The Education of Bet (20 page)

"Did you have a good time?" I asked my roommate from my position in bed, sheets pulled up to my chin.

"You know, I did," he said, sounding surprised. He removed his tie.

"And what of my sister?" I couldn't help but ask. "What did you think of her?"

He was silent for a long moment. Then: "She's as odd as you are, isn't she?"

February 18, 18—

Dear Will,

Well, I have really put my foot in it. I have gone and fallen in love for the first time, and with my own roommate, no less! I can hear you laughing at me now: "This is a fine kettle of fish, Bet! You say you want to impersonate a boy—me; you say you want to go to all this trouble so you can obtain a proper education. And what happens at the end of the day? You fall in love! That is so like a girl—and
that
is why education is wasted on girls! Now what, pray tell, do you plan to do? After all, your first plan has worked out so well!"

Fine. Laugh all you want to. But I can assure you, it is not funny. I can further assure you, if you have never had such feelings yourself, that I have come to learn that one does not choose whom one falls in love with. Yes, it would have been nice if I could have waited until after my original plan had been successfully executed here at the Betterman Academy. Yes, it would have been nice if the object of my (great) affections had turned out to be someone suitable, someone I met after all this, someone whom I had not met under false pretenses. And preferably someone of my own station, since what boy whose family can afford to send him away to school would ever possibly grow warm feelings for the maid's daughter? But since, as I say, one has no choice in these matters of love, it is useless to talk about what "would have been nice."

Oh, Will. I am heartsick, and in every way imaginable. I am heartsick because I am in love. I am heartsick because the object of that love has no knowledge of my feelings, nor can he ever! For I have determined that the only possible action to take is no action; I shall continue my quest to get an education until it is completed. And so I will put my feelings aside, push them down as though they never existed, and I will redouble my efforts in my lessons until I achieve what now seems impossible: forgetting I ever had those feelings in the first place.

Oh, Will! I wish you were here! Or I wish, at the very least, that you would write me back, even if you laugh at me throughout your letter, for then I would know that you are well. Which I do not know, since it has been so very long since I have had any letters from you.

Please, write and tell me you are well. Please, write and tell me what a foolish little idiot I have been and how stupid it is of me to have allowed my heart to become so engaged.

Your sister in spirit,
Bet

***

The Sunday morning after the winter ball found me up early and at my desk, having resolved to attack my studies with renewed vigor.

James, on the other hand, woke up angry.

"I can't believe this!" he said, sitting bolt upright in bed and blinking against the glare of all the lamps I'd lit and the light streaming through the window's open shutters. "It's bad enough to have a roommate who insists on going to sleep in pitch darkness so that if I must rise in the middle of the night, I practically kill myself merely attempting to cross my own room. But now my insane roommate has to insist on so much light on Sunday morning, and so early, when the rest of the sane world is still sleeping?"

I resented that remark about my sanity. Or lack thereof.

I looked up from my studies just long enough to see a confused look cross his face.

"And was that
birds
I heard chirping?" he went on. "
Birds
chirping in
England
in the middle of
February?
" He paused, cocked an ear. "Funny, I don't hear anything now." Another pause, followed by an accusing: "It was
you,
wasn't it? You were
whistling while you worked,
weren't you?"

I felt the blush coloring my cheeks, for more reasons than one.

"Good morning, James," I said, forcing myself to look at him, forcing a normal tone into my voice as if nothing had changed between us in the past day and night because as far as he knew, it hadn't. "I trust you slept well after the dance?"

"Hey!" he said, ignoring my polite query. "You're well again! You're not coughing and sneezing as if you're dying, and you're up early, whistling like a bird!"

"Yes, well, I—"

"I knew it. I knew it! I knew yesterday, when you claimed to be so ill, that you would make a speedy and miraculous recovery from your deathbed, just like you did the last time. So tell me, what was
that
all about?"

He didn't wait for me to answer, which was good, since I didn't have an answer; certainly not one I was willing to share.

"I know!" He snapped his fingers at me so abruptly I flinched a little in my seat. "You were worried that if you went with Bet, none of the other boys would dance with her, and you just wanted her to have a good time."

"How did you guess?"

"Well, I've never been a brother, but I have read about them in books. So I know that sometimes they undervalue their sisters, think that no one will want to dance with them, so I'm guessing you figured that if you asked me to look out for her, of course I wouldn't allow her to have a bad time."

"Yes, well, I—"

"But don't you see, Will? You needn't have gone to so much bother."

"I needn't?"

"No, of course not. A girl like Bet would be fine no matter who was or wasn't with her."

"She would?"

"Of course!"

"But, er ... why?"

"Because she's pretty."

"Well, I'm sure she would love to receive such a compliment. You know, if she were here."

"But it's more than that."

"More than pretty?"

"Oh, yes. You may not see it, since you're her brother, Will. But your sister is kind and intelligent and funny. And special."

I confess it without qualm. When I heard James say that about Bet, I had one reaction, even though I couldn't let him see it:

Swoon!

***

Oh, this was worse than worse.

As Bet, I liked James, but could not confess that liking, while James could do nothing about his liking for Bet.

"Do you think your sister might visit again this term?" he asked tentatively one night while we were studying.

"No," I said. "She is kept quite busy at home. Besides which, have you not seen the snow on the ground lately? I would think that even Father Christmas would be hard-pressed to get through."

