The Madness Underneath

by Maureen Johnson

“Yeah.” I nodded, giving her the best smile I could manage under the circumstances. “I think so.”

  8

  THAT EVENING, AFTER JAZZA HAD GONE OUT TO SOME KIND of German language immersion meeting at a pub, I prepared myself for my date. This mostly involved deciding which of my small selection of similar outfits to wear and putting my hair up and taking it down again.

  When I was ready (hair up, wearing jeans), I spent fifteen minutes staring out the window, waiting to watch Jerome cross over from Aldshot. I didn’t want to stand outside. It seemed much cooler to come sweeping down the stairs like Scarlett O’Hara in a sweater, with an “am ah late?” (I had noticed that I had one thing going in my favor—my English friends seemed to love it when I amped up the Southern thing. If anyone at home had heard me talking, they would have wondered why I was suddenly talking like someone who lived on a plantation and had servants weaving magnolias into her hair at that very moment. My English friends couldn’t tell the difference between real South and cartoon South, and this, to me, was adorable.)

  He appeared at six fifty-five, his curly head bobbing along, his scarf looped casually around his neck. I waited out the five minutes, even though I could see him right below.

  “So I was thinking,” he said, rocking back on his heels, “a meal, and…I don’t know. We can go anywhere you like.”

  “Where do people go?”

  “I have no idea. Do you want food? Are you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry,” I said.

  “What kind of food?”

  “Whatever you’d like.”

  “I’d like whatever,” he said. “Whatever you want to do.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  Once we had established that we were both in the mood for food, it took five more minutes to establish that food should be Italian food, and another ten of looking at Jerome’s phone for possible places to obtain said Italian food. The restaurant we’d decided to go to was near Spitalfields Market, which is pretty much where everyone goes on a Saturday night. Every pub was filled to capacity, and people spilled out into the streets. We dodged around a giggling and very drunk band of women wearing fascinators that looked like tiny top hats, except for one in a tiny bridal veil.

  The place was very small, with about ten tables. Small restaurants, I realized, were scary. Small restaurants watch you. Small restaurants expect something of you. You have to be a better sort of person, and I wasn’t sure if I was that person yet. They seated us like we were together, which we were. When I was asked if I wanted a glass of wine to start, I laughed out loud, and the guy just looked at me and wandered off. A small plate of bread appeared between us, and the waiter took away our wineglasses in a snatching motion that felt a little judgmental.

  I’d been planning on ordering the cheapest or close-to-cheapest thing on the menu, which turned out to be spaghetti and meatballs. Jerome ordered risotto, which just sounded cooler. Mine sounded like food you get for children. Maybe I would get crayons as well.

  “How is it so far?” he asked. “Being back?”

  “It’s good,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, I haven’t done any actual work yet, so I guess I’ll see.”

  Though I’d talked to Jerome every day, I had never told him that I wasn’t doing any work from school. We never discussed my work from school. It was like my work, or lack thereof, was my dirty little secret—as opposed to the mushy and sometimes vaguely graphic things we’d said to each other. It was my secret shame.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “The Oxford and Cambridge UCAS was due back in October. I didn’t apply. For Bristol and Durham, it’s due in January, but…I think I’m going to take a year and try to run my own business, just to see what happens.”

  “Business?”

  “Tours,” he said. “I started giving Ripper tours when you were away. I didn’t want to say, because…I mean…I didn’t talk about you. There were just so many people around, all the time. And they wanted tours of the area, so…”

  “It’s okay,” I said. And it was okay. Jerome had been obsessed with the Ripper from the start.

  “What I was thinking,” he said, “was that I could stay in London for my gap year and do walking tours and freelance work. My uncle has a spare room in his house in Islington he’ll let me stay in. I could make all the money I need to pay the university fees. It’s not the most exciting gap year, but it will keep me from being destitute. What about you?”

