“You’ve got to hear about this,” Benji said. His dreadlocks quivered with his laughter. “The most hilarious thing happened in my English class.”
“So tell us already,” Lindsay said, sitting down next to Benji and wrapping one arm around his waist. Melissa and I dumped our bags on the floor and stood facing the boys on the bench. Ted reached for my hand, but taking it meant standing right in front of him and Hugh. I squeezed Ted’s hand and then dropped it and shifted backward, trying to put a few more inches between Hugh and me. Hugh grinned at us the same way he always did, but it was hard for me not to see it as knowing, threatening. I took a deep breath and tried to think of all of them as my audience, with me in the role of a carefree teenage girl.
“So, we’re doing The Scarlet Letter, right?” said Benji.
“God, I hated that book so much,” said Melissa. We’d all read it the year before; Hawthorne was part of the standard junior English curriculum.
“Same here. Did any of you guys have Selinsky? She splits you up into assigned groups and makes you write and act out a scene based on a chapter in the book. Damn, Courtney, I wish you were in my class. We totally would have gotten an A.”
“You know it,” I said. I was barely listening. Benji sounded so far away, as if Hugh’s presence changed the dimensions of the room.
“So, freaking Selinsky assigns me to a group with Farah Zarin and Susan Dashiel. And our chapter is seventeen, ‘The Pastor and his Parishioner.’ You remember it?”
We all gave him blank stares, although my own had more to do with the fact that I was trying to block out Hugh Marsden than with having blocked out The Scarlet Letter.
“It’s the part where Hester and Dimmesdale are in the woods talking and she, like, buries his face in her tits to make some point about the damn letter. And there’s three of us, so Selinsky is like, ‘Add a narrator so you all have parts.’ And you know I don’t want to go anywhere near either of those two girls’ tits, so I’m like, ‘Yo, I call narrator!’”
He kind of had a point about Susan Dashiel. Susan was boldly, unconditionally weird, the kind of person who wore SPF 50 sunscreen every day, even in winter, claimed to be writing her fourth fantasy novel, and was obsessed with anything Medieval. She was actually an amazing actress and had cross-dressed to play Iago in Othello as a freshman. It was a shame that she’d probably become an archaeologist or a professor of dead languages, because she could have had a serious career as a character actor. But she was so strange, it was hard to be nice to her or imagine anyone finding her attractive.
“Wait,” said Melissa. “What’s wrong with Farah Zarin’s tits?”
“She don’t got any!” said Benji, and the boys laughed some more. Which was true, but cruel, and Farah was hardly as off-putting as Susan. “Anyway, so Zarin is instantly like, ‘I’ll be Hester,’ and of course Susan Dashiel has no problem with playing Rev Dimmes. So whatever, we work on this thing during class for a few days, and we’ve rehearsed it a couple of times, and instead of the big embrace, Zarin just kind of pats Susan on the back with one hand and points at the “A” on her chest with the other. Everything’s normal. And this week, everyone performs their scene, and no one’s really into it, right, because everyone hates this damn book. So just before it’s our turn to do our thing, Selinsky gets up and starts yelling at the class, like, we should be more into this assignment and having more fun with it, like, damn, woman, if you wanted us to enjoy this, you should’ve let us at least pick our own groups, you know? But I guess she got Susan all fired up, because when we do our scene, she totally goes for it, moaning, wailing, tearing at her clothes and seriously rubbing her face against Farah’s not so ample bosom. Zarin just sat there shell-shocked. Of course when we’re done, Selinsky’s clapping and standing up, all ‘bravo!,’ and the rest of the class is totally silent.”
Everybody laughed, and I tried to put an appropriately amused expression on my face.
“Good thing she’s never played C’s love interest,” said Hugh. He smiled the crooked half-smile that I’d seen him use to win over more than one girl. He reached out and put one hand on my waist. “Or Ted here would have lost his woman to the dark side.”
His hand was on me, squeezing just a little, in a way that I might have taken as casually affectionate in the past. I flinched and slapped his arm away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Jesus, C, I was only joking!” Hugh shook his head at me and gave Ted a “women are crazy” face. “You on the rag or something?”
“That’s disgusting.” Melissa swatted Hugh’s head playfully. “You’re a pig.”
“Fuck off, Hugh,” I gritted, and turned around and stomped away.
Behind me, I heard Hugh say, “What the hell crawled up her ass?” and Ted respond, “I don’t know, man. She’s been acting weird lately.”
“Sounds to me like she just needs a little…” Hugh lowered his voice, but Melissa’s response carried across the room: “Ugh, pigs!”
