The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (14 page)

THE CROWN OF ALABASTER

The next day, Frankie cut all her classes.

The details of her many false moves and fruitless investigations are boring, but suffice it to say she spent two hours in the domed top floor of the library searching for a hidden door, seven minutes examining the flagpole, fifteen minutes breaking into the storage room where extra flags were kept, and forty-two minutes searching that room. She vetoed the new gym and the arts complex as possible “crowns” because she was guessing the oath of the Loyal Order had been written years and years ago—long before even Senior was a Basset, and certainly before the new buildings were constructed. She spent a significant portion of her time before lunch navigating the catwalks in the old theater, silently observing the drama classes taking place on the stage below. She searched for items wrapped in sticky tape, books, or maps. She looked to the west, but all she could see were draperies and lighting equipment.

Of course, it did occur to her to call Senior and ask him. He obviously knew exactly what the oath meant. Only—Frankie knew her father held his memberships close. He’d vowed his loyalty to the Order of the Basset Hounds, and he would never reveal their secrets, no matter how trivial or silly they might be. Not even to his own daughter. That had been clear at the steak house.

So Frankie called Zada instead, as she headed out of the old theater and over to the widow’s walk.

“I’m on Telegraph at a coffeehouse and I’m waiting for someone, so I don’t have much time,” said Zada. “What’s up?”

“Hi, Zada.”

“Hi, you. How come you’re calling me? You never call me in the middle of the day.”

“You know that Basset thing Senior sometimes talks about? Like a club he was in at Alabaster?”

“The Basset Hounds. Yeah.”

“What else do you know about them?”

“He never gives any details. It was like a secret society. There were rumors about it when I was at school, like it was a group of guys who did mysterious things late at night. But I never saw much evidence.”

“Well, it exists. I know people in it.”

“Are you joining the Basset Hounds?” Zada was incredulous. “What do they do?”

“I can’t join. It’s all guys, all seniors.”

“Matthew, right? Is he telling you all their Basset Houndy secrets? I’m dying to know. We could drive Senior crazy if you came home knowing all about his precious society.”

“Matthew’s not telling me,” said Frankie. “That’s just it. I kind of found out behind his back.”

“So. What did you find out? I’ve always suspected Senior was up to some stuff he won’t tell us about for fear of being a bad role model.”

“So far it’s not that much. Mainly bonding. Drinking beer or meeting in secret places, like up on the catwalks or in a library carrel. I think they pull pranks every now and then. They painted the Guppy on Halloween two years ago.”

Zada giggled. “Oh, that was funny.”

“Yeah. It’s—Zada, you don’t remember anything more that Senior said? Anything about a history they wrote that was hidden away somewhere?”

“No. Please. I do everything I can to prevent him from talking to me about his days at Alabaster. The man is seriously boring.”

Frankie laughed. “We do have a very boring dad.”

“Why are you asking about the Bassets, Frankie? You already know way more than I do.”

It was difficult to explain. “They won’t let me in,” Frankie finally said.

“Did you ask?”

“You have to be tapped.”

“What if you just asked? I bet Matthew would help you get in.”

“I already told you, it’s for senior guys. A certain kind of senior guy.”

“And all they do is drink beer and paint statues? Why would you even want to bother?”

“That’s what Trish would say, but you’re missing the point.”

“Oh, Frankie, my friend is walking through the door right now. So make it quick. What’s the point, then?”

“Power, I guess.”

“What?”

“Like Senior’s always saying: It’s how the world works. People form these bonds at school.”

“Oh, give me a break, Frankie.
Hi, Saffron, just a minute, I’m on with my sister and she’s stressing about some boy thing.
Are you seriously going to tell me you buy into the patriarchal notion that power is localized in institutions created years and years ago by people who were overly proud of themselves for having the male set of genitalia, and most of whom are either dead or drooling over themselves in nursing homes by this point?”

“Well—”

“Please, that is so antiquated. The institutions of male supremacy only have real power over you if you buy into that notion. Go found your own club and tell them
they
can’t join. Or better yet, drop the idea of clubs altogether because they’re exclusionary, and embrace some other, more flexible way of connecting with people.”

