by Emily Layden
“‘It’s Christmas,’” Mr. Morgan croons, strumming an uncomplicated chord as he continues: “‘Baby, please come home.’”
Mr. Clark (and the drums) kick in, and around Celeste the student body loses its collective mind. Brie turns to Blake, clutching her chest as if in a swoon; Kit Eldridge cups either side of her face, her jaw half-open.
Without taking her eyes off the stage, Josie shouts in Celeste’s direction: “If he doesn’t win, the game is rigged.”
It’s not Mr. Morgan, though, who captures Celeste’s attention. At the back of the stage, Ms. Ryan occupies a bass player’s usual amount of space—which is to say, not much. She sways lightly with the beat, the instrument resting against a jutted-out hip. At the chorus, she leans toward her mic, her neck slightly forward (“‘Christmaaas’”) before returning to her bass. Suddenly, everything Ms. Ryan does is intercut with what Celeste has seen her do with her husband; the moment plays for Celeste like a scene in a movie where a murderer’s confession is spliced together with slash cuts to the act itself. First, the images are contained to exactly what Celeste has seen—the oversize T-shirts, the hand inside Owen’s pants, then the palm on his chest, the movement from the living room into the bedroom, Ms. Ryan leading the way—but the longer Celeste is confronted with the image of Ms. Ryan onstage before her, her wavy hair half tucked behind an ear, the more Celeste realizes she has more of the memory:
Ms. Ryan and Owen in their apartment hallway, bare feet against the nubby Berber carpeting, Owen pushing Ms. Ryan against the wall, kissing her neck, his hands working first over her T-shirt and then under it while Ms. Ryan’s face tilts back and upward; in the bedroom, Ms. Ryan undresses first, and then Owen climbs on top of her, and Ms. Ryan winds her legs around Owen’s waist, her knees toward the ceiling. Her arms wrap around his back, and her nails claw into the space around his shoulder blades, leaving skin-toned not-quite-scratches behind. In this version the lighting is gray-blue and glowing, as if in the predawn; the action is silent. It reminds Celeste of something she has seen in a movie—but she is certain it’s real, that this is how it happens.
Suddenly Celeste wishes she could stop the entire concert, wishes with a kind of frantic hunger that someone would pull a fire alarm or that the power would go out or that at this very second an asteroid would careen into the Earth. The way Josie bites down on the knuckles of her closed fist; how Sloane holds an open palm to a dropped jaw; the manner in which Blake brings a hand to each temple—it all makes Celeste want to scream: She’s mine, you don’t know her like I do, only he and I get to see her like this.
* * *
After the show—after the Songbirds perform “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” after Olivia invites the performers onstage for a final bow, after Mr. Banks waves red-faced and sweating to a standing ovation—Celeste follows Josie back across the Bowl to Lathrop, where their classmates sprint from room to room and gather in the lounge for the elaborate spread of snacks their Dorm Parents and Proctors have prepared.
“I’m gonna go put on sweats,” Celeste says, a hand on Josie’s upper arm, which is already reaching into a five-pound bag of Sour Patch Kids.
“Oh, but—” Josie whines, sucking on a blue candy, “don’t you know? It’s so glamorous to eat junk food in formal attire!”
“Since when?” Celeste asks.
“Since Jennifer Lawrence ate that pizza at the Oscars.” Josie pops another Sour Patch Kid into her mouth. “Anyway, I can’t promise you there’ll be any red ones left.”
But instead of going to her room, Celeste walks past her door and to the set of stairs that ladder down the back corner of the dorm. On the second floor she moves with the same kind of wordless viscosity that she does in the pool, all pulse thumping in her own ears, eyes trained on the floor beneath her. When she knocks on the door she does so with a quick rap-rap-rap; while she waits, she brings a hand to her temple, checking where Josie smoothed her hair behind her ears. She looks to her left, to Izzy Baldwin’s room, and again calls up the image of the Proctor with her ear to the wall she shares with Ms. Ryan’s apartment.
