Belzhar (14 page)

IN SPECIAL TOPICS THE NEXT MORNING, ON OUR
first school day after break, it’s obvious that so much has changed since we were all together last. I barely look over at Griffin, afraid that if I do, someone might notice what’s happened between us. As we all sit at the oval table waiting for class to begin, Griffin is no longer slouched down, his head in his hoodie. Instead, the hoodie is off and he looks over at me, his eyes alert and questioning. But I keep my expression neutral and turn toward the window. I don’t want anyone to know what’s happened.

But it isn’t just us. Casey enters pushed by Marc, and both of them distinctly seem to have a secret. Even Sierra seems different. Though we’d hung out when she got back from break, she seemed quiet. And now she keeps to herself before class begins, busying herself with her papers, shuffling them a lot more than necessary.

When Mrs. Quenell comes in, she sits down, looks around at us with a slow smile, and then says, “Together at last.”

“How was your break, Mrs. Q?” Casey asks.

“Oh, fine, Casey, thank you for asking. I got a head start on packing, because as you know I’m moving out of my house right after classes end. Right now I’m still swimming in a sea of bubble wrap. How about the rest of you?”

Everyone says vague, positive things about Thanksgiving.

“You all seem a little . . . heightened,” Mrs. Quenell says, and that’s an accurate word. But nobody’s willing to say specifically what’s going on with them.

The odd energy in the classroom carries over into our discussion about Plath, who we return to as if she were an old friend. Today we’re talking about an early poem called “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” She wrote it in college, and Mrs. Quenell asks Casey if she would read the first three stanzas aloud. Casey takes a breath and starts to read:

“‘I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite

insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)’”

During the short but intense reading, I can barely move or think. I feel my heart knocking inside me. Sylvia Plath understands everything about love. What it does to you. What it did to me.

She knows me.

For a little while after the poem gets read, I sit very still, trying to calm the knocking. I see that Mrs. Quenell is looking at me, and I feel sure she knows something. Just like Plath, she seems to know everything.

I remember some meditation trick that Dr. Margolis taught me—how if I start to feel overwhelmed, I should just focus on my breathing. “Breath goes in, breath goes out,” he’d said in a slow, hypnotic voice. “Breath goes in, breath goes out.”

I keep breathing rhythmically now and try not to think of anything at all. At first it seems to work, and my thoughts of Reeve start to disappear. But then a new batch of thoughts arrive. Thoughts about Griffin, who’s sitting only two seats away from me. I didn’t want to sit right next to him today, because it would have been too much.

Belzhar can’t be explained, but what went on between Griffin and me can’t really be explained either.

I think I made you up inside my head
, I think, and the line refers to Reeve and Griffin equally.

• • •

After class, Griffin stops me in the hall and says, “You left something at the farm.” It’s the first time we’ve talked since we’ve been back at school. He reaches into his backpack and pulls out the maroon hoodie he’d lent me.

“No, that’s yours.”

“You take it. I have others. Like, five hundred of them.”

“I noticed.” He presses the hoodie into my arms. “Listen, Griffin,” I say. “The thing that happened when we were at the farm? It can’t happen again.”

He looks hard at me. “Oh,” he says. “Okay.” Then he pauses and adds, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sorry,” I tell him, and then I turn away before he can say anything else. I’m still carrying his hoodie in my arms, and I don’t have the heart to give it back.

But late that afternoon, alone in the dying light of my dorm room, trying to make sense of my French homework, I put on his hoodie again. It’s much too big, but it keeps me warm, and it smells human, physical, as if another person’s arms and chest have been inside it day after day. A specific person. Him. I like knowing that. Wearing the hoodie makes me feel as if he’s nearby.

Which is somehow what I want, despite having told him that what we did can never happen again.

• • •

That night the five of us gather in the dark classroom, a special Monday night meeting because Marc got back late the night before. The meeting feels as urgent as our very first one, back when we were all trying to make sense of what was happening to us.

Marc helps Casey out of her chair, then positions her beside him. “Well, we have an announcement,” he says.

