The Cereal Murders gbcm-3

by Diane Mott Davidson

  After about ten minutes of pointless wandering through mazelike halls, I located Miss Ferrell’s room. Actually, it wasn’t that difficult: it was the only door with a poster of a giant croissant on it. Above, a hand-lettered sign was posted: SENIORS: DISCUSS APPLICATION ESSAY AND ROLE-PLAY COLLEGE INTERVIEWS TODAY – THIRD PERIOD.

  From inside the room came the sound of voices. I opened the door and slipped in, heeded only by five or six of the thirty seniors within. Audrey appeared to have just come in also; to my surprise, she was sitting in the back. The Marenskys, apparently finished with their powwow with the headmaster, plus the Dawsons and several other sets of parents, were seated over to the side. A couple raised eyebrows at my entrance. I shrugged. Just me, the caterer. I noticed that a number of the seniors were mourning their valedictorian with black armbands.

  A short, round fellow whispered, “Did you bring any food?” When I shook my head, he reluctantly turned his attention back to the front of the room.

  Miss Ferrell’s toast-colored hair was swept up into a;:’ large topknot held on the crown of her head by a trailing red scarf that matched the red of her tent dress. The dress itself was one of those bifurcated triangles, half bright red, half raspberry pink. She looked like a pyramid of sherbet. I took the one empty chair at the back of the room. Julian gave me a high-five sign and I smiled. Guess I had shown up at the right time.

  “Okay now,” said Miss Ferrell, “it seems to me that too many of you are becoming obsessively worried about what colleges want – “

  A hand shot up.

  “Yes, Ted?”

  “I heard that for the most selective schools, if you aren’t in the top ten percent of your class, you are dead.”

  There was a collective sharp intake of breath at Ted’s infelicitous choice of words. Miss Ferrell paled slightly and reached for a response.

  “Well, the ranking may have some effect, but it also helps to have good grades showing your effort…”

  “But what about a composite SAT score between 1550 and 1600?” prompted another student fiercely. “Don’t you have to have that too?”

  “I heard you had to play varsity soccer, basketball, and lacrosse,” catcalled another, “and get the good sportsmanship award too.”

  There were whispers and shaken heads. Miss Ferrell gave her audience an unsmiling look that brought a hush.

  “Look, people! I could tell you that the ideal applicant walks a minimum of six miles each way to school! That he’s a volunteer vigilante on the subway! Is that going to make you feel better or worse about this process?”

  “There’s no subway in the mountains! Good or bad?” Audrey Coopersmith decorously raised her hand. “I heard that the ideal applicant comes from a low-income single-parent family.” Over the murmurs of protest, she raised her voice. “And I also heard that if the applicant’s after-school job helps support the family financially, it shows character, and that’s what top colleges are looking for.”

  Cries of “what?” and “huh!” brought another stern look from Miss Ferrell. Did Heather Coopersmith have an after-school job? I couldn’t remember.

  “That is one possible profile.” Miss Ferrell drew her mouth into a rosebud of tiny wrinkles.

  Hank Dawson raised his hand. “I heard that the top applicants had to do volunteer work. I don’t think it’s safe for Greer to hang around some soup kitchen with a bunch of welfare types.”

  “Nobody has to do anything,” replied Miss Ferrell crisply. “We’re looking for a fit between a student and a school… .”

  Rhoda Marensky raised her hand. Her rings flashed. She’d draped her fur over her lap. “Is it appropriate for the applicant to discuss minority connections? I understand there is renewed interest in applicants with Slavic surnames.”

  Hank Dawson bellowed: “What a crock!”

  Greer Dawson cried, “Daddy!” Caroline Dawson gave her husband and daughter a be-quiet look which made both droop obediently.

  Macguire Perkins swiveled his long neck and smirked at his classmates. “I flunk. I quit. Guess I’ll be at Elk Park forever. You can all come visit me here. There’s no way any school’s going to let me in.”

  “You’ve already demonstrated how not to get in,” said Miss Ferrell quietly. There were snickers from the listeners, but I missed the joke. Miss Ferrell demanded of Macguire, “Did you write to Indiana? I asked you to have it ready by today, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said under his breath. “I would like you to share it with us, please.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Macguire, let’s go.”

