A Breath of Eyre (6 page)

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Authors: Eve Marie Mont

BOOK: A Breath of Eyre
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C
HAPTER
5
O
n Halloween, Gallagher took us to the library to do some research for our projects. Everyone was restless and anxious because we knew there were only fifty minutes separating us from a weekend of Halloween festivities. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees seemingly overnight. We all clutched our jackets around us as we made our way to Old Campus, dry leaves scudding across the pathways and crunching beneath our feet.
We followed Gallagher up the massive oak staircase and into the main hall of the library, feeling dwarfed by the tall mullioned windows that lined the walls. Michelle and I claimed a long table by the windows, where we spread out our books and notes so you could barely see the surface. I pulled out my notebooks and articles and began sifting through them, trying to find a good place to begin. As Michelle searched the stacks, Gallagher called me to his table to conference about my paper.
I approached him like Dorothy making her way down the corridor to see the great and powerful Oz. I’d been so busy these last few weeks that I hadn’t been able to finish reading
Jane Eyre
. I think a part of me was reluctant to finish because I’d stopped reading at such a high point. Jane had just agreed to marry Rochester despite their vast difference in age and position, and I almost wished the book could end right there. The fact that there were still a hundred pages left made me nervous.
I sat down across from Gallagher, catching a faint whiff of his evergreen cologne. My palms began to sweat, and my tongue dried up.
“Jane Eyre,”
he said, a sigh in his voice. “Did you know it was one of my favorites?” His eyes were hooded, lovely and deep. My chest grew tight. “It’s achingly romantic, isn’t it?” All I could do was nod.
The book
was
achingly romantic. I got a pang in my chest just thinking about it. Briefly I recalled the scenes in which Jane and Rochester got to know each other, their chemistry palpable, their dialogue sizzling. But as I stared across at Mr. Gallagher, willing my tongue to speak, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, let alone something witty and charming that would make him love me forever.
But what if he saw beyond my awkwardness and knew what was in my heart? What if our age difference didn’t matter to him? Nor the fact that he was my teacher? Rochester had been Jane’s employer, and that hadn’t kept them apart. What if Mr. Gallagher returned my feelings but couldn’t express them because, well, because it was illegal?
God, I was such an idiot.
“So, Ms. Townsend,” Mr. Gallagher said, ripping me out of my foolish daydream. “Tell me more about your thesis.”
With a nervous bubble in my throat, I explained that I wanted to do a feminist interpretation of
Jane Eyre,
showing how Jane was a role model for Victorian women. I quickly ran through some of the reasons: she was determined and self-sufficient, she never used beauty or sexuality to gain favor, she made her decisions based on moral principles even when they went against her own desires. I stopped talking and waited for him to say something, feeling his eyes appraise me in a way that made my heart pound.
“That sounds promising,” he said, “if a little safe.” My heart sank. So much for undeniable chemistry. “Emma, you’re one of the best writers in this class. But I’d really like you to work on your voice.”
Great,
I thought,
he thinks I sound like a cartoon rodent, too.
“By voice, I mean that intangible quality that makes a person’s writing come alive. When the reader feels like the writer is speaking directly to him. Last year, your papers were a bit ... conventional. Don’t get me wrong, they were well-written, organized, and full of sophisticated ideas and insights. But you need more confidence and passion. I want you to own every sentence.”
I knew what he was talking about. It was what I loved about Jane. She spoke her mind with such self-assurance and conviction. Mr. Gallagher’s eyes lingered on mine a moment too long, and prickles of heat erupted along my neck and face. “I do hope you’ll consider submitting your paper to the symposium,” he added.
“I will. If it’s any good,” I said. He smiled as if this were a foregone conclusion, and I walked away, feeling the tremendous pressure that comes with being told you are good at something.
When I got back to the table, I tried sorting out my materials amid the mess we had made. That’s when I noticed my journal was missing. I’d stupidly left it sitting out with my other notebooks. I dashed to the stacks to see if Michelle had inadvertently picked it up.
