Lucy and Linh (10 page)

Then came the incident that altered the course of our year. Afterward, some girls blamed Ms. Vanderwerp, but the saddest thing was that she was doing it all inadvertently, with her wet eyes always looking on the verge of tears, and that catch in her voice when she spoke, like a zipper that would not go all the way up, revealing an embarrassing gap. There was something about her that reminded me of an aunt who was always knitting scarves you'd never wear.

When I arrived for history the next morning, I could not sit in my usual spot because Brodie and Chelsea were crowding around Amber. As I entered the room, I heard Chelsea squealing, “Quick! She's coming!”

For a second I thought they were working on some plot they planned to unleash against me. But when the three girls looked up and saw it was me, they seemed relieved. “Quick, shut the door!” they hissed. I did as instructed, and realized that my paranoia was misplaced vanity. Of course they were plotting against someone else. Why would they target me?

I didn't dare tap either Brodie or Chelsea on the shoulder and ask for my seat back. But I edged closer, hoping they would notice me and leave so that I could sit down. I saw Amber had a thick red marker in one hand with the top off. I could smell the ink in the air, the same strangely delicious artificial scent of nail polish.

Chelsea was crouched on the floor. In front of her was a silver thermos cup emblazoned with the school logo; you could buy it for twenty-five dollars at Edmondsons. Steam was coming from its open top. And in her lap, on top of a pile of tissues laid flat against the material of her kilt, was something red.

I saw what it was, but it seemed so bizarre, so repulsively wrong, that I couldn't be sure. I couldn't look again because Chelsea picked the taboo object off her lap and plonked it into the thermos of hot water like a tea bag.

Pulling it out by its string, she got up and ran toward the door with Brodie. Just at that moment the door opened, and Katie stumbled in. “Hey, what's happening?”

“Katie, get in your seat
now
!” yelled Brodie.

“But what are you doing?”

“Bloody hell, Katie, just sit down!”

The Cabinet had always been cruel in a silky, nice way, never before so crudely as this. Stunned, Katie found her seat and sat down.

“Quick, the tape!” Brodie hissed, and Chelsea tore a strip of masking tape from a roll and handed it to her. Chelsea then passed Brodie the offensive object. Brodie, who was the tallest girl in their group and could reach the top of the doorframe, taped it firmly in place.

And so the deed was done.

Stuck there, dead in the middle of the doorframe, the thing swung from its string like some kind of eyeless cotton roadkill.

Chelsea and Brodie ran back to their desks and sat down. The door of the room was still closed. “No one say a word!”

We all sat at our desks straighter than usual. No one moved. It was only for a few seconds, but we all looked in toxic shock at the object, colored with a red permanent marker and dipped in hot water, steaming there, swinging there, like a sick abortive art project, in the middle of the doorframe, but low enough so that when the door eventually did open—and it would open any second now—Ms. Vanderwerp would walk in, oblivious, carrying her green spiral-bound teacher's planner and cylinder of wipes. She would walk in, and she would not know what had whacked her in the middle of the forehead until she turned back to take a second look.

And that is exactly what happened.

The door swung open, because Ms. Vanderwerp was always a minute or so late.

She stumbled in, and was hit in the forehead.

Immediately, her hand shot up to wipe away the unexpected moisture.

Looking at her hand, she saw that it was now covered in a streak of watery red.

She looked back to see what had struck her, and when she turned to face the class, she looked at the room like a person who had unexpectedly found herself blinded. Her eyes had never swum so much behind her glasses, like blue fish whose water was rapidly draining out of their bowls.

All this seemed to happen much slower than I imagined it would, which made the incident even more awfully slapstick.

Now, any reasonable person would quickly spot that that watery red was not the color of blood, and that the fluid didn't even smell like blood. But Ms. Vanderwerp had no time to reason this through in her head.

Why would such a thing still be warm? And yet it was the icky warmth of the water, the diluted hue of red and the steaming wad of expanded cotton swaying from side to side, that escalated her disgust and confusion. Her mouth turned into an infinity sign of horror.

No one laughed, or said, “Miss, miss, it's a joke!”

“Argh!” she screamed, and it was a rough scream. I had always imagined that if Ms. Vanderwerp were to raise her voice, it would be high. But this was the scream of a cement truck on its first rotation. It was a scream of breaking rock. It was the first time that tremulous, gentle voice had made a noise that was clear and full of conviction.

For a moment, the blue fish behind her glasses looked as if they could be saved: I could see the tears filling up their bowls, overflowing down the sides of her face. Then she was out of the room.

“Quick, someone shut the door!” shouted Brodie, and Amber dashed from her seat and grabbed the handle. She had the presence of mind not to slam it and so draw attention to Room 105.

“She was crying. Did you see? Tears were coming out of her eyes!” That was Katie, whose mouth was an O.

“Shit. Shit. Shit!” Amber panicked. Her panic was like an actress's, her hands wrung at the wrists as if doing an imitation of alarm.

We all looked up at the doorframe, and it was still there, a macabre microphone amplifying what they had done to poor Ms. Vanderwerp.

Still standing by the door, Amber jumped up and pulled the tampon from the doorframe. She held it out in front of her as if it had somehow transformed into an actual used sanitary item, and it suddenly seemed as nauseating as the real thing. She headed toward the only bin in the room.

