a cognizant release August 21 2010

For Lynn

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Book One
Growing Up

1.Finny Meets a Boy

2.An Important Introduction

3.Lessons

4.Harsh Consequences

5.First Impressions of the Thorndon School

6.Finny’s Incredible New Roommate

7.Finny and Judith Find Ways to Entertain Themselves

8.A Trip to the Principal’s Office

9.Finny Tries to Make Amends

10.The Vacation Begins, a Bit Early

11.A Sad Time

12.Things Begin to Brighten

13.Another Visitor

14.The Deal

15.An Interlude

Book Two
Reunions and New Friends

16.Judith Has a Party

17.The Party, After Finny’s Discovery

18.A True First Date

19.A Potential Conflict Arises over Eggs and French Toast

20.A Difficult Thanksgiving

21.The Tender Crab

22.Finny Goes to Paris

23. La Maison des Fantaisies

24.My Father the Collector

25.In Which the Potential Becomes Actual

26.Finny’s Convalescence

27.Several Significant Developments

28.The Spice Trade

29.Back at Stradler

30.Earl Is Coming!

31.Another Interlude

Book Three
From Here On Out

32.Finny Gets a Glimpse into the Lives of Her Friends

33.Another Trip

34.Finny and Earl Have a Chance to Catch Up

35.Another First Date

36.A Pleasant Evening

37.The Reading

38.A Final Look

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

Book One
Growing Up

Chapter 1
Finny Meets a Boy

She started out life as Delphine, named by her father for the city where the Greek oracle was from, but she’d always had an independent mind about things like names, so she’d gone by Finny ever since she was old enough to choose. It sounded Irish, which went with her dashing red hair, and in any case Finny always liked everything Irish, for no reason she could say. She had an older brother named Sylvan, probably because her father, Stanley Short, wanted to carry on the tradition of the S.S. initials, which always gave Finny the expectation that the name of a ship was to follow. She thought it was dumb to let someone else decide what you’d be called for the rest of your life—what if they named you Pooh Bear or Dishrag?—so she went ahead and made that decision herself.

Finny was a tough, rascally kid, with a plucky assurance, hair as red as a ripe tomato, a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks like she’d been splashed with mud—cheeks that were puffed up like bread starting to rise, the kind of cheeks old aunties like to pinch. Sometimes when they did that, Finny pinched back. She wasn’t the type of kid to be ogled and fondled all day, to go oogly-googly when people told her how adorable she was. Once when she was four and her aunt Louise gave her a pinch on the cheek, Finny pinched the woman right back on the breast, so hard that Aunt Louise howled in pain and dropped Finny on the floor. It was a linoleum floor, and when Finny crashed down, everyone thought she was dead. Then Finny started to laugh. The reason she was laughing was that she’d plucked the button from Aunt Louise’s breast pocket clean off her blouse. She had it balled in her sweaty fist.

Finny’s mother, Laura, was a tall woman with a bony frame, a small mouth, a sharp little nose. She wouldn’t have been anything special to look at, but she put herself together in an appealing way. Hairpins and colorful sweaters and elegant black skirts. Laura had a warm smile, a shy, flirtatious way of speaking to you, and adults tended to talk to her the way they talked to Finny: in a slightly higher voice, with a practiced gentleness, a simple vocabulary. Finny saw the way her mother transformed herself for guests into a pleased, curious child—and Finny didn’t like it. All the posturing, the willed submission, the need to grab up people’s attention in greedy handfuls. As a girl Finny wore old soccer shirts and jeans cut off so the strings hung down over her knees. She always had a skinned elbow or a bruised calf muscle from roughhousing after school. She liked kick ball, and for a while could take down most of the boys in her class in a wrestling game they played at recess.

Laura was adamant about proper bathing and grooming, looking neat and tidy whenever you went out of the house. It is unfortunate but true that people judge you on your looks, Laura once told her. She had a way of imparting her own beliefs as if they were objective facts about the world.

So Finny responded, “How can I dress if I want to look like an orphan?”

Finny avoided baths, saying she’d bathed the day before and that was enough. Or else she’d get in the bath and neglect to use the soap. Or use it only on her legs but not her arms. Put the shampoo on her feet. Anything to throw her mother off, show her in what little regard Finny held all those careful preparations and disguisings. She came out of the tub sopping wet, dirt under her fingernails, mud on her cheeks, hair as tangled as a bowl of spaghetti. Finny was supposed to comb her hair after she got out of the bath, but for a while, when she was seven or eight, she stopped doing that. She would just comb the front, and then flip it in a way so that it looked neat when Laura saw it before bed, but the back got so knotted her brother, Sylvan, started calling it the rat’s nest.

Finny liked that. She modeled it in the mirror, in front of Sylvan, posing with her arms behind her head, or tilting her chin in an imitation of the coquettish poses she’d seen women striking in magazines. “My beautiful rat’s nest,” she’d say, stroking it like she was in an ad for shampoo. There was a thrill in this, in so brazenly tossing aside her mother’s notions. Like parading around with Laura’s underwear on her head. It made Sylvan nervous, Finny knew—he tried to do everything the right way—but he wasn’t going to tell anyone about it. Her brother wasn’t a snitch.

In the mornings and evenings Finny began to wear her hair up, just to hide it. One night she wore a hat—an old beret from a Halloween costume—when she couldn’t find a way to gather it up in any kind of decent shape. Laura asked her to take the hat off, and when she saw what was beneath it, she yelled at Finny and made her go to the Hair Cuttery and get it all combed out. It took four hours, and Finny’s mother had to pay triple because they needed three hairdressers working at the same time. Sylvan sat in the empty barber’s chair next to where the young women were grooming Finny like a prize poodle, and he told her how adorable she looked.

“Shut up,” Finny said. “Ouch.”

“You look like a strawberry shortcake,” he said.

That made her mad, the image of herself as a cute little dessert. “You look like something that gets flushed down the toilet when I’m sick!” Finny yelled in the middle of the hair salon. It was the most disgusting thing she could think of, and one of the young women dropped her comb.

“I’m sorry,” Laura said, shooting Finny a cautioning look.

Finny’s dad was a lawyer, the managing partner of a small firm in Baltimore, though the family lived far out in the suburbs. All her father ever talked about at the dinner table was “great men.” It was his favorite subject, and when they had dinner guests, he liked to sound people out on the issue. He even talked about writing a book one day if he could ever get his ideas in order. He loved to apply quotations by great men to whatever people were discussing. “Good artists borrow; great artists steal,” Stanley would offer during any discussion even mildly related to the subject of art. Then he would say, in a more sober tone, “Picasso.” Just the name. Never Picasso said that or That was Picasso’s idea. “God does not play dice,” was another of his favorites, and to Finny it sounded like a warning, as if God were telling you not to mess with Him. Then Stanley would say, “Einstein,” in the way other people say Amen at the end of prayers. The name was enough to command respect, dropped like a punctuation mark at the end of whatever point he was making.

Stanley was a shortish man, with red-brown hair, perfectly round wire-rimmed glasses, and a nose that looked slightly too large for his face. He had a finicky stomach, and he chewed Pepto-Bismol tablets like they were after-dinner mints. He didn’t like to announce trips to the bathroom, so when he had to get up from the table to attend to his stomach, he would always say he was going to brush his teeth, and then click his top and bottom teeth together, as if to illustrate what he meant. Sometimes he brushed his teeth three or four times over the course of an evening. Because of the Pepto, his breath had a milky, minty smell, like peppermint ice cream, which Finny would always remember waking to on Sunday mornings, when her dad got her out of bed.

Sylvan, who was a year older than Finny, seemed to gobble up everything Stanley said. Or at least he saw no reason to fight against it. When Stanley talked about his theories at the dinner table—about how and why these great men were such geniuses—Sylvan nodded, or asked little questions to spur his father on. He liked the show of it more than anything else, Finny thought later, the sight of his father so engaged, so dynamic. “Look at Jefferson,” Stanley would say. “Rousseau. Spinoza.” And when she was very young, Finny used to actually turn and look around the room, half-expecting these great men to be found crouching beneath the floral tablecloth, or beside the marble buffet where Finny’s mother kept the cracked teal candy plate, the birthday and holiday cards they’d received that season. “They all believed in the rational self-sufficiency of man, the potential of people to do good. Even if it’s rarely the case that they do.”

Sylvan nodded vigorously, then asked, “What’s ‘rash on all selfs’?”

Finny laughed. “It’s what you have,” she told Sylvan.

“Be serious,” Sylvan said.

“Be normal,” Finny shot back.

“Be quiet,” Laura said, “and let your father finish his point.”

Then Finny began to feed the dog, Raskal (after Raskolnikov; Crime and Punishment was the book that had turned Stanley on to Dostoyevsky), under the table. She liked to pinch little morsels of fish and potatoes off her plate, then slip them like secret messages into Raskal’s mouth. Like Stanley, Raskal had a sensitive stomach. He was a loafing, overweight golden retriever with asthma, and when he ate human food, he passed gas noticeably. As soon as Finny began to smell something funny, she heard her father say, “Fiiinnny,” his voice gradually rising through her name, like the volume being turned up on a stereo.

“What?” Finny said.

“Goddammit,” Stanley said. “Can’t you just sit still and listen?”

“I am listening.”

“Don’t feed the dog people food.”

“I don’t feed him people food. I feed him doggy food.”

“Food at the table is people food, and the doggy food is in the doggy room.”

“Sometimes people eat people food in the doggy room when the dog is eating doggy food,” Finny said.

“The point is, don’t feed him the food we’re eating, Finny.”

“How could I feed him what we’re already eating, Daddy?” Finny said, holding her palms up like it was the craziest question in the world. She knew it would get Stanley riled up. It was great men and mediocre men he wanted to make distinctions between, not people food and doggy food.

“Get up to your room,” he told her.

“But—”

“I said get up there!” He was red, and he glared at her. It wasn’t that she liked teasing her father, getting him steamed; she just felt like he wasn’t speaking to her when he talked about his great men, like everything he said was offered with a wink in Sylvan’s direction.

One time, when Sylvan and Finny were much older and they were talking on the phone about their father, Sylvan said, “It’s the dinners I always remember. The way Dad held court.”

“The thing was,” Finny said, “he always seemed to be talking to you, don’t you think?”

“I think it’s only because I was listening. Really, you were a lot smarter than me. He knew you saw through it.”

It was like Sylvan to do this, jumble up all the pieces and rearrange them in a pleasing way, make everyone seem earnest and well-intentioned. She had never thought of the situation that way before, and she wasn’t sure if her brother was saying these things now only to make her feel better about what she couldn’t change.

“But that time I made fun of him?” she said, trying to pull their conversation back to surer ground, a silly story they could both laugh at.

That was the time her dad had yelled at her for feeding Raskal under the table, and from some perverse motivation, when he was done yelling, Finny had said, “Aristotle.” Just that one word, but in a voice that was clearly an imitation of the way Stanley quoted great men.

“What did you say?” Stanley asked.

“Nothing.”

“I heard you.”

“It wasn’t anything.”

“Don’t mock me, Finny.”

“I don’t mock,” she said, unable to resist the opening. “I steal.”

Stanley’s eyes lit up. “Get out!” he screamed, jostling the table so the plates clattered.

On the phone, Sylvan said to Finny, “I’d never seen him so angry before.”

“Me neither,” she said. “To tell the truth, I was a little frightened.”

“I don’t think you were ever frightened, Fin.”

“You’re wrong about that, Syl. I was more frightened than any of you ever knew.”

Finny grew up in northern Maryland, in the area of rolling farmland just west of Interstate 83, just south of the Pennsylvania line. The Shorts’ home sat on a hill, and from the back windows you could see the whole scoop of the valley where they lived: cornfields, clusters of trees, horse pastures, all threaded with fences and gravel driveways, dotted with big manorish houses. It looked to Finny, from her bedroom window, like a huge gaudy quilt. The air outside their house smelled like grass and dirt, honeysuckles in the late spring, horse manure when the farmers were planting. One lap around the block was eleven miles long, by the car’s odometer. (It had been Stanley who’d measured, on a Sunday, with Sylvan in the passenger seat: they’d reported their findings as soon as they’d walked in the door. “Eleven point two,” Stanley said. And Sylvan nodded.)

Finny’s childhood memories were a clutter of impressions: dried-out fence posts, the feeling of wet grass slapping her feet and the swishing sound it made when she walked in it, swampy summer air, dandelion dust, snow days where everything was bleached white, bright cool fall afternoons turning to silver evenings, hills like a great green sea rolling into the distance. Only at the farthest edge of her vision did the land appear to flatten out. At the horizon there was a kind of green-gray ribbon, which could have been trees or even mountains, some sort of border. It was too far away to tell. But when she was very young, Finny always imagined going there, and in her mind that far-off and magical place got mixed up with ideas she had about her future, about what lay beyond this house.

Another thing Finny remembered: Sunday mornings. It was the only day Stanley didn’t go into work at the law firm, and he spent it with the family. He was very adoring of Finny’s mother. It showed in his formality in social situations, holding doors and pulling out chairs. Then, at least one Sunday every month he made breakfast in bed for Laura. He was an awful cook, and managed to impart the flavor of five-alarm chili into any dish he prepared. Even when he made French toast, he was able through a combination of seasoning and cooking techniques to capture the essence of five-alarm chili. Some avant-garde New York restaurants would have appreciated his secrets.

The kids would jump into bed with Laura, and since Stanley always made too much food, they’d help her eat it.

Finny’s mother ate happily, saying, “You spoil me, Stanley.

You’re too good.” Every time. Sylvan and Finny would lie in bed with her, sampling the charred remains of Laura’s breakfast, as Stanley beamed at his family from the couch in their bedroom.

Only Finny once said, “How could you possibly eat this?”

“Because to me it’s the best meal in the world,” Laura said.

“Do you get out much, Mom?” Finny asked.

Stanley broke in. “Did you know that Henry James went to a hundred and ten dinner parties in one year alone in England?”

“Really?” Sylvan said.

“Yes. Or maybe he had a hundred and ten invitations. In any case, it was some kind of record. And all that time he was writing The Portrait of a Lady. The only way I can make sense of it is that he was gathering material, observing the decadence and waste of a dying society so that he could write about the great unfulfilled potential of man.”

