“This is very, very unfortunate,” Dr. Himelstein was telling me.
I was barely hearing a word she was saying. I was thinking about Danko, and the stillness of the night in Croatia, and standing along the side of an empty road in the darkness holding my arms over my chest not unlike Jessica was doing at that very moment. I was thinking about freedom and about the possibility of being able to sleep at night in the near future without having to fear that I might wake up with someone’s moist breath on my neck. Dr. Himelstein was talking about repercussions and responsibilities, but my thoughts were consumed by escape.
“You’re coming with me, miss,” Principal Silvestri told me sternly after she was done profusely thanking the firemen for responding so quickly to our emergency. Not everyone was angry about the incident; I heard Ms. Kumar mutter under her breath to Mrs. Klienman that she wished someone would pull a fire alarm every day if the city was willing to send over such stone cold hunks. The shower had been turned off and someone had brought a towel up from the locker room to wrap around Jessica’s shoulders. Monica stood next to her and both girls were listening intently to one of the handsome firemen providing them with either directions or words of comfort, I couldn’t tell. Jessica’s eyes were red and it looked like she had been crying, after all.
“Get your books and your jacket. I would like to believe this was an honest mistake, but given your academic record, Betsey, I think it’s time we gave your parents a call.”
My eyes met Amanda’s as I was being pushed out of the room and she looked away, shaking her head. I didn’t mind. We were never really friends, anyway.
The blisters on my fingers gained me more credibility with Mom than with the school. Mom was not exactly happy to be called away from her important photo shoot that day to meet with Principal Silvestri, but when a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year high school calls you and tells you to come and pick up your kid, you pretty much have no choice but to do just that. In the forty-five minutes it took Mom to get across town in a cab, Principal Silvestri had come to the decision that she would leave it to the school board to decide on my expulsion.
“But that’s not even fair,” my mother argued, immediately taking my side. “It was an obvious mistake. My daughter was injured and no one at this school has even addressed her injuries.”
I sat, slumped over, in a chair opposite Principal Silvestri’s desk. There was an enormous painting hung behind her desk that was probably grotesquely expensive and high-profile, but it just looked like a bunch of color blobs to me. I thought about Kristijan’s desire to study art and wondered if he, too, intended to put color blobs everywhere. It was a pleasant distraction to imagine him joining us there, signing everything in Principal’s Silvestri’s stuffy office with his gold Sharpie. I had decided after my mother was called to simply remain quiet. The chips were falling exactly where I wanted them; I didn’t trust my own big mouth not to mess things up.
However, my mother was a tough talker, and let’s not forget, financially loaded. When Principal Silvestri informed her that it was her intention to allow the school board to vote that Friday on my future with the school, my mother said, “Well, haven’t you even asked Betsey for her side of the story?”
Both of their heads turned in my direction, and I looked up from the floor with my head in my hands, eager to just wrap this up and get back to our apartment. I could hear my mobile phone, tucked inside my backpack at my feet, buzzing up a storm with text messages. My handful of friends at Pershing, including Christie, probably didn’t realize I couldn’t exactly text back while I was sitting in Silvestri’s office undergoing the third degree.
Under pressure to say something, I racked my brains for the perfect response that would seal the deal. Something that would suggest that I hadn’t intentionally splashed Jessica with a highly caustic liquid, but something that also suggested overwhelmingly that my carelessness would require the ongoing concern of the school.
“She just kept telling me I was doing everything wrong,” I said weakly.
Principal Silvestri raised her eyebrows at my mother as if to say, See?
Mom shook her head at me. “Betsey.” She sounded so disappointed. I wondered for a split second if maybe it might have been easier all around if I had just told her what had happened with Danko. At least then her dismay wouldn’t have been entirely my fault.
In the cab ride on the way to our apartment, where Mom intended to dump me before going back to her office to resume the photo shoot I had interrupted, she could barely address me, she was so angry. “I just don’t know what to do with you anymore, Betsey. This behavior is just entirely unfounded. I used to wonder if you had jealousy issues with Bijoux, but she’s barely around anymore. You have our undivided attention.”
Yeah, I thought to myself. That’s the problem.
“All these years, I’ve been fighting the urge to just admit defeat and send you off to a school where you can be more closely disciplined, and I feel like you’re leaving me no choice,” my mother continued. “Don’t you have any goals for yourself? Any sense of awareness that you’re creating a trajectory for yourself that’s going to be impossible to repair past a certain point? You’re not a little girl, anymore, Betsey. You don’t have many more opportunities to set yourself on a better path. Bijoux wasn’t interested in school but she never created trouble the way you seem to just… generate it. Constantly.”
She was wrong, oh so wrong, I wanted to scream. I was doing exactly that— resetting my path—she just didn’t know yet.
“I think this is it, really. It’s going to break my heart to send you away but I simply don’t know what to do with you anymore,” Mom said, looking up from work emails on her Blackberry to stare me down. “You’re fourteen years old. I just don’t have time to keep disciplining you this way.”
I fought the urge to break into a smile and frowned instead to keep my act of regret sincere. I gazed out the window, focusing on traffic ahead. “You should just talk to Dad,” I told her glumly. “He already knows all about boarding schools.”
