At the end of rehearsal, as the rest of the cast gathered the coats and bags they’d dropped in the seats of the auditorium, Mr. Gillison put his arm around my shoulders. “Wonderful, Courtney, just wonderful! I take it you did the research I recommended; it’s paying off. This is the kind of work I’m used to seeing from you—scratch that, this is better. Your best work! Maybe just bring it down half a notch, at least for the first act, all right? You’re scaring the ingénues.” He laughed and squeezed my shoulders in a one-armed half-hug.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Mr. G.”
Already, the world was rushing in, tearing through the spell Arthur Miller’s words had cast on me. I jumped down from the stage and went to get my things. Leaving a good rehearsal was as bad as the end of a good performance—a brutal comedown from the best high, a sense that whatever I’d just achieved was transitory and already past. Lexi was waiting for me outside the theater, and I was grateful for the distraction.
“What’s up?” I could tell by her face that she had news. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was twitching like she was about to go into hysterics. Even her hair was excited: the ends floated in the air, alive with static electricity.
“I heard about Hugh,” she whispered. “The disciplinary committee is out. But we shouldn’t talk about it here.” She glanced down the hall nervously.
The auditorium was just off the main foyer of the school building. It was deserted; most students were across campus at the gym for sports practice, and any faculty still on campus were in their offices on the upper floors. But Lexi was right. The old mansion that housed Country Day was full of nooks and alcoves, and anyone might be around the corner. There was even supposed to be a secret passage from one of the Latin classrooms that ran all the way down to the banks of the Souhegan River on the edge of the campus. The story went that the passage had been constructed during Prohibition, to bring in liquor that was smuggled up the river from ships in Boston Harbor. The passage was rumored to be full of some final shipment of fantastically valuable, orgasm-inducing Scotch, but no one had ever found it.
Lexi and I went out the front door, down across the lawns to the junior parking lot, and climbed into her car.
“So what happened?” I asked, lighting a cigarette as we pulled out of the drive.
“Fucking nothing,” said Lexi. “Nothing. Three days’ suspension, and yesterday and today count as time served. So he’ll be back on Thursday like it never happened.”
“What? Shit!” I dropped my cigarette in my lap and scrambled to grab it without burning myself or dropping the thing and lighting the car on fire.
“And get this: he’s suspended for the Jack Daniels only. His parents brought blood reports from the hospital that said he was clean except for the booze.” Lexi pulled out onto Route 2 and headed east, toward the city.
“Wasn’t that part of the reason we used 2C-I?”
“I figured the less evidence, the better, but I also thought drooling mud and screaming about Madagascan primates would be proof-positive of drug use to Farnsworth.” She slapped the steering wheel. “They—the Marsdens—claimed some kind of bad reaction. Whiskey and allergy meds, or something.”
“Ugh,” I tossed my cig out the window, suddenly nauseous. “Unbelievable. I guess he was probably pretty convincing when he denied taking anything.”
“The only thing Farnsworth finds convincing is a donation to the fucking endowment,” said Lexi. “That bastard.” The window was open and her hair was flying around like she was one of the Gorgons.
“How did you do it, anyway? Without Hugh noticing?” I looked over at Lexi.
“I kissed him,” she said. She managed to look both pleased and disgusted with herself at the same time. “He’s so dumb he thinks forcing himself on me, like, won me over.”
I didn’t have the words to respond to that; I made a repulsed noise, and Lexi went on: “I caught him just outside the bathroom, and I flirted a little and got him to give me the bottle so I could take a swig. I had the powder in a little packet in my hand, so I leaned in and gave him a big smooch before I gave the bottle back, so he wouldn’t notice I was dumping it into the bottle. Which I did one-handed,” she added smugly.
I tried not to gag, thinking about Lexi pressed up against Hugh on the other side of the wall from where Elaine and I had been smoking. “Way to take one for the team, I guess. I’m not sure I could do it.”
“Well, you don’t have a reputation, Courtney,” she said, emphasizing the word sarcastically. “It might be weird, but there’s something liberating about everyone passing judgment on your sexuality. Like, if they already think the worst of me, why shouldn’t I use that against them?”
“Not everyone is always judging you, Lexi,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, well. Present company being a welcome exception.” She flashed me a smirk, sharp and bright as a blade.
“Don’t forget Farah,” I said. “Where is she, anyway? And where are we going?”
“She’s in the computer lab doing quality control on the Belknet. Or something like that. She saw Farnsworth’s email informing the faculty of the committee’s decision and texted me. We’re going to Harvard Square. I like to go there to remind myself there is intelligent life outside of Belknap.”
