The Children (7 page)

When we were teenagers, Sally and I liked to ride our bikes to Holden Academy at night. We felt a sort of entitlement to the place, based on our family connections. Whit and his brother Aaron had attended Holden, as did their father and grandfather before them. When they were old enough, Perry and Spin also boarded, but our grandfather had retired as headmaster when we were little. Joan couldn't afford the tuition, and Whit, while generous in spirit, didn't believe he should pay for the education of another man's children.

“I think you're lucky,” he confided to Sally and me as we headed off to meet the school bus one day. I was just starting my freshman year of high school. Sally was a sophomore. “I always wanted to ride a bus and go to a public school.”

“I know,” Sally had said to Whit. “We are lucky.”

Ten minutes later, when the bus stopped at the intersection in front of the Holden campus, we saw three girls leaving the school's dining hall. One of the girls said something to her friends, and we watched as they all collapsed into one another, suddenly sodden-legged and seizing, one of them apparently suffocating with mirth. We had met some of Perry's friends from Holden—sometimes he brought them to the lake for the weekend—and these girls were cut from the same cloth. They were “lame,” according to Sally. I agreed. They all wore skirts and navy blazers. There was something ridiculously optimistic about the way their ponytails were set, something predictable about the athletic, slightly masculine cut of their thighs.

“Ugh,” said Sally. “Look how stupid they all are. Wait a minute—who's this now?”

A tousle-haired, suntanned boy was jogging toward the girls, and Sally practically sat on my lap to get a better look at him. We were both craning our heads for a last glimpse of the boy before the bus turned the corner.

“I hate preppies,” Sally said.

“Me, too,” I said.

“I think it would be fun to meet some of them, though,” Sally added.

“Me, too.”

It was that Friday night that we first pedaled over to the campus on our bikes.

Our mother and Whit didn't know what we were up to, but eventually they found out, and Whit always expressed a certain pride in our escapades.

“For over a hundred and fifty years,” he'd announce to dinner guests, years later, “Holden students have found ways to sneak off campus to find mischief. Sally and Charlotte Maynard turned this tradition on its head by sneaking
onto
campus.”

He didn't know all the details. He didn't know that Sally engaged in a series of affairs at Holden, not just with various members of the hockey and football teams but, one year, with a thirty-five-year-old history teacher named Ed Harriman. He didn't know that I snuck into the library at night and looked at the old yearbooks. Or that I'd go into the dean's office to read the students' transcripts and disciplinary reports. Sometimes I'd wander into the nurse's office to read the medical histories of the students. Some of these kids had serious issues: A girl I knew from grammar school was now anorexic; another was a cutter. One of the boys had been caught selling cocaine. For some reason, these reports gave me satisfaction.

It was Everett who discovered our nocturnal education at Holden. I was riding my bicycle up Town Hill Road one autumn evening and he was returning from the Pale Horse. It was late, probably close to midnight. That road is dark—there are no streetlights on any of the Harwich roads—and it's a long, steep climb. I saw Everett's pickup drive past. He had glanced out his window to see what kind of nut would be out riding at that time of night. I think he was pretty surprised to see that it was me.

Everett was at UConn and hadn't paid much attention to Sally and me in the past year or so. But he recognized me that night, even though I had my hood pulled up over my head. He pulled over and stopped his truck. I gave him a little smile.

“Hey, Everett,” I said.

“What're you doing out so late?”

“I was with Sally. We were … visiting a friend.”

“Where's Sally?”

“Why?”

“You said you were with her.”

“She's still at our friend's.”

“You're gonna get hit by a car. You need to put a reflector on the back of your bike. I almost didn't see you.”

“Oh.”

“I'll give you a ride.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said. He lifted my bike into the bed of the pickup and we started off.

“Does Joan know you're out?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“What about Whit?”

“It's fine,” I said. “They're asleep.”

“Have you been drinking or something?”

