What We Hide (21 page)

Penelope was still Queen of the Swamp—Percy’s nickname—despite pissing off every single person at some point or another.

It was hard to admit that Tom had succumbed, but I did complain to Percy: “She says and does
anything
she wants to! Like no one ever taught her any manners.”

“As if she’s a toddler.” Percy was good at listening. “It’s very naughty to knock the jam pot onto the carpet or to poke hairpins into the butter, but she’s still part of the family, so you clean up the mess and try not to leave jam pots or hairpins lying about.”

“But then she finds a packet of matches. And burns down the house.”

“Why aren’t you pissed off at your brother?” said Percy. “He’s the one who … did whatever he did with her. She’s just a pathological slag.”

I
was
pissed off at Tom, but he was away on Planet Sheffield. Penelope was in my own dormitory. I never looked in her direction. I slept with my back to her bed under the window. And I’d been avoiding the Swamp for days. But where else was there to go? Especially tonight when we had a weirdly warm evening. I’d be missing that twilit half hour, listening to night birds, seeing the branches shift to monstrous silhouettes.

I spotted Penelope’s white denim jacket from the top of the path, a perfect beacon. I took a second trail that circled away from the Swamp, bumpier, more scattered twigs and heaps of leaves. I hadn’t approached the woods from this direction before, had no idea where or if the paths met up. What was I doing in the dim, creepy woods anyway? I just
couldn’t bear to go down to the Cellar by myself—what if people were making out? Or sit in the dorm looking like a lonely bunny when they all showed up at Bed Bell. I walked nearly on tiptoe, hearing small crackles in the hush, an occasional bird whistle. Yellow leaves fluttered and turned over like girls showing off the backs of their dresses. Maybe I’d find the shrine that the third form had reportedly built under a bush, a place for the fairies to come.

A boy laughed. I saw a flash of blue ahead, amongst the grays and greens. He wasn’t a killer rapist because why would he be laughing? I crept off the path and peered around a tree, palms against the crinkled bark. There were two jackets, one blue, one darker. Two boys. I couldn’t see who, but they were laughing again, and then … tussling. I inched from my tree to a thicker one, better for hiding behind.

Now they were snogging and bucking their hips, white hands gripping dark-clothed bodies. I could have walked right past without them noticing, they were going at it that hard. One wore a hoodie; neither face was visible.

The kiss went on and on. I pushed away from the tree trunk, palms welted in stripes, stumbled through the bracken, hearing myself pant. I somehow arrived on the path below the Swamp and pulled up short. No way could I go back past the boys, so there was only forward. I took a deep breath before breaking cover from the shadows, then stepped into the clearing, intending to pass the Swamp
with an air of autumnal enchantment, hands in pockets, eyes toward the purple twilight.

“Look what the woods coughed up,” said Penelope.

“Nymph wearing anorak,” said Adrian.

“Jenny!” said Kirsten. “What are you doing?”

“Exploring.” I tried to laugh.

“Hang out for a bit.” Kirsten patted the stone ledge next to her. Nico and Penelope sat close by, twin demons staring at me. Oona was throwing dead leaves on Adrian, dodging his swatting hands.

“Nnn. Catch you later.” I kept moving.

Who’d been kissing? I waited farther up, beside a hedge that framed the bedraggled rose garden. I’d see whoever appeared on either path. Night was blowing in quickly, swilling the violet sky, forcing the kids at the Swamp to think about curfew. It was Nico who ambled along first, with Adrian as sidekick and Oona right on their heels.

“The damsel doth await us.” Adrian thought he was so funny.

“Ha ha.” I kept an eye on the woods behind them.

Nico turned his head to follow my gaze just as Luke emerged from the trees. Blue jacket. Nico and Adrian looked at each other, big exaggerated
Aha!
, and turned to consider me.

“Luke?” murmured Nico.

“No.” My mind leapt to a denim bum gripped by pale hands. “No, really!” I knew my face was flaming.

“What?” said Oona.

Luke paused at the Swamp, pretending to tip his sister
backward into the mucky fountain, sidestepping Penelope’s attempt to retaliate. As if it were any ordinary day. And maybe it was, for Luke. Only for
me
a new notion had been startled out from under a rock. An invisible thing, suddenly catching the light. Luke and another boy.

