“I know what you mean,” I said, giving her a smile.
“Well,” she said, “would you maybe have a few minutes to talk to me sometime anyway?”
“There are other counselors, Nicole.” I was sure Dean Shepherd wouldn’t want me to have anything to do with Nicole Kellogg.
“But I know you. And it’s actually not about my own problem.” She fiddled with a button on her peacoat. “It’s, like, I just need advice about how much to butt into someone else’s life.”
“Oh.” I checked the time on my phone. Could the dean get mad (madder than she already was) if I talked to Nicole as a friend? I was almost too tired—too drained—to care. “Well, I have about an hour. I’m walking to town, and if you want to walk with me …” I glanced at Sera. “Unless you want to meet alone, Nicole. I have time after the assembly this afternoon.”
“That’s okay,” Nicole said. “Sera knows about it, too.”
The three of us shuffled through blankets of dried leaves. Winter would be here soon, and then spring, and then … God. Which other New York schools should I apply to? I needed to do some serious research. David kept asking about it.
“So, it’s like this,” Nicole said. “I’m in that freshman PE class, you know? Where they try to drown you?”
“Sure,” I said. “We hated it. Abby told them submersion in water was against her religion.”
“Abby?” Nicole said.
I waved my hand. “No one. Sorry. Go on.”
“Well, when I was using the locker room a couple of days ago,” she continued, “I saw this girl in the showers, and she didn’t look too good.”
“You think she might have an eating disorder?” I said.
“No. It’s not that.” We reached a crosswalk. Nicole readjusted her baseball hat, fussed with her hair. When the sign changed to WALK she spoke. “I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be gossiping about this.”
“Nicole,” Sera said, stretching out the last syllable. “It’s not gossiping.”
Nicole drew in a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Well, this girl had, like, bruises all over her body. I don’t know. Like someone’s hurting her.”
“Maybe she’s on the girls’ rugby team?” I said. “Have you ever watched one of their matches? They’re totally brutal.”
“I really doubt it,” Nicole said. “Her leg’s been in a cast all semester.”
Nicole never mentioned Celeste’s name. I don’t know whether she even realized I knew Celeste. But once it was clear that’s who she meant, I told her not to worry. That I’d figure out what was going on. I also told her not to spread this to anyone else. I was upset that she’d already told Sera, and who knew how many other people.
I continued on to town alone, my book bag not the only weight on my shoulders. Since Celeste and I rarely saw each other now, I had been trying to think about her as little as possible. Especially since when I did see her, she looked harried and tired. I’d heard her call out in the night, too, through her door. So I knew she was still having nightmares.
One thing Nicole said that struck me was the fact that Celeste had been showering at the gym. She wasn’t playing a sport, of course. So why would she be at the gym? Was she hoping to keep me from seeing the bruises? I tried to remember the last time I’d had to wait for her to get out of the bathroom so I could use it, the last time I’d seen her coming out in a towel. But I couldn’t. Whenever I was in my room I had my door closed, and if I heard her in the hall, I usually made a point of waiting to go out.
Sure enough, when I got back to the dorm and checked, I saw she’d taken away her wire basket of shampoo and soap. Her toothbrush still rested in the holder. That was the only sign of her in the bathroom. For some reason she was using the shower at the gym. And for some reason, she was covered in bruises.
Of course, they could be from Whip, like she’d said before. But I had my doubts. This had gotten to the point where I’d have to tell someone else—David or the dean. First, though, I wanted to know what I was dealing with.
I knocked on her door. “Celeste? Are you in there?”
I tried the knob. It wiggled only the slightest bit. Locked. I’m not Nancy Drew at heart and didn’t entertain thoughts of lock picking or anything like that. I decided to just wait until Celeste was back and go in while she was there. It’s not as if I knew what I’d be looking for, anyway. Just, something …
I’d given up and had moved on to writing a paper about the unreliable narrator in Nabokov’s Pale Fire when it occurred to me how stupid I was being. I had the key from before she’d changed our living arrangement. Duh.
