Abby lowered her voice. “I am not going to play the cello over the phone in front of my whole hall.”
I kept grinning. “I don’t care. Play for me, Abby.”
This went on for a bit until Abby hung up in exasperation. I almost called back to apologize, but somehow I knew that wasn’t the right play, and so I decided to hang tight and wait.
In the meantime, I agonized over what to get her for Christmas, but eventually, with my mother’s help, and spending a lot of the money I’d saved from my summer lifeguard job, I got her a pendant with a Tahitian pearl set in white gold. It was the first time I had bought jewelry for a girl, and I was nervous about how she would react. On Christmas Day, I woke up in my house in Asheville, wondering if Abby had opened my present yet. Downstairs, I found a wrapped present from Abby under the tree. She had mailed it to my house, and my mother had kept it hidden with the other Christmas presents. I opened it and pulled out a CD with nothing on it except, written in black Sharpie, To Matthias. Christmas 2000. Love, Abby. When I put the CD into the stereo, there were a few seconds of silence, followed by some indeterminate fumbling noises, and then Abby’s voice came out of the speakers. “Okay, this is Bach’s Cello Suite number one, in G Major,” she said. Another pause. And then music began to pour out of the speakers, low, deep notes that spiraled steadily upward and then dipped back down into the lower ranges before resuming their climb, as if soaring on an updraft. I sat in my living room, transfixed by the music.
Dad, yawning, came in, dressed in a tee shirt and pajama bottoms. “Merry Christmas,” he said. “What’s this?”
I turned to look at him. “My girlfriend,” I said. It was the first time I had uttered those words, and they sent a strong current through me. “She sent me this. She’s playing the cello for me.”
In January, Fritz returned to school gushing about Montana and fly-fishing and horseback riding in Yellowstone. He’d decided Western riding was much cooler than English riding and wondered if he could convince his parents to buy him a new horse. Just as I was about to make him eat his new Stetson hat, he invited me to spend the MLK long weekend at his house. That Friday, Mrs. Davenport picked Fritz and me up from Blackburne and drove us to Fairfax. On the way, she said from behind the wheel, “Oh, Fritz, your sister’s going to be home, too. Wat’s picking her up.”
Immediately my face went to slow burn. Fritz eyed me and slowly began to grin. “Good,” he said. “Matthias is looking forward to that, I’m sure.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, grinning myself. I thought Mrs. Davenport glanced at me in the rearview mirror, but I wasn’t sure. “Who’s Wat?” I asked in what I hoped was a not-too-obvious bid to change the subject.
“Fritz and Abby’s uncle,” Mrs. Davenport said. “My husband’s brother.”
Fritz rolled his eyes. “He thinks he’s hysterical,” he said to me, his mouth twisted into an odd smile.
I didn’t pay much attention to this—I was too nervous about seeing Abby again after three months. All my bravado from the phone call when I’d told Abby to play the cello for me seemed to have evaporated. Immediately I wished I had worn something other than the yellow oxford I had chosen simply because it had been one of the few clean shirts in my closet.
When we arrived at Fritz’s house, there was a Land Rover in the turnaround drive. “Good, Wat’s here,” Mrs. Davenport said.
“And Abby,” Fritz said, nudging me in the ribs. I shot him a look and willed myself to walk normally up to the front door.
Mrs. Davenport was reaching for the doorknob when the door swung open and Abby stood there, looking at me. “Hi,” she said brightly and a little breathlessly.
I stopped. “Hey,” I said. We stood there for a second, and then Abby stepped forward and hugged me, her cheek against mine. “Good to see you,” she whispered into my ear.
“Yeah, you, too,” Fritz said loudly from behind my shoulder. “Do I get a hug or what?”
Abby pulled back from me and made a face at her twin brother. “Hello, Mother,” she said, hugging Mrs. Davenport pointedly.
There was the usual confusion of carrying bags up to rooms, the Davenports’ yellow lab, Maisy, panting and grinning and slapping her tail against everyone’s legs, and Fritz and Abby sniping at each other. Then I found myself alone in an upstairs hall with Abby. Fritz was downstairs calling for his mother and asking about dinner. I opened my mouth to say something, but Abby reached for my hand and pulled me into another guest room. I registered a red floral bedspread and matching curtains before Abby pushed the door shut.
