The Education of Bet (23 page)

Ah, Mrs. Smithers,
I thought fondly in my admittedly pixilated state.

"Such a pleasure to have you two with us for a change," Mercy said with what struck me as a forced geniality.

Hamish merely scowled.

Stephens merely scowled too. I'd gotten the sense that Stephens somehow blamed me for Hamish attacking him over dinner that night. Perhaps because his taunting of Hamish had been about my "sister"?

"Here, have another," Mercy said, replacing my empty bottle with a full one.

James tried to take it from me, but I grabbed it tighter and looked up at James beside me. He reminded me so much of Will then, in personality if not in looks, and the beer I was drinking reminded me of the way Will had encouraged me to drink at the pub that night on my first journey to Betterman.
Ah, Will.
But then I thought how different the two were, really. Yes, they were both boys; yes, they were both handsome; yes, they both wanted the best for me, in ways that no one else on earth did. But I'd never wanted to kiss Will the way I wanted to kiss James right then...

"My, it is cold out here tonight," James said, rising abruptly and moving away from me. Later on, I would realize what a kindness he had done me, for if he'd stayed right there next to me, in my drunken state I would have kissed him in front of God and everybody, as the saying goes. As it happened, I teetered and fell face forward into the cold dirt.

Poor Mrs. Smithers. She was going to have a devil of a time cleaning the dirt stains out of all our trousers. Didn't these boys ever drink indoors?

I pushed myself up to a sitting position. I was freezing.

"It is cold, isn't it?" Mercy allowed cheerfully.

I realized then that I must have spoken my thoughts aloud. I would have to watch that, I cautioned myself.
Demon beer.

"And it would be a nice night," Mercy went on, "to have some female companionship to keep a boy warm, wouldn't it?"

"Too bad there aren't any around," James said. But as he spoke, I saw him spare me a smile.

Ah, James.

"Now, if Gardener's
sister
was here," Mercy said. "You remember—
his twin?
Now, there's a girl that could keep a boy right warm enough, I'd wager."

James's anger was instant. "Lay off Gardener's sister," he said, moving to stand in front of Mercy in a challenging position.

I was dimly amazed he could move so fast, given how much we'd all had to drink. Perhaps he'd drunk more in his life than I had? But I also felt a lazy smile touch my lips: James was standing up for me.

"Yesh," I slurred, stumbling to my feet to join James, "lay off my shishter."

I looked up at Mercy. Oddly, he didn't look as though he felt threatened by the situation he'd gotten himself in.

"You really are an odd one, Gardener, aren't you," he said, as if it were a new observation.

"Well, you know." I hiccupped. "I suppose I have my moments when I might appear
different.
"

"The night of the dance," Mercy said consideringly. "That illness came on you so suddenly. If one didn't know better, one would think you were scared of being around girls."

"Scared of girls?" I hiccupped again. "That's rich. I'm just what you might call
particular
about who I spend time, er, getting warmed up by."

"Oh?" Mercy raised his eyebrows. "And what sort of girls
do
appeal to you?"

Suddenly I remembered what James had said in an earlier discussion. In addition to pointing out that I was not like the others because I did not smoke or drink or regularly get into fights, he'd also said I didn't insult the others enough. Well, I was ready now.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing," I said, my own words striking me as incredibly funny. "If I ever wanted to get warmed up by a girl, it would never be one of
Hamish's
sisters."

And then I really did vomit.

***

"Well, that went well," James said a half-hour later as he helped me get ready for bed.

"Do you really think so?" I mulled this over as he pulled my nightshirt over my head. "Yes," I answered for him, "I think so."

"The look on Hamish's face." He chuckled.

"Too bad I never saw it." I yawned. "Too busy vomiting."

Gently, James lowered me down onto my bed and stretched me out.

"I did all right, though, didn't I?" I asked, half sitting again. "I did well at being a boy?"

"Let's see..." He considered. "You got drunk. You smoked until it hurt. You got belligerent. Why, yes. I'd say you did perfectly."

I smiled. Then I draped my arms around his neck and attempted to pull him toward me.

"Would you like to kiss me?" I asked saucily.

James waved a hand in front of his nose. Oh, right. I hadn't done anything about my teeth yet. "Not tonight, I'm afraid. But I do love you, Bet."

Then he eased me under the sheets and tucked the crisp linen under my chin.

"I love you too, James." I sighed a happy sigh.

"Night."

"Night."

The next day, despite my pounding head, we laughed. We laughed a lot.

And so we continued, in our stumblingly awkward and yet blissful way, for a week, then another, and another, until spring came and with it the budding trees of late March and the end of Lent half. Soon we would break as we had for the Christmas holidays, this time until the end of April, at which point we would reconvene again for Summer half, which would last until early July.

***

It's amazing how long someone can hold a grudge, seething in silence, and how patiently a person can wait to eke out his revenge. Wait long enough, and the mark doesn't even see it coming.

They came for me in the night.

It was two hours after James and I had finished dinner at Marchand Hall. We were in our room, the door locked, which was a rarity at the Betterman Academy, when the jiggling started, followed by a loud pounding. Thank God, I thought, for that locked door, as James had just been kissing me. Thank God also that I still had on my day clothes, or at least my shirt and tie and trousers, for it would have been awkward to explain away the length of time it took for me to tear out of my nightshirt, bind my breasts with cloth, and get changed again before I answered the door. I laughed at the picture in my mind, stopped laughing when James unlocked the door and I saw Hamish standing there, fists clenched at his sides. Behind him I saw Mercy, Stephens, about a half a dozen others, and—was that Little in the back?

