16
“What’s wrong?” Heath rolled over onto his side as I frantically texted Andrea back. I was sitting up in his bed, having woken up due to receiving ten text messages telling me to do just that. I needed to get back to campus.
“It’s not good,” I said, scooting off the bed and grabbing my jeans from the floor next to me. “Rockwood is trashed. The Head of School’s office is a mess. They did all sorts of things to that stupid sculpture. Somehow, they dismantled all the security cameras. The security detail was playing poker all night in their office, and no one knows why. So, that’s all part of the investigation now. How these kids managed to get a horse into Andrea’s office, I’ll never know.”
Heath sat up in bed, and admiring his chiseled upper body, I wanted to crawl back in there with him. I had no regrets about going to his place the night before. I had forgotten about Kyle for a few hours, which felt freeing. Spending time with Heath was easy. If I had found Kyle after his karaoke performance, I probably never would have gone over to Heath’s apartment, but I had no idea what the right answer to any of it was. All I knew was that I had had fun, and now the fun was over. I needed to go back to reality, and from what I was told, a heavily vandalized fire escape outside my kitchen window.
“They brought a horse into her office? Up those flights of stairs?” Heath asked, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t get any kind of notification from the station yet.”
“I don’t think anyone is hurt, which is good,” I said, pulling on my sweatshirt. “The Rye police found a bunch of students at the beach at five in the morning with a bonfire and a ton of champagne.”
“Classy,” he said. “Hey, I need to work today, but I’ll call you later. Can I get a kiss before you leave?”
“Sure,” I said, walking over and sitting on the edge of the bed. “This was a good time.”
“It was,” he said, his hands on my thighs, lightly massaging them. “And I’m excited to meet your friend Tamara this week.”
“I’ll get in touch with her today now that I know your schedule. We’ll figure something out,” I said and then kissed him softly.
“I like you a lot, Devon Paige.”
...
“Sorry to interrupt your romp with the paramedic,” Andrea said from behind her desk. She gestured at the dark brown horse that was standing and snorting in the corner of her office, its reins connected to what looked like a dog’s leash, tethered to the handle of a massive filing cabinet. I gave it a pat, not knowing what else to do. “Animal Control is on its way to get him out of here.”
“Looks like he’s pretty well-behaved,” I said, sitting across from her. Andrea looked awful, both exhausted and with damp yet somewhat greasy-looking hair. There was also a strange smell, but maybe it was coming from the horse. “Are you okay?”
“No. I am not,” she said. “I turned on my shower this morning, and guess what happened?”
“I have no idea.”
“Beef soup rained down on me. Those fuckers taped beef bouillon cubes onto my shower head.”
I suppressed a laugh, feeling both badly for her and impressed by the ingenuity. That was some prank. “They broke into your house? How on earth?” This was a new low. I started connecting the dots in my head and realized who might be able to access the Head of School’s house. Oh. “I have an idea.”
Andrea shook her head. “I guess giving your niece a key to your house isn’t a good move.”
“And you know she was involved?” As horrific as Ashlyn was, I didn’t want to assume anything. But I knew it was likely.
“She was found at the bonfire guzzling a big Yeti mug full of champagne. Taittinger, no less. How do they pull this shit off? I was drinking Korbel until I was at least thirty. If I was lucky.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, what was appropriate, what would be overreaching. “What are you going to do?”
Andrea sighed, waving to the Animal Control officers who had entered the room. She signed off on the paperwork, bid adieu to the horse, and settled back into her seat across from me. “I wonder what his name was.”
“He seemed like a good horse. At least he didn’t trash the place.”
“Maintenance came through and cleaned up some poop earlier. Luckily, he didn’t keep going with that. I am grateful because who needs horseshit on top of everything else? I also wonder where the hell he came from. Even Ashlyn doesn’t own a horse.”
I thought back to Adrienne’s horse stunt at Walden Pond. “Adrienne Preston wasn’t in that group at Rye Beach, was she?”
Andrea scrolled through her phone for a few seconds. “No, she’s not on the police report. Of course, we don’t know for sure if there were others involved, but my guess is this is the core group, given the celebratory nature of the gathering.” She passed her phone over to me so I could take a look. Of the student names I knew, they were mostly from the crew that I always saw surrounding Ashlyn. The same kids, I assumed, were involved with The Underground Stallion. No big surprises. “We now have to conduct a full investigation. Parents have already been notified. Many have indicated they are hiring lawyers. It should be lots of fun.”
“That must have been awkward, you know, calling your brother.”
She took off her glasses and wiped them with a cloth. “These keep getting greasy. I need to check the other shower in my house to see if they defiled it, too. I don’t think I’ll be able to trust mine again for a while. But yes, it was terrible. He and my sister-in-law tend to think Ashlyn can do no wrong, so there were plenty of excuses given despite the fact that they hadn’t even spoken to her yet.”
I looked at Andrea, who was a combination of sad and angry, her limp hair laden with oily beef soup. She wasn’t perfect, but neither were any of us, especially me. She didn’t deserve this. “What happens if the investigation yields proof that they did all of it? I saw The Stallion covered in tarps again. I assume they got to it.”
“Yes, they spray-painted words labeling it as part of a horse’s anatomy, if you know what I mean.”
I gasped. “Does Ward Connelly know?”
