To Tuscany with Love (16 page)

Lee sucked in the frigid air. Why bother to finish? It was impossible to get an A with the data he had scraped together the last three weeks. Dropping it now would look so bad on his transcript that he’d be denied admission to any reputable med school. Lee knew in his heart that he’d make a decent physician, even though it was an obligation rather than a choice. Stillman, on the other hand, seemed driven to achieve the income of a doctor, nothing more. The injustice of it burned in him.

He had two choices: give up or take control and seize what was rightfully his.

Lee looked at his watch. Although it seemed like an eternity, only minutes had passed since he parted with Stillman. He knew what he had to do, and even though it violated his every principle, sometimes Machiavelli was right. The end justifies the means.

An hour later, Lee waited outside Sherry’s window. He shivered and paced under the row of oak and maple trees beside the dormitory. Surely she’d be asleep by now. He’d given it thirty minutes after her window had darkened. Luckily for him, he’d been an RA in this dorm his sophomore year and knew every inch of its floors. He had looked Sherry up in the directory; it had been a cinch to count off the windows to her room.

He pulled his coat up to his chin and swung his backpack over his shoulder. A girl Lee had known from his Calculus II class last year lived in this dorm. She’d flirted with Lee all year and last week asked him to meet for coffee between finals. Although Lee had put her off initially, now she became his ticket inside.

Lee waltzed inside to the dorm’s front desk and called her room. When the girl arrived, two other students were studying in the main lounge, so Lee followed her to the back recreation room. Admitting that finals were swamping him now, Lee suggested that they meet for lunch the first week after Christmas break, and they agreed on a day. Then Lee volunteered to exit the dorm by the back door—it was closer to the library.

The heavy-duty tape Lee had used to reinforce a textbook was still in his backpack. The girl didn’t notice when he slapped a piece of tape to the bolt as he pulled the door closed behind him.

Lee knew this moment was his chance.

He waited five minutes and re-entered the building. He quickly removed the tape from the bolt on the dorm door, then found and pulled a fire alarm. Lee slipped into the utility closet on the first floor. He heard the fire alarm ringing and footsteps running past the closet. Alarmed girls’ voices rose and fell in volume as the residents headed out of the building.

When the footsteps died down, he ran up the stairwell farthest from the door and peered down the hall, looking in both directions. No one. Lee relied on Sherry to have had the good sense to leave the building. He ran down the hall. He’d pretend to be a “sweeper,” one who looks for people not yet evacuated, if anyone saw him.

He turned the knob to Sherry’s room. Yes—she’d left it unlocked. The light was on, but to Lee’s luck, curtains covered the windows. He closed the door behind him and rushed to her desk. There, on the far side, sat a stack of large envelopes. He ripped the top one open, careful not to damage the contents. It was Stillman’s typed lab packet and report.

Beneath Stillman’s report, he noticed two more large envelopes, no doubt with other students’ papers inside. Next to the stack of envelopes, a voluminous research paper sat in a pristine cover. He flipped through it. It was Sherry’s British Literature final paper. He let it weigh in his hand as he considered the alternatives. Could he risk destroying her paper in the fire he was going to start?

A photograph of Sherry, her faced scarred by acne, smiled at him. In the picture, her arms were draped over two brown mutts. The three faces watched him. Lee thought of her, forced by bad dental luck to wear braces with headgear in college, and he couldn’t put her paper in jeopardy. Her life was tough enough. He placed her research paper back on the desk, but closer to the center than it had been before.

Lee had to work fast. He tucked the envelope with Stillman’s project into his backpack.

He didn’t feel remorse for what he was doing. Stillman had the raw lab work; he could easily re-create the report, turn it in a day late, and lose only one letter grade. Stillman had the highest grade in the class, so if he got a B on the labs, he could still get an A for the semester.

Lee placed the other two envelopes on the edge of the desk, sliding them out so that a corner of the envelopes hung over the wastebasket below. Lee knew it was possible that these two envelopes, with students’ term papers inside, would be destroyed. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of those students. Hopefully, flames from the fire he was about to start wouldn’t rise high enough to burn the envelopes.

In the distance, the horn of a firetruck sounded. Firemen would soon be here to control the blaze. He grabbed the campus newspaper, threw it into Sherry’s metal wastebasket and then topped it off with a handful of typing paper. He lit the blank paper with his lighter.

It had to look as if Stillman’s paper had slid off the stack of envelopes and fallen into the wastebasket, or been consumed by leaping flames. Please, he thought, don’t let the flames leap that high. Even though Lee could live with Stillman losing a letter grade, he didn’t want to burn anyone’s paper.

Lee ran out into the hall. It took less than five minutes for him to exit through the side door and slip out into the dark night. He heard the girls tittering in fear and excitement. He could picture them clustered on the grass circle in front of the building. Lee ran for a clump of trees.

High-pitched screams drew him back to the dorm.

