The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel (15 page)

Heavy, purposeful footsteps pounded down the hallway. The door opened. The light flashed on, and the three boys lay there, making a big show of adjusting their eyes to the light.

“What’s going on?” Nicholas said.

Gid pulled the pillow over his head.

“Mother?” said Cullen. “Is that you?”

Cockweed filled up the doorway. “You can quit the acting,” he growled. “Oscars for everyone.”

Cullen rubbed his eyes. “Oscar who?” he said.

Cockweed stepped inside and shut the door. He pressed his lips to one side in an attempt to look menacing. “Is that supposed to be funny?” he said.

“No,” Cullen said, “I honestly don’t know anyone named Oscar.”

“Look, dickhead.” Cockweed pointed his finger in Cullen’s face. “Someone in this room just yelled out the word
penis
. It sounded like you.”

Cullen assumed a look of utter confusion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “Wait. Let me say penis—I won’t yell it—and see if it jogs any recent memories. OK. Penis! No. Nothing!”

For a few seconds Cockweed was so incapacitated with rage that he could do nothing but stand there and turn various shades of pink and white and red. Finally he cleared his throat and began to patrol the room in circles, his hands clasped behind his back. He paused at the dresser, opened some drawers and peered in. He shut them and stood there for a second, taking in the room, his nose quivering like a bloodhound. He strode toward the closet. He put his hand on the closet door. He walked into the closet.

I had been in that closet. It smelled like pot. Not just a little, either.

Gideon’s balls climbed up inside his stomach and then back down.

“OK, I shouted penis,” Cullen said. “I did.”

Cockweed didn’t move.

“I shouted out penis, just to be…just to be funny, I guess.”

Cockweed stepped out of the closet, shut the door, and turned on Cullen. “You woke up my daughter. She’s four years old.”

There was a long pause. Gid was still sitting up in bed, his head bowed to his knees. He looked at Nicholas, who mouthed the words
Jesus Christ
.

“I know,” Gid mouthed back. How, he wondered, had Cockweed not smelled that pot?

Cockweed bore down on Cullen. “You woke up a four-year-old with the word
penis
.”

“Well,” Cullen said, “you have to admit it’s better than waking her up with an actual penis.”

Despite my belief that it would be hard for a student like Cullen, with family money, to get kicked out of Midvale, he very nearly achieved this feat. “You are on a short leash,” Cockweed told him as he led him out of Dean Paley’s office early the following morning. “The shortest leash in the history of leashes.”

“I wanted to say, Wow, Cockweed, that’s a really good analogy,” Cullen said later on to Gid and Nicholas as they sat under their tree in the quad. Gid was thinking how strange it felt to sit on the quad not stoned. Everything felt smaller and less like a dream.

“Yeah, well, it’s a fucking good thing you didn’t,” Nicholas said. “I think we need to get rid of the plants.”

I couldn’t believe Cockweed hadn’t noticed them. It didn’t make any sense.

“I think you’re overreacting,” Cullen said. “Let’s just lie low for a week.”

Nicholas stood up and brushed grass and leaves off his pants. “God, I hate sitting on the quad and not being stoned.”

“I was just thinking that,” Gid said.

“And I blame you,” Nicholas said to Cullen. “All right. Let’s give it a week.”

“But what am I supposed to do about Pilar?” Gid said. “I have to sneak out to see her.”

Nicholas shook his head. “You’re not ready yet anyway, not after you told me about how you fucked up last night.”

Cullen nodded. “Agreed. I think we need to see a list of ten…ten?”

“Ten sounds good,” Nicholas said.

“A list of ten good compliments about her tits before you’re ready to go back in,” Cullen said. “It’s perfect timing, actually. You should be thanking me.”

Nicholas and Gid both glared at Cullen. “Don’t push your luck,” Nicholas said.

“What are you talking about?” Cullen said. “
I
got him out of the closet. If you think about it, I’m the one who saved us!”

Gid pictured himself back in Virginia, eating Doritos in the basement, watching
Friends
reruns, waiting for his dad to get home, or, twice a week, his mother to come pick him up and take him to Wild Thyme or Whole Foods café. He did not want to go back to that life. “If this gets fucked up,” he said to Cullen, “that is on you.”