“Isn’t Portrait of a Lady about a lady?” Finny asked.

“Yes,” Stanley said, looking confused. “What’s your point?”

“You said the ‘potential of man.’”

“Ah,” Stanley said. “When I say ‘man,’” he explained in his most professorial voice, “I mean it in the broadest sense. I am talking about all of us, collectively. I’m saying it in the way that a great man once said, ‘The effect of the law is to make men good.’” He paused long enough to give weight to this remark, then said, “Aquinas.”

“Then why don’t you say people?” Finny asked. She knew it was just the way you said it. But still. It irked her.

“Because it’s simpler,” Sylvan said, then looked at his father, who nodded.

“But it’s wrong,” Finny said, her voice breaking, betraying anger. She knew it didn’t matter, but the comment stuck in her somehow.

“Right or wrong,” Stanley said, “that is the convention.”

“The convention is stupid,” Finny said, wanting to say more, to fight about it, to make clear how ridiculous she thought all his conventions were. She felt her family’s eyes on her, her mother’s smile like a barrier pushing her back.

“Speaking of ladies,” Laura said, giving Finny a meaningful look, “I’m not sure you’re acting like one right now.”

“Mom, if you had a penis, you would act like a lady.” Finny wasn’t sure what it meant, but she was so agitated that the words just spilled from her, like water from a cracked glass.

“That’s disgusting talk,” Laura said, and Finny noticed she was sucking in little breaths, about to cry. “And we—we were having such a nice breakfast,” Laura sputtered. “Why can’t you ever just let it be when things are going nicely?”

“Sweetheart,” Stanley said, getting up from the couch, walking over to her. “She’s nothing.”

What he actually said was, “It’s nothing,” but for some reason Finny heard him wrong.

Stanley put his hand on Laura’s shoulder. “Don’t you think it’s enough, Finny?” he said, holding his wife like a demonstration of all Finny had screwed up.

“This food tastes like burnt!” Finny screamed, and stomped out of the room.

“It doesn’t really,” she heard her brother telling her father as she walked down the hall.

There seemed to be something about her family that Finny couldn’t take in. Or maybe it was her family who couldn’t take her in. All their agreements and rules, rituals and defenses and bargains, it was all wrapped in a fog of mystery, a haze that Finny wasn’t sure would burn off in the light of experience.

Finny spent that afternoon in her bedroom, trying not to cry, then giving herself over to it in short, maudlin bursts. She stuffed her face into her pillow and howled, shook with tears. The thought of it, of how she looked, made her sick. If one of her parents or her brother had walked in during these brief concessions to grief, Finny probably would have hopped out the window, or pretended she was trying to suffocate herself. Anything to not be seen like this, so vulnerable, so compromised. She thought of herself like the white birch tree in her parents’ yard, which grew far away from all the other trees because it would wither in their shade. On its own, though, it flourished. She wanted to be like that, so odd and lonely and strong.

She thought of things she could do to get them. She could stick a knife in her shirt and spill some ketchup on it, so it would look like she’d stabbed herself. Or she could take one of her mom’s earrings and hide it and pretend Raskal ate it. Or stick pictures of women inside her dad’s great men books. But all these ideas seemed silly, a little clumsy. She could see them shaking their heads at her, like she’d tripped over her shoelace, or accidentally put her underwear on over her pants. She was hopeless, they’d think, a bum toaster or a wobbly table, something they’d just have to live with because they’d already shelled out the cash.

So she did the only thing that made sense to her. She ran away.

She headed for the sliding glass doors in the back of the house. She thought it might be tricky to get out without anyone seeing her, that her mother might ask her where she was going, or her brother would stop her to see if she’d been crying and she would have to make up some story about her allergies, or how she’d just gotten up from a nap. But the house was quiet. They were tucked into some rooms, somewhere, watching movies or reading or doing work. Sometimes Finny imagined her dad with his great men like a kid with his toy soldiers, lining them up and having them fight, making little machine gun noises with his mouth.

She slid the door open, stepped out, closed it behind her.

This was in the fall. She walked down the hill to the split-rail fence that surrounded the horse pastures behind her house. She started walking along the fence, in the high grass. Some horses trailed alongside her. It was cool outside, and she hadn’t brought a coat, just a little green sweatshirt she liked to wear, with a hood she sometimes tied so that only her nose and eyes stuck out. She called the sweatshirt “the green reaper.” The sun was low and bright in her eyes, and the air had that smoky fall smell. A breeze carried the musky scent of the horses to her every now and again, and also the smells of crackly leaves and dirt and grass and manure.

At the end of the fence Finny turned up the dirt path through the old vineyard that had been out of commission for years. On both sides of her some leafy vines wrapped a wire trellis, making a green wall that was just taller than Finny’s head. Plants sprouted from cracks in the hard soil, winding in with the vines. Finny loved coming here when she was by herself; this place had a magical feeling to her, like those hills she could just barely make out from her bedroom window. She kicked rocks and listened to the sound of her shoe soles scraping the dusty ground. She liked the noise of it, the bite of cold air on her face, her hands plunged warmly in the green reaper’s pockets.

She thought of her mother. It’s almost dinner, Laura said. Where’s Finny?

I don’t know, Stanley said. Sylvan! Do you know where your sister is?

She left the vineyard, walking away from her house. She went up the dirt road that snaked through some hills where cows grazed in the afternoons. This was as far up as she’d ever gone. But she kept walking. Past a decrepit horse barn with a sagging roof, the rails in front of its entrance collapsed so that they made an X. Past a little pond with a fountain in it that someone had made on his property. Finny could hear the water splashing. Inside the pond there were some exotic-looking birds the man must have also bought. They had long, pointy beaks, and black lines around their eyes. Their feathers were streaked with bright colors, purple and gold and green. They looked at Finny through their lined eyes, with serious, arrogant expressions, like the women in fur coats with big leather purses whom Finny had seen on Madison Avenue when she’d gone to New York. She spotted one of their feathers—a blue and silver one—on the grass beside the pond, and picked it up, put it in her pocket.

She walked up a steep hill that was covered in onion grass so it smelled like cooking. When she got near the top, where it flattened out, she saw a pasture on the other side of another split-rail fence. But this fence was in bad shape, bending under Finny’s weight when she tried to climb it. She was almost over when one of the boards cracked beneath her foot, and she let out a little scream and fell back.

Only she didn’t fall. Something stopped her. Held her. Eased her down onto the grass.

“Thanks,” Finny said, before she even saw who had saved her.

“It’s okay,” the voice said back, and when she turned around, she saw that it belonged to a boy. He was shorter than she was, and a little chubby in the face. His body was like none Finny had ever seen. It looked like a man’s, with broad shoulders and strong arms—but smaller, and with shorter legs. Like the kind of pictures you can mix and match—a man’s top half on a child’s legs.

“I just saw you coming towards that fence,” he said, “and I know it’s bad. I got hurt on it once. I was going to say something, but you were already on it.” He had a high voice, a slightly embarrassed way of speaking, that didn’t go with his man’s body at all. She noticed his cheeks got a little color when he talked to her.

“Thanks,” Finny said again, not knowing what else to say. She wasn’t sure if he was fishing for compliments.

But he just said, “Come on. I’ll show you the easiest way to get up there.”

They walked along the fence a little, and he showed her a place where two boards had cracked, so that all they had to do was duck a little to get under the top one.

“Easier to go under than over,” the boy said.

“Especially for you,” Finny said, not knowing why she’d said it. The words had just popped out—it was the way she liked to challenge people, to press a little and see if they pressed back. It seemed mean, though, and she wanted to say she was sorry. After all, he’d saved her life.

But he just laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I can fit in tight places.”

She still wanted to apologize, but he just walked on to the middle of the pasture, as if he’d forgotten what she’d said.

The middle of the pasture was also the top of a hill that overlooked the valley. The sun was almost down behind the trees now, and the sky was a crystal gray-blue color. They sat down without saying anything. The valley looked like a giant checkerboard of cornfields, forests, and fields. The land was spotted with barns and farmhouses, sectioned by dirt paths and meandering roads. Finny heard the distant shout of a farmer calling in his horses from the fields, and also some birds tweeting and the buzzing of insects.

“How do you know about this?” she asked the boy.

“I come up here a lot,” he said. “When my dad’s giving lessons. He teaches piano. We live down there.” He pointed at a little brown house, which looked from where they sat to be hardly bigger than Finny’s living room. “It’s kind of small,” the boy said, “so I like getting out if he has people.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No. Just my dad.”

“No mom?” Finny said.

“No,” the boy said, and left it at that.

“My name is Finny.”

“I’m Earl.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Earl,” Finny said, and held out her hand to shake. It was an imitation of the jokey, flirtatious way her mother sometimes introduced herself to men. But it was all she had.

He took her hand, though, and shook firmly. She noticed his palm was slick. And his round cheeks were still flushed.

“How old are you?” Finny asked.

“Fifteen,” Earl said. “I just turned.”

“I’m fourteen,” Finny said. “But I’d say I act at least sixteen.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s no one I like who’s under seventeen. Except my brother. Sometimes. When he’s not being a kiss-ass.”

“How old’s your brother?”

“Sixteen. We live way over there.” She pointed in the direction of her house.

“That’s probably nice. He’s in high school with you?”

“Yup. But he doesn’t like it. He thinks the work is too easy. He’s a nerd.”

Earl laughed. “I’m glad you like him, then,” he said.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer the question. He stood and walked a few steps away, a breeze pushing his hair off his face. Finny thought he looked better like that, without his hair hanging down on his forehead. She watched his boxy silhouette against the sky.

“My dad’s done,” he said, and pointed down to his house. Finny could see a car pulling away from it, a tiny spark of light from the setting sun reflected on its hood. There was another car in the driveway, a brown station wagon. Earl’s dad’s car.

“That was his last lesson,” Earl said. “I better go.”

Finny wanted to say something about how she’d had a nice time sitting with him, but she didn’t know how to do it without sounding foolish, like she was trying to get him to invite her over or something. She never wanted to seem needy, like she couldn’t make her own meal without the scraps of praise other people offered.

Then she remembered the feather—the blue and silver one she’d nabbed from beside the bird pond. She took it out of her pocket. “Here,” she said, and handed it to Earl. “I found it while I was walking. Have a good evening.”

Earl looked at it, then put it in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll treasure it always.” He took her hand, and helped her out of the grass. When she was up, he did something unexpected. He brought her hand toward his face. She was afraid he was going to kiss it, and she almost screamed to stop him. She hated the thought of some saccharine scene, a romantic farewell.

But all Earl did was brush the backs of her fingers quickly over his chin. She felt the scratch of his stubble. It was a strange gesture, a cross between a dog’s nuzzling and something a very old man would do.

Then he was off, headed back down the hill to his house. Finny went down the other side of the hill, under the fence in the place Earl had shown her. The crickets were chirping now. She went back through the hills, through the old vineyard, where she tried to find her scuff marks from walking before. But in the dim light she couldn’t find them.

When she was out of the vineyard, she started to run, back along the fence to her house. What the heck were you doing? she imagined her father saying. We were worried sick. I almost called the police.

It was getting cold. A dog barked—maybe Raskal—and then let out a long howl. Lights were coming on across the valley, speckling the countryside like stars. She ran toward her house, its windows aglow in the gathering dusk.

Inside, her mother was carrying a casserole dish to the dining room. “Wash your hands, Finny,” she said. “I was just going to get you.”

Chapter 2
An Important Introduction

She woke up with a tingly feeling on the backs of her fingers. His chin, she realized. All night she’d dreamed about it, the sandpapery feeling of his stubble against her hand. Again and again, she’d found herself stroking his face, like she was calming a young child. She couldn’t understand why that moment, that sensation, had made such an impression on her. She got out of bed, laughing a little at herself.

And as she waded into her morning, the day before did seem more and more like a dream. There was breakfast with her mother and brother. Finny didn’t like to eat in the mornings, but Laura always said, “If there is one meal that people expect you to eat, it’s breakfast.” So Finny force-fed herself a few mouthfuls of granola, toast with peanut butter. At the kitchen table her brother was reading a book of short stories by women writers for English class. When Laura asked him how it was, he said, “Good but not great.”

Then the ride to school with her father. Before they got out of the driveway, Stanley stopped the car.

“Oh,” he said, like he’d just remembered something. “I forgot to brush my teeth.” He clicked his top and bottom teeth together, then bolted out of the car.

Stanley came back in ten minutes, his suit jacket making crinkling sounds from the Pepto wrappers he’d stuffed in his pockets, his breath smelling like peppermint ice cream. They started driving. Sylvan was in the front, as always. He was reading his book of short stories.

“What are you reading?” Stanley asked him.

“Some stories for English,” Sylvan said. “All by women writers. They’re pretty boring.”

“‘There are no dull subjects,’” Stanley quoted. “‘There are only dull writers.’” He nodded at the book. “Mencken.”

“Are there dull car rides?” Finny asked.

When she got home from school, she walked back to the field where she’d met Earl. She passed the pond with the fountain in it, but this time the birds didn’t look so stridently colorful—just the usual blues and grays. She wondered if maybe she’d exaggerated to herself. The afternoon was overcast, and she had the hood of the green reaper over her head. Not tied tight. She didn’t want to look scary. When she got to the pasture where she’d met Earl, he wasn’t there. She looked down at his house, and there were no cars in the driveway. Not even the brown station wagon.

She felt suddenly depressed. Hugely, embarrassingly so. She had expected—irrationally, she realized—that he would be here, waiting for her, whenever she arrived. That she didn’t need to call or make a date. That, like in a book, he would know she was coming. But the world was never like the world in books. There were always these snags and bumps, these unexpected turns and abrupt disappointments.

She could have gone to his house. She could have knocked. But it seemed so far away. She felt foolish for all her misplaced hopes and expectations, like she’d gussied herself up for a party that was on another day. He’d probably forgotten all about their meeting already.

Walking back home, she felt as if she’d been holding a full basket and something had dropped out of it. She didn’t know what or where, but she knew it was important, weighty. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get it back.