“We?”
says Griffin.

“Marc and me. We kind of got together,” Casey says shyly. “But it’s more than that. It’s become something big.”

“That’s excellent,” says Sierra. “How did it happen?”

“Oh, we started texting over break,” Marc says. “And I asked if I could take the shuttle down and see her in New York. It was too depressing in my house. We went to the Museum of Natural History to look at the dinosaurs, and out for Chinese dumplings. We had a great time.”

“So it’s serious?” I ask.

“Oh yeah,” says Casey. As if to demonstrate, she leans her head against Marc, and they look like the most serene, long-term couple in the world.

Sierra lifts a paper cup of green Gatorade in their honor, and says, “This is the best news.” Then, when Casey and Marc have said everything they want to say, Sierra says, “Now I have to tell you all something too.”

Has she fallen for someone? Have love and sex swept over our entire class the way Belzhar did? But when she leans forward I can tell this isn’t about hooking up or falling in love. This is something else, but I don’t know what.

“I think I might know who took my brother,” she says.

“What?”
I say.

“I went to Belzhar over Thanksgiving, of course,” Sierra says in a rush, “and I was sitting on the bus with André, like always. When he fell asleep, I started looking around at other people. I’ve been to Belzhar a lot, of course, but I’ve only really focused on my brother. I can’t believe it took me so long. And I noticed this one guy in his fifties—white, scrawny, gray hair. He was just sitting there kind of watching André like it was the most interesting sight in the world.

“I said to him, ‘Excuse me, can I help you?’ He just turned away from me. So I spent the rest of the ride thinking about where I’d seen him before, because I knew I had.

“And then I remembered. He’d been to one of our dance concerts. They’re open to the public, and tickets are free. But I remembered that he’d been to both performances, the early one and the late one, and that he’d sat up front. And when I noticed him on the bus, looking at André, something clicked.

“So over Thanksgiving, after I went to Belzhar, I called Detective Sorrentino again and described this guy to him. And he said something like, ‘So I’m supposed to believe that after
three years
, you suddenly remember a particular person on the bus that day?’ And I said yes. And he said, ‘So what is it, a recovered memory?’ I said I didn’t know what that meant, and I begged him to try and track down this guy. But when I called back on Sunday, he admitted that he hadn’t done anything, like interview the staff of the dance academy again, or talk to people who said they’d been to those shows back then. ‘I decided it isn’t a high-value lead’ is what he said.”

“But you
saw
the guy,” says Casey. “What could be higher value than that?”

“I saw him in Belzhar,” Sierra reminds her. “What am I supposed to tell Sorrentino?”

“But it’s infuriating,” I say. “It could be a real lead. Can’t you get your parents involved?”

Sierra shakes her head. “No, not anymore. Every time I think I have a lead and then it turns out to be nothing, it’s so hard for them. I can’t involve them again. They’re worn out, they’re barely functioning. Just because this guy was looking at André on the bus in Belzhar doesn’t prove anything. But I have to get Sorrentino to follow up. I’m going to keep calling all the time from the pay phone. But I don’t have a lot of faith in the system, to put it mildly.”

She stops talking and we’re all silent, and she looks over at Griffin, and then at me. Then she does it again. Sierra is a perceptive person, and since we’ve gotten so close, she knows me. “Wait, what’s the deal?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” Griffin says.

“Come on,” says Marc. “I saw something in class today too. You and Jam. What’s going on?”

I can’t imagine what to say, but I don’t have to say anything, because Griffin does. “Something happened between us,” he says, and I’m shocked.

“Griffin, that was private,” I say. “And besides, I told you it can’t happen again.”

Everyone is totally fascinated by our little soap opera, and they just keep looking back and forth between us.

“I’m sick of keeping everything in, okay, Jam?” he says. “Walking around
feeling
things, and then they can’t be talked about. I’m just sick of it.”

“But you still didn’t have to announce it,” I say.

We stare at each other. “It can really never happen again?” he asks.

