by Jay Forman
My phone cha-chinged and vibrated when Jack’s next text came in.
Grace, Director of Boarding, will meet you in rotunda in an hour.
*
My backpack felt unusually light when I draped one strap over my shoulder. I’d only thrown in an extra sweater, my laptop, cellphone, and my notes from the cruise. Somehow I’d find a way to sneak out and nip home to shower and change. (I had lots of experience at sneaking out of Berkshire.)
I was expecting the Director of Boarding to be a dowdy matron in a loose flowery dress, but found a pretty young woman wearing khaki pants and a T-shirt waiting for me in the rotunda.
“Lee?”
“That’s me.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Grace.” No boarding director had ever smiled so welcomingly at me. “Come on, let’s get you settled,” she said cheerfully as she started to walk toward the circular staircase that led to the girls’ dorms.
We circled up past the closed oak door that opened to the chapel’s balcony seating area. I’d served most of my detentions in there, the wooden shutters along the front edge of the balcony closed to keep the detainees completely separate from the chapel. (Did God not want to see people who had committed heinous crimes like smoking on school property or skipping the occasional class?) Another circle, another memory – through the fire door that hadn’t closed properly when I was a student (and still didn’t) we entered the hallway of the boarding area. Grace’s office was in the tower.
The round room had offered her predecessors a three-hundred and sixty degree view of the grounds. Because of the extensive renovations and additions to Berkshire’s buildings Grace only got a one-hundred and eighty degree view.
She explained some of the new school rules to me and, ever the one to question rules, I just had to ask if those new rules applied to me. They did. (That didn’t mean I’d pay any attention to them, though.)
“So, that’s about it. Any questions?”
“Just one. What do I do?” She looked confused, unsure of either my question or the answer, so I clarified. “What’s my job?”
“Sylvie was scheduled to leave next week anyway and we’d already spread her duties out among the other boarding dons, so there actually isn’t much for you to do. Mr. Hughes explained why you’re really here...,”
That surprised me, given Dick’s insistence that I sign a confidentiality agreement. But Dick had been so concerned about me that he hadn’t thought to get Jack to make the same promise, and Jack hadn’t wasted any time stepping through that gaping loophole.
“...so I haven’t scheduled you any specific tasks. Just make a good show of supervising, making sure the rules – especially the curfew rules – are adhered to, stop any bickering or bitchiness, and be a shoulder to lean on. Stress levels are high right now, what with Kayla’s death and Ethan being missing, and some girls are beginning to stress about the upcoming final exams, too. Does that sound reasonable to you?”
“I guess so. What about my hours?”
“Nothing set. But I’d appreciate your help at the end of the day. The girls can’t get into too much trouble when they’re in class during the day. It’s after classes end that things can get interesting, but you already know that from your time here.”
Had she read my file?
“Actually, Jocelyn is the worst one for breaking curfew and I know you’re probably going to want to talk to her anyway, so I’ll leave her all to you. If she’s not in her room at curfew you’ll probably find her in the editing suite in the media centre. She’s putting together a video for the graduation ceremony. The other place the girls sneak off to is the tower room, they go there to smoke.”
It’s where I’d gone to smoke when the weather was bad, before that night. “I’m surprised that you haven’t banned that and locked the door, especially after what happened to Kayla.”
“Oh, it has been banned, but quite frankly I’d rather they did it up there than in their rooms or out on the grounds somewhere. It’s somewhat controllable if they’re just above my head.”
“Did Kayla smoke?” Grace knew why I was at the school, so why mince words?
“I think so, she used to go up there a lot to hang out with other girls. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.” Grace changed the subject so suddenly that it startled me. Did she not want to talk about Kayla? “I’ve put you in the seniors’ area.”
I followed her down the hallway.
“Your old room is part of the expanded bathroom now.”
How appropriate. It had been a shitty room.
Grace opened the first closed door we came to. “Home sweet home!”
The walls were institutional beige. There was a desk, a wardrobe and a thinly padded chair that would barely fit anyone with more than an athlete’s body mass. The bed looked too small, even for me. And the room was stifling hot. I walked right over to the radiator under the window, bent down and turned the knob to turn the radiator off.
“Sorry about the temperature. It’s that time of year when the weather outside can’t make up its mind. Maintenance won’t be turning the furnaces off until the end of the month, so you’ll have to make do with Berkshire air conditioning if you’re too hot.”
“The window?”
“You got it!” she laughed. “The dons’ bathroom is five doors down the hallway. Lunch is at noon and dinner’s at five in the main dining room. We find it’s best to start herding the girls down a few minutes early. After dinner, between six and eight, it’s supervised study time and all of the students, except for the upper form, are expected to be in the Robson Library then. The upper forms are free to study wherever they want. Everyone gets free time between eight and nine-thirty, that’s when we have to be extra vigilant. Curfew is at nine-thirty, all electronic devices must be turned off by ten, room lights off by eleven. I think that covers everything.”
I wanted to change the subject back and decided to do it just as sharply as Grace had done. “Do you think Kayla killed herself?”
Grace looked out into the hallway, then closed the door and sat on the one chair in my room. “No.”
