Liv, Forever Read online

  Our guide, apparently named Abigail, stepped forward and took a bow. And then another one. The students cheered, and I noticed some adults I had to presume were faculty members also clapping and cheering for her.

  “So that was supposed to be funny?” I didn’t plan to say it. The words just fell out of my mouth. It wasn’t accusatory. It was a sincere question. I was truly grasping to understand why they would do this. The headmaster went silent, and I knew he had heard me. Everything went silent, and everyone was looking at me. Accusing me. Or so it seemed. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, but I’m not the type to stand onstage. I’m the type who hides in her closet, drawing. For an instant it all felt very dramatic.

  But the headmaster ignored me, turned away as if I’d said nothing, and looked out to the student body, continuing his well-oiled speech. “As I was saying, welcome. You, transfers, are the chosen few, carefully selected to fill the scarce open spots at Wickham Hall. You will spend your remaining years in preparatory school getting the best education this country has to offer. But be forewarned, we are an institution of traditions. Big and small. From our beloved Headmaster Holidays to our secret societies, we are founded on a tradition of excellence, of high performance, of, dare I say, perfection.”

  That’s when I noticed him. He was standing next to the headmaster, still looking at me even though the others had turned away. Dirty blond. His expression was different than the others’. Not disapproving or shocked. It almost looked like wonder. I noticed his shirt was partially untucked. And his teeth were not perfect; one buckled ever so slightly in front of the other. Our eyes met, and I quickly looked away. But I could feel his gaze linger. I desperately willed my face not to flush, my lips not to purse. Suddenly I was aware of every single muscle in my face. I even think I invented some. I tried to focus on the headmaster’s words.

  “As you all know, this is Wickham Hall’s sesquicentennial. We’re celebrating one and a half centuries as the country’s premier secondary school. We celebrate Wickham Hall’s birthday every year with Fall Festival, but this year, we have a very special alumni celebration planned.”

  He kept talking, but I no longer heard him. I looked up at the Gothic ceiling, but all I saw were those mesmerizingly imperfect teeth.

  When I got to my room, my clothes were already unpacked, and whoever had done it felt leggings deserved to be hung up. I couldn’t decide if that made me feel fancy or violated. I was trying to appreciate Wickham Hall, so I decided to feel pampered, like I’d checked into a hotel so lavish they unpacked your bags. And this invisible valet had made my bed, too. The crisp white sheets and pillowcases had WH monogrammed on the edge. I wasn’t used to having my bed made for me. Or crisp sheets for that matter.

  It’s not that it was so bad at home. My parents were nice people. Nice people—I always spoke of them as if they were someone else’s parents. Legally, they were mine, and it’s not that I wasn’t grateful they got me off the foster-home circuit; I was deeply grateful. But I felt about as close to them as I did to my chemistry teacher. And chemistry was not exactly my favorite subject.

  My dorm, Skellenger, was one of those Mount Vernon buildings in the stretch known as Dorm Row, but the style inside wasn’t quite as presidential. The room was simple and small. A bed, a desk, and a giant wardrobe with a mirror. Cold linoleum floors.

  The first order of business was to rearrange the furniture. I always did this. My foster parents had always been so surprised when they’d come to see how my first nap was going, only to find I’d rearranged the room. Some would laugh; some were impressed by the strength of such a slight girl. But usually they’d get angry. I guess it was my way of making those short-term rooms feel like my own. Or, if you want to psychoanalyze, you might say I did it as a way to assert some control over my erratic life. Or it might just be that I’ve always liked things to look a certain way.

  I decided to move the giant wardrobe so that it blocked the view of the room when someone entered. It provided some mystery and privacy. I pushed the bed into a corner and the desk beneath the window. Then I pulled out my homemade cardboard portfolio. I’d brought a few collages to hang on the walls to create some semblance of home.

