by Kerstin Gier
I stared through the window and thought of sending Henry a text—I’m here, where are you?—but then I decided not to. From the plane, London had looked like a scene in one of those kitschy snow globes, with glittering white powdered sugar all over the rooftops, trees, and streets—down here, however, there wasn’t any glittery sugar to be seen. Slush isn’t in the least romantic, and if I’d had to describe my mood, slushy would have been the right word for it. I’d arrived at the airport feeling cheerful and full of anticipation, and I got out of the car in a really bad temper when Ernest finally parked it in the drive of his house—I mean, our house. Matters didn’t improve when the front door was opened by Grayson’s girlfriend, Emily. She was the last person I wanted to see at that moment.
“Oh, there you are,” said Emily, looking about as pleased as I felt. Objectively considered, she was a very pretty girl with gleaming, smooth brown hair, nice skin, a tall and athletic build, but I couldn’t help it: to me she always looked like the stern governess in an old movie, like the one in Heidi. And like a horse. A kind of governess horse or horsey governess. She seemed much older than other eighteen-year-old girls, and it wasn’t just because of her high-necked, severe clothes, but also because of the superior, know-it-all expression that she turned on everyone. For a split second I was tempted to turn around then and there and march away again. But then Buttercup came into the front hall with her ears flapping, and behind her were Grayson, Florence, and Lottie.
And someone with bright-gray eyes and dark-blond hair standing out in all directions. I almost burst into tears of sheer relief.
Henry.
He simply pushed Emily aside and took me in his arms.
“Hey, there you are again, my cheese girl,” he murmured into my hair. “I’ve missed you so much.”
I wound my arms around Henry’s neck and held him much closer than was strictly necessary.
“You smell nice,” I whispered. It wasn’t precisely what I wanted to say, but it was the first thing to come into my head.
“That’s not me; it’s the stuff with the unpronounceable German name that Lottie’s been baking.” Henry made no move to let go of me again, and as far as I was concerned, he never had to, but stupidly we weren’t alone.
“You’re all invited to try them,” cried Lottie. She was wearing the felt slippers she’d originally made as a Christmas present for Charles, but at the last minute she’d decided not to give them to him after all. Because there are many people who don’t appreciate the value of a homemade present, she’d said. And that had been a wise decision, because the day before Christmas Eve, Charles had given her a foil-wrapped chocolate Santa Claus. A small foil-wrapped chocolate Santa Claus. My beckoning Japanese cat was a one-carat diamond by comparison.
“It’s a surprise welcome-home party for you snow bunnies!” Lottie beamed at us. If she was suffering from unrequited love for Charles, she hid it well.
“And we’d have made up a welcome song, I’m sure,” said Emily, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Only, what on earth rhymes with snow bunny?”
“Jar of honey?” suggested Grayson.
“Don’t be silly!” said Emily, and without even looking, I could tell what kind of face she was making.
“No, silly doesn’t rhyme with bunny. But very funny does,” said Grayson, and I chuckled into Henry’s sweater. Oh, it was good to be home. “And plenty of money.”
“Wrapped up in a five-pound note, like the Owl and the Pussycat when they went to sea,” added Mia, “in their beautiful pea-green boat.” She patted me on the back. “Hey, you two are getting between us and Lottie’s jam buns.”
Lottie’s new recipe did indeed turn out to be for large, fluffy, very light yeast buns with a plum jam filling and a crisp crust, and life was downright perfect for the next twenty minutes. Sitting in the kitchen with the people I loved best in the world, drinking hot chocolate and eating the delicious jam buns—at that moment I couldn’t imagine anything better. Everyone was talking at once, Mia telling more tall tales about our skiing expeditions, Florence planning the party she and Grayson would have for their eighteenth birthday in February, and Lottie describing the Bavarian cream pudding she was going to conjure up for us tomorrow. I didn’t even have to let go of Henry, because we went on holding hands under the table, laughing and exchanging meaningful looks with each other, and after the second jam roll, I felt sure I was about to burst with happiness. Well, maybe not just happiness—those rolls might seem as light as a feather, but once inside you, they swelled to twice their original size. I felt a blissfully satisfied smile spreading over my face entirely of its own accord.
