The Year of the Gadfly (24 page)

Read The Year of the Gadfly Online

Authors: Jennifer Miller

“Even if he isn't directly responsible,” one member of the Community Council said, “it is people like him who bastardize Prisom's legacy and the sacred ideals of this school.”

When asked to comment on the situation, Headmaster Morgan said, “We are doing the best we can to bring the vandals to justice.”

But for many, the headmaster's best may not be good enough.

 

As I read this article and the others in the series—all of them so forthright and critical—my anger at the
Oracle
's current editorial staff exploded. I'd done my best to write with a lucid, vibrant prose style, but Katie Milford always edited my stories to oblivion. In my last assigned piece (a review of the new TV drama
Xcess High
), she'd actually
added
clichés to my copy! Even worse, she was guilty of censorship, what Murrow called “a denial of every human institution we now defend.” I pitied the reporter who came searching for clues in my stories ten years from now.

In any case, the article from 1999 only added credence to the Party's belief that Mr. Kaplan was hiding something. “We can deny our heritage and our history,” Murrow said, “but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.” If Mr. Kaplan was trying to deny a secret from his past, he'd be held accountable eventually. Murrow continued, “There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.” Like it or not, I was now a citizen of this republic—this school—and as such, I was responsible for how the events of the past affected our present and future. I was desperate to believe that Mr. Kaplan hadn't bullied a kid into attempting suicide. But as Mr. Kaplan himself told us on the first day of school, belief wasn't good enough. Only Truth mattered.
Please, Murrow,
I thought,
let Mr. Kaplan's secret be unimportant. Let his transgressions be inconsequential.

 

From Potter's Hill, it was another twenty minutes to the Historical Society. When I arrived, I stood at the door for a long time waiting for Hazel to answer. Since the kidnapping, I had called the Historical Society's phone number and left multiple messages but hadn't heard back. I was starting to worry. Hazel lived all alone, and if she'd gotten into trouble, who would help her? I pressed the doorbell over and over and was just deciding that I would break one of the windows if necessary when she opened the door.

She looked awful. She was dressed in an oversize flannel shirt and jeans, and her hair resembled a knotted ball of chestnut yarn.

“I'm sorry . . .” I stammered.

Hazel didn't say anything. She just looked at me with these lusterless eyes the color of a mildewed pool. Her freckles looked like splattered mud.

“I was worried. You didn't call me back and . . . Are you okay?”

Hazel nodded, though the motion seemed to require tremendous effort.

“Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?”

“I was sleeping, but come on in and I'll put the kettle on.”

“Are you sure?” I lingered on the porch. “I can come back another day.”

“You trekked all the way here, didn't you?” There was a bite in her voice. I suddenly remembered that I didn't know Hazel at all. She opened the door wider and waited for me to enter before shuffling to her studio without turning on any of the lights. Her room was mustier-smelling than the last time. She pulled aside the curtains over the sink and turned on a couple of lamps. I leaned against the kitchen counter as Hazel filled the kettle.

“I took your advice,” I said, thrusting some enthusiasm into my voice. “I went back into the Trench.”

Hazel turned to face me, her thousands of freckles like eyes inspecting my face. It was only a trick of the light but disconcerting nonetheless.

I recounted the secret conversation in the Trench between Mr. Kaplan and Headmaster Pasternak. As I spoke, Hazel grew less cranky, and I was about to launch into the demon and the kidnapping when the kettle burst like a warning siren. I stopped talking.

“Are you all right, Iris?” Hazel asked, pouring me a cup of tea. I nodded and took a sip. The tea tasted like minty roses. “It's an herbal infusion from Nepal,” she said. “It calms the body and loosens truths from the heart.” I gave her a blank look. “Toxins build up in the body, which is why so many cultures believe in purifying sweats. But we're all filled with emotionally toxic thoughts and memories—the things we don't like to speak about. This tea helps shake those thoughts loose.”

“Like a truth serum?”

Hazel frowned. “Of course not. Now drink up.”

