“Be careful in your essay, luv,” Mrs. Fithern cautions. “The protagonists are Dick and Nicole Driver. Not Scott and Zelda. It’s fiction.”
And then, as though suddenly remembering the other dozen students in her class, she randomly calls on Kersti. “What other character symbolized the promise of youth in the book, or of something new and better?”
“Um. Their children?” Kersti guesses.
Mrs. Fithern sighs. “You’re being way too literal,” she says, sounding annoyed. “I mean thematically.”
Her obvious disappointment gives Kersti the impression she would much rather continue this discussion of Tender Is the Night with Cressida, one-on-one, over coffee.
Around midnight that night, after they know Hamidou has gone to sleep, Kersti and Cressida creep down the flight of stairs to the third-floor bathroom, cigarettes in hand. The other girls are already there, consoling Noa, who’s crying.
“What’s going on?”
“Noa’s ex-boyfriend tried to kill himself,” Raf says.
“Andries?”
Noa nods, sniffling. She unravels a strip of toilet paper and daubs at her eyes. “It’s not the first time,” she tells them. “He did the same thing last summer.”
“And you never told us?”
“I was embarrassed.”
Kersti can’t imagine anyone being so in love with her that he’d want to die if she broke up with him. She’s dated a couple of guys since the debacle with Magnus. One was from a finishing school in Villars, a jet-haired Colombian named Miguel. He didn’t speak much English and although he was good looking, they fizzled out pretty quickly. The other one she met at the local hangout, Captain Cook’s. His name was Roger. They went out for a few months in the fall, but didn’t survive the holidays. Neither guy held a candle to Magnus.
“How did he do it?” Lille asks.
“Razor blade. The wrong way, of course.”
“And this time?”
“Same. I got an emergency call. Madame Hamidou came and got me during study hall. It was Andries from the hospital.”
“Pathetic,” Cressida mutters. “Anyone who doesn’t die didn’t really mean to.”
Noa stands up and splashes water on her splotchy face. “I’m going to bed,” she says, and leaves the bathroom.
Lille starts to braid Kersti’s hair, tickling her scalp with her fingers. “Poor Andries,” she says. “Talk about a cry for attention.”
“You don’t even know him,” Cressida says.
“Lille feels everyone’s pain,” Alison says. “That’s why we love her.”
Kersti closes her eyes, enjoying the moment. Lille’s fingers in her hair, the draft of sharp cold air in her nostrils, the comforting banter of her best friends. She’s content. She feels more at home than home here; she always has. She tries not to think about the end of the year too much.
She dozes off for a bit and the next thing she knows, Cressida is up on her feet.
“Where you going?” Kersti asks her, turning her head slightly in Lille’s lap.
“Out.”
“You’re sneaking out again?”
There’s a certain combination of fearlessness and gall required to make a nightly escape from school. Plenty of rebellious students have tried and gotten caught over the years—suffering a suspension or a loss of weekend privileges—and maybe the odd one actually got away with it and didn’t need to prove it could be done again. Cressida isn’t like that. She doesn’t care about proving anything to anyone. She’s immune to that teenage albatross—approval. She only serves herself, with no fear of consequence.
“One of these days you’re going to get caught,” Kersti warns, hurt that Cressida would rather sneak out to meet Magnus than hang out with them.
“What’ll they do? Expel me?”
“Maybe.”
“You are adorably na?ve, Kuusky. Don’t wait up for me.”
The door closes behind her and Kersti lies there, pissed off.
“She’s fearless,” Lille says admiringly, tugging on Kersti’s hair.
“She doesn’t care about anything,” Kersti mutters. “Is that fearlessness?”
“Rules don’t apply to her.”
“Why not?” Kersti wants to know. “Why does she get to do whatever she wants? Hamidou must know.”
“You sound jealous.”
“Maybe I am.”
“There’s no point punishing her,” Lille says. “A person has to care in order for a punishment to be effective. Hamidou knows that.”
“So she just goes through life doing whatever she wants?”
“Life is much bigger than the Lycée,” Lille says. “The real world will be different.”
“Will it?”
“Why does it bother you?” Raf asks her. “It’s her life.”
Kersti has no answer for that.
She’s still up when she hears the door creak open and then close. It’s four thirty in the morning. She sits up and turns the light on, startling Cressida.
“What the fuck!” Cressida cries, stumbling backward. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“What the hell happened to your face?” Kersti asks her. Her lips are swollen and bloody.
Cressida peers at herself in the mirror. Kersti gets out of bed and stands behind her. Up close, there are bite marks on her top lip. The skin around her mouth, all the way down to her chin, is bright red, chewed and raw.
Cressida studies her wounds, inspecting the damage. And then she laughs. “It’s pretty bad this time,” she says.
“This time?”
“Look at this,” she says, peeling off her jeans. She stands before Kersti in her panties, exposing violently bruised inner thighs, a kaleidoscope of blue and purple.
“Holy shit. Magnus did that to you?”
Cressida doesn’t answer. Instead, she goes over to the sink and brushes her teeth.
“Did Magnus do that to you?” Kersti repeats.
“Why are you still up?” Cressida asks her, her ravaged mouth full of toothpaste suds.
Kersti sits on the bed and waits for her to finish.
“It was just sex,” she says, gently patting her face with a towel.
“That was just sex?” Kersti cries. “You’ve been battered.”
“He likes it rough.”
“I’ve never seen you look like this before,” Kersti says, horrified. “Those bruises . . .”
Cressida gets into bed and pulls the duvet up to her chin. She groans from the pain. She must be sore everywhere.
“Has he always been like this with you?” Kersti asks.
Cressida looks away.
“Did you let him do this to you, Cress? Or were you trying to stop him?”
“Oh, Kerst,” Cressida says, as though Kersti could never be expected to understand.
“Because if you wanted him to stop and he did it anyway—”
“Yes, I know what rape is, Kersti. This wasn’t rape.”
“But if Magnus forced you—”
“It wasn’t Magnus.”
Kersti falls silent. Cressida turns off her lamp and rolls over on her side, giving Kersti her back.
“Who was it?”
Silence.
“Cress. Who was it? Did someone rape you?”
“It wasn’t rape!” Cressida responds impatiently. “I love him. It was consensual. It’s just getting way more intense, but it’s amazing.”