It’s Owen who opens the door, in a white V-neck T-shirt and baggy basketball shorts, the edge of navy-blue boxers just visible at his waist, patterned with the gray skeletons of little fish, spiny and bug-like. To an outsider it might seem odd that this adult man—who had to pass a basic background check to live on-campus with his wife but who does not himself have any actual professional ties to the school—lives with 150 teenage girls. But faculty spouses and partners are a regular part of boarding school life, where the private lives of teachers become paraprofessional: even now, as she wonders whether she’s thrilled or repulsed by the hair that furs Owen’s legs and the patch of chest above the V of his shirt, nothing about the arrangement strikes Celeste as strange, not even in this year of yard signs and allegations and Pedophile Playoffs.
“Hi,” Owen says finally. “You’re probably looking for my wife? I think she’s out in the common room with everybody.”
“Did you come to the show?” Celeste asks.
“Oh,” Owen says. He looks at Celeste directly, curiously. His eyes are gray-green, a kind of kaleidoscopic hazel. “Yes, yeah.”
“She was really good,” Celeste says.
Owen cocks his head to one side and curls his lips into a kind of half smile, half smirk. “What’s your name?”
“Celeste.”
“Celeste,” he says, nodding, his shoulders slipping slightly back. “Did you know she learned to play the bass just for this?”
“She didn’t already know how?”
“Nope.” Owen places a hand around the back of his neck and rubs, shaking his head slowly in a disbelieving kind of one-two. “Nothing. She didn’t even, like, play the recorder in elementary school music class.”
“Wow,” Celeste says. She imagines Ms. Ryan as a little girl, her big eyes consuming her soft, small face.
“Yeah. She’s always doing things like this. This summer, right after we moved in, our air conditioner broke. We had this crappy window unit, you know? So it was a hundred degrees in here, and I was like, let’s just go get a new one. But before I could even google the nearest Target, my wife had yanked the air conditioner out of the window and was sitting cross-legged on our living room floor with a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench. She watched three YouTube videos and had it fixed in like fifteen minutes.”
It’s almost too much for Celeste, the thought of Ms. Ryan on the wood floor in the summer heat, all exposed skin and sharp angles—knees and elbows and tanned shoulders—sweat beading at her temples, her dark hair pulled back in a tiny ponytail, her focus singular, determined. She imagines the rush of cool air as the unit rumbled back to life, Ms. Ryan standing in front of the vents with her arms outstretched, palms out, eyes shut, and then: Owen behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, burying his face in her neck as she cranes back, leaning into him—
“Anyway,” he says, and Celeste feels her cheeks brighten as the image dissolves, “the point is, the woman can learn to do anything.”
What would it be like, Celeste wonders, to be talked about this way? She thinks about how her Peer Educator asked them—in a Hall Meeting workshop on “healthy relationships,” one mandated by (but without any direction from) Mrs. Brodie in the wake of the newspaper leak—to define intimacy: “The sign above the condoms in CVS,” Hannah Griffin said, half joking, before they’d come up with better answers—closeness, familiarity. But their Peer Educator wanted them to talk about communication, apparently, and anyway the whole thing felt like a case of the blind leading the blind. How could they know? They didn’t even like the phrase sleeping with as a stand-in for sex. This must be it, Celeste thinks now: the marvel of a fixed air conditioner, sex in sweatpants, your spouse singing your praises when you’re not even listening.
“I’m sorry,” Owen continues: “You probably don’t want to hear about all that. Like I said, Allison—er, Ms. Ryan—is probably out in the c
ommon room, if you need her.”
