We Know It Was You (19 page)

“Shhh!” Virginia said. “Listen.”

She heard someone running in the woods. Virginia trained her ears for a second, then bolted into the trees. Branches scratched her arms as she flew between their black silhouettes. Within moments she'd passed the reach of the streetlamp. The darkness was sudden, and Virginia felt swallowed by it. Almost immediately she had to stop running. She couldn't see anything, and she couldn't hear anything either, not over the sound of her own pounding feet.

“Hey!” she shouted.

They were still running, whoever it was. Virginia could hear leaves crunching, but only faintly. They were far ahead of her now. Then the sounds stopped; they were gone. Or hiding. What was she supposed to do, stand there all night and wait for them to come out? She sighed and started trudging back.

“Gottfried?” she called, stepping out of the trees. She looked around. The street was empty; apparently Gottfried was gone too. The puckered football lay in an orange circle of lamplight. Virginia went over and picked it up. It was old—the leather was hard and misshapen. She gave the ball a throw. It bombed to the ground with zero spiral, landing
about a foot from where she'd aimed. She stared at it, feeling weirdly certain it had been meant for her head.

The Boarders, 2:00 a.m.

This is the last time,
Zaire told herself.
I swear to God this is the last time.

She sat up on her bed and started putting on her slippers. She knew Gottfried was awake. She'd heard the soft squeak of his desk chair in the room above. Gottfried was an insomniac. It was different from what Zaire was, which was a night owl. Night owls stay up late because it's what feels natural to them. Insomniacs do it because they can't control the way their brains switch off and on.

She slipped silently up the stairs and knocked softly on Gottfried's door.

“
Ja?
Come in.”

He always let her in. A lot of guys wouldn't do that with their exes. Or whatever she and Gottfried were. There was an unspoken rule among the boarders: Never date other boarders. And now Zaire knew why—because when you break up, there's no escape. Regular kids got to go home at the end of the day, but at the Boarders all they went home to was each other. And emptiness. Zaire used to like the quiet. It helped her study, and since studying was her main focus in life, she had no reason to complain. But now the quiet made her insane, because it meant she could hear every move Gottfried made.

Zaire pushed the door open. Gottfried was at his desk, half-hunched over a drawing pad. There was a bowl of canned pineapple chunks with a blob of mayonnaise on them. Gottfried would eat anything, like seriously anything. A week-old sandwich with mold on it, or an entire barrel of cheese puffs. He even drank Tab, which Zaire had only ever seen old-lady teachers drink.

“Can't you sleep?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Do you want us to . . . ,” she started awkwardly, “you know . . .”

Gottfried shrugged good-naturedly. “
Ja
, sure . . . I mean if you want to; if you are okay wiss it. . . .” He pushed back from the desk, the chair's wheels bumping on the uneven wood floor. He arched his back a little, stretching. His knees spread open. Zaire's eyes ran hungrily up and down the long, lean shape of his legs. Gottfried was the only boy in school who wore jeans. All the other guys wore khakis and corduroys.

Zaire sat on the bed across from him. “Are you relaxed?”

“No,” Gottfried said. “People are all driving me crazy today.”

“God, me too,” Zaire said, thrilled. Gottfried usually liked everyone—it had been the main point of conflict in their short-lived relationship. Zaire had wanted to spend all their time making out in his room and planning for the day they'd escape this clubby preppy shit-hole and return
to Europe where they both belonged. But the more they were together, the more it became evident that Gottfried actually
liked
it here. He liked playing lacrosse and going to dances and eating hot dogs. He liked American cigarettes and American movies and American girls. He'd actually said that when they were breaking up, unbelievably—that he liked American girls.

“American girls?” Zaire had said back, appalled. What the hell did that mean? What was so great about American girls?

“Not American girls . . .” Gottfried had tried to explain. “You know . . . happy girls.”

Happy girls?
American girls weren't
happy
; they were
fake
. Corny Davenport wasn't
happy
; she was a pathological ditz who needed everyone to love her. Virginia Leeds wasn't
happy
; she was an insecure attention whore who had no life. American girls were vapid and asinine and fatuous, especially the ones at Winship. No Winship girl could come up with three synonyms for “stupid” that quickly, if they could at all.

