The Crazy School (17 page)

My lips were so dry it hurt to clamp them onto the edge of the glass, so Lulu tipped it up. More water spilled down my chin than got into my mouth, and she pulled the glass away.

The tiny sip made me feel thirstier. “More?”

“See if that stays down. I can make you some tea if you like.”

My head was too heavy to hold up, so I let it fall back to the pillow.

“I’m going to go put the kettle on,” she said.

I dozed off while she was gone, waking up when she sat down and made the mattress jiggle again.

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She gave me another small sip of water. I kept it all in my mouth this time.

“You had a rough night,” she said.

I swallowed. “What happened?”

“I thought you’d gone back to Pittsfi eld at fi rst,” she said.

“Figured you’d ditched me because you didn’t feel well.”

“No.”

“I know, it seemed pretty strange. I started walking home alone when the party was over,” she said, brushing a strand of hair off my forehead. “But on the way, I saw your car. So I got Pete, and we started looking for you. We fi nally found you mumbling to yourself out behind the vegetable patch, down by the Farm. You’d been sick. You kept talking about spiders.”

“The snow,” I said. “It looked like spiders.”

“You were delirious.” She gave me more water.

“How long was I out there?” I asked.

“They’d all gone to sleep down at the Farm.”

The kettle started whistling.

“Peppermint tea okay?” she asked, standing up.

The idea was repulsive. “Just water.”

“The mint will soothe your stomach. I’ll put some honey in it.”

The whistling got shriller. Lulu stood up and left the room.

After a minute I could hear her opening and shutting cabinet doors. She returned, bearing a hand-thrown clay mug, steam rising up off it with the smell of mint.

The scent made my stomach ripple, and I felt my mouth fi lling with spit.

She put it down on the bedside table. “I’ll let that cool off.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think I’m quite up for it.”

“Give it a minute.”

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“Tell me what happened fi rst,” I said, shutting my eyes again.

“It was tough getting you here. We were going to take you to my apartment, but we didn’t think you’d make it that far.

You were so sick. This was closer.”

“I’m sorry.” I cringed, picturing her and Pete carrying me uphill from the Farm while I was covered in puke.

“Whose nightgown is this?” I asked, plucking at the un-familiar sleeve on my arm.

“Dhumavati’s. Your clothes were pretty nasty. I washed everything last night, but we had to put you in something.” Lulu pointed to a pile of folded stuff on a small wing chair near the door. My jacket was hanging on the back.

“You didn’t have to,” I said.

“Well . . . I really did. Either that or throw it all out.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Plus, everything was wet from the snow.”

“You guys must all be exhausted,” I said. “I’m grateful.”

“I’m just glad we found you.”

“So am I.”

“Have some tea,” she said, holding the mug to my lips.

I took a big swallow. It felt like it was going to stay down all right. I took it from her, drinking more, slowly.

She closed her eyes, leaning against the headboard next to me.

“Dean knows I’m here?” I asked.

“We called him after we got you cleaned up. He wanted to come down, but we told him he might as well let you sleep.”

“Why don’t you lie down all the way, get a little rest yourself ?” I said.

“Feels good just like this, after that chair.”

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I heard the front door open in the next room and a breath of cold air washed over us.

Pete appeared in the doorway. “She’s awake?”

“We both are,” said Lulu.

“Hey,” I said, slowly sitting up. “Thank you for everything.

Both of you.”

“Are you feeling a little better?” he asked.

“Better,” I said. “Not exactly great.”

The two of them were silent for a bit too long.

“Have you told her?” Pete asked Lulu.

“Told me what?”

The phone rang out in the living room.

“I’ll get it,” said Pete, looking relieved.

“Told me what?” I asked Lulu.

“Shhh,” she said.

Pete mumbled a few things, then got quiet for a while, then said, “I’ll let them know.”

I heard him exhale as he fumbled the phone back in place, then he came into the doorway again and looked at Lulu.

“That was Tim,” he said. “Everything’s canceled for the day . . .

classes . . .”

I looked at him. “We got a snow day?”

Pete shook his head, started to say something and then stopped.

“Pete?” I said.

He cleared his throat. “The police are here.”

I tried to catch his eye. “Why?”

He walked over toward us. Took a seat at the foot of the bed.

“They want to talk to everyone about last night.”

“About what, last night?”

“Mooney and Fay.”

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“They ran away?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“What?”

Pete stood up again.

“Come on,” I said, “what happened?”

He wouldn’t look at me, couldn’t stand still.

“So it’s true?” asked Lulu.

“Yeah,” he said.

I turned toward Lulu, “What the hell’s going on?”

“Last night, Mooney and Fay committed suicide,” said Lulu.

“But they were just . . .”

“Oh, honey, I know,” said Lulu, putting an arm around my shoulders to draw me close, tears running down her face.

I couldn’t even cry, I was too numb. “How do you know for sure?”

“Dhumavati got a call this morning,” said Lulu.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Dhumavati asked me to wait. She wanted to make sure you were okay fi rst.”

I looked up at Pete. “Who found them?”

“Gerald,” he said. “Early this morning. Up in the loft.”

“What loft?”

“Above the living room at the Farm. He wondered why the ceiling hatch to it wasn’t closed all the way.”

“How do you know they . . .” I couldn’t fi nish the question.

“They drank something,” said Pete. “Nothing up there with them but two half-empty cups of punch, and Gerald said there was some—”

He stopped.

“Some what?” I asked.

He shook his head.

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I pulled away from Lulu. “Some
what,
Pete?”

He grimaced.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Gerald said there was foam. Around their mouths. And that the cops were talking about poison.”

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24

I pushed the covers off my legs.

“Madeline, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Lulu.

I didn’t answer, just crawled away from her and started to climb out the other side of Dhumavati’s guest bed.

