The Swallows

by Lisa Lutz

  “Why would you break into my classroom just to see these anonymous Q&A’s?”

  I didn’t have a good bluff for that question.

  “Inspiration?” I said.

  Her eyes searched the room; she was trying to find an angle, a way to get me to talk.

  “Gemma, you’ve got to give me something here.”

  “I heard that Warren students take a blood oath by the statue of Samuel Warren, to pledge allegiance to the school. Is that true?” I said.

  “Real blood has become passé,” said Witt. “They decided that any bodily fluid would do. Most of them just spit on his placard. Some of them…It doesn’t matter.”

  “They pee on it. I know,” I said. “Anyway, Stonebridge has its own thing. Do you know what it is?”

  “No.”

  “We close ranks. Cheating, fighting, bullying, stealing, anything. Stonebridge students will never rat each other out. Anyone who breaches this unspoken contract is not just shunned but destroyed. Teachers and faculty are no exception.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she said.

  “What do you think happened to Ms. Whitehall?”

  Ms. Witt

  My mother slept on the floor and woke me up at the crack of dawn. She had already rolled up her sleeping bag and made a pot of coffee. She served me a mug and sat down on the floor. She mentioned a man dropping by. She described Finn.

  “Do I need to worry about you?” she said as she was leaving.

  I told her she didn’t.

  I slept for another hour after she left.

  Then I got dressed, grabbed a cup of coffee at Dahl, and returned to my classroom, where there was reliable Internet and phone reception. I called my father. It was early, but he answered.

  “Are we talking now?” Dad said.

  “I need the number of your PI. What’s his name?”

  “We call him Lucky. His name’s Pierre.”

  “Okay. Can I have his number?”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to track someone down.”

  “Give me the information and I’ll call you back,” he said.

  “Why can’t I have Lucky’s number?” I said.

  “Because that leaves me out of the equation.”

  I had only Whitehall’s name, age range, and previous place of employment. Dad called back in an hour with the phone number and address for a Mary Whitehall, DOB 5/7/78. She lived just outside Bennington, Vermont.

  “Are you sure this is the right one?” I said.

  “She’s the only Whitehall who ever lived in Lowland,” Dad said. “What do you want from her?”

  “Information,” I said, ending the call.

  * * *

  —

  Bennington was about a forty-minute drive from Lowland on a traffic-free Sunday morning. Whitehall’s house was just outside the city limits. As I passed through a short stretch of retail, I stopped first at a liquor store and then ordered a dozen donuts and two cups of coffee at a drive-through window.

  A few minutes later, I parked my car in front of a one-story clapboard house with a shaky porch and a paint job so ancient it was peeling rainbows. A patch of brown lawn and weeds surrounded the house. I looked at my watch. It was almost eleven. Even my father, with a hangover, doesn’t sleep that late.

  I grabbed my provisions and strode up the walkway. The front stairs squeaked and bent under my weight. I heard the mumble of a TV playing inside. I knocked. The TV quieted. I knocked again.

  “Mary,” I shouted. “You don’t know me. I teach at Stonebridge. We need to talk.”

  Silence.

  “I have coffee, donuts, and vodka. I’m going to wait on your porch until you open the door. Take your time. But the coffee is warm now,” I said.

  It took about ten minutes before she opened the door. My guess is that she was cleaning herself up, although it was hard to say.

  Before I left Lowland, I had looked at Mary Whitehall’s picture in the yearbook for the prior year. The woman before me was definitely the same person. Maybe after a three-year bender.

  “What do you want?” Mary said.

  I held up both cups of coffee. “How do you take your coffee?”

  It took a while before she answered.

  “Cream and sugar,” she said.

  I gave her the cup in my left hand and pulled two packets of sugar from my pocket. Mary turned around and walked back into the house, leaving the door open. I followed her inside.

  I was expecting the inside to look like her outside, but Mary kept her home clean and uncluttered.

  Whitehall took a seat at an old wooden table. She ticked her head to the side, silently inviting me to sit. I unloaded the booze and donuts from my backpack and placed them on the table. Whitehall chose an old-fashioned from the donut bag and split it in half, placing one side on a napkin and biting into the other.

  “What happened at Stonebridge?” I said.

  “No,” she said, taking another bite of donut. “You came to my home without invitation. You talk. I’ll listen. Then I’ll decide if I’m going to answer any questions.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  I told her about my Q&A’s and the ratios of specific answers, the repeated references to something called the Darkroom, and some kind of editors mentioned in one of the assignments.

  Mary removed a chocolate glazed donut from the bag. “Go on,” she said.

  “Last night I was coming out of the bathhouse—”

  “That’s the only thing I miss about that place,” she said.

  “I was walking through the hallway of the gym and I heard a conversation between a boy and a girl. He was trying to make her do something she didn’t want to do. In light of the Q&A’s, I’m fairly certain it was a blowjob. She definitely wanted to stop. The boy said that if she stopped she didn’t have a shot at—something I couldn’t quite make out. It sounded like dull-something.”

  “Dulcinea,” she said.

