I had known I was doing badly, but a forty‑nine was worse than I’d realized.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” she said. “And I’ll offer the same option to all the students, but‑” She didn’t finish because she didn’t need to‑you’re the one I’m doing this for. The deal was to work on a project for extra credit, and that was what I made the timeline for. And Ms. Prosek did laugh when she saw that I’d included her on it, but things weren’t the same between us. In her apartment the afternoon that she’d told me I had a forty‑nine, she had not, as she usually did when I left, confirmed that we were on for the following Sunday. And I could have asked in class that week, but I didn’t‑I didn’t want to burden her‑and because I hadn’t asked, I didn’t go the next Sunday. In class the Monday after that, we made eye contact as I was sitting down, and she pressed her lips together as if she were going to say something, but she didn’t; anyway, other students were around. I still saw her almost daily, of course, but outside of class, it was only in passing, or in a group‑when it got warm in April, she had all of her advisees over for a cookout.
Standing in front of the schoolhouse, I said, “But, I mean, I’m not a bad seed. Am I?”
“Of course you’re not a bad seed.”
“I know I’m not great at sports, or I’m not, like, an asset to Ault. But I don’t break rules. It just seems like maybe I should get the benefit of the doubt. I don’t see why this exam has to be the difference between if I stay or not.”
She sighed. “I don’t know why you have the idea you’re not an asset to the school. You have just as many supporters as anyone else. Beyond that, I hope you understand that no one is trying to be punitive. But, Lee, you’re already a year behind most of your classmates in math. The school has requirements, and in order to get a diploma a year from now, you need to fulfill them. And what guarantee do we have that the same situation won’t arise in calculus? At a certain point, I don’t think it’s fair to you to keep putting you in over your head.”
“This won’t happen with calculus,” I said.
“No?”
“If I had it to do over, it would be different,” I said. “I know it would.”
She was quiet again, and then she said. “I think it would, too. I think we let this get away from us. But you have to realize that our concerns are academic, not personal.” She was squinting into the sun and because of this, it was difficult to discern her expression when she said, “I really don’t think they’ll spring‑clean you.”
The first thing I thought was, They? Maybe when it came down to it, she could not save me, but wasn’t it a lie to act like she couldn’t prevent the situation from arriving at that point? Surely, if she wanted to, she could give me a D; she could fudge and never discuss it, even with me.
The second thing I thought was that I’d have to tell Martha‑contrary to what she’d said, apparently teachers did use the expression.
Classes ended that Friday, and for the week before that, we hadn’t been doing much anyway; in Latin, Mrs. Pfaff brought in Rice Krispie treats her ten‑year‑old daughter had made, and in Spanish, we watched Mexican soap operas. In the dorms, some people had already started packing, which I hated doing‑I saw the naked walls and cleared‑away surfaces as unkind reminders of just how fleeting it all was, just how illusive the idea that any of it belonged to us.
After classes ended, I saw Aubrey every night, even Saturday, and I found myself practically looking forward to our meetings. Without classes, the days seemed stretched beyond use, like old rubber bands; it was good to have a few hours of structure. Also, the weather was pretty then, which always made me feel crazier. I heard about other students swimming down in the river, jogging together, riding their bikes into town for ice cream. To participate in such activities would have been like flaunting something; even if I wasn’t really studying, it would look better later on, after I’d failed the exam, to have stayed in the dorm.
On Wednesday evening, the night before my math exam, on the terrace outside the dining hall, we voted for senior prefects. No faculty members were there, only Gillian and Darden, who distributed the pieces of paper themselves. Afterward, they were the ones who’d tally the votes.
“I can totally imagine Gillian stuffing the ballot,” I said to Martha as we walked back to the dorm.
“She’d get kicked out,” Martha said. “It’s not worth the risk.”
“Who did you vote for?” I asked.
“Aspeth, of course. She’s such a natural leader.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “But I actually meant who did you vote for for guys?”
