The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  “Do you think you can stand?”

  I nod.

  “Lean on me,” Trey says. As I lift my head, he wraps his arm around me. “One, two, three, up.”

  The room sways. I focus on a face in front of me: Pilot. Behind him, Augusto and his sad little moustache. Next to him, Lotus. I look slowly from person to person. The expressions on their faces are not what I’d expect.

  “That’s embarrassing,” I say with a shy smile. But everyone just stares at me, wide-mouthed, as if I’ve turned my skin inside out. “It’s fine. I’m okay.” I pat my face, the back of my head, wondering if they’re all staring at blood on me. I’m not bleeding. “Is there something wrong?”

  “No, nothing, Anne,” Pilot whispers, shaking his head like he’s trying to shush me.

  “What’s everyone looking at?”

  I turn to Harper, who drops her gaze. That’s when I know something is up. I’ve only known Harper a day, but I’m positive she’d happily take any stab she could at me—so why’s she holding back now? I glance at my hands, expecting to see something foreign, something alien, like scales or gigantic bruises. But they’re just my normal hands.

  “Let’s get you seated,” Garnet says, ushering me back to my workstation. Behind us, everyone shuffles away. “How’s your head?”

  “Why’s everyone acting so weird?”

  “You were muttering something when you passed out. It sounded like you said Dad.”

  The memory of my dad standing over me returns, but it’s not nearly as strong or worrying as the sensation I have now—the sensation that something’s up. “That’s why everyone’s acting weird?”

  “No, it’s—never mind. They’re not.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “They’re not,” Garnet states, her tone sharp before she turns to the class. “All right, let’s start packing up, everyone. Trey will be here for the rest of the week, following which I will assess your work. Remember, based on these sketches, one of you will be selected to headline the Art Walk for Parents’ Day this semester.”

  I leave class shaken. Pilot is just seconds behind me.

  “Are you okay? I can’t believe you passed out,” he says as we step into the dark, syrupy fog. As if the fog isn’t bad enough, a light rain has started to fall. Suffocating gray dreariness, when all I want is to breathe. “I’ve never seen that. Just splat. You fell right off.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” A breeze blows under my skirt, soughing like whispered secrets through the fabric. “I’ve never done that before.”

  “You’ve never passed out?”

  I shake my head and, through the rain, glance around the quad as we walk, trying to make sense of what just happened. I’m not a fainter. Even on the tea cups at Disneyland, while all the other kids were staggering off and dumping their guts into a garbage can, I walked off straight as an arrow and lined up for round two. But now this.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta go,” I say to him. It feels like the wet air is collapsing on me. Like Pilot, for all his welcome friendliness, is crushing me just by being near. I need space. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I lie. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Lunch,” he calls as I race away. “Cafeteria. You and me.”

  Fine. Whatever. With nowhere to go, I head past Goethe Hall and to the nearly empty parking lot behind it, where I stop short, brace my knees, and thank God there’s no one else here. The lot backs onto a steep hill that leads to the highest point on Wormwood Island, a flat clearing above a craggy, terrifyingly steep cliff. At the far end of the lot, I spy the Harley Dr. Zin was driving yesterday and the yellow Ducati I saw at Ben’s house last night. I imagine Ben arriving at school today and confidently edging his powerful bike into that parking spot. The idea of him makes me feel better and worse at the same time, makes my stomach flutter and knot.

  “Just breathe,” I remind myself.

  What started as a gentle shower has turned to rain, which is growing heavier as dark clouds roll in. This world, so shadowy, gray, and foreign to me, gradually stops spinning. The more I stand silently, the less freaked I am that I passed out. I have, after all, been uprooted and thrown into what feels like reform school. I had a terrible sleep. My internal clock is way off. A little fainting is called for.

  With a long sigh, I trudge across the dim parking lot, pulling my blazer over my head to shield my hair from the rain. I amble to Ben’s Ducati. Glance around. Make sure no one’s watching as I trace my fingertips over the soft seat, covered in raindrops, and finally kneel to touch the steel muffler. I wonder what it’s like to be Ben Zin. To be unapologetic and poised and perfect. I’ve never been any of those things.