I can’t believe we’re talking about this in front of everyone. “I don’t know,” I finally say, which is the same as saying, Yes, Griffin, it can happen again. And if you want to know the truth, I want it to happen again.

The others are still watching us, and I realize I’m not mad at him anymore. It’s done now; it’s out. I take his hand. It’s past time for us to go back to the dorms, but no one wants to get up. We all sit for a little while longer in this close and glowing circle.

SNOW FALLS ON VERMONT, BUT NOT ON BELZHAR.
Griffin and I walk along wet, white paths together in our down jackets and boots. Only when we’re deep in the woods do we hold hands or stop to touch or kiss, and our hair and eyelashes become dotted with snow. We barely talk, because he knows what I’m thinking, and there’s nothing we can say that will make me feel okay about my double life.

In Belzhar, the air is cool but not cold, and the grass remains brown, without a single flake of snow. Each time I go there, Reeve is tensely waiting. He has no idea about Griffin, and though I’ve explained to him how the journals work, he doesn’t understand what all of us in Special Topics fear: that a rapidly filling journal is like a ticking clock.

Back and forth between worlds I go, like a demented, hallucinating bigamist.

One afternoon during mail call, I receive a letter from my mom that upsets me further:

Dear Jam,

We were so sorry to miss you over Thanksgiving, but Christmas will be here before you know it, and we’re all THRILLED that you’ll be home for two and a half whole weeks. First, a little news. I ran into Hannah’s mom at the mall, and she told me that Hannah and Ryan broke up. Naturally, that was a surprise, and I thought maybe you’d want to drop Hannah a line. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.

Now, on to what I really wanted to discuss. As I told you, Dad and I have been concerned about Leo since he’s been hanging around with that Connor Bunch. Then this week something shocking happened. I’m just going to go ahead and write it: Leo was arrested for shoplifting at Price Cruncher. Yes, that’s right, LEO.

Introverted, nerdy, twelve-year-old Leo,
arrested
? She’s right; I’m shocked too. Far more shocked than I am about Hannah and Ryan, which is also pretty shocking. After I read my mom’s news about Leo, I have to put down the letter for a full ten seconds before continuing:

He stole a can of orange spray paint, can you believe it? He shoved it down his shirt, and Connor did the same thing, and they were caught on video. Store security hauled them into a special room in the back for shoplifters that’s like a little jail cell with bars, and they actually called the cops. Because they’re both so young, the store was persuaded not to press charges, but you can imagine how Dad and I feel.

Jam, what I want to say up front is that I really can’t wait for you to be back in Leo’s life. Lately I wonder if we did the right thing, sending you to The Wooden Barn. Maybe you won’t feel the need to go back up there for spring semester. Maybe you’ve been able to deal with what happened last year a little better by now.

After a rough start this fall, it sounds like things have gotten easier. You even sounded chipper on the phone this week. Dr. Margolis thinks it’s great that you’re so involved with your a cappella group and your Special Topics in English class. We told you it was important to try living there. But maybe, because you’re doing so well now, you’ve gotten all you can get out of it. We’ll have to have a sit-down and discuss this in person.

I thought that over Christmas break, you could make sure to spend extra time with Leo. He’s still struggling with how to be a social person in the world, which he never really had to deal with before. But now that he is more in the world, and less in his fantasy world with all those wizards and driftlords (is that the right word?), he needs guidance.

Darling, you’re someone who’s been through tough times. Like a driftlord you’ve “drifted,” but like a wizard you now seem “wise.” So maybe when you’re home you could give your little brother a hand. Dad and I would be grateful.

xoxo

Mom

I put the letter back in its envelope, feeling terrible as I remember how, earlier in the semester, she’d asked me to write to Leo, and I never had. Later in the afternoon, I take my calling card down to the pay phone and call home. It’s not the end of the workday yet, so I know my mom and dad will both still be in the office at Gallahue and Gallahue LLP. But Leo should be home by now.

After half a dozen rings he says hello in his slightly nasal voice.

“It’s your sister,” I say. “Remember me?”

“Maybe,” Leo says. “Long brown hair?”

