The Year of the Gadfly (23 page)

Lily waited, her arms pressed to her sides, imagining the insects skittering behind their glass panels. Maybe Justin was right to want to keep her from all of this. Maybe
that
instinct was the right thing. The normal thing.

Only then he returned. He held a large book with a thick leather cover.
Marvelous Species: Investigating Earth's Mysterious Biology.
“My mom gave this to me,” he said. “According to the bookseller there were only a few printed, so it's rare.” He handed it to her. “It contains everything you could possibly want to know about entomology, extreme life forms, you name it. Look inside.”

She balanced the heavy object between her hands and opened the cover. On the title page she read,
To Lily, marvel of my life. Justin.

“I don't understand.”

“I wrote that a long time ago. Years ago.”

For a brief moment, Lily remembered her grandmother's assurance—
It's only one date, it's not the be all and end all
—and then forced the words from her mind. “How did you know you'd be able to give it to me?” she said.

“I didn't. I guess you could say it was aspirational.”

“What are all these blank pages at the back?”

“That's for entomological and botanical drawings—if you want to add them. Now, are you ready for your first lesson?” He turned to chapter one and began pointing out insects, their scientific names and habitats, what they ate, and why their coloring was useful. He told her about the expeditions he and Jonah had taken with their parents, trekking through forests in search of specimens, capturing them and preserving them. Without a hint of discomfort, he described the killing process, detail after sick little detail.

THE MORNING AFTER
our dinner at the Sidecar, Hazel came to get me as promised. It was a cold day but clear, and we drove past the snowdrifts, shielding our eyes from the glare. We ate breakfast at a diner in town, and afterward, just when we'd said goodbye on the sidewalk, Hazel called me back. She looked shy, almost sheepish, and a small place inside of me melted. “Do you want to go for a drive?” she asked.

I would have preferred to take my car. I did not trust Hazel's geriatric scrap of metal any more than her driving. She sped, as always, swinging us madly around the curves. But even as I clutched the seat, I felt exalted. The world around us glimmered, coated with new ice from the previous night's rain. The shadows of tree branches slid over Hazel's serene face, and I was struck by the extraordinary fact that we were only feet from each other, breathing the same air.

I told her about my early grad school days in California, drinking microbrews and playing darts with my friends on the weekends, laughing about science jokes so rarefied only a handful of people on the planet could understand them. She was surprisingly interested in these friends. What held us together? she wanted to know. Was it just the science?

As I mulled this over, we entered the heart of the Berkshires. The houses here were much grander than those in Nye, like pictures in a glossy catalogue. I was about to answer Hazel when she spoke again. “Did you tell your friends out West about Justin?”

So this was at the root of her questioning. “He came up a few times.”

The way Hazel glanced at me, I knew I'd given the wrong answer. “I didn't want to share him with a bunch of strangers,” she said. “Not like you apparently did.”

Remembering that Hazel's moods could swing wildly, I tried not to worry about this dig. “I thought about presenting myself as an only child,” I said. “I mean, that's what the West is for, right? Reinventing yourself. But any time I was put on the spot, I just couldn't do it.”

Hazel sped past a gabled house whose lawn looked pristine even at the onslaught of winter. I couldn't tell if she was still listening or not.

“Isn't it ridiculously rich out here?” I said, trying to deflect her criticism elsewhere. Hazel didn't answer.

 

We visited a gallery showing Lorna Greenburg's latest artwork. The show featured silver tool-like sculptures resembling the torture implements of a sadistic dentist.

“You could do some damage with those,” I said, looking at the sharp, flashing objects.

“Like mother, like daughter,” Hazel murmured. I asked what she meant and she looked at me like she'd just surfaced from a trance. “I don't know.” She shook her head. “I don't know why I said that.”

We walked out of the gallery. “Let's do something for old times' sake, Jonah. Something childish.” Her cheeks were pink with cold and her hair fell in curls from beneath a bright blue snow hat. Her teeth matched the snow.

