“Hey!” Amy said. “No touching!”
“That’s not what you tell most guys, Dennaker,” said the guy grabbing the pillowcase; it was Max Cobey.
“Bite me,” Amy replied.
“Who else is down there?” Heidi asked.
“Who else is up there?” Max said. “It sounds like a herd of elephants.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s a bunch of incredibly hot women wearing nothing but G‑strings and lipstick,” Amy said. “And for only ninety‑nine cents a minute, you can call up and talk to any one of us. Operators are standing‑”
“That is enough for now, Amy,” I heard Madame say, and I was half‑relieved and half‑disappointed. “We will leave the boys alone.”
“We gotta go,” Amy called down. “Farewell, so long, auf Wiedersehen, good‑bye.”
We began pulling up the mop and broomstick, and McGrath, who had disappeared into the room, stuck his head back out. “I don’t get to keep it?” he said. “After all that harassment?”
“You can keep it,” I said, as if it were my pillowcase to give away. “But only if you promise to use it tonight.”
“I’m gonna use it every night,” McGrath said, and that was the last I heard before I was back in the room and the night was outside again.
On Friday morning after Latin class, as we were collecting our books, I said to Martha, “You’re going tomorrow, right? With Conchita?” Martha and I had hardly spoken before, and initiating conversation made my heart pound. But it would be weird to ride into Boston together, never really having talked, when we’d spent the last seven months sitting side by side in Latin. Especially when I had the feeling that the reason we’d scarcely talked was because of me‑on the very first day of class, when I was so terrified to be at Ault that I could barely make eye contact with people, Martha had said, “I’ve never taken Latin. Have you?” and I had said, “No,” looked away, and folded my arms. A few months later, Tab Kinkead had farted while standing at the chalkboard translating the sentence Sextus is a neighbor of Claudia; most people hadn’t heard, but when I’d seen Martha try without success to stifle her laughter, I’d known for sure that I’d made a mistake‑she was someone I could have been friends with.
In the hallway, Martha was saying, “Conchita’s mom is super‑nice.”
“Do you know where we’re eating?” I asked. Logistical questions were, in my opinion, the best questions of all; they were the most innocuous.
“We’re meeting at Mrs. Maxwell’s hotel, so we’ll probably go somewhere around there,” Martha said. “You’re on the lacrosse team with Conchita, aren’t you? She really likes you.”
I could feel what I was supposed to say in response‑Conchita’s great, or I really like her, too –but I just couldn’t form the words. Martha’s remark made her seem, not in a bad way, like a camp counselor: generous and encouraging, happy to see people getting along.
“What sport are you doing?” I asked.
“Crew, and actually I’m pretty sure this’ll be my only free Saturday for the whole spring, so I’m glad to be going somewhere.”
“Is crew as intense as everyone says?”
“It’s beautiful to watch, but when you’re in the boat, you’re basically grunting and sweating the whole time.”
“Whenever I see people rowing, I always think of Jonas Ault in, like, 1880,” I said. “I can picture him wearing one of those unitard things and sporting a handlebar mustache.”
Martha laughed. Later, one of our jokes was that she was an easy laugh, a laugh slut. But something I always appreciated about her was how she made you feel witty. “Oh, yes, “ she said, adopting an affected tone. “Crew is very civilized.”
“A sport for gentlemen, “ I said, and I wondered why I’d never spoken to Martha before.
I knew from the list posted outside Dean Fletcher’s office that McGrath was a server at Ms. Prosek’s table this week, and it was this knowledge that had helped me, as I’d lain awake around four o’clock in the morning, formulate a plan to kill him. Like all servers, McGrath would arrive to set the table twenty minutes before formal dinner started. When he did, I decided (and it was a decision so thrilling, an idea so perfect, that after it came to me, I did not fall asleep again before my alarm clock beeped at six‑thirty), I’d be waiting beneath that table to place the sticker on his leg.
