Prep

  I smiled at him without saying anything. With people outside of Ault, you pretended that you were lucky to go to the University of Michigan and maybe, depending upon whom you were comparing yourself to, you really were; but Mr. Byden and I both knew that within Ault, it wasn’t lucky at all.

  “Do you feel prepared for college?” Mr. Byden asked.

  “Yes, definitely. I’ve gotten an excellent education.” This, in fact, was true.

  “Any favorite classes?”

  “Eleventh‑grade history with Dean Fletcher was great. And tenth‑grade history, with Mr. Corning. I liked environmental science pretty much, too. I had Mrs. McNally for that. Really, all my teachers here have been good. It’s just that I haven’t always been so good at the subjects.”

  Mr. Byden laughed. “Nobody’s perfect, right? But I know you’ve contributed a lot to this place, Lee, in your own way.”

  What on earth did he want from me, I wondered, and at that moment, he said, “I’ll get to the point. The New York Times is planning a feature on the school.”

  “Wow.”

  “Well, it’s certainly an opportunity, but media attention is always a double‑edged sword. It’s smart to approach any situation like this with a degree of caution, especially in this day and age, when the general public isn’t all that enamored with the idea of prep school. The Times is a first‑rate paper, of course, but sometimes the media tends to simply reinforce existing stereotypes instead of taking the time to tell the real story. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “All of us at Ault are awfully proud of the school, and when the Times comes here to do the interviews, we want them talking to kids who can convey that pride. I’m not saying, if you’ll pardon the expression, that we want to feed them a line. What we’re looking for are students who can provide a view of the school that’s balanced as well as truthful. My question for you is, can I persuade you to be one of those students?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

  “Terrific. Now, the angle of the story as it’s been described to me is the changing face of American boarding schools, with Ault functioning as a stand‑in for Overfield, Hartwell Academy, St. Francis, et cetera. What they’re saying is, these places are no longer enclaves for the sons of the wealthy. We have girls, we have blacks, we have Hispanics. Despite their reputation, boarding schools are mirrors of American society.”

  “So I would be speaking as a girl?”

  “As a girl, or on behalf of any of your affiliations.”

  I wondered if he thought there was more to me than met the eye‑that I was Appalachian maybe. “Are there specific things I should tell them?”

  Mr. Byden grinned. I still think of that grin sometimes. “Just the truth,” he said.

  Cross had visited only once since spring break, about two weeks before my conversation with Mr. Byden. Upon returning to school, I’d expected him the very first night, because that was what I wanted; I forgot, over and over, that the fact of my wanting something wasn’t enough to make it happen. As the days passed, I expected him less while thinking about him just as much or more‑the first thing that occurred to me when I awakened in the morning was that another night had passed without a visit. During the day, as much as possible, I kept an eye out for him. He was off crutches and at breakfast, or at chapel if he skipped breakfast, or at roll call if he’d skipped chapel‑he was guaranteed to be at roll call, since he and Martha ran it‑I’d register what he was wearing, and then for the rest of the day I’d always be scanning for the red‑and‑white‑striped button‑down, or the black fleece vest; it was like his clothes gave the day a personality. I didn’t talk to him at all, but it reassured me to see him; if he was at a lunch table two away from mine, then at least he wasn’t down by the boathouse having outdoor sex with Aspeth.

  At first, my fear had been that Cross was using spring break as a cutoff point and that he would never visit again. If he did come by, therefore, it would be disproportionately reassuring, it would represent more than a single visit. And then he did come, and everything wasn’t okay. I could feel how off we were immediately, how I was stiff and overly attentive and he was distant. We had sex, and he didn’t come for a long time‑longer, it seemed, than ever before‑and afterward I could sense that he wanted to leave. He didn’t, though, and then we both fell asleep, and when I awakened it was because he was tapping me to say good‑bye. He was out of bed, dressed already, and it was only a little after three. I shouldn’t have let myself fall asleep, I thought, or at least I should have woken up when he did, so I could stop him before he climbed out of bed. Not by persuading him logically, but by distracting him physically‑by giving him a reason to stay.

  He was leaning over me with one hand set on my shoulder. I folded back my arm and reached for his hand, and he let me take it, squeezed my own hand once, then dropped it. “It’s still early,” I said. I wasn’t whispering and my voice was whiny, and gravelly from sleep.

  “I’ve got to leave.” That’s all he said; he didn’t give a reason.

  My questions clamored forward. Where have you been? What did I do? Are you coming back? Please come back because I don’t think I can stand it if you don’t. Had this visit been probationary, I wondered, and had my behavior disappointed him?

  “Okay?” he said, and he pulled the sleeping bag up around my shoulders and patted the top of my arm once more. Of course it wasn’t okay. But he left anyway, and when I was alone, I thought of how many times I’d wondered if things were awry between us, if I was displeasing him or he’d lost interest. All those times, I’d suppressed my impulse to ask, and I was glad I had because maybe asking would have hastened the end. And because‑I understood this now‑you really didn’t need to ask. When it was over, you knew.

