“David has a key?” she said, leaning forward. “You don’t
think he—”
“No!” I said immediately. “Not to mention, he was with me.”
A thought—David’s lateness to meet me at his dorm—flickered
through my mind. But I forced it out. There was absolutely no
way.
“Okay.” Kate sat back again. “So, about telling the dean or
whoever. I don’t think you should. They wouldn’t investigate; all
they’d do is ask Celeste who doesn’t like her. And we know the
answer to that.”
“Abby.”
“Right. Now—”
“Kate, you don’t think there’s any chance she’d have done
this stuff, do you?” I asked in a quieter voice. I knew the answer,
just needed to hear her say it.
“Abby?” She screwed up her face, annoyed. “Please. I can’t
believe you’d even ask me that. Now, let’s take option two,
which, from all you told me, is much more likely.”
Option two: Celeste threw the photo herself.
Kate continued, “If that’s the case, you’ve actually done all
you can do. You already asked her what happened to the photo. If
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she did it herself and pretended not to know about it, maybe she
was just embarrassed. In any case, there’s some reason she didn’t
want to tell you, so . . .” She shrugged. “What else can you do?”
I sat for a moment and processed what Kate had said.
Basically, she was saying that no matter what happened to the
photo, I should let it go.
“But . . . I feel like I should be doing something,” I said. “Take
some sort of action. I don’t want to feel like there’s all this bad
stuff going on in my room and I’m just sitting here all la-di-da.”
Kate stared down at her mandala for a minute. “Well, you
can’t keep Celeste out. But you could lock the windows, too, I
guess. With the doors and the windows locked, if it’s someone
else, they won’t be able to get in.”
I nodded. Lock the windows. I could do that.
“You knew she’d be like this,” Kate added. “You told me right
from the beginning, it’s always something. So maybe you need to
just let her have her little dramas. You’re not your sister’s keeper.
Or David’s sister’s keeper. Sit tight and ignore it as much as
possible until I come flying home to you.”
“You have no idea how much I wish for that day,” I said.
We talked for a little while about other stuff, and then Kate
had to go. Before she logged off, she said, “Oh, and Leena? Would
you just jump David’s bones already?”
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She was gone before I could respond.
On Mondays, I had a free period after Calculus and would
help carry Celeste’s books to Rel-Phil. That afternoon, as we
walked across the quad, the sky was blue and the air was knife-
pleat crisp. Barcroft looked like a picture in a prep-school
catalogue, students everywhere, lounging on the expansive lawn,
playing Frisbee, taking their time getting to their next classes.
I felt so much better after talking to Kate. She was so logical
and unflappable. I was going to take precautions—locking the
windows and doors—but otherwise, it was out of my hands. I still
felt angry that it was happening in my home, but at least I didn’t
feel the weight of solving everything.
“Good day for KSM,” Celeste said. Kill, Screw, or Marry.
Whenever we saw a group of three people—sitting together,
walking together, whatever—we each had to pick one to kill, one
to sleep with, and one to marry.
“Okay,” I said.
Students sat in clusters all over the wide marble steps of the
chapel as we walked past. We’d just KSM’ed a group of freshmen
when a new threesome sat down: Simone Dzama, Mr.
Bartholomew, an English teacher, and David. My heart did a
nervous jump at the sight of him; my body had a flashback to how
it had felt on the roof.
“Exempt,” I said immediately.
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“No one’s exempt,” she said. “You know the rules.”
“Come on, Celeste.”
“Don’t be so uptight.” She stopped walking. “I’ll even go first.
It’s an easy one. Kill Simone, marry Mr. Bart, screw David.”
I looked at her with a grimace.
“What?” she said. “I’m not going to kill or marry my own
brother.”
She was trying to shock me. I should have been used to it by
now. “Okay,” I said, “Kill Mr. Bart, sleep with Simone, marry
David.”
