What We Hide

Also by Marthe Jocelyn

Folly

How It Happened in Peach Hill

Would You

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2014 by Marthe Jocelyn
Jacket art copyright © 2014 by Nikki Smith/Arcangel Images (figures) and Mark Owen/Arcangel Images (background)

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jocelyn, Marthe.
What we hide / by Marthe Jocelyn. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: Told from multiple viewpoints, high school Junior Jenny of Philadelphia spends a semester at a Quaker boarding school in Sheffield, England, near where her brother is avoiding the Vietnam draft, and where everyone carries close-held secrets.
ISBN 978-0-385-73847-7 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-385-90732-3 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-375-89465-7 (ebook) — ISBN 978-0-375-85544-3 (pbk.) [1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Boarding schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Secrets—Fiction. 5. Foreign study—Fiction. 6. Sheffield (England)—History—20th century—Fiction. 7. Great Britain—
History—Elizabeth II, 1952– —Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J579Wh 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013015146

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1

for Maz
and
for Elena
,
friends of my youth

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Jenn

Robbie

Brenda

Oona

Film Titles

Penelope

Illington vs. Zoffton: Cannon Fodder

Luke

Jenny

Brenda

Oona

Nico

Penelope

Jenny

Percy

Revenge

Robbie

Jenny

Acknowledgments

About the Author

jenn

So here we were, running away to save Tom’s life.

And turning mine inside out.

If there hadn’t been a war going on, my brother would have taken a year off before college and doodled down to Mexico in a van. But now it was college versus Vietnam. Unless he wanted to fake a mental disorder, but Dad said over his dead body was he having a son with
psycho
on his record and Mom said it would be
her
dead body if her son got sent to war. They didn’t say those things with me in the room, but the heating vent in the upstairs hallway conveniently transmitted any words spoken in the kitchen, so I listened in as the discussions went on for weeks.

The original plan was Canada. Tom was leaving. So was his best friend, Matt, of course, but to a different place. That part was bad. Tom was my closest person on earth,
but when Matt got his draft notice, it was almost worse, because it made me feel lucky in an awful kind of way. Our parents looked at every option to keep their son out of the army. At Matt’s house they were proud for him to be a soldier, like his dad had been.

They told me at a Saturday breakfast. I held my spoon between two fingers, making it vibrate like a hummingbird’s wing. The idea of Tom staying at home and attending the University of Pennsylvania had been abandoned weeks earlier. Not safe enough. Now Canada—all billion acres of it—was also too close.

“If he goes to college in England he’ll take up residence on another
continent
.” Dad’s hand swept over to capture my rattling spoon. “At least temporarily. It slows down the whole process if his name comes up. The new lottery system still lets the boys go to college, but that could change at any time.”

Did he know what he was talking about? Or was it pure hope?

“There’s a rumor,” said my mother, “that they’ll end college deferment altogether. He’d be forced to join up. Every single month counts, as long as he’s eligible.”

“Maybe he’ll meet a girl,” Dad said. “If he married an English girl, he’d become a citizen of the United Kingdom, which is not involved in the war. He’d be safe forever.”

“Does Tom know you’re arranging his marriage?” I wanted Tom to be there so I could roll my eyes at him. This was almost funny. But Tom, typically, was still in bed. “And why did you keep the whole boy-wonder-goes-to-Britain
plan such a big fat secret? No one thought I’d care whether my brother suddenly moves across the ocean?”

“We didn’t want you getting upset until we knew for certain.”

But
Tom
had known for ages, adding foreign applications to the pile he’d done for American schools.

“And now it’s decided?” Without me having a say? “Where exactly is he going?”

“The acceptance letter came yesterday,” said Dad. “He’ll be at Sheffield. A very fine university.” His smugness made me want to grind my teeth.

“Isn’t he clever.”
For a pothead
. I drummed the spoon on my side of the table as many times as I could before Dad’s hand stopped me. “And what about Matt?”

Mom folded her napkin and stood to clear the dishes. “It’s … hard about Matt.”

I knew she loved him too, and had ever since the boys started Little League in the third grade. He’d sat at this table for a thousand bowls of macaroni, a million fistfuls of popcorn. Mom’s eyes caught mine, but then she looked away.

“Each family has to decide for itself,” she said. “We can only do what
we
think is best. For us. For Tom.”

“It’s not fair,” I said. “None of it.”

“Matt will be leaving in a few weeks, just like your brother.”

“
Just like?
That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard! Tom goes to England and Matt goes to napalm bomb land? How is that the same?”