  Macguire grumbled and slapped through an untidy folder until he found some papers.

  “Up here, please,” commanded Miss Ferrell. “Now, everyone, quiet, please. As I’ve said numerous times, honesty and creativity are what we value in these essays. Parents” – she nodded meaningfully at the tense adults in the back of the room – “would do well to remember that.”

  Macguire groaned again. Then he unfolded his long body from his desk and slouched to the front of the class, where he towered over the diminutive Miss Ferrell. The holes in his tight jeans showed muscled flesh. His oversize shirttails hung from beneath his sweatshirt. He gave a self-deprecating grin and blushed beneath his acne. It was painful.

  Miss Ferrell warned, “If there is any disturbance during Macguire’s presentation, the offender will be excused.”

  Macguire gave a beseeching look to the class. Then, reluctantly, he lifted several crumpled pages and started reading.

  “‘I want to go to Indiana University because their basketball team needs me. I have always been a fan. I mean, you’d never catch me yelling at the TV during the NCAA finals, “Hoosier mother? Hoosier father?”

  Someone snickered. Macguire cleared his throat and continued.

  “ ‘I’m using my essay to apologize for the way I acted when I came for my campus visit. And also to set the record straight.

  ” ‘It started off because some of my basketball teammates from last year’s senior class are at I.U., and they all pledged SAE. And also, I didn’t get along with my campus host. I mean, in the real world we wouldn’t have been friends, so why pretend? I’m just trying to explain how everything went so wrong, for which I am sincerely sorry.

  ” ‘After my campus host and I parted company – I did not ditch him, as he claimed – I went over to SAE to see the guys. They were having a keg party and invited me to join in. I didn’t want to be rude and I did sort of feel bad about the campus-host situation. So I thought, well, this time I would be polite.’ “

  The laughter grew louder. Macguire looked up. To Miss Ferrell, he said in a low voice, “I know you jus said one page for the essay, but this is a long story. I had to add extra sheets.”

  “Just read,” ordered Miss Ferrell. She gave the giggling mass of students a furious look. They fell silent.

  ” ‘So anyway,’ “ Macguire resumed with a twitch of his lanky body, ” ‘there we were, and I was being polite and a good guest. Yes, I know I am underage, but as I said, I was trying to be polite. Now, after I was polite for all those hours, of course I couldn’t find my way back to the dorm, because you’ve built all those buildings out of Indiana limestone, and to be perfectly honest, they all look alike. While I was lost I was real sorry I had dumped my campus host.

  ” ‘I did finally find the dorm, and I am truly sorry for the guy on the first floor whose window I had to knock on so he could let me in. He was mad at me, but it wasn’t that cold out, I mean I’d just been lost out there for over an hour, and I wasn’t cold. So why should he have minded so much to come outside in his underwear? And why would you lock up the dorms on a Friday night, anyway? You must know people are going to stay out late partying.’ “

  I looked around. All the senior parents looked somewhat shellshocked. Macguire plunged on. ” ‘I don’t want to be, like, too graphic, but my college counselor is always telling us to write an honest essay. So to be perfectly honest, after I passed
out for a couple of hours I woke up and had to puke. It was an overwhelming urge brought on by all that time I was being a good guest over at SAE, and you should be glad that I didn’t ruin all that nice Indiana limestone outside my window but instead hauled ass down to the bathroom.

  ” ‘After I hurled I felt better. I wanted to go right back to sleep so I could be on time for my interview the next morning and tell you how I helped bring Elk Park Prep to the state finals in basketball with my three-point shots, and not have to listen to you ask me a bunch of questions about Soviet foreign policy. Okay, I told you in my letter that I did a paper on it my junior year, but who cares now? I mean, the world has changed.

  ” ‘Anyway, at three A.M. I was in the bathroom ready to go back to bed. Here’s an honest question: Why do you put the exit to go back outside right next to the bathroom door? So there I was again, outside, and not smelling too good this time, knocking again on that guy’s window to be let in, and this time he was pissed.

