by Sandra Block
“So about the cigar box,” she starts.
“Yeah?”
“Any ideas?” Her long black boots click against the cobblestone. “Besides just going in and grabbing it?”
I think hard, but no good ideas flash into my head like they sometimes do. The best coding ideas come when you don’t think about them. It’s probably a right-brain thing. The obvious answer would be to tell the police. But I don’t say that. Because Dahlia might bite my head off, which is the perfect idiom in this case.
“Maybe Natasha could go over there and sell them drugs?” I suggest. “Then she could get the cigar box?”
A cold wind swoops against us, and Dahlia shakes her head. “They’d never let her in.” We walk through the gates of the yard. An inch of snow is clumped on the edge of the grass. “And I wouldn’t want her to go,” she says. “I’d never put her in that position again.”
I don’t ask what she means by again. But I think I get it. We walk in silence a moment. Dahlia tucks her scarf in tighter. Out of nowhere, she says, “Trojan horse.”
I stare at her. “Helen of Troy?” I was pretty good at history. You just memorize a bunch of dates.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s how I get in there.”
I can see the building for her class lit up ahead. “I don’t get it.”
“I let them invite me in,” she explains.
“How?”
“Same way I did the first time,” she answers. “A party.” Then she bites her lip, stretching it. Plum-colored lipstick. “I just have to figure out how to get invited.” Some friend of hers jogs by, and they wave hi to each other.
We keep walking, and I think of her going in there, to the Hawk Club, and I can’t stand it. “What if that Sean guy is wrong though?”
“What do you mean?” She smooths down her raspberry-colored scarf.
“I mean, what if there is no cigar box? Then, you’re risking all this for nothing.”
She shrugs. “No big deal. Then I’ll turn around and walk out. But I have to take the chance.” Dahlia stops on the pavement and turns to face me. “I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. You get that, right?”
I nod. “But what if…” I brace myself for her to get upset with me. “Instead of going in there and trying to find the cigar box yourself, we could tell Snyder about it. Then he could bring it to the police.”
Her face tightens up. “No.”
“It’s Snyder though,” I say, feeling a little frustrated, but trying not to show it. If I say it nicely enough, maybe I can convince her. “We can trust him.”
“I do trust Snyder. I don’t trust the police.”
I let out a little sigh. “But—”
“James,” she barks. Her voice is loud in the night, and when she starts talking again, it is quieter. “You have no idea,” she says, “how they treated me. No idea.”
I nod. Because she’s right. I don’t know.
“If I tell them about the cigar box, they’ll bury it; I’m telling you.” A gust of wind hits us again. A flag across the street is flapping. Dahlia grabs my sleeve. “They haven’t even run my fucking rape kit.”
I swallow back anger. Because that won’t help. But it makes me want to explode. Right then, I can feel how Dahlia feels. Like I never have before.
“No police,” she says. “Never.”
When I look at her, I see a glimmer of tears in her eyes, then they fade away.
“Anyway, I have to go to class.”
“Okay,” I say.
She leans over and kisses my cheek. And as I walk away, I feel the gloss of the lipstick on my skin. Tight and sticky. Like a magic seal from Dungeons & Dragons.
And now, I have something else for my good things file.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Five Years Ago
I sit in my semi-wrinkled suit with the top button of my pants undone. The office feels oppressively masculine, with its enormous, dark-cherry wood desk, wall full of diplomas, and rows and rows of leather law books.
I am beyond exhausted. We drove until midnight, my brain still half-addled with pot. I got there and threw my bags in Eli’s place, slept on the bumpy couch in his family room, then woke up bright and early for my Miller and Stein interview.
Staring at the books in the office, I realize that in the back of my mind, I always thought I’d end up working in a place like this. But as a lawyer.
“Your course work certainly shows an interest in the law,” he says. The man interviewing me, Connor O’Malley, seems nice enough. On the cute side, with sandy-brown, just-thinning hair and soft, brown eyes.
“Yes,” I answer.
“And your résumé is quite impressive.”
I nod. I haven’t seen my résumé. “Thank you.”
There is a silence as he shifts his legs behind the desk and puts my résumé down. “I have to ask you, Dahlia.” His eyes turn to me. “How you ended up here?”
I clear my throat. “What do you mean?” Though I know exactly what he means.
Connor shrugs. “You’re at Harvard, getting A’s there, playing club field hockey, first place at Model U.N.”
Most of that is true.
“And now, you’re here.” His voice softens. “Instead of taking your LSATs, graduating Phi Beta Kappa maybe, and interviewing for a job here as a lawyer.”
I swallow. “Something happened.”
He nods. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t look away. His gaze is warm, but probing nonetheless.
Crossing my arms, I look down at the floor. I’m not sure I even want this job. But it’s something. And I can’t go back home. I’ll wither up and die there. “I was raped,” I say finally.
He inhales sharply. “Oh.”
So, it looks like I won’t get the job after all. “Yeah,” I say, as nonchalantly as possible. “Kind of takes the wind out of your sails.”