At the accidental use of his wife’s first name, Owen flushes; he crosses one foot over the other, flexing the toes of the crossed foot against the floor, his ankle knocking into the bottom of his shin. Maybe it’s the way Owen seems a little sheepish, or maybe it’s because he sounded like he was dismissing Celeste but also apologizing—she’ll replay the moment again and again in her head, looking for the shrug of his shoulders, listening for the curves of flirtatiousness when he asked What’s your name?, the impossibility that Allison was just a coincidence—but Celeste pulls her right hand from her side and reaches it across the space between them and places her palm on Owen’s upper arm, against his outer bicep, right next to where Ms. Ryan had placed her hand on his chest.
As soon as she feels the weight and warmth of him beneath her—as soon as her hand registers how unexpectedly solid Ms. Ryan’s husband feels—she pulls back, like she’s touched a hot stove. She looks up at Owen, whose jaw is half-dropped, eyes wide, head back so that the skin of his neck wrinkles beneath his chin.
She does not look back as she walks quickly back down the hall. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpses the inside of Izzy’s room through a half-open door—a mound of rumpled comforter, the gold glow of twinkle lights and a desk lamp, the sophisticated refusal of overhead lighting—and resists the urge to take off running, worried the awkward clacking of her heeled feet would draw attention.
She has a hand on her own door, her fingertips curled around the knob, when someone shouts her name.
“Celeste!”
She turns slowly, bracing herself, sure that it’s Ms. Ryan, having chased her down. She imagines what Owen might have said, adjectives clanging in her brain: weird, awkward, creepy, embarrassing. But it’s not Ms. Ryan who moves toward her down the hall; it’s Lauren Triplett, in a tiny black dress with her hair pulled back in a half-up bun, her athlete’s shoulders muscular but not manly. Celeste guesses she’s on this floor visiting Camilla or one of the other sophomores on the field hockey team—at least, she is certainly not here to see Celeste.
“Just wanted to say that I love your dress,” she says, walking closer. “Is it vintage?”
“Oh—yeah.” Celeste looks down at her stomach, at the seam that refused to sit flat on her hip bone. “Thanks,” she manages.
Lauren stops in front of her. Her eyes flick across Celeste’s cheeks, nose, eyebrows, forehead. Celeste resists the urge to bring a hand to the corner of her eyelid, to make sure that her makeup hasn’t run, that the concealer by the corner of her nose hasn’t caked.
“Your hair looks really, really pretty,” Lauren says finally. “I wish I could do mine like that.” Smiling, she reaches a hand out and gives Celeste’s forearm a little squeeze. “Okay, I’ve gotta get out of these shoes.”
For a moment Celeste stands frozen, watching the freshman stride down the hall with an ease that belies any discomfort in four-inch strappy sandals. She thinks about how Josie has this talent, too—the ability to say the half-true thing, to place all her feelings in a prism of relatability, like the struggle of uncomfortable shoes.
She closes her door behind her, muffling the sounds of vacation eve. It’s two minutes to eleven, and the bracket’s winner is due to drop. Briefly, Celeste considers its creator; were the yard signs her doing, also? Or did she see them on her way to school—like everybody else—and think, I could do something like that, too? Celeste imagines her alone somewhere right now, waiting for her moment to hit Send. What does it feel like, she wonders, to communicate from behind leaked newspapers and hacked Instagram accounts and teacher takedowns? To never be seen but always heard, to choose the terms of your own invisibility?
Celeste surveys her desk. There’s a stack of handouts from Bioethics, feedback from Ms. Edwards paper-clipped to her essay on Jane Eyre. In the cup that holds her pens and pencils, her pink-handled mini-scissors stand at attention. Hooking the scissors between her thumb and forefinger, she bends to the floor, hiking her dress up to her thighs and folding her legs into one another on the pink shag of her rug. There’s a popcorn kernel near her left knee. A long, stray hair snakes through the fibers, its sleek, thick blackness stark against the deep, bright pink.
