Liv, Forever (20 page)

Malcolm hadn’t exaggerated: alumni started to arrive on campus before he woke up. It was day one of Fall Festival, the school’s anniversary weekend celebration. They celebrated Wickham Hall’s anniversary every year, but this was a particularly big one: the big one-five-oh.

Malcolm slept though the voices and car-door slams. I even heard a helicopter and wondered if the president had arrived on Marine One. It wouldn’t have surprised me. Malcolm needed the rest; he was so spent. He slept right through first period, although his phone kept buzzing. He slept until his door was swung open by a handsome man—a taller, sturdier, older version of Malcolm. When Malcolm saw him, he sprang up, instantly awake.

“Dad!”

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” His father’s eyes immediately dropped to the fading ink on his chest. “What’s all that?”

“Just a drawing.”

“Put a shirt on, son.”

As Malcolm followed his father’s orders, Gabe burst in. “I found Brit’s old MySpace. Serious creep-o-rama …” He trailed off as he noticed Malcolm’s father, then quickly tried to cover up. “
Creep-o-Rama
, have you seen it? On Hulu? So realistic, that movie was
so
realistic, man!”

Malcolm’s father ignored Gabe as skillfully as Kent had in the library. “I have business to tend to. I’ll see you at the Ball this evening.”

Malcolm nodded, not that his father waited for a response. He turned on his heel and walked out of the room, without even so much as a nod to Gabe.

The door slammed.

Gabe exhaled. “Sorry, man. But Brit’s MySpace is outta control. They kept writing on her profile and harassed the crap out of her. Even after she died.”

“And that’s probably
why
she died,” Malcolm grumbled. He already looked tired again.

“Exactly. But, anyway, what’s the plan for Old Homestead?”

“The Victors Ball.”

“Yay for you,” Gabe muttered.

But Malcolm started to smile. “No, that’s the plan. That’s it.
That’s
how we’re going to get in.”

“
We
?! As in you and me?”

“Yes,
we
. But first we have some work to do.”

Gabe eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“Making you presentable, my friend.”

BOTH MALCOLM AND GABE
went to see Nurse Cobbs to get out of classes for the day. They figured it’d be pretty easy to get a medical excuse after a friend had died, and they were right. Although she was prickly, Nurse Cobbs was, it turns out, a bit of a sap. Not that she didn’t loathe Gabe for his “ceaseless shenanigans” (her phrase, not mine), but Malcolm charmed her (of course) and she also remembered me. Apparently she’d noticed a drawing in the notebook I was carrying that first day and thought I was very talented.

As Malcolm was leaving, Kent passed him on his way in.

“What’s the matter?” Malcolm asked.

“Stomachache. And you? Seeing the counselor, I hope.”

Malcolm shrugged, avoiding an answer.

“I’ve been calling you. And texting. See you tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

I wanted to linger to see what Kent was up to. He didn’t seem to be in any pain. But Gabe was still in the examination room and I couldn’t leave Malcolm alone, so I ran over to Gabe’s door and whispered, “Watch Kent.”

“HE DIDN’T GO INTO
an examination room,” Gabe told us when he got back to Malcolm’s room. “He went into Nurse Cobbs’s office and left with a bunch of big envelopes.”

“Big envelopes,” Malcolm repeated.

“Maybe he takes some medication,” I offered.

“These didn’t look like medication envelopes. They looked … I don’t know. They weren’t labeled. It was weird.”

“Weird, yes,” Malcolm interjected. “Who knows what
they were. But we have work to do to get you ready for the Ball.”

“
A lot
of work,” I added. Gabe stuck out his tongue.

Malcolm looked at him. “I really hope that was meant for Liv.”

“Yeah. She’s a little dubious of this alleged makeover.”

Malcolm turned to face my general direction. “Well, Liv, please weigh in. I could use some girl-help here.” Then he turned to Gabe. “And you, take a seat.”

The facial scruff was first to go. Then his long hair. While Malcolm chopped off Gabe’s locks, he studied his face. It was pained, no doubt. You could maybe even say tortured. Like I said before, very Van Gogh. Finally Malcolm asked, “When did you know you had it?”