“If that’s your plan, you better hurry up.” Celeste gestured
with her chin toward the steps. “You’ll be out of luck on both
counts.”
Simone had a hand on David’s shoulder and was laughing,
her long legs—with striped knee socks and bare thighs—stretched
out in front of her. David stared, apparently mesmerized. A lump
settled in my stomach.
“So, what’s up with you and Whip?” I asked, turning away.
Because of the distraction of her burn and the photo, I’d never
asked her last night.
“He looks surprisingly good in body paint,” she said, “if that’s
what you mean.”
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“So, you had fun?”
“Jesus, Leena.” Celeste glared at me. “David’s obviously
already using you to do his dirty work.”
My face flushed. “He worries about you.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s the goddamn problem.” She
turned toward the steps and called, “Hey! David!” He looked in
our direction and she beckoned him over. Crap. What was she
planning?
David said something to Simone then grabbed his bag and
walked over.
“What’s up?” he said.
“You guys are annoying me,” Celeste said, gesturing at the
two of us. “That’s what’s up. All this delay. Dilly-dally, twiddle-
twoddle. It’s annoying.”
The flush in my cheeks flared hotter. “Celeste—”
“No. Wait a minute.” She reached into her bag I was holding,
brought out a bunch of papers, and began shuffling through
them. “I don’t know what the holdup is, but . . . here. A catalyst.”
She separated out a sheet of white paper. David reached for it but
she hid it behind her back and turned to me. “The other day,
David brought me papers he’d picked up for me at the office,” she
said. “But a couple of his own things were mixed in the pile.” Now
she held out the sheet for us to see.
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The syllabus for David’s English class.
“So?” I said.
Celeste turned the paper over.
On the back, David had done a bunch of doodles: a
remarkably realistic eye, a glass of water, a cartoon cat . . . My
immediate thought was, Wow. David can draw. A split second
later, though, my brain made sense of the largest doodle on the
page. An elaborate graphic version of a name—in black ballpoint
pen, a name turned into an almost Celtic twisty-turny hedge of
intertwined, swooping strokes.
Leena.
My breath stopped.
David grabbed the paper from Celeste. “What the hell?” he
said, shoving it in his bag. “Who cares?”
“Yeah,” I said, recovering enough to jump to his defense. “So
he doodles. Big deal.”
Celeste snorted. “Anyone who has ever been in love knows
the primal urge to doodle the loved one’s name.”
“You’re unbelievable,” David said, shaking his head. “I’m
outta here.”
“It’s just a name on a piece of paper,” I added, to assure him
I wasn’t making a big deal out of it.
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David walked away without looking again at either one of us.
“I’m doing this for your own good,” she called after him.
“Don’t you want to actually live life, instead of just thinking about
it? Instead of focusing on everyone else?”
David didn’t turn around, just held up a hand giving Celeste
the finger. People on the path had stopped and were staring.
“Thanks for ruining a nice friendship,” I said as his figure
receded.
“He’ll get over it.”
We started walking again. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t making
her carry her own bag after that little episode. And I couldn’t
believe that instead of just being angry, some of what I felt
coursing through my body was actually excitement. I didn’t want
to let her know that, though.
“Has it occurred to you that if something were going to
happen between me and your brother, it should happen at its
own pace?” I said.
“No,” she said plainly.
I shifted her bag on my shoulder. “Well, has it occurred to
you that if something were going to happen, the fact that you are
so suspiciously, overly gung-ho about it would give someone like
me second thoughts?”
“Huh.” She seemed to consider this. “No.”
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“It is a little weird,” I said. “Your insistence. Just tell me—why
do you want us to get together so bad? Do you have some
ulterior motive?”
She stopped walking and looked at me. “Okay. Yes, actually, I
do.”
Of course. I raised my eyebrows.
“I want you to get him off my back,” she said.
“What?”
