I said, “I really believed in magic when I was here. Maybe that’s because of the age I was, but—I had a lot of magical thinking going on.” I was glad he didn’t press for details, because I couldn’t explain about the marks I made for Ace, the pay phone, the earnest séances, the way I took everything as a sign.
Maybe I was falling into that thinking again, but the universe seemed to be pointing me in such an obvious direction: Bring me back to Granby, throw Britt and Alder in my path, take away Yahav, take away any stability Jerome had once provided. Give me Thalia’s yearbook quote and the dots in her planner and show me Beth Docherty’s flask. And what was left in front of me but one clear path?
Oliver stared into the salsa as if it might hold answers for him. I’d seen him on that couch at the party. I’d seen his eyes as he talked to Amber over giant dining hall waffles. I said, “This isn’t the moment for caution.” He looked up at me, either startled that I’d seen into his soul or baffled.
I stood, because I needed to go upstairs and email Lance and tell him that I really truly was done, that I released him, that he should look for a new cohost right away. I had a few in mind.
I said, “You should tell her how you feel.”
56
When you’re eighteen, a month is a few years. Thalia’s death, Puja walking out into the night, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Tokyo subway attack, the O. J. Simpson trial, the Bosnian war, our classmates’ car crash—they were all the clutter of one busy spring and didn’t seem to occur in any particular psychological proximity.
What I remember: Puja, having fallen out with Rachel and Beth, taking off into the night, then getting swept away from Granby. Tim Busse and Graham Waite driving back drunk from Quebec and crashing, Graham holding on for a day in the ICU without any real hope. (Two boys I’d rather liked: Tim, whose voice was the first I’d heard on my magic pay phone, and Graham, who’d sung me Tom Petty.) Three memorial services, all a blur. You leading the Choristers in the same songs each time: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Jerusalem.” That reporter hanging around town, trying to intercept us on our way to the bakery or the pharmacy for her Rolling Stone article.
Was it any wonder Thalia’s death folded into the others, both in our own imaginations and the public’s? Hani Kayyali, who’d taken over as class president when Jenny Osaka stepped down, gave a graduation speech about healing and moving on—meaning from all of it, the bitterness that had seeped into every interaction, the new wave of uninspired vandalism on campus, the muck of accusations and regret and distrust.
We listened numbly on the quad, the girls in white dresses that ranged from casual bridal to Vegas cocktail, the boys in khakis and dark blazers. We froze, they roasted.
When you found me to say goodbye, I was standing between Severn Robeson and my mother, holding a plate of cake. I doubt you remember the awkwardness, me not knowing how to introduce them, you not fully understanding who they were. But it was chaos anyway: infinite aunts and uncles and godparents swarming, illicit cigars and flasks in every direction. After four years of forced intimacy, we had all just learned each other’s middle names. Our rooms were already emptied.
I remember you saying to my mother, “Bodie’s been my Girl Friday the past three years. I wish I could clone her.”
This was the only time my mother set foot at Granby. She’d sniffed her way through my campus tour, calling every building “fancy.” She wore capri pants and a floral T-shirt to the ceremony, and I avoided her as much as possible. It was only partly embarrassment; mostly, I resented her invasion of this place she didn’t understand, her skeptical glances at the spots I was bereft to leave.
And then there was Severn, whom everyone took for my father. While I’d grown up thinking of the Robesons as elegant and rich, here he seemed positively Midwestern and middle-class, a hard-bellied guy in an ill-fitting sport coat.
My mother said to you, “And what do you teach?”
“Music,” you answered, and she glanced at me, baffled. You thanked me for the gift I’d left outside your office door (one last RC Cola, for the road). And before someone dragged you away for a picture, you said, “I don’t know my new address yet, or I’d say to write, but I suppose I’ll just hear about you when you’re famous.”
“What did that mean?” my mother said as we walked toward the mostly empty tables. I sat with her and Severn as, across the lawn, my classmates who’d managed to ditch their families posed for photos. I longed to join them. “His Girl Friday? And what are you supposed to be so famous at?”
Dorian Culler walked right up to our table then, a couple of snickering skiers trailing him, and extended his hand to Severn in the most well-bred way. He said, “Mr. Kane, it’s a pleasure. I’ve been courting your daughter with no success for years. Perhaps you can talk some sense into her. I plan to make a good living, and treat her well. She can have all the babies she wants. Six, seven babies at least. My name is Bueller,” he said, and here his friends lost what was left of their composure, doubled over. “Ferris Bueller.” Dorian’s face never cracked. Severn said something confounded but polite, and Dorian bowed slightly before he walked away.
Severn said, “Well, it’s grand that everyone’s in high spirits. I’d hate to see the place get too serious.”
I watched Dorian make his way back to the clump of loud, cigar-wielding families who seemed to know each other already. To my surprise, his mother had shown up in a wheelchair. Fran filled me in later, info from her parents: Mrs. Culler had been in a wheelchair since shortly after Dorian was born. We’d had no idea. We’d never seen her on campus before; maybe she’d never come. The paths around campus were too rocky even for a bike—the mailing they sent us before freshman year directly advised against bringing one—and it looked like serious work just getting her around the quad. Robbie, who’d likely been to Dorian’s house in Greenwich many times, had taken it upon himself to wheel her across the rough terrain, to bring her cake and punch, to take his own boutonniere off and pin it to her dress.
I hated Dorian Culler with every organ of my body, but for the first time ever I felt the urge to talk to him. To say, “I had no idea, and you have no idea about me.”
But everyone was dispersing, climbing into overloaded cars. It was time to go.
57
On Thursday, it sleeted. To be honest, I’d forgotten about sleet. You don’t see it in movies; in the movies it either rains or snows. Why would Hollywood replicate this horrid, stinging slush?
I never had an umbrella at Granby. What a freak you’d have to be, to carry an actual umbrella, like some old lady, like someone who wasn’t at home here in the woods. Never mind my sore throat from November to April, my hacking coughs, the low-grade fever I had for three full weeks late senior year, lurching to class, living on infirmary Motrin. I tried to remember if that fever was before or after my weeks of meltdown, my dangerous episode by the Kurt tree. It was around that time, certainly. I’d brushed off everyone’s concern about my pallor, my vacant eyes, by telling them I was sick, which wasn’t false.
We had a low-energy class that morning, the kids fuzzy-brained. They each had a final project due for their other class tomorrow as well; Alyssa had stayed up all night, something to do with a suspension bridge model.
They were only halfway out the door when I checked my email (a reflex, the worst habit) and called for Britt and Alder to stop. Between hate mail about Jerome and hate mail about me, an answer from Vanessa. It was curt but not angry.