A Breath of Eyre (25 page)
Authors: Eve Marie Mont
“Because she can!” I said. “She knows she won’t get in trouble because you’re all too afraid of her family to punish her. Why won’t you even consider that it could have been Elise? You’re willing to drag Michelle’s name through the mud and ruin the chances for her future, but you’re not—”
“Enough!” Overbrook said, shouting so loudly that even the board members recoiled. “You are treading on very thin ice, young lady. If it turns out that Ms. Dominguez is innocent, I will do what I can to be lenient and to make sure that Michelle is allowed to come back to Lockwood and finish her education here. But consider this. Ms. Fairchild’s family is very generous to the school. They make it possible for you and your roommate to attend Lockwood. I have heard excellent things about you, Ms. Townsend, and if you play your cards right, you have every possibility of getting into an Ivy League school and launching a distinguished career of your own some day. I suggest you think very carefully on all of this and consider whether you really want to bring this damaging and far-fetched testimony to the hearing in April. We have heard what you have to say, and you are dismissed.”
I glanced at Gallagher one more time, hoping he might soften and consider how unfair Overbrook was being, but he dropped his eyes. He knew this was a farce as much as I did. In the end, the rich would always win.
I walked out of the boardroom and into the cold February air. It was five o’clock. Months ago, it would have already been dark at this time, but the sun was still out, reminding me that spring would be here soon.
I was walking briskly back to the dorm hoping not to run into anyone when Mr. Gallagher came up behind me and grabbed my arm. “Emma,” he said. “I’m so sorry about all of that. You must understand—”
I yanked my arm from his grasp. “I understand perfectly.” His gaze fell to the ground with that same enigmatic expression I’d seen before.
“I wanted to ask you about the symposium,” he said. “Given all that’s happened, I hope you’re still planning to enter your essay?”
At first I wasn’t sure how to respond. What was the point in competing against someone like Elise? And yet, not competing seemed like giving up. I had been angry when I heard that Michelle had decided to drop out of the equestrian competition. I would be a hypocrite if I quit the symposium now. “Yes,” I said.
“Good. I hoped that all this”—he pointed back toward Easty Hall—“wouldn’t change anything.”
“It changes everything,” I said. “But I’m still going to compete. I may, however, make a few changes to my essay.”
“Oh?” he said.
“In the draft I gave to you, I say that Jane is a strong role model for women because she forgives Rochester for his failings, but at the same time, refuses to become his lover until he’s redeemed himself. But now I disagree. I don’t think she should have forgiven him at all. How could she go back to Rochester after discovering what he’d done? If she had been a true feminist, she would have looked out for Bertha.” I realized my mind was muddled with all the events of the past few months: witnessing Bertha’s suicide and not being able to stop it, learning the truth about my mother, losing my friendship with Michelle. But I did believe what I’d said about standing up for those who couldn’t stand for themselves.
Mr. Gallagher wore a patronizing expression. “You are young,” he said, “and you haven’t experienced much of the world. I think you’ll find that love does strange things to a person. We forgive much in love. Some day you will understand this.”
I glared at him for a moment, my crush on him officially extinguished forever. How dare he condescend to me just because he was older and had seen more of the world? How dare he imply that I couldn’t possibly understand the complexities of love because I was too young?
Maybe I hadn’t experienced true love yet, but I was only sixteen. I understood love as much as anyone could at my age. At least, I think I was beginning to. And it was Gray Newman, not Mr. Gallagher, who had everything to do with it.
C
HAPTER
25
HAPTER
25
T
he rest of the week was a miserable and agonizing blur as I waited for word about the hearing. I didn’t hold out much hope that my “testimony” would make any difference. Michelle still hadn’t called me back, and I was hurt that I’d gone to all this trouble for her and she still thought I was the bad guy.
he rest of the week was a miserable and agonizing blur as I waited for word about the hearing. I didn’t hold out much hope that my “testimony” would make any difference. Michelle still hadn’t called me back, and I was hurt that I’d gone to all this trouble for her and she still thought I was the bad guy.
That Sunday Gray was coming to take me out to a sushi restaurant in Waverly Falls, and we were finally going to get to finish our game of Poker Polygraph. Of course, with a father who was a fisherman, I’d eaten fish my entire life, but never raw fish. I was a little skeptical, but food was the last thing on my mind that day as I dressed in my favorite sweater—a fake cashmere in a soft violet color—with jeans and black boots. It had snowed overnight, so the campus was covered in a soft blanket of white and the trees looked like they’d been trimmed with lace.
I threw on my long black coat and ran downstairs, startled when I reached the lobby to see that Gray’s hair had been nearly shaved to his skull.
“Wow,” I said. “When did you do that?”
“Last night. The swim team just made Districts. The coach said this is more hydrodynamic.” He ran a hand over his smooth scalp. “Do you hate it?”
I paused a second too long. “No, I just need a minute to get used to it.”
