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I wasn’t quite done eating dessert, but I didn’t want to look like I was thrown by this.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, setting down my spoon.
Back in my room, I tried to choose a bed. I definitely didn’t want the one in the middle. I had to have some wall space. The only question was, did I go ahead and take the one by the super-cool fireplace (and therefore lay claim to the excellence of the mantel to store my stuff), or did I take the high road and choose the other side of the room?
I spent five minutes standing there, rationalizing the choice of taking the one by the fireplace. I decided it was fine for me to do this as long as I didn’t take the mantel right away. I would just take the bed and not touch the mantel for a while. Gradually, it would become mine.
That important issue resolved, I put on my headphones and turned my attention to unpacking boxes. One contained the sheets, pillows, blankets, and towels I’d had shipped over from home. It was strange to have these mundane house things show up here, in this building in the middle of London. After making up my bed, I tackled the suitcases, filling my wardrobe and the drawers. I put my photo collage of my friends from home above my desk, plus the pictures of my parents, of Uncle Bick and Cousin Diane. There was the ashtray shaped like pursed lips that I stole from our local barbecue place, Big Jim’s Pit of Love. I got out my collection of Mardi Gras beads and medallions and hung them from the end of my bed. Finally, I set up my computer and placed my three precious jars of Cheez Whiz safely on the shelf.
It was seven thirty.
I knelt on my bed and looked out the window. The sky was still bright and blue.
I wandered around the empty building for a while, eventually ending up in the common room. This would probably be the only time I had this room to myself, so I flopped on the sofa right in front of the television and turned it on. It was tuned to BBC One, and the news had just started. The first thing I noticed was the huge banner at the bottom of the screen that read RIPPER-LIKE MURDER IN EAST END. As I watched, through half-open eyes, I saw shots of the blocked-off street where the body was found. I saw footage of fluorescent-vested police officers holding back camera crews. Then it was back to the studio, where the announcer went on.
“Despite the fact that there was a CCTV camera pointed almost directly at the murder site, no footage of the crime was captured. Authorities say the camera malfunctioned. Questions are being raised about the maintenance of the CCTV system …”
Pigeons cooed outside the window. The building creaked and settled. I reached over and ran my hand over the heavy, slightly scratchy blue material on the sofa. I looked up at the bookcases built into the walls, stretching to the high ceiling. I had done it. This was actually London, this cold, empty building. Those pigeons were English pigeons. I had imagined this for so long, I didn’t quite know how to process the reality.
The words NEW RIPPER? flashed across the screen over a panoramic shot of Big Ben and Parliament. It was as if the news itself wanted to reassure me. Even Jack the Ripper himself had reappeared as part of the greeting committee.
4
WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING TO FIND TWO STRANGERS in my room—one mom-looking type, and the other a girl with long, honey-blond hair wearing a sensible gray cashmere sweater and a pair of jeans. I rubbed my eyes quickly, reached around myself to make sure I was wearing something on both the top and bottom of my body, and discovered that I had slept in my uniform. I didn’t even remember going to bed. I just rested my eyes for a minute, and now it was morning. Jet lag had gotten me. I pulled the blanket up over me and made a noise that resembled “hello.”
“Oh, did we wake you?” the girl said. “We were trying not to.”
This is when I noticed the four suitcases, two laundry baskets, three boxes, and cello that were already in the room. These people had been politely creeping around for some time, trying to move in around my sleeping, uniformed body. Then I heard the racket in the hallway, the sounds of dozens of people moving in.
“Don’t worry,” the girl said. “My dad hasn’t come in. I don’t want to disturb you. You keep sleeping. Aurora, isn’t it?”
“Rory,” I said. “I fell asleep in my …”
I let the sentence go. There was no need to point out the obvious.
“Oh, it’s fine! It won’t be the last time, believe me. I’m Julianne, but everyone calls me Jazza.”
I introduced myself to Jazza’s mom, then headed down to the bathroom to brush my teeth and try to make myself generally more presentable.
The halls were swarming. How I’d slept through this invasion, I wasn’t entirely sure. Girls were squealing in delight at the sight of each other. There were hugs and air kisses, and lots of tight-lipped fights going on with parents who were trying not to make a scene. There were tears and good-byes. It was every human emotion happening at the exact same time. As I slithered down the hall, I could hear Claudia’s voice booming from three flights down, greeting people with “Call me Claudia! How was your trip? Good, good, good …”
I finally got to the bathroom and huddled by a window. Outside, it was a bright, clear morning. There were really only three or four parking spots in front of the school. The drivers had to take turns and keep their cars in nearly constant motion, dropping off a box or two and then continuing around to let the next person have a space. The same scene was going on across the square at the boys’ house.
