“What else?” asked Dr. Clover, her face completely expressionless.
Natalya waited to see if someone else would step in to answer. When no one else volunteered, she added, “They eat.”
Dr. Clover nodded briefly. “And?” she continued.
“They grow.” Natalya glanced around the room. People were looking at her, but still nobody said a word or raised her hand.
“And?”
Was Dr. Clover waiting for her to give the right answer? Was everything she’d said so far wrong?
Natalya tried to picture living things from different categories. Her mother’s plants. Her brother’s fish.
Remembering what had happened to Chekhov the goldfish right before they’d flushed him down the toilet, Natalya added, “They die.”
“And what do they do between being born and dying?” asked Dr. Clover. “For example, if you eat, what else must you do?”
Natalya felt simultaneously excited and nervous. It was like Dr. Clover was giving her a test.
“They excrete,” Natalya said. Her word generated a giggle from several girls, and Natalya forced herself not to make eye contact with anyone but her teacher.
Dr. Clover responded simply, “And…”
Well, she’d spoken the word excrete out loud. What did she have to lose?
“They reproduce,” said Natalya. Her voice was firm, as if there was nothing embarrassing about what she’d just said. “Sometimes,” she added quickly, finding it hard to imagine a Mr. Clover with whom Dr. Clover was reproducing.
This time Dr. Clover didn’t say and. Instead, she said simply, “Thank you, Natalya.” She looked around the classroom. “I see none of you has a pencil or pen out, which is truly a shame, as Natalya has just given us an excellent working definition of life.” There was the sound of fifteen girls scrambling to get pens out of their bags. Dr. Clover walked to the board and began writing the words Natalya had spoken. At grow, she turned to face the class. “In the future, I suggest you all take notes the first time we discuss something in this class.”
When the bell rang, Dr. Clover assigned the homework, then marched back to her office. The girl who’d been sitting at Natalya’s table gave a dramatic exhalation.
“You were awesome. I can’t believe you survived that. I’m Jordan, by the way.”
“Oh,” said Natalya. “Thanks.” As they packed their bags, then fell into step heading toward the lunchroom, she didn’t add that being questioned by Dr. Clover had been the best thing that had happened to her in a class since she’d been at One Room.
Question. Answer.
She could work with that.
“VICTORIA?”
Ms. Kalman was standing with her back to the board, her right arm extended and her hand pointing to something she had clearly drawn, while Victoria’s mind was elsewhere. She’d been thinking about how there were exactly two months until the election. Two months until her life went back to normal.
Or didn’t.
“Ummm…” Victoria contemplated the blackboard. Had that blobby thing with the little hairs sticking out of it been up there before?
“We were talking about paramecia,” Ms. Kalman explained. She had a confused this-isn’t-how-Emily-would-act look on her face.
Ms. Kalman was clearly deep in the denial stage of teaching Victoria.
Victoria wondered what it would be like if she went to a school from which her superstar sister hadn’t just graduated. Would she magically find herself comfortable talking in class? Would she speak less than she did now? Could a person speak less than Victoria did now and still be considered alive?
When Victoria remained silent, Ms. Kalman continued. “I was asking if you remembered from last night’s reading how they reproduce.”
Okay, why was her teacher asking her a question about reproduction? Was it because her dad was running for Senate? Was this really a question about abortion? Or, wait, that was completely paranoid. No one cared who her dad was. Except her history teacher. And Chloe’s parents.
Victoria’s eyes darted around desperately, as if the answer might be printed on one of the walls of the bio lab. She was sitting at a table near the back of the room, and people had turned around in their seats to look at her. One girl stopped staring long enough to write something on a slip of paper and slide it to her lab partner—Victoria was so not being paranoid when she imagined it said, Is Victoria Harrison stupid or what?
Her father’s campaign manager’s words came back to her. Remember, Victoria, anything you say or do will be held against your father.
How about what she didn’t say?
At the front of the room, expertly twirling his pencil, sat Jack, the guy with the camera from yesterday. As she looked at him, desperately trying to remember how paramecium reproduced, Victoria remembered Jane’s question.
Is he cute?
She hadn’t had an answer then, but she had one now. Jack was cute. Jack was very cute. The eyes that were staring into hers were a deep, dark gray. His skin was pale with a hint of pink at the cheeks, like even though it was September and a million degrees out, he’d somehow just come in from the cold. He was wearing a short-sleeved brown T-shirt, and his shoulders were broad and defined. Could he be a swimmer? His hair wasn’t long exactly, but it was slightly tousled. That was the word for it. Tousled. With those shoulders and that hair, Jack wasn’t just cute. He was sexy.
Jack is sexy, Victoria thought, and as the sentence ran across her brain, like one of those advertisements that planes pull across the sky, the answer to Ms. Kalman’s question came to her.
“Asexually!” she blurted out. “They reproduce asexually.” Only after she’d said the words did Victoria realize she was still staring deeply into Jack’s eyes.
“Excellent!” said Ms. Kalman, turning to write the word on the board.
Jack held Victoria’s look for a long beat; the corner of his mouth turned up. And then, slowly and silently, he clapped for her.