Gray laughed and opened the door for me, and we walked across the quad. His navy Jeep Wrangler was parked in the lot, and I felt a little uncomfortable as I climbed into the passenger seat. Was this a date or just two friends hanging out? I still wasn’t sure.
When we were in the car, Gray lifted his pant leg to show me that the coach had made the team shave their legs, too. He looked sleek and streamlined, like a dolphin. There was something oddly sexy about it.
Waverly Falls was a fifteen-minute drive through country roads, so I sat back in my seat and listened to a music mix Gray had made. It was liberating to leave the gates of Lockwood for a day, to wind down the road away from campus, surrounded by evergreens dusted with snow. Waverly was an old mill town that had been transformed into a quaint and trendy shopping destination. The mill still stood above the river, but it was just a burnt shell of itself, a museum relic that, for some reason, the town had left to rot on the hillside. We drove past the spot where the river was dammed to power the hydroelectric generator, and Gray pulled over to the side of the road and parked.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
He walked around to my side of the Jeep and opened my door. I took his hand briefly then let go as we began walking uphill toward the falls. During dry seasons, people used to picnic on the rocks here and swim in the river. The water is clean, and the stones, smoothed by years of erosion, are striated with shades of beige, copper, pink, and white so they look like marble. A few years ago, a boy drowned when the dam opened unexpectedly, unleashing a surge of water that swept him downstream. That’s when they stopped allowing swimming and built the four-foot stone wall that now separated us from the river.
When we reached the top, the mammoth iron gate that enclosed the hydroelectric plant partially obscured the view of the falls and the sixty-foot drop below. But we could certainly feel its presence. The air here was cool, moistened by spray, and the roar of the falls was almost deafening.
I pointed to a sign that hung on the gate near the drop-off. It said: RIVER LEVELS RISE AND FALL DAILY. STAY AWAY OR YOU WILL DIE.
“Not exactly subtle, is it?” I said. Gray laughed and shook his head. “So why did you want to show me this?”
“Because it’s one of my favorite places,” he said. “It’s sort of peaceful here.”
I scanned the industrial view of the dam and listened to the tumult of water, feeling more anxious than anything else. “How exactly is this peaceful?” I asked, laughing.
He paused for a second. “I can’t think here. It’s too loud. I imagine myself out there, in the thick of all that water and sound, and I can disappear. I come here when I need to get away from everybody.”
“But you brought me here,” I said, teasing him.
“You’re not everybody.” His eyes met mine for one charged moment, then flickered off into the distance. His hand gripped one of the slats of the gate, and I got the same feeling I’d gotten that day on the beach when I thought Gray was about to tell me something. Something important. I wanted him to open up to me, but I wasn’t sure how to reach him. “Come on,” he said, seeming like he was a little disappointed by my reaction to his special place. “Let’s go eat.”
I felt guilty, but his mood lightened as soon as we got into town. The hostess at the restaurant sat us at the sushi bar and brought us a little carafe of hot sake. Gray poured me a small cup but left his empty.
“Aren’t you having any?” I said.
He shook his head. I took a sip and winced.
“You don’t like it?” he said.
“It’s an acquired taste.”
“Like me.” He smiled, and I wondered why one little flash of white teeth could rattle my brain like that.
We studied the menu, ordering a sampling of sushi, sashimi, and rolls. Once the waitress left us, Gray reached his arms across the bar and took my hands in his. I felt an electric shiver flutter through me. “You look really pretty today,” he said, and I rolled my eyes, uncomfortable with flattery. “You realize that rolling your eyes like that only makes you look more adorable.”
“Stop it,” I said.
“Stop what?”
“Complimenting me. I liked it better when you were teasing me. Besides, how can you call me pretty after Elise Fairchild?”
His eyes narrowed like he was angry. “Emma, she may be pretty, but I’m not in love with Elise Fairchild, and I never was. Our friends set us up together, and it worked out for a while because we hung with the same crowd. But she’s proven time and time again that she’s phony and shallow and the complete opposite of you.”
“Then why did you agree to go to the Snow Ball with her?”
He bit the inside of his cheek like he was considering whether to tell me or not. “Don’t get mad,” he said. My eyebrows rose expectantly. “I went with Elise to make you jealous.”
“You what?” I let this sink in and found myself simultaneously annoyed and flattered. “Gray, that’s horrible. Didn’t you consider her feelings at all?”
“To be honest, I didn’t. She doesn’t worry about anyone else’s feelings. That day at the beach, I asked you about the dance to see how you’d react. I thought you might be going with Owen, and the thought made me so jealous that I just blurted out that I was going with Elise.”
“I can’t believe you!”
“Don’t be angry,” he said.
I was angry, but it was hard to stay mad at him when his motivation had been to make me jealous. The waitress came and set down the sushi we’d ordered: tuna, salmon, red snapper, and unagi, which Gray said was just eel. I dutifully tried each one, but the only thing I liked was the pickled ginger.
“Based on our last game of poker,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t notice I wasn’t eating very much, “I get to ask you some questions.”