And then the perfect twenty minutes came to an end.
“I’m really impressed to see how sporting you are, Liv,” said Emily, who was sitting opposite me. She had eaten only half a jam roll, with a knife and fork, which showed that she and Grayson had not been holding hands under the table. “I’d really never have thought it of you. My respects.”
What was she talking about? “Well, we Silvers have our good points,” I cautiously replied. “But I don’t think I can manage a third yeast roll. It’s Grayson you should be impressed by. If I’ve counted correctly, he’s on his fourth.”
“My fifth,” said Grayson with his mouth full. “I already had one before—”
Emily cut him short. “I wasn’t admiring you for the number of calories you can consume, Liv, I was admiring your nonchalance.”
Nonchalance—the Boker had used that word recently (when she complained that she didn’t have any herself these days, in view of the fact that Ernest and Mom were an item), so I knew what it meant; it meant being casual and unconcerned, not minding. Hmm. “Nonchalance about what?” I asked suspiciously.
Henry held my hand a little tighter and started getting to his feet. “Why don’t we go upstairs and … well, unpack your suitcase?”
Emily returned my glance without batting an eyelid, totally unimpressed by the fact that Grayson was looking at her as if he’d like to jab his fork into her.
“Em,” he said menacingly.
“What? I’m only saying I admire her.” Emily was still looking me straight in the eyes. “I don’t think most people would be so happy to have their sex life discussed in public.” She added with a thin-lipped smile, “Or rather, their lack of a sex life.”
Henry groaned quietly and stopped pulling at my hand, and Grayson dropped his fork on his plate with such a loud noise that Mom, Lottie, Florence, and Ernest, who were all deep in conversation at the other end of the table, fell silent. For a second you could have heard a pin drop.
Then Mia, speaking instead of me, said, “What?” I was very grateful to her for taking over. “Who’s been discussing Liv’s sex life where?”
“Sex life?” Mom echoed her. It was always a cue for her to be wide awake.
“Oh, I suppose someone at Frognal Academy.” Emily leaned back, crossing her arms. “Someone with nothing else to do. If it’s any consolation, most people don’t think you’re really frigid.”
“What?” said Mia again. And once again Mom, too, echoed Emily: “Frigid?” I swallowed with difficulty.
Florence sighed. “Em! Presumably Liv hasn’t seen it yet.” She was looking at me sympathetically. “Or did you go on the Internet while you were away skiing?”
I shook my head slowly. Nonchalantly, you might say.
“Oh, I see.” Emily allowed herself to give that thin-lipped smile again. “I thought Henry would have told you about it ages ago.”
No. He hadn’t. Whatever it was.
“I haven’t had a chance yet,” said Henry. “And by the way, Liv is standing right here. It’s only silly gossip. No one will be interested.”
“No, of course not. Secrecy only let two hundred and forty-three readers add comments to her post,” said Florence.
Mia jumped up and snatched Lottie’s iPad off the sideboard. She was right. It was about time I gave up my wonderful nonchalance as well.
I let go of Henry’s hand and stood up.
“Like I said, it’s only uninteresting gossip,” Henry repeated.
“Dead boring,” agreed Grayson. “May I have another of those jam bun things, Lottie?”
“Oh,” said Mia, staring fixedly at the iPad. “Oh no. Oh. Bloody. Hell.”
I took the thing from her and skimmed Secrecy’s post. One nasty dig after another, which was typical of her blog. There was the bit about Henry and me at last, in the postscript: they’ve been an item for months, and they still haven’t slept with each other.
Well, in fact, that was true. How did she know? Or was she simply guessing?
Only making out and holding hands … Hmm, what do you make of that? Seeing that we all know Henry Harper isn’t exactly famous for holding back, it must be something to do with Liv.
