The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel

by Sarah Miller

  “Let’s just have sex,” Pilar said.

  Gideon said one word: “But…”

  He had been there to break up with her.

  She took her pants off.

  Please, Gideon, I begged silently. Say no and leave. If you leave now, and you try to get me back, I will forgive you. I will believe you.

  I saw resolve in his eyes. He did want to go.

  But then Pilar took her underwear off. His eyes closed a little. I saw his body give in. He was a guy. She was a girl who had taken her clothes off. It was going to be harder to resist what his body wanted than to just take what it was offered. I saw him forget what he’d come here to do as instinct took over.

  As I took off down the hall, I felt Gid’s hand, I felt it like it was on my own neck, the soft pads of his fingers and that tip of his right finger that was callused from holding a pen. I felt his soft lips on her neck and his hands on her slim flanks. I felt her lift her knee to help him.

  I started to tear through the bathroom trash. I found the Design New England section of The Boston Globe. I lit the page on fire and watched the flame climb up, burning away a headline about the appeal of Roman blinds over Venetian ones.

  The alarm sounded with a force so hard it was more than sound. It felt like actual metal tubes were pushed in my ear. I ran the burning paper under the faucet for a few seconds and flushed it.

  I opened the door, and a few seconds later—crucial, no one had seen me—girls were already starting to stream out of their rooms, giggling, self-consciously braless, holding their arms over their chests in skimpy nightshirts.

  “Girls.” It was Captain Cockweed’s wife, wearing a long flannel nightgown with hearts on it, clogs, and a gold down vest. Our dorm head had to be out for the night, and she was filling in. “Everyone out. Let’s go.” She had her frizzy brown hair in one of those plastic clips, a giant one, the size of a potato masher.

  The quad lights came on and it felt a little like an outdoor concert. The stars were bright. It was a warm night, and some girls spread out bathrobes in the grass. Giggles echoed off the brick and floated up into the piney air.

  I was pacing.

  In my mind, I thought, OK, this will just interrupt them. Pilar will come outside, Gid will hide.

  Pilar and Gideon were still inside.

  The noise had so shocked Pilar that she had jumped off Gid like he was a hot stove, as if touching him had set off the alarm. “Dios,” she said. “That is fucking loud. I can’t stand it. I think I’m going crazy. Geedeon. Isn’t it driving you crazy?”

  She dressed herself as quickly as she could in a pair of black yoga pants and a white tank top and a red pashmina. Maybe I should just wear a black tank top, because it’s just better for night. She crouched down and shoved a pile of shoes against the wall to make space for him to sit. Gid got in the closet. She kissed him. “I’ll be back,” she said. She started to walk out the door when she looked down at her feet. She was wearing sneakers. Sneakers and pants made her feel fat.

  If only she had walked right out the door.

  Instead, she came back to the closet. She smiled at Gideon. “Hey,” she said.

  “You better hurry,” he said. “They’re going to check the rooms to see who’s not there.”

  “I’m just grabbing a pair of flip-flops,” she said, and as she headed out the door, Gid called, “Good luck.”

  The hallway was dark, and the instant she opened the door, Cockweed was standing there with a flashlight. Gideon still hadn’t quite shut the closet door. “Rayburn,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I felt terrible. It had been just an impulse.

  I couldn’t help myself. I just hadn’t wanted to see them have sex, and I just went crazy and lit that fire.

  Cockweed. Ugh. I mean, what the fuck was I thinking! I mean, it’s prep school. Someone is always lurking, waiting to get you into trouble, right? All you have to do is just ask for it a little and you get it. And they had gotten it. Being in opposite dorm rooms was absolutely forbidden. Especially naked.

  Gid was going to have to go back to Virginia.

  Life with Jim Rayburn. The Sears couch and the matching recliner. The dinners with his mother, driving his mother’s new PT Cruiser instead of the timeless white Beamer. Nicholas and Cullen, his best friends, he’d basically never see them again.

  With Pilar gone, there was no way we were going to beat Xavier.

