And We Stay (7 page)

EMILY BEAM WRITES HER BEST POEMS IN HER HEAD WHILE LYING ON
her back staring through the dark at the ceiling while K.T. snores. Emily isn’t sure what to make of K.T. While the two of them were in the bathroom a few hours earlier brushing their teeth, Annabelle Wycoff, who was washing her face, studied Emily in the mirror.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look sad.”

Before Emily had a chance to pull the toothbrush out of her mouth, K.T. said, “Oh, didn’t you know? Emily’s an orphan.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Annabelle said. “Really?”

“Yeah,” said K.T., making her brown eyes as wide as they could be. “Really.”

Emily could tell that K.T. was being sarcastic, but in the mirror, Annabelle turned her eyes to Emily’s. “But didn’t I meet your mom? The day you moved in?”

“That wasn’t her mom,” K.T. said. “That was her guardian.”

“But Emily introduced her as her mom.”

“Wishful thinking,” K.T. said. “Emily’s much too devastated to tell the truth.”

In the mirror, Emily narrowed her eyes.

“My gosh, I’m so sorry,” Annabelle said. “How did your parents die?”

K.T. looked at Emily. “You want to tell her?”

Emily took the toothbrush out of her mouth. “In an avalanche,” she said.

“They were skiing,” said K.T. “In Switzerland.”

“That is just awful.” Annabelle turned to Emily. “Were you with them at the time?”

“No,” said Emily. “I was here in the States, staying with my aunt in Boston.”

“Her parents were on their second honeymoon,” K.T. said. “They were very much in love.”

Annabelle put her hand to her heart and looked at Emily with sad puppy eyes.

“Emily’s hurt,” K.T. explained to Annabelle. “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Without a word, Emily walked out of the bathroom and down the hall, past the huddle of girls by the phone waiting to talk to their boyfriends. When, a minute later, K.T. arrived, Emily refused to join her in her celebratory dance.

“I don’t want to lie to anyone here,” Emily said.

“It wasn’t a real lie,” said K.T. “It’s not like she’ll believe it.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

“Whatever.”

“Whatever yourself,” said K.T., kicking off her suede boots. “Be that way.”

Emily plopped on her bed, thinking of her mom and dad back in Grenfell County. She glanced at her watch. Her dad
would be asleep downstairs in his chair with the radio on, and her mom would be upstairs in bed in her flannel pajamas, reading, which was where they were and what they were doing the night Emily returned from the party at Cole Hankins’s house, the night it all veered off course.

First, there was what happened in Mr. and Mrs. Hankins’s bedroom, and then, when a policeman showed up to shut the party down, Paul was the one to go to the door. Someone had seen the blue lights through the window and had warned everyone to hide their alcohol. When he let the policeman in, Paul did not lie when asked if the teenagers in the house were drinking.

“Tell you what,” Paul said. “I’ll take keys away from everyone who’s in no condition to drive.” The policeman stayed around to make sure it happened but didn’t end up arresting anyone.

To Emily’s surprise, Paul had been a leader that night. Maybe he was mature enough to be a father, but after that party, Emily felt about as mature as a tadpole. She had gotten drunk, the first time in her life she’d ever done more than nurse a beer for four hours. In Mr. and Mrs. Hankins’s bedroom, the three beers she’d had downstairs were making the ceiling spin. After she and Paul did it once on top of the paisley bedspread, Paul wanted a blow job, and Emily said no.

“But it will turn me on,” said Paul. “In a major way.”

“That’s what whores do,” said Emily.

“Emily,” said Paul, “you could never be a whore. You’re a nerd.”

“I am not!”

“You’re, like, the one smart cheerleader. The hot
and
smart one.”

“Is that why you like me? Because I’m a cheerleader?”

“No,” said Paul. “No way. Give me some credit.”

He rolled Emily down again on the bed. He was urgent and this time gave no thought to a condom. She didn’t say anything; he was too far into her and too far gone. It was the only time they’d ever done it twice in a row, and afterward, Emily ran down the hall and threw up in the guest bathroom.

A lot can happen in a bathroom.

Before ASG, Emily never had to share one, but the bathroom in Hart Hall is hardly ever empty. She found the matchbook on the floor of one of the stalls. It was more than against the rules to smoke in Hart Hall—it could get a girl sent home. A wooden house built in the 1890s could go up in flames in a snap.

Emily gets out of bed and walks to the hook where her towel and flashlight are hanging. All AGS girls have hooks with towels and flashlights, their armor against a raging fire that would be started, no doubt, by one carelessly discarded match. Emily takes the flashlight to bed with her and opens the book Madame Colche gave her.

While the Civil War raged in the hills and valleys beyond her home, Emily Dickinson wrote. She was thirty-five when the war ended, a spinster still living at home, which wasn’t unusual. Back then it was what unmarried women of privilege did.

Dickinson dashed off poem after poem, numbering them
to keep track. What she ended up with instead of a husband, instead of children, were words, thousands of them.

