The St. Ambrose School for Girls(36)
Even if I will pay for this, I’m quietly happy. And this version of a positive emotion is not accompanied with the clanging, hallucinatory success and mastery that I felt for those twenty-four hours after I dyed my clothes back to some semblance of wearability, the mania running amok and taking me all the way to the White House, before it was dashed just as quickly by a memo designed to mislead me.
This happiness is of a calmer nature. It’s satisfaction.
And I have a feeling it’s going to last for a very long time.
chapter ELEVEN
That night, I can’t resist. Twenty minutes before curfew, I leave the dorm via Tellmer’s front door. As I walk to the right, I hunker into my sweater and look up at the windows of the phone room. There are five girls with buff-colored receivers pressed to their ears. Two have propped a hip up on the windowsill, and the others are sitting on top of the tables that are pushed back against the walls, talking stations for the inmates. Seeing all of them sitting where they should not, their feet on chairs or wedged into the vertebrae of the radiators, makes me think about all of us out at that field on those picnic tables. I wonder whether the inability to use furniture properly is a hallmark of our generation.
There are security lights tucked into the eaves of my dorm’s roofline, right above the frieze of composers, and from the fixtures flows illumination that is warm in tint but does nothing to mediate the temperature. The night is colder than I anticipated and I wish I’d brought my jacket, but one advantage to my black clothes is that I disappear into the shadows as I pare off from the walkway, my boots making no sound, as the leaves have not yet begun to fall.
I’m careful to veer far away from the parking lot, where Hot RA’s Porsche is parked, along with Ms. Crenshaw’s Toyota Camry and the third-floor married couple’s station wagon. As I continue along, I make it seem to any casual observer as though I’m headed to Wycliffe next door. Once I am certain I’ve gone far enough, I double back and penetrate the brush and tree barrier, finding the dirt footpath that Greta and the Brunettes first showed me.
The path is close to the riverbed, and it must get flooded during torrential rains like the one we had the other day. This may explain why there are, from time to time, river stones embedded in the dirt, transplants from the bed that were migrated by a rushing force with sufficient power to carry them out, but not enough strength to bring them back in. The only other impediments in my way are the granddaddy trees that are spaced very far apart, their strictly enforced territories appearing to have been negotiated by virtue of the reach of their massive arms.
When I arrive at my split-trunk maple, I hide my body and lend my ear at the same time, the deciduous skyscraper accepting the lean of my weight as if I am but a newspaper section blown by the wind against its towering torso. In the icy blue moonlight, Greta, Francesca, and Stacia are where they always go, sitting on that outcropping about thirty feet in front of me. The huge stones are smooth, just like the other river rocks, but they’re mesomorphs among minors, three or four enormous, mountain-worthy boulders that have inexplicably been dropped at the head of a deep and whirling pool within the river’s course.
The girls are smoking, and they’re tapping their ashes into the water, which, as always, makes me angry. When they’re done with their cigarettes, they’ll flick the filthy filters into the current as well, and I imagine if they were drinking beer, the bottles would be sunk in the pool. If they were eating chips, the bags would follow suit. So, too, would candy wrappers, sandwich sleeves, and the dead batteries of their Walkmans. They have no concept of nature, no respect for the animals and the aquatic life for whom this river is sustenance, not a moving trash can.
“—stop sulking anytime you want,” Greta says. “I mean, you won. What do you have to get bitched about.”
Stacia speaks up. “Everything’s fine. The air’s cleared. We’re here together and that’s all that matters.”
Someone get that girl a Nobel Peace Prize, I think to myself.
“Right, Francesca?” she prompts.
Francesca shrugs and strokes her hair with her free hand. “Sure. Whatever.”
In the darkness, the bruise around her eye is not very noticeable. Or maybe she’s put concealer over the discoloration.
“You’re such a drama queen.” As Greta exhales, she lets her head fall back, the plume of smoke sent to the night sky, as if she is determined to litter up into space as well. “But I forgive you.”
“Thanks.”
Greta doesn’t seem to notice the snarkiness. Or more likely, she doesn’t care. “So let’s talk about the dance,” she says. “Are you asking Daniel?”
“You know I’m not.” Francesca taps her cigarette like her forefinger is a hammer. “You know I can’t. Mark will be there.”
“It’ll be fun if they see each other.”
“For who.”
“Me.”
These are the boys they always talk about. Daniel, Mark, Todd, and Jonathon. I know all kinds of things about their other halves, except for physical descriptions, but something tells me they’re the Labrador retrievers of boys, well-bred, well-mannered, and athletic. And blond.
The jury’s out on whether they have webbed paws for retrieving water fowl.
“What about Todd,” Stacia asks. “Is he coming?”