When we pulled into her driveway, though, Lexi left the car running. “I’ll be back in one sec,” she said. I stared at the house while the car chugged beneath me, wondering what the hell Lexi was up to. When she came back, she was flushed and grinning, and she thrust something heavy and wrapped in one of her cashmere sweaters at me. “Check this out.”
It was one of the guns from the case in her grandfather’s library, clunky and oily and probably a thousand years old.
“It’s a Nagant M1895,” Lexi said proudly. “Used by the Russian military for decades. Max collects them. Something about reclaiming power from his family’s oppressors.”
“Whoa,” I said. “What are we going to do with it?” A little flicker of fear and adrenaline touched the back of my neck. I thought about the way Ted’s shotgun felt in my hands, about Lexi saying she was the kind of person who would punish people who hurt her that night at Mr. Grieves’ loft.
“Just a little target practice.” Lexi grinned at me and pushed a strand of gold hair behind her ear, reversing the car sharply down the driveway.
* * *
Lexi’s shooting range was the bare swath that cut through the woods below the power lines on the west edge of town. She parked in the cul-de-sac, dead-ended by three large cement blocks with a chain suspended above them from two metal poles, to keep kids from off-roading under the lines. We pulled the straps of our bags high on our shoulders and began to walk through the tall, dry yellow grass. We covered maybe two miles quickly and silently, our breath clouding the cold air around us.
“All right,” said Lexi. “We’re probably good here.”
“Are we even still in Belknap?” I asked.
“I’m not sure where the town line is back here,” said Lexi. “But the power lines go for another couple of miles and come out by the dump in Carlisle. There aren’t any houses around here for over a mile.”
She kicked the dead leaves on the ground at the edge of the trees until she found an empty gold beer can, which she propped in the crotch of a tree. I noted that the can rested at about the same height as my own head. I hoped Lexi’s aim was bad enough that, if she did ever get the chance to shoot Hugh, she’d get him non-fatally, in an arm or a leg.
“You go first,” Lexi said. She held the hunk of metal out to me butt first.
The path cleared through the woods for the power lines was about 30 feet across, and we stood on one side of it and eyed the beer can in the tree on the far side. I raised the gun with both hands, but I was used to bracing a shotgun on my shoulder to absorb the recoil, and I didn’t know how hard the revolver would kick. I got nervous and flinched as I pulled the trigger, the shot going embarrassingly wide of the target.
“Some soldier I’d make,” I said.
“I think it’s snowing,” Lexi said. We both stood still, listening for the hush of snow, trying to catch the movement of flakes out of the corner of our eyes. “First of the year.”
I tilted my face up to the white sky and closed my eyes. The snowflakes were tiny, some brushing quickly over my cheeks while others landed and melted, like little icy needles. I jumped when I heard the shot, but my eyes opened too late: the gold can was gone from the tree and all I saw was Lexi grinning, the gun dangling from one hand—Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.
“Damn,” she said, studying the gun in her hand, still smiling. “That felt good.” Lexi turned the gun from side to side, admiring it. She raised it, aiming one-handed into the woods. She pulled the trigger and split a small sapling about ten feet from us.
“It’s messed up,” I sighed, thinking of the jar of hot sauce in the field behind Ted’s house. “But I know what you mean.”
“Seriously.” She held it out to me again, but I shook my head. I was too afraid of that surge of power I’d felt at Ted’s to try it again. She flipped the safety like an old pro, and put the gun inside her bag on the ground. The snow was falling more heavily now, and the sky was growing dark. Lexi stepped closer to me. “Courtney, it’s okay to be pissed off. You don’t have to be scared all the time.”
“Lexi…” I rested my hands on her shoulders. “I don’t think I could have gotten through this fall without you. I would have had a psychotic break in Thistleton Hall and gotten carted away in a straight jacket.”
Lexi choked back a laugh. “Not that I wish either of us were going through this alone, but maybe if the famous Courtney Valance had a public breakdown, someone, Farnsworth or whoever, would notice something is wrong.”
“They’d only think something was wrong with me.” I said. “And they wouldn’t be mistaken.”