She promised herself she wouldn’t go back the next afternoon. And in school she did a pretty good job of forgetting about Earl. She took notes in history class. Worked on a diorama about Ancient Greek theater during her lunch hour. In biology they dissected an owl’s pellet, which was a wad of hair an owl throws up after digesting its food. Hers had the skeleton of a mouse tangled in it, the tiny bones brittle as matchsticks. She wondered if the owl needed to swallow some Pepto after it ate that. She thought of joking to her teacher that she’d found some Cheetos and half a doughnut in hers. But there wouldn’t have been much point. Mrs. Alston would have just looked confused, read the package the pellets came in to see if there’d been a mistake.

“What are you going to do this afternoon?” Laura said when they got back home from school.

“Go for a walk,” Finny said.

She was just going to walk around their yard, by the horse fence, and maybe into the vineyard. But then when she was in the vineyard, she couldn’t resist going a little farther.

Up the road. Past the fountain. Over the hill.

The brown station wagon was there.

She thought of going down and knocking on the door of the little brown house. Hi. I’m Finny. Is your son home? Then Earl coming to the door. Oh, hi. But if he wasn’t every bit as excited as she was, it would kill her. She would literally drop dead in his doorway. Just to show him. There, now you clean up this mess. It would be embarrassing, but it wouldn’t matter because she’d be dead.

She decided it was too risky. She turned away. Headed back down the hill.

But then she heard something behind her. A voice. She didn’t turn around, though.

She heard it again: “Finny!”

Now she turned around, and he was standing there, just behind the fence, waving his arms over his head as if flagging down an aircraft. She laughed. Relief more than anything else. She wasn’t sure if she would have come back a third time.

“Earl!” Finny shouted, waving her arms like his. It would have seemed too playful, too familiar, with anyone else.

“I thought it was you,” he said when she got back up to the top of the hill. “I’m so glad you came today. I was worried all yesterday that you were going to come and I wasn’t going to be there.” His cheeks were flushed. “On Mondays my dad travels for lessons, and I usually go with him after school.”

Finny was about to tell him she did come yesterday, how she felt when she saw he wasn’t there. She could have told Earl that. But instead she said, “You’re lucky I didn’t.”

Earl smiled. He had a way, she’d learn, of softening under her pressure, offering up his belly the way a puppy would. When she kidded him or spoke sharply, he just laughed and went on. He seemed to trust in her good intentions. When Finny teased her mother, Laura puckered up her mouth like she’d eaten something sour. But here was this funny little half-man, the best audience she’d ever had.

“You wanna see my house?” Earl said.

“Sure,” Finny said.

When they got close to the house, Finny could hear the piano music. She didn’t recognize the piece, but she knew it was beautiful. Or thought it was. Something about the way it swirled and tumbled at you. She understood that her feelings about Earl might have influenced her reaction to the music. But she still allowed herself to believe this was the most beautiful music she’d ever heard. Much later, when she and Earl had to be apart for some time, she would go to a library and try to find the piece in their music collection. It was a sentimental gesture, but she knew that no one would ask her why she was doing it. She didn’t know anything about classical music or composers. She listened to dozens of albums. She tried to describe the piece to the music librarian: “It’s this cascade of notes. All piano. Just really full and happy, but with an edge of something sad.” And then she realized she was describing her own feelings, and stopped.

Now, though, she asked Earl, “Is your dad giving a lesson?” She hadn’t seen another car.

“He’s just practicing,” Earl said.

When Earl opened the door, the piano immediately went quiet. The instrument was enormous, probably eight or nine feet long, and it took up half the living room. It was kept against the shadowy wall opposite where Finny stood. In fact, the whole house was shadowy. Only a couple of little peephole windows punctured the wall to her right, and then one window in each of the two bedrooms, the doors of which were open. The house was decorated in dark colors, a brown and gold rug on the floor of the living room, beige shades, wood on the walls and floor, giving the place the look of a cabin. The light was dim, too, flickery like candlelight. In the kitchen there was a stove with some pots stacked on it, and the sink was full of dirty dishes. (It’s a sad but true fact that guests to your home will lose their appetites if they see a sink full of dishes, Finny’s mother once told her.) There was another door that presumably led to a bathroom. And that was the whole house.

“Dad?” Earl said.

“Yes,” the man sitting at the piano said.

“I have a guest.”

“No,” Finny said, “don’t stop because of m—”

But the man was already turning around. He was a short man, and when he sat up fully on the piano bench, facing Finny as he did now, his feet dangled just off the ground. (In order to play, he’d had to sit on the very edge of the bench.) He had a paunch, and the top half of his body was shaped like a summer squash. He’d combed a flap of wispy walnut-colored hair over his astoundingly pale scalp. His head was round as a basketball, and his lips pouted a little when he closed them, so that he seemed to have an expression of mock-seriousness or concentration on his face.

“Menalcus Henckel,” he said to Finny, and at first she thought he was casting a spell on her, the words sounded so crazy. His voice was high like Earl’s, though not as gentle. He had a touch more impatience in him. After he spoke, he did an odd thing with the corners of his mouth, moving them up and down, like he was switching between a smile and a frown.

Finny realized he had said his name, so she said, “Finny.”

She stood there, then, for maybe five seconds, in absolute silence, until Earl said, “We met outside up there.” He pointed in the direction of the hill above his house. “Finny lives in the neighborhood.”

“Very good,” Mr. Henckel said, like he was commenting on a piano exercise Earl had just finished, and then he performed three of his smile-frowns.

“So, Dad, we’re going to spend some time here, okay? You can just go on practicing if you want.”

“Actually, I’d love that,” Finny said.

Finny had trouble seeing Mr. Henckel in the dim light, but it looked like he was nodding. It also looked like he had his eyes closed. He was very still. And then all of a sudden his mouth dropped open.

“Earl?” Finny said. “Is your dad okay?”

“Yeah. You just need to give him one minute,” Earl said. “Let’s sit down and wait for him.”

They sat in the beige-cushioned chairs across from the piano in the living room. Mr. Henckel was slumped over on the piano bench. His flap of hair had come loose and was dangling over his ear. He breathed noisily, the air whistling in his nose.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Earl said, and Finny knew he was talking about his father.

“I’m having fun,” she said. Because she was. Entering into this family’s house was exciting for her, like peeping in the windows of a place she was told never to look. She’d been to other girls’ houses before, but they were always so neat, and everyone was so polite, and she could nearly hear Laura saying I told you so in the background. The friendships never stuck.

All of a sudden Mr. Henckel made a loud snorting sound. Finny let out a little yelp, but clapped her hand over her mouth in time to stop herself from making too much noise.

“So sorry, my dear,” Mr. Henckel muttered when he was awake, his hand darting to smooth the flap of hair back over his scalp. “You have to understand,” he told her in an almost pleading way, “it just comes upon me.”

She was delighted that Mr. Henckel had called her “my dear.” She said it was fine, that she needed a rest, too.

“Thank you for being so kind,” he said with four smile-frowns. “A lovely young lady.” She loved his formal way of speaking, calling her “my dear” or “young lady.”

“My dad was a professional piano player a while ago,” Earl said. “He played one time at Carnegie Hall.”

“Not a soloist, mind you,” Mr. Henckel said, correcting his son. “Just a kind of exhibition.”

“And he was once in the Tchaikovsky competition,” Earl said.

“And that, my dear, was very sadly the end of it all,” Mr. Henckel reported.

“Why?” Finny asked. It sounded like he wanted to talk about it.

“I fell asleep,” Mr. Henckel said. “During a rest in the piece. I couldn’t help myself. It just comes upon me.” Finny noticed his forehead shining. He took out a handkerchief and swiped at his brow. It turned out Mr. Henckel always sweated when he talked about himself.

“The judges didn’t know what to do,” he went on. “They thought I was in a very deep concentration. But then it just kept going and going. It was the first time it had happened in the history of the competition. After thirty seconds, they realized I was asleep and disqualified me. A pity. They said my performance was top-notch until then.”

“I’m sorry,” Finny said.

“Very kind, my dear,” Mr. Henckel said, and concluded his story with a smile-frown.

He then offered everyone coffee. It was his favorite drink, and he dosed himself with it constantly. His breath smelled strongly of coffee, and he treated the drink as if it were some vital drug.

“I sleep better when I have a cup before bed,” he confided at the kitchen table, where they sat next to the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Mr. Henckel mopped at his forehead with the yellowed handkerchief, which Finny was afraid might touch her, so she scooted back.

Earl served the coffee out of a silver pot, into white china cups. Despite the indifferent housekeeping, there were these odd flourishes in the house—a fancy coffee set, a piano that must have cost a fortune, some antique-looking furniture.

“My mother’s,” Mr. Henckel said about the coffee set.

“It’s very nice,” Finny said.

“I have decaf normally,” Earl said. “But since it’s a special occasion.”

“I’ve never drunk coffee before,” Finny said.

Mr. Henckel raised his cup and proposed a toast. “To our lovely young lady friend,” he said. And then seemed unable to help going on: “Who has every bright prospect in front of her, and appears more than wise enough not to squander them in the manner of some of her elders.”

They all clinked cups and drank. Finny nearly spit her first mouthful out, the taste was so bitter. But she swallowed it down, then asked if she could have some sugar.

“Of course,” Mr. Henckel said, and brought out a little silver dish of sugar from the cabinet, and a silver pitcher of cream from the refrigerator. “Forgive my rudeness, my dear.” He offered a smile-frown with his apology.

“It’s fine,” Finny said. “My mom says I act like I live in a barnyard.”

“Well, you live next to one,” Earl said, and Finny laughed.

“May I ask what distinguished family you come from?” Mr. Henckel asked.

“The Shorts,” Finny said. “But I’m not sure they’re distinguished. My dad quotes a lot of famous people.”

“So he is a man who knows history.”

“I guess.”

“Finny has an older brother,” Earl said.

“And what is this young fellow’s name?”

“Sylvan.”

“Perhaps you could bring him by one afternoon, and we could increase our eminent party by one.”

“Maybe,” Finny said. Though she knew what her brother would say about her new friends. Misfits. It was a word he’d picked up from Stanley, and he used it to describe anyone he didn’t approve of. But Finny had grown to like the word, and thought it was a pretty good description of how she saw herself. As someone who just didn’t fit. A square peg in a world of round holes. Earl and his father were the same.

“I’d like to meet Sylvan sometime,” Earl said, his cheeks glowing a little, “but it doesn’t have to be soon.”

“Okay,” Finny said.

Mr. Henckel had fallen asleep again. Finny heard his breath whistling in his nose.

“It’s usually not this bad,” Earl said about his dad. “I think he just got excited that you were over and it made him tired. I think he likes you. You’re very nice and interesting to talk to.”

“Thank you.”

Earl had a way, Finny saw, of building up the people around him. He’d done it before with his dad, when he’d talked about his piano playing, and now he’d turned his attention to Finny. It was a way of making people feel accomplished and important, and they immediately became comfortable in his presence.

“I think I should go soon,” Finny said, as she watched Mr. Henckel’s comb-over flop back down over his ear. “But I wanted to say bye to your dad.”

“It’s okay,” Earl said. “I’ll tell him. But you’ll definitely come back, right?”

“Of course,” Finny said. She hesitated. “But I was thinking. My parents might not like it if I’m coming over too much.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just how they are. They have to approve everything. But maybe there’s a way I can get over more.”

“What were you thinking?”

She told him her idea. It was as bold as she’d ever been with a boy, but something about Earl made her that way.

When she was done, Earl said, “It sounds great.”

Back at home Finny felt jittery from the coffee, and from the excitement of her afternoon, the plan she and Earl had hatched.

“Where were you?” Laura asked her.

“Just walking,” Finny said.

Chapter 3
Lessons

Stanley loved Bach. He’d been to the Tanglewood festival once and heard the Mass in B-Minor in a church, and since then he’d thought Bach was the greatest composer who ever lived. He had Bach records lined up in his study, a poster of the first page of the cello suites on his wall, and he talked about Glenn Gould, the Bach pianist, like he was a family friend. “Gould is tough,” he would say whenever the subject came up. “You have to take time to get to know him.” Sometimes he would play a brief recording for Sylvan and Finny, and they would have to sit there and pretend they were listening. Stanley would do a little conducting as the record played, working himself up feverishly in the crescendos. When the recording was done, Stanley would say “Bach” and nod.

He’d wanted Sylvan and Finny to be musical. They’d obliged by joining chorus. But Finny hated singing. She thought her voice sounded like a creaky gate, and her high notes were enough to make Raskal whimper. She hated being stuck up there, in the white turtleneck and black slacks they made them wear, howling out her part. The boy next to her used to stick his finger in his ear on the side Finny was on. “Am I that awful?” she asked him. “It helps me hear myself,” he said.

“I was wondering if maybe I could take piano lessons,” Finny said to her father at dinner on the evening she’d visited Earl’s house.

“Of course,” Stanley said, and she thought she saw his mouth tremble with pleasure. Sylvan stopped eating.

“If you practice enough,” Stanley said, “you might be able to play the Well-Tempered Clavier. Or at least the Inventions.”

“That would be great,” Finny said.

“Maybe the Goldberg Variations!”

“There’s a teacher I heard was pretty good. He actually lives near here.”

Sylvan was watching Finny, a little crease denting the skin between his eyes.

“How did you hear about him?” Stanley said.

“Through some people at school. He was in the Tchaikovsky competition.”

“Tchaikovsky,” Stanley said.

“I think he charges very reasonable prices, too.”

“Money is no issue in art,” Stanley said.

“It would be lovely if you learned to play a little for guests,” Laura said. “There is nothing in the world a party guest enjoys more than a recital.”

“Are there any more potatoes?” Sylvan asked. He was shaking his head at Finny, like she had suddenly decided to perform a jig on top of the dining room table.

“‘I don’t like to think much about my playing,’” Stanley began. “‘It would be like a centipede considering in which order to move its legs.’”

Nobody knew quite what to make of this, and they all just watched Stanley. In the silence, Raskal let out a small fart.

“Gould,” Stanley finally said, and for some reason this seemed to settle the matter.

