Black Mirror (17 page)

In the silence, I could hear the ticking of Ms. Wiles’s hubcap clock. Then she said gently, “Is there any part of this that you’re
not
guessing at?”

I swallowed. Suddenly the logical structure that had seemed so clear in my mind trembled and crumbled. I flailed around in the debris looking for something to say. Andy’s testimony about the boxes! But there was the way Ms. Wiles had spoken of Andy earlier—and somehow I didn’t mention him now … a retarded man’s testimony …

“Any part at all?” persisted Ms. Wiles. “Any proof? Do you have
proof
, Frances?”

The dust on the cans at the food pantry. Saskia’s clothes and jewelry. Even the way Daniel had tried so hard to alienate me—now it flew into my head to wonder if he’d been trying to protect me. Could it be?

I swallowed. “Ms. Wiles, look. You don’t have to believe it. I just thought, if you’d come to the police with me. Let them take over. Please. I just need you to support me while I tell someone—someone who can investigate properly.”

The hubcap clock ticked on in the quiet.

I remembered something Saskia had said to me during her tour.
We act as a central clearing-house for donations and redistribution. Of course, these days we’re pushing people to donate plain cash. That way we can buy what’s most needed, and not be stuck redistributing useless stuff that people really ought to throw out.
Money, I thought despairingly. If only I’d been as interested as Daniel in money and how it works, I might have done a better job of piecing this together.

“You’re a very creative girl, Frances,” Ms. Wiles said finally. “Smart too. A little overwhelmed, though, and very, very sad and lonely. It’s maybe not surprising that you’ve let your imagination run away with you …”

I stared at her. My brain whipped desperately on. Patrick Leyden’s marketing campaign to expand the scholarship program to middle schools—if I was right, he was planning to move his drug distribution operation in among the littler kids …

“I like you very much, Frances,” said Ms. Wiles gently. “But the other day you nearly had a breakdown, sweetheart. I think you’re imagining things now. After all,” she repeated, “it’s not as if you have any proof.”

“No,” I said. “No, I’m not imagining anything.” But I knew it was useless.
They killed my brother.
I felt the words well up wildly inside me.
Ms. Wiles, they killed Daniel! I know it!
But I didn’t let the thought escape. I knew it wouldn’t be believed. And she was right: I had no proof.

“So you won’t go with me to the police?” I said.

Ms. Wiles got up. “We’re going to have my nice stew,” she said. “And after that, Frances, I’m going to walk you to the infirmary. You can get a good night’s sleep there, and then we’ll talk tomorrow.” She paused. “I’d really like to believe you, Frances. If you just had something concrete—but you don’t, do you?”

Helplessly I shook my head.

Ms. Wiles shook hers back. “Then it’s hard not to think you’re a little … well, delusional.”

She smiled kindly. Very kindly.

I
f I’d thought things through, I wouldn’t have done what I did next, because there was really no point to it. It wasn’t as if I were thinking of actually running away—from Pettengill, from Lattimore. But as I sat bewildered and unbelieved in Ms. Wiles’s living room, defiance filled me. I wasn’t going to let Ms. Wiles take me to the nurse like a—like a kicked kitten.

Ms. Wiles was in the kitchen, ladling out stew, saying something that I didn’t bother to hear. Intending simply to slip out, I quietly crossed the room toward the front door, grabbing my coat as I passed. But my gaze fixed itself on the door to Ms. Wiles’s studio, and I found I’d approached it and grasped the knob. It turned easily. The room was unlocked.

Then, as if I’d planned it, I found myself swiveling back
to the front door, silently opening it a few inches, and then turning back to step inside the studio and close that door behind me.

And there, finally inside the studio that I’d longed to see ever since I’d known Ms. Wiles, I froze in shock. It wasn’t completely dark in the room—some light filtered in around the window blinds—but it wasn’t possible to see very well either. That didn’t matter, though. I had no need to use my eyes.

I inhaled sharply. Behind me I could hear Ms. Wiles’s exclamation, hear her running feet as she crossed the living room to the open front door. Hear her call after me—she thought—into the winter dark: “Frances! Frances, come back!”

None of this mattered. Standing in the converted sunporch, my nose and lungs telegraphed information directly to my brain.