  I wasn’t going to get my scholarship.

  Worse…I would never see Gideon again.

  I wanted to hate him because he was going to have sex with Pilar even though he was planning to break up with her. But I just didn’t hate him. Some people you can try to hate, and they might even deserve it. But if you think someone’s hot, you’re probably just not going to keep hating him for very long. It’s just kind of impossible.

  Pilar packed and cried. She was stunned that her time at Midvale was coming to an end. I had just started to like it here. I didn’t have to really hang out with that bitch Madison anymore, and Geedeon is so nice. And I had a purpose, and I was managing to get maybe kind of smart and not totally just be the pretty girl, not just be that stupid girl that Elias Ganz felt up but to be smart too. OK, so most of my dreams about the ATAT match didn’t get beyond what I was going to wear, but I was psyched to go.

  Edie was doing her best to make me feel better.

  “It’s really not all that bad,” she said. We were in our room, lying on our beds and staring at the ceiling like we always did when we were bummed, or thinking, or both. “Now you won’t have to deal with them anymore. Well. I mean, who knows how long you could be in Pilar’s head. But at least they won’t be here.”

  The idea of Midvale without Gid seemed terrible to me, like a death. Even though we had broken up, I still had opportunities to see him, and be mad at him, and that was better than his not being here at all.

  “So,” Edie said. “You did still like Gid. I kind of didn’t believe that you were so over him.”

  I didn’t say anything and she went on.

  “Yeah. You know what? When you’re attracted to someone, everything just flies out the window. Like Devon, for example. He’s a fat fuck and he smokes too much pot. I am, like, a hundred times smarter than he is. And yet, I still spend just about every waking moment thinking about him. And it’s torture, because, you know, I don’t really have any way of knowing whether he actually really likes me or if he is just going to, like, have sex with me and break up with me.”

  “Oh, Edie,” I said. “I’m pretty sure—”

  “Pretty sure doesn’t cut it,” she said. “I want to know.”

  “But even if you knew, you wouldn’t know,” I said. “Girls’ minds are pretty complicated, but I mean, boys’ minds are even worse because they’re not. I mean, seriously, I think we just happen to have holes that they want to stick things in. We’re interchangeable to them. They’re not interchangeable to us. Which means we just have to find them and figure out how to get them to avoid another girl’s holes. But even if he said, ‘Oh, I am so into you,’ all it means, well, all it could mean is, I am so into having sex with you until someone prettier than you wants to have sex with me.”

  My voice reached a dangerously high pitch.

  Edie looked at me. Her face was very serene, very pretty, and serious. She spoke in a gentle voice. “You’ve been in someone else’s head,” she said. “A guy’s. I mean, I’ve guessed that what you’re saying is true, obviously, or I wouldn’t be all weird about this Devon thing. But you’re talking like you know.”

  “Pilar’s is the only mind I’ve ever been in,” I said.

  Edie shook her head, and she even looked like she might laugh. “You are such a bad liar! Come on, Molly! I’ve seen you for the last year. You’ve been out of it. Your head has been somewhere else. Besides, why didn’t you tell me you were in Pilar’s head earlier? What would you have had to lose?”

  I hadn’t told
her I was in Pilar’s head basically because she would have thought I was insane. And also, more important, because I was so embarrassed to have gone out with Gideon when I was in his head. How insecure Edie was about guys, well, I think I was maybe even worse. I felt like if anyone knew I was in Gid’s head, they’d think, Oh, that’s the only way she could get him to go out with her.

  But at this point, everything was such a mess it didn’t seem important to keep in a secret anymore. “OK,” I said. “I was in Gideon’s head.”

  The birds chirping outside suddenly seemed very loud.

  “Wow,” she said. “I…why didn’t…wait. Since when?”