  “Dulcinea? Like Don Quixote?”

  “Yes,” she said. “What did you do when you heard them?”

  “I pulled the fire alarm.”

  Mary smiled and nodded her approval.

  “What does it mean?” I said.

  “It’s an ‘award’ for the girl who gives the best blowjobs that year. There’s some kind of scoring system that I never worked out.”

  “Jesus. How many girls participate?”

  Whitehall shrugged and searched the donut bag, debating whether to indulge in another.

  “Most of them didn’t know they were being scored. Something has changed, if it’s out in the open like that,” she said.

  “No one’s tried to stop it?” I said.

  “One or two, unsuccessfully. Like I said, it was a well-kept secret for some time.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  “I didn’t know anything for the first four years. Your anonymous questionnaire gave you quite the head start. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

  “Why do you say that?” I said.

  “Because now you think you have to do something. But you haven’t been there long enough to know what you’re dealing with. Stonebridge may look like Green Gables, but it’s the Bada Bing Club for the preppy set.”

  “Who told you about it?” I said.

  “I was an adviser to a senior. Christine Cleary. I’d known her for three years. We were close. One day, something had changed. She was different. She looked defeated, I guess. I kept after her until she told me what was wrong. She said her boyfriend was scoring her blowjobs and sharing the data with his friends. She said there was some kind of website they maintained. I thought I had to do something. I reported the issue to Martha Primm, because that was the protocol. Is she still there?”

 
“She is. What did she do?”

  “She made all of the girls meet in the auditorium on a Saturday for a ‘female-empowerment seminar,’ I think she called it. She told them that they had to take ownership of their sexual destiny and it was on them to control the situation.”

  “And there was no reciprocal seminar for the boys?” I asked.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Has anyone spoken to the board about Martha?”

  Mary laughed. “No. Her job title may be guidance counselor, but she’s just another arm of the board. They hired her to make sure that the school’s record stays clean, and they don’t care how that’s accomplished. Parents look at those statistics. No one will send their daughter or son to a school that has a shaky record on consent. Where were you before?”

  “Warren Prep.”

  “You didn’t have any problems there?” she said.

  I conceded there were problems and returned to my original question.

  “Back to Christine,” I said.

  “A day after the seminar, Christine dropped out of Stonebridge. I still don’t know how they got to her. I tried to talk to some of her friends; they shut me out. It all happened so quickly after that.”

  “What happened?”

  “The police came to campus and searched my apartment. They found a pound of weed, which was not mine. I was accused of dealing to the students. And then I was gone. I would have fought it if I wanted to keep teaching. But I didn’t, and I didn’t want to have hearings and hire a lawyer. They offered to drop the charges if I resigned. I just wanted to forget about the whole thing.”

  I had a queasy feeling. I ate a donut. It didn’t help.

  “Did you ever go to Dean Stinson?” I said.

  “No. That’s why Martha was hired. To deal with all non-academic problems. The culture there is locked in. Many private schools exist like a sovereign nation. They have their own customs and laws and are not easily swayed by outside influence.”

  “Are you telling me there’s nothing I can do?”

  “I’m telling you to watch your back.”

  * * *

  —

  I had to fight the urge to be bold and shine a light on the whole damn thing right away. I drove back to Lowland, parked my car, and headed straight to my classroom. I reviewed the Q&A’s one more time. I pulled three papers that made the boldest statements against the status quo. Then I summoned Gemma to meet me.

  As soon as she walked into the room, she said, “Please don’t expel me. I have nowhere to go.”

  “You’re not expelled,” I said. “Sit down.”

  She was so relieved she practically collapsed into the chair.

  “Last night, I couldn’t figure out what you were after,” I said. “I thought maybe you planned to screw with some of your classmates, get dirt on them. That wasn’t it, was it?”

  She shook her head. I placed the three Q&A’s on her desk.

  “You need allies,” I said. “I think you’ll find them here.”

  Gemma Russo

  Ally #1

  What do you love? Neko Case, banana bread, the smell of Pine-Sol

  What do you hate? BJs, editors, and agents of the Darkroom

  If you could live inside a book, what book? The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

  What do you want? An invisibility cloak and cyanide

  Who are you? I’m not who they think I am

  Ally #2

  What do you love? Vicks cough drops, rain, the Ramones

  What do you hate? Dulcinea, shag rugs, obligatory BJs

  If you could live inside a book, what book? The Maltese Falcon

  What do you want? To buckle the patriarchy; a spork revival

  Who are you? The enemy

  Ally #3

  What do you love? Waffles, Red Sox, sleeping in (and family, obv)

  What do you hate? BJs, the Darkroom, Them

  If you could live inside a book, what book? True Grit

  What do you want? A revolution or a time machine

  Who are you? A fool

  Ms. Witt took a risk giving me those Q&A’s, and I had to respect that. But she didn’t give me three allies. She gave me two. The first Q&A was Kate Bush. I’d already begun my recruitment process. The second one, however, came as a bit of a surprise. Mel Eastman. The fact that she mentioned Dulcinea by name meant she had more skin in the game than I would have thought. If she’d heard of it, she was a victim of it. That’s the general rule.

