The Garden of Dead Dreams (10 page)

Reed shrugged. “Oh, I thought I saw him exit the theater with Olivia through the side door. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

“Yeah, you must have been.” Etta felt claustrophobic all at once. She grabbed her key off her desk, slipped past Reed, and yanked the door shut behind them, jiggling the doorknob to make sure it was locked.

When Etta crested the hill behind her cabin, the sound of Reed’s footsteps behind her, she realized she hadn’t deposited her key in her usual hiding place under the porch steps. She gripped it more tightly, the jagged metal gouging into her palm, and quickened her pace.

* * *

Etta was so lost in her own thoughts—swirling images of the play, Olivia on the stage, the director’s expression as he stepped into the aisle—that she didn’t see the figure up ahead of her on the trail at first. She halted and fell forward, jerking her foot in front of her just in time to catch her weight. She gazed at the man’s ruddy cheeks and gray stubble for what felt like forever, but might have only been a few seconds. Then she spun around and heard the sound of Reed’s name being forced from her lungs, so guttural that her throat stung from the force of it. She sprinted down the steep grade, her eyes glued to the ruts and rocks in front of her, the gnarled roots, the puddles. How long had it been since she’d heard Reed’s footsteps behind her?

She rounded a corner and leapt to the edge of the trail to avoid colliding with Reed. He brought his hands up to protect his face and then dropped them. His hair was drenched with sweat—stringy strands pressed to the head band.

“I saw him.” Etta clutched Reed’s hand, which was large and limp in hers, his palm slick. She yanked Reed behind her up the hill. She couldn’t tell if the sound of the ragged breathing was coming from her or from him.

When they got to where she’d seen the man standing, she dropped Reed’s hand. She felt dizzy and hunched forward, clutching her knees with her hands. When she felt steady, she pushed herself up and gazed in every direction.

“Was it Galen?”

“Galen?” The name sounded strange on her tongue. The forest was a sea of shadows, thick curling undergrowth, moss-coated tree trunks. Had she really seen someone? She wasn’t sure of anything now.

Etta and Reed walked back to Etta’s cabin. By the time they reached the clearing in front of the women’s cabins, Etta was convinced she’d had a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep. Reed wasn’t so sure.

“Did he have a weapon?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? It was nothing.”

“But you thought you saw a beard? Certainly Galen would have a beard, living in the forest as he does.”

Etta took a step backward, away from Reed. “Please drop it.” The tone of her voice was sharp, and now Reed looked both dubious and bruised. Etta tried to smile.

“Can I tell you something?” Reed asked.

Etta squinted.

“Your shirt’s on inside out.”

Etta looked down. Her T-shirt wasn’t just inside out, it was backward, the tag sticking out under her chin. They both laughed.

* * *

A note hung on Etta’s door, folded in half and stuck on with a piece of masking tape. The white paper looked almost fluorescent against the dark paint. Etta peeled the tape off the splintery wood, cringing at the sound it made. Her mind went to love letters—calligraphy, poems, envelopes sealed with kisses. She unfolded the paper and laughed. It was the opposite of a love letter —a form letter, if one line of print could be called a letter at all. Someone had written the date and Etta’s name on two blank lines at the top of the page. Beneath it was a type-written sentence:
Your presence is requested in the office of Director Edwin Hardin at:
Beneath it someone had scrawled
13:00
.

It was obviously from Teddy. The director’s assistant was obsessed with military time and the metric system. According to Carl he’d spent his first year at the academy campaigning, with actual signs and posters, for all official correspondence and business to be done in military time and metric units. Hardin had finally given Teddy an ultimatum—the campaign or his job. So Teddy had stopped wallpapering the great room and the dining room with posters. Nonetheless, he managed to include a time or measurement in his correspondence, often at the expense of logic.

Etta pushed her key into the lock and turned, but it didn’t budge. She pulled it out and tried again. She knocked, but apparently Olivia wasn’t home yet. She leaned over and studied the lock then sat down on the chair next to the door and blinked back the sunlight.

Maybe her lock had gotten jammed somehow. She tried it three more times and then ducked behind her cabin, stripped off her shirt, put it on the correct way, and walked to the lodge.