On Saturday morning sunlight streamed in the window of our little room. The hills were lush and soft-looking. The bad news is that we had an all-day ATAT practice. The good news was that we had won our first three ATAT matches, which meant that we were one of six teams invited to a round-robin the following Friday night. If we won that, we’d go to the finals.

More bad news: I hadn’t told Edie I was inside the mind of Gideon Rayburn again, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that she thought I was still in Pilar’s head.

“I really want you to tell me Pilar’s favorite food,” she said as we were on our way across campus to practice. Flocks of squawking geese were flying north, and I pretended they’d droned her out.

“Favorite food,” Edie repeated. “It’s not hard. You’re inside her head. You know she had her bikini area lasered, just
because you know. But you don’t know what her favorite food is?”

“I think it’s just a question of where her focus is.” I said. “I…” Cullen was raking leaves in front of his dorm—part of his punishment—and he waved cheerfully to us and we waved back.

“I can’t believe what he said to Cockweed,” Edie said. “Or what people say he said to Cockweed. I bet he didn’t really say that.”

“Oh, he said it all right. I know he did.”

Edie looked at me funny.

“I mean, he is totally capable of doing something like that,” I corrected myself.

“So,” Edie continued, “at least you can figure Gid’s not going to go to Pilar’s room this week, what with the boys seriously on Cockweed’s radar.” She tried to look encouraging. “It’s seems like kind of good news, right?”

“Well, I guess they won’t be having sex this week, but who knows about next week. Pilar’s got this stomach exercise where she gets into plank position and then touches knee to opposite elbow and so on. Well, every day her stomach is getting smaller, tighter, and flatter.” That was true as of the last time I was in her head, anyway. I didn’t mention the fact that Gid, meanwhile, was working on his list of breast compliments for Cullen and Nicholas, and they were pretty good. They’d given him back the first draft with some suggestions. “I think you need more nipple stuff in there,” Cullen had said.

Again, I had laughed in spite of how awful it was. And then I tried to think about the fact that although Cullen’s stupidity had bought me a couple days, the longer Gid and Pilar didn’t mess around, the hotter they would get for each other.

I tried not to think about them having sex that was as good as the sex Gid and I had when we weren’t able to be alone for a couple days.

“Pilar’s favorite food,” Edie reminded me. “I know she’s hungry. I can see it in her eyes.”

At practice I was paired up with Devon. He was looking particularly fat today, wearing skintight vintage bell-bottom jeans and a yellow T-shirt that clung to every heaving slab of flesh. Poor Pilar, totally obsessed with a light fold of skin over the top of her jeans, while Devon wore his obesity like a badge of honor.

The whole time we ran our drills—we were doing constitutional amendments, the years states were admitted to the Union, and various crap about Teddy Roosevelt—Devon had one eye on me and one on Edie. He had buggy eyes, and this divided attention made him look retarded, but, amazingly, very cute.

Anyway, this is how our practice went.

Me: “What amendment gave women the right to vote?”

Devon: “The nineteenth. Duh. Was Edie always this hot?”

Me: “I can’t answer that. What state used to be part of Massachusetts?”

Devon: “New Hampshire. Did she, like, all of a sudden grow boobs?”

Me: “It’s actually Maine. You can remember this because they both begin with M. And no, she didn’t all of a sudden just grow boobs. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with a little thing called adolescence, but—”

Devon: “No, no, no, no. Adolescence happens earlier. I think she got a boob job.”

Me: “Does it turn you on to think she got a boob job? Like, that means she is somehow, I don’t know, sending you a message? That as she lay there going under, she thought, I can’t wait for Devon to see these?”

(Devon nods.)

Me: “Devon, why don’t you just ask her on a date?”

Devon (looking at his shoe): “I forget what we were talking about.”

Poor Edie. Yes, boys were always a disappointment.

At noon, pizzas arrived. “You know,” Devon said. “They delivered pizzas to the Marines the night before they invaded Baghdad.”

Indeed, Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan stood up and announced we were going to be watching a video.

“I hope it’s porn,” Mickey said.

“Mickey, I generally enjoy your sense of humor, but today it’s a little tiresome,” Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan said. “Moving along. I have every confidence we are going to do extremely well at this round-robin. And I am fairly sure we’re going to win.”

