“Darden,” I said. The balloons were long gone, and our classmates were dispersing. Sitting on the steps with him, I felt untouchable, protected from both the judgment of others and time itself-as long as Darden was next to me, we were still at Ault, our futures hadn’t happened yet-but I knew that I had to let him leave. It was partly because I wanted to find out the answer and partly just to keep him there that I said, “Did you ever hear that Cross Sugarman and I-that we were-”
“I heard something about it,” Darden said. “But nothing big.”
“You heard, like, that we were-what did you hear?” (Darden was so dignified, and I was so awkward and insatiable.)
“That you were hanging out for a while. Something like that. I wouldn’t sweat it.”
I couldn’t correct him. To tell him that he was comforting me in the wrong way, in the opposite of the way I wanted-it would cast a shadow over the fact that just prior to this he had understood exactly what I needed.
“Anyhow,” Darden said, “that was months ago. And no one but a fool believes everything they hear in this place.”
Did he mean that he was willing to act like it wasn’t true? Or just that he was ready for the conversation to be over? Probably that, the latter.
We stood. “You’re okay?” he said.
When I nodded, he hugged me. It was the kind of hug he and Aspeth might exchange after walking back from the library to the dorms for curfew, a hearty hug but a throwaway hug. At least, hypothetically, a throwaway hug; for me, it was the first time I’d been hugged by any boy at Ault besides Cross.
“I’m sorry that I screwed up,” I blurted out.
He shook his head. He didn’t say I hadn’t screwed up (he probably thought I had-also, of course, he was probably the one who, in a factual and not cruel way, had made the comment to Angie Varizi about my not being popular). Instead, Darden said, “I know you are.”
Martha came to find me in the library. Since everyone else was outside all the time, the library was where I’d been hiding when I couldn’t stand to be in our room anymore. Seniors were exempt from exams, so there was no work. All that was left was graduation itself and, after that, senior week, during which we’d drive from party to party in Dedham and Lyme and Locust Valley. Because it was the very last part of Ault, and because how could I not, I actually was planning to attend the whole thing.
The past few days had been sunny and endless and I had felt afraid of everyone and despairing about Cross. I’d spent most of the time trying unsuccessfully to pack. Every June before, when we’d had to remove our posters and unscrew Martha’s futon and stack our books in boxes that we stored in the dorm basement, the chore had depressed me-all the space in the room, the blank walls. It reminded me how ephemeral our lives at Ault were. This time, I would fold three sweaters and stick them in a box and then I’d need to get out of the room, and I’d peer out the window, and if the coast was clear, I’d race outside and sprint past the chapel and the dining hall to the library and go into the periodicals room, which was empty and dark and cool, and I’d read magazines, and sometimes in the middle of an article, I would look up and think, I have ruined everything. During my time at Ault, I’d always felt I had things to hide, reasons to apologize. But I hadn’t, I saw now. In a strange way, it was as if all along I’d anticipated what would happen with The New York Times, I’d known how it would end.
When she entered the periodicals room, Martha was breathing heavily, as if she’d been running. “Scoot over,” she said.
I was sitting on the floor, my back against a wall. I shifted, and she sat down next to me.
She said, “You know how tomorrow’s chapel will be the last one for the year?”
I nodded.
“Apparently, some seniors were looking for a student to give a talk refuting what you said in the article. I guess they’ve found someone.”
“Who?”
“That’s the part I don’t know. The rumor was that they were trying to find either a minority or a white person on scholarship.”
“Good luck. So which seniors?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
I looked at her.
“Who you’d expect,” she said. “Horton Kinnelly. Doug Miles.”
“And is this the part where you tell me I should go?” I said. “To build my character or something?”
“Not to build your character. But I do think you should go because it’s the last chapel.”
“Martha, probably half the senior class will skip.”
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “People are getting sentimental.”
I thought of Darden and said, “Not everyone. Not you.”
“Just wait. I’ll be bawling at graduation.”
We were quiet, and I could hear the sound of a saw outside; adjacent to the chapel, the maintenance crew was building the graduation stage. Because the ceremony was supposed to be held outside, all the seniors were obsessed with whether the sunshine would last. I could truly say that I didn’t care-in fact, a part of me would have been grimly satisfied if it rained and we had to move into the gym.
And similarly, a part of me was relieved to know that I would, perhaps implicitly or perhaps not implicitly at all, be scolded in public. This seemed the Ault way, to be held accountable. Already, over the years, I had gotten away with too much.
“I sure blew it, huh?” I said.
Martha was quiet, and then she said, “Well, it’s not like it was an accident.”
I stiffened. Not you, too, Martha, I thought. It would be more than I could take, though I realized in that moment that she had never said to me anything like, You weren’t wrong, or, This wasn’t your fault. What she’d said instead was, in essence, You can’t let it bother you. Not to be confused with I’m on your side.
“You’re not stupid,” she continued. She did not seem particularly accusatory; she seemed to be musing. “In fact, you’re probably the most careful person I know about what you say.”
“Are you suggesting I wanted this to happen?”
“I don’t see it as that black-and-white.”
Sitting there, so close together, I hated her a little bit. But this was not the same as thinking she was completely wrong. Maybe the reason I’d had a premonition about how it would all end at Ault was that I would cause it to end that way. Because how was it possible that I’d lasted four years without ever truly exposing myself, and then blown it in the last week? Could it have been that secretly I had craved the opportunity to say to everyone at Ault, You think I think nothing. But when I do not speak, I am always thinking. I have opinions about this place, about all of you. Maybe. Maybe that’s what I’d wanted, but if I’d wanted it, I’d wanted it on my own terms. I had imagined that Angie Varizi could make me seem articulate and persuasive, not bitter and isolated, not vulnerable.