  While I’m lost in thought, a figure slides by the opposite end of the lot, right where I was standing only moments ago. I squint through the rain in time to see a man disappear into the bushes at the base of the cliff. The brush and trees shake as he ascends the hill; through a break in the trees, even with the rain coming down hard, I finally see who it is. I recognize his distinctive brown cloak.

  “Villicus?”

  He continues on, up. And I have a choice. I can escape what looks like the beginning of a thunderstorm, go to class, knowing the bell is going to ring in two minutes. Or I can follow him. Look closer at his activities. Begin acting on my PT, even if I’m not sure I’ll convince Teddy this was all about my PT—not when my single purpose, at this moment, is to see what that strange old man is up to.

  There’s less underbrush on the hill than I’d expected. My boots and tights keep my legs from getting scraped as I make my way up, careful to keep my distance from Villicus, who walks superfast. He doesn’t walk, actually; he slides and lurches and hobbles, moving with jerks and fits up the side of the hill that will take him—and me—to the flat clearing and the treacherous cliff there. Exposed to the rain.

  My head is still spinning from passing out, and the exertion of climbing doesn’t help. When I finally near the top, I quietly tuck myself behind a tree twenty feet behind him and hide myself in the tangled branches, which block most of the downpour.

  Villicus looks out over the dark water, his back to me, his long coat flapping in the winds of the storm. He has a case—the jeweled case I saw on his desk yesterday—wide open at his feet; he reaches into it. If my ears aren’t playing tricks on me, he’s talking to himself in what sounds like a mix of Latin and German, his little mutterings intertwined with the whistle of the wind.

  “Sceptrum paremus. In cruor scribebat. Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft.” A pause. “Sie sagte unser Geheimnis.”

  I cower behind the tree, suddenly worried that he’ll turn around at any second and spy me, suddenly regretting my decision to follow him instead of going to class, suddenly feeling like the world’s biggest fool for eavesdropping on my headmaster when he has the power to expel me, to ruin my life. As a low rumble of thunder shakes the island, I hold my breath and freeze in place. Because it’s too late to run now.

  And then I hear a word I know, a name I recognize: Featherly. Lotus’s last name. And the name mentioned repeatedly last night by that Manish fellow. Villicus says the name again and again; the soft, airy word is in stark contrast with the gruffness of the German. Villicus lifts the glassy object he’s been holding into the air just as a bolt of lightning shatters the gray sky and reveals it to me: a tube with a pointy bottom, a pale label, and a silvery, heavy-looking top. It’s filled with something dark, a viscous liquid that clings to its sides.

  Finally, Villicus says in English, “For indiscretions, you pay your dues. Even God and Satan see eye to eye on this.”

  And, with that, he flings the tube out into the darkness, over the water. I watch it sail through sheets of rain until it disappears, swallowed by inky waves like a sacrifice to the gods of the ocean. Villicus snaps his case shut, lifts it, and, passing the shrubs and shadows that shield me, begins to hobble back down the hill.

  Out of nowhere, someone screams on campus. That scream is followed by anothe
r. And then a shriek.

  Villicus pauses to listen to the chorus of horror that sends chills through my bones. He’s just steps from me; I hold my breath, grit my chattering teeth, and, drenched in rain, flatten against the shadowy side of the tree, praying harder that he won’t notice me. Then, with a grin, he lumbers out of my sight. More screams—piercing, hair-raising, nightmarish cries—carry him onto campus. Then silence. Then the sound of me bolting down the hill and racing, heart beating furiously, to class.

  six

  THE MODEL UN FROM HELL

  TRUE TO HIS WORD, PILOT IS WAITING FOR ME WHEN I walk out of my morning lecture on the philosophy of consciousness, which followed The Ethical Dilemma of Euthanasia. Neither of which could hold my attention, not with the memory of those screams plaguing my mind all morning. Pilot is leaning against the lockers, which are plastered with Cupid and Death Dance posters. Whatever happened on campus to cause the screams, no one has spoken a word about it. If I didn’t know better, if my brain wasn’t seared with the fiery memory of those shrieks, I might think the whole thing was a fantasy, a hallucination borne of the eeriness of watching Villicus chant under a slate sky.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Pilot says. “You still pale from passing out?”

