All These Things I've Done (2 page)

I have to admit: it was amazing how fast the rumours spread. Minors weren’t allowed to have their own phones, and no one of any age could publish, virtually or otherwise, without a licence or even send an email without paying postage and yet gossip always finds a way. And a good lie travels a heck of a lot faster than the sad, boring truth. By third period, the story of my break-up had been carved in stone, and I hadn’t been the one doing the carving.

I skipped fourth period to go to confession.

When I entered the confessional, I could see the distinctly female silhouette of Mother Piousina through the screen. Believe it or not, she was the first female priest Holy Trinity School had ever had. Even though these were supposedly modern times and everyone was supposedly enlightened, more than a few parents had complained when the Board of Overseers had announced her as their selection the prior year. There were some people who just weren’t comfortable with the idea of a lady priest. In addition to being a Catholic school, HT was also one of the better schools in Manhattan. Parents who paid its exorbitant tuition fees did so on the understanding that the school wasn’t allowed to change no matter how bad things got everywhere else.

I knelt down and crossed myself. ‘Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned. It has been three months since my last confession . . .’

‘What’s troubling you, daughter?’

I told her how I’d been having impure thoughts about Gable Arsley all morning. I didn’t use his name but Mother Piousina probably knew who I was talking about anyway. Everyone else at school did.

‘Are you considering having intercourse with him?’ she asked. ‘Because action would be an even greater sin than the thoughts themselves.’

‘I know that, Mother,’ I said. ‘Nothing like that. The thing is, this boy’s been spreading rumours about me, and I’ve just been thinking how I hate him and I want to kill him or at least hurt him a little.’

Mother Piousina laughed in a way that only somewhat offended me. ‘Is that everything?’ she asked.

I told her that I’d used the Lord’s name in vain several times over the summer. Most of the instances had occurred during the mayor’s Great Air-Conditioning Ration. One of our ‘off days’ had coincided with the hottest day in August. Between the 110-degree temperature and the heat generated by Nana’s many machines, the apartment had been a pretty close approximation of Hell.

‘Anything else?’

‘One more thing. My grandmother is very sick and even though I love her’ – this was really hard for me to say – ‘sometimes I wish she would just die already.’

‘You don’t want to see her suffer. God understands that you don’t mean it, my child.’

‘Sometimes I have bad thoughts about the dead,’ I added.

‘Anyone specific?’

‘My father mainly. But my mother sometimes, too. And sometimes—’

Mother Piousina interrupted. ‘Perhaps three months is too long for you to go between confessions, daughter.’ She laughed again, which annoyed me, but I continued anyway. The next one was the hardest to say.

‘Sometimes I am ashamed of my older brother, Leo, because he’s . . . It’s not his fault. He’s the kindest, most loving brother but . . . You probably know that he’s a little slow. Today, he wanted to walk me and Natty to school but I told him that our grandmother needed him at home and that he’d be late for his job. Both lies.’

‘Is this your entire confession?’

‘Yes,’ I said, bowing my head. ‘I’m sorry for these and all the sins of my past life.’ Then I prayed the Act of Contrition.

‘I absolve you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ Mother Piousina said. She told me to say a Hail Mary and the Lord’s Prayer as penance, which seemed a ridiculously minor punishment. Her predecessor, Father Xavier, really knew how to give a good penance.

I stood. I was about to open the burgundy curtain when she called to me, ‘Anya, light a candle for your mother and father in Heaven.’ She slid open the screen and handed me two candle vouchers.

‘We’re supposed to ration candles now,’ I grumbled. With the endless stupid coupons and stamps (weren’t we supposed to be rationing paper?), the arbitrary point system and the constantly changing rules, ration laws were incredibly annoying and impossible to keep up with. It was no wonder so many people bought goods on the black market.

‘Look on the bright side. You can still have as much of the host as you want,’ Mother Piousina replied.

I took the slips and thanked Mother Piousina. For all the good lighting candles would do, I thought bitterly. I was pretty sure my father was in Hell.

After giving my vouchers to a nun with a wicker ticket basket and a box of votives, I went into the chapel and lit a candle for my mother.

I prayed that, despite having married the head of the Balanchine crime family, Mom somehow wasn’t in Hell.

I lit a candle for my father.