“You're gorgeous,” I said, but Hazel feigned annoyance and shook her head.

We bought Chanukah memorabilia at a drugstore and then went to a boutique that sold expensive Christmas tchotchkes. Hazel chatted up the cat-hair-covered saleswoman as I infiltrated the Santa Claus figurines and gilded ornaments with dreidels, gelt, and Stars of David confetti. Under the cover of a six-foot synthetic Christmas tree, I strung up a
HAPPY CHANUKAH
banner. I snapped some photographs and then took Hazel by the hand. “Shabbat Shalom!” she called to the quizzical clerk as I pulled her out the door, the two of us giggling like kids.

 

On the way back to Nye, I told Hazel about my students: the snobby ones, the wickedly smart ones, and, of course, Iris. I was surprised to learn that Iris had found her way to the Historical Society on assignment for the
Oracle.

“Sounds like she has a crush on you,” Hazel said after I explained Iris's interest in the Academic League and the way she was always spying on me in class.

I protested, but Hazel was adamant. “Girls get carried away, Jonah. Especially girls as lonely as Iris. You need to watch yourself.”

I wouldn't have described Iris as lonely—a loner, maybe. “Girls are perplexing,” I said. “They're like an alien species.”

“How so?”

“Oh, I don't know. The insanely complicated sociopolitical organizations they build. The weird substances they excrete, the bizarre protuberances.”

“You're going to talk about substances and protuberances in the context of
women
?”

We pulled into the center of town, and I was trying to garner the courage to ask Hazel home with me. The bright blue color was draining from the sky, a stretch of gray encroaching like a storm front. I wanted to wrap both of us up in a large blanket, but Hazel leaned over and kissed my cheek. It was time to say goodbye.

“I'll call you,” I said. “You promised me a PBR.”

“Dammit,” Hazel moaned, with mock disappointment. “I guess I did.”

THANKSGIVING MORNING I
packed myself a bagged lunch, put on my snow boots, and told my mom I was going to Hazel's house. “Why not invite your friend Hazel over here?” she asked. And I thought,
Not a chance.

People were taking advantage of the unusually warm weather. I passed husbands stringing up Christmas lights and kids building snowmen. At a park called Potter's Hill, I stopped to watch the little kids in puffy coats riding their silver saucers and plastic sleds. They'd come shooting down the hill, scarves flying, and crash-land in the snowbanks. For a few minutes they wouldn't move, just lie on their backs, playing dead. Then all of a sudden they were up again, magically resurrected, and climbing the hill with these dutiful, earnest expressions, their sleds trailing behind them like security blankets.

I walked toward the hill, found a patch of snow just off the sledding tracks, and lay down. Above me the sky was milky blue; the snow under me felt like a firm mattress. Dalia would have liked this place. Back in Boston, she and I used to lie on our backs—on the grass or the snow—and watch the clouds overhead. Sometimes we'd lie there for an hour or more thinking our own thoughts. Could she see me now? Did any part of her remain in the universe? It would have been nice to think of her and Murrow together somewhere, but I knew that wasn't possible.

I closed my eyes and listened to the kids shrieking and playing. I wondered if Potter's Hill was actually a potter's field, where people used to bury their unidentified dead. If so, were all these kids sledding over a bunch of bones? At this very moment, somebody could be decomposing just a couple of feet beneath me. Mr. Kaplan told us that with all the dead skin cells and falling leaves, the world is dying as much as it's living, even though we only like to consider the living parts. He said to train our minds to see past façades—to let our eyes penetrate. Sometimes he's so clueless. A teacher shouldn't use the word “penetrate” with freshmen.
Ever.

Still, I considered his advice a lot after Prisom's Party kidnapped me. I had awakened in the
Oracle
archives curled on the floor. My head felt stuffed with cotton balls, and my wrists were still sore. I'd missed three periods. I had never skipped a class before, and my small act of defiance thrilled me. Had I dreamed about the kidnapping, the pigs, Thelonius Rex? But then I felt something around my neck: a silver flash drive hanging from a piece of string. I pulled my laptop out of my briefcase and inserted the drive. It was named “Chestnut_Tree,” and inside were documents titled A and B. Document A contained a short note.

