What We Hide (20 page)

“Right,” says Jenny. “The place with the bodies in the bathroom.” She can be dead funny sometimes.

“But really you should go to the Buckingham Hotel. Best scones in Yorkshire.”

“I’m weirdly nervous,” says Jenny. “About seeing them. My mom’s going to have emotional fits about missing me.”

“Yeah,” says Kirsten. “That happens.”

I’d like to say,
At least you’ve got a mother. A mother whose fits don’t drive her to shave her head with the dog clipper to drown out the scary voices
. But that would make them all squirm the wrong way.

Caroline wanders in, starkers, from Brontë dorm. “Have you forgotten the thirty other girls waiting for baths?”

“Yeah, yeah.” We climb out, wrap up, let the next lot
in. Brush teeth, comb out hair, smear on various lotions. Jenny has not invited me to tea on Saturday. Yet.

Plan B

Visiting day begins with Meeting, of course, so I slink my way amongst the arriving families and happen to end up on a bench between Jenny’s brother and Oona’s dad. The former, lovely. The latter, not so much.

“Remember me?” I say to Tom. He is dead cute close-up. Darker than his sister, no spots, wearing a flannel shirt that reeks of weed. Jenny taps his arm, makes him pay attention.

Richard welcomes the parents, recites his standby poem that starts, “When a friend calls to me from the road …,” and invites us to pause in silent contemplation. We hear what passes for the band—a cello, a violin, a clarinet, and a trumpet—playing some creaking melody composed by Curtis, the music master.

After Meeting, I stick close.

Jenny’s mother’s face glows from being in her favorite place on the planet—with her arm hooked through her daughter’s. Jenny ignores me.

“You must be Jenny’s mum. Welcome to England.”

Jenny is obliged to say, “This is Penelope.”

“It’s so great to be here!”
Graaate
. “Which is your family?”

“My mum couldn’t come today,” I tell her in a low voice. “She’s … not well.”

“Oh, that’s too bad! Would you like to join us for tea?”
Right on cue, all breathy and eager. “We’d love to get to know one of Jenny’s new friends!” She speaks in exclamation points.

Tom lifts his eyebrow at me and I’m nodding, yes, I’d love to come, thank you, Mrs.… and I can’t think of Jenny’s last name, but it doesn’t matter because she’s giving me a hug, as if I’m beloved already. I have the evil thought,
What’s this one hiding?
Kirsten’s mother seemed nice to start with too.

Jenny pulls me aside before they toddle off for all the Show Your Work activities.

“You can come to tea,” she says. “If you must. But don’t mention Matt.”

“Oh?”

“It’s kind of a taboo topic. Everyone’s really touchy about it. So, do me a favor?”

“Yeah.” She’s got me wondering.

I plan to spend the day on my bed, forgetting that families love to tour the dorms to get a taste of their child’s home away from home, not bothering if they’re interrupting someone else’s
real
life. For me, this
is
home.

But I get curious enough to wander into Brontë while Esther is stashing her jumbo jar of Nutella. Esther’s mother pokes around in the bathroom.

“Who’s the poor girl who wears this nasty retainer?” she calls out.

“Don’t touch anything! That’s Oona’s.”

“I haven’t met Oona yet, have I? Is she a friend?”

“She’s not really friend material.”

“Sweetie! That’s a sad thing to say. What do you mean?”

“She’s quite homely,” Esther admits. “But she’s boy crazy.”

Esther glances at me and I gaze back without twitching.

“And what about you? Is there a boy you’ve got your eye on?”

“Mum!”

“It’s a harmless question, Esther.”

Does Esther’s mother have the faintest clue how weird her daughter is? How she wears that floor-length cape from morning until night, apparently fending off the Dark Powers of Middle-earth? For which we’re all grateful, naturally, but it hardly leads to romance.

I need a fag. I head for the Swamp. Two cigarettes later, who should turn up but Jenny’s sexy brother. Brilliant. He grins when he sees me, offers a slim, hand-rolled enticement, and off we go a little deeper into the woods.

We get to the spot where a fallen tree gives us something to lean against. Tom lights the spliff and we pass it back and forth until it’s gone and then we’re facing each other.

“Is your mother as perfect as she seems?”

