The Scarlets
Authors: Madeleine Roux
Why be a man when you can be a success?
—
BERTOLT BRECHT
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
—
JEAN RHYS,
WIDE SARGASSO SEA
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
T
he things we want are only thus because we cannot have them. I myself desire a legacy that reaches beyond my own small life, perhaps even into immortality. When I achieve this—if, not when—it will surely cease to be the core of my longing. I crave and dread to know what I will want then. It will be bigger, yes, and accordingly it will consume me that much more.
—Excerpt from Warden Crawford’s journal, spring 1953
W
hen Cal woke up, the classroom was empty. No professor. No students. His cheek stuck to the desk a little as he jerked his head up. His mouth tasted sour and the world spun, everything skewed and fuzzy.
“He’s in here.”
That was his professor’s voice. Professor Reyes. God, she was horrible. Cal couldn’t stand her. That stupid gap in her teeth. The way she rolled her eyes when she posed a question and no hands went up.
Maybe you should ask better questions, lady.
His head pounded, that sour taste in his mouth making his stomach turn. He put his head back down on the desk. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was better than keeping his eyes open and feeling the light pierce straight through to the back of his skull.
“This is the third time, Roger,” Professor Reyes was saying. “Three times. It’s unacceptable.”
“I understand, Carie. Thanks for coming to me with this.”
“Of course.” Cal could just imagine her rolling those beady eyes of hers. “But next time . . .”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry.” Roger—his dear old dad—managed a wry laugh. “There won’t be a next time.”
The door shut slowly but with a hard snap at the end, as if to say she was leaving them alone but wasn’t happy about it. Cal wasn’t happy about it either. A new feeling knotted up in his gut, almost sharp enough to make him sick. But that might have been from the half case of Yuengling he’d had last night. The one that had made him pass out in class in the first place.
“Does this mean I can go back to Greenport?” Cal lifted his head again, this time smudging a tiny puddle of drool across the desk. “Please tell me I can go back to Greenport.”
“I thought you hated Greenport. Couldn’t wait to leave.” Roger—it was always Roger, never Dad or Pop—hoisted up the girth over his belt before settling down on a desk facing Cal. The chair-and-desk-in-one squeaked in protest from the burden.
“Yeah, well, Greenport does suck. But this place sucks even worse.”
Staring at his father was like looking into a magical mirror that showed Cal’s future if he didn’t lay off the cheap beer and Commons pizza. There was just the sparest tuft of reddish-brown hair on Roger’s head, a few desperate wisps that he combed and gelled into an apology for his freckled bald spot. He had those freckles on his cheeks, too, darkening through his perpetual suntan. He had been handsome once, a fact his mother pointed out constantly until it wasn’t so much affectionate as just really, really sad.
Your father was so handsome, Cal. Such a handsome young man.
Cal frowned, shifting his eyes to the floor. His mother could be so deluded. She still insisted on saying that crap even after the divorce, like maybe wishing could take her back in time. Frankly, Cal thought she was lucky to be rid of him.
“
Drunk
, Cal. Drunk in class? Three times?” Roger shook his head, making his drooping cheeks go all walrus-y and loose. “Thank God Caroline came to me. You’re getting a reputation, son—a reputation I can’t smooth over and pretty up for much longer.”
“You poor thing.”
“Sit up.”
And Cal did. Sometimes, occasionally, he obeyed that singular tone of voice Roger had. It was the same voice Cal used to hear before getting taken over his father’s knee as a kid.
“You know, some people would call this a cry for help.”
Cal shrugged and worked a kink out of his neck. “Some people are idiots.”
“You are not going back to Greenport.” Roger crossed his arms over his chest, firming up his jowls into a sneer. “You are not going anywhere. You’re going to stay here and get a tutor. You’re going to sober up and stop this . . . this . . . these tantrums.” He adjusted his tie and looked away, to one of the high, streaked windows. “I thought the gay thing was bad enough, but your behavior has only deteriorated since you started at this school.”
“Gee, Roger, thanks.”
The gay thing.
That sharp sickness in his stomach calmed. Roger was just trying to rile him up, get a reaction, and he wouldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t let that happen. “Did you like take a seminar on being a total dickhead, or does it just come naturally?”
He expected the anger, but he didn’t see the slap coming. It hit and hit hard, and Cal felt his teeth slice open the inside of his cheek.
His father had been handsome once. His father had been an athlete once. His father had probably been human once, too.
Bastard.
“You will get a tutor,” Roger repeated, wringing out his hand. “And you will sober up.”
“And if I don’t?”
His father stood and shimmied his belt again, staring down at Cal with cool, empty eyes. “I don’t like making contingencies, Cal. Tutor. Sober. We won’t be having this conversation a second time.”
T
he words on the page blurred. Something behind his right eye felt like it was broken, like part of his eyeball had snapped off, leaving behind a blinding throb that wouldn’t quit. He drummed his fingers on the desk, trying to disguise the tremor in his hand.
Less than four hours after his argument with Roger, here he was doing the tutor thing. The sober thing? Well, there was only so much a guy could tackle at once.
There were words in front of him on the desk and words ringing in his ears, but try as he might, Cal couldn’t make heads or tails of their meaning or how they could possibly be relevant to him and his raging hangover, which hadn’t gotten better even after all the aspirin he’d taken.
“Do you have any beer?”
Blinking, swallowing a yawn, his tutor stared back at him. She was cute, sort of, in the way only a quiet book nerd could be cute. She had tawny skin and shapeless, curly dark hair. Her teal eyes were the most conventionally attractive thing about her.