“Oh. Darden. Did you vote for your lover Cross?”
“Martha,” I hissed. Jenny Carter and Sally Bishop were walking behind us.
“Sorry, I meant Purple Monkey. Here, I’ll make it up to you. Get on.” She had stepped in front of me and was squatting, her back to me. “Climb aboard,” she said over one shoulder.
“Get on your back?” I said uncertainly.
“I’m taking you for a ride on the Marthasaurus.”
“Are you drunk or something?”
“Not unless someone spiked the juice dispenser at dinner. Get on.”
I turned back to look at Jenny and Sally, then waited for them to pass us. “Hi,” I said, and they both smiled. “I think I’m too heavy,” I said to Martha.
“Have you not seen this?” Martha flexed one arm‑she was wearing a tank top, red cotton with a scalloped neckline‑and her bicep rose. She was an inch shorter than I was and thinner as well, but she was definitely stronger.
“Okay,” I said. “Get ready.” I stepped forward and draped my arms over her shoulders. As she rose, she reached around to catch my legs, and my leg sockets locked into her arm sockets. She staggered a little, and I made an involuntary whoop, but then she steadied herself.
“Where do you want to go?” she said. “You name it.”
“Boston?”
Martha made a snoring noise.
“Okay, fine. How about Bombay?” I tried to say it in an Indian accent.
“Much better.”
“How about Mother Russia?” I tried, with about the same degree of success, to use a Russian accent, and Martha laughed. “To my dacha!” I cried and knocked my knees against Martha’s sides. “Vamonos!”
She tried to gallop, but she was laughing too hard. She stopped and bent over, with me still on her back, and just stood like that with her shoulders shaking. Being able to feel her laugh made me laugh, too.
“To fin de siècle Paris,” I yelled, and Martha said, gaspingly, “I think you just spit in my hair.”
This was definitely the weirdest I had ever acted in public at Ault; it was still light out, and people were standing on the steps outside the library, throwing a football on the circle. To my surprise, none of them seemed to be paying attention to us. Martha righted herself, and I said, “Am I strangling you?”
“Yes, but it’s okay.”
In the courtyard, just outside the entrance of Elwyn’s, I slid off. “Thanks for the ride,” I said. “And by the way, you’re so strange.”
“I know. I blame my parents.”
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “You’re nuts.”
“Lee, everyone is nuts. I promise.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, and she said, “But I’m right.”
Who knew what would happen, as we walked up the steps of Elwyn’s, with the election or the math exam? The probable outcomes were not in our favor; we were hovering in that thin space before resolution, when the cards still might, but probably would not, fall in our favor. Usually, I just wanted to learn the ending. At that moment, however, the suspense didn’t bother me so much. It was a warm spring night; at least for a little while longer, it was almost nice not to know how it would all turn out.
After chapel, when everyone was walking en masse to the schoolhouse for roll call, Aubrey materialized beside Martha and me and said, “I have something for you.” He looke
d at Martha, and she said, “I’ll leave you two alone. Just find me inside, Lee.”
Aubrey passed me a manila envelope with my name written on the outside in capital letters.
“Is it the answers to the exam?” I asked.
He looked appalled.
“I was kidding,” I said. I pulled out a card, handmade, that said on the front, in spindly boy letters, GOOD LUCK! Inside, it said, I hope that you do very well on your exam, Lee! From, Aubrey. He had not, as a girl would have, decorated the page with stars or flowers or balloons.
“It didn’t take me long.” He was blushing. “Do you have any final questions?”
“I don’t think so. But thank you‑I appreciate the card, Aubrey.” I did appreciate it, and I also felt a little baffled by it. It was the kind of thing I would make for someone else, what I would spend an evening on instead of math homework; but no one had ever made a card like this for me.
“When you’re isolating a variable, remember to go one step at a time. You’ll only become confused if you attempt to solve for both variables simultaneously.”