In the four months that Emily and Paul were together, they had sex fifteen times. Emily had been in Paul’s bedroom twice, and both times, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wagoner was at home. Her parents were strict, too, about allowing Paul in the house when they were away or already in bed, which was why Emily and Paul spent so many evenings sitting in the truck. Paul knew places to park on the back roads. They made out with the heater on; it was cold without clothes. But it had been thrilling, to be needed so wildly. The first time Emily rubbed her hand over his crotch, Paul came in his pants. He had been a virgin, too.

The next morning, as Emily is stepping out of the shower, Annabelle announces from the sink again how sorry she is for Emily’s loss, her debate-team voice echoing off the tiles.

“I’m sorry for your brothers and sisters, too,” Annabelle says. “If you have any.”

“I don’t,” Emily says, wrapping her towel more tightly around her body.

“It’s a good thing you’re here, isn’t it?”

Emily looks at Annabelle, who seems completely sincere.

“You have a hundred and forty-nine sisters at ASG. Isn’t that great?”

Emily excuses herself.

“Don’t hesitate to knock on my door if you need anything!” Annabelle calls as Emily walks fast, faster, down the
hall to her room. When Emily throws open the door, K.T. is just waking up.

“Thanks to you, Annabelle now wants to be my guardian angel.”

“You could use one,” K.T. says.

“But she’s a cream puff.”

“Yeah, she is, but she aspires to be the first female president of the United States. It wouldn’t be the worst thing, to have Annabelle watching over you.”

“Why did you lie like that?”

“You lied, too,” says K.T.

“You roped me into it,” says Emily. “I couldn’t just stand there like a mute.”

“Come on, it was fun.
And
it will throw them off the trail.”

“What trail? Who’s
them
?”

“You would not believe the rumor mill at this place,” K.T. says.

“Well, you sure gave it a generous feeding last night.”

K.T. smiles. “Exactly. Annabelle is the Mouth. Once the story is out, all the other rumors will fizzle, at least for a while.”

“I thought you said no one would believe it.”

“They won’t, not in their heart of hearts. But an orphan shipped off to boarding school because her hip, rich, very in-love parents died? Are you kidding me? It’s romantic. The stuff of storybooks. And people believe what they want to believe.”

“I need coffee,” Emily says. “I need to think this through.”

“It’s foolproof,” says K.T. “It will keep them occupied for a good long while. Trust me.”

“I was taught never to trust anyone who says ‘trust me.’ ”

“That’s sad. Who taught you that?”

“My dad.”

“Well, forget him,” K.T. says. “He died in an avalanche, remember?”

Emily rolls her eyes. It is exhausting, nights of little sleep, days of being one against the world. While K.T. is in the bathroom, Emily sits at her desk and dashes off the poem that rained on her brain in the shower. Emily wishes she could write to Ms. Albright and tell her that the house where a great American poet lived, the one Ms. Albright loved most, is only three blocks away. Emily should go inside and buy a postcard and write in tiny, tiny print all she needs to say to the best teacher she’s ever had. But where to begin? What do you say to the person who probably saved your life? Not only literally, but also figuratively. With Terra so far away, Ms. Albright’s classroom was the one place at the start of eleventh grade where Emily could be Emily.

Unlike other teachers, Ms. Albright lined the window-sills with flowering plants. Her walls were covered with posters of books and movies that Emily had never heard of. Ms. Albright introduced her, introduced them all, to Ingmar Bergman and Bollywood, showing snippets of films every Friday but only if everyone in class had passed the reading quizzes that week. Every Monday at the start of class, Ms. Albright would read them a poem from the
New Yorker
or even a whole story. Sometimes she passed around the magazine so they could see the cartoons.

Ms. Albright told them memories of her own days in high school, which weren’t that long ago, when everyone
called her Tinkerbell because she was so small. Above all, Ms. Albright showed Emily that the life had a mind all its own, and that this life had its own separate beauty, its own separate magic. But what life is Emily living now? There are two girls trying to claim it, the Emily who used to be and another Emily, scarily unfamiliar. Sometimes, Spooky Emily can communicate only in meter and rhyme.

It is a sadder but wiser Emily who will rise each morning and eat breakfast with her roommate and go through the motions of being an orphan.

Emily Beam,
February 16, 1995

MADAME COLCHE GIVES EMILY A SPECIAL SMILE WHEN SHE WALKS
into French, but Emily can barely smile back. It’s Friday, almost the end of her fifth week of classes, and she feels like a zombie. The coffee at breakfast hasn’t stayed with her, and she skipped lunch to go to the lieberry and write a poem that had been tapping at the back of her brain all morning. Emily almost asks Madame Colche for the leftovers in the French press perched on the windowsill.

Amber sits in the back hiding behind her wheat-stalk hair. As Emily slides into her desk in the middle of the room, she catches Amber’s eye. Amber looks away, but when Emily turns toward her again a few minutes later, Amber winks at Emily. Three times.

“Mademoiselle Atkins,” Madame Colche says.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as? As-tu quelque chose dans ton oeil?” What’s the matter with you? Do you have something in your eye?

“Comment?”

Madame Colche repeats the question.

“Oui,”
says Amber.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” What is it?

“Regret. J’ai le regret dans mon oeil.” I have regret in my eye
.

The whole class turns to look at Amber.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Amber says. “
Ça va
, everybody.
Ça va.
”

Madame Colche says nothing for a moment as Amber shakes her curtain of hair back into place.