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I took a seat at one of the empty cubicles and spent several minutes setting it up. I plugged in my computer. I pinned my course syllabus to the cork wall and stared it down. Everyone else in this room was calmly carrying on. No one had, to my knowledge, read their course assignments and tried to escape through a chimney. I had been admitted to Wexford, and I had to assume that they didn’t do that just to be funny.
Wexford had a large assortment of books on Alexander Pope, so I headed off to the Literature Ol–Pr section, which was on the upper level and in the back. When I got to the aisle, I found a guy lounging right in the middle of it, on the floor, reading. He was in his uniform, but wore an oversized trench coat on top of it. He had really elaborate, bleached-blond, sticky-uppy hair formed into spikes. And he was singing a song.
Panic on the streets of London,
Panic on the streets of Birmingham …
Sure, it was very romantic to lounge around in the literature section with big hair, but he was doing this in the dark. All the aisles had lights on timers. When you went into the aisle, you turned on the light. It clicked itself off after ten minutes or so. He hadn’t bothered to do this and was reading with just the scant amount of light coming from the window at the far end of the aisle. He didn’t move or look up, even when I had to stand right next to him and reach over him to get to the books. There were about ten books of collected works of Alexander Pope, which I didn’t need. I had the poem—I needed something to tell me what the hell it meant. Next to those were several books about Alexander Pope, but I had no idea which one I wanted. They were also very large. Meanwhile, the guy kept singing.
I wonder to myself,
Could life ever be sane again?
“Excuse me. Could I ask you to move a little?” I said.
He looked up slowly and blinked.
“Are you talking to me?”
There was a dim confusion in his eyes. He tucked in his knees and spun around on his butt so that he was facing up at me. Now I understood what people meant by bluebloods—he was the palest person I had ever seen, a genuine grayish-blue in the light of the aisle.
“What are you singing?” I asked. I hoped he would take that as “please stop singing.”
“It’s called ‘Panic,’” he said. “It’s by the Smiths. There’s panic on the streets now, isn’t there? Ripper and all that. Morrissey’s a prophet.”
“Oh,” I said.
“What are you looking for?”
“A book on Alexander Pope, and I—”
“For what?”
“I have to read ‘An Essay on Criticism.’ I read it, I just don’t … I need a book about it. A criticism book.”
“Then you don’t want these,” he said, standing up. “They’re all rubbish. You’ll do far better with something that puts Pope’s work into context. See, Pope was talking about the importance of good criticism. All those books are just biographies with some padding. You want the general criticism section, which is over here.”
It seemed to take extraordinary effort for him to stand up. He pulled his coat tight and shied away from me a little. Then he gave a little jerk of his spiky head to indicate that I should follow him, which I did. He maneuvered around the gloomy stacks, turning abruptly a few aisles down. He didn’t turn on the light when we went in—I had to switch it on. He also didn’t need to scan for the section or book he was looking for. He walked right to it and pointed to the red spine.
“This one. By Carter. This one talks about Pope’s role in shaping the modern critic. And this one”—he indicated a green book two shelves down—“by Dillard. A little basic, but if you’re new to criticism, worth a read.”
I decided not to be resentful of the fact that he assumed I was “new to criticism.”
“You’re American,” he said, leaning against the shelf behind us. “We don’t normally get Americans.”
“Well, you got me.”
I wasn’t sure what to do next. He wasn’t talking; he was just staring at me as I held the book. So I flipped it open and started looking at the contents. There was an entire chapter on “An Essay on Criticism.” It was twenty pages long. I could read twenty pages if it helped me look less clueless.
“I’m Rory,” I said.
“Alistair.”
“Thanks,” I said, holding up the book.
He didn’t reply. He just sat down on the floor and folded his trench-coated arms and stared up at me.
The aisle light clicked off as I left, but he didn’t move.
It was going to take some time before I understood Wexford and its ways.
8
HEN YOU LIVE AT SCHOOL, YOU GET CLOSE TO people really quickly. You never get away. You eat every meal with them. You stand in the shower line with them. You take class and play hockey with them. You sleep in the same place. You begin to see the thousand details of everyday life that you never catch when you just see people during school hours. Because you’re there constantly, school time moves differently. After only one week at Wexford, I felt like I’d been there for a month.
I realized I was popular back in Bénouville, I guess. I mean, not homecoming queen material, because that always went to a Professional Pageant Quality person. But my family was Old Bénouville, and my parents were lawyers, which meant that I was basically always going to be okay. I never felt out of place. I never lacked friends. I never walked into a class without feeling like I could speak up. I was of the place. I was home.
Wexford was not my home. England was not my home.
