Wherefore art Thou, Brain?
“Okay, take these stairs to the third floor and hang a left,” Camille was saying minutes later in the hallway as she sketched a rough map on the back of her Dean & Deluca napkin. “Avoid the temptation to write on the Welcome Back Wall”—she drew an X over its location in the east wing—“it’s controlled by the Student Senate, and who cares about them? And never use the bathroom at the end of the hall.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Amory said with a shudder. “Jenna Davidson used to Nair her mustache in there last year, and let’s just say the scent has lingered.”
I laughed, remembering how poor Jenna had had that mustache problem since the fourth grade at Miss Mallards. It was cool how quickly I was bonding with Camille’s friends—but it also made me a little nervous to realize that as soon as Camille was done with her napkin mapmaking, she and Amory would scoot off to gym together, and I’d be left to roam the halls on the way to first period English all by myself.
Camille put the finishing touches on the map, sticking her tongue out as she drew, just like she’d done ever since we were swapping Bratz coloring books back in the day.
“Voilà!” she said, handing over her masterpiece, which had dotted lines to take me through my classes and which showed me where to meet her and the other girls in the gym after school for the Activities Fair.
“Thanks again,” I said, giving both girls air-kisses. “Wish me luck!”
“Naturals like you don’t need luck,” Camille said as the two of them disappeared around the corner.
I followed the route to my first class, breathing through my mouth as I walked past the bathroom, and stepped inside a brightly lit room looking out over Madison Avenue. The first thing I noticed was that, unlike every classroom back at Stuy, these walls were not plastered with posters of cheesy motivational quotes set against snowy mountaintops. Here the walls were tastefully decorated with framed quotations from famous works of literature—some of which I recognized, many more of which I didn’t.
There was no “third table” to sit at, just a cluster of desks, and I wanted to sit somewhere not too close to the front. I spotted an open seat in the middle of the room and moved toward it. I had just plopped down when I noticed Mattie Hendricks taking out her notebook to my left.
The last time I’d seen Mattie was in Nevis, and I remembered being happy to watch her let loose at a couple of the parties. I’d always liked Mattie, even though some of the girls called her “The Barker” behind her back. So what if she had a slightly awkward and badly timed laugh? She was sweet. Today she was wearing her standard issue Mattie uniform: a white Gap T-shirt and the same straight leg jeans she’d had since middle school.
“Hey, Mattie,” I said, hanging the strap of my bag over the back of my seat.
“Flan!” she called with her usual enthusiasm. “I heard you were coming back to private school, but now that you’re here, I can’t believe it. This place needs you!” Her barking laugh rang out across the room.
I chuckled with Mattie to be nice, even though nothing funny had happened. I was also looking around the room to get a feel for the other girls in the class. They didn’t look too scary. Actually, they looked pretty normal, just trying to squeeze in one last text message or nail file session before the bell rang. I’d been hoping Olivia might be in my class. We’d had English together back at Miss Mallards, and our notebooks had been filled with more games of Would You Rather than notes on Edgar Allan Poe.
“So, what’s the scoop on freshman English here?” I asked Mattie.
“Oh, it’s a breeze,” she said, waving her hand at me. “You’ll totally be fine. You like Shakespeare, right?”
“Uh, sure. ‘To be or not to be,’” I stammered, trying to remember what little I knew of Shakespeare from Miss Mallards, although I didn’t actually know where I’d pulled the reference from.
“Oh, we’ve already done Hamlet. I think we’re picking up with The Merchant of Venice, even though Romeo and Juliet is totally my favorite. I’m such a romantic,” she said, breaking out the bark-laugh for the second time. “Speaking of romance, are you going to go to the pizza party tonight with the Dalton boys?”
“Oh,” I said, trying to figure out how to field this one. I hadn’t had time to hear Camille’s list of social suicide no-no’s, but if I had, I would guess that The Barker would be near the top. But as I looked at Mattie’s big grin and eagerly clasped hands, I found myself nodding. Social demarcations be damned, right? I hadn’t come back to Thoney to be snotty, and I could use all the friends I could get. “Sure,” I found myself telling Mattie, “I’ll be there. You should head over for some pizza, too.”
“Oh, I really wish I could, but I have to dog-sit for my neighbor’s cockapoo tonight,” Mattie said, laughing so loudly that I could feel the rest of my new classmates staring at us both.
And of course, at that moment, Kennedy paraded in with Willa in a cloud of Betsey Johnson perfume. Both of them set down their corresponding Marc Jacobs leather satchels, then turned toward Mattie and me with correspondingly raised eyebrows. Somehow the room seemed quieter now that they were there, and each of my classmates was giving Kennedy and Willa the type of once-over glance that I usually reserved for models at Fashion Week.
If Kennedy noticed the attention, she didn’t show it. Instead, she merely cocked her head at me and said, “So great that you two BFFs picked up right where you left off. Care to share what’s so hilarious?” Her voice was sickeningly fake. “Or is it an inside joke that only you two could possibly find funny?”
