No, neither of those things.
She’s worried.
e’s going to ask you, I just know he’s going to ask you,” Jolene says, squeezing my arm on Monday. We’re sitting out on the quad, and Jolene is uncommonly giddy. “Promise me you’ll say yes, okay?”
I laugh. “Uh . . . sure,” I say. “If Mitchell asks me to the Winter Dance, I promise I’ll say yes.” It’s like promising to take the money if I won the lottery. Who wouldn’t? Only my chances with Mitchell are better than my chances of winning the lottery, and in my gut, I know this. It makes me giddy. It makes me think, Oh, please please please.
“Yay!” she says. She gets to her feet. “’Cause here he comes. I told him you wanted to talk to him.”
“You told him . . . What?!”
“Bye!” she says, scampering off. I see Thelma and DeeDee waiting for her on the walkway, full of giggles.
I’ve been set up.
I glance warily behind me, and sure enough, there Mitchell is, strolling toward me with his patented sardonic smile.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he says. He joins me on the stone bench.
“Hi, Mitchell,” I say.
“Hi, Bliss.” He nudges me with his thigh, which is lean and strong in his dress-code khakis. “I hear there’s something you want to ask me?”
“Um . . .” Oh, gosh. Where do I go with this?
He lifts his eyebrows. His leg is still next to mine. He’s sitting that way guys do, feet planted wide, and he reaches over and runs his finger down the sleeve of my cardigan. His expression is questioning and sweet, and all I can think is, He’s touching me on purpose.
“That’s all I get?” he says. “‘Um’?”
I blush. “Um . . .”
He grins and slides his thumb up under the cuff of my sweater. Every cell is on high alert, saying, Me! Me! Stroke me!
“Sing that ‘Little Boxes’ song again,” he suggests. “The one you were singing with your friends that day.”
I snort-laugh. “Yeah, uh-huh. No.”
“But it’s such a good song.”
“I know it’s a good song. You sing it.”
He looks at me appraisingly. Then he leans back, cocks his head, and starts singing. He’s doing it to show he’s not afraid of taking a dare, but—whoa. His voice is as gorgeous as the rest of him. It’s low and sexy, and it’s just for me.
He sings about the identical people with their identical homes and identical children, and when he gets to the end, he draws it out slow: “And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same.”
I clap.
He glances down like maybe he’s a little embarrassed. But right away his gaze swings back, and there’s no way around those long, dark eyelashes. He’s so gorgeous. He’s so . . . boy.
“It’s true, you know,” he says.
“About people getting put in boxes?”
“About people putting themselves in boxes. Everyone’s afraid to be an individual. We’re no better than sheep.”
I lift one eyebrow. “We aren’t?”
“Excluding present company, of course.”
“Ah. Of course. But don’t you think . . .” I hesitate, because I have opinions on this “sheep” business. Only I’m not sure how far I want to go.
“What?”
I blow out a puff of air. “Okay. When I lived on the commune—”
“That’s what I mean,” he says. “You get it. You’ve lived. For you, it’s not all prep schools and bobby socks.”
“Bobby socks?” I tease. “I’m afraid you’ve been watching too much Andy Griffith.”
“Miniskirts, then.”
“You’re saying you don’t like miniskirts?”
“On the right girl, sure, I appreciate a miniskirt.” He keeps his eyes steadfastly off my legs, which makes me think I’m that right girl and which kindles warmth within me. “But there’s more to life than that.”
“Well, sure,” I say. “But what I’m trying to say is that people on the commune . . . I don’t know. Just that there were sheep there too.”
“But there’s a difference,” he insists. “Anyone who makes a decision to live like that, they’re doing their own thing. Even though it goes against society.”
If I were having this conversation with Sandy, I know how I would feel. I would feel antsy, because I’d wonder at her private agenda. But Mitchell has no agenda. Or rather, Mitchell’s agenda is me.
So I flutter my hand dismissively. “Society . . . pah.”
“Right,” he says. “Yes!”
Confusion pulls his eyebrows together. Then he laughs as if it’s just a joke.