“Hi,” she said, putting her arms around my neck and looking up at me, smiling.
“Hi,” I managed. My hands had found their way onto her hips. They felt right there, like they were shaped for nothing else but holding on to her.
“I missed you,” she said, still smiling.
I answered by leaning forward and putting my lips on hers. Her hands went to the back of my head, and we drank each other in for a few delicious moments.
The bathroom door opened, and we broke apart, whirling around. A tall man in a tie and suit, a drink in his hand, came through the doorway. He stopped, his eyebrows raised, and we looked at each other for a moment, my hands still on Abby’s waist.
“Ah,” the man said, putting his drink down on a dresser. He stuck his hand out at me. “I’m Wat Davenport,” he said, smiling.
“Uh, hello, sir,” I said, quickly letting go of Abby and shaking his hand.
“Hi, Uncle Wat,” Abby said breezily. “This is my boyfriend, Matthias.”
Wat considered me, his eyebrows still slightly raised. “Well, I certainly hope so,” he said.
The rest of the weekend was thankfully devoid of similar embarrassing moments. Mr. Davenport made his usual, brief appearance and then disappeared into his office. Wat popped in and out, helping Mrs. Davenport in the kitchen, wagging his eyebrows at me and occasionally singing songs like “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in a surprisingly good voice. Fritz, annoyingly, stuck around with me and Abby much of the time, declining to go out to dinner with his uncle—“All he does is talk about famous people he’s met or how he’s been to the Louvre or the Great Pyramid of Giza,” Fritz said—but finally his mother took him to exchange some clothes from Christmas that hadn’t fit him. Mr. Davenport was still working in his office, and Wat had a meeting in D.C., so Abby and I got a couple of hours together. We spent them sitting together in their home theater, watching Say Anything, Abby’s choice. It felt good, just sitting in the dark, holding Abby’s hand or putting my arm around her. But soon I became very conscious of Abby’s breath, barely tickling my neck as she rested her head against my shoulder. I could see the outline of her bra underneath her tight pink sweater. Her thigh was pressed against mine. Suddenly I understood that it was actually possible that Abby and I could sleep together one day. From there it was a single, short step to thinking that I could close the door to the theater, turn the movie’s volume up a little, and we could have sex right there in one of the leather reclining chairs. I had a condom in my wallet. That her father was in the house added a thrill of danger. And I wanted Abby, every inch of her. I was thrumming like a tuning fork.
Abby turned her head to look up at me. “What?” she said, a slightly puzzled smile on her lips.
I shook my head. I wanted her, but as she looked at me, I realized that I wanted all of her, not just some quick, furtive sex in the basement. “Nothing,” I said, squeezing her gently with my arm. “Just thinking that we’re gonna be like them one day.” I nodded in the direction of the screen, where Lloyd Dobler was warning Diane Court to avoid stepping near some glass in a parking lot.
This is perhaps the single wisest decision I ever made in a relationship, not just because it led to more kissing and to our hands wandering. We didn’t have sex, and I was left aching with desire, but we discovered that, on some deep, instinctual level, we both liked and trusted each other.
If perhaps I had tr
usted myself half as much as Abby did, things might have turned out better.
LESS THAN TWO MONTHS later, on the day before Fritz vanished, Mr. Summerfield, my physics teacher, gave us a take-home test to complete. Teachers occasionally did this at Blackburne, assigning tests for homework so they could use precious class time to conduct more labs, or force students through the subjunctive mood again, or squeeze in one more lecture about the effects of the Peloponnesian War. In our case, Mr. Summerfield wanted us to work on one more set of practice questions in preparation for the AP exam. So I took my test back to my dorm room and left it in my physics notebook while I went down to the track to run laps in the cold and practice baton handoffs with the relay team. After practice and a shower and dinner in the dining hall, I returned to my room. Fritz was studying in the library for a calculus test with two other classmates, so I had the room to myself. It was dark outside the two windows of our corner room in Walker House, and my lamp threw a golden, solitary cone of light over the desktop. I liked studying this way, the harsh overhead light switched off and the desk lamp radiating a soft, focused glow that just touched the darkened windows. I pulled my physics notebook out of my backpack and opened it; then I took out the test, laid it out on the desk, and peered at it.
