The Little Woods

by McCormick Templeman

  “Fredericka Bingham, but everyone calls me Freddy,” she said, shaking my hand. “And I just want you to know that under ordinary circumstances, I don’t hang around in other girls’ rooms looking through their underwear.”

  “Don’t believe a word,” Blondie said, and then spat into my cup. “That’s practically all she does.”

  “Wait, Bingham?” I said, recalling a name from a welcome letter I’d received. “Aren’t you the student body president?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to be a politician, so obviously I’m going to have to have you both killed. You can understand how this might look.”

  “Of course,” I said very seriously, and Freddy smiled for real with big joyously gapped front teeth.

  “Don’t worry, Noel will be first to go. This is Noel, by the way.”

  “Nole?”

  “Yeah. Noel. Written like the Christmas song, but pronounced like the grassy Kennedy-assassination one,” she said, nodding and tugging on her sleeve. She had dressed herself in a sort of punk rock menagerie, fishnet peeking out here, waffled long underwear tucked under there, and she had ringed her eyes in thick black liner. I was impressed.

  “Her parents named her after Noël Coward, isn’t that bourgeois?”

  I nodded, completely lost.

  “He was a playwright,” Noel said, rolling her eyes. “My parents are total assholes. They named my sister Albee, but she changed it to Helen when we were, like, five.”

  “Wait, your sister … is she …?”

  “Your roommate. But don’t worry, we’re nothing alike,” Noel said, smiling, then spat again.

  “My—my roommate?” I stammered. “I thought she wasn’t back yet.”

  “She’s not.” Freddy laughed. “Not until tomorrow.”

  “She’s doing Outward Bound, and they got stuck somewhere, can you believe it?”

  “And so we came to use Helen’s room so Noel could dip. It’s disgusting but she does it to wean herself off the cigarettes she smokes over breaks. Anyway, we saw all your stuff,” Freddy said, shrugging. “I know. I know. Normal people would have left, but we started snooping. I hope you’re not mad. We heard about you, and we were curious.”

  I took a seat on my absent roommate’s bed.

  “They never let people transfer midyear,” Noel said, her eyes wide. “My God, your test scores must be off the charts.”

  I shrugged. “They said they had a slot to fill.”

  “They always have a slot to fill.” Noel shook her head and spat into my cup again. “Someone always chunks it and gets sent home for some reason or another. You’re more likely to be eaten by wolves than make it all the way through St. Bede’s.”

  “We’re lacking hard data on that, but it’s basically true,” Freddy said, taking my green cup away from Noel, who leaned back and set her snowy head against my pillow. They looked at me, and I knew I was supposed to speak, but I had no idea what to say.

  “So then you’re my welcoming committee because I got high test scores?” I asked.

  “How high are they?” Noel asked, her voice breathy, nearly reverent.

  “High,” I said. “I’ve got kind of an eidetic memory, you know, like photographic. It’s not a classic one, but if I look at a list of information, I can usually recall it for a while. It fades eventually, but it’s useful for tests.”

  “You don’t retain any of it over the long haul?”

  “Some of it, yeah. I remember definitions. My cousin and I went through a phase where we’d get really high and memorize the dictionary—well, Danny mostly got high, and I mostly memorized, but lots of that stuck. Whatever, standardized test scores are meaningless.”

  Freddy gasped.

  “Helen’s going to love you,” Noel snorted.

  I adjusted a sock that was creeping uncomfortably down my ankle.

  Their eyes lingered on me, and I felt gawky and strange.

  “You know about the whole no-cell-phones-no-Internet policy, right?” Noel chirped.

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “I hate cell phones anyway.”

  Freddy nodded and smiled like I’d just passed a test. “We do too. And anyway, service is spotty at best here, so it’s actually not such a big deal.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Did you just say no Internet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I knew about the cell phones, but no Internet? What the hell?”

  Freddy pursed her lips. “It’s not banned like cell phones are, but it’s strictly limited. Basically there’s one computer with Internet access in the library. You can use it if you need to, but the signal’s always going in and out, so it’s actually a waste of time.”

