reliable but not showy.”
I nodded and picked up the box, noting that it was light for its size. “Ready?”
Roxanne slipped her feet into her ancient boots and we headed out the door to the post office in town—the school mail center was closed on Saturdays, and was risky, despite the theory that you could get away with a lot of things right under the administration’s nose. The explosion in the steam tunnel had been declared a random accident and the activity at the east end of the main building had mellowed considerably; there were only a few gawkers and the crime scene was devoid of firefighters. Students had recently finished classes and were heading up to the fields for Saturday afternoon games. Brookwood life was moving forward, recapturing its rhythm. I had no idea what was going to happen once the package under my arm reached its destination, but I was okay with that. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
As we passed the pond and the science building, Professor Mannering’s essay question popped into my head—the one I still owed him about truth versus belief. There were so many things I’d believed to be true when I arrived at Brookwood. That it was my job to get Annette away from her mother. That at Brookwood, Annette and I would thrive. That our relationship was strong and beautiful. And authentic.
The truth, I’d come to realize, was made up of other things—things I’d learned and experienced, and things that shaped my new life here. It was never my job to save Annette from her mother, or from the world, or from herself. That was up to her, and I could only offer help, and only then if she wanted it.
We didn’t thrive here. Or at least we didn’t thrive here as a couple. I wasn’t even sure we’d ever been a couple at Brookwood—even behind closed doors. I think we were two people simultaneously hanging on, but trying to break free in our own ways.
Was our relationship strong and beautiful? Parts of it, yes. But on the whole, not so much.
I was still sorting out how I would put these mental ramblings into words, and then down on paper. The thing was, I was still letting go of old beliefs and getting used to the truth. It felt a little bumpy, and yet kind of okay.
Without Annette Page 25