Harvard Square is a knot of shops and historic streets in Cambridge, wedged between the Charles River and the much-vaunted university. It was about twenty miles from Belknap. If you’ve seen Good Will Hunting (Best Original Screenplay Oscar, 1998), you’ve seen Harvard Square; it’s where Matt Damon and Minnie Driver meet and go on all their dates. That day, the Square was decked out in a confused tangle of holiday decorations: Paper skulls left over from the Day of the Dead fluttered on the windows of the Border Cafe; a sun-faded vampire lurked in the windows of the Curious George bookshop; and horns of plenty spilled carefully arranged displays of shoes onto beds of artificial leaves in fall colors, though the trees across Cambridge Common were bare save for premature Christmas lights. The Pit, a brick depression in the center of the Square by the T stop and Out of Town newsstand, was full of kids who appeared to be in costume, although it had nothing to do with Halloween. When my older sister and brothers were young, the Pit kids had been tough—runaways and punks and street kids—but now they were mostly suburban refugees like Lexi and me, wearing uniforms of disaffection: brightly colored hair and sneakers; expensive, artfully torn jeans; band hoodies from Urban Outfitters; parentally-approved tattoos and eyebrow rings. Harvard kids walked around and through the Square, but they didn’t hang out in the Pit—that’s what final clubs were for. We got a parking spot in the little metered garage and did a lap, checking things out.
“Want to peruse the sales racks at Urban?” I asked Lexi.
“Can’t.” She smirked again, with the same blend of pride and shame she’d had in the car. “I’m banned. I got caught shoplifting there last year. Correction: I didn’t get actually get caught there, in the store. They chased me through the Square.”
“Damn, Lexi.”
“They don’t mess around, either. Called the cops. Called my grandfather. It’s a totally amateur move, stealing from Urban Outfitters.” She gave me a sly grin. “I know better now.”
“I never got that. The shoplifting thrill, I mean.”
“Well, I’d love to show you what you’re missing. But it’s way easier at the mall than around here. They’re too used to the Pit kids.” She waved dismissively at the pink-haired, cow-eyed fourteen-year-olds perched on the bricks. “What about the Brattle? Maybe there’s a good movie playing.”
We walked over to the Brattle Theatre and checked the listings. It was small and only played one or two movies at a time, and rarely new releases. Heathers was starting in an hour.
“Perfect,” I said.
“What is it?” Lexi wrinkled her brow skeptically.
“You’ve never seen Heathers?” I was shocked.
“Max is kind of a snob about pop culture. We don’t even have a TV.
”
“Wow, no TV?”
“I mostly torrent stuff on my computer. But what is this movie?”
“It’s an 80s classic,” I explained. “Winona Ryder and Christian Slater go on a killing spree and murder the popular assholes at their high school.”
“Seriously? How have I never even heard of this?”
“You’ll love it,” I promised. We walked up to the window and bought two tickets.
“Have you seen, like, every movie in the world?” Lexi asked as we walked inside.
“No,” I said. “But I guess I’ve seen more than most people.”
Lexi took a seat in the middle of the empty theater and pressed her knees against the chair in front of her. “Well,” she said, like she was making a decision, “I think you’ll be famous some day.”
“I’ll hire you to be my personal photographer.” I told her, dropping into the seat next to her. “I’ll write it into all my contracts, that any magazine spreads and publicity photos must be shot by you.”
Lexi laughed. “I promise to always shoot your good side. Not that you have a bad side,” she added, turning her face toward me as the lights came down. “It would be nice to always have a subject who’s so beautiful.”
I felt myself blush, far more fiercely than I would have expected. I was glad it was dark. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” I told her. “It’s a deal.”
* * *
After the credits rolled over Veronica and Martha Dump Truck, we went to Algiers for mint tea. Algiers had a high, octagon-shaped ceiling with wood panels, a shape that was echoed in the small wood tables with intricate brass inlays. We could have been in a tent in Morocco.
“Well, you’re right, that is totally my new favorite movie,” said Lexi. “No offense, but Melissa Lewis and Hilary Monroe would make great Heathers.”
“Believe me, I know,” I said. “But I don’t hate either of them enough to kill them. They’re bitchy, not evil.”
“Now, Hugh Marsden, on the other hand…” Lexi made a face to indicate she was joking. Mostly. “Knowing Farnsworth, though, he’d just find some way to raise the damn dead, and we’d end up with a rapist hockey zombie.”
I snorted. “If I don’t get into Tisch, I’m going to Hollywood to write that screenplay. Rapist Hockey Zombies. It’d be a cult classic at the very least. You can have a ‘story by’ credit.”
“As long as you name the main zombie Hugh.” Lexi rested her head on the table next to the teapot. “I was so sure he’d get kicked out of school. I can’t look at his stupid face every day for the rest of the year.”
“What about next year?” I pointed out. “Any school that will recruit him for hockey will be just like Country Day. And if he ends up in the NHL—”
Lexi lifted her head off the table. “He’ll be untouchable,” she said grimly.
* * *
When Lexi dropped me off that night, I was a little surprised to find my mother up and about instead of sacked out on the couch. She had water on to boil and was chopping herbs. “Hi, honey,” she said as I came through the door. “Did Ted drop you off? That didn’t sound like his car.”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, ignoring her question. I didn’t want to tip off her suspicion of my “new friends” again. “We’re going gourmet tonight, huh?”
