“Oh, right,” Drew said. “Sorry, I haven’t looked at it yet.”
“Um, okay,” I said. I didn’t understand why she was being this way. Here was our one chance to get our top class choices next semester and ensure we had matching schedules, and she was completely blowing it off.
“Why don’t you just give your list to Dalton so you don’t miss the deadline?” Drew asked. “I’ve got your list so I can build my schedule off that.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Hmm?” Drew said, distracted. “Oh, yeah. I just have a migraine.”
She was being weird, evasive. Her migraine excuse was as transparent as my tired excuse.
“Hey,” I said casually, “did you figure out how you’re going to get Mr. Franklin’s trig exam yet?”
“Oh yeah, I think so,” Drew said.
“Need any help?” I asked.
“No, I’ve got it covered,” Drew said. “Thanks, though.”
“So, that’s it?” I asked. “You’re not even going to give me any details?”
“You guys, you’re not going to believe it,” Stevie said, sitting back down at the table, juggling three bowls of fro yo. “Mocha Midnight Madness is back.”
She scooted one of the bowls across the table toward me and elbowed the other in Drew’s direction.
“I got spoons!” Yael said, dumping a handful of silverware on the table.
“Yum,” Drew said, but I could tell her smile was feigned. She reached for a spoon and averted her eyes from me. I had the strange feeling that even if Stevie and Yael hadn’t come back to the table just then, she would have found a way to avoid answering my question.
Later that night, I was in Dalton’s room doing research for a report we had been paired together on in Mr. Andrews’s Introduction to Photography class. We had to write about a modern photographer who was doing something innovative in the medium.
Girls were allowed in the boys’ dormitories during study hours, which were after dinner and before curfew (seven to nine o’clock on weekdays). But we had to leave the door ajar and have three feet on the floor at all times. I sat on Dalton’s bed next to him, my back leaning against the dormitory wall and one foot tucked under me, one dangling on the floor. I was trying to stay focused on the task at hand, but my mind kept wandering to Mr. Andrews. I wanted to ask Dalton about the compromising photo (what did the A’s want with it?), but I didn’t know how to broach the topic. Dalton wouldn’t be allowed to tell me the purpose behind the compromising photo without betraying the A’s confidence, and I didn’t want to put him in that position.
On the one hand, Mr. Andrews seemed like a decent human being, and blackmailing him or undoing him with these misleading pictures seemed cruel. But on the other hand, I didn’t have a choice. If I failed, would the A’s release the photographs they had of me and Leo? Forget the public humiliation I would suffer—Leo would suffer too, and he had done nothing wrong. I couldn’t do that to him.
“Earth to Charlie.”
I looked up to see Dalton staring at me.
“Hmm?”
“You seem a bit distracted,” Dalton said. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “Everything’s fine.”
“What do you think of this guy?” he asked, and I leaned closer to him to get a better look at his laptop screen. My shoulder leaned into his shoulder and I felt him stiffen beside me.
“Um, so this photographer uses all natural light in his photos,” Dalton said. “They’re showing his latest exhibit in the West Village next Wednesday. He’s even doing a Q & A afterward. Maybe we could go? Get bonus points for getting a quote from the artist for our paper?”
“Sounds good,” I said. “And I can ask him about his thoughts on the line between the public and the private in his art,” I said sarcastically.
“Interesting line of thought, Ms. Calloway,” Dalton said, clearly mocking my exchange with Mr. Andrews that first day of class. “Ethics and art is always an enlightening discussion.”
I turned to laugh and caught Dalton smiling at me. There were barely three inches of space between us. My breath caught in my throat and Dalton leaned forward and kissed me.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he said.
“How long?” I asked.
“Pretty much since you were a freshman and you called Libby Winkler Libby Wanker right to her face in the dining hall because she was being snooty.”
“She was so full of herself,” I said. “Everybody secretly hated her.”
“Still, it was a pretty ballsy move for a freshman to call out a senior like that.”
He moved his laptop off his lap and skimmed his fingers along the edge of my jaw until they were on the nape of my neck, and he pulled me forward and kissed me much less gently, his fingers wildly clutching in my hair. It was painful and exciting at the same time and when he drew back it felt like he had sucked the oxygen from my lungs. I had never been kissed like that.
“And I wanted to do that from the first day in Introduction to Photography,” Dalton said.
“Oh, yeah?” I said, and cocked an eyebrow at him. I was a little breathless but trying to hide it. I didn’t want him to know the effect he had on me. I wanted to keep the upper hand. I reached forward and playfully unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. His mouth was slightly open; I saw the want in his eyes. “And what did you want to do to me after I beat you at poker?” I asked.
“You only beat me because you cheated,” Dalton said, smiling, his voice low.
“It wasn’t very gentlemanly of me,” I said. “But maybe if you were less of a gentleman, you would have won.”
“I’m not always a gentleman,” Dalton said.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I said.
He pushed me down on my back on his bed and pinned my wrists above my head in one of his hands. He was on top of me, kissing me, his other hand trailing down my neck, skimming my collarbone, grazing my breasts, my belly button. Then his hand slipped underneath my shirt, warm skin to warm skin.
