Accelerated (36 page)

“But—”

“Come on,” she said, taking Toby’s hand. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Sean sat, stunned. The hours he couldn’t see her during the day were agony. It was impossible to imagine her leaving. When she came back into the living room, he couldn’t control himself. “Don’t go,” he blurted.

“I have to.”

“Why?” He sounded like he was eight, except that the eight-year-old had taken it better. “You can stay here, with us. You can find another job. I’ll help you.” Pleading was the only strategy he had. “Don’t go.”

She was giving him a funny look. “Come with me.”

“What?”

“You should both come with me.”

He’d never considered moving. Not really. Until this second.

“I wouldn’t be Toby’s teacher, we’d be far away from Bradley. We could just … live our life.”

Living his life sounded good. He wondered what he’d been doing all these years. “But my job …”

“You hate your job.”

“Of course I do. But it’s … a job.” He imagined not working for
Buzz
. It was terrifying. Freeing. Amazing. After the Burdot thing maybe he wouldn’t need a nine-to-five job.

“There are tons of galleries in Providence. And Newport. Boston is close.”

“I could quit
Buzz,”
he said, liking the sound of it. “That would be fucking amazing.”

“It would be fucking amazing,” she said, laughing.

“Toby could enroll in school.” As he said it, he could imagine the whole thing. “We could get a place. All three of us.”

“Do you think Toby’s ready? That’s a big deal.”

“He likes you so much.”

“Do you think
you’re
ready?”

“I love you,” he said, fully aware this was the first time he’d said it. “I love you. So yeah, I’m definitely ready.”

“Me too,” she said, kissing him through a smile. “On both counts.”

B
Y THE TIME
T
OBY WOKE UP
, S
EAN HAD SLIPPED OUT OF BED NEXT
to Jess and was back on the couch.

“Dad, why are you sleeping here?” Toby asked, as he climbed on top of him, turning on cartoons.

“Jess stayed over and I let her sleep in my bed.”

“Yay!” Toby bounced up and down. “Can she have pancakes with us?”

“Let’s let her sleep,” he said. “Then we can ask her when she gets up.”

“Ask her what?” Jess emerged from the bedroom, pulling her hair into a ponytail. She looked like a kid, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“If you can have breakfast with us.”

“You know my specialty is chocolate chip pancakes, right?” she said. “Do you have any chocolate chips?”

Sean shook his head. “We don’t really bake.”

“No problem. Do you have any leftover Halloween candy?”

Toby ran to his room and returned with his stash.

“Great,” Jess said, separating out the Hershey’s Kisses and Nestlé Crunch bars. “We can chop and practice fractions at the same time.” She asked Toby to cut the candy bars in half, then in quarters. Then in eighths. He executed the tasks on cue, relishing every moment of praise.

“Where’d you learn to make these?” Toby was smitten, and Sean was in trouble, because he would now have to make chocolate pancakes every weekend.

“Tony’s Kitchen. It’s a diner near where I grew up. We used to go there Sunday mornings,” she said. “Tony taught me how to make them. I think I was about your age.”

“Is it still open? I want to go.”

“Sure, we can go. And I’ll take you sledding on the golf course, too.” Jess smiled at Sean. “Westerly was a great place to grow up.”

It was too cold to go outside, so they stayed in, reading the paper, watching movies, drinking hot chocolate. Sitting by her on the couch, his laptop propped on her legs, he brushed her arm because he couldn’t stand not touching her. The buzzing in his chest hadn’t stopped since they decided to move away together.

“Oh my God,” she said, turning the computer screen to face him. “Read this.”

The report Daniels had given him about the correlation between giftedness and ADD filled the screen. “Yeah, I have that, remember?”

“No,” she said. “You have
part
of this.” She scrolled to the bottom. “Look.” This report contained an additional section, a conclusion that wasn’t attached to the one he had.

“It contradicts everything else in the report.” She read: “Despite the hypothesis put forward here, there is no proof that would uphold any theory that a correlation exists between giftedness and Attention Deficit Disorder. In fact, research has shown that giftedness and ADD overlap far less frequently than for those who are not gifted.”