I prayed that Hell wasn’t so bad, even for a murderer.

I missed them both so much.

My best friend, Scarlet, was waiting for me in the hallway outside the chapel. ‘Nice work skipping fencing on the first day, Miss Balanchine,’ she said, linking her arm through mine. ‘Don’t worry. I covered for you. I said you were having scheduling issues.’

‘Thanks, Scarlet.’

‘No problem. I can already see exactly what sort of year this is going to be. Shall we go to the dining hall?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Yes, you could spend the rest of the school year hiding in the church,’ she said.

‘Maybe I’ll even become a nun and swear off boys forever.’

Scarlet turned to study me. ‘No. Your face wouldn’t be good in a habit.’

On the walk to the dining hall, Scarlet filled me in on what Gable had been telling people, but I had overheard most of it already. The most important points were that he had broken up with me because he thought I might be a caffeine addict, because I was ‘kind of a slut’ and because the start of a school year was a good opportunity for ‘taking out the trash’. I comforted myself with the thought that if Dad had been alive, he probably could have had Gable Arsley killed. ‘So you know,’ Scarlet said, ‘I did defend your honour.’

I was sure Scarlet probably had but no one ever listened to her. People thought of her as the crazy drama girl. Pretty and ridiculous.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘everyone knows that Gable Arsley is a horse’s backside. The whole thing’ll blow over by tomorrow. Everyone’s only talking about it because they’re losers with no lives of their own. And also, it’s the first day of school so nothing else has happened yet.’

‘He called Leo a retard. Did I tell you that part?’

‘No!’ Scarlet said. ‘That’s pure evil!’

We were standing in front of the double doors that led into the dining hall. ‘I hate him,’ I said. ‘I really and truly hate him.’

‘I know,’ Scarlet agreed, pushing the doors open. ‘I never knew what you saw in him in the first place.’ She was a good friend.

The dining hall had wood-panelled walls and black-and-white linoleum tiles like a chessboard, which made me feel like a piece in a chess game. I saw Gable seated at the head of one of the long tables by the window. He had his back to the doors, so he didn’t see me, though.

Lunch that day was lasagne, which I have always detested. The red sauce reminded me of blood and guts, and the ricotta cheese of brain matter. I’d seen guts and brain matter for real so I knew what I was talking about. In any case, I wasn’t hungry any more.

Once we sat down, I pushed my tray towards Scarlet. ‘You want?’

‘One’s more than enough, thanks.’

‘All right, let’s talk about something else,’ I said.

‘Other than—’

‘Don’t you say that name, Scarlet Barber!’

‘Other than the horse’s backside,’ Scarlet said, and we both laughed. ‘Well, there’s a most promising new boy in my French class. Actually, he kind of looks like a new man. He’s all, I don’t know, manly. His name’s Goodwin but he goes by Win. Isn’t that OMG?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Um, it stands for something. Dad said it used to mean, maybe, “amazing”? Or something like that? He wasn’t sure. Ask your nana, OK?’

I nodded. Scarlet’s dad was an archaeologist and he always smelt like garbage because he passed his days digging up landfills. Scarlet went on about the new boy for a while but I wasn’t really paying attention. I couldn’t have cared less. I just nodded occasionally and pushed my repulsive lasagne around my plate.

I looked across the dining hall. Gable caught my eye. What happened next is somewhat blurry to me. He would later claim that he hadn’t, but I thought he sneered at me, then whispered something to the girl sitting to the left of him – she was a sophomore, maybe even a freshman, so I didn’t know who she was – and they both laughed, and in response I lifted my plate with the uneaten, though still scalding-hot lasagne (all food was required by law to be heated to 176°F to avoid the bacterial epidemics that were so pervasive), and then I was running diagonally across the black-and-white linoleum floor like a bishop gone mad and just like that Gable’s head was covered with ricotta and tomato sauce.

Gable stood, and his chair toppled over. We were face-to-face, and it was like everyone else in the dining hall had disappeared. Gable started to yell, calling me a string of names that I won’t bother to repeat here. I’d rather not type a whole long list of curse words.

‘I accept your condemnation,’ I said.

