Cecily Von Ziegesar (4 page)

“No thanks.” The guy turned abruptly and walked up the road, away from town.

Tragedy got in and pulled her door shut. She picked up her Rubik's cube and swizzled it around. “I got you a cookie but I gave it away. Guy was fucking starving. I don't think I've ever seen anyone that hungry.”

Adam let the car coast in a free fall down the hill toward town. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty. “Guy was nuts,” he said.

 

P
atrick carried the coffee into the parking lot across the road from his old dorm. Even though it served no actual purpose, Buildings and Grounds kept the grass surrounding the lot neatly mowed. He circled the tidy, green perimeter, headed for the depression in the lot's far corner, one of his favorite resting spots. He liked to stretch out in the sun in that particular grassy dimple, obscured from the road and the rest of campus by the cars in the lot. But today a black Mercedes sedan was parked at an awkward angle, half in the lot and half in the grass. The car bore Connecticut plates and a Greenwich beaches parking sticker. It was the car he'd learned to drive on, and it was in his spot.

“Shit,” Patrick swore, about to turn and run. After all these years they'd finally come after him. Then he noticed the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. His parents hadn't smoked when
he lived at home, and it was doubtful they'd taken it up since then. He moved closer to the car and put his nose up against the driver's-side window. Gum wrappers and cassettes littered the passenger seat, along with a rumpled white Greenwich Academy sweatshirt.

The door was unlocked. Patrick slid in behind the wheel and put his coffee in one of the cup holders between the seats. Closing the door, he sank back into the cushiony tan leather. The car smelled stale and sweet. He touched the steering wheel with his fingertips. It was hot.

Shipley had been nine years old when he left for boarding school. Whenever he got kicked out, he'd return home for a brief stint before moving on to yet another school. But even as the years passed, he still thought of his sister as that nine-year-old girl, dutifully setting the table, a headband in her blond hair. Her fingernails were clean, she chewed with her mouth closed, she wore a tutu. How could anyone be that good all the time? She was fourteen when his family dropped him off at Dexter. She wore braces and dangly earrings, but she was still good. And she seemed frightened of him, as if his complete disinterest in pleasing anyone else would somehow rub off on her, cause her to miss the school bus.

Was it possible that Shipley was now at Dexter?

He removed a cigarette from the half-empty pack and lit it with the little yellow lighter that was tucked inside.

The summer he was sixteen, he'd gone on an Outward Bound hiking trip in the Canyonlands of Utah. The group consisted of seven kids between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, three other guys, three girls, plus two trip leaders who were both male and in their twenties. He was the only kid whose parents had paid for the trip. The others had been sent as an alternative to juvenile detention or drug rehab, and their tuition was subsidized. His
sister was up in Vermont at sleepaway camp, learning to ride horses and shoot a bow and arrow. She'd begged their parents to go. He hadn't made any plans at all. So there he was, in Utah.

“Let's gather around in a circle,” one of the leaders said on that first morning, after a van had dropped them off in the middle of some dusty nowhere and they'd strapped on their packs and hiked for a few miles. Except for the provisions that had been distributed evenly among them, Patrick's pack was empty. Outward Bound had sent a list of what to bring, but he'd left his bag on the plane. He was totally unequipped. He didn't even have a toothbrush.

“We're going to do a little get-to-know-you exercise,” the leader explained. He wore a pair of Smith ski goggles on his head even though it was summer.

“Just say your name and then the first thing that comes into your head,” the leader continued. “We'll start with you first.” He smiled at a skinny girl with bruised shins.

She squirmed around a little before speaking up. “I'm Colleen. I steal.”

The leader nodded like that was good news. He pointed at the next kid.

“I'm Roy. I'm jonesing.” Roy had a red mohawk.

The leader pointed at Patrick.

“I'm Patrick.” He told them. “Pink Patrick.”

The entire group howled with laughter, leaders included.

“Motherfucking faggot!” Colleen shrieked, covering her mouth with her gold-ringed hands.

After that he was Pink Patrick for good. On the second night of the trip, he hitched his pack onto his shoulders and started walking. No one followed him. They were too busy playing I Spy and Concentration.

He walked through the desert for an entire night and all the
next day without eating or drinking anything. It was hot. He was wearing jeans. His eyelids and tongue were swollen and heavy. Finally he reached an Indian reservation—a group of trailers and RVs with pieces of Astroturf cut to fit around them like lawns. An overweight Indian smoking a cigarette in a plastic lawn chair outside an RV stood up and handed him his half-empty can of Tab. Patrick gulped it down, feeling it burn the lining of his stomach with its fizzy brownness. He waited on the piece of Astroturf while the Indian went inside. He came out and handed Patrick a package of Oscar Meyer thick cut bacon. And that's what he ate that day—raw bacon and Tab—until he made it back to Moab and got a bus home.

