Celeste.
“Actually,” he said, “I have to meet someone later at senior
tea. So . . .”
“Oh. Okay.” I didn’t know why, but this surprised me. Maybe
because I hadn’t noticed him making any particular friends since
he’d been here.
We entered the lower level of the student center and went
into the mailroom—a total scene, as it usually was between
classes. My box held a coupon packet from local businesses, a
flyer for Buried Child—the play Abby was in, an Urban Outfitters
catalogue, a glossy brochure from my mother’s office, and a note
to call Dean Shepherd’s office. Probably about babysitting.
David came up behind me as I was sorting through things to
keep and recycle. He rested a hand on my shoulder.
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“Need a condo in LA?” I asked, waving the real-estate
brochure, conscious of the warmth that spread through my body
from where he touched me in a way I wouldn’t have been if
Celeste hadn’t made an issue out of it.
“Why are you on a real-estate mailing list?” he asked.
“It’s my mother,” I said. I glanced at the brochure again.
She’d drawn a speech bubble coming out of one of the windows:
Can’t wait until you’re here!
I held it out to him and pointed at the building. “That’s
where she lives.”
“Really?” he said. “Wow. Pretty slick.”
“Pretty awful,” I said, throwing it in the recycling bin.
He gave me a funny look. Sort of . . . pitying.
“That wasn’t a statement or anything,” I said as we made our
way back outside. Ever since I told him about the divorce mess, I’d
gotten the impression he thought my relationship with my
parents was totally dysfunctional.
“Didn’t say it was.”
“I know.” I fastened a higher button on my jacket to keep the
wind out. “I just feel like you might think we’re not close
anymore. I mean, we’re not close the way we used to be, but it’s
better. I was way too attached to my parents before. The
separation had to happen sooner or later.”
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“I guess,” he said, kicking at a couple of acorns on the path.
“Seems like they didn’t have to make it so traumatic for you,
though.”
“Maybe.” I was kind of annoyed at what he was implying
about my parents. “But it all worked out for the best.”
We walked up the steps and into Grove Hall, to the same
sprawling room where registration had taken place. There was a
setup of baked goods, coffee, and tea here for seniors three
mornings a week. I waited for an opening in the crowd around the
food table—the way we all ate so much, it was as if we hadn’t
eaten breakfast a couple of hours ago and weren’t going to lunch
soon—got a pumpkin muffin and a coffee, and met David on a
small couch in a corner of the room. He moved his bag off the
spot he’d saved for me.
I sat down, shrugged off my jacket, and checked to make
sure no one nearby was listening to our conversation. “So, you
know about the vase,” I said.
“Yup. Am I still a suspect?”
“Don’t be silly.” I wished Celeste hadn’t told him that part of
it. “I think it just blew over. Our room has such strong cross
breezes, and it was pretty blustery.”
“What about Abby?” he asked.
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“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But that’s why I wanted to
talk to you. I’m worried that— Well, wait. Did Celeste mention
the other thing?”
“What other thing?”
Lowering my voice a notch further, I told him about the
knocking noise she’d heard. As I did, the expression on David’s
face grew more and more concerned.
“Why didn’t she tell me this?” he said, pulling his phone out
of his bag. At first, I thought he was calling her, but then I realized
he was online, searching for something, following links. “You
know that guy she was with over the summer?” he said, still
typing.
It took me a second to remember. “The guy in the band?”
“Yeah. I’m just . . . Oh. Here. Hold on.” He didn’t say anything
for a moment, then, “Okay. Good.” He turned his phone off and
tossed it in his bag. “There’s video from a show last night in
Amsterdam. He’s there.”
So David had thought the guy might have followed Celeste
here? “Could you really have imagined him doing those things?” I
asked, trying to picture a typical rocker guy hiding in Celeste’s
closet and knocking on the wall.
“It would’ve been weird,” David conceded. “But he was
weird. Maybe not technically a stalker, but close.”
