Another Faust
Page 16
Lucy just stood there, holding a handful of faux diamond necklaces, wearing a button saying, “Diamonds are forever.”
“Checkmate,” Charlotte whispered, completely in shock.
“How did she find out?” Lucy couldn’t even think straight. Then she turned on Charlotte. “You told her! You traitor!”
“I didn’t!” Charlotte said. “I kept the whole campaign a secret. I swear.”
“Oh, please! Everyone knows you have a crush on that Tourette’s boy, Valentin!”
“He doesn’t have Tourette’s!”
Victoria, who had finished passing out buttons and was now hanging posters all over the school, walked past Lucy and Charlotte. “Here you go, girls,” she said as she tossed them a couple of buttons. “Show the world you’re against slavery and oppression.”
A few hours later, the voting booths opened. Charlotte and Lucy stayed close by, making final efforts to win people to Lucy’s side. It wasn’t hard. Despite a better campaign, nobody liked Victoria. A sophomore girl who shouted slogans for Victoria’s anti-diamond campaign one minute still preferred to have Lucy’s love and approval in the next. A junior boy with no leanings, a self-proclaimed “man of the issues,” still thought Victoria was creepy. Victoria could only stand to the side and watch. Before one boy walked into the voting booth, she grabbed his arm. “Make the right decision, Theo. You don’t wanna be Ted-wet-the-bed again.” The boy nodded fearfully.
Lucy looked up from her booth, glancing at the droves of kids she had been cultivating since primary school. This was a landslide, and it was sweet enough to take away all of today’s stings. Then Lucy saw Belle and Thomas handing out buttons for Victoria’s campaign. He whispered something in her ear, and she laughed. Lucy thought she saw Belle playing with Thomas’s hair. Without taking her eyes off Thomas, Lucy asked Charlotte, “What’s going on?”
Charlotte looked down and shrugged. “How should I know?”
Lucy shot up from her seat and marched toward the two. “Thomas, are you handing out buttons for her?” She pointed an accusing finger at Victoria.
“Belle asked me to help,” said Thomas.
Belle had asked Thomas, not because she cared who won, but because they’d be together in front of Lucy. A part of Belle felt bad for her, but it had all gone on long enough. It was time that this thing with Lucy was over.
“And if Belle asks you to betray your girlfr —”
Lucy stopped short. She wasn’t so sure Thomas was her boyfriend anymore, or ever had been. The way Belle wrapped her arm around his, Lucy felt like a fool.
Thomas tried to explain. “I’m sorry, Luce. I never wanted to lead you on or anything. It’s just that Belle and I . . . well, we’ve been . . .” He couldn’t finish his sentence, because he wasn’t sure what they were doing. Neither was Belle, for that matter. She had sat up at night, complaining to Bicé about the fact that he hadn’t even kissed her yet. And now he wasn’t using any of the right words, like girlfriend or together.
Lucy turned to leave. “Whatever. I’m still going to win.” She didn’t want his pity. And she didn’t want Belle to see her cry. But instead of feeling satisfied, all Belle could think about were the words Thomas hadn’t used.
Lucy sat back down at her table, and Charlotte put an arm around her.
“Don’t worry, Luce. At least you’re winning the election!”
Before Lucy had time to wipe her tears, she saw Ms. LeMieux walking toward her.
“Lucy Spencer, we need to talk,” she said sternly.
Victoria watched as Ms. LeMieux began speaking with Lucy, who was gesticulating wildly to what seemed like a series of head shakes from Ms. LeMieux. Over Victoria’s shoulder, two moths lingered, swaying up and down as if held there by a string, listening to every word. Between gestures, Lucy glared at Victoria, who waved and took a bite of Lucy’s last Magnolia cupcake. Victoria watched with a satisfied grin as Lucy’s diamond stand was dissembled and carried out of the school. Lucy stomped toward her with murder in her eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” she screamed at Victoria. “Didn’t they teach you how to play fair in the orphanage?”
“Fair? Lucy, you were over the spending limit. Is that fair?” Victoria said calmly.
“You went over, too. Where did you get that boy, anyway?”
“Doesn’t matter. I had permission.” Victoria waved a note in Lucy’s face. It was written on Ms. LeMieux’s stationery. Lucy grabbed it from her and began to read.
Due to Ms. Faust’s Chronic Retinal Akinetic Paroxysms, she will be excused from the budget limitation included in the election rules, which makes it impossible for her to employ the help of her private eye therapist on her campaign. Given the cost of the therapist, the budget constraint would put her at a severe disadvantage to the other students. Therefore, she is granted an unlimited budget in the interest of fairness and in keeping with the school’s disability policies.
“This says due to a disability. None of the stuff you bought was for a disability. You’re perfectly healthy. I’ve seen you at Pilates!”
“Doesn’t matter. The note doesn’t say what I can spend the money on. It just says unlimited budget. So you broke the rule and I didn’t.”
“And you’re the one that turned me in!”
“I didn’t say that,” Victoria said, but her eyes told a different story. “Diamonds are a bit overmuch, don’t you think? I mean, can you buy everyone’s love?”