  The reporter from The New York Times was named Angela Varizi. Hearing the word reporter, I had imagined a man in his fifties, gray and balding, in a dark three‑piece suit, but when I entered Dean Fletcher’s classroom, which was where she was meeting students for interviews, she looked younger than thirty. She was sitting at the head of the table, and when she stood to shake my hand, I saw that she had on jeans‑a violation of Ault’s dress code when worn in the schoolhouse‑and cowboy boots and a white button‑down shirt. Her straight hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had a gap between her front teeth. She definitely wasn’t beautiful, but there was something open and intense in her face‑she did not seem apologetic about the fact that she wasn’t prettier. When she shook my hand, her grip was firm.

  I was missing my second‑period class in order to be interviewed. I knew, from a memo Mr. Byden had sent out, that Angela Varizi had met Mario Balmaceda, a junior, before me and that after me was Darden Pittard.

  “Have a seat,” Angela Varizi said.

  An image flickered through my mind of giving a blow job to Cross in this same classroom and I winced, though I couldn’t have said if it was with disgust or longing. I sat on the side of the table opposite where we’d been that day.

  “Will anyone else be here?” I asked. “Not other students, but will there be a teacher to make sure I don’t say anything bad?”

  Angela Varizi laughed. “Do you often say bad things?”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “I like you already,” she said. “And the answer is no. Either the administration trusts you guys, or they vetted you so I don’t get to talk to any malcontents. Now let’s get some of the nitty‑gritty stuff out of the way first. You’re a senior, aren’t you, and you’ve been here all four years?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Remind me where you’re from.”

  “South Bend, Indiana.”

  “Gotcha. I’m meeting with so many of you that I’m starting to get your profiles confused, but now I remember you.”

  Who had provided Angela Varizi with a profile of me, I wondered, and what exactly had it said?

  “You’re the one going to the University of Michigan, aren’t you? Cong
ratulations.”

  “Well, I applied to Brown, but I nearly flunked precalculus last year, so I didn’t really expect to get in.”

  She nodded, jotting something in her notebook.

  “You’re writing that down? Has the interview started?”

  “Lee, whenever you’re talking to a reporter, you’re being interviewed.”

  “I thought reporters used tape recorders.”

  “Some do, but a lot of us who work for newspapers choose not to. We often have such tight deadlines that there isn’t time to transcribe tapes.”

  “Sorry to have so many questions,” I said.

  “Ask them at any time. And you can call me Angie, by the way. Now let me ask, how do your parents feel about you going to the University of Michigan?”

  “They’re happy. I’ll be a lot closer to home.”

  “Are they Michigan alums?”

  “No. My dad went to Western Indiana and my mom started college but then she didn’t finish because they got married.”

  “What do your parents do?”

  I paused. “I’m sorry to keep being like this, but I don’t really understand what my parents have to do with the article.”

  “Here’s the deal. You and I will talk and talk, and then the article will come out, and I’ll have quoted you for a paragraph or two. You’ll think, why did Angie leave out all my other brilliant insights? But a lot of what I’m asking is for context‑it won’t be in the article, but it’ll inform the article, if that doesn’t sound completely pretentious.”

  “My mom is a bookkeeper at an insurance company. And my dad is in sales.”

  “What does he sell?” Angie’s head was down, and she was writing again. Her voice was neutral; it seemed as if she would react the same to anything I said.

  “Mattresses,” I said. “He sells mattresses.”

  She didn’t gasp, or clasp her chest. Instead, she said, “And he works, what‑in a chain or in an independent store?”

  “It’s a franchise, which he owns.”

  “Gotcha. And tell me about siblings.”

  “My brother Joseph is fourteen, and my brother Tim is seven.”

  “Will they go to boarding school as well?”

  “I don’t think so. Joe is already the age that I was when I started here. And it’s just not that normal for people where I’m from.”

  “So why did you go?”

  I’d developed two standard answers to this question, which I varied depending upon my audience; I decided to give Angie both. “This is a much better school than the public high school I’d have gone to in South Bend,” I said. “The resources here are incredible‑the caliber of the faculty and the fact that the classes are so small and you get all this individual attention and your classmates are really motivated.” As I said it, I imagined this being the remark that Angie quoted‑it was definitely my most eloquent so far. “The other reason is that I had a sort of dumb thirteen‑year‑old’s idea of boarding school,” I continued. “I’d gotten it from TV shows and Seventeen magazine, and I thought it sounded really glamorous. So I did research and applied. My parents thought it was weird, but when I got in, they let me go.”

  “Just like that? They didn’t need more convincing?”

  “No, they needed convincing. But our next door neighbor, my mom’s best friend, Mrs. Gruber, is an elementary school teacher and she thought this was a great opportunity and went to bat for me. In the end, my parents said I could decide.”

  “All this when you were thirteen years old?”

  I nodded.

  “Not bad. You must have been a lot more mature than I was. Now let me ask you this. It’s no secret that boarding school is awfully pricey.”

  I could feel myself blushing, my heart rate picking up speed. It seemed impossible that she would ask what it appeared she was about to ask. It would just be so‑obvious.

  “Ault is, what, twenty‑two thousand a year?” Angie continued. “What I’m wondering is how much of a factor the cost was for your parents when they were deciding to let you go.”