“That call might have been worse than the call to my brother. Yes, he knows. And to answer your earlier question, the students could be removed. I might be in the position of telling my very own niece that she can no longer attend the school that I oversee. If the Board even keeps me on.”
I sat up a bit straighter. “I think you should. Kick her out. She’s obviously ungrateful and abusive.” This was the overreaching I was worried about, but I felt so badly for Andrea. She was being taken advantage of.
Andrea sighed. “You’re probably right. I need to warn you about a few other things. I know it’s your day off, so this is just to make you aware of the situation. They ransacked the kitchen. I have no idea how they were still hungry after that breakfast, on top of everything else, but it looks like they grabbed food for their beach celebration. Marnie and I decided that given the circumstances, we would keep the dining hall closed until dinner. We had a boatload of doughnuts delivered and set up a breakfast station outside this morning. It’s probably winding down now. We’re getting boxed lunches brought in from a deli in Portsmouth. Marnie’s idea, of course.”
“I’ll help them at dinner,” I said. “I’ll take a night off this week or something.” Andrea nodded, looking relieved. “What else should I know?”
“They partied in the library. It’s a mess. A sticky keg, books everywhere, so much cleaning is needed. Lots of other classrooms are messed up. We may need to shift classes around a bit until things are back to normal.”
I remembered she had mentioned something about my fire escape in her frantic earlier texts. “What about my apartment? Did they break in?”
“No, we checked after we saw your fire escape decorated, shall we say ? Or it was decorated. Not anymore. I had maintenance take everything down after they snapped a bunch of pictures for the record.”
I felt a huge pit drop through my stomach as if I had swallowed a bowling ball. “Let me see them.”
“Are you sure? Devon, none of it’s very kind. And I really need you to stay here,” she said, on the verge of tears. “You’ve been a godsend. I know I don’t say it enough, but you’ve been such a positive force at Rockwood. Don’t let the vandalism of a few mean-spirited teenagers drive you out of here. Hell, they’ll probably get kicked out anyway.”
“Everyone else knows what was there. I need to see it for myself.”
Andrea passed her phone over to me. My kitchen window and fire escape were adorned with big cardboard faces. Each was a man I had been involved with at some point in my life. Bentley Preston. Heath. Kyle. Random guys I dated in Boston. A guy I went on one date with during my college semester in Washington, DC. I couldn’t even remember his name. My senior prom date. How had they found these guys? Perched on the fire escape landing was a waste barrel with the word TRASH emblazoned on it. Affixed to the container was one more cardboard face, and this time it was mine. The message was clear.
“Don’t worry, Andrea. I’m not going anywhere.” Despite the horror and embarrassment of it all, I felt resolved. And a desire to help make Rockwood better if I could.
“Oh, good,” she said with relief. “And I really need to get some more people to help clean this afternoon so we can get the campus back to normal operations tomorrow. I am offering fifty dollars an hour. Do you know anyone who needs cash?”
...
I drove my car the short distance to Wentworth, taking note of the work this defiant group of students had done. Toilet paper filled many of the trees. Signs and flyers of all sizes littered the interiors and exteriors of buildings depicting Andrea’s head photoshopped onto a bikini-clad woman’s body, straddling The Stallion. I spotted Kyle’s car parked on campus. Someone had scrawled Devon’s Boy Toy on the rear window with what I hoped were washable car markers. These kids had thought of everything.
When I was finally sitting on my couch, still wearing my clothes from the previous night, I stared at my mother’s cell phone number in my contacts. Part of me hoped she had another gig that afternoon and would pass. I also knew that fifty dollars an hour was much more money than she ever made, and I could probably find a small, easy task that my dad could handle. They could leave Rockwood that night with perhaps two weeks’ salary.
“Oh, I haven’t heard from you in a long time. Too busy for her mother, I always tell anyone who will listen.” This was my mother’s greeting when she answered my call.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hello. I can’t imagine what this must be about since I never get calls from you. I don’t even try to call you because you are always so busy doing such important things.”
I took a breath and counted to three before answering. “Would you like to make some money working at Rockwood this afternoon?” I figured keeping emotion out of it and getting right to the point was the way to go. A businesslike approach with people like her helped keep me somewhat in check.
“At your fancy school? Imagine that. What do you want me to do, scrub toilets? Because I’ll do that. I do that all the time.”
“I know you do. But it’s going to be cleaning some spaces that got vandalized last night. There was a big prank on campus, and we need to get the school ready for classes and a sense of normalcy. You can have dinner here, too, if you want.”
“Those kids sound like little shits if they did that. How lucky they are to go to such a fancy place. They don’t know how good they have it. I had to drop out of high school to help support my family, as you know. Kids today are so spoiled.”
I ignored her tirade and pressed on. “I can probably find something for Dad to do, too,” I said. “Nothing too hard on him, I promise. You’ll each make fifty dollars an hour.”
The woman who never shut up was speechless. After about ten seconds, she finally spoke. “Fifty dollars an hour? Each? That school has that kind of money? I can’t imagine how much they’ve been paying you. I expect a very nice Christmas present, Devon.”
I could never win with her. “Would you like to come down here? If not, I’m sure I can find some other people.”
“No, no, we’ll do it,” she said. “We’ll clean up after the little shits.”
“Mom, if you’re coming here, you’re going to have to stop referring to them as little shits.”
“Okay, okay. For that much money, I can keep my mouth shut.”
I had my doubts.