Those teal eyes were still staring at him. Right.
Fallon.
That was her name.
“You know drinking more won’t really cure your hangover, right?” Fallon asked, scratching at her cheek with the eraser on her pencil.
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Cal stretched, then thought better of it. Hunching over the desk seemed to be the only position that didn’t rile his headache. “I just know that I want a beer right now, an ice-cold one, and that I want to know the bare minimum to write this paper on
Wide Sargasso Seat
.”
“
Sea.
”
“Whatever. This book is basically fan fiction for another, more famous book. Why are we even tested on this garbage?”
“Definitely don’t put that in the paper,” Fallon muttered, rolling her eyes. But she stood and shuffled over to the mini-fridge next to her bed and crouched, rummaging until she came up with a can of Bud Light. Maybe she wasn’t such a nerd after all. “Here.”
She put the can down harder than she had to on the desk, punctuating that one huffy word.
Cal managed a weak chuckle and cracked open the tab top. “On a diet?”
“Remind me to charge extra for this tutoring session. Sorry, charge your
dad
.” Not one for the jokes, then. That figured. Roger would’ve made sure whatever tutor he picked was totally humorless.
Just like Roger.
“What’s he like anyway?” Fallon asked, so softly and casually that Cal wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly.
“Who?”
“Your dad. I’ve seen him a few times on campus, but I was surprised when he called me.” Fallon was watching him intently. Too intently for his liking. “I’m not an English major, and I’ve definitely never taken psych. Seems like there are better tutors for you on campus.”
“Maybe you’re the cheapest,” Cal suggested.
“Right, like that’s a big concern for your family.” Rolling her eyes, she watched him fiddle with the icy beer can and seemed to interpret his silence as disagreement. “I thought you guys were loaded. And he’s the dean. I hear he’s got everyone in this place in his pocket—faculty, staff. . . .”
“Who told you that?” Cal asked, slumping down into his chair with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He took a sip of his beer to cover up the sudden flush in his cheeks.
Fallon turned to look out the window, the light coming in making her eyes even paler and more exotic. “Nobody
told
me,” she said. “I just crack a campus newspaper once in a while. He’s in like every other article, doing charity stuff, fund-raisers. Isn’t he helping some local politician’s big run?”
“What are you, president of my dad’s fan club?” Cal sipped the beer, but it didn’t have the numbing effect he was hoping for. “You need a new hobby, my friend.”
Fallon closed her book and leaned on it, flicking her pale eyes between Cal and the can of beer. “How the hell did you end up here?”
About as quickly as he had lost interest in the assignment, he had also lost interest in the beer, and leaned back in the chair, fiddling with the chunky class ring on his left hand. “Here as in here?” he asked, pointing to his own chair. “Or here as in the college?”
“Take your pick.”
“Stanford didn’t want me. Princeton passed, too,” he said.
“I can’t imagine why,” he thought he heard her mumble. More clearly, she said, “Daddy’s money and influence didn’t fix all that for you? I mean, you could be top dog on this campus, and it doesn’t really seem like you are.”
Ouch. Cal caught her eye, staring until she looked guiltily away. What was up with this chick?
“Well, to answer your question, I’m stuck here—at this college and in this chair—because dear old Dad’s the dean, as you seem so happy to remind me,” Cal replied with a withering sneer. “He only uses his money and influence to help himself, but because of him, I’m held to a higher standard.”
“Are you kidding? I heard what happened in Professor Reyes’s class. Anyone else would’ve been on academic probation or kicked out for good. I’d say mandatory tutoring is pretty damn lenient,” Fallon said, and then in an undertone, “Pretty damn lucky.”
What was he supposed to say to that? No? That he hadn’t been silver-spoon-fed since before he could remember? He pushed away from the desk and stood, wandering to the dorm room window that overlooked the quad. Fallon had managed to snag a single in Jeffreys, which, for a second-year, was about as likely as getting hit by a comet and lightning in the same day. Cal moved the cheap Ikea curtain out of his way, squinting through the painful flood of sunlight to see the students milling around between classes.
Devon Kurtwilder and his buddies were having an impromptu lacrosse match on the grass outside Cal’s dorm, Brookline. The whole thing could’ve been torn straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, chiseled abs and criminally tousled hair included.
If only he could get Devon as his tutor instead . . .
Cal also saw his friends Micah and Lara sitting under a tree not far from the lacrosse game. One of Devon’s buddies passed a ball sharply to his teammate and it flew wide, nearly smacking Lara in her glossy dark head. Micah was instantly on his feet, all but beating on his chest Tarzan-style at the jocks. For a second, Cal thought the screaming match was going to escalate into a full-on fight. But then he saw his father striding up the concrete path that bisected the quad. Roger dodged onto the grass and came between Micah and the lacrosse players, saying something to Micah and waving around a manila file folder. Even after the players backed off and resumed their game, Roger kept waving the folder and barking at Cal’s friends. Whatever he was shouting about, it made Lara gather her things and leave in a hurry.
Cal hoped this didn’t mean anything serious for Micah—he didn’t need to be getting in trouble. His roommate had had a rough life before college, but he worked really hard to be an upstanding student now. In fact, Micah had become the sort of model citizen at NHC that Cal had never managed to be. It had just taken a little help from Roger and a meeting with the admissions office to sweep Micah’s record under the mat and get him into the school in the first place. According to Micah, anyway. It seemed like a fantasy to Cal. He didn’t know that Roger.