  “I guess…I go home, and…”

  At this point, I was interrupted by the arrival of a plate that contained very little spaghetti and three suggestively large meatballs.

  College applications. I was supposed to start collecting those. I was supposed to have taken the SAT at a remote testing center in November. I was supposed to start asking for recommendation letters. A lot of things hadn’t happened. The gaping hole called “my future” gaped a bit more.

  Maybe I would go home and just repeat school. Maybe I would work at the grocery store for Miss Gina and save up money for a year, like Jerome was doing. Maybe I’d be assimilated back into the crazy quilt that was Bénouville, Louisiana, and never, ever, ever leave again. It was, after all, a swamp. And swamps suck people in.

  “I’m freestyling it a little right now,” I said, poking at my spaghetti.

  The waiter futzed around us, moving our bread basket and hovering pointlessly, demanding updates on our enjoyment levels while we had mouthfuls of food. If dates were like this, then dates were kind of weird. I felt like every move I made was being watched. I think Jerome felt equally uncomfortable, so we skipped dessert, paid up, and decided to take a walk around the market. Then we looped through the crowded streets, hand in hand. Jerome was talking about some things going on in his building, and it was nice just to listen for a change.

  We took the long way back to school, walking down Bishopsgate, through the throngs of people coming in and out of Liverpool Street station. We turned onto Artillery Lane, which is a very narrow, very Dickensian street running along the Wexford campus. There was no one around, and this was about as close as we could get to Wexford without actually being back on the grounds. We both came to a stop by a little recessed spot next to one of the buildings, a stump of an alley off of the alley where they kept the trash bins. A sub-alley used for trash is also a fine spot to kiss. I mean, people talk about the top of the Eiffel Tower and tropical beaches at sunset—but those places sound demanding, like they expect something from you. That’s just too much backdrop. A dark London trash alley is real privacy, and it doesn’t judge you. It’s probably just glad that you’re there to kiss, because those alleys probably see far more unpleasant things on a nightly basis. The small pile of empty vodka bottles and discarded T-shirt and single sneaker in the darkest corner spoke to that.

  I leaned up against the wall, feeling the cold of the bricks against the back of my neck. Jerome brushed my hair back from my face, because the wind had kicked up a bit and blown a few strands into my mouth. (Oh, the ongoing love affair between hair and mouths. Hair always goes for the mouth. The mouth opens, and hair says, “I’m going in! I’m going in!” like a manic cave diver.)

  “Is this all right?” he asked. He was using that very low, somewhat husky universal kissing voice.

  “Huh?” I said, because I am sexy.

  “This,” he said. “Are you…all right?”

  “Oh. Yeah. No. Yes, I mean, fine. I’m fine. We can do this.”

  Now it was awkward. Never get stabbed—it makes everything awkward.

  He leaned in slowly, and I found myself caught somewhere between two very different emotions. One was the gushy warmth and general excitement, the tingling. And the other was the bald awareness that kissing is kind of weird. The half closing of the eyes. The O shape of the mouth. Seeing that little bit of the inside of the lips when someone purses in preparation for the kiss.

/>   He stopped just short of my face.

  “This isn’t all right,” he said.

  “It is,” I said. “It is. Come here.”

  I pulled him forward and pressed his mouth to mine. I think he liked the forcefulness of it—although maybe I was a bit too forceful, because I felt the delicate clink of tooth on tooth. After a moment or two, I started to relax and closed my eyes fully, sliding my hand up into his hair, feeling the general warmth of the whole thing. It was all going well until a couple of guys from Jerome’s building passed by and started to snicker, and then one of them interrupted to say his door handle was broken.

  “I suppose we should get back,” he said.

  On the way to Wexford, we passed the local pub, the Royal Gunpowder. The sidewalk surrounding the pub was covered in flowers and candles stuck into liquor bottles.

  “What’s all that?” I said.

  “Oh. Yeah. That happened after you left.”

  “What happened?”