Celeste’s windowless room was nighttime dark. I ran my hand over the rough plaster wall until I felt the switch. I held my breath and flipped it.
I don’t know what I expected. Nothing as obvious as whips and chains, of course. Something more subtle—a clue … One wall was covered with sketches and notes. Her hat collection sat piled in a corner. Shoe boxes sat in stacks, labeled on the side with notes like Bugs—done; Bugs—to do; Nests. All perfectly normal—for Celeste, at least.
Under her desk, there were six large, white candles, with deep enough depressions at the top that I could tell they’d been burned quite a bit. Candles were definitely not allowed in dorm rooms, so she was risking something by having them, which was odd. But nothing to do with bruises, clearly.
I turned off the light and closed and locked the door behind me, simultaneously relieved and disappointed.
David was standing in the hallway.
“What were you doing in there?” he asked.
“Oh, hi!” I shoved the key in my pocket. “I was just looking for my Barcroft sweatshirt. I thought I might have left it in the closet when we switched rooms. I wanted to wear it to the assembly later.”
“No luck?” His words, and his eyes, were steel hard. Because I’d been in there without Celeste?
“Nope,” I said, ignoring his strange reaction. “What’s up? Should I get parietals?”
“That’s okay.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Is there something you want to tell me, Leena?”
So it wasn’t me being in her room that had made him mad. A pressure started in my chest. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’re just making it worse.”
Celeste’s bruises? Was that what he meant? “David,” I said, “I really don’t know what you mean. Honestly.”
“I know, Leena,” he said. “I know you were an hour late for your Columbia interview. An hour late.”
“No, I wasn’t,” I said, stiffening. “Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. Is it true?”
“No!”
David raised his eyebrows.
“Twenty minutes,” I said. “I was twenty minutes late.”
“Still. You’re never late. Why would you be twenty minutes late for something so important?”
“It was an accident. Why are you so mad? Please, don’t be.” I reached out and touched his arm, but he brushed my hand off.
“Why am I mad? Leena, if you cared about being in New York with me, you wouldn’t have screwed up the interview. And you lied to me about it, too.”
“I didn’t screw it up,” I said. “The interview itself was fine. Look, don’t you want to go in the bedroom to talk?” Honestly, I didn’t know how the interview had gone. Once I arrived I was in such a state—blurry from sleeping, panicked at being late, nervous about being unprepared—that I barely heard myself answering the woman’s questions. It was probably a moot point, anyway. Columbia had been a long shot. And I had blown it.
“Not particularly.” He leaned against the wall and rested one foot on top of the other, his arms tightly crossed. I was in sock feet, and he seemed to loom over me in a way he didn’t usually. “That’s a whole other thing, the bedroom,” he said. “You’re different in there. Here. In the dorm. You’re always so preoccupied and nervous. The other day you couldn’t get me out of here fast enoug
h. When’s that going to change, Leena? Maybe you just don’t want to be with me, is that it?”
I grasped his arm, but he shook me off again. Roughly. My elbow jolted back into the edge of the door. Pain fired through my nerves. “Of course I want to be with you,” I said, trying to ignore the sharp pulsings. “Maybe I’ve been weird, but don’t you know what a hard semester this has been for me? With Viv and Abby and Dean Shephard all disowning me? Thank God I have you! But maybe that’s why I’ve been acting weird, if I have been.” My heart pounded. I couldn’t lose David, too.
But you will, Cubby said. The words, her voice, came to me out of nowhere.
“What about when we fool around?” David said. Had he heard Cubby? Had I said that out loud? “We’re talking about moving in together. I can’t imagine you’ve been like this with other guys.”
“No,” I said. Why had I imagined Cubby’s voice? “No, I haven’t.”
“Doesn’t that tell you something? That this has all been a big waste of time?”
“No, that’s not it. I promise. I haven’t been like this with other guys because I haven’t been with any other guys.”
David shook his head as if he was clearing water from his ears. “What do you mean? I thought you dated a couple other people?”