His face is flushed, and he nods again. He looks down at his hands.
“I’m gathering up my resources, as it were, before I go back there again. But I will. Someday.”
Connor stares out the window at the hot, muggy day outside. “My wife is ill,” he says. The statement comes out of nowhere.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He grits his teeth, his jaw muscle flaring. “Yeah, it’s hard. Breast cancer.”
“Jeez,” I say sympathetically. I guess since I was sharing, he decided to share too. Even the score perhaps, on my behalf. I’m not sure if this makes me like him more or less.
He pops on a smile. “Oh well, we’ll make it. She fought it before, and we’ll fight it again.”
I nod again, feeling bad for him. My eyes wander to the bookshelf again, the majesty of the large, momentous books. Books full of our nation’s laws. Our history. Unfortunately, I’ll probably never see the likes of this room again.
“So,” he says, “when can you start?”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Dahlia
The professor is late, which is unusual. At this point, I’m rather sick of the class anyway, but it’s the last class, and I need the damn thing to graduate. And if I ever want to go to law school, I’ll need that piece of paper. Plus, I need it to apply to the Stanford thing, not that I’ll even get in.
The door creaks open, and the students shush. But it isn’t even the professor, just a late student. “False alarm,” someone calls out to laughter. After twenty more minutes, the mood turns. People are turning off their laptops and grumbling to one another. The natives are getting restless.
“It’s kind of rude,” Whitney says, the crunchy, pretty one, the Nordic ice queen who doesn’t shave her legs. “For her to just not show like that. I mean, it’s not like we have nothing else to do.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe she’s got a good excuse.”
“Do
ubt it,” she complains. “They don’t care. They think we just party and don’t show up to class anyway. But I do show up. I’m paying money for this.”
Party. Of course. Maybe Whitney can help me with my Trojan horse. “You go to college here, right?” I ask.
“Yes. But they don’t have this class during the day,” she says, clearly used to explaining this a lot. “Well, they do. But it’s during my Russian class.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, so I have a question for you. Would you have any ins with the final clubs?”
Whitney looks at me like I’ve just told her I have herpes. The final clubs and Feminism in the Law are not exactly natural allies. “Um. No.”
“Let me explain,” I add, quickly. “I’m actually doing an exposé on them. The Hawk Club in particular.”
Her expression changes completely. “You’re a writer?” she asks with near adulation.
“Sort of. Actually, I’m a paralegal. But I do a blog,” I say. “Well, I’m starting one,” I amend, in case she asks for a name.
“An exposé on what?” she asks, her expression doubtful again.
“Rape,” I say. “In final clubs.”
She assesses me a second, then nods. It’s the right answer. The word doesn’t jar her, not in the least. “And how do you think I could help you?”
“I’m trying to get into the Hawk Club, sort of undercover. I don’t know anyone on campus, though, who could get me in. To one of their parties or something.”
She nods, thoughtfully, her lips pursed in concentration. “I could possibly help.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I know a guy in there. Christian Ford.”
“Okay.” I grab a pen and write down the name.
“He’s kind of an asshole,” she continues, “and I’ve heard rumors about him. That he’s not a good guy.”
“Uh-huh.” Not a good guy being code for rapist.
We stare at each other a second. I feel like she’s trying to tell me something, but I’m not sure. Maybe she’s in the unlucky club, maybe she isn’t.
“Give me your number,” she says. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Dahlia
“I just don’t think we should spend all that money before the wedding,” Sylvia says, dropping a sheath of paper into the printer. “But Beau says we should go.”
“Go where?” I ask.
“North Carolina,” she says, a tad annoyed, and slams the printer door shut. “I just said that.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry,” I say. “Little distracted with this slip-and-fall.” Which is a lie. I should be distracted by Tabitha’s slip-and-fall but instead have been thinking about the Hawk Club and if Whitney will be able to get me in somehow. Because if not, I’ll have to figure out something else. I don’t really have any other connection to the undergraduate scene still, since I’m not some kind of hanger-on loser. Not to mention I didn’t actually graduate.
“You’re still going with James for Christmas?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, opening Tabitha’s file.
“Surprised you’re not going somewhere with Eli,” she says without any attempt at guile. Sylvia mistakenly believes that “in my heart of hearts,” I have a crush on Eli. Though I have told her several times now that in my heart of hearts, I don’t.
“He’s still gay,” I answer, “and still dating Brandon.”
“Well, you don’t have to get all snarky,” she says, when a text comes through from James.
Pix are on his computer.
Okay, I text back. I’ll make the call.
But my stomach sours. I don’t want to make this call. I don’t want to take down the Hillsview Teacher of the Year, one of the few who actually chose to do service instead of going directly to Wall Street and ruin his life. I don’t want to put the guy from Hillel, the guy who could have been singing the V’ahavta prayer next to me, into prison for this. I don’t want to live in a world where pictures like the ones now on his computer exist. And I don’t want to lie and say they belong to him.
