The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (24 page)

She sighed. “I know. The
Contracantos
—that was you, right?”

“Yeah.” She trusted me, apparently, so I’d trust her. “Me, Jackson, Elizabeth. And Luke. It was really Luke’s idea. We were just following orders. Our great ideas were always his.”

“I doubt that. He’s not as awesome as you think he is.”

“No, it’s true. He is.”

“Neither am I.” She laughed. “We’re messed up, Luke and me. People are always messed up when they only want one thing.”

I looked into her eyes again, but she looked away.

“If you want lots of things, you can be happy when you get a few of them. But I only want one thing.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to make it. You know that. I want to go to New York. If I don’t go now, I’ll never go. I’m a ballerina and I’m eighteen and I’ve got maybe ten years before my body starts to give out on me. This is my life, Ethan Andrezejczak. My one and only. You know how you’ll have some great dream and you wake up and it slips off? It’s gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you forget the dream was even that good. It just slides away. And there are lots of sad things in this world, but the saddest thing I can think of, Ethan, is becoming some happy soccer mom with a coupon binder and a jogging stroller. And I’ll be like, ‘I used to dance.’ But I won’t even know. I won’t even remember how much I wanted this.”

After school, we saw BradLee leaning against his old Volkswagen, smoking. He guiltily stubbed out his cigarette when he saw us.

“Yo,” said Elizabeth.

“Hey,” he said.

Jackson and I kept walking to the Appelvan, but she stopped. She said to BradLee, “Why do you write the script?”

He twitched.

“We just want to know why. Is Coluber blackmailing you? Is that it?”

“For the record,” he said, “I don’t write the script. I have nothing to do with
FAS
.”

“And for the record, we don’t believe you.” Jackson and I were lingering awkwardly behind her. She twisted and gave us an exasperated look. I moved to her side.

“Why?” I said. “Why do you do it?”

BradLee checked over both shoulders. At this time of afternoon, the lot was full of teenagers backing out of parking spaces, so any adult with a healthy instinct for self-preservation stayed far away. “For the record,” he said again, “I don’t write the script.”

“And off the record?” said Elizabeth. “Why?”

He checked over his shoulders again. He needed to stop doing that; it made him look like a bush-league crook. “Let me first remind you that selective colleges consider junior-year English grades to be of paramount importance—”

“Screw you, BradLee,” snapped Elizabeth. She spun and started to walk off.

“Wait!” he said.

“I cannot believe you’re threatening us. Considering what we know about
you—
”

“Look, off the record—”

“We could destroy you. We could make your life a living hell.”

“I don’t doubt it—”

“We’re talking full-out rebellion. You’d never have control of your classroom again.”

“Cyberwarfare,” said Jackson.

“Spitballs,” I said.

“As if we even care about any grades
you
give,” said Elizabeth.

“Are you going to listen?” said BradLee. “Because I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you why I write the script.”

“I’ll draw an asterisk right onto my transcript,” she muttered. “It’ll be like, ‘Note: grade issued by total d-bag.’ ”

BradLee sighed and pretended not to hear her. “Coluber asked me. I was waiting tables, trying to figure out what to do with my life, and Coluber called me up.”

“So you lied,” I said. “There was no job in finance.”

“He remembered me from
Mind over Matter
. He knew I’d been an English major. But he wanted our relationship to stay under the radar so I could spy for him.”

“There was no dartboard.”

“After all, he needs to know who’s glamorous, who should be on the show.”

“There was no funny story about interrobangs.”

BradLee looked wounded. “No! I have
several—
”

“We get it. He asked you to do it,” interrupted Elizabeth. “But why say yes?”

“Either you’re evil, or he’s blackmailing you,” said Jackson.

“No. Neither one. It’s more complicated than that. I do it, well, for the reasons people do things. I get paid. I’m good at it. I thought it’d be cool to have a secret life.”

More complicated, I thought, but also more bland.

“And because I think in the long run, the show’s a good thing for Selwyn. Also that.”

He was sagging against his dirty car, the snuffed cigarette limp in his hand. He was wearing those awful old purple sneakers, and he’d never shaved that half-witted beard. He was a good teacher. He didn’t have to be a good teacher. Coluber wanted him to spy and write, and he’d have kept the job even if he’d sucked at teaching high school English.