“Yep. How was Thanksgiving?”

“It was all right. Aunt Paula and Uncle Donald came from Teaneck. They brought kale.”

“Sorry I missed that.”

“The relatives or the kale?”

“Both,” I say.

There’s a pause and I can hear crunching. Leo’s eating an after-school snack, probably cool-ranch-flavored chips. In the background I hear the TV, or maybe the computer, and then a boy’s voice saying, “Where’d you go, Gallahue?”

“I’ll be right in!” Leo calls.

“Who’s that?” I ask innocently.

“A friend.”

“You don’t have friends,” I say. “Not the kind who come over after school.” I know this sounds mean, but it’s true. “Maybe you have forty-year-old online friends who live with their parents,” I go on. “And who play
Magic Driftlord
.”

“
Dream Wanderers,
” he corrects me. “Driftlords are
characters
in
Dream Wanderers.
And I do have a real friend. Connor Bunch.”

“So I’ve heard. Do Mom and Dad know he’s over?”

“Why, are you going to tell them?” Leo asks in a nasty voice.

“Whoa, little bro, who
are
you these days?” I say. “By the way, I know about the shoplifting.”

There’s a silence. “It wasn’t supposed to go down that way,” Leo bursts out. “Connor said there weren’t any security cameras in that part of the—”

“
Leo,
” I interrupt. “You don’t just go from being an unconscious little dweeb to being a
criminal.
Look,” I say in a softer voice, “I know it’s good to have a friend and everything. But use your head! You can’t go along with whatever Connor Bunch says just because you’re glad he wants to hang out with you.”

“I
don’t
go along with whatever he says. You should hear some of the things I say no to!” Leo lowers his voice and says, “But he’s the only one who’s
nice
to me, Jam.”

“What were you going to do with the spray paint? Vandalize the school?”

“Connor had an idea. He just hadn’t told me yet. We didn’t get that far because we got caught.”

“Well, I’m sure it was something incredibly idiotic,” I tell him. “And I’m glad you got caught, Leo. Otherwise, you might’ve done it a second time.”

There’s a long, long pause, and Leo confesses, “Actually, this
was
the second time. The first time, we didn’t get caught. But we hardly
took
anything then. Just a couple of Snickers bars. Connor says that stores don’t even
care
about the little stuff, that they factor it in—”

“Are you nuts, Leo? It’s
stealing.
You’re cheating hardworking people out of the money they earned. Just think about Mom and Dad.”

“What about them?” he says glumly.

“What if a guy came to Gallahue and Gallahue LLP, wanting them to be his accountants? And after Mom and Dad did a little work for him—a little hard work that they went to school to learn how to do—he ran out of the building without paying. And our parents had done this work so they could afford our food and clothes and our orthodontia. And so maybe we could all take a vacation once in a while. But the guy decided, ‘Screw the Gallahues, I won’t pay.’ Would
that
be right?”

“No,” Leo says with a tiny, choking sob.

“Exactly,” I say.

I realize that I sound a little like my mom or dad now, but not in a bad way. I listen for a second or two while Leo struggles to contain his emotions. I don’t want to make him feel
too
bad, so I say, “Listen, I’m coming home for Christmas. I’m not going to get snowed in this time. And you and I are going to hang out, okay? We can sit in my room—I’ll let you come in more, I won’t say ‘Go away’ through the door—and we can have life conversations and stuff.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Will you play me some indie rock?”

“Indie rock? Is that what you want me to do?” I’m completely surprised by this. I had no idea that Leo even knew music existed.

“Yes,” he says, snuffling. “I think it’s time.”

“Okay, then,” I say. “I will.”

• • •

When our class meets again in the darkened classroom around the candle, our main topic of conversation is the end of the journals. We’ve each got an average of three more visits left before the last line gets covered with writing.

“And then what?” says Marc. He’s so agitated about this that he can’t sit still, but keeps drumming his fingers on the floor like a hyperactive kid.

“And then we find a way to keep going back,” says Sierra. “We have to. I’m not going to leave André there.”