She follows the curve of her ear with her left forefinger, releasing the hair from where Josie smoothed it into place. She is surprised by her own care, how delicately she holds the two-inch section in front of her face, pinching it between the middle phalanxes of her index and middle fingers. She counts her breaths, listens for the quell in the merriment outside her door. She imagines them together in the hall, foreheads touching over glowing screens, alert to the watchful eyes and ears of the adults in charge. In the quiet she imagines she can hear each strand of hair as it breaks, snapping as the scissors bite. But the cut pieces fall noiselessly, landing like feathers on her thighs.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: Dec 21, 2015, 9:02 A.M.
Subject: Resignation
Patricia,
It is with great sadness that I write to inform you of my resignation, effective immediately. While I have appreciated your support in recent months, and while I maintain my innocence regarding all accusations levied (including those implied in the course of the Vespers weekend), we both know that I cannot return to school in January and continue as an effective educator.
I apologize for the suddenness of this departure, and I realize that such an exit after more than twenty years may be interpreted as a sign of disrespect, ingratitude, or even guilt. I can only say that I hope the winter break will provide you with the space to divine the appropriate messaging, and the time to find a long-term substitute.
Rich
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: Dec 21, 2015, 10:18 P.M.
Subject: Re: Resignation
Rich,
I am disappointed although not surprised to hear this. I hope that this decision provides you with the distance, support, and tranquility you crave.
Regardless of circumstance, midyear departures do pose certain challenges. I think that the smoothest way to navigate this transition would be for us to grant you a leave of absence, with your anticipated retirement from Atwater at the conclusion of the school year. Twenty years is, after all, a veritable career. While you are still technically a member of the Atwater community, I would appreciate your continued adherence to our policy of not commenting on the pending lawsuit.
Thank you for your service to Atwater.
Patricia
Retrospectives
The paintings appeared on the first Thursday after break. They hung in classrooms and hallways; above common-room couches and library carrels; on the dining hall doors, in the music practice rooms, and in the gym by the ellipticals. In the arts building, Trask, they were the most prolific of all, reproductions taped to supply cabinets and office doors and even laid flat and tacked down on studio tables, like neat little workstation placemats.
They were portraits of young women, each one comprised of hundreds of tiny drawings of butterflies: smaller and more crowded at the creases of the nostrils, the corners of the eyes, the Cupid’s bow above the lips; larger across the cheeks, the apex of the forehead, the point of the nose. Some students said the paintings reminded them of Magic Eye pictures, the dizzying kaleidoscopic optical illusions in which a person could see, if they squinted in just the right way, a cityscape or a cresting wave or a horse in stride. Others said they looked like horror-movie stills, of bodies being buried alive in swarming insects. Most agreed that they seemed to depict rather young women—although it was possible that this distinction was less due to artistic intention and more a consequence of context. Everywhere on campus the faces stared at them, girls zipped shut in casts of bugs.
The only upside to the infestation, from Abby Randall’s perspective, was that it gave her and Bella Nitido something rea
l to talk about.
* * *
The email came in the middle of Christmas vacation. Abby was home in Vermont, most days not even changing out of her pajamas, watching Netflix underneath a stack of her mother’s quilts while her cat—an older, temperamental tabby unironically named Kitty—purred at her feet. It was from her Dorm Parent, Ms. Trujillo, with Update typed in the subject line, and Abby knew what it would say before she opened it. Her roommate, Helen, a new girl from South Korea, practically arrived homesick, and after a few tearful nights withdrew from Atwater, leaving Abby with a track record of failed rooming arrangements (her sophomore roommate, Haley, who was supposed to be her junior roommate, too, was asked after two years of straight Ds to consider whether Atwater was the right place for her educational journey; it was not) and a double all to herself. Of course she assumed she’d get a new roommate, as assignments shuffled and the usual handful of late-enrolling hockey players (the only Atwater sport that was reliably decent, and the only one that enlisted a roster of PGs) trickled in, but then a week and then two and then a month went by, and it never happened. She spread her yoga mat on the opposite side of the room, played music without her earbuds in, got fully naked when she had to change, no longer shimmying out of underwear beneath a wrapped towel.