I was not popular at Wexford. I wasn’t unpopular either. I was just there. I wasn’t the brightest, though I managed to hold my own. But I had to work harder than I’d ever worked. I often didn’t know what people were talking about. I didn’t get the jokes and the references. My voice sometimes sounded loud and odd. I got bruised from the hockey balls and the hockey ball protection I wore.
Some other facts I picked up:
Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.
Baked beans are very popular in England. For breakfast. On toast. On baked potatoes. They can’t get enough.
“American History” is not a subject everywhere.
England and Britain and the United Kingdom are not the same thing. England is the country. Britain is the island containing England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom is the formal designation of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as a political entity. If you mess this up, you will be corrected. Repeatedly.
The English will play hockey in any weather. Thunder, lightning, plague of locusts … nothing can stop the hockey. Do not fight the hockey, for the hockey will win.
Jack the Ripper struck for the second time very early on September 8, 1888.
That last fact was hammered home in about seventeen thousand ways. I didn’t even watch the news and yet, news just got in. And the news really wanted us to know about the eighth of September. The eighth of September was a Saturday. And I had art history class on Saturday. This fact seemed much more relevant to my life, being unused to the idea of Saturday class. I had always assumed the weekend was a holy tradition, respected by good people everywhere. Not so at Wexford.
But our Saturday classes were our “art and enrichment classes,” which meant that they were supposed to be marginally less painful than the classes during the week, unless you hated arts or enrichment, which I suppose some people do.
Even though Jazza tried to wake me up on her way to the shower, and again on her way to breakfast, she succeeded only when she returned to the room to get her cello for music class. I fell out of bed as she hauled the massive black case out of the room.
I wasn’t alone among the Saturday late starters. I’d already developed the habit of throwing my skirt and blazer over the end of my bed at night, so all I had to do in the morning was grab a clean shirt, pull on the skirt, shoes, and blazer, and scoop my hair up into any formation that looked reasonably like a hairstyle. I showered at night, and like Jazza, I had given up on makeup. My grandmother would have been appalled.
So I was ready in five minutes and flying down the cobblestones to the classroom building. Art history was in one of the big, airy studio rooms on the top floor. I took a seat at one of the worktables. I was still wiping the crap out of the corners of my eyes when Jerome took the seat next to me. This was the first class I had with a friend, which wasn’t that shocking, considering that my friends numbered exactly two at this point. Out of everyone I’d seen, Jerome looked the most out of place in his uniform, certainly compared to the other prefects. His special prefect tie (their ties had gray stripes) was crooked and not quite tightened at the neck. His blazer pockets bulged with stuff—phone, pens, some notes. His hair was the most unkempt—but in a good way, I thought. It looked like he had trimmed his loose curls to just the regulation level, and maybe half an inch beyond. They fell just over his ears. And you could tell he just shook it out in the morning. His eyes were quick, always scanning around for information.
“Did you hear?” he asked. “They found another body around nine this morning. It’s the Ripper, definitely.”
“Good morning,” I replied.
“Morning. Listen to this. The second victim in the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888 was found in the back of a house on Hanbury Street, in the back garden by a set of steps at five forty-five in the morning. That house is gone now, and the police were all over the location where it stood. This new victim was found behind a pub called the Flowers and Archers, which has a back garden very much like the description of the Hanbury Street murder. The second victim in 1888 was a woman called Annie Chapman. The victim this time was named Fiona Chapman. All of the wounds were just like Annie Chapman’s. The cut to the neck. The abdomen opened up. The intestines removed and put over her shoulder. Her stomach taken out and put over the opposite shoulder. The murderer took the bladder and the—”
Our teacher came in. Of all the teachers I’d had so far, this one looked the mildest. The male teachers all wore jackets or ties, and the women tended to wear dresses or serious-looking skirts and blouses. Mark, as he introduced himself, wore a plain blue sweater and a pair of jeans. He looked to be in his midthirties, with tortoiseshell glasses.
“The police aren’t even trying to deny it anymore,” Jerome said quietly, right before Mark took roll. “There’s definitely a new Ripper.”
And with that, art history began. Mark was a full-time conservationist at the National Gallery, but he was coming in to teach us about art every Saturday. We were, he informed us, going to begin with paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. He distributed some textbooks, which weighed about as much as a human head (a guesstimate on my part, obviously, but once the Ripper was mentioned, body parts tended to come to mind).
It became immediately clear that even though this was a Saturday class under the general label of “art and enrichment,” this was not just a way of killing three hours that might otherwise have been spent sleeping or eating cereal. This was a class, just like any other, and many people in it (Mark checked) were planning on taking an A level in art history. More competition.
On the positive side, Mark informed us that on several Saturdays we would be going to the National Gallery to see the paintings up close. But today was not one of those days. Today we were going to look at slides. Three hours of slides isn’t as horrible as it sounds, not when you have a reasonably interesting person who really likes what he’s talking about explaining them. And I like art.
