She nods, like we’ve formed a blood pact and if I violate the agreement, I’m subject to a lifetime library ban. Taking strength from the banality of our exchange, I put my head down.
And it’s “do not try to reshelve the film,” I think to myself when I’m finally left alone. And the reels are in a drawer, not on a shelf.
After I make sure I’ve followed the rules more correctly than her grammar does, I go back up to the first floor via the stairs. The lady with the roots showing is at the front desk, but she is on the phone, taking notes on whatever conversation is occurring. I don’t know where her “try and” colleague is.
I almost walk by the newspaper display, but I stop.
The local paper is the fourth in the lineup, going from left to right, behind the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today. As I lift the rod it’s bifurcated on, I wonder if I’ll be allowed to “reshelve” it when I’m finished.
There’s a big table with six chairs around it right next to me, clearly provided so that people can do what I do as I lay out the folio on its dowel. The front page is filled with the known details of the murder thus far, and there are plenty of photographs. The first is a shot of the river behind Tellmer, but it’s a stock photo, from the Ambrose admissions pamphlet. Another image, of the school gates with all the reporters and news trucks, is a fresh one, however, and so is that of the police chief at a microphone, addressing the press at the station house next door. The last is a picture of Mr. Stanhope looking more enraged than full of grief as he walks out of the headmaster’s house. This one was clearly taken with a serious telephoto lens from the iron fence, as the press is not allowed on the school’s private property.
As my eyes go back and forth over the newsprint, I figure out how Greta got ahold of my essay. The reporter states that Mr. Stanhope has served on the St. Ambrose admissions committee for the last decade, and in this capacity, it is noted, he has personally reviewed the applications of every single student who has matriculated into the school.
Which means he had to have a copy of my essay somewhere. And Greta went home over Columbus Day weekend. She must have gone through his files in some kind of study or office, found it, and gotten her bright idea.
Given all the other things that have happened, the elucidation of this now very minor detail barely registers, and I suddenly remember the first time I saw the Stanhopes on move-in day. I can picture so clearly that Mercedes with its matching hubcaps, and Greta’s mom with her every hair in place, and the way Mr. Stanhope looked at my mother.
And then that smile Greta gave me.
I have no sense of satisfaction that all that is ruined now. Truly. I’m not that kind of monster, to be happy a family is destroyed.
Even if that daughter of theirs is a total nightmare.
Was, I mean.
Oh, Greta, I think to myself. What did you say to Nick Hollis about that baby you were carrying?
chapter THIRTY-TWO
It is night now. The dorm is quieting down as everyone tries to get their homework done. I wonder if any of the other girls are having the same trouble concentrating that I am. What I’m sure of is that I’m glad there are so many people around me. That music is playing. That the walls are thin enough that I can hear the occasional volley of chatter.
I don’t want to be alone. Outside the bank of windows in front of me, the darkness of eight p.m. on a mid-October evening makes me feel like total and complete isolation is only an eyeblink away.
I am obsessing over fact patterns and none of them pertain to the content of the American history book I’m supposed to be studying. I’m thinking about Mountain Day, about Francesca looking as if she had been in a fight. She hadn’t been crying afterward. She had been mad. Viciously so. I think of her role in the distribution of my essay. I think of her being left in the rain when Greta got into Nick’s Porsche.
What if Francesca knew about the pregnancy? What if she figured it out, based on, say, a pattern of throwing up that changed on Greta’s part, vomiting that did not, as of late, have to do with an eating disorder, but with morning sickness.
Francesca strikes me as the kind of person who would notice this.
And now I think of what she said about her hometown honey, Mark, and his extracurricular activities with her supposed best friend over the summer.
“No, no,” I say out loud. “That’s crazy.”
Maybe it’s someone from outside Ambrose entirely, all these what-ifs and if-thens complete bullshit. Maybe it was a drifter and a case of wrong place/wrong time.
Or a serial killer getting started.
As my head spins and spins, I wish I had never gotten involved in any of this sleuthing stuff. It’s food for the caged beast of my illness, the possibilities and permutations raw meat dangled just outside of the bars, enticing and somewhat necessary for its survival.
Just as I look back down at my textbook, Strots comes into our room. She smells like cigarettes and fresh air, which are not as mutually exclusive as one might think.
“Hey.” She takes her field hockey windbreaker off and hangs it in her closet. “Man, it’s getting cold out there. You hear the latest about the murder?”
Yes, in the echo chamber of my skull. All the time. “No?”
“They called Francesca down to the police station.” Strots sits on her bed with a bounce. Her cheeks are flushed from the chill and she rubs her nose like it’s running now that she’s in the warmth of the dorm. “Someone saw her leave with the cops.”
I try to seem casual. “What are they asking her about?”
Strots gives me a flat look. “Her plans for Christmas. What do you think?”
“Did they ask Stacia down, too?”
“I don’t know. They probably will, though. They’ve got their ass in a crack until they find out who did this.”
After Strots kicks off her shoes, she bends down and drags a fresh six-pack of Coke out from under her mattress. She pulls one of the plastic bottles free of the plastic loops.
“You want?” she asks me, holding it forward.
“I can’t sleep as it is.”
There’s a hiss as Strots cracks the top of the soda. “That’s not good for you, right?”
What? Oh, my bipolar.
“No, it isn’t. But things have been so crazy.”
“Too right.” Strots settles back against the wall and looks at the ceiling as she crosses her legs at the ankles. “I just had to go out and clear my head. I couldn’t stand to be in this dorm for one more goddamn second.”
I have a feeling she’s thinking about Keisha as she stares at the third floor.
Abruptly, she sits up properly, like she’s trying to change her thought pattern by altering her posture. “They got rid of the crime scene tape, by the way. Down by the river, at the head of the trail.”
She takes a sip and I think about the number of times we’ve done this, her having a nightly Coke and me wishing I was like her. I’m doing that again now, quietly envying her confidence in the midst of such chaotic uncertainty. Of course, we’ve never had murder as a topic of conversation before, not that she’s doing much talking outside of her news report. She’s like that, though. She doesn’t deal in hypotheticals, whereas I am drowning in them. Halfway between us, on the median line of our room, is a perfectly normal person, someone who’s aware of the hidden contours of situations, and willing to discuss them, but who’s nonetheless able to stay focused on the concrete and the known of the given fact pattern.