The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (23 page)

She hoped, she hoped that he would see how badly she wanted to be part of his world, how badly she’d wanted to break through the door that separated them, and how much she deserved to break through it.

“That’s seriously sick,” Matthew finally said.

It hung in the air.

Matthew unwrapped a piece of gum and stuck it savagely into his mouth, then crumpled the wrapper into a tiny ball. “I can’t believe you’ve been lying to me like this.”

“But you were lying to me!” Frankie cried.

“I was not.”

“You lied about where you were going, you lied about knowing Porter, you pretended you had nothing to do with anything that happened. You’ve been lying to me every single day since we met.”

“I was being loyal.” Matthew stood and walked to the other end of the infirmary. “Loyal to a group of guys I’ve known for four years, if not since childhood. Loyal to a society that’s existed for more than fifty years. What were you being loyal to, huh? Or were you jerking people around to make yourself feel powerful?”

“I—”

“And what do you have against Alpha? Why would you set him up that way, when he’s my best friend? The guy is being expelled because of you.”

“I didn’t want that to happen! And it’s not like he wasn’t part of it, too. He never stood up and said he didn’t write the e-mails. He could have done that any second. And besides, it’s not like you did nothing yourself,” cried Frankie. “You stole the Guppy. You rubber-stamped all those letters, and bought bras and toy basset hounds and holiday lights. I know you did. Why aren’t you standing up and telling your part in it if you’re so concerned about Alpha?”

“I would,” shouted Matthew. “But he doesn’t freaking want me to. He’s the one with the
Disreputable History
, he’s the one whose name is on the e-mails, he’s the one Porter turned in. Me confessing that I’m a member of the Loyal Order isn’t going to change anything except it’ll cost my dad a ton of money. There’s no point.”

Frankie was holding back tears. “I wish you’d let me explain.”

“I think you already did,” he said.

He was way on the other side of the room. It felt so unfair that Matthew could walk away from her while she was stuck in bed, weak and half dressed.

“You’re crazy, do you know that?” Matthew continued, pacing. “What you did is psychotic.”

“Why is it psychotic if I did it, and brilliant if Alpha did it?” wailed Frankie. “That’s so unfair. It’s a double standard.”

“He’s getting expelled! You lied to me!” Matthew grabbed a small metal bowl from the nurse’s desk and threw it against the wall. It hit the floor with a clatter.

“Don’t throw things!” Frankie shouted. “You can’t throw things.”

“You’re making me want to throw things!” cried Matthew.

“Well, stop!” She said it as strongly as she could.

Matthew paced some more, but he didn’t throw anything else.

Neither of them spoke.

“I’m turning you in,” Matthew finally said. “I’m going to Richmond’s office right now.”

He went through the door and slammed it behind him.

“Don’t shut that door on me!” cried Frankie. “Come back!” She swung her legs off the infirmary cot and stumbled to the door in the cotton gown the nurse had given her.

She would stop him.

She would explain. Make him see how he’d misjudged her.

But by the time she opened the door, Matthew was already out of the building.

THE LETTER, AGAIN

Ms. Jensson, the Cities teacher, had kept a photocopy of Frankie’s paper on the activities of the Suicide Club and the Cacophony Society. When Richmond asked the faculty and students to come forward if they had any evidence that shed light on recent events, she turned it in. It contained numerous elements that could be identified as the seeds for the projects of the Loyal Order, and Ms. Jensson (who was eager to disassociate herself from the perpetrator in order to keep her new job) helpfully made notes for the headmaster so he wouldn’t miss any of the connections. The day after Matthew reported her, Richmond called Frankie to his office and requested a letter of confession. In response, she wrote the missive you no doubt remember from the start of this chronicle:

I, Frankie Landau-Banks, hereby confess that I was the sole mastermind behind the mal-doings of Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds. I take full responsibility for the disruptions caused by the Order—including the Library Lady, the Doggies in the Window, the Night of a Thousand Dogs, the Canned Beet Rebellion, and the abduction of the Guppy.

That is, I wrote the directives telling everyone what to do.

I. And I alone.

No matter what Porter Welsch told you in his statement . . .

