Prep: A Novel (15 page)

There were two entirely discrete feelings I had at this moment. The first was a disbelieving glee that I was really about to kill McGrath Mills. When you are accustomed to denial and failure, as maybe I was or maybe I only believed myself to be, success can feel disorienting, it can give you pause. Sometimes I found myself narrating such success, at least in my own head, in order to convince myself of its reality. And not just with major triumphs (of course whether I’d ever experienced a major triumph, apart from getting into Ault in the first place, was debatable) but with tiny ones, with anything I’d been waiting for and anticipating:
I am now eating pizza, I am now getting out of the car.
(And later:
I am kissing this boy, he is lying on top of me.
) I did this because it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of the thing than the thing itself.

The second feeling I had at this moment was a sad feeling, an abrupt slackness. I think it was McGrath’s leg hair. Also, his whistling. McGrath was a person. He didn’t want to be killed, he didn’t know I was waiting underneath the table. And it seemed so unfair to catch him by surprise. I didn’t want to win the whole game, I knew suddenly. I wanted admiration, of course, schoolwide recognition, but I couldn’t possibly get through all the little moments it would require, just me and the person I was supposed to kill. With Devin, it had been okay because he’d been such a jerk, and with Sage and Allie, because it hadn’t mattered to them if they remained in the game or not. But McGrath was nice, and he seemed to care at least a little about staying alive, and yet it would have been ridiculous for me not to take him out, with the opportunity quite literally in front of me. And it wasn’t even that I entirely
didn’t
want to. It was just that it seemed complicated. From now on, I thought, I’d do whatever was necessary to get to Cross. But I wouldn’t be zealous, I wouldn’t think the game itself actually mattered. This was the decision I was making as I extended my arm and placed the sticker on McGrath’s calf—I placed it just to the side of his tibia bone, almost exactly halfway between his ankle and knee. Then I pushed out the chair in front of me and emerged from beneath the table on my hands and knees. Looking up at McGrath from that position, I couldn’t help feeling a little like a dog.

His expression, as I’d feared, was one of naked surprise. I am not even sure he recognized me immediately. I stood, and said, uncertainly, “I just killed you,” and though McGrath broke out laughing, I think it was only because he was a good sport.

“Oh, boy,” he said in his Southern accent. “You nailed me. Man, did you get me good. How long were you under there?”

I shrugged.

“That’s a well-deserved win. Hey, Coles, look who was under my table. I know, she was stakin’ me out!” McGrath turned back to me.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be sorry. What are you sorry for? You got me fair and square. I gotta give you my stickers, right? But you know what?” He felt in the back pocket of his shorts, and in the pockets on both sides of his blazer. “I left ’em in my room,” he said. “Can I give ’em to you later? I’ll come up to your dorm and do a hand-delivery.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Anything’s fine.” (Of course he didn’t have his stickers. The game didn’t
really
matter to him.)

I knew right away that I had ruined it. Whatever jokiness had existed between us—I had killed the substance of it. McGrath would be friendly to me from now on (and I was right in thinking that, he always was friendly, for the year-plus that remained before he graduated from Ault) but the friendliness would be hollow. In killing him, I had ended the only overlap between our lives. “Assassinate anyone lately?” he would ask, months later, when we passed each other, just the two of us in a corridor of the third floor between fifth and sixth periods. Or, “How are your pillowcases holdin’ up?” I might laugh, or say, “They’re okay”—something short. McGrath didn’t want to talk, of course, it wasn’t as if we had anything to
say
to each other. I knew all this, I understood the rules, but still, nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.

On Saturday morning, I waited outside the dorm courtyard; Conchita had said her mother would send a car to pick us up at eleven. It was seventy degrees, sunny and breezy, and I thought of how Martha had said she was glad to be going somewhere; I was glad, too. I could see a black limousine across the circle, and on the circle itself, two boys tossed a softball. I tilted my face toward the sky and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, perhaps a minute later, the limousine was in front of me, and Conchita’s head was poking through an open window in the back. “Hey, Lee,” she called. “Climb aboard.”

