“Probably not.” He tilted his head back to admire the sky. “It looks farther away when there’s so little of it.”
For a while we just stood there, faces upturned, not speaking. The noise from the Castle was a dull rumble in the background, like the clamor of car engines on a road in the distance. An owl hooted softly, somewhere. It occurred to me (for the first time, I think) how alone we were when the Castle was empty, when there wasn’t a party, when the other students were all half a mile away at the Hall. It was just us—the seven of us and the trees and the sky and the lake and the moon and, of course, Shakespeare. He lived with us like an eighth housemate, an older, wiser friend, perpetually out of sight but never out of mind, as if he had just left the room. Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.
There was a soft fizz of electricity; Meredith’s lights flickered and went out. I looked back toward the Castle in the deep gloom. The kitchen lights were on and the music audible, so I assumed we hadn’t blown a fuse.
“Wonder what happened.”
James was not curious enough to tear his eyes away from the sky. “Look,” he said.
With the lights out we could see stars, tiny pinpricks of white scattered around the moon and glinting like sequins. The world was perfectly still for one precious instant. Then there was a crash, a shout, and something inside shattered. At first, neither us moved. We stood staring at each other, hoping—silently, desperately, pointlessly—that someone had simply knocked a bottle off the counter, or slipped on the stairs, or some other clumsy, innocent thing. But before either of us could speak again, voices inside started screaming.
“Richard,” I said, my heart already in my throat. “I bet anything.” We raced back toward the Castle, in as straight a line as we could manage.
The door was hanging open but people had blocked it completely, filled up the gap. James and I shoved them aside to get into the kitchen, where at least a dozen others had made a ring around the edge of the room. James broke through the circle first, knocking two second-year linguists out of his way. I wasn’t sober enough to judge the distance and slammed into him when he stopped, but the close press of people kept both of us from falling over.
The cellist who’d been talking to Meredith outside sat crumpled on the floor with one hand over his face, blood dribbling out between his fingers. Filippa crouched beside him, perched on her toes in a glittering mess of broken glass. Meredith and Wren stood facing Richard, and all three of them were shouting at once, their words overlapping and indistinguishable as music and laughter churned in from the next room. Alexander hovered in the doorway behind Richard, but he was leaning on Colin and in no condition to intervene, so James and I pushed forward to arbitrate.
“What happened?” I asked, hollering to be heard over the racket.
“Richard,” Filippa said, giving him a dirty look over her shoulder. “Came downstairs and sucker punched him.”
“What the hell? Why?”
“He was watching the yard from the upstairs window.”
“Everyone calm down!” James ordered. Wren fell silent, but Richard and Meredith ignored him.
“You’re out of control!” she yelled. “You need to be in a straitjacket.”
“Well, maybe we could share one.”
“This is not a fucking joke! You could have knocked his teeth out!”
The boy on the floor groaned and leaned forward, a long thread of blood and saliva hanging from his bottom lip. Filippa stood up swiftly and said, “Yeah, I think he probably did. He needs to go to the infirmary.”
“I’ll take him,” Colin said. He left Alexander leaning on the doorjamb and gave Richard a wide berth as he came across the kitchen. He and I and Filippa got the cellist to his feet and draped his arm around Colin’s shoulders. They weren’t even out of the room before Richard and Meredith resumed their shouting match.
Meredith: “Are you happy now?”
Richard: “Are you?”
“Both of you, stop!” Wren’s voice had climbed to a dangerously high pitch. “Just stop, can’t you?”
Richard rounded on her and she took one wary step back. “This isn’t your problem, Wren.”
“No,” Filippa said, sharply, “you’ve made it everybody’s problem.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Filippa—”
James and I both moved forward, but Meredith spoke first and Richard froze, all the muscles between his shoulders bunched and bulging.
“Don’t talk to her like that. Turn around and look at me,” she said. “Stop bullying everyone else like a fucking schoolboy and look at me.”
He turned and lurched toward her so suddenly that everyone jumped back, but Meredith didn’t move an inch—she was either brave or crazy.
“Shut your mouth—” he started, but she didn’t let him finish.
“Or what? You’ll knock my teeth out, too?” she asked. “Do it. I dare you.”
I decided that perhaps “brave” and “crazy” were not mutually exclusive. “Meredith,” I said, carefully.
Richard swung toward me, and James and Filippa shifted closer, closing ranks. “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “You I’ll send to the infirmary in pieces.”
“Back off!” Meredith shoved him, both hands hitting his chest with a flat thump; before she could withdraw again he grabbed her by the wrist. “It’s not about him. You’re making it about him because you can’t hit me and you’re just desperate to hit someone!”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Richard said, jerking her forward. She twisted her arm against his grip until her flesh went white. “If I knocked you around a bit, gave everyone something to stare at? We all know how you like everyone staring at you. You slut.”
Between the six of us, we’d called Meredith some version of “slut” a thousand times, but this was horrifically different. Everything seemed to go silent, despite the music pounding in the next room.