The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (22 page)

A PERPETRATOR

Shortly before curfew that night, as the student body would find out the next morning, security guards entered the steam tunnels through a usually locked door in the subbasement of Hazelton library.

Immediately the guards discovered a flashlight, a pack of cinnamon gum, an ultimate Frisbee schedule folded in quarters, a book, a boy’s peacoat, and a length of twine near the entrance, the latter with one end tied to a spigot for no explicable reason. A further search revealed senior scholarship student Alessandro Tesorieri, concealing himself in a little-used side passage and sweating profusely.

Tesorieri refused to say what he was doing in the tunnels, but security theorized to Headmaster Richmond that he was guilty of perpetrating the various activities of the so-called Fish Liberation Society and the alleged Society for Vegetable Awareness, Promotion, and Information Delegation. Tesorieri was also suspected of masterminding other recent infractions—namely the In the Ladies We Trust campaign (including the Library Lady), the Night of a Thousand Dogs, and what had been popularly termed the “Doggies in the Window.”

He was charged with theft, vandalism of school property, trespassing, and disrupting the peace. Headmaster Richmond, along with the chief of campus security, questioned Tesorieri, asking him the significance of the dog symbol that appeared on so many of the pranks, linking them together.

Tesorieri merely shrugged and said he’d never much liked Snoopy.

Before they released him, security did a search of Tesorieri’s dorm room and laptop. All of these were found to be completely clear of evidence (he had deleted all e-mails, per Frankie’s instruction), but at the end of the evening a security guard thought to open the book that had been found near the suspect’s peacoat in the tunnels, though the suspect vehemently denied it belonged to him, pointing out also that he neither chewed cinnamon gum nor played ultimate Frisbee.

The book, upon further examination, bore the title
The Disreputable History of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds
. Its presence next to the suspect’s coat was deemed incriminating.

Finally the security officers let Tesorieri go to bed, threatening a formal meeting of the Committee on Student Discipline as soon as it could be arranged.

Frankie went to first and second period the next morning, but she’d barely slept the night before and her arm had begun to swell and ooze, so by third period she was in the nurse practitioner’s office making up a lie about an exposed pipe down in the laundry room of the dormitory and receiving a prescription for antibiotics. She felt weak and dizzy.

At lunchtime, Matthew visited her. She was alone, resting on an infirmary bed with three ice packs strapped to her arm with first-aid tape. The nurse was in the front office.

Matthew pulled a chair over to her bed and sat down. “How’d you know I was here?” she asked him.

“Trish told me.”

“I asked her not to.”

“You ran off last night like you were mad at me.”

She could barely remember. Oh, yes. He hadn’t listened to her about the Guppy, he’d corrected her grammar, and then he’d suggested she shake him up. He had secrets from her that he wasn’t ever revealing.

Matthew had been Frankie’s boyfriend for almost three months now. Why couldn’t she tell him she was mad? “I don’t think we really talk,” she mumbled.

“Yes we do,” he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling.

“We talk all the time.” “I—I think you underestimate me.” “That’s not true.” “Yes,” Frankie said. “You do. You underestimate me.”

Matthew was confused. “I think you’re great, Frankie. Charming and funny, and—usually you’re adorable. How could I underestimate you?”

“But you do,” she told him. “I know you do.” “How can you know?” “We don’t tell each other much, do we?” He stood and paced the room. “I didn’t know we were going to have a relationship talk. I came here to find out if you were okay. And to tell you about Alpha.” “We’re not having a relationship talk.” “We’re not? Because it sounds like it to me.” “What happened to Alpha?” “You know how the Guppy got stolen, and there were those basset hound lights in the windows of the old gym?” “Yeah.” Was he going to tell her? He was. He had to. He was finally going to tell her.

“And the whole thing with the salad bar and the bras everywhere on Halloween?” Matthew continued.

“Uh-huh.”

“It turns out Alpha’s been the one making all that happen. He’s not telling anyone in the administration anything, but they caught him in the steam tunnels last night and they know that was how the Guppy got to the swimming pool—through the tunnels. They found a notebook in his possession that proved everything.”

“In his possession?”

“Well, on the floor next to his other stuff. He says it’s not his, but it’s pretty much got to be.”

So it
was
Alpha in the tunnels.

Some part of Frankie felt pleased. Not that Alpha had been caught—but pleased that she had made him care. That it had been he in the tunnels, winding up twine.

The only better person would have been Matthew.

“What’s happening now?” she asked.

“The discipline committee met this morning. They voted to expel him.”

“No.” Frankie’s mind reeled. She hadn’t intended this, hadn’t meant to ruin him.

“Anyone else, they probably wouldn’t expel,” Matthew went on. “They’d just threaten, but not really do it. Alpha they can seriously get rid of, so they’re going to make him an example. He’s expendable in their eyes.”

“Why?”

“He’s got no money. I mean, his mother doesn’t. If it were anyone else, the discipline committee would just make threats. Then the family would make an enormous donation—and the kid would be reinstated with a clean record.”