"Perhaps when the spring arrives...?"

"No!" I practically shouted at him. "No." I forced a more reasonable tone into my voice. "You must realize that you are placing me in a most awkward position here."

"And how is that?"

"Well." It was all I could do not to squirm in my seat from discomfort. "It is obvious to me that you fancy yourself fond of, er,
Bet.
"

"I never said—"

"And I can certainly understand that. As you have said, she is pretty and kind and intelligent and funny and—what was that other word you used?"

"Special."

"Of course.
Special.
But I, as you well know, am her brother. I am also, as you well know, your roommate. So I don't see how you can possibly expect—"

"I never said anything about fondness."

"No, but—"

"I never said
anything
that should cause you to dither on so."

"No, of course not, but—"

"
All I asked,
"—James half rose out of his seat as he shouted at me—"
was if she might be visiting again this term!
"

"Oh. Well then, the answer would be no. I'm afraid I do not think that will happen."

I don't know how James felt, but this was starting to exhaust me.

Honestly, it was easier, not to mention safer, to put my nose to the grindstone and just study.

Study, study, study.

***

Two weeks after the dance, March on the horizon, it was still all anybody could talk about. We were all at dinner, Marchand Hall ringing with the sound of five hundred boys eating, and Stephens was regaling us with his own memories of the night.

Stephens was the boy who'd told Hamish and Mercy where Little and I were the day they'd surprised us fishing by the river. Stephens, a spotty-skinned boy with dirty hair who'd been held back more than once for failing to show the intelligence to advance to the next form, had originally struck me as the sort who wasn't so much stupid as scheming, always angling for better position in the pecking order. If that meant doing things that might result in other boys' harm, like informing on Little and me, so be it.

Early on, I'd gotten the impression that all Stephens's angling was in the hopes of displacing Mercy as second to Hamish; no one could displace Hamish. In recent days, that impression had changed. Now I thought that Stephens accepted that Mercy's ability to supply Hamish with beer, not to mention Mercy's skill at providing Hamish with the optimum level of sycophancy, meant that Mercy would never be supplanted. The hierarchy of our little universe at Betterman was too firmly in position. Nothing would alter it now. I believed that Stephens resented this more than most, and for some time he'd been seizing every opportunity to throw what little daggers he had Hamish's way.

"Gardener's sister really was something!" Stephens said to the table at large.

To my surprise, there was a chorus of approving murmurs. Who would have ever guessed I'd be such a success with so many? But then, the night of the dance, I'd really only had eyes for James, so perhaps I'd failed to notice some of the other things that were going on around me.

"Yes, she really was," Stephens went on enthusiastically when it became apparent that the others were going to do no more than murmur in reply. "So pretty. And so sharp, by all accounts."

I must say, I did feel rather flattered on my own behalf.

"And what a fine dancer!" Stephens said with awe in his voice, as though the girl he was talking about had somehow invented dancing. "Wouldn't you say so, Tyler?" he said, addressing James.

"She was adequate," James allowed, refusing to look up from his meal.

At first I was offended at this—adequate?—but then I realized from the dejected slope of James's shoulders that he was no doubt still smarting from the discussion we'd had about when Bet might or might not make another appearance.

"I'd say she was more than adequate," Stephens said. He turned to Little. "Wouldn't you say so, Little? Why, I was sure I saw you spin her around the room at least once."

"It was ... it was ... it was the time of my life," he finally hiccupped out. Then he blushed in my direction. "I hope I haven't offended you, Will."

"No offense taken," I reassured him.

"The time of your life," Stephens echoed thoughtfully. "Yes, I could see how someone could feel that way about such a girl. Wouldn't you say so, Hamish?"

Hamish scowled.

"Oh, that's right. You wouldn't know, would you?" Stephens spoke the words with such oversweetness he might have been a nasty girl about to steal her grandmother's last tart. "Gardener's sister refused to dance with you."

Hamish scowled some more, but Stephens wouldn't leave it alone.

"Gardener's sister even danced with Little—with
Little!
—but she refused to dance with you."

That's when Hamish lunged at Stephens's neck.

***

Once you have heard a thing, no matter how hard you might try to forget it, it is impossible to
un
hear it. And so it was with the words James had spoken on the night of the dance: he regarded me—
Will—
as his best friend. It was therefore now impossible for me to think of myself in any other way.

In the aftermath of Hamish's lunging for Stephens's neck at dinner, James was shaken.

"I don't see how," he said, "the masters can chalk this up to yet another instance of 'boyish high jinks'!"

"You know how things are around here," I said softly. "It doesn't do to expect it ever to be any different. And as Little always points out, there's no point in running from it."

"But did you see the marks on Stephens's neck?"

Of course I had seen them. We all had.

"Come on," I said. "At least we tried."

This was true. For once not content to sit idly by and watch as one of our number was physically abused, James and I, as though thinking with one mind, had attempted to restrain Hamish. Not that it had done much good. So angry was he at Stephens, Hamish had had the strength of three boys, shrugging off our efforts as he'd proceeded to throttle Stephens.

"Come on," I said again.

And then I did something I should never have done, made a mistake far graver than thinking I could fight Hamish. Wanting to make James feel better—not even sure in the moment if I was thinking of myself as Will, the roommate James regarded as his best friend, or as Bet, the girl who liked James—I reached out and covered his hand with mine.