I shook my head and tried not to smile. I was feeling shy suddenly, and embarrassed. I glanced at him a few times as he drove. When he turned onto East Shore Road, I realized I was sad that the ride was almost over.

“Where were you?” I blurted out.

“The tavern.”

“I was at Holden,” I said.

“Doing what?”

“Sally and I have a few friends there.”

“I thought they locked up all the dorms after ten.”

“They do, but the doors have keypads. Sally and I know all the codes.”

“You know all the combinations to the dorms?”

“We know all the combinations to every building on campus.”

“You do not.”

“The science building. The dean's office. All the buildings. I can prove it. I just proved it to a kid who lives in the senior boys' dorm. I got him a copy of his transcript. He's giving me a hundred dollars to alter it before it goes out to colleges.”

“Why would you want to stick your neck out like that? For some entitled Holden brat?”

“I don't know. It's fun.”

“You know you could get arrested?”

“For what?”

“Trespassing, for one. Stealing.”

“Who would catch us?”

“My uncle Russ, he's head of security. I'm tempted to tell him what you girls are up to. You're too young to be hanging around there.”

“We're in high school. We're the same age as the kids who go there.”

“But you don't go there.”

“My mom grew up at Holden, you know.”

“So?”

“The athletic building is named after Whit's grandfather.”

“So?”

“So Sally and I like to go and swim in it sometimes. You know, with friends.”

Actually, Sally was the only one who ever swam there.

“Boyfriends?”

I sank into my seat and shrugged. Sally was the only one with boyfriends.

“I just like it there,” I said finally.

“You don't belong there. Be careful,” he said, and then he pulled the truck over. We were still almost a quarter of a mile from Lakeside. My heart was racing.

“I thought you were driving me home.” I wanted Everett to kiss me.

“You can get out here. I'm not gonna risk Whit seeing me drop you off.”

“He wouldn't care.” But Everett had already jumped out and was unloading my bike.

I got back on my bike and gave him a little wave as I rode past.

“I think he'd care,” Everett called out. He drove slowly behind me until I turned into our driveway.

So it was our shared secret that united us at first. From then on, when Everett worked around the place with his dad, I noticed him. Sometimes I'd be sitting on the porch doing homework. Sometimes, if it was a weekend, I was out fishing on the dock, or rigging the sailboat with Spin. I always called out to him now to say hello, and he'd mumble something in reply.

He caught me leaving Holden again, a few months later. This time, I had just pedaled out of the main gate when he drove past. He pulled over and I rode eagerly up to his window.

“Hey,” I said, staring off down the road. It was cold that night and the words floated from my lips in little white puffs.

“Hey,” he said. “Well, get in.”

After I climbed inside the truck, he turned to me and said, “Do you know there are maniacs driving around the countryside looking for girls like you?”

I had been blowing on my hands to warm them. I didn't know what to say, so I just shrugged.

“I'm not kidding.”

“Well, then, I'm glad you stopped. I don't want to be attacked by a maniac.”

Everett started driving. “I should tell Whit. I should tell Whit what you're up to, before something bad happens.”

We drove on in silence. His truck was old and had one of those bench seats in front. He turned on the radio, then dropped his hand onto the seat next to me. It was dark. I never would have had the courage if it wasn't so late and so dark, but I moved my hand over on the seat and touched his hand with my pinkie. I barely grazed it. I just wanted to touch him. He drove on. I moved my hand just a little bit closer, just so it rested against his.

Everett stomped on the brake and I was hurled against the dashboard.

“Would you put your fucking seat belt on?” he shouted. Then: “What are you, fifteen years old? Sixteen?”

I was crying. He had scared me. “I'm seventeen,” I said.

“You're not seventeen.”

I was sixteen, but I didn't say anything.

“What are you doing down there at Holden? Fooling around in the dorms with the guys? Huh?”

“No.”

“Bullshit.”

“Just let me out,” I said.

