The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (17 page)

If there’s one thing I
don’t want
to talk about, it’s the sad state of my wardrobe, which has been, for the longest time, my mom’s old clothes. I’m not ready to get dressed up tomorrow night. I don’t recall seeing a glam gown tucked away among the well-worn jeans and old Disneyland tees in my tiny closet.

“Is it important, what I wear?”

“Is it
what
?”
Molly looks like she’s not sure if I’m kidding. “Anne, it’s the Cupid and Death dance. It’s, like, a huge tradition.” She dips into the popcorn again.

“So I have to get dressed up?”

Molly swallows her popcorn slowly, like she can’t believe she actually has to explain this. “Slightly.” She stares at me, waiting for me to comprehend. “Here’s the deal. ’Kay, it’s this cool masquerade-type thing from way long ago. The girls all get dressed up, with like full-on gowns, big jewelry, big hair—that’ll be easy for you. You’ve already got sexy hair.”

I almost choke on my popcorn.

“The makeup. The shoes.” Molly’s getting lost in her fantasy, preening on the sofa like
she’s
getting dressed for the dance. “The girls wear these sexy little masks—just to add to the mystique of it all. Isn’t that deadly hot? The whole masque is based on this old story, this premise that Cupid and Death exchange arrows, or whatever. So people who hate each other fall in love, and vice versa. Every year. Every welcome dance. Same story.”

“Do the guys wear tuxes?”

“Oh, the guys get devilish. See, the girls go as hot girls, right? But the guys go as either Cupid or Death. Most choose Death—sexier costume.”

“It’s a costume party?”

“No, it’s a masquerade done by the wealthiest kids on the face of the earth.” Molly sighs. “Which means it’s all about looking celebrity-sexy. Don’t you want to floor the room with how hot you can look?”

“I love you for saying that, Mol, but I’ve got nothing to wear. And, honestly, I’d prefer to just wear jeans and have a kick-ass time dancing.”

Memories of summers with my mom flood my mind, and I find myself clenching my teeth to keep from turning into some sobbing friend Molly’ll never wanna see again. But I can’t help reliving those afternoons in the kitchen. After spending the morning with my mom at the library, where she worked and where I read, we’d get home and she’d turn on the radio. Sometimes she’d fall deep into thought, and I wouldn’t hear from her for hours; other times—the best times—she’d challenge me to one-up her dance moves. Sounds lame, I know, to dance with your own mom, but she was a trained dancer who probably could have gone far had she not fallen for my dad and decided to stay in Atherton. Before she adopted the life of a librarian and mortician’s wife, long before she and my dad welcomed me to their family, she was a beautiful, leggy ballerina.

Our kitchen’s squeaking linoleum floor saw her take me through everything from tap and jazz to cool urban dancing. Sometimes my dad, who had no rhythm, would take a break from his work to judge us or watch the routines she’d choreographed. What wouldn’t I give to get those days back? Just one of those days. Just for a minute.

Something out the front window catches my eye then, and my heart stops short before breaking into a sprint. Ben is on his Ducati, revving it as he waits for his front gates to open so he can leave his estate.

“What is it?” Molly asks, following my stare. When she sees him, she laughs out loud. “Oh, no, you don’t. You like
him
!
Ben freakin’ Zin. No wonder you’re depressed.”

I exhale heavily, letting my cheeks puff up and empty. His bike takes off. Through the trees lining the road, I catch glimpses of him flying by, heading toward campus, and then he’s gone. Cruising the island.

“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper, sagging into the sofa as Ben passes. “He’s got some girlfriend from off the island visiting anyway.”

Molly raises an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw him with a girl. In his house.
Twice
.” I frown and stare into space, mentally reliving those moments. “He used to live in Beverly Hills. He must have met her there. They’re probably soul mates.”

“A visiting girlfriend? From Beverly Hills? Here?”

I blink slowly, which is as close to confirmation as I can get. Every passing day, my imagination transforms Ben’s girlfriend into better and better versions of the perfect girl. She’s just one sleep away from being a Swedish princess turned eco-entrepreneur with a membership in Mensa.