The door to his room slammed shut, and Dalton bolted off of me.
“Shit,” he said.
He went over to the door and opened it and stepped outside, glancing up and down the hall. I sat up and ran a hand over my hair to smooth it.
“That was weird,” Dalton said when he came back in. “It was probably a draft or something.”
“I should get going,” I said. “Now that we have our project figured out.”
I reached for my laptop and started to gather up my things.
“Yeah, I’ll walk you back to your room,” Dalton said.
Drew wasn’t back yet as it wasn’t quite curfew, so I sat on my bed with my laptop taking some notes on the photographer Dalton and I had picked for our project. The USB drive with the interviews from my mother’s case file was still sitting on my bedside table, and it kept catching my eye.
Maybe my mistake was not in listening to the interviews, but in listening to the wrong ones. I put in the USB drive and clicked on Grandma Fairchild’s audio file and put on my headphones. The first half of the interview covered the same ground as my aunt Grier’s—basically, my mother’s personality and character—but of course, Grandma Fairchild painted a very different, much more pleasant picture of my mother. Then Mr. Lynch asked about my parents’ relationship.
“Grace cares for Alistair a great deal,” Grandma Fairchild said. “It was kind of a quick, whirlwind affair when it all started, which was unusual for Grace. She had a hard time opening herself up to anyone after Jake.”
“Jake?”
“Yes, Jake Griffin, her high school boyfriend. He grew up down the street. They met when they were children.”
Jake Griffin. That name sounded so familiar. Where had I heard it before?
“He was a good kid, a smart kid,” said my grandmother. “He went to boarding school up in New Hampshire, I think it was. On a full scholarship. But he passed away very young. Gr
ace was still in high school—oh, she must have been sixteen or so when it happened. Very young. She was devastated. It took her a long time to get past it.”
A boarding school in New Hampshire? A boy who passed away? A cold shiver ran down my spine. Jake Griffin. I hadn’t heard that name before, but I had seen it. In the front of my father’s senior yearbook, on the “In Memoriam” page. Jake Griffin, the boy who had died, the one in the picture with my father on Healy Quad, their arms wrapped around one another, smiling at the camera. Jake Griffin and Alistair Calloway, the caption had read.
I tried to put all of the pieces together in my mind, to make them fit. What did it mean that:
My mother had dated this boy
At the same time my father was friends with him
In the same year this boy had died, and
Seventeen years later my mother disappeared into thin air?
Because what were the chances it didn’t mean anything?
Twenty
Grace Fairchild
Spring 1997
I sat with Teddy’s family and Margot during the ceremony. When Teddy walked across the stage in his cap and gown and received his diploma, we all stayed politely seated, unlike most of the other families, who popped up to snap a photo. Eugenia had hired a photographer to sit close to the stage and document everything. She had also made all of us arrive two hours before the ceremony so that said photographer could take pictures of us with Teddy in his cap and gown at the most scenic spots on campus. That way, we wouldn’t have to jostle for pictures with all the other graduates and their families. I also secretly suspected Eugenia wanted the pictures taken when her hair and makeup were freshly done, rather than after she had sat through the hour-long ceremony in the blistering sun.
I’d bought a new outfit for the occasion—a pale pink dress on discount at Saks Off 5th. It was a designer I’d heard Olivia mention once. The dress was formfitting but had a modest neckline and hit a few inches above my knees. I felt pretty in it, but as I was posing for pictures, I had a disturbing thought—what if the dress was too sheer? I hadn’t thought so when I’d stood before the mirror in the dull fluorescent lights of the dressing room, but standing in the bright sunlight, I wondered how much people could see and cursed myself for not thinking to buy a slip, just in case.
Now, as the band played and the graduates marched proudly down the aisle with their diplomas in hand, Teddy’s father leaned toward me.
“We’re going to miss our reservation,” he said, frowning at his watch. The ceremony had started late and was now threatening Eugenia’s perfectly laid plans.
“Alistair, stay behind and wait for your brother,” Eugenia said, fanning herself with her program. “We’ll go ahead to the restaurant and hold our table.”
Margot put a hand on Alistair’s elbow and fanned herself furiously with a program with the other. “I’m going with your parents,” she said. “If I stay in this heat one more minute I’m going to get heatstroke.”
“I’ll wait with you,” I volunteered.
Alistair nodded. “Go corral the troops,” he told me as he stood, his hands in his suit pockets. “I’m going to find a restroom.”
It took me a few minutes to find Teddy on the mall with all the other families and graduates. But eventually I spotted him off to one side, standing with some of his friends in a half circle, facing the other direction, toward the stage. I recognized two of them: Graham Park and Nick Cheng. Teddy and I had met them for a late movie downtown and gone out for sushi a few times. They were nice guys, always very polite. The third boy was tall and gangly, with freckles. He was half turned toward me so I could see his profile. I tried to place him in my mind, but I couldn’t remember ever meeting him.
“I still contend that Teddy here is the true champion,” Nick said, clapping Teddy on the back.