When he called Nina Goldsmith, she wasn’t as ecstatic as he’d hoped. “It’s something,” she said. “But a judge won’t—”

“Is it enough for the
Times?
What if I leak some of this stuff to a reporter?”

“
The New York Times?
The paper of record?” The snort was over the top, he thought. “Do you know how much evidence they need to make accusations like this? Do you know how many sources they need? Trust me,
The New York Times
is not the way to go here.”

“She’s going to sit on it,” he said when he hung up. “She’s going to sit on it until it dies.”

“Maybe your sister can do something?” Jess picked up his phone and handed it to him.

He dialed her number. Nicole would be able to do something. She didn’t sit on anything when she could pounce. “Nina Goldsmith is useless,” he said, and regaled his sister with Nina’s uselessness.

But Nicole didn’t pounce. She didn’t say a word, just let out a low growl. “She’s right,” Nicole said finally.

The words sounded foreign coming out of her mouth. “What?”

“That school has some juice. The resources, the alumni, the lawyers … You’ve got to come at them with an arsenal. Shoot to kill, baby brother. I want them dead as much as you do, trust me.”

“But …” His mind was spinning. He wanted to trust her. “What about the
Times?
What if I go to a reporter there who can dig up some—”

“Not yet,” she said. “Last thing you want is to come off as a delusional, paranoid New York parent. You need sources, documentation, evidence, for anyone at the
Times
to take you seriously.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“We’ve got to build our arsenal.”

Jess, who’d been hanging on every word, slumped back on the couch.

“I’ll do some more digging,” Nicole said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t worry. We’ll get them.”

As soon as he hung up, the phone rang in his hand. It was Rick, and he was slurring. Yelling and slurring. “Fucking Oscars.”

“Rick,” he said. “What’s up?”

“We’re supposed to have a Q&A with Natalie Portman. A ten-minute phoner.”

“To go with the dress-shopping photos. Yeah, I’ve got it all laid out.” He hated when Rick called him on Sundays and it always happened around the Oscars. Every issue through the end of February would spend pages and pages analyzing the getups, the hair, and the bling of anyone who walked down the red carpet. His days were spent looking for the most revealing, embarrassing, hideous, inappropriate, see-through, ripped, or otherwise flawed, fashion choices of Hollywood’s A-list.

“Yeah, well she bagged us. Gave the interview to
Us
.” He let out a long belch.

“So you need filler?”

“The intern’s writing something about pre-Oscar boob jobs.”

“Is anyone having boob jobs before the Oscars?”

Jess mouthed,
boob jobs?

“She’s got leads,” Rick said, but he was lying. “Of course she does. Look, story’ll be on your desk tomorrow. Just get me some images before the close.”

After he killed the call, he threw the phone across the room. “My life,” he pulled two fistfuls of hair, “sucks.”

“Your former life,” she corrected him. “I heard you’re moving soon.”

“That’s right. I’m moving north.” He relaxed as soon as he said it. “To the smallest state in the Union.”

“We prefer
intimate.”

“Even better.” He smoothed her hair, allowed his hand to trace the side of her face.

“So how come
Buzz
can run anything it wants, even if it’s not true?”

“Because
Buzz
has no standards, not a shred of journalistic integrity.”

“No named sources?”

“Named, unnamed—we don’t need sources at all.”

Her eyebrows perched high on her forehead in anticipation, waiting for him to put it together. When he did, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it himself. “You are brilliant.”

He put on a pot of coffee and they worked on the story late into the night. The layout he would hijack the next day could accommodate about five hundred words, which was enough to do the job. It was enough space to get in all the facts, some history and the photos from the nurse’s closet. The only way to make a splash with the article was to tell Toby’s story. He wasn’t a writer, but he’d read enough
Buzz
stories to know how it was done:

“The best school in Manhattan almost killed my son. Earlier in the year, they succeeded in killing his best friend by insisting that he take ADD medication to improve his focus. Both children were diagnosed as a result of teacher evaluations that had been forged by school officials.” Without naming names, he recounted Bev’s admission. He wrote about how the school had covered up Calvin’s death—though he didn’t name Calvin—by attributing it to peanut allergies. He wrote about how a sky-high percentage of Bradley students were on prescription ADD medication that Garvey said was unnecessary. Billy Horn said to go ahead and quote him about Bradley’s “full-court press” to get him to put Zack on medication. Sean also stuck in the fact that Daniels had given him only part of the “Giftedness” report, and he quoted Noah as an unnamed source saying that schools “did this.” Without naming names, he told Debbie Martin’s story. In keeping with
Buzz
style, he threw in a lot of “allegedlies,” “sources say,” and “according to those involved.”