  “One of the staff murdered the owner,” he said.

  “There was a murder next to Wexford?”

  “It’s not connected. The guy who did it had a drug problem. The press made a big deal about it because of the Ripper stuff and the timing, but it was just one of those things.”

  “Just one of those things” is probably not the best way to describe a murder, but I knew where he was coming from and what he was trying to do. A murder around the corner was freaky and unwelcome. Julia had mentioned that I might hear about other violent things on the news and imagine connections or have unpleasant memories. But I understood—these things do happen. They’re not good, but they’re also not all connected. I was calm about it.

  I think. I may have walked away kind of quickly, but aside from that, I was calm about it.

  We could have stayed out a bit longer; it wasn’t curfew yet. But the night felt over. Going to the restaurant and talking—that had been exhausting. The kiss had been good while it lasted, but it had taken a bit of effort to get it going. And we’d concluded the night by walking past a murder scene. It was jimjam time for Rory.

  We had a quick kiss in front of Hawthorne—not a full-on one, but enough to catch the attention of anyone around. It was a statement kiss. Then I let myself back in and took the creaking steps back upstairs. Jazza was still out making Teutonic merriment, so I had the room to myself for a little bit. I put on my pajamas and tucked myself into bed.

  Why had tonight been so weird?

  I had a very uncomfortable thought—I wasn’t actually sure why I liked Jerome, aside from the fact that he liked me. And he was English. And he was cute. Mostly cute? What was “cute”?

  His head was kind of large.

  Where did that thought even come from? By what standard was I supposed to judge? His head was fine. Did looks matter, anyway? I liked making out with him. I liked that we were together, that people saw us together. I liked the general feeling of it all.

  Maybe that’s what relationships were.

  I was overthinking this. I hadn’t accomplished much in my time with Julia, but she had told me that I might react weirdly in “emotionally and physically intimate situations.” Things might feel weird at first. All things considered, I was doing well. (Also, I had clearly been paying a lot of attention to what Julia said. She had gotten in my head.)

  I got out of bed and trundled next door. Gaenor and Angela were around. Gaenor and Angela were easily the two loudest people on the hall, possibly the building. Possibly the world. They never minded me coming into their room and shooting the breeze for a while. That’s how I would dispel the creeping darkness—be normal.

  Just be normal. That’s all I had to do.

  9

  WHEN I WOKE UP ON SUNDAY, JAZZA WAS GONE. THIS was because I woke up at noon.

  At home, I’d been getting up at noon on the weekends, but I’d never done that at Wexford. Nobody did, unless they were sick. There was something unspeakably decadent about it. I felt wanton, like I should stroll around Wexford in the creepy silky-polyester robe my grandmother had bought me for my birthday. My grandmother basically wears whatever the Disney star of the moment is wearing, and she tends to buy me matching items. These things include the aforementioned silky robes, matching pajama sets of shorty-shorts and tank tops, see-through lace body suits, and fishnets. I hadn’t brought that robe to Wexford, because I didn’t think the good people of England really needed to see the poly-silk outline of my thighs as I shuffled along in the morning.

  Also, I realized I was alone yet again. Before—the great before, which seemed so long ago and so very different from the now—I never felt like I had any privacy. There was always someone else in the room. Often Jazza, and definitely Boo, who shadowed me everywhere I went. But now Jazza was gone a lot. It was the week before exams, after all, and her calendar was full of study groups and rehearsals. Room 27 was all mine. It was big and lonely and cold. I put on my fleece, which served as my bathrobe, my jacket, and my safety blanket.

  As I walked down the hall, I noticed how quiet it was. A few people had their doors cracked open, and when I peered inside, I saw them hard at work, bent over computers and books. I was the only one swanning down the hall, freshly awake. I showered and dressed and tried to slide into the rhythm everyone else had set. I left the door open just a crack and settled in at my desk. (The slightly open door was to invite visitors, and also I felt I was more likely to work if everyone could see me.)