She sighed, frustrated. But just like that, I knew she would call him. And I knew he would suggest she call Treadwell. My parents could be so easily played.
CHAPTER 6
After two days of bickering, phone calls to California, more phone calls to Massachusetts, application paperwork and then a very brief phone call on Friday afternoon from Principal Silvestri informing Mom that the board had determined I was no longer welcome at the Pershing School, my fate was sealed. I did a private little dance of victory in my bedroom behind my closed door.
At the end of it, Jessica and her parents seemed most upset about her ruined pair of kitten-heeled Fratelli Rossetti leather oxfords. Mom and Danko assured her parents they would cover the cost of a new pair. I was given an absurd lecture as I scooted brussel sprouts around on my plate with my fork about how they would expect me to pay for the shoes out of the allowance I would earn by performing household tasks, which we all knew was preposterous since we had a full-time cleaning staff. I didn’t even know where we kept the cleaning supplies. Jessica had suffered a very minor chemical burn on her shoulder, but nothing that would even leave a scar.
During the whole week of upheaval, I pretended to read my textbooks at home as if it were really a top priority of mine to keep up with the Pershing lesson plans. No one told me that I wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment building, so during the days I wandered around the city at my leisure, sometimes with my sister. Three afternoons in a row, I ended up at Tompkins Square Park, watching dogs in the dog run chase each other. The park was only a block away from the luxury building where Bijoux was close to buying an apartment and there were plenty of good distractions in that area; frozen yogurt shops, arcades, Asian markets selling cool beauty products and gadgets.
Bijoux finally decided on the duplex apartment in the East Village with Tobin’s input, and movers arrived on Thursday to box up all of her clothing to transport it downtown. Because Mom w
as essentially paying cash for the property and there was no need to wait for a mortgage to be approved, she was able to close almost immediately and just move in. I liked the apartment, with its sky lights and high ceilings, much more when it was empty than I knew I would once it was full of all of Bijoux’s junk. The idea of the open space, undecorated, appealed to me.
“Come with and help me unpack,” Bijoux encouraged me as she was about to follow the movers to Avenue A on their drive downtown.
“Nah,” I declined, even though I knew I would take the train down to that neighborhood later in the day on my own. Tobin was arriving from Los Angeles that afternoon, and I didn’t really want to be a third wheel on their lovefest. Bijoux’s new place had three bedrooms and for a fleeting second I imagined what it might be like for one to just become mine, but Mom and Danko allowing me to move in with my sister was less likely to happen than them sending me to live on the space station. I was already considering myself lucky after just a week of being school-less that truant officers weren’t beating down the door to our apartment on East 73rd Street, demanding that Mom enroll me in the local public high school.
“Don’t get your heart set on Treadwell,” Mom cautioned me on Friday night. “I know your father recommended it, but there’s an admission test for transfer students and the dean has informed me that it’s pretty challenging. Given your grades over the last few years, Danko and I are looking at few alternative schools for you. We’ll be lucky at this point if you’re accepted anywhere.”
I was scheduled to take the admission test—a four hour admission test—the following Wednesday at the Harvard Club where one of Treadwell’s proctors would be present to ensure that I wasn’t cheating. That basically gave me a weekend and two days to relearn everything I had been taught so far in high school, and try to get ahead by a year. It seemed impossible, and I was intimidated.
Desperate to find a way to crack the test, I googled it and became even more concerned. Past test takers (mostly those who had failed it) claimed that the test focused on math ranging from simple algebra through calculus, reasoning word problems, and reading retention. There was a history section, too, but complaints about that were far fewer in number than complaints about the math. Lastly, there was an essay, and I already had a vast collection of evidence that I was a crappy essayist. I felt confident that I would be able to kick some butt on everything except the math part and the essay. So I did what anyone in my position would do: I stalked Kristijan on video chat until he answered very early on Sunday morning and I begged him to tutor me through advanced math.
For three days straight I worked more diligently on trying to understand algebraic equations than I had ever focused on any school work before in my whole life. Kristijan, who thankfully was the product of strict Eastern European schooling, was able to explain concepts to me and then find exercises on websites for me to complete while he slept in Croatia. All other distractions went ignored for the three days while I was studying. During those three days I only showered once. I only ate food that I could quickly microwave and carry back to my desk, and I pretended not to see the nasty pile of cardboard microwave packaging growing into a tower behind my laptop. I shooed our weekday maids away every morning, not wanting to be interrupted.
Christie had been texting me constantly about how she thought I could probably convince Principal Silvestri to take me back if I just showed enough interest. Then her texts about how she was going to D.I.E. if I didn’t come back to school at Pershing became all about the attention she was receiving from Seth Zable. He had apparently started calling and texting her around the clock, wanting her to collaborate with him on a fashion spread for Franny magazine, pretty much the coolest hipster fashion magazine ever, published out of a warehouse in Venice Beach, California. I was excited for Christie, but after replying to the first ten or so of her text messages, I realized I needed to block her out in order to study. Replying to every note within seconds was seriously interrupting my studying and as much as she was a good friend, I couldn’t jeopardize my future by indulging in her interest in communicating around the clock about her ascent into the fashion elite.
