All These Beautiful Strangers

by Elizabeth Klehfoth

  “Are you feeling better?”

  I looked up to see my father standing there, two mugs of coffee in hand.

  I’d left the gala early, telling only my father that I was leaving, and I’d made an excuse about a disabling migraine.

  “I came by to check on you afterward,” he said as he sat down across from me. He slid one of the coffee mugs across the table toward me. “I knocked on your door but you didn’t answer. Your light was off.”

  “Sorry, I was out cold,” I lied.

  In truth, I didn’t answer because I hadn’t been there. I’d gone back to my room only briefly to change, make some last-minute alterations to my article for the Knollwood Chronicle, and load that and my pictures onto the flash drive I’d purchased the other day at the school gift shop. Then I’d snuck across campus to intercept Finn and switch out his flash drive with mine. I didn’t get back to my dorm room until nearly one in the morning.

  Afterward, I hadn’t been able to sleep. It kept running through my mind, the magnitude of what I’d done. I couldn’t take back what I’d written or those pictures. They would be out there in print, for the whole school—the whole world—to see. Forever. I’d tossed and turned and only just drifted off to sleep when my alarm went off, and then I’d had to drag myself out of bed to go meet my father for breakfast before he headed back to the city.

  “How long has this been going on?” my father asked, forcing me out of my reverie.

  “What?”

  “Your migraines,” he said. He had that worried crease between his brows.

  “Oh,” I said. “Not long. It’s nothing, really.”

  “You don’t look well,” he said. “Maybe you should come back with me to the city. I can get you in to see Dr. Carmichael first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I have finals next week,” I said. “I can’t miss them.”

  “Your health is more important,” my father said. “I’ll have Dr. Carmichael write you a note. You can take your finals when you’re feeling better.”

  I forced my eyes up from my cereal bowl to my father’s face. He looked so concerned, so protective, so fatherly. It pained me to look him in the eyes after what I’d done, how I’d betrayed him. And for him to act so kindly toward me, precisely because he didn’t know yet. But he would understand, wouldn’t he? In the end, he’d forgive me. Right?

  I should tell him the truth, I thought. I knew that I should tell him, because he would find out soon enough. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, Dalton materialized behind him, breakfast tray in hand.

  “Where’d you disappear to last night?” Dalton asked.

  He rounded the table and sat down next to me. To my discomfort, I saw Margot was right behind him. She sat down across the table from me, next to my father.

  “Alistair,” she greeted my father with a smile, and he acknowledged her with a curt nod.

  “Migraine,” I said.

  Dalton rubbed my back. “You doing okay now?” he asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said.

  “Maybe Mom could take a look at you and prescribe something?” Dalton asked, looking at Margot.

  “That’s very generous,” my father said quickly. “But I’d prefer if Charlotte saw our family doctor.”

  “That’s probably best,” Margot said. “So, Alistair, how’d you fare at the auction?”

  As their conversation turned from me to vacation home rentals, I noticed a sophomore girl at the next table over gawking at me. She looked away quickly when I met her eyes. And then I saw it—spread out on the table in front of her was that day’s issue of the Knollwood Chronicle.

  I glanced around the dining hall, and I saw it wasn’t just her—most people were starting to stare. I felt it gathering around us like a storm about to break. The collective gasps, the gawking silences. That old familiar weight of being held up for speculation. As I scanned the room, my eyes locked with Leo, who was standing in the entrance to the dining hall. His face was white as a sheet. My cool, confident cousin looked terrified.

  Just then, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and I turned just in time to see Ren Montgomery barreling toward me. She tackled me, pushing me off my chair and onto the table. My glass of orange juice went flying, its pulpy contents landing in Margot’s lap; my elbow landed hard in my bowl of cereal; my tailbone sang with pain as it met the hard wood of the table behind me.

  “What the hell, Ren?” Dalton said, yanking her off of me and then putting himself between us. “What’s your problem?”

  “What’s my problem?” Ren spat. “Why don’t you ask your backstabbing bitch of a girlfriend who just fucking outed us to the entire fucking world.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dalton asked, looking from me, still splayed out on my back on the table, to Ren, and then back at me.

  “I’m talking about all of our dirty little secrets that Charlie just made front-page news,” Ren said. She was hysterical. She turned around and plucked the issue of the Knollwood Chronicle from the sophomore sitting at the table next to us and shoved the paper into Dalton’s chest. “Extra, extra. Read all about it!”

  I sat up and pulled my elbow out of my cereal bowl. The sleeve of my sweater was drenched.

  “You’re done,” Ren said, pointing her finger at me. “You’re over.”

  As I sat there, holding my throbbing, milk-soaked elbow—a disheveled mess on display for the whole school to see—I knew that she was right. Because the gun I’d loaded for the A’s at the beginning of the year, I’d just pulled the trigger.

  “What’s this?” my father asked, taking the paper from Dalton.

  “The truth,” I said. I looked at Margot, her stare hardening as her suspicion of what I’d done crystallized on her face. “All of it.”

  My father looked down at the paper in his hands, and he started to read.