  And I did work. I did some reading. I did a little French. I did a few problem sets.

  I paused when I noticed it had gotten darker—not dark, but there was a dim quality to the daylight, a low fade made worse by the overcast sky. Three in the afternoon, and already it seemed like dusk. I reviewed what I had accomplished, thumbing through pages read and counting up assignments completed. I had done reasonably well, better than anything I had done in previous weeks, but it wasn’t even in spitting distance of enough.

  It dawned on me, perfectly and clearly, that I was going to fail everything. I’d known this. I’d even said it out loud. But I’d never really breathed that fact in. Smelled it. Tasted it.

  This was failure. Doing all you could and yet knowing that it just wasn’t going to cut it.

  I shut my door to panic alone.

  Why was I here? They’d brought me back, and now what was I supposed to do? I felt like I was faking all of this, like I was playing the part of a student. I had the costume and the props, but I didn’t really belong here. I’d pinned notes on the stupid corkboard backing of my desk, and I’d highlighted things…But it was all so meaningless.

  For about an hour, I had an overwhelming urge to grab my bag, stuff in a few things, and take the next train to Bristol. I could be back on my parents’ couch that night if I got moving. I could admit that I wasn’t ready for this, that the semester was a wash. My parents would be thrilled, I was sure. Not about the semester being a wash—but certainly about having me back where they could keep me safe and sound. It would be so easy to do. The very idea made me warm inside. It was okay to give up. I’d been brave. Everyone would say so.

  And yet…even as I opened a dresser drawer and figured out which things I would take with me in this hypothetical scenario, I remembered the problem.

  There would still be ghosts.

  I would still have a future.

  I would still go back to school eventually. You can’t curl up on the sofa and deny life forever. Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was I going to go all fetal position, or was I going to woman up? I went into fetal position on the bed to think about this. Fetal position turned out to be very comfortable.

  Someone had to help me.

  I slithered to the end of the bed and stretched my arm as far as I could to reach around in the top drawer of my desk and find that business card. Jane Quaint. The therapist who had changed Charlotte into the shiny New Charlotte. The one who made her unafraid of school and life. I flicked
the card with my nail a few times and rubbed the edge under my chin. I’d had a therapist, and that had been a pointless exercise. A time-suck. A total pain in the ass. But this woman had done some kind of magic with Charlotte, and now Charlotte was fully functional. Maybe she could make me fully functional.

  The gloom accumulated outside. God. So dark. So early. My books, so thick. My confusion, so total.

  It couldn’t hurt to call.

  I would call.

  Now. I would call now.

  English phones have a double ring that I still found strange and charming, kind of like the chirping croak of a little frog. The call was on its third ring-ring and I was just about to hang up when a surprisingly deep yet clearly female voice answered.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name is Rory, and—”

  “From Wexford?” said the woman.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “I know who you are, dear. A friend of Charlotte’s, yes?”

  That might have been stretching things a bit, but I wasn’t going to split hairs.

  “Right,” I said.

  “Well, I’m very glad you’ve called. I was hoping you would.”

  “You were?”

  “It was no small thing you went through,” she said. “And from the tone in your voice, it sounds like you aren’t having the best day.”

  I cleared my throat. “No,” I said. “I guess not.”

  “Why don’t you pop round?”

  “What, now?”

  “Why not?” she said. “It’s a quiet Sunday around here. Why don’t you pop round, and we’ll have a nice chat?”

  I could see, even from this brief exchange, what Charlotte was talking about. Julia was nice, but she was clinical. When you spoke to her, she was clear and firm. You didn’t “pop round” to Julia’s. You had an exact time, to the minute. This Jane sounded more like a friend. She gave me an address in Chelsea, and when I asked her what Tube stop that was, she was dismissive.

  “Oh, just get in a taxi, dear. I’ll pay for it when it arrives.”

  “What…really?”