The Last Academy (13 page)

O
n the way back to my room after classes that afternoon, I passed by a guy talking on the pay phone outside Pilgrim Dorm. Seeing the phone made my hand hurt. Where was I going to go for the summer? Or winter break, for that matter? Not home, according to my father.

I decided maybe my dad was being held hostage when I called. That’s why he’d said those things. Burglars had a knife to his throat, so he tried to get me off the phone. Except I couldn’t make the idea work — wouldn’t he have used his last words to tell me he wanted to see me again?

I thought about the way he had been talking, all tired and confused. Maybe he was having a stroke. No one had called to tell me because they were at the hospital, waiting to see if he pulled through. But the thought of my family circled around my dad in a hospital bed … and somehow
forgetting to call and let me know? That idea was even more terrible than not being allowed to come home.

Finally, I thought about fourth grade, when my parents had been fighting so bad the word “separation” had floated around the house, from behind closed doors, and whispered through the phone line when my mother called her mother. That year, I’d practically lived at Lia’s, our friendship cemented by the fact that she’d never once been annoyed when I’d knocked on her front door. Bit by bit, my parents had gotten better, and I had come home. Maybe this was the same sort of thing. Maybe in a few weeks, I could call my dad and he’d invite me home for winter break. The idea of staying on campus for the holidays, alone, made my insides feel scooped out.

When I got back to my room, Tamara was lying on her bed, reading a book. I sat at my desk and tried to distract myself by thinking about Mark. At first it was pretty good, with the kissing and stuff. But soon, all my worries got mashed together with those memories of making out with Mark, and so I gave up and took out my English homework. There was a paper on
Othello
due in a week. I was staring through the book when Nora showed up.

“I need your brain. I’m stuck.” She crossed my room and opened the patio door. I followed her, glad to leave Tamara behind. Outside, she said, “I need to find out more stuff on coins. And some stuff on art history.”

“Did you ask the librarian?” Suddenly, I didn’t care as much about the coin. Just about Mark. And mainly about what my father had said to me.

Nora kicked a dandelion that had sprouted on the lawn. “I did. She says the books I want are in the archives. Which wasn’t as helpful as it seems, because that room is locked tight. I need a note from a teacher to get the key.”

“How about the key ring we copied?” I offered dully, wishing Nora could tell that I wasn’t into this conversation.

She shook her head. “So far, those open everything in the theater, stuff in the faculty room … I’m pretty sure the drama teacher’s spare car key got copied, too. But grand theft auto looks bad on your transcript.”

I frowned at her. She paced, totally wrapped up in her own head. She was so self-absorbed.
My father told me I’m not wanted!
I wanted to scream in her face.

“Wow,” I scoffed, instead.

She rolled her eyes at me. “I have classes, too, you
know. I can’t spend all my free time sneaking around campus, searching for locks to try.”

“Then don’t. It’s a stupid idea, anyway,” I said.

That got her attention. “It’s not stupid. Jessie was my roommate, and Brynn is our friend — that coin’s for her,” Nora said, standing up straight. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

I couldn’t quite manage either a sarcastic comeback or a sincere apology, so I only shrugged unhappily. Nora flounced away, confident in her plan, as always. I stayed out on the grass, thinking.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said, into the dark emptiness of the campus lawn. By that time, Nora was long gone. But she was right. Whatever reason any of us were here — I couldn’t change that. But that coin did mean something, and we were supposed to figure out what.

A few days later, mostly to make peace with Nora, I snuck into the library and tried to break into the archives room. I’d seen it in a hundred old movies, so I was pretty confident I could do it. When I got there, I pinched my student
ID card between my thumb and finger and slid it between the door and the frame. I put my ear against the door and listened, because that’s how people in movie land did it. Then I jiggled the handle and wiggled the card.

My failure at Breaking & Entering 101 was kind of epic. My card, with my smiling face right there on it, slipped through the crack and disappeared. For a few seconds, all I could do was stare. I had just unwittingly left a calling card for my attempted crime.

As I tried to talk myself out of fleeing the scene, I glanced around for options. There was an old computer terminal to the left, next to the water fountain. After a moment, my eyes focused on what was on it. A number-two pencil. I tiptoed over and grabbed it. I told myself to stop tiptoeing — I was in the library during library hours, not inside a bank vault. I couldn’t stop, though. It was all the adrenaline, I guess.

I dropped down on my belly, pressed my face to the crack at the floor, and peered into the archives room. Right away, I saw my card, about four inches inside. My fingers couldn’t reach it, but the pencil could. On the first couple of tries, I succeeded in leaving a bunch of graphite
swishes across the magnetic strip on the back of the card. Then I wised up and turned the pencil around. The eraser stuck to the card enough to drag it.

