The Poison Apples (11 page)

I laughed.

“Come on. Seriously. All the seniors come in wearing robes and candles. I think it sounds magical.”

“It sounds dumb.”

“Alice…”

“Okay, okay.”

She held out her hand and I grabbed it. She hauled me up, giggling, and the two of us ran up the hill toward the chapel, holding hands.

So … okay. Maybe Molly Miller was a huge dork. Actually I knew Molly Miller was a huge dork. Not only did she have all the outward signs of dorkiness—huge glasses, a squeaky voice, pimples, frizzy hair—but over the course of the evening, she'd informed me that her favorite book—besides
Zen Ventura
—was the dictionary. (“And not just the dictionary,” she'd said pointedly. “The
Oxford English
Dictionary.”)

But I was kind of starting to like her anyway.

And it wasn't just because she had a cold, distant father and a crazy, daughter-hating stepmother and a mother in an insane asylum.

I mean, that helped. We'd spent the entire afternoon talking about our horrible family situations.

But I was starting to realize that Molly Miller was also—in her own, bizarre way—kind of fun.

We ran up to the chapel, and it did look pretty beautiful. Its stained-glass windows glowed in the night sky, and crowds of students were pouring inside, their voices echoing as they made their way up the stone steps.

Molly clutched my hand tighter. I looked at her. Her eyes were shining. It was weird. She was totally into the, like, romance of boarding school.

It was kind of infectious.

The two of us filed into the chapel, and squeezed into a pew near the back. The place was packed. An old woman with a shock of white hair was softly playing the organ, and a middle-aged man with glasses and a big red beard was standing at the podium, shuffling through a pile of papers.

“That's Headmaster Oates,” Molly whispered.

“Him?”

The guy definitely didn't look like a headmaster. He looked more like … an organic vegetable farmer.

“He's a former PMM student himself,” Molly said reverently.

She'd clearly read the entire school brochure and transfer welcome packet from front to back.

The old lady started playing a slower, grander melody on the organ. The chapel was filled with the sounds of shuffling and breathing while everyone turned around in their seats and looked toward the front entrance.

The first senior walked through the door in a white robe, cupping a small votive candle in her palm. She was followed by another robed student, and then another … I pleasantly zoned out and watched the lights from the candles bob and blur while the organ played and the senior class filed in one by one and made their way toward the podium.

Until I saw him.

And then I'm not exactly sure what happened.

My heart stopped for a second and then started again. A little voice inside my head said:
Uh-oh
. Then I felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over my head. Followed by a bucket of hot water. Followed by another bucket of cold water.

He was walking near me, just next to me (his candle's flame seemed to burn more brightly and sorrowfully than any flame I'd ever seen before), and then he moved past me. He was gone.

I blinked. I swallowed. My brain started and stopped, like a car engine trying to rev to life.

“Who,”
I whispered to Molly,
“was that?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “Who was who?”

I couldn't believe it. She hadn't noticed him?

“That,” I said hoarsely. “That
person
. That
guy
.”

“Which guy?”

“The, uh…” I lifted my hand up and pointed, trying not to be too obvious. “He just walked by.”

“A hundred guys just walked by. Are you talking about the one with the earring?”

I shook my head numbly.

“Alice. Are you okay?”

I shook my head again.

“Oh, my God. Are you breathing?”

I shrugged. The organ song came to a dramatic end.

“What's going on? You look like you saw a ghost or something!”

A girl sitting in our row leaned over.
“Shhh!”
she hissed.

Molly rolled her eyes. I turned toward the front of the chapel, trying to will my vision into focus. The hundred or so entering seniors were all standing in front of the podium, shifting their weight from foot to foot and cupping their little candles. Headmaster Oates looked up at all of us and smiled nervously.

“Hello?” he said into his microphone, and it shrieked and hissed in response. Everyone in the audience moaned and put their hands to their ears. Except me. I was still looking for … him.