“I want him to have someone he can take care of so he’ll
stop spending every free minute wondering who I’m hooking up
with or whether I’m losing my mind or whether I took a crap
yesterday. Is that so weird? I have enough to worry about without
worrying about him worrying about me.”
Her voice and face made it clear she was telling the truth. I
didn’t quite know how to respond.
“I just know,” she added, “that if he had the right girlfriend,
not just some fling, he’d be the best boyfriend ever. It’s not like I
randomly picked you. I really, honestly think you’d be great for
him. Don’t you think he’d be great for you?”
I stared at her some more, at the almost pleading look in her
eyes. “You sound like you’re trying to sell your used car,” I said
finally, laughing a little.
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“Leena,” she said, smiling now, too. “I promise, he runs
really, really well.”
As I walked away, after leaving Celeste at the religion
building, I found myself unable to contain a huge smile. Celeste’s
reason for wanting us to get together wasn’t that weird. And
despite feeling bad about David’s embarrassment, I couldn’t help
feeling a giddy jolt of excitement when I thought about what had
happened on the quad. I actually broke out into a skip.
For once, I wasn’t the one doing the elaborate name
doodles. They were being done about me.
David called me that evening. “So, that was awkward,” he
said.
“Yeah,” I said, hugging a pillow to me, “you could say that.”
“Sorry she’s such an ass,” he said. “I wasn’t mad at you when
I walked off like that. I just couldn’t believe her. Of course, I
should have acted like I didn’t care. That would have been much
better. She’s like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum. She really
is.”
“I know.”
“And, you know, that wasn’t—”
“Don’t even worry,” I said. “I doodle all the time. Totally
random stuff.”
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“Because I respect the moratorium,” he said. “So I wouldn’t
ever, you know, ask you to compromise that. Even in my
fantasies.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, smiling, because the way he said it was
insinuating just the opposite.
“The seriousness of the moratorium must be respected,” he
went on. “Celeste wasn’t aware of it, I guess.”
“I guess not,” I said. And I closed my eyes and hugged the
pillow tighter, and dared to think that something good—
something very good—might have come from rooming with
Celeste Lazar.
My favorite part of books and movies is almost always the
“before.” The beginning, before whatever upends the characters’
lives has happened— before she knows he’s a vampire, before the
spaceship arrives . . . And for me, the next week or so had that
same sort of feeling. I knew, almost for sure, that something was
going to happen with me and David. I wasn’t sure when—maybe
not immediately; I hadn’t shed my stress about how much work
lay ahead of me this semester. But still, the air was filled with the
thrill of possibility.
Every time we talked—not about anything serious, just the
usual conversations about classes and homework and stuff—
there seemed to be a little more physical contact. But nothing to
push us over that line. Nothing that meant I actually had to deal
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with the complications of the situation. Just . . . the beautiful
before.
And as for what had happened with Celeste’s photo, well,
Kate had reassured me as much as anyone could have. Not that I
forgot about it, of course. I was vigilant about locking the
windows and doors whenever I left. But I’d pretty much decided
that her theory was correct: Celeste had thrown the photo
herself, and had been too embarrassed to let me know. And all I
could do was sit tight and wait for the semester to be over.
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Chapter 17
“ BUT HOW DO YOU MANAGE EVERYTHING-” I said to
Marika, my co-counselor. “I mean, how do you have time for all
your work, plus this, plus soccer, college stuff, and a girlfriend? It
seems . . . impossible.”
I’d decided to take advantage of a lull in activity at the peer-
counseling office and had been asking Marika’s opinion about my
“friend’s” dilemma—to get involved in a relationship or not—
while she practiced yoga poses on the carpet.
“I don’t know,” Marika said as she balanced in tree, arms
stretched over her head. “I don’t really think about it. It all just
happens.” She looked at me as if I might have a brain deficiency.
“You do realize a lot of people have relationships while living full
and productive lives?”
“But what would you do if Susanna dumped you, right before
midterms or something?”
