Liv, Forever (5 page)

I can’t say I minded not having to stand up and introduce myself, but a simple acknowledgment might’ve been
nice. It was like the teachers already had their favorite star students and had no interest in a new one.

My first class was English literature. The teacher, Mrs. Winslow, explained that Minerva and Wallace Wickham had personally established the Wickham Hall curriculum. And because they were great lovers of Romantic poetry, we’d spend the better part of the first semester on it. We’d start with the “big six” writers. William Blake first.

Blake was one of my favorites, always, because he was a poet
and
an artist. He illustrated his own poems, mixing text with imagery. And that’s what I liked to do. I never wrote actual poems, but I used text. Also, he was almost as obsessed with angels as I was.

We read “A Little Girl Lost” aloud. The first stanza always got me:

He was so certain things would have changed for us “children of the future age.” But had they? Had we even come close to attaining Blake’s vision of “free love”? At Wickham Hall they wouldn’t even let you be alone with a guy.

When Mrs. Winslow asked what the father in the poem might stand for, I raised my hand. I was pretty sure I knew. Social restraint, conventions, rules. But she completely
ignored me. One of the Sloans from my dorm got called on instead and guess what? I was right.

Then Malcolm’s blond friend piped up. “But couldn’t love be a crime?” he asked, smiling incessantly. “If you loved the wrong person?”

From snippets of conversation around campus, I’d gathered that his name was Kent Steers and that he was Abigail’s twin brother. It made sense. He had her same straight blonde hair. And I’d known his smile seemed familiar when I first saw him in the dining hall.

“Fascinating concept, Kent. Not a theme that’s central to the poem, but very,
very
interesting,” Mrs. Winslow fawned.

But none of the teacher’s favorites—the Sloans or Charlottes or Dylans or Kents—seemed to notice the irony of reading this poem at Wickham Hall.

I CHECKED MY SMALL
metal mailbox in the Student Activity Center on my way to lunch. I found one piece of paper, a memo marked
URGENT
. It read:

I consulted my campus map and discovered the infirmary was located in one of the oldest buildings on campus, not far from Old Homestead, about a ten-minute
walk. I headed over immediately, beyond relieved to have a reason to skip lunch.

Someone must have been watching as I approached the door of the old stone structure because I got buzzed in before I even knocked. I entered a hallway, long and dark, passing room after room—all empty.

“Wickham Hall is more than two hours away from the nearest hospital, so we have to be prepared,” snapped the officious Nurse Cobbs, startling me as she exited one of the rooms and started to escort me down the hall. “Back in the day, with tuberculosis and small pox rampant, we needed our own miniature hospital to serve the students and faculty. These days, it’s not so busy.” She almost sounded disappointed.

We entered a small examination room, and she sat me on a table and did the usual: temperature, blood pressure, reflexes. She banged my knee with that rubber hammer and nothing happened.

“Maybe my nerves stayed in Vegas,” I joked. She didn’t laugh but instead used the moment to catch my leg off guard, successfully making it jump.

Finally, she moved me to a little school desk to take my blood. I warned her that my veins were terrible. “Most years I showed up to school with bruises because my doctor’s nurse could never hit the vein. Usually they ended up sending me to the lab at the hospital.”

“I’m quite skilled at this task,” she snapped. And, sure enough, she was. She smiled, pleased with her handiwork as the small vial filled. But I had to look away. I couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

ALL WEEK, I APPROACHED
every new class—and every walk in between—thinking I might see Malcolm. But I never did. Occasionally, I thought I saw him in the distance, part of a cluster of Wickies, but as I drew closer, it was never him. I wished he’d asked for my last name or my number, but he hadn’t. I wished I’d sent in a picture for the student directory instead of being an invisible “no picture provided” girl.

The only bright spot of that first week was finally getting to set foot in the Art Center. Close up, it looked like a massive spiral staircase around a giant sunken outdoor fire pit where the school apparently held an annual bonfire: the centerpiece of Fall Festival. The exterior was made of glass and metal. When I stepped inside the atrium, I was shocked to see several of my drawings in one of the galleries. As I approached, I saw a sign that read
WELCOME NEW ARTISTS!

Finally, a real welcome.

“Do you approve?”

The voice startled me. It came from behind—the throaty voice of an older woman, one who probably smoked about a thousand unfiltered cigarettes a day. I turned around. She was smaller than her voice. Tiny, in fact. And ancient, but with that cool, weathered, I’ve-seen-the-world look of Georgia O’Keeffe or Louise Bourgeois. She was dressed like a bohemian—patterned stuff from India, Central America, Africa—nothing resembling anyone else I’d seen around here.

“I was saving your portfolios for your arrival,” she said. “I decided I should celebrate the work.”

I smiled, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d never seen my stuff hanging up anywhere except my own wall. This was like a real gallery. It was exhilarating. But also overwhelming and terrifying. I felt exposed.

She could sense my discomfort. “Your art
should
be up there, Liv, for all to see,” she stressed. “But, unfortunately hardly anyone ever comes in here.” And it was true. This magnificent building was weirdly deserted.

“I’m Ms. Benson, the head of Wickham’s art department.”

“I’m Liv Bloom. But I guess you know that.”

“Yes. May I take you to your studio?”

“Yes, please. I’ve only been waiting sixteen years for this moment.”

MY STUDIO.
IT WAS
perfect. It was the kind of studio you dream about having someday, after you make it big—with high glass ceilings and natural light and a sturdy wooden easel and flat files where I could store my work.