He circled wide, so if anyone saw him, it would look as though he had come from the library.

The screams intensified.

Lee saw the reason. Black and gray smoke seeped from around the window in Sherry’s room. Had the desk ignited? Why hadn’t the firetrucks arrived yet? The sirens had sounded so close. Last month, a prankster had pulled the fire alarm and the trucks had arrived in less than ten minutes.

He thought of the hard work of the students that he had put in jeopardy, now likely consumed by flames. He felt nauseous. What had he done?

The wail of the firetrucks split the air. Closer. Closer. The pitch of the girls’ screams changed, and he saw why. Sherry had run back into the building. His stomach clenched. He sprinted toward the dorm. He had to stop her.

Firemen raced toward the building from the back, where the trucks had rumbled to a stop. The firefighters dashed inside, splitting between the front and side doors.

Lee stopped his race to the dorm. They would reach her first. He leaned against an oak tree and caught his breath. Please. Find Sherry. Bring her out safely. He repeated his silent prayer over and over.

The back door to the dorm opened. A firefighter walked out with his arm around Sherry.

Lee collapsed to his knees and thanked God. The fire sirens silenced. He knew he had to leave and distance himself from the fire. He stood and stumbled away. Sixty paces later, he stopped. With one hand on a tree, Lee bent, racked again by dry heaves. Guilt and fear consumed him, and he shivered as if he’d fallen through the ice of a frozen pond.

Sunrise was peeking through the blinds in Lee’s room by the time he finished.

He’d spent the night retyping and rewriting Stillman’s paper, changing the descriptions into his own language. Now even Stillman couldn’t guess Lee had stolen his material. Stillman’s work impressed Lee. He couldn’t imagine a more precise and well-worded document.

His eyes wandered to the window. The sky had the typical Midwest gray pallor, but streaks of color brightened the horizon.

He pulled a trash can lid from the bottom of his closet. Black soot caked the inside of the lid. Last winter, he had had the brilliant idea of sharing s’mores with a coed. Bedding her had become an obsession and a distraction. Unfortunately, even building a small fire in his dorm room hadn’t loosened her morals. He’d kept the lid because he was proud of his idea—the Residential Housing Department never had a clue he had built a fire in his room.

Lee ripped Stillman’s typed report and the envelope into halves, then halves again. He laid the ripped pages of his friend’s labors in the center of the trash can lid and pulled out his cigarette lighter. Then, Lee cracked open the windows in his room, letting in the frigid air. Bending over the lid, he lit the papers. The flame grew immediately. After a few minutes, he doused the fire with a cup of cold coffee.

Ten minutes later, the ashes had been flushed down the toilet. No evidence remained of his criminal act.

A couple of hours later, his final lab packet hand-delivered to his professor, Lee stood in line at the Blue Coffee House for an extra-large cup of the high-octane liquid fuel. He hoped to get by with coffee for another few hours, rather than the caffeine-laced pills that many students used during finals.

The remainder of the day loomed, his duties a blur of library time and one final that night. Everywhere he went, students buzzed with stories of the dorm fire. He pretended to be focused solely on his books, but he strained to hear every word.

The next night, Lee stood outside the Organic Chemistry room; he scanned the ID numbers for his own. His gut felt like an acid pump on steroids. Even though his finals had ended the day before, he couldn’t join the end-of-term celebrations. He felt no joy.

“Mr. Mostow, may I have a word with you, please?” The deep voice of his Organic Chemistry professor echoed behind him.

Lee forced his face into a stoic expression, turned, and nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. He followed his professor’s brisk march to the stairwell. Lee’s breaths came shallow and silent.

“Mr. Mostow, I must tell you, I read your final labs last night. It was the finest packet I have seen in my thirty years of teaching at this institution. And to think you did it without a lab partner. I am confident your application to medical school next year will be successful. Down the road, don’t rule out research. Your attention to detail and analysis is remarkable for an undergraduate.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lee shook his prof ’s hand.

“Now go. Enjoy your holiday. You’ve earned it.” A broad smile spread across the man’s face.

Lee turned toward the stairs, stopping a foot short of running smack into Stillman, who was leaving the chemistry lab. A putrid shade of gray blanketed Stillman’s face. His shoulders slumped. Only his eyes showed signs of life.

Stillman gave Lee a dark, penetrating stare that sucked the air right out of Lee’s lungs.

Behind Lee, footsteps scuffled against the floor.

“Mr. Jackson, have you resurrected your report yet?” The professor’s voice made both Lee and Stillman jump.

“No, sir. We’re reassembling the data. Unfortunately, some of our charts were lost in the fire.” Stillman’s voice broke. “If we could just have to the end of the break—”

“Absolutely not. That would be unfair to those who managed to complete the work in a timely fashion.”

Lee edged around Stillman, desperately trying to avoid eye contact. The professor’s next words followed Lee through the hall.