The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (24 page)

Footsteps pound out in the stairwell, and the door flies open, hitting us with a sudden gust of warm air. There stands Garnet, her face flushed like she’s been running and crying at the same time. I suppose she’s heard the news about Molly and is trying to round up kids for a grief counseling session.

“Well, hello, you two,” she says coolly. “I didn’t expect to find
you
in here, Miss Merchant.”

Hold that thought. She
didn’t
expect to find me? She’s not rounding up kids.

“Garnet,” Ben breathes. Their eyes meet. “I was just telling Anne where to find a book she was looking for.” His suddenly blank stare darts at me. “Second floor. Check the stacks.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I say, confused, and get to my feet. I adjust my rain slicker as Garnet and Ben stare my way. Are they waiting for me to leave? I shuffle my feet a bit. “Um, okay. See you guys later.”

“See you tomorrow morning, Anne,” Garnet says. “I’m announcing the Art Walk winner first thing in class. We’ll see how you fare.”

Nodding like a robot, I glance from her to Ben once more before exiting into the stairwell, leaving them behind in the frigid darkness. The concrete steps blend into one gray blob as I race down as quickly as possible, recalling the strange expression on Garnet’s face and the shift in Ben’s mood when she arrived. As if
I
was the intruder. As if I was an annoying little girl the big kids had to shoo away. Bracing the cool handrail, I stop short near the doorway to the first floor and look up to the fourth again, my head dizzy and my chest heaving.

This is the moment when I realize who Ben’s blonde girlfriend is, who the person nicknamed
Lizzy
is.

“No way,” I whisper, covering my mouth. “But she’s a
teacher.
”

Following Gigi’s lead, I retire to bed early that night. It’s been a long day, and I’m ready to cry into my pillow for Molly, but not before Teddy stops me on my way up to the attic.

“The master has demanded to see you in his office first thing in the morning,” he says. His tongue slithers in his puny black mouth.

“The
master
?”

“The headmaster,” he corrects. “I have strict instructions to walk by your side from Gigi’s front door to his office door. So don’t try any funny business.”

“What does he want with me? Is he going to off me, too?”

“You’d better watch yourself,” he warns, his beady eyes bright. “He wants your confession.”

“My what?”

“Your confession about your relationship with Molly Watso.”

Fine!,
I think, slamming my door. I’ll be expelled tomorrow morning, shipped back to California, and there I’ll force my dad to come clean about sending me to a rich-kid asylum.
Fine by me
! I’ll tell him and anyone who’ll listen every little detail about this nuthouse, from signing forms in blood to pitting students against each other. I’ll tell him how Harper performs sexual favors for teachers to win the Big V. How Garnet is having an affair with a minor. How I may be the only student at this school who isn’t
screwing
some teacher to get a grade—and how, if Teddy had had his way yesterday, that wouldn’t even be true. How they’re so evil here, good people like Lotus get expelled and Molly would rather die than join the student body.

Exhausted by it all, I turn out the lights. It’s time for a cry. It’s time to let out everything I feel about what’s happened to Molly. As I pull back my covers, though, I stop short. There is a hardcover book half-tucked under my pillow: Machiavelli’s
The Prince.
Its jacket gleams.

I squint in the darkness of the attic. “Hello?” I whisper. “Who’s there?”

Flicking on my bedside lamp, I pick up the book and a note falls out, flitting down to my duvet.

       
Here’s the book you were looking for.

       
~Ben

Wondering if Ben’s watching me right now, I head to my window, fully expecting to see him at his. But I don’t see him at all. What I see makes my voice catch in my throat.

There she is. There’s Molly. Waving up at me before darting into the shadows.

My voice finally escapes, and I scream once, short and tight, then leap into bed and throw the covers over my head, breaking immediately into the prayer my mom used to say with me when I was certain I’d seen a ghost in my bedroom doorway. I chant it until I fall into darkness:
Now I lay me down to sleep.

fourteen

MY SOUL TO KEEP

IN AN EERILY SILENT ROOM, I WAKE UP WITH A START AND
sense that I am not alone. Ben’s book is under the covers with me, where I still hide, where the air is stuffy, humid with my tears. Outside the covers? I have no idea. And that is the worst part of falling asleep with your face covered—waking up to darkness, waking up to the awareness that someone could be standing right over your body, waiting for you to slowly inch the covers back, waiting to ambush you. I hear the floor groan near the staircase. I
know
I am not alone.

There is someone in my room.

But at least they’re near the stairs, not hovering over me. And perhaps they don’t realize that they’re dealing with a girl from a funeral home, a girl who learned to shine a flashlight on the monsters under the bed, to swipe her hand through the shadows just to prove there’s nothing to fear when it comes to things that go bump in the night. A girl who, in one quick motion, is whipping the covers off and thrashing her head in the direction of the intruder. Which I expect to be Teddy. But which is categorically
not.

“Molly.” I say it in a whisper. For a reason I’ll never understand, I don’t scream when I see her leaning against the newel post at the top of the stairs, smiling a lovely straight, white smile at me.

“
Shh
,” she whispers. Her voice sounds completely normal. She looks…completely normal—except her braces are gone. She’s not ghostly in any way. The opposite, in fact. Even from feet away, she appears filled with life, vibrant. I rub my eyes and gape at her again. “They said you were dead.” I shove my covers off the rest of the way.

She shrugs. That response stops me in my tracks. It’s a surprisingly nonchalant thing to do when someone suggests you’re dead.

“Molly?” My chest is abruptly heavy with dread. “What are you doing here? Are you…a ghost?”