Examination week began that same day, and Frankie was grateful. The semester’s classes were over and the usual rhythms—meals, sports practice, dorm check-in times—were all suspended in favor of a test schedule.

Frankie, her arm bandaged and a prescription for antibiotics in her pocket, dropped the letter in Richmond’s office and went up to the widow’s walk to call Zada. She explained everything.

“Senior is going to lose his mind,” Zada said after she’d listened.

“I know.”

“Why did you want to be a member of his dumb old club anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“I doubt he’ll be mad that you wanted to be a member,” said Zada. “I mean, I think it’s like his dream that you follow in his footsteps. But he’ll be furious you got the whole thing exposed and lost the
Disreputable History
. He’ll think you showed disrespect to his sacred institution and compromised the secrecy of the club.”

“Do you think he’ll pull me out of school—if I’m not expelled?” asked Frankie. “Like, he’ll refuse to pay for it anymore?”

“Maybe. But do you want to go to Alabaster anyway?”

Frankie did—and she didn’t. She wanted the good education. She wanted the power that being an Alabaster alum would give her. She wanted the doors to open that Alabaster could open for her.

She was an ambitious person.

But she also hated the boarding school panopticon, the patriarchal establishment, the insular, overprivileged life. And she hated the thought of another half year in company with Matthew and Alpha, after what had happened. Part of her wished Richmond
would
expel her, the way he had been planning to expel Alpha; or that Senior would refuse to pay, and the choice would be made for her.

“You can sic Ruth on him if he tries to pull you out,” continued Zada, when Frankie didn’t answer. “If she starts in on him, he’ll keep you in school. He can’t say no to her whenever it comes down to it.”

“I know,” said Frankie.

“Bunny, do you need to be on medication?” Zada asked suddenly.

“What?”

“I mean, should you maybe go have a chat with a counselor? It sounds like you’re kind of—like you got obsessed.”

“I think it’s the institution,” said Frankie.

“I’m not saying an institution, I’m just saying a counselor.”

“No, it’s the institution that’s wrong with me,” said Frankie.

“Alabaster?”

“I was trying to master it.”

“Bunny, go talk to the counselor for one hour. I’ll help you deal with Senior.”

“I have a geometry test,” Frankie told Zada. “I have to go now.”

Outside Founder’s House, Frankie ran into Porter. He had been waiting for her. “Let me walk you to geometry,” he said, stepping onto the quad. “Are you ready for the test?”

Frankie shook her head. “I’ve been in the infirmary. I haven’t studied that much.”

The last time they had spoken, she’d been screaming at him in the Front Porch, but Porter acted as if nothing could be further from his mind. “I didn’t know it was you,” he said as they walked. “When I turned in those e-mails, I didn’t know it was you.”

“Oh.”

“I thought it was Alpha. I mean, I know we’ve had our differences, and I was a jerk last year, but I wouldn’t turn you in to Richmond like that. I had no idea. I would feel so bad if you got expelled because of what I did.”

He still had an impulse to protect her—he who’d done her more damage than anyone. “Why did you turn them in at all?” Frankie asked. “Weren’t you a member of the Loyal Order?”

Porter shook his head. “Not really,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“I was a spy.” He said it with a glimmer of pride. “Last March, when Richmond let Alpha back in to Alabaster for senior year—he knew he was letting in a troublemaker. Alpha had broken all kinds of rules his first two years; he got caught with alcohol. And cigarettes. He snuck off campus. You know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Anyway,” said Porter. “Richmond wanted to give Alpha a chance to graduate from Alabaster, but also wanted someone in the student body who could keep track of what Alpha was up to, because Alpha potentially wielded a lot of control over the senior boys.”

Frankie looked at her feet, stepping in the muddy, packed snow of the unsanctioned path across the quad. “Why would you do something like that?”

“Richmond knew I was failing bio.”

“You were?” Frankie hadn’t known.

“I had blown off the homework at the start of the term and couldn’t catch up. Puffert was threatening to make me repeat the class, but Richmond called me in and told me he could make the problem go away if I would do something for him. He knew I was friendly with Callum and Tristan from lacrosse, and asked if I would, you know, join the pack. And report back if anything major was brewing.”