  “Since that very first day,” I said. “When his dad honked at us. Well, actually right before that. It started when he was just at the end of his drive up here. I was in this guy’s head, and he was so sweet and scared, but funny. And it was the strangest feeling, because I felt like I understood him…because I was thinking about how afraid I had been to come to school here, and then I heard someone else thinking that.” I shook my head to try to explain better. “I heard a voice in my head having the thought, but since it was the same as mine I didn’t notice it, and then, well. He started thinking about his balls, and…”

  Edie smiled. “And you were like, hmm, I don’t have balls.”

  I nodded. “Exactly,” I said. “And then, well, it turned out he was coming toward me. I couldn’t help feeling he was for me, you know. We were both thinking about how scared we were of Midvale.” I laughed, this time without humor. “He changed so much here. He grew up so much. He used to be so afraid of Cullen and Nicholas.”

  Edie nodded. “Well. They are dicks.” Then she twisted up her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She looked so hurt.

  “I felt stupid,” I said. “I thought you would think that the only reason that Gideon went out with me was because I was inside his head.”

  “What?” Edie was shocked. “Molly, Gid was so lucky to have you. He’s great, but you’re…greater.”

  Now I laughed for real. “I guess part of why I started to really like him was watching him have the nerve to become friends with Cullen and Nicholas. I always really respected that. Imagine if you came here for your first year, and Madison Sprague was your roommate.”

  “No, thank you,” Edie said. “She’d probably have had me skinned and turned into a pair of boots. I would probably have suggested it too, just to make her happy.”

  “I love him,” I said. “I think he’s amazing. I don’t want him to go. I want to get back together with him. But it’s just that…Shit.”

  I told her the white bikini story.

  “What a dick,” she said.

  I nodded. “That’s kind of how I felt.”

  “Of course, it’s not really his fault,” she said.

  “No,” I agreed.

  “But that doesn’t make him not a dick,” she countered.

  “No?” I asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Are people dicks for their feelings?”

  “I don’t know either. But I couldn’t keep going out with him. I felt like an idiot. Like he was having his cake and eating it too.”

  “Well, you can’t really blame him for going out with her,” Edie said. “Based on your holes theory. You took your holes away. Doesn’t he have a right to get new holes? Especially if he was sad about losing access to yours?”

  I snorted. “How could you possibly think that Gideon was going out with Pilar to get over me?” Even though this is sort of what I had been hoping since Gid got pissed about Pilar’s being on ATAT.

  “Because it’s totally obvious. And I think it would be pretty much obvious to anyone who wasn’t you.”

  “Not to Cullen and Nicholas. They think Gid unconsciously got me to break up with him so he could be with Pilar. Which is, in a way, kind of what happened.”

  Edie waved me off. “Molly, what do we know about those guys? They’re dicks. Forget about what they think! Wait. OK. You were in Gideon’s head.”

  “Correct.”

  “And then…you were in Pilar’s…”

  “Yes,” I said. “Then his again and then hers.”

  “And…OK. Wow. You are a freak. I thought I was a freak, but you are a serious freak!”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “But that’s not what I was going to say,” Edie said. “You have to be able to figure out why.”

  “You’d think so,” I said. “But we haven’t.”

  “We?” Edie said.

  I told her about Dr. Stanley Whitmeyer.

  “Dr. Stanley Whitmeyer! That is, like, the most fake name I ever heard!” Edie laughed.

  “No…he writes me. And I can tell he understands.”

  “OK, OK,” Edie said, but she still looked skeptical. “What does this Dr. Whitmeyer say?”

  “He keeps telling me to think about why I want to get out of their heads and why I want to stay,” I said. “And I’m like, I don’t want to stay, and he says if I didn’t want to stay I wouldn’t be there. I hate that shit!”

  “So. You got into Gid’s head without even knowing him, and the old guy thinks it’s because he was, like, coming toward you, and you were so psychically aligned? Like, meant to understand each other?”

  I nodded. “I guess that’s pretty much it.”

  Edie started to take notes. “And then you got into Pilar’s head, trying to get out of Gideon’s?”