When the corner of my ID appeared on the right side of the door, I pinched it and hopped up off the floor, wiping the pencil strokes off the back like mad and kind of giggling a little. I turned around to get out of there and bumped right into Ancient Abby. I won’t lie — I shrieked.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked.

I knew I was busted. Even if I could explain why I’d been standing there shrieking, how was I going to explain the ID card in my hands? Full confession was a necessity. Giddy fear flooded my brain. I could see the future: I’d get suspended, maybe even expelled. They’d call my parents. Good-bye, Mark and Nora and everyone. I’d go home…. But wasn’t that what I wanted?

My mouth unhinged and fell open, ready to barf out every little detail, when this
other
voice in my head spoke up. It was cool and calm, unlike the always-tell-the-truth voice that usually had the floor. It said,
Sheesh. Shut your big mouth, already. All you were doing was retrieving your own property.
After a second, I realized the voice was some strange
combination of Lia and Brynn, with the self-confidence of Nora, too. But it was also me.

“I asked you a question, young lady. What are you doing here?”

“Leaving,” the voice said with my mouth, and I walked away. The librarian made a well-I-never huff behind me. There was nothing she could do. Nothing at all. It was the best I had felt in a long time.

W
inter Formal was on Friday, and everything about everything made me want to pinch myself. That morning, Brynn got released from the infirmary, and school was over for the quarter. Break officially started after the dance, but even so, I’d already seen people trickling around campus with luggage bags. Their faces were full of nervous excitement to be free of Lethe, returning home or visiting old friends. Not me. Miss Andersen had signed a slip that gave me permission to stay in the dorms over the holiday.

That evening in Nora’s room, Brynn, Nora, and I spent approximately a thousand hours getting dressed for the dance. Nora wore a black miniskirt that showed off her legs. Brynn’s dress was bright pink and eye catching, but
not slinky at all. I guessed she’d chosen it because it fit over the brace on her knee.

I checked myself in the mirror attached to the closet — fluffing my short hair, scanning my midnight-blue dress for loose threads, making sure my makeup was right.
This was Jessie’s mirror
, I realized suddenly. After Miss Andersen packed up all of Jessie’s stuff in boxes and took them away, Nora had done a good job of changing everything in the room around. She’d fashioned Jessie’s old bed into a couch of sorts and hung posters of Olympic runners on the wall. But she’d left her mirror here.

“So, you going with anyone?” I asked Nora, raising an eyebrow on the last word to let her know I meant Thatch.

“Not officially,” she answered, with a secret smile, blushing a little. “What about …” she started to ask Brynn, but then trailed off, awkward. Troy had asked Brynn to the dance. But that had been before the egging. When Brynn looked up at us, her eyes sparkled with tears.

“Hey, he’s a jerk,” I said. But Brynn shook her head and smiled the way people do when they want to let you know they’re not really crying, but they’re too choked up to actually say anything. Nora and I waited. When Brynn
could talk again, she said, “Troy’s gone. He withdrew from Lethe.”

There was a moment of silence before I said, “When?” and Nora snorted, “Good.”

Brynn sniffled. “He came by yesterday to say good-bye” — she raised a hand to stop us from interrupting — “and to tell me he’d just come from Dr. Falzone’s office, where he’d confessed his part in what they did to me … on the balcony. He told me he’d handed Dr. Falzone a list of all the guys who were involved.”

Brynn’s hand was still up, but it didn’t need to be, since I was totally speechless. “Then he told me he was sorry, and he left.” Brynn took a deep breath, blotted delicately under her eyes so as not to mess her makeup, and gave us a watery smile. Down came the hand.

“Wow,” I said. I didn’t know what to think of Troy. Owning up didn’t make him any kind of hero after what he’d done. But it did take him off my list of completely worthless individuals.

“So long story short, I’m dateless.” Brynn gave us a grin and heaved a dramatic sigh into her pink makeup puff. A cloud of powder blew back in her face, ruining her moment and making her cough. Nora started laughing.
The puff flew through the air, but Nora dodged it with her usual grace.

Just then Miss Andersen rapped on the door and flung it wide. Her eyes settled on me. “There you are. Good,” she said, and left.

“What was that?” I squawked, still flustered by Brynn’s story.

“That is what happens when you get on the List,” Nora answered. “Now they’re gonna keep tabs on your whereabouts to make sure you and Mark behave.”

Brynn turned to her mirror and curled the lashes of her left eye over a mascara wand. Her eyelid pulled way up, like she was on someone’s torture rack. With her mouth yanked down in a small O, she teased, “Camden would have been smarter to keep it under wraps. Now she’ll never have any fun.”

