The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (6 page)

THE WOODS

Security at Alabaster was lax. The feeling

of being watched generated by the panoptical nature of the boarding school institution was enough to keep most of the students obeying the rules without the need for any serious levels of surveillance.

Matthew stuck a note under Frankie’s dorm room door on Saturday morning, explaining that she was to take the north stairwell down to the second floor (thereby staying as far from the hall supervisor’s room as possible), then cross through the lounge to the small kitchen nobody used, which had a back door onto a tiny porch with steps leading down to the Dumpsters behind the dorm. The bar across the door claimed to be alarmed, but Matthew knew that last year, at least, it never had been.

A note in Matthew’s writing.

Although it said
BURN THIS
in large letters at the bottom, Frankie carried it around for half the day before setting it on fire.

She was going out with Matthew Livingston.

Late at night.

To a party he was giving with his friends.

Last year, if you’d asked her, Frankie would have said such a thing was impossible. She had been a kid, and he was almost a man. She had been nobody and he had been golden. And yet here it was, happening—as easy as, well, falling off a bicycle.

Trish hadn’t been invited. Her boyfriend Artie hadn’t been either. Frankie felt apologetic, but Trish waved her off. “I’m gonna be on the golf course for like two hours already Saturday. Artie wants to play. I’m not going back in the middle of the night to watch a bunch of senior guys drink beer. I hate those kinds of parties.”

“Since when?” asked Frankie, stretching herself across her single bed. “Since when have you even
been
to these kinds of parties?”

“My brothers took me to some on Nantucket this summer, and I was just cold and bored, watching guys show off on the beach and get drunk.”

“Weren’t there any girls?”

“Yeah, there were girls, but it was—” Trish sighed.

“It was macho, somehow. I went a few times, and then I just told Topher and James I was staying home.”

“What did you do instead?”

“Watched movies with the parents. Made crumbles.”

“What, like berry crumbles?”

“And peach. And rhubarb.”

“Really?”

“It’s fun,” answered Trish. “Way funner than listening to guys talk about sports and slur their words, I’ll tell you that.”

Frankie found her friend’s attitude infuriating. By opting out of what the boys were doing in favor of a typically feminine pursuit, Trish had closed a door—the door between herself and that boys’ club her brothers had on the beach. Sure, she was still invited. She could open the door again. But another summer spent making crumbles in the kitchen, and the boys would stop asking her to come out. Instead they’d expect warm dessert to be waiting for them on their return.

“Will you get up when I call you and let me back in through the kitchen?” Frankie asked, suppressing her irritation.

“Of course,” said Trish. “I’ll sleep with my cell.”

The nights were still warm—it was only early September—so Frankie wore black cotton chinos and a long-sleeved navy T-shirt. She put extra leave-in conditioner on her frizzy hair, and a pearly shine of pink across her cheekbones. Matthew was waiting for her in the woods behind the Heaton dorm, just as he said he’d be.

“Hey,” he whispered. “You made it.”

She nodded.

“You got my note okay?”

“Yes.”

“And did you burn it?”

“Look.” Frankie held her hand up close to his face.

“Band-Aid.”

“I had no idea it was going to burn so fast. What did you write on, tissue paper?”

Matthew laughed. They were walking in the woods that surrounded the Alabaster campus, out of the glare of the streetlamps that lined the quad. Frankie could see other black-clad figures traipsing through the dark, though she couldn’t tell who anyone was.

They traveled in silence for a minute, then Matthew took her hand—the one with the Band-Aid. “I’m concerned about you reinjuring your hand,” he said. “For your own protection, I think I have to hold it, to keep it safe from thorns and vicious woodland animals.”

“All right,” said Frankie. “But if it feels greasy, that’s from the Neosporin I put on like half an hour ago. It’s not like I’m naturally covered with grease.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m not oozing pus or anything.”

“Braggart.”

Matthew’s hand was large and comforting. Frankie felt a tingle of joy run up her arm.

“That’s what I look for in a girl,” Matthew went on. “I look for a someone who is not oozing pus.”

She laughed.

“Seriously,” he said, stroking the inside of her wrist with his other hand as they walked, “I’m glad you came out tonight. I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

Was he loony? He was a senior, athletic, universally considered attractive; he had a car; he would own a slew of nationally renowned newspapers one day; he had driven cross-country with his friends, eating pie and making videos. And she, Frankie—well, she didn’t think badly of herself. She knew she was unusually smart in certain subjects and could regularly make her friends laugh, and she was pleased that she was now at least reasonably good-looking most days—but she was a heterosexual sophomore with no boyfriend and no social power (especially now that Zada had graduated). On what planet would a girl in her position refuse to go to a golf course party with Matthew Livingston?

Frankie’s mind was starting to turn over.

She had never wanted anything so badly as she wanted Matthew to be her boyfriend. But he’d just made this statement—that he had been worried she wouldn’t come—that was nearly impossible to answer with any dignity. What could she say that was most likely to get her where she wanted to be? Her synapses went into a series of calculations and evaluations that can be listed as follows:

Could say: “Here I am.”