“But, Zada.” Frankie wanted to explain about the door being closed, about wanting to push through the door, about wanting not to feel small and second-best at the table. But Zada cut her off.

“Don’t stress over this, Frankie. It’s okay if Matthew’s in some dumb drinking club that you’re not in. Just let him be in it and go do your own thing.”

“All right.”

“Now take a deep breath and go back to your class. Okay, Bunny Rabbit? Because I know you’re missing class.”

“It’s lunch already.”

“Okay, then. I’m hanging up now. Bye.”

Zada was gone.

Alabaster Preparatory School had begun some 120 years ago on a piece of land that had been subsequently developed into the large, rambling campus where Frankie went to school. At its inception, however, there had been only two buildings: the semi-renovated Founder’s Hall (English department) and Founder’s House, a large, white, Victorian-style house where the founder himself had lived, now a small museum of minor local interest. It housed a collection of first-edition novels, plus a bunch of nice china and some antiques.

At the top of Founder’s House was a widow’s walk, even though Alabaster was nowhere near the ocean. Visitors could get there by mounting a steep staircase from the third-floor hall. Once up, they’d find a square, railed observation platform on the roof that allowed a 360-degree view of the campus. Against the north railing was a bronze map of Alabaster, annotated with tidbits of information about various buildings.

At the door to Founder’s House sat a docent, someone equipped to hand out pamphlets and point the way to the bathroom. Frankie smiled at him, flashed her student ID, and made a show of walking quietly through the ground floor of the house, gazing at first editions. As soon as she could, however, she scurried to the top floor, down the hall, and began climbing the stairs to the widow’s walk.

If this is the crown, Frankie thought as she went up, then I should look to the west and see if I can see anything that gives a clue as to where the history is hidden. Also, look to the books—the dome of the library.

She pushed open the door and stopped for a moment, blinking in the sun.

Standing in front of her was Alpha Tesorieri. Looking west.

LOOK TO THE WEST, BOYS

Alpha jumped when he saw her, but soon

smiled. “Hello.”

“Hey. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I didn’t expect you, either.”

Why was he here? He must have figured out the oath.

If he didn’t know there was a history, he was at least looking for
something
here on the crown.

If this
was
the crown.

It must be.

Could Alpha have any clue that Frankie was here because of the Basset Hound oath?

No.

Yes.

Maybe. It was a stretch, but maybe.

“Such a coincidence,” Frankie said, wandering over to gaze at the map. The library was northwestish from Founder’s House, which didn’t help much. The history building—worth a try—was to the south.

“What brings you up?” asked Alpha.

Frankie thought, I’ve got to keep him from looking west. Keep him from figuring anything more out.

“It’s such a pretty day,” Alpha continued, when she didn’t answer. “I came to look at the view. Fall is the best season. Hey, do you see that tree that’s completely purple?”

“Where?”

He pointed it out. “That shouldn’t even be a color that’s in nature. It doesn’t look real. Don’t you love it?”

It was a beautiful tree. “It’s like it doesn’t know it’s supposed to be brown. No one told it. So it’s busted out with the purple,” Frankie said.

“Exactly,” said Alpha. “Now I’ll ask you again. What brings you up?”

“I have a project for my Cities class,” Frankie lied. “We have to come here and make observations about the layout of Alabaster—the way the design of the school enforces or encourages particular ideologies and behaviors.” She was astonished at how easy it was to invent a plausible answer.

“Interesting,” said Alpha, his eyes flitting west again.

What did he see there? There was the library, slightly north, and directly west the earth sciences building. Beyond that the old theater, and then the woods.

Frankie walked to the southern railing, searching for something to distract him. “There’s a path across the quad that’s worn by people’s feet, do you see? Going diagonally from the main building to the door of the caf. No one wants to stay on the paths, even though it’s not that much quicker to walk on the grass.”

Alpha walked over and looked down. “It goes right by the ‘Keep Off the Grass’ sign, too.”

“No one seems to worry about getting caught.”

Alpha laughed. His arm was touching hers as they leaned on the railing. “I wouldn’t worry. That’s the sort of thing where if you get caught, nothing happens,” he said. “A security guard scolds you. That’s it. You’re not going to get expelled.”