  “ ‘You know really, now that I look back on it, he didn’t have to get that ticked off. It was Friday night! He didn’t have classes the next day! But as I told you…’ “

  Macguire looked hopefully at Miss Ferrell. “You see, I’m not one of those guys who use bad grammar and say, Like I told you. That ought to count for something.”

  “Macguire! Read!”

  Macguire cleared his throat and found his place. ” ‘I am sorry,’ ” he read. ” ‘I’m sorry to the guy in the underwear, I’m sorry for drinking when I was a minor, I’m sorry that when you asked me about Soviet foreign policy I said, Who gives a shit? and I’m sorry to my campus host, can’t remember his name. You can tell him that if he wants to come out to Colorado, I’ll show him a good time. Promise.’ “

  The applause from the students was immediate and deafening. The parents sat in stunned silence. Macguire, flushed with pleasure, gave the class a broad smile. I began to clap too, until I saw Miss Ferrell’s frown. My hands froze in mid-clap. She rapped on her desk until she had quiet. “Can I go back to my desk?” implored Macguire.

  “You may not. I will talk to you later about that… essay. Meanwhile, I want you and Greer Dawson to sit down and role-play an interview. Greer will be the director of admissions at … hmm … Vassar. Macguire, you will be the applicant.”

  Macguire slumped unhappily into a chair while Greer Dawson walked primly to the front of the room. Today she was dressed like an L.L. Bean ad: impeccable white turtleneck, navy cardigan, Weejuns, and a tartan skirt. Being paired with Macguire Perkins obviously annoyed her. Miss Ferrell directed her to the desk at the front, then crossed her arms. Macguire gave Greer a goofy look. Greer closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. It seemed to me that Macguire would be better off auditioning with Bar-num and Bailey than trying to go to I.U., but I was not in the college advisement business.

  Thank God.

  “Gee,” said Macguire in a deep voice. He tilted his head and eyed Greer lovingly. “I’d really like to go to Vassar now that it’s coed. I want to watch the Knicks play in New York and I can’t get into Columbia.” Laughter erupted from the gallery.

  “Miss Ferrell!” protested Greer with a shake of her straight, perfectly cut blond hair. “He’s not taking this seriously!”

  “I am too!” said Macguire. “I really, really want to go to your school, Hammer, uh” – he opened his eyes wide at Greer and she tsked – “Miss Dawson.”

  Miss Ferrell gestured to Greer to continue.

  Greer’s sigh was worthy of any martyr. “I understand you are interested in basketball, Macguire, and foreign relations. We have a year-abroad program, as you know. Does that interest you?”

  “Not that much,” drawled Macguire, his mouth sloped downward. “I really hate Spanish, and German is too hard. What interests me is your coed dorms. I did my senior thesis on sexual liberation.”

  “Macguire, please!” cried Miss Ferrell over the squeals of amusement. “I told you not to talk about sex, religion, or politics!”

  “Oh, God, fuck, I’m sorry, Miss Ferrell… well, I don’t care about politics anyway.”

  “Macguire!”

  “Well, I don’t want to go to Vassar anyway,” he whined. “I can’t get into Stanford or Duke. I just want to go to Indiana.”

  “Yes, and we’ve all seen just how likely that’s going to be,” snapped Miss Ferrell. “Let’s get two more people up here. Julian Teller,” she said, pointing, “and Heather Coopersmith. What school interview do you want to role-play, Julian?”

  Julian shuffled between the desks. He flopped into the chair formerly occupied by Macguire, ran his hand nervously through his mowed hair, and said, “Cornell, for food science.”

  “All right,” said Miss Ferrell. “Heather,” she said to Audrey’s daughter, a dark-haired girl with her mother’s face, pink-tinted glasses, and thin, pale lips, “let him ask the questions.”

  “This is not fair.” Greer Dawson was miffed. “I didn’t really get a chance.”

  “That’s true, she didn’t,” piped up her father.

  “You will, you will,” said Miss Ferrell dismissively. “This is a learning experience for everybody – “

  “But the period’s almost over!” Greer cried.

  Miss Ferrell opened her eyes wide. The sherbet-colored dress trembled. “Sit down, Greer. All right, Julian, what are you going to ask Heather about Cornell?”