The room smelled wrong. There was no charcoal or graphite dust in the air. No rich lingering stench of turpentine or oil. No tiny fruity aroma of a recently-used acrylic. No dirty or damp or dried-out rags. There was not even—artwork aside—the normal human scent that any well-used room takes on. And, finally, the place was bitterly cold.

Ms. Wiles had never created art in this room. No one had, ever.

It was very nearly empty. A few boxes were stacked against one wall, but that was it.

I slipped my arms into the sleeves of my coat and buttoned
it. But … Ms. Wiles
was
an artist, I reminded myself. She couldn’t have fooled me about that—let alone have fooled the school, and all the other students. Ms. Wiles taught art, and she taught it well. She knew what she was talking about. She understood what she saw. That wasn’t faked. That
couldn’t
be faked.

But none of it mattered right now, because even if Ms. Wiles was a real artist with real work of her own, she didn’t do that work here—and she had lied about it. So, what else might she have lied about? The answer leapt into my mind:
About being my friend.

I exhaled slowly. I thought of how Ms. Wiles had urged me to get involved with Unity. Urged me to cooperate with Patrick Leyden’s grand campaign to raise money for middle-school scholarships.

When we were sitting shivah for Daniel, Ms. Wiles had been talking with Patrick Leyden. She called him a dickhead to me, but he called her Yvette.

I found my way to a box in the corner of the false studio and sat on its edge. Patrick Leyden. Who
wasn’t
he intimate with at Pettengill? All the Unity kids, the Pettengill alumni, people in the school administration—they all loved him. He donated money; he got great publicity. How many of them knew the truth about Unity? There were teachers who were involved with Unity explicitly. Some of them had been at the meeting I’d gone to. Who else had been there? The associate dean—oh, God. Where did it end? No one was safe for me to talk to. Anyone could be involved …

Vaguely I was aware that in the next room Ms. Wiles had made a phone call or two. I couldn’t make out her words—I didn’t even try. I didn’t cross to the door and press my ear against it. I didn’t make plans or try to work anything out.

I just sat.

Ms. Wiles.

And James, my James, who was not mine at all. I tried to tell myself that he was new to Pettengill; he was dealing in a small-time way; he was not, could not, be involved with Unity. But with despair I remembered the time I’d seen him in the woods with a strange man, and the furtiveness of it all, and I couldn’t convince myself. If Ms. Wiles could be involved, why not James? That scene at the meeting, when he’d confronted and angered Patrick Leyden—it might have been staged. Although I couldn’t think why …

One thing I did know, though: I had a stupid heart. I loved the wrong people.

I forced my mind onward.

Daniel.

My brother. What had really happened to Daniel? The fleeting thought I’d had earlier came back inexorably. Daniel had been so vehement, so vicious, about not wanting me involved with Unity. I wondered again—was it at all possible that he had been trying to protect me? I so wanted to believe it. I tried to remember a single tender thing my brother had said to me since we began at Pettengill, since he’d joined Unity, since he’d become involved with Saskia.

But there was nothing.

Had Daniel been killed? Was it really not a suicide? My thoughts flew round and round like vultures circling a dying man. There was my dream, but that wasn’t all I had to go on. Saskia and the Unity kids had been the only ones who could confirm that Daniel had been suicidal. Who could confirm his “longtime drug habit.” My throat filled with the old hatred for Saskia. She’d claimed Daniel had written her that brief suicide note. What if he hadn’t? What if Saskia had written it? What if Patrick Leyden had?

I thought of Saskia in her beautiful clothes. Maybe, if not for Saskia, Daniel would have joined me in disdaining Unity. Maybe—

But I couldn’t fool myself about that for very long. Unity had not been about Saskia for Daniel. It had been about Patrick Leyden. Patrick Leyden had killed Daniel, if anyone had. Indirectly, at least—and maybe even directly.

Then my nails bit at my palms, and I thought,
What if they did kill Daniel? What’s been done once is easier the second time—what if they decide to kill me too?

Bile rose in my throat. The shock of its taste abruptly brought me into the present. I shifted on the box, became aware of the frozen blocks that were my feet. How long had I been sitting there? It might have been minutes or hours. I couldn’t see the face of my watch. How much longer could I safely stay? And if I left—where would I go? Who could I talk to? James? Ha.