  The third Q&A I couldn’t figure out. I put that one on hold. My first order of business was getting Mel on my team. I sent her an anonymous message through the Blackboard system.

  M,

  I also hate Dulcinea.

  If you want to discuss remedies, meet me at Burns trailhead.

  3:00 p.m. sharp.

  Signed,

  A friend

  When I arrived at the appointed time, no one was there. I noticed a piece of paper covered by a rock at the bottom of the wooden stake. I picked up the paper and unfolded it.

  Friend

  If this is the “friend” I used to know, meet where the slummers summer.

  M

  Mel and I rarely spoke during the school year, but I always wished I could hang out with her without sacrificing my social standing. She was legitimately one of a kind. I still remember our first real conversation, the summer before my first year at Stonebridge. Mel sat next to me at breakfast one day, regarded her cereal spoon, and said, “I feel like they’ve just given up on eating utensils, you know what I mean?”

  She then launched into a whole speech about how no one is bothering to improve on an item that could very well be improved upon. Later, we had a long discussion about her idea for a compromise between hardwood floors and carpets. She understands that sometimes people want something soft under their feet but carpets are simply unsanitary. A few times I was worried Mel might need medication or something, but I later concluded that she just has a strange, fascinating, and rare mind and thinks aloud more than most people.

  I hiked twenty minutes from the trailhead to Stevenson Falls, which is where I assumed Mel suggested we meet. That’s where we killed most summer afternoons. Mel was sitting on a rock, drinking out of a thermos.

  “I thought I was being cautious with the trailhead meet,” I said.

  “You can never be too cautious,” Mel said. “What if someone happened to be near the trail or followed you? You wouldn’t want to be caught talking to a second-class citizen. Coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said, sitting down on a rock next to her.

  Mel had been hurt when I stopped talking to her. I would have been too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t fight them unless I’m one of them.”

  “What are you fighting, exactly?” Mel said.

  “The system,” I said.

  “You’re being vague,” she said.

  “Okay. I’ll be straight. I want to destroy the Darkroom. I want to end the Dulcinea Award. I want to bring the editors to their knees, begging for mercy.”

  “How do you plan to do that?” Mel asked.

  “I don’t know. Build an army, start a campaign of disinformation, fracture their union.”

  “How’s that army coming along?”

  “It’s a work in progress,” I said.

  “It’s an army of one,” Mel said.

  “Got to start somewhere. At least I have a plan.”

  “I have a plan,” Mel said.

  “Oh yeah? What is it?”

  “I’m going to hack the Darkroom,” Mel said.

  That was a good plan.

  “We can work together,” I said. “Now we’re an army of two.”

  “Right,” Mel said dr
yly. “An army of two.”

  “There are others just like us,” I said. “We can recruit.”

  “Who do you have in mind?” Mel asked.

  “Kate Bush, for one.”

  “Is she in?”

  “I think so. I don’t know. I’m not sure that she trusts me.”

  “Because you’re one of them,” Mel said.

  “But I’m not. Maybe you could talk to her.”

  “Maybe,” Mel said.

  “See, now we’re an army of three,” I said.

  I was doing what Ms. Witt had asked me to do. She gave me allies so I could build an army. And you build an army so you can fight a war.

  PART II

  Allies

  The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  Announcements

  Good morning, students of Stone, on this Thursday, September 17, 2009. Friday is the last day to add or drop a class and switch advisers. Please be sure to have all your paperwork in order. Maintenance, once again, apologizes for the scorching showers in Dickens House. Rest assured, the situation has been remedied and a deadbolt installed in the engineering room. In today’s lost and found, we have a pink cashmere scarf—this is very soft. If no one claims the scarf by the end of the day, I might keep it. Heh heh. Expect the weather to be in the mid-seventies with maybe one or two perfect, billowy clouds. Today’s quote comes from Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, born A.D. 50. It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. That’s all, folks. Be safe out there.

  Ms. Witt

  I was well into the second week of class before I truly accepted my fate as the creative-writing instructor. Jack Vandenberg dropped my class at the last minute, but I got New Nick in his stead. Even taking into account the unsettling Q&A I’d narrowed down to Jack, I considered the switch a net loss.

  In class, I asked for volunteers to read aloud from their brief origin stories. New Nick read his, about the day when he, at age eleven, met the Dalai Lama. Mel Eastman, after some cajoling, shared her piece, called “A Portrait of Count Chocula.” She recalled the time that she, age seven, threw an epic tantrum in a grocery store, demanding that her mother buy a box of Count Chocula cereal. Her mother relented. Mel, after consuming the product, cut out the front of the cardboard box and taped it on her wall as art. The next morning, her wall art was in the recycling bin. She retrieved it and hung it on her bedroom wall again. A standoff ensued, involving a hunger strike (on young Mel’s part). In the end, Mel became an avid collector of and foremost authority on cereal-box art. Her collection, hung in her bedroom, included early pieces of Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Froot Loops, and Grape-Nuts.