I strode through Thistleton Hall with purpose, as if I knew exactly where I was going. The lounge was packed; fourth and fifth periods were lunch blocks, and half the kids at school had one or both of them free. For the most part, everyone was caught up in their own dramas in the corners and edges of the room, while traffic swirled and eddied in the center, where waves of people passed through on their way from the east wing of the school to the west. For one strange moment, I caught Elaine Winslow’s eye. She was sitting under the windows on one end of the long row of senior benches. Her boyfriend Marshall Rye was next to her, in the middle of saying something, gesturing with his Starbucks cup. Elaine held a matching cup on her lap, and despite Marshall’s animated story, Elaine’s eyes were on me. I got the feeling she had been watching me for a few minutes before I noticed. I would later come to find out that Elaine Winslow had been watching me for years, but at that moment, I pushed through the crowd and tried not to cringe. Like the crew I’d just left in my wake, she was probably wondering what my problem was. Surely, Ted deserved a bright, uncomplicated girl like Elaine, and he’d figure that out any day now.
I was running through a list in my mind of places I could hide out on campus. There was the theater, but drama classes were sometimes held there, and anyway, if anyone wanted to find me, it was an obvious place to look. There was the library, but the private carrels were usually staked out by kids with more experience than me in being antisocial, and the way they were positioned at the end of each row of shelves, it would be too easy for someone to sneak up on you (this was, in fact, a common library pastime: trying to scare your friends into yelling loudly enough to draw the ire of the wizened librarian, Mrs. Astorly). There was a hallway of unused lockers off the music rooms that was often deserted, but this was a known fact, and as such, it was the location of choice for mid–school day makeouts.
I wanted a cigarette desperately, but sneaking one on campus during school was to risk serious disciplinary action. We weren’t allowed to wander the school woods until classes were over, and if you went to the boiler room, you ran the risk of bumping into Madame Bergeron, the French teacher who smoked her own cigarettes there constantly. I silently cursed my fear of driving; as a senior with off-campus privileges, if I had a car, I’d have been able to drive myself to Echo Bridge, which was the preferred off-campus smoking spot. Then I remembered the dark room. If the ventilation system meant to draw out chemical fumes was strong enough for Marian Hayward’s joints, it was certainly strong enough for a Marlboro Light. I hitched up my bag and headed for the art wing.
On the wall above the darkroom door, there was a detailed painting of Darth Vader with the words “Welcome to the Dark Side.” I opened the door to dim orange light and an angry shriek.
“Knock, dammit! This is a dark room!”
Sexy Lexi. Of course.
“Oh, hell.” I slammed the door and stood against it. “Sorry.”
“It’s not like anyone’s working in here or anything.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I crossed the room and hopped up on the counter underneath a humming open vent. I wasn’t going to let her intimidate me. I had as much right to be in the dark room as she did, even if I had never used a camera that needed film. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“Seriously?” asked Lexi. She poked at something among the trays in the sink with her tongs and shook her head. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
“You’re not smoking,” I said.
“Yeah, but if you get caught, they’ll lock this place up for good. God, at least use an ashtray.” Lexi picked up a can of Diet Coke from the edge of the sink, shook it, tipped it back for the last sip, and handed it to me. “Did Marian tell you that you could smoke here?” She said Marian’s name with a nasty edge.
“No,” I snapped. “I just needed a cigarette.”
“Well, this isn’t a smoking lounge, no matter what Marian thinks. I’m on disciplinary probation already.”
“Is that because of Marian?”
“Don’t play dumb,” Lexi said. “Even if she didn’t tell you about smoking in here, everyone around here knows everyone’s business.”
“Not everyone,” I mumbled, mostly because the idea of everyone knowing everything made me nauseated right then.
Lexi looked thoughtful. “Well, I suppose you’re right there,” she said. She lifted a piece of paper from one tray to another in the sink and turned on the water. I slipped off the counter and stood next to her at the sink, peering in. She turned off the faucet and tilted the tray toward me, the water in it waving back and forth over a square of paper. Whatever the subject of the photograph, it was a mass of black and white blotches now.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right,” said Lexi. “I can print it again.” She pushed up her sleeves and turned on the faucet again, the rushing water obscuring the photograph. A tattoo curled around one of her thin, white forearms, just below the elbow.
“Is that real?” I asked her, pointing to the tattoo. It appeared to be a snake.
Lexi held up her arm. “Yeah,” she said. “I got it over the summer.”
“Wow,” I said. “You must have a good fake ID.”
“Nah, my grandfather signed a form.”
“That’s pretty cool of him.” I was impressed. I didn’t want any tattoos myself; as an actress, casting directors would view me as more versatile with unmarked skin, at least while I was starting out. Obviously it’s not an issue for Angelina Jolie. But still, if I had wanted one, my parents never would have agreed. They’d lost their minds when my sister Anna came home from college with a nose ring.
“We compromised,” explained Lexi. “I wanted it right here.” She tilted her head and ran a finger from her earlobe down her neck.
“You wanted a tattoo on your neck?” I asked. “That’s pretty hardcore.”
“It’s my name,” said Lexi. “Lexi’s short for Alexandra, which was an alternate name for Cassandra in Greek mythology. You know, Homer and the House of Atreus and all that.”
“She was someone’s concubine, right?” I didn’t take Latin, but at Belknap, The Odyssey and The Iliad were part of the freshman history course. “A spoil of war, or whatever.”