It is a joke, but it’s more than that too.
“I’m serious,” I say. “Yes, it’s important to think for yourself, and I never want to be someone who lives in a little box. Especially if I don’t even realize it.”
“You’re not going to end up in a little box,” Mitchell says.
“Um, thanks. I hope not.” I tilt my head. “In the lyrics . . . you think the little boxes are houses?”
“What else would they be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe coffins?”
He weighs the possibility. He nods and says, “If you spend your whole life trying to be like everybody else, you might as well be dead. Conformity equals coffins. You’re brilliant.”
“‘Conformity equals coffins,’” I repeat with a smile. “Ah.” I’m not done with him yet, however. “Have you seen the commercial for Sanforized-Plus?”
“What the hell is ‘Sanforized-Plus’?” Mitchell asks. “Pardon my French.” He leans back on the bench and stretches his arms along the top. It’s almost as if he’s got his arm around me, but not quite.
“It’s a fabric that doesn’t wrinkle,” I say. “The commercial is obnoxious, because it shows this long-haired guy who’s barefoot and dirty and whose shirt is totally wrinkled.”
“My kind of man,” says Mitchell, in his neatly pressed button-down.
I give him a look. One side of his mouth quirks up.
“But the commercial is kind of clever, too, because the question the announcer asks is, ‘Why do all nonconformists look alike?’”
“Why do all nonconformists look alike?” Mitchell says. “That’s a contradiction in terms.”
“Exactly,” I say. Does he get it?
His eyes meet mine. It’s intense. We study each other until it’s almost too intense, like when you stare into the mirror and start to fall into your own pupils.
Then—not because he can’t handle it, I don’t think, but because it’s time—he leans over and sniffs my hair.
“I do like your shampoo,” he says.
“Lustre Crème,” I quip. “‘Never dries, it beautifies.’”
“Hmm.” He regards me as if he likes what he sees. A moment passes, and he moves his arm from behind my shoulders and slaps his hands on his thighs. “So. Bliss-whose-hair-smells-like-apricots. Want to go to the Winter Dance with me?”
My insides soar, but I can’t resist teasing him a bit more.
“I don’t know,” I say. “If it’s a dance, there might be miniskirts. There might even be bobby socks.”
“Is that a yes?”
I grin. “That’s a yes. If you want, you can even iron your shirt.”
a-tie Hill! Ka-tie Hill!”
The bleachers shake as everyone chants her name. I chant too. Katie makes it down the last row and onto the basketball court, and the gym erupts with stomps and hoots.
“It’s like a Grateful Dead concert,” I say to Thelma. I have to raise my voice. “I feel like people should be selling falafel and hawking shrooms.”
“Hawking shrooms?” she says.
“Mushrooms,” I explain.
“Why would people sell mushrooms at a concert?”
“Magic mushrooms, you goof.”
She’s not following. “Magic? What’s magic about them?”
“Not magic like that. Magic like
. . . you know.” I trail my fingers in front of my face and make my expression rapt. “Ooh, look at the pretty colors!”
She purses her lips. “Bliss, don’t be weird. Not today. Anyway, there’s no such thing as magic.”
I roll my eyes and focus back at the spectacle on the gym floor, where Katie Hill is getting her crown. Her jet-black hair gleams, and she’s got a foxy figure that even her school uniform can’t conceal.
“She’s gorgeous,” I say.
“Tell me about it,” DeeDee says.
Beaming, Katie takes her seat next to the junior and senior Snow Princesses. All three are gorgeous. All three are foxy.
The guy beside DeeDee whoops and circles his fist in the air. “Righteous!” he calls.
DeeDee giggles. “Boys,” she says.
“I know,” I say, pretending to be oh-so-wise in the ways of the world. Now that Mitchell and I are . . . well, a couple, kind of . . . I’ve become the resident “boy” expert. I’m happy to oblige.
On the floor, Coach Nelson holds up his hands. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the final member of the Snow Court.”
“Why’s it called the Snow Court?” I ask.
“Just because,” DeeDee says.
