The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (22 page)

Jake's remark caught his mother halfway between sitting and standing. She was undecided about whether she should get up and leave in a huff or sit down and have it out with her son. Jake made the decision for her. He took her hand. “Calm down, Mother. Just calm down. Let's talk about this. Tell me what Bartleby said.”

Mrs. Kaplan sat.

She took a shallow sip of coffee and said, “When I asked her why she rejected all our efforts to befriend her, she said, ‘Because you are destroying my self-image.'”

“What did you do?”

“I sent her to Louise.”

“Nurse Starr?”

Mrs. Kaplan set her cup down. She nodded.

Jake evoked the image of me, that singular dark head poking its way to the infirmary, singing. As the sight came into focus, so did the song I sang. He hummed a little, and then, half to himself, he started to sing the first verse, the one he knew best,
“God save our gracious
Queen,/Long live our noble Queen. . . .”
By the time he got to
“Happy and glorious, /Long to reign over us,”
he was singing out loud and when he got to the final line,
“God save the Queen,”
he was
con brio.

Applying her smile like a cosmetic, his mother asked, “What did you just sing?”

“I was singing ‘God Save the Queen.' Is my voice so bad that you don't recognize it? That Kane girl—Bartleby—was singing it just now.” Full-voiced, Jake repeated,
“Happy and glorious, /Long to reign over us,/God save the Queen!”

Mrs. Kaplan was too bothered to try to figure out why she was so bothered by that song. Instead she focused on the singer. “So,” she hissed, “So,” she repeated, “our Miss Kane, Miss Margaret
Rose
Kane was singing, was she? She was singing while I was agonizing over what she had just said?”

“Agonizing? I don't call sending her off to Louise Starr—”

His mother's head hurled back as if slung from a slingshot. The smile was
GONE
. What was happening? Her son had never spoken to her like this before. Never.
Who is
us,
Mother? . . . I don't call . . .
She stood up, stunned. She stayed in place seething, until she gathered breath enough to reply. “Well, Jacob, in the words of your protégée, I want this conversation to be over.”

And she stormed out of the mess hall.

Jake watched her leave, shook his head sadly. He reopened the
New York Times.
He scanned the news—reading only the headlines and first paragraphs—and read the entire Arts section in depth before allowing himself to open the Sunday magazine and start the crossword puzzle. He had not yet taken his pen from his pocket when Ashley Schwartz found him. She smiled benevolently, and in a voice pitched as high as a dog whistle, she asked him if he enjoyed looking at the pictures. Jake gave her a loony smile and nodded.

Ashley told him that Gloria said that he should come with her. Jake did not get up immediately. He folded the paper and smoothed it down. She said that he'd better come now because one of the girls in Meadowlark had had an accident. In that same highpitched voice she asked, “Remember the girl who wet her bed?” Jake returned a puzzled look. “The bed wetter?” she repeated. “She just threw up all over the floor in Meadowlark.” And with that, she pantomimed retching. “
THROW.UP. FLOOR.MEADOWLARK!
”

He folded the paper again, studied it, smoothed it, hesitated. The temptation to set her straight was strong, but something told him that this was not the time. Ashley thought he hesitated because he didn't want to come or didn't understand the urgency. She
scolded him, saying that it was starting to smell real bad. She waited for him to stand up. She pinched her nose and made a face. “Stinks. Stinky-poo.
UNDERSTAND
?” Jake nodded, slowly. “Gloria wants it cleaned up.
NOW
.” She started to walk away, looked back, and saw that Jake still had not moved. Putting her hands on her hips, she asked if he understood NOW. Jake gave her one of his dopey smiles and started shuffling toward her. She turned her back to him and told him not to forget his bucket and mop and to remember which cabin. Meadowlark.

Jake took his time getting there, and once he did, he again stifled an impulse to
Frustate their knavish tricks.
Instead he silently went about the business of cleaning up the mess and never let the treasured alums know that he was on to them.

Now, as he watched the coffee dripping through the filter, he thought about the Meadowlarks, and he thought about me. The ratio had become Margaret Rose, one: Meadowlarks, seven, for he realized that Berkeley had become one of Them. He thought about all the mischief the Meadowlarks had put me through. They owed me, Bartleby.