“It’s thirteen-twelve. You were summoned for thirteen- hundred.” Teddy must have sensed Etta’s presence as she’d stepped through the doorway, because his gaze didn’t budge from his monitor. His fingers flew across his keyboard.

“You have to work today? I thought everyone had the day off.”

“I work when I’m needed.”

“Oh, that sucks.”

Teddy narrowed his hazel eyes at Etta. His black curls were slicked down with a greasy hair product. “No, it’s my job. Wait over there, please.” Teddy gestured toward two red upholstered chairs that sat on each side of the window near the closed door to the director’s office.

Etta plunked down in the furthest chair from the director’s office and wiped her hands on her pants. She’d heard that Hardin met with each student at least once a semester to check in. That’s all this was, she told herself. But her hands trembled. She grabbed a
Poets & Scribes
from the pile on the small wooden table between the chairs, and flipped through one, gazing at the photos.

“Sir. Etta Lawrence is here. Shall I send her in?” Teddy squeezed the phone between his ear and shoulder, still typing. Then he rolled his chair away from his computer and lowered his voice. “Yes sir. I know you said that, sir. But it’s more convenient for me to use the telephone.” Teddy was silent again. “Yes, I understand that we’re virtually in the same room.” More silence. “I will, sir.”

The door next to Etta swung open, and Director Hardin’s long figure filled the doorway. He smiled, his jowls lifting slightly. “Come in.”

Poets & Scribes
slipped onto the rug twice before Etta managed to get it back on the table and follow Hardin into his office. She sat down in one of two upholstered chairs in front of his desk. Director Hardin sat in the leather chair behind his desk and leaned back, drumming his fingers on the arms of the chair. His office was exactly the place Etta would expect the director of a prestigious writing academy to work—wood floors, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, antique stained-glass lamps—the kind of office Etta had always thought her father should have as president of a university, instead of the windowless box he worked in, which was furnished with just a desk and two wooden chairs. Of course, decorations, books even, would be too impious for Temple Christian College. Etta glanced at the framed black and white photograph of Vincent Buchanan that hung on the wall between two long windows and tried to imagine him in this office, sitting at this desk.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Lawrence.”

“Etta.”

Hardin nodded and leaned forward, folding his hands over a pile of file folders on his desk. “I apologize for bothering you on a Sunday. I would not think to interrupt your writing unless it was of the utmost importance.”

A buzz zipped up Etta’s spine, a numbness spreading between her ears. It was happening. The worst thing possible. He knew about her past. She glanced at the door. She could stand, make an excuse, and flee the room. But then what? She turned back to the director. What would she say? She tried to string together sentences in her head, but they swirled together into the humming buzz.

“Well, Etta, it’s due time we meet again. If only it could be under better circumstances. I’m afraid I have some news regarding Ms. Saxon. She was your roommate, yes?”

A calmness rushed through Etta. This wasn’t about her. Then she processed his words:
was
.
Was your roommate
. A roar burst into her head, like air rushing out of a balloon, only louder.

Hardin’s eyes shifted back and forth behind his wire-framed spectacles. “Ms. Saxon has left the academy and will not be returning. I hate to trouble you with anything that will interfere with your writing. However, I’m hoping you can gather Ms. Saxon’s things so that we can ship them to her mother’s house in New York. Carl will retrieve them tomorrow afternoon. Is that too soon?”

Etta stared at him and tried to shake her head, but she couldn’t tell if she’d managed it.

“I appreciate your assistance. If you find it necessary to be absent from classes tomorrow for this purpose, just leave a message with Teddy. I will excuse you.”

Etta nodded, although she hadn’t known that attendance was kept in any formal way. She’d never had a reason to miss a class. The silence spread out between them, heavy and suffocating, and finally Etta stood and stepped toward the door. Then she spun around. “Why did she leave?” Her voice sounded strangely far away.

Hardin straightened the folders on his desk. Etta glimpsed the label on the top one—Saxon, Olivia—and a shiver rippled through her. “Oh yes, of course. I suspected you might ask that question. Your roommate is ill and needs some rest.”