“I don’t want you to blame yourself,” she says, sidestepping my questions. “And I don’t want you to be sad. I know I’m going to be okay, but I need you to look out for yourself now.”

“What—?” I stammer, struggling to form a coherent thought.

She smiles softly. Without a sound, she begins backing down the stairs, keeping her pretty brown eyes on me the whole time, that small grin playing across her lips but, otherwise, such a mystifying expression. Clearly, she wants me to follow her. And I do. Like little mice escaping the attic, we quietly creep down the stairs, Molly staying five or so steps ahead of me and watching me, watching me. The stairs that bring us to the main floor of the cottage practically disappear under my feet, I am so fixated on her, on assessing everything about her and comparing it to what I know of ghosts and of humans, wondering which side she’s on. And then she’s leaving through the front door, and the moment I turn my eyes away to slip on my boots, she’s taking off at full speed, running with all her might, wailing into the wind, “Follow me, Anne!”

Stumbling, fumbling to get my boots on, I hobble as I race after her. The fog is hanging low, and it clings to my bare arms, neck, and face as I follow Molly toward the village, where the dim glow of a hundred torches turns the sky orange and where smoke mixes with fog. Drumbeats again, just like before. Molly runs faster than I knew she could, never even pausing for a breath, only glancing over her shoulder every other minute to make sure I’m still with her. And I am. I’m chasing an apparition into a village I’m sworn to steer clear of. Yet I can’t turn away, can’t stop. Even though I know I should. In the village are people who hate me, who likely blame me for what’s happened to Molly, but I’m running toward them all.

I come to a short stop near the bench where Molly and I watched the fire festival. Ahead, Molly runs up to a woman sitting in the ring of torches, a woman who must be her mother. Just as I wonder if anyone else can see the ghost of Molly, her mother puts her arm around her, pulling her close and kissing the top of her head fiercely.

“What took you so long?” I hear her mother say. “Every second with you is so precious, sweetheart.”

Like last week, Mr. Watso is in the middle of the circle of torches. But unlike last week, the dancing woman and the two shirtless men are nowhere to be seen. And unlike last week, the ring of people is small. A moment later, I see where the rest of the villagers have gone: in the darkness beyond, out at the docks, nearly fifty people are loading up a dozen mini-yachts. Two boats have already set sail, and I can just make out their floodlights glowing as they head west, toward the mainland. Am I wrong, or am I witnessing a mass exodus of the villagers?

“Our dear Molly has arrived, at last,” says Mr. Watso.

His tone couldn’t be any gentler, couldn’t be any different from the rough roaring of last week’s encounter. It’s a tone I recognize because it’s exactly the tone that everybody who’s ever given a eulogy at the Fair Oaks Funeral Home has had. He’s lost someone; he’s in mourning. But how could he have lost Molly if we can all see her?

Then he glances my way, spying me shivering in the fog. “It looks like Molly wanted her friend here, too.”

She nods. “I did,” she says, smiling at me. “My only friend.”

I return her smile and taste a tear that rolls down my cheek and between my parted lips.

“Without further ado, let us begin the cremation.”

It’s hard to say what happens next because it’s almost too much for my brain to process. A great fire is lit in the center of the ring. Mr. Watso says beautiful words about his granddaughter. Molly’s mother weeps; Molly whispers in her ear. Others in the circle cling to each other. Another boat shoves off, the passengers on it waving solemn good-byes. Mr. Watso lifts a long body wrapped in cloth over his head, managing the weight effortlessly, just like I’ve seen so many pallbearers do with caskets. A foghorn sounds in the distance. The wrapped body is gently placed in the fire, and Mr. Watso, overcome with sorrow, chokes out a
good-bye.
Everyone is sobbing now. Including me.

I tear my eyes away from the cremation in time to see Molly begin to flicker just like the flames, in time to see her glance my way with that small grin that comes and goes. And then her mother is clinging to no one at all, her lonesome wail rising into the air. Molly is gone.

“The cremation is complete,” chokes Mr. Watso. “Let us pause to remember Molly Lynn Watso. Let us pray that the spirit of my grandchild finds rest in the eternal beyond.”

Villicus taps the hourglass on his desk, and a burst of sand flows down. His perma-arched eyebrow is high on his head this morning as he looks at me and waits for Teddy to fold his long body into a tiny chair placed off to the side. The jeweled case I saw Villicus carrying the other day is on his desk again, looking polished and new.

I am waiting patiently to be expelled. I am numb.

In any court, this case would be thrown out and the detectives and lawyers humiliated. Because I haven’t confessed to a thing. And the only evidence Villicus has to any wrongdoing on my part is either circumstantial—that shoe they found on the hill could have been worn by Molly herself—or provided by a witness I’d rejected just hours before the shoe was discovered (that is, Teddy).

But there’s no court here. And I’m the only one doing any sort of investigating, which says a lot. Villicus is free to make whatever judgments he’d like. Just as I’m free to make whatever judgments I’d like about him—the most important right now being that he played a role in the death of Molly Watso. No one has said who did it—hell, she might have killed herself—but Villicus is at least indirectly culpable. It was his institution that was so terrible that Molly chose death over it.

Crossing my legs and folding my hands over my knees, I await expulsion. I should be overjoyed to be leaving. But I feel nothing. I’m sure I went into shock last night, and I have yet to snap out of it. If this isn’t a nuthouse, as I strongly suspect it is, this expulsion will show on my transcripts when I apply to Brown—but that doesn’t matter now, not like it used to.