They straggled up the path toward us.

“Hey, Luke,” said Adrian. “There’s a leaf in your hair. Just like the one in Jenny’s.”

My hand went to my head before I could stop it. No leaf. Adrian hooted. Oona bugged out her eyes. Penelope’s went slitty, watching.

“Jenny?” said Luke.

“Jenny?” mocked Adrian, with a little shimmy to his hips.

“Jenny?” Nico was asking me, not believing.

I pushed through the bramble of bodies and hurried across the flagstones, praying with every step,
Don’t trip, don’t trip
.

I skipped Cocoa and sneaked into the bathroom to run a scalding bath before anyone could remind me that I was nowhere near the top of the list for First Bath. I went under, held my breath, whooshed up, went under again. It made me think of a news clip we’d seen on television before the Sunday mystery, of camouflaged soldiers in a swamp, with leaves and briars attached to their helmets, faces smeared with mud, only their heads above the murky water. Did Matt have to hide from the enemy
like that? Was the enemy hiding from him the very same way?

Were we
all
hiding
all
the time, camouflaged by what other people expected to see? There was Luke, plain as day, letting assumptions keep him out of sight. Or in my case, a whole constructed person. But what was I hiding from? The nobody I felt like inside, or some other enemy? Was my disguise helping Luke’s? Could his hurt mine?

I finally climbed out, not wanting to waste the bathwater, leaving it, still warm, for the girls now clattering up the million stairs, the chill driving them toward hot-water bottles like sheep. And even hotter in the Austen dormitory was the gossip tidbit of the night.

“Is it true?” gasped Caroline. “Oona said … you and
Luke
!”

I bent over, toweling my hair. “She’s wrong.”

“Nice try.” Oona had sidled in from Brontë. “I was
there
!”

“Where exactly is
there
, Oona? You’re just wrong.”

Penelope came in, grabbed her toothbrush, headed for the bathroom.

“Pen?” called Caroline. “Did you hear about Jenny and Luke?”

“Penelope is ticked,” said Oona. “She’s been trying to get off with Luke for three terms.”

“Stop.” I pulled on flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt, cold all over despite the bath. “It’s a lie.”

Penelope stuck her head into the room, mouth foaming with toothpaste, pinning me with a look. A minute later she was back. “Mostly,” she said, “I feel sorry for the poor
soldier in Vietnam. Shouldn’t
he
be the one we’re thinking about tonight?”

“Ohmy
god
!” I said. “Why are you so quick to believe
Adrian
of all people, before even listening to me?”

Kirsten stood in the doorway.

“What was your rule again?” said Pen. “Concerning other people’s brothers?”

Kirsten ignored her.

“Kirsten! I swear! I did
not
get off with Luke!”

Kirsten ignored me too.

I already had one fake boyfriend. Now there were two. Luke’s secret … was his. I’d just pretend not to know. Even Penelope and Oona couldn’t stir up a romance between us. But Matt was something else. I had to fix this. What if I said that Matt had realized his tour of duty was too long for me to wait, or maybe that he’d met someone else? Easier to lie than be straight, at this point. I’d tell one more and start fresh.

I got out a minute early from History the next morning, saying I needed the loo. I went straight to the sheet where the letters and parcels were listed. Today’s letter would be the one. I’d have red eyes and not want to talk about it for a day.

I made a pencil stroke next to my name, thinking how the real me wanted to keep writing to Matt, how I’d have to figure out how to mail stuff without anyone knowing. He
needed
my letters, I knew he did. And if he wrote another one? If only.

“Do you have post?” Penelope stood next to me, Esther peering over her shoulder at the list.

“Yes,” I said. “One.”

Penelope was looking at my pencil.

“So.” Luke was suddenly behind me at the tea urn after lunch. “You went for a walk down the woods by yourself.”

It seemed as if the entire dining hall hushed as tea trickled into my mug. As if we’d stepped onstage.

“Yes. I did.”

“And now there’s this rumour going around.”

“Yeah, crazy, right?” I stirred in sugar from the tin, slowly, slowly.

“I hope you don’t …” He was whispering, no doubt feeling every eyeball and earhole in the room pulsing and stretching in our direction. “This has been a messed-up week,” he said. “A kid I know got hurt because of a rumour. It’s … I swear, I didn’t say anything, you know, to make them think … Where did you go walking …?”

