The Scarlets (2 page)

If it was true, it was probably the nicest thing his father had ever done for anyone.

Cal left the window behind with a snort. A lot more than a pane of glass separated him from Micah and his father. “
Et tu
, Micah?” he said aloud.

“Can we get back to the novel, please?” Fallon asked in a huff, turning in her chair. She pulled her curls into a messy bun, the hair tie snapping so loudly it made him wince. “Or do I get to be your therapist, too?”

“My best friends here are dating,” Cal said, as if that explained everything. He still insisted on making that distinction. His best friends
here
. He wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like his friends from Greenport even thought about him anymore. They were all busy planning their bright futures as senators and governors, at Yale, Harvard. . . . “Not that it’ll last. Lara will figure out what a boring goody-goody Micah really is, and that’ll be the end of it. She says she finally wants a nice guy, but I know what a load of crap that is.”

“Goody-goody?” Fallon laughed, a little bitterly, and glanced up from her book. “I heard that kid has a rap sheet.”

“Oh my God, for
stealing
. In
high school
. It’s not like he killed somebody!” Though honestly, Cal himself had found Micah’s past intriguing when he met him last year. How often did you come across an overachieving, down-home charmer with a record?

“I always liked Lara,” Fallon said softly, and with maybe a hint of disappointment. “She was in my first-year seminar. Brought a funny bear thermos to class every day.”

“Yeah, she goes everywhere with that thing.” Fallon seemed to know an awful lot about his friends, even though Cal had never seen her hanging around them before. Then again, NHC was a tiny campus. He could probably name half of his year by name.

Cal ran his fingers across the spines of the textbooks and novels lining Fallon’s crowded bookshelf. A few comic books were sticking out at the end. He chuckled and pulled one of them down. “Dudes in purple spandex, eh? Good choice.”

“You can borrow it if you want,” Fallon replied, finally shutting her book in resignation. “Although your dad would probably skin me if he knew we were reading comic books right now. You’re supposed to be studying, Cal.”

“
The Phantom
,” Cal read aloud with a smirk, ignoring her. “The ghost who walks! Ooh, spooky! The purple getup kind of kills it, though, don’t you think?”

“Seriously, take it. You’d probably like it. It’s about a spoiled kid from a spoiled family who takes up his birthright to fight crime in the jungle. Maybe it’ll work like magic and teach you something about what the rest of us peasants like to call
responsibility
.”

“Oh, I know all about responsibility. My dad has been trying to make me be more responsible my entire life. Too bad for him he doesn’t have any real power over me.” Cal flipped through a few of the pages of
The Phantom
. “Anyway, I’m not sure I should be taking cues from a man in purple tights.”

“I said you would like it, not that it was realistic.” Fallon joined him at the bookshelf. She wore ill-fitting jeans and a simple gray tee with some kind of wolf-head design on it. Her chain-mail bracelet looked like it had come straight from a cheesy Renaissance festival. She seemed like the kind of girl who would really go to those things. “But you’re right, you have better things to worry about.”

“No, it’s cool. I think I will take it,” Cal said.

Fallon shrugged, but he caught a thin smile behind the show of indifference. “So what else do you have to do to convince your dad you’re back on the straight and narrow?”

“Well, starting tomorrow, I have to sort junk in Brookline’s basement,” Cal replied with a groan, the thought temporarily squashing his upswing in mood. “Maybe I can convince Professor Reyes my delicate constitution can’t abide the dust,” he said, grabbing his book bag. “Anyway, thanks for the comic.”

“No problem. And Cal?”

He paused on his way to the door, half turning his head to face her.

“I, um, I can do a thing or two with computers. If your dad doesn’t let up, I could try and get into his email. Maybe there’s something in there you could hold over
his
head for a change.”

Cal chuckled, but it tapered off quickly when he realized she wasn’t kidding. What she was proposing wasn’t a bad idea, but he hadn’t quite reached that level of desperation. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. But I can’t pay you as much as my dad can. I can’t pay you at all, really.”

“Please. I’ll be honest with you—your dad seems like kind of a dick,” Fallon said, going to sit at her desk. She picked up a little USB stick and began fiddling with it. “And believe it or not, I know what it’s like to have parents on your case. I could do this as a favor. It doesn’t make us best friends or anything.”

“Of course not.”

Cal paused at the door, tucking the comic book into his bag with a quick wink. “Thanks for the offer. It’ll give me something to think about after I finish this essay on Rhys’s postcolonial and postmodern response to
Jane Eyre
.”

Before the door closed entirely, he got to enjoy a glimpse of her bewildered expression.

“What? I have ears. Some things
do
get through.”

Fallon smiled and shoved a pen behind her ear. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Brookline basement. 7:00 sharp. Prof Reyes will let you in.

C
al scowled at his phone and the irritating text message glowing up at him. This was not new information. Roger had emailed him instructions that morning. Did he really think it was necessary to police his every breath?

Cal started typing,
Stop worrying about me so much, you can’t afford to lose any more hair
, then changed his mind and tossed his phone onto the bed. He and Micah shared a double in Brookline, which was almost awful enough to make him pledge a frat, if only to get a better room. He and Micah had ended up here after deciding to be roommates at the last second the previous year, but the irony was, Micah was hardly ever in the room now, since he and Lara had become inseparable. This was how it always was; things between Micah and Lara would be good for a few weeks and Micah would disappear. Then she would break up with him for a few days, or he would break up with her, and he would brood at his desk listening to weepy country songs until it drove Cal out of the room, to literally anywhere else.

Cal stared at Micah’s empty, made bed.
You two are poisonous for each other. Hurry up and figure that out already.