And what about
me
? Losing Tom
and
Matt? Who would I
be
without them? All my life I’d had two big boys to watch for clues, two boys teasing me, squishing me between them, agreeing that I was a flea and a pest and still the best sister ever.

“You look hideous,” they’d say when I dressed up for a party.

“We’ll kill him,” they said when Jared Benner didn’t show up for the tenth-grade dance.

So now it was me, Mom, and Dad. Dad’s earnest legal cases. Mom gung ho about the Equal Rights Amendment and having what she called “a voice.” She wasn’t exactly a women’s libber, but she did say “Thank goddess” instead of “god” to support the movement. I told my parents that school was
bor
ing, even if my friends Becca and Kelly were as entertaining as a soap opera. Boys and drama. Competitive crushes on Tom. I was more a background kind of person, not shy, exactly, but … undercover. Tom was sure of himself, the one who got noticed, the one who knew every time what to say, who to charm, what to do.

“I’m supposed to just carry on, pretending that Tom is not a draft dodger?”

“Don’t use the word
dodger
,” said Dad.

“I should say
evader
? Or you like
resister
better?”

“Shush!”

“Don’t they track down draft dodgers and put them in prison?” I pushed my bowl of cereal sludge away. “And I’m supposed to invent a story for my friends that he’s got flat feet or something?”

Not that making up stories would be any different from usual. I
had
to fabricate home drama now and then, just to have something to say.

“G’morning.” Tom slouched into the room. Boxer shorts, T-shirt, hair standing up on one side. The bristling silence made him pay attention. “What?” When did he start having stubble in the morning? It made him look so arty.

“Your sister”—Mom poured him juice—“is having one of her moody mornings.” She opened the oven, releasing the warm cinnamon-bun cloud saved just for Tom.

“What?” he said to me.

“
Moody?
You’ve been hiding this from me for how long?
Months?
And now I’m supposed to just
lie
? On
command
? As if my opinion means nothing?”

I left the room. What
was
my opinion?

“Jenn?” He found me later.

“I’m not talking to you. Traitor. Secret-keeper. Favorite child. Sister-leaver.”

“I’ve refined the plan.”

I pulled a pillow over my head. The bed jounced as he sat down.

“Really. You’re going to like it.”

“Mmmph.”

“I told them that I’d only go over there if you came too. You should do a semester abroad, come to England, be my pal.”

I dragged the pillow off my face and sat up. “What?”

He lay down next to me. “Yep.”

“What did they say?”

“That you’d have to go to school. Of course. But …”

“
Three whole months?
They didn’t say no?”

“They were actually sort of cool with it. They think it was their idea. An opportunity for mind-broadening. Good for the college applications. You can always leave if it’s awful. Or maybe stay if you love it. Plus it makes
me
going more believable.”

“Like,
boarding
school?”

“Yeah, we’ll find someplace near Sheffield. You can pretend to be Jane Eyre.”

“Didn’t her best friend die of tuberculosis in the dormitory?”

“Look at the alternative: You. Mom. Dad. Here. Forever.”

The summer suddenly got busy. Shopping, packing, planning, and goodbyes. The hum of
anything can happen
, which I’d never felt before. My friends were wild with envy. The only really awful part about leaving was Matt acting as if we weren’t running away from him too. He cheerfully never mentioned the sinking ship, or the rat named Tom who was jumping clear.

I told Becca and Kelly not to come to the airport.

“Family.” They knew to avoid the situation. I’d used that single word to create this dark mythology about my home life.

So the send-off was parents plus Matt.

Matt was on leave, going back in four days to Virginia to finish basic training, just as Tom would be sitting down for his first college lecture across the ocean.

Tom had obviously smoked a joint before leaving the house. He bought a bag of M&M’s and ripped it open in the airport shop. He poured them down his throat, laughing. Matt poked Tom, trying to break the flow of candy. Matt was taller, with broader shoulders and more muscles. You’d think Tom was the scruffy, poetic type, but he was the sneakiest, quickest guy on the basketball court. He couldn’t chew
and
laugh
and
swallow, though, so he was spitting out M&M’s, laughing so hard he almost gagged. I bugged my eyes at Matt to pull Tom away, behind the magazines. All we needed was for Dad to launch into another lecture on responsibility.

Mom and Dad took turns hugging us goodbye, making us show them again that we had passports, tickets, contact info for Dad’s colleague who was renting us a car, English pound notes, and traveler’s checks. Matt scooped Tom and me together for a lump hug, hanging on as if it were the last time. His uniform was stiff against my cheek, hardly worn.