The Poison Apples (14 page)

I snatched my jacket off the coat hook, flung the back door open, and started running. I figured that if I ran until I reached the highway, and then hitched a ride, I could be back in time for Agnes and lights out.

As I sprinted past the dimly lit-up houses of North Forest, the chilly autumn wind blowing my hair back and the dried leaves skittering around my feet, I felt a smile spread across my face for the first time all day.

TEN

Alice

We were both standing by
the
WELCOME, PARENTS
sign, waiting. He looked as anxious as I felt.

Did he even realize I was there?

At first there had been about a hundred of us waiting around near the entrance to campus, chatting among ourselves, peering over one another's heads to see if the station wagon approaching was the station wagon that contained our parents.

Except Dad and R. didn't drive a station wagon. They drove a 1956 gold Cadillac, a gift from Andre Blackmun, the famous theater director who had taken R. under his wing when she was just seventeen.

Anyway. Station wagon after station wagon drove onto campus, and normal-looking, ruddy-cheeked parents leapt out and embraced their normal-looking, ruddy-cheeked children, and then everyone piled back into their cars to go get ice cream before the afternoon's activities began. The crowd of students began to dwindle. After a while, there were about thirty of us. Then a dozen. Then five. Then Judah Lipston the Third, my silent friend from the Boston van ride, fell sobbing into the arms of a plump middle-aged woman and a tall emaciated man (I could only assume he was Judah Lipston the Second), who had just emerged from a parked car, and suddenly it was just me.

Me and the Guy.

I hadn't seen him since the night of the fall commencement ceremony.

I was pretending to find the grass at my feet extremely fascinating.

It was strange. I'd been thinking about him for almost a month. His face—or what I could recall of his face—had been my constant companion. It floated above me when I lay in bed at night. It stared back at me when I looked at my reflection in the mirror. It hovered between the peaks of distant hills when I sat with Molly Miller outside Middleton and watched the sun set every evening.

Now he was standing right in front of me, in the flesh, and I couldn't even bear to look at him.

In fact, his presence was so overwhelming that I forgot—briefly—how much I was dreading seeing R. again. Although, all things considered, I was pretty lucky; that morning Reena had brusquely informed me that she was meeting her parents in the town of Putnam itself for lunch. That meant that she wouldn't be waiting at the station wagon parade with me. And that meant maybe, just maybe, I could successfully avoid having her see or meet my father and R., period. The goal was to show them my dorm room when I was sure she wouldn't be there, quickly usher them out, and then avoid her and her functional family for the rest of the weekend.

“She's late,” the Guy said.

I nearly jumped a foot in the air. Then I turned and looked at him. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, and he was staring off into the distance.

“Yeah,” I said.

I prayed that I would think of something else to say. But nothing came to me. So I closed my eyes against the midafternoon sunshine and just … waited.

“She's always late,” he said. “My mother, I mean.”

“What about your father?” I asked, and then instantly regretted it. I sounded too curious.

I felt him turn and look at me. After a second, I turned and looked at him. I wanted to faint. It felt like his brown eyes were boring a hole into my forehead. But I forced myself to keep making eye contact. And there was something about him that made me want to tell him … everything.

“My dad is gone,” he said.

“My mom is dead,” I blurted out.

He looked shocked. I clapped a hand to my mouth.

“Aw, man,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“Jamal?” someone asked.

I whirled around. A petite woman in sweatpants and a Yankees baseball cap was standing in front of us.

“Mom!” said the Guy, and then he and the little woman embraced each other. I tried not to stare.

“I got lost,” she said, “and then I parked in the wrong lot, and then—”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “Let's go get lunch.”

They slung their arms around each other and started to walk away. He glanced over his shoulder at me, smiled, mouthed, “Good luck,” and then turned back to his mother and began talking to her. Something he said made her giggle, and then they rounded a bend and were gone.

I took a deep breath.

His name was Jamal.

Jamaljamaljamaljamal.

We had actually spoken to each other.

He knew my mother was dead.

