Barker looked far from impressed.
“He’s not very on top of things, is he?” he said, looking over at Karl. Karl gave me a stern look to stay silent before responding.
“No, I assure you that he is, Charles. He’s just been ... distracted lately.”
“Yes, yes ... so you’ve said.” The headmaster’s eyes traveled over me suspiciously as though expecting to see some sign of disturbance written along my face. From his side, Karl gave me an impatient nod to compel me to speak.
“Right. I’ve been distracted,” I said, bowing my head to convey what my toneless voice could not. “I’m sorry, Mr. Barker.”
“Good, good – so long as you understand the situation,” Barker said, shuffling some papers on his desk to the side to clear a spot for his arms. “Well, even though you’re doing so poorly with little chance of scraping by, I’m willing to hold off on your suspension given the ... circumstances. I’ve spoken to your uncle and he assures me that your grades are a reflection of the … most tragic situation with your mother.”
My eyes flickered over to Karl and narrowed. I could only imagine what he had invented to tell Barker in order to smooth things over.
“As one of Bickerby’s finest young men, Enim, I’m willing to give you the proper needed amount of time to grieve,” Barker continued, drawing my eyes back to him. “I understand how trying this must be for you. Your father informed me that your mother had been sick for a long time … I often wondered why we never saw her at school events. Even so, it must have been quite a shock … a most difficult situation …”
The heat in Barker’s office was much too high and it was quickly becoming difficult to breathe. I swallowed repeatedly to keep from retching as my neck swelled in my collar.
“I’m going to give you some leeway, here, Enim. I’ve spoken with your teachers and they’ve agreed, given the circumstances, to give you the chance to raise your grades, granted that you put in the effort. If you do exceptionally well for the rest of the semester – which at this point normally wouldn’t change anything – then they’ll raise your grades to passing ones.”
Barker watched me with bulging eyes as he waited for me to respond, but my voice was still stuck in my throat. The wooden arms of the chair beneath my hands grew damp with sweat.
“Of course, I also expect that you’ll be on your best behavior,” he said. “I’m doing you a favor, here. I don’t want any trouble out of you. No more incidents like last year –”
“That’s past us.” Karl interjected the headmaster in mid-breath. As their eyes met briefly from across the room, Barker waited to exhale. The subject was clearly still a sore one. “There’s no need to revisit it.”
“I just don’t want anything repeating itself,” Barker said cautiously. “After all, I gave him a chance last year to get his act together, and here we are again.”
“With a completely different situation,” Karl said. His voice was firm; he appeared to have taken on the role he was accustomed to personating as a lawyer.
“But a situation nonetheless, Karl.”
“One which I am just as willing to pay you for, Charles.”
Barker’s face twitched with a smile; the price of letting me stay was unmistakably worthwhile.
“Yes, you’re right, Karl, of course,” Barker said. “Forgive me, it’s just ... that little stunt that Enim pulled last year was quite upsetting for all of us here at Bickerby.”
“I’m sure that it was,” Karl said, though he sounded dubious of Barker’s claimed upset. “But, really, Enim was just going along with what was obviously Jack Hadler’s idea.”
“That may be, Karl, but it was your nephew who admitted to lighting the thing on fire, not Hadler –”
“And it was me who compensated the school for its – loss – as well.”
Karl raised his voice ever slightly as he spoke. As they bickered, I took the opportunity to wipe my palms on my pants. The deal that they had already made was of no concern. As I waited for papers to be signed and hands to be shaken, I sank down in my seat and wished that I could disappear.
“And Bickerby benefited greatly from it, Karl, as you can see.”
Barker slid his chair back and indicated to the view from his window. His office overlooked the sporting fields which had grown more expansive over the summer.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Karl agreed, though his tone was peppered with cold. Barker smiled regardless.
“Well, now that we’re all on the same page,” he said, picking up his pen to jot something down on a piece of paper, “we can move forward from this little mess.”
He turned his smile to me in the ugliest of expressions.
“Here’s a late pass, Enim,” he said, finishing the note and clicking his pen closed. “Now, run off to class before you miss too much more.”
His condescending tone was worse than any stern or displeased one, but I stood and mutely stepped forward to take the pass anyhow. I needed to get outside before I suffocated.
“There’s a good lad,” he said. “Now, make sure that you keep those grades up. I know that you’re upset about your mother, but she wouldn’t have wanted you to neglect your schoolwork.”
My heart went cold. Halfway through reaching for the late pass, I lifted my eyes to Barker’s and stared straight through him, no longer able to keep the words at bay.
“You don’t know what my mother wanted,” I said quietly.
Barker’s smile slid downwards until his mouth was a thin line. He eyed me with venom.
“Well, perhaps not, Enim,” he said, “but I know that no one in their right mind would want their son to fall on academic probation.”
A cold breeze went through the room like a chill. It picked up the late pass and slid it off the desk and onto the floor, but no one seemed to notice. My hand dropped back to my side and clenched into a fist.
“She wasn’t in her right mind,” I said just as quietly. “But maybe no one told you that.”