We were just inside the study hall. Because he was a freshman, Aubrey had an assigned desk for roll call; my classmates and the seniors stood in back, or sat on the wooden boxes covering the radiators along the far wall.
“Thanks for all your help, Aubrey,” I said.
He didn’t move immediately.
“I guess this is it, huh?” I said.
He still didn’t move and, because I didn’t know what else to do, I extended my hand. Roll call was starting. We shook.
I remained near the door listening to announcements‑the Minority Student Alliance was having an end‑of‑the‑year dinner in the activities center Sunday night, and also Mrs. Morino hoped we’d all congratulate Adele Sheppard on the good citizenship award she’d just received from the Raymond Long‑Term Care Center where she’d been volunteering every week since her sophomore year. When Mr. Byden stepped forward‑he stood just behind the prefects during roll call, and when he had an announcement, he usually went last‑I felt a sudden quickening of my heartbeat. He was going to say who’d won the election; I was sure of it. The year before, he’d made the announcement at formal dinner, but I realized elections must have been held earlier, because formal dinner was now finished for the year.
He cleared his throat. “As you know, prefect elections for all grades were held yesterday. I’m pleased to share the results.” As he went through the younger grades, I scanned the room for Martha, and I saw her leaning against the far wall. I tried to catch her eye, but she was watching Mr. Byden. I looked around for other nominees and saw Darden standing nearby. He had a mild, pleasant smile on his face, an utterly agreeable expression, and I knew he knew he hadn’t won; I felt a pang for him, to have to be here in front of everyone acting like a good sport. “Finally,” Mr. Byden said, “for the rising senior class‑” Before he got any further, a few people around me hooted. Mr. Byden smiled dryly. “For the rising senior class,” he repeated, “please congratulate your new prefects, Cross Sugarman and Martha Porter.”
The room exploded. All around me people seemed to be shouting and giving high fives‑why, I wondered, was it acceptable, once the decision had been made, to show that you cared about it, but wrong to have done so beforehand?‑and I was clapping, too, but I did not feel elated. The truth was, I did not even feel happy. I felt stunned. Martha had won? Martha? It had been easy to root for her because she was my roommate, because even if no one else recognized it, Martha was great‑because we were underdogs, both of us. Except that, apparently, we were not.
I looked again at Darden, who was still clapping heartily, still smiling, though a muscle in his jaw, a little below his ear, was twitching.
“Darden.” He didn’t hear me, and again I said, “Darden.”
He turned.
“I’m sorry you didn’t win,” I said. Was this disingenuous, given that I had voted for Cross?
He shook his head. “No big thing. Hey, pretty cool about your roommate, huh?”
I tried to smile. “It’s crazy.” Darden and I stood there for a few seconds, both of us with our fake grins, and then at the same time we turned toward the back of the room. It was easy to locate Cross because of his height, but so many people were surrounding Martha that I couldn’t even see her. Up on the platform, Mr. Byden had started speaking again, but I don’t think any seniors were paying attention.
If I had been a good friend, a good person, I’d have pushed my way through our classmates and thrown my arms around Martha. And that, the instant of congratulating her, would have been manageable. My fear was of what would come next‑her giddy disbelief, the welling nakedness of her feelings. Also, how I might have to reassure her that she did deserve this. Or worst of all‑that maybe she’d just be happy. Maybe she’d simply want to luxuriate in the moment, guess who had and hadn’t voted for her, anticipate what the role of prefect would be like. And these would not be unreasonable impulses‑who could you be your smug and exuberant self with if not your roommate?‑but I did not feel like I had the ability to stomach them. I walked out of the room; I didn’t look around, so I don’t know if anyone saw me.
Downstairs in the math wing, I entered an empty classroom‑not Ms. Prosek’s but the one across from hers‑and didn’t turn on the lights. I started paging through my textbook. It was far too late, but it felt good to be doing something.