“Lice?”

Malcolm whipped his hands away.

“Kidding. Damn. Seriously? Just because I’m not filthy rich doesn’t mean I’m infected.”

Malcolm sighed and got back to chopping. “I was asking when you knew you had the gift or whatever? Hearing voices.”

Gabe sighed. “Just since I got here.”

“How?
Why
?” Malcolm asked cautiously.

“I …” Gabe paused, uncomfortable, but he continued. “My older brother died two years ago. He was my hero. I … I don’t know. I wanted to talk to him again, so I focused. I prayed, I begged, I cried. I don’t know how it happened, but I guess I just opened myself up to it. Or maybe it was always there, and I just wasn’t listening. I don’t really know. There is no explanation, I guess.”

“So you just heard his voice one day?”

“No, he was never there. But when I came here last year, I started hearing the girls. And seeing them. I told my parents, but they figured—still figure—it’s all in my head. They’re too wrecked over my brother. They can’t deal with me. That’s why they sent me here in the first place.”

Malcolm nodded as he snipped off a lock of hair.

“What?” Gabe said.

“Nothing,” Malcolm said. “It’s just that we all end up here for a reason.”

Malcolm turned back to the task at hand, studying Gabe’s hair. Or maybe just pretending to. He was a pretty decent stylist. Who would have known?

WITH THE SCRUFF AND
the long hair gone, Gabe already looked like a new man. “Turns out you’re not terrible looking,” I said, quite serious.

“Ha. Ha.” Then he told Malcolm. “Turns out your lady friend has a real sense of humor.”

“Yes, I know. Now for styling.”

“
Styling
?!”

“I know I don’t look it, but I’m very in touch with my feminine side,” Malcolm said with a smirk.

I giggled. I almost forgot for a moment.

“She laughed at your joke,” Gabe said.

Malcolm smiled with a sigh as he went to his wardrobe, pulling out a starched shirt and suit. Gabe insisted on wearing his own vintage Radiohead T-shirt underneath “so there’s some dignity down there somewhere,” but
Malcolm’s formal wear was still miserably large on Gabe. He looked in the mirror. “This looks like a joke. Like a bad music video from the eighties.”

“I’ll get you another one,” Malcolm said as he left the room. Within moments he was back with another, smaller shirt and suit.

“So you can just walk out into the common room, tell someone you need something, and they just bring it to you?”

Malcolm nodded. “On a silver platter.” His tone was dry. “Especially if they’re smaller than me.”

Gabe sniffed. “Seriously, though, when I walk into the common room, people flee.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way—I mean, I see how the people here are and they’re not always nice—but you do kind of ask for it.”

“
What?
!”

“You have to admit, you cultivate the image. You practically wear a sign that says, ‘Go Away.’ ”

“You do,” I added.

Gabe looked down, intending to swing his hair down over his face—as he always did when he got uncomfortable—but the hair was no longer there.

“But that’s the old Gabe,” Malcolm said. “Tonight you’re going to be confident. Outgoing.”

Gabe grunted.

“No grunts or grumbles.”

Gabe huffed and looked down at the floor.

“No staring at the floor or off into space.”

He jammed his hands in his pockets, squirming restlessly.

“Or fidgeting.”

“So what am I
supposed
to do?!”

Malcolm laid his hands on Gabe’s shoulders. “Look at me. You work the room. You pick out alumni. You notice who’s bored and who’s available to make small talk, and you approach them. They will assume you’re a new or prospective Victor, so they’ll want to talk to you.”

“But what am I supposed to talk about?” he asked, his voice rising.

“College applications and visits are always a solid choice.” As he continued, Malcolm instinctively gestured as if in conversation. “Harvard Square, the weather in Boston versus Princeton versus New Haven. Rowing on the Charles. Of course you’d prefer Harvard, for undergrad at least, but Yale and Princeton are great backups.”

Gabe’s eyes flashed toward Malcolm’s desk. He squirmed out from under Malcolm’s grasp, grabbed a notebook, and actually started taking notes. I almost clapped.