  “Something like that.”

  Together, we venture back out into the storm, which has slowed but not stopped, and walk to the cafeteria. Wondering if I should tell him about the screams and ask him if he knows what happened, I decide against it—for now. Not surprisingly, Pilot and I are the only two on campus who are actually paired up; the rest of the students stay as separate from one another as possible, wandering around the quad like charged particles that can’t touch.

  And then we reach the cafeteria. Ah, the cafeteria. Let me pause for a moment to reflect on the beauty, the majesty of the Cania Christy cafeteria. First, its location is pristine, butted up against the shoreline. Second, its walls are comprised entirely of glass, which sets it apart from every other stone and brick building on campus and offers panoramic views. When you walk in, all you can see is the ocean and all you can smell is this insane aroma of whatever gourmet dish they’re featuring—today, it’s saffron seafood risotto. The lineups to get served are short. The plates are hot. The drinks are cold. The cafeteria ladies—well, okay, they look just like every other cafeteria lady, except they wear the same emerald brooches the secretaries wear. And the tables? They’re next to an indoor stream that runs right through the room and cascades outside, where it careens down the shoal. Lovely.

  If only I had an appetite.

  “What’ll you have, Annie?” Pilot picks up two trays.

  “Not my name.”

  “Okay, what’ll you have, Anastasia?”

  Not even bothering to roll my eyes, I glance at the menu, looking for something simple. “What’s in the club sandwich?”

  “Basil-crusted shrimp. Kentucky hickory smoked bacon. Fresh avocado. And I think they serve it on toasted brioche.”

  I smother a laugh. So much for simple. I get the roasted beet salad instead and grab a table with Pilot, who’s not hungry, either. Next to us—or, actually, four feet above us—sit the faculty; their table is an elevated platform. All the better to see the students from. I’ve never felt so watched over as I do at Cania. Back home, teachers trusted the smart kids, and I always just assumed that wealth bought you all sorts of privileges, like privacy, respect, and a willingness to look the other way. Here? I glance up at Villicus, who’s peering at me—oh, great. Here, it’s starting to feel like I can do no right. Like no one can.

  “Like reform school,” I mutter.

  “What?” Pilot asks, spearing a ball of goat cheese from my plate. He shoves it in his mouth and chews. “Blech. Doesn’t taste like anything.”

  “Never mind.”

  As if trained to ruin every moment I have at this place, Teddy walks in and takes a table near us. He pulls out his notepad and fixes his eye on me…because I guess there’s a right way and a wrong way to slice a beet. Or maybe he’s grading me on my ability to chew with my mouth closed. I can’t be sure, but knowing I’m being observed from so many different angles doesn’t give me warm fuzzies. Reform school. My dad definitely shipped me off to reform school—though the idea of Cania being a fancy mental institution hasn’t entirely exited my mind.

  Next to carefree Pilot, I must look like a paranoid schizophrenic. He yammers on endlessly, openly mocking the notion of being valedictorian. At one point, his voice gets so loud and Teddy’s scribbling so furious that I wonder if we should leave.

  “I’m not hungry anyway,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” he chides, waving his finger. “We’ve barely even started to get you settled in here, Annie. Or, wait, what has Harper started calling you?”

  “She’s started calling me something?”

  “Fainting Fanny.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I groan, casting a sideways glare at Teddy as he notes my new nickname.

  “No one said she’s the cleverest girl around, but she’s a shoein for valedictorian next year.”

  “She is?” I whisper, turning my shoulder to block Teddy from reading my lips. “Why?” I have a hard time masking my irritation.

  “What? You don’t like her already?” Pilot sighs. “God, why can’t we all just get along? Look, Harper’s all right. If you just let her have the Big V, everyone’ll be fine.”

  “Well, that’s convenient for you, but I actually want to be valedictorian.”

