by Ariel Kaplan
“It wasn’t the best five minutes of my life, no. Thanks, by the way.” It was then that I realized Emily wasn’t wearing a college shirt. She was wearing a tank top with that same flower, the one from her ring and the Ophelia card, printed on it.
“Where’s your sweatshirt?” I asked.
“It’s eighty degrees out,” she said. “These people are sheep.”
From behind us, I heard “Baaa.”
Followed by another “Baaa.”
I turned and saw Shira and Bebe, followed by Nate, who said, “Moo,” and then, “Sorry, I’m an iconoclast.”
None of them, I realized, were wearing their shirts.
“Don’t start,” I said to Nate. “I know you own like ten of them.”
“Don’t pick on Cute Nate,” Shira said. “He’s a very nice cow. Bull. Do bulls moo?”
Bebe pulled out her phone and said, “I’ll look it up.”
“I didn’t realize you guys had B lunch,” I said.
“Bulls moo,” Bebe told Shira. “That’s a thing.”
“Oh, we don’t,” Emily replied, ignoring the conversation about the verbal tics of cattle. “But the lunch buffet over at the Hyderabad Café is always totally picked over by twelve-thirty, and they have free lassis on Mondays.”
“So you guys are just skipping?”
“Skipping,” Emily said. “Or taking a lunch meeting. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Will we be back in time for next period?” I asked, a little reflexively.
Shira laughed. “Not if we’re doing it right.”
“Honestly, Mischa,” Emily said. “What is it that you think they can do to you now?”
I stopped walking long enough that Shira bumped into me. “Nothing,” I said. “They can’t do anything.”
* * *
—
My plate was filled with samosas and nothing else. Emily, who was eating about twelve different things, looked at my lunch and said, “Gack.”
“I like fried food,” I explained.
“Apparently. Hey, as long as you and your gallbladder have some kind of understanding, who am I to intrude?”
She picked up an idli and ate it. “So,” she said. “Bebe may have figured out how Beth got into Brown.”
I looked to Bebe, who had just put half a tandoori chicken wing in her mouth and was making the sign for either I am chewing or I am choking.
“Beatrice, do you need the Heimlich?” Shira asked.
Bebe shook her head vigorously. “Chew-ing,” she said with her mouth full. “Choking is this.” She put her hands around her own neck.
“You were pointing to your esophagus.”
She swallowed. “I was pointing to my jaw!” She put down the bony remnants of the wing. “Anyway, yeah. I got bored last night and googled Beth’s dad. He’s been a busy beaver.”
“What did he do?”
She typed into her phone and set it in the middle of the table. Nate and I squished our heads together to read the screen. Emily and Shira, who had presumably already seen it, kept eating.
“They named a building after him?” Nate said incredulously.
“It’s not a building,” I said. “It’s a wing. Of the biology building. Which he endowed.”
“I wonder how much it costs to endow a wing,” Nate said, scrolling down on the phone.
“In this case, one point two million,” Bebe said. The straw of Shira’s lassi popped out of her mouth, and she whistled.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s. Wow.”
“So what does this tell us?” Nate asked. “Maybe nobody changed Beth’s grades at all. Maybe it was just the money.”
“Perhaps,” Emily agreed. “That’s a distinct possibility.”
“Which means we have no leads,” I said.
“Except Amy,” Emily said. “And that weird English grade.”
“But you don’t even know for sure that she had the B+!” I said. “You might be wrong about that. In which case, we’re right back where we started.”
“We have other leads,” Bebe said. “Remember the list we made up.”
I made a mental tally of what we’d done so far: we’d put a virus on Mrs. Hadley’s computer, broken into the school, stolen Mrs. White’s email address, read her private email, and pretended to be Willa Jenkins to talk to Beth Reinhardt.
It was starting to seem like we were involved in a lot of criminal activity with no actual results. I wondered what the penalty was for all this, if we got caught. Skipping school was one thing; there was literally nothing worse that could happen to me on that front. But getting in trouble with the police…that was something else.
“No,” I said. “We really don’t have leads. We have suspicions. Which are not leads. A lead requires just the tiniest amount of tangible evidence, and we have nothing.” I smashed a samosa with my fork. “This whole thing has been a complete waste. We’ve committed felonies. And for nothing.”
Emily leaned back from the table. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want to stop,” I said. “There’s no point. I don’t want to risk getting in even more trouble. This has turned into a wild-goose chase. One of us is going to end up arrested.”
Emily said, “We know what we’re doing. We’re not getting arrested.”
“I can’t take that chance! Do you even understand? I have nothing right now. Nothing. If I end up with a record, I won’t even be able to get a job. Do you get it? Do you get what’s at stake for me? No. You don’t. If you guys get caught, so what? Your parents will hire a lawyer. Maybe you’ll get a few months of probation, and then your record gets wiped at the end. I don’t have that option. I’ll just get screwed.”
