For starters:
She’s beautiful. But more than that, she’s attractive—in that perfect, not-trying-but-always-saying/wearing/doing-the-right-thing way.
She rides better than anyone else at school. Her horse Rainmaker was champion at Junior Hunter Finals last year. When he trots, he seems to float above the ground.
Every boy at Hardwick knows who she is and seems to have her on some kind of radar. I haven’t seen a boy walk by her without saying hi at least, and usually trying to come up with an excuse to stick around.
Her father, Edward Gibson, owns the famous department store in New York. He went to Hardwick too, and has a building named after him.
The girl seems to have her own gravitational pull.
But the truth is I don’t want to be friends with Honor. I’m alone in that sentiment, clearly. What bugs me is not that the feeling is mutual (which it is). It’s more how she manages to communicate with everything she does that I will never—could never—be a person like her. Sorry, Wren. You’re not. You can’t be. You should give up now and go back to wherever you came from.
After a whole week of being invisible at dinner—in fact, of being invisible for most of every day—I realize another reason I will never quite fit in. Everyone else has been here for a month, yes, but at least half of the class has also been here a full year for ninth grade. There’s a whole language between them I don’t speak. I’m like a foreign exchange student. Hardwick Hall will never feel like home.
Alone on my laptop at night, I let my mind wander. I still can’t quite work out what strings my mom must have pulled to get me in here so last minute. Or how she would even have strings to pull. She never really talked about high school. It seemed like she was always trying to get away from the East and away from her past—to make a life as different as possible from the one she grew up with.
I remind myself that I’ll be able to ask her those questions soon enough. Hannah won’t be gone forever. It’s a six-month gig. I just have to make it through this year. That helps a little. I promise myself that I won’t call her every day. I check the website for Jonesy’s store, Pacific Books, looking through boring snapshots of a book signing from last week, hoping to catch sight of Spite and Malice. I do see Malice in one, tail floating up above him and kinking back under as he stares at a patron with his glowing yellow eyes. Spite is in another, sleeping in a window. It looks like they’ve settled in, at least.
Mostly I find myself in a constant state of both wanting to call my mother and not wanting to talk to her. If I had a cell phone like a ton of the kids here do, despite the rules, I think I would be texting her all the time, those pings satisfying this impulse to reach out, find her there, but not have to come up with anything to say.
About my secret: It’s really my mother’s secret, but since it’s about me, that makes it mine too. She has always refused to tell me who my father is.
Hannah’s never been married. She has many friends who are men, and I’ve certainly gotten the impression from a few that they would have been happy to stick around. There have been one or two “boyfriends,” I guess you’d call them, though that sounds weird when you’re talking about your own mother, and she never acted in the slightest bit like I feel when I like a guy. She was just okay about it. They could leave. Or stay. Nothing was going to rock her world. None of the boyfriends is my father. None of the friends is my father.
I have tried to figure out the timing, the similarities—were they in the same place that summer? Isn’t my hair kind of like this one? Do my hands look like that one’s? And of course, I’ve asked. Nothing will make her tell me. She says it’s not important. That I’m my own person. I should feel free to invent myself instead of follow or reject someone else’s mold. Inevitably the conversation goes something like:
Me: “What about your mold?”
Hannah: “That you are stuck with. Feel free to follow or reject.”
Me: “But what if I want more options to follow or reject?”
Hannah: “This person is not able to provide you with any options.”
Me: “Is it someone I know?”
Hannah: “No, it’s someone from a million years ago.”
Me: “Why didn’t you stay together?”
Here she always gives me the pained look. “We’re from different worlds. Well, not exactly. But we live in completely different worlds. It was impossible, Wren. It is impossible. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“Impossible because he’s dead?”
No answer.
“Because he’s married?”
No answer.
“Because he’s your long-lost twin brother?”
“Wren!”
I get nowhere. She won’t budge. If I push her, I get a cliché. “When you’re older. When you’re ready. When it feels like the right time. At some point. Not now. It doesn’t matter. Wren, just trust me.” All shorthand for “no.”
Usually what happens—or at least what happened before I ended up at Hardwick—is I give up and go back to my room to write a song. (Not about that. How lame do you think I am?) About a story I read that day. Or the way the beach looked in an earthquake. Or some guy in my history class. A lot of times I listen to other people’s songs and take them apart and try to figure them out. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle, if you like that sort of thing.
The point is, there is always this vacuum between me and Hannah. She’ll never tell. And I will always wonder. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering already about this other half of who I am. But I’ve kind of given up talking about it to her, or to anyone else. Not that there’s anyone here I could to talk to.
That first week, I look for Hannah everywhere, trying to compare my Hardwick to her Hardwick. Did she have friends right away? Were the classes hard for her? Did she wonder what she was doing here? Or did she accept that it was the place she was supposed to be?
In the chapel, I scroll down the list of senior prefects. In the gym, I scan photos of the girls’ sports teams from the ’90s, though I have no idea what sports Hannah played. I walk along the flagstone paths, picturing her steps under my steps, imagining I can see what she saw.