For graphics, he enlarged an image he found online of a Metattent Junior capsule and downloaded the best of his cell phone photos. He smiled. It was his best work for
Buzz
to date.

The next day, he laid out the boob job story. A salacious smile twisted Rick’s lips. “Now
that’s
a story.”

By the end of the day, the intern was still waiting on a quote from a plastic surgeon who had never treated any of the celebrities mentioned. “I can stay late,” Sean told Rick. “Go home. I got this one.” It was the first time he’d ever wanted to stay late at
Buzz
.

Rick slapped him on the back. “I owe you one.”

After the intern had gone home, Sean pulled her story and replaced it with his Bradley article. It fit perfectly. The image of the pill cabinet wasn’t the strongest, but it did the trick. At the last minute, he found a photo of Bradley’s entrance, which helped place the story visually. He fooled around with some headlines. “Top School in Country Drugging its Students” was a good one. He also liked “Number One School in Nation Drugs Its Kids.” He finally settled on, “Rx Academy,” which he decided packed the biggest punch.

At midnight, he sent the files and it was done. He’d have to wait until the end of the week when the magazine hit the stands to know if anyone would even bother reading a
Buzz
story that featured no boobs, fashion gaffes, or celebrity gossip. Even if no one read it, that was okay. He’d have done something when no one else would. He could move on.

“O
NE
,
TWO
,
THREE
,
AND GO
.” H
E AND
J
ESS HOISTED THE FRAME
from the ground and walked it to the center of the Sean Benning wall of the gallery. Martin Vols had already hung a series of gory photographs of a decapitation, and Tina Crowe was setting up what looked like an electric chair and camcorder for a performance piece she had tried to describe to them earlier.

“You got it?” he asked as Jess slid her arm behind the frame.

“Almost, wait.” Pieces of hair slipped from her ponytail. “Got it,” she said, releasing the wire onto the hook. She let go of the frame and brushed the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. “Take a look.”

He stepped back and admired her. Her jeans were splattered with the same paint that covered his. “Good. Very good.”

“The frame,” she said. “How’s the frame?”

“Oh, that’s crooked.” He estimated an inch with his fingers. “Up on the left.” She nudged the corner up with acute concentration he found both amusing and touching.

“I think I’ve found my second career,” she said, standing back to appraise her work. “Picture hanger.”

“I’m all for it, if it means you’ll wear those jeans every day.”

She draped her arms around his neck. “I don’t think you’re focusing.”

“You don’t?”

“On the right thing.” She kissed him in the middle of the gallery. “We’re almost done.”

They’d been working all afternoon and it was finally coming together. Snow fell outside, but inside, the room was warm and bright and humming with creative energy. “I’ve got something for you.”

She looked skeptical. “For me?”

He reached into the pocket of his down jacket, which was heaped in the middle of the room, and presented her with a gold mesh pouch cinched with a gold ribbon.

“What’s this for?”

“I missed Christmas, so I guess this is for your birthday.”

“My birthday’s in May.”

“Happy early birthday.” He paused, watching her. “Open it.”

She shook the necklace from its pouch and held it in her hand, smiling. “It’s beautiful. I love it,” she said, pressing it against her chest. “But I’m supposed to get
you
something for your opening. Not the other way around.”

“I’ve never heard that rule.” He took the necklace and stepped behind her to fasten it. When he’d seen it in the store window, he’d had no choice. The owner who’d made the necklace told him it was one-of-a-kind, made from something called blue topaz. When Jess turned to face him, touching the glittering stone, he knew he’d been right. It matched the vapor blue of her eyes. “There was no way I couldn’t get that for you.”