Veto. Sounds coy.

Could say: “Of course I came.”

Veto. Sounds like I idolize him.

Could say: “Why wouldn’t I?”

Veto. He’ll feel awkward answering that question.

Could change the subject.

Veto. People like to be listened to.

Could say: “I’ve never been to a party on the golf course.”

Veto. Too juvenile.

Could say instead: “I’m always up for a party.”

Veto. Too irksome. Plus, sounds like I went to lots of parties last year, which he’ll soon find out I didn’t.

I need to make him laugh. And I need to unsettle him enough so that’s he’s not entirely certain I like him.

Golf. The golf course.

“I’m a halfway decent golfer,” said Frankie after only a 2.8 second pause. “I never turn down the chance to play a few holes.”

There. Matthew laughed!

Frankie glowed in satisfaction. This was better than winning a debate.

“You’ll need infrared goggles,” he said.

“What, you don’t have?”

“Um. No.”

“You expect me to play nighttime golf without serious military-level equipment?” Frankie faked a pout. “I don’t think that’s fair. I want this lack of tech support figured into my handicap.”

Relieved that reasonably intelligible and even entertaining things were coming out of her mouth, Frankie snuck a look at Matthew. His profile was Bostonian, and his white skin glowed under his late-summer freckles. “If I’d known you were so demanding, I would have made better preparations,” he said.

“Aha. So you are throwing this party.”

Matthew nodded. “Me and Alpha. We matched everyone up, and Alpha got the she-wolf to paste the invitations.”

“The she-wolf?”

“Alpha’s girlfriend.”

Alpha had a girlfriend. Since when did Alpha have a girlfriend? Hadn’t he just been flirting with Frankie three weeks ago? “I didn’t know he had one,” she said as coolly as she could.

“Oh, he’s always got one. And she’s always the she-wolf,” said Matthew. “The girl may change; in fact, the girl will always change. But the name remains the same.”

Hm. Frankie wondered if she had underestimated Alpha. When she’d met him at the rock wall, she had thought he either didn’t remember her or was backing off because Matthew had claimed her. But now it seemed Alpha had already hooked up with the she-wolf, and if he always had someone, he was at least as popular with girls as Matthew. “Isn’t he supposed to be an alpha
dog
?” Frankie asked. “Not a wolf?”

“Of course. But we’re gentlemen. We’d never call a girl a—”

“I see. And Alpha got this she-wolf to make invitations?”

“They just started going out. She’s still trying to impress him.” Matthew laughed. “She hasn’t realized yet that it’s impossible.”

Frankie absorbed the information. Who was the she-wolf? How had she managed to be already so in with this pack of boys that they’d had her make the invitations to their secret party?

And why was it impossible to impress Alpha?

Of course she couldn’t ask Matthew any of these questions, so she said something else. “You matched everyone up?”

He chuckled. “Yeah.”

“So I’m guessing you wanted to take me to this party.”

“Well,” said Matthew, pushing her gently with his shoulder while keeping hold of her hand. “I wanted to take you
somewhere
. And I was geeking out and couldn’t ask you to go get food or see a movie with me like a normal human.”

“Right.” Frankie was sarcastic.

“For real. So we got this idea to have a party, and I didn’t have to ask you, but yet I still get to take you.”

“Very slick.”

“I manage incredible things while avoiding other things,” said Matthew.

“Like what?”

“I organized a party so I wouldn’t have to ask you out. I did two extra-credit response papers in English last year ’cause I was avoiding Italian vocabulary for the final. I built a boat this summer to keep from hanging around with a girl who—I don’t know—thought she was my girlfriend. Or wanted to be, or something.”

“You built a boat?”

“Just a putt-putt. At my family’s place on the Vineyard. It’s in a fishing village. Menemsha.”

“I thought you—” Frankie thought Matthew had driven cross-country with Dean and Alpha, but she cut herself short because she didn’t want him to realize he’d been so important to her that she remembered his summer plans. And besides, he could have done both. “I thought you meant a sailboat.”

“My uncle builds those, but no. This was for putting around, maybe fishing, maybe going over to the Aquinnah side with my bike. Do you know the Vineyard?”

“No.”

“Oh, I should show you around. There’s this great biking area that you take a tiny ferry to—or a leaky putt-putt, if you’re me. And guys are pulling lobsters right out of the sea and throwing them into a pot. You like lobster, don’t you?”

Frankie thought: He’ll show me around the Vineyard? What?

And then she thought: He likes me! He wants to see me in the summer. Which is months away.

And then she thought: How do I answer him?

Matthew let go of Frankie’s hand and reached his arm around her shoulders, while her brain turned over his offer to show her around the Vineyard (it was several hours and a ferry ride away), his apparent ignorance that she was Jewish (and didn’t eat shellfish), and his assumption that they would be hanging around together longer than just for tonight. Within 3.27 seconds she decided there was no direct response that wouldn’t make her sound overeager, naive, self-conscious, or confused—although she was all four.