  My cheeks were burning.

  “Does the question make you uncomfortable?” Angie asked.

  “People here don’t really‑” I paused. “Money isn’t discussed.”

  “Talk about the elephant in the living room!”

  “But that’s why,” I said. “People have so much, so it’s like nobody needs to mention it.”

  “Do you see differences between people who have it and people who don’t?”

  “Not really. We never use cash for anything. For your textbooks, or if you’re taking the bus into Boston, you just fill out a card with your student number.”

  “And then your parents pay the bill?”

  “Yeah.”

  Our eyes met. She wanted me to say something she already knew. And I didn’t yet understand that just because you can recognize what another person wants and just because that person is older and more powerful than you are, you don’t have to give it to them. “It’s a little different for me,” I said. “The thing is that I’m‑I’m on scholarship.” In four years, the only people I’d ever talked about this with were Mrs. Barinsky, who worked in the admissions and financial aid office, and Mrs. Stanchak. I’d never even discussed it with Martha. Martha knew, I assumed, but not because I’d said anything. “My parents pay for my expenses,” I continued. “But they only pay, I think this year it’s four thousand in tuition.”

  “Gotcha.” Angie nodded several times and again, I felt a stir of confusion. I was nearly certain she’d already known. “That’s a real tribute to you.”

  “For all I know, the school regrets its decision to let me in here in the first place. I did really well in elementary school and junior high, but after I got here, I started to have academic problems.”

  “Were you inadequately prepared?”

  “Not exactly. It was more that I just stopped feeling like I could do it. I was so‑so un‑outstanding here. It wasn’t like anyone expected me to be a star.”

  “I want us to grapple with the issue of financial aid a little more. I sense this isn’t your favorite topic, but stay with me. I’m wondering if you think the faculty shows favoritism toward wealthy students.”

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “There’s one young teacher who’s friendly with these guys in my grade who all went to the same school in New York before they came here. They’re called the bank boys, and they’re all pretty, you know‑rich. The teacher gives them rides to McDonald’s, or he took them to a Patriots game one time, and people thought that was kind of weird because most of the class didn’t even know about it until after it had happened. But I don’t think the teacher is friendly with the bank boys because they’re rich. He coached most of them in soccer, and that’s how he knows them.”

  “Why are they called the bank boys?”

  “Because all their dads work for banks. I mean, not really all of them do, but that’s what it seems like.”

  “Would that be bank and boys with big Bs or little Bs?”

  I stared at her. “You’re putting this in the article? Please don’t.”

  “Let’s keep talking and see what else we come up with. I’ll tell you a story. I did my undergrad at Harvard.”

  I thought of having told her about my rejection from Brown and felt embarrassed.

  “You said there aren’t differences between students who have money and students who don’t, but that doesn’t jibe with my own experiences,” she said. “I’m from a working‑class family in New Jersey, and in college I had to take out tons of loans. And the kids at Harvard, especially the boarding school kids, had an attitude about money that I had never seen. Freshman year, my roommate bought a black wool coat with a black velvet collar. It was beautiful. I didn’t care much about clothes, but I positively coveted this coat. And a week after she bought it, she lost it. She forgot it on the T. And you know what she did?”

  I shook my hea
d.

  “She went back to the store and bought another one. Just like that. But the real kicker was, I made a comment about charging things to Daddy, just teasing her, and she was enraged. And it took me a long time to figure out, okay, what she’s really doing is inflicting her discomfort with herself onto me.”

  I looked out the window. Sunlight fell through the branches of a nearby beech tree.

  When she spoke again, Angie’s voice was softer. “Does that story ring any bells?”

  “One time, when I was a sophomore‑” I said and then stopped.

  “Go on. This might feel weird, Lee, but I’d argue that it’s awfully important.”

  “Sophomore year, I had a teacher for English who people didn’t like very much. I was walking with other students after class one day, and one of them, this girl, said something about the teacher being LMC. She was talking about the teacher’s clothes.”

  “What does LMC mean?”

  “That’s what I was wondering. So later I asked my roommate, and my roommate, who would never say something like that, seemed kind of embarrassed. She said she wasn’t sure but she thought it stood for lower– middle‑class.” Martha had known that was what it stood for; I could tell that she’d just felt self‑conscious explaining it to me. When I’d told her why I was asking, she had said, “Aspeth is so ridiculous.”

  “Unbelievable,” Angie said.

  “People here aren’t obviously snobby, but their idea of what’s normal‑well, another thing I remember for some reason is you can take the bus to Boston on Saturdays if you don’t have a game. And the dean gets on before you leave campus to say all school rules are in effect, and then he meets the bus when it comes back at the end of the day and randomly searches people’s bags. One time last year, the bus was about to pick us up in Boston, and I ran into some girls by Fanueil Hall. They were girls from my dorm. We were all at a clothes store, and one of the girls was taking stuff off the racks and carrying it up to the cash register without trying it on. I said to the other one, ‘Doesn’t she want to see if it fits?’ and the girl said, ‘She’s just buying stuff to wrap the alcohol in.’ She didn’t say alcohol, but that’s what she meant. It was probably a hundred dollars’ worth of clothes.”