“I was under the impression,” said Emily blandly, “that your mother is a lawyer.”
“She’s not a criminal lawyer.” I pushed my chair back to get up. “Look. It’s not like I don’t appreciate all the time you’ve put into this and everything else, because I do. I really do. It’s just—I can’t take these kinds of risks. I’m sorry.”
Bebe and Shira exchanged an unreadable glance, but Emily’s eyes were only for me. “Are you sure about this?” she said. “If we stop now, there’s no chance of changing your transcript back. Or your letters.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
Nate said, “I’ll drive you back to school, I guess.”
* * *
—
In the car Nate said, “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to think. I just can’t let things get any worse. I can’t get arrested. Do you understand?”
“Not wanting things to get worse? Of course I understand.”
“So you don’t think I’m making a mistake?”
“I think what you decide to do is none of my business. I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He put his arm around me. “Come here,” he said.
“What?”
“Just come here.” He pulled me next to him, and then I did what I’d been wanting to do from the beginning: I broke down and sobbed.
As I was crying noisily into his shoulder, his hand rubbing up and down my arm, I realized I’d been kidding myself for the last four years. I didn’t like Nate. I didn’t have a crush on Nate. I didn’t have a thing for Nate.
I was in love with Nate.
I didn’t particularly want to go back to school after that, but I did, because I had a student government meeting and I didn’t want to leave everyone in the lurch.
The SGA meetings were generally held in Ms. Wentworth’s room, since she’s our faculty adviser, despite the fact that she rarely shows up. We pushed four desks together to make a long table at the front of the room, and I sat between Jim and Caroline, whil
e Mark, who had been up too late doing his math again, strained to keep his eyes open on Jim’s other side. The eight class reps sat in the front row, along with Meredith Dorsay, who was our representative on Blanchard’s board of directors. She sat with her arms crossed in smug satisfaction while Caroline typed up the minutes, Jim called on the reps to report, and I stewed in my own fury.
“Meredith,” Jim said, which jolted me out of my fantasy of ruining Meredith’s sixty-dollar blowout by shoving her head in a toilet. “You have a report from the board?”
“Yes,” she said, standing up, which was super unnecessary, since it’s not like we wouldn’t have been able to hear her otherwise. “The board is donating eleven hundred dollars toward the senior class all-night grad party this year. I should have their check by the end of the week.”
“Make sure Mark gets that,” Jim said, but Mark had momentarily nodded off, and Jim had to elbow him back into action. “Narcolepsy boy. Stay with us.”
Mark jolted upright, saying, “Yes! The check. I will take the check.”
“For eleven hundred dollars,” Jim prompted.
“Right,” Mark said, making a note. “Eleven…hundred…check…to…bank.”
“That’s less than they donated last year,” I blurted out.
“Excuse me?” Meredith said.
“According to the records, the board gave the seniors thirteen hundred dollars for last year’s party.”
Meredith smoothed an invisible wrinkle in her sleeve. “Because last year’s class was bigger.”
“By four people,” I said.
“Right. It was bigger by four people. Which is bigger.”
“Do you mean to tell me that those extra four people were worth fifty dollars each?” I asked.
“I suppose fifty dollars would seem like a lot to some people,” she said.
“I suppose asking for parity would have seemed like too much work for some people,” I said.
Caroline said quietly, “Mischa, what are you doing? It’s two hundred dollars. We can make up the difference.”
Loudly, Meredith said, “Are you getting all this in the minutes, Caroline?”
Caroline gruffly said, “That’s my job.”
“Ladies,” Jim said. “Should we move on?”
“No,” I said.
“No,” Meredith said. “Maybe Michelle would like to go talk to the board? You can ask them for more money, and then tell them what great use you’ve made of the scholarship they already gave you.”
I stood up fast enough to knock my chair over. Caroline’s mouth popped open, but I noticed she didn’t actually say anything. One of the junior class reps said, “Oh no she didn’t.” Jim’s hand shot out and grabbed my arm. “Vicious,” he said. “Sit down.”
“Let go of me,” I hissed.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Meredith, that was uncalled for.”
“I’m just saying, if she thinks she can do my job better, she should go ahead and try.”
“I’m adjourning this meeting,” Jim said.
“We haven’t heard from the freshmen yet,” Caroline pointed out.
Jim turned to the two freshmen reps, who were watching this whole exchange with bug-eyed terror. “Do you guys have anything that can’t keep?”
They shook their heads vigorously.
“Great. I move to adjourn the meeting,” he said.
“Second,” Caroline said, slamming her laptop shut.
Look at me, I willed. Look at me right now. But she didn’t.
