Chapter 16 #2
Through the open window, the sound of boisterous laughter and inebriated mumbles.
Cece tosses and turns in the impossibly narrow bed, mattress springs seeking out the tender areas of her back.
The small oscillating fan provided by the school labors under its colossal duty, pushing hot air around a room not meant to be inhabited beyond the first week of June.
Jonathan is still out, drinking and carousing with forgotten friends, maybe even old flames.
Cece had thought she might grow jealous or petty upon meeting one of Jonathan’s high school dalliances, and even though there’ve been jokes among his friends, gentle ribbing, and raised-eyebrow innuendo, she is surprised to find that she doesn’t care.
After all, she’s the one he’s with; she’s the one he’s brought to his fifteen-year reunion—not these other women.
Outside, the revelers have gone quiet, and Cece moves to the window in the hopes of a cool breeze.
In the distance, under a shadowed tree, a circle of people stand swaying silently.
Cece waits for her vision to adjust to the darkness.
Something—a bottle, a glass—catches the moonlight while it’s passed from hand to hand.
Ears straining, elbows digging into the windowsill, Cece looks on.
At first, it’s barely discernable, a low hum in the night, like a forgotten lullaby.
Then the chorus grows, a melody shakes forth from the swaying circle, men shouldered up against one another, leaning forward, fingers snapping to some familiar beat.
This must be Deerfield’s famous all-male a cappella group, reunited once again under the near-full moon.
Cece has never cared much for song, and if pressed, she might say that a cappella is just fine, but she never understood why it was elevated to such venerable status, especially in high school and college.
At Bucknell, the all-male group had quite the following, and Cece remembers thinking it comical that a group of singing boys might attract as much attention as a soccer game.
And yet, for all her past pessimism, Cece finds herself enjoying the sweet serenade echoing in the summer night.
Eventually, the crowd breaks up and the men stagger off in groups of three and four.
Giving up on sleep for the foreseeable future, Cece throws on some clothes and heads downstairs, but not before making sure to keep the door unlocked, just in case Jonathan comes back while she’s gone.
It’s strange, making her way through a building made for kids.
The hallway seems narrow, the wood floors creaking beneath her feet, the low ceilings pressing down from above.
She wonders what the space must be like when school is in session: doors open, boys mingling in the hallway, jockeying for position in front of sinks in the bathroom, violating each other’s personal space in the way most young men do.
Then it’s lights out, and the faculty dorm parent, perhaps a man with white wispy hair, is bellowing up and down the halls, threatening detention and worse.
And then it is quiet, save for the dripping faucets and clanging pipes.
A hush falls over the campus—boys and girls in their respective dorms, faculty grading papers by lamplight, bemoaning the familiar mistakes, the cooks and janitors soaking their cracked and knotted hands.
The night air is cool, a welcome respite from the furnace that is the dorm room, and Cece takes off walking, imagining herself a wide-eyed scholar on this learned campus.
On the quad there are voices—men drunk—shouting about one thing or another.
Cece sticks to the path, her presence obscured by the old oaks overhead.
At first, she isn’t certain, but then she recognizes Jonathan’s voice.
She wants to join him but thinks better of it.
It’s his high school reunion. Let him have his fun.
She’s about to keep on walking, determined to do a full loop around campus and walk herself to exhaustion, when she hears the admission of a secret, the hint of a misdeed, and she finds herself slowing down and creeping closer and crouching—she’s ashamed to admit—behind an enormous boxwood bush.
Logan strikes an imposing figure on the field. Cece recognizes a few other moonlit faces from the people she’s met throughout the day. Jonathan stretches his arms over his head. Beer cans pop and fizz. A toast to something.
“I can’t believe we didn’t get nabbed,” Logan says.
“Logan might as well have been running his own pharmacy,” someone shouts.
“I was just providing a service, my friends. Not my fault if the school had a rampant pill problem!”
“But you did get caught,” Jonathan says, his words soupy. “That old fucker. Mr. Erdinger caught you with that huge bag of pills in your book bag.”
“Wasn’t there a rumor that he was a Nazi?”
“He sure graded like it.”
Clouds shifting, the near-full moon spills across the quad, the men swaying to some invisible tide.
“Innocent until proven guilty!” Logan shouts, bowing before them.
“If you’ll recall, the backpack was mine, but the drugs were not.
And after all, how could they be? A legacy, captain of the lacrosse team?
No, gentlemen. I’m an upstanding citizen.
A Deerfield man! Those drugs belonged to an interloper, an imposter! ”
“Fuck. I forgot about that. Did we really pin it on that kid?” a voice in the darkness asks.
“Sure did,” Logan says, “but he had it coming. Fucker was trouble from the minute he stepped on campus.”
Jonathan drains his beer and tosses it onto the quad where it tinkles softly in the grass. “How the hell did you convince Mr. Hech the drugs weren’t yours?”
“Oh, you mean our fearless headmaster? That quivering little weenie. You don’t remember, Jon Boy? How many beers have you had anyway? Methinks you’ve gone lightweight on us. You all vouched for me—said you saw him put the drugs in my backpack. He was jealous and trying to frame me.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right.”
“What happened to him?” Jonathan says.
“Expelled,” Logan says, “if memory serves. Perhaps we ought to pour one out.”
By the time Cece stands up, her leg has fallen asleep, and she limps gingerly back to the path.
After a disagreement over their tennis acumen, the men have meandered off toward the lower courts in search of rackets and balls.
There is talk of a one-thousand-dollar wager.
From the other end of campus, the steady thump of base.
Some, it seems, are not keeping their powder dry for the dance tomorrow night under the big tent.
Jonathan has promised it will be glorious, and a tad debauched.
The walk feels displeasing to Cece now, and so she heads back to the dorm that once seemed regal and storied but now looks run-down and grimy.
The hallway walls are a sickly yellow under the fluorescent lights, and Cece dreads returning to Jonathan’s old dorm room with its tight quarters and miniature window.
Why does she care about some injustice from years ago?
Of course, Logan is a terrible person, but she had already deduced that fact within five minutes of conversing with him.
And it’s not like he and Jonathan are still friends.
Cece is comforted by the fact that Jonathan doesn’t seem to have remained close to any of his Deerfield compatriots.
He’s jettisoned them, become his own person with his own values, values Cece quite enjoys.
Sure, he did something stupid for a friend; he lied.
What kid hasn’t lied? And who is she to judge?
She wasn’t exactly truthful with him about the goings-on this summer.
Cece puts the fan on high and rolls into bed, the rubbery mattress squeaking.
And even as she affirms Jonathan’s goodness to herself, she can’t help but let her mind drift to whoever this boy was—the victim of Logan’s cruelty.
She wonders how he came to be at Deerfield; she wonders if he ever got a second chance.
She wonders, eyes fluttering, breath heavy, sleep coming to her at last, what any of this—life and its oddities—means at all.
The hankering for a proper cup of coffee and the desire to escape her cramped confines drive Cece from bed.
The campus is still asleep, bathed in early-morning mist. The air is cold and crisp—a quality of New England summers Cece’s come to appreciate.
It will burn off quickly, and Cece will be left marveling at how she could have ever doubted the midday heat.
Coffee in hand, a brisk walk to clear her head, Cece returns to find Jonathan still in bed, the room air stale and pungent, last night’s beer, and maybe some liquor, pushing through his pores.
A pitiful groan rises from the huddled mass, arms bent over his eyes.
He croaks for help, and Cece administers Advil from her toiletry bag with bottled water from the vending machine downstairs.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Jonathan mumbles before he clutches the pillow under his chin and dozes off, legs hanging off the end of the bed.