“Impossible,” said Lexi.
Then she kissed me.
For a second I was too surprised to move, and then, even more surprisingly, I was kissing Lexi back. While my brain was blaring the word WHAT? over and over again like a siren, my body was registering soft lips and a gentle tongue, a warm hand on my cold cheek and an arm around my waist. My hands rested tentatively against her upper back, her hair silky where it lay over her shoulders. Lexi smelled amazing, in a completely different way than Ted had ever—
Ted. What was I doing?
I stepped back, and we both took huge gulps of air. The snow was collecting in her hair like the crown of one of her grandfather’s wood nymphs. We just stared at each other for what must have been a second but felt like hours. Her cell phone began to ring, and we both about jumped out of our skin. Otherwise I might have stood there in the woods, stunned and silent, for who knows how long.
Lexi got to her phone first. “Farah?” She listened for only a moment. Her face got very still and empty. Then she hung up the phone and hoisted up her bag.
“We have to go. Now.”
Chapter 15
We sprinted under the power lines toward the cul-de-sac and Lexi’s Caddie. I didn’t even know what was wrong; she had just turned and started running. I pounded along after her, trying to keep up, the box of bullets rattling in my bag. I was terrified that the safety on the gun in Lexi’s bag might get flipped off. I was terrified of whatever had happened to make her run through the woods like a scared rabbit. I already felt like I wasn’t getting enough air. To distract myself from hyperventilating before we got back to the car, I willed my legs along and filled my mind with minutia. I’m glad the two miles back are mostly downhill, I chanted to myself. I’m glad I’m wearing flat-heeled boots. Is that the start of a blister on my left baby toe? Think about that later. Jump the rock. Watch the branch. The only sounds in the dim, snow-muted forest seemed to be my lungs and heart.
We skidded to a stop by the car. My feet slipped on snow and leaves, and Lexi pressed one hand on the hood and the other to her stomach as she bent over. Her face was bright red, but it was only a second before she stood straight and unlocked the driver’s side. I fell into the passenger seat, and the car leapt forward, gears squealing in protest. I braced myself against the dash and yanked my seatbelt around my coat. Lexi pulled onto Route 2 and hit the gas, driving like she was in The French Connection (Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, 1972). We were halfway to Cambridge by the time I caught my breath.
“We’re meeting Farah at Grieves’ place,” Lexi told me.
“What is it?” I asked. I kept my voice as even as I could. The look on Lexi’s face was scaring me. It was like she’d gone feral. The wind was howling where she had the window cracked open for her cigarette.
“Molly,” Lexi said, so quietly I wasn’t sure I’d heard her until she kept talking. “Hugh got her alone in the darkroom.”
“Oh. Oh, no.” I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the cold window as nausea swept over me. Stars danced on the edge of my vision. I could feel myself tipping toward a faint, and I took a deep breath, swallowed, and forced my eyes open. It was only four o’clock, but it was fully dark, with heavy traffic heading out of the city, appearing as headlights in the snow. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.” Lexi picked up her cigarettes and execu
ted a complicated maneuver in which she kept the heels of her hands on the steering wheel while using her fingers to extract another cigarette from her pack, lighting it from the butt of the last. “Apparently Madame Bergeron caught them en flagrante delicto, so I’m presuming he didn’t get a chance to…finish things. And the darkroom is going to be stripped and used for storage.”
“Wait, what?” I stared at her. “How do you know that? Why were they in the darkroom in the first place?”
“That was Farah on the phone,” Lexi said flatly. “She saw the report Bergeron sent to Farnsworth via email.”
“Are you serious? What did it say?” I picked up her smokes from the center console and pulled one out for myself. I thought I might throw up. We should have gone to the cops that first night at Mr. Grieves’. Before that first night. I should have gone straight to the police from Melissa’s guest bathroom.
“It said that she caught two students—and she named Molly and Hugh—‘behaving inappropriately’ in the darkroom. And because neither of these students is particularly inclined toward the arts, she concluded that they’d chosen the darkroom for privacy, and that it is a harbor for acting outside of the school’s behavioral code.”