“Every bit and more,” he says. “Except for a relentless attachment to optimism.”

I hook my fingers through the belt loops of his jeans, tugging, playful, looking him in the eye.

“Good weed, eh?” he says.

“Yeah.”

He’s got a fleck of lint caught in the stubble on his chin, his lips are half smiling. “Um, what’s going on here? Aren’t you in the little-sister category?”

“Not if I can help it.” I pull on the belt loops again.

“Wait a sec,” he says. But it’s not like he’s resisting. He’s a boy. Why would he say no?

In two seconds my hips are against his and same with our mouths. Am I really high or is he a great kisser? Maybe both. We’re sort of swaying and kissing at the same time. There’s some flowery word for this craving in my knickers, but I call it twat-ache. Tom, unlike any other boy I ever met, slides his hand into my pants and rubs exactly
there
, so I nearly faint and fall down.
He’s
doing
me
, how’s that for novelty? But after the full-body rush, I recover and find his zip. His turn.

We’re back at the Swamp, me having another fag, when I ask him, “What’s the deal with Jenny’s boyfriend?”

“Who?”

“Is he really in Vietnam?”

“Uh …”

“Matt.” I chuck my cigarette into the dirt. “Right?”

“Man, that was strong stuff,” he says. “My dealer at Sheffield is actually Moroccan. Yes, Matt’s in Vietnam.” He rubs his eyeballs with the heels of his palms.

That’s when Jenny comes huffing down the path like she’s running for a bus. She skids to a halt, seeing us so chummy on the stone rim of the fountain.

“What the hell?” she says. I hope I appear to be purring.

“Hey,” says Tom.

“You missed dinner,” she says.

“Not really,” I say.

“You look
cozy
.” Making
cozy
sound poisonous.

“Uh.” Typical male response from Tom.

I lift the hair off my neck and feel the breeze catch the curls, adding to what I hope Jenny recognizes as
dishevelment
. I didn’t set out to piss her off. I
like
Jenny. But what makes her think she can manage the world?

“Penelope was just saying how much you miss your boyfriend,” Tom says. Jenny looks at him and he looks at her.

“Matt,” says Tom.

“I know his name.” Jenny glares at me.

“I miss him too,” says Tom. “Your boyfriend.”

There is a slippery undercurrent here that isn’t clear to me. Does it have to do with Matt being black? Or from not as posh a family? Or what?

“You are such … Penelope, you …” Jenny starts and stops. I can feel her steam whistle about to blow.

“There is
waaay
too much teen-girl nuance going on here,” says Tom. “Are you two in a fight or something?”

“We weren’t,” says Jenny. “But we are now.”

She turns and stomps away, trying to make her escape before I see how red her face is and how her eyes are wet.

Tom just shrugs goodbye at me and follows her. I guess I’m not surprised. I watch him catch up several yards along the path, but she wrenches herself out from under his brotherly arm. He tries again, she stops walking, he says something, she shakes her head and waves her hands about, they keep going. Neither of them bothers to look back in my direction. The chill from the stone under my bum spreads all the way through me. I’m really high. But
I’m really bloody low. So much for tea at the hotel. How the hell am I going to salvage this one?

It must be break between dinner and the afternoon program, because the courtyard is swarming. I skirt around the edges, avoiding the general cheer of chatting families, though when I look closely it’s the parents chatting and the kids looking vague or haunted or embarrassed or all of the above. Nico’s mother, the famous author, is wearing sunglasses. Percy’s mum, wow, she’s gorgeous, her dark skin glowing amongst all the pasty whites. Esther’s dad has one of those beards that probably hosts a nest of wrens and a plate of macaroni.

I can’t face the dorm. I slide into the kitchen. The weed and the loneliness have made me ravenous. Damn, I’d forgotten that they don’t serve Vera’s food to the parental masses, but a real dinner catered by a place in Harrogate. Scraps worth foraging for.

Two women in white jackets are rinsing glasses and stacking dirty plates into big bins. A man rattles the bins out to a van. I note the platters of leftovers covered in foil sitting on the counter. The strangers are like robots, no smiles, focused on getting the hell out, which they do pretty quickly.

Vera seems a bit dazed in the sudden quiet, wiping her hands down the front of her apron. The din of families in the courtyard comes through an open window.

