The Poison Apples (20 page)

I glanced at Molly, who had clearly heard everything Kristen said.

“Well,” I began, trying to think of a way to defend my friends without getting into some kind of weird argument, but Kristen had already yanked me down into the seat right behind Molly and Alice and was pulling celebrity magazines out of her purse.

“You
have
to see this picture,” she said, and started flipping through the latest issue of
People
.

I nodded weakly.

Hopefully the bus ride—which, I saw now, was going to be excruciating—wouldn't be representative of the entire weekend on Mount McKinsey.

After all, I had three extremely important goals for the trip:

1. Relax and have fun.

2. Conduct the second official meeting of the Poison Apples.

3. Kiss David Newman for the first time.

And, I told myself as the bus pulled out of the Putnam Mount McKinsey campus and onto the snowy highway, using the very words my father had said to me before taking his medical boards fifteen years before:
A Paruchuri Always, Always Achieves His (or Her, in this case) Goals.

TWO

Molly

The sun was setting
when we arrived at Mount McKinsey Lodge, and the silhouette of its roof made a sharp black triangle against the burning orange sky. As the bus came to a halt, we all fell silent, amazed.

It was a gigantic, sprawling old building, with three chimneys and two verandahs and a huge stained-glass window above the front entrance that—with the glow of the setting sun shining through it—cast strange, otherworldly shapes onto the floor of the lobby, where the entire school stood, agog, with our suitcases.

“MIDDLETON GIRLS!” Agnes yelled, and we all clustered around her.

She began handing out room assignments. I unfolded mine, ran over to Alice and Reena, and asked: “Room 405? Room 405?” They looked at their assignments, squealed with delight, and the three of us slapped five.

“Did I hear someone say Room 405?” a familiar voice inquired from behind us.

I turned around, horrified. It was Kristen.

“Yes,” I said slowly. “Is that—”

Kristen pushed me aside and hugged Reena. “We're roomies!”

Reena bugged her eyes at me over Kristen's shoulder in a help-me expression. I ignored her. I wasn't going to feel bad for someone whom Kristen actually
liked
. And I was the one who had to deal with being her roommate all the time.

The four of us hauled our suitcases up four flights of creaky, windy stairs and were panting by the time we reached Room 405.

Reena turned the key in the latch and flung open the door. We all gasped.

“It's like we're in the nineteenth century,” Alice said dreamily.

“More like the thirteenth century,” said Kristen. She bent down, touched the floor with her forefinger, and then showed it to us. “Gross. Everything is covered in dust. Doesn't anyone ever clean this place?”

“Who cares?” I said. “It's beautiful.”

The ceiling was slanted and crisscrossed with wooden beams. There were four single beds, each one with its own individual red velvet canopy and a tiny, tasseled, red lamp beside it. There were even four tiny desks and four wooden rocking chairs. I walked over to the one of the dusty oval windows and stared out at the winter landscape. There were the snowy bluffs of Mount McKinsey, then miles of evergreen forest, then the thin gray line of the highway, and then a little cluster of buildings that was probably the town of Putnam. I squinted even farther out into the distance, and thought I saw, nestled between snow-covered hills in the distance, a dark spot that might have been North Forest. Or maybe I was just imagining it.

North Forest. The thought of my hometown sent shivers down my spine.

I hadn't spoken to either of my parents in almost a month.

“Molly!” said Alice. “Can you hear me?”

I spun around. “Yeah. Sorry. I spaced out. What?”

“Are you coming down to dinner?”

“She's always like this,” Kristen commented from the door, where she was waiting with Reena. “She's always staring into space, thinking about something nerdy.”

I stared at Kristen. Nerdy. Right. The disintegration of my family was nerdy. “You're right,” I said to her, my voice icy with rage, “I should be spending my time the way you do, coming up with ways to get Jamie Vanderheep to pay attention to me.”

Kristen blushed a little, but then put her hands on her hips and tried to look nonchalant. “And what's wrong with that?”