“Are you sure you had it with you?” she said.
“I always have it with me.”
“You think someone took it?” she asked, and I shrugged helplessly. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”
“Find what?” I heard a voice say from over by the circulation desk. “Are you looking for this?” Elise stood with her friends gathered around her, holding my journal in her hands like a trophy. My mouth fell, and the acid in my stomach began to roil. “Hey everybody, did you know Michelle was a poet? And if you all gather round, I’ll read you some of the highlights,” she said, flipping to a page she’d already marked.
The other girls clapped and snickered and fawned. I was about to say something, to claim the journal as my own, when Michelle grabbed my arm and squeezed. Her eyes blared a warning. Before I could act, Elise was reading my poem in her most practiced silky voice. She read the final lines slowly, tauntingly: “‘The golden rule we soon shall spurn, until this lesson you do learn—those who burn us soon will burn.’” I felt as though all the clothes had been stripped from my body. “That sounds like a threat, don’t you think, Mr. Gallagher?”
Mr. Gallagher came over, wondering what all the commotion was about. “What sounds like a threat, Ms. Fairchild?”
“Michelle Dominguez seems to be making threats against the student body in her journal. And look, she’s even written a poem about you!”
Oh my God. Elise had read the sonnet about Gallagher. I wanted the floor to swallow me whole. Either that, or for Elise’s head to spontaneously combust. Gallagher approached Elise and took the journal from her. Fear and humiliation took over my body. “Ms. Fairchild, that’s enough for today,” he said. “Now why don’t you all go back to the dorms?”
“But Mr. Gallagher, don’t you care that—?”
“Ms. Fairchild, go now before I change my mind.” His voice was stern, his expression grim.
“Fine,” she said. “I was just trying to help.” She flipped her hair and gathered her books from the table, giving us her patented malicious grin. “Trick or treat,” she said to us just before leaving.
I glanced at Michelle, whose face was oddly devoid of expression. After everyone else had gone, Gallagher went from table to table, shoving in chairs and making a terrible racket. I sat down at the table with Michelle and bit my lip. She still had that vacant look in her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have told everyone it was mine.”
“I didn’t want you to,” Michelle said. “Why do you think I grabbed your arm?”
“But, Michelle—”
“I’m serious, Emma. Don’t make your life miserable over this. It’s no big deal.”
When he had restored relative order, Gallagher took a seat next to Michelle and closed his eyes, his lashes leaving long shadows on his cheeks. He laid the journal in front of her, still open to the page that held my sonnet.
“What’s all this about?” he said.
“If you haven’t noticed,” Michelle said, “Elise doesn’t like me very much. She stole my journal so she could humiliate me.”
“Listen,” he said. “I know Elise did this to embarrass you, and it was very wrong of her. But I’m going to ask you not to retaliate.”
“Revenge isn’t my style, Mr. Gallagher.”
“The poem seems to imply otherwise.”
“It’s just a poem. It’s not real.”
He sighed, looking exasperated. A thick lock of hair fell onto his forehead. “It’s just, Elise Fairchild ...”
We both knew what he wanted to say. Elise Fairchild was big money. He was powerless to punish her. And even if he did, she’d have her father’s cavalry of lawyers here in a heartbeat, rescinding thousands of dollars of endowment money that funded the very scholarships we had.
“Those girls will always be poison because they’ve been given everything they’ve ever wanted,” he said. “You two have had to work for what you’ve gotten. Elise is threatened by that. You’ve earned your spot. Elise bought hers. Does that make any sense?” We nodded. “I hope you two can put this behind you and manage to have a happy Halloween, despite it all.”
“Thanks, Mr. Gallagher,” Michelle said. He smiled faintly, and Michelle and I got up and headed for the stairs.
I was speechless. Michelle was the most courageous person I’d ever met. I envied her ability to stand there and take the consequences for a poem I had written. Why hadn’t I said something? Done something? Sometimes it felt like I was sleepwalking through life, reading lines from a script instead of making conscious choices. I wanted to be strong like her.