So Finny began a routine of piano lessons. She went to Mr. Henckel’s house twice a week because, she told Stanley, she needed to get a good grounding. The lessons were supposed to be an hour, though with all they had to cover, they often lasted longer than that.

Usually the lessons began with a nap. Maybe five minutes or so. Finny sat at attention on the piano bench, and listened to Mr. Henckel breathe. Sometimes he snored. He had a deviated septum, he’d confided to Finny with a large number of smile-frowns. “It’s very unpleasant,” he’d told her, “but of course we all must accept the fates we are dealt.” He’d always come awake from his nap with a giant snort, and if Finny wasn’t ready for it, the shock of it might knock her off the piano bench. “Whoa!” Finny said when he did it. Sometimes she clapped. Then Mr. Henckel’s hand would dart to his head to fix his comb-over, and he would say, “So sorry, my dear. It just comes upon me.”

After this part of the lesson was done, there was usually a period in which Mr. Henckel told a story about his past. This was Finny’s favorite part of the lesson. The stories Mr. Henckel told usually centered on some embarrassing revelation about himself. In the first few weeks of lessons, Finny had already learned that Mr. Henckel had been born to a very wealthy family in Massachusetts, but was effectively disinherited when his parents learned that he was responsible for “the offspring of a nontraditional pairing,” as he’d put it. She’d also been informed that Mr. Henckel sometimes “salivated excessively” while he slept, and that he could never drive anywhere without Earl because if he fell asleep at the wheel, Earl would have to take control of the car and steer it to a safe resting spot—something Earl had become expert at doing. Mr. Henckel sweated so copiously when he told his stories that he had to continuously mop his face with the yellow handkerchief, and sometimes still a droplet would escape and roll down his cheek, fall to the floor. “So kind of you to listen, my dear,” he told Finny, though she could never say that she really had a choice. Mr. Henckel seemed compelled to confess.

After the story portion of the lesson it was usually time for Finny to play what she’d practiced since the previous lesson on her family’s upright Yamaha piano. Her father always said that their little piano had “good tone,” but it was nothing compared to the way Mr. Henckel’s grand piano reverberated in the tiny space of his house. It was magnificent, the sound of it. Yet it was like a magnifying glass on Finny’s technique, blowing up the tiniest faults until they were mammoth. Finny was not a good player. She knew it. She crossed her fingers and bungled melodies, missing notes or hitting two at once. Earl usually stayed in his room with the door closed, mercifully, during her lessons. Finny had a terrible time counting out rhythms, too. Nothing sounded the way it did when Mr. Henckel played it, and Finny had an uncanny ability to get a ragtime beat into any piece. She could make the Moonlight Sonata sound like a Scott Joplin composition.

When she was done, though, Mr. Henckel would say things like, “Very fine work, my dear. Just a little practice. That’s all it takes. A little practice and you’ll be performing Shostakovich at Carnegie Hall. It is not hard to ascend in life with the proper discipline.”

Finny thanked him for his kindness and gave him the check Stanley had written for thirty dollars. “A pittance,” Stanley always said about Mr. Henckel’s fee, which Finny suspected had been lowered for her.

Then they would break for coffee, which Earl would pour out into the china cups. He made regular for Mr. Henckel, and decaf for himself and Finny. Finny began to like the taste of the coffee, probably because her cup was filled mostly with milk and sugar. At some point Mr. Henckel would fall into a nap, and Earl and Finny would clear the cups away, then go into Earl’s room to hang out, or into the fields outside his house. They got to the point where they just went through these stages without asking each other; they’d grown comfortable that way, accustomed to their routine.

Once, walking in the hills, Earl said to Finny, “It must be nice having dinner with your whole family.” It was December, sunny and cold, a day after Finny’s school had let out for winter break. They were walking behind Earl’s house, by a little stream that trickled through some rocks. There were brittle shelves of ice over the water, which Finny liked to crunch with her feet as she walked.

“Sometimes,” Finny said. “But not as much as you’d think.” She felt bad the moment the words left her mouth.

But Earl didn’t seem to mind. “Why?” he asked.

The valley was quiet, and only the wind whistled in her ears. She thought Earl seemed down, and she felt the need—as would often be the case in their lives—to make him feel better.

“Because I always feel like I’m doing the wrong thing,” Finny finally said. It was something she had never tried to put into words. “I feel like I’m not the person my parents want me to be.” She felt a sharp pain behind her eyes, and realized she could have cried.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Earl said.

They walked on, up the hill to the pasture where they had sat together that first afternoon when they’d met. It felt like such a long time ago to Finny, though it had only been a couple months. Now Earl led the way. He had a silly shuffling walk when he climbed hills, because his legs were so short. Finny always laughed a little when he was in front of her, but she never let him see her doing it. It wasn’t out of meanness she was laughing. It wasn’t like the way she laughed when she fed Raskal under the table and her dad got angry. It was more like the way parents laugh at young children, or the way her aunt Louise laughed at her cats when they batted their toys around the living room. There was something warm and protective about it, tender actually, though Finny hated words like tender. She could never explain the feeling to Earl, so she kept it to herself.

It was getting dark. The sky was rolling to reveal its silver belly. Already, lights were coming on in the houses. These were the shortest days of the year, when night arrived at five o’clock and you woke up in the same darkness you went to bed in. Finny had to leave Earl’s house earlier and earlier so that she didn’t break her mother’s rule of getting home before dark.

“Are you cold?” Earl said.

“Not really,” Finny said. “We can stay out a little longer.”

They walked over the top of the hill and kept going, into a copse of trees that cast long shadows in the low sun. Finny’s face stung from the wind, and she sniffed a little because the cold was making her eyes tear up. She heard a twig snap under her foot, and Earl turned to see if she was okay.

“Nothing,” Finny said about the twig, though she’d felt a twinge of nervousness when Earl had turned around, as if he were going to say something important.

They kept on, feet rustling the tall grass. In the distance Finny saw some horses with blankets on their backs, walking toward a barn. Everything was quiet now. Earl stopped and turned toward her.

“I think anyone would like you,” he said.

“That’s nice,” Finny said, wanting to say more, but not knowing what.

“You must think my dad and I are strange.”

Finny was shaking her head, but all she could get out was the word “No.”

“I just want you to know how nice it’s been having you come over.”

“Earl,” Finny said.

Then he kissed her. It was the first time Finny had been kissed, and she felt his mouth like a warm fruit bursting on her tongue.

“I love you,” Earl said.

“I love you, too,” Finny said.

Then they walked back to his house.

Chapter 4
Harsh Consequences

That evening, when Finny got back to her house, her mother was at the sliding door in back. The sun had just set, and the purple sky was reflected in the glass. Laura’s shape looked like an apparition behind it.

Laura opened the door. “You’re late,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Finny said. “After my lesson I had to—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“But—”

“The first thing any person judges you on is punctuality,” Laura said with a severe expression on her face. Finny’s mother rarely got angry with Finny. She was more the type to sigh and leave a room than to yell at or hit her children. It was as if she didn’t want to risk getting tangled up with them, so she kept a careful distance. Several times, though, when some point of honor had been violated, when shame drifted like a storm cloud over the family, Finny had seen Laura furious. Her anger was much sharper and more enduring than Stanley’s bursts of temper, which went off like firecrackers and disappeared just as quickly. Laura got a sour, disgusted look on her face when she was mad, and she squinted up her eyes at you. It was how she looked now.

“It won’t happen again,” Finny said as she slid past Laura, into the house.

“No, it certainly won’t,” her mother said, speaking in a low voice, through her teeth, as if trying to hold something back behind them.

“I’m going to wash up for dinner.”

“Just wait, just wait,” Laura said, grabbing Finny’s arm and yanking it so hard Finny felt her shoulder nudging out and back into the socket.

They were in the mudroom, where Raskal slept and ate his meals. There was a smell like sawdust from his food. It always felt cold in this room, because of the tiles and the drafty door, and now Finny shivered. They faced each other.

“Listen to me,” Laura said. “You’re not having dinner with us tonight. You can eat in your room.”

“Why?”

“Because you need time to think about what you did.”

“What are you talking about?” Finny said.

“Your behavior,” Laura said. “This trickery.” She pronounced the word like someone in old Salem might have pronounced witchcraft. “Maybe a little consideration will make a difference.” Finny had heard grown-ups talk in this righteous way before, when they wanted to make it clear they were inconveniencing themselves for your sake.

“A difference in what?”

“Your morals,” Laura said.

“What’s wrong with my morals?” Finny asked.

And then something surprising happened. She saw her mother’s stern expression buckle, the way a very large and imposing building might buckle under certain strains. Almost instantly it collapsed. Her mother was in tears. Laura had a silly, hiccuping way of crying, and Finny had the impulse to pat her on the back.

“To think,” Laura said through her sobbing. “To think you were fooling us all this time.”

“Fooling you about what?”

“All your lessons. The freedom we gave you. It was our mistake, and now we must suffer for it.”

If she hadn’t been so angry at her mother, Finny might have felt sorry for Laura, who made it seem as if she had no part in the decisions that were made, as if the world simply tilted in certain directions, and she was a ball that rolled however the ground sloped.

“The worst part was what you did to your father,” Laura went on. “Getting his hopes up and toying with him that way. You could see how happy you were making him. All he ever wanted was for you to play Bach.”

“He liked my Bach.”

“And the whole time you were doing it just so you could go off and kiss that boy. He looks like he’s ten years older than you, Finny. I’ve seen him. He probably has a wife and child somewhere.”

Finny couldn’t imagine how her mother knew she had been kissing Earl. It happened less than an hour ago—she’d hardly become accustomed to the fact herself. And now it was being yanked from her, that memory, that moment, torn from her hands and trampled on.

“Earl is fifteen, Mom. Relax.”

“We let you come and go from this house, day after day. We didn’t ask any questions, because we trusted you. We thought you had our best interests in mind, the way a child should with her parents. But you didn’t care about anyone but yourself.”

“Who told you?” Finny asked.

“That’s not important. You lied to us.”

“I didn’t lie. I was taking lessons from Mr. Henckel.”

“You were taking lessons from that sexual predator. I can’t have you sneaking around already. It’s too early for that. Not that any time would have been good. But you’re fourteen years old, Finny. It’s not right. You’re lucky we found out. You’re going to be grounded for the rest of your vacation. No one could ever become a lady the way you’re going.”

“Mom, I want to be a lady about as much as you’d like to stick your head up Raskal’s ass.”

Laura let out a gasp like she’d been socked in the stomach. Her forehead was wrinkled, and Finny saw she was ready to start crying again. “What you don’t seem to understand, Finny,” Laura said, “is that I’m not doing this to torture you. I love you and I want the best for you.” Her voice caught when she said that, and then she did begin to cry.

When Stanley came home, Finny pleaded with him. She caught him in the upstairs hallway, between their bedrooms. Stanley had his suit jacket tossed over his shoulder, and was clearly on the way to “brush his teeth.”

“We can’t have you sneaking around,” he told Finny. “That’s the bottom line.” And then he quoted, “‘Happiness is a working of the soul in the way of excellence or virtue.’” He paused to allow the idea to penetrate, and seemed to contemplate whether to attribute the quotation. In the end he held off, probably because of the solemnity of the occasion.

“You have to understand,” Finny said. “I wasn’t lying to you. Please. Listen to me, Dad. I wanted to take lessons. I want to take them.”

But Stanley shook his head. “You can take lessons with someone else. And you won’t have the distraction of that deviant.”

“He’s not a deviant,” Finny snapped back. To hear Earl talked of that way was like having her hand slammed in a door. “And anyway, I’d rather be fondled by a deviant than have to listen to another one of your lectures.”

Stanley’s face colored, but he just shook his head. She could see he’d resolved to stay calm.

“Well you might just have your wish,” Stanley said. “You might not have to listen to me for a very long time.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need to go back to your room now.”

“Please, Dad,” Finny said, and felt her voice catch in her throat. She began to cry. There was no way to stop it. The tears just streamed from her, like she’d been slit open. “Please, please,” she kept saying.

And Stanley stood there, shaking his head, in a way that was now more sad than stubborn. She saw him through her tears, the hall lights like sunbursts in her bleary vision.

She spent the week and a half of her vacation at home, watching television and movies, flipping through mystery novels and comic books, trying to find a gap of time she could squeeze a call to Earl into. As long as she stayed inside, her parents let her be; they seemed busy with their own plans and discussions. Once, when Stanley was at work and Laura was out getting groceries, Finny dialed Earl’s number, and listened to the phone thrill once, twice, three times on the other end. An image of Earl’s house, the day the brown station wagon wasn’t there, flashed in her mind.

Then someone picked up. “Hello?” It was Earl’s voice, distant and awash in a tide of static. But still him. Earl. Happiness flooded her heart.

“Earl, it’s me. Finny.”

“Finny!” he said. He never held back with her. It was something she’d loved about him from the moment they’d met, the way he opened himself to her. She felt as if she could curl up in the space he’d given her. “I was so worried about you. When your mom called and said you couldn’t take lessons anymore. I didn’t know what happened.”

“My mom caught us kissing.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Finny said.

“When am I going to see you?” Earl asked. It was a question each would ask the other many times over the years.

“Soon, I hope,” Finny said. “But we’re going to need a new plan. I’m grounded now. They think I was sneaking around to get to spend time with you.”

“Well, you sort of were.”

“I know. But they have the idea that you’re a lot older and taking advantage of me.”

“Oh,” Earl said, and Finny could tell by how his voice sounded that he was blushing. He would always be reserved, and a little formal, about sex. She wished that she could reach through the telephone wire now and touch his face.

“But it’s okay,” Finny said. “They don’t understand that I like being taken advantage of.” It sounded like the kind of sexy thing a woman might say in a movie, and Finny laughed at the role she was straining toward: a heroine, some breezy beauty. It wasn’t her. She was just Finny.

“Listen, Earl,” Finny said, “I have to get off the phone soon. My mom is out buying groceries and if she catches me on the phone with you she’ll kill me and probably you, too. But I just wanted to say that I still love you, and we’re going to figure something out.”