I had planned much better entrances. I had scripted all kinds of greetings. I had gone over my best stories. But so far, I was zero for two. I brushed my teeth and rubbed my face with cold water, finger-combed my hair, and accepted that this was how I was going to meet my new roommate.
Since she was actually from England and able to come to school in a car, Jazza had way more stuff than me. Way more stuff. There were multiple suitcases, which her mom kept unpacking, piling the contents on the bed. There were boxes of books, about six dozen throw pillows, a tennis racquet, and a selection of umbrellas. Her sheets, towels, and blankets were all nicer than mine. She even brought curtains. And the cello. As for books, she easily had two hundred of them with her, maybe more. I looked over at my cardboard boxes and my decorative beads and ashtray and my one shelf of books.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“Oh …” Jazza spun around and looked at her things. “I think we’ve … I think we’ve brought it all in. My parents have a long drive back, you see, and … I’m just going to go out and say good-bye.”
“You’re done?”
“Yes, well, we’d been piling some things in the hall and bringing them in one at a time so we wouldn’t disturb you.”
Jazza went away for about twenty minutes, and when she returned, she was red-eyed and sniffly. I watched her unpack her things for a while. I wasn’t sure if I should offer my help again because the things looked kind of too personal. But I did anyway, and Jazza accepted, with many thanks. She told me I could use anything I liked, or borrow clothes, or blankets, or whatever I needed. “Just take it” was Jazza’s motto. She explained all the things that Claudia didn’t, like where and when you were allowed to use your phone (in your house and outside), what you did during the free periods (work, usually in the library or in your house).
“You lived with Charlotte before?” I asked as I made up her bed with a heavy quilt.
“You know Charlotte? She’s head girl now, so she gets her own room.”
“I had dinner with her last night,” I said. “She seems kind of … intense.”
Jazza snapped out a pillowcase.
“She’s all right, really. She’s under a lot of pressure from her family to get into Cambridge. I’d hate it if my family was like that. My parents just want me to do my best, and they’re quite happy wherever I want to go. Quite lucky, really.”
We worked right up until it was time to get ready for the Welcome Back to Wexford dinner. It wasn’t the cozy affair of the night before—the room was completely full. And this time, I wasn’t the only one in a uniform. It was gray blazers and maroon striped ties as far as the eye could see. The refectory, which had looked enormous when only a handful of us were in it the night before, had shrunk considerably. The line for food snaked all the way around to the front door. There was just enough room on the benches for everyone to squash in. There were a few more choices at dinner—roast beef, lentil roast, potatoes, several kinds of vegetables. The grease, I was happy to note, was still present.
When we emerged with our trays, Charlotte half stood and waved us over. She and Jazza exchanged some air kisses, which nauseated me a bit. Charlotte was sitting with the same group of prefects. Jerome moved over a few inches so I could sit down. We had barely applied butts to bench when Charlotte started in with the questions.
“How’s your schedule this year, Jaz?” she asked.
“Fine, thank you.”
“I’m taking four A levels, and the college I’m applying to at Cambridge requires an S level, plus I have to take the Oxbridge preparation class to get ready for the interview. So I’m going to be quite busy. Are you taking that class, the Oxbridge preparation class?”
“No,” Jazza said.
“I see. Well, it’s not strictly necessary. Where are you applying to?”
Jazza’s doelike eyes narrowed a bit, and she stabbed at her lentil roast.
“I’m still making up my mind,” she said.
“You don’t say much, do you?” Jerome asked me.
No one in my entire life had ever said this about me.
“You don’t know me yet,” I said.
“Rory was telling me she lives in a swamp,” Charlotte said.
“That’s right,” I said, turning up my accent a little. “These are the first shoes I’ve ever owned. They sure do pinch my feet.”
Jerome gave a little snort. Charlotte smiled sourly and turned the conversation back to Cambridge, a subject she seemed pathologically fixated on. People went right back to comparing notes about A levels, and I continued eating and observing.
The headmaster, Dr. Everest (it was immediately made clear to me that he was known to all as Mount Everest, which made sense, since he was about six foot seven), got up and gave us a little pep talk. Mostly it boiled down to the fact that it was autumn, and everyone was back, and while that was a great thing, people better not get cocky or misbehave or he’d personally kill us all. He didn’t actually say those words, but that was the subtext.