He thought about the tactical error his mother had made in assigning the cabins. She too owed Bartleby.

And he thought about Alex and Morris and the towers. He owed them a backup plan.

And then, despite the gallons of coffee he had drunk all day, he fell asleep without unplugging the coffeemaker.

T
he following day, Jake was reluctant to leave his cabin. He knew that any news about our plan—good or bad—would come by phone. He quickly changed the lightbulbs in Hummingbird and came back to the cabin and waited for the phone to ring. He picked up the receiver to make sure there was a dial tone, then left to empty the trash cans into the Dumpster. Returned to the cabin, listened for a ring, checked again for a dial tone.

He was so jumpy that it was difficult for him to efficiently be his inefficient self.

He hurried through the rest of his chores, almost giddy with anxiety about his inability to conceive of a backup plan. It was Thursday, and he was due to haul the Dumpster down the hill for pickup, and he would have done so had there been some way to take the phone with him. But there was no telephone cord long enough to reach the bottom of the hill, so he risked his mother's wrath rather than risk missing a phone call. He left the trash in the Dumpster and hoped that it
wouldn't attract rats or rabid raccoons or overflow before he could cart it away.

—
everyone should always have a backup

Still worried and uneasy, Jake absentmindedly picked up his paintbrushes and began to dab paint on canvas. It was then that the idea came to him. It came to him all at once: What to do. How to do it. And why it would work. He was ready to run out of his cabin and put his plan in action when he remembered Uncle Alex saying that he got things done by not being in a hurry.

He would wait. Timing was all. He relaxed.

He tuned his radio to the classical music station, and as he applied paint to his canvas, he refined his plan and thought about the joys of payback time.

When my call came, he half expected the news to be bad—and it was—but it was bad in an unexpected way. The first time I told him that I was in jail, it didn't even register.

I'm in jail.

Who is this?

I'm who the operator said I am. I am Margaret Rose Kane.

Oh,
that
Margaret Rose Kane.

He needed time. He desperately needed time if he was not to hurry, and the timing of his backup plan was to work. He checked his watch. There were three
business hours left to the afternoon. Peter Vanderwaal was on Central time, so he had an extra hour to make that call. He put his brushes aside, picked up the phone, and asked for directory assistance. He made three calls before phoning Peter. Then he and Peter talked at length because Peter always talked at length. When he hung up, Jake brewed a fresh pot of coffee.

And then he waited.

In the predawn darkness—well past lights-out and long before morning mess call—Jake stormed into Meadowlark cabin and snapped on all the overhead lights. He clapped his hands and shouted, “Up! Up! Everybody, up!” The girls were frightened, which is exactly what Jake had expected and of which he took full advantage. “Get dressed. Wear good tracking shoes, hats, and bring enough sunblock to cover yourselves from head to toe.”

Ashley Schwartz was the first to speak up. “Who are you?” she asked.

Alicia asked, “You're not Jake, are you?”

“No, I'm his evil twin,” Jake answered. “Now do as I tell you while I go get some supplies.”

“Supplies for what?”

“For payback time.”

“I'm going to Mrs. Kaplan,” Ashley announced. “This is unauthorized, and I'm going to tell.”

“I wouldn't do that just yet,” Jake said. “I think we ought to have a little talk first.” Defiantly, Ashley started toward the door. Without touching her, but with a stare as potent as a New Zealand Border collie, Jake herded her back to the row of girls, who were all standing now with their arms crossed over their chests, suddenly conscious of the fact that they were in their nightclothes in the presence of a grown man who was not an idiot. Keeping up his herding-master mode, Jake said, “Sit!” One by one, the girls sat. Three on the edge of one bed. Four on the one facing it. Jake stood in the aisle between the two. “Good!” he said after they had arranged themselves a wingspan apart. “Good!” he repeated. “Now we can talk.”