Nora nodded in agreement, the mood of the room lightening. Like the two of them were sage poets hired by a Chinese fortune cookie factory:
He who eats cookie in bed wakes up feeling crumby.
Also:
She who sees boy in public will never see him alone.
I rolled my eyes at them, but secretly I was impressed with Brynn’s ability to pick herself up from what had happened and go on. Also, my
insides were bubbling with nervous excitement about the dance.

There was a knock at the patio door. Mark stood there in a crisp white shirt and pressed navy pants.

“Hi,” he said. “You look pretty.”

He looked only at me. It was like Brynn and Nora weren’t even there, like I was the only girl in the world. In that moment I was so happy I might have died. Except I was pretty sure heaven’s soundtrack didn’t involve the smothered giggling of my two friends in the background.

“You ready?” He held out his hand. Blushing hot as a light bulb, I took it.

“Take care of our girl!” Nora yelled, as we left.

Everybody talked like going to Winter Formal with a guy was supposed to be a big deal. But it wasn’t really. I mean, no cars or wild limo drives or whatever normal schools do. Just walking across the darkened campus, past deserted classrooms, up to the dining hall. Still, my heart was a hummingbird.

Mark and I didn’t say a word the whole four-minute trip. Everyone we passed turned to stare, and I was stealing
glances at everyone, checking out their formal clothes and fancy hair. I couldn’t tell if Mark was nervous, or if my own nervous vibes were bouncing off him and coming back on me. I also couldn’t remember if I’d put on deodorant.

When we got to the dance, Mark took me over to hang out with his senior friends. I stood there and smiled while they talked. Bit by bit, I relaxed. Little by little, I realized that behind the fancy clothes, they were the same people I knew. Mark’s friend Beau remembered my name and told me I looked nice. I beamed smiles at him, grateful he was nice to me and to Mark, considering he had liked me first. Two guys — seniors, of all people — liking me? I would have never thought it possible. I wished I could tell Lia, if I’d been speaking to her.

“So … spring fling vay-cay,” Beau said, and slapped Mark on the shoulder. “You going?”

Mark shrugged. “I’m going to see my parents,” he said.

“You can’t be serious,” Beau scoffed. “I heard a rich alum is donating his yacht this year. They’re going to Catalina Island. Sounds cool, right?”

“What?” I asked, as elegant as a princess, if that princess were also an uninformed freshman goober in way too much satin.

Beau leaned in close to me and said, with a knowing smirk, “The faculty host a trip over spring break. Last year it was a road trip down to Mexico. Those of us who’ve cut the apron strings are looking for a little more adventure.” Beau threw a teasing elbow into my date’s ribs.

“Funny, I don’t remember you making any of the trips before.” Mark smirked back, like it was an inside joke.

“This year, man. This is my year,” Beau promised. Mark snorted a laugh. Beau started talking about lacrosse. I spaced. The disco ball did its disco thing, snowing bits of light down on us. I glanced out at the alleged dance floor. It was deserted. The music hadn’t started yet.

Across the room, Mr. Graham and Mr. Cooper stood in their suits. Near them, Thatch helped himself to a glass of punch. He craned his neck this way and that, tiptoeing up on his loafers. He looked kind of like a prairie dog up on its hind legs, scanning the perimeter. His forehead smoothed and he dropped back down on his heels. I followed his glance across the room. Brynn and Nora walked through the doors, talking to each other. Thatch wandered over to inspect the audio equipment by the dance area. He smiled to himself, a little secret smile.
He likes Nora!
I thought.
As more than just a make-out buddy.
It made me like
the guy in spite of his exceedingly high dork quotient. At least he had good taste in girls.

I excused myself to say hello to Brynn and Nora. Like an actual grown-up and everything. I whispered in Nora’s ear what I had seen Thatch do. She said, “Oh my God, shut up!” about a million times before I was halfway through my story. Nora and Brynn and I became a giggling pile of girls. It was pretty uncool, but I was too happy to care. The music came on way too loud.

“Let’s dance!” Nora yelled. The dance floor was still completely empty. I mean, it was pristine, it was so deserted.

“No way.” I shook my head, still laughing. Nora grabbed me and Brynn and dragged us. “Brynn’s knee — she’s not supposed to …”

“You can stand there and shake your stuff,” Nora said. Brynn grinned and nodded.

“But …”

I did not want to shake anything. Nora towed us out to the center of the dance floor and started doing the twist, with her arms and hair flying around. All I could do was bust out laughing. A couple of guys hooted at her. Personally, I would have died, but the commentary only seemed
to encourage Nora. Brynn put her hands up over her head and joined in a little. A couple of other kids actually got on the dance floor. Then a couple more. Nora started a conga line. A stupid, time-warp conga line. And people joined in. I could not believe it. She had some kind of goofy magic.