He moved to punch me but then he stopped himself. ‘You’re not worth it, Balanchine. You’re scum like your dead parents,’ he said. ‘I’d rather just get you suspended.’ As he left the dining hall, he tried to wipe off some of the sauce with his hand, but it didn’t do any good. It was everywhere. I smiled.

At the end of eighth period, I was delivered a summons to appear in the principal’s office after school.

Most everyone managed to avoid getting into trouble on the first day of school so there weren’t that many people waiting. The door was closed, which meant someone was already in the office, and a long-legged guy I didn’t know waited on the love seat in the foyer. The secretary told me I should have a seat.

The boy was wearing a grey wool hat that he took off as I passed. He nodded, and I nodded back. He looked at me sidelong. ‘Food fight, right?’

‘Yeah, you could call it that.’ I wasn’t in the mood for making new friends. He crossed his hands on his lap. He had calluses on his fingers and, despite myself, I found this interesting.

He must have seen me staring because he asked me what I was looking at.

‘Your hands,’ I replied. ‘They’re kind of rough for a city boy.’

He laughed and said, ‘I’m from upstate. We used to grow our own food. Most of the calluses are from that. A couple are from my guitar. I’m no good; I just like to play. The rest I can’t explain.’

‘Interesting,’ I said.

‘Interesting,’ he repeated. ‘I’m Win, by the way,’ he said.

I turned to look at him. So, this was Scarlet’s new boy. She was right. He certainly wasn’t hard to look at. Tall and thin. Tanned skin and toned arms which must have come from the farming he’d mentioned. Soft blue eyes and a mouth that seemed more inclined to smile than to frown. Not my usual type at all.

He offered me his hand to shake, and I accepted it. ‘An—’ I started to say.

‘Anya Balanchine, I know. Everyone can’t seem to stop talking about you today.’

‘Hmmph,’ I said. I could feel my face getting flushed. ‘Then you probably think that I’m crazy and a slut and an addict and a mafiya princess, so I don’t even know why you’re bothering to talk to me!’

‘I don’t know about here, but where I’m from we come to our own conclusions about people.’

‘Why are you here?’ I asked him.

‘That’s an awfully big question, Anya.’

‘No, I meant here outside this office. What did you do wrong?’

‘Multiple choice,’ he said. ‘A. A few pointed comments I made in Theology. B. The principal wants to have a chat with the new kid about wearing hats in school. C. My schedule. I’m just too darn smart for my classes. D. My eyewitness account of the girl who poured lasagne over her boyfriend’s head. E. The principal’s leaving her husband and wants to run away with me. F. None of the above. G. All of the above.’

‘Ex-boyfriend,’ I mumbled.

‘Good to know,’ he said.

At that moment, the principal’s door opened, and out came Gable. His face was pink and splotchy from where the sauce had hit him. His white dress shirt was covered in sauce, which I knew was probably bothering the heck out of him.

Gable scowled at me and whispered, ‘Not worth it.’

The principal poked her head out the door. ‘Mr Delacroix,’ she said to Win, ‘would it prove a terrible inconvenience to you if I saw Ms Balanchine first?’

He consented, and I went into the office. The principal shut the door behind us.

I already knew what would happen. I was put on probation and assigned lunch duty for the rest of the week. All things considered, pouring the lasagne on Gable’s head had still been completely worth it.

‘You must learn to resolve these little relationship problems outside of Holy Trinity, Ms Balanchine,’ the principal said.

‘Yes, Principal.’

It somehow seemed beside the point to mention that Gable had tried to date-rape me the night before.

‘I considered calling your grandmother Galina, but I know she’s been in poor health. No need to worry her.’

‘Thank you, Principal. I appreciate it.’

‘Honestly, Anya, I worry for you. This kind of behaviour, if it becomes a pattern, could be damaging to your reputation.’

As if she didn’t know that I’d been born with a bad reputation.

When I left the office, my twelve-year-old sister, Natty, was sitting next to Win. Scarlet must have told her where to find me. Or maybe Natty had guessed – I was no stranger to the principal’s office. Natty was wearing Win’s hat. They’d obviously been introduced. What a little flirt she was! Natty was cute, too. She had long, shiny black hair. Like mine, except hers was stick-straight while I was stuck with untameable waves.

‘Sorry about stealing your place in line,’ I said to Win.

He shrugged.