It was then eight forty‑five. We were to pick up the exam from Ms. Prosek’s classroom at nine o’clock, take it to the study hall or to our room, and return it by noon; in a little more than three hours, it would be over, my fate would be sealed. Afterward, I’d do something for Martha‑make her a card or get her flowers from town. And by that point, she’d be calmer. She herself was about to take a history exam, which would certainly dilute this moment, and maybe after that she’d talk out her election with someone else, the person she was walking back to the dorms with. By the time we met up again, she’d be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn’t have had to be there while she got it in order.
When Martha had been chosen by Mr. Byden to be on the disciplinary committee, I’d been pleased for her‑it wasn’t a really big deal, in a way it was the distinction of a goody‑goody, but it was still a distinction, and I congratulated her sincerely. And other things‑the summer before our junior year, when she started going out with her brother’s friend Colby, the choreography of their attraction had enthralled me; for a couple weeks, I’d spoken to Martha nightly on the phone, interpreting Colby’s behav‑ior, advising her, as if I knew anything at all about the minds of boys. For several days after she told me they’d kissed, I felt intermittent bursts of joy and it would always take me a minute to remember that it was not to me but to Martha that something good had happened. And I was always glad for Martha when she got good grades‑she studied hard, and she deserved them.
But being prefect‑it seemed a little arbitrary. Before Cross had nominated her, it hadn’t been a thing we’d ever discussed, a thing she’d even, as far as I could tell, considered. And then it had just worked out, without her really trying. And finally‑what if I had been nominated for senior prefect? What if I’d gone to the meeting that day instead of to the dean’s office and my presence there had made someone, maybe even Cross, think, Why not Lee? And what if I had been the wild card instead of Martha? Maybe people secretly liked me, too, or respected me, or saw me as an alternative to Gillian or Aspeth. It was not impossible. Because, really, wasn’t this turn of events as much a defeat for the two of them as a victory for Martha? If I had been elected, I would be Cross’s counterpart, we’d talk to each other every day, standing side by side at the desk in front of the entire school. With evidence that people believed in me, I’d be different, confident; I’d finally be able to relax. And certainly I would not be spring‑
cleaned‑how could Ault spring‑clean a senior prefect?
Yet these were grubby thoughts; just to have them in my own head was embarrassing. And now I knew myself to be generous with encouragement only when I either did not want the thing the other person sought or did not believe the person would really get it. It was the opposite of what I aspired to‑in the moment of truth, I wanted to be loyal and forthright, reliable, humble, trustworthy. Instead, I was greedy and envious.
Roll call had ended. I could hear people in the halls of the math wing. It struck me that being spring‑cleaned might, in an awful way, be easier than watching Martha become prefect.
It was eleven‑thirty when Martha got back to the room, and I was lying on the futon, on my stomach, eating stale tortilla chips. I was hanging my head off the end of the futon so the crumbs would spill onto the floor, and the position was making blood rush to my face. Also, because I had given up on my exam after about fifteen minutes and then spent more than an hour sobbing, I felt dehydrated and slightly hoarse. “Hi,” I said. “Congratulations on being prefect.” This wasn’t how I’d planned to say it‑I’d planned to overcompensate and shout, I was looking for you everywhere! –but there it was; I’d said what I’d said.
Martha looked at my desk, where the exam lay folded open to the second page, then looked back at me. “What are you doing?”
The question seemed rather broad. “I’m having a snack,” I finally said and held out the bag of chips. “Want some?”
She picked up the exam and flipped through it. I had signed my name under the Ault oath on the first page, which was the same one that appeared on every exam: With my signature, I hereby verify that I have neither given nor received any help on this test… On the next page, I’d completed the first problem, which Ms. Prosek clearly had started with so as to put us at ease. I had written a few numbers under the next problem, and then, though it had nothing to do with what the problem was asking, I’d written out the quadratic equation, just in case I’d need it later. After that, from the second page to the seventh, I hadn’t written anything. As she got closer to the end, Martha’s expression vacillated between confusion and dismay.