“Richmond knew about the Bassets?”

“No. The guy was clueless until all those dogs started popping up this year. He just told me to see if I could get in with those guys and keep an eye out. I knew that meant becoming a Basset, but that if I made the right moves it wouldn’t be too hard.”

“Why not?”

“My dad was a member, and my older brother, too.

Whole thing. I’m a legacy. So I was fairly certain I’d get the tap, if I only got those guys to like me.”

“Didn’t you think how upset your family would be when you betrayed the Order?”

Porter laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I thought about that.”

“So how could you do it?”

“The last thing I want is to be like my dad, Frankie.” Porter shook his head. “Or my brother. You should remember that. I hate everything they stand for.”

“So you told Richmond yes.”

Porter shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I thought it over carefully. I’m not saying it was easy. But Richmond was rescuing me from repeating bio, I got to say F.U. to my dad, and in addition, it was a chance to knock Tesorieri off his perch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I got new clothes, I joked around in the locker room, I showed up at parties even when I wasn’t invited, until eventually—I was invited. It wasn’t hard, really.”

“What’s your grudge with Alpha?” Frankie asked him.

“He went out with my sister Jeannie when they were sophomores. Didn’t you know that?”

No, she didn’t.

“He broke her heart. Completely stopped talking to her one day. No notice, no formal breakup. She ended up sinking into a huge depression and spent all of the next summer locked in her bedroom, drinking and listening to The Smiths. Ruined.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, my parents had to send her to a shrink.” Porter took off his scarf and folded it neatly as he walked. “So I never liked the guy,” he went on. “And then once I was in the Order, he was so full of himself. Sure, I had to admire his ideas—well, they were your ideas—but I hated the way he acted like he owned us. Leader of the pack. It just grated on me.”

“What about Callum and Tristan? You didn’t care about betraying them?”

“They’re good to play lacrosse with. But they’re— they’re very clubby. Very old school. I’m a geek, Frankie. They’re not like my real friends.”

“Matthew made you apologize to me, didn’t he?” Frankie guessed.

“I would have anyway.”

“And he made you give him a printout.”

“Well, yeah. He did. You knew about that?”

Frankie nodded. “I found it.”

“He’s not everything he seems, Frankie. I tried to warn you away from him at the Front Porch, but I couldn’t say anything else because he got seriously mad that I asked you to come to lunch with me, and then even madder when he heard we’d been arguing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, for weeks I was getting these notes from Matthew every couple days, questioning my loyalty and telling me I’d better adhere to the code of the Bassets or lose my place. So there was no way I could report to Richmond or do anything but exactly what Alpha was telling me to do in the e-mails—or the Bassets would kick me out and the whole spy project would be for nothing.”

“Only it wasn’t Alpha writing the e-mails.”

“No.” He looked at her and pulled his winter cap down farther over his ears.

They were standing in front of the mathematics building now. Students were filing in for the eleven a.m. exam. “Anyway,” said Porter. “I wanted to say that I didn’t know those e-mails I turned in would implicate you. I’m sorry for all the trouble it’s causing.” “What’s the difference?” Frankie asked him.

“How do you mean?”

“What’s the difference between me and Alpha? Why would you turn him in, and not me, if your mission was to turn in the person responsible?”

Porter frowned, thinking. “I have some kind of loyalty to you, I guess. Because we used to go out. I think you always have some kind of leftover loyalty to a person you went out with.”

“And you don’t have any loyalty to Tristan? Or Callum?”

He shrugged. “I was never really there, you know? I was just pretending to be there.”

Neither of them knew what to say for a minute. Frankie scuffed her boot in the snow.

“Why did you do all that, Frankie?” asked Porter. “I mean, it was brilliant, what you did, what you made us do—but why would you bother? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

Frankie sighed. “Have you ever heard of the panopticon?” she asked him.

Porter shook his head.

“Have you ever been in love?”

He shook his head again.

“Then I can’t explain it,” Frankie said.

They went inside and took the geometry test.