 

Our email:
[email protected]

Your email:
[email protected]
. Password: Murrow.

Use these addresses to submit your intel or contact us on gchat. You are NOT to share this information with anyone, and you MUST be discreet. Contact us only when you are alone and NEVER during class.

 

Did they think I was stupid? I was sure I'd seen as many spy movies as they had. I opened document B.

 

Your assignment, should you choose to join us, is to figure out Mr. Kaplan's secret. To start, do a thorough search of the
Oracle
archives and see what you can find. You'll want 1998 through 2002. We hope you'll choose the path of Charles Prisom. Sincerely, Prisom's Party.

 

Just hours before, I'd known nothing about Prisom's Party. But suddenly I was on the
inside.
Suddenly I had the chance to be part of something spectacular. But then I thought about my aching wrists, and the sound of Syme's centipede voice, and the flash mob and the assignment I'd been given to uncover Mr. Kaplan's secret. WWEMD? But Murrow didn't answer. He seemed less accessible to me in the Trench, as if the place had shoddy ghost reception.

I stood up from the archive floor. My head ached, but soon an idea began to rise up, as though from a deep pool. It floated toward the light, breaking the surface and sparkling before me. I would investigate Mr. Kaplan for Prisom's Party, and if my doubts about them were unfounded, I would serve them loyally. But if I discovered they were using me for some evil end, I would expose them. And this time, I wouldn't bother with Katie Milford. This was a story for the
Nye County News—
at the very least.

I sat for a minute in the archive room, waiting for this decision to settle, to see how it felt. It wasn't long before a lot of murky seaweed began clotting up my brilliant plan. Murrow once said that a journalist can't make good news out of bad practice. Well, lying to the Party seemed like pretty bad practice, and blackmailing Mr. Kaplan definitely seemed wrong. On the other hand, didn't investigative journalists lie all the time? And didn't Charles Prisom instruct the Party to take all necessary means to protect itself? Weren't the ideals of Prisom's Party more important than the career of one individual? I wasn't sure I knew the answer to any of these questions. But I also knew there was only one way for this fearless reporter to go, and that was forward.

With trembling fingers, I logged into the gmail account and sent a message to W3AR3WATCH1NG. The near-immediate reply—
Hello, Iris
—made my fingers quiver above the keyboard.
When can I visit you again?
I wrote. If I was going to investigate
them,
I needed to know where they were hiding.
We will give you access in exchange for
information,
the response said. I was trying to decide what to write when another message came in:
Good luck, Iris.
And I knew—at least I hoped—Winston was on the other end.

I pulled out the newspapers from Mr. Kaplan's high school years. There were a number of articles by a Justin Kaplan. Was this Mr. Kaplan's brother? And then a familiar adrenaline rush swept through me. A Justin had written the inscription in Lily's book.

I started into the papers from Mr. Kaplan's sophomore year. Among the general school news, I found a bulletin reporting a horrific vandalism of the school lockers—students depicted in disgusting acts of violence and sex—and the fallout of expulsions and hospitalizations that resulted from it.

 

SUSPECT EVADES EXPULSION, BUT SUSPICION REMAINS

by Laurence LeSueur

NYE—The students responsible for Thanksgiving's locker vandalism remain a mystery, but the school's primary suspect, sophomore Jonah Kaplan, has been removed from the Community Council's most-wanted list.

The Community Council had used Kaplan's reputation as a cruel provocateur and his frequent disciplinary run-ins with Headmaster Morgan to build the case that he was the locker vandal.

Kaplan denied any involvement in the vandalism and was exonerated after his parents testified that he'd spent the entirety of Thanksgiving break under their supervision.

A poll conducted by students found that 93.3% of the student body does not believe this alibi. Over 60% of students believe he is responsible for the attempted suicide of an upperclassman.