His parents were on a cruise in the Greek Isles, so he hid out in Greenwich for a whole month, lying beneath the sprinklers out on the lawn, letting the water tickle his tongue. When they came home, they didn't want to know anything about what had happened. All they knew was his dirty laundry was all over the floor, he'd drunk everything in the liquor cabinet, and the kitchen was a disaster. His sister came home from camp looking happy and suntanned, with a wristful of lanyard bracelets. Soon after that he'd left for another boarding school. He was never home much.

Patrick reached for the warm coffee and took a sip. It tasted like a hot fudge sundae made with coffee ice cream. It was blended heaven, better than anything he'd ever tasted.

Dexter's overnight orientation trip had been much the same. He'd introduced himself as Pink Patrick just to see how everyone would react. Of course they laughed, and then they avoided him. He'd requested a single in Coke, so when they got back to campus he kept to himself. Those first few weeks he tried to go to class, but he couldn't see the point. He felt like he was standing outside a fish tank watching a busy school of fish. They just kept on swimming.

Since leaving school he'd been as far as Miami, but he always circled back to Dexter again. He liked Maine's extreme weather, its rugged shoreline, its endless greenery, and its relatively tolerant population. No one minded a loner like him. Plus, it was always easy to find food or grab a shower and some clean clothes on campus. But he always had that nagging feeling that he was waiting for something.

He took another sip of the warm, sweet coffee. Maybe this was it.

I
t's often said that the best way to strengthen a relationship is to go camping. The simple tasks of choosing the campsite, unpacking the supplies, setting up the tent, gathering firewood, preparing and cooking the food, and washing the dishes allow each person to demonstrate their strengths and encourage teamwork. At the end of the day, when the coals are dying and each member of the group is snuggled up in their warm sleeping bag under a starlit sky, they can congratulate each other on a job well done, feeling grateful that they were not alone to conquer the elements.

“Keep looking,” Tom commanded as Nick scrambled around on his hands and knees. Before leaving them to fend for themselves for the night, Professor Rosen had split the group in two. The three girls in pink Dexter T-shirts were on one side of the river while Tom, Nick, Shipley, and Eliza were on the other. As soon as she'd dropped them off, Professor Rosen had disappeared into the woods with her sleeping bag, promising to come back for them at daybreak.

Shipley and Eliza put themselves in charge of setting up camp and sent the boys to collect firewood. Tom was really jacked up about it. He snapped a thin twig in half with his hands and tossed it onto their measly pile. “Come on, man, before it gets dark.”

Nick wasn't at all sure he would survive the night, let alone a whole year, living with this brute. He sneezed four times in quick succession and wiped his nose and eyes on his shirt. “Any special wood we should be looking for?” He assumed Tom knew all sorts of manly stuff about which wood burns the longest and the cleanest.

“Fuck if I know.” Tom peeled a skinny green branch off a nearby bush. “I'm from Westchester.”

Nick pressed his lips together in a determined half smile and tried to maintain his usual sunny outlook. Life at boarding school often fosters a hunger for philosophical exploration. The Berkshire School in Massachusetts, from which Nick had graduated in June, went so far as to offer a course called Adventures in Eastern Philosophical Concepts.
The Tao of Pooh
and
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
were required reading. “Everything is an analogy.” “When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret: Life is Fun.” It was Nick's favorite course.

“I think we'll need some big stuff if we're going to use the fire to cook with.” Nick patted the trunk of a huge half-dead spruce, as if he just so happened to have in the pocket of his embroidered tunic the chainsaw they'd need to cut it down. They didn't even have a hatchet. He looked up, examining the upper branches of the tree. He'd come to Maine for its natural beauty. Well, here was his first opportunity to commune with nature.

Tom watched in awe as Nick let out a wild-boy yelp and hurtled himself through the air and into the arms of the tree, desperately straddling its wide, sturdy trunk.

“Jackass,” Tom chuckled admiringly. “Jesus. Watch your balls, man.”

Nick could feel his eyes water and his hands break out in a rash as he shimmied clumsily up the trunk toward the next set of branches. He turned his head to the side so as not to breathe in too much of the tree's noxious, hive-inducing fumes.

“Take it slow, monkey nuts,” Tom warned.

The tree tolerated Nick's scraping and kicking like an old horse that is used to abuse. How had he done this as a little kid without castrating himself? The rough bark tore up the skin on the insides of his knees and bruised his crotch. There were splinters beneath his fingernails and he'd already skinned both elbows. Ten feet off the ground was a thick branch around ten inches in diameter that had been stripped of its bark by a porcupine. If he hung on long enough, jiggling his weight up and down just a bit, maybe gravity would work its magic and the branch would snap. He released his grip on the tree's trunk and swung, Tarzan-like, onto the branch.