  “Correct.” I said. “And he was like, you have to tell your head you couldn’t take being in Gid’s head. That it was too sad. And it worked. Well, except…”

  Edie kept writing this down. “You went into Pilar’s head. Molly. What were you thinking when Gid came into your head for the first time? Do you remember?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “I was thinking I didn’t want to go to school here, that I didn’t know if I belonged.”

  She nodded. “And what were you thinking about, exactly, when you went into Pilar’s head for the first time?”

  This was harder, but I remembered. “This is embarrassing. I was in Buffalo, and I was asking myself if Pilar was in fact the hottest girl in the world, because Gid, while he was kissing her, had whispered that to her.”

  Edie smiled sympathetically. “OK, that sucks. But as far as I’m concerned, this isn’t that complicated.”

  “That’s what Dr. Whitmeyer says,” I said.

  “OK, listen,” Edie said. “You found your way into Gid’s head because you thought the same thing as him. It’s like your brain was on some current and so was his, and they melded.”

  I desperately wanted this to be something I could understand, but I was wary. “So then why didn’t he go into my brain?”

  Edie surprised me by laughing. “Well, I’m guessing the dominant brain current takes over. And I’m just guessing that would be yours,” she said.

  That was probably true.

  “So,” Edie continued. “You understood what it would be like to be new here, to feel weird, and then, like, he was hot, so you stayed in his head, and then, after you start going out, you just stay because all you can think about is his thoughts. It’s like the current of his brain is holding yours prisoner.”

  I followed.

  “OK. Then you’re really ready to get out, but then Pilar, well, she up and thinks the same thing at the same time as you—you think she’s the most beautiful girl in the world, and she thinks, I am the most beautiful girl—and you end up in her head.”

  “But then I ended back in Gid’s head, and back in Pilar’s, and those times I wasn’t thinking the same…” I felt my insides go to ash. Edie was right: I got back into Gid’s head when we’d both been wondering whether Pilar’s hand block meant she was done fooling around with him. Mine was wishful thinking that she was, his was panic that she was. And then, I’d gone back into Pilar’s head when we’d both thought about whether her stomach was finally flat enough for her to
have sex with Gideon. Obviously, we were all on different sides as to whatever we’d wished for, but we were both obsessed with, and basing all future happiness on, the same thing.

  We were getting there. “But what about the kissing?”

  Edie shrugged. “Well, I’m sure that just helped you get into her head. Expedited it.”

  “Shit,” I said to Edie.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know. Shit.”

  We had to go to ATAT now.

  “I guess we’ll talk about this later?” I said.

  Edie laughed. “What else are we going to talk about?”

  As we walked there, I thought back to the two times I’d gone into Pilar’s head: the first time, and the second time, when Gid was walking across the quad toward her the other day.

  “I think I ended up in Pilar’s head because I wanted to feel what it felt like to have Gid look at me the way he looked at her,” I said to Edie.

  Edie shook her head sympathetically. “Oh, Molly,” she said. “I think the way Gid looks at you is pretty good.”

  I wasn’t sure. And with his leaving, I wasn’t going to find out. “I think there’s something wrong with you,” Edie said.

  “Duh,” I said. “I’m inside Pilar’s mind.”

  Edie shook her head. “No,” she said. “Besides that.”

  The feeling at ATAT was very glum. We all got our partners and went to our various corners of the room to work our drills, but no one bothered to actually engage with the material. Everyone was talking about what happened, and how fucked we were.

  I partnered with Nicholas. He looked more bummed out than I had ever seen him.

  Then I saw that Nicholas was…well, not exactly trying not to cry, but as upset as someone like him gets.

  “I just can’t imagine life without Gid here,” he said. “I just wish there was something I could do. Cockweed’s had it in for us for a long time. He’s always wanted to take Gid down. Oh my God. A few weeks ago, Cullen was making a lot of noise—long story—and Cockweed came in and looked around our room, and he went in the closet, and we have shitloads of pot in there, and he didn’t even see it or smell it or anything. And I thought, Wow, we’re home free.” He managed to pull off a thoughtful smile. “It’s so weird this is what happened. It totally came out of left field.”