The privacy was nice, he supposed, turning back to his computer and the open document on the screen. He had managed his name and “TITLE TBD”; then, a very long subtitle he planned to turn into a paper any moment now: “The descent into madness and cultural promises left unfulfilled—the true cause of Antoinette’s deteriorated mental health in Rhys’s
Wide Sargasso Sea
.”

It wasn’t bad, really, but that was
all
he had. One dynamite subtitle was not going to keep him from flunking out. Cal swore and saved the document, then let his black mood propel him like a missile to the shared mini-fridge. It was stocked with beer, as always, but crouching there and perusing the shiny cans didn’t give him the jolt of anticipation it usually did. He knew if he drank right then, it would just be to secretly flip the bird at his father.

Instead, he slammed the door shut and went to crack open his window. Maybe air would help get the scholarly juices flowing.

The old Brookline windows hadn’t been replaced since the sixties, when the building used to be an actual insane asylum. The school constantly closed and reopened the dorm, promising renovations that never seemed to materialize. The place felt like a tomb. The window shrieked as Cal forced it open, and a gush of moist air poured in. The lacrosse team was out on the quad again today—or had never left—their laughter drifting up to him like distant music.

“Hey! Kurtwilder! Over here, man, I’m open! Pass!”

Cal heard the words as if from a dream. He felt like he was only half-present—like he was watching the world below from somewhere that wasn’t the world at all, and the scene before him was visible but not tangible. He imagined saying those words aloud, to Micah, maybe, or to Lara, and hearing how stupid they sounded. His friends would probably run to one of the college counselors, who would then tell him he was depressed.
Here, take this medication.

Maybe that would help, he reasoned, leaning closer to the open window. He wondered if pills would make that invisible barrier between him and the world thinner or thicker. He didn’t know which option scared him more.

As he stood there, he could all but hear the cursor on his screen blinking. Waiting. Ticking down the seconds he was wasting thinking about nothing. He could just drop out. That would be one way of handling all of this. Maybe he should call his mother, get her take on things. She had the kindness Roger didn’t. But she wasn’t exactly the best role model, either, since some of that kindness came from her nightly pills and vodka cocktail.

Cal glanced at his watch. Six thirty.

Half an hour. He could buckle down and be scholarly for half an hour, surely. He crossed from the window to his bed, where the book for his essay lay facedown and open, little Post-it flags indicating passages Fallon had highlighted for him. He flopped down onto the bed and grabbed the book, rolling onto his back and propping one knee on the other.

“‘There are always two deaths,’” he read, “‘the real one and the one people know about.’”

He was finally getting into the book when his phone buzzed right next to his head, making him start and drop the book on his face. Sputtering, he elbowed the novel out of the way and snatched up his mobile.

7 sharp, Cal. I mean it.

“Jesus, Roger, I get it.”

It’s like he can sense me procrastinating from afar. Saddest superhero power ever.

Groaning, Cal pocketed the phone and hunted down his book bag and shoes, a ratty old pair of Top-Siders his first boyfriend had given him in high school. Well, technically Cal had
stolen
the shoes, lovingly, and then Jules just hadn’t had the heart to ask for them back. Cal would wear the damn things until they had holes and then find someone to repair them.

Brookline’s halls were empty. It wasn’t a popular evening hangout spot. Most kids he knew went to the library or the gym after dinner, sometimes to rehearsals or study groups. Even in broad daylight and at peak hours of activity, the dorm never felt cheerful. Crowded, maybe, but not lively.

That figured. There were all kinds of creepy-ass rumors about what had gone on in the bad old days of Brookline, when it was still an asylum and not just another historic fixture on a campus choked with historic fixtures. As far as he knew, it was mostly campfire crap, stories that got told around Halloween to spook the first-years and visiting prospies. He couldn’t imagine what would actually be down in the closed-off basement. Certainly by now all of the important antiques and files had been secured and put away somewhere?

Cal whistled as he skipped down the stairs, determined not to spend the night in a dark mood. This was supposed to be punishment, but he would endure it like a champ. Hell, if he tried hard enough, he might even enjoy it. Maybe he could dig up a cool story or two for Lara to use in an art project. A lot of her work was about uncovering forgotten history.

He reached the main level and then continued downward, taking the turnoff toward the shadowy entranceway he had never given a second glance. Voices reached him from the alcove, and he passed a glass display case with some faded newspaper clippings, then took a sharp right, stopping short before he tumbled into someone’s back.

“Ah. Our fifth is here.” Professor Reyes poked her head around the human barrier directly in front of him.

Then Human Barrier turned, and Cal froze, squishing his toes nervously in his Top-Siders. It was Devon. Magical Lacrosse God Devon Kurtwilder, still sweaty from his game on the quad.

“Well, that’s everyone, then,” Professor Reyes continued. She was dressed in all black and half-wrapped in a glittery, beaded black shawl. About a dozen gaudy necklaces hung from her neck. “Let’s head down, and I’ll explain the rules as we go.”

“The rules?” Cal repeated. He didn’t recognize the other two students, but they looked older, maybe juniors or seniors, both girls. His dad had been on about how this was a “lucky group of students,” handpicked by the professor to rummage around in the basement, cataloging whatever old stuff was down there. An Exploratory Committee, he’d called it, which sounded way too official and smart for Cal to be involved in any real capacity. So now he was a tagalong. Great.

Devon ignored him, snapping a piece of gum and turning back toward the professor. His shirt wafted cut grass smell and sweat.

Professor Reyes reached into one of the many crocheted pockets on her tunic and fished out a giant key ring that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Hogwarts. She swept them all with her dark, beady eyes and nodded solemnly. “There are rules to going down here, Cal. Rules to the basement. Rules to Brookline. There’s more than just dust and memory down there; there are instruments, rusted but dangerous. So we have rules, and if you follow the rules, this will all go smooth as glass.”