“Yeah, but we … I … I only got together with them a few times,” I said. “They wouldn’t … they wouldn’t really count in the scheme of things. They weren’t relationships.”
David hesitated. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“What? Why I’m so incompetent?” I said.
“No, no. Come here.” He held his arms open. I hesitated a moment, then let him wrap them around me. “It helps me understand why it makes you nervous. I thought it was me.”
“David.” I tipped back my head to look up at him. “I’m scared to death to leave school at the end of the year. And the only thing that makes it seem bearable is that I’ll be with you.”
“Really? Because it seemed so strange about the interview …”
“I know. I don’t know what that was about, honestly. It was weird and not like me, and I didn’t even want you to find out. I think maybe I was so nervous about it that I freaked.”
I remembered my feelings before the interview. Looking back, they seemed as foreign as if they belonged to a stranger. All I wanted was to live there with David. It was the only way I could imagine feeling safe when leaving Barcroft. No matter what Cubby said.
We stood there, his arms around me.
“Columbia was my first choice,” I said. “But it was a huge long shot to begin with. There are other schools in New York. NYU, The New School … or if I want to do architecture, somewhere like Pratt or Parsons. I’ve been looking into them. It’ll all work out. I’ll end up where I’m meant to be.”
“Just as long as it’s in New York, I don’t care about anything else,” David said, pulling back a bit. “Hey, now that I know you don’t want to get rid of me, I need to ask you something. Sunday the seventeenth is my mom’s fiftieth birthday. She’s having a big party at the house—kind of like a family reunion. Would you come with me and Celeste?”
Celeste. Bruises. The sincerity in David’s eyes. Why did there always have to be something about Celeste hanging over me?
I tried to smile. “I’d love to.”
Chapter 32
STUDENTS ENTERING THE CHAPEL later that afternoon filled the cavernous space with shouts and laughter, waved at each other, and rushed to get seats near friends. More than one person had blue face-paint on; Barcroft apparel was ubiquitous. Stupidly, I’d worn a red sweater. After my talk with David, the last thing on my mind was Barcroft-Edgerton weekend. Now I looked like a Red Sox fan in a room full of Yankees.
Instead of letting my eyes stray in the direction of the left-side balcony, where I used to sit with Viv and Abby, I watched the hundreds of bodies milling around the oak pews on the main level. Too short, too pale, too heavy—no one matched my David blueprint. He’d had an appointment with his advisor right before this. Maybe she’d kept him late.
I randomly followed a group down the center aisle, now searching the pews for anyone to sit with. I was about to give up and sit alone when I saw a familiar green beret.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you saving that seat?”
Celeste followed my eyes to the spot next to her. “Nope.”
I stepped over her crutches and sat on the hard, wooden bench. Almost none of Celeste’s skin was showing. She had on a velvet blazer, a high-necked, Victorian-style blouse, and men’s khakis, slit up the leg to accommodate her cast—an interesting change from her usual style.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
I craned my head around and saw peer-counselor Toby’s dark hair and silver glasses. “Hey, Toby.”
“We miss you,” he said.
“Of course you do.” I smiled. “Can’t say it’s mutual. I’d forgotten how nice it is to have free time.”
He laughed thinly. We both knew I was lying.
I turned back around, bumping my elbow lightly against the pew, reigniting the pain. I rubbed it as I studied the assembly program and tried to decide what to say to Celeste. My eyes caught on a familiar name.
I nudged Celeste and held the program out in front of her. “Did you know Whip’s father and grandfather are speaking? Telling stories about fifty years of blue-red rivalry?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m having dinner with them.”
She was? “So you’re still hanging out with Whip? I haven’t seen him around the dorm.”
“I wouldn’t bring him there,” she said. She tipped her face toward the chapel’s soaring windows. The light brought out the thin lines on her chapped lips.
“Is everything okay, Celeste?” I asked in a lower voice.
“Yeah, fine.”