  From the gallery came the cry, “Ask her about home ec! Can I learn to be a smart caterer here?”

  Julian flushed a painful shade, My heart turned over. Julian touched his tongue to his top lip. “I don’t want to do this now.”

  The exasperated Miss Ferrell surrendered. “All right, go back to your desks, everybody.” During the ensuing chair-scraping and body-squishing, she said, “People, do you think this is some kind of joke?” She put her hands on her sherbet-clad hips. “I’m trying to help you.” She panned the classroom. She looked like a Parisian model who had been told to do peeved. And the class was taking her about that seriously.

  To my great relief, the bell rang. Miss Ferrell called out, “Okay, drafts of personal essays before you leave, people!” I fled to a corner to avoid the press of jostling teenage bodies. By the time everybody had departed, Miss Ferrell was slapping papers around on her desk, looking thoroughly disgusted.

  “Quel dommage,” I said, approaching her. What a pity. “Oh! I didn’t see you here.” She riffled papers on top of her roll book. “It’s always like this until a few days before the deadlines. What can I help you with? Did you come to see me? There’s no French Club today.”

  “No, I was here to see the headmaster. Forgive me, I just wanted to drop in because, actually, Arch loves French Club. But he’s having trouble with his schoolwork – “

  She looked up quickly. “Did you hear about this morning?” She drew back, her tiny body framed by a rumpled poster of the Eiffel Tower on one side and a framed picture of the Arc de Triomphe on the other. When I shook my head, she walked with a tick-tock of little heels over to the door and closed it. “You’ve talked to Alfred?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Mr. Perkins told me about Arch. About his academic and… social problems.” Come to think of it, he’d only mentioned the schoolwork mess.

  “Did he tell you about this morning?”

  “No,” I said carefully, “just that Arch was flunking a class.” Just.

  “This is worse than that.”

  “Worse?”

  Miss Ferrell eyed me. She seemed to be trying to judge whether I could take whatever it was she had to say.

  I asked, “What happened to Arch this morning?”

  “We had an assembly. The student body needed to know about Keith.” Her abrupt tone betrayed no feeling. “When it was over, I’m sorry to say Arch had a rather strenuous disagreement with someone.”

  I closed my eyes. For being basically a kind and mature kid, Arch seemed to be getting into quite a few disagreements lately. I wondered what “rather strenuous” meant
. “Who was it, do you know? We’ve just had someone throw a rock through one of our windows, and maybe…”

  “Later Arch came and told me he’d gotten into a fight with a seventh-grader, a boy who is frequently in trouble. The other boy apparently said Keith was a tattler. Puzzling… most seventh-graders don’t even know seniors.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. When Arch arrived at his locker, he found a nasty surprise. I went to check and… there was something there… .”

  “What?”

  “You’d better let me show you. I put my own lock on the locker, so it should be undisturbed.”

  She peeked out into the hallway. The students had settled into the new class period, so we were able to make it down to the row of seventh-grade lockers without being seen.

  Miss Ferrell minced along just in front of me. Her bright red scarf fluttered behind her like a flag. She fiddled expertly with the clasp on Arch’s locker. “I told him to leave it alone and the janitor would clean it out. But don’t know what to do about the paint.”

  What I saw first was the writing above Arch’s locker. Block letters in bright pink pronounced: HE WHO WANTS TO BE A TATTLER, NEXT TIME WILL FACE A LIVE…

  Miss Ferrell opened the locker door. Strung up and hanging on the hook was a dead rattlesnake.

  6

  It was all I could do to keep from screaming. “What happened when Arch saw this?”

  When Miss Ferrell did not answer immediately, I whacked the locker next to Arch’s. The snake’s two-foot-long body swayed sickeningly. It had been strung up just under its head, and hung on the hook where Arch’s jacket should have gone. I couldn’t bear to look at the expanse of white snake-belly, at the ugly, crimped mouth, at those rattles at the end of the tail.

  Miss Ferrell closed her eyes. “Since my classroom was nearby, he told me.”

  I felt dizzy. I leaned against the cold gray metal of the adjacent locker. More quietly, I said, “Was he okay? Did he get upset?”