“How do you know this girlfriend is not from Cania?”

“I can’t place her,” I sigh. “She doesn’t look like any of the girls I’ve seen.”

“In the whopping four days you’ve gone to school here.”

“Five.”

Molly rolls her eyes. “Whatever. So it sounds like you want to find out about your competition. Am I right?”

“She’s hardly my competition. Or, I guess, I’m hardly hers,” I groan. Molly just smiles at me. “Why? What are you thinking?”

That’s how I find myself standing at the Zins’ twelve-foot front door, holding my fist an inch from it, preparing to knock.

“Let’s just see if she answers,” Molly says for the third time.

“And if she does? We, what, head for the hills?”

“No—we interrogate her.” Molly grins, but I can barely breathe. “Don’t worry. If she answers, we can say you’re looking for Gigi.”

So holding my breath, closing my eyes, and praying Ben doesn’t come home to find me
interrogating
his girlfriend, I rap quickly. Twice. Then Molly and I wait. Try again. Wait. “Great, she’s not here. That’s that. Let’s go.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Molly says. “Come on.”

Ten seconds later, I’m pressed against the ivied trellis by the Zins’ outdoor kitchen, right near the solarium that houses their pool, at the back of the house. Molly has somehow convinced me that we need to find hard evidence of Ben’s girlfriend’s existence. The only way to do that?

B&E.

“You are the worst influence,” I loud-whisper.

I’ve never in my life considered breaking into a house, and yet it has taken little more than Molly’s mention of it to get me here. If we get caught? I lie and say it’s all for my PT. And pretend I’ve never met this crazy village girl.

Pressing her finger to her lips, Molly jerks her head at a window that’s slightly ajar. “Do you want to find out about Miss California or don’t you? No better way than to snoop through Ben’s underwear drawer.” She fakes a pensive look. “What do you think? Boxers or briefs?”

“What if he comes home while we’re in there? Or what if she’s in there, like, napping?” I chew on my lip nervously. “I’d die. Seriously. Keel over dead.”

“Come on,” Molly groans. “Don’t play coy with me. You know you want to.”

Pressing against the wall, Molly slinks like a cat burglar from a black-and-white movie until she reaches the window. I can only stare in amazement. Waving me over, she pokes her head in and glances around quickly, stirring up butterflies in my stomach.

“Forget it!” I whisper sharply. “Abort mission! We are
not
breaking into Ben’s house.”

But we break in anyway. Molly pulls the window open and pops the screen out. I can’t very well leave her alone to wander in there all by herself.

“Nobody’s home,” Molly says as she hops in, dusts herself off, and stares around the room. “Ben will never know.”

“How do you know his family’s not here?”

Nervously, I prop myself on the ledge, swing my legs over, and, with a deep breath, jump into the room. We’re in the library, the enormous curved walls of which are lined with mahogany bookshelves and filled with beautifully bound texts. A ladder travels up. A desk, presumably Dr. Zin’s, is on the other side of the room.

“It’s just Ben and his dad.”

“Well, how do you know
his dad’s
not here?” I ask.

“Dr. Zin’s always away. Recruiting all over the world. So, what kind of evidence are we looking for? Long blonde hairs on his bed?” Molly asks. “Or short little pubes?”

“That is so not funny,” I grumble, watching Molly disappear around the corner. “Don’t go far.”

“I won’t,” she whispers, peeking back in.

I have no idea where to begin. Here I am, nestled in the middle of a wealth of information, but none of it can help me—not the volumes by Goethe, Marlowe, Mann—because I haven’t got the foggiest idea what I’m looking for. Evidence of the existence of a blonde girlfriend, whatever that might look like. Love letters? Erotic photos? I hope not.