His eyelashes were thick and dark, his eyes trying to pierce me. My chest was warm, like when Mom rubbed on Vicks for a cough.

Was he asking,
Had I seen him?

“Rumors are dumb,” I said.

He stuck out his lower lip and blew upward, fluttering his hair.

“No offence,” he said. “You’re really nice and everything. Especially after … that other time, when I was … But you’re, you know, a friend of my sister … older …”

I leaned in and put my hand on his arm, ever so softly, not wanting to scare him away.

“Plus,” I said, “I’m a girl.”

He winced, but I held on. He didn’t know enough to realize that most of what I said was not necessarily reliable. But I wanted my hand to explain that he could be with anyone he wanted, that I wouldn’t tell.
Not
telling the truth was my specialty.

“Excuse me, lovebirds. Some of us need access to the tea urn.” Adrian waved his mug in our faces. Luke jerked back, banging his hip against the table, setting off a massive wobble. Managing not to slosh my tea, I retreated right out of the dining hall, down the corridor to the Girls’ Changing Room. I balanced my mug on the back of the sink and looked in the mirror, trying to see a person who could be trusted with a giant, dangerous secret.

I knew someone would show up at the Swamp before afternoon lessons. A feeble sun brightened what had started as a regular gray English day. I rubbed my eyes, jamming my fingernails into the corners, drumming up a sting.

“Hallo.” Percy dropped down next to me on the edge of the fountain. “You look completely forlorn.”

Kirsten sat on my other side. She’d forgiven me? She believed me about Luke? All the more reason to go ahead. I hugged my notebook, corner of envelope peeking out.

“I’ve heard from Matt.”

“She heard from Matt,” Kirsten announced. Penelope
and Adrian passed a cigarette back and forth. “But what’s wrong?”

“He … he broke up with me.”

“Oh no!” Kirsten and Percy lunged to embrace me, arms banging across my back.

“Lucky day for Lukey.” Adrian dropped the cigarette and did a little butt-crushing dance.

“Shut it, Adrian,” said Percy.

“Or Percy here.” Adrian kicked Percy’s boot. “He’s having wet dreams about you every night.”

“Shut it, Adrian,” said Kirsten. “What did he say, Jenny? What’s his reason?”

My eyes watered, she was being so sweet.

“When did you hear this news?” Penelope took another cigarette from behind her ear.

“My letter today.”

“Really?” she said. “That’s odd. Because when I asked Hairy Mary if I could take your post, she said your name must have got a tick by mistake, that you didn’t have a letter after all.”

Now I cried. Burning-hot angry tears poured out. I couldn’t stop, and no one except Penelope knew why I was crying.

“Anyone got a packet of matches?” she said.

percy

The letter comes on a Wednesday by second post. A tick beside
Percy Graham
on the list in the hallway is so rare that he leans in till his nose nearly touches the page, making sure the mark is not misplaced from Luke Flanders above or Ben Hawthorne below.

Percy does not recognize the handwriting. But the stamp is a little Queen’s head in cream on mulberry, announcing that the sender is in England. Inside, the letter had been written on a typewriter and signed with a scrawling
Mick
above more typed words in parentheses:
(Michael Malloy, your father)
.

Percy stuffs the letter into his jeans pocket without reading it, and sits down right there on the stairs outside Matron’s office, where the post is distributed. His chest is suddenly tight, and he wonders where he left his inhaler.
He’d better be able to breathe before he reads a letter from the dad not seen for nine years.

“Christ,” says Adrian, purposely tripping over him. “Could you pick a worse spot, Chicken Boner?”

Percy Graham does not have his father’s name, because, as his mother frequently reminds him, he does not have a father. She doesn’t say it spitefully, nor exactly sadly, but rather the logical explanation of a fact.

She doesn’t stint on facts. There was someone who had helped her make Percy. His name was Mick Malloy. He was that white-skinned fellow who came to Percy’s sixth birthday party and held a camera the whole time. Maybe someday Percy would meet him again. He now worked as a film director and she’d even heard that he was quite a success. He sent money. But a father he was not.

The letter tells Percy—when he finally reads it down at the Swamp before tea—that he is about to see his father. This very weekend. Mick Malloy is coming to visit, Saturday at noon.