This kind of talk, this saying I love you, it had felt so odd that first time, so desperate and dramatic. Making too much of herself. That’s the phrase that had come to mind, a phrase Finny had heard used to describe silly women, who cried and fretted over burnt omelets or stained rugs. But now these theatrical words— I love you, I need to see you—it took almost no effort to say them. When she was with Earl they came to Finny’s lips as naturally as hello and goodbye.

“I love you, too,” Earl said. “Still.”

·    ·    ·

Sometimes Sylvan visited Finny during her imprisonment. He was spending his vacation at the library, working on a paper about the Constitution and its belief in “the inherent goodness of man.” That’s how he described it to Finny, and she told him it sounded like something their dad would say.

“Maybe,” Sylvan said, a little defensively. “But only because it’s a smart idea. I thought of it completely myself.”

“I’m glad you’re using your powers for good.”

“Someone has to,” Sylvan teased her.

“And I definitely don’t want to be that person,” Finny told him.

Another time she had been crying. It was an embarrassing thing that happened to her every now and again over the course of that week and a half, and as usual, she tried to hide it. But since Earl had entered her life, she’d found that for some reason it was much easier for her to cry. Anything could start it. A pretty piece of music. The way the hills looked on a clear evening. She’d never understood why people cried so much—at the end of movies, or when they got a nice letter. But now she saw something about the world, about how beautiful things are always a little sad, too. She understood that, in a way, she was crying for Earl, but also for other things she had lost, or would lose. And she knew that this feeling, this endless, inconsolable longing, would forever be a part of her life, a part of what it meant to truly love. It was a vision Earl had given her without knowing it, and in the end she could never say whether it was good or bad, only that she had it now, and could never give it back.

A knock on the door.

“Go away,” Finny said through tears.

Another knock. “It’s me, Finny.” Sylvan’s voice.

She wiped her eyes on her shirt and let her brother in. He sat down on her bed.

“I’m sorry you’re having such a crappy vacation,” he told her. “This sucks.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to this. She was concentrating too hard on not crying, and the roof of her mouth hurt. She couldn’t tell why her brother was suddenly being so nice to her.

“Thanks,” Finny said.

“Mom’s just so pissed off. You know how she gets. Like the family’s future depends on it.”

She hadn’t heard her brother criticize their parents before. She stayed quiet, waiting to hear what he would say.

“I think she’ll get over it, though,” Sylvan said. “It’s just a boyfriend.”

“The thing is,” Finny said, “I can’t figure out how she knew.”

“There’s lots of ways,” Sylvan said. “Anyway, it’s only three more days. Then once we’re back at school, I think it’ll be over.”

“But they won’t let me take lessons with Mr. Henckel again.”

“Who knows? Maybe they will.”

She didn’t see why her brother was being so optimistic about the situation. Nothing ever worked in her favor with her parents.

“Would you do me a favor?” Finny asked her brother, since he was being nice. “I mean, if I needed it.”

“Sure, Fin. Anything.”

“If I want to get a message to Earl sometime, would you bring it to him? Like maybe a letter, or just something I tell you.”

“I could do that.”

“I don’t have anything right now. I just mean, it might be hard for me to talk to him sometimes.”

“He’s the reason you’re in trouble.”

“Yeah, well,” Finny said, and shrugged.

“Anyway, of course,” Sylvan said.

Then Finny began to explain where Earl’s house was, past the fountain, over the—but Sylvan stopped her.

“It’s more of a birdbath,” he said.

“How do you—” Then it hit her. She didn’t even need to finish the sentence. Sylvan must have realized, too, because his mouth hung open a little.

“I’m sorry, Fin,” he finally said, with an awful, sad look in his eyes. “I really am.”

Finny couldn’t wait for school to start again. It was probably the first time she’d ever felt that way. She had the idea that once she was back at school, once the machinery of her house was humming again, she would be a little freer to wander, to slip back into her own routines. She imagined phone calls to Earl, afternoon walks together. She looked forward to the first day of classes the way a traveler might look forward to a warm house after a long cold journey.

But the weekend before she was to go back to school, her father told her she was to pack a suitcase. “A change of plans,” he said. “We’ve been talking to the people at Thorndon. A boarding school. A very good one, actually. It’s in Massachusetts. They’ve agreed to take you in the middle of the year. I booked you a flight Monday. They’re just finishing their winter break.”

Finny’s mouth dropped open. She tried to think of words to fill the space, but all that came were empty breaths.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” Stanley said. “To make some changes. To get a new outlook, if you will.”

“I won’t,” Finny said.

“There’s not much of a choice, unfortunately,” Stanley said. “You’ve been testing the limits for a long time, Finny. And this took it too far. You just need a little time to get your priorities in order.”

“My priorities are in order.”

“A change in circumstances will be good,” her mother said. “A new setting always offers a young lady opportunities for growth. And besides, there really wasn’t anything else we could do, Finny. You didn’t leave us a choice.”

Finny was struck dumb by her mother’s words. Once again, she’d proven less than adequate in both her parents’ eyes, and she was paying for it. She didn’t know how to convince them of their mistake, so she cried and hollered and pleaded.

In the end, though, she packed her bag. Like her parents had said, there really wasn’t much of a choice.

She was still outraged by what her brother had done, telling on her, but she gave him a note she’d scrawled out to pass on to Earl as soon as Sylvan could. She saw now that her brother felt as horribly about what he’d done as she did, that he couldn’t have known what the consequences would be. And anyway, he was the closest she had to a friend in this house.

The note to Earl said: Sent to Thorndon School by my parents. Have to pack my bags and am leaving on Monday. I love you and I miss you and I will write to you as soon and as much as I can. Please don’t forget me.

Monday morning she left for Thorndon.

Chapter 5
First Impressions of the Thorndon School

The Thorndon School was nestled in a beautiful pocket of forest west of Boston, and from the cab window Finny could see shreds of snow along the sides of the driveway that led to it. The main building of the school was made of a kind of smoothed stone that had a blue-gray tint in the sun. Little crystals in the stones sparkled in the light. From the front, the building looked plain and square, with large windows that were darkened like sunglasses.

The cabdriver, whose pimply neck Finny had stared at the entire ride from the airport, dropped Finny by the front door, and she paid him, remembering to tip an extra dollar. The front door of the school opened when Finny pushed on it. It was a large wooden double door, with more of the tinted glass above each side. Finny wondered why they were so careful to tint all the glass, what could be so secret. When Finny got inside, the lobby of the school was so dark she could hardly see anything once the door swung shut behind her. The walls were made of gray brick, and there were some rectangular pillars that held up the ceiling. On her right a hallway extended into a shadowy space Finny couldn’t make out. A couple of exit signs provided the only light in the area where Finny stood, their green letters glowing like lamps in some medieval dungeon. Finny dropped her bags.

“Hello?” Finny said.

And then, to her surprise, a voice answered, “Hello.” The voice was distant enough to be her own echo, but it offered a much deeper and more resolute-sounding greeting than her own voice had. She couldn’t tell from which direction the voice came.

“Where are you?” Finny said.

“Who are you?” the voice said.

“I’m Finny.”

“Finny who?”

“Finny Short.”

“How old?”

“Fourteen.”

“From what state?”

“Maryland.”

There was a pause, and Finny wondered what the questioner had made of her answers. Then Finny heard a creak, and a door to her left and a little in front of her—which she hadn’t seen—opened. The door was down a couple of steps from where Finny stood, and now she heard someone coming up toward her, a determined footstep on each stair. She could make out some features of the figure that approached her: it was short and squat, with short hair, and it moved steadily and confidently. By the time the figure was close to Finny, illuminated by the green light of one of the exit signs, Finny was pretty sure it was a woman.

“Poplan,” the woman said in a rough voice.

Realizing this was probably the woman’s name, Finny said, “Finny,” once again, and held out her hand to shake, the way she’d been taught.

“Oh no,” Poplan said, “certainly not.”

They both looked down at Finny’s extended hand, which Finny soon dropped to her side again. It was cold in the building, and Finny crossed her arms in front of her.

“I hope you don’t think I just go around shaking unwashed hands willy-nilly.”

“I don’t know how you shake them,” Finny said.

“Really, common colds are among the most transmittable germs there are. You have to be vigilant,” Poplan said. “I refuse to fall victim to a cold that could have been prevented by simple hygiene.”

“Sorry, Miss Poplan,” Finny said again.

“What?”

“I said I was sorry, Miss Poplan. I won’t make the mistake again.”

“No, I mean what you called me. Miss Poplan. Don’t ever do that.”

Finny thought she had made the mistake of calling her miss when she was really a doctor—a mistake Finny had made with her parents’ friends more than once. “I’m sorry, Dr. Poplan,” Finny tried.

“No, no, no,” Poplan said. “Just Poplan. Nothing else. No miss or missus or lady. Just Poplan. That’s all I’m ever called.”

“Are you my teacher?” Finny said.

Here Poplan laughed. She had a wheezy laugh, like someone who’d smoked for many years. She laughed a little longer than Finny expected someone could laugh about that question.

Then Poplan said, “No.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m your dorm matron. Which means you’re going to live with me.”

Finny imagined this woman’s home like an extension of the dungeonlike space in which they now stood. “Do I get one phone call first?” Finny said.

Poplan didn’t register the joke. Instead, she walked very directly toward the wall to Finny’s left and snapped on a light switch. Two overhead lights flickered, then came awake, though the rest of the building remained in shadows. Finny could now see that Poplan had an ovular head, like an egg, and a very tall and thin nose, giving her a birdish look. Her hair, which was so many shades of gray that it looked like a painter had worked on it, wasn’t combed or finessed into any detectable style. It sat like a thatched roof on her head.

“We keep the lights off and the heat low during the breaks,” Poplan explained. “Saves energy.” Then she turned ninety degrees, with the definite direction of a soldier during a march, and said, “I’ll show you to your room.”

She picked up one of Finny’s bags and started walking into the dark hallway. Finny followed her, holding the other bag against her hip, struggling to keep up. “You know, they had a man to pick you up at the airport,” Poplan said as they walked.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Finny said again. “I looked for him, but he wasn’t there when my plane got in. We were very late. I took a cab.”

“I think he was in the bathroom when you landed. He came back and said you weren’t there. He thought you’d missed your flight.” Then Poplan laughed her long, wheezy laugh. “Scared the dickens out of him.”

They had to walk outside for a minute to get to the dorm, and the sudden cold gripped Finny. Poplan was only wearing a sweater, no jacket, but she didn’t seem to mind. She kept on her unshakeable path.

Fewer than a third of the students were boarders, Poplan told Finny, and it was a very small school to begin with, only fifty students in a class. The school went from eighth through twelfth grade, which meant that only about eighty girls were boarders. Finny would start in the second semester of the eighth-grade class—held back a year because the headmaster believed there was no substitute for a Thorndon education. Most of the eighth-grade girls were still getting their bearings anyway, Poplan said, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to slip in. The dorm Finny would sleep in, Pearlman, housed both eighth and ninth graders.

The dorm was much less striking than the school. It was a big brick house with about twenty rooms, most of them small and overheated, with gray-brown carpeting to hide stains. Poplan lived in a room on the ground floor, as did a few of the teachers. Finny’s room had two beds in it. There was a small window between the beds, and a desk and closet on each side.

“Your roommate is Judith,” Poplan said. “She’ll be back tomorrow. With all the other girls. They took you a day early so you could settle in.”

Then Poplan left Finny to herself. Finny spent the afternoon unpacking. She composed a letter to Earl about her new surroundings. I miss you already, she wrote. The school is very pretty but it’s lonely here without any people in it. And without you of course. But there’s a funny little woman who lives in the dorm and calls herself Poplan. I don’t know if it’s a first or a last name. (Who would name their child Poplan?) I’ll write you very soon, Earl. Love, Finny.

She folded the note and put it in an envelope she’d brought, but didn’t write Earl’s address on it because she was afraid someone would find it and ask about him.

She was curious about her new roommate, so she peeked into Judith’s closet. There was nothing surprising here—the usual sweaters and skirts and a couple of conservative dresses, all pastel blues and pinks. The only intriguing thing was a tube of black lipstick the girl kept on the top shelf of the dresser that was inside the closet. Finny opened the drawers of the dresser, and here she saw some interesting clothing. It was all black, even the stockings and underwear. The shirts had frills and lacy surfaces, and some of the pants were torn in ways that looked deliberate. It was as if two people shared this closet, one conservative, the other bold and exciting. Finny tried to imagine the girl who could wear both sets of clothing, and the only picture that came to mind was of Orthrus, the two-headed dog she’d learned about in Greek mythology. Oh, everything’s good, Mom, but my roommate’s an Orthrus.

She picked up the black lipstick to examine it more closely, and just as she did this, there was a knock on the door. Finny stuffed the lipstick into her pocket, not knowing what else to do, and then opened the door. Poplan was standing there, now wearing a shiny suit that looked like it was made of silk. It had some vines and flowers printed on it, and the kind of buttons you secure through loops of fabric.

“I always dress for dinner,” Poplan said.

“I do, too,” Finny said, and started off into the hall.

But before Finny got out the door, Poplan made a sound. Uh. A little catch in her throat. Finny stopped.

“Hands,” Poplan said, and nodded at Finny’s hands. “Don’t think that just because we’ve hit it off I’m going to fall victim to your germs.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“In life, you have to be vigilant,” Poplan said.

That night they ate alone in the dining hall. It was a cavernous room, with brown tile floors, stone walls, and pillars. Again, Finny had the feeling that she’d entered a medieval dungeon. Their forks clattered against their plates in the echoey space. There had been meals left for them—cold sandwiches and pasta salad and fruit salad and brownies. Poplan ate the way she walked, with focus and determination. She hardly spoke during the whole meal, except once to tell Finny it was nice having company.

Finny assumed that after dinner they would go their separate ways, but Poplan proposed a game.

“Do you know Jenga?” Poplan asked.

When Finny told her she’d heard of it but never played, Poplan challenged her to a match.