“You're being very insulting,” she'd said to him, her voice shaking. At which point Gottfried had apologized and began aggressively complimenting her to make up for it, saying she was beautiful and smart and that her name “rolled off the tongue very pleasing.” And after that the conversation became such a humiliating nightmare that Zaire could hardly bear to remember it. Zaire demanding to know why, if she was so beautiful and smart, he didn't
want to be with her. Gottfried awkwardly insisting that he didn't know; he just didn't want to be her boyfriend anymore. The relationship had only lasted a month. Zaire had expected dating Gottfried to be challenging—he was aloof and inarticulate and strange and hard to read—but she hadn't expected to fail quite so miserably.

That had been six months ago, and now they were supposedly friends. But Zaire was still in love with him. It was so stupid. She hated herself for it. And her self-hatred made it even harder to get over him. If only she could siphon some of that love back to herself, recover a bit of her self-esteem. Gottfried didn't need her love; he'd certainly made that clear. But there was something else he needed, and she was the only one who could give it to him. Only he wasn't aware of the price he was paying for it.

“Just close your eyes,” she breathed. “Let me help us both relax.”

2:10 a.m.

Virginia awoke with a jolt and trained her ears.

Whoooo . . . Shhhwhooooo . . .

It was the ghost.

During the day it was easy to joke about the ghost.
Ha-ha, the Boarders is haunted! Spooooooky!
But at night it wasn't funny anymore. It was a low, soft whistle that came from above their heads, always after the sun went down.

Virginia had tried to get Benny to investigate it, but it
was hard to get him interested. He hadn't experienced its eerie crooning waking him up in the middle of the night, the way its signal traveled through the dead dorm like an invitation.
Come out, come out.
If he could hear it now, he wouldn't be so dismissive.

“Why don't you just follow the sound and find out what it is?” That was always Benny's impatient suggestion, like it was the simplest thing in the world, and Virginia was a moron for not thinking of it herself. She
had
thought of it herself. But every time it happened, she would lie in bed, frozen with dread, telling herself,
In ten seconds I'll get up. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .
Then,
In twenty seconds I'll get up. Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . .
At a certain point the ghostly noise would just stop, as if summoned back into its nocturnal realm. And only at that point would Virginia's courage uselessly reappear. She'd berate herself for being such a stupid coward and vow that next time she heard it, she'd get up and face it once and for all.

What made this night different from the others, Virginia didn't know. Maybe it was the way she'd jolted awake. Usually the sound woke her gently, like soft fingers pulling her from a dream. But this time, as soon as her eyes were open, her feet were on the floor and she was darting across the room to fling open the door, no countdowns or psyching herself out.

Whssshooooooooo . . .

Virginia looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes adjusted to
the darkness, and she found the stairs leading up to the boys' hall. She took them two at a time, on silent feet, then listened at the top of the landing.

Wwwwwhoooooo . . .

She crept out into the boys' hall. It was dark except for one small bit of light coming from a cracked-open door. She immediately knew whose room it was. Everyone kept a mental map of the rooms, particularly who lived above who. It was a weirdly intimate relationship, sharing the same vertical space with someone. You knew when they were out and when they were in; you heard their footsteps; you heard their phones ringing. If you got stuck with one of the younger kids above you, sometimes you'd hear them crying. The upper schoolers were supposed to reach out and mother the younger kids, but no one ever bothered. Virginia couldn't remember anyone bothering when she first came. You either learned to keep your misery inside, or you begged your parents to bring you home and no one ever saw you or thought of you again.

Virginia was lucky, because the room above her was empty. The one across from it, above Zaire, was Gottfried's. She stepped toward the light, slowly inching her way down through the darkness so the ancient floorboards wouldn't creak. She flattened herself against the dark wall and tilted her head. The door hung open a crack, just enough to see a slice of Gottfried's room.

Wsssshhoooooo . . .

Zaire and Gottfried were staring at each other. Gottfried was at the edge of the unmade bed, Zaire facing him in his desk chair. In her hands she held an old-fashioned Coke bottle, and she was blowing across its lip, making a hollow, ghostly whistle.