  “So there isn’t, like, a computer lab or anything?”

  “Oh, there is.” Freddy nodded. “State of the art, but it’s only for writing papers and making spreadsheets and stuff. There’s no Internet in there whatsoever.”

  “God,” I said. “Are they trying to make us feel isolated or what?”

  “It’s actually a good policy,” Freddy said, thrusting out her jaw. “It means we do research the old-fashioned way. St. Bede’s has a phenomenal library. And we don’t have to worry about the Internet plagiarism problem some of the other top boarding schools have had. So really it’s good.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds great. So are you guys juniors too?”

  “Mmm, no. Helen and I are,” Noel said, taking my cup back and massaging the handle. “But Miss Bingham here’s a senior, and Pigeon’s a sophomore.”

  “Pigeon?”

  “Yeah, you’ll meet her later. She’s, well …” Noel rolled her eyes at Freddy. “She’s just Pigeon. You can’t really describe her.”

  “Don’t any of you have normal names?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Noel laughed.

  “I don’t know,” I said, laughing too now. “No one here’s named, like, Heather, or Kristen, or anything.”

  “Sure they are. Take Kristen Mitchell or Heather Whatserface. But they don’t really do anything, so no one really talks about them.”

  “Do you guys live in McKinley too?”

  “No. We live in a nice dorm. No offense,” Noel said, and stretched out farther on my bed.

  “This is primarily a sophomore dorm. We have singles in Prexy, which is where most of the juniors and seniors live, except for the ones who want doubles, or ones like Helen who are too lazy to fill out their room request forms. They live here.”

  “It’s good for you,” Noel said. “It’s nice to have a roommate when you’re new so you don’t get lonely. That’s why it’s required for freshmen and sophomores.”

  “So the other girl left, then?” I asked. “The girl who used to live here? Did she get kicked out or something?”

  Freddy and Noel exchanged looks, and something heavy settled onto the room.

  “Iris,” Freddy said. Noel looked at her feet. “She ran away.”

  “In the fall,” Noel said, her voice cracking. I noticed that she’d gone pale. “She was …”

  “Enough about Iris,” Freddy said, getting up and smoothing her skirt. “She was a pain when she was here, and she’s a killjoy now that she’s gone. It’s getting late, and Noel and I have to go.”

  Noel looked up at Freddy with questioning eyes and then nodded. “If you want, come sit with us at lunch tomorrow. Do you have first or second?”

  “What?”

  “Lunch.” Noel laughed, the color slowly bleeding back into her cheeks.

  “I don’t know. How do you know?”

  Freddy smiled sideways at Noel, who spat one final time into my cup, then set it on her sister’s desk.

  “If you see us, just come sit with us, ’kay?”

  They left me in my room, dusky light trickling in through the curtain as it wavered in their wake. I changed into my moose pajamas and crawled under my big plaid comforter.

  I wondered what Clare would think about my coming to St. Bede’s. I wondered if she knew I was here. I wanted to tell m
yself that I could feel her presence—that I was somehow closer to her—but I’d never believed in ghosts.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHEN THE ALARM CLOCK WENT off at seven-forty-five, my eyes felt like sandpaper and my tongue tasted sweetrotten, like decayed fruit. I brushed my teeth, pulled on a black T-shirt and my shorts even though I knew it was too cold for them. Somehow I’d already managed to lose my brush, so I ran my fingers through my hair and hurried off to breakfast. I kept my eyes down, and alone at a table in the corner, I ate my bowl of cereal in record time.

  I had English first period. I didn’t like English. My English teachers always hated me, partially because I could be kind of obnoxious with my vocabulary, but mostly because I tended not to do the reading. They were also usually grizzly old men, so I was thrown off when I walked into junior English to find Ms. Harlow. In the morning light, she looked about fifteen with her white peasant top and her low-slung bell-bottoms. She turned from erasing the blackboard and sat on the edge of her desk. She looked peaceful, ruminating, and I was pretty sure she had a belly ring. She was going to hate me even more than those grizzly old men did.