James faked an elaborate yawn. "Really, Hamish," he said, "it's just a few days till end of term. Isn't it a bit late in the season to be staging yet another tossing? And anyway, don't you ever get tired of that sort of thing?"

As it turned out, Hamish had another sort of tossing in mind, quite different from putting a boy in a blanket and throwing him in the air to make him squeal.

Hamish pushed his way into the room and commenced ripping the sheets off first my and then James's bed. He looked underneath the beds. He dumped the water out of our washbasins.

"Can we help you locate something?" James yawned again. "Preferably before you destroy the whole place?"

Hamish whirled on James. "I've never liked you, Tyler, you with all your ...
smugness
." He turned toward me. "And I like you
less.
"

Before James could respond, Hamish made for his wardrobe and threw wide the doors. He began tearing clothes out and tossing them at the other boys, throwing the things that displeased him right out the window.

"The sleeves on that shirt may be too long for you," he said, addressing Mercy, "but you can't argue with the fabric."

"Are you stealing my clothes?" James was incredulous.

Hamish shrugged. "Borrowing," he said. "Why should you have all the best things? I would think you'd be generous enough to spread it around a bit."

"I wonder what Mr. Winter would think of all this?" I said in as threatening a voice as I could muster.

Hamish snorted. "Not bloody much, I shouldn't think."

I stood straighter. "Perhaps I shall go get him and find out, then."

Hamish snorted again. "Fat lot of good that'll do you."

My eyes narrowed. "How do you mean?"

"Mercy brought him a little present," Hamish said with a sneering smile. "Told him that all those bottles of beer were a gift from his parents for his having put up with us all these months. Made a similar delivery to Mrs. Smithers. Come to think of it, the last time we saw them, they were enjoying an end-of-term snort together."

"I doubt we'll be seeing them before morning," Mercy added, giving a half bow in modest acknowledgment of his own contribution to the evening.

Having exhausted James's wardrobe, Hamish turned to mine. As Hamish reached for the handle, I threw myself at his back. I suppose I should have thought of fighting them earlier, but there were so many of them and only two of us. Now, however, I was desperate.

Mercy and Stephens seized my shoulders and peeled me off Hamish. They needn't have bothered, I realized. Hamish could have tossed me off with a single shrug.

"Hey, what's this?" Hamish said, finding the wardrobe locked. He jiggled the handle harder, grew frustrated. He ran his hand along the top of the wardrobe, producing only dust that Mrs. Smithers had been too short to reach, and grew more frustrated. "No one keeps their wardrobe locked here. First your door was locked, now this. What are you two hiding?"

"Shall I go and fetch an ax?" Stephens offered.

"The key." Little piped up for the first time. "Will always keeps a key in his pocket. I-I-I saw it drop out of there the day we went fishing." Little must have felt my horrified glare boring into the side of his head, for he turned to look at me with a sad, apologetic shrug. "I'm sorry, Will. But you know there's never any point in running or hiding. They always catch you in the end."

I struggled, but there was little I could do as the two boys held me firmly while Hamish rifled through my trouser pockets. At this point, James also tried throwing himself at Hamish's back, to no avail.

"A
ha!
" Hamish exulted, key in hand.

But his exultation turned to dismay as he flicked through my things, removed a shirt here, a pair of trousers there.

"Huh," he said. "I don't see what the big secret is. These are just clothes, and not even as fine as Tyler's. Oh, well." He shrugged, tossed a shirt to Stephens. "Maybe one of the younger boys would like this."

I breathed a sigh of relief as Hamish moved to close the doors, but that relief proved premature as Hamish caught sight of the trunk in the bottom of the wardrobe. "What's this?"

All I could do now was stand helplessly by as, with what seemed like excruciating slowness, Hamish dragged out the trunk and opened the lid.

"What's this?" he said again, now clearly puzzled as he pulled out my dress, my wig. Confusion quickly turned to anger, however, as Hamish put two and two together and came up with ... what?

"There was never any sister at all, was there?" he accused darkly. "
That's
why you begged off sick the night of the dance. It was really
you!
" And then anger turned to horror. "And I asked you to
dance
with me? You danced with Tyler and Little, while masquerading as
a girl?
" He paused for the briefest of moments, dress and wig still in hand. "What kind of an abomination are you?"

His horror was my opportunity.

I ran.

In a million years, I would never have imagined that I could outrun a group of boys, but the events that had transpired, coupled with my abrupt bolting from the room, worked to my advantage. Still, I felt no better than a wily fox briefly outsmarting the hounds as I raced down the stairs of Proctor Hall, raced across the grounds of the Betterman Academy, the dogs nipping at my heels. When it felt as though I could run no farther, my legs screaming in agony, my heart pounding as though it would slam right through my chest, I took refuge in the one place I thought I might find it: the chapel.

It seems such an irrational thing to me now. Did I think I was a character in a Victor Hugo novel, crying "Sanctuary!" at attackers? Had I forgotten that the right of asylum, guaranteeing a fugitive protection from arrest in the safe haven of a church, had been abolished in England some two hundred years before? Whatever the case, it was where I chose to make my stand. And curiously, once inside, I felt calm permeate my entire being as I took in the great painted window soaring over the altar, the pulpit itself fashioned in oak, the high gallery and organ behind. Even when the others burst through the doors and Hamish backed me up against the altar, that sense of calm did not leave me.

Could I still get out of this? I wondered. Perhaps I could say it had all been an elaborate practical joke? Hamish would surely beat me for it, since he would see the joke as having been on him. Still, it would be worth the severe beating, if only I could—

"What kind of an abomination are you?" Hamish roared at me again. "You made a fool out of us!" His voice turned deadly. "You made a fool out of
me
."