“It’s the theme,” Jolene says. She grabs my right hand, and Thelma grabs my left. They really want it to be Sarah Lynn Lancaster.
“It is my great pleasure to announce this year’s freshman Snow Princess—”
“I can’t breathe,” Thelma says, fanning herself with her spare hand. “I can’t breathe!”
“—Sarah Lynn Lancaster! Sarah Lynn, come on down!”
Thelma, Jolene, and DeeDee squeal. The crowd chants, “Sarah Lynn! Sarah Lynn!”
In one of the center bleachers, Sarah Lynn stands, looking pleased, but embarrassed. Her friends push her along the aisle, and she jogs down the stairs and across the floor. She hides her face, then lets her hands fall away as Katie pulls her into a hug.
Everyone claps and cheers. Thelma and the girls jump to their feet, and Jolene pulls me up too. I put two fingers in my mouth and whistle, making Jolene laugh.
A few rows down, there’s some sort of a disturbance—there’s jostling and angry voices—but I don’t look. I smack my palms together and keep focused on the pretty Snow Princesses, ignoring the sudden cramps in my stomach. DeeDee turns her head, then Thelma, and though I try to resist, my head pivots as if it’s connected to a string that’s just been yanked.
It’s Sandy.
Of course it’s Sandy.
Her expression is mulish, and she’s pushing past a group of guys. They’re mooing. A teacher at the end of the aisle rises, his mouth a warning.
Sandy tramps over to the teacher and speaks into his ear. He frowns, but nods and steps back. Sandy heads down the bleacher stairs.
A guy with zits on his forehead sticks his leg out.
She trips.
“Have a nice fall, pig!” he calls, and a second guy laughs and holds out his palm.
My gut clenches. I want to kill him.
Next to me, Jolene bites her lip. She knows what happened was bad, and wrong, but she won’t meet my eyes. I want to kill her, too. Or cry. Or both.
“Excuse me,” I say brusquely. On the other side of the bleacher, Sandy heaves herself up. With a red face and stiff posture, she clomps up the stairs toward the main level and the exit.
Jolene tries to hold me back. “Bliss . . .”
I shake my head. We’ve been through this before, so I shouldn’t be disappointed, but I am. I jerk free and head angrily after Sandy.
On the gym floor, the captain of the football team presents Sarah Lynn with a long-stemmed rose. Sarah Lynn gets roses, Sandy gets tripped, and the whole world sits back and lets it happen.
spot Sandy outside of Hamilton Hall, sitting rigidly on a stone bench. Her gaze is fixed on some far-off point. I hesitate, then go over. It’s my first time on this part of campus since visiting Agnes, and goose bumps tighten my skin. Will Liliana reach out to me, given that I’m so very close?
“Hey,” I say to Sandy, sitting down next to her.
Her breathing accelerates so that I can see the rise and fall of her chest. “Did you see her expression when her name got called?” she says. “Like she was so surprised to be chosen. Like, ‘Goodness gwacious—me?’”
“What, you think she was faking it?”
“I know she was faking it. I bet she practiced that face in the mirror all last night.” She mimics Sarah Lynn, forming her mouth into an “O” and widening her eyes. She draws her hand to her cheek in a prissy manner, and I look away. I’m embarrassed for her.
“Fine,” I say. “Who did you want to be picked?”
Her cheeks puff out with disbelief. “You think I care who the freshman Snow Princess is?”
“Apparently.”
“No, no, and no again. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass who any of the Snow Princesses are, and if . . . if a bomb exploded during the Winter Dance and killed everyone there, you wouldn’t see me crying.”
“I’m going to be at the dance,” I say. She might as well know. She’s going to be mean about it, but I’m not going to hide it.
“Oh, God,” she says. “With Mitchell?”
“Yes, with Mitchell.” And you won’t ruin it for me, I add to myself.
She huffs. “You call yourself a freethinker, and yet you’re voluntarily choosing to participate in an archaic ritual that objectifies women and sustains the myth of happily-ever-after fairy-princess bullshit? Are you insane?”