  I was just settling into my seat when a distraction of monumental proportions walked in. He was pale and slight, with sable eyes and matching hair, and I thought I could just make out the slant of his hips above his trousers. If I couldn’t, it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was one of those boys who make you dizzy when you look at them, and when they smile, it feels like you’ve just stepped into a too-hot bath. It’s nearly unbearable, but then it feels good.

  I was so taken with him that it was a moment before I noticed the girl at his side. She was black with a cherubic face and a statuesque body. She seemed to be all curves, and her hair poofed away from her head in a magnificent mass of black curls held back by an emerald-green band. Her eyes curved up at the corners like a cat’s, and her brows arched finely above them. The boy stroked her hand as he held it, and he stared at her like she was the answer to an impossible riddle. So that was kind of a buzzkill.

  “Jack. Sophie.” Ms. Harlow smiled, jumped down from her desk, and sauntered over to greet them each with a languid sort of hug. “It’s so good to see you guys. How was your break?”

  I tried to eavesdrop, but other students were filtering in now, and their conversation dissolved into murmurs.

  Ms. Harlow started class with a freewriting exercise, which I’d always considered something of a cop-out; then she asked if any of us wanted to read ours aloud. Unfortunately some of us did. A boy with bleached-blond hair and a puka-shell necklace read something about surfing. A girl with thick, pouting lips read a poem about suicide. I looked over at Jack and Sophie. They seemed to be playing hangman. Maybe they could be my friends.

  When the readers had finished, Ms. Harlow clapped leisurely.

  “Great stuff, guys. Great stuff. So I’ve got a question for you all. What makes some writing good and some writing bad? How do we take something that is essentially subjective and make it objective? How do you know if something is literature?”

  Oh God. Her eyes roamed the room and I could feel them settle on me. Oh please, God, no. I stared down at my college-ruled sheet of doodles and pretended to concentrate. What was literature? Hmm. I am formulating my opinions, and I’m not quite ready to speak, so I hope no one calls on me yet.

  “Miss Wood?”

  I looked up.

  Pushing a blond ringlet behind her ear, she gave the impression she was at a Cat Power concert rather than standing in front of a classroom full of students. “Welcome, Cally. So tell us, what does literature mean to you?”

  “Honestly …” I could barely hear myself speak over my heartbeat and I had no idea what I was about to say. “Honestly, like, this question is so important to me that I almost don’t even know what to say about it. I mean, what is literature? How can we know, you know, because it’s, like, really super subjective. I mean, who am I to say I hate Shakespeare or whatever? I mean, who am I? And that is, like, the real thing, isn’t it? Literature makes us ask ourselves who we are and what we want to know or whatever. It’s all about identity.”

  Oh my God. Had I really just said that? The room was completely silent until Jack fairly burst. “Did you just say you hate Shakespeare?” He laughed. Everyone else looked horrified.

  Ms. Harlow wrinkled her brow, clearly disconcerted, and then searched the room for someone who wasn’t ridiculous. Her eyes settled on Sophie.

  “Miss Taye?”

  “Sure, um,” she said, her voice strong and clear. “I guess I agree with Cally. Identity is fluid. There’s a continuum, and however far away from a white patriarchal view you situate yourself on that continuum is going to influence your view of literature. Makes sense to me.”

  My God, had she just taken what I’d said and made it sound cogent? I smiled at her, and she winked at me. When class ended, and Ms. Harlow called me up to her desk, I was sure I was going to be kicked out for being an idiot, but instead she handed me a copy of The Odyssey.

  “We read it in the fall, and I don’t want you to miss out. It’s a yearlong syllabus, so you’re responsible for everything.” She smiled, pleased with herself. “I like to teach the books out of chronological order because I feel The Odyssey is easier for a high school student to penetrate.”

  “Wait, I have to read The Odyssey and The Iliad?”