I get used to some things: the breathy half-snores of India in the bunk above me; the odd salad I take to concocting for lunch, exactly the same ingredients in exactly the same proportions every day; studying, really studying, for hours every single night, whether I have a test or not the next day. The classes are hard, much harder than I’m used to at home. On the plus side, I don’t really have anything else to do.
But there’s already so much I know I won’t get used to: how low and metallic the sky can look on an overcast day; how the sun keeps setting earlier and earlier each day, earlier enough to notice; how there really are girls who have their own gravitational pull.
Chapter Three
Horsey Girl
Have I mentioned Nick?
The day I meet him, I’m on my way to the stables for my second riding lesson, and I’m nervous. The first lesson was amazing. Mr. Kelley had me on a quiet, thick-necked chestnut named Chester, with a Roman nose and a white blaze down his face. The saddle felt different from the armchair-like Western saddles I had sat in before. This one was thinner, flatter. Not exactly uncomfortable, but more like you were wrapping yourself around it than it was wrapping itself around you.
Chester’s walk is slow and rolling. His hoofs hit the ground with a dry thud, as though they are heavy, and with each step it is a relief to put them down. We walked around and around in the still-warm September sun. By the end of that first hour, I could already stop, start and turn to make small circles in either direction. My hair was matted with sweat under my borrowed helmet, my nostrils coated with dust, and when I slid to the ground and drew the reins over Chester’s head, my thighs ached so much I couldn’t imagine ever standing up straight again. I ab
solutely loved it.
The next time—today—we were going to trot. Before I took that first lesson, I hadn’t even wanted to ride, so I didn’t care how it went. Now all I can think about is how long it will take me to get as good as Honor and Eloise, if that is even possible. I am impatient, the way I felt when I was first learning to play the guitar. I want to canter, to jump, to be invited to ride in one of the interschool horse shows that Hardwick either hosts or visits.
At the same time, I am terrified to canter or jump. Hell, I am terrified to trot. My legs still feel like jelly from the first lesson two days ago. How will I hang on at all?
This is what I am thinking as I pass the boathouse on my way to the ring. Crew practice is ending. A scull with four boys, all in gray sweatshirts with hardwick hall printed in green across the front, pulls up along the dock. One of the boys jumps onto the dock in a practiced way.
He is slim, with straight, light-brown hair falling in his face. His eyes have the kind of crinkles in the corners that connect to his smile. The other boys hop out, and together they flip the boat out of the water and upside down. It’s a light, thin, fast boat; you can carry it easily, especially if you have muscles hardened from hours of rowing on and off the water as well as a thousand other painful exercises required for the sport.
I take in his eye crinkles sort of absentmindedly. I guess maybe I am even staring. Normally I would pay more attention to looking like I wasn’t looking, but I am more focused on Chester and Mr. Kelley and whether I will be able to trot well enough without falling off to be allowed to canter and jump someday.
The boy catches my gaze and walks right over. “Hey,” he says, “you looking for the women’s eight? Coach is on the other side right now.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I gather from context that it has to do with rowing. The teams compete in boats of four or eight, I later learn. At schools that are really serious, they often divide the teams into lightweight and heavyweight. Hardwick is a very serious rowing school, but not a very big school, so our team is divided only into boys’ and girls’ teams.
“I’m not rowing,” I answer, nodding toward the stables.
“Got it. Another horsey girl. Too bad.” He winks. Some guys can really pull that off, and with others it’s completely cheesy. He can pull it off.
“Too bad?” I say.
“Heartbreakers.”
It’s a line, I know, but like the wink and the crinkly eyes, you know it’s a line, and you don’t care.
“Right,” I say doubtfully. “I just started, so I don’t think I qualify.”
He looks me up and down and smiles to himself. “Give it some time. It’s kind of inevitable. It’s okay. It’s not a bad thing. I’m Nick, by the way.”
“Wren.”
“Okay, Birdie. See you around.”
Chester is ready for me when I reach the barn.
Mr. Kelley reminds me how to hold the reins (not the Western way I’m used to) and sends me out to the track along the rail. “Wren, keep your inside leg on him, steady contact on your outside rein. Don’t let him duck in toward the center of the ring. And look up. Look where you want to go.”
I find even just walking takes such intense concentration that I stop thinking about Nick. So that’s another plus to riding. When Mr. Kelley tells me we’re ready to trot, I nudge my heels against Chester’s sides. After a few tries, he breaks into a jagged, bumpy gait. It feels a little like someone grabbing me by the ankles and shaking me. The more I brace myself and try to sit still, the stronger the earthquake effect. I try to relax like Mr. Kelley says and let my weight sink down through my heels. Now I feel more like a swaying, sloppy belly dancer, but at least my bones have stopped rattling.
Mr. Kelley is patient. He explains how to post, rising with every other beat of the trot. It’s much harder to get the rhythm right than it looks watching other people do it, but by the end of the hour, I catch it a few times. It feels like rattle, rattle, rattle, soft bump, soft bump, rattle, rattle. I end up sweaty, dusty, exhausted. My thigh muscles are shaking from holding on so tight. But mostly I just feel like I could sing right here in the middle of the riding ring and not care who hears me. Not even Nick.