We all cheered.

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan made a grim face. “Now the bad news,” she said. “The very likely opponent in the finals is going to be Xavier Academy. Now, I took the liberty of driving over to Xavier Academy one evening and videotaping their team…”

Edie looked at me and mouthed the words
What the fuck?

“You’re the man!” Mickey said.

“We’re the New England Patriots of ATAT,” Devon said. Edie giggled. He winked at her and then whispered to me, “Uh, do you think that Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan is maybe, like, kind of fucking nuts?”

It definitely was kind of strange how much she wanted us
to win. She was like one of those weird mothers in Texas who kills her daughter’s rival so her child can make the cheerleading squad.

“Say something,” Devon whispered. “I want to know what’s up her ass.”

I raised my hand. “Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan? Did they let you videotape them?”

Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan snorted. “Certainly not. I climbed a fire escape, went in a window, and hid in a crawl space.”

We were flabbergasted. “Wow,” Devon said. “That is super hardcore, Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan.”

“You’re not the only people in the history of civilization to attend prep school,” she said. “Nor the only ones to break rules. Well. Moving along!” She went to the TV/DVD player in the corner of the room and slipped in a DVD. “Watch carefully, because we have our work cut out for us.”

The video started out as a rumble of voices, and light coming through slats. Then it focused in on a slightly grainy image of one boy and panned out to reveal eight other boys who all looked almost exactly like he did. They were all skinny and pale, and each had a very prominent Adam’s apple and an expression of total humorlessness. A slim man in a black suit who looked to be no more than a few years older than all his students paced, firing off questions.

“That’s Mr. Raines,” Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan said. “He’s their adviser. He’s written a couple of books on the War of 1812.”

Of course he had.

“OK,” Mr. Raines said, “who is A. Philip Randolph? ID, historical period, significance. Jones!”

A short, towheaded boy stepped forward and announced, as if he were giving name, rank, and serial number, “A. Philip
Randolph, 1889 to 1979. Head of the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters’ Union. African-American who, protesting unfair wages and treatment of his union in 1941, threatened to have African-Americans march on Washington. Considered to be the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.”

“Good,” Mr. Raines said. He pushed his glasses back on his head and all the boys who wore glasses, which was exactly eight out of ten of them, did the same.

“The Crimean War. Historical period, significance. McCaskill.”

McCaskill was one of the two not wearing glasses. He had a long nose and a querulous purse to his lips. He delivered his information as if he were angry. “Crimean War, 1853 to 1856, a conflict between Imperial Russia on one side and the Ottoman Empire, France, and England on the other. Principal conflict: control of the Holy Land. Florence Nightingale was a British nurse whose exemplary service—”

“I thought Florence Nightingale was American,” I said to Nicholas, who was standing next to me.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think even Florence Nightingale thinks Florence Nightingale is American. And the Crimean War, I’ve heard of it, but like…”

“Right,” I said. “Me too.”

Raines stalked across the floor and spun around. “Who is Herb Stempel? Tate.”

“Henry or Alistair?” said two voices, presumably Henry and Alistair.

“Henry,” Raines said crossly, as if this should be obvious.

“The man who faked his loss on the quiz show
Twenty One
so that Charles Van Doren could become its new champion.”

They moved on to math. They found volumes in their
heads. They did quadratic equations on their fingers. They were asked how quickly a baseball, thrown at an arc of 30 degrees, might land in a catcher’s mitt 18 inches off the ground and 100 feet away when thrown with a velocity of 79 mph. Someone yelled out, “Point eight seconds.”

“Very good, Tate,” Raines said.

After this the tape went off.

“Was that the end of practice?” Sergei asked.

“No,” said Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan darkly. “That’s just when I had seen enough.”

The day of the round-robin match, Edie and I were eating on the chilly marble steps of the Administration Building. The silverware clatter and yeasty smell of the cafeteria had made my stomach churn, and frankly, so had Gid, sitting alone in the far corner, thinking to himself, watermelon, tuna, gross cheese, yellow squash. He mentally piled them all up in a bowl and poured goat’s milk on them. I knew what he was doing. When he didn’t want to think about sex, he did a sort of food-aversion thing.