Of course, to enlist Kristijan’s help, I had to tell him why I needed to essentially become a mathematical whiz in less than a week. The story I shared wasn’t far from the truth, only I left out the significant part of my wanting to get kicked out of school. That part, I was sure he wouldn’t understand. He seemed to enjoy helping me, or at least showing off how much better he was than me at math.
Mom took the day of the test off from work. We left the apartment extra early and walked to Le Pain Quotidien for croissants and coffee before we shared a cab down to the Harvard Club. She had told me she was going to work from a leather armchair in the lobby of the fancy club while I took my test. I didn’t really believe she was going to sit there for all four hours, but it was sweet of her to pretend that she would.
The proctor greeted me nervously. I got the sense she didn’t deal with cases like mine often (mid-semester troublemakers who were trying to transfer in from another private school). She introduced herself as Adrienne and explained that she was a recent graduate from Harvard’s MBA program and that’s how Treadwell had been able to provide me with the snazzy location for my test-taking. Mom wished me good luck and gave my shoulder a little squeeze for encouragement, but when I turned to smile at her, all I saw was disappointment in her eyes.
Adrienne led me down a hallway that had a lot of framed oil paintings of fat old guys in suits on the walls, the whole time blabbing about how much she loved her days at Treadwell and how she made the closest friends in her life there.
“I mean, it’s tough, of course, and some of the teachers are real downers, but once you find where you fit in and fall into a routine, you’re going to just make so many great memories,” Adrienne rambled. We reached a closed door which she opened, flipped the light switch on the inner wall, and illuminated the room. It was basically a small conference room with an oval wooden table in its center, with leather chairs placed neatly around it. Heavy brocade curtains blocked the overcast morning outside, making the room seem overall like a sound-proofed tomb. I felt her pinch both of my upper arms from behind me as we stepped inside the room. “You’ll see. It’s a great place. I can’t imagine going to high school anywhere else.”
I wished she would just shut up already. She was talking about everything as if I’d already been accepted, which would make it all the more horrible if I didn’t get in. I hadn’t even dared to really imagine in any great detail what my life at Treadwell would be like other than becoming best friends with Taylor. What I had imagined was this day, and this test, and in my fantasy version of this situation, I was seated in a regular old class room at a desk, not at a heavily polished wooden table, across from the proctor. It was pretty disorienting to find myself in a weird conference room that looked like George Washington had decorated it.
“I know,” Adrienne said, reading the expression of discomfort on my face. “It’s a little strange. But once you get into the test, you’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I pulled one of the heavy leather chairs out from the table and sat down. From my purse, I removed three perfectly sharpened pencils. I was ready for action. Even if failure was what awaited me, I couldn’t delay it any longer. My stomach felt as if an anvil was in there, anchoring me into the chair that felt oversized around me.
Of course, she hit me up with math first.
I thought we were in this together, Adrienne! I thought angrily.
With the test before me on the table, face-down until Adrienne could situate herself across the table with her stopwatch, I felt as if a shotgun were about to announce the start of a race. I held my wrists to my face and inhaled the smell of Yellow Dress perfume, which I had lightly sprayed on earlier that morning. I liked to think of that as my lucky scent, as Bijoux and I had basically doused ourselves in it the morning we posed for the Japanese version of the perfume�
��s advertising campaign a year ago.
“Okay,” Adrienne said, scrutinizing the stopwatch she had set down on the table in front of her. “You will have ninety minutes to complete this section. Begin.”
I swallowed hard, and flipped over the test. My eyes scrambled to take in the first problem. For a few seconds, my thoughts were so scattered and rushed that I couldn’t even read the instructions. I felt cold darkness creeping up around me, and sneaking into the corners of my vision. In the back of my mind I could hear crickets chirping, as if I was back on that road in Croatia; exposed, desperate, with nowhere to run. My breathing started to become erratic.
Calm down, I told myself. You’re ready for this. For the first time in your whole rotten, haphazard life, you’ve actually prepared in advance.
I tried to steady my nerves. No one was going to take the test for me; I had to be my own hero. My salvation from my stepfather was in my own hands. It was mine to grab… or to lose.
The meaning of the words in the first math problem on the page began to actually unfold in my mind. Carol is making muffins. Her standard recipe makes 16 muffins, but she wishes to make 24. If the standard recipe calls for 3 ¼ cups of flour, then how many cups should Carol use?
In my head, I damned Carol for wanting to make more muffins than the stupid recipe produced and wished I could shake her by the shoulders and just tell her to freakin’ double the recipe and eat the extra muffins. But there was no real Carol, obviously. There was just a math problem on the first page of a stapled packet of more math problems. My pencil began moving, almost magically, almost as if my own hand wasn’t pushing it across the paper. On my scratch paper I began drafting the problem. This was a simple proportion. I could convert the fraction to 3.25 and place that over 16. I could do this. I was doing it.
My heart ballooned with hope.
The Viscount's Daughter - [A Treadwell Academy - 03] Page 11