But I think of the video, of him waiting in line and stroking himself, and steel my nerves.
I don’t want to do it. But I have to do it. I grab my purse, with the burner phone that I bought for this purpose.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
• • •
“Hillsview Middle School. Can you hold?”
“Sure. That’s fine,” I answer, my voice echoing in the empty conference room. I stand there, listening to Muzak, fighting a sense of dread.
“Thank you for holding. How can I help you?”
“Um, yes.” There is a lump in my throat. “Can I talk to Principal Davies?”
“May I ask who’s calling?” she asks.
“I…I can’t. I don’t want to say that. But I do need to speak to him. It’s extremely urgent.”
I hear rumbling over the phone and catch the principal’s surly response. “Tell her I’m sorry, but I can’t—”
“Please,” I insist into the phone. “It’s really very important. It’s a sensitive matter. Please.”
A hand covers the receiver, followed by some hushed, rapid conferencing back and forth. I am sweating, the burner phone tight against my ear. The conference room is unnaturally quiet, the soft-gray walls closing in on me. They sway just an inch. I can feel a lick of the vortex in the distance. “Go home,” I whisper. “Go back from whence you came.” I lean my elbow against the wall to steady myself. “Go home—”
“Hello? This is Principal Davies.” His voice is baritone and sounds nonplussed.
“Hi.” My breath feels short. “Thanks for speaking to me.”
“Okay.” His response is noncommittal.
I take a deep breath and descend into my role. “I’m so sorry to do it this way,” I say, putting on a sopping, pleading tone. “I don’t mean to be difficult. It’s really important…but I don’t want to get my child involved if I don’t have to.”
“Uh-huh.” His tone lightens a smidgeon. “I’ll hear you out at least.”
I start pacing the room, the carpet crunching under my feet. “It’s about Mr. Holstein. I just…” Then I pause, pretending to do an about-face. “You know what? Forget it. Maybe I shouldn’t even get involved here—”
“Please,” he interrupts. “Go ahead. If you have something important to say, I want to hear it.”
“Oh, okay. You’re…you’re probably right.” Bait set. Reeling in. “My child isn’t in his class, but he was in his room for some kind of shared class. With Mrs. Matucci.” I pick a name from the website.
“Yes.”
“And what happened was…” I take a deep breath. “My child saw something on his office computer. Maybe he was wrong. He could have misunderstood.”
“What was it, ma’am?”
“It was troubling, and I needed to tell someone. But I really don’t want to get involved.”
“Ma’am,” he says more forcefully. “What was it?”
“He told me it was pictures of children…but not his kids or anything. At least, I don’t think so…”
I hear the principal swallow over the phone. “Uh-huh.”
“Pictures of them…” I whisper. I can barely get the words out. I am disgusted with myself. But I’m disgusted with Henry Holstein too. “It’s hard to describe,” I say.
“Please,” Principal Davies says. “Go on.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
James
We’re waiting in line at Subway, and Dahlia is debating her toppings. I love Subway for the opposite reason. I always get the veggie wrap, and the guy there is nice and knows just how many olives and tomato slices to put on.
We look around for a booth and find a deserted one. “Any word on Holstein?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I k
eep refreshing the Hillsview News, but no…nothing yet.”
“It’ll happen,” I say. “Pretty fast, I would think.”
She bites into her wrap, and almost immediately, her text goes off. Reading it, she starts smiling. “Finally!”
“What?” I move my neck over to see.
“From the girl I was telling you about,” she says. “Whitney from my class.” She turns the screen toward me. Hawk Club party, January 10. Dahlia turns the phone off and puts it down on the table. “Some kind of after–New Year’s party, she said.” She starts chewing, then swallows. “And even better, I got the code word. So I can get in.”
I take a bite of my sub. “What’s the code word?”
“‘Magna Carta,’” she says with a snort. “Talk about pretentious, huh.”
I pick a fallen olive off the wrapper. “1215,” I say.
She stares at me a second, then smiles. “June 15, 1215, to be exact,” she adds with a wink.
There’s this Police song about how everything this girl does is magic, and I never felt that way about anyone. But I feel that way a hundred percent about Dahlia.
We keep eating for a while, but I start feeling butterflies in my stomach, thinking about her going to that party. “How will that work?” I ask. “You’re just going to show up and look for the cigar box?”
Some tomato juice rolls down her chin, and she wipes it off. “Sounds about right.”
I put my sub down, not really hungry now. “But couldn’t that be dangerous?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just a party.”
But I think she’s lying. We both know how the last party there went. “What if they’re watching for you?”
She rolls her eyes, which I would usually find annoying, but not with Dahlia. “I highly doubt they’ll be looking for me.”
“Who knows,” I argue. “They were looking for you when they tried to get Alethia.”
She doesn’t argue with this, and thinking about Alethia only makes me feel sicker. “Maybe I could go in with you.”
“Impossible.” She sips her water. “They won’t let guys in.”