The St. Ambrose School for Girls(90)

As I picture Sandy trying to keep me from falling at the stairs, I feel really, really bad.

“I wonder who the hell it is.” Strots points her smoldering cigarette at me. “Trust me, the name’ll come out. These things never stay completely quiet.”

“What’s his wife going to do?”

“Divorce his ass, I’ll bet.” Strots laughs a little as she reaches for her Coke ashtray. “Who’d have thought the shit with me would get put on the back burner so fast. Gay doesn’t look so bad when it’s compared to statutory rape, right? Anyway, I thought you’d like to know the gossip.”

“Thanks.”

There’s a hiss as she drops her half-smoked butt into the plastic bottle, and then my roommate leaves quickly and without saying goodbye. My feelings aren’t hurt. She just proved she was taking me into account by reporting the news with timely gusto.

At that moment, I hear voices down below in the parking area. I rise half out of my chair and look over the edge of the big window. Nick Hollis and his wife are arguing with each other. Her car, a Honda hatchback, is parked off to the side on the grass because there’s no official spot for it, and I feel as though her presence in the world of Ambrose seems paralleled by the out-of-kilter way her Civic is jammed where it’s not readily accommodated.

Her suitcase, which she’s putting in the trunk, is a clear commentary that regardless of her travel schedule being over, she’s hitting the road again.

She’s collateral damage, I think to myself. Although she is not wounded. She is infuriated.

Still, the pair of them are pretty restrained in their discord, no doubt because they’re aware they’re liable to be watched. Both of their faces are bright red, however, and their eyes glow, hers with anger, his with brokenhearted pleading. I have a thought that this is not the beginning of this particular fight, but rather the culmination of something that has been going on for a bit, probably since he returned from the headmaster’s office. I’m willing to bet when things were confined to their apartment, there was more volume, and maybe some shoving. I’m extrapolating this from how they tilt in toward each other, how rageful Sandy’s expression is, how she gets even more flushed as the hushed volley speeds up.

I want to stick my head out my window and tell them to do this elsewhere to protect their privacy. As soon as the word gets out widely that Nick Hollis has been fired for sleeping with a student, this public display of marital conflict will become part of the story, and though none of their words carry, at least not up to my window, dialogue will be dubbed in by novice screenplay writers with soap opera tendencies.

And then something carries through Strots’s open window that hits me in the gut.

Nick raises his voice sharply to talk over his wife. “My father is getting me a goddamn lawyer. I’m not leaving this campus and I’m going to fight this all the way. It’s defamation—”

“Not if they look into Molly Jansen.” Sandy’s voice gets reedy. “How are we here again, Nick? Only one year later. With another fifteen-year-old.”

Abruptly, they fall silent, and as the woman stares at her husband, I consider bolting back to the bathroom and kneeling in front of another toilet. No toothbrush required, Francesca.

Another fifteen-year-old?

His wife is the one who ends the argument. She backs off with a dismissive gesture, as if she’s washing her hands of the whole thing. Slamming shut her rear compartment, she gets behind the wheel of her cockeyed Civic and reverses out in a herky-jerky fashion, as if her anger is being channeled through her foot into the accelerator and the brake. When she can finally tear off, there is only an anemic squeak of tires, the low horsepower of the engine failing to meet what is no doubt a stomping call to action. If she’d been in the Porsche, I bet she would have made a lot of noise and burned a lot of rubber in her wake.

Left by himself, Nick Hollis turns his back on the dorm, and he stands there staring at the brambles and the river for a very long time. Every once in a while, he pulls his hand through his thick, silken hair. I have a thought that he must be getting cold in only that red cashmere sweater, but as the sun begins to set, he doesn’t seem to notice the drop in temperature.

I wonder if he is aware of anything at all—

There is a bang behind me, sharp and insistent, like a gunshot.

I spin so fast that I knock my chair over.

Greta is standing in the open doorway to my room, and for once, she is undone. Her eye makeup is smudged and her face is blotchy.

My one and only thought is that Francesca sold me out to protect herself with this girl who is not really her friend.

“Where is that fucking bitch,” Greta says.

“Strots?”

“Where the fuck is she.”

“I-I don’t know. Why?”

Greta jabs a finger at me. “She’s gone way too far this time. Way too fucking far.”

My heart pounds. “What are you talking about?”

“You tell her I’m going to settle this. She takes from me, I take from her.”

The door slams shut, and I hear Greta take off. For someone who weighs less than I do, her footfalls are those of a fully grown man, and her fury frightens me.

I lunge for the door, thinking I’ll tell her the truth, that it was me who ratted on her and Nick. I did it, not Strots. I found what I found and I made it all happen. And then when she doesn’t believe me, because no one ever does, I’ll race ahead and warn my roommate, who has to be upstairs with Keisha…