  My collages were mostly black and white with an occasional streak of color, and always very precise. I used text from old books and magazines, pencil, ink, and acrylic paints. Sometimes I wrote in big words. Not big as in fancy, S.A.T. vocabulary, but small words that represent big ideas. Love. Truth. Beauty. Death. Home. Stuff like that. I always avoided God, not because I was afraid of some divine retribution, but because I wasn’t yet sure where I stood on that particular issue. My parents belonged to a Bible church where they dragged me as often as possible, but I could just never get with the being-gay-is-a-sin thing. I mean, does Jesus love you or not?

  I liked to use duct tape to hang art, but we’d been specifically instructed to use only poster tack on Wickham Hall’s historic walls. They were so serious about this rule that they provided me with two packages of Elmer’s Tac N’ Stik in the welcome pack I found on my desk. As if they knew. Had my parents told them?

  I should call them and tell them I’m here and safe.

  I tried to get through several times, but the signal wouldn’t hold. So much for the omnipotent iPhone I spent six months saving up for. Finally, I just texted. Then I sat down and started something new—a picture of a girl floating. A self-portrait. Almost all my drawings are self-portraits. They don’t necessarily look like me—in fact, they rarely do—but they represent me. It doesn’t take a degree in art history to imagine why I’d draw myself floating. I jumped, startled, when someone rapped on my door. “There’s a mandatory dorm meeting in the common room,” a clipped voice announced from behind my wardrobe.

  THERE WERE ABOUT TWENTY girls draped in a variety of relaxed poses over the chairs and low tables in the common room. I never realized people could look so uptight and so relaxed at once. Abigail Steers sat in the center of the most central couch, surrounded by the others. They seemed so at home, and considering most of them had been living at Wickham Hall for at least two years already, they probably were home. It’s a feeling I’d never felt, and I certainly didn’t feel it then.

  But there was something else. You know how they say girls who live together will start to get their periods at the same time? Well, it was like these girls had started to become the same. They dressed the same. Their hair was almost identical. Their skin was milky with the occasional bout of freckles. Their noses even turned up in the same way. But mostly, they all talked the same. They talked about prefects and proctors and coxswains. Harkness. The Tuck. I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, but the Head of the Charles sounded pretty gruesome.

  The dour dorm mistress, Mrs. Mulford (think pitchfork lady from American Gothic, but in ill-fitting slacks and a Wickham sweater) introduced me to the disinterested group of Sloans and Charlottes and Elizabeths. She announced that Abigail was our appointed dorm prefect. “A student monitor,” she explained to me, as if I were three years old. Then she went over the standard safety issues and quizzed me on Wickham Hall’s strict code of conduct. Just me. When I couldn’t tell her the exact protocol required to leave campus, the girls tittered. Mrs. Mulford suggested I reread the student handbook. She went over the main dorm rules: curfew at 9 P.M. and no boys allowed in our rooms. Period. Then she excused us to get ready for dinner.

  I THOUGHT I WAS dressing properly for dinner when I changed into my vintage sundress. Big mistake. When I arrived at the dining hall, I found all the girls in sleek cocktail dresses and the guys in dark suits. I quizzed a custodian-looking person near the entrance. “First Dinner,” he sniffed. Another phrase that had no meaning. No one had told me about First Dinner. Was it a Wickham Hall tradition for the students to dress formally for the first dinner back at school? The word “perfection” rang in my ears.

  The dining hall was perfect, with dark, wood floors and a hand-carved vaulted ceiling. Students sat at doze
ns of round tables, served by waiters. Waiters? What kind of school had waiters?

  In an effort to avoid the dreaded looking-for-a-seat-in-a-new-cafeteria moment, I decided to walk with purpose until I saw an empty seat or a friendly face. The problem was, I didn’t see any empty seats. Or friendly faces. So I kept walking, and the more I walked, the more I began to hope I’d see a back door I could just slip through. No door, either.

  But at the farthest end of the room was a table with just one person. His wasn’t a friendly face—he was looking down, his darkish long hair hanging over his eyes. But it was a seat, so I took it to spare myself the embarrassment of having to parade, underdressed, back through the enormous dining hall.