“You heinous little witch!” Lucy screamed, and lunged at Victoria. She grabbed a chunk of hair and pulled hard. Victoria let out a yelp and tried to fight back, but frankly, Victoria’s powers were limited to manipulation and scheming. As Lucy continued to pull Victoria by the hair, a small crowd rushed around the girls. Christian and Connor, who were walking from a class together, came running up to the scene.
“What’s going on?” Connor asked.
“That’s Vic!” said Christian.
He pushed away the crowd to get to the girls, and Connor followed. They each grabbed one of the girls and pulled. When they were apart, Christian stepped in the center to keep them from attacking again. Lucy lunged at Victoria. Christian grabbed her arm to hold her back. Lucy was now seething with anger. It was all just too much, the way they had come in, so cocky, like they didn’t need any friends. Through clenched teeth she spat out every vile, hateful thing she could think of. “You know what? Your whole family is a bunch of freaks. I should be thanking God that I don’t have a bunch of orphan hatchling mutants for brothers and sisters. I —”
In a split second, Lucy had collapsed to the floor. She had been spewing her venom, then Christian had made a barely noticeable frown, and suddenly Christian was kneeling in the middle of the crowd, holding her limp arm. She was down.
Christian didn’t waste any time taking Lucy to the school nurse. He picked her up and ran to the office with a throng of people running behind him. In the end, only Christian, Connor, and Victoria were allowed to stay, since the nurse needed someone to explain.
“She’s unconscious,” said the nurse. “Connor, call an ambulance.”
“We don’t know what happened to her. She just collapsed on her own. It must be a diabetic episode or something,” said Victoria, eager to draw attention away from herself and always ready with an ailment when the need arose.
“So there wasn’t a fight?” the nurse asked, eyeing the small red spot on Victoria’s forehead.
“Lucy attacked me. I have about a hundred witnesses. And she must have overstrained herself, because she just collapsed.”
“And you had nothing to do with it?”
“She collapsed after we’d been separated.”
Connor was walking back into the room just as Victoria was finishing that last explanation.
“The ambulance is coming. Christian, you were holding her arm.” Connor looked at Christian as if he didn’t trust him anymore. Christian couldn’t even open his mouth.
“No,” said the nurse, “you c
an’t make someone faint by squeezing their arm. If this didn’t happen during the fight, then it must be a preexisting condition. All right, I’ve heard enough. Everyone out.”
As they filed out, Christian breathed a sigh of relief and Victoria shot him a warning glance. He had almost given away the game, and that’s the one thing Victoria feared most. Connor too was casting Christian sideways glances.
Despite every attempt to show herself as the victim, Lucy was disqualified for over spending and unsportsmanlike behavior. The election went on as planned, with Victoria as the default winner. Of course, that still didn’t mean that anyone liked her. Rumors had already turned the situation into an all-out catfight. Even though Lucy and Victoria had barely touched, people were saying that Victoria had put Lucy into a coma, that she had punched her in the face, or pulled out all her hair, or had knocked her out with a ninja kick in midair.
Lucy spent the day in bed, crying and calling all her friends to whine. When she called Connor, Mrs. Wirth, who had heard the whole story, picked up the phone and gave her usual blind justifications. “Oh, you probably just fainted, dear. You girls and your crash diets! You really should be more careful.” When Lucy tried to tell her about Victoria’s wealth of information, Mrs. Wirth said, “Oh, she’s just observant.” And when Lucy told her about the moths or the smell, two things that Mrs. Wirth herself had noticed, she simply said, “You know the French: toujours au naturel.”
It wasn’t a total win. Lucy did get a position on the Student Council. To Victoria, anything but total annihilation of her opponent was a loss. At least that’s what Madame Vileroy said later. Besides, Christian had almost given away their secrets.
“Think of all the wonderful things you’ve done for him, Victoria. All he’s ever done is cause you trouble. Christian doesn’t deserve your forgiveness.”
It didn’t matter how much Christian apologized. Victoria knew that apologies don’t matter when you’re constantly doing things wrong. It felt as if she’d had to forgive him seven hundred times. “The devil’s in the details,” she said to Christian one day, “and you always screw up the details.” Even though Christian had saved her, she didn’t speak to him for a week.
Through the damp New York streets, two moths fluttered toward the dark home of the Fausts. Through an open window and past a candlelit hallway, they found their way to the east wing. As the two moths danced across the room, Madame Vileroy was reading something particularly compelling in her book. She sat reclined in a chaise, propping the large skin-bound volume on her knees. Her black dress enfolded her. Without looking away from the book, she raised a long thin finger near her ear, where the moths perched and told their tale of children, of parents, of small crimes. The governess nodded, musing on the ways the world turns, and turns on itself. She delighted in all the tiny imperfections, how rust and dust slowly take everything, how even good hearts grow weary, and the lives of little moths decay into unsung deaths — just another little badness that the world is too busy limping along to notice. Madame Vileroy wiped her hand in a fold of her dress and thought of how well everything was going. Just give them a little power, and watch a human burn down the world. Like a Watchmaker Devil, she just introduced one little turn then sat back and watched the turning and turning of eternal gears come to a sudden crash.