I sat on the bed and the scratchy wool blanket on it felt all too familiar. I should have brought my duvet with me.
“Some people are wondering if Kayla and Ethan pulled a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing, but I can’t see that. For one, I don’t think Kayla was capable of getting that mushy. And Ethan definitely isn’t the type to do something like that. He’s a great kid! I got to know him on our March Break trip to Klosters and he’s got his head screwed on right. I don’t even buy that he and Kayla were in teenage love. If anything, he was all gooey-eyed for Glyn Tory. She was on the ski trip with us and Ethan spent an awful lot of time with her.”
“So if Kayla didn’t jump, who do you think pushed her? Jocelyn?” Throwing Jocelyn’s name out as a suspect was a crap shoot, but I wanted to see how someone who knew both girls would react to it.
Grace looked out the window and stared at the snow-covered soccer pitch. “I don’t know. She idolized Kayla and even if she was a bit melodramatic I think her tears were real when Kayla died. Jocelyn had trouble fitting in, making friends, and when Kayla took her under her wing she really came to life. Several girls were jealous of Kayla, but jealous enough to kill her? I don’t think so. I don’t know the boys as well, but they can’t access the tower easily; the connecting doors between their dorms and ours are always locked.” She turned to look back at me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can help because I truly can’t imagine anyone here doing something like that.”
I dearly hoped she wasn’t about to give me the ‘we’re like a big loving family’ speech.
“I’m not saying that we all get along all of the time, but we have perfectly normal minor issues and we deal with them.”
I took a page from Jack’s book and got specific. “Where were you that night?”
She flinched at my directness. “I wasn’t in the tower room, if that’s what you’re asking.”
>
“No, no, that’s not...,” I’d been too blunt. I should have paid more attention to how Jack managed to keep people on his side even when he was grilling them. Sometimes barrelling ahead at full bore scared people off, and that modus operandi wasn’t going to help me here.
“I wish I had been there, or in my office at least. Maybe I could have done something, or would have seen something or someone? Maybe I could have stopped...,”
“Don’t go down the road of maybes and what ifs.” It was the never ending road that I’d travelled more than any other place on the planet. “It’ll drive you insane. What happened happened. You can’t change it now and you probably couldn’t have changed it then.”
“I guess so. But I can’t help feeling guilty. I should have been here, but I’d missed dinner and went down to the kitchen to grab something. Mem C and I knew something was up when we heard all hell break lose in the hallways above the kitchen.”
“What a stupid fucking bitch!” A young female voice shouted in the hallway outside my closed door. “Did you see the mark she gave me?”
“I know, right?” Another girl replied. “She’s always easier on the guys. She needs to get laid.”
“Duty calls,” Grace stood up and opened the door. “Jayli! Two of those words equal two detentions. You’ll serve the first one tonight. And you’ll be joining her, Martha.”
Mind your manners, young ladies of Berkshire, my teachers’ constant reminders replayed in my head.
Now what? I felt like the new kid, coming to a new school in the middle of the year. I wasn’t sure where I fit in, or even how to fit in. Talk about déjà vu!
I tucked my computer away under my bed and checked my watch. There was still half an hour left before lunch. I had the halls to myself.
The tower room was the demon I didn’t want to face, but I knew I had to. I hadn’t been inside it since that night so long ago. I walked slowly along the hallway, taking the time to look in the rooms I passed. Some girls liked stuffed animals, some were neat freaks, and some were perfectly normal messy teenagers.
The fire door was closed, but not latched. I took the final curved flight of stairs up to the tower room. The door was closed.
As I turned the handle I was surprised by a sudden desire – I wanted a cigarette. My lungs had been healing for almost twenty years. I hadn’t had the urge to inhale in over ten years. It was the room on the other side of the door stirring up nicotine-memories. That’s what it had to be.
Or maybe it was the distinct smell of burning tar and nicotine?
I opened the door to discover a uniform clad girl sitting in the open window, leaning out, smoking – just as I had done so many times. She’d taken the screen out and leaned it against the wall by her legs. I’d done that, too.
“Who are you?” Her tone was accusatory, as if I was the one who didn’t have the right to be there.
“I’m Lee. Who are you?”
“Are you going to give me a detention?” she held the cigarette outside the window, but didn’t let go of it.
A detention? Me, give a detention? Yeah, right! Technically, I was in a supervisory position and probably should have given her one. “No, I’m not. But aren’t you supposed to be in class right now?”
“I’m supposed to do a lot of things. I’m choosing to have a cigarette.” She brought the cigarette to her mouth and inhaled, defiantly and deeply. “Besides, this is my spare. Are you the one who’s come to fill in for Sylvie?”
“That would be me. Now you know who I am, how about returning the favour? Name? Age? Rank? Anything?”
There was only one word to describe her expression – surly. She wasn’t quite scowling, but she was definitely assessing me. I doubted that Berkshire’s current students treated substitute teachers, or dons, with any more respect than we had. She had long ruler-straight dark brown hair that obviously hadn’t been cut in a while; the ends were frizzy. Her eyes were dark brown and looked too small for her face. That could have been caused by the extra-thin designer glasses she was wearing, or it may have been because of the pudginess of her cheeks. She wore her kilt rolled up high. Almost all of the surface area of her thick thighs was visible. Everything about her was thick. Everything except for the intelligence in her eyes.