“Dude!” Tom crowed. “You're a fucking kamikaze!”

Nick flailed at the branch, but before he could even wrap his fingers around it, the base of the branch came away from the trunk, splintering wetly. He crashed to the ground face-first. The rotten branch thudded against the back of his head.

“Ouch.” Tom approached his fallen companion. “Did you break anything?”

“Ow,” Nick moaned pitifully. “It hurts.”

“Wood's rotten as shit, man,” Tom observed standing over him. “I could've told you that.”

Nick clambered to his knees and swiped at his face with the
backs of his hands. Blood smeared his knuckles. He touched the stinging space between his eyebrows and his fingers came away bloody. He could still see though. He was fine. And now he had a war wound.

He reached for the splintered branch and used it as a crutch to stand up. “Think it'll still burn?” he asked, holding the branch out for Tom's inspection.

Tom liked to think he was tough, but not around blood. During rest time in preschool he used to have to lie down next to Wallace White, who suffered from chronic nosebleeds. He threw up every time.

“Oh shit.” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “Dude, you're bleeding.” He staggered off toward camp, retching. “I'm going back.”

Nick wiped his hands and face on his shirt. The blood was tacky, like red paint. “What about the wood?” he shouted, but Tom was already out of sight.

“He's fucking bleeding!” Tom crashed through the woods like a rabid bear and threw up a few yards away from the tent that Shipley and Eliza had just managed to pitch, no thanks to the boys.

“Who? Nick?” Shipley dropped the dented pan they were expected to cook ramen in, denting it even more. “What happened? Is he okay?” Her heart beat hard and fast in her chest and she could actually feel her light blue eyes turn a deeper shade of blue. College was already so exciting.

Eliza emerged from the tent holding a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese. “Look what I found. It's probably twenty years past its sell-by date, but who cares? It's better than ramen. Hey, where's our wood?” she demanded of Tom.

Tom's face was ashen. He sat down cross-legged beside the
fire ring that Eliza and Shipley had only just finished assembling out of sturdy rocks. There was no fire because there was still no wood. “I'm not feeling well.”

“Excuse me?” Eliza responded, about to lay into him.

“Something's happened to Nick,” Shipley interrupted. “Stay here,” she told them importantly. “I'll go.”

Just then Nick himself strode out of the woods, a parcel of sticks cradled in his shirt. “I fell out of a tree!” he announced. “I'm okay though.”

Shipley hurried over to help him with the wood. She touched his cheek. “Your face is bleeding. Come on, there's a first aid kit in the tent.”

“Fucking fuck!” Tom exclaimed. He lunged forward and puked directly into the fire ring. “Please get him the fuck out of here,” he gasped.

“Poor baby.” Eliza tsked unsympathetically. Camping out with these three was like watching the Westminster Dog Show on TV.
The first dog in our terrier group is the Bedford Terrier, known for its loud bark and tiny penis. This is number 44, Tom Ferguson, Bedford Terrier. Next is the Boarding School Terrier, known for its shaggy coat and perma-grin. This is number 33, Nick Hamilton, Boarding School Terrier. And finally, the Florence Nightingale of Greenwich Terrier, known for its lovely blue eyes and willingness to hump. This is Shipley Gilbert, number 69, Florence Nightingale of Greenwich Terrier.

“Come on.” Shipley led Nick into the tent and rummaged around in the Dexter-issued orientation pack for the first aid kit. “Sit down. I'm just going to get you cleaned up, and then we'll make a nice dinner.” She knew nothing about first aid or cooking, but she liked the idea of playing nurse. She daubed an alcohol swab on the torn-up skin between Nick's eyes.

“Yeesh!” Nick gasped through clenched teeth. Tears streamed down his dirt-smudged cheeks. It stung so badly he wanted to kick her.

Shipley lifted her hand away, but only for a second. The wound was dirty. She had to get it clean. “I'm sorry. I know it hurts,” she murmured, swabbing it determinedly.

There is probably nothing more painful than rubbing alcohol on an open wound. Nick shivered from head to toe and forced a smile to his face, trying to remain zen. “As long as you're the one hurting me, I can take it,” he told her through gritted teeth.

Shipley blushed. She was aware that he was flirting with her, but she had no idea how to respond. She selected a round Band-Aid from the first aid kit and pasted it over the cut. It looked a little silly, but it would have to do.

