The St. Ambrose School for Girls(48)
And I’m on your side, I tack on to myself.
“She’s an amazing woman. I love her very much.”
“What does she do?” Check us out, having an adult conversation. And I ask this just to keep him talking, as I already know at least parts of her résumé. “I think she’s gone a lot, isn’t she?”
“She’s one of the leading AIDS researchers at Yale. She does a lot of outreach with city governments, especially ones with bigger underserved populations. So it requires travel.”
“Wow.” Yup. Brilliant and a humanitarian. I start to surreptitiously glance around, looking for a photograph that confirms the Miss—no, Mrs.—America thing. “That’s really impressive.”
“She is.”
When he smiles, I want to smile back, but I am afraid I have something in my teeth even though I haven’t eaten today. I will also not smile because I have not brushed my teeth and I can’t make an assessment of my breath after my lithium-with-Coca-Cola-chaser. Bad enough that I have roots in my hair, and desperate-girl noir clothes that are like Goth tarps on my shrinking body. Halitosis in his presence would sink me worse than my depressive episode.
Especially given the singularity of his wife.
Nick pauses. Like he’s waiting for something from me. Meanwhile, I become frozen. I want to say the right thing, give him whatever he needs from me, sure as if this interaction is my one moment to be existentially judged, my single, solitary second of reckoning that will determine the course not just of the rest of this year at Ambrose, but of all the decades that follow.
If there are to be any.
“Sarah,” he says, “I just want you to know that I’m here to help.”
“Thank you?” I say, in the form of a question. Because I have no idea what he’s getting at.
As he becomes quiet again, I decide I’m content to sit here for however long he wants. I’m in the sanctum sanctorum and also allowed to stare at him, and it’s all so very deliciously distracting that I decide even Strots can wait.
Hell, even suicide can wait.
“So, the pharmacist down at the CVS called the school’s health clinic,” he says finally.
I stiffen and forget all about what he looks like and what he sounds like and what kind of posters are on his walls and what a hero he has for a wife. Now we’re getting down to business, and as I curse Phil the Pharmacist for being so very much smarter than I gave him credit for, I know I am back in territory where I must consider my responses carefully.
From a clinical perspective, not an existential one.
Although with me, I suppose they are the same thing.
“I didn’t steal anything.” I lead with this even though I know it’s a lark that will not fly. “I did not.”
“That wasn’t what he was worried about.”
Nick is speaking softly, and I don’t know whether it’s because he doesn’t want to spook me like I’m a wild animal or if he knows what came through the wall that night when he was fighting with his wife.
“Sarah, I know that you have some… special circumstances… in your background.”
At this, I bolt up and start pacing around his apartment, my mind running at a thousand miles an hour. I picture myself paraded in front of the entire dorm in the common room, shown off as an example of how Ambrose takes care of the less fortunate, the less sane, my secret not just laid bare but promoted officially as a virtue of the institution.
“The administration wants to be sure you’re okay.” Nick gets to his feet, too, and casually goes over to the door. There’s a long shelf directly to the left of it and he moves some books around on the levels, but I’m not fooled. He’s going to stop me if I try to bolt. “We’ve called your mother and she’s on her way.”
“What?” I bark. “You can’t do that.”
Okay, that’s a stupid thing to say. They can do anything they want.
“We need to make sure you’re all right.”
I put my hands to my head. No, no, no, this is wrong. Enough with the green eyes and the Guns N’ Roses crap. “I have to go. I have to find my roommate.”
“Sarah, what you were thinking about doing…” He clears his throat, and as he turns and looks at me, his eyes are a little scared. Like he’s out of his professional depth, but really wants to help me. “That’s not the answer. Trust me. It’s not.”
Doing the math in my head, I figure the earliest possible time the school could have called Tera Taylor, undiscovered movie star, is maybe forty-five minutes ago because that’s when I left the CVS. It’ll take her at least that long to get herself organized to leave the house. She’ll have to change into one of her dresses and do her hair and makeup. She won’t know where her keys are. She’ll need to put gas in her Mercury Marquis because she drives around our little town on fumes. I have about three hours.
If they are shipping me out of here—which is likely not the wrong idea for my welfare—I need to get to Strots before she goes to the game, and I have about ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
“Can I go back to my room now?” I say.
“I just…” As Mr. Hollis—Nick—struggles for words, it’s clear that whatever training he received prior to becoming a residential advisor is wholly insufficient to handle the problem I represent. “It was just a game. It doesn’t matter who won or lost. No one blames you, okay? You did the best you could, and you almost caught the ball.”