“Is he threatening us?” I whispered to Jerome.
Jerome didn’t turn his head, but he moved his eyes in my direction. Then he slipped a pen from his pocket and wrote the following on the back of his hand without even glancing down: Recently divorced. Also hates teenagers.
I nodded in understanding.
“As you are probably aware,” Everest droned on, “there’s been a murder nearby, which some people have taken to referring to as a new Ripper. Of course, there is no need to be concerned, but the police have asked us to remind all students to take extra care when leaving school grounds. I have now reminded you, and I trust no more need be said about that.”
“I feel warm and reassured,” I whispered. “He’s like Santa.”
Everest turned in our general direction for a moment, and we both stiffened and stared straight ahead. He chastised us a bit more, giving us some warnings about not staying out past our curfew, not smoking in uniform or in the buildings, and excessive drinking. Some drinking seemed to be expected. Laws were different here. You could drink at eighteen in general, but there was some weird side law about being able to order wine or beer with a meal, with an adult, at sixteen. I was still mulling this over when I noticed that the speech had ended and people were getting up and putting their trays on the racks.
I spent the night watching and occasionally assisting Jazza as she began the process of decorating her half of the room. There were curtains to be hung and posters and photos to be attached to the walls with Blu-Tack. She had an art print of Ophelia drowning in the pond, a poster from a band I’d never heard of, and a massive corkboard. The photos of her family and dogs were all in ornate frames. I made a mental note to get more wall stuff so my side didn’t look so naked.
What she didn’t display, I noticed, was a boxful of swimming medals.
“Holy crap,” I said, when she set them on the desk, “you’re like a fish.”
“Oh. Um. Well, I swim, you see.”
I saw.
“I won them last year. I wasn’t going to bring them, but … I brought them.”
She put the medals in her desk drawer.
“Do you play sports?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” I said. Which was really just my way of saying “hell, no.” We Deveauxs preferred to talk you to death, rather than face you in physical combat.
As she continued to unpack and I continued to stare at her, it occurred to me that Jazza and I were going to do this—this sitting-in-the-same-room thing—every night. For something like eight months. I had known my days of total privacy were over, but I hadn’t quite realized what that meant. All my habits were going to be on display. And Jazza seemed so straightforward and well-adjusted … What if I was a freak and had never realized it? What if I did weird things in my sleep?
I quickly dismissed these things from my mind.
5
IFE AT WEXFORD BEGAN PROMPTLY AT SIX ON Monday morning, when Jazza’s alarm went off seconds before mine. This was followed by a pounding on the door. The pounding went down the hall, as every door was knocked.
“Quick,” Jazza said, springing out of bed with a speed that was both alarming and unacceptable at this hour.
“I can’t run in the morning,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
Jazza was already putting on her robe and picking up her towel and bath basket.
“Quick!” she said again. “Rory! Quick!”
“Quick what?”
“Just get up!”
Jazza rocked from foot to foot anxiously as I pulled myself out of bed, stretched, fumbled around filling my bath basket.
“So cold in the morning,” I said, reaching for my robe. And it really was. Our room must have dropped about ten degrees in temperature from the night before.
“Rory …”
“Coming,” I said. “Sorry.”
I require a lot of things in the morning. I have very thick, long hair that can be tamed only by the use of a small portable laboratory’s worth of products. In fact—and I am ashamed of this—one of my big fears about coming to England was having to find new hair products. That’s shameful, I know, but it took me years to come up with the system I’ve got. If I use my system, my hair looks like hair. Without my system, it goes horizontal, rising inch by inch as the humidity increases. It’s not even curly—it’s like it’s possessed. Obviously, I needed shower gel and a razor (shaving in the group shower—I hadn’t even thought about that yet) and facial cleanser. Then I needed my flip-flops so I didn’t get shower foot.
I could feel Jazza’s increasing sense of despair traveling up my spine, but I was hurrying. I wasn’t used to having to figure all these things out and carry all my stuff at six in the morning. Finally, I had everything necessary and we trundled down the hall. At first, I wondered what the fuss was about. All the doors along the hall were closed, and there was little noise. Then we got to the bathroom and opened the door.
“Oh, no,” she said.
And then I understood. The bathroom was completely packed. Everyone from the hall was already in there. Each shower stall was already taken, and three or four people were lined up by each one.
