At around nine thirty, Alison finally spikes the game-winning ball. They all jump to their feet, cheering—Kersti because now she can finally get back to Huber House—and line up to shake hands with their opponents. Mahler is happy. He kisses Alison and swings her around. “Glückwunsch, mein Meister!” he cries. No longer imbeciles, now they’re his champions.
On the bus ride back to the Lycée, Kersti sits beside Alison. Neither of them says much. Kersti is thinking about the ledger, not wanting Cressida and Lille to look through it without her. Alison is staring out the window with a sad face, even though they’ve just won the championship.
“You okay?” Kersti asks her.
“Sure,” Alison says, not turning her head.
“Are you looking forward to graduating?”
Alison lets out a strange laugh.
“You’ve probably got athletic scholarships everywhere,” Kersti says, trying to engage her.
“I’m going to UBC for volleyball.”
“Cool.”
Alison doesn’t ask Kersti where she’s going next year, which is fine because Kersti doesn’t know. Instead she says, “Is Cressida still sleeping with Mr. Fithern?” Completely out of nowhere.
“They’re traveling together this summer,” Kersti blurts, almost gleefully. “He’s leaving Mrs. Fithern.”
Alison shakes her head in disgust. Her face turns pink, even her freckles. She slumps down in her seat, turns back to the window, and doesn’t say another word. As though Kersti is somehow at fault.
By the time Kersti reaches Cressida’s room, it’s well after ten and Lille is the one she finds sitting on the bed. “Where’s Cressida?”
“I don’t know,” Lille says quietly, her voice faraway. She seems preoccupied. “I just got here.”
“Are you okay?” Kersti asks her. “You seem spacey.”
“Komiko said she just saw Cress on the second floor. She was leaving.”
“Leaving?”
Kersti rushes over to the balcony and pushes open the doors just as Cressida is crossing the lawn, almost languidly, as if she’s out for a stroll in her own garden. Even in the dark, Kersti is able to make out the shadow of her lithe body gliding on the grass. The wild tangle of hair blowing out behind her like a cape, the gazelle legs that are not quite concealed by her knee-length white cotton skirt.
She watches Cressida approach the iron gates, which are supposed to keep them safely locked inside the campus, and her chest flames with anger. Cressida was supposed to wait for them to read the ledger. Kersti stays out on the balcony until Cressida vanishes in the darkness—off to break Magnus’s heart—and when she comes back inside the room, Lille is gone.
She decides to look for the ledger herself. She walks over to Cressida’s bed and pulls back the duvet, but the book isn’t there. Cressida must have moved it. Kersti does a swift scan around the room and then starts opening drawers, lifting the mattress, checking under the bed. She sifts through Cressida’s school bag, the papers on her desk, her closet.
She must have taken it with her, which makes no sense. Why would she have done that? Kersti tidies Cressida’s room, making sure it looks exactly the way she found it, and then shuffles dejectedly back to her room. She changes out of her sweaty volleyball uniform and without even showering or brushing her teeth, falls into bed wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. She lies there for a long time, waiting. She’ll wait as long as she has to until she hears Cressida’s door, and then she’ll charge in there and demand to see that ledger.
She stares up at her sloped ceiling, seething and restless. Her window is open and she can hear Mme. Hamidou talking on the second floor with the other on-duty teacher, whose voice Kersti recognizes as Mrs. Fithern’s. Mrs. Fithern has to board here all week, which means Mr. Fithern is home alone. Will Cressida pay him a visit after she leaves Magnus’s place? Will they celebrate her new freedom?
It always lines up for Cressida. No matter what she does, it invariably works out for her. And as Kersti lies here simmering, she begins to imagine her life without Cressida—an inevitable reality as the school year draws to a close.
Maybe it won’t be such a bad thing, she considers. It goes without saying she’ll miss her. She’ll miss confiding in her, she’ll miss her pep talks, their laughter, their antics, her unconditional love. What she won’t miss is the perpetual hum of inadequacy she feels whenever she’s in Cressida’s presence. Or that throbbing sense of injustice that never has a voice. Why does everything work out for her? Why don’t the rules apply to her? Why did she get away with it?
Kersti knows Cressida will always want her in her life, even just to know Kersti is there in some corner of the world, her reliable little beacon of ordinary; a connection to normalcy. She’ll anticipate Kersti’s postcards from Toronto and find them comforting, particularly while she’s jet-setting around the world, handing off lovers like relay batons. “Oh, it’s from my best friend,” she’ll tell her Spanish bullfighter lover. She’ll treasure Kersti’s lame postcards of the CN Tower and the Hockey Hall of Fame as though they’re novelties, just like Kersti’s boring life will also be a novelty. But maybe the long-distance friendship—which is not much of a friendship at all—will prove vastly healthier for Kersti’s self-esteem.
Chapter 33
LAUSANNE—June 2016
Kersti somehow manages to finish her speech. It’s a good thing she prepared notes. As she returns to her seat, she realizes she has absolutely no recollection of what she’s just said. “You were great,” Jay whispers.
Noa leans over and squeezes her knee. “Good job.”
Kersti turns around to look at Alison. They acknowledge one another. Kersti mouths, Do you want to talk?
Alison nods and points toward the tennis courts.
“I have to pee,” Kersti tells Jay. “I’ll be back.”
She gets out of her chair again and squeezes through the aisle. As she comes to the end of the row, she realizes the person whose legs she’s climbing over belong to Angela Zumpt. “Hi, Angela,” she says.
Angela is noticeably heavier and has a few more wrinkles and gray hairs, but otherwise she hasn’t changed much. For today’s ceremony, she’s wearing serviceable chino pants and a yellow button-down. There are beads of sweat on her forehead.
“Hello, Kersti,” Angela mutters, without really looking at her.
Kersti escapes and finds Alison at the tennis courts.
“What are you doing here?” Kersti asks her, wasting no time on small talk.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Alison, I think I know what you’re going to say.”
“I don’t think you do,” she says, shaking her head, her red hair swinging. “I know something that might . . . well, it might help you get some closure.”
“Alison—”
“Mrs. Fithern didn’t have anything to do with Cressida’s accident,” she says, her freckled cheeks turning pink and splotchy. “This is hard to say—”
“Alison,” Kersti interrupts. “Did you come here to tell me about Hamidou?”
Her pink splotches turn bright red, flaring up all over her neck and chest.
“I’ve seen the Polaroids,” Kersti says.