I thought of my father with sudden longing. If I were to tell him all this, what would he say? Would he come with me to the police?

My father … I swallowed. We’d just had that talk, and he’d advised me to close my eyes, to take the scholarship and ignore my feelings about Patrick Leyden. But I hadn’t known any of this stuff then, and at least I could be sure that my father wouldn’t mean me any harm. That he was a man of integrity.

But not of courage, or initiative. And he might not believe me either.

I put my hands up to my face. I couldn’t think what to do. Turn myself in to Ms. Wiles? Tell her I was crazy, that I believed I was crazy? Maybe that would be safest—I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to take even the smallest risk. But if Daniel had been murdered—if Unity was the front for a drug distribution ring, now planning to expand into middle schools—utter evil, going after the younger kids …

Who knew what Ms. Wiles had already been up to? People might be looking for me—scouring the campus and Lattimore.

I needed to think. Oh, God. I needed just a little more time and space and then surely, surely, I’d be able to figure out something to do.

It was then that I remembered Andy Jankowski. Andy, the only person on campus who could not possibly be involved in—whatever this was. Andy, who lived practically next door, above the garage.

I
could hear no activity in the cottage anymore, so possibly Ms. Wiles had left. But it didn’t really matter; from its previous life as a sunporch, the fake studio had its own door to the outside. I peeked around it cautiously and then slipped out into the calm darkness. It was the work of a moment to cross to the big white garage above which Andy Jankowski had his apartment. The windows on the second floor were dark, however. I lingered in the shadow of the building. What time was it? Could I wake Andy if he was there but asleep? How? Would loud knocking cause too much of a racket? There were other faculty apartments nearby—and people might be looking for me.

I stood helplessly, unable to move or make another decision.

And then, like a miracle, above my head a light went on.
I stepped away from the side of the garage and looked up and, after a minute or two, a shade went up and Andy’s face appeared at the window. He looked right out at me. I thought about lifting my hand to wave, but I didn’t. It felt too heavy. I just kept staring upward.

More lights snapped on in the apartment, and then another one appeared behind the downstairs door. The door opened and Andy came outside. He was fully dressed, but with unlaced boots and coatless. He was carrying his coat, however. He came up to me and put it around my shoulders, on top of mine. I looked up at him, but it was too dark to read his expression.

“Frances Leventhal,” he said. He sounded puzzled, and a little alarmed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. My temples were pounding. “I needed a place to go. I just needed …” I couldn’t go on. A friend. A real one.

“I woke up,” Andy said slowly. “You were at Ms. Wiles’s. She was going to help you.”

“She didn’t help me. I needed a place to go. Could I—please—could I come in? Just for a little while.” I could hear the desperation in my voice. I wondered if Andy would recognize it. If it would mean anything to him.

He said simply: “Yes. Come in, Frances Leventhal.”

“Thank you,” I managed. But for some reason I still couldn’t move. Then Andy reached out a hand, took mine in it carefully, gently, and led me up the stairs inside and into his apartment.

Andy was an awkward host. He ushered me to an old, well-scrubbed kitchen table, removed a cardboard box from the second chair so I could sit there, and sat down himself, looking across at me for a full minute in uncertain silence before suddenly leaping up and pouring me a glass of milk. James’s favorite beverage. I felt my shoulders tighten. I sipped at the milk anyway while Andy drank his own glass with an expression almost of relief at having thought of something to do. He fidgeted in his chair. He shot me frowning, nervous glances. The room was warm. I slipped off Andy’s coat, and my own.

There was a big clock on the wall. Eleven-thirty, it said.

“She didn’t help you?” Andy asked suddenly. “That Ms. Wiles?” The huge wrinkle across his forehead was deep.

I shook my head. I couldn’t look at Andy, so I looked around the apartment.

It was a single, large room, with the irregular eaves and sloped ceiling of a space that had been created as an afterthought in an attic area. The walls were a bright, clean white and bare of pictures; plain horizontal blinds hung over the windows. Andy’s single bed stood in the far corner against the wall. The living room area was defined by an old brown sofa, a green rug remnant, and a large television. In the kitchen nook, where I now sat, there was a sink and a stove, but no real oven, only a microwave.