“When they ask about classes, just talk about the core curriculum—how you enjoy the broad educational base. And the Harkness Method, how the round tables really help classroom conversation. They love to talk Harkness because it’s one of the things that sets these schools apart.”

Gabe was scrawling every detail.

“And crew, of course. If it were me, I’d talk about how much I enjoy rowing alone. How I like to go out there and think—I’d probably say I met a girl. I liked to think about her …” He stopped talking, suddenly reminded I was dead.

“Got it,” Gabe said. “Go on.”

“And the key is to hold your chin up, puff your chest out. You must
look
extremely confident but speak with modesty.”

“That’s how you people do it?”

Malcolm nodded.

“But, wait, who am I?” Gabe asked. “I can’t just be Gabe Nichols. Don’t I have to have that fancy Victors bloodline?”

“Well, you have to be Gabe Nichols because Kent and Abigail and the others will recognize you. But … what they
don’t
know is that your mother’s maiden name was …” Malcolm paused, conjuring.

“Goggins!” I blurted, remembering one of the old names from the bricks in the catacombs.

“Goggins,” Gabe repeated for Malcolm. “It’s a name we saw in the catacombs.”

“Perfect! I’ve seen that name in the Victors charter. So there’s your lineage.”

Malcolm flipped open his laptop, got online, and searched the Goggins family tree. In less than five minutes, he’d presented a completely plausible scenario for Gabe. His mother would be Cynthia Goggins—Wickham Hall class of 1984, a Victor with a long bloodline and, now, a foreign ambassador’s wife who almost never made it back stateside for the alumni celebrations.

Gabe scribbled every detail of “his” family tree into the notebook.

“But you can’t use notes,” Malcolm said, shutting the computer. “You have to memorize it all. You have to believe it.
All
of it. If you run into my friends, you know they’ll question you hard.”

“And?”

“You say you never talked about your family history because you had no clue what you were missing until we started to hang. Now you want to join.”

“I … don’t know,” Gabe stammered.

“I can help you,” I volunteered. “I can be that little voice in your head telling you what to do, reminding you of dear Aunt Mildred and poor cousin Clyde.”

“She said she can help me, say things to me.”

“Good idea,” Malcolm said to me—to the air—then turned to Gabe. “Posture!” Gabe straightened up. “And now, let’s work on the handshake.”

Gabe put out his hand and Malcolm took it, shaking it firmly and giving it a sharp pat with his left hand.

“Ouch. And what’s with the little slap?”

“You shake firmly. And the pat basically tells the man, or woman, that you’re friends. It implies a closeness that exists among all Victors.”

“Like a secret handshake?!” Gabe was elated.

Malcolm laughed. “I guess. I mean it’s not something anyone’s ever said out loud, but it’s just what they do.”

“Sweet. I always wanted to know a secret handshake.”

A lifetime of dedicated eccentricity and alienation was hard to overcome in an afternoon, but Malcolm worked Gabe like a drill sergeant, tutoring him right up until it was time to go to the party. And I watched carefully, so I’d know what to look out for at the event. After all, being invisible, I was the perfect etiquette coach.

MALCOLM HELD THE DOOR
open for me as the three of us were leaving Pitman. I swept out ahead and looked back
at them: two handsome, clean-cut young men walking out the dorm. Once Gabe realized this was truly our only access to Old Homestead, he devoted himself to the performance of a lifetime. And, miraculously, he’d become a dead ringer for a Victor. He was almost unrecognizable. He looked more like a Victor than Malcolm himself.

“Look at those two hot Victors,” I joked.

“What of it?” Gabe snapped arrogantly, the cockiness almost
too
easy for him.

“I think you were one of them in a past life.”

He lifted an eyebrow suavely. “Perhaps I was.”

As we were both chuckling, I caught a glimpse of Malcolm. His head drooped. Weird. It was almost as if the he and Gabe had traded places. In our trio, Malcolm was—probably for the first time in his life—the outcast. He couldn’t be in on our banter, so no matter how much Gabe translated for him, he ended up the third wheel. Out in the real world, of course, I was the odd one out.