  It was the story I’d written, and the photographs. I’d published them after all. Not the ones of Mr. Andrews, as I’d originally planned, but the ones of the A’s at the Ledge the night that Jake died.

  I’d decided, finally, what type of person I wanted to be.

  Haunting Truths

  By Charlie Calloway

  Since I started at Knollwood Augustus Prep, I knew that the school was haunted. There were whisperings of a ghost, a boy who had died years ago, so long ago that his name and the circumstances of his death had long been forgotten. Still, the story of the ghost was as much a part of the school as the old library, or Headmaster Collins, or Knollwood’s tradition of graduating some of the best and brightest students in the country. Everyone knows that a sighting of the ghost is a harbinger of bad luck, and everyone or their friend has a story of seeing the ghost before being on the receiving end of a bad breakup, or a failing exam grade, or a rejection letter from a dream school.

  Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about ghosts—about the things that haunt us, and the stories we tell—because surely, these say something important about us. What are the things that won’t let go of us, or that we won’t let go of? And why tell these stories, over and over and over again? It seems like there’s something beyond the story itself we’re trying to communicate, something just beneath the surface, something important that must be understood.

  It turns out there really was a boy who died at Knollwood. His name was Jake Griffin and he drowned in Spalding River on December 21, 1990. Jake Griffin was a scholarship student, an outsider, and the story goes that he cheated on an exam and, fearing expulsion, went up to the Ledge and jumped.

  I understand why this story was told and why it was so easy to believe and why it is told still. Jake Griffin was a boy from a working-class family who had infiltrated the hallowed halls of Knollwood Augustus Prep, and he couldn’t hack it. Through his suicide, everyone was absolved of his failure and his death. There’s something in the retelling of this story, even when it is stripped to its barest details—a dead boy, a ghost, a haunting, a harbinger of bad luck—
that we’re drawn to, that we can’t let go of. The specter of failure haunts all of us. It is terrifying that maybe we’re not good enough after all, maybe we never will be, maybe people see right through us. What’s more horrifying than that we ourselves are ghosts, a mere shadow of what we pretend or want to be?

  There’s more to Jake’s story than what we’re told. In fact, Jake didn’t get caught cheating on an exam. He wasn’t driven to the Ledge that night by the depths of despair. He didn’t jump. Ironically, what brought Jake to the Ledge that night was victory, not defeat. After several months of completing numerous trials, Jake had finally won his way into the most elite group on campus—the A’s. And it was in the throes of this celebration that Jake overdosed on Percocet, stopped breathing, and died. Or, at least, his friends who were with him that night thought Jake had died. They didn’t call for help or medical assistance. In their haste to protect their own reputations and futures, they tossed Jake’s body over the Ledge. It was only later, when the autopsy report was released, that they learned that Jake had been unconscious at the time, and they had left him to drown in the cold river below. In the wake of this discovery, no one came forward. Instead, they told lies that came to be taken as truths, to protect themselves.

  I understand why we don’t tell this story. It is an ugly story, and it is difficult to look at head-on. We immediately want to look away, close up our ears. That some of Knollwood Augustus Prep’s most distinguished students—now our golden alumni—cruelly left a young man to die is not a story we like to tell or hear. It doesn’t reflect well on us, may even lead us to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions about who we are and what we’re doing here, the values we’re really perpetuating.

  I’ve been asking myself that question a lot this past year—who am I? And who do I want to be? And I’ve come to realize that I can’t really answer that question unless I’m willing to be honest about a lot of things. So, here goes. The truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth, with its many ugly faces.

  I’m an A. Or, at least, I’m an initiate of the A’s. My last “trial” to get into the A’s was supposed to be publishing pictures in this issue of the Knollwood Chronicle that made it look like a faculty member was hooking up with a student. The pictures were a lie meant to punish and humiliate a teacher for turning down the advances of another A, as twisted as that sounds. And since I’m not going to publish them, I suppose I’m not an A anymore. And I’m okay with that, even though for the majority of this year I thought all I really wanted was to be in that illicit group. I, like most of you at this school, have often looked at the A’s as if they were gods. It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize that what I mistook for courage was really gross ego, and what I mistook for power was really coercion and the worst kind of bullying.

  I’ve done a lot of things this past year that I’m not proud of, and many of those things were done in pursuit of becoming an A. I made out with my cousin in the back of Ren Montgomery’s Audi and let her take photographs of us to use as blackmail in the event that I slipped up; I stole the diamond collar from Headmaster Collins’s pit bull (and I have the scar to prove it); I sat silently by as Auden Stein got suspended for something he didn’t do, even though I might have saved him if I’d only spoken up with the truth.

  But I’m tired of the silence. I’m tired of hiding the parts of myself that I don’t want other people to see. I’m tired of the lies and the half-truths and the destruction that they wreak. I know in telling these things I will hurt people—including those who deserve it and those who don’t, people I love and people I hate. I myself won’t come out of this unharmed. Someone once told me that no one tells the truth and walks away unscathed, and it turns out, they were right.