It's Zaire!
Virginia thought, partly relieved and partly annoyed. What was she doing, blowing in a Coke bottle at two in the morning? And why did she do it all the time? Didn't she know it creeped everyone out?

Zaire set the bottle down on the desk. “Are you relaxed?” she asked.

Gottfried sighed contentedly and nodded.

Then Zaire stood up and lifted her silky nightgown over her head. She posed in front of Gottfried, naked except for a pair of expensive-looking underwear. The lamplight reflected off the curves of her brown breasts with an unnatural sheen. Shimmery body lotion, Virginia decided. Her nipples were so dark they were almost black, sitting haughtily high on each plump mound. Virginia had seen so many boobs lately she thought she was immune to their allure. But Zaire's were incredible, she had to admit. And obviously Zaire knew it.

Virginia watched as Zaire straddled Gottfried on the bed and kissed his pale neck. Gottfried's hands reached for her ass, and his fingers dug into their round cheeks. Soon they were making out really intensely, Gottfried fully clothed and Zaire almost naked.

He shouldn't take advantage of her like that,
Virginia thought. Maybe they were trying some post-breakup friends-with-benefits thing, but who did Zaire think she was kidding? Herself? She obviously still liked him, and if she kept throwing herself at him, she'd just drag the whole thing out. Maybe if she'd been the one to dump him instead of the other way around, they could still hook up without it being a disaster. But everyone knew Zaire had pressured him into the relationship in the first place.

They flopped over Gottfried's bed and were rolling around in the tangled sheets. Gottfried's hands pawed Zaire's smooth body, and Virginia could hear their soft moans. She held her breath, feeling weirdly transfixed. Gottfried was such a weirdo and a goofball, but all of a sudden he seemed brutally sexy. Maybe even the biggest goober in the world would seem sexy if you stuck a naked, shimmering, big-boobed girl on top of him, Virginia decided.

Zaire squirmed beneath Gottfried to wrap her legs around him, and in doing so, they rolled out of Virginia's view. She craned her neck a little but couldn't see them without stepping perilously close to the light and possibly exposing herself. She knew she'd better leave and was embarrassed to realize that if her view hadn't been blocked, she probably would have stood there endlessly like a peeping blob, watching until they'd moved way past making out. It made her shudder, realizing how easy it was to become a pervert if you didn't stop yourself in time.

Friday

Backstage of the assembly hall, 11:30 a.m.

A huge neon-pink banner hung above the stage:
GATORADE PRESENTS: HONORING OUR CHEERLEADERS, A DAY OF SPIRIT AND GRATITUDE
.

Backstage, Gerard did a few lunges to warm up. Then he flexed his biceps and checked them out for the hundredth time.
Not bad!
he thought, nodding to himself. The thing people didn't realize about Gerard was that he actually had a pretty great body. Maybe he wasn't as ripped as some of the guys at Winship, but he was lean and toned and had nice arm muscles from lugging fifty-pound water jugs all the time. Unfortunately, the only person who ever noticed was his mother, who always squealed, “Don't crush your poor mama with those big manly muscles!” whenever they hugged.

But today everyone was going to notice. Gerard was wearing a skintight black shirt with the buttons undone halfway down his chest and a pair of equally tight black high-waisted jeans. His hair had been carefully disheveled
and then glued in place with his dad's pomade. The look verged on being seriously queer, Gerard knew, but he was confident he had the masculine prowess to pull it off. And besides, it was for Brittany. He'd have dressed like a clown or a transvestite or Curious George if he thought it would impress her.

Gerard was proud to say he knew Brittany's favorite movie, which was
Dirty Dancing.
He felt this knowledge was very intimate, and wasn't aware that it was true for half the girls in America. Nor was he aware that Brittany had about five hundred “favorite” movies, which changed depending on whatever movie anyone happened to be talking about at the time. “That's my
favorite
movie!” she gushed indiscriminately. But Gerard had seized upon this nugget of
Dirty Dancing
, and in his mind Brittany's love for it had ballooned into obsession. Brittany was
obsessed
with
Dirty Dancing
! Patrick Swayze was her god!