“It’s all mine?” It really didn’t seem possible, but she nodded.

Ms. Benson pointed out all the materials she’d stocked for me: several different inks, every variety of charcoal and pastel, a set of oil paints, a complete double-ended Bristol marker set, and some discarded magazines and newspapers for collage. There was even an old typewriter—just like the one I’d used at home but left behind because it was too heavy.

“I looked at your work carefully and tried to anticipate your needs.”

I had to prevent myself from bursting into spontaneous laughter. No one had ever been quite so thoughtful or generous with me. Not even Santa. I’d made out painstakingly detailed lists every year asking for each of the specific pigments I needed—phthalo green is expensive!—but my parents had always ended up grabbing something like a Crayola paint kit from Target, thinking that was close enough.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll work. Hard. Say you’ll push yourself and try things that are uncomfortable … like making a big mess. Drawing with your left hand. Losing control. Breathe
life
into your work. Put yourself out there. I’d like to see you try bigger canvases that would make your art—and you—really
seen.
” She turned to leave but then paused by the door. “And … say you’ll keep your eyes open and be safe. Don’t find yourself alone at night.”

“They’re pretty strict about that around here, huh?”

“Yes, they are,” she croaked. But I could tell that hadn’t been what she meant.

I WAS SO ENGROSSED
in my drawing I almost missed my 5
P.M.
scholarship meeting. I had to rush across campus clutching the Wickham Hall map with my dirty hands. When I finally arrived, I discovered the work-study advisor was Mrs. Mulford, my dorm mistress (aka Pitchfork Lady). She snapped at me; I was eleven minutes late. She reminded me that my scholarship at Wickham Hall was
dependent upon successful completion of my work shifts. Then she informed me with near glee that my work-study job partner was Gabriel Nichols.

I looked over. Of course. Gabe from First Dinner.

“The students paired off, choosing partners they felt were well suited. Mr. Nichols was not yet selected.”

Gabe: the weirdo in the corner no one picked. Imagine, even the scholarship students were this judgmental. He gave me a little wave from the corner of the room, then held up his arms triumphantly, shaping his thumbs and pointer fingers into
L
s: the universal symbol for “loser.” I smiled.

“Great,” I chirped to Mrs. Mulford. “That’s who I would’ve picked anyway.”

Part of me wanted to let her know she hadn’t won, part of me felt sorry for him, and part of me meant it. He kind of scared me, but he also seemed more real than anyone else around here. At least he owned his weirdness. It was brave. Being at Wickham Hall kind of made me feel like a loser, too, but I’d never wear it as a badge.

Mrs. Mulford made us wait until the other teams had their assignments. Then she explained our first job was to catalog all the alumni names carved into the bricks of the catacombs. We were to start immediately. Gabe shuddered. Like, actually
shuddered.
As if he had some physical reaction to the thought of the catacombs. I asked him what was wrong, but he shrugged it off.

WE STARTED AT THE
bottom of the circular stairway, the same one Abigail had led us down the day I arrived. If you
looked closely at each brick, there was a name and year carved into it. Supposedly, this had been a tradition for many years, until all the bricks were carved. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the school, they’d decided to log all these names and create a map of their locations so visiting alumni might easily find their ancestors’ bricks. So it was our job to trudge like rats through the dark underground hallway and record these names on a laptop they’d given us. It seemed like an absurd task to me, but compared to what I’d expected—having to do dishes or scrub floors Cinderella-style—it didn’t seem so bad.

I read out names, and Gabe typed them into the laptop, names like Archibald Cumberland and Willfred Pinfolds. I almost giggled a few times. You could just picture these people holding lapdogs or muskets while posing for a somber Gilbert Stuart portrait like that one of George Washington on the one-dollar bill.

But Gabe was edgy, constantly looking over his shoulder. He kept jerking at the tiniest sound.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said unconvincingly as he clicked on the computer. “Did you notice this laptop is completely blank and Internet disabled?”

“So?”

“They obviously don’t trust us.”

“Or it’s a new computer and they didn’t put anything on it yet.”

He huffed but then lurched, apparently hearing something down the hall. His edginess was making me feel uncomfortable, too. I tried to distract him.

“Prudence Goggins. Class of 1939.” I put on a crackly old voice. “I studied needlepoint and tea-making at Wickham Hall and then went on to marry the ketchup baron … Haverford Heinz, Class of 1938.”

Gabe managed a chuckle. We turned the corner into a small nook off the hallway, and he suddenly screamed—at the top of his lungs. He grabbed my shirt and lurched backward, pulling me away from something hideous. Something horrible. The school laptop hit the floor and smashed. I fell right on top of it.

“Run! Now!” he shouted at me. And then he turned back to the darkness, addressing whatever was there. “No! Stop! Go away!”

As I was gathering myself up and pulling away, I couldn’t help but quickly glance back into the dark nook—the way you have to look at a car accident as you pass—and I saw it.

Nothing.

There was nothing there. But nothing has never been so frightening.

THE BROKEN LAPTOP SAT
on the table between Mrs. Mulford and us. Needless to say, she wasn’t pleased, especially with Gabe.

“Considering you’re on Final Warning, this incident warrants a conversation with the headmaster and could possibly precipitate your expulsion.”

He stared at his lap, his hair shielding his eyes. But I could tell from his expression that, as much as he despised Wickham Hall, home was worse. I understood. I felt for him. So, without really thinking, I started to talk.