His presence in my head and on this earth was a terrible weight. But I couldn’t not eat, because hopefully one day I would be over him and I didn’t want to be over him at a second-rate university, and I needed my strength for ATAT. All I could eat lately was tapioca pudding with almonds in it. The bland sweetness of the tapioca soothed me, and the crunch of the almonds kind of woke me up.

“I don’t want to sit through that entire round-robin match today just to get demolished in the finals,” I said to Edie. “There’s got to be a way to beat Xavier.”

“Of course there is.” Edie nodded with confidence. “We don’t know what it is yet. But it will come to us.”

Just then, Gid clomped down the steps of the cafeteria and Pilar emerged from the library, and they started moving toward each other. What a vision she was, long hair flowing behind her, a short skirt baring the sheen of her legs, her butt perky on the pedestal of a pair of high-heeled boots. She waved, and as she lifted her arm, her shirt lifted up to reveal a patch of her stomach, concave, lightly muscled, golden, Mala Rodríguez perfect. They embraced but didn’t kiss. I couldn’t tell if Pilar turned away from him or if he turned away from her, or if they just happened to not kiss.

Then Gid thought, Why didn’t she kiss me? Is she avoiding me? I’ll kiss her. I might as well.

They kissed. It was a hungry kiss, and when it looked like it was over, it started up again.

Every single notion I’d had that I was OK, possibly even over Gideon, that I didn’t want to be with him anyway, etc., disappeared when I watched him kissing Pilar. I tore my glance away to look at her stomach, to double-check if it was indeed approaching satisfactory proportions for her to have sex with Gid. Then I heard:

I theenk it’s flat enough. I really theenk it is.

No. Please, I thought, let me be hearing this through Gid somehow.

Maybe we can have el sex tonight.

No. It was unmistakably loud and clear. I was back in Pilar’s head.

“Shit,” I said. “Shit, shit shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Edie said.

“Pilar’s thinking her stomach is flat enough to have sex,” I said.

Of course, Edie didn’t know I had ever left her head and was confused. “She just all of a sudden thinks this? I don’t get it.”

I threw up my hands. “I don’t know. I guess so. It’s not my fault. Blame her abs, not me!”

Edie nodded understandingly. “OK, OK. Anything else going on? Anything at all?”

“And now she’s…telling Gideon she has to go to the post office to pick up a package.”

Edie smiled like she knew something I didn’t. “Keep going,” she said.

We sat down on the steps and waited a few minutes for Pilar to pick up her package. Gid kissed her and went off to his class.

How had I just gone out of his head into hers again?

“Molly!” Edie interrupted my thoughts. “What’s going on?”

“She has the package. It’s pretty big…like two large shoe boxes placed next to each other. She brings to it a little table outside the post office. She’s opening it with her keys. There’s an envelope on top. ‘Pilar—you’re beautiful just the way you are. Love, your dad. Enjoy.’ Now she’s taking out a couple layers of tissue paper. She’s reading: San Telmo Bakery, Boston. She…I’m reading something.
Alfajores
?”

Edie smiled proudly.

“What is an
alfajor?
”

“It’s a cookie with dulce de leche and chocolate,” Edie said. “Pilar’s favorite.”

“And how did you know Pilar liked them?”

“I asked her,” Edie said. I’d never seen her look so pleased with herself.

“You asked her? How?”

“We were sitting around in the lounge in the dorm, chatting, and I said, ‘Oh, I love cream puffs,’ and she said, ‘Oh,
alfajores
are way better.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ and she described them to me and there was actually drool forming at the corner of her mouth.”

I shook my head. “You’re crazy.”

“Is she eating them?”

Not just eating but wolfing. I hadn’t seen her eat a full meal in a while. She did kind of have to be starving. “Yeah,” I said.

“Well,” Edie said, “then I guess I’m not crazy. We just bought ourselves a little more time. Until we can get you out of her head.”

Then she frowned. “But wait a minute,” Edie said. “If you’re in her head, didn’t you see me talking to her? Or hear me, or whatever?”

I knew Edie was just curious, but I had that feeling of angry defensiveness, as if I were being interrogated. I tried to sound offhand, “Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe I was asleep?”