Pride and Prep School

by Stephanie Wardrop

  I went to his house to solve a mystery and left with a deeper one. But it’s one that makes me feel hopeful for the first time since he’d stormed out of my kitchen.

  Two days after the house tour, on the last Saturday of Winter Break, I begin my career as a vegan baker to the punk under-twenty-one set by loading up the wagon of Mom’s old Volvo with brownies and cookies and cupcakes that I had spent two whole days baking and forced into any sanitary container I could find. I pick up Shondra, who is clearly one of the best people ever to walk the face of the earth for having offered to help me, and we drive to a little gray building with peeling siding and an American flag on a pole that’s as big as the building itself. Dave’s van is already parked there, and soon he and Gary and Gary’s girlfriend, Megan, are helping me unload and set up my wares at the small bar, which, as Gary promised, is stocked only with Coke, Diet Coke, and Red Bull.

  “These look awesome!” Megan enthuses as she unwraps a tray of brownies. She has brown hair hacked off at her shoulders with a purple streak on one side and is wearing ripped up fishnet stockings and a striped dress; both create the effect of a sausage attempting to flee its casing. While the band sets up, Shondra and I debate how much to charge for each item as Megan whips out a truly impressive collection of pens in colors that I didn’t even know existed in Sharpie form. She makes elaborate little cardboard signs for each of my offerings, announcing them as ANTI-CORPORATE CUPCAKES and ANTI-DEATH DOUGHNUTS. The cookies she labels JUST FUCKING AWESOME.

  In half an hour kids start spilling in and, despite their definitely un-preppie appearance, I wonder if Shondra feels weird since it seems like she’s the only person of color in the place. I guess she’s used to it, because she is just sipping a Diet Coke and sitting on a stool, bobbing her head to the Dead Kennedys playing on the PA system, surveying the growing crowd.

  “These kids aren’t gonna stomp each other, or mosh pit, or whatever?” she asks me with a grin.

  “I have no idea. Some of them look like they could inflict some damage if they wanted to.”

  “They’re at least trying to look that way,” she agrees.

  “They just better not smash up my cupcakes. I like to bake, but I don’t know if I would ever spend two whole days doing it again.”

  Shondra nods, and says as she runs a long finger along the rim of her soda can, “Hey, my friend Los is down from Pemberley this weekend. He couldn’t make it tonight, but could you meet us at the Blue Rooster tomorrow afternoon? He really wants to meet you.”

  “Yeah, okay …” I say as I hand over a peanut butter chocolate cupcake to a skinny kid with a green Mohawk that keeps drooping in his eyes. My first sale! And the show hasn’t even started yet.

  A loud yell almost lifts the roof off as the Cryptic Pigs from Hell take the little platform that passes for a stage. They’re loud, they’re fierce, and they’re not half bad. Kids jump and shout and slam into each other as the band rips through songs by the Clash, the Jam, the Ramones, the bands Gary’s mix CDs have prepared me for. Most of the kids are from East Longbourne, but I recognize a couple people from school. Tony Mondetto, rumored to be the son of the head of the Netherfield Mafia, buys all my chocolate chip cookies. And Caroline Cranos from my history class is there. At least I think it’s her; she doesn’t usually wear a safety pin in her nose. She keeps hurling herself at the stage along with her friend Katie, whose glasses get knocked off and almost moshed to bits at one point. I also notice Cassie’s ex, the Brick, bobbing his head to the music and raising his fingers in the heavy metal “rock on” salute. He comes by for a Red Bull and a cupcake, whooping as he approaches the bar.

  “Hey, Georgia! These guys fuckin’ rock!” he yells at me over “I Wanna Be Sedated”.

  “I know!” I yell back. “How are you?”

  He keeps nodding and puts a hand over one ear, shouting, “I’m good, I’m good! Good to see you!”

  “I had no idea he was a closet punk,” Shondra laughs when he bounces back to the crowd. “You’re almost sold out, George. Maybe you’ve recruited some new vegan warriors.”

  We watch Megan body surfing toward the stage as Gary does his best to look like a badass as he thrashes his guitar. Dave has his glasses off so he has to squint when he looks at the crowd and when he sees us, he points and we cheer. When we’re sold out of baked goods, Shondra and I join the crowd, bobbing and stomping as the music thrashes around us. It’s fun to be there amid all the noise and the happy chaos. I feel better than I have in days, like I’ve been untethered and let loose into a limitless space. It’s a great feeling and a great night. And I sold a lot of cupcakes and brownies and cookies.

  Shondra squeals a little when I hand her a roll of bills that we earned. I’m more than happy to share. I just want to cover the loan on the ingredients from Mom. As we leave I promise Caroline that next time I will add a selection of gluten free items, as well, because apparently celiac disease is just as cruel as meat.

  I wish I’d saved a brownie or something for Michael. If he’s reading what amounts to the vegan bible, he ought to taste the sacrament, right?