“I’m sorry about Luke,” he said. “Coluber was adamant that we try to get him. And even then, I didn’t think Luke would go for it. Not completely. I didn’t think he’d drop you guys.”

“But you’d have told Coluber about the
Contracantos
anyway,” said Elizabeth.

“You know?” His mouth hung open as he stared into the parking lot. “I’d have told him anyway.”

“You’re just like Ezra Pound,” I said.

BradLee nodded, his eyes drooping. “Like Pound,” he said, “I should have been able to do better.”

Nothing changed. We had seen the sordid underbellies of Selwyn and BradLee and
For Art’s Sake
, but there was nothing to do about it. It was a dark time.

So we kept going, and school kept going. Mrs. Garlop taught us Euler’s method. Ms. Pederson cattle-prodded us through Book II of the
Ars Amatoria
. I realized that there is really only one pose of defecation, but I kept forcing Herbert into it, and Dr. Fern would appraise my sketchbook, her finger
on her cheek, and say, Hmm, perhaps his legs are too short, perhaps his torso is too long. I’d brush off the eraser turds and squint at Herbert and try again, but it never came out right, and neither Dr. Fern nor I could ever figure out why.

Giselle
went up. Elizabeth and I went together, presumably to watch Jackson’s adroit manipulation of the lights. Maybe that’s what she watched. I watched the effortless effort that was Maura Heldsman dancing. One leg would pop up as if it had a string attached and she would smile euphorically, but her other leg was planted, her calf muscle bulging. She danced freely, her dance was freedom itself, but by seeking that freedom she had been enslaved.

At the same time, I thought about putting my hand over Elizabeth’s.

I didn’t do it, but I thought about it.

When the museum episode aired, we watched it in the Appelden, Elizabeth and Jackson and I. We roused ourselves to make derisive comments, but when it was over we sank back into the hazes that had become our default states ever since we’d realized that we knew everything but could do nothing.

Jackson was liquidating Mongols on
Sun Tzu
. I was half sitting, half lying on the couch, my chin on my chest. Baconnaise was lolling on my stomach. He too had been listless lately. He’d always been a sensitive guy. Our moods must have been rubbing off on him.

And hauling around that tumor probably didn’t help. Have
you ever chewed three or four sticks of gum simultaneously? That’s what it felt like. A clod. Ungainly. Squishy, solid, too big.

I thought Elizabeth was zoning out on kTV, but she suddenly grabbed the remote, flipped off the TV, and sat upright.

“GUYS.”

Baconnaise swiveled his head toward her and flicked his tail. With a percussive snap of keystrokes, Jackson paused his game. I shoved myself upright and turned to Elizabeth.

She looked surprised. “That worked? I’m honored.”

“It sounded urgent,” said Jackson.

“It is.”

“Talk, then.” I could already feel my attention waning.

“We need to
do
something,” she said.

Now I’d lost all interest. “How many times,” I asked Baconnaise, “have we heard that?”

“Twice,” Elizabeth responded. “
Twice
, Ethan. Before IMAGE and the
Contracantos
. Before VORTEX and the break-in.”

I wasn’t going to be sucked in by a tricolon yearning to be completed. I’d matured. “Whatever,” I said. “It doesn’t work. ‘Doing something.’ Like that does anything.”

“It’ll be different this time,” she said. “We know so much more.”

“We know everything. We can’t do anything.” I let my butt slide forward again so my head was the only vertical part of me. It gave me a crick in my neck, but that was preferable to expending the energy required to sit up. Baconnaise was sprawled apathetically on my chest. He was lying like a pregnant zebra, on his side with all four legs akimbo, the tumor between them. He must be exhausted, I thought. So was I.

“You’re so negative.”

“Why wouldn’t I be negative?” I knew she was baiting me. “I’ve had enough of plans. Plans never go according to plan.”

“Our plans do go according to plan,” said Elizabeth, who had clearly been thinking about this. “They’ve just sucked as plans. We didn’t formulate our goals correctly. We didn’t know what we wanted. We could have anticipated all the problems with VORTEX.”

“Except the ceiling part,” Jackson said thoughtfully.