Before beginning, they each washed their hands twice, under Poplan’s orders. It turned out that Jenga was Poplan’s favorite game, and she played it with a competitiveness and relish that Finny had never witnessed before in an adult. The game consisted of poking little wooden blocks out of a tower and then placing them back on top of the structure. The first to knock over the building lost. When it was Poplan’s turn, she winked and lined up her index finger at a block the way a marksman might aim at a bull’s-eye. She then dislodged the block with a series of deft little pokes, always keeping a finger ready on the other side, to poke the block back in the other direction should the tower begin to sway. Finally, when the block came free and Poplan had placed it on top of the tower, she let out a long, tortured breath, as if she’d just dismantled a bomb.

They played on the floor in Poplan’s room, which was decorated in a surprisingly feminine way. The bed was covered in a pink duvet, and there were china animals on the shelves and the desk, the types of items young girls might buy at the mall as presents for their mothers. Finny kept getting distracted by the animals’ faces, a collie’s sad eyes, a parrot’s rainbow beak, the arc of an elephant’s trunk, and in truth, they freaked Finny out. It was like being watched by a band of loony cartoon characters. She knocked over the tower.

“Aha!” Poplan screamed, and shook her fist victoriously.

“Damn,” Finny said.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Poplan said. “No one has ever beaten me in Jenga.”

“I think I need to go to sleep.”

“All right,” Poplan said, and she seemed a little disappointed. “But there’s one thing.”

“What is it?”

“I hate to do this on your first night. I’m very sorry, but I’ve had orders, and one must obey one’s superiors.” She looked down solemnly, but with obvious determination to complete the task she’d been given.

“What are you talking about?” Finny asked.

“Oh, my life, my life,” Poplan said, shaking her head, and then got up and went to her closet. She opened the door and, after digging around a moment, brought out a purple T-shirt with green lettering on it that Finny thought was the gaudiest thing she’d ever seen.

“Like I said,” Poplan continued, “I’m very sorry. But they said you have a tendency to sneak around.” She handed Finny the shirt.

“After talking to your father last week, Mrs. Barksdale—the principal—she thought it might be a good idea to give you something bright to wear.” And then Poplan added, in a softer voice that seemed to betray the first hint of reluctance in her, “Every night after eight.”

Finny looked down at the shirt. On the front, in letters the color of pea soup, it said: Thorndon School. And on the back, in a message that must have been botched by the printer, it read: Shorty Finn.

Chapter 6
Finny’s Incredible New Roommate

The girls began arriving the next afternoon. Finny was in her room with the door closed, and she heard them in the halls, banging doors and suitcases, chatting, making familiar comments to each other: “Oh, it was fine, but Brian turned out to be a jerk anyway.” “Do you have any more, because I’m all out?” “Kelly says she’s got big boobs but her ass is fat.” Finny listened to all of it, feeling tired at the prospect of making her appearance, all the smiles and handshakes. She hated the idea of drawing all those hungry eyes to her, the scrutiny she was sure to receive. And then later, when she had to wear that stupid shirt: it would be humiliating.

But just as she thought of getting off the bed and going out into the hallway, the door of her room swung open.

A girl with a big black duffel came in and threw the bag down on the floor. “Oh, hey,” the girl said, shutting the door behind her. “You must be my roommate.”

“Finny,” Finny said.

“That’s an interesting name,” the girl said. “Is it Irish?”

“No,” Finny said, and couldn’t gather her thoughts to say anything more. The reason she was so scattered was that the girl who stood before her was beautiful. She wasn’t just cute or pretty, the way some of Finny’s classmates at home were. She had long blond hair that she kept back in a ponytail, tied up with a simple black band rather than the colorful, poofy ornaments other girls wore. She was tall, maybe four or five inches taller than Finny, and she had a bright, open expression, large eyes, a slightly wide jaw that somehow complimented her delicate nose and defined cheekbones, her plucky little chin. And she had breasts, full ones. She was actually more like a grown woman than a girl, and Finny could easily have imagined her on the arm of some handsome man in a suit.

“Oh,” the girl said now about Finny’s name. “Well, I like it anyway. I’m Judith.”

The instant Judith said her name, Finny remembered the lipstick she’d stashed in her pants pocket the day before. She felt a hot gulp of fear slide down her throat.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Finny said. And then: “I took your lipstick.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say, and she figured it would be better to get it out of the way early that she was a thief.

But Judith just laughed and flopped down on her bed across from Finny. “You mean the black one? Actually, I’m glad you took it. I meant to put it in my dresser before I left, but I forgot. They would have seen it.”

“Who?”

“Old Yeller. That’s what we call the principal, Mrs. Barksdale.”

“Why?”

“Take a guess,” Judith said.

Finny didn’t have a response to this, so they sat for a moment in silence. Then Judith said, “I was living alone before break. Actually, I’m in ninth grade.” The way the girl began her sentences with the word actually, it sounded like she was correcting some unheard person. “You’re in eighth, right?”

Finny nodded. “Unfortunately.”

“When they said a new girl was coming, I volunteered to have you stay with me.”

“Thanks a lot,” Finny said. “But how did you get to choose?”

“My parents are on the board,” Judith said, and then blew at a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. Finny was captivated by her movements, her ease in these strange surroundings. “It just means they give a lot of money,” Judith went on. “You might have seen the Turngate Auditorium? That’s my last name. Turngate.”

“I’m sorry you had to give up your room,” Finny blurted out. She felt clumsy in the presence of big graceful Judith.

“Like I said, I wanted a roommate. My last roommate left all of a sudden, and it was lonely. Actually, I’m very glad you’re here.”

“Why’d she leave?”

Judith shrugged. “Family stuff. By the way, why are you here? I mean, why’d you come in the middle of the year?”

“I got in trouble,” Finny said.

“What kind of trouble?” Judith asked. “Boys?”

“Actually, yes,” Finny said. She was already beginning to talk like Judith. The girl’s pull was that strong, like a huge planet on a tiny pebble.

“Did you get caught doing something?”

“Sort of.” Normally Finny wouldn’t have answered any of these questions. She would have shrugged, or made a smart comment about what she got caught doing. But she felt compelled to give Judith what she asked for. Finny wanted so badly to please her, to win her approval. She could see that Judith must have been used to having that effect on people. “I started taking piano lessons so I could see this boy. Then my parents found out.”

“And what happened?”

“I got sent here.”

“No. I mean, what happened with the boy?”

“He’s at home. We’re still in love.”

Here Judith let out a squeal of pleasure. “How wonderful,” she said. “Have you written him?”

“I just sent him a letter this morning.”

“Hm,” Judith said, frowning. “Well, you have to be careful about that. Old Yeller will check mailboxes.”

“Really?”

“But she won’t check mine. How about you have your boyfriend send the letters to my mailbox? And then I’ll hand them off to you. I promise I won’t peak at anything. Unless you let me.” Judith was glowing. Finny loved the way their strings were crossing, how they were winding into each other’s lives.

“Thanks,” Finny said.

“Nothing,” Judith said, in a way that sounded faintly European to Finny, though Finny had never been to Europe. “So what did you do last night?”

“I ate dinner with Poplan. Then we played Jenga.”

“Oh, so the Pussy Popper got you to play already?”

“It wasn’t that bad. The only dumb thing was this shirt I have to wear so I don’t run away.”

“Shirt?”

Finny got up and went to her closet, pulled out the shirt. She put it on, and modeled it for Judith, striking a sassy hand-on-hip pose, the way she used to when she was modeling her rat’s nest for Sylvan. Finny was beginning to feel comfortable enough with her new roommate that she could joke like this, strut around and make faces, twist up other people’s behavior into these absurd shapes.

Judith laughed at Finny’s display, so hard she fell back on the bed and hit her head against the wall. “Ow,” she said, then laughed some more. Finny kept dancing, enjoying how silly she and Judith looked together.

“Shorty Finn,” Finny said. “It’s like a deformed shark.”

After a while Judith stopped laughing. “Actually, that’s terrible,” she said. “The shirt, I mean. I’m so sorry they’re making you wear that. But I think I can take care of it.”

“How?” Finny said.

“You’ll see.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, until it was time to go down to dinner. When they had gotten their coats on and were all ready to go, Judith said, “Oh, by the way, I know you went through my dresser, and it’s okay.”

Finny was going to deny it, but then she wondered how Judith knew. Were there video cameras in the room? Was she psychic? Finny could have believed this girl possessed almost any powers. Maybe the CIA was working for her.

“Actually, I wasn’t sure,” Judith said. “But now by the look on your face, I am.” She laughed. “Don’t worry. Like I said, it’s okay. Actually, I would do the same. No one stops at the top of the dresser.”

That evening the dining hall was a completely new room, alive with the bustle of eighty girls. Finny could hear their shouts and chatter even as she came down the stairs. Judith was next to her, and by the way everyone watched them, Finny could tell that Judith held a privileged position in the school. Judith introduced Finny to some girls as they picked up their trays—one named Nora who lived on their hall, and another named Jean who was downstairs—and though Finny’s head was swimming, she loved their faces, their smiles and timid, sweaty handshakes.

Judith and Finny sat down at an empty table, which soon filled up around them. They talked about so many subjects that Finny would have trouble recalling them later: hair products, favorite stores, dishes to avoid in the dining hall, what people did over vacation. Judith pointed out people to Finny. There was an upper-form girl named Cynthia Bunswaggel, whom they called Bum Wagger because of the way her ass swayed when she walked. There was a girl named Yasmin Pitzer, whom they called Pits of Death because she didn’t shave under her arms and had BO. Tasha Nolan was the Jackhammer, because of her percussive laugh.

In the far corner of the room was a woman that Judith identified as Mrs. Barksdale, the Old Yeller. She wore a bright red blazer, and her stringy hair was dyed a light orange color, as if she’d been going for blond but hadn’t left the dye in long enough. She was so skinny that Finny could see the muscles tensing in her face and neck when she ate, and a vein that pulsed in her forehead. There was something animal-like about her, like a starved and aggressive dog.

When they were eating dessert, the Old Yeller got up and came over to Finny’s table, which became instantly silent.

“Hello, young lady,” the Old Yeller said to Finny. “I’m Mrs. Barksdale.”

“Hi,” Finny said.

“We’re happy to welcome you to our school. I hope you’ve settled in okay?”

“Yes. Thank you very much.”

“And Poplan told you about your dress code?”

Finny nodded. She was struck by Mrs. Barksdale’s voice, which seemed strained and nasal, like air pinched from the neck of a balloon. It was an almost inhuman pitch, and it cut through all the background noise in the room.

“Then I will see you at the check-in this evening. I expect you’ll be there?” She made this last comment with a small laugh, as if she were on to Finny already. And then she tucked her chin to her neck and gave Finny a long look.

“That was odd,” Finny said when Mrs. Barksdale had left.

“Actually, that was a typical Old Yeller moment,” Judith said. “No one knows what she’s thinking.”

After dinner and an hour and a half of free time, which the girls used to unpack but which was normally reserved for homework, all of the girls in the dorm were called to line up in front of their rooms for check-in. Judith had been out in the halls, catching up with friends. Finny hadn’t seen her since dinner, though now she took her place next to Finny. They were the first ones in the hall, and Finny wondered where everyone else was.

Then the girls came out of their rooms. Finny was shocked at the sight of them. She looked at Judith, who giggled. Finny couldn’t believe what was happening.

The reason Judith was laughing was that all of the girls were wearing purple T-shirts. They looked exactly like Finny.

“What is this?” Mrs. Barksdale shouted, her voice high and grating, like nails scraped against glass. Finny had to put her hands on her ears.

When she took her hands down, Judith said, “You see what I mean about the nickname?”

Chapter 7
Finny and Judith Find Ways to Entertain Themselves

Classes began the next morning. They were all the subjects Finny was used to, but the Thorndon School called them by different names. English was “communications,” history was “humanities,” and math was called “SMP,” for some reason related to the textbooks they were using. But once Finny got used to the titles, the courses were standard. She’d always been a decent student—not A’s, but usually high B’s—and here was no different. In truth, the classes were what engaged the least of Finny’s energies in her first semester at Thorndon.

Finny’s real life began at three o’clock, when the final class let out. She’d go first to her room, to drop off her bag and check for letters from Earl. Finny had asked Earl to start addressing his letters to Judith, and Earl didn’t mind. He always included a very polite note to Judith wrapped around his note to Finny: Thanks again, Judith, for delivering this letter to Finny. I hope I’ll meet you sometime. You sound like a very nice and considerate person. Sincerely, Earl Henckel. Judith had gotten in the habit of leaving the letters on Finny’s pillow during lunch, since Judith got back to the room later in the afternoon because of basketball. (She was the center on the JV team.) Sometimes she told Finny how sweet Earl seemed, and how she couldn’t wait to see them together.

“You must be the most adorable couple,” Judith said, and though Finny liked the sentiment, she had the odd sensation her friend was talking about people much younger than herself.

“Cute as a button,” Finny said, and Judith laughed. She could tell now when Finny was being sarcastic, and she seemed to get a lot of pleasure out of Finny’s cranky comments.

Earl’s letters to Finny were as sweet and careful and encouraging as Earl was in person. Finny! he always began, and she could picture him that day he yelled to her and waved his arms like he was signaling an aircraft. That excitement, that joy, he didn’t try to contain it. He told her the news about his life, about school and his afternoons and Mr. Henckel, the words seeming to just pour out. My dad was a little depressed after you left, Earl confided to Finny in one letter. He’s been falling asleep a lot lately at the dinner table and during his lessons. One time he actually fell asleep onto a student, which was awkward. I think he got used to our afternoons together. He always asks me if you’re going to come over for coffee sometime. I didn’t really tell him everything that happened, because I didn’t want him to know you got in trouble. I hope that’s okay. I know he just misses seeing you, like I do. Those were fun days, weren’t they?

When she read it, Finny started to cry. “Damn,” she said to herself. She meant to stay happy, skim along the surface of her days at Thorndon. But every once in a while a memory snagged her. The letter was getting speckled with tears, so she put it away.

But most of the time she was happy. Days were bright and cold and fast. Once Judith got back from basketball, panting and sweaty, they’d shower in two stalls next to each other and talk about their days, their voices reverberating off the tiled floors and walls. They’d go to the dining hall together, eat with Brooke and Mariana and Simone. Then they’d do homework together in the study room until check-in.