“Jocelyn de Corneille. Seventeen. Third in the class. Actually, I guess I’m second now. The guy who was second went missing this afternoon.”
Chapter Nine
Jocelyn took another drag on her cigarette and then stubbed it out in a little brass ashtray that sat beside her on the windowsill. “This is a disgusting habit. I only started because Kayla talked me into it.”
I walked over to the cracked chapel pew that was in the middle of the round room. It made a creaking sound when I sat down. “Who’s Kayla?” Jack may have told some of the staff why I was really at the school, but I knew that information wouldn’t have trickled down to the students yet.
“She was my best friend. She died.”
What happened to the girl that Mademoiselle and Grace had described? The one who’d been so emotionally distraught over Kayla’s death? There was so little emotion in Jocelyn’s voice that she could have just as easily been describing how she flossed her teeth. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Cliché, but it was the best I could come up with. “Was it sudden?”
“I’ll say. She fell out this window.”
She fell? “How awful! Was it an accident?”
“No.” Jocelyn’s bland face suddenly showed some emotion; distrust. “Grace didn’t tell you?”
I’d played too dumb and if I didn’t act fast I’d lose any chance of getting Jocelyn to trust me. “She mentioned that a student had recently died, but she didn’t go into details.”
“Oh.” She seemed satisfied with my answer. “I kind of figured that everyone was still talking about it, you know, because it was so gross and everything. Nobody’s talking to me, though.”
“Maybe they don’t know what to say? It’s hard to know what to do when one of your friends is going through something so painful.”
“That’s not why they’re not talking to me. They only talked to me before because Kayla and I were friends. Everything sucks now that she’s dead.” For the first time, she actually sounded sad. “Kayla was going to get me a date for the grad ball, but that’s not going to happen now, is it?” The sadness that I thought I’d heard was quickly turning to obvious anger. “We’d even bought our dresses.” She slid off the window ledge and pulled up one of her socks. “I might as well throw the stupid dress out the window, too.”
She hadn’t just said that, had she? Throw the dress out the window, too? And her anger wasn’t sitting right with me, either. Sure, anger and denial was the first stage of grief, but Jocelyn’s anger reminded me of Dr. Campbell’s. Bad, bad Kayla had messed everything up by dying.
“Kayla was supposed to be going with Ethan, the guy who’s run away.” The bell announcing the end of class reverberated through the floorboards. “I should go.”
“Lunch?” I desperately wanted to ask her more questions and hoped that I could find a way to sit next to her at lunch.
“No, the editing suite is empty now and I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m putting together a year in review video for the grad ceremony. And I have to add stuff on Kayla to the memoriam video, too. I’ve already got the stuff edited for Mr. Haber and Miss Knowles.”
Miss Knowles? That name sounded familiar. “Did Miss Knowles work in the kitchen?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I think I knew her. I was a student here, a long time ago.” Miss Knowles was one of the few happy memories I had of Berkshire. She’d been a kind woman, always giving me extra-large helpings of dessert. “Mind if I tag along? I’d really like to see your memoriam.” Had Jocelyn worked on another video? One with Kayla in it?
“Whatever.” Jocelyn shrugged her shoulders and walked out the door.
*
I began to understand how salmon felt when they swam up
stream against a strong current. Jocelyn and I were definitely going against a tidal wave of girls in the stairwell – they were heading upstream to their dorm rooms, we were heading down to the main floor. Once out of the tower wing the river of students became co-ed. I recognized Jeff Kaufman from his yearbook photo. He was holding court in an alcove, six maids in waiting listening to every word he said and laughing a lot.
We entered a new wing, one that I hadn’t been lost in yet. There were computer labs, science labs that looked like something out of a mad scientist science fiction movie, and a two-story library that I could have spent weeks in devouring the multitude of books it held. It wasn’t as cosy as the wood panelled library near the chapel, and didn’t have a wood burning fireplace, but it held ten times as many books as the library I’d found solace in. The sports facilities, including a gym that had more cardio equipment and free weights in it than the gym I belonged to, would have encouraged any future Olympian to strive for and achieve the excellence boasted about in Berkshire’s promotional material.
We went down another flight of stairs and walked past a set of double doors that were open. I caught a glimpse inside the new Janine and Arthur Hughes Theatre and was blown away. I could have been looking into the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto or The Old Vic in London. It had row after row of plush seats, three aisles, a balcony level, a raised stage and even an orchestra pit.
Jocelyn opened the next door that we came to and walked into the room without stopping.
I grabbed the door before it closed on me and followed her into the dark room. Only the lights over the control board were on. It had more buttons, knobs and doo-hickeys than the control panel in Jack’s plane.
“It’s nowhere near finished.” Jocelyn sat down at the control board, pulled a USB key out of her pocket and stuck it into one of the many ports. “Do you want to hear it with music, too? I’ve got a recording of it to time my editing to.”
“Sure.” I sat down next to her in one of the swivel chairs.