What did she mean, Henry wasn’t exactly famous for holding back? I didn’t think he’d been all that restrained. Or me either. But you didn’t have to go rushing into things.
Is she a prude? Frigid? Or does she belong to some kind of religious community where sex is forbidden before marriage? Then again, maybe she’s just a little slow for her age, poor thing.
Oh well. Huh. If that was all. Maybe I really was a little slow for my age. So what?
Almost relieved, I raised my head and grinned at Henry. “You and Grayson are right. It really is dead boring, uninteresting gossip.”
Henry grinned back, and with a cheerful grunt, Grayson helped himself to another roll. Emily’s thin-lipped smile was looking a little sour now, but maybe I was wrong there—after all, her natural expression was grumpy. And Florence, Mom, Ernest, and Lottie went back to their conversation as if nothing had happened. I was so relieved that my appetite came back. Surely another little jam bun wouldn’t do any …
“Don’t rejoice too soon,” said Mia, putting her forefinger on the screen. Among all the other comments, Secrecy had spoken up again. Don’t be too hard on poor Liv—she’s new to the role of a girl in love. Not so long ago she was still the kind of student who got her head dunked in the toilet. Poor thing, she could tell you all about the insides of the toilet bowls at her school in Berkeley, California.…
“How does she know about that?” asked Mia quietly.
“No idea.” But I wasn’t grinning now. Secrecy and the whole school could assume whatever they liked about my sex life, for all I cared, but the Berkeley story was a secret. Apart from the four girls who had attacked me in the toilet, only Mia and Lottie knew about it.
And … Henry.
As I slowly turned my head to look at him, his cell phone began to ring.
5
IN MY DREAM, I was walking through Frognal Academy with everyone staring at me, giggling and whispering. Emily, looking elegant on a purebred bay horse, trotted past me in the stairwell and called, “Don’t be too hard on poor Liv. She can’t help it if Henry doesn’t want to sleep with her.”
Luckily I spotted a green door in the wall of the corridor at that moment, so I knew I was just dreaming.
“She’s simply rather underdeveloped physically and mentally,” said Emily. It annoyed me that she had the nerve to insult me in my own dream. Fundamentally, didn’t that mean that my own subconscious mind was saying these mean things about me? I wasn’t letting it get away with that. With a wave of my hand, I abolished the horse, and Emily fell to the stone floor with a thud.
“Ouch!” she said indignantly.
“Are you crazy, Liv?” Florence helped her friend up. “She could have hurt herself.”
“My dream, my rules!” I said, reaching for the doorknob. “And I really couldn’t care less what people think about me.” A snap of my fingers, and Emily, Florence, and all the rest of them turned into soap bubbles. They floated through the stairwell and burst, one by one, with a series of quiet pops. Satisfied, I slipped through the green door into the dream corridor outside.
“Activate Security Protocol Mr. Wu mark three,” I said quietly. If no one was listening, I liked talking to the door as if I were on the starship Enterprise. Weirdly, and although I hadn’t done anything to it myself, it had changed quite a lot over the last few weeks. While at first, it had looked like the door of a cozy cottage in the Cotswolds painted deep green, it now had two columns, one on each side, and an extra skylight above it. It was still green, but not such a dark green, more of a fresh minty color, and as it now looked, it suited a mysterious Victorian villa rather than a cottage in the country.
I connected the changes that had happened to the door with those I had gone through myself. I’d noticed the same thing happening to other doors in this labyrinth. Some just changed their color; the paint on others was peeling away; some changed their size and shape entirely. I suspected it had something to do with the owners’ states of mind. It was impossible to keep it all straight, because in addition, the doors were always changing places with one another.
However, the doorknob in the shape of a lizard was still there, and it winked at me when I quietly closed the door behind me. Just in time to see Henry’s untidy blond hair disappear around the next corner. I was going to call his name, but then I didn’t—who knew how loud the echo might be in these corridors, and who or what might be enticed into investigating? Furthermore, where on earth was Henry off to? His door was directly opposite mine, and we’d been going to meet each other. Right here. And if I had my way, right now.
