The Apprentices (4 page)

“We must take the allegation seriously,” Mr. Willingham said. “The Honor Code is very clear.”

“But you have no proof!” Janie said. “It’s her word against mine! And Mr. Evensong, you
know
I know how to do all those problems. I have no motive to cheat, and she does have a motive to get me in trouble—she’s mad at me! That’s all this is!”

Mr. Evensong looked briefly uncertain, but Mr. Willingham cut in. “I’m sorry, Miss Scott,” he said.

“Let me show you the notebook,” Janie said, fumbling through her things. “I can show you what I was writing. It’s
all notes on my experiment. I’m desalinating seawater. That means taking the salt out.” She thrust the red notebook at the headmaster, who looked away.

Janie took the rejected notebook back into her lap, stunned.

A thought occurred to her. “How much money has Mr. Magnusson given to Grayson Academy?” she asked.

“We would never disclose such a thing,” Mr. Willingham said. “And it has no bearing here.”

“I think it does,” Janie said. “Opal’s a terrible student. You know that. Even
she
knows that. But she’s valuable, isn’t she? Has her father promised you a building?”

Mr. Willingham actually blushed, scarlet blooming on his portly cheeks.

“He has!” Janie said.

“Her father is irrelevant.”

“He is
not
! Opal and I were fighting because her dad thinks I’m smarter than she is. She’s failing math, and I’m good at it, and now you want to expel me because she’s mad, when I didn’t cheat!”

Mr. Willingham’s face was now the color of a ripe plum. “We don’t
want
to expel you, Miss Scott,” he said. “We
are
expelling you.”

“Did Opal threaten you?”

“This matter is closed. I’ve written a letter to your parents.”

Janie stared at him. “You wrote to them before you even talked to me?”

“Yes. The case was cut and dried.”

She was silent with disbelief.

“I’m sure you’ll find a place in another fine school,” he said.

“Oh, sure. Schools love cheaters.”

“As an expelled student, you are no longer permitted in the dormitories,” he said. “You may stay in the infirmary until your parents collect you.”

“The
infirmary
?” she said. It wasn’t enough to kick her out, they had to put her in the grim sick beds, with the terrifying nurses?

“You’ll be perfectly safe there,” he said.

Janie’s mind raced. She needed to stay near the school, to be near her experiment, but
not
in the infirmary, under Willingham’s control. She had to buy time. “I have an aunt in Concord,” she said quickly, the words coming out before she had thought them through. “I can go there until my parents come.”

“Oh, splendid,” Mr. Willingham said. He seemed relieved to be rid of her. “You may telephone her from my secretary’s desk. But please reverse the charges, if you don’t mind. Concord is a toll call.”

Janie almost laughed. They wouldn’t even pay for a phone call to Concord? But it didn’t matter, because her aunt didn’t exist. “Right,” she said. “I’ll reverse the charges.”

“You may go,” Willingham said.

She looked at Mr. Evensong to see what he thought about all of this, but he was looking down at his hands.

Janie left the headmaster’s office, dazed, and closed the heavy door behind her. Mr. Willingham’s secretary was rummaging in a file cabinet against the wall. Janie wondered where she would actually go.

Her eye fell on a wire tray on the secretary’s desk, where she saw her parents’ names and address in Ann Arbor typed on a stamped white envelope.

The secretary still had her back turned, and Janie picked up the envelope and tucked it between her books. Hugging the books close, she slipped out of the room.

J
anie went back to Carleton Hall in a daze. The building was weirdly silent as she walked up to the second floor, and she stood in her room looking around. Most of the things in it were Opal’s. Janie had come straight from London, with only her clothes and a few books. The Persian rug on the floor was Opal’s. There was also a framed photograph of Opal doing a split in a handstand on the back of a trotting horse. When Janie asked about it, Opal had only shrugged. “It’s something I used to do,” she said. Janie didn’t understand how someone who had the confidence to do
that
panicked when faced with a trigonometry problem.

Janie took out her duffel bag and unzipped it on the bed. Where would she go? She sat down on the bed with Mr. Willingham’s letter and opened the envelope.

November 8, 1954

The letter enraged Janie all over again. The accusation was a lie, and Mr. Willingham had no proof. She understood his greed and desire to keep Opal’s father’s donations coming in. But she didn’t understand Mr. Evensong turning her in without talking to her first. He
knew
what kind of student she was.

She gathered her shampoo, hairbrush, toothbrush, and toothpaste, and put them in the duffel. Then she sat down in despair. If she left now, and dismantled all her glassware and her titrating apparatus, she wouldn’t have any answers, after spending the entire fall designing the experiment. The thought of all that wasted time made her feel sick. And she
was so close! To go to Ann Arbor now, to her parents, would be like leaving in the last ten minutes of a movie, before she found out what happened. But it was much more important than a movie. She couldn’t move the equipment; it was too ungainly and fragile, and some of it belonged to the school. She didn’t want to tell her parents to come get her. She just wanted to finish her project. And maybe she could still clear her name.

Janie heard the door to the room open—Opal back—and she spun around. But it wasn’t Opal. It was Mrs. Jericho, the Carleton Hall housekeeper, with her plump face and white apron. “I thought I heard someone up here,” Mrs. Jericho said. “You’re not meant to be here between classes, you know.”