“It’s a dance, Sandy,” I say. “I think maybe you’re the one who’s insane.”
Her lips twist. I’ve pleased her. Such a funny girl to be pleased at being called insane.
We sit. I wonder if I can leave now that I’ve done my duty, and then I wonder at my own thought process. When did tending to Sandy become my “duty”? Last night on the phone, I agreed to spend the night at her house this weekend, a decision I already regret. But Sandy pushed and pushed until it was easier to say yes than to keep offering flimsy excuses.
I shift positions, intensely aware of the looming structure behind us. I hold my psyche close, careful not to open myself to pale feelers wanting to woo and enchant me. Yet no one—or no thing—seems to want to communicate with me. Has Liliana truly gone dormant?
No. I do sense something. Curious fragments, more on the outside of my brain than the inside.
It’s Liliana. But who is she talking to, if not me? Surely not Sandy, who is mired in her own strange mind.
“Were your parents ever beaten?” Sandy asks.
“What?”
“Because of being against the war and all. Sometimes demonstrators are beaten, aren’t they?”
I look at her askance. “I guess. But no, not my parents.”
“Were they clubbed? Did they ever get teargassed?”
“Sandy . . . you’re being weird.”
“Did people throw rocks at them?” Sandy asks. “People threw rocks at me once. In fifth grade.”
I lean back on my hands. I’m not interested in hearing about fifth grade again. I also have a hard time believing kids threw rocks at her. I mean, come on.
I shiver, because something’s wrong, wrong even within the already-wrong context of hearing Liliana’s voice again. There’s too much pressure in my brain. Too much pulsing desire. The wind scrapes a tree branch against the side of Hamilton Hall, and I hunch my shoulders. Sandy turns and takes a long look at the looming stone façade behind us.
“That’s where Liliana was locked away,” she says.
I don’t respond.
“You know,” Sandy goes on, “before she did herself in.”
I glance away. Of course I know, and she knows I know. An almost unbearable compulsion flaps against my rib cage, and I get the airy feeling of floating above myself. I need to leave, I want to leave . . . yet instead I blurt, “Did I ever tell you about the day I got lost?”
“You got lost?” Sandy s
ays with sudden still alertness. “Where?”
I’m confused. Why am I telling her this? Sandy is the last person I should tell about this. But something is squeezing and squeezing . . . and there’s blood on the flagstones . . . and as if I’m a puppet, I hitch my chin in the direction of the building.
“You got lost in Hamilton Hall?” Sandy says peculiarly.
“It sounds ridiculous. I know.”
I press my thumb and forefinger against my eyebrows. My head hurts. “There’s an entire wing on the third floor that’s unused,” I hear myself say.
Her intake of air is quick and sharp. “Go on.”
“You go through this heavy door, and you’re back in the past. Dark. Dusty. Old-fashioned wooden doors that lead to dorm rooms.” The words gust out of me, relieving the pressure. “Liliana’s room, like you said.”
Sandy gets to her feet. “Show me.”
Suddenly I’m cold, because I’m not going back there. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Why did I bring it up?
There is smugness in the air. It comes from neither Sandy nor me.
What have I done?
“I’ve got to go,” I say.
“Did you try door three-thirteen?” Sandy asks forcefully. “Did you . . . did you . . .”
I get to my feet. I’ve said too much.
She grabs my arm and pulls me toward the building. She’s agitated. “I couldn’t open it,” she says. “Maybe you can.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know!” I’m panicky, and I try to hide it with a joke. “Because maybe Liliana’s ghost is there, waiting for her next victim!” I make spooky hands that tremble too much. “Oooooo!”
“Don’t talk about Liliana like that,” Sandy says.
“Wh-what?”
“She was the victim,” she says fiercely. “She was the one who was wronged.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. Forget the dead lamb, forget the small matter of binding Elizabeth to a cross, and sure, Liliana was wronged. “Hey. Look. The pep rally’s done.” From the gym, kids stream out. “I’ve got to get to English,” I say, speaking rapidly. “I’m, uh, supposed to have five possible topics for my research paper, but I’ve only got two.”