“Not if it were me,” said Frankie. “My dad doesn’t have that kind of money.”

Matthew shrugged. “Well, most people here do. And your dad’s an active alum; he knows people. But not Alpha. His mother never even went to college.”

“Didn’t she take him on a yoga retreat? Isn’t that like an expensive spa vacation?”

“She a crazy lady. She’s spending through the money she gets from renting out their apartment like there’s no tomorrow. She’s got no savings, no way of making a living. And Alpha got in early-action to Harvard.”

“He did?”

“The letter came last week. But if he gets expelled, he’ll lose his place.”

“Did you know about all this?” Frankie asked.

“What?”

“Alpha doing all these pranks?” (Tell me, she thought. Tell me.)

Matthew shook his head. “I had no idea.”

“But he’s your best friend.”

“Well, he’s completely brilliant—and he always breaks rules and thinks of ideas. I can’t say I’m surprised. But the pranks he did this year were way beyond what he did before, and it all kind of had this political slant to it, and an art element, you know? So I didn’t know for sure. And it was strange that he didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah.”

“Richmond called me and some of the guys in to see if we knew who was helping Alpha execute the pranks, but there was nothing to say. We didn’t know anything.”

He was lying to her.

Even now when she was in the infirmary. Even now when she’d told him they didn’t really talk.

When Alpha was getting kicked out of school.

“He’s not saying a word about how anything went down,” continued Matthew. “I thought maybe Elizabeth had been helping him, but now it looks like it was some sophomore he knew.”

“Who?”

“Your old boyfriend. Porter Welsch. He got scared and turned in some e-mails he’d got from Alpha, e-mails telling him to buy lawn ornaments and dog masks off the Internet, and to climb the library dome with a parachute.”

“Porter worked for Alpha and turned e-mails in to Richmond?”

“I guess so. Anyway, we’re all gonna write letters and attest that Alpha’s an upstanding citizen and a valuable member of the Alabaster community and all that—but I seriously doubt it’ll help. Richmond wants a scapegoat.”

Matthew would never tell her, Frankie could see.

And worse, he would never suspect her. Because to him, as to her family, she was Bunny Rabbit. Even though he never called her that.

Harmless.

“Look at my arm, Matthew.” Frankie raised herself on her good elbow and lifted the ice pack so he could see the burn.

“Shocker.” He came over and took her hand. “What happened to you? I should have asked right away. I’m sorry.”

Frankie looked into his face. He genuinely liked her, she knew. Maybe even loved her. He just loved her in a limited way.

Loved her best when she needed help.

Loved her best when he could set the boundaries and make the rules.

Loved her best when she was a smaller, younger person than he was, with no social power. When he could adore her for her youth and charm and protect her from the larger concerns of life. “I burned myself,” she said.

“How?”

“You don’t have any idea?”

He looked at her arm for a long time. Wrapped in ice packs. “No, I don’t. Am I supposed to?”

Frankie took a deep breath and said it. “I burned myself in the steam tunnels.”

“What?”

“You’re standing here, telling me about Alpha getting caught in the steam tunnels, having spent half of yesterday in the steam tunnels yourself, and you look at my burned arm and it doesn’t once cross your mind that I might have been in there with you?”

Matthew dropped her hand. “You followed us?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Why is it so hard for you to see me, Matthew? Why does it seem so impossible to you that I sent you there? That I wrote the e-mails?”

He stared at her silently.

“It’s not hard to get an e-mail address that makes you look like someone else,” she told him. “Anyone can do that.”

“But why would you?” he whispered.

“I never wanted anyone to get expelled, you have to believe me. I wanted to—” Frankie searched for the right words. “I wanted to—prove myself. I wanted to make things happen, wanted to show that I’m as smart as any of you, or smarter even, when all you ever think is that I’m adorable.”

Matthew shook his head.

“I didn’t want to be left out,” she went on. “You and your club. You’re so
exclusionary
, Matthew, it was driving me crazy. That I could be your girlfriend all this time and you’d never tell me, never let me in. Like you thought I wasn’t worthy.”

“How did you know about the Bassets?” His voice was tight.

“I followed you one night. Into the theater. It wasn’t rocket science.”

He shivered. “That’s crazy.”

“What, I should have just asked you to invite me along?”

“Maybe.”

“Be real. You wouldn’t even let me touch that stupid china doggie in your bedroom. No way were you just going to tell me everything that was going on.”

“We told Elizabeth.”

“Just enough so she’d make pretty party invitations for you! Not so she’d actually be a part of things.”

“Well, we told her. And maybe I would have told you.” He was defensive.

“But you didn’t, Matthew. I gave you a hundred chances, and you never did.” Frankie swallowed hard. “I wanted to show you what I could do. And there was no way to show you except for this. I thought you’d guess a long time ago, actually. The thing that makes me saddest is that you never did.”

She hoped, she hoped, he would
understand
. That he would appreciate her the way he appreciated Alpha. Admire her cleverness, her ambition, her vision. That he would admit her as his equal, or even as his superior, and love her for what she was capable of.