After my lesson, I stay to help feed and water the horses, so I’m late for dinner. There’s no time to change. It’s not a formal night, so that’s okay. Sort of. When I sit down at the table with my roommates, the expensive shampoo smell rising off their wet, sleek hair seems to amplify my own horsey musk, and I wish I’d washed my face properly instead of just splashing hose water on it at the barn.
Lauren Benaceraf, one of the day students, is sitting at the table. She has musical theater practice some nights and stays for dinner. She’s friendly with Eloise, but Honor ignores her, just like she ignores me. Still, Lauren puts a lot of effort into trying to make Honor like her. Or convincing herself that Honor likes her.
“If you guys want,” Lauren says, “my mom says I can have some friends stay over Saturday night. We could do pedicures and watch a movie or something.”
Honor smiles into her plate.
Eloise, off Honor’s look, bows out. “Honor and I are going to the city. But thanks. That would be cool some other time.”
“Bummer. I don’t have a weekend pass left,” says India.
I haven’t been at school long enough to have one, either. You get one a month, and the first six weeks as a new student don’t count. Besides, I’m not sure I’m included in the invitation anyway.
“I’ve never been to New York,” I say, mostly to fill the silence. “Well, except for about five minutes on my way here. But that doesn’t count. What are you guys going to do?”
I’m asking both Honor and Eloise, but Honor is suddenly too interested in who’s entering the dining room to register the question. Eloise answers for her, like she’s her translator or assistant or something. “Honor’s dad is getting some big city award, and there’s a party for him. We’re taking the train down with Ned. You should really go sometime. It’s the best.”
Ned is Honor’s little brother, a First Year. The term is self-explanatory: they are the kids just starting Hardwick Hall, what in a normal school would be called ninth grade. The next year up is called Lower Year—my class—then Upper Year, then Last Year, the kids who are graduating. I’ve only met Ned once. He’s a blonder, friendlier, spacier version of Honor. They look a lot alike.
India joins in. “I can’t believe you’ve never been to the city. That’s, like, seriously crazy. You totally have to go.”
I shrug, staring at my plate. “My mom’s kind of stuck with the West Coast since I was born. She’s come back a few times for work. But I could never come with her. It was for investigative reporting jobs, not really a good time to go sightseeing.”
One time was when she was covering a murder trial in San Diego that had a connection to a drug ring in New York. When she came back, she seemed really shaken up. I kept catching her staring at me in this really worried way. I asked if something happened while she was there, but she said no, it was just the details of this trial and worrying about me, out in the world, when I got old enough to be on my own.
“I think Greenland must be super amazing,” India says. “Your mom is so lucky. It’s so right on that she gets to go.” India likes to makes a very big point of her interest in travel and environmental causes. She did some kind of junior Peace Corps thing last summer, so she asks me a lot about what my mom is up to. I’ve tried to explain it the best I can, though I don’t completely understand it myself.
Mainly it has to do with this huge ice sheet. Scientists are looking at layers built up in the ice to try to figure out how the climate is changing and how fast the ice sheet is melting. The sheet is so big that if it melts too much, the sea level could rise almost twenty-five feet, and every coastal city in the world would end up underwater.
Wha
t’s pretty clear from what Hannah says is that it’s very cold—between minus twenty and minus fifty-five—and dangerous. The Explorer XO-565 lab is underground, under the ice, and there’s a giant drill that digs down and removes layers of ice two hundred thousand years old.
“I don’t know about lucky,” I say. “She’s stuck with ten scientists in a mobile lab way out on the ice sheet. It’s risky. The ice can break, so they have to drill slowly, or else they could get buried.”
“I can’t imagine my mom ever doing anything like that,” says Eloise. “First of all, something dangerous like that. She hates to drive in even an inch of snow. And she would never leave me and go somewhere that far away.” She looks up abruptly. “I don’t mean leave you. I just mean, my mom never really wanted to do anything besides have kids and stay home.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. The truth is, so far there have been many nights with me lying in my bed or up late studying when that was exactly what it felt like. A better offer came up, and poof, just like that, Hannah couldn’t wait to go. No discussion of what I wanted.
When the feeling comes up—usually in the form of a tightness in my stomach, a closing of my throat, a kind of tingling where my neck joins my head—I try to shake it off. I remind myself of the facts: Hannah has worked hard to become a journalist. She’s been frustrated for a long time, feeling like she’s not making any advances. She was brave to leave her family and start her own life with her own rules. She’s always taken care of me.
I know this. I have always admired this. I’ve always thought that being independent is the most important thing. Living your own life above all else. In Ventura, I never thought about the other choices she might have made or what she left behind. And now here I am, flung into her past, walking in her footsteps. Footsteps she couldn’t wait to erase, as far as I can tell. Did she really think Hardwick would be the best thing for me? Or just the most convenient thing for her?
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