It consisted of four practice questions, each with various parts. The first question was about converting mechanical energy into thermal energy, something we had recently reviewed. Easy. The second question was about sound wavelengths, a topic I had presented to the class for a project assignment. I wrote out my work on my own sheets of notebook paper, comforted by the sound of the pencil scratching against the paper. Then I read the third question. As was typical with such questions, the description of the scenario was both clinical and absurd. Two small blocks, each of mass m, are connected by a string of length 4h. Block A is on a smooth tabletop, with block B dangling off the edge of the table. The tabletop is a distance of 2h from the floor. Given a couple of other variables, I was supposed to answer various questions about the acceleration of block B if it was released from height h, the time that B would hit the floor, the time that A would hit the floor, and the distance between the landing points of blocks A and B. I stared at the problem and then looked back at the brief list of equations that came with the test, the only extra help we were allowed to use—no notes or textbooks. It was an easy set of questions about acceleration and mass, but for some reason I was drawing a blank. I made a stab at part (a), silently cursing the entire premise as ridiculous. When would I need to know the speed at which a block falls off a table? I knew this wasn’t the point, but it felt good to grumble.
Halfway through part (b), I wrote to the end of my last sheet. I reached down to pick my physics notebook off the floor and opened it for a piece of scrap paper. Instead of opening the notebook to a blank sheet, however, I inadvertently opened it to a scrawled page of notes. I frowned and then actually felt my eyes widen. The notes were from earlier that month, the day Mr. Summerfield had gone over acceleration. The answer to the test question I wasn’t sure about was in those notes.
Mr. Summerfield was a short, bearded bear of a man. He looked as if he could twist open a fire hydrant with his bare hands. He smiled often and spoke in a soft rumble. I liked him, and I think he liked me, although he graded insanely hard like many of my teachers. I was earning a B+, could maybe raise it to an A- by graduation. This had no bearing on getting into college; I was already accepted to UVA and was going to visit the following week to meet one of the English professors. But just before Christmas, Mr. Hodges had told me that I was being considered for a Copen scholarship, a prestigious award granted by Blackburne to a graduate of high academic caliber who would attend a college or university in Virginia. I couldn’t help but fantasize about what it would mean to win the Copen and to see my parents’ reactions when I told them that they didn’t need to pay my tuition. My GPA was strong, but most of my classmates had strong GPAs, and several of them were applying to Virginia schools as well.
I don’t believe I consciously considered the Copen as I looked down at my physics notebook. And I’m not trying to justify my actions. I knew what the honor code was, and I had signed up to live under that system. After three years at Blackburne, it had become second nature to me. Fritz had been elected as a prefect by our classmates, and I had seen him after he had come back from the three Judicial Board hearings held that year, two of which resulted in guilty verdicts and student dismissals. Fritz had looked tired, pained, suddenly adultlike, and I was a little in awe of what he must have had to do in those hearings. It had brought home to me the seriousness of the honor code and the consequences of failing to live up to it. I would have said, up until that point, that the honor code was one of the defining factors of my life.
And it was, though not in the way I would have thought. Because after accidentally seeing my physics notes and realizing that I had made an error on my test, I erased my previous answer and wrote out the correct one with an easy deliberateness. Then I moved on to the rest of the test. Within fifteen minutes, I had finished. I closed the test, placed it in my physics notebook, and put the notebook in my backpack. Then I read the assigned chapters from Light in August until the bell rang and Fritz came back from his study session and we got ready for bed.
