Chapter 55
The heat wave stoking the Canadian fires reached Helshire in the third week of senior year.
Temperatures stayed above ninety, even in the dead of night. The grass on the Quad became brown and crispy to the touch. We Lavernick girls amused ourselves with gossip, invented a religion based on air purifiers, and played endless games of poker.
As the world burned, I focused on the first task: hiding myself.
I tried to listen to music without crying, but failed when it was beautiful. I put butterfly clips on my fingertips, but it hurt too much. When I took up archery again, my hands shook.
My only success was treating Sebastian as I always had in public—like an amusement, an unreliable flirt. We were the only thing I could hide.
He and I weren’t worried about our second task. If anyone had an innate sense of rebellion, it was Gertie. When we eventually told her about Care, she’d either happily join, or shrug us off.
Not one’s cup of tea.
The problem came after her. Peter had been the lone survivor in his class, and I’d murdered him. In the next was only Thomas, still a freshman.
We had three years to teach him that our family was wrong.
In our fourth week back, I summoned him to my room.
“How are your classes?”
“Accounting is fine,” he sighed. “But I really like Legacy Bronze Age.”
“The Romans came. We survived. The Romans left.”
Thomas laughed. “Turns out Grandma’s version was missing a few beats. Uncle Milo says we were incorporating centurions the whole time!”
“Hence all the Latin.”
He nodded. He hadn’t touched the cocktail I’d made him, because I’d poured myself only water. He never drank unless I did.
“Speaking of incorporation,” I said, “how’s your roommate?”
“Doesn’t talk much. I’m trying to loosen him up, but there’s no big parties because of the fires. And the whole Tom thing annoys him.”
Tom’s roommate was the eldest son of a Guyanese diplomat, Thomas Clive Gibbs, a first-generation Hellion and a long shot for incorporation. Aunt Minerva at Campus Housing thought that sharing a first name would spur a connection.
“Someone called him Black Tom. He was not pleased. I don’t much like White Tom either. Anyway, he’s Thomas now. I’ve lost my extra syllable permanently.”
“Noted. What’s he into?”
“Avoiding other human beings. He reads a lot of books about cricket, which is some kind of sport.”
“Talk to Rishabh Seth. He’s obsessed.”
“Noted,” he echoed me. Because it was Tom, it was respectful, not mocking. He’d always copied everything me and Sebastian did.
Hopefully, that would apply to Care as well.
“Thomas reads engineering journals for fun. He should be at MIT, except he can’t handle any kind of pressure. Not even having a paper graded.”
“You can use that,” I said.
“When I mirror the way he speaks, I sound like a toffy-nosed twat, explaining the abstruse, obtusely.” He shuddered.
“You should hear me and Faraday, dear.”
“How’d you get her to trust you?”
“All the ways Minerva taught us. Memorized everything about her family, listened to her dreams, made her feel seen.”
Tom looked out the window at the smoky sky. “I don’t think Thomas wants to be seen. He’d rather curl up in bed with a book of cricket stats.”
“Then put yourself in his shoes,” I said.
Tom turned back to me, frowning at the unfamiliar phrase. “You mean, pretend like I’m scared of everything?”
“Pretend, but only in your head.”
I gave Tom a moment of silence, letting him imagine what it was like to be an ordinary, anxious boy, afraid of tests, competition, grades.
He shook his head. “That’s fucking weird.”
“It takes time,” I said, wondering if all those hours I’d spent mirroring Faraday had taught me to care for her, a little. “But you’ll get used to it. That’s what Minerva means when she says listen.”
Tom crossed his arms. “Seems like a lot of work.”
He was obedient though. He would take up this small task of empathy. Maybe a little of Thomas’s uncertainty would rub off on him.
“Welcome to college,” I said, “where you get your assumptions challenged.”
My door sprang open.
“Jessica!” cried Faraday, reeking of brush smoke. Her face glistened with sweat, and a mask hung from her left ear. “It’s an emergency!”
I turned to Tom. “See you later?”
He nodded—and fled.
Faraday locked the door behind him and threw herself on my bed. She was still dressing like us, all in white linen, to match the endless summer outside.
“What’s this about?” I asked.
“You haven’t visited me yet! Don’t you want to see the light box you sold me? I found the perfect spot, right at the top of the stairs!”
“That’s your emergency? Art appreciation?”
“I’m getting to it.” She leaned back on my bed. “Do you think the smoke will ever go away?”
“Next week,” I said. “The heat wave ends with a storm.”
“Do you promise, dear?”
“I merely report the forecast.”
“You’re as bad as your cousin. He said the same thing.”
“How is Sebastian?” Had she tried to kiss him yet? I hadn’t asked. I didn’t think about Faraday when Sebastian and I were together.
“If you visited us, you’d know.” Faraday let out a groan. “I’m deeply over everything reeking of smoke. The koi have gone belly-up in my pond. It’s ghastly.”
“A tragedy,” I agreed.
“I could slay one of your delicious cocktails though. Nothing smoky, please.”
I glanced at my liquor cabinet, lovingly packed by Veronica, as always, the night before we left for Helshire. It was mostly untouched.
“You’re still not drinking,” Faraday accused.
“Not till I’m off these meds.”
Faraday shuddered. “That’s ghastly too. Who spends their senior year sober? Ghastly, ghastly, ghastly.”
I handed her Tom’s untouched drink, equal parts gin, milk solids, Cointreau, and Lillet Blanc. Sweet enough for his jejune palate.
“A Corpse Reviver, my version.”
“Are you sure you won’t have a small one?”
“I’ve tried. Didn’t go well.”