“Oops,” said Headmaster Oates, chuckling. “Sorry about that, guys.”

And then there he was. His face was half-obscured by a tall girl with a blond ponytail, but I could see his gorgeous left eye … and his gorgeous left shoulder … the gorgeous left corner of his mouth …

I'd never reacted like this before. To anyone.

“Welcome,” Headmaster Oates said. He beamed out at all of us. “Welcome, new students. Welcome back, old students. This fall is going to be an exciting one. We've hired some incredible teachers, built a new science building, and we're introducing an intramural Frisbee league that I'm sure will—”

His voice faded away. I stared at what I could see of the Guy, and my imagination was starting to run away with me. I pictured the two of us walking over the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset, the silvery East River gleaming below us. I pictured the two of us sitting across from each other at a romantic Italian restaurant. I pictured what it would be like to be the votive candle cupped inside his palm. What did his palms smell like? What did his sweat smell like? What words did he whisper in his sleep? What was his preferred brand of toothpaste? What was his favorite movie? What did he look like in a tuxedo? What was the name of his third grade teacher?

“Oh, no,” Molly murmured.

I turned to her. “What?”

“No, no,
no
.”

“What's wrong?”

She nodded toward Headmaster Oates.

“—a chance for parents and teachers to interact,” he was saying. “And a chance for parents to be incorporated into extracurricular and dorm life. We're a family here at Putnam Mount McKinsey, but we also care about the families you came from.”

“Parents Weekend,” whispered Molly. “Apparently it's the week after next.”

My brain snapped back into focus.

If my dad came by himself, it might be okay. Or … not. Because then everyone in my English class would know my father was Nelson Bingley. Which would be weird and … humiliating. But if my dad came with R., it would be even worse. She'd find a way to ruin whatever life I'd already established here. She would traipse around campus in her purple pashmina shawl, charming the pants off of everyone or freaking them out, depending on what mood she happened to be in. (“I thought you said your stepmother was evil,” Molly would say, hypnotized, her pupils forming tiny concentric spinning circles. “But R. Klausenhook is
lovely
!”)

And what would Miss Perfect Paruchuri think about my totally weird and dysfunctional family? It would only give her new reasons to make fun of me and talk about me behind my back.

I had to find a way to make sure my Dad and R. weren't coming.

I also had to find out the name of the Guy.

EIGHT

Reena

These were the cool kids.

Jamie Vanderheep, crouched in the corner of his dorm room, riffling through his pile of old records, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.

Rebecca Saperstein, sprawled across Jamie's couch, idly drawing on her big toenail with a purple Magic Marker.

Jules Squarebrigs-Farroway, sitting at my feet, playing a video game and hooting whenever his character blew somebody up onscreen.

And Kristen Diamond. My new best friend. Laughing, lying next to me on the bed, her head in my lap while I ran my fingers through her long red hair.

I was In.

I'd always been pretty good at finding my way In. When we moved to Beverly Hills in the middle of my seventh-grade year, it took me exactly two weeks to befriend Samantha Foote, the most popular girl in my grade, and then only two more weeks to make out with Frankie Olevsky, the most popular guy in my grade. I didn't even like Frankie Olevsky; I just knew that he and Samantha were my ticket In.

It always happened the same way, whether it was at a new school or summer camp—there was that first paralyzing moment of fear: the what-if-I-don't-make-it moment. But that was always quickly followed by the triumphant I-made-it-after-all moment; the moment right after I'd cracked everyone up, or caught the cutest boy in the room glancing at me as I walked by.

So I guess it went the same way at Putnam Mount McKinsey: one brief bout of fear, one brief bout of embarrassment (I blushed whenever I thought about the cigarette incident—and I was still constructing elaborate lies to convince Kristen I was a smoker), but finally, three days after I arrived, I received an invitation to a post-fall-ceremony-hanging-out session in Jamie Vanderheep's dorm room. And the deal was sealed.