When she got home, Victoria was shocked to hear her dad call out, “Hi, honey! We’re in the office!”
“Hi,” she yelled back. Lately she and her parents texted and left each other voice mails more than they actually saw one another. Yesterday, the first day of school, she’d come home to an empty apartment.
She walked through the living room, nearly falling over one of the baskets of fruit that arrived at the campaign office or the apartment nearly daily. Every lobbyist in the state was interested in her father’s campaign, and the law forbade their spending more than a certain amount on gifts. Since this was about the fiftieth identical basket they’d received from a place called Harry & David, Victoria had the feeling it cost exactly whatever it was people were allowed to spend.
Her dad’s “office” was a small alcove off the living room that they’d put a sliding door on a few years ago. It was just big enough for his desk, where he was standing, and a chair, which her mom was in, one leg thrown over the arm. In the very few feet of available floor space, campaign literature was piled high—pictures of her dad smiling out at her from familiar, dark green borders.
Her mom reached an arm up, and Victoria bent down to embrace her. “We’re playing hooky,” she whispered. “Everyone thinks we’re sick.” She made her voice mock stern. “But don’t you tell lies. Do as we preach, not as we do.” Victoria laughed and hugged her. She hadn’t seen her mother in jeans and a ponytail since May; it was good to see her dressed like this instead of in the suits she wore to campaign events.
Without taking his eyes off the screen of his computer, Victoria’s father gestured for her to come to him. She did, and he put his arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze. She looked at the page he was reading:…good are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without health, the unspoken assumption on which all quests rely?
“That’s great,” she said, coming to the end of the sentence. She stepped back to her mom’s chair and sat down on the free arm. “Did you write that?”
Still reading, her father shook his head. “I haven’t gotten to write a speech of my own in about twelve weeks. Now that I might win, nobody trusts me to speak for myself.” He cocked his head to consider what he’d just said. “What a strange country we live in.”
“How was school today?” her mom asked, stroking Victoria’s arm.
“It was okay.”
Her dad ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “This is…I can’t see myself saying half of this.”
Sometimes Victoria got the feeling that her parents were a little afraid of the campaign staff. Before, when her dad had been a nobody, and her family and all their friends had spent weekends standing on street corners with petitions until they’d finally managed to get the thousands of signatures he’d needed to be on the ballot, the campaign had seemed really fun. But ever since Congressman Dowers had left politics to “devote” himself to his family (instead of their au pair), Victoria’s dad’s campaign had been staffed by professionals, people who had worked for Obama, Clinton (Hillary and Bill), people who knew a million times more about politics and running for office than her parents or the friends who’d staffed the campaign before. Lately she’d noticed that if Steven, the campaign manager, thought something should be done, it got done. Steven thought it would be a good idea was a refrain Victoria had heard a lot in the past three months. Steven thought it would be a good idea if you’d come campaigning with us. Steven thought it would be a good idea to let some press come down to Princeton when we drop Emily off. Steven thought it would be a good idea if you wore a dress instead of shorts.
She’d started substituting Satan whenever she heard his name.
“So,” said her dad, slapping his thighs with his hands and stepping back slightly from his computer to stare at Victoria, “does everyone at that school of yours know how wonderful you are yet?”
Victoria thought of how she’d practically cried in front of Jack yesterday, then stared at him and half shouted “ASEXUALLY” right in his face today. Not to mention Chloe and her “JK!” Oh, and the girl who’d passed a note to her friend in bio that probably said how stupid Victoria was. “Um…not exactly.”
“They will,” her dad assured her. He gave her a warm smile. “You’re the nicest Harrison. It’s not even a contest.”
“Thanks.” Victoria tried to return his smile. She knew her dad meant what he was saying as a compliment, but she couldn’t help thinking he called her “nice” because Emily had already taken all the good adjectives like driven and talented.
He stood up and raised an eyebrow at her. “Feel like baking something?”
“Seriously?” People who knew that Victoria liked to bake always assumed her mother had taught her, but it was actually her father who was the cook in the family. He said making a complicated recipe was the only way he could shut his brain down and relax after a hard day of work. Her mom, on the other hand, despite being a tenured professor at Columbia Law School, couldn’t boil water without taking antianxiety medication.
Her mother clapped once. “Yes! I vote for you two baking something. If you bake dessert, I volunteer to clean up. And I’ll order dinner.”
“Are you sure, honey?” her dad teased. “You can handle ordering?” He leaned down to kiss his wife, who kissed him back, then gave him a mock salute.
“Aye, aye, captain. I’m on it.”
Victoria followed her dad through the living room. “What are we making?” Before he’d entered the Senate race, Victoria and her dad had made a dessert together at least once a week—they took turns finding evermore elaborate recipes for cakes, pies, tarts, cookies, sometimes even savory foods like quiches or cheese soufflés. Now, as they walked to the kitchen, Victoria tried to remember the last time she and her dad had baked together.
They stood side by side and looked around the room. Clearly the fruit basket she’d nearly tripped over wasn’t the only one that had been delivered since she’d left for school this morning.
“Um, how about something with fruit?” he suggested.
