Echo Bridge (11 page)

“Yeah,” Ted rubbed his head. “Tomorrow morning might be a little rough. We’re leaving for the Berkshires at seven.”

I snuggled closer into him. “Maybe you should be at home in bed, then.”

“But I wanted to see you,” Ted nuzzled my hair while he reached behind him and picked up a blanket that was folded over the railing. “I know we can’t spend the whole night together, but I thought maybe we could, you know…”

I didn’t let go of him, but I tilted my head back and looked him in the eye. “You thought we could make love on a blanket in the woods?” I felt a rush of emotions: panic, shame, and disappointment—disappointment with Ted, who’d basically booty-called me, and who’d never suggested fooling around outside before (usually we were at least in the Rover), but more with myself. I was ashamed that I let Hugh affect me like this, but I wasn’t ready to have sex with Ted again. Certainly not on the aqueduct, where Hugh had held Lexi down.

Deep down, I was afraid to say no. Maybe a tiny part of me wondered if Ted wouldn’t take no for an answer. A bigger part of me worried that he’d feel like we were moving backwards and would get bored or frustrated and break up with me before I managed to get my head right again.

“Well, I was kind of thinking of the platform down by the water.” Ted looked at me and tried to make a cute face. “We can hear each other’s echoes!”

I knew he was trying to be sweet, but my stomach turned a little. Sex noise echoes were not something I wanted to hear at the moment, especially after the nasty little kissing noises we’d heard from Hugh’s car on Farah’s computer.

“Um, Ted,” I said. I tried hard to smile naturally. “As much as I love you, you know how I feel about the great outdoors. Plus, it’s kind of cold.”

“I know,” Ted looked sad. “I should have brought two blankets. But I can keep you warm, Court.” He pulled me in for a kiss.

“Ted,” I said more firmly. I made a show of checking the time on my cell phone. “I only have, like, ten minutes before I need to start walking home if I’m going to make it by midnight.” Never had I been so grateful to have a curfew.

“Ten minutes is enough,” said Ted, smiling down at me.

“Not for me.” I put my hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Listen, babe. I know it’s been a little while, and I’m sorry about that. But I really don’t want to have sex out in the open like this. Remember what you said about Revelry? Doing something special afterwards?”

“Yeah. It’s Family Weekend at Dartmouth, so Mom and Dad will be gone. Do you think you’ll be able to spend the night?”

“Sure. I’ll just tell my parents I’m staying at Melissa’s.” I was relieved. Rivalry Revelry was a week away; if I couldn’t work through my issues by then, I’d hold my nose and jump.

“But that’s so far away.” Ted gave me a squeeze and pouted like a little kid. I knew it was a result of being the baby of his family, but it got me every time. He was adorable. I wanted so badly to be able to take his hand and walk down those steps, to put my arms around his neck and hear the river lap at the stone pilasters. In that moment, pressed against Ted’s wool coat, I would have given anything I had to be innocent again—to not know the feel of Hugh Marsden’s hands, the secrets in Lexi’s wide hazel eyes, the things Mr. Grieves was capable of with a keyboard. To be able to cut out the past few weeks like old film on the editing room floor, and go back to being the girl I was before.

But there are no retakes in real life, so the reel just kept rolling, and I couldn’t have sex with Ted any more than I could erase the things I knew. So I said, “You know what they say: the best things come to those who wait,” like I was delivering a line in a trashy teen sex comedy, and kissed him deep and soft. Then I made him walk me home.

The Rivalry Revelry dance was held in the conservatory that extended off of the science wing of the schoolhouse. Every plant in the conservatory was decked out in tiny white lights, and banners in navy and red—the school colors—hung from the ceiling. When Ted and I arrived, all my nerve endings were electrified. It was like every opening night I’d ever experienced rolled into one ball of emotion. I was anticipating two things: First, Lexi dosing Hugh’s bottle of whiskey. I had no idea how she was going to manage it, let alone what might happen once the stuff kicked in. Second, sleeping with Ted again for the first time since Hugh had attacked me. I wasn’t sure I was ready, but I also knew I couldn’t put Ted off any longer without a reason, and I felt more confused than ever about telling him that his best friend was a psycho.