Jerome, I noticed, was a careful note taker. He sat far back in his chair, his arm extended, writing quickly in a loose, relaxed hand, his eyes flicking between the slide and the page. I started to copy his style. He took about twenty notes on each painting, just a few words each. Every once in a while, his elbow would make contact with my arm, and he’d glance over. When class was over, we fell in step beside each other as we walked to the refectory. Jerome picked up right where he left off.
“The Flowers and Archers isn’t far from here,” he said. “We should go.”
“We … should?”
Again, I knew many students at Wexford could legally drink, because you only had to be eighteen. I knew that pubs would be a part of life here somehow. But I hadn’t expected someone, especially a prefect, to invite me to one. Also, was he asking me out? Did you ask people to crime scenes on dates? My pulse did a little leap, but it was quickly regulated by his follow-up.
“You, me, Jazza,” he said. “You should get Jazza to come, otherwise she’ll start stressing from day one. You’re her keeper now.”
“Oh,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Right.”
“I have desk duty at the library until dinner, but we could go right after. What do you think?”
“Sure,” I said. “I… I mean, I don’t have plans.”
He put his hands in his pockets and took a few steps backward.
“Have to go,” he said. “Don’t tell Jazza where we’re going. Just say the pub, okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
Jerome gave a slouchy, full upper body nod and walked off to the library.
9
T DIDN’T TAKE A GREAT DEAL OF INSIGHT TO KNOW that Jazza was not going to want to go to a crime scene that evening. She was, to use the vernacular, a normal person. She was at her desk eating a sandwich when I returned.
“Sorry,” she said, turning as I came in. “My cello practice ran late, and I didn’t feel like going over to the refectory. On Saturdays I sometimes treat myself to a sandwich and a cake.”
“Treat myself” was a little Jazza-ism I loved. Everything was a tiny celebration with her. A treat was a single cookie or a cup of hot chocolate. She made these things special. Even my Cheez Whiz had become a little treat. It was more precious now.
Something was beeping on my bed. I still wasn’t used to the unfamiliar ring and alerts of my English phone. I hadn’t even gotten into the habit of carrying it with me because there was no one likely to call me, except my parents. They had been scheduled to arrive in Bristol that morning. That’s who the message was from. I noticed an alarmed frequency in my mother’s voice.
“We think you should spend the weekends up here, in Bristol,” she said, once we’d gotten the basic hellos out of the way. “At least until this Ripper business is over.”
Alarming though Wexford could be at times, I had no desire to leave it. In fact, I was certain that if I did, I would miss crucial things—all the things that would allow me to adapt and last the entire year.
“Well, I have class on Saturday morning,” I said, “then we eat lunch. And doesn’t it take, like, hours to get there? So I wouldn’t even get there until Saturday night, and then I’d have to leave in the middle of Sunday … and I need all that time to do work. Plus, I have to play hockey every day, and since I don’t know how to play, I have to do extra practice …”
Jazza didn’t look up, but I could tell she was listening to every word of this. After ten minutes, I had convinced them that it wasn’t a good idea to leave, but I had to swear up, down, and sideways to be careful and to never, ever, ever do anything on my own. They moved on to describing their house in Bristol. I was scheduled to see it for the first time during a long weekend break in mid-November.
“Your parents are alarmed?” Jazza asked when I hung up.
I nodded and sat down on the floor.
“Mine are as well,” she said. “I think they want me to come home too, but they aren’t saying. The trip to Cornwall would be too long, anyway. And Bristol is just as bad. You’re right.”
This confirmation made me feel a bit better. I hadn’t just been making things up.
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked her.
“I thought I’d stay in and work on this German essay. And then I really need to put in a few hours of cello practice. I was in terrible shape this morning.”
“Or,” I said, “we could go out. To … a pub. With Jerome.”
Jazza chewed a strand of hair for a moment.
“To a pub? With Jerome?”
“He just asked me to ask you.”
“Jerome asked you to ask me to go to a pub?”
“He said it was my job to convince you,” I explained.
Jazza spun around in her chair and smiled broadly.
“I knew it,” she said.
Jazza and Jerome, I supposed, had had an ongoing flirtation, and now they had me to bring their love to life. If that was going to be my role, it was better if I accepted it. Or, at least, looked fake cheerful about it.
“So,” I said. “You and Jerome? What’s the story?”
Jazza cocked her head to the side in a decidedly birdlike fashion.
“No,” she said, laughing. “Don’t be disgusting. Me and Jerome? I mean … I love Jerome, but we’re friends. No. He’s asking you out.”
“He’s asking me out by asking me to ask you?”
“Correct,” she said.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to ask me?”
“You don’t know Jerome,” Jazza said. “He doesn’t do things the easy way.”
My spirits perked right up again.