“Two, I think.”
“Three, you big cheater!”
“I was hoping you were so out of it you wouldn’t remember.”
“Well, I do remember.” He put a huge dollop of wasabi on a piece of sashimi and stuck the entire thing in his mouth. “Stuffing your mouth so you can’t talk won’t work,” I said.
He swallowed dramatically. “All right, ask away.”
“Okay, question number one,” I said. “Who’s your favorite author?”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “That’s a dangerous question.”
“Why?”
“Because my answer to this probably determines whether I get a second date with you.”
“That’s not true,” I said, smiling at his use of the word
date
. “Come on, I’m not going to judge you.”
date
. “Come on, I’m not going to judge you.”
“Girls always judge. You say you won’t, but then I’ll give my answer, and your face will get all weird, and I’ll know you disapprove.”
“Just answer the question,” I said, laughing.
“Okay, fine. Hemingway.”
“Ughhhh,” I groaned.
“See? You’re judging.”
“I’m kidding!” I said. “But what is it with men and Hemingway?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I like the whole code hero thing. Like, in
The Sun Also Rises,
I love that Jake Barnes is this flawed hero who’s so damaged that he can’t connect with people.”
The Sun Also Rises,
I love that Jake Barnes is this flawed hero who’s so damaged that he can’t connect with people.”
“The strong, silent type,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“All right, moving on,” I said. “And you have to tell the truth on this one. No telling me what I want to hear.”
“You want the truth?” he said, standing up from his stool and doing his best Jack Nicholson impression. “You can’t handle the truth!”
I cracked up. “You’re pretty corny, you know that?”
“I know. It’s my big secret.” He sat down.
“I knew you had one. But stalling will get you nowhere. Here’s my question: What do you want to do with your life?”
His mouth fell open, and he leaned back in his stool as far as it would go. “Has my mom been talking to you?” he said.
“No, I’m just curious.”
“Aw, Em,” he said, looking away from me. “I have no idea what I want to do. When I think about it, my stomach starts to hurt. Or maybe that’s just the unagi talking.” He picked up the last piece of eel with his chopsticks and wriggled it in front of me.
“Can you at least try to answer the question?”
“Okay,” he said. “My dad wants me to go to Northeastern for business so I can take over All Naturals when I graduate. But when I think about doing that for the rest of my life, I want to kill myself. I used to want to study criminal justice at BU, but I don’t think my grades are good enough to get in. I screwed up my freshman and sophomore years, and my GPA is pretty pathetic. I’ve thought about joining the military, but I’m not sure I want to do that right now, so ... I don’t know. I feel kind of aimless. I wish I had it all figured out like you.”
“Believe me, I don’t have it all figured out. But I know that I don’t want you to join the military,” I said, looking down at the bar.
“Why not?” He was watching me intently, waiting for my answer. I wanted to say something smart and political, like I was a pacifist or something. But the only reason I had at the moment was that I didn’t want him to go far away.
“It seems dangerous,” I said.
“It is dangerous. That’s the point.”
“You mean you want to put yourself in harm’s way?”
“Kind of,” he said.
“Why?”
We were no longer just joking around; I seemed to have opened some old wound. “I wouldn’t mind dying if it meant saving someone else’s life,” he said. “Sometimes I feel like I have to do something dangerous, or I’ll go crazy.” He looked past me and out the window, and I was sort of sorry I’d brought the subject up. His eyes had gone all distant and sad. “Anyway,” he said, “enough about that. What’s your third question?”
For the moment, I couldn’t remember what my third question was going to be. Before I could formulate my thoughts, I heard myself asking, “Did you sleep with Elise?” I was glad Gray didn’t have food in his mouth because I think he would have spat it at me. Suddenly, I didn’t want to know the answer.
“You know what?” I said, shaking my head. “Never mind. That was rude. I’ll ask something else—”
“No, it’s okay.”
“No, really, Gray. You don’t have to—”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes. I did. Sleep with Elise.”
“Oh.”
A surge of jealousy burned through me. What had I expected? That Gray Newman was a saint? That he was the only red-blooded eighteen-year-old in the world who could say no to Elise Fairchild?
“You’ve gone all quiet on me,” he said, his head dipping to study my face.
“Hmm?” I couldn’t look at him.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I was the one who asked.”
“We did go out for six months, Em.”
“I know. There’s nothing wrong with it. I’m just ...” I started compulsively straightening up our plates and glasses for the waitress. Gray stilled my hand.
“Hey,” he said. “Let’s not talk about Elise. She’s out of my life. I want to talk about you. This day is about us. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” I was kind of sulking.
“Let’s go shopping,” he suggested.
“What, you think shopping can heal a girl’s wounds?” I said, insulted.
“No, I just think it’ll be fun.”
He paid our check, and we left the restaurant. I was still stewing a bit. The image of Gray and Elise physically entwined made me ill. We strolled down the street and passed an upscale dress shop. Gray threw his arm around my shoulder and steered me inside.
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