He cleared his throat. “As you know, prefect elections for all grades were held yesterday. I’m pleased to share the results.” As he went through the younger grades, I scanned the room for Martha, and I saw her leaning against the far wall. I tried to catch her eye, but she was watching Mr. Byden. I looked around for other nominees and saw Darden standing nearby. He had a mild, pleasant smile on his face, an utterly agreeable expression, and I knew he knew he hadn’t won; I felt a pang for him, to have to be here in front of everyone acting like a good sport. “Finally,” Mr. Byden said, “for the rising senior class-” Before he got any further, a few people around me hooted. Mr. Byden smiled dryly. “For the rising senior class,” he repeated, “please congratulate your new prefects, Cross Sugarman and Martha Porter.”
The room exploded. All around me people seemed to be shouting and giving high fives-why, I wondered, was it acceptable, once the decision had been made, to show that you cared about it, but wrong to have done so beforehand?-and I was clapping, too, but I did not feel elated. The truth was, I did not even feel happy. I felt stunned. Martha had won? Martha? It had been easy to root for her because she was my roommate, because even if no one else recognized it, Martha was great-because we were underdogs, both of us. Except that, apparently, we were not.
I looked again at Darden, who was still clapping heartily, still smiling, though a muscle in his jaw, a little below his ear, was twitching.
“Darden.” He didn’t hear me, and again I said, “Darden.”
He turned.
“I’m sorry you didn’t win,” I said. Was this disingenuous, given that I had voted for Cross?
He shook his head. “No big thing. Hey, pretty cool about your roommate, huh?”
I tried to smile. “It’s crazy.” Darden and I stood there for a few seconds, both of us with our fake grins, and then at the same time we turned toward the back of the room. It was easy to locate Cross because of his height, but so many people were surrounding Martha that I couldn’t even see her. Up on the platform, Mr. Byden had started speaking again, but I don’t think any seniors were paying attention.
If I had been a good friend, a good person, I’d have pushed my way through our classmates and thrown my arms around Martha. And that, the instant of congratulating her, would have been manageable. My fear was of what would come next-her giddy disbelief, the welling nakedness of her feelings. Also, how I might have to reassure her that she did deserve this. Or worst of all-that maybe she’d just be happy. Maybe she’d simply want to luxuriate in the moment, guess who had and hadn’t voted for her, anticipate what the role of prefect would be like. And these would not be unreasonable impulses-who could you be your smug and exuberant self with if not your roommate?-but I did not feel like I had the ability to stomach them. I walked out of the room; I didn’t look around, so I don’t know if anyone saw me.
Downstairs in the math wing, I entered an empty classroom-not Ms. Prosek’s but the one across from hers-and didn’t turn on the lights. I started paging through my textbook. It was far too late, but it felt good to be doing something.
It was then eight forty-five. We were to pick up the exam from Ms. Prosek’s classroom at nine o’clock, take it to the study hall or to our room, and return it by noon; in a little more than three hours, it would be over, my fate would be sealed. Afterward, I’d do something for Martha-make her a card or get her flowers from town. And by that point, she’d be calmer. She herself was about to take a history exam, which would certainly dilute this moment, and maybe after that she’d talk out her election with someone else, the person she was walking back to the dorms with. By the time we met up again, she’d be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn’t have had to be there while she got it in order.
When Martha had been chosen by Mr. Byden to be on the disciplinary committee, I’d been pleased for her-it wasn’t a really big deal, in a way it was the distinction of a goody-goody, but it was still a distinction, and I congratulated her sincerely. And other things-the summer before our junior year, when she started going out with her brother’s friend Colby, the choreography of their attraction had enthralled me; for a couple weeks, I’d spoken to Martha nightly on the phone, interpreting Colby’s behav-ior, advising her, as if I knew anything at all about the minds of boys. For several days after she told me they’d kissed, I felt intermittent bursts of joy and it would always take me a minute to remember that it was not to me but to Martha that something good had happened. And I was always glad for Martha when she got good grades-she studied hard, and she deserved them.
But being prefect-it seemed a little arbitrary. Before Cross had nominated her, it hadn’t been a thing we’d ever discussed, a thing she’d even, as far as I could tell, considered. And then it had just worked out, without her really trying. And finally-what if I had been nominated for senior prefect? What if I’d gone to the meeting that day instead of to the dean’s office and my presence there had made someone, maybe even Cross, think, Why not Lee? And what if I had been the wild card instead of Martha? Maybe people secretly liked me, too, or respected me, or saw me as an alternative to Gillian or Aspeth. It was not impossible. Because, really, wasn’t this turn of events as much a defeat for the two of them as a victory for Martha? If I had been elected, I would be Cross’s counterpart, we’d talk to each other every day, standing side by side at the desk in front of the entire school. With evidence that people believed in me, I’d be different, confident; I’d finally be able to relax. And certainly I would not be spring-cleaned-how could Ault spring-clean a senior prefect?
Yet these were grubby thoughts; just to have them in my own head was embarrassing. And now I knew myself to be generous with encouragement only when I either did not want the thing the other person sought or did not believe the person would really get it. It was the opposite of what I aspired to-in the moment of truth, I wanted to be loyal and forthright, reliable, humble, trustworthy. Instead, I was greedy and envious.
Roll call had ended. I could hear people in the halls of the math wing. It struck me that being spring-cleaned might, in an awful way, be easier than watching Martha become prefect.
It was eleven-thirty when Martha got back to the room, and I was lying on the futon, on my stomach, eating stale tortilla chips. I was hanging my head off the end of the futon so the crumbs would spill onto the floor, and the position was making blood rush to my face. Also, because I had given up on my exam after about fifteen minutes and then spent more than an hour sobbing, I felt dehydrated and slightly hoarse. “Hi,” I said. “Congratulations on being prefect.” This wasn’t how I’d planned to say it-I’d planned to overcompensate and shout, I was looking for you everywhere!–but there it was; I’d said what I’d said.
Martha looked at my desk, where the exam lay folded open to the second page, then looked back at me. “What are you doing?”
The question seemed rather broad. “I’m having a snack,” I finally said and held out the bag of chips. “Want some?”
She picked up the exam and flipped through it. I had signed my name under the Ault oath on the first page, which was the same one that appeared on every exam: With my signature, I hereby verify that I have neither given nor received any help on this test… On the next page, I’d completed the first problem, which Ms. Prosek clearly had started with so as to put us at ease. I had written a few numbers under the next problem, and then, though it had nothing to do with what the problem was asking, I’d written out the quadratic equation, just in case I’d need it later. After that, from the second page to the seventh, I hadn’t written anything. As she got closer to the end, Martha’s expression vacillated between confusion and dismay.