“I’ve come to help tidy up,” I say. She fetches me the ancient broom, no comment. I often appear in the kitchen at odd moments. She gathers up stray knives and spoons, wipes the counter with a damp grey rag. Very sanitary. My
broom is not efficient, but I do my best. Near the food, I lift a corner of the tucked foil.

“You have no family today?” she asks. “No mother?”

No, I agree. No mother.

“Me also, I tell you already, yes? I have no mother. You hungry?”

She hands me a plate and lets me fill it myself. Little browned potatoes, slices of rare roast beef, slivers of carrots and parsnips tossed together in something sweet and gingery. It’s the best food I’ve ever eaten off a school plate or maybe anywhere.

Vera watches me. “Good, yah?”

“No offence, Vera, but it’s … in
cred
ible!”

She doesn’t exactly smile but close.

“You think I don’t know what they say?” She unwraps foil from another plate, revealing a Battenberg cake with glistening frosting. “You think I don’t know what name they call me?”

Ouch
. That cannot be a good feeling.

She shrugs. “How could be worse than Nazis?” Anytime I talk to Vera, she reminds me about the Nazis. “I get on a train,” she says. “I leave mother and brother on platform. My father already is killed, betrayed by neighbour not liking Jews. I depart Prague and escape. I am fourteen years old. Why complain about stupid names?”

She trades my dirty plate for one holding a slab of pink and yellow cake.

“And then what happened?” I say. “What happened to your mother and your brother?”

“I never hear.” She finds me a clean fork. “She was
wearing blue sweater with pearl buttons when we say goodbye. Brother was holding box with stamp collection.”

I’ve been eating the cake so fast I’m practically drinking sugar, but now it lands in my stomach like a stone.

“It’s a tradition,” I say. “To complain about school food. That’s what kids do. Don’t take it personally.”

“Good women feed us oranges and cocoa in Holland where we take boat to England. Good Quakers give me job in school. Cook before me is already gone. I must start right away to make food. How am I to learn cooking with no mother?”

She gives me the rest of the cake, which I carry like a precious baby up to Austen dormitory. Where Kirsten and Jenny are in a huddle on Kirsten’s bed. It’s one of those conversation-killing entrances and they don’t have the grace to look guilty. I go to my locker and tuck the cake away.

“Something you want to say?” I ask. “Or just waiting for me to leave so you can stab me in in the back?”

“Look who’s talking!” says Jenny. “Let’s start with how I specifically asked you not to mention a particular something and you turned right around and opened your … Well, anyway. I guess you won’t be joining us for tea.”

“What’ll you tell your mum?”

“I already told her”—Jenny slips into a perfect imitation of me when I explained my mother’s absence—“ ‘She is … not well.’ ”

It’s horrible.

“And then,” says Jenny, “we could discuss how brothers are seriously off-limits!”

“Is that an American rule?”

“It’s a worldwide rule for keeping your friends!”

“Penelope has a bit of a thing for other people’s brothers,” says Kirsten.

“I never touched your brother, Kurse, and I think you
know why
!”

She turns on me with a face I’ve never seen, eyes like a fiery dragon’s. I’ve lost enough today. My hands fly up in apology. “Sorry!”

I want to say that certain brothers seem to have a thing for me too. I want to say what’s wrong with taking it where you can find it? But Jenny is trying on Kirsten’s clothes, her black pencil skirt and the turquoise Biba top, dressing for the Buckingham Hotel, leaving her snipped-up rags in a heap beside the bed.

I press my forehead against the window that looks over the drive. A parade of cars is nosing toward town, each car holding a family. There is only me to blame for where I am. There is only me.

jenny

When the letter finally came from Matt, I had this great idea. What if I kept getting letters? All it took was a tick beside my name for people to think I had post. The sheet was pinned on a board in the Great Hall during morning lessons. A quick, small pencil mark and my reputation was intact. Brilliant. I just let the stamped corner of the first envelope peek out from my notebook, and Oona or Penelope would notice, not that I was speaking to Penelope.

“Come on, tell us what he said!” Oona’s thirst for romance was almost embarrassing.

I brushed off obvious nosiness with a distant gaze. Real letters came too, from my mom or from Kelly, red and blue markings shouting
Airmail
. Bundled together, who would know?