Prep: A Novel (10 page)

Whenever Cross responded to John, his voice was perfectly placid. Once Cross said, “Okay, but when would spring break be?”—they were still talking about a whole week of surprise holidays—and they could have been at a table in the dining hall, shooting the shit after dinner. I decided that I liked this gulf between the normality of Cross’s tone and the abnormality of the situation; it made what was happening between us a secret.

He touched my hair, first so briefly that it felt accidental; then his fingers raked through and started over again, and every so often, he rubbed the back of my neck with his thumb. My whole body was hot liquid; I felt beholden to him, and painfully happy. From the radio came the sound of trumpets. The rain outside made everything soft, the roll of the tires over the road, the fuzzy traffic lights, and on Cross’s other side, John was talking and talking, and I wished that we could keep driving all night long and that for the whole ride, everything would stay just as it was in this moment.

It did last, but only for a little bit. Then we were turning in to the gates of Ault. Cross leaned between the two front seats and, just like that, his arm was not around me, his fingers were not in my hair. “Left,” he said to the driver. “Past the chapel.”

In front of a cluster of dorms—not the cluster I lived in, because Broussard’s was on the other side of the circle—the taxi stopped, and the driver turned on the inside light. I blinked as if I’d been awakened. I didn’t dare look at Cross, so I turned and peered out the window, but all I could see was darkness. Other people would be able to see in, I thought, if they were passing by, and I found myself hoping they were not. I did not want anyone to wonder what I was doing in a taxi with Cross and John and Martin.

“Okay,” Cross said, and I could tell that he was talking to me. I glanced over, and we looked at each other for several seconds. Martin and John were getting out of the car. “Bye, Lee.” Cross nodded his head once.

I said, “But what—” and he turned back. I had no idea what to say next, though, and after a few seconds, he turned again. For a long time, I wondered if there were a certain thing I could have uttered to change the outcome of the situation. I imagined what I didn’t say as a single perfect sentence, a narrow, discrete rectangle, like a ruler; it was unknowable to me, but somewhere in the world, it existed. When Cross shut the door behind him, the light inside the taxi went off, and I was able to see the three of them walk away. I heard laughter as the taxi pulled forward.

In the rearview mirror, I made eye contact with the driver. I had not really looked at him before—he was middle-aged and heavyset, with gray stubble and a plaid cap. “Now where?” he said. He had a thick Boston accent. “What building?”

I pointed. “That one.”

When he stopped the taxi again, I was horrified to see that the meter read 48.80. I said, “I have to run inside and get some money. I promise I’ll come back.”

He shook his head. “Your boyfriend paid.”

“My boyfriend?”

“But you pay again if you want, I won’t stop you.” He had a rumbling laugh.

“Thanks.” I pulled the door handle.

“What college is this?” the driver said.

“It’s a high school. It’s called Ault.”

“All this for a high school?” He gave an impressed whistle.

“I know,” I said. “We’re lucky.”

When I entered the room, Sin-Jun and Dede looked up from their desks. “Lee is back, “ Sin-Jun said, and Dede said, “We thought you’d died.”

“I missed the bus from the mall,” I said. “I had to take a taxi.”

“Okay, so?” Dede said. “Did you go through with it?”

“Oh,” I said. “No, I did.” I pulled back my hair and angled my ears toward them, first my right and then my left. They approached me, and I wished that I had chosen more interesting earrings; there really wasn’t much to see.

“Ahh,” Sin-Jun said. “Very exquisite.”

“The left one looks red,” Dede said. “But I’m sure if you use hydrogen peroxide, it’ll be fine.”

“What does hydrogen peroxide do?”

“Didn’t they explain this to you when they did the piercing?”

“A man did it,” I said. “He was kind of mean.”

“You’re supposed to clean them every night so they don’t get infected. You do it at the same time that you turn the earrings.”

“You turn the earrings?”

“God, Lee, they didn’t tell you anything. Hold on.” Dede walked to her bed, squatted, pulled out a clear plastic box from under it, and returned to Sin-Jun and me with a brown bottle and several cotton balls.

I turned to Sin-Jun. “How was Boston?”

“Boston is good, but it rains all day.”