I nearly laughed. “You’re joking.”
Her eyes flicked toward me as I opened the window a sliver and lit the cigarette. “I wish I was. Bergeron didn’t even know what she was seeing. She thought they were just messing around.”
“Were they?” I asked. Lexi took her eyes off the road to shoot me a look. “I’m not, like, defending him, Lexi! But Molly’s really into him. He might not have to…” I swallowed. “Force her.”
Lexi returned her hard stare to the highway. “Evidently the good madame used the phrase ‘rough horseplay.’ Does that sound consensual to you? Knowing what you know?”
“Oh, my God.” I watched the smoke leave my lips in a thin stream. Then I flicked the cigarette out the window and dropped back against the headrest, closing my eyes. I thought of the moment earlier that afternoon, when I’d seen Lexi down the hall standing in a square of sunshine thrown by a window. How it had seemed perfectly safe to call out her name and run the few steps toward her. I had thought the word to myself—“safe”—after considering how few people would still be on campus. I had been worried about my own safety, about Ted seeing me with Lexi and wanting to know why, or Hugh seeing me with Lexi and realizing what we both knew about him. But we’d done nothing for Molly’s safety, even with that knowledge.
My eyes snapped open in realization. “What about Farnsworth?”
“What about him?” asked Lexi, narrowing her eyes at the windshield. The falling snow gave every headlight a halo.
“Don’t you think he’ll remember your report when he reads Bergeron’s?”
“He’ll be glad that she’s not recommending the number one left wing in the state be punished,” Lexi said bitterly.
We cruised along the Charles, the bricks of Harvard looming on our left and in blurred shadow on the far side of the river. Lexi parked around the corner from Athenaeum Lofts, which shone like a glass beacon between the brick office buildings, dark and empty the night before the holiday. The snow had tapered off and all that remained was a light dusting, already blowing away in the fierce wind that had picked up. In the lobby of the building, the security guard merely glanced at us before nodding and waving us toward the elevators.
“I guess Grieves told him to expect us,” I said lamely, as the doors slid closed. Lexi didn’t reply, and I stared at the two columns of numbered buttons, the light bouncing back and forth between them as the elevator rose.
On the eighteenth floor, we ran down the hall, our footsteps falling much softer on the gray carpet than they had on the ground under the power lines. Mr. Grieves opened the door before we had a chance to knock, and Lexi nearly fell into his arms.
“You’re loud,” he said, closing the door behind us.
Farah was sitting Indian style on the couch, her boots lying on the floor under the coffee table, computer in her lap. She just sighed when she saw us.
“We should have gone to the police already,” Lexi said.
“I should have known better,” Grieves shook his head. “I can’t believe I let myself get involved in this. Do you understand what happens if you go to the cops now? Do you have any idea what will happen to me if the cops come here with a search warrant?” He waved one hand over the long table of computer equipment. “Fucking vigilantes. I should have taken you to the cops myself the first night you came here instead of getting mixed up in this bullshit.”
“Rahim,” Farah said. “Calm down. We haven’t even found anything we can use on his phone, so there’s no point in telling the cops that we hacked it. We can report him without involving you.”
“Seriously?” asked Lexi.
Farah shrugged. “Maybe Hugh’s smarter than he looks? Smart enough not to brag about attacking girls via text, anyway.”
“What about that list of dates?” I asked.
Farah shrugged. “It’s just a list of dates. Without names or, like, locations or something, it’s meaningless.”
“But it has to be a list of conquests,” I said. I felt my cheeks go hot, and I knew I’d cry if I kept talking. “If Lexi and I both saw those dates right away, what else can it be?”
“Conquests? You mean crimes.” Lexi stared at the floor. “This is my fault. I know that.” She put up one hand to quiet Farah’s protests while Mr. Grieves looked on, leaning against his worktable and folding his arms. “I’m going to make it right. We’ll go to the cops, all of us. Not you,” she added quickly to Mr. Grieves. “Farah’s right. We’ll leave you out of it, Rahim.” Both Mr. Grieves and Farah’s cheeks colored slightly. “But the three of us,” she looked from Farah to me, “will tell them about Hugh. And I’ll come clean about Revelry. Just me. You two will deny knowing anything about it.” I stared at her, trying to process what she was saying. Trying to picture our lives after all of this came out.
