The Finishing School

“I just can’t.”


Kersti decides to leave it alone. Alison is one of those people who look really healthy on the outside—she’s active and robust and outdoorsy—but underneath that rosy-cheeked fa?ade is something starkly different, something dark and moody. That long-ago confession about her compulsive masturbating was no isolated quirk, Kersti thinks. There’s a disconnect between who she presents to the world and who she really is, or whatever it is she’s guarding.

“You haven’t asked me about Cressida,” Kersti says.

“Is she alive?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think she was a good person,” Alison admits. “I still don’t. She was a sociopath, if you ask me.”

Kersti’s hand instinctively goes to her belly and she wonders with a sickening feeling if Alison is right, and if such things are genetic.





Chapter 26





LAUSANNE—May 1998



“Here,” Cressida says, spritzing Kersti’s modest cleavage with her Chanel No. 5. It’s the night of the spring Charity Ball. Lille, Noa, Raf, and Kersti are getting ready in Cressida’s room. She’s got the best dresses, jewelry, and makeup to choose from, as well as the most space, it being a corner room. Alison is out of their inner circle now. She hangs out with the athletic girls.

“I think you need a necklace,” Raf says, giving Kersti a once-over.

Cressida nods and whips a stunning double strand of pearls from her underwear drawer. She puts it around Kersti’s neck, fastens the clasp, and smiles approvingly. “Perfect,” she says, her breath smelling of watermelon bubble gum. Kersti has noticed lately that Cressida is smoking a lot less and chewing gum instead. Mr. Fithern is an outspoken antismoker.

Kersti is wearing one of Cressida’s dresses, a royal blue raw-silk strapless with a bell skirt that makes her feel a bit like Joan Collins. Noa says it’s good with her eyes and Kersti has to admit, it does match them perfectly. It fits well, too.

She likes what she sees, until Cressida slides up behind her and dwarfs her. She’s wearing a black strapless dress that pushes her breasts up and cinches her waist to the size of a wrist, with a ruffle at the bottom that barely covers her behind. She wears no jewelry, but doesn’t need it. Her hair is wild, its springy coils bouncing on the slope of her pale shoulders. She’s spectacular.

She scrunches her hair and shakes it out, smacks her lips twice, turns this way and that, thrusts out her breasts. “I hope Charlie likes my dress,” she murmurs, uncharacteristically insecure.

“Isn’t Magnus your date?” Kersti reminds her, and Cressida gives her a look.

Arndt Schultz invited Kersti to be his date, but she turned him down. He’s popular at school but ugly; she didn’t want to have to spend the night fending him off or being responsible for his good time. They decided as a group—Lille, Noa, Raf, and Kersti—not to go with dates, and to enjoy their last Charity Ball together.

Only Cressida is going with Magnus; he insisted. She’s a bit peeved about it, complaining she just wants to hang out with the girls, but Kersti knows Mr. Fithern is the one Cressida wants to be with.

“You look gorgeous, Kersti,” Lille says. “You’re a Scandinavian goddess.”

“Baltic,” Kersti corrects, already starting to evaporate next to Cressida.

The ball is in the banquet hall of the sprawling Chateau D’Ouchy hotel, a turreted castle with a gray stone fa?ade and orange-shingled tower on the banks of Lake Geneva. It’s black-tie and open bar, even for the students. Cressida hands Kersti a vodka and orange juice. They’re outside on the Lakeside Terrace, where it’s easier to spike their drinks. They each have their own flasks to make the notoriously weak drinks stronger.

“Doesn’t he look hot tonight?” Cressida says, admiring Mr. Fithern from a distance.

He’s standing at the bar with Mrs. Fithern, talking to two other English teachers. He does look good in his tux, with his dark hair gelled and spiked out, edgier than he usually wears it. He glances over at Cressida a couple of times and holds her in his gaze.

Lille stumbles over, already drunk. Her bleached white hair is piled on top of her head in a frothy Marie Antoinette bun with loose wisps curling around her powdered face. She looks like an old-fashioned, sad-eyed doll. “Hello,” she says, curtseying.

The sun hasn’t even set behind the Alps and Lille is clearly not long for consciousness. She’s never been able to hold her liquor well. Vodka nights usually end with her puking and blacking out. Tonight will be no different.

“Go easy, Grasshopper,” Cressida says.

“I can’t look Mrs. Fithern in the eyes,” Lille slurs. “She called me over and Mr. F. was beside her and I had to bolt—”

“Don’t say anything stupid,” Cressida warns, her eyes flashing.

“I’m trying not to, but it’s awkward. Aren’t you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Cressida responds. “Why should I be?”

“You could be a little more compassionate,” Lille says, her eyes filling with tears. “She’s her wife.”

“His wife,” Kersti says.

“Lille, you need to slow down,” Cressida tells her, taking the drink out of her hand. “Take a break.”

Lille snatches it back, spilling most of it on the front of her doll’s dress. “Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking,” she huffs, and walks off.

“You know how much she loves Mrs. Fithern,” Kersti reminds Cressida.

“So do I,” Cressida says. “But I love him more.”

She opens her clutch and retrieves her pack of cigarettes. She hands one to Kersti, lights both, and exhales over the railing. It’s dusk and the sky is the color of salmon. The lake is dotted with rainbow-hued catamarans, behind which, east toward Vevey, the hilly vineyards of Lavaux stretch forever.

“I’m going to miss it here,” Cressida says, her wistfulness catching Kersti off guard. “I’ve grown up here.”

Kersti will miss it, too, she realizes, gazing out at the shoreline of Lac Léman. Will she even remember it in ten years? Or twenty? Will this picture of the Swiss Riviera, with the Alps rising in the distance out of its crystal blue bath, remain as bright and vivid in her memory as it does today? She tries to hold on to it, to impress each detail into her mind, but it’s starting to sink in that what has turned out to be the happiest time of her life is coming to an end. She’s going home soon. They all are.

She can’t even imagine life without her best friends available to her at any moment, Hamidou’s ubiquitous guidance, speaking French every day, traveling, mountains, Huber House and its decrepit third-floor bathroom. She can already feel the dread of having to be wrenched away from here and sent back to the place where she never felt right, or enough.

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