I decided to go after him. After all, I had better things to do than stand around here looking stupid and waiting for him. Like finally talking, for instance. And really talking, not just canoodling.
Keeping quiet—I was barefoot—I followed him. We hadn’t had a chance to discuss how Secrecy could know the story of the school toilets in Berkeley. Henry’s cell phone had rung, and he had left in a hurry to go and collect his little brother. From a friend’s house, he had said.
“Can’t your mum do it?” Emily had asked, and I was really glad I hadn’t asked that question, because I don’t think I’d have survived the cold, contemptuous look that Henry gave her.
Not that it bothered Emily at all. When Henry had left, she turned to Grayson. “I thought Mrs. Harper had dealt with that problem?”
“Em!” said Grayson with a strange sideways glance at me.
“What’s the matter?” Emily had shaken her head as if baffled, while Grayson took her by the elbow and led her into the next room.
“That problem”? What problem?
That was when I realized it was high time for me to talk to Henry. It was one thing that I knew so little about my boyfriend. Or rather that he told me so little about himself. But the fact that even Emily was better informed than I was hurt me more than I liked to admit. Now and then I’d thought of probing, asking Henry all the questions that had come into my head as time passed, but then I didn’t ask them after all. In movies and books, the hero’s girlfriend who always wants to know everything usually turns out to be a silly cow and a control freak, and pretty soon she’s the hero’s ex-girlfriend. Or, depending on what kind of story it is, she’s the victim of a terrible crime and everyone is secretly pleased. But control freak or not, I was beginning to feel I just had to know where I stood with Henry.
The corridor into which he’d turned seemed to be empty, but I thought I heard footsteps in the corridor branching off to the left behind an imposing red door, so I went faster. I’d soon catch up with him.
Talking, no making out, I reminded myself again to be on the safe side. Repeating it like a mantra couldn’t hurt.
“Ouch!” I’d bumped into something hard, or rather into someone turning the corner, just like me but in the opposite direction. At first I thought it was Henry.
“Good heavens, Liv!” exclaimed the someone, obviously as startled as I was.
It wasn’t Henry; it was Arthur Hamilton. The Arthur Hamilton whose jaw I had broken and whose crazy girlfriend had tried to cut my throat last fall. The Arthur that I’d seen only at school since the disaster in the cem
etery, and then I’d kept my distance. If our paths did happen to cross, we’d stared at each other like two enemy generals meeting off the battlefield, demonstrating strength and lasting hostility.
I jumped away from him as quickly as I could. However, it was too late to assume an intimidating expression—I was afraid I was gawping at him more like poor scared Bambi.
Arthur had recovered from the shock faster than I had, because he was smiling.
No doubt about it, he was still the best-looking boy in the universe, with his symmetrical features, big blue eyes, his porcelain complexion, and his angelic golden curls, but something in him had changed. Not outwardly; there wasn’t even a scar left from his injury, although his jaw had been wired for several weeks. No, the damage was under the surface, as if last fall’s events had affected the mysterious aura of a born winner that used to surround him. And his smile had clearly lost something of its hypnotic charm. “Very smart outfit, Liv Silver.”
I didn’t have to look down at myself to know what I was wearing—it was what I actually had on at that moment: a pair of baggy pajama bottoms with blue polka dots on them, and an old T-shirt of Grayson’s that I had rescued from the donation bag because I thought the panda in a pink tutu on the front of it was funny. The wording under the panda said TOO FAT FOR A BALLERINA.
Hell. Why was I roaming around these corridors in pajamas? I ought to have turned into a jaguar. Then maybe Arthur would have shown a little more respect. “Thanks,” I said with all the dignity I could muster up. “Have you seen Henry? He ought to be somewhere around here.”
“I wonder why I’m not surprised to find you still haunting this place?” Arthur smiled faintly. “Well, it was obvious that you weren’t going to give that up. What are you after? Getting into your teachers’ dreams in the hope of better grades?”