He was a Yankees fan.

I was a die-hard Mets fan.

It was like Romeo and Juliet.

Suddenly I heard the whirring and clanking of an ancient engine. I squinted into the sunshine, and saw R.'s gold Cadillac come rushing in my direction. It was unclear whether or not she could see me. In fact, as the car approached, it kind of looked like she was going to run me over. I waved my hands in the air and yelled. When it was about two feet away from me, the Cadillac screeched to a dramatic stop.

My family had arrived.

*   *   *

“It's so
windy
,”
R. moaned.

The three of us were sitting on a picnic bench in front of the ice cream stand in Putnam's town center. There was a pleasant breeze wafting through the branches of the trees and rustling the red and yellow leaves.

R. was clutching the edges of her silk shawl and shivering dramatically. She was also wearing a tiny hat with a peacock feather sticking out of its center. “It's so interesting,” she informed me. “You're only three hours north of New York City, but there really is a huge difference in temperature.”

As if I'd chosen to leave New York and move up to a tiny cold town in the mountains.

Dad and R. had only been in town for fifteen minutes, and I was already feeling lonelier than I had since arriving at Putnam Mount McKinsey. Sitting in your room doing homework alone is one thing; feeling alone in the presence of your only living parent and his wife is another. The first thing R. had told me—before we even said hello—was that she was making “a huge sacrifice” by coming to Parents Weekend (as if I wanted her there at all). Rehearsals had just started for her new play, a Broadway revival of
The Cherry Orchard
, and she was missing two of them by coming to Putnam.

Now the sixty-degree weather was making her miserable.

I clearly was The World's Most Evil and Unreasonable Stepdaughter.

Dad was sitting off to the side, wearing a wrinkled pin-striped suit and scratching absentmindedly at the surface of the bench with his thumbnail. Both Dad and R. looked—to put it mildly—out of place in rural Massachusetts.

“So, how are you?” Dad asked. “How's your roommate?”

“Oh. Yeah. Reena. She's okay.”

“I'm looking forward to meeting her.”

“Well. Yeah. Actually, I think she's pretty busy for most of the weekend.”

R. let out a high-pitched shriek as another cool breeze wafted over us. “Are we
really
staying here until Sunday?” she asked Dad. “Because I'm going to get frostbite if we do.”

There was a long pause.

“Hey, Dad,” I said finally. “Guess what? We're reading
Zen Ventura
in English class this semester.”

Dad looked up and blinked. “You're kidding me.”

“Nope.”

He shook his head. “That's absurd.”

“Why is it absurd?”

He sighed. “Because, Alice. It's not
Johnny Tremain
. It's not an easy book.”

“It's a very complicated text,” R. added eagerly.

“Well,” I said, “Mr. Newman is actually a really good teacher.”

Dad guffawed. “I'm sure.” Then he turned and gazed at R., pushing back a tendril of her hair. “Those kids are going to bludgeon my book to death, darling,” he said.

I was horrified. He was actually starting to talk like her.

I stood up, abruptly. “Can we go now?”

“What's the hurry?” R. asked.

“I want to show you guys my dorm room before…,” I trailed off.

“Before what?”

“Before the Welcome Dinner.” What I really meant was
before Reena Paruchuri and her parents come back to campus and witness how totally bizarre you are.

We climbed back in R.'s Cadillac and drove to campus. On the road next to the student union, I thought I spotted Reena's black hair and light blue headband. I ducked my head below my window before I could see who was walking with her.

“What are you doing?” asked Dad.

I held my breath until we were a safe distance away, and then I sat up again. “Oh. Nothing. I thought I saw some gum on the floor.”

We parked next to Middleton and got out of the car. R. stared up at my dorm, shielding her eyes from the sun with her ring-bedecked fingers.

“Oh,” she said. I could sense the disapproval in her voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know. I got the ugly dorm.”

“Uck,” she said. “It's just that late sixties architecture … I hate it.” She shuddered and flailed her arms, as if the cootie-infested goo of late sixties architecture had actually rubbed off on her body.