  I’m pondering this the next day when I am sitting on a lumpy, mangy old couch in the Blue Rooster, inhaling the smell of ground coffee, which I love, even though I don’t like the taste of it. I’m eager to meet Los, whoever he turns out to be, because after finding out that he’s read Foer’s book, I feel like the mystery of Michael Endicott is starting to unravel at last. I know that Sondra’s friend will probably have the key to unlocking the mystery of Michael’s expulsion since he was there at Pemberley when it happened.

  When Shondra comes in, her half braids-half twists bobbing, she’s all smiles, and behind her is a squat but attractive guy with very cropped black hair and large, arresting hazel eyes with long brown lashes. He shakes my hand with enthusiasm.

  “Hi, I’m Los. And you’re Georgia, right? I hear you’re a fierce baker.”

  “Yeah,” I say as I try not to stare at the sinister-looking tattoo wrapped around his neck. It’s like an iguana’s tail with swirls instead of spikes, or a bird’s wing with cactus needles instead of feathers, beautiful and formidable at once.

  “Shondi tells me you’re friends with Michael Endicott,” he says.

  I smile at the sound of “Shondi.”

  “I don’t know if we’re exactly friends …” I try to explain without explaining and Shondra looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  Los seems to deflate for a moment underneath his very baggy Army jacket.

  “Could you call him for us?” Shondra asks.

  “I don’t know his phone number, and, um … I’m not sure he would want to talk to me.”

  Los sighs impatiently and, extracting a cell phone from his kangaroo pouch of a pants pocket, turns from us and calls information.

  “What happened with you and Michael?” Shondra asks as she takes a seat next to me and we watch Los pace and talk on the phone.

  “I told you. He half asked me out, half completely insulted me and my entire family. I let him know I wasn’t flattered and he might hate me now.”

  “Hmmmm,” is all Shondra says until Los returns, saying, “He’ll be home in ten minutes, according to his mom. Can you at least drive me to his house, Georgia?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess. I have my dad’s car and I have to pick him up at Meryton at four, but I can do that.” The last place I want to go is back to Michael’s ancestral estate, the scene of my almost-crime of trespass, but there is no way I am going to let Shondra and her friend down.

  Los smiles and pulls one of Shondra’s braids very gently.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I need to see him in person to tell him something, and I haven’t been able to get a hold of him.”

  “You knew him at Pemberley, right?” I ask Los as we’re all driving to Longbourne along the serpentine edge of Sylvan Park.

  “Yeah. I need to thank him,” Los says. He’s looking out the window at the houses and trees. You can tell when we reach the
Longbourne town line because all of a sudden the sidewalks are very smooth and even and not erupting with tree roots from below like they are on the Netherfield side of the park.

  When we get to Michael’s house, I throw on the brakes for a second, almost sending Los through the windshield, because Michael is right there, dressed in long gray shorts and white running shoes, stretching out his calf muscles on his front steps. He looks up and watches the car approach and a grin breaks out across his face as Los practically bursts from the car before I come to a full stop.

  “Figuerroa!” Michael calls and Los lopes over to him and envelopes him in a hug.

  “Endicott!”

  Shondra and I get out of the car more slowly and hang there, watching, not sure what to do, but she’s smiling.

  “Hi, Shondra, Georgia,” Michael says.

  “You been running, man?” Los asks him, then turns to us. “Endicott was always running somewhere back at Pemberley. He could run from here to New York and not break a sweat.”

  Michael shrugs.

  “I run cross country,” he says to us. “And track.”

  Los clamps a hand on Michael’s shoulder and addresses Shondra and me.

  “Will you ladies excuse us? I need to talk to my man Endicott here.”

  “Sure,” Shondra agrees readily.

  “We’ll go out back? If that’s okay,” I suggest. “It’s a nice day for once.”

  Michael nods and he and Los disappear into the house, which Shondra stares at with some discomfort. I know how she feels.

  “Can you believe this place?” I ask.

  “It’s amazing,” she says quietly. “I can’t imagine actually living in a museum like this.”

  “You should see the inside,” I tell her as we walk past the porch toward the general direction of the backyard cut out from the woods. “My mom dragged me here on a Historic Homes Tour. It was so embarrassing, especially when Michael came back and found me there.” I don’t mention that I was en route to his off-the-tour bedroom, though.

  “Ow,” Shondra laughs sympathetically.

  We both stop and take in the view. In a sunken part of the backyard, surrounded by boulders and smaller rocks and plants just waiting to come awake again, lies a pool carved out of the rock and ground, looking for all the world like a lagoon just naturally occurred in the middle of Longbourne. It’s obviously old and really very beautiful, even in the winter.

  “Michael teaches swimming at the Y in Netherfield,” I say. “I guess this is where he learned to swim.” I wonder what he looked like then, a skinny little boy with such dark eyes.

  Shondra nods and takes a seat on a stone bench overlooking the little lagoon grotto area. She leans forward a little, shoulders hunched, even though it’s not cold for once.

  “This place is something else,” she says.

  “I think ‘daunting’ is the word,” I say as I sit next to her. “So what does Los want to thank Michael for?”

  “You don’t know?” Her eyes and mouth are almost comically round now.

  “No.”

  She presses her lips together for a moment. I can tell she must be weighing whether she can answer my question or not. She gives a little shrug to herself and says, “It’s about how Michael got kicked out of Pemberley. I mean, you heard about that, right?”