The next morning, I woke up, went to breakfast, and then walked down to the physics lab, high-fiving my lab partner, Jeb Tanner, before taking my seat. Mr. Summerfield came in just before the bell with his thick textbook under one arm. “Tests, gentlemen,” he said in his soft, deep voice, and we were pulling our notebooks out of our backpacks when the enormity of what I had done hit me like a sheet of flame from the sky. I sat there, the test in my hand, my lips parted as if I were about to sip from a cup. I had cheated on my take-home test, the one we were about to turn in. Dazed, I looked around, noticed boys making sure their names were on their tests, one or two frantically scribbling. I put my test down on the desk and looked at it. The question I had cheated on was on the second page. Change it, I told myself, followed immediately by Leave it alone—how could he tell? My mind darted back and forth between the two thoughts like a herring trying to avoid a pair of sharks.
“Now, boys.” The deep voice had an edge to it. Despair fell on me like a fog. It was too late now. Jeb, sitting in front of me, turned around, expecting me to hand him my test so he could pass it up. Slowly, I did. He turned away, and I looked at Mr. Summerfield at the front of the room, praying he wouldn’t be able to detect my dishonesty. I felt like I had the word cheater branded on my forehead. I was violating everything I had pledged to believe in, and I was doing it easily. And for what? The Copen scholarship? Was I mercenary enough to do this for an extra hundredth of a point on my GPA? But behind these thoughts, in a dark, hidden corner of myself, a small voice muttered about the ridiculous stupidity of that test question. Was I going to potentially lose the Copen because of my inability to perfectly solve a problem about falling blocks? And my classmates—Fritz included—didn’t need a scholarship. Their families skied in Gstaad every winter and would purchase their sons brand-new BMWs upon graduation.
“Hey,” Jeb said. I looked up, startled. Jeb was holding out my test. “You forgot to pledge it,” he said.
Forcing a smile, I took the test back. The pledge—“I have neither given nor received any unacknowledged aid on this work”—was usually written on everything we turned in, a restatement of our contract with the honor code. Jeb was smiling patiently. I picked up my pencil, wrote out the pledge, and then hesitated. This was a second chance. But what could I do? Jeb was waiting, and Mr. Summerfield was pacing at the front of the room, collecting tests. Change it! No time!
“Boys!” Mr. Summerfield barked, and Jeb snapped his head around to look at him. As soon as Jeb turned around, I lowered the pencil to my test and signed the pledge. As I did, my pencil lead broke.
“Mr. Glass, we’re waiting!” Mr. Summerfield said. Jeb turned back to stare at me. I handed him the test with a mutt
ered, “Sorry!” Then I looked at Mr. Summerfield. “Sorry, sir,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Mr. Summerfield grunted and received my test; then he put the stack down on his desk and moved to the whiteboard to begin a new lesson.
I have no idea what Mr. Summerfield taught us that day. Instead, I remember sitting in my chair facing the board, stunned in the wake of my success at cheating, and terrified of what it might bring about.
CHAPTER FIVE
The dew-beaded bricks muffled my footsteps as I walked to Huber Hall the morning of my first day of teaching. The Hill was shrouded in a wet fog from the river that made the walkways and the Lawn glisten in the dawning, pearl-gray light. A fertile odor hung in the air, wet grass and straw and muddy river combining to suggest that the day was not merely beginning but being born.
It was five minutes to seven as I pushed open the door to Huber. Twenty minutes remained until the bells would ring to awaken the students, but I wanted an hour to work alone in my classroom, and Gray Smith had offered to take my morning dorm duty. I’d spent a fitful night, and a little before six o’clock, when I had realized that I could no longer pretend to be asleep, I had risen from my bed to shower.
Huber was known as the Tower of Babel since all languages were taught there. If you sat in the hallway during the school day, you could hear Latin, German, French, Spanish, and English all vying for your attention. However, what most people noticed was its gallery of photographs. On either side of the main hallway hung black-and-white pictures of smiling young men, boys almost, standing in officers’ caps and khaki uniforms or pilots’ leather jackets. The captions underneath each cheerful face proclaimed them as Blackburne graduates who proudly entered the armed services during WWII and died in combat. Here was a lieutenant fresh out of the Naval Academy; there an army fighter pilot with a tidy crew cut and a wool-lined leather jacket. They were part of the background, faces that hung silently in the crowded halls during the day, unseen among the turmoil of school life. That morning, however, I was keenly aware of the frozen features of those young men gazing down upon me as I walked to the stairwell at the back of the building and went downstairs to my classroom.
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