“It's just a little pathetic when he so obviously has a crush on Reena.”

Reena gasped. “Molly!”

“What? It's true.”

Kristen's face had crumpled involuntarily, but now she was twirling a piece of red hair around her forefinger and clearly trying to come up with a comeback. Still—for once—it looked like I rendered her speechless. After a few awful seconds, she turned and left the room. We all stood there for a minute and listened to her high-heeled boots clatter down the hallway.

“Molly,” Alice whispered, “that was really mean.”

“Mean?” I asked. “You're calling me mean? That girl is the Queen Bee of Mean.”

“Yeah, but two wrongs don't make a—”

“Alice,” I said, “do not finish that sentence.”

Reena, still standing in the doorway, giggled softly, covering her mouth with her hand.

“You think this is funny?” Alice asked. “Kristen looked like she was gonna start crying.”

“I'm just impressed, that's all,” Reena said. “Miller has guts.”

“That's a strange thing to say,” Alice informed her, “for someone who's totally unable to say no to Kristen, like, ever.”

“I can say no!” Reena retorted. “And maybe you're just jealous because she doesn't even notice—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, walking forward and linking arms with both of them. “Let's not fight. Who cares about Kristen? This trip is about the Poison Apples.”

“You're right,” Reena said as the three of us walked down the hallway and started descending the spiral staircase toward the sounds of our classmates chattering in the dining room. “We need to have our second meeting sometime this weekend.”

Just as we were about to enter the lobby, Alice froze in her tracks, her foot hovering in the air between the last step and the floor. “Act normal,” she whispered. “Just … act normal.”

“Are we not acting normal?” Reena asked, confused.

“Shhh,”
Alice hissed.

A cluster of PMM seniors passed by us, talking and laughing. A vaguely familiar-looking African American boy lagged behind for a second and smiled at us. “Hey, Alice,” he said.

Because her arm was still linked in mine, I actually felt the goose bumps spring up on Alice's skin. Her temperature also seemed to drop about thirty degrees. Her eyes widened and she looked like she was about to faint.

“Um, what?” she asked the boy.

He frowned. “Wait, what?”

“I…” Alice hesitated for a second. “What?”

I could see Reena out of the corner of my eye, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

“I, uh … I just said hello,” the boy said, looking uncomfortable. “But I should probably go, uh, catch up with my friends.”

Alice nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah. Of course.”

He raised his hand, gave an embarrassed half-wave to me and Reena, and then dashed away.

For the next few seconds, Alice remained absolutely still. I watched her delicate nostrils flare as she attempted to inhale and exhale. Reena and I sent each other what-do-we-do-now? looks. Finally Alice whispered something inaudible.

“What did you say?” Reena asked.

“Kill me now,” Alice muttered. “Just … kill me.”

“It wasn't that bad,” I told her, trying to sound positive. “You were both just a little … awkward. What's the big deal?”

“He's pretty cute,” Reena said.

Alice turned to her, her face drained of all color. “Jamal Chapman is more than cute. He's the most beautiful boy in the world.”

Nope,
I corrected her in my mind,
Pradeep Paruchuri is the most beautiful boy in the world.
But I had to be careful to never, ever say that out loud. Reena would never let me live it down. And she'd probably run and tell Pradeep within five minutes.

“Oh my God,” gasped Reena. “You totally have a crush on him! I can't believe you didn't tell your own roommate about this!”

Alice shook her head back and forth. “I refuse to talk about it. Later. Right now I just feel like I'm going to die.”

With Alice trembling between us, Reena and I proceeded to the dining room, where the sounds of silverware clinking against plates echoed like music off the tall cathedral ceilings. The windows were almost twenty feet tall, and they opened onto long, snow-covered verandahs. The sun had just set, and the sky outside was light violet. Ornate, sparkling chandeliers hung from the ceiling. There were dozens of round tables, each one covered in red cloth. Our PMM classmates, usually so raucous and obnoxious, seemed to have absorbed the dignity of the room they were sitting in, and were conversing softly—even laughing—in an uncharacteristically grown-up manner.

