In her first year at Queen of Angels Upper School, she discovered that William Liston was discussed by everyone, in every grade, seriously, in hushed tones, as if he were a celebrity. Acquiring information about William and his cohort of athletic, attractive boys and girls offered an interesting alternative to schoolwork. Their families, their relationships, their brushes with discipline, even their grades, were discussed by everyone around Ada with the attention to detail of baseball fanatics discussing the players on a team. Even quiet Lisa Grady knew more than Ada did, at times, about William Liston, who was called Will at school. (This fact, too, made Ada feel as if she were not his peer, but some formal acquaintance of his—a business associate, a guidance counselor, a friend of his mother.)
“Did you hear Will and Karen Driscoll broke up?” Lisa asked her, and, shamefully, Ada lied and said she knew this. She had noticed that Karen had not been at the house in a few weeks—a fact that she offered up with a sort of smug authority, as someone with insider knowledge.
In fact, Ada had not spoken directly to William, nor he to her, since their exchange in the attic. He came and went quietly from the house, slipping in later than his curfew, leaving early in the morning to do, as Liston said, God knows what. When he was home he usually spent time with Matty. Therefore, all of the information she had about William—aside from what she could observe—was given to her by Liston, who still occasionally spoke to Ada about her problems with the boys, despite the fact that she tried to discourage it. Sometimes, when Liston was particularly stressed about something at the lab, she would lapse into the confidential tone that she used to take with David, telling Ada more than she wanted to know about her life and her children. When she came with Ada to visit David at St. Andrew’s, she might let something slip on the drive over about William’s trouble in school, or Gregory’s teacher’s concern over his quietness. And, in spite of herself, Ada listened with interest, gathering facts about William, storing them up to mull over later.
The fact that she lived with the Liston family had not gone unnoticed by the girls in her grade. Slowly, they began to speak to her in class, and then, occasionally, at lunch. Lisa Grady looked up over her glasses in alarm the first time this occurred, as if she couldn’t quite understand what was happening.
It was Melanie McCarthy—her nominal ambassador at Queen of Angels, her tour guide, who had offered no guidance to her whatsoever—who approached, with two friends.
“Hi, Ada,” said one of them, Theresa Fitzharris, a short girl with red hair and freckles so abundant that they made her look tan from a distance.
“Hi,” said Ada, too quietly.
“Do you care if we sit here?” asked the other, and Ada gestured with a hand to indicate that she didn’t.
“I like your hair that way,” said Theresa, and Ada briefly, embarrassingly, reached up to touch it, because she could not remember what she had done to it. It was pulled back at her temples into two clips; she had been wearing it that way because Karen Driscoll did.
“Thank you,” said Ada, and for the rest of the lunch period they plied her with questions about William Liston—where he went after school and what his interests were, what he was like at home, what his brothers were like—and by the end of the discussion it became clear that they were asking on behalf of Melanie McCarthy, who was much quieter than they were, and whom they were positioning, Ada realized, as next in line to date William. By the time she realized this it was too late: she had given them too much information, more than William knew she had, and they now assumed that Ada and he were close, that she talked to him regularly, that she was—Ada shuddered to think it—like a sister to him.
“Maybe we can come over sometime,” said Theresa Fitzharris, and Ada said she would have to ask Liston—calling her, awkwardly, Diana.
By the time lunch was over, Ada had realized the gravity of her error. She had exchanged her knowledge of William for a place as an insider, and in doing so she had falsely represented her relationship with him. Furthermore, she had given Melanie McCarthy information that she could use to get closer to him—the fact, for example, that he went to a nearby baseball field after school many afternoons with his friends to sit aimlessly in a circle around home plate; the fact that he had a weekend job at a nearby video store. Would this get back to him somehow? If they ever came over, would they expect Ada to introduce them to William, to watch television with him on the couch? She couldn’t say. Lisa Grady watched her with interest, knowing the depth of her lie, wondering, alongside Ada, what she would do next.
After school that day, Ada took the bus to St. Andrew’s as usual, to see David. She had begun doing her homework while she was there, since he mainly did not have much to say. She would spread her books out on his bed while he sat in his blue corduroy armchair, looking out the window, and she would chatter to him with false cheer about what she was learning.
As she walked from the bus stop, she stopped to pick up a particularly beautiful leaf from the grounds. She had been doing this each day that she visited. David took them from her, always, and contemplated them for a while, turning them over and over while he looked, tracing their veins with a finger. Usually he said nothing in response. Perhaps a quarter of the time, now, he produced the correct word for the object in his hands. The rest of the time he changed the subject, or continued a conversation he had been having in his mind. She opened the window whenever she could, which was whenever David’s roommate was out, to let in the crisp air. Sometimes she walked with him on the meager grounds of the place, although he had lately seemed less and less interested in doing so.
That afternoon, when Ada arrived, David’s roommate Paul was missing from the room, and a man in a too-bright shirt and pleated, baggy pants was sitting with David when she arrived. He was perched on the edge of David’s bed familiarly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His tie hung down between his legs. He was saying something—“Do you understand, Mr. Sibelius?”—when Ada walked in, and she dropped her blue backpack, the one that Liston had given her, heavily on the floor.
“You must be Ada,” said the man, standing up quickly from the bed. “I’m Ron Loughner.” He had a high, hoarse Boston accent and wore cuff links in his polyester oxford. He was balding ungracefully, his hair too long in places, an attempt to conceal his scalp. He did not look unkind, just uncomfortable. He came over and offered his hand to Ada, as if he expected her to know him, and she looked at it carefully before shaking it. David, in his armchair, didn’t turn around.