“Yeah,” I said. “At the mall, too.”

“Here,” Dede said. “Sit down.”

I sat on her desk chair. Sin-Jun sat on Dede’s desk and propped her bare feet on the seat of my chair. Dede stood beside me and tucked a lock of hair behind my left ear. Our positions reminded me of the piercing itself, and I thought of telling them how I had fainted. But I wasn’t sure yet if it was a funny story or just a weird story, and besides, if I mentioned fainting, I’d have to mention Cross.

Dede unscrewed the cap of the hydrogen peroxide, pressed a cotton ball to the opening, and tipped the bottle upside down. She set the bottle on the desk and held the cotton ball against my earlobe. Very gently, she rubbed it around the earring.

I couldn’t tell them about Cross, I thought. I couldn’t tell them because Dede liked him and because she wouldn’t believe or understand it, and I couldn’t tell them because I myself was unsure what there was to believe or understand. It wasn’t like he’d kissed me, or made any declarations. What could I claim? For years and years, I felt this way, not just about Cross but about other guys—if they didn’t kiss you, it didn’t mean anything. Their interest in you had been so negligible as, perhaps, to have all been in your head.

I thought of how it had felt to sit so close to Cross in the taxi, the weight of his arm across my shoulders, the warmth of his body beneath his clothes. I thought how that was what I wanted, that if I could just have that—just Cross next to me, not flowers, not poems, not the approval of other students, not rich parents or good grades or a prettier face—I would be happy. That was the thing that if it were happening to me, I wouldn’t feel distracted or wish to be somewhere else; all by itself, it would be enough. As I thought this, I also thought that I wouldn’t get it—surely, I wouldn’t—and I felt my eyes fill. When I blinked, tears ran down my face.

“Oh, Lee,” Dede said. “Oh, honey.” Sin-Jun leaned forward and patted my shoulder, and Dede said, “I’ll be done in two seconds.” She took the damp cotton ball away from my ear, and I realized that they thought I was crying because it hurt.

3. Assassin

FRESHMAN SPRING

I met Conchita Maxwell in the spring, on the first day of lacrosse practice. When Ms. Barrett told us to split into pairs and toss a ball, I watched as the girls around me turned to each other, murmuring and nodding. It had become a ritual in sports and in class—the time when everybody divided, and I had no one to divide with. Then the coach or teacher would say, “Is anyone not paired up?” and I and one or two other students would meekly raise our hands.

“Hey,” said a voice behind me. I turned and saw Conchita. “Want to be partners?”

I hesitated.

“Take ten minutes,” Ms. Barrett called out. “Just get the feel of throwing and catching.”

“Let’s go over there.” Conchita pointed to a corner of the field a few feet from where the woods began. Though I hadn’t yet responded to her offer, it was clear to both of us I wasn’t going to receive another one. “By the way,” she said, “I’m Conchita.”

“I’m Lee.”

“I’ve never played lacrosse before,” she said cheerfully. I’d never played, either—in fact, I had purchased my stick less than an hour before, in the school store, and it smelled like leather and new metal—but I said nothing.

Though Conchita and I had never spoken, I already knew who she was. In fact, I’m sure everyone at Ault knew who she was, mostly because of how she dressed. She was a skinny girl with a large pile of short black puffy hair and dark skin, and I’d first noticed her in the dining hall several months back, in purple clogs, a pair of tights with horizontal purple and red stripes, purple culottes (they might have been knickers—I wasn’t certain), and a red blouse with a huge ruffly collar. The final accessory was a purple beret, which she’d set at a jaunty angle. I had thought at the time that she resembled a member of a theater troupe specializing in elementary school visits. For lacrosse practice, Conchita looked slightly more conservative—she was wearing a chartreuse tank top, white shorts, and chartreuse knee socks, which she’d actually pulled up to her knees. Apparently a hat enthusiast, she sported an Ault baseball cap with a still-stiff brim; the cap made me wonder if, after all, she was trying to fit in rather than to stand out.

As we walked, Conchita sneezed three times in a row. I considered saying
Bless you
to her, then didn’t.