  “I’m not asking anything of you I haven’t asked of your classmates. St. Bede’s is rigorous, Cally.” She gave me a treacly smile. “It’s best not to get too far behind.”

  I nodded and left.

  Outside, a gentle rain was falling, and the grounds looked ridiculously lush. Jack and Sophie walked ahead of me, linked arm in arm. With a shock, I realized I was following them, and I had no idea where I was supposed to be going. I reached into my bag and pulled out my schedule and map. It looked like maybe I was going in the right direction. Jack and Sophie stopped ahead where the path split. They embraced quietly and just stood there hugging. I walked past them and tried not to make myself noticed. Then I heard a scuffle of feet and a female voice.

  “Hey, new girl,” I heard someone call, and when I turned, I saw Sophie coming toward me. “Wait up.”

  She took my arm in hers like we were old friends.

  “I’m Sophie. Are you going to Spanish?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “There’s nothing else down this way. I’m in that class too. We can sit together.”

  We walked the rest of the way, arm in arm. She smelled like lilies.

  “It must be scary,” she said, “starting midyear.”

  “At least I’m handling it super well and not, like, making a fool out of myself or anything.”

  She smiled at me. “That was some crazy stuff you said back there.”

  “Thanks for saving me. I’m not great at talking in class.”

  “If you don’t like talking in class, Spanish is going to be a doozy for you. I’ll try to run interference.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying not to blush. I wasn’t used to girls going out of their way to be friends with me, but then, Sophie clearly wasn’t your average girl.

  “No problema,” she said, laughing.

  The rest of the morning was far from pleasant. It turned out that the Spanish teacher actually expected us to learn Spanish, and it seemed that most of the kids in the class already knew it. I’d spent the past few years quietly napping while my Spanish teachers played telenovelas on rolling TVs. It was clear I had a lot of catching up to do. I’d always relied on being competent without having to study, but if the rest of my classes were like Spanish, it was going to be a challenge to maintain my extraordinary laziness while at St. Bede’s.

  When class was over, I felt like I might cry. Sophie put her arm around me and smiled.

  “Welcome to St. Bede’s,” she said. “What do you have now?”

  “Um. Chemistry.”

  “Here, I’ll walk you. Jack has chem now too. You guys
should be partners.”

  “Is Jack your … your boyfriend or whatever?” I asked, trying not to blush.

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He doesn’t date.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure I understood. “Do you mean he doesn’t date girls? Like he’s gay?”

  “Not really. He’s sexually ambivalent. You know, like Morrissey.” Then she stopped and smiled, warm, friendly. She patted me on the back. “Have fun in chem. Just don’t let Jack handle anything explosive, and you’ll be fine.”

  The all-American surfer guy from the dining hall the night before turned out to be my chem teacher. His name was Mr. Reilly, and I could tell right away that he was going to be an enormous douche bag. When I walked in, he was flirting with a skittish redhead who was clearly quarterbacking the St. Bede’s anorexia squad. He leaned into her and smiled, and she trembled, looking terrified and excited all at once, and then he flipped his head back and laughed.

  “Shelly, we’re gonna get you out there one morning.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Reilly. I get really seasick.” She tittered.

  When he saw me, he stepped away from the little redhead, a complacent smile playing on his too-full lips.

  “Hey,” he said, strutting toward me. “I’m Mr. Reilly. You must be the much anticipated Calista Wood.”

  “It’s Cally.”

  “Ah. Kali, goddess of destruction.”

  “No, just Cally. No destructive tendencies.”

  “I feel you.” He nodded. “Take a seat.”

  Jack waved and motioned to the empty spot next to him.

  “Jack Deeker,” he said, extending his hand. “Glad to finally have some help here. My last lab partner went AWOL in October, and I suck ass at chemistry. You any good?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Wow,” he said, laughing. “Modest too.”

  Up close, he was ridiculously toothsome, and he smelled so good—like fresh cut grass mixed with the mating musk of some exotic ungulate—it made my face ache.