There are two elegant-looking urns displayed on the marble mantelpiece of the fireplace. A large, old-looking book labeled
Ars Goetia
on a side table. An ornate bronze cross hangs over the doorway; next to it is a glazed Serenity Prayer stamped with the Alcoholics Anonymous logo. Framed photos are scattered across the walls, organized in that designerly eclectic way: sleek chrome frames blended with thickly molded antiques, all in different sizes. Almost every photo is of Dr. Zin with some celebrity or politician from the eighties and nineties. Cher. Michael Jackson. That Eurotrash singer, Pete Burns. In one, Zin’s hovering over a smiling Geraldo Riviera, who’s obviously recovering from a nose job. Three with Joan Rivers. One of him with Donatella Versace at Bill Clinton’s second inauguration. Even one with Demi Moore.

As I wonder at the sort of life Ben and his dad have, a life of luxury so different from my own, I trail my fingers over the old book—
Ars Goetia
—that attracted me earlier. I lift its weighty, copper-flecked cover. The floor under me creeks, though the air is still and I haven’t budged. A wisp of cool air glides by me, and the curtains of the window we crawled through billow in large shapes, as if an unseen child hides behind them. Steadily, I return my attention to the book, a grimoire, which is an ancient book on demonology, and open it. Its pages are thick with centuries of dust clinging to the oil deposited by the fingers of people long dead. Dog-eared pages lure me. The first is a listing of the ranks of demons, from mere devils to marquis to dukes to princes, each fitting somehow into the legions—or armies—of Hell. The photos show tattooed and bejeweled men, many nude, some seemingly in a state of decay, most baring their teeth, slick with blood, inexplicably vulgar.

“Creepy,” I whisper, turning to another tagged page.

This one is an actual list of demons. One is named Paimonde—just like the name of the building where I have art class.

“That can’t just be a coincidence.”

A chime across the room startles me, shaking my bones in my skin. Panicked, I glance at the doorway but find it empty. I drop the cover of the disturbing grimoire, rubbing my hands as if that might wash away the eerie sensation flooding my body, and head to where the chime sounded from: the Mac on the desk. The chime was an email coming in. Dammit, why didn’t I just go to the computer first? Surely Ben’s got some photos of his girlfriend on here.

“Let’s just pray she’s not photogenic.” I sit and shuffle the mouse to wake it up.

The screen fills with color, bright and vibrant in contrast to the darkness of this library and of the book I’ve just read; a row of icons lines the bottom. I hover over the iPhoto icon and click. Disappointingly, there are just four photos. I click the first one.

It’s Ben and a dirty-blonde look-alike girl who can only be his little sister—thirteen, maybe fourteen. Ben looks exactly as he does now, except with a different hairstyle. The room they’re in is decorated with a towering silver-and-gold Christmas tree, with Andy Warhol on the walls, with distinctive barrel chairs, probably the originals Frank Lloyd Wright designed, flanking the tree. Ben and his sister are smiling broadly, their arms around each other’s shoulders; the formality that seems so characteristic of Ben now is nowhere to be seen.

“He looks happy.”

Maybe the blonde was his sister visiting,
I let myself hope. I glance at the doorway—still empty—and click the mouse.

The second photo is of Ben’s sister by herself, smiling as she holds Taylor Swift’s
Fearless
CD, a Christmas gift. The third is of her again, this time wrapping a string of lights around Ben, who has a bow on his head; Dr. Zin smiles just at the edge of the frame. And the final photo is of Ben’s mom sitting between her kids in front of the tree. They all have bows on their heads. She looks so normal, so mom-like—not what I’d expected of the wife of a plastic surgeon—that it’s almost like looking at my own family photos, the way we used to be. Playful, normal, a
family.
I can’t help but wonder where Ben’s mom and sister are now. Still in California? Did the Zins divorce?

“You alive in there?” Molly shouts, poking her head in and sending me through the roof.

“Molly! Are you trying to kill me?” I hiss. “Have you found anything?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Bedroom’s clear.”

Dammit.
I’d wanted an excuse to check his bedroom.

“Checking the kitchen,” Molly says.

“For what?”

She grins. “Snacks.” And disappears again.

Turning back to the computer, I bring up a search window. As much as I want to know about Ben’s love interest, I have more pressing questions to answer. I put my investigation into the details of Ben’s girlfriend on hold while I start a new one: researching Cania Christy.