“I have to leave school…for a while,” Janie said, because she couldn’t imagine leaving for good.

Mrs. Jericho’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “Is everything all right?”

Her kindness surprised Janie, and she felt tears burning behind her eyes. She willed them back. “Yes,” she said. “It’s all fine.”

* * *

Janie walked away from the dormitory, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, knapsack over the other. She crossed Kingsley Street, at the edge of campus, and wandered through the town of Grayson, trying to think.

Her parents would understand. They knew all about being falsely accused. She thought she understood a little better now how they had felt when the U.S. marshals started following them around. She remembered her father pounding the table in helpless rage. His fury had startled her when she was fourteen and knew nothing about the world. It didn’t surprise her now.

So her parents would help her fight Mr. Willingham. They would go to the board of trustees. Or they would help her find a better school, with a less corrupt and infuriating headmaster. At the very least, they would take her back to Ann Arbor. It was almost Christmas break, and she could curl up on her parents’ couch by the glowing fireplace, reading novels. Her dad would crack jokes to make her laugh, and her mom would be witty and compassionate. There would be many variations on the name Willingham—Mr. Willing-Sham, Mr. Wimpy-Ham—and many impersonations of him with his belly and his waistcoat and his pipe. Janie could eat cereal in pajamas and socks, instead of having to dress in a chilly dormitory and shiver through the frosty morning to the dining hall.

But she didn’t want to go home. She couldn’t let Willingham win like that. She had to finish her experiment, its mazelike apparatus so precariously assembled in the chemistry lab, and to do that she needed to stay quiet and unnoticed for just a little bit longer. Her parents wouldn’t understand. They would show up ready to fight, or they would sweep her away in indignation, and that would be the end of it.

But where to stay? She hoped she might see a sign in a window on one of the streets in Grayson—some sweet old lady advertising a tiny, cheap room for rent. She had a little money, but it wouldn’t last long. The hotel where most parents stayed was expensive. There was a cheaper hotel at the edge of town, but the clerk would call the police if a sixteen-year-old girl tried to check in by herself.

She saw no signs in any windows, and was walking back
past Bruno’s restaurant when she saw the teenage busboy, Raffaello, hosing off rubber kitchen mats in the alley. He was one of the few people in town she knew by name. He kinked his hose to shut it off. “Hi,” he said. “It’s Janie, right?”

She nodded.

“Don’t you have school?” he asked. He had dark eyes and glossy black curls. He didn’t have Bruno’s Italian accent, but he didn’t talk like the kids at Grayson, either. She guessed he went to East High.

“Not today,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“They let me leave early so I can come here and work for my dad,” he said. “I only miss gym and study hall.”

She eased the duffel bag strap off her tired shoulder and put the bag on the ground. The lunch service at Bruno’s was over. Where had the time gone? She had been wandering in a daze. “Do you make money, working for your dad?” she asked.

“Of course,” Raffaello said. “You think I clean these things for fun?”

“I wish I had a job.”

“We need a dishwasher.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but I’m joking. You wouldn’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“The pots are greasy. The water is hot. You burn your fingers until they get so tough and callused you don’t feel them anymore. You smell like dishwater at the end of the night. It’s no job for girls.”

She bridled at that. “
I
could do it. I’m good at doing dishes.”

He laughed. “Yeah, at home, washing three or four plates, right? Not for a hundred people. But you don’t need a job. You go to Grayson.”

“So?”

“So you must be rich. And smart.”

“I’m not rich. And I don’t go to Grayson anymore.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Your parents stop paying?”

“No. And I had a scholarship.”

“So you’re extra smart.”

“Just extra poor.”

“You could go to East High with the rest of us poor kids.”

She smiled. “I was really looking for a room to rent, first,” she said. “But I’m not sure how much it will cost. Do you think I could get the dishwashing job?”

Raffaello tilted his head in thought. “No,” he said. “Maybe.”

Maybe was good enough. “Will you let me try?”

J
anie helped Raffaello haul the rubber kitchen mats inside. She hadn’t eaten lunch, so she ate a bowl of spaghetti with him. It was the same spaghetti she’d eaten in the dining room, but it tasted different in the kitchen. Raffaello introduced her to the cooks and showed her around the kitchen. When his father showed up for the evening shift, Raffaello spoke to him in rapid Italian. Bruno looked skeptically at Janie and disappeared into the front of the restaurant.

“What’s the answer?” Janie whispered.

“He’s deciding,” Raffaello whispered back.

“How can I improve my chances?”

“You can’t.”

Then his father came back into the kitchen and shrugged. “We try,” he said.

“Thank you!” Janie said, but Bruno just shook his head.

Raffaello showed her how to aim the spray nozzle at the best angle into the deep sink so it didn’t splash water everywhere, and how to load the big new industrial dishwashing machine—Janie had never seen a dishwashing machine
before—and slide the steel door closed. Then she started scrubbing pots. Dinner started, and more greasy plates came in with the busboys, and Janie scraped leftovers into a giant trash can and started the whole process over again.