  My father, Alistair Calloway, was at the Ledge the night that Jake died. He couldn’t bring himself to dispose of Jake’s body, so Margot Dalton (then Whittaker) and Matthew York did. They all kept quiet when they discovered the hand they’d had in Jake’s death. Ten years ago, my mother found out the truth about what happened to Jake, who had been her high school sweetheart. And when she tried to come forward with that truth, Margot silenced her. I saw Margot with my mother down by the lake the night she disappeared. Last week, I discovered my mother’s suitcases in the basement of Margot’s Southampton house and today I realized my mother’s canary diamond from her engagement ring might be the very same yellow diamonds surrounding the bezel of Margot’s watch.

  There’s the whole ugly, haunting truth. Today, we all must finally step out of the shadows and let the light illuminate our hard edges and the sins we’ve committed in the dark.

  Below the article, I’d put the photographs of Jake Griffin and the A’s, and I’d listed the name of every A I knew.

  When my father finished reading, he looked up. For one long, silent moment, he looked at me and I tried to read even a trace of emotion on his face, but there was none. Then, he looked at Margot.

  Dalton was looking at Margot, too. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. I looked around and realized that at some point, a mass of people had congregated in the dining hall. There was my photography teacher, Mr. Andrews, by the coffee cart. My uncle Teddy and aunt Grier were three tables over. I noticed Stevie and Yael near the entrance, gaping. It seemed like everyone in the dining hall was staring at Margot.

  Margot pushed back her chair and stood.

  “I don’t know what scene you and your daughter are trying to orchestrate here, Alistair,” she said. Her voice shook and betrayed her. “But I don’t want any part of it.”

  My father reached out and grabbed Margot’s wrist. She flinched. His eyes caught on the yellow diamond bezel of her watch.

  “Charlie,” my father said, his voice quiet, but calm and steady, “call the police.”

  Margot tore her hand out of my father’s grasp. “Let go of me.”

  She clasped her freed wrist in her other hand like she was injured. She looked at Dalton, and then at me, and then her gaze flitted to the audience that had amassed around us. There were a hundred silent witnesses as Margot fled, powerless and cowering, toward the door.

  Half an hour later, I found myself alone in the headmaster’s office, waiting for Headmaster Collins to arrive. My father was in the hallway, speaking with the police and a very agitated Old Man Riley.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. It had been going off for the past half hour, since the drama in the dining hall had exploded, but with everything going on, I hadn’t had a moment to look at it. I pulled it out now and unlocked the screen.

  Word about my article had traveled fast. I had a dozen missed calls. Three from my sister in Reading. One from Greyson. Six from Drew. I guess her parents must have let up on some of their phone restrictions.

  I opened my messages and saw several texts from a group chat.

  Drew: So I leave and I miss all the fun apparently?

  Yael: Your girl Charlie just dropped a bomb on those A-holes

  Stevie: Charlie where r u? R u ok? I can’t believe that about your mom!

  Drew: Yeah, like what the fuck is going on?!

  Yael: R they going to arrest that psycho bitch?

  Stevie: C, answer your phone plz

  Drew: Call me later you guys! I need deets. The parental unit finally gave me back my phone.

  Yael: C, u did good, girl. We’re here if you need us.

  Well, at least some people didn’t hate me.

  The door opened and Headmaster Collins came in looking all stern and serious.

  “It’s a circus out there,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  I put my phone back in my pocket and sat up straight. Headmaster Collins took a seat behind his big oak desk. I could tell he hadn’t been prepared to be called in this early on his day off, because he was unshaven and his hair was only half combed. The top button in his collared shirt had been buttoned in the wrong hole, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  “I won’t pretend it wasn’t br
ave, what you did,” Headmaster Collins said. “You acted with valor and integrity. It’s heartening to see that at least some of the values we’ve tried to instill in you in this institution have taken root.”

  Headmaster Collins folded his hands on his desk and looked at me solemnly, and I knew I wasn’t going to get off that easily, with just a pat on the back and a “job well done.”

  “That being said, doing the right thing doesn’t exonerate all of the wrongs that were committed,” he said. “Theft. Vandalism. Cheating. Lying. I can’t turn a blind eye to the serious misconduct that went on.”

  “Am I expelled?” I asked.

  Headmaster Collins sighed. “Every member of the A’s is going to face expulsion,” he said. “However, in light of your coming forward, I’m willing to make an exception in your case. There’s only one week left in the semester. I’ll let you sit for your exams and finish out this semester. If you withdraw enrollment for the spring, I won’t put an expulsion on your academic record. You can start again somewhere new. I’m sure, with a sizable donation, another institution can be persuaded to take you on midyear.”

  I’d known expulsion was a possibility when I’d written the article. But still, the reality of it hit me hard. No more Knollwood. This place had been my home for the last two and a half years and now, it was being taken from me. Still, I knew things could be worse.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “That would be your father,” Headmaster Collins said. “I know he would like to have a word with you before you give a statement to the police. So, I’ll give you two a moment.”

  When he left, my father came in and sat in the seat next to me.