“But it’s such a pointless little rebellion,” objected Frankie. “‘Ooh, I’m gonna walk on the grass when the signs tell me not to! Look at me.’ When those same people would never break any other rules. Not any that would matter.”

“It feels good to be disobedient, don’t you think?” asked Alpha. He leaned his weight ever so slightly harder against her arm, and Frankie could smell cigarette smoke and a wisp of apple.

She didn’t quite want to pull away, but she did.

“It feels good to off-road across the quad,” Alpha continued, as if nothing had just happened.

“It’s hardly off-roading,” she said. But inside she thought: Was he flirting with me? Did I imagine it?

“Yeah,” Alpha said, “but that’s exactly what those car salesmen are selling when they sell those SUV offroaders. The
idea
of off-roading. No one’s seriously driving their van up a mountaintop. They just want to be the kind of guys who
would
drive up there. Guys who don’t stay on the path.”

He was arguing just like he did with his friends in the caf. Like he liked her. Like he respected what she was going to say next.

He hadn’t been flirting with her. “You’re saying everyone likes to think of himself as a guy who doesn’t stay on the path?” Frankie asked.

“Sure. Who wants to be the guy on the path?”

Frankie didn’t—but she didn’t want to be the guy whose idea of off-roading was an SUV purchase or a shortcut across the grass, either. “If everyone’s off the path,” she wondered, “then isn’t it an illusion? Like they all think they’re nocuous rebels, but really they just spent a lot on the same car all their neighbors spent a lot on?”

Alpha laughed. “Nocuous? Like the positive of innocuous? That’s funny.”

We haven’t been alone together since that day on the beach, Frankie thought, looking into his wide face as it crinkled in amusement. I wonder if he’s remembering it, too. But instead she said, “Yeah. It’s the same type of people who convince themselves they’re cool by walking across the quad, when actually they’re treading the exact same path half the student body treads every day, and they’re only breaking a rule the school obviously doesn’t care about enforcing.”

“You have a point,” conceded Alpha. “But doesn’t that ‘Keep Off the Grass’ sign bother you? Doesn’t it make you want to walk on the grass?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t it annoy you to go all the way down to the corner there and then make a left turn to get to the caf, when you could get there faster across the quad, because some landscape guy, like, a hundred years ago decided that was how the path should go?”

“I think there are bigger things to rebel against,” said Frankie. “If I want to be off-roading, I should be doing some major and serious off-roading. Why waste my off-roading energies on the dumb quadrangle?”

“Yeah, but with serious off-roading you risk actually getting in trouble,” said Alpha.

“Did you really run a cockfight on the Lower East Side?” Frankie asked him. She had always been curious, and she wanted to come away from this encounter understanding something more about Alpha than she had before.

He looked at her, surprised. “That’s for me to know,” he answered, smiling.

“No, really—did you?”

“I’m not going to corrupt you with tales of my bad behavior. Look.” He pointed down. “There’s your boyfriend.”

Sure enough. Matthew was standing in front of Founder’s House, gazing up at them.

Frankie and Alpha met Matthew on the steps out front. “My two favorite people,” Matthew said, looking genuinely pleased to see them. “I was practically alone at lunch.”

“You were not.” Alpha shook his head.

“Well, except for Dean and Callum and Steve and Tristan,” said Matthew. “But I missed you. Callum and I built a desert island habitat using forks, mashed potatoes, and banana skins.”

“I forgot my books,” Frankie remembered, and ran back into the Founder’s House foyer to collect her bag. While she was in there, she heard Alpha saying to Matthew: “Dog, she showed up on the widow’s walk. Why would she show up on the widow’s walk?”

“Don’t be paranoid. She would never mess with us,” said Matthew. “And besides, she doesn’t even know anything about anything. I promise you, she’s harmless.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Be sure. I know her way better than you do,” said Matthew.

“I didn’t find jack up there,” said Alpha. “But it’s worth going back. Every other possibility has turned out dead.”

Frankie joined them, and they escorted her to her sixth-period class.

Alpha insisted they walk diagonally across the quad.