“Let's go inside,” I said. I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.

They followed me into the dark, carpeted dorm lounge (“Eeek!” shrieked R. when a poster from the bulletin brushed against her shoulder), and up the flight of stairs to the second floor. I opened the door from the stairwell to the hallway, and almost knocked over …

“Alice!” said Molly. “Hey! What a surprise!”

“Hey, Mol,” I said. “What are you doing on my floor?”

Molly and Kristen Diamond (who, Molly and I had decided together, after an evening of carefully tallying up their offenses, was an even worse roommate than Reena Paruchuri) lived on the fourth floor.

“Um … I was just dropping something off.” She pushed up her glasses, and her eyes flitted to the right and behind me, where Dad and R. were standing.

“Oh,” I said, and stepped aside. “Dad and R., meet my friend Molly. Molly, meet my father and, um, stepmother.”

Molly smiled so widely that I thought her face was going to fall off. I also noticed that she had a tiny piece of spinach between her two front teeth. She thrust out her hand and forced my surprised-looking father to shake it.

“Mr. Bingley,” she said. “A pleasure. An total and absolute pleasure.”

I stared at her.

And then it hit me. I had completely forgotten.

Molly Miller was obsessed with my father.

“Yes,” my father responded, looking a little uncomfortable. “Uh, likewise.”

R., never one to be left out, offered up her hand. “I'm R. Klausenhook,” she said. “You must be one of Alice's little friends.”

Molly shook R.'s hand limply, not taking her eyes off my father's face.

“Yes,” Molly said with great reverence. “We just love Alice here at Putnam Mount McKinsey.”

We? Who was she talking about?

“Mmhm,” said my father, and shot me a get-me-out-of-here look.

“What are your plans for the weekend, Mr. Bingley?” Molly asked brightly. “Hiking? Swimming? Skiing?”

“Skiing?” I echoed. She was really starting to freak me out. “It hasn't even snowed yet.”

Molly blushed. “Well. Um. Of course. I mean…”

“Mol,” I said, “you'll have to excuse us, but I wanted to show Dad and R. my dorm room before the Welcome Dinner starts, and—”

“Of course, of course!” Molly cried, and moved aside.

“I'll see you later tonight,” I told her. “Maybe—”

“I'm sorry, Alice,” Molly said loudly, interrupting me. “But could I maybe just ask you and your wonderful family for one favor?”

Dad and R. stopped in their tracks, chagrined. I stared at Molly.

“Um, what?” I said.

Molly looked at my father. Her eyes shone with pathos. “Unfortunately,” she said, “no one in my family was able to make it to Parents Weekend. My mother is in a mental institute, and my father and I have had a kind of … well, falling out.”

My jaw dropped. Why was she telling my father this? Did she think he was some kind of god or something?

“I'm so sorry,” my father murmured, although he didn't look sorry at all. He looked bored.

“So I was wondering,” Molly continued, “if maybe I could accompany your family on some of this weekend's activities?”

I briefly closed my eyes.

“If,” she added, turning to face me for the first time, “it's all right with Alice, of course.”

“It's all right with me if it's all right with Alice,” my father said tiredly.

Molly stared at me with gigantic, pleading eyes.

I groaned. “Fine, Molly. Whatever.”

Molly clapped her hands with joy, and then darted down the second-floor hallway, beckoning my father and R. to follow her.

“Just you wait until you see the inside of Putnam Chapel,” she told them, already taking on the role of official tour guide. “The stained-glass panels go all the way back to the nineteenth century, and they're going to change your life.…”

I followed, lagging a few feet behind.

It was just my luck.

My only friend at boarding school was already more interested in my father than she was in me.

*   *   *

“HA HA HA,”
Molly bellowed, and heartily slapped her own knee.

I couldn't believe it. I had no idea that people actually slapped their own knees in real life—it always just seemed like a cliché in books. But here was my new best friend, sitting to the left of me in the dorm cafeteria, and she was actually doing it.