“No, no!” hissed Brodie. “What if they search the bin?”

“Well, I'm not putting that back in my bag!”

“Put it in your thermos, Chelsea,” ordered Brodie.

“Eww,” Chelsea complained.

Amber ran to Chelsea's desk, opened her thermos and dropped the tampon in. She screwed the lid back on as if she were screwing down the cover of a black manhole that could unleash zombies. Some water spilled onto Chelsea's desk and she wiped it off with her sleeve, scowling.

Then Amber paced back to her own seat next to me. I could hear her breath, like a series of sighs, both exhausted and excited. A creepy thought snuck up on me, Linh, that this reaction sounded almost postcoital. Gross.

There was movement from the other side of the room. Katie stood up.

“Katie, what the hell do you think you're doing?” demanded Brodie in a whisper.

“I can't take this,” Katie said.

“Stop being a drama queen. Sit down.”

“You're all so dead,” warned Katie.

“Yeah?” challenged Chelsea. “Well, you're part of this too, so don't pretend not to know about it, you self-righteous bitch. You sat in the classroom and did nothing. You wanted to see what would happen.”

Brodie examined the room with her murky lion's eyes. “All of you are part of this,” she said.

“I need to go to the bathroom.” I stood up.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Chelsea didn't know whether I was being funny or smart or what. “Piss in your pants.”

I sat back down.

“No one say a word,” hissed Chelsea.

We sat for a minute or so in silence, broken only by Chelsea giggling once or twice in panic. I didn't dare look at Amber, in case she saw the expression on my face. Stupid bitches, I thought.

The wait seemed like a small eternity, even though it was less than a minute; I wondered why we sat there glued to our seats instead of dispersing because there was no longer a teacher in the room. But deep down, we knew that there was nowhere for us to go, and that if we did that we'd get into even more trouble.

In some self-denying parts of their brains, the Cabinet probably thought that things could continue as normal, that if they did what we were trained to do at this school—be Young Ladies, innocuous, innocent and well behaved—the repercussions would not be so bad, that the incident would be put down to Ms. Vanderwerp's fragility, and how she could not control a class.

But I knew that every teacher would see through this lie.

After a time, we heard heavy, determined footsteps outside. The Growler stormed into the room, looking around, making sure we felt her gaze. “Who is responsible for this?” she hollered.

No one said a word.

She slammed the door shut. “Despicable, vile act of bullying!” We would all get detention and stay in at lunchtime unless someone spoke, she announced. “Come on, own up—all of you are witnesses.”

Then it dawned on us. As if we thought we could lie about it! As if we could pretend it had never happened! All that time wasted hiding evidence, when the Cabinet could have spent the remaining moments of the class devising one good collective story.

Mrs. Grey looked around. Her eyes were like a sniper's, and when they stopped on a student, her words became ammunition. “Siobhan?”

Siobhan looked down at her desk.

“Meredith? Isabelle? Stella?”

They all remained silent. Then she turned her gaze on me. Thin red trees of veins had etched themselves into her cheeks. “Lucy?”

I kept my jaw clamped and lowered my head.

“Oh, for heaven's sake! None of you are going out to lunch until somebody owns up. You'll have a whole hour to think about what you have done. I expected better than this from Year Tens.”

An hour. I could see Amber's back relaxing, curving down into the chair. During that hour, she would be able to rally the troops and concoct a convincing story. She looked at Chelsea—but that was a mistake, because Chelsea could not stop a smirk from insinuating itself on her sharp little face.

“Chelsea!” hammered the Growler. “What do you have to smile about?”

Chelsea looked down at her desk again.

It was peculiar: the Growler had not asked Chelsea whether she knew who was responsible for this vile act. In fact, she'd not asked any of the Cabinet; she hadn't even glanced their way. Surely the next person to be asked to report on school transgressions would be Brodie, the prefect? But no.

“When I leave, the teacher on yard duty will stay with you through lunchtime,” the Growler said.

Amber's shoulders slumped. All plans of insurrection were thwarted.

The teacher on duty was Mr. Sinclair. He came into the classroom and didn't say a word as he closed the door behind him.

From his seat behind his desk, he looked at us for a long while. It was not a good look. Even Gina, who would have given anything to have Mr. Sinclair look at her for longer than three seconds, suddenly did not want his eyes on her.

Finally he spoke. “You girls are in serious trouble, I hear.”

At first, they tried to get Mr. Sinclair on their side. “But, sir, it was only a joke.” Amber was thick—she hadn't noticed that Mr. Sinclair had begun not with a question but with a statement. Still, they tried to buddy up to him.

“We didn't mean to,” whined Gina.

I'd never seen such a look on Mr. Sinclair's face, and I never wanted to again. I doubted that even his wife or mother had seen it. It was a look of incredulity, but not a “do you take me for some kind of fool” look. No, it was a look that reflected the lie back to the liar.

“How dare you?” bellowed Mr. Sinclair—Mr. Sinclair the Hot One, Mr. Sinclair who had awkwardly ignored his Valentine's Day gifts, Mr. Sinclair with his Socratic classroom. “How dare you do this to a colleague of mine? One of the nicest people in this college.”