As soon as I had said it, I wished that I could take it back. Barker’s eyes went to Karl in silent confusion and the younger man shook his head in dread, but neither of them knew how to proceed. Barker was at a complete loss: he must have had been under the impression that my mother had passed away from some terrible disease. He kept glancing at Karl to try to make sense of what I had said, but Karl was firmly avoiding his gaze. The matter that none of us ever discussed had escaped into the room to suffocate us.
Finally Karl spoke.
“Enim, why don’t you go to class.”
It wasn’t a question. He was directing me from the room so that he could smooth things over with Barker before it was too late. I wondered what wild fabrication he would invent to explain what I had said – anything other than the truth.
“Why don’t you go to hell?” I returned.
Karl made no response. He was as composed and reserved as ever; it was as though I had said nothing at all. I stared at him with every bit of contempt and hatred that I had ever felt towards him, willing him to shrivel and die from the look alone. He was just like my father: playing what had happened to my mother as a means of getting what he wanted and eliciting pity that he didn’t deserve.
“You know what happened to her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Enim,” Karl responded quietly.
“Oh, that’s right,” I said formally, “because you weren’t there.”
The jab seemed to strike him physically and he recoiled. As he took a step back from me, Barker looked between us. Despite his confusion, he was well aware that there was something unsightly in the conversation that he had been blinded to.
“Enim,” Karl repeated, “go to class.”
I turned and fled from the room, but it was only because I couldn’t stand to be near him for a moment longer. Doing my best to look normal, I hurried past the secretary and slipped out into the hallway. When I reached the grounds I didn’t bother to look at t
he clock to see what time it was; I wasn’t going to attend classes that day.
I crossed to the edge of the campus without caring if anyone could see me. Slipping beneath the low branches, I made my way through the trees until I came to the cliffs. The water was the brightest of blues beneath me, like a blanket that had been laid out to fall asleep on. Compared to the jagged rocks beneath my feet, it looked soft from where it waved below – inviting, even. I closed my eyes before the thought could fully come and tried to clear my head. I wished that I could will myself away.
It wouldn’t take Karl long to smooth things over with Barker: only a half-hour of his time or an extra figure scrawled in his checkbook. He and my father were well-trained in how to fix things, after all. The thought left a bitter taste on my tongue.
I sat down on the edge of the cliffs and stared down into the blue. My mother had never felt so far away. And yet, if I strained hard enough, I could hear the song that we had played together on the piano in the distance over the waves; and if I imagined harder still, I could see her standing on the rocky beaches below with her white dress billowing out behind her. And I wasn’t afraid to admit that I wished that she was there with me, because she was the only person in the world that had ever understood me, but I could never admit that I also wished the unthinkable – that she wasn’t there and that she would leave me completely, and that her memory would finally fade away.
Even beneath such a miserable sky, the water was such a deep, thoughtful blue. When I thought of returning to Connecticut for Christmas, and of what it would be like now that everything had gone wrong, I would have given anything to prevent it. I tried to shut my mind on the memory from ten months ago but it burned against my eyes. For a moment, as I watched the water waving up at me, I wished that it would surround me as it had the night before and drag me down. I could feel it sinking into me, grasping me, saturating me, suffocating me, and for a moment it felt very right, very welcoming, even –
The wind smacked my face and I stumbled backwards and fell to the ground. My hands broke my fall and the skin was torn on jagged rocks and broken twigs. I clutched them to me, grimacing in pain, and curled up as the cold began to seep in through my clothes. I sniffed at the wind and buried my face in my arms. The fall had knocked the sense back into me and I suddenly felt sick for what I had been thinking. I didn’t want to drown, after all, and I didn’t want to die. I just wanted to feel better – but when would that happen?
I stood from my spot and hurried back through the trees towards Bickerby. At the edge of the woods, I slowed to catch my breath and smoothed my hair and sweater down in an idle attempt to compose myself. The grounds were empty and still as though they had been frozen in place.
I returned to my residence building quickly, head bent low to cover my face from the wind or any passersby who might have noticed my expression, and slipped inside just as the sky lost its last touch of blue and turned fully to gray. Heaving myself up the stairs to the fourth floor, I shut the door to the dorm room behind me and collapsed on top of my mattress. The dozens of prescription bottles hidden beneath it rattled as I did so. For a moment I considered reaching down and opening one; Beringer had said that they would make me feel better. But he didn’t know what thoughts I was trying to force away.
“There you are.” Jack’s relieved voice sounded from the door sometime later. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
I lifted my head slowly.
“Nowhere.”
“But – were you in Barker’s office this whole time? I looked in all your classes, plus here, plus the library, plus the dining hall. Sanders keeps coming by the room, too, asking where you are – he says he’s got a message for us or something – what’s that all about? Did Barker suspend you?”
“No, I ... no.”
“But what happened?”
“With what?”
“With – with Barker, Nim,” Jack said incredulously. He crossed to sit beside me on the bed. “Did Porter get caught last night? Did he rat you out? Because I saw him on campus, and I swear I’ll –”
“No, it wasn’t that.”