But before I even had a chance to flub my second Kennedy interaction of the day, in walked a pencil-thin man in a tweed coat and boxy glasses who I guessed was Mr. Zimmer.
“Welcome back, everyone,” he said, taking a sip of coffee before leaning against his desk. “And welcome especially to our new student”—he looked down at his notes—“Flan Flood.” When he looked up he scanned the room, saw my unfamiliar face, and gave me a warm smile. “Joining us from Stuyvesant, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, blushing for no reason and feeling the whole room’s eyes on me.
“And what were you studying at Stuyvesant?” he asked.
My brain went totally dead as I tried to remember a single thing I’d done to get that A on my English final last semester.
“Um,” I said, fiddling with the buttons on my blazer. “We just read Animal Farm?” I felt my voice rise up in a question, and I wanted to say something else to not sound like such a nervous mute. “I really liked the way George Orwell satirizes communism.”
Mr. Zimmer nodded. “I do, too. You’ll find, however, that the curriculum at Thoney is not quite as progressive as your old school’s. We’re still stuck in the sixteenth century with Shakespeare. We shall begin this semester with The Merchant of Venice. Everyone open the paperback you picked up as you came into class.”
I looked around at the other twenty girls in the class, who all seemed to have the book in their hands. Very quietly, I got up and went to the front door to get the book while everyone watched.
English had always been one of my favorite subjects, and even if the Thoney curriculum was going to be a total switching of gears from what we’d been reading at Stuy, I figured I could handle it. After all, Mattie had said the class was a breeze, right? So why was I getting so flustered?
“Who would like to read the beginning of Act One?” Mr. Zimmer asked.
As one of the nail filing girls cleared her throat and began to read, I had to feel impressed by how assured she sounded plowing through the Shakespearean verse. But by the time I finally found where we were on the page, she was already reading the last line.
“Thank you, Maya. Very nice,” Mr. Zimmer said. “Last semester, we discussed the purpose of an opening act, how to see it as an introduction that sets the proverbial stage for what’s to come in the rest of the play. With that in mind, how can we make sense of this particular passage?”
Whoa. Mr. Zimmer might as well have been talking in Shakespearean English. I was slinking down in my seat and praying that he wouldn’t call on me when I realized, to my surprise and slight horror, that he wouldn’t have to call on me. Half the class had their hands raised to answer.
Was I the only one who was lost?
As Mattie and even Kennedy were called on to answer Mr. Zimmer’s questions, I realized:Yes, apparently I was the only one who didn’t know exactly what was going on. I mean, I knew the gist of The Merchant of Venice, but that was mostly because I’d seen SBB’s modern retelling, Loan Shark of Venice Beach. But all I’d heard for months was how hot her kissing scene with Penn DiMontagne had been, and since none of that was happening in Act One of the actual play, I had very little to add to the discussion going on in class.
Mr. Zimmer continued, “Now, who can tell me about the agreement that Antonio and Bassanio come to by the end of Act One? Flan, would you like to weigh in?”
I gulped. It sounded like an easy question. But with the whole class’s focus suddenly shifted toward me, all I could think about was SBB lamenting how she and Penn never could quite recapture their passion off-screen.
I tried to block the image of the two of them making out in that one scene on the boardwalk so I could look at Mr. Zimmer and respond like a capable, intelligent girl. But I just kept seeing the way Penn brushed his blond hair out of his eyes before he leaned in to kiss SBB. After thirty painful seconds of dawdling, the only answer I could come up with was a very timid “Um …”
“Hmm,” Mr. Zimmer said. “Someone else, then?”
Without missing a beat, Willa jumped in. “‘Try what my credit can in Venice do,’” she recited from memory. “He wants to use Antonio’s street cred for collateral. It’s right here on the page,” she said, shrugging carelessly in her baby blue cashmere shrug.
“Mmm. Yes, excellent, Willa,” Mr. Zimmer said.
Street cred? Excellent? I wondered whether everyone in this school was drinking the “Bow down to Kennedy and Willa” Kool-Aid. Still, watching Willa blow off the question as utterly obvious, I felt like the class über-dunce. Why had I totally choked?
I dropped my eyes into my book and wished I were anywhere but here. I ran my eyes over the words another time, but the language was still swimming around in my head. All I wanted was to catch one phrase that made any sort of sense.
Just then, Mattie slyly dropped a folded sheet of paper on my desk.
TO FLAN, it said on the outside.
What was this? A pity note from The Barker? That would be a great way to start out the semester. Surely, Camille would have a rule against accepting this. But when I opened up the paper, I saw that the note wasn’t from Mattie at all—what was written on the inside was far worse than anything Mattie could have thought of. But here, finally, were words I actually understood.
YOUR PERSONAL ACT ONE IS LOOKING A LITTLE TRAGIC. PERHAPS IT’S TIME TO GET THEE TO A TUTOR.—XOXO, KENNEDY