Before the dance, Ted took me to our reservation, at a sleek French restaurant in the Financial District. I ordered escargot and tried to look sexy licking garlic butter off my lips, while Ted teased me for eating snails. We hadn’t even had our salads yet when Ted’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out and looked at the screen.

“You’re kidding me.” I stared in disbelief as Ted looked at me and shrugged, holding up his phone like he couldn’t help it.

“Just one sec, babe,” he said, standing up as he answered the call. “Dude,” he said into the phone, walking toward the door of the restaurant. I narrowed my eyes at him through the plate glass window, but Ted wasn’t looking at me. I felt like everyone else was, though, like I was the girl who gets dumped spectacularly and publicly at the start of a romantic comedy. I pushed the last snail around on my plate.

“I’m so sorry,” Ted said, when he slid back into his chair a minute later.

“I can’t believe you did that.” I picked up my Pellegrino and tried to look as icy as the glass felt.

“Babe, Hugh got pulled over by the cops on his way to dinner. With Molly in the car and everything. Don’t tell me if it was Melissa, you wouldn’t have picked up.”

“If it was Melissa, I wouldn’t know, because I wouldn’t have picked up when she called me in the middle of our date.” I grit my teeth. “Wait. So what happened?”

Ted chuckled to himself and tore a roll in half. “You can’t ask me for the story and still be mad that I took the call.”

“Just tell me.” My pulse pounded in my ears. Grieves had said something about getting Hugh pulled over, but what if he’d lost his license? If he didn’t make it to Revelry, Lexi would miss her chance to set him up.

“The truck has a taillight out from when he backed into that stone wall in the parking lot last week. And you know how Belknap is; the cops didn’t have anything better to do, so one of them pulled him over.”

“So what?” I masked my relief with boredom. “You came back in here like it was some kind of emergency.”

“When the cop ran his license, a DUI popped up.” Ted leaned toward me, getting into his story. “But Hugh’s never been busted driving drunk. I don’t even know if he’s ever driven drunk.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “He’s hardly a paragon of sobriety.”

“Yeah, but he usually just passes out on the nearest couch. He doesn’t go careening around. He loves that truck too much.”

“A Lexus SUV is not a truck,” I muttered. I was worried that “the guys” Grieves had referred to had done their job too well. “Did he get arrested?” Maybe that would give the college athletic recruiters pause, anyway.

“Nope,” Ted grinned. “He had two center court tickets to the Celtics game next week in his glove compartment. He gave them to the officer, and the officer told him and Molly to have a good night.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said. The waiter set a plate of
coq au vin
in front of me, but I didn’t think I could eat. It was like the whole town was in on protecting Hugh.

“What are you talking about?” Ted waved his fork at me. “You want Hugh locked up for the night instead of at the dance with all our friends?”

Yes
, I thought, staring at Ted a moment. “I just think it’s creepy that a cop can be bought so easily, I guess.”

“Well, maybe the guy knew it was a computer error, or, like, a different Hugh Marsden or something. He probably just wanted to go to the Celts game. Aren’t you going to eat your cock…
au vin
?” He gave me a lewd grin.

I glared at him. “I can’t take you anywhere.”

“You love me.” Ted leaned over the table and kissed my nose.

When we arrived at the dance, Ted and I greeted our friends and accepted their compliments. Ted might not have been able to handle a classy dinner, but he did look damn good in a tux. I was wearing a silver-sequined sheath, very clingy, very Marilyn. Ted stood with the guys in one corner while I joined Mel, Hil, and a few other girls on the dance floor. We usually only danced with our dates during slow songs. No one went to BCD dances stag; even if you were single, you always paired up with a friend. Hugh was standing with Molly when we came in, but after a few minutes he wandered over to Ted and his boys. Molly joined a couple of other sophomores by the chocolate fountain. Rivalry Revelry, like all formals at Country Day, was strictly an upperclassmen affair. Freshmen and sophomores were only allowed in as dates. It was a huge deal to be invited to a formal as an underclassman.

Selena Mitchell and Lindsay Stevens came in with Jake and Benji and joined our group, giggling. From a distance they just looked giddy, like they were having a good time, but up close they were obviously stoned.

“We ate at IHOP. You know, ironically.” Lindsay giggled. “We took pictures with the waitresses.”