As I approached the car, I tried to arrange my face in an unsurprised expression. I had never ridden in a limousine. Inside, seats of gray leather lined the sides and rear of the car; a darkened window divided the back from where the driver sat in front. Conchita, I saw, was wearing a purple T-shirt, a denim jumper with oversized orange buttons, white tights, and high-heeled, open-toed straw sandals; she looked less like a member of a theater troupe than like a four-year-old permitted for the first time to dress herself. Martha was dressed normally and wasn’t, to my relief, wearing a skirt.

“We’re trying to decide what music to listen to,” Conchita said. “The only stations that come in very well are reggae and—what did you call it, Martha?”

“Gentle jazz,” Martha said.

“I vote for reggae,” I said.

“We thought that’s what you’d say, but we wanted to make sure.” Conchita pushed a button, and the window between us and the driver came down a few inches. “Will you set it to the first station?” she said. “Thanks.” Without waiting for a response, she pressed the button, and the window rose. Then I knew, I finally understood, that Conchita was rich. And understanding this confused everything else I knew about her. Why did she need to act weird? Why did she mention her Mexicanness so often, why did she talk about feeling like an outsider? If she was rich, she belonged at Ault. The equation was that simple. Being rich, in the end, counted for the most—for more, even, than being pretty. And yet, as I thought about it, it wasn’t that Conchita had ever hidden anything from me. Her elaborately decorated room, even her wardrobe, which was peculiar but not cheap-looking—these had been signs to which I’d turned a blind eye. My assumption that she was a scholarship student was, I realized, offensive; it was embarrassing. (It was embarrassing and yet—and yet now, knowing I’d been wrong, I was free to room with her. I could give in, it would be okay. Thinking this felt the way peeing in your pants does when you’re five or six: a complicated relief, one best ignored in the present moment.)

“Okay, listen to this,” she was saying. “I’ve been waiting to tell you guys until I was with both of you at the same time—I heard that Mr. Byden used to date Madame Broussard.”

“No way,” Martha said.

“Mr. Byden the headmaster?” I said. “But he’s married.”

“It was a long time ago,” Conchita said, “but what if he still carries a torch for Madame?”

“How do you know this?” I asked.

“Aspeth told me. Her dad and Mr. Byden went to Harvard together in the sixties, and I guess Madame was living in Boston then.”

“Imagine kissing Mr. Byden,” I said. “He’d make you keep three feet on the floor.” This was the rule for visitation; also, the couple was supposed to leave the door open. “And what’s really gross,” I added, “is think about Mr. Byden having a boner.”

“Lee,”
Conchita said, and it occurred to me that I might have genuinely offended her.

“An erection,” I said. “Whatever.”

“
Stop
it.” She covered her ears with her hands.

“They probably had pet names for each other,” Martha said.

“Shnookums,” I suggested.

“Apple dumpling,” Martha replied.

“Cheese pie,” I said, and for no real reason, both of us convulsed with laughter.

“What?” Conchita said. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard—by then she’d uncovered her ears.

“It’s not—” I began, and then I made eye contact with Martha and started laughing again.

“What?” Conchita was looking between us. “What does cheese pie mean?”

Martha wiped a tear from her eye. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “Lee just made it up.”

“Then why is it so funny?”

“Well—” Martha struggled to remain composed. “It’s just like,
cheese pie
?”

“Apple dumpling,” I repeated, and both of us began snorting.

“Martha let a boy touch her boobs,” Conchita said.

“Thanks, Conchita.” Martha appeared unperturbed.

“I would never do that,” Conchita said. “At least not before I’m married and then I’m only having sex in the dark.”

“Yeah, right,” Martha said, and her tone was affectionate.

“Have
you
had sex?” I asked her, and as soon as I’d said it, I felt myself clutch. Really, I hardly knew her; I had forgotten how little I knew her.

“God, no,” Martha said. “My mom would kill me.” She didn’t seem to have found the question intrusive. “Conchita, when a guy goes up your shirt, it’s just skin,” Martha said. “It feels kind of good.”

“Would you let a guy touch your boobs, Lee?” Conchita asked.

“It would depend on the guy.” I thought of the song “Lay, Lady, Lay,” the man in dirty clothes.

“I’m really surprised,” Conchita said. “I didn’t realize that you were promiscuous, too.”