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I took a sip of coffee. “I guess dealing with him over the
summer explains why she’d be paranoid now.” It made me feel a
bit better to know that there was something behind her
irrationality. “Because I’m sure it was just a noise that the house
made, not a person.”
“Yeah,” David said. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“Anyway,” I said. “I’m worried that from now on, if anything
slightly out of the ordinary happens, she’s going to blow it out of
proportion. Look for someone to blame. Probably Abby. Do you
have any suggestions for what I should do to . . . I don’t know,
make her feel more comfortable in the dorm? And to help
convince her that these things really were just random?”
“I can talk to her,” he said. “But I bet you don’t have to
worry. Something else will distract her. Another ill-fated love
affair, probably.” He smiled a little ruefully.
“And you believe me that Abby didn’t break it, right?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “If you say so. I don’t even know her.”
“You’ll get to know her better at the dorm dinner.”
“The what?”
It turned out that Celeste hadn’t invited him. I’d assumed she
had, when she referred to her guest as a “he” a couple days ago.
“You should definitely come,” I said, trying to cover my surprise
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and to smooth over the awkwardness. “I’m sorry we didn’t invite
you sooner.”
“That’s cool.” He was looking at me strangely. “You know,”
he said, “as long as we’re getting stuff out in the open, there’s
something I need to talk to you about, too.”
“There is?” I felt a little surge of nerves at his serious tone of
voice.
“Uh-huh. You seem to have a problem, and I’m not sure you
realize.” He reached forward and softly brushed the side of my
head, then grinned as muffin crumbs sprinkled my chest. “Every
time you eat, you get food in your hair.”
I quickly wiped the crumbs off. “Yeah. That’s been pointed
out to me before.” Shit. My nervous system had had a mini-
conniption, wondering what he was going to say and then feeling
his hand touching my head and—
“Hey, Leena, David.” Simone Dzama, a doe-eyed,
environmentally friendly hippie chick, stood by the couch. It was
only after she squatted next to David and began talking excitedly
about a trip to a green rally in Boston that I realized she was
whom he had been meeting. I picked at my muffin as they talked,
trying not to listen to them making plans. I studied the shifting sky
out the plate-glass windows, then read and responded to a
couple of messages that had arrived while I was in class.
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Simone finally stood. Before walking away she said, “We
should find a time for that other thing, too, David. This weekend
or something.”
My pulse sped up again, and I knew it wasn’t from caffeine.
“Hey.” David nudged me.
“I didn’t know you were into that stuff,” I said. “I mean,
enough to go to a rally.” I didn’t know you were hanging out with
Simone.
He shrugged. “I’ll go if I don’t have too much work. Simone’s
nice. We have English together.”
I nodded and took another sip of my now tepid coffee.
Obviously, it wasn’t just Celeste’s involvement that made this
friendship with David complicated. I might not want him, but I
didn’t want anyone else to have him either.
With everything that was on my mind, I forgot to call Dean
Shepherd until I was on my way to lunch. When I did, Marcia said
that the dean wanted to talk to me in person and asked if I could
come in at four this afternoon. I told her it wasn’t great—I had
field hockey at three and wouldn’t be done. She said the dean
would wait. I briefly wondered why we couldn’t just talk on the
phone, and why she was wil ing to stay in the office late for me,
but didn’t think much of it. I was always happy to see Dean
Shepherd.
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Some days, I barely got any exercise during field hockey,
since I was assistant coaching JVII instead of playing. I wasn’t
good enough for varsity, and coaching younger kids sounded
more fun than a noncompetitive “sport” like “Freedom
Movement” or “Boot Camp.” Today, though, the team had
needed extra players for a scrimmage, and I didn’t have time to
go home and change before my meeting. I arrived at Irving Hall a
mess, in cleats and sweatpants and sweatshirt, bringing along my
field hockey stick and the smell of grass, mud, and sweat.