“Michelle—” I began to say as we came out into the cool October air.
“I don’t walk to talk about it, okay?” she said, passing the journal to me. “Keep that thing under lock and key from now on.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She shook her head. I thought she was too angry to respond, but then she blurted, “Let’s do something, for God’s sake!”
“What do you mean?”
“Go somewhere. Live a little. If I don’t get out of this place, I’m going to explode.”
“But where do you want to go?” I asked.
She got a mad gleam in her eye and exclaimed, “Braeburn!”
C
HAPTER
6
A
ll the way back to the dorms, I tried to talk Michelle out of sneaking to Braeburn, but I felt like I owed her something.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said. “Owen told me Braeburn’s having a big bonfire tonight.”
“Really? You think they’ll have a drum circle and make us tie-dye our clothes?”
“At this point, I don’t care if they sing ‘Hare Krishna’ and dreadlock my hair. I need to get away from these Lockwood bitches. And let’s wear costumes. Get out of our own skins for a change. It’s Halloween!” Her mood was suddenly effervescent, and I found myself won over by her enthusiasm.
We rummaged through our closets in search of costumes, but I couldn’t find anything promising, just boring sweaters, faded jeans, and bland T-shirts. Michelle emerged from her closet with a ruffled red blouse and a pair of red leggings. “Sexy devil,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Slutty.”
“Perfect.” She twirled around, holding her outfit to her rib cage and flashing a mischievous smile.
I picked through my paltry wardrobe and settled on a simple black dress with a white collar. Barbara had bought it for me to wear to her niece’s wedding last year. I slipped it on and turned to show Michelle.
“What are you going as, a nun?” she said.
“Very funny. I was thinking Wednesday Addams.”
“Oh, right,” she said, nodding. “You actually look a little like her. Let me do your braids.”
After we finished dressing, we set out into the night, heading down the hill toward the stables. It was only seven o’clock, but it was already dark out. Most of the girls were taking the path to the Commons, where Student Council was hosting a chaperoned Halloween party, but no one seemed to notice we were headed in the opposite direction. When we reached the woods, Michelle took out her flashlight.
“I talked with Nicole Manning,” she said. “She and Blake were the ones who got caught last year. She said the path is pretty worn down. Apparently, guys from Braeburn sneak here all the time. They tied yellow markers on the trees to guide people.”
“There’s one,” I said, pointing midway up the trunk of a tree to a little flicker of fabric. We entered into the brush, slowly making our way deeper into the woods and trying to stay on the makeshift path. Michelle’s flashlight cast a small pool of light ahead of us, but everything else disappeared in the gloom. Wind whipped through the trees, making the trunks heave and whine. The largest trees, twisted and gnarled with age, looked like giant goblins.
When we got to the log that lay between the banks of the stream, my stomach clenched. The water wasn’t that deep here, but the currents could be really strong. Ever since the incident this summer, I’d been acutely aware of water’s power and its indifference to my survival.
Michelle crossed the log with ease and stood waiting for me on the other side. “Come on, slowpoke!” she shouted.
I could barely see ahead of me. The woods were inky dark. I remembered how the Puritans who once lived here believed this wilderness was the devil’s territory. During the witch trials, a few of the condemned escaped and followed the Old Salem Road all the way to these woods, where they hid in a network of caves somewhere on the Danforth plantation. I couldn’t help but imagine the spirits of those escaped souls lurking behind me, waiting for the moment I fell into the water and drowned so they could enter my body and take over my human form.
Cautiously, I sidestepped along the log until I was poised over the deepest part of the stream. The water whooshed below my feet, hypnotizing me, fixing me in place. Michelle’s voice woke me out of my daze.
“What’s taking so long?”
“You’re not helping!” I said.
The log jiggled, and I froze, crouching down and clutching the log. In her impatience, Michelle had come back across to fetch me. She reached down and took my hand, then lit the rest of the way with her flashlight. I tried not to look down as she guided us safely to the other side.
