I FOUND THIS BIG OLD EASY chair in the library and cracked open the The Bacchae for the quiz the next day. My calculus tutor was at another table, figuring out the dimensions of the universe. A few other kids sat at a long wooden table, reading beneath bankers’ lamps, but for the most part, the huge room was empty.
The random percussion of steam radiators provided a lulling soundtrack. You could put that in a song, I thought. I could hear the crackle of a fireplace somewhere. For once, I felt like I could have been anywhere except Oakhurst Hall: some really cool living room from a movie or something.
Once Simon had explained the play and I started to figure out how to read the words, I thought it was a pretty cool story. I was starting to get into ancient Greece. Any civilization that liked sports and wine couldn’t be all bad—except that, like Bruno said, Greece ended in civil war and brought itself down . . .
I closed my eyes, and I was just sort of melting into the chair . . .
. . . while my brain was trying out a few more thoughts before I fell asleep . . . like . . .
. . . what Sam said . . . no matter where you go, there . . .
. . . and then I woke up with a start. I’d dozed off. I was cold, and the place was completely empty. I walked back to the dorm. Ward was waiting outside the door.
By now I’d figured out that The Hall had three kinds of faculty: the Jarvis ones trying to help you out by sharing what they’d learned in life, the teachers who were treading water until they summoned enough guts to find a life, and the cops who’d decided to earn their chops by giving out enough tickets that someday they could wear a head-of-school bow tie at a private day school in Tulsa.
I’d blown curfew by a good fifteen minutes. And the cop was waiting outside Screwville. When I told Ward I’d been in the library, it sounded completely lame, even though it was the truth. I guess that happens a lot. But I knew I couldn’t have come up with a lie that worked, not with the way he was looking at me.
“The library is closed, Lefferts.” Even though it was cold, beads of sweat on his half-bald head caught the light from a lamppost. He was totally getting off on this.
“But it wasn’t,” I said. “I was reading my history homework, and I fell asleep, and nobody else was there. So I left. Hey, I ran back here, sir.” Okay, slight exaggeration.
“Every minute you waste bullshitting, son,” said Ward, “is another minute you’re late.”
“I’m not lying,” I said, “sir.”
Ward daggered me in the eye. “Lefferts, I was boarding in sixth grade. I know the game. You think you can beat the house. But you’re messing with something bigger than you think. This place has been around for centuries, and it’ll be here long after you’re gone.” He paused for a really stupid dramatic effect. Then he actually pointed a finger in my face and said, “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, boy.”
Damned if I was going to get punished for doing my goddamned homework. “Mr. Ward, I was just studying history,” I said. “I was reading The Bacchae—and that’s just what the play is about—somebody trying to bust up a society—”
“That’s good, Jack,” snapped Ward. He was about to explode. “I suggest you study it harder. Because history tells us that places like Oakhurst Hall are the places that keep the history of Western civilization going. Without us, everything falls apart. Now, get your butt into your room.”
I slogged upstairs. Western civilization. What was that? The history of Wyoming? The history of honkies?
I threw my pack against the wall of the room. Josh was lying on his bed reading a magazine with Eddie van Halen on the cover.
“Explain, guitar man,” I said. “I haven’t been caught for breaking lots of major rules. And then I get busted for studying.”
He laughed. “Welcome to life through the looking glass.” Then he went back to the magazine and added, as if it didn’t matter, “Oh, and I passed your message on to Simon and Danny. Seems like we’re all in for sobriety.”
“Seriously?”
“But, man, I gotta warn you—I’m not real good at reality.”
• • •
After English I wanted to tell Caroline the good news, but I could tell that she wasn’t in the mood. Booth—her Ward—had been riding her too. “In time trials, she was all over me, even though I went from seventh to fifth,” she said. “I’m not ‘social’ enough. She senses an ‘attitude’ problem. She’s right: it’s her attitude that’s a problem. She’s totally fake. I guess I have to start buying into the Beauty-Industrial Complex. I’m supposed to wear some bra that costs five times what it’s supposed to? Who could possibly care what my bra looks like?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said.
Damn!
But she just smiled that shy smile, and elbowed me, and blushed. And suddenly the guy who’d ever wasted a thought about Lucy and her legs vanished into thin air.
“. . . just so hypocritical. I mean, girls are supposed to be, like, equal and strong now, right? No more glass ceiling! But then everyone still tells us what we have to look like, and we believe them. It’s like girls are expected to be, I don’t know, good at . . . everything now . . . which makes it hard to be . . . anything.”
“I think you’re a lot of things,” I said. “And fake isn’t one of them.”
“Sorry. I’ll chill out. And, hey, I made the symphony. Third flute.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Cool! So what are they playing for the Thanksgiving concert?”
“Beethoven’s Fifth. Boring and easy. But I guess they don’t want to take any chances if it’s really going to be on TV. Apparently it might be more than local cable access. Like maybe out of Boston. I guess Carlton’s got some contacts. And were you ever right about Hopper. What a pompous ass. I was supposed to be eternally grateful when he told me I’d made the team.”
As we walked up the music building steps, I suddenly felt Caroline’s hand touch mine, just a brush. In books, moments like that are always described as some sort of zap of current, but for me, it was just a warm rush, all over.
I glanced down to see if she was trying to put her hand in mine. But she’d shoved it back into the pouch of her sweatshirt.
After we’d gone inside, I turned around and walked right back outside. I was feeling too good to let Hopper bring me back to earth. I went for a walk, and the next thing I knew, I was down on the thirds soccer field, where Alex and I were scheduled to fleece Yacht Boy the next day after real practice—followed, I hoped, by another calculus lesson from my private tutor.
Surrounded by woods, at the foot of the mountain, how could it be that, all the way down here, I could still smell Caroline Callahan’s hair?