After lacrosse practice, I rushed to the dining hall and arrived by five‑thirty, ten minutes before McGrath was due. Only five or six students were in the dining hall, including that night’s dining hall prefect, a senior named Oli Kehlmeier. (Being one of the three dining hall prefects was actually desirable‑they oversaw the waiters at formal dinner, which meant they could boss around the younger boys and flirt with the girls.) Oli was busy spreading white cloths on the tables‑it surprised me to see a dining hall prefect in fact working‑and I decided to take a cloth myself from the stack near the doors to the kitchen.
I smoothed the cloth over Ms. Prosek’s table, then scanned the dining hall. No one was paying attention to me. I moved a chair out of the way, crouched, crawled under the table, and pulled the chair in. I was sitting with my heels pressed to my rear end, my knees forward, but that quickly became uncomfortable, and I switched to sitting Indian‑style. There wasn’t much room to maneuver. My elbow knocked a chair, and I froze, but I heard nothing from the outside‑no proclamation of poltergeist, no face appearing at the level of my own to ask what the hell I was doing‑and I relaxed again. A few old‑looking globs of gum were stuck to the unfinished underside of the table, I noticed, and I could smell both the table and the floor, though neither of them smelled particularly like wood; they smelled more like shoes, like not‑so‑dirty running shoes, or a child’s flip‑flops.
At twenty of six, I tensed, anticipating McGrath. As more and more servers arrived, I felt certain that every set of approaching footsteps was his. All the tables around Ms. Prosek’s appeared occupied, and surely, I thought, they would see me, surely they’d notice the pale blue fabric of my skirt (was it gross that I was sitting on the floor in my skirt?), or see my sandaled foot. But no one approached. At the table to the right of mine, the server, I could tell by her voice, was Clara O’Hallahan, and she was singing to herself; she was singing the Jim Croce song “I Got a Name.” A little later, I heard a boy say, “Reed was in a bad mood today, huh?” and a girl said, “No worse than usual.” I waited to hear someone mention Assassin, but no one did. Eventually, the voices all became a blended, increasingly noisy hum, punctuated by the clinking of silverware and glasses. It was ten of six. McGrath wouldn’t dare miss formal dinner when he was serving, I thought, or would he? Just for skipping, you got table wipes, but if you were the server, I was pretty sure you got detention.
He arrived at four of six; well before he’d gotten to the table, I heard his cheerful drawl. Someone must have remarked on his lateness because he was saying, as he came closer, “It’s the two‑minute method. Watch and learn.” Above my head, he set down what sounded like plates, then silverware. Before I could stick him, he’d left again, and he returned with a tray of glasses. His calves were mere inches from me‑he was wearing khaki shorts, his leg hair was blond and thick‑and he was whistling.
There were two entirely discrete feelings I had at this moment. The first was a disbelieving glee that I was really about to kill McGrath Mills. When you are accustomed to denial and failure, as maybe I was or maybe I only believed myself to be, success can feel disorienting, it can give you pause. Sometimes I found myself narrating such success, at least in my own head, in order to convince myself of its reality. And not just with major triumphs (of course whether I’d ever experienced a major triumph, apart from getting into Ault in the first place, was debatable) but with tiny ones, with anything I’d been waiting for and anticipating: I am now eating pizza, I am now getting out of the car. (And later: I am kissing this boy, he is lying on top of me. ) I did this because it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I
wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of the thing than the thing itself.
The second feeling I had at this moment was a sad feeling, an abrupt slackness. I think it was McGrath’s leg hair. Also, his whistling. McGrath was a person. He didn’t want to be killed, he didn’t know I was waiting underneath the table. And it seemed so unfair to catch him by surprise. I didn’t want to win the whole game, I knew suddenly. I wanted admiration, of course, schoolwide recognition, but I couldn’t possibly get through all the little moments it would require, just me and the person I was supposed to kill. With Devin, it had been okay because he’d been such a jerk, and with Sage and Allie, because it hadn’t mattered to them if they remained in the game or not. But McGrath was nice, and he seemed to care at least a little about staying alive, and yet it would have been ridiculous for me not to take him out, with the opportunity quite literally in front of me. And it wasn’t even that I entirely didn’t want to. It was just that it seemed complicated. From now on, I thought, I’d do whatever was necessary to get to Cross. But I wouldn’t be zealous, I wouldn’t think the game itself actually mattered. This was the decision I was making as I extended my arm and placed the sticker on McGrath’s calf‑I placed it just to the side of his tibia bone, almost exactly halfway between his ankle and knee. Then I pushed out the chair in front of me and emerged from beneath the table on my hands and knees. Looking up at McGrath from that position, I couldn’t help feeling a little like a dog.