Jack eyed my expression uneasily.
“Then ... what is it?”
“It’s nothing; I’m just on academic probation.”
“You’re what?”
“On academic probation,” I repeated. “I’m failing every subject.”
“So he suspended you?”
“No. He and Karl worked it out, like usual.”
Jack gave a relieved sigh and leaned his head back against the wall.
“Oh – well, that’s good. I mean, it’s not good, but it could definitely be worse.” He gave me another odd look and added, “Right?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Was there something else? You look ... weird.”
I instinctively smoothed down the front of my sweater and shook my head.
“No. I’m fine.”
He opened his mouth to counter the claim, but was stopped by a quick knock sounding on the door. It opened to reveal Sanders standing in the doorway for the second time that day.
“Hadler, Lund,” he said curtly. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like we’re doing?” Jack asked from beside me.
“I’d ... rather not know, I think,” the building monitor replied, glancing between us uncertainly.
Jack rolled his eyes.
“If you came to see if Nim’s been suspended, you’re out of luck,” he said flatly. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“No, no, that’s ... that’s not why I came by.” He looked flustered and had lost a bit of his usual solidity, failing to address Jack’s comment or add any remarks about my whereabouts as he normally would have, and stood in the doorway as though too anxious to step over the threshold. “You two missed the student meeting in the residence lounge.”
“Right, well, we never go to those,” Jack said. “What’d you discuss this time? How residence life is? What channel to keep the TV on in the student lounge? Or was it a petition to get rid of ‘quiet hours’ again?”
“No, it was nothing like that, Hadler.”
“Oh good,” Jack deadpanned, “because I wouldn’t want you to take a poll without counting my vote.”
“This isn’t a joke, Hadler.”
“Believe me, Sanders, I know. It’s not like you have a sense of humor.”
The other student sucked in a breath and stared at Jack with a hollowed expression.
“This is serious. Something’s happened.” He looked between us oddly, and his eyes rested a moment too long on mine in a pleading manner. “Someone’s ... someone’s died.”
“Oh.” Jack made a face and glanced over to me. “Like another local girl or something?”
“No. No, not a local.”
“Someone in our year?” He pulled his legs up to his chest as he considered it. “Was it that guy on the third floor with the weird eyes? He always looked sickly to me ...”
“No, it was ... it was one of the staff.”
“Right,” Jack said with a nod. “Well, that’s understandable. Some of the teachers here are pushing eighty, at least –”
“It’s not that – it had nothing to do with age,” Sanders said quickly. “It was ... it was one of the younger teachers.” He paused and looked between us again, his uncomfortableness clear. “It was ... it was one of your teachers, actually, Hadler. Your ... your French teacher, I believe. Miss Mercier.”
A ringing silence met his words. For a moment I thought that I might have misheard him, or that he had made the tale up to get back at Jack for years’ worth of insults, but his expression was too miserable to be anything but truthful.
I looked around at Jack to see his response. His form had gone very still as though frozen in place and he was staring blankly at Sanders without seeing him. His eyes appeared overcast and his mouth had gone dry, and for a long moment he didn’t move.
“Wait,” he sai
d at last, giving a slight shake of his head and a slim smile. “Wait, that’s – that’s not true. She’s not dead.”
“I ... I’m afraid that she is, Hadler.”
Jack shook his head again as though hoping to dislodge the words that Sanders had planted there.
“No, she’s – she’s not dead. She was just out of town. She’ll be back.” His tone had gone from disbelief to certainty, and his frown held every conviction that his version of events was truer than Sanders’. “She’s just out of town visiting a friend – she can’t be dead.”
“I ... She is, Hadler. I know that it’s a shock, but ...”
“No.”
Jack tossed his bag off the end of the bed to clear the space around him; it clattered to the ground and spilled textbooks onto the floor. As he stared at Sanders, daring him to refute him again, the other boy backed up a bit against the wall. Jack stood to face him properly.
“She was just visiting a friend,” he repeated. “That’s what they said. So how could she – how’d she –? What happened?”
Sanders could only shake his head. Jack ran his hand through his hair without taking notice of him.
“How did it happen? Was it a car accident or something? Did she – was it –?”
“I don’t know, Hadler,” Sanders said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “They didn’t tell us anything other than that she had ... passed.”
“That can’t be it – there has to be something else!” Jack said angrily. “She didn’t just walk out of here to see a friend and die, did she?”
“She never actually left to see a friend.”
“What?”
The three of us turned as another voice sounded from the doorway. Julian Wynne was leaning up against the frame. Though his expression was of well-feigned sorrow, he couldn’t keep the excited gleam from his eyes.
“There was no friend,” he repeated. “Barker made that up to cover the whole thing up.”
“What ‘whole thing’?”
“Her disappearance,” Julian continued, gazing down at his nail-beds as he spoke. “She just never showed up to school one day, and when someone went to look for her, they found her house was empty. Front door was left open and everything. Barker didn’t want it to get out, so he said she’d gone away.”
None Shall Sleep (Damnatio Memoriae Book 1) Page 10