  Just as I sat down, everyone in the room started to stand up. Perfect, I thought. I stood back up. The guy at my table also stood, and I could see he was dressed even more shabbily than I was—beat-up cargo pants and a dark hoodie over an old, indecipherable band T-shirt. They all raised their hands to their hearts—all except the guy at my table. I expected to hear the Pledge of Allegiance, but instead they started to sing, “Wickham Hall, oh Wickham Hall, our joy and our pride! Wickham Hall, oh Wickham Hall!” Then the guy leaned in close so I could hear him defiantly change the lyrics, “You’ve got nowhere to hide!”

  I pulled away from him.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” he snarled. “Be afraid of them.”

  I thought he was making some sweeping generalization about the student body, but then he gestured across the room and I looked. There was a group of four students carrying a giant silver platter with a dead animal draped across it, and they were followed by five or six other students, all swinging silver carving knives back and forth to the beat of the song.

  “What is that?”

  “A boar,” he delighted in telling me. I had to laugh, which immediately put him more at ease. “I’m Gabe,” he offered.

  “Liv,” I said.

  He was skittish and intense, but his brown eyes were gentle. Still, I wanted to keep at least three feet away. He was almost exactly how I’d always pictured Vincent Van Gogh—in other words, pretty crazy.

  While everyone continued to sing the Wickham Hall alma mater, the students placed the boar platter onto a table in the center of the hall. The students with the knives quickly and deftly carved it up. Then everyone clapped and took their seats. All I could think was, There’s been a terrible mistake. I need to go home. I don’t belong in this place. I didn’t know people ate boar or that they even still existed.

  Gabe turned to me and said, “It’s crazy, right? Am I crazy, or is it crazy?”

  I cringed. “It looks pretty crazy to me.”

  The headmaster approached a microphone (clearly one of his favorite things to do) and announced it was time for the First Dance.

  “Exactly one hundred and fifty years ago, Wallace and Minerva Wickham stood in this very hall.” His voice boomed and echoed, enveloping the crowd. “It looked much the same as it does today. Their son Elijah carved the boar, and then they celebrated the beginning of their school’s first year with a waltz. They were very romantic, the Wickhams, and commenced every school year with that same dance. And, thus, after Wallace and Minerva passed, it became Wickham Hall tradition for the president of the student government to lead a waltz in commemoration of the Wickhams. This year, I proudly present to you: Malcolm Astor.”

  I glanced at Gabe. His lips were tight; his forehead was creased and sweaty. He looked truly disturbed. But when he saw me looking at him, he switched to a mocking look.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “He’s trolling for a partner. I call it the Snob Trot. Yet another archaic, sexist Wicky tradition. They only pick one another, dance with one another. Just watch. It’s disgusting.”

  I turned around to check out this Malcolm Astor. He was blocked by the headmaster, so I craned my neck. When he stepped out from behind the headmaster, I saw it was him. The one with imperfect teeth. The one I couldn’t stop thinking about. The one I’d already made a drawing of.

  The students clapped and cheered as he started to stroll through the hall, proud but not cocky, his eyes searching. He took his time, basking in the moment. And I could see girls’ faces warm with hope as he approached. I felt Gabe looking at me, so I tried to look disinterested, even disgusted. And part of me was disgusted; this whole scene felt like something from a fussy John Singer Sargent painting from the nineteenth century. But another part of me didn’t want to take my eyes off him.

  As Malcolm wound his way through the hall, all the guys were egging him on, chanting, “Astor! Astor!” I noticed Abigail sitting at a table with several girls from the dorm. As he headed toward her table, she turned to her blonde acolytes, excited. They giggled, patting her. Primping and pumping her up. Surely he was headed to her. She touched her hair expectantly to make sure it was just so, with full tracing paper effect.

  But then he made a dramatic turn the other way. Students hooted and hollered. Abigail’s eyes flashed. The curt smile couldn’t conceal her annoyance.

  I could see his face as he turned and thought I saw a mischievous glimmer, as if he knew he’d faked her out, and it gave him some pleasure. Maybe they were exes. That definitely seemed like potential ex behavior, but I wouldn’t have known. I’d have to have had a boyfriend to have had an ex.

  “Look at this guy,” Gabe scoffed. “It’s like he wants to grace every single girl in the school with his perfect presence. And all the pathetic girls are eating it up.”