For another twenty minutes, we trudged across pine needles and fallen leaves until we heard the sounds of music and the crackling of a great fire. We emerged from the woods into an overgrown meadow that led to the football field of Braeburn’s campus. Some kids were making out on the bleachers as we passed, so we followed the noise and the smoke up the hill to a large parking lot, where an enormous fire was blazing, lighting up the sky.
Michelle pointed to a figure strumming a guitar by the bonfire, surrounded by a few other guys. It was Owen. He was wearing a pin-striped suit and tie with a fedora and singing some old blues song.
“You made it!” he said when he saw us, launching into an intentionally off-key version of “A Little Help from My Friends.” He had this big, goofy grin on his face that made me want to hug him.
“Who are you supposed to be?” Michelle asked.
“Robert Johnson. You know, the blues legend?”
“I know who Robert Johnson is,” Michelle said, laughing. “I just didn’t recognize you because you’re so ... so ...”
“So white?”
“Exactly.”
“I may be white, but I’ve got the blues in my sooooul,” he crooned.
Michelle and I cracked up. “What have you been smoking?” she asked, laughing.
“Sadly, nothing,” he said. “Come meet some of my friends.”
He introduced us to some guys—a surfer type named DJ or TJ, a very small freshman named Benjamin, and an extremely good-looking guy named Flynn.
Despite her issues with the girls at our school, Michelle had no such problems with guys. She flocked to them, and they responded in kind. Her exchanges with Owen’s friends were easygoing and tinged with flirtation. I, on the other hand, went mute in the presence of boys.
Owen sat at the center of our group, his face golden in the firelight so he looked like a tiny sun, all these other boys shining in his orbit, trying to catch a little of that warmth. Owen had a lightness about him, a magnetism that drew people in. Unlike Gray, Owen fit in here at Braeburn, harmonizing perfectly with its guitar-strumming, karma-loving vibe.
TJ and Benjamin were cordial—well, more than cordial to Michelle—but Flynn didn’t seem particularly interested in getting to know us, and after a while he got up and went off in search of beer or drugs or who knows what. Owen just smiled and continued to play his music. We sang with him as he played “Cross Road Blues,” then a medley of Beatles songs, ending with a hilarious folk cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Michelle sat next to Owen, so close that she kept brushing against his leg and shoulder.
We chatted and joked by the warmth of the fire, letting the buzz of the night spread through us. The parking lot was packed with cars, kids tailgating even though chaperones were supposedly patrolling the lot, sniffing out alcohol and drugs.
“Any chance of getting a drink?” Michelle said. “You know, to warm up.”
“A few coolers are floating around,” Owen said. “You want to check it out?”
Moments later, Michelle, Owen, and I were standing at the back of some guy’s convertible, slurping wine coolers like they were Gatorade. At first I said no, but Michelle gave me a disapproving look, and Owen just laughed as if to say, “What’s the big deal?” So I relented. The wine cooler tasted sweet, like berry Kool-Aid, and after a few sips I felt nice and warm and mellow inside, so mellow that when the owner of the convertible asked if I wanted another, I said yes. Michelle had another, too, and we all laughed at something Owen said, and I felt fine, really fine, as if everything was right in the world. After another drink, I felt so fine that when Gray Newman appeared in front of me, I had no desire to walk away from him.
“Is that Townsend?” he said. “At a party? Shouldn’t she be in her room with her head in a book or something?” He was wearing jeans and a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The light from the fire turned his skin a surreal bronze color.
“I’m having fun,” I said. “Is that okay with you?” My voice sounded different to my ears, husky, like I was getting a cold.
“It’s perfectly okay,” he said.
“You’re not drinking?” I asked, surprised to see him empty-handed.
He shook his head. “So, what made you decide to come to Braeburn? I’ve never seen you here before.”
“It was Michelle’s idea.”