“You could go to jail,” pointed out Farah.
“I’m seventeen,” said Lexi grimly. “They might be lenient because I’m a minor. Harvard will be out of the question, that’s for sure. But I’ll do it. Because it proves Farnsworth ignored me. He forced me to take matters into my own hands.”
“That’s a compelling version of events,” said Rahim. “But I’m not sure it proves anything, not legally.”
“He’ll get fired, though,” said Farah. “Even if Lexi goes to jail and Hugh gets off. No way will the board, the parents, or his precious alumni will be able to back Farnsworth if this makes the papers. They’ll need to hang the authority, for the sake of the school’s image.”
I felt my phone buzzing in my bag and pulled it out. I had three missed calls from my parents, who’d been home from do-gooding at the Pine Street Inn for hours.
“Let’s go. Right now.” Lexi stood up.
“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” I blurted out. I knew she was right—going to the police was the only option we had left. But I didn’t want to remember all of this on Thanksgiving every year. I wanted one more safe family dinner. One more day when no one knew what Hugh had done to all of us. One more night when Ted still loved me. Because I knew this would be the end of us. He wouldn’t take my side or Hugh’s. He’d be stranded in the demilitarized zone between us, between all our nosy friends, the underclassmen running around Thistleton Hall, reporters, and probably the police themselves. I was dragging him into something about which he had no inkling.
Lexi sighed a very small, disappointed sigh. “That’s true. I suppose there’s no point in ruining a perfectly good holiday. And we’ve waited this long. I guess we can go on Friday. As long as no one’s going to chicken out.” She shot me a look from under her lashes.
“Actually,” Rahim said. “Maybe you should wait until Monday.”
“Why?” asked Farah.
“You said your headmaster tried to blow this off when you went to him before?”
>
“Yeah,” said Lexi.
“If you go to the cops over the holiday weekend, they’re going to contact this headmaster. You’re giving him two days to work with the cops to tell whatever story suits him. If you go to the cops on Monday morning, instead of school, then the cops are going to show up on your palatial campus. Plenty of people will see them go into the headmaster’s office, or take this Hugh motherfucker away. Even if he gets away with what he’s done to you, that image of him being led off in cuffs will be burned into everybody’s brain. He’ll never be innocent, not really.”
“Wow,” Lexi looked at him with awe. “That’s brilliant.”
He shrugged and said, “I know what I’m talking about,” in a way that made me think he might have been dragged out of school in handcuffs once.
Chapter 16
We left Rahim’s place under an icy rain, and Lexi dropped me off at my house. A pit of loneliness opened up inside me as I stood in the driveway and watched the Caddie pull out. Max was out of town on a research trip, and Lexi was spending the night and Thanksgiving with Farah and her mom. I, on the other hand, was coming home to a dark house and what was sure to be a tense meal with my parents the next day. They were already asleep and surely furious that I hadn’t come home earlier or bothered to call.
Inside the house, only the kitchen light was on, and there was a terse note on the table informing me that I was expected to get up early the following day and help with the cooking, and that I could expect a serious discussion about my behavior of late. I made myself a sandwich and took it upstairs to Anna’s room. I tried to get something on her little TV, but it was ancient, and there was no cable hook-up or DVD player in her room, so all I could find was snow and static. I sat on the edge of her bed and ate my sandwich slowly, listening to my father snore down the hall, thinking about how my dad would feel when it all came out. He wouldn’t blame me for what happened like the fathers in made-for-TV movies, but I couldn’t imagine looking him in the eye once he knew. And I drank all that vodka, the night it happened. No one but me had been pouring those shots and slinging that bottle around. I tried to remind myself of the list of dates, of how many there were and how it wasn’t the fault of any of those girls that they ended up there, but it didn’t help. I set the plate on the floor and pulled the covers over me. I wished more than ever that Anna had come home and that I could tell her the whole story from my warm cave under the covers.
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