“Well, is there some reason you haven’t been using our bathroom?” I felt like I was walking on hummingbird eggshells. “If something’s wrong with the water pressure, or whatever, I can figure it out. I’m good with that stuff.”
A low, rhythmic thumping crept into my ears from behind us.
“No. No reason.”
“I know you’re not using it,” I said. “There must be something wrong. You didn’t burn yourself again, did you?”
She gave an exaggerated sigh. “I’m showering at the gym after physical-therapy sessions. The tub is too slippery with my cast.”
“Really? That’s it?” I said. The thumping had gotten louder. Now I could feel it under my feet.
Celeste turned to face me and smiled. “Somehow you know that little redhead saw me in the locker room, and now you’re trying to find out why I’m all beat-up looking. Right?”
“Well?”
She began to make quick, precise folds in her program, like origami. “I’m fine,” she finally said. “I’m handling it.”
“There’s no reason you should have to handle it on your own,” I said.
“If I needed to talk about something, I would. Okay?” Her program had turned into an origami crane. She balanced it on the back of the pew in front of us. It trembled from the vibrations coming up from the floor.
“It’s weird, Celeste. Being covered in bruises. I don’t want to lie to David if he asks how you’re doing.”
“Don’t tell him anything,” she said. “I mean it.” Her sharp jaw clamped together and appeared even more angular than usual.
The thumping was now thunderous, hundreds of students slamming their feet down in unison. The energy made my face hot. I had to raise my voice.
“I only would because we worry about you. If you’re being hurt in some way …”
“Shh! I’m not.” Her eyes bored into mine. “If I tell you, will you shut up about it already? You’re as bad as my smothering brother.”
“Okay,” I said.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
Celeste stared up at the organ pipes behind the dais. “I’m getting my blood tested to make sure there�
�s nothing wrong, like some sort of condition that’s making me bruise easily.”
“What do we eat? What do we eat?” The cry came from a group of senior football players at the back of the chapel.
“Condition? Like what?” I said.
“Red meat! Red meat!” the rest of the student body answered, shouting.
She shrugged.
Bruises. Blood test. “Like … like leukemia?” I said. My stomach rolled.
“What do we eat? What do we eat?” Louder this time.
“That’s just the worst possibility,” Celeste said. “It’s probably not that.”
“Red meat!! Red meat!!”
Probably? “Celeste, aren’t you worried? Don’t you want to tell David? I’m sure he’d go with you to the doctor.”
“No!” she snapped. “Don’t tell David anything.”
“What do we eat? What do we eat?” Full-throated hollers now.
“But—”
“Don’t tell David anything,” Celeste said, “and I won’t have to tell him about your little pill problem.”
The rows of heads filling the pews swam in and out of focus. A wave of nausea passed through me.
“Red meat!!! Red meat!!!” everyone screamed.
“My pill problem?” Toby’s laughter behind me reminded me he was there. Could he have heard any of this over the commotion in the chapel? I lowered my voice again. “You must be kidding. I don’t have a problem.”
“How do we like it?” the seniors bellowed.
“I could convince David you do,” Celeste said. “You know he’d believe me. I’ve seen what’s in your owl, Leena.”
“RAW!!!!!!”
Chapter 33
DESPITE THE COLD PANIC in my chest and the flashes of heat on my skin, somehow I made it through the assembly. The walk home blurred by as I stared at my feet and told myself that everything was under control, that Celeste wouldn’t tell David. I wasn’t doing anything wrong by having medications, of course, but I didn’t trust that he’d understand my explanation—especially not if he asked where I got them all from.
Back at the dorm, I snagged Cubby off the windowsill and a plastic bag out of the trash can—appropriately one from Barcroft Drugs. I opened Cubby and let the small baggies of pills tumble into the bigger bag, tied the handles in a knot with shaking hands, then stashed it in the closet, snug between the foam mattress and the wall. If Celeste did tell, I could at least make sure she didn’t have any evidence. Sweat trickled down my spine; chills ran through me. A sharp pain stabbed at my temples and sent my brain spinning.
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