  “I’ve heard lots of stories. Cheating on a history test, selling prescription drugs, what else… ?” Shondra smirks at this. “I know, that one seemed pretty unlikely,” I agree.

  “Last year he and Los were in a history class together, and Los was not doing well. He’s at Pemberley on a soccer scholarship and it was taking up a lot of his time, plus he just really sucks at studying. So he was going to lose his scholarship if he didn’t get his grades up, and Michael knew that. So when Los was busting on the midterm, Michael let him see some of the answers and they got caught.”

  “But why did Michael get kicked out and not Los, too?”

  “They were both supposed to be. But Michael took the fall for him. Los said he was all panicky, waiting in his room, packing up his stuff, waiting for his appointment with the headmaster about violating the honor code, ready to face his disappointed family who were all so proud of him, and the next thing he knows, there’s no meeting and Michael is just gone.”

  I look up to the sky and watch a red-tailed hawk circling lazily overhead as I try to digest this information. It’s a little like trying to take in an atom bomb.

  “Los never got the chance to thank Michael for what he did,” Shondra says. “And he wasn’t sure Michael would even want to see him, so when he found out I know Michael, and you know him even better, he asked for some help.”

  “Wow.”

  We sit there for a few moments in silence as I try to sift through all of my feelings. I’m angry with everyone who spread those stupid rumors about Michael, including Brick and Cassie for believing that Michael abused his dad’s prescription pad, and Willow for being half right about the cause of the expulsion and telling me, and I’m sure many others, that Michael had been expelled for cheating. But I am most angry with myself for doubting him, for misreading him, for writing him off as a snob, pure and simple, when he is obviously much more complicated than that. He rescued me from a night of drunken stupidity and he had saved Los’ academic career. He runs track and cross country and has a very lovable, very un-pedigreed dog. And he reads animal rights literature in his spare time.

  I’ve gotten so much so wrong.

  When Michael and Los find us after a few minutes, I find myself staring at him as if I’ve never seen him before. I study the sharp planes of his nose and cheekbones, and the loose black-brown curls that dip over his ears. The way his mouth is fuller on the bottom than the top, and how mobile it is when he speaks. How long and refined his neck is nestled in his hoodie sweatshirt.

  We all sit on the stone bench and the big mossy rocks beside it and Los pulls a joint and a lighter out of his pocket and looks at Michael for permission.

  “Is this cool, man?”

  “Yeah,” Michael chuckles. Another surprise.

  I watch as Los lights it and passes it to Michael, and Michael breathes it in and holds it, his dark eyes half shut, then exhales slowly, passing it to Shondra. After a few passes the pot makes me feel fuzzy and less urgent in my confusion, like everything is good whether I know it is or not. I keep looking at Michael—I’m vaguely aware that I am openly staring at him, in fact—but he never seems to look in my direction.

  We sit and chat about nothing in particular. Mostly Los catches Michael up on all the news at Pemberley. The sun’s a little warmer and a little brighter today, and there are the first hints of spring in the little buds popping shyly from the tree branches and some plants peeping out of the soil, waiting to bloom. Somehow, I feel like I am, too.

  Michael says he might go to Boston with his dad for part of Spring Break and Los answers that he is going back to Puerto Rico for the week to visit his grandmother. He invites Michael along.

  “Both sound like more fun than I’ll have. I’m retaking the SATs,” Shondra offers. “I need a higher score for most of the schools I want to go to if I want them to give me any aid. And I do!”

  Los puts his hand on her knee and smiles. “I hear that. But I’m doin’ all right this semester,” he says, looking at Michael.

  Michael closes his eyes and smiles like a sleeping child having a really good dream. He looks really beautiful, and I want to reach out for him, to touch him, really lightly and casually, the way Los touched Shondra.

  But I don’t.

  I really want to say something to him, though I don’t know what.

  So I don’t.

  After about forty-five minutes go by, I realize I have to get Los and Shondra back to Netherfield so I can pick my dad up at Meryton, so we all say goodbye. As I drive back around the edge of the park, I think that Michael didn’t seem angry with me—or terribly interested in me and my being there. But I guess neutrality is better than
contempt.

  It’s not until I drop Los and Shondra off at the Blue Rooster that I finally figure out what I wanted to say to Michael but was too pot-foggy to think of when I was at his house.

  It’s, “I’m sorry.”

  I hope it’s not too late for that. I know that I’ve misjudged him. I know that I’ve been wrong about everything.

  Now I have to figure out how to make things right.

  STEPHANIE WARDROP

  Stephanie Wardrop grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania where she started writing stories when she ran out of books to read. She’s always wanted to be a writer, except during the brief period of her childhood in which piracy seemed like the most enticing career option—and if she had known then that there actually were “girl” pirates way back when, things might have turned out very differently. She currently teaches writing and literature at Western New England University and lives in a town not unlike the setting of Snark with her husband, two kids, and five cats. With a book out—finally—she might be hitting the high seas any day now.

  Also from Stephanie Wardrop and Swoon Romance