“And we’re done,” Jim said. “Mischa, come with me. Meredith,” he shot over his shoulder, since he was already dragging me from the room. “Put a muzzle on it.”
Out in the hallway he turned to me and said, “You want to tell me what that even was?”
“She’s incompetent,” I said.
“She’s awful, but she’s not incompetent. You know she has no control over how much money the board gives us for that party.”
“She could have asked for more.”
“How do you know she didn’t?”
“She—”
“Look, it doesn’t even matter! We have a budget surplus, and if we don’t use it, it’s just going to go to the juniors for next year anyway.”
“Then the juniors should have it.”
“Hey,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder, which I shrugged off. “It’s not like I’m not sympathetic here. Meredith’s a snake. But if you’re going to be gunning for her in every meeting for the rest of the year, it’s going to be a long three months.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“Of course I am,” he said. “Do you want to get a coffee or something? I have another hour before I have to be at tennis.”
“No,” I said. “Thanks. I should go home. Or something. I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he said. Then, frowning: “You’re not going to…”
“To what?”
He let out a long exhalation. “To jump off a bridge. Or whatever.”
“No,” I said, then felt worse, because that seemed to be the logical next step for me—not necessarily to jump off a bridge, but to want to jump off a bridge. “I’m not jumping off anything.”
“Okay. Good. I mean, you would tell me, right?”
“Yeah, I’d tell you. But I’m not. I promise.”
He turned to go, but then stopped to say, “Caroline said you guys were supposed to go shopping last weekend.”
“I—I guess I forgot.”
“Maybe you should call her,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I was walking out of the building when I got a text from Penny Ford, the president of Students for Sober Driving. It said, Meeting tomorrow at six. Please bring work supplies!
I thought really hard about spiking my phone into the ground.
Caroline was supposed to be my ride home after the SGA meeting, but I just couldn’t deal with listening to half an hour of conversation about DOC (or COD), so I bolted out the door without looking back. I got out my phone to text Nate, but then I remembered that he has therapy on Thursdays. Tucked into the little pocket of my purse was Emily’s Ophelia Syndicate card, with the little flower in the corner. I ran my fingers over the embossing. Then I texted Emily.
I told myself it was because she lives like a mile from the school and picking me up wouldn’t have been a big deal for her. Are you busy? I texted.
Yes, she texted back after a few seconds. I had to roll my eyes.
Was that your only question? she asked.
If I ask you to pick me up, can you not ask why?
What a strange request. Would I care why?
No, I said, you wouldn’t.
Then please don’t tell me.
Thanks.
I put my phone in my pocket and sank onto a bench that was slightly damp from last night’s rain. A few minutes later my phone buzzed again.
It might help, Emily said, if you told me where you were.
Oh. I’m still at school. I’m outside the side door.
Sorry, I said.
You should be.
I put the phone away again. She was right, though. I was boring. My main interests were school and, oh yeah, more school. I didn’t play in a band. I didn’t speak three languages or know how to disembowel a computer or collect first-edition romance novels. I’d never been anywhere or done anything, because I’d kind of thought those were things you did after high school. Like being interesting was some kind of a payoff. I wondered what Emily had been up to when I called. Probably hacking into a bank or something.
Emily pulled up in her BM
W two minutes later.
“You were still at school,” I said. “You could have mentioned that.”
“I was in the computer lab finishing a CS project with Bebe. Did you want to wait longer? I can circle the block a few times.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll get in.”
I went around the front of the car and got in next to her, and she pulled away without asking me where I wanted to go. She turned right at the light like she was heading for the Beltway, so I said, “Where are we going?”
“I was taking you home,” she said. “Was that not what you wanted?”
“No, home is fine,” I said. Then: “If I hadn’t called, what were you going to do?”
She turned and looked at me over the tops of her sunglasses. “I was going to go home and read a book.”
“Really?”
She didn’t answer. A second later I asked, “What book?”
She turned into the next shopping center and pulled on the parking brake. “Mischa,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Well, not nothing. It’s just…I had SGA today.”
“Okay.”
“I do a lot of clubs, actually.” I remembered the increasingly angry texts from Leo Michaels about my poor French club attendance. “Or at least I’m supposed to, and, you know, I go to school, and I study and write papers and stuff. And that’s kind of…it.”
“Oh. You’re bored.”
“I guess.”
“There must be something you like to do.”
I shrugged. I guess I like binge-watching shows on Netflix, but that doesn’t seem like a nonboring way to be spending my free time. “I don’t even know,” I said honestly. “Is that weird?”
“Depends,” she said. “How badly have you always wanted to be an android?”
“What is wrong with me?”
“You mean, why are you so boring?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you chose it.”
“So what do I do?”
“Unchoose it? I don’t know. What are you asking me for?”
I shrugged again.
“All right,” she said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. “What did you like to do for fun before you came to Blanchard?”