“
You … are … hilarious
,” choked out Rebecca Saperstein. She lay curled up on the couch, shaking with laughter. I'd just done a spot-on imitation of Headmaster Oates, and now I was basking in the warmth of everyone's response. Kristen, her head still in my lap, grinned up at me. The two of us were the only sophomores in the room. Jamie and Rebecca were both seniors, and Jules Squarebrigs-Farroway was a junior. (You know you're really, truly In when you're not only hanging with the cool kids in your grade, you're also hanging out with the cool kids who are two grades above you.)

So I should have been happy.

I wasn't.

For one thing, I kept obsessing about my roommate, Alice. There was something about her that drove me crazy. For one thing, why did she hate me? And why did it seem like she was one of those people whose life was just … perfect? like nothing had ever gone wrong for her?

And then I kept wondering what I was going to do about Jamie Vanderheep. He kept crawling over to me on the floor and showing me these old jazz records he'd bought over Christmas break in Pittsburgh. “Oh, man!” he kept saying, shaking his head and snapping his fingers. “You gotta hear this! The trombone, like,
sings
!”

Obviously he wanted to make out with me.

And he was cute—he really was. He had big blue eyes and sandy brown hair that curled around his ears and he was wearing a really awesome threadbare Jane's Addiction T-shirt from, he claimed, “like 1992.” He was popular. He was a senior. He was co-captain of the Ultimate Frisbee team. He was known to walk around campus followed by a wide-eyed group of drooling junior girls.

But I couldn't stop thinking about David Newman.

I was completely, horribly, utterly, devastatingly, crushed out.

“How old do you think David is?” I asked Kristen, absentmindedly weaving a little braid into her hair.

“David who?”

“David Newman, dummy.”

“Oh. God.
Old
.”

“Like over thirty?”

“Maybe.”

Jamie Vanderheep spasmed on the floor, listening to a record he'd just put on. “The bass!” he cried out in ecstasy.

Kristen squinted up at me. “Wait, why do you care?” she asked.

“Oh. I was just wondering.”

“Do you have a—”

My phone rang. I snatched it out of my bag, relieved, and looked at it.

“Who is it?” Kristen said.

“Ah, nobody. Just my brother, Pradeep.”

Kristen sat straight up and looked at me. “Wait. Pradeep?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he go here?”

“Yeah. He just transferred with me. He's a junior. He—”

She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God. I
met
him the other day.”

“Really?”

“He's adorable.”

I winced.

“I mean, I don't mean that in a weird way…”

“Uh-huh…” Girls always went nuts over Pradeep. It really grossed me out, especially when they were my friends. One thing I loved about my friend Katie in LA was that she always thought Pradeep was—as she put it—“a total doofus.”

“Are you gonna answer your phone?”

I sighed and looked at it.

“You should totally invite him over!”

“Okay, okay.” I pressed Talk and put the phone to my ear. “Hey, Deep.”

“Deep,”
Kristen whispered. “That's so cute.”

Ew.

“Hey,” said Pradeep. His voice sounded drained of all emotion.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you. In person.”

“Do you want to come over? I'm in East Dorm.”

There was a pause. Then: “That's a boys' dorm, Reen.”

“Yeah. I know. I snuck in.”

Another pause.

“There are lots of people here,” I added. “Not just boys. You should come over.”

Kristen nodded eagerly, listening.

“I want to see you alone,” he said. “Can you meet in front of the horse?”

There was an enormous bronze statue of a rearing horse in the center of campus, right near a grove of pine trees. According to Jules Squarebrigs-Farroway, it was
the
clandestine meeting spot for fights, make-out sessions, and drug deals.

And, apparently, brother-sister crisis counseling.

“Fine,” I sighed. Then I hung up the phone. “Sorry,” I told Kristen. “Apparently this is family only.”

She smiled at me, her eyes glazed over. “God. Do you, like, love him?”

“Uh. Well. He's my brother.”