My head was telling me to keep mum about Prisom's Party. It was too soon to reveal that part of my investigation to Hazel or anyone else. But my heart was ordering me to confess everything. I decided to compromise. The
Oracle
articles about Mr. Kaplan were in the public domain, so why not share them with Hazel? I handed her the Xeroxes I'd made and watched her carefully as she read.

“I remember all of that,” she said when she was finished reading. “And in fact, I have a few other documents that might interest you.” Hazel told me to wait and disappeared from the studio. She must have been upstairs, because I could hear the ceiling creak overhead. I thought I heard her muttering to herself, though it might have been the wind rattling the windows.

Within five minutes she had returned and begun spreading five-by-seven-inch photographs on the coffee table. The locker vandalism blazed to life in all its horrible detail.

“I took these shots before the school ripped down the images,” she said. “Just look at the detailing . . .”

She seemed awed by the pictures, like she was an art critic appraising a brilliant body of work. It seemed strange that Hazel had these pictures in her possession after so many years, not to mention after all the traveling she'd done. But my overwhelming response to the display was disgust.

“Iris?” Hazel looked at me suddenly. “How did you come across the locker vandalism in the first place?”

“I was researching my Charles Prisom story.” My face flushed with the lie, but I pressed on. “You mentioned that you knew Mr. Kaplan. Do you think he could have been the locker vandal?”

“Well, as I told you last time, Mr. Kaplan was a difficult person to understand. He was always troubled, and you never quite knew what he was capable of, so I guess—”

“I don't want him to be guilty,” I burst out, and then, embarrassed by my lack of professionalism, I added, “I mean, I'd like to exonerate him.”

“A virtuous instinct,” Hazel said, and rose to reheat the kettle.

A virtuous instinct but a faulty one,
Murrow whispered in my ear.

What do you mean?
I thought back, watching Hazel across the room.
And P.S., this isn't a good time for a chat.
It occurred to me that I hadn't asked Murrow a question. Was he so deeply embedded in my subconscious that he was now giving unsolicited advice?

You're following Mr. Kaplan as a reporter,
he continued,
not as a friend.
Friends can afford to have their biases, but reporters—well, I don't need to talk to you about the importance of objectivity.

But you said I was lucky to have Mr. Kaplan as a mentor.

That was before you started investigating him.

I considered this, feeling that I'd made some fundamental miscalculation, but before I could send any more thoughts Murrow's way, Hazel returned. She eyed me strangely, like she sensed something was off, and asked again if I was all right. I nodded and described my faux immersion story about the Academic League. She advised me to address the vandalism more directly. “Get out that reporter's notebook of yours and let's create a strategic plan to determine his innocence. What do we need to know about the vandalism?”

I chewed my pen cap. “Whether there were any witnesses or evidence.”

“Yes, but it's been a decade since the event. The trail is probably cold.”

“What about figuring out how he entered the school?” I thought about Prisom's Party and the Trench. Who knew how many keys were floating around, changing hands between students. Maybe there was even a skeleton key that could open any door in the building. That might explain how Prisom's Party was able to sneak around so easily.

“Also important,” she said, “but still difficult to figure out.”

We looked at each other and suddenly I knew the answer. “We need to know whether he can draw,” I said. Hazel looked energized for the first time since my arrival, and I knew I'd found the right approach. I opened a fresh notebook page and we assembled a plan.

“You're smiling,” Hazel said a while later, as she finished her tea. “What's going on in that brain of yours?”

“I have all these lab partners and study partners, but it never feels productive, you know? Everybody either wants to control the group or do as little work as possible. But this feels like a team.” I lowered my head. “I know how silly that sounds.”

“It does not! Two minds working on the same wavelength are a marvelous thing. Human beings may all share the same emotions, but we don't all
think
alike. Never take a kindred spirit for granted.”

Dalia,
I thought, and swallowed hard.

“And Iris . . .” Hazel cast her eyes downward. “When you do find that kind of connection with someone, you must protect it fiercely. You never know who might seek to destroy it.”