She pulled a tissue from the pocket of her shorts and blew her nose loudly. “Allergies,” she said. It was early April then, just after spring break, a perfect afternoon of cobalt sky and bright sun. “You name it, I’m allergic to it.”

I didn’t try to name anything.

“Grass,” Conchita said. “Pollen, chlorine, mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms?”

“If I eat one, I break out in hives for up to a week.”

“That sucks,” I said, and I could hear in my own voice not a meanness, exactly, but a lack of deference.

We positioned ourselves ten yards apart. Conchita set the ball, a rubbery white globe like the egg of some exotic creature, in the webbing of her stick and thrust the stick forward. The ball landed in the grass several feet to my left. “Don’t say you weren’t warned,” she said.

I scooped up the ball and propelled it back; it landed even farther from her than her shot had from me.

“I take it you’re a Dylan fan,” Conchita said.

“Huh?”

“Your shirt.”

I looked down. I was wearing an old T-shirt of my father’s, pale blue with the words
The Times They Are A-Changin’
across the front in white letters. I had no idea where he’d gotten it, but he’d worn it to jog in, and when I’d left for Ault I’d taken it with me; it was very soft and, for a few weeks, it had smelled like home.

“You realize that’s one of his most famous songs, right?” Conchita said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Right.” At Ault, there was so much I didn’t know. Most of it had to do with money (what a debutante was, how you pronounced Greenwich, Connecticut) or with sex (that a pearl necklace wasn’t always a piece of jewelry), but sometimes it had to do with more general information about clothing, or food, or geography. Once at breakfast when people were discussing a hotel I’d never heard of, someone said, “It’s on the corner of Forty-seventh and Lex,” and not only did the names of the streets mean nothing to me, but I wasn’t even certain for several minutes what city they were talking about. What I had learned since September was how to downplay my lack of knowledge. If I seemed ignorant, I hoped that I also seemed disinterested.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the song,” Conchita said, and she began to sing. “Come gather round people wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown and . . . I can’t remember the next part . . . something something something . . . if your time to you is worth saving.” To my surprise, she had a pretty voice, high and clear and unself-conscious.

“That does sound kind of familiar,” I said. It didn’t sound familiar at all.

“It’s sad to see what’s happened to Dylan, because he had such a powerful message back in the sixties,” Conchita said. “It wasn’t just music to make out to.”

Why, I wondered, would music to make out to be a bad thing?

“I have most of his stuff,” Conchita said. “If you want to, you can come by my room and listen.”

“Oh,” I said. Then, because I didn’t want to either accept or decline the invitation, I said, “Here,” as I flung the ball. It went far beyond her, and I added, “Sorry.”

She scurried after the ball, then sent it back. “We probably won’t have to go to the away games. I’ve heard that when it’s a big team, sometimes Ms. Barrett lets the people who aren’t that good stay on campus. No offense, of course.”

“I haven’t heard that,” I said.

“Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. But I could really use the time.”

To do what?
I thought. I knew Conchita didn’t have a boyfriend—only about twelve people in our class of seventy-five ever dated, and they always went out with each other—and I didn’t think Conchita had many friends, either. The only person I could remember seeing her with was Martha Porter, a red-haired girl from my Latin class on whose last test the teacher had written across the top—I’d seen this because Martha and I sat side by side—
Saluto, Martha! Another marvelous performance!
On the same test, I had received a C minus and a note that read
Lee, I am concerned. Please talk to me after class.

“Lacrosse was originally played by the Huron Indians,” Conchita said. “Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Really? You knew that already?”

The fib had slipped out spontaneously; when pressed, I found it difficult to lie on purpose. “Actually,” I said, “no.”

“It dates back to the 1400s. Makes you wonder how it became the favorite game of East Coast prep schools. You’re from Indiana, aren’t you?”

I wasn’t sure how she knew where I was from. In fact, I knew that she was from Texas, but I knew this only because, in addition to reading old yearbooks, I regularly perused the current school catalog, where everyone’s full names and hometowns were printed in the back:
Aspeth Meriweather Montgomery, Greenwich, Connecticut. Cross Algeron Sugarman, New York, New York. Conchita Rosalinda Maxwell, Fort Worth, Texas.
Or, for me,
Lee Fiora, South Bend, Indiana.
I did not have, among other things, a middle name.

