The Year of the Gadfly

by Jennifer Miller

  I was sketching out my plans when Rick Rayburn and Stephanie Chu entered. Stephanie’s desk was next to mine. We shared a passion for Orson Scott Card novels and spent many an hour debating the minutiae of the Shadow series when we should have been grading exams.

  “You’ve been working hard,” Stephanie said, collecting notes for her next class. She bent over my desk. “What’s all that?” Rayburn joined Stephanie, peering over my shoulder.

  “When was the last time anybody used the books from that top shelf?” I asked. We all looked up at the old textbooks, their spines sagging.

  “Beats me,” Rayburn said. “Isn’t that a book by Albertus Magnus?”

  Stephanie laughed. “Let’s tell the kids we’re now offering AP Alchemy and see how many bite!”

  Rayburn and I seconded this notion. Then he sat down and Stephanie went to class.

  I inspected my calculations. When the three of us glanced at the bookcase, I’d let my eyes wander to the spot from which I believed Franks’s photographs were taken. Sure enough, peeking from between a large textbook and a couple of manuals was a small black lens. Casually, I turned around in my chair and asked Rayburn a question about midterm exams. There was another small camera tucked into the bookcase behind my desk.

  “By the way, Jonah, my sister-in-law tells me that Peter came home all excited yesterday. Seems he finally garnered the nerve to talk to Iris Dupont.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I hear you gave him a little encouragement.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Well, if they get married, we’ll make you an usher.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, rising from my desk. The temptation to look at the cameras was too strong. I walked down the quiet hallway, wondering where the other cameras were. Was I being watched right now? It was entirely possible. I could be certain of only the two cameras pointed at my desk, however, so I would have to make those cameras my weapons.

  Lily

  April 2000

  LILY OPENED HER eyes. The ceiling spun like a frantic carousel. Her head throbbed with a mud-colored pain. She pushed herself upright, and her stomach plummeted. She doubled over and sat unmoving until the sick feeling passed.

  Slowly, she raised her head and looked around. She recognized Veronica’s basement: the large television and mint-green walls. The overnight bags spewed their stuffing like abused teddy bears. Feminine detritus littered the floor. Candy and chips were crushed into the carpet. Cold, gray light filtered in. She was alone.

  Lily remembered drinking from Alexi’s flask, but nothing afterward. Had anything happened with Alexi? The previous night seemed like a distant memory: half dreamed, half true. The art project. Sacrificial Lamb. What she’d said about Justin.

  She forced herself to stand. The world spun away from her, but she stumbled to the bathroom. The tiles were cold under her feet. In the mirror, her under-eye circles were like dark thumbprints. She’d just lifted a hand to fix her knotted hair when she saw a flash of black on her wrist. She yelped and shook her arm, but the black spot didn’t move. She held her wrist up to her face to find a dark smudge. Then, in the bathroom mirror, she noticed a couple spots of black on the hem of her T-shirt too. She lifted the bottom of the shirt and saw more black on her lower abdomen. What the . . . ? she thought, realizing her stomach was speckled with dark splatters like ants. Lily rubbed at the black spots, but they seemed to be imprinted on her skin. What had happened to her? Was this some kind of rash? An allergic reaction? Had the girls spiked the flask with more than just a sleeping pill? She pushed down the rim of her pajama pants. More black. An awful coldness seized her. She pulled down her pants all the way. Her quads were their usual creamy color, and she breathed a sigh of relief. But then, on her inner thigh, she spotted a black dot. With shaking hands, Lily pulled down her underwear. She screamed. Her pubic hair, once white, was now jet black.

  At that moment the ceiling began to shake. “Lily?” Feet pounded on the stairs. A chorus of voices called out, “Lily! Are you awake?”

  Lily pulled up her pants, wiped her eyes, and came out of the bathroom to find Veronica, Amy, Jocelyn, and Krista clustered around the door.

  “Oh my God!” Veronica shrieked, throwing her arms around Lily’s neck. “Last night was amazing. You were perfect!”