  “It’s not convenient for me,” he counters. His face pales, his voice falters, and his shoulders slump like a deflating balloon. “It’s hard. My dad’s not superenthused about my performance here, you know. He wants me to be valedictorian. He was supposed to be our next president, and here he’s got this flunky kid who keeps screwing everything up.”

  “Wait, he was gonna be president?”

  “It’s more than a little screwy that you don’t know that.” Pilot frowns. “Anyway, that’s not my point.”

  “Right. Sorry.” I push a leaf around on my plate.

  “It’s like he wants me to fit into this little mold, but, I mean, I never asked to come here. He sent me here.”

  “So if no one wants to be here,” I ask, “why is it so hard to get in?”

  “Who said people don’t want to be here?”

  I stare at him. “You’re kidding, right? Everything I heard yesterday about why people are here, it was all brutal. Vague, but brutal. Even you were vague.”

  “Moi? No way. I’m always straight up.”

  “Oh, really?” I say teasingly. “Because I seem to remember some crap about doing something your dad didn’t like?” As I shake my head, he laughs. “So, spill it. Because, honestly, that could mean running with scissors or playing with matches.”

  “All right, if you must know, it did have something to do with fire.” He drops his gaze. “There was a girl. In a house fire. I was driving by, and she was screaming so loudly, I could hear her over my engine—and we’re talking a serious AMG engine. Loud.”

  “What happened?”

  “I tried to save her, but I couldn’t.” He struggles to keep his emotions in check. “And the mental trauma that followed, knowing I could have helped her…it was too much to bear. I fell apart.”

  My jaw hits the table. “Pilot, that’s incredible! You’re, like, a hero. Why wouldn’t your dad be extremely proud of you for that?”

  “He thinks it was a stupid, reckless thing to do. And I guess he’s right. I mean, I didn’t save her. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is I don’t want the Big V,” Pilot continues. “He wants me to do it. Forget it,” he grumbles. “When I fail, old pops’ll finally get a taste of his own medicine. The hell he put our family through.”

  “Hell? What’d he do?”

  As Pilot’s mood shifts, in saunters Harper and her trio of perfect plastic friends. I glimpse them out of the corner of my eye; it’s ha
rd to look away. They’re sparkly, shiny, sexy—like a roadside collision of money and physical perfection.

  “I guess you wouldn’t know,” he says, and his voice chokes up. “The sex scandals.”

  My eyebrows hit the top of my head. “The what?”

  “Don’t make me repeat it.”

  I cringe but say nothing.

  “The Enquirer called it ‘The Sexcapade of the Century’.”

  “Your dad was involved in…a sexcapade?” I’m sorry, but it’s hard to keep from laughing just a little. The word is ridiculous. The notion of such a thing is…come on.

  “Behind the fall of every politician is the other woman. Or, in my dad’s case, three other women. All caught on tape in the same bed.” He fiddles with his napkin. “It was on Nancy Grace every night for a month. Made me sick. Anderson Cooper had him on the show twice. When the truth was exposed, my dad had to quit campaigning. So embarrassing.”

  As Pilot twists his napkin into a hundred knots, Harper and her gang claim a table close to the stream. I can’t help but watch them, with their swaggers that belong in a red-light district. These girls. These devastatingly alluring girls. These inhumanly gorgeous girls.

  Pilot catches me watching them. “Okay, so you’re not interested in my dad’s sex scandal, but you care about those sex-scandals-in-training?”

  Underneath the table, he kicks my shin, but I barely react. I’m not superproud of my squirrel-like attraction to shiny things—their shiny hair, shiny lips, shiny eyelids, shiny cheekbones—but I can’t stop staring.

  “It’s not that I care,” I explain, though I’m still watching them, which isn’t helping my argument. “They just look like walking magazine covers. Like celebrities.”

  “Like they have emaciated rat-dogs in their bags and tramp stamps on their butts?”

  “Like they’re made of glitter.”

  “I call them the Model UN from Hell.” He kicks my shin again to get my attention and points to a silvery stand across the room. “Dessert table. I need a sugar rush. Come. Walk and talk.”