Now that they were into the semester, Poplan did the check-in instead of Mrs. Barksdale. At night Poplan wore a kimono. She lined the girls up, and after calling each one’s name, she made them wash their hands with soap and warm water. “For your own sake,” Poplan said. She fought colds with a military vigilance, and at the first sign of a sniffle or a sore throat, she would quarantine a girl in the guest room for a week. “There’s no negotiating with a fever,” she would inform the girls. “Your lives are in my hands.”

Finny’s favorite time was the night, once she and Judith were shut up in their little room together, the hallway dim, the black sky pressed against their window. There was a cozy companionship to these moments, a luxury of time, as if life spread out before them, an endless and dazzling sea. She felt such exhilaration in Judith’s presence that Finny had to check herself from becoming too giggly, too overwhelmed with pleasure. So she fell back on her wry delivery, that deadpan way of making jokes. It was the sense of humor Finny would hold on to, even as an adult.

Judith seemed to know everything about everyone in the school. She stood a head taller than most of the girls, and there was a kind of authority in her walk and demeanor. At night Judith told Finny all the gossip, about who’d snuck off with which boys at the last dance. About the girls who stuffed paper in their bras. And other things. More intimate, sexier things than Finny had ever heard talked about before. Judith told her about how Cynthia Bunswaggel had once gotten her period when she was in bed with a guy, and in the morning he’d woken up in a puddle of her blood and thought she was dead. And Halley Klein, who put condoms on carrots and used them to masturbate, only one time the carrot broke off and Halley had to go to the nurse to get it extracted.

Teachers, too. They weren’t safe from Judith’s swath of knowledge. Finny had heard the music teacher singing opera at night in her room, and when Finny told Judith how beautiful it was, Judith said, “It’s because she uses a vibrator. She sings to cover up the sound.” Which Finny found hard to believe. She wasn’t even quite sure how a vibrator worked, but she started listening for the sound of it beneath Mrs. Polczek’s singing. Poplan dated women, Judith said. She never brought them around because she was afraid of losing her job. For some reason Judith didn’t like Poplan, Finny had discovered. But when she asked why, Judith just shrugged and said, “She’s not my type.”

Finny never knew how much of Judith’s stories were invented, or exaggerations of what had happened, tales that had been dressed up by so many tellers that it was impossible to make out their original shapes. But under the canopy of Judith’s voice, a garden of images and incidents bloomed. The world of Thorndon became alive and teeming with secrets.

Then there was the game. When Finny thought back about it, she wasn’t sure exactly how it had started, but it became a pattern that every couple nights one of the two girls would offer the other a dare. They alternated dares. It began simply enough. Go outside the room after lights out. And then the next time: Go outside after lights out and say the word “penis” in the hallway. Each time a step further, a little more dangerous. Stay outside for five seconds. Do it with your pants off.

Finny no longer had to wear the purple shirt because Mrs. Barksdale realized that she couldn’t make a rule that none of the other girls could wear purple shirts. So Finny felt a little freer at night. Some nights they both put on Judith’s black clothing, and her lipstick, called each other “draculady” and “phantom” and snuck into other girls’ rooms to show off their looks. Judith’s “dark” wardrobe was extensive, and she told Finny that when they were in the upper forms they’d go to clubs in New York where they could wear these clothes “for real.”

They talked about their lives at home. Finny told Judith about her mom’s social pointers, her dad’s lectures and the way he popped handfuls of Pepto like an addict.

“They sound funny,” Judith said. “I’d love to meet them sometime.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Finny said.

“No, really. I mean it. On some break. I could come visit.”

“You could come during spring break if you wanted.”

“It’s settled, then,” Judith said. “I’m going to Shorty Finn’s house for spring break.” Here Judith got up and pulled Finny off her bed by the arms. They did a little ballroom dancing routine they’d made up just for fun, Finny dipping and spinning Judith. When they came together in a final embrace, Finny felt the curves of Judith’s womanly body pressed against her own childish frame.

“Oh great,” Finny said. It sounded like the flat way she delivered punch lines.

Judith’s explanations of her own family were a little harder to make out. It seemed she didn’t really spend time with them the way Finny did with hers. Her parents didn’t talk to each other anymore, Judith said, except when it had to do with money or plans for Judith. Her mom and dad lived in separate parts of their apartment in New York—“wings,” Judith called them, “separate wings.” They lived on the Upper West Side, in a building called the Beresford, which Judith said was one of the fanciest buildings in New York.

“If you tell anyone in New York that you live in the Beresford, they’ll think you’re a snob.”

She said that most of the other people in the building were famous, or at least old and rich. She saw movie stars in the elevator, and once Peter Jennings had given her a ride in his car. The lobby of the Beresford was like a museum, with chandeliers and antique end tables and Oriental rugs. If you tripped and fell, you might break ten thousand dollars’ worth of furniture in one clumsy swoop. (Finny of course imagined she’d be the one to do that, if she ever visited.)

“But it’s all terribly boring,” Judith said, in a way that made her sound much older. “All the smiling and bowing doormen. It’s so stupid.”

“It sounds very glamorous to me,” Finny said.

“Well it’s not.”

This was the first time Judith had gotten agitated with Finny. Finny heard her friend’s mattress creaking as she adjusted positions. And she wondered: Why would Judith make such a big deal of all the chandeliers and riding in Peter Jennings’s car if she hated it so much?

“My dad has a girlfriend,” Judith said.

“You mean a lady he takes out?” Finny was trying to get a grasp on this strange world.

“No, I mean a woman who looks like my sister. I mean, she’s twenty-five or something. But she actually comes over. While I’m there. He doesn’t tell us, but I’ve heard them together.” Judith had dropped her aristocratic way of speaking. She sounded like a child now.

Finny was about to ask what she heard her dad and his girlfriend doing, but then she realized. “Oh,” she said. “That’s awful. What does your mom do?”

“She gets on boards.”

“What do you mean?” Finny pictured the woman on table-tops, swatting at her husband with a broom.

“I mean, like at Thorndon. Or different museums. Pretty much anything she can throw a lot of money at. I don’t even think she knows all the boards she’s on.”

“Well at least she’s being generous.”

“Tell me about your brother,” Judith said, and Finny understood she was trying to change the subject. “Actually,” Judith went on, “I don’t even recall his name.”

In Judith’s company, Finny felt as if she moved behind a protective shield. Even Mrs. Barksdale mostly left her alone, though Finny heard her yelling at other girls numerous times. Giving it to them, Finny and Judith called it. Old Yeller is giving it to someone. Mrs. Barksdale would start at a medium volume in her rasping, discordant voice, and as she gave it to some student—who’d shown up late for morning meeting, or swiped some fruit from the dining hall—her voice gradually rose to an almost frenzied pitch, a feverish screech. She couldn’t help herself, and Finny always felt sorry for the girls who were singled out. By the end the student would be holding her ears as Mrs. Barksdale shrieked and squealed. It was such a harrowing, bewildering display that students often began to cry, they were so traumatized by the effect they’d had on this woman.

Students were allowed to eat outside of the dining hall for lunch, and Finny and Judith began sitting in the hall in front of the library. Soon Brooke and Mariana and the others joined them. One time, during lunch, Chayla brought a cupcake out of her lunchbox with a candle in it, and Judith took out her lighter and lit it. She kept her hand cupped around the flame. It was Finny’s birthday, and they sang to her.

“How did you know?” Finny asked when they were done singing. They’d never told each other their birthdays.

“I have my ways,” Judith said. “But blow it out before Old Yeller sees.”

That night a present arrived from Earl: a box of instant coffee. Not the same, he wrote, but maybe it’s enough to hold you over until I see you.

In February, there was a parents’ weekend, when Stanley came to visit. Laura stayed at home with Sylvan; Finny suspected it was because her mother was still angry at her over Earl. Stanley attended a few of Finny’s classes on Friday, ate lunch with her in the dining hall, took Finny and Judith to dinner in Boston. (Judith’s parents hadn’t come.) By the end of the weekend, he seemed satisfied with the school he’d placed Finny in, though he left her with an oddly solemn quote: “‘A useless life is an early death,’” he told her as he was getting into his cab. Then yelled, “Goethe!” just before slamming the door.

At night, after Stanley’s visit, Finny and Judith kept going with the dares. Run naked all the way from our door to Claycie’s and back. Put a love letter on Amanda’s welcome mat. Shout the word “boner” so I can hear it with the door closed. And on and on. They spurred each other with their laughter and pleased looks. Later, Finny would recognize that it was a kind of flirting, not necessarily sexual, but a testing of boundaries, of how far each would go for the other, how much they would risk. To go out in the hall, to shout something disgusting, to wait—it was all a way of saying, See, look what I’ll do. To keep the game going, to avoid piercing this lovely dream. And what Finny hated to admit—but had to, when she thought back on those nights with Judith—was that there was a desperation in it, in her. She was clinging to what she saw as her new life. Far from being that beautiful lonely birch in her parents’ yard, Finny’s branches were entangled with Judith’s, and she wasn’t sure she would ever be set free.

One night Judith asked her to do something Finny had to think twice about. It wasn’t that the act was particularly dangerous, in the sense that she was likely to get caught. It wasn’t so much more daring than the dozen other stunts they’d pulled in the last couple weeks—sliding condoms that Judith had bought under the door of a sallow-looking girl named Pam, whom they called the Ice Chest; singing a full chorus of “My Girl” after Poplan had gone downstairs. But this time there was a question in Judith’s dare: Would you go this far for me? Judith knew that Finny liked Poplan. She knew this would raise issues.

The dare was that Finny had to slip a note that Judith had written under Poplan’s door. Not such a difficult thing. Finny would be the last person Poplan would suspect. They’d become friendly, to the point where Poplan had let Finny sample the cache of Asian food products she kept in her dresser: shrimp chips, salted plums, cans of fruit with names like longan and rambutan. Poplan didn’t even watch Finny when Finny washed her hands at night; she trusted her that much.

What bothered Finny was the message Judith had written: I want your pussy. Nothing else. No signature, no instructions. Just those four words. At the time Finny couldn’t say exactly what she felt was wrong with this, why this was a different sort of joke. She didn’t have the words to explain what Judith was asking her to do, what loyalties she was testing.

“She’ll think she has an admirer,” Judith said.

“Or a stalker.” Finny wondered if there was a way she could play this, if she could make just the right jokes, put it in just the right light to force Judith to see how foolish the request was.

But Judith didn’t budge. “Are you worried the Pussy Popper’s gonna come after yours?”

Finny laughed. “Not gonna pop mine,” she said. She wasn’t going to let Judith faze her.

“Then you’re in?”

“Where’s the note?”

Chapter 8
A Trip to the Principal’s Office

Two notes for Finny the next day.

The first was in her mailbox in the morning:

Dear Finny, the letter began:

I am writing to express what a wonderful and happy time I enjoyed with you and your new friend, Judith. I am extremely pleased that you are finding such a satisfying life in your new environment, and such a worthwhile group of friends. I would have trouble explaining all my feelings in a letter, but I want you to understand that I am proud of you, and think very highly of the young woman you are becoming.

Also, with regards to your question about Judith visiting over spring vacation: that is fine by us. We will be pleased to introduce her to the modest intellectual bastion we have maintained here at 2026 Geist.

This is the bulk of what I wished to tell you, but I feel that it may be appropriate to conclude the letter with a quotation, if you will permit the indulgence. (I will modernize spelling for your convenience.)

“Continual success in obtaining those things which a manfrom time to time desires, that is to say, continual prospering, is that which men call FELICITY.” (Hobbes)

With tenderest feelings,

Stanley et al.

Finny read the letter twice. In spite of the stilted language and awkward sentiments, in spite of even the fact that the quote used the word man to mean people, Finny was touched. It wasn’t so much the words as the feelings she recognized behind them. She felt a rush of love for this man she’d always been wary of.

In her letter back to her father Finny wrote: I love you, Dad. Thanks for saying those things. I had a wonderful time with you, too. Can’t wait for the vacation.

The second note of the day was stuck on Finny’s door when she returned from classes. At first she thought it was a letter from Earl, and wondered why Judith would put it up where everyone could see. Then she saw the handwriting. In very neat script, the envelope read, Delphine Short. No address. Inside, in the same tight script, there was a brief note: Mrs. Barksdale requests that you report to her office immediately upon returning from classes.

Her faithful secretary,

Miss Filomena Simpkin

Finny walked into Mrs. Barksdale’s outer office at three-fifteen. Her secretary, Miss Simpkin, was seated at the desk, typing out a letter. She had a dainty way of pecking at the keys, odd for such a large woman. Miss Simpkin was entirely shapeless, her body like a tower of mashed potatoes or a bowl of pudding, and she seemed to flow over and around the chair she sat in. She wore a matching sweat suit every day—today’s was olive-colored—and her only attention to fashion seemed to be in the small white flower she kept tucked behind her ear.

“I got a note to see Mrs. Barksdale,” Finny said.

“I wrote that note,” Miss Simpkin said. Her voice was deep and husky.

“Then, does she want to see me?”

“I don’t know what she wants. I only know what she tells me. She told me to write that note. I can buzz her and see, if that’s what you’re asking me to do.” Miss Simpkin had a way of making everything you said sound like an impertinent request.

“I’m just coming because you told me to,” Finny said.

“Mrs. Barksdale told you,” Miss Simpkin corrected. “I am just the messenger. She is the voice.”

“Okay. But is this the right time?”

“Would you like me to buzz?”

“Only if I’m supposed to be here.”

“Nothing can be discovered until I buzz.”

“All right, then, buzz,” Finny said. “Please.”

“Then I will buzz,” Miss Simpkin said.

She made an elaborate show of buzzing, pointing her index finger upward, then steering it down onto the button like a crashing spaceship. Finny could hear the phone buzz loudly in Mrs. Barksdale’s office, which was hardly five feet from where Finny was standing. The office windows were covered by blinds, but Finny could see Mrs. Barksdale’s wiry shape behind them.

“Yes?” Mrs. Barksdale’s voice crackled on the speaker-phone. Finny could also hear her through the wall.

“Miss Short is here to see you,” Miss Simpkin said. Then she looked at Finny and added, “She seems impatient.”