“I bet people don’t play lacrosse in Indiana,” Conchita said. “But some of these girls”—she nodded toward our teammates—“have been playing since first grade.”

“Things are different on the East Coast.” I tried to sound noncommittal.

“That’s an understatement.” Conchita laughed. “When I got here, I thought I’d landed on another planet. One night the dining hall was serving Mexican food, and I was real excited, and then I show up and the salsa is, like, ketchup with onions in it.”

I actually remembered this night—not because of how the food had tasted, but because I had spilled that very salsa on my shirt and sat for the rest of dinner with a red stain just below my collarbone.

“My mom is Mexican,” Conchita said. “I’m spoiled by her cooking.”

This actually did interest me. “Is your dad Mexican, too?” I asked.

“No, he’s American. They met through work after my mom immigrated. And I have two half-sisters, but they’re way older. They’re, like, adults.”

For the first time, I caught the ball in my webbing.

“Nice job,” Conchita said. “So do you like it here?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“What do you like about it?”

“I think that’s a really weird question,” I said. “Do you not like it or something?”

Conchita appeared unruffled by my rudeness. “Hmm.” She set the tip of her stick against the grass, like a cane. “I can’t tell if we’ve decided to be honest. At first, I thought you and I were going to. I’d gotten the impression you weren’t the same as everyone else, but now I’m thinking I might’ve been wrong.” She seemed perhaps a little sad but still not angry, not at all—she was a lot slyer than I’d given her credit for.

“Since we’ve never met,” I said, “I don’t know how you could have
any
impression of me.”

“Please, Lee. You’re not going to act like we don’t all have ideas about each other, are you?”

The remark shocked me. Certainly, I had ideas about other people, but Conchita was the first person I’d encountered who seemed to have ideas about me. Besides, in spite of my zest for gathering information about other students, I would never have revealed what I’d learned to the people whom it concerned; I knew enough to know that if, say, over dinner you said to some guy you’d never spoken to before,
Yeah, you have a sister who went to Ault, too, right? Alice? Who graduated in 1983?
it would only creep him out. Not that I personally felt creeped out by Conchita’s research; mostly I felt curious. “Fine,” I said. “What are your ideas about me?”

She could have gamed me in this moment in the way that I was gaming her, but she didn’t. “I have a hard time believing you like it here,” she said. “That’s the first thing.” She hoisted her stick into the air again and shot the ball forward, and it thunked against the ground midway between us. “You’re always walking around with your head down. Or at roll call, you just study and don’t talk to people.”

Abruptly, I felt myself sink into another mood. I didn’t retrieve the ball but just stood there, with the base of my stick propped against my right hip—not the right way, not even the right side, to hold it, I later learned—and stared at the manufacturer’s logo painted over the aluminum.

“You seem thoughtful,” Conchita said. “And I don’t see how any thoughtful person couldn’t have some problems with this school.”

I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will—that is the part that’s almost unbearable.

“Maybe we’re alike,” Conchita said.

I looked up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make this leap.

“I’ve always thought, I bet I could be friends with her,” Conchita said. “You know how you just get that feeling? But if I’m wrong, you can tell me.”

I thought of the day she’d worn the beret, its bright purple woolly fabric; if I had noticed it, surely other people had. Then I thought of how my life at Ault was a series of interactions and avoidance of interactions in which I pretended not to mind that I was almost always by myself. I could not last for long this way, certainly not for the next three years; I’d been at Ault only seven months, and already, my loneliness felt physically exhausting.

But then the whistle blew—Ms. Barrett was summoning us—and in the shifting activity, I managed not to give Conchita an answer.

Gates was running roll call alone the next morning, but near the end, Henry Thorpe came and stood on the platform. Gates moved aside, and Henry stepped in front of the desk, and even though he hadn’t said a thing, people started laughing—he seemed to be imitating himself running roll call on another day. A lot of times students performed skits as announcements, and occasionally, if the senior class had a big test, they’d filibuster by performing lots and lots of skits, or making joke announcements; once, nearly twenty members of the senior class came up, one by one, to wish Dean Fletcher a happy birthday.