What Prisom's Party was asking me to do would surely destroy my connection to Mr. Kaplan. I felt sad knowing that I might break this link before I even had the chance to fully understand it.

“Alone we are nothing, Iris. We're invisible. But when you find someone who sees the world as you do, you become visible.”

I turned my head to the window. It wasn't yet dark, but I could just make out our shapes—Hazel's and mine—like ghosts in the glass. With her, I felt visible. And with Mr. Kaplan. They were the only living people who made me feel this way.

“You must have had friends back in Boston who really saw you, right?” I nodded, and all at once I began to cry. A small inside crying that just happened to show up on the outside, too.

Hazel scooted over and put her arm around me. “You had someone,” she whispered. “But you lost her.”

“How did you know?” I gulped and looked up into Hazel's speckled face. For just a moment there was an oddly sanguine look in her eyes, but I blinked and it was gone.

“Oh, I just know what that kind of loss looks like.” She sighed. “What happened?”

Aside from Murrow, I hadn't talked to anyone about Dalia's death. Dr. Patrick had attempted to pry my mouth open, but my lips were sealed like a shuttered crustacean. Of course, everybody at my old school knew. The
Boston Globe
ran a front-page piece about teenage mental illness with a photograph of me and Dalia together when we were thirteen. My parents were furious that the paper didn't ask my permission, but apparently that job had been left to an unpaid intern. After the story broke, people began to recognize me. This didn't last more than a few weeks, but it was one of the reasons my parents were happy to leave Boston.

Dalia was the perfect lede for the
Globe
story, I told Hazel now. “There was a whole debate about whether her medications were responsible for what happened or whether it was the illness. And a tragedy's great for the news.”

“How did she do it?”

No one had yet had the guts to ask me this. Now that Hazel did, I wanted to crawl into her arms and never come out again. It was the same urge I'd felt looking up into the Morgans' oak tree for the first time. “Her wrists,” I said. “In her bathroom at home. Her mom found her.”

We sat for a moment without talking. I wasn't crying anymore, but I felt terribly tired. Hazel looked exhausted, too. Her ringing phone startled us both.

“Well, hello,” she said in a way that suggested she knew the caller well. “No, I'm busy right now.” She paused. “Really?” She stood up and moved away from the couch. “This is an excellent opportunity.” Silence again, then she moved farther away from the couch. I realized I had no idea what Hazel's social life was like. I didn't even know if she had a boyfriend, though she was so striking, I figured she must. Hazel finished her conversation and sat down.

“I'm so sorry, Iris,” she said as though the interruption hadn't occurred.

“It's okay.”

Hazel's mouth tensed, and for a moment I thought she might be angry, even angry with me. But then all at once the exhaustion returned to her face. “It's getting late. And I'm sure you have a family dinner. You'd better get going.”

I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to go back into the cold by myself.

“I'd offer to drive you back,” she added. “But I can't. Not tonight.”

“Wait,” I said, feeling suddenly helpless. “What about Prisom's letters?”

“Still looking.” Hazel seemed distracted. “Do you mind letting yourself out?”

I shook my head. “Well, thanks.” I sidled to the door. Hazel went into the bathroom. I stood for a moment listening, afraid that she was in there slitting her own wrists. But that was crazy. “Bye, Hazel,” I called out.

There was no response, so I walked back through the darkened house and let myself out into the graying afternoon.

Jonah
November 2012

IN THE TWO
weeks after our Sidecar dinner, Hazel and I were together often. I even brought her to trivia, where she quickly became the locus of my colleagues' attention. It turned out, however, that she didn't mesh well with everybody. After our second game night, Stephanie Chu approached me in the department.

“So you've known Hazel a long time?” she asked. I told her yes, though we'd been out of touch. Stephanie nodded, but her skepticism was transparent. I wondered if some underlying female competition was at play; Stephanie was the kind of woman I usually went for—nerdily attractive, A-cup, Asian.

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