“How counter-culture,” Melissa snarked. “Will took me to Sonsie on Newbury.” Melissa was wearing the Phillip Lim she’d tried on the night of her party and an ugly architectural corsage of white orchids. She had a very hot-and-cold thing going with a boy at Brown who had graduated from Country Day two years earlier, but that fall she had recruited Will McKinley as her surrogate boyfriend. Though she swore they were only friends, he had been spending a lot of time at her house. Will had a narrow, foxlike face, with high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, and a charm that had a cutting edge to it—the kind of guy who thinks that pushing your buttons and giving you crap counts as foreplay. He was considered quite the catch, and more than one girl was giving Melissa the side-eye—including Hilary, who had an enormous crush on Will and a bad boyfriend in Gavin Purcell. Gavin was just then chatting up a couple of medium-popular junior girls under an enormous fichus, which meant he and Hilary were fighting. Gavin’s cheating was indiscriminate, but he only did it out in the open when he was angry with Hilary.

“Sonsie,” said Hilary. “That’s awfully romantic for two friends.”

Melissa Lewis was one of my best friends, but I was a little afraid of her. She could look at you with knives in her eyes, and you were as good as bleeding.

“Will’s sister is the hostess,” she said. “By the way, Hil, we drove past Tetrazzini on our way out, and I saw Gavin’s car. Was that you he was helping out of the passenger seat? Or was it Wendy Fitzgerald?”

Tetrazzini was the Italian restaurant in Belknap. It was where you went to dinner with your parents on a Sunday night, not where you wanted to be seen with your Revelry date. Wendy Fitzgerald was a particularly slutty junior amongst the flock Gavin had gathered by the fichus. She and Hilary were wearing unfortunately similar long dresses of bronze silk.

“I only ask because last week you said Gavin was totally beneath you, so I assume you can’t possibly have come with him,” Melissa went on sweetly. “But you and Wendy are the only girls here in orange.”

Hilary turned an odd shade of purple that clashed with both her dress and her hair.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said quietly to Selena, and slipped outside for a cigarette.

* * *

According to Mr. Grieves, 2C-I was a white, crystalline powder invented by some mad chemist who’d become interested in cleansing the doors of his perception in the 1960s and had begun studying psychoactive substances (I imagined him as William Hurt in
Altered States
). He’d synthesized dozens of compounds, most of which were readily available online for totally legal purchase, in spite of the fact that most of them had zero practical applications. Grieves had stolen a vial from one of the pharmaceutical companies where he worked and given it to Farah. She taken the train into Cambridge to see him, and when she talked about hanging out with him, it was all coding languages and equations while Lexi and I stared dumbly. Farah had given the vial to Lexi, who was going to find some way to give it to Hugh without his knowledge.

The night air outside the dance was cool, and though it raised goose bumps on my arms, I was glad for it. Inside, everything felt too bright, too loud, and too fast. The dark stillness was a relief. From outside, the glass conservatory blazed in the night like a giant multifaceted gem. The Top 40 beat coming through the walls sounded small and lonely echoing off the trees. I stood out of sight, near the corner where the glass room met the stone wall of the main school building, which was covered in long strands of ivy. I watched my hands shake as I lit my cigarette, then dropped the still-burning match as a shadow detached from the waving ivy and resolved itself to my left. Elaine Winslow. She wore a long dress of baby blue satin with a halter neckline. The ties of the halter hung down her back, weighted with cubic zirconia stars. The color emphasized her blue eyes, and her light blond hair hung loose to her toned shoulders.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said back. I looked down to make sure the match I’d dropped hadn’t ignited any dry, dead ivy. Not that the idea of burning Belknap Country Day to the ground didn’t hold some appeal at that moment.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Elaine said.

“I kind of just started,” I said. “I didn’t know you smoked either.”

“No one does,” she said, “because I’d be totally dead if they did. My sisters, my coach, Marshall—they’d all kill me if they knew.”

“Oh,” I said. I guessed this was an athlete thing; aside from Ted, I didn’t think Melissa or Hilary or anyone else would care if I smoked. They didn’t know, though; cigarettes were my excuse to sneak away from everybody when I needed to.

“So please don’t tell anyone. Especially Molly. She’d go nuts.”

“Trust me,” I said. “I can keep a secret.”