“God, that tone!” She put down the knife and looked at me with her lips pressed together. “So sarcastic. Anna and the boys never talked like that.”
My mother said something like this at least once a day, whether I was aiming for sarcasm or asking a simple question. I had come to the conclusion that she just didn’t like the sound of my voice. “I’m only trying to convey that the inclusion of fresh herbs in our dinner meal is unexpected but welcome,” I said as sweetly as I could manage.
She gave me a reproving look and went back to chopping. “There’s a block of parmesan in the fridge, would you mind grating some?” She pointed with her chin to the box grater standing on the counter by the sink.
“Okay,” I said. Through the picture window over the sink, I could make out the outline of the shed in the backyard. Light shone through its little window. Dad was clearly at work on his birdhouse masterpiece. “Doesn’t Dad get cold out there?”
Mom had set the herbs aside and was forcefully snapping spaghetti in half over the pot of water. The steam billowed around her head as she dropped in the pasta and threw up her hands.
“He says he doesn’t. He’s got a space heater out there, which I’m sure he’ll leave on one night and burn the darn shed down. But does he listen to me? No.” She turned to me with a sigh, and picked up the glass of white wine standing next to the cutting board. I studied her reflection in the dark window, where her salt and pepper hair appeared black once more, and the distortions in the glass smoothed the lines on her face. She wore a fond little smile that belonged only to my father. It appeared whenever he did or said something particularly sweet or particularly in character.
I imagined for one brief moment telling my mother everything. It was the thought of her tears that stopped me. I was her baby, and I knew she’d find some way to blame herself—she should have been more strict with me about parties and sleepovers, she should have sent me to the performing arts academy in Cambridge instead of Country Day, she should have known who Hugh was the moment she’d laid eyes on him. I couldn’t have her thinking like that.
Mom sipped her wine and shook off whatever little reverie she’d been having. “By the way, Anna called today. She’s not coming home for Thanksgiving.”
“Seriously? That bitch.” I slammed the box grater down and pushed the dish of grated cheese toward my mother. I didn’t really know where the vitriol was coming from. It was partly for myself, for not having the guts to tell my mother what had happened or for even thinking of hurting her like that. It was partly for the sudden, angry abandonment I felt at hearing that Anna wasn’t coming back. But I need her, I thought, sounding whiny even in my own head. I realized that I’d been thinking of telling Anna everything all along; I’d been waiting for her to come home, because how could I even begin to explain on the phone? And there was always the possibility that Grieves was right about how you never knew who was listening.
“Courtney! What is wrong with you lately?” My mother set down her glass of wine and braced her arms on the counter, trying to look me in the eye. I avoided her gaze.
“Oh, you know. Just the usual high school bullshit.”
I think if I’d been standing within her arm’s reach she might have slapped me just then.
Instead, she said something she hadn’t said in years: “Courtney Catherine Valance, go to your room.”
“Mom—”
“This is not a movie, young lady. You can’t speak to your mother like that and get away with it because the script calls for it.”
“Mom—”
“Go to your room!”
I picked up my book bag, stomped upstairs as loudly as I could, and went into Anna’s room, slamming the door behind me. I hated my mother just then. How could she be so blind? I wasn’t making trouble—I was troubled.
Chapter 12
Troubled. A few days later, the word was still rolling around in my head like a marble. I was sighting a bottle of organic Caribbean hot sauce down the barrel of a 20-gauge shotgun, my finger on the trigger. Ted’s brother Tom was home from college—it was the weekend before Thanksgiving, and he had the week off—and though it was an invitation I usually declined, I’d taken them up on a little target practice in the field behind their house. The Parker brothers didn’t shoot empty cans, instead raiding their mother’s pantry for unopened containers of approximate gore: Bonne Maman strawberry preserves, San Marzano tomatoes, red wine vinegar in ornate bottles. Secretly, I had always found this morbid, but that day I saw the appeal. The barrel was cold in my left hand, and the wood butt dug into my shoulder. I braced my boots firmly in the dirt. Tom was watching me, waiting for me to fumble. I squeezed the trigger and grit my teeth, a
nd the hot sauce went down, chipotle gore across the faded leaves of November. I felt pretty tough for a second. You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? (Taxi Driver, four Oscar nominations, 1977.)
“Nice,” said Tom. “Courtney, I must admit, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Good job,” muttered Ted. He hadn’t been watching my shot, but he put his arm around me anyway. He’d been distracted all day, all week, even after Hugh had come back to school. You’d have thought Hugh had been out with an exotic but not contagious disease by the fuss everyone had made. Ted and his boys, Melissa and Hilary, and even Marian, Selena, and Lindsay all flanked him in the halls like bodyguards. Rory Swanson, the junior Ted had thrown up against the wall, didn’t show up at school on Thursday or Friday, and though I knew the kid was probably just afraid of getting his ass kicked and trying to lay low until Monday, the murmured gossip around school was that Hugh had found out about Rory’s bookmaking and put him deservedly in the hospital. At Belknap Country Day, Hugh Marsden was a bigger deal than ever.
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