Finny frowned.

“You can send her in,” Mrs. Barksdale responded.

Finny muttered, “Thanks,” and walked into Mrs. Barksdale’s office.

Mrs. Barksdale’s office was a small room with the same gray-brown carpeting Finny had in her dorm room. The walls were an off-white color, and if not for all the clutter, it would have been a cheerful little space. The principal had a pencil clutched in her teeth when Finny entered, and she was writing something with another pencil. Finny looked around as she waited for the principal to acknowledge her. On the wall hung Mrs. Barksdale’s degree from Oberlin, and two pictures. The first was of the principal with her husband, a diminutive man who looked a decade older than Mrs. Barksdale and who was completely bald. In the picture Mrs. Barksdale had seized her husband in what she obviously considered an affectionate embrace, only her husband’s expression appeared more one of terror than fondness. The expression seemed to betray the belief that his wife was trying to kill him.

The second photo on the wall was a family portrait, featuring the husband again, and also a young girl whom Finny took to be the principal’s daughter. The girl sat between her two parents, in a neat white dress, a look of distress on her face, as if she still couldn’t accept the fact that, of all the couples in the world, God had chosen to place her with this one.

Finny wondered why the principal had chosen to hang these particular photos on the wall. She noticed that Mrs. Barksdale’s desk—a large wooden desk that took up most of the room—was strewn with pencils. The pencils had teeth marks on them from eraser to point, as if a dog had chewed on them, and some were broken in half. Behind Mrs. Barksdale the window let in shafts of dusty sunlight. It was hot in the room, and there was a sour smell, like spoiled milk.

Suddenly, Mrs. Barksdale ejected the pencil from her mouth. She stopped writing and looked at Finny. “What’s this I hear about you writing notes?” she said.

“What?” Finny said. For a moment she was stunned. She wondered how Mrs. Barksdale could have found the notes to Earl, whether the principal had in fact gone through Judith’s mailbox.

“You’ve got a lot of boldness, young lady.”

“Boldness?”

“But you’ve crossed lines here.”

“Lines?”

“Yes, I would certainly say so,” Mrs. Barksdale said. “But then again, you deserve a fair hearing. Let me buzz Miss Simpkin for her response.”

Mrs. Barksdale made the same show of pressing the button that Miss Simpkin had made a moment before.

“Yes?” Miss Simpkin responded. Finny could hear her voice through the door as well as the telephone line.

“Miss Simpkin,” Mrs. Barksdale said, “you know the details of Miss Short’s case. Now, would you go as far as to say that she ‘crossed a line’?”

“Certainly,” Miss Simpkin said.

“I thank you,” Mrs. Barksdale said, and hung up. “It’s settled, then. Miss Simpkin has made everything clear, as usual. She believes you’ve crossed a line. And Miss Simpkin has impeccable moral judgment.”

“Oh,” said Finny.

“I’ll give you one chance to speak for yourself,” Mrs. Barksdale said, “because I know that is the fair thing to do.”

While Mrs. Barksdale’s words remained calm, Finny could hear that this was a struggle for her. The woman’s nervousness seemed to be suppressed by the greatest effort, the way you might throw all your weight on an overstuffed suitcase to contain the clothing inside. Finny could tell that Mrs. Barksdale was heading toward a screech. This was how it always began before she lost it, before she gave it to someone. Finny shuddered at the thought of the Old Yeller letting loose in this tiny room.

“I—I didn’t know that I couldn’t write my friends,” Finny sputtered.

“Friends?” Mrs. Barksdale said. “Do you treat all your friends in such a— perverted way?”

“Perverted?”

Here Mrs. Barksdale buzzed again. “Miss Simpkin, I have called to ask your advice on another matter of principle.”

“Shoot,” Miss Simpkin said.

“Would you go as far as to call Miss Short’s actions perverted?”

“Undoubtedly,” the gravelly voice answered.

“I thank you,” Mrs. Barksdale said, and hung up. “From the mouth of a woman who could have been a Supreme Court justice,” she informed Finny. “An unerring sense of fairness.”

“I’m sorry—” Finny said.

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” Mrs. Barksdale cut in. “Do you know that Poplan was humiliated by your little note?”

Finny’s mouth dropped open. Her mind scurried for words. She never imagined it could have been the note to Poplan that Mrs. Barksdale was talking about. That silly prank. And it had happened only last night. She was sure she’d been alone in the hall. Who could have told on her? A horrible flash of an idea appeared in Finny’s mind.

“Let me cut the mystery short,” the principal said, and her voice was edging toward panic, like the needle on a record beginning to lose its grip, to skip and scratch. Finny glanced at the picture of the little man cowering in the Old Yeller’s grasp, the gnarled pencils on the table. “I can see that you’re astonished at my ingenuity. So let me just say that you were observed, that a student saw you sneak downstairs with that dirty note, and heard you giggling when you came back up. She told us you were up to something, and when Poplan showed us the note, we put two and two together. Or I should say, Miss Simpkin put two and two together. I owe everything to the unconventional genius of Miss Simpkin.”

“Thank you,” Miss Simpkin called from the outer room.

Mrs. Barksdale buzzed her.

“Yes?” Miss Simpkin said.

“You’re welcome. But may I kindly ask you to use the buzzer next time,” Mrs. Barksdale said.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Simpkin said.

“Quite all right,” Mrs. Barksdale said, and hung up.

Who was it? Finny thought. Who would have followed her all the way downstairs to the teachers’ rooms, then stood and watched in the dark? Again, the horrible idea flashed in Finny’s mind, and she shook her head, like she had water in her ears.

“It was a stupid prank,” Finny said now. “We didn’t mean anything—”

But here Mrs. Barksdale cut in, unable to contain herself any longer. “And to think Judith Turngate offered to room with you! One of our brightest stars! And you go performing your filthy pranks!”

Finny couldn’t take it. It was like a radio with bad reception turned to the highest volume. Mrs. Barksdale’s voice slashed and stabbed. It bounced off the walls like a misfired bullet. Finny put her hands on her ears.

“Don’t you cover your ears in front of me!” Mrs. Barksdale screeched. When she screamed, the tendons in her neck tensed like the strings in a marionette. She reached across the desk and tore Finny’s hands from her ears. “You’re going to listen to me!”

“But—” Finny started.

“But nothing!” Here Mrs. Barksdale stopped to take a breath. She must have realized the scene she was making, because when she began again, it was in a slightly calmer voice. “Let me just make this clear. We considered calling your parents, Finny. What you did was that wrong. This is a much more serious offense than you think.”

Finny nodded. “Please—” she began again.

But Mrs. Barksdale made a sound—chuf—like a little bark. “I have no time for this. I’m going to explain our decision, and then send you off to deal with it. We’ve decided you’ll have one chance to get this right, Finny Short. You’re going to be housebound the next three weekends before break—no parties, no walks except to and from the dining hall.”

“Okay,” Finny said, having feared the punishment would be much worse.

“And of course you’ll have to apologize to Poplan. She’s very hurt. I’ll leave it to her discretion how to handle you. She’ll see you tonight after dinner. Now you can go.” Mrs. Barksdale made a shooing motion with her hand.

Finny was getting up to leave when the phone buzzed. “Very fair,” Miss Simpkin said on the other end of the line.

“I thank you, Miss Simpkin,” Mrs. Barksdale returned. “I’m honored that you should think so. You have true moral fortitude, Miss Simpkin….”

Chapter 9
Finny Tries to Make Amends

“Come in,” Poplan said after Finny knocked on the door. Finny went inside and closed the door behind her. Poplan’s room had a pleasant smell, like something sweet was baking in it. Her bed was neatly made, the porcelain animals arranged and dusted on her shelves.

“Hi,” Finny said.

“Hello,” Poplan said. She was wearing a very simple kimono that evening, a jade color with no pattern on it. Her hair was wet from the shower. She was tidying up the room, smoothing out the duvet on her bed.

“I came because I had some things I wanted to tell you.” Finny had an anxious feeling in her chest, like it was puffed up with helium. Her fingers were trembly and cold, and she was sweating a little under her arms.

“What things?” Poplan said. She kept smoothing her hand over the duvet, even though it looked perfectly smooth to Finny. Finny could see she wasn’t going to make it easy for her. She wouldn’t even look Finny in the eyes.

“About the note you got under your door last night. It was my fault. I mean, I did it. I put it under there. I’m sorry, Poplan.” The words just rushed out of her, like she was coughing some sour-tasting thing out of her mouth.

“Why did you do it?” Poplan asked, still smoothing the cover, not looking at Finny.

“I just—” Finny started. “I didn’t think—” She couldn’t seem to get the right angle to charge at it. “It was supposed to be funny,” she finally got out. “But it wasn’t.”

“You actually scared me.”

“It was a dumb thing to do. It was supposed to be a joke, but we didn’t stop to think what would happen.”

“We?” Poplan looked at Finny. She’d stopped smoothing the cover, and her hands hung by her sides. “Was it your idea?” she asked.

“It was just a joke,” Finny repeated. “I regret it. I’m sorry.”

Poplan shook her head. “I’m surprised you did it, Finny. I thought we were friends.”

Finny looked about her, as if for someone who might come to her defense. But all she saw were Poplan’s animals, watching her, waiting to see what she’d say.

Then something happened to Finny, all at once, so fast it was like a wave washing over her. She began to cry. It was a bitter kind of crying, and she had to take long breaths to slow it. She stood there in the room, the tears falling off her face, saying, “I’m sorry, Poplan. I’m sorry.” She felt ridiculous for making a scene, but she couldn’t stop it.

And then Poplan’s arms were around her. “Okay,” Poplan said. “Okay.” Her voice was steady and calming. Poplan held Finny and stroked her hair, and Finny wept. It was partly that Finny was sorry, but also that Poplan had loosed something in her. Finny knew she didn’t deserve this woman’s affection.

“All right,” Poplan kept telling her. “It’s okay.”

And finally, when she stopped crying, Poplan asked her again, “I just want to know if it was your idea, Finny. Did you come up with it?”

Finny shook her head.

“I had a feeling,” Poplan said. They were still standing close, and now Poplan pulled out her desk chair and gestured toward it with an open palm. Finny sat down. Poplan sat on the bed, facing Finny.

“Now I’m going to say something,” Poplan began, without any of her usual brusqueness. She seemed softer, as if Finny’s tears had awakened some motherly instinct in her. “I know this might sound strange. Maybe it’ll even be uncomfortable. And I know you probably won’t believe me. But I think I’m saying it for your own good.”

“What?” Finny managed to ask.

“Judith is a bad influence,” Poplan said. “I know that everyone loves her, and that you and she hit it off. I know it seems like she’s your best friend in the world right now. And it’s not to say that she doesn’t like you or want to be. It’s just that she has a need to act out. I’ve seen it. And she doesn’t always think about the people around her when she does it.”

“Why are you saying this?” Finny asked. She was shaking her head. She didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to see mud splattered on her beautiful canvas.

“I know it’s not going to sound right to you. I know you’re probably going to hate me for it. But I like you, Finny, and I feel for you. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

“Are you mad at Judith for something?”

“I’m not mad at her, and I’m not jealous,” Poplan said. “It probably seems that way, but I’m not.”

“Then why? What did she do to you? Besides this stupid prank?”

“She didn’t do anything to me.” Poplan looked at the ceiling and muttered something that sounded like “Oh, my life.” Then asked Finny, “Did Judith tell you anything about her last roommate?”

Finny didn’t understand why Poplan would ask that, why it had anything to do with what was happening now. She knew she should stop the conversation here: she wasn’t ready for any shattering truths.

And yet, her curiosity nudged her on, like when she’d stood in front of Judith’s dresser, wondering what was inside.

“She said she had some family stuff,” Finny offered at last.

“Her name is Jesse,” Poplan said. “Judith and Jesse. That was the team. I caught them on the roof with a bottle of hooch.”

“Of what?”

“Porch climber. Tiger milk.” Poplan’s forehead was creased, as if Finny were the one speaking a strange language.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Finny said.

Poplan leaned toward Finny and whispered, “Alcohol.” Then, in a louder voice: “Which is why Judith doesn’t like me.” She paused, seeming to consider her next words. “They were daring each other to lean over the edge. It was dangerous. I had to turn them in, Finny.”

“All right,” Finny said.

“The next thing I know, Jesse’s expelled,” Poplan continued. “Judith was the victim. She’d been dragged out of sleep, hardly knew where she was going. Her parents had a long talk with the school. The administration was afraid to mention alcohol to the other students, so none of them ever found out what happened.” Poplan looked Finny over the way she sometimes scrutinized girls while they washed their hands at night, then added, “I’m telling you this in confidence, of course. I trust this conversation will remain off the record.”

Finny nodded. Her thoughts were too stirred for her to speak. It wasn’t that she felt betrayed; she knew Judith’s parents held power at the school, and Judith had probably been told not to mention what happened to anyone. Finny was just surprised at herself, at how easily she’d been taken in.

“Look,” Poplan said, and made a chopping motion with both hands, like a politician coming to a point, “it’s not that I’m telling you not to be friends with Judith or go on about your life here and have fun. I’m happy to see that you’re enjoying yourself and making friends. I’m only saying you need to be your own person. Judith seems like she knows everything, but she doesn’t. If you follow your own judgment, Finny, I think it’ll turn out all right.”

Finny wanted to stop Poplan, to protest, but didn’t know how to do it. And it was true, there was a sense in which Finny had been less of herself since she’d come to Thorndon. Part of it was Judith, her overwhelming influence. But part of it was also Finny, a new desire in her to please and be rewarded, so different from her old life, her old way.

And now that other question appeared in Finny’s mind. Who told? She was certain Judith wouldn’t have snitched, or even tipped someone off about what Finny was doing, but still, the idea was there. It was a mark of Judith’s power, Finny realized, that you could imagine her doing inexplicable things, for her own reasons. But also a sign of Finny’s own insecurities, that she could believe her closest friend had betrayed her.

“Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say about that,” Poplan concluded, and stood up. She’d regained some of her military bearing. “Now, there is one thing you can do to make this up to me, and I hope you won’t refuse.”

“What is it?” Finny asked.