His expression, as I’d feared, was one of naked surprise. I am not even sure he recognized me immediately. I stood, and said, uncertainly, “I just killed you,” and though McGrath broke out laughing, I think it was only because he was a good sport.
“Oh, boy,” he said in his Southern accent. “You nailed me. Man, did you get me good. How long were you under there?”
I shrugged.
“That’s a well‑deserved win. Hey, Coles, look who was under my table. I know, she was stakin’ me out!” McGrath turned back to me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry. What are you sorry for? You got me fair and square. I gotta give you my stickers, right? But you know what?” He felt in the back pocket of his shorts, and in the pockets on both sides of his blazer. “I left ’em in my room,” he said. “Can I give ’em to you later? I’ll come up to your dorm and do a hand‑delivery.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Anything’s fine.” (Of course he didn’t have his stickers. The game didn’t really matter to him.)
I knew right away that I had ruined it. Whatever jokiness had existed between us‑I had killed the substance of it. McGrath would be friendly to me from now on (and I was right in thinking that, he always was friendly, for the year‑plus that remained before he graduated from Ault) but the friendliness would be hollow. In killing him, I had ended the only overlap between our lives. “Assassinate anyone lately?” he would ask, months later, when we passed each other, just the two of us in a corridor of the third floor between fifth and sixth periods. Or, “How are your pillowcases holdin’ up?” I might laugh, or say, “They’re okay”‑something short. McGrath didn’t want to talk, of course, it wasn’t as if we had anything to say to each other. I knew all this, I understood the rules, but still, nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.
On Saturday morning, I waited outside the dorm courtyard; Conchita had said her mother would send a car to pick us up at eleven. It was seventy degrees, sunny and breezy, and I thought of how Martha had said she was glad to be going somewhere; I was glad, too. I could see a black limousine across the circle, and on the circle itself, two boys tossed a softball. I tilted my face toward the sky and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, perhaps a minute later, the limousine was in front of me, and Conchita’s head was poking through an open window in the back. “Hey, Lee,” she called. “Climb aboard.”
As I approached the car, I tried to arrange my face in an unsurprised expression. I had never ridden in a limousine. Inside, seats of gray leather lined the sides and rear of the car; a darkened window divided the back from where the driver sat in front. Conchita, I saw, was wearing a purple T‑shirt, a denim jumper with oversized orange buttons, white tights, and high‑heeled, open‑toed straw sandals; she looked less like a member of a theater troupe than like a four‑year‑old permitted for the first time to dress herself. Martha was dressed normally and wasn’t, to my relief, wearing a skirt.
“We’re trying to decide what music to listen to,” Conchita said. “The only stations that come in very well are reggae and‑what did you call it, Martha?”
“Gentle jazz,” Martha said.
“I vote for reggae,” I said.
“We thought that’s what you’d say, but we wanted to make sure.” Conchita pushed a button, and the window between us and the driver came down a few inches. “Will you set it to the first station?” she said. “Thanks.” Without waiting for a response, she pressed the button, and the window rose. Then I knew, I finally understood, that Conchita was rich. And understanding this confused everything else I knew about her. Why did she need to act weird? Why did she mention her Mexicanness so often, why did she talk about feeling like an outsider? If she was rich, she belonged at Ault. The equation was that simple. Being rich, in the end, counted for the most‑for more, even, than being pretty. And yet, as I thought about it, it wasn’t that Conchita had ever hidden anything from me. Her elaborately decorated room, even her wardrobe, which was peculiar but not cheap‑looking‑these had been signs to which I’d turned a blind eye. My assumption that she was a scholarship student was, I realized, offensive; it was embarrassing. (It was embarrassing and yet‑and yet now, knowing I’d been wrong, I was free to room with her. I could give in, it would be okay. Thinking this felt the way peeing in your pants does when you’re five or six: a complicated relief, one best ignored in the present moment.)