  I nodded my head. I did agree on some level, but when I looked up and saw him approaching, I got a sick feeling in my stomach.

  “Look, he’s even coming back to the Pit,” Gabe huffed.

  I nodded again and then looked down, took a bite of the dinner that had appeared in front of me. I had to chew something. Maybe I was starving, and that’s why it felt like my stomach was collapsing into itself. Was that meat wild boar? While I was looking down, shoving a roll into my mouth, there was a shift in the room. Everyone went silent. I looked up, mouth full of bread, to see what had happened and … he was there.

  He stood in front of me and asked, “May I have this dance?” He looked sincere. Even nervous. I had to finish chewing and swallow. I’d never realized swallowing took so excruciatingly long. It gave me time to look around and see the entire student body was staring at me (again)—a field of baffled faces, including Gabe’s.

  “I don’t know how to dance like that,” I whispered so only he could hear.

  “I can lead you.” He saw I was taken aback. “Or we can dance however you want.”

  I didn’t say yes, but he could tell from the look on my face that I wouldn’t argue. He took my hand and led me away. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with Gabe. I didn’t know why I even cared what Gabe thought.

  As we reached the dance floor in the middle of the great hall, a waltz started to play. He held my right hand and my waist firmly, and somehow, without realizing it, my feet started moving. At first I had to silently count the beat: 1-2-3, 1-2-3. I watched my feet and willed them to be graceful. I felt uneasy being up there but also defensive. I did not want to fail in front of those faces. Those people. And, at some point (probably once I stopped thinking about all that), I realized I was actually dancing with him, enjoying the strength of his hands silently leading me. I never would have thought I’d want to do this—waltz in front of all these people—but this I wanted.

  What I remember most of all is that he looked into my eyes. We were only a few inches from each other, yet he held my gaze. He looked at me intensely, like he wanted to catch every thought or emotion that flickered through me. We locked eyes, and I forgot where I was. I felt completely free. Then I stumbled on his foot. When he heard the snickers from the crowd, he released my waist and spun out and away from me, striking a disco-meets-flamenco-meets-Dancing with the Stars pose. There was a brief wave of stifled chortles across the room. And I giggled, too, grateful that he’d t
aken the attention off me. But when I looked into the crowd I saw displeased faces. Girls who felt cheated. Guys who looked confused or appalled. I even sensed dissatisfaction in the eyes of the headmaster as he, once again, approached the microphone.

  “Now, Sixth Form Honors gentlemen, you may select your partners.”

  Ten or twelve guys stood up and approached girls, bowing in front of them. The girls all curtsied, and then the couples joined us on the dance floor, waltzing. A blond guy—textbook handsome with blue eyes and a smile that seemed oddly familiar—passed us, chuckling over his partner’s shoulder, “Astor, you sneaky devil.”

  “Shut up, Steers.”

  What was sneaky? Suddenly I felt self-conscious. Stupid. Obviously this guy had some ulterior motive. “This isn’t really my thing,” I confessed, as if it wasn’t already obvious, and looked around for an exit plan.

  “We don’t have to dance,” he whispered as he slowed us down until our feet weren’t moving, only our bodies swaying.

  “I’m Malcolm, by the way,” he said softly.

  “Olivia. But people call me Liv.”

  “Like ‘live’ without the e?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice. My name’s so boring. Completely uninspired. Unabridgeable.”

  “Yeah, I guess Mal isn’t the best nickname, huh?”

  “Or Colm. But Liv … it’s a name, a verb, a command. A notion of mortality. That’s a name ripe for some epic poetry.”

  I smiled. “I guess.” No one had ever put it quite like that.

  “If I could write, I’d write you one, a poem.”

  I gave him a look. I mean, seriously? But he really seemed to mean it. “You don’t even know me,” I said.

  “But I know I need to.”

  Need, not want.

  I was glad we were no longer moving our feet, because I wouldn’t have been able to dance through that. I looked into his eyes, semi-expecting to see a glimmer of something, like he was teasing me or purposely being over the top, but he wasn’t. He seemed sincere.