“Nick pointed her out to me earlier, over by the fountain,” the tall one said. “I saw that little pink dress she’s wearing. There’s no way she hasn’t put out.”
I stopped walking. The realization that they were talking about me hit me hard in the gut. I suddenly felt like I wasn’t wearing any clothes. It was like one of those horrible dreams where you suddenly realize you’ve been walking around naked and everybody is staring at you.
“Like I said, I’m bowing out this round,” Teddy said.
“Bullshit,” Graham said. “I’m not winning by default. Let’s review the plays. Nick?”
“Teddy went to first with that Zeta Sigma, rounded second with that French foreign exchange student, and made third with the econ TA,” Nick said, counting each of Teddy’s conquests off on his fingers. I wondered when these encounters had taken place—were they while we were together? Before?
“And you hit a home run with the townie,” the tall gangly one said.
Townie. I didn’t even have a name.
“Come on, just admit it,” he went on. “You’ve tapped that.”
Teddy shrugged. He was laughing. I could tell by the way his shoulders shook, even though I couldn’t see his face.
“I plead the fifth,” Teddy said.
Witnessing Teddy divulge one of the most intimate details of our relationship to this gangly freckled boy and his other friends made me feel sick. And the fact that it was all some kind of joke, some kind of game.
Nick raised Teddy’s arm triumphantly in the air. “I declare a winner.”
“We’re not worthy, oh great one,” the gangly freckled boy said, giving Teddy a mocking half bow.
As I stood there, willing myself to leave but unable to move, Teddy turned and saw me.
The expression on my face must have told him everything I couldn’t say, because his smile faltered, and all his color drained away.
“Grace,” he said.
I turned and walked quickly away from him, stumbling slightly as my heels poked into the grass. He chased after me and grabbed me by the arm, forcing me to stop.
I saw his friends a few paces back, still standing in their half circle, looking at us.
“Don’t touch me,” I said. I tried to tug my arm out of Teddy’s grasp, but his grip only tightened. His fingers dug into my forearm, sharp and bony. I winced.
“Grace, just let me explain,” he said, as if he had the words to make things right, to put us back together. But he couldn’t possibly. Those words didn’t exist.
“I said, get your hands off me,” I repeated.
“I don’t know what you heard,” Teddy said, glancing back at his friends and then lowering his voice. “But don’t listen to those idiots. They were just dicking around. They’re jerks. They didn’t mean anything.”
“No, I didn’t mean anything,” I said. “I was just—what? Some kind of joke to you? A stupid game?”
“No,” Teddy said vehemently. “That’s not true. You weren’t—it wasn’t.” He stopped and took a deep breath. He looked at me so earnestly it hurt. “It was real. You and me. I swear to you it’s real. Grace, I love you.”
I did it just like Hank had taught me in the backyard when I was ten. Knuckles clenched, thumb on the outside, weight on my back foot, and then I threw it forward, right into his face. My fist sang with the impact. I heard the wind go out of him; he released me instantly and doubled forward.
“Fuck,” Teddy said, clutching his nose. “Fuck.”
I didn’t wait to see if he was all right. I just turned and ran.
I could barely see straight. As I rounded the corner of the nearest building, I ran straight into someone, hard. I felt the hot, sharp pain of my ankle twisting in the strap of my heel as I fell, and then someone reached out to steady me.
“Whoa there, you all right?” the man asked.
When I looked up, I saw that it was Alistair. We seemed to recognize each other at the same time. I saw the way his face lit up from within, that flicker of light in his eyes. “I was just coming to find you,” he said.
And then he seemed to register the emotion in my eyes, and his face clouded over.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I hardly knew how to answer that question.
“It wasn’t real,” I said. “None of it was real.”
I knew I was babbling but I couldn’t stop.
I grabbed my ankle, which stung, and then slowly stood and shifted my weight to it. It was fine. I’d only twisted it—I could walk.
I heard my name in the distance, and I looked back over my shoulder. It was Teddy, trying to figure out which way I had gone. There was blood on the collar of his shirt. I had busted his nose.
I looked back at Alistair.
Alistair nodded as if he understood. “Go,” he said. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t follow you.” His voice was tight, laced with fury.
It was the second time that Alistair had saved me, and for the second time, I was too distracted to thank him. I just turned the corner and ran, without a backward glance.
Twenty-One
Charlie Calloway
2017
I stayed until Ms. Stanfeld did her nightly curfew check and then I grabbed a duffel out of my closet and hastily packed. I threw in a change of clothes, my laptop, and everything I could fit from my mother’s case file.
“Can you please level with me?” Drew asked as she watched me from her bed. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, grabbing my toiletries bag and throwing in all my stuff from my shower caddy. “But I sure as hell am going to find out.”
“Okay,” Drew said. “But you’re kinda scaring me. Can you at least tell me where you’re going?”
“I’m going to Hillsborough,” I said. “But you can’t tell anybody—not even Leo. I need you to cover for me in case I don’t make it back by curfew tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” Drew said.
I lowered myself out of the window first and then Drew tossed me my duffel.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” Drew whispered down to me.
All These Beautiful Strangers Page 23