Etta’s eyes drifted to the windows, and she thought of Olivia standing on the stage next to Robert North, her dark eyes shifty and watery. Of course, Hardin didn’t mean Olivia was sick in the traditional way, that she had a cold or the flu or a migraine. But what did he mean? “Will she be okay?”

Hardin’s hand wavered above his desk, trembling. “I wish this were the first time I’d seen this sort of thing. Some young people can’t handle the pressure of the academy, the solitude, the expectations. I am convinced that only students already inclined toward instability fall victim to their demons here.” He lowered his voice. “Or perhaps that’s what I tell myself.”

“But her play was so amazing,” Etta murmured. She couldn’t take her eyes off the director’s hand. The tremor seemed to have taken on a life of its own, betraying his still face and poised posture. Hardin clutched the edge of the desk, his fingers still twitching.

The director stood and strode around his desk. Before Etta knew what was happening, her cheek was crushed against the pocket of his suit jacket and the slightly sweet, spicy scent of his cologne enveloped her. He pulled away. “I know this must be difficult for you. Roommates tend to grow quite close here.”

Etta gazed at him, then reached for the doorknob. She thought about telling him about her run with Reed, the trick of the light. Instead she murmured, “My lock’s jammed. I can’t get into my cabin.”

“It is standard procedure for us to change the locks when a student departs. Carl attended to it this morning. Teddy has your new key.”

* * *

When Etta got back to her cabin, she pulled her iPod out of her desk drawer and scrolled through artists, found Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, and pushed play. She turned the volume louder than usual and lay back on her bed.

Olivia had hated Bob Dylan, because his crooning reminded her of her mom’s “crazy years.” Etta had assumed Olivia was referring to her mom being a hippie. Now Etta repeated the words, “crazy years.” Crazy years? As in psychotic? She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember everything Olivia had told her about her mom.

I’m the product of a one-night-stand. My mom slept with her literature professor.

Do you know your father?

My mom got stoned and forgot to tell him about me. She dropped out of college and moved to a commune outside of Taos. We lived in a teepee until I was three.

Etta pushed herself off the bed. She mumbled the lyrics of “Blowing in the Wind” and slid the broken-down boxes from beneath Olivia’s bed. She found her tape in the closet, and put together some boxes then threw things in haphazardly, mixing books, clothes, and blankets in the same box. The scent of lavender clung to everything. When she was done, she sat on her bed and scanned the bare floor, the empty desk, and the stripped mattress. An exhausted satisfaction settled over her for a minute, like it always did when she finished a big cleaning project. It was the same sort of feeling she got from a long run.

Then tears burned down her cheeks. In the last several months, the constant loneliness that had for so long been a part of her life had dissipated. She’d thought it went away because applying to the academy had been the right thing to do, moving across the country, becoming somebody other than the person her parents detested. But now she knew it was Olivia.

* * *

The next morning Etta slid into her seat behind Maura. Most of her classmates were already in their seats. One of the Poet’s Row students was on his feet, telling the others a story, gesturing, his voice booming through the room. Outside red and orange speckled the undergrowth beneath the trees. Etta turned to a blank page in her notebook.

She’d considered missing class, since Hardin had offered to excuse her, but what would she do? Sit in her room all day surrounded by boxes of Olivia’s stuff? A noise came from the back of the room and Etta turned.

Director Hardin stood just inside the doorway with Walker Ryan. They were both imposing men, and they were at eye level with each other. The director had his hand on Walker’s arm, and his skin looked ashen against Walker’s canary yellow jacket. Walker shook his head.

Etta scanned the room, her gaze bouncing from Pari and Lorna to Lydia and Hillary to Jordan, Poppy, Chase, and Katie. They didn’t know about Olivia yet. Etta had assumed the announcement would be made at Sunday dinner. Unable to bear the thought of it, she’d skipped dinner and relied on the stash of food in their mini refrigerator, most of which had been gleaned from care packages Olivia’s aunt had sent. They arrived each month brimming with crackers, nuts and seeds, and jars of homemade granola, applesauce, and dried fruit, always with a handwritten note addressed to both of them, although Etta had never met her:
Dear Olivia and Etta . . .