Mr. Barber sat down at his desk and jotted a few things in his notebook. “Good day,” he said, reaching for his coffee. And on cue the bell rang.
I stood up, staring down at the page, doing the math quickly in my head. Thirty-seven of fifty questions right. That was a 74. I had gotten a 74 and received an F. What kind of psycho school was this? How could the dean let Barber get away with this?
Missy scoffed as she walked by me. “Guess we’re not in PS 31 anymore, huh?”
One day I was going to shove something up her nostril. Seriously.
“Oooh, sorry,” Constance said, wincing as she fell into step with me on the way out the door. “Want to study with me next time? I have this whole flash card system that really works.”
I stared at Mr. Barber as she ushered me out of the room, wondering how sad and miserable a person you would have to be to torture innocent kids like this. He must have felt me watching him. Had to feel the heat of my glare. But he never looked up from his book. His refusal to acknowledge me just made me hate him more.
But by the end of the day, I started to wonder if Mr. Barber had been right to give me that F. Several of my teachers handed back grades from last week’s work and with each one my heart had sunk lower. Clearly, here at Easton, I was no longer an A student. But at least the other teachers were kind enough to stick to the traditional grading system.
Aside from the C on my art history oral, there was a C+ in
French, a B- in Trig, and a C on an English paper I had written on Upton Sinclair. Apparently even a paper about one of my favorite authors, written for one of my favorite classes, wasn’t going to save me. My only A was on a biology lab that had been done in class with three partners, and I can’t say I contributed all that much, having stayed up late the night before, whispering with Thomas on the hall phone. I was not at all surprised when, upon receiving my mail that afternoon, there was a note from Ms. Naylor to come see her.
I had a feeling it was time to start packing my bags.
On my way to see Ms. Naylor before dinner, I scurried by Gwendolyn Hall, the old class building that had been closed up ten years ago due to problems with its “structural integrity.” I was surprised when a trio of guys stepped out from behind the back wall and hurried off toward the quad, but I kept walking. Until I heard his voice.
“Hey.”
My heart caught. It was Thomas. He leaned back against the stone wall with one knee crooked, his foot pressed into the rock behind him. He held out his hand to me.
“C’mere.”
A rush of warmth overcame me. I glanced over my shoulder at Hale Hall, which the students called “Hell Hall” since that was where the advisors and teachers kept their offices. If I hesitated for very long, I would be late. But not even my fear of Naylor could tear me from the mischievous longing in Thomas’s eyes.
I took his hand.
“Where’re we going?” I asked.
He said nothing. He pulled me around the corner and up a set of
crumbling stairs, through an open stone doorway. On the other side was an outdoor room that was almost like a cave, the walls wet with dew. Somewhere nearby drops dripped a constant beat. Thomas sat down on a bench built into one of the side walls, pulling me onto his lap. Before I could catch my breath, he slipped his hand under my hair and pulled me into him, smothering me with his kiss.
“Thomas,” I gasped, pulling away. “I have to—“
He shook his head quickly and pulled me in again. My heart pounded. My fingers touched his face, his neck, grasped his shoulders. His hands ran down my back, over my stomach, grazed my breasts, and then returned to my face. I was overcome with heat and longing. I pressed myself closer and closer to him, knowing all the while that we could be caught at any moment, that I was making myself later and later for my meeting, that this was very, very wrong.
“This is all I think about,” Thomas said breathlessly, breaking away for the slightest second.
“Me too,” I said. I struggled to catch my breath. “But I have to go.”
“When I saw you come around the corner I thought I was seeing things,” he said, searching my eyes. “But you were really there.”
I giggled. “Yeah. I really was,” I said. “But I do have to go.”
Thomas kissed me again and I could feel his desperation to keep me there. Still, somehow, I slid away, groping for my bag on the damp stone floor.
“We have to do this again,” Thomas said, gazing up at me, his chest heaving up and down.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We most definitely do.”
“Miss Brennan, when we first met and I told you I would be keeping a close eye on you, did it sound like I was making a joke?”
