The Season of Risks

Chapter Fifteen

 

  Jacey stopped answering my phone after that, and we no longer drove to town to find the International Herald. The paper must have moved on to some other hot topic, because a few days later my phone stopped ringing, except for the occasional call from Dashay. I left innocuous replies on her voice mail.

  Richard's stomach had been pumped, and he was expected to be okay, though he wouldn't be finishing out the semester. Apparently he hadn't taken enough pills.

  A registered letter arrived for me from Ireland. Inside were plane tickets to New York and on to Dublin, the flights leaving in less than a month. Exams ended the third week of April, and then I'd be gone.

  Really gone. I didn't plan on returning to Hillhouse. The coursework was too boring, the company too juvenile for my tastes. I wanted to take my place in the world, beside Raphael Montero.

  And the Hillhouse professors were ignorant, I decided, after Professor Warner trashed my personal essay. I'd written a variation of "The Little Match Girl," a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. On a cold winter night, I wrote, a girl is huddled outside on the pavement, lighting matches to keep herself warm. As each match explodes into light, she has a vision of the life inside the houses, where families gather around holiday trees and banquet tables while logs blaze in fireplaces. The girl's last vision is of her dead grandmother, who's come to take her soul to heaven. The girl dies, frozen to death, smiling.

  A boy across the room made the first comment: "Why would she use matches? Everybody carries lighters these days. "

  He seemed inclined to go on, but Professor Warner held up her hand to stop him.

  "This is a class in nonfiction" she began, "and retelling fairy tales is simply not appropriate. Not to mention a kind of plagiarism. "

  "But the story is true," I said. "It didn't happen exactly that way, but the spirit of it is true. I've always been on the outside, looking in. "

  In a flat voice, Sloan said, "I believe it. "

  No one else spoke. Professor Warner set my essay facedown on her desk and moved on to another student's work. Class droned on. We didn't go to Leo's Bowl that day.

  When my phone rang that evening, I instinctively looked around for Jacey to answer it. But she wasn't in the room, so I said, "Hello?" in an imitation of her voice.

  Cameron's voice said, "Ari? Is that you?"

  This was the call I'd been waiting for. "Congratulations," I said. "You're making history. "

  "And there's talk we may be endorsed by some major Democrats. Can you imagine that?" He sounded exhausted but more optimistic than he'd been in a long time. He said his staff would be calling me. They needed details for a biography of me they were putting together for the media.

  So I would be in the limelight now, not in the shadows. "I'll help any way I can," I said.

  "They're planning some events for us-you know, first official picture of us together, first time out in public. It won't happen until sometime next month. "

  Next month I was going to Ireland. "Okay," I said.

  "The skies seem bluer every day," he said. "Are they gray where you are?"

  "Sometimes," I said.

  "Gray with an E or an A?"

  "I don't know," I said. "It's all the same color, isn't it?"

  My last weeks at Hillhouse? They're a jumble of memories: taking exams, eating boring meals, writing papers. Cameron's staff sent a photographer to take my picture and Tamryn Gordon called, in that grating voice, to ask me questions. Before she hung up, she said, "I hope you're pleased with yourself. "

  I said yes, I was pleased.

  The next day they issued my official biography to the press. It was much duller than my real life. A few reporters telephoned me, but I made it clear I wouldn't be talking to anyone until Cameron made the arrangements.

  Jacey's laptop was stolen right out of our dorm room, and then someone took all the money out of her checking account. It wasn't much, maybe three hundred dollars, but from the fuss she made you'd have thought it was a thousand. "That's what you get for keeping a file on your desktop labeled 'Passwords,'" I told her.

  She didn't say anything. She'd pretty much stopped talking to me by that point, which was a relief. I looked forward to having a room of my own at my new home in Ireland.

  Cameron called me twice a week, like clockwork. He sounded polite and distant, as if he was playing a part he didn't enjoy. I made my voice warm and seductive, to shame him.

  In the lounge I found a new magazine article about him, talking about his love life. And there was my name, Ariella Montero, right next to his. He told the reporter that he didn't think I was too young for him. "She's twenty-two," he said. "She knows her way around the world. "

  I smiled at that.