Madame Vileroy smoothed her golden hair with a delicate ivory hand. The next bestowal was for Valentin — the writer. A writer believes anything, living a life of lies. For him, she had an old and precious gift. One that a desperate soul would surely embrace. A great lie for one who has yet to become a great liar.
The Book of Julius
Prid. Id. Mart.
The year of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos
It has been three years hence I began this miserable campaign against the Gauls — for money, though in my writings I have told the people of Rome it is for their glory. For I am the hand of Rome, but I am afraid I will never be its Caesar. While making camp at the river Sambre, we suffered a surprise attack on our rear guard. They drove into our shields with such might, I think perhaps my expedition may have been foolhardy. I may be forced to join the battle. I do not fear for my life. I fear for my name.
Id. Mart.
The year of the consulship of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Nepos
I have met a woman.
March was a dying and dreary month, full of nothing but aborted promises. The New York weather was wet and unblooming. Madame Vileroy was ever-present, and for the most part, the Fausts were still not very welcome at Marlowe. Belle was undisputed queen bee, but nobody likes queen bees. Her baths were so painful that she’d need days to recover. Though she could control how others felt, her own moods would swing wildly out of control. She’d leave her bathroom broken, her nails dug into her forearm. She’d become irritated after initial recovery, then angry at the world. Those were the times she’d make mistakes, when the pain had made her bitter. And even if she was set to make you love her, she couldn’t make herself play the part, even a little. One day she made a teacher cry. His big blubbering face looked ghoulish as he wailed in the middle of class, saying he loved Belle, calling his wife on his cell phone right there in front of them all to tell her he wanted out. It was such a ridiculous scene, a grown man on his knees, so desperate and lustful that the other students were grossed out. And the indecency of it made Belle look ugly.
Victoria’s hatred for Marlowe had eased after she had won class president, joined the debate team, and settled into a calendar full of other activities. She found plenty to hate, though, like the frog-ugly ladies of the counselors’ office who thought about ice cream a shocking amount of the time, the winning streak Thomas was on in debate, the wannabe gangsta rappers in the Investment Banking Club — and of course, there was an unhealthy dose of hate for Lucy Spencer.
Still, no Faust was more depressed during the endless March than Christian, who had lost his only friend after the hallway incident with Lucy. Connor had kept his distance after that. He didn’t offer to play golf or to show Christian around school. Christian went on with his life, but he didn’t handle friendlessness as well as Bicé. Once Bicé walked into his room with everything stopped and she saw Christian frozen in the middle of an awkward high five. Buddy’s plasticine smile, after a nice shot, was the only human contact he had. Christian was leaning out to make the maneuver work since Buddy didn’t know what a high five was and Christian seemed to be slapping his wave good-bye.
Bicé kept a low profile. Kids would laugh, saying she was retarded, the way she’d forget things you’d just told her, the way she’d almost screech if you touched her, the way she talked to herself in the middle of class while the teacher was talking. Even in public, Bicé acted like she’d been shipwrecked on a deserted island. She could have been insane or schizophrenic, until suddenly she’d translate Cicero’s Latin as if it were Seuss’s English, catch the Asian kids making fun of her in Cantonese and correct their grammar, or spend a whole hour explaining the inside jokes in Finnegans Wake. In those moments, she’d be magnanimous, and then she’d see the eyes staring at her and shrink. It was like being “in the monkey cage,” she said, which was an idiom in Swahili. She had become famous. Teaching her was like excavating the library of Alexandria — you didn’t have anything to add, only hoped to discover what was already there, hidden under a sea.
The attention made her unpopular, so much that she’d become infamous. If she had ridden the bus, she would have been the girl huddling in the seat directly behind the bus driver. Her brothers and sisters were busy with their hectic lives, so she spent more lunches and break periods by herself, reading and eating alone. While her siblings struggled for their prizes, as they drove toward their certain dreams, Bicé struggled to find a friend — anywhere, even in books. She kept thinking that if she could just learn more and more languages, maybe she’d even find one somewhere on the planet.
In truth, Bicé had no choice but to concentrate like that. Because she was doing so much more than just learning languages. She was deciphering them. Undoing them, and putting them back together from scratch. She would spend hours poring over syntax and origin, using one language to learn another. That’s why most of the international kids didn’t like her. “So arrogant,” they would call her. Like the incident with Pamposh Koul and his band of gorgeous South Asian imports — girls who had transferred to Marlowe from top Indian and Pakistani schools, most of whom were in training to compete for Miss Universe and packed themselves tightly by Pamposh’s side. That was the day that Pamposh had asked her if she spoke Kashmiri and she said no, because she didn’t. A few hours later, he and three of his girlfriends had sat around one of the tables at the library, a few feet away from Bicé, whispering cruel remarks in Kashmiri, making sure to emphasize the fact that, yes, they were making fun of her, and no, she could not understand for once.
Then, one of them had walked over to her table waving a piece of paper.