Eliza ducked into the tent. “The Cowardly Lion is resting and replenishing his fluids. I moved the fire to a nice, vomit-free spot and put a pan of water on to boil. I just came up with a great invention though: a battery-operated camping microwave. Imagine the millions I could make on that.” She dug around in one of the packs in the tent and then glanced at Shipley and Nick, kneeling only inches away from each other. “You guys done playing doctor?”

Shipley sat back on her heels. The round Band-Aid wasn't very professional-looking, but it would be too painful to take it off and put on a new one. “I did my best,” she said apologetically.

“It feels better, thanks,” Nick told her gratefully, even though he could feel the Band-Aid's adhesive trying to adhere to the wound itself. It wasn't a good feeling.

Eliza could practically see his tail wagging happily through the back of his tunic. “I'm looking for some pepper or maybe
some garlic powder or herbs,” she explained, still rummaging. “Something to spice up the mac.”

“But that's my bag!” Nick protested.

Eliza removed a Ziploc bag full of clumpy dried green leaves from Nick's backpack. She opened the Ziploc and sniffed its pungent contents. “Is this pot?”

Nick crossed his arms over his chest. He'd wanted to introduce the pot after dinner as a sort of get-to-know-each-other aperitif. “Yeah, it's pot. I brought it for all of us.”

Shipley stared at the Ziploc bag. Her brother was sent to boarding school for the first time because of pot. He got kicked out of Brunswick for breaking into the school after hours and stealing pot from another student's locker. Pot was illegal. It did things to you. She was terrified of it. And she'd always wanted to try it.

Eliza watched in fascination as her new roommate's eyes grew very round and took on a silvery blue glow. She looked like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole.

“Can we smoke it now?” Shipley demanded.

Nick stood up and retrieved the bag of pot from Eliza's hands. “Come on. I've got rolling papers in my pocket.” He led the way out of the tent.

“Hey, wake up.” Shipley crouched next to Tom's prone form and whispered into his ear. “Nick has pot!”

“Just what I need,” Tom mumbled. He sat up anyway, more aroused by the sensation of Shipley whispering in his ear than by the thought of getting high. The fact that he'd managed to puke repeatedly his first day at college was more than a little embarrassing. But pot was known to alleviate nausea and cause short-term memory loss. Maybe it was just the thing. “I want my own joint though. You should hear this guy sneeze,” he told the girls. “Dude's got freaking TB.”

They gathered around the campfire, sitting cross-legged as Nick rolled four perfect joints and distributed one to each member of the group. The campsite was in a small clearing a few hundred yards from the riverbank. They'd followed Professor Rosen there on foot from the logging road, fifteen minutes through pathless woods. Tall trees surrounded them in a huddle, offering their silent and unbiased protective service. Nick removed a burning stick from the fire and lit the tip of each joint. They smoked wordlessly for a while, interrupted only by a choking first-time cough from Shipley and Nick's incessant sneezes.

“Six years on the rugby team and now I'm smoking up like a total douche-bag,” Tom reflected before taking another hit. His eyes were trained on the strands of Shipley's hair, set aglow by the firelight. They were gold, platinum, bronze, and rose. Auburn, plum, violet, and lemon. And…peony. “Christ, I'm already wasted.”

Eliza smoked her own joint with a great deal of skepticism. She'd only gotten high a couple of times, taking hits from bongs at parties when no one else was looking. She liked how relaxed she got, but she hated how stupid it made her feel. Why would anyone want to feel that stupid on a regular basis? Plus, getting high made you want to eat, which made you fat. It was a nobrainer, literally.

Nick was glad he'd brought the pot. Everyone was mellow now. It was like they were all meditating on the same theme. Twilight had set in, and every atom and molecule swirling around them seemed to glisten. Across the river the girls were singing “Yellow Submarine.” Their voices sounded very far away.

Shipley wished she could just eat the pot instead of smoking it. Her lungs ached after a day of smoking cigarettes, and the rolling paper stuck to her dry lips. But it was all so naughty,
which was what made it all the more fantastic. Her nostrils were buzzing. Her ears were buzzing. She could feel Tom staring at her, and it felt nice. If he wanted to kiss her right now she would let him. She'd run her hands over his bristly head and lick his muscular neck.

She took two more hits and then rose unsteadily to her feet. “I have to pee,” she announced and walked toward the woods. Maybe Tom will follow me, she thought as she stepped out of the clearing and into the darkening forest. Tree trunks rose up around her like the legs of giants. This was what it felt like to be a small child walking among adults.

She'd never peed in the woods before. Up ahead was a clump of young fir trees that looked like a promising private toilet. Squatting down behind the bushy trees, she watched in stoned fascination as her pee streamed out of her, making a little hole in the earth. A mosquito stung her thigh. She swatted at it, spun around, and attempted to pull up her shorts at the same time. There were other bites but she wouldn't notice them until tomorrow.