Faraday shrugged, drank, then stared at me. “Jessica. Did you just give me…a warm cocktail?”
“Oh.” I could hear Veronica screaming somewhere in the smoke. “The ice machine is down the hall, and you said it was an emergency.”
“Jesus.” Faraday plonked the glass down, shaking her head. “And it’s sweet.”
“My standards are mellowing,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Did Sebastian ever visit you in the hospital?”
“Yes. He drove me home.”
Faraday nodded, but didn’t seem happy. “He never talks about you.”
A secret within a secret. “He has a lot on his plate.”
“Sebastian doesn’t care about grades.”
“He only pretends not to care about things.”
“Are you two still fighting?”
I almost laughed. “Of course not.”
“Then why weren’t you at my party last night?”
I stared at her. “Last night…”
“Oh, my god. You forgot.” Faraday stood up and began to pace. “You never forget anything.”
“I was in a car accident.”
“It’s more than that. You don’t call me dear anymore. You don’t sound like you. You stand different, like you’re afraid of the ground. Where’s my Jessica?”
In the hospital? On the side of the road by that old oak tree? Or maybe Faraday’s Jessica was still in that small room.
Maybe killing Hiromi was the crash that had changed me.
“You don’t even look the same.”
“But isn’t my new nose rakish?” The word sounded flat from repetition. Faraday didn’t even smile. If I couldn’t fool her, how was I going to survive my family?
“It’s not just how you look, it’s how you look at me. Like I make you sad! Are we still friends?”
We had never been friends. She’d always been prey—the weakling to cut from the herd. But now I was the weakling.
“Of course we’re friends,” I said.
“You hesitated. You never used to hesitate.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You never used to apologize either.” She stopped her pacing and stood in front of me, her face flushed again. “You are not fine. You are not you! Do you even care about me anymore? Or Sebastian?”
“What does he—”
“I did something silly,” she said. “I mean, it was brave, and it worked. But you should probably know about it, just in case.”
The emergency revealed, at last. “What did you do, dear?”
“I talked to him—my father’s old business partner. The one you fixed.”
“Why, Faraday?”
“He didn’t want to talk to me, but I had to know.
That broken little finger seemed like nothing.
But it wasn’t nothing, was it? Telling me about it made him throw up!
” She shook her head in wonder. “He was shaking. He offered me all the money in his wallet just to let him walk away. It was glorious.”
I took her hands. “You aren’t supposed to know these things, Faraday.”
“But there’s an issue. With my family. Can I have another drink?”
I let out a sigh, and made a second Corpse Reviver in silence. Still no ice, but I added a dash of absinthe for bitterness.
Faraday didn’t complain, just sipped it—apologetic now, ladylike.
“It’s Oscar Junior,” she began. “He thinks he’s so much smarter than us since he got into Harvard, but he’s rather dim. He should’ve gone straight to Mother.”
“About what?”
“The checks you gave me. Oscar was looking over the family accounts and spotted my excesses. He tried to blackmail us both—me for embezzling, Marlow for being incompetent. We had to do something!”
“Faraday. You should have come to me.”
“You were in the hospital—with staples in your head.” She took another sip. “Oscar made me and Marlow hand over our credit cards, or he’d tell Mother!”
“So you…broke his finger?”
“We did the whole thing—the heavy blanket, the squishing, with help from friends of Marlow’s. We paid them in beer. They kept giggling, though, which I told them not to do. Also we broke a lamp—a Tiffany, so ugly. Which is maybe why it didn’t stick.”
I rested my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands. Faraday had executed a wrack on her little brother. This was unprecedented. There would be repercussions. “What do you mean, it didn’t stick?”
“Oscar went crying to Mother! We denied it, of course. And since Marlow and I never agree on anything, Mother didn’t believe a word from Oscar, who told the worst whoppers when he was little.
At least, she didn’t believe we broke his finger, or the lamp.
” Faraday sighed. “But she checked the bank accounts, and put our credit cards on hold—all three of us!”
“So Oscar hasn’t gone to the police?”
“No, he’s gone to Harvard. I think the lamp bothered Mother the most. She loves those things.”
I sighed. “Then you’re probably fine.”
“Fine? I can’t live on my allowance.”
“You’ll have to scale back, until your mother cools down.”
“But this is senior year! Can’t your family do something?”
“You don’t want to involve them. Not after what you did.”
“But I’ll explain everything.” A sweet smile played on her face. “I only took over to spare you. Because you seem so unwell.”
And I saw how this would end—Faraday spilling to my family about me, transformed into not-me. She might be only half aware she was doing it, but this was blackmail.
“What do you need?”
“Another letter to the bank. From Mother this time.”
I nodded. Gertie could handle that part.
“If I help, you have to promise you’ll never, ever do anything like that again.”
Faraday held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
Then she pulled on one to make a little pop, and giggled. She knew this was blackmail.
Had we Mortons eaten her soul, or had she already been rotten? Had our families made the world like this, or only greased the wheels?
It didn’t matter—the gears of the machine ground just as fine.
“By the way, dear,” Faraday said. “Did that girl ever visit you?”
I shook my head. “What girl?”
“The one you liked, in New York. Did she come to see you in the hospital? Or was it not that kind of thing, in the end? Where someone takes a long, boring train ride, comes to sit and hold your hand while you jabber with staples in your head. Like I did.”
I stared at her too long, more than a hesitation. A kind of lifetime, one that didn’t happen.
Finally I shook my head. “In the end, it wasn’t that kind of thing.”
Faraday smiled.
“Well, then. You haven’t changed that much, have you, dear?”