For the third time, Martha and I burst out laughing.

“I
wish
I was promiscuous,” I said.

“Don’t say that.” Conchita looked stricken.

“I’m kidding,” I said, and she looked relieved, and then I couldn’t resist saying, “Sort of,” and she looked stricken again. “Oh, Conchita,” I said, and I moved over to her seat and put one arm around her shoulders and rocked her back and forth a little. She seemed young to me in this moment, and very charming. We’d gotten onto Route 128 by then, and there was something about the speed of the car, something about the car being a limousine, something about the sunshine and the conversation—I was happy for real. The sense I always had at Ault that what I had to offer was inadequate, that I needed to be on guard, was drifting away, rushing out the open sunroof.

The hotel was near the Boston Common; it was the fanciest hotel I’d ever been inside, but by then, this fact did not surprise me. Corinthian columns flanked the lobby, and green marble lined the floor and ceilings. Conchita approached the concierge’s desk to ask where the restaurant was, and Martha and I followed her, all of us still giddy from the ride, and I could feel that the hotel staff and other guests in the lobby were looking at us and that we were three girls to them, we were ordinary, and in this moment, our ordinariness was not a bad thing. On the contrary—in being underdressed and a little loud, in traveling in a pack, we were fulfilling their idea of teenagers, and I felt proud of us.

In the dining room, Conchita cried out, “Mama!” and hurled herself into the arms of a woman who was both very pretty and very fat. Mrs. Maxwell kissed Conchita all over her cheeks and chin, and then they both were crying and speaking to each other in Spanish and turning to us to apologize for crying. Mrs. Maxwell was seated and did not rise to greet us, though she did extend her arm. It was tan, and many gold bracelets hung from her wrist. “I am delighted to meet my daughter’s friends,” she said. When Conchita introduced me, Mrs. Maxwell said, “Ah, the Bob Dylan fan.” She wore loose pale green silk pants and a shirt of the same fabric, with a plain neck and wide sleeves; even from several feet away, I could smell her perfume. Her skin was smooth and brown, darker than Conchita’s, and her dark hair was pulled into a loose bun.

“Thank you for having us to lunch,” Martha said, and I said, “Yeah, it’s really nice of you.”

In the whole dining room, only a few tables besides ours were occupied; near us, a beefy man sat by himself. A waiter brought us menus, tall leather rectangles with the descriptions of the food written in calligraphy. Only one of the entrées was under twenty dollars and it was grilled vegetables. It was oddly liberating to realize I had only fifteen dollars in my pocket—I wouldn’t be paying, I wouldn’t even try, because I couldn’t. The bottom of the menu featured the date, and when I realized they must have printed a new menu daily, the idea seemed remarkable. I had suspected before, and the whole day only reinforced the suspicion, that money could make your life nice, that you could want it not for reasons of greed but for reasons of comfort, because it allowed you to send for your daughter and her friends in a limousine, to eat food that tasted good in a pretty setting, to be heavy and still wear nice clothes. One of my mother’s friends was about as fat as Mrs. Maxwell, but she wore sweatpants and flowered smocks.

Mrs. Maxwell said, “I would like each of you to tell me your life story. Lee, you will go first.”

I laughed. But then I did it—I started with my mother going into labor in a swimming pool, told about how in kindergarten I’d insisted on wearing the same pair of brown rubber cowboy boots for the entire year, how I’d had an imaginary friend named Pig, what ages I’d been when my brothers were born. I got all the way up to Ault. They asked questions, but not cornering questions, and then our appetizers came—we’d all ordered appetizers, it had seemed to be expected—and then Martha told her story: how she’d thought she was dying when she lost her first tooth, how she’d won the spelling bee in second grade, all the snow days she’d had growing up in Vermont. The main courses arrived, and mine was roast chicken with mashed potatoes and cranberry relish; it felt like Thanksgiving.

We had dessert, too, all of us ordering different tortes and mousses and sticking our forks and spoons into each other’s food. Conchita’s mother was talking about things at home, people they knew, a wedding she and Conchita’s father had attended the previous weekend. “And here is a funny story for you,
mi hija,
” she said. “We have hired a new worker to help Miguel in the garden, and his name is Burro.”