“You have to hurry,” Jazza said. “Or this happens.”
It turns out there is nothing more annoying than waiting around for other people to shower. You resent every second they spend in there. You analyze how long they are taking and speculate on what they are doing. The people in my hall showered, on average, ten minutes each, which meant that it was over a half hour before I got in. I was so full of indignation about how slow they were that I had already preplanned my every shower move. It still took me ten minutes, and I was one of the last ones out of the bathroom.
Jazza was already in our room and dressed when I stumbled back in, my hair still soaked.
“How soon can you be ready?” she asked as she pulled on her school shoes. These were by far the worst part of the uniform. They were rubbery and black, with thick, nonskid soles. My grandmother wouldn’t have worn them. But then, my grandmother was Miss Bénouville 1963 and 1964, a title largely awarded to the fanciest person who entered. In Bénouville in 1963 and 1964, the definition of fancy was highly questionable. I’m just saying, my grandmother wears heeled slippers and silk pajamas. In fact, she’d bought me some silk pajamas to bring to school. They were vaguely transparent. I’d left them at home.
I was going to tell Jazza all of this, but I could see she was not in the mood for a story. So I looked at the clock. Breakfast was in twenty minutes.
“Twenty minutes,” I said. “Easy.”
I don’t know what happened, but getting ready was just a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. I had to get all the parts of my uniform on. I had trouble with my tie. I tried to put on some makeup, but there wasn’t a lot of light by the mirror. Then I had to guess which books I had to bring for my first classes, something I probably should have done the night before.
Long story short, we left at 7:13. Jazza spent the entire wait sitting on her bed, eyes growing increasingly wide and sad. But she didn’t just leave me, and she never complained.
The refectory was packed, and loud. The bonus of being so late was that most people had gone through the food line. We were up there with the few guys who were going back for seconds. I grabbed a cup of coffee first thing and poured myself an impossibly small glass of lukewarm juice. Jazza took a sensible selection of yogurt, fruit, and whole-grain bread. I was in no mood for that kind of nonsense this morning. I helped myself to a chocolate doughnut and a sausage.
“First day,” I explained to Jazza when she stared at my plate.
It became clear that it was going to be tricky to find a seat. We found two at the very end of one of the long tables. For some reason, I looked around for Jerome. He was at the far end of the next table over, deep in conversation with some girls from the first floor of Hawthorne. I turned to my plate of fats. I realized how American this made me seem, but I didn’t particularly care. I had just enough time to stuff some food down my throat before Mount Everest stood up at his dais and told us that it was time to move along. Suddenly, everyone was moving, shoving last bits of toast and final gulps of juice into their mouths.
“Good luck today,” Jazza said, getting up. “See you at dinner.”
The day was ridiculous.
In fact, the situation was so serious I thought they had to be joking—like maybe they staged a special first day just to psych people out. I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named “Further Maths.” It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance. Then I had two free periods, which I had laughingly dismissed when I first saw them. I spent them feverishly trying to do the problem sets.
At a quarter to three, I had to run back to my room and change into shorts, sweatpants, a T-shirt, a fleece, and these shin pads and spiked shoes that Claudia had given to me. From there, I had to get three streets over to the field we shared with a local university. If cobblestones are a tricky walk in flip-flops, they are your worst nightmare in spiked shoes and with big, weird pads on your shins. I arrived to find that people (all girls) were (wisely) putting on their spiked shoes and pads there, and that everyone was wearing only shorts and T-shirts. Off came the sweatpants and fleece. Back on with the weird pads and spikes.
Charlotte, I was dismayed to find, was in hockey as well. So was my neighbor Eloise. She lived across the hall from us in the only single. She had a jet-black pixie cut and a carefully covered arm of tattoos. She had a huge air purifier in her room, which had gotten some kind of special clearance (since we couldn’t have appliances). Somehow she got a doctor to say she had terrible allergies, hence she would need the purifier and her own space. In reality, she used the filter to hide the fact that she spent most of her free time smoking cigarette after cigarette and blowing smoke directly into the purifier. Eloise spoke fluent French because she lived there a few months out of every year. As for the smoking, she never actually said, “It’s a French thing,” but it was implied. Eloise looked as dismayed as I did about the hockey. The rest looked grimly determined.
Most people had their own hockey sticks, but for those of us who didn’t, they were distributed. Then we stood in line, where I shivered.