“Sorry I’m so gross,” I told Dean Shepherd as I sat across
from her. “And you look so nice. I love your blouse.”
She glanced down distractedly. “Thanks. Michael gave it to
me.”
“We’re having a dorm dinner soon and if you and Mich—”
“Leena,” she interrupted, “I have to pick up Anya in a little
bit and didn’t call you in here to socialize.”
“Oh. Okay, sorry,” I said, a bit taken aback.
“A couple of days ago, did you tell Nicole Kellogg that . . .”
She looked down at a piece of notepaper in front of her. The
yellow sheet was covered with her loopy handwriting, illegible
from where I sat. “. . . that she doesn’t have a home anymore?”
“Nicole Kellogg?” It took a minute for me to remember that
she was the crying redheaded freshman I’d counseled. “What?
No. Of course not.”
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“You know how much I trust you,” Dean Shepherd said, “but
you’ve got to help me understand what this is about. This girl,
Nicole, she’s very upset. She’s considering leaving school.”
“Are you serious? Because of me?” I must not have
understood correctly. There was no way.
“What did you say to her?”
I picked up a shiny, leopard-spotted shell from the desk and
started running my fingers over it, trying to remember the
meeting. “Um, well . . . She was having trouble with her
roommate, not respecting her boundaries, being loud,
inconsiderate, you know, normal stuff.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And I just, I told her that she had to think of her like a sister,
who she might not choose to live with, but has to find a way. And
that the best way to do that is by trying to communicate right up
front about what she needs.”
“But did you say something about her home?”
“Just that to be happy at boarding school, it helps to think of
school as your home. And your parents’ house as just that—your
parents’ house. Somewhere you visit. Because you don’t live
there anymore, and probably never will. I mean, right?”
Dean Shepherd’s nostrils indented as she drew a deep
breath. “Leena, can’t you see how upsetting that might be for
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someone? It’s hard enough for her to be away from her family for
the first time, but then to tell her that it’s not her home anymore?
These things have to happen slowly. You don’t just break away
like that because you’ve spent a few weeks at boarding school.”
I put the shell down, lining it up with a piece of smoky quartz
that I’d given to the dean when her husband died. A sick feeling
filled my chest. “I guess I see what you mean. But that wasn’t my
intention. I meant to make her feel better.”
“Well, of course. But you said something that came from
your personal experience, that didn’t help this girl in her
situation.”
“I . . . I’m sorry. What can I do? Should I talk to her? Tell her
she misunderstood me?”
“It doesn’t sound like she did misunderstand you. Rather
that you used bad judgment in your advice.”
I stared down at the grain of the wooden desktop, willing my
eyes to stay dry. “So what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t think there’s anything you can do for Nicole,” she
said. “I’m dealing with it now. Hopefully, it will blow over, and
she’ll stay at school. I just want to make sure you understand
what you did wrong.”
I looked up. “I do. And . . .” I was sure she could see my lips
trembling. “ . . . I’m sorry.”
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“All right,” Dean Shepherd said with a half smile. “I’m sure it
won’t happen again.”
She began shuffling the papers in front of her. Was there
another topic I could bring up? Something to bring us back to the
way we usually were?
Before I thought of anything, she said, “Oh—by the way,
how’s everything in the dorm? One of Celeste’s teachers is
worried she’s seemed kind of tired and distracted this semester.
Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “She’s got a bit of insomnia, but it’s better than
it was at first.” I certainly wasn’t going to tell the dean about the
problems we were having. That would just give her more proof
that I wasn’t as good with people as she’d thought. That I wasn’t
living up to her expectations.
“Okay. Good.” She nodded and went back to her papers.
I sat there a moment longer, still feeling like I needed to say
something, like I needed to make this better.
“Leena,” she said. “You can go now.”
I pushed back the chair and stood up. On my way out I
noticed I’d tracked clumps of mud all over her rug.
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Chapter 12
I CONCENTRATED ON THE SOUND of my cleats hitting the