I tried to stop smiling. I really did. But after that encounter with Thomas, it was impossible.
“No.”
“Well then, I assume you were unaware that I receive weekly reports from every one of your teachers,” she said, the jowls shaking. They grazed the high collar of her silk purple shirt, leaving a nasty stain of makeup residue behind.
“Yes.” I blinked and shifted in my seat, pressing my lips together. Serious. This was serious. “I mean, I didn’t know that. No.”
Ms. Naylor narrowed her eyes at me. She clucked her tongue as she lifted a sheet of paper from her desk toward the dim light. “Unsatisfactory,” she read. She picked up another sheet, holding it the same way. “Minimal effort shown.” Another. “Little to no preparation for class and quizzes.”
I grew warmer with each comment she read and finally the
giddiness was tempered. I tried to discern which teacher had said what, and therefore whom I now hated the most. Unfortunately, when I thought about it, I realized that any one of them could have said any of these things. They were all right. I had turned out to be an abysmal student.
“One more round of grades like this and you will be put on academic probation. Your scholarship will be reassessed and the Board of Directors might begin to wonder if it made a mistake in admitting you,” she said, lifting her chin imperiously. “Believe me when I tell you that the Board of Directors does not appreciate being shown that it has made a mistake.”
It was weird the way she referred to the board as an “it” instead of a “they.” Grammatically correct, maybe, but it made me think of a supercomputer behind a green curtain handing down verdicts from on high. It was effective, though. I officially had the fear.
“Now, what are we going to do about this, Miss Brennan?” Naylor asked, laying the papers down and lacing her bulbous fingers together on top of them.
I swallowed hard. “Study harder?” I suggested.
She stared as if waiting for me to tell her this was a joke.
“
I
suggest you stop spending so much time socializing with the women of Billings House and get yourself to the library,” she said finally. My jaw dropped. Her lips twitched and I could tell she was pleased with herself for shocking me. She tapped her fingertip to her temple near the corner of her heavily made-up eye. “I told you I would be watching. You should start taking both me and your education more seriously.”
Disturbing. Very disturbing.
“If you are no longer a student at Easton, then you won’t have your new friends or that Thomas Pearson to spend time with anymore, will you?”
Oh, God.
Had she seen us? Why was she looking at me that way?
“Now, are you going to start taking your schooling more seriously?” she asked, her eyes gleaming in triumph.
“I . . . I will,” I said, trying to figure out where the school had hidden the secret surveillance cameras. Other than at morning services, I had never seen Ms. Naylor outside her cave. How did she know whom I was hanging out with?
“Very well, then. You’re excused.”
I scrambled out of my seat and her office, feeling her eyes on the back of my neck. Once outside, I took a deep breath and considered everything she had said. She may have been creepy and potentially voyeuristic, but the woman had a point. If I didn’t pull my grades up I was going to be booted, and then I wouldn’t have the Billings Girls
or
Thomas to distract me anymore. I would be on a Greyhound back to Croton before you could say “big fat failure.”
Outside it was a warm, sunny day, and on my way to lunch I saw Noelle, Ariana, Taylor, and Kiran all kicked out on the grass in the quad, soaking up the rays. Kiran’s shirt was pulled up to expose her stomach and her face was tipped toward the sky. Noelle was propped up on her elbows, debating something with Taylor, who picked at the grass. Ariana lay with her back on the ground and her feet up on a bench, her book lifted in front of her face. She had moved on from
Anna Karenina
and was now reading
The Brothers Karamazov
.
The other students trailed by the Billings Girls on their way to the cafeteria, casting sidelong glances in their direction. During the school day, we weren’t supposed to lounge anywhere unless we were sick, and then it was to the infirmary with us. I heaved a sigh as I walked by them.
“Problem, glass-licker?” Noelle asked.
I paused, uncertain, and hovered a few feet away, clasping the strap on my bag with both hands. It had been a long time since any one of these girls had acknowledged me outside the cafeteria. “No. I’m fine,” I said.
“No, you’re not. You just came from Ms. Naylor’s office,” Ariana said, never taking her eyes off her book. How did she
know
that? She turned the page lazily and continued reading.