“Oh, it’s a party now!” Nora shouted. A bunch of whoops from the conga line agreed.

I had to dance a little despite myself. A guy from my Spanish class, Andy West, danced with me for a few minutes. And the craziest thing happened: I felt really, really good. Andy crossed his eyes at me and whirled around.

Then Thatch went right up to Nora and started dancing with her. At first she turned away from him, probably on account of their secrecy pact. He put his hand on her shoulder. Over the music I couldn’t hear, but I saw his lips move.
Dance with me.
Nora’s mouth opened in surprise, and for a moment I was afraid she’d reject the guy. But then she nodded, blushing like wildfire, and they started dancing. In front of everyone, for the whole school to see. I wanted to run over and hug Nora, she looked so confused and happy and embarrassed, and Thatch looked so proud of himself, the goober. But I knew this was their moment. I felt a pang of missing Mark. Where was he?

I stepped outside, looking for him. It was wonderfully crisp, dark, and quiet, with the party seeping out the door as it closed behind me. To the west, the dark chapel stood like the shadow of a sleeping giant. I leaned against the banister and wondered what Jessie was doing right then. The shadows behind me moved and I wheeled around. Mark stepped out of the darkness.

“I didn’t see you there,” I said. Because stating the obvious was one of my many charms. He stepped closer. “Did you see Nora and Thatch dancing? I’m so happy for them!” My cheeks still felt hot and flushed. I hoped I didn’t look like a red-faced kid in gym class.

“I saw you.” Mark half smiled. He looked very serious, actually. “Who were you dancing with?” Another step closer.

“Andy West. He’s in Spanish with me. Did you see that guy jitterbug? I thought I was going to lose it….”

He put his hands on my hips.
I no think good, Mark touch me when
, my head informed me. “You like him?” Mark asked, eyes focused right on mine, his voice a murmur.

I shook my head no. Andy was fine. Andy was even kind of cute. But he would never be Mark Elliott in a million years.

“Good.” Then he kissed me. “I’ll be in Nueva Vista over the break. My parents live there.” His lips were barely inches from mine. “Could I come back up here and pick you up, take you somewhere?”

“Yeah.”

“Call me,” he said.

“More kisses, please,” I answered.

“Ahem,” Mr. Cooper said, from the doorway. “Why don’t you two lovebirds join the rest of the festivities?”

“Hi, Mr. Cooper,” I said, trying for a normal tone of voice.

“Camden.” He nodded. Mark took my hand and tugged me back toward the party. Slow music blared inside.

“See you, Coop,” Mark said, as we passed.

“Oh, I’ll be keeping my eye out to make sure I do,” Mr. Cooper assured us.

Mark and I danced. We had our picture taken together. We drank punch and hung out with Brynn and Nora. Then Mark went with the senior boys to get a group photo. By then Nora and Brynn were back out on the dance floor, but I was too hot to dance. I slipped outside again for some air.

The jasmine hedges near the doorway smelled a lot better than the dancing teenagers inside. I walked toward the breezeway outside Rowntree Room, away from the dining hall. Quiet voices bounced off the terra-cotta floors and echoed, overlapping. One of them sounded like Mr. Graham.

“Give me my coin,” he said. The other laughed. I got chills so bad I thought I was going to pass out. I knew exactly what coin, and I knew that laugh, too.

Far, far away in the dining hall, the music went dub-step, like some huge heart having a cardiac event. Girls were giggling and catcalling. Mr. Graham’s voice was like water lapping at a dock post underneath all those other sounds.

I peeked around the corner. Far down the pathway were the silhouettes of two adult men, walking together toward Hadley House. Between me and them, there was nothing but brick walkway, open lawn, and dim lamplight. There was no way to sneak up on anyone. I slipped out of my high heels and followed them.

Right away, the bricks made runners in my nylons that crept over my toes and unzipped their way over my calves. If anyone had seen me, it would’ve been hard to explain
what I was doing, all faux-ninja style, trying to eavesdrop on a private conversation between the biology teacher and Barnaby Charon.

The worst was that I still couldn’t hear what they were saying, only how they were saying it. It didn’t exactly sound like an argument, but I could tell Mr. Graham wasn’t enjoying his part of the conversation. I crept as close as I dared.

The two disappeared into the Hadley House alcove below Mr. Graham’s apartment. I practically nested there in the jasmine hedge, trying to avoid detection, waiting for the sounds of their voices to diminish enough so that I could follow.

A door closed upstairs and the voices stopped. I snuck into the warm yellow light of the alcove and watched Barnaby Charon slink into the darkness near the sunset bench, like a vampire bat disappearing out an open window. After I was sure he’d gone, I crept up the stairway to Mr. Graham’s apartment.