The Finishing School

Their feud at the end of last year is mostly forgotten. The night Cressida confided about her affair with Mr. Fithern, Kersti decided she wouldn’t speak to Cressida for the entire summer. It was already May, which meant only a few weeks of silent treatment to get through until the end of the school year.

She lasted about two weeks, which made things very awkward in their room. Cressida kept trying to explain, tell her side of it. But Kersti was too hurt. At first, she couldn’t get past the fact that Cressida had claimed to still be in love with Magnus while she was already seeing Mr. Fithern, but morbid curiosity ultimately trumped Kersti’s self-righteousness. She couldn’t stand being excluded from Cressida’s unfolding drama. It was killing her not to be able to ask Cressida all the questions that kept popping into her head. She wanted to know everything about the affair. She wanted details. Where did they rendezvous? Was he going to leave his wife? Who else knew? And naturally, Kersti wanted to know if Magnus would be available again.

She finally caved the night of the Ascension holiday. She was in bed unable to sleep and Cressida was at her desk, working on an essay. She always did her homework in the middle of the night—an afterthought. “You told me you loved Magnus and that’s why you wanted him back,” Kersti blurted into the dark. “You knew I liked him, but you had to take him anyway—”

“I didn’t take him from you,” Cressida said, turning around to face her.

“And the whole time, you were also screwing Mr. Fithern. Why?” Kersti demanded. “Why couldn’t you just let me have Magnus?”

“It wasn’t my decision to make,” Cressida said. “Magnus is his own person. He made his own choices. I had no control over that. Besides, I did have feelings for him.”

“Did?”

“Do.”

“But you have stronger feelings for Mr. Fithern,” Kersti said, turning on her bedside lamp. “You said so. I don’t get why you had to have both!”

“Haven’t you ever loved two people at the same time?”

Kersti thought about Cressida and Magnus and the answer was yes, but she said nothing.

“I didn’t think Charlie and I had a future,” Cressida said.

“So you used Magnus as your backup, which also kept him away from me. Just because you could.”

“No, Kersti. I had a fling with Charlie. I never planned to fall in love with him. I planned to be with Magnus. Magnus and I made sense. Charlie and I . . .”

She shook her head, bewildered. Like she was the victim in all this. “I may be impulsive,” she said. “I follow my heart and sometimes it’s reckless and people get hurt, but I’m not a bad person, Kersti. I don’t make calculated decisions to deliberately hurt people. Especially not you or Magnus.”

“You think that makes it okay?”

“I don’t know if it makes it okay,” Cressida said. “I don’t worry about what’s okay or not.”

Kersti knew that to be true. She just wasn’t sure if it was an admirable quality, or reprehensible. She thought about L’étranger and wondered if Cressida was amoral or just living by her own truth.

For most of the summer, their friendship was like a fragile artifact. Still in one piece, but full of filament-like cracks that weakened its integrity. They emailed each other regularly—Cressida from London or Belize or wherever she happened to be—but their exchanges were terse, formal. Kersti was still aggrieved and didn’t want Cressida to think she was forgiven.

And then on Kersti’s birthday in August, she received a FedEx package with a plane ticket to Greece. Seventeen years on earth deserves seventeen days on the Greek Islands. Happy B-day, Kuusky. I’ll meet you at the Athens airport. Cress

Her parents agreed to the trip, deciding it would be an early graduation present. They gave her a cell phone and two hundred dollars and off she went. Armand and Deirdre were supposed to be there the whole time, but Deirdre got a role in the West End and it was decided the girls would have a chaperone instead, Armand’s twenty-five-year-old personal assistant. Armand flew in on his private plane to meet them for a few days in Corfu and Samos, but for all the other islands they were basically alone.

The Greek Islands in August were teeming with tourists. Everywhere they went it was hot, crowded, and exciting. They quickly fell into a rhythm—sleeping until noon every day, Greek coffee, a few hours at the beach, siesta in the afternoon. Dinner at 10 p.m. Partying until four, five, six o’clock in the morning, dancing and downing tequila slammers and then capping off the night with a gyros at sunrise. Kersti had a fling with Boyd from Brisbane. That’s what they called him. He ended up following them to Santorini and Ios, but eventually Kersti decided to lose him. She actually really liked him, but she started to think Cressida was the one he wanted. How could it not be? Maybe she was being paranoid—maybe she simply couldn’t believe that anyone would like her and not Cressida—but she couldn’t face the possibility of another rejection.

For seventeen days they celebrated her seventeenth birthday, hopping from island to island. The best part was having Cressida all to herself for such a long time. On their last night, when they were on the ferry back to Athens, Kersti reached for her hand and held it. “Thank you,” she whispered.

They were lying side by side on the deck, surrounded by dozens of other stargazing backpackers. “I had the best time.”

“I’m the one who’s thankful,” Cressida returned. “I don’t deserve you.”

Kersti knew their friendship was restored. The cracks were gone; the surface was smooth again. Her heart was full.

She knocks on Cressida’s door and Cressida pops out, grinning mischievously. “I have a surprise for you,” she says.

“What?”

She pulls her into the room, closes the door, and whips a joint out of her kangaroo sweatshirt.

“Where’d you get that?” Kersti asks. She knows Cressida smokes up a lot—with Magnus and with Mr. Fithern—but she usually doesn’t do it at school.

“We have to do it here,” she says. “One time before the end of the year.” She means in Huber House. Whenever they’ve smoked before, it’s been at Ouchy or outside one of the bars.

They bundle up in sweaters and coats and go outside on the balcony. Cressida lights the joint, has a toke, and hands it to Kersti. They pass it back and forth, their smoke mixing with their frozen breath. “It’s freezing,” Kersti says, her teeth chattering.

“Does it seem weird to you that Celine Dion is married to that old guy?” Cressida says, sounding quite vexed by it.

“What made you think of that?”

“She’s Canadian and you’re Canadian. I just kind of put that together. Plus I have that stupid song in my head from Titanic.”

“He was her manager,” Kersti tells her.

“I know, but he’s old enough to be her dad. She was like twelve when she married him.”

Kersti laughs. “She was twelve when he discovered her, not when he married her.”

“Still,” Cressida says. “She was a kid and he was like forty.”

“You’re in love with an older man,” Kersti reminds her.

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