LAUSANNE—June 1998
Kersti wakes up with the sun shining directly in her eyes. There are noises outside her door, which is probably what woke her. Banging, yelling. She sits up and waits. She hears someone say her name. Where’s Kersti? Is she in her room?
And then she hears wailing in the background. She jumps out of bed just as someone throws open the door. It’s Mme. Hamidou. Her face is as white as the bedsheets, her eyes swollen and ringed with red. She comes to Kersti and takes both Kersti’s hands in hers. Her body is trembling violently. Kersti can feel it just holding her hands. Hamidou can hardly look her in the eyes.
“What is it?” Kersti whispers, expecting to be told her parents are dead.
“It’s Cressida,” she says softly.
“What?”
“Something’s happened—”
“What?” Kersti starts shaking. Her heart is in her throat, pulsating.
“She fell.”
“Fell?” Kersti is confused. “Where?”
“From her balcony.”
“Is she alive?” Kersti cries, trying to understand if it’s a matter of broken legs or a broken back or—
“Yes, but it doesn’t look good,” Hamidou says, her voice quivering. “She . . . if she lives, I don’t know if she’ll ever be the same.”
If she lives?
Kersti collapses on the edge of her bed, struggling to breathe. She can’t find her voice to ask more questions. Mme. Hamidou must be in her own private hell—Cressida is like her daughter. Fell from her balcony on the fourth floor.
Everything comes rushing into Kersti’s mind at once, a random blur. What time did Cressida get home last night? Is she alive? How the hell did she fall over the railing?
“Did she jump?” Kersti asks Hamidou, suddenly remembering something Cressida said the night Noa’s boyfriend tried to kill himself. Anyone who doesn’t die didn’t really mean to.
“Of course not,” Hamidou responds, horrified.
Kersti has to see. She runs from her room, ignoring Hamidou’s imploring screams for her to come back; ignoring the other Huber House girls, who are huddled together on every floor, some crying, others shell-shocked. Lille, Alison, Nastia, Komiko, Angela. She notices Mrs. Fithern, sobbing quietly into her hands in the staff lounge on the second floor. Kersti races downstairs to the main floor, out the front door, and around back, where Cressida would have landed. Half-expecting to find her there, her beautiful body broken, mangled. But Cressida is gone. Her body has been removed and all that’s left is her blood, splattered like red graffiti on the cement. The police are clustered around the spot where she landed.
Mme. Harzenmoser and M. Bueche must have taken care of everything before they woke the students, just like they did with the vandalized statue twenty years ago. They called the ambulance, the police, the house supervisors.
“Kersti!” Hamidou is running toward her. “Come here, mon amour,” she cries, enveloping Kersti in her thin arm and leading her away. “You shouldn’t see this.”
“Where is she?” Kersti manages, her voice strangled.
“They’ve taken her to the hospital,” Hamidou says, rubbing Kersti’s back.
Kerst breaks away and heads back to Huber. She runs up the stairs and locks herself in a stall in the third-floor bathroom. Why didn’t she go to Cressida last night at dinner when she had that dread feeling in her gut? Why didn’t she go over to her and hug her and tell her it would be okay? Why didn’t she tell her she loved her? She knew Cressida was troubled. In trouble. She could see it in her face, in the grim set of her mouth and the melancholy look in her eyes. Instead, Kersti did nothing.
She just went off to her volleyball tournament without saying a word, without offering a shred of comfort to her. Why hadn’t she hugged her at least? And then, when she got back to school and saw Cressida leaving campus to go meet Magnus, she was resentful, spiteful. She assumed the worst about why Cressida hadn’t shown her the ledger. She ransacked Cressida’s room looking for it and then lay in her bed all night contemplating life without Cressida; how that might be a good thing for her.
If only she had called out to her from the balcony and begged her to come back. Why didn’t she? Cressida might have come back. For Kersti, she might have.
Kersti pulls her knees tight into her chest. She feels hollow inside. Maybe this is partly her fault. All her wishing that Cressida would get what was coming to her—a consequence, some disciplinary action, a punishment of any kind—has finally come to fruition. Wasn’t she always secretly hoping Cressida would get in trouble just once, to balance things out? Wouldn’t that have meant the world was just a little bit fair?
Kersti has always wanted life to be fair. She thought Cressida having to pay for even one of her transgressions would make it so; would appease her. How many times had she silently, secretly wished for her best friend to be taught a lesson?
She never meant for something like this to happen. She never wanted her prayers to be answered in such an irrevocable, cataclysmic way. If Cressida dies, she’ll never forgive herself.
Someone bangs on the door. “Kersti? Ouvre la porte!” It’s Hamidou.
“Is she still alive?” Kersti wants to know.
“They’re doing everything they can to save her.”
Kersti knows it’s a lie. Cressida can’t be saved.