“I want to live in Mount McKinsey Lodge,” I whispered, as we surveyed the room for a place to sit.

“They say it's haunted,” Reena whispered back.

That was the first thing that distracted Alice from her stupor of humiliation. Her eyes widened. “Haunted?” she said. “Don't say that. Come on. You're kidding.”

“I'm just repeating what I heard.”

I groaned. “You guys are acting like little kids.”

We found an empty table and sat down.

“I'll save our seats while you guys go to the buffet table,” I told Alice and Reena. “Then I'll go by myself.” I just wanted to sit and absorb the atmosphere for a while. I'd never been anywhere this elegant in my life.

They nodded and left, and I leaned back in my chair and gazed up at the ceiling contentedly. There was something about Mount McKinsey Lodge that fit perfectly into fantasies I'd had when I was little girl. Everything about it was so old-fashioned and refined. There were even pictures in the lobby of all the famous writers who had stayed there when it was a working hotel. Being at the lodge made me feel like a totally different person. Instead of Molly Miller from North Forest, Massachusetts, I was Molly Miller from Paris, France. Molly Miller from Zurich, Switzerland. Molly Miller from Venice, Italy. Actually—even better—I was a world-traveling high-society woman from Monaco. I wore long white gloves and a single gleaming magnolia behind my ear. I went to masked balls and sat at the roulette table in Monte Cristo casinos, laughing and smiling and whispering sweet nothings into the ears of handsome men. At night I slept between silk sheets. I lived in a thousand different hotels, always arriving by steamer and carrying a golden birdcage that contained a single green parakeet named—

“Pradeep.”

I gasped and jolted forward in the chair that I'd been absentmindedly tipping backward.

Pradeep Paruchuri had just sat down across from me at the table.

“Pradeep,” he repeated. “That's my name. Do you remember me from Orientation Week?”

Did I remember him from Orientation Week? Was he trying to be funny?

I nodded. “I remember.”

“Molly, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“My sister keeps telling me all these great things about you.”

Something in my chest burst into flame, traveled up my throat, and burned my cheeks. I lowered my head and stared at the tablecloth.

“Well, Reena is great, too,” I whispered.

“I just wanted to say again that I'm sorry about what happened during that—”

“It's okay,” I interrupted him.

“During that orientation activity? Dropping you and all? I felt horrible about that.”

“Pradeep,” I heard myself saying, with uncharacteristic firmness, “please stop apologizing. The whole thing becomes exponentially more humiliating every time you say you're sorry.”

His smile turned into a huge grin. “Ha. Reena was right. You are funny.”

This left me completely speechless, and luckily Alice and Reena showed up at that moment and plunked their trays of food down on the table.

“You've got to get some of this,” Reena informed me. “It's like real food. So much better than at school.” Then she turned to her brother. “What are you doing here?”

“Talking to your friend. Is that such a big deal? Or am I not allowed to sit with you guys?”

Reena rolled her eyes. “Do whatever you want to do, butthead. Actually you and Molly should talk to each other. You're both big nerds.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Pradeep asked.

“You both spend all your time with your faces buried in books.”

“Oh, yeah?” Pradeep gazed at me curiously. “Who are your favorite authors?”

I took a deep breath.
You are a nineteenth-century lady from Monaco,
I told myself.
You wear white gloves. You are charming. You think nothing of talking about books with a handsome young man.

I propped my chin in my hand, trying to look casual and thoughtful at the same time. The author that always came to mind was Nelson Bingley, but I had to be careful these days not to freak Alice out.

“Emily Dickinson,” I said. “Um … also Walt Whitman. I guess those are both poets. In terms of novelists, I really love Dickens. Especially
David Copperfield.
Um. I also really like—”

“
DAVID
COPPERFIELD
IS MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK!” Pradeep shouted.

Reena buried her face in her hands. “Geez, Pradeep. Make sure the whole cafeteria hears how nerdy you are.”