He spun around and looked at each of the girls, passing by each one once. Then around again. “Let's begin with you,” he said pointing directly to Berkeley Sims. “Yes,” he said, “let's start with
Metalmouth
Berkeley Sims.” There was a tittering wave that spread along one bed—the one on which Berkeley was seated—across the floor, and along the length of the other. Nothing Jake could have said or done would have better convinced them that this Jake knew more, saw more, heard more than they could ever have guessed.

“Where were you at camp last year, Miss Berkeley Sims?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he
said, “Butterworth Cheerleading, wasn't it?” Berkeley nodded. “Is that where you learned the bed-wetting trick?” he asked. She nodded again. “I thought so. It's quite popular among cheerleaders. Let me see if I have this right. It goes like this: Two girls fill paper cups with urine—their own. They put them on the bathroom floor and leave. A third girl picks one up. Only one. The other is flushed down the toilet. Two others fill paper cups with water. One of the girls stands guard outside the door. Another climbs the ladder and stands on the top rung. First she spills the two glasses of water on the mattress to soak it thoroughly. She sprinkles the urine on top of that. The paper cups are thrown in the Dumpster by the kitchen trash. “So it takes . . . let me see”—here he pretended to count on his fingers—“oh, yes, it takes exactly seven to pull it off. If asked, you could say that none of you had peed in Margaret's bed, and technically, you would be correct.”

The girls were speechless.

“Now, do I have it right?” he asked. They said nothing. “Tell me,” he commanded, “is that the way you did it?” Like birds perched on a wire, they sat motionless. “Is that the way you did it?” he demanded. They nodded in unison. “I can probably tell who urinated in the cups and who climbed the ladder, but I won't. What is important is that I know who stood
guard outside the door. That would be Berkeley. She did not participate other than standing guard and being the mastermind.” He spoke directly to Berkeley. “I've seen it before, Berkeley. There are minor variations on the procedure, but in general, it is a trick that Butterworth Cheerleading excels at.”

He folded his arms across his chest, studied the ceiling for a minute, then lowered his head. “Good,” he said, summarizing. “Now that we have that little incident solved, who wants to talk about plumbing?”

The girls looked at each other and then sat back without saying a word, ready to listen to Jake's next tale. After all, this was all about them.

Again he addressed Berkeley. “Was that Pap Harris's Water-Skiing Camp you attended the year before last?” Berkeley nodded. “Did you forget to tell B-Cup over here,” he said, looking straight at Kaitlin, “that she should never stuff into the drain the T-shirts of the girl you want to accuse? It's a dead giveaway that she did not do it. There's a better trick to stopping up shower drains, but I don't want to take the time now to educate you.” He smiled. Then, looking at Stacey, he said, “And, Dolly, you really should not attempt to do dirty tricks until you know left from right. It might prove to be a problem a few years from now, when you learn to drive.”

Then Kaitlin looked at Stacey. “We had all agreed it would be the shower on the left. Remember?”

Stacey was furious. “It depends on where you are. If you're inside the shower, it was the one on the right.”

Kaitlin ranted, “Everyone else—everyone but you—understood that it was to be the shower on the left when you face them. Not when you're
in
them.”

“Well now, enough of that,” Jake said. “Do you want me to guess in whose cubby I will find the screwdriver that was used to loosen the drain plate?” He looked from one face to another until he saw Ashley smile. “Could it be Tattoo?” Ashley lifted her chin defiantly. “I know, I know, Ms. Ashley Schwartz, the screwdriver doesn't really belong to you. You lifted it. I know where it came from, and I know where it is stashed. Once you got rid of Margaret Rose, you weren't so worried about being caught with it. But I would like to get it back. As soon as we return from our mission will be fine.”

He said nothing more for a while, allowing their uneasiness to grow. Jake waited until the pink of Ashley's blush deepened from petal to shocking. “Now,” he said, “shall we talk about sun protection? Even though Berkeley tried hard to convince me that Margaret Rose had made the mess at the foot of her bed, I know
she could not have. She was in the infirmary when Heather threw up. Besides, Heather—or should I call you
Fringie?
—from past experience, I know that at least one girl always comes back from tubing sick. So I hope your back is healed and that you have learned your lesson, for sunblock will be a very important part of your supplies.”