  “She’s not perfect anymore,” Amy muttered.

  “Lily.” Veronica cupped her palms over Lily’s shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “You’re okay, right? I’m sorry it got messy, but it’s not permanent dye. It’ll wash out.”

  Lily nodded, bewildered.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what was going to happen. But if you’d known in advance, it would have ruined the effect.”

  Exactly what Alexi had said. But Alexi had also promised no more tricks.

  “So listen, I’m going to edit the tape and then give you a copy.”

  “Wait—what are you going to do with it?”

  “Like we discussed. I’m sending it with my application to the artist apprenticeships. But Lil, don’t worry, they’ll keep the materials private.”

  “But—”

  “What?” Veronica’s face hardened. “What’s the matter?”

  “Headache,” Lily stammered.

  Veronica brightened. “Go lie down and I’ll make you my hangover special. You’ll be feeling great in no time.” The girls made room for Lily on the center couch, according her unexpected deference. She felt like the virgin about to be handed to the sea monster, except that for her, the sacrifice had already taken place.

  Veronica returned with a glass of something green and frothy.

  “Don’t inquire about the elements of this particular concoction,” Jocelyn said. Her accent seemed to have returned.

  Lily took the glass and sipped. The liquid was chalky but otherwise tasteless.

  Veronica could hardly sit still. “Last night was just amazing. And to do the whole thing at school? Perfection.”

  Lily put down Veronica’s drink. She was feeling worse. “School?”

  “Where the film’s climax takes place, Lil. In the Trench.”

  “We’re all ready for the raw footage,” Krista said.

  “Yeah,” Amy smirked. “It’s raw all right.”

  “I’m going to go home,” Lily said. “I’m going to call for a ride.”

  “Already?” Veronica pouted, then looked doubtful.

  A few minutes later Lily was changing her clothes in the guestroom when Veronica walked in. She leaned her lithe body against the door, and her dark hair fell down over her shoulders. Lily could just make out her naked breasts beneath her white tank top. She tried not to stare.

  “Listen,” Veronica said. “Alexi told me how he screwed up out there in the field, and I just want to say—thank you for staying in character.”

  Lily nodded. She couldn’t look at Veronica.

  “It really means a lot that you’ve been part of this.”

  Lily concentrated on her feet. It felt good to have her own shoes back.

  “But Lil?” Veronica came to the bed. “It’s really important to keep this between the five of us. The material is sensitive, you know? We don’t want to hurt anyone or get anyone in trouble.”

  Lily stared into Veronica’s sable eyes and for a moment became stuck there, as though in tar. She nodded numbly and let Veronica lead her downstairs.

  “I don’t understand why girls your age wanted to have a sleepover party,” Maureen said when she picked Lily up. She’d just come from running a wedding brunch, and her car, including the floor of the passenger seat, was packed with vases and flowered centerpieces. Lily shifted uncomfortably among the profusion of petals and turned away from her mother.

  “Your father says Veronica and her friends are artists.”

  Lily pressed her eyes shut. The girls must have stripped her. They must have touched her. And what about Alexi? Had he touched her? Lily shivered deep inside and bit her lip to keep from crying. The thou
ght of Alexi touching that part of her while she was passed out sent sick waves rushing through her. But thinking about his fingers touching her, his eyes examining her—that also made her wet. Right there in the car with her mother. Lily wanted to tear the heads off the flowers at her feet. What Veronica had written in the diary was true; she was a sick, disgusting person.

  At home, Lily refused her mother’s offer to “brighten her room” with leftover wedding roses. She locked herself in the bathroom and turned on the shower as hot as she could stand it. As promised, the dye began washing out, running in black streams down her legs. The water in the tub turned muddy. She soaped up and scrubbed. After a few minutes, the dye on her skin was mostly gone, but her pubic hair remained the color of smoke. It’s not permanent, she told herself, and scrubbed harder. There was no change. Panicked, she tried a different soap. “It’s not permanent!” she whispered again and again. But the color had set.