  Packing up at the end of the semester was easy. I left most of my stuff for the campus Free Store. I didn't want to carry much, because I'd be getting new clothes in Ireland-new clothes for a new life. I was throwing sweaters into a box when the cell phone rang, and for once the caller ID said it was Cameron.

  But the voice was one I'd never heard before. "How could you do that to me?" It was Cameron's voice, but it sounded harsh, bewildered, and angry.

  When I began to reply, the phone went dead. When it began to ring again, I switched it off and returned to sorting through my sweaters. When that became boring, I simply threw a bunch of stuff away.

  The next morning I rolled my suitcase outside to wait for the taxi. Dashay and Bennett would come later to pick up the Jaguar. Everything had been arranged via e-mail.

  I'd planned to carry my laptop in my shoulder bag, but it was too heavy. So I left it behind. Jacey could have it. My family could afford to buy me a new, more up-to-date one.

  Spring had made the grass pale green. I wore a light coat that almost matched it.

  "You're off, then. " Sloan stood behind me, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  "Yes. I'm off. "

  He watched me critically, as if he didn't like my hair and makeup. But I knew they looked perfect.

  "When are you leaving?" I said, to be polite.

  "Tomorrow. Going to work at a supermarket in Atlanta. "

  It sounded dreadful. "I'll tell Ireland you said hello," I said.

  "You do that. " His eyes finished their scrutiny, and he began to walk away. He didn't even say good-bye.

  Then he stopped and turned toward me again. "Tell me one thing. Remember that day in class when you turned invisible?"

  I smiled.

  "Why did you do it?"

  I didn't have the answer. Finally I said, "It was a joke. "

  "A joke. " He said the word as if it were an obscenity. Then he spun around and strode off, his shoulders hunched high and square.

  At the airport I had two hours to kill, but the shopping options weren't exciting. I was browsing through magazines at a shop when a man said, "You're the one. You screwed Neil Cameron. "

  He held a copy of the New York Times. The lower right side of its front page displayed my photograph-the official one released by Cameron's aides-next to a photocopy of a birth certificate. The headline read: SCANDAL MAKES CAMERON QUIT RACE ABRUPTLY.

  I said, "You must be confusing me with someone else," and walked away.

  At another shop I bought a copy of the newspaper. The birth certificate on its front page said that Ariella Montero had been born only fifteen years ago.

  The tabloid covers had harsher headlines: CRADLE-ROBBER! JAILBAIT! CAMERON DATING TEENAGER. CAUGHT BY HIS OWN LIES. They featured photo after photo of the two of us, my hand on his arm.

  I hadn't known how things would end. It might have been fun to be the first lady.

  But I didn't mind so much. My heart was set on Ireland.

  "It's my first time on a plane," I told the attendant.

  "Are you nervous?" He was a small, agile man in his thirties, with wiry hair. "Because if you are, just push t
hat button. " He gestured toward the ceiling panel. "I'll come and tell you a joke. "

  I liked that. "Can I have a drink?"

  "Honey, you're in first class," he said. "You can have three. "

  I had two, gulping down the first. The attendant seemed amused. As I sipped the second, leaning back in the plush leather seat, I used my phone to text Diana, telling her I'd made the flight safely. Then I sent myself an e-mail about the events of the day, so that I'd have all the details later to use in my blog. When I got to Ireland, I wrote, I'd tell my side of the story. I wouldn't talk to all of the reporters, only the ones who paid the most. Maybe I'd be offered a book deal. I tried to think of a good title, but we took off before I came up with one.

  The plane was reportedly cruising at thirty-five thousand feet when the explosion happened.

  Envision it: the passengers screaming, the attendants stumbling, then chaos as the plane nosedives into the Atlantic. Everyone in a panic except for the girl in seat 2A, who sits motionless, pressing her face against the cabin window glass, peering out into a rush of nothingness. Then, hearing voices thin as water, silver as mercury, calling her name.

  Welcoming her home.