“Put your seat belt on,” he grumbled. “There's something really the matter with you,” Everett said finally. “You and your sister both.”

“We're just bored,” I whispered.

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Stop crying.”

“I can't.”

“I can make you laugh.”

“No you can't,” I said, recalling our childhood games. Everett, Sally, Spin, and I used to play a game where we'd sit and stare into the eyes of one of the others. The first person to smile lost. Sally always won.

I felt him looking at me. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye and then it was hard not to smile.

“I saw you smiling,” he said.

“I wasn't,” I said.

“I can make you,” he said. “I can make you smile.”

“Okay. Try,” I said, scowling with all my might.

That night was our first together. I snuck over to his place when I saw his bedroom light go out. I tapped on his window. He let me in.

 

SIX

Spin and Laurel came to the lake every afternoon that first week. Sally was in the city, but she e-mailed constantly, wanting to know what I had found out about Laurel.

“She's stopped posting on Facebook,” Sally said. “She stopped blogging, too.”

“I think she's respecting our privacy,” I said. “Spin's privacy. You know, she's not nearly as braggy as she seemed on her blog. She's interested in others. I have a feeling she's a good writer.”

“Based on what?”

“She likes to observe people. They say that's what makes a writer great, her curiosity about others.”

“I've never heard anybody say that,” Sally said.

“It's just a known fact,” I said, annoyed. Sally thinks she knows everything.

“Some people are just nosy,” she said.

Whatever.

Spin was busy that week. It wasn't just his duties on campus with the remaining students. He had his work for the Lake Marinac Task Force—the group devoted to keeping our lake healthy and clean.

Joan, Sally, and I are content to know as little as possible about the lake's task force. We're aware that Spin and a few others are constantly measuring and sampling the water. We just don't care to know all the details. Spin is a fascinating person with a great personality, except when he talks about the lake, or any environmental issues, really. Then he can be kind of a bore. On Laurel's second day here, while we all sat out on the porch enjoying the lake breeze, she asked Spin about the task force.

“Did you start the thing or what?” Laurel asked him.

“Oh no, it began long before I was even born,” Spin said.

“It was in the early 1970s. Whit was one of the people who started it,” Joan interjected. She thought it important for Laurel to know that she was on the Holden crew team then. She had been the captain of the first women's varsity team at Holden. “We practiced every morning on the lake,” she explained. “You can't believe how cold it was some mornings, but we were out there every day.”

“Yes,” Spin said. Then, when Joan offered nothing to link her rowing to the task force, he proceeded to tell Laurel that a few decades ago our lake was in jeopardy. There was an overgrowth of invasive plants (algae, blah, blah, blah). Runoff from lawns and farms (phosphorus, blah). Fertilizers (nitrogen, whatever), resulting in algal blooms. The task force hired biologists to do a study, then came up with a plan to keep the lake alive.

“So the lake was actually dying?” Laurel asked.

“No,” Joan said.

“Yes, it was dying,” Spin said. “Lakes and ponds die all the time. They're living, breathing organisms, just like us.” He shielded his eyes then and squinted out at the water as if he were trying to read its very pulse. Joan turned to me and rolled her eyes.

“Lakes need nutrients in the form of phosphorus and nitrogen,” he continued. “But if they get too many nutrients, which can happen in the summer, the whole system is thrown out of whack. The water temperature rises. Too much algae blooms and it hogs up all the oxygen. And then you can have a real situation on your hands.”

“One worries about summerkill, dear,” said Joan to Laurel. “Now, who would like to go to the market with me?”

“Summerkill?” Laurel asked.

“Yes, summerkill is when large populations of fish die off suddenly,” Spin said. “Lack of oxygen.”

We haven't had a summerkill in years. Spin has been working on a study with a team of environmental scientists at Yale; it's a six-year study following the placement of giant aerators in the water. That's why he regularly tests the water quality at various points on the lake.