  At school that week, Lily avoided Justin and spent lunch in the spacious handicapped stall on the third floor where she didn’t think anyone would look for her. She sat on the ledge over the radiator and stared out over the fields or straight down at the familiar courtyard where a single duckling sometimes poked at stale bread.

  In the quiet, Lily dreamed about escape. She imagined walking through days of sunlight, her arms stretched wide beneath the open sky. In this fantasy there was no one to send her inside, but it didn’t matter, because she never burned.

  Midweek, someone walked into the bathroom. “Hello?” It was a male voice. Justin. Lily held her breath. “Lily?” She heard the first two stall doors creak. Then his face appeared beneath the door of the handicapped stall. “You’re hiding from me?” When she didn’t move from the window ledge, he slithered under the door. She turned her head to the window.

  “If you just tell me what’s wrong, I know we can fix it.”

  Lily pressed her body against the window. She couldn’t make herself small enough.

  “I brought you something.” Justin pulled a brown box from his backpack and handed it to her. She opened it and peeled back the tissue paper. Inside a picture frame, pinned to a white backing, was the dragonfly he’d found under the picnic table.

  “You can’t make me better.” Her eyes were full of tears.

  “I can try.”

  “Your tournament’s coming up.” She ran her finger absently around the frame. “Don’t you have useless information to cram?”

  “It’s not useless.”

  Why the hell wouldn’t he get mad? She’d insulted him. He was supposed to lash out! Lily looked out the window, her eyes drifting over the woods and hills to where the mountains bled into the horizon. She thought of Justin filling his brain with libraries of facts. The information was endless. He’d never learn it all.

  “Don’t you ever get frustrated? Don’t you ever just want to stop trying? Doesn’t that sound like a relief?”

  Justin’s blue eyes opened into wide circles, as though this question had never occurred to him before. “No,” he said, blinking. “It doesn’t.”

  Iris

  December 2012

  MURROW WASN’T HAPPY with me. I was continuing to investigate on behalf of Prisom’s Party, he argued, because I was angry with Mr. Kaplan for canoodling with Hazel behind my back. He said there was no way that anybody with half a conscience would continue spying for that organization after I’d discovered their lies about Edmond Dantes and Thelonius Rex.

  But I didn’t care. In the forty-eight hours since I’d discovered Hazel and Mr. Kaplan kissing outside the Historical Society, I’d decided to finally nab his car keys. “If I’m going to solve the mystery,” I said to Murrow as I made my way toward the science department, “I’m going in whole hog.”

  “So now you’re using clichés?” he asked. “Iris, I’m surprised.”

  “I’m not using the phrase as a cliché,” I snapped. “‘Whole hog’ is a literary allusion to Huckleberry Finn.”

  “Somebody ate a bowl of Pretentious-O’s this morning,” Murrow murmured. I ignored him and directed my attention to the current task. The science department was usually empty at this hour, it being just long enough after school that the student-teacher meetings were over. Mr. Kaplan, meanwhile, was coaching an Academic League scrimmage in the theater. I knew where he kept his keys, because I’d seen him pull them from his jacket pocket on multiple occasions. I stood before the parka now, reached my hand in, and, sure enough, felt the rough serrations of metal.

  “You’d think he’d be more careful,” I said. “I mean, just leaving his keys lying around like this? It’s idiotic.”

  “A certain level of passion, even indignation, is useful, Iris. But you’re on the warpath.” I turned to see Murrow, sitting in Mr. Kaplan’s desk chair, watching me.

  “Go away! I don’t want you here. And ‘warpath’ is a cliché!” I headed for the door and marched into the hallway. Murrow followed, skulking just behind me.

  “Your mother is right about the whole cliché-czar attitude. You shouldn’t fault people for every verbal imperfection.”

  “If I’m not going to be vigilant, then who will?” I stopped and turned to face him. “I mean, if you give an inch, they’ll take a— Shit!”