“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed. And as they circled the kitchen, gathering the necessary ingredients and supplies, debating which recipe for peach tart was their favorite, Victoria could practically feel memories of Chloe and Jack and asexual paramecium fading away.
MARK WAS NO longer Jane’s crush.
In fact, Jane hated him.
He talked to Jane and Laurie as though he knew everyone and everything worth knowing at the Academy, but the only person he knew who wasn’t a clueless freshman like the rest of them was some random sophomore in his set design elective, a guy who’d gone to Mark’s junior high. Though Mark repeated what he heard from this person as if it were highly classified information that he’d received from multiple high-level sources, careful questioning on Jane’s part slowly revealed his “sources” were really just a source. Singular.
Then there was the way he dressed. His Vans, hooded sweatshirts, and ponytail made him appear to be a skater punk, but Mark didn’t seem to own a skateboard. And he was completely uptight, nothing like the laid-back skater dudes at her old school. As far as Jane could tell, Mark had read an article: “How to Dress Like a Hipster Skater Punk—Without Actually Being One.”
“What are you going to audition for?” asked Laurie as the three of them sat at lunch on Friday.
“Not sure yet,” answered Jane. She didn’t exactly hate Laurie, but she was tired of her relentless enthusiasm. She had more pep than a cheerleading squad.
Laurie’s eyes bulged with excitement. “What if we all try out together? It would be so fun to be cast in the same show, don’t you think? Does either of you sing?”
Mark leaned forward and gave Laurie and Jane a significant look, like he had a major secret to share, one they were doubtless dying to hear. Laurie bent her head across the table toward him, but Jane stayed where she was as Mark whispered, sotto voce, “Okay, don’t freak out on me, but I’m thinking of trying out for Midsummer.”
Laurie gasped. Jane felt the blood rush from her head. Midsummer. The fall drama.
Though she’d been at the school less than a week, Jane knew there were dozens of upcoming auditions at the Academy—for dance performances, for student-directed plays, for video productions. It was, after all, The Academy for the Performing Arts, and the hallways were already wallpapered with flyers offering students a chance to try out in the coming weeks.
Most of the shows were small ones: they’d have tiny casts and crews and would be held in one of several black-box or other little theaters in the building. But the fall drama and the musical were both directed by the head of the theater department, Mr. Robbins, and staged in the school’s only proscenium auditorium, which had a capacity of almost a thousand people.
This year’s fall drama was A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Oh my god,” squealed Laurie. “I can’t believe you’re going to try out for Midsummer, Mark. That’s like, the bravest.” She turned to Jane. “Can you imagine? I didn’t even know freshman could audition for the main-stage productions. Or, wait, you said Fran Sherman got a part when she was a freshman, so I guess I did know.”
Mark shrugged, trying and failing to hide a grin.
If only he’d acknowledged the hugeness of what he was doing; if only he’d said, I know, isn’t it crazy! or I’m totally freaking out, Jane could have been happy for him. As it was, his feigned nonchalance felt condescending, like to Mark, Jane and Laurie were just a couple of starstruck freshmen who couldn’t understand the decisions made by real stars.
“That’s just the kind of guy I am,” Mark explained. “I’m not afraid to put myself out there.” He gave them both a vaguely stern look. “And you shouldn’t be either. Anyway, it’s no big deal. I’m sure I won’t get a big part. Not one of the lovers, for example.”
Despite her irritation with him, Jane had to make herself not giggle when Mark said the word lovers. She’d read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in eighth-grade English, and she thought of
Hermia and Helena and Lysander and Demetrius as couples, not lovers. But clearly that was babyish.
“Who do you think will be cast as the, um, lovers?” The way Laurie pushed her glasses up on her nose and hesitated over the word made Jane pretty sure she, too, was using it for the first time.
“Well, Fran Sherman, obviously,” said Mark.
“Obviously,” echoed Jane.
Mark, who had missed the sarcasm in her voice, leaned back in his chair and took a bite of the chocolate chip cookie that was his lunch. “Len, like, loves her.”
“Len?” Jane had never heard of Mr. Len. Was he the assistant to Mr. Robbins, the director?
For a second, Mark had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Leonard Robbins,” he explained. “He directs the dramas. But everyone in the plays calls him Len. Or, I mean, he tells you that if you get in.” Jane tried to get a mental picture of Leonard Robbins—the old-fashioned name made her picture someone gray-haired and dignified, maybe with a cane and an ascot.
Mark hurriedly took another bite of his cookie and looked around. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but I happen to know that he chose the play because Fran wants to be Helena.” He pursed his lips together. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything. I hope I can trust you.”
The only thing Jane hated more than not knowing the inside scoop was being condescended to by someone who claimed he knew the inside scoop.
“Oh, please,” she snorted. How could she have had a crush on this guy? What had she possibly been thinking?
“What?” Mark shot back.
“Just…if you’re going to audition, fine, but don’t be all”—she gestured in a way that was meant to convey the totality of his idiocy—“you know about it.”
Mark gave Laurie a look like, Can you believe her?
Laurie studied the table.
“Well, whatever,” said Mark, giving a tense laugh. “I think if you were brave enough to audition for a main-stage production, you’d be talking about it too.”
The Darlings Are Forever Page 4