Kiran slid her designer sunglasses down and looked at me over the top. “Oh, yeah. She’s got that look.”
“What look?” I asked.
“That ‘I just got my first grades at Easton and now I’m suicidal’ look,” Noelle said, casually crossing her legs at the ankles.
Taylor sucked air through her teeth. “That bad, huh?”
Sometimes I forgot how much these girls knew about this place. How integrated they were into the inner workings of Easton. A few years here and they knew everything that was going on. I wondered if I would ever have that kind of Easton wisdom. I wondered if I would even be here long enough to find out what next week’s Friday dinner special would be.
“I can handle it,” I said.
“Bullshit,” Noelle replied. “You look like the stick you just peed on turned blue. Get Taylor to help you.”
Taylor’s eyes brightened and she sat up. “I’ll
totally
help you.”
“Really?” I asked. I couldn’t believe the Billings Girls were actually offering their aid. They hadn’t forced me to run any overly heinous errands for them in days, either. Was it possible that the torture was over? Maybe they were finally accepting me.
“She helps all of us,” Noelle said, closing her eyes as she tilted her face toward the sun. “Why do you think we hang out with her?”
Taylor’s face dropped. Clearly this comment hit a little too close to home.
“Noelle,” Ariana said in a scolding way.
Noelle’s eyes widened and she sat up again. “What? She knows I’m kidding,” she said. “Taylor, you do know I’m kidding?”
Taylor managed to nod, but I could tell she was totally thrown.
“Don’t you have a ton of your own work to do?” I asked her.
Before Taylor could answer, Noelle scoffed. “Please. She’s already done all her coursework for the semester. Plus mine,” she added under her breath.
Kiran snickered and I wondered if this was actually true. For some reason, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Maybe this really
was
why Noelle kept Taylor around. It would explain why a girl of such amorphous attitude tolerated someone so steadfastly sweet.
“Really. It’s no problem,” Taylor told me.
“You’re so lazy, Lange,” Kiran said to Noelle, yawning. She turned over onto her stomach, readjusting her shirt for maximum back exposure. There was a black tattoo on the small of her back; it looked like an Egyptian sphinx. I wanted to ask her about it, but Noelle cut me off.
“Look who’s talking. I think your ass has grown exponentially since we got here,” Noelle said.
“I’m impressed you know the word ‘exponentially,’ ” Kiran shot back with a smirk.
“Girls,” Ariana said, shaking her head.
Noelle sighed and picked up her bag, pushing herself from the ground. “You should let her help you, glass-licker,” she said as everyone else scrambled to their feet, following her lead as always.
“She may look and act like a dumb blonde, but she’s almost freakishly smart.”
Taylor turned pink, but said nothing. She smiled at me encouragingly, hugging her books to her chest.
“Okay,” I said finally. “If you really don’t mind.”
“Cool! When do you want to meet?”
She seemed inordinately psyched about helping me study, but it made me feel ten times better. And even better, the Billings Girls were extending a hand of friendship, and that hand could very well help me get my grades up and keep me here at Easton. This day was turning right around.
The next few days were a flurry of studying, soccer, and secret make-out sessions with Thomas. Every time I saw him he would find some way to touch me or tickle me or kiss me. We made out behind the landscaper’s cottage after breakfast one morning. On my way back from practice on a sunny afternoon he pulled me into the baseball dugout where I let him slide his hands under my shirt and under my bra for the first time, shaking with nerves and paranoia all the while.
But mostly we met up in our own secret place, inside the entryway to Gwendolyn Hall. There we were still on edge, but felt safer than anywhere else. I would sit on Thomas’s lap or he would lay me back on his jacket and we would touch and kiss and explore each other until the last possible second. Until we had to run off to class or dorm meetings or practices.
Still, each one of these encounters was rushed and panicked, with the two of us constantly listening for footfalls and checking over our shoulders for prying eyes. All of which made each meeting that much
more exhilarating, made me that much more desperate to go further each time. Before we were caught. Before we were exposed.