“Yeah. She could see the future. In one version of the story, these snakes that were associated with the god Apollo licked her ears, giving her the power to hear the future. Hence,” she pointed to the spot on her neck just below her ear again. “My grandfather thought I should at least get it somewhere it could be covered up.”
“So can you read tea leaves now and stuff?” I joked.
Lexi rolled her eyes. “Well, in the myth, Apollo is so pissed Cassandra won’t screw him that he curses her so no one will ever believe her prophecies. She’s kind of a crappy namesake. Can I have a drag?” I put the cigarette in her hand. “So what’s the story?” she asked. “What exactly drove the famous Courtney Valance to the demon nicotine?”
Suddenly, I heard Melissa’s voice in my head: “She practically fell to her knees and undid his pants with her teeth.” When she’d said it, I had simply assumed Hugh was exaggerating or maybe lying outright about a minor liaison with Lexi. Here, in the darkroom, I wondered if there was more to it than that. But I didn’t know how to find out without showing my own hand.
“Oh, you know,” I said breezily, taking the cigarette back from her. “College applications. Creative stress. The pressure of all those boring eyes down in Thistleton.”
Lexi laughed and placed her dripping print on a pane of glass propped in the sink, dragged a squeegee over it. “Welcome to my little sanctuary.”
“So what is the story with you and Marian anyway?”
She shrugged and leaned over the counter next to the Arbus enlarger, cutting a strip of film with an X-Acto knife. She held a negative up to the eerie orange bulbs overhead, then sprayed it with one of those cans of pressurized air people use to clean their computer keyboards. “There’s no story. She likes to hang out in here and smoke weed—clearly the ventilation system is quite a draw—” she gestured at me with the spray can—“and one day she wanted to make out a little.” She squinted at the negative again. “I wish I hadn’t done it. It was creepy, like she felt like she had to do it, like it was some kind of trade for her hanging out in here.” She made a face. “And it was like the one day of the year Mrs. Geary decided to check the expiration dates on the chemicals and walked in.” She slipped the negative into the Arbus enlarger. “So now if there’s any more trouble—if, say, she were to walk in right now and see you smoking—they’ll close down this place for good. It’s a shame. Do you know this is better equipment than a lot of art schools have?”
I hopped back up on the counter, dropped the cigarette into the soda can, and lit another. “So are you guys, like, dating?” The light inside Arbus went on for a few seconds, shining down onto the test strip of paper Lexi had placed underneath.
“What, me and Marian? No.” She dropped the test strip into one of the trays in the sink. “She’s fun, but she’s a flake, and anyway, I’m pretty sure Marian mainly likes boys.”
This was my opening. “What about you?”
She looked at me straight on, evaluating. I tried to keep a neutral expression on my face, not too interested and not too innocent. Lexi must have decided I was all right, because she bent back over the sink, moved her test strip into a different bath, and said, “I’m equal opportunity. It’s not like one thing over the other; it’s two different things. And before you ask, Farah Zarin is not and never has been my girlfriend. She’s a good friend, but she’s totally straight.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. I took a deep breath and said, “So I guess you gave Hugh Marsden an equal opportunity then, too, huh?”
The tongs rattled in the sink, and Lexi turned around and took a step toward me. “What did you hear?” Even in the dim light of the dark room, I could see that her face had changed, and she was glaring at me. Without taking her eyes off me, she picked up the X-Acto knife—she didn’t even seem to notice she’d done it—and held the knife in a closed fist down by her side. “What did he say? Did he send you in here? I should have known.”
“Lexi, chill.” I pulled nervously on my smoke. “I was just making conversation. Hugh didn’t send me in here, and honestly, he didn’t say anything, at least not to me. I heard about it secondhand.”
“Who said th
at? What did they say?” Her grip on the knife tightened.
“I don’t know. It was just going around. That you guys ran into each other at Echo Bridge and hooked up. It’s no big deal.” But obviously, it was. “What happened?”
“Hugh motherfucking Marsden.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. Then she opened them and looked at me. “We happened to be in the same place at the same time. End of story.”
“Obviously not.” I said. My heart was pounding. I could feel the hot little ball of anger in my stomach ballooning. “You’re holding a freaking knife, Lexi.” Suddenly I noticed a few dark droplets falling from her hand. She’d been squeezing the X-Acto knife so tightly she’d cut herself. I jumped off the counter again. “Do you need a Band-Aid?”
She looked down at her hand in surprise. “I need Hugh Marsden’s head on a stick, is what I need.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, and it felt almost the same as saying the actual words, the ones that would make it real. I felt deflated and loose. Her head snapped up and her face softened as she studied mine. I carefully took the knife out of her hand and dropped it in the sink. “I… he…” I didn’t have to say it. Lexi knew.
“I didn’t think I was the only one,” she said quietly. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard, her blood running over our fingers. We stood there staring at each other for what was probably a second but felt like an eternity, hands clasped, nails digging into palms.
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