I felt horrible when I stood up—pounding headache, still sore all over. Weak and shaky. I caught sight of my refl ection in an old mirror hanging over Dhumavati’s bureau. I looked so horrible I closed my eyes. “This wasn’t suicide.”

“How do you know?” asked Pete.

I opened my eyes and stared at him in the mirror. “I just do.”

“Madeline, come lie down before you fall over. I told Dhumavati I’d keep you in bed,” said Lulu.

“I can’t.” I walked over to the bureau and braced myself, one hand against the top drawer.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

I turned toward Pete. “Where is everyone, in the dining hall?”

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Lulu stood up. “You’re sick as a damn dog.”

“No, I’m not,” I said.

“Oh, please,” she insisted. “You puked all over yourself in the snow. Couldn’t even walk without us holding you up. I’ve never seen anyone get hit that hard with the fl u.”

“Look, Madeline, if the cops want to talk to you, they’ll come down here,” said Pete.

“Dhumavati told me to let you rest,” said Lulu. “Half the school’s down with this bug.”

I walked back to the bed so I was standing in front of her and took her hand.

“Feel my forehead,” I said, laying her palm against my skin.

“No fever, right?” I said. “And I didn’t have any fever the fi rst time you touched my face this morning, did I?”

She pursed her mouth, unswayed.

“And I haven’t puked since you guys found me out there last night.”

“Once,” she said. “We had to change the sheets.”

I turned to Pete. “Was that the last time, after you guys put me to bed?”

“We’re not going to argue about this. You need rest,” he said.

I walked over to the chair that held my folded clothes. “I need to get up there.”

“No, you don’t,” Lulu said.

Pete stepped into the doorway, blocking my way out and looking concerned.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Lulu’s right. You shouldn’t go out in the cold. You’re just gonna make yourself worse.”

“Trust me, right now there’s nothing I’d rather do than go home and lie down, preferably through Thanksgiving,” I said, 1 6 3

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shrugging his hand off. “Look, you guys—I don’t
have
the fl u.

Somebody fucking dosed me. That’s why I have to talk to the cops. Ask them to fi nd out what the hell I threw up out in the snow—see if it’s the same shit Fay and Mooney drank.”

“You don’t think it was suicide?” asked Lulu.

“Was there a note?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure the police would discuss that with us.”

“Gerald would’ve. And I can tell you right now he didn’t fi nd one,” I said, picking my clothes up off the chair. “I talked with Fay and Mooney last night. There’s no way they were planning to kill themselves.”

Lulu nodded, but Pete looked like he wasn’t about to give up blocking the doorway.

“If the police think they
did
, they’re not going to look at anything else. Because then it’s just a couple of crazy kids up at that crazy school. That’s not what happened. They have to know.”

“But Fay cutting herself,” said Pete. “And the idea that anyone here would—”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “I hope to hell I am.”

“But maybe you’re not,” said Lulu, standing up and walking over to Pete. “Go wait in the living room. Let Madeline get dressed.”

She closed the door behind him, then turned back toward me. “You’re sure about this?”

“Fay and Mooney wanted me to come back down to the Farm this afternoon so we could talk. They promised me they wouldn’t take off before then.” I tossed Dhumavati’s nightie onto the bed and started getting my clothes on.

“Okay,” she said.

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I sat down and reached for my boots. “Did you tell anyone about the rest of it?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Want me to spit into my palm so we can shake on it?”

“I’m sorry, I had to ask,” I said, standing up and checking myself out in the bureau’s mirror again. There was a crocheted panel of lace laid out beneath it, with a few small mementos and framed photographs scattered across its surface. “You’re just the only person I can trust,” I added.

“Same here,” said Lulu. “Do you think there’s any way this
was
suicide?”

“I told them I had an idea about something we could do,”

I said.

“Did you tell them what?”

“No, but I know they wanted to fi nd out. Mooney’s the one who told me to come back today.”

I picked up a tin ashtray that held a small shell button and couple of bobby pins. Somebody’s dented souvenir from Fisher-man’s Wharf. “I mean, I could believe they decided to blow me off and run away, but even that would’ve surprised the hell out of me.”

“And where would they have found anything to do it with on their own?” Lulu asked.

Her question brought me up short, because the fi rst time I went down to the Farm, Mooney had told me about laying out the poison for rat duty.

If he and Fay
had
wanted to die, Mooney knew exactly what to spike the punch with.

But wouldn’t rat poison be locked away? We weren’t allowed 1 6 5

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to keep bottles of Wite-Out in our desks. Too many kids wanted to huff the fumes.

And Fay and Mooney had been so much less morose the night of the party. I’d heard that sometimes people get more cheerful after deciding to kill themselves, but I couldn’t believe that of these two kids. I wanted to believe they trusted that I had a workable plan, a way out. Mooney’d even given me shit about keeping my sweater on around Wiesner.

I tilted the photos on the bureau so I could see them better.

One of a young, dark-haired Dhumavati with a pretty little girl on her lap, the pair of them sitting on a picnic blanket in front of a spindly pagoda. One of Dhumavati alone, holding up a get out the vote! sign in a crowd of cheering people.

“When was the last time you were on overnight duty at the Farm?” I asked Lulu.

“Couple of weeks ago,” she said. “Why?”

“Did you have to do anything about the rats?”

“We set out traps at night. I didn’t think it was working too well.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. “They’d started using poison.”

“Would Mooney have known that?”

“He had to help spread it around at lights-out,” I said. “But I can’t believe anybody would leave shit like that sitting on the kitchen counter till morning, can you?”

“Of course not,” she said. “There’s a locked cabinet. Everything questionable goes in there—right down to the dish soap.”

“Padlock or key?”

“A key. When you’re on duty you have to wear it around your neck, even in bed.”