“No one says you have to,” says Casey.

“But no one’s told us how to keep going.”

“No one’s told us
anything,
” Griffin says.

As the end of the journals seems to be closing in, none of us knows what to do, and we’re all getting increasingly anxious.

“Maybe, on the last day of class, Mrs. Q will give us a
second
journal,” says Casey. “And we can take it with us when we go home for Christmas.”

“A blue leather journal,” says Marc.

“Nah, that’s not going to happen,” says Sierra. “And you know it.”

I feel a pressure building up in my chest, and my throat gets thick. “Oh, Jam,” my mom used to say in the first weeks and months after I lost Reeve, “where did you go?” I was empty then, I was barely a person. But because of Belzhar, I’ve been coming around, returning to my “old self,” as my parents would probably say if they could see me now. To lose Reeve a second time would empty me out all over again.

“I don’t think I could live without seeing André,” Sierra says. She isn’t being melodramatic. She’s stating a fact.

Everyone’s quiet and worried, and finally someone says it’s getting late. Griffin leans over to blow out the candle—he’s always the one who makes sure it’s out, and since the trip to the farm I know why—when we hear tires on snow, and see a spinning red light pour through the windows.

“Oh, come
on,
this can’t be happening,” says Casey, and Marc helps her into her chair as car doors slam, and then campus security barges first into the building, and then the classroom. We’re busted.

A little while later the headmaster, Dr. Gant, meets us for an “emergency meeting” in his office. He’s been called away from the boys’ dorm, where he also serves as houseparent, and where he was probably just starting to get everyone settled down for the night. We all take seats around his woody, dimly-lit room, a place I’ve only seen once, the first day I arrived here. I was in such a state that afternoon, monosyllabic and furious.

How long ago that day seems. I remember how my mom stood in my dorm room punching the edges of my orange study buddy to distribute the filling evenly. And how DJ stared at me from her bed, and I was positive that she and I would always dislike each other.

All I could think about, that day, was how much I missed Reeve.

Everything’s different now.

“People,” says Dr. Gant. He’s a mild, middle-aged man who looks as if he’d be very sorry to have to discipline anybody. “What were you thinking? You can’t go off unsupervised like that. And you know that candles are a forbidden item here, in a school full of old wooden buildings.”

“I was
on
it,” says Griffin defensively, his chin up. “I would never have let anything happen.” Me, of all people, he means.

“But there are
rules
, Griffin,” says Dr. Gant. “Have you met there at night before?” No one wants to answer. “Security says they found older wax drippings on the floor, so I’m guessing the answer is yes.”

“All right,” Casey says. “Yes, we have.”

“But why?” he asks. “Is it really just to ‘hang out,’ like you told security? Is that it?”

“Sort of,” says Marc. I can see how hard it is for him to lie to an authority figure, or even be vague.

“It sounds a little more complicated than that,” says Dr. Gant. He pauses. “We’ve had a couple of issues with the Special Topics in English people in previous years. They tend to be a very close group. One year they all wandered off into the woods for an hour, and no one knew where they were. Another year they seemed to . . . invent their own language. But I don’t want to talk about students from the past. I want to talk about what’s going on with all of
you
right
now.
”

Of course, it’s interesting to get this information about previous classes, but none of us can ask any more questions about it. And what are we supposed to say about ourselves: All right, Dr. Gant, here’s the deal: Twice a week we write in our journals, which take us to a place where our wrecked lives have been restored. Except now we’re just about out of
room
in the journals, so we need to figure out how to extend our time in that place we go to, because we can’t bear to stop going there.

So, please, Dr. Gant, can you just pretend we
weren’t
busted, and let us keep meeting once a week in the classroom late at night?

But we reveal nothing to him, and finally he removes his rimless eyeglasses and rubs his eyes, then puts the glasses back on, looping the wires carefully over his ears.

“I’m very sorry,” he says, looking at each of us one by one. “But for the rest of the semester, with the exception of classes and meals and rehearsals, consider yourselves members of another class. Let’s call it Special Topics in Being Grounded.”