“I am not interesting in planning again,” I said. “I want to sit here. It’s March. Two more episodes of the show, two more months of school. It’ll be over soon.”

“
FAS
will have another season,” said Elizabeth.

“So what? That’s senior year. We’ll choose to ignore it. Then we’ll go to college and we’ll never have to think about any of this again.”

Elizabeth was looking at the remote mournfully. She was wearing her typical blinding clothes: green scrubs, a wide pink top, bowling shoes that were so smothered in sparkles that it looked like she’d stepped in unicorn dung. But the clothes seemed out of place in the camel-colored Appelden. “Maybe so.”

“You’re right,” said Jackson. “It’s a choice.”

I thought he was backing me up. I thought I’d got them. That I, Ethan Andrezejczak, had actually won an argument.

Then Jackson stood up, and his voice became fervent. “We could choose to stay here. We could lie around the Appelden and let people sell their souls. Compromise their ideals. Act like harlots so they have a chance to live their dreams.”

He took a step forward and almost tripped over Honey Mustard, but he wasn’t derailed.

“These are people we know. This is something we could change. If we don’t, if we choose this life”—he gestured to the TV, the twin monitors, the couches and the dog kennel and the gerbil cage, the beigeness of it all—“we’re going to live with this choice forever.”

Honey Mustard barked.

“And every time we think about high school or
For Art’s Sake
or Maura or—or Luke—every time, we’re going to hear a voice whispering,
‘You should have been able to do better.’
 ”

“Hell yeah, Jackson,” said Elizabeth after a moment.

“Seriously,” I said. “I can’t believe the words ‘live their dreams’ crossed your lips.”

“Me neither,” said Jackson, dropping back into his chair, his pale cheeks flushed. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“You got me,” said Elizabeth.

I didn’t want to admit that I was feeling the old fires stirring too. “You were already on his side,” I told her.

“But if I hadn’t been, I would be now.”

“You can’t know that. That’s the most fallacious thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You sound like Luke,” said Elizabeth.

“Shut up about Luke.” Now I was angry, angry that I’d almost been conned into throwing my heart and soul into some dumb plan that would only fail at the end. “I sound like myself.”

“Are we going to choose ignominy or glory?” said Jackson. “Will our lives be dull or packed with adventure?”

“You’ve been reading too many fantasy novels,” I told him.

“We need to do something,” said Elizabeth. “We need a plan. But first we need to answer the all-important question.”

“What have you two been smoking?” I muttered.

She glared at me. “What do we
want
?”

“Glory,” said Jackson.

“Justice,” said Elizabeth.

“Luke back,” said I.

“Okay,” she said sternly. “Get over it.”

“What?” I yelped. “Luke is
dead
to us. That’s not something you get over.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Your best friend betrays you, the best guy you’ve ever met, and you move right on?”

Elizabeth sat up sharply. “I’ve wanted to say this for like a month now.”

Uh-oh, I thought.

“Luke is not who you thought he was. Luke’s not who any of us thought he was. He told you that himself. He had a price. Maybe everyone does, maybe some people don’t, but Luke did, and that’s that. You’re mourning a person who never existed at all.”

I grabbed Baconnaise. He woke up and trotted sleepily up my arm. I watched him and didn’t meet Elizabeth’s eyes.

“You’re all about the people who don’t exist, aren’t you, Ethan?” she said. “Your best friend was a guy you didn’t know.
You idolized a teacher you didn’t know. You’re in love with a girl you don’t know. Now all you want to do is play with a gerbil who doesn’t even have a personality
to
know. You think he does, but Ethan? Hello? Baconnaise is a rodent.”

Baconnaise is so much more than a rodent, I thought. But she was too angry to interrupt.

“That’s what you’re trading in for us. Look. I’m an actual girl, sitting beside you, and over there, look, it’s your best friend. And you treat us like drones or droids or something. We’re the things you have to deal with until you make it to your
real
friends. But guess what? Maura’s not even a person to you, just some dancing goddess. Luke wasn’t a person either. He was this ideal, telling the tale of the tribe or revising the mythopoesis or whatever your big theory was. That’s the only reason you like them, because you don’t know them at all.” She flopped back onto the couch. “It’s sick.”