  “You expect too much of yourself, Iris.”

  “No, you’re the one with the impossible expectations. I’ve read all the books about you, all the transcripts, seen all the video footage. I’ve spent hours, Ed—hours absorbing your life, trying so hard to be like you, to live up to your standards, to be the kind of person—the kind of reporter—you’d be proud of, but I can’t do it. I can’t live the way you lived and still function here. I’m just as dirty as everyone else. So just be happy, okay? Be happy that you’re still the morality king, the perfect Edward R. Murrow.” I started walking again.

  “I’m not real!”

  “I get it. You’re a figment of my imagination.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, Iris. There is no Edward R. Murrow. There’s only the myth of him.”

  I halted. I couldn’t speak. And Murrow just stood there, in stark relief before a panel of lockers, observing me, like he was waiting for me to make a decision. I’d never really seen his face before this moment, never looked at it as a collection of individual features. But now I noticed the mole beneath his right nostril and the crow’s-feet around his eyes, and his thick black eyebrows. His hair was parted on the far left and slicked back. I imagined touching it, and feeling the hardened gel flake beneath my fingers.

  Who are you? I thought. Do I know you at all?

  And as I wondered, Murrow began to waver darkly. And then, like a television on the fritz, he went blurry and snapped out.

  I stared at the lockers. Just like me, Murrow was a liar. He’d falsified his CBS application, lied about his age and prior experience, even invented fake degrees. He’d carried on a long-term affair with Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, leaving his wife alone for nights at a time, lying to her, behaving as if his celebrity status exempted him from his basic commitments and moral obligations. I knew all these things. I knew how easily people ignored facts when they needed a hero. I knew that I’d edited out the parts of Murrow I didn’t want to see, simply redacted the hurtful information. I just didn’t like thinking about it.

  I heard laughter and saw a group of girls some feet away staring. “Whack job,” one of them snickered. “Was she really talking to herself?” another one said. “Somebody needs to have her committed.”

  I turned and fled in the opposite direction. What was happening to me? That time at home, when my mother caught me talking to the wall, I’d known Murrow wasn’t really there. I’d been imagining, pretending. And maybe I was too old for that, but at least I knew the difference between reality and fiction. And now? My world had become an imbroglio of moral quandaries and deceptions. Maybe I really was crazy. I should have known that Hazel, despite her talk, was no different from any other grownup. I should have expected he
r and Mr. Kaplan to retreat into their private adult world and leave me on the outside, alone. Good thing I didn’t mind being left out. Aloneness is a skill—that’s something people don’t realize—and I was always terrific at rejecting rejection.

  I pushed through the back doors and plunged into the cold afternoon. My eyes watered. I stuffed my hands into my jumper pockets—I hadn’t bothered to grab my coat—and marched toward Mr. Kaplan’s Subaru, fishing the keys from my pocket. Standing before the car, I hesitated. For a moment I wondered, What if Ed Murrow could see me doing this?

  But he couldn’t see me. And even if he could, so what? He was just a human being like any other. Flawed, imperfect, mortal. I’d been so foolish, treating him like a god.

  I unlocked the door, climbed into the back seat, and hunched down. The interior of Mr. Kaplan’s Subaru was significantly cleaner than Hazel’s Saab. (Talk about a compatibility mismatch. Their relationship was clearly doomed.) I searched the various pockets and compartments. Then, under the seat, I found a shoebox of papers. On top was a handwritten letter on Mariana Academy letterhead.

  Dear Jeffrey,

  I wanted to tell you again how distraught I am over the accident and how sorry I feel about your loss. I want to do whatever I can to make your lives easier during this incredibly difficult time. Regarding your concern about preserving the accident site for inspection, I have called my contacts at both newspapers and am assured that the details we agreed upon will not appear in print. I, too, would rather this information be suppressed in order to protect Lily’s privacy. As for your other question, Lily refuses to say why Justin drove over that evening. I’m sure she knows, and I’m equally certain she’ll come around.