“You weren’t hoping to see me?” he said.
I pushed some hair behind my ear, trying to hide my blush with my hand. “Believe it or not, I don’t spend my days thinking about you.”
“Just your nights, then,” he said, arching an eyebrow. A shiver ran the entire length of my body. “Are you cold?” he asked, looking concerned.
I said no, rubbing my hands together anyway. “How’s Elise?” I asked out of some perverse desire to ruin the moment.
He narrowed his eyes like he didn’t like that question. “I don’t know,” he said, looking at the ground and shuffling a leg in his jeans. “We’re not together anymore.”
“Really?” Cartwheels danced across my rib cage. “You broke up with her?”
“Actually, she broke up with me.”
Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
“She got bored with me.”
“Bored? With Gray Newman, party animal?”
“Reports of my reputation have been greatly exaggerated,” he said, laughing. He cocked his head to see if I believed him. “In the end, we just weren’t compatible.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You two were the golden couple—rich, popular, good-looking.”
“Well, I guess those things just aren’t enough.” He got that sad far-off look in his eyes, and I felt bad for having brought the subject up. But then his lips curled into a teasing smile. “So,” he said, “you think I’m good-looking?”
I wanted to wipe that cocky grin right off his face. “Well, you’re not my type, but I’m sure
some
people find your looks interesting.”
He pretended to clutch a knife in his heart. “
Interesting?
That’s the kiss of death. Why don’t I just call you nice?”
“I am nice.”
“I know you are,” he said, his gaze burning a hole through me.
“But you don’t like nice girls.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Townsend.”
“Do I?” We stood there in a face-off mode, me grabbing my necklace and willing my face into a challenging sneer. He was trying to conceal a smile.
“Take a walk with me, Townsend,” he said. I eyed him suspiciously. “Come on, it’s just a walk. You act like you’re afraid of me.”
“I’m confused by you,” I said. “Not afraid.”
I glanced over at Michelle, who was talking to some guy I didn’t know. Owen glanced in my direction and opened his mouth as if to say something.
It was just a walk with an old family friend. So why did I feel so nervous? Gray dipped his head in an unspoken question—
are you coming?
I nodded and followed him away from the fire and the crowds toward one of the school buildings, dark now but for a single floodlight illuminating the side entrance.
“So, talk to me,” he said, continuing to move us farther away from the crowd.
“About what?”
“About anything.”
“How about you tell me what you want to know.”
“All right,” he said. “Tell me about your necklace.” He stopped walking and reached across to touch the pendant. When his finger brushed my skin, I stopped breathing.
“It was my mother’s,” I said, hearing my voice shake.
“Oh, yeah. I knew I’d seen it before.” He bent his head to inspect it, his eyes at my level. I dropped my own because the moment felt too heavy, too real. I was staring at the top button of his shirt when I saw a glint of silver. “Hey, you’re wearing something, too.” I reached out and barely grazed his collarbone with my knuckle. He drew open his shirt to reveal a pair of dog tags.
“My uncle’s,” he explained. “He died in Cambodia when he was nineteen. My dad tells me I’m a lot like him. I wish I’d known him. My dad and I don’t really get along, but I have a feeling me and my uncle would have. My dad just thinks I’m a screwup.”
“My dad thinks the same thing.”
“Your dad thinks I’m a screwup?” he said.
“No, no,” I said, laughing. “He thinks I am.”
Gray regarded me quizzically. “He couldn’t possibly. You’re, like, the goody-two-shoes, straight-A student. My mom told me you have over a 4.0 G.P.A. with all those honors classes you take.”
“How does she know that?”
“Apparently your dad brags about you when you’re not listening.” I suppressed a smile. “We refer to you as Miss Perfect around the dinner table.”
“Believe me, I’m not perfect,” I said, flattered that they talked about me at the dinner table. “Barbara thinks I’m
troubled
. My dad doesn’t even like me anymore. I’m just so tired of trying to please everyone. I’m tired of being good all the time.”

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