“Okay, listen to this,” she was saying. “I’ve been waiting to tell you guys until I was with both of you at the same time‑I heard that Mr. Byden used to date Madame Broussard.”
“No way,” Martha said.
“Mr. Byden the headmaster?” I said. “But he’s married.”
“It was a long time ago,” Conchita said, “but what if he still carries a torch for Madame?”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
“Aspeth told me. Her dad and Mr. Byden went to Harvard together in the sixties, and I guess Madame was living in Boston then.”
“Imagine kissing Mr. Byden,” I said. “He’d make you keep three feet on the floor.” This was the rule for visitation; also, the couple was supposed to leave the door open. “And what’s really gross,” I added, “is think about Mr. Byden having a boner.”
“Lee,” Conchita said, and it occurred to me that I might have genuinely offended her.
“An erection,” I said. “Whatever.”
“Stop it.” She covered her ears with her hands.
“They probably had pet names for each other,” Martha said.
“Shnookums,” I suggested.
“Apple dumpling,” Martha replied.
“Cheese pie,” I said, and for no real reason, both of us convulsed with laughter.
“What?” Conchita said. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard‑by then she’d uncovered her ears.
“It’s not‑” I began, and then I made eye contact with Martha and started laughing again.
“What?” Conchita was looking between us. “What does cheese pie mean?”
Martha wiped a tear from her eye. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “Lee just made it up.”
“Then why is it so funny?”
“Well‑” Martha struggled to remain composed. “It’s just like, cheese pie ?”
“Apple dumpling,” I repeated, and both of us began snorting.
“Martha let a boy touch her boobs,” Conchita said.
“Thanks, Conchita.” Martha appeared unperturbed.
; “I would never do that,” Conchita said. “At least not before I’m married and then I’m only having sex in the dark.”
“Yeah, right,” Martha said, and her tone was affectionate.
“Have you had sex?” I asked her, and as soon as I’d said it, I felt myself clutch. Really, I hardly knew her; I had forgotten how little I knew her.
“God, no,” Martha said. “My mom would kill me.” She didn’t seem to have found the question intrusive. “Conchita, when a guy goes up your shirt, it’s just skin,” Martha said. “It feels kind of good.”
“Would you let a guy touch your boobs, Lee?” Conchita asked.
“It would depend on the guy.” I thought of the song “Lay, Lady, Lay,” the man in dirty clothes.
“I’m really surprised,” Conchita said. “I didn’t realize that you were promiscuous, too.”
For the third time, Martha and I burst out laughing.
“I wish I was promiscuous,” I said.
“Don’t say that.” Conchita looked stricken.
“I’m kidding,” I said, and she looked relieved, and then I couldn’t resist saying, “Sort of,” and she looked stricken again. “Oh, Conchita,” I said, and I moved over to her seat and put one arm around her shoulders and rocked her back and forth a little. She seemed young to me in this moment, and very charming. We’d gotten onto Route 128 by then, and there was something about the speed of the car, something about the car being a limousine, something about the sunshine and the conversation‑I was happy for real. The sense I always had at Ault that what I had to offer was inadequate, that I needed to be on guard, was drifting away, rushing out the open sunroof.
The hotel was near the Boston Common; it was the fanciest hotel I’d ever been inside, but by then, this fact did not surprise me. Corinthian columns flanked the lobby, and green marble lined the floor and ceilings. Conchita approached the concierge’s desk to ask where the restaurant was, and Martha and I followed her, all of us still giddy from the ride, and I could feel that the hotel staff and other guests in the lobby were looking at us and that we were three girls to them, we were ordinary, and in this moment, our ordinariness was not a bad thing. On the contrary‑in being underdressed and a little loud, in traveling in a pack, we were fulfilling their idea of teenagers, and I felt proud of us.