Malcolm smiled. “I asked Dr. Merganfield about that, as a matter of fact. He said growth comes from achievement. He’s a bit of a martinet.”
Sophie said, “It’s somewhat authoritarian, dear.”
Malcolm said, “Lots of structure.”
Grace said, “Where is it?”
Sophie said, “Not far from here, actually. One of those big mansions, near Windsor Square.”
Grace said, “Is it expensive?”
Silence.
Sophie said, “No need for you to worry about that.”
“I can pay you back,” said Grace. “One day, when I’m successful.”
Malcolm reached for a cookie, changed his mind. Sophie sniffed and wiped at her eyes.
“Dear girl,” she said, “we have no doubt you’ll be successful. That, in itself, will be our payment.”
Malcolm said, “Not that we need recompense.”
Grace said, “I hope it’s not too expensive.”
“Not at all,” said Malcolm, blinking the way he did when he tried to hide something from her.
Grace said, “Sounds like Merganfield’s the optimal choice.”
“You’re sure?” said Sophie. “It really is a no-nonsense place, dear. Maybe you should visit both of them.” She broke out into laughter. “How foolish of me. Touchy-feely isn’t your thing. If you approve of a place, you’ll thrive.”
“First, visit,” said Malcolm.
“Sure,” said Grace. This hadn’t turned out so bad. Taking a cookie, she reached into her vocabulary vault. “Guess now I’ll have to be pro-social.”
Two days later, she took the Merganfield admissions test in the mahogany-paneled reception room of the cream-colored building that served as the school’s main building, the only other structure a triple garage converted to a no-frills gym.
Sophie had called the place a mansion. To Grace, it felt like a palace: three stories on Irving Street, easily double the size of Malcolm and Sophie’s Tudor. The house sat centered on a vast, park-like lot surrounded by black iron fencing. Trees were huge but most looked neglected. Lawns, hedges, and shrubs appeared shabby.
The style was one Grace recognized from her readings on architecture: Mediterranean mixed with a bit of Palladian. To the north were the enormous homes of Windsor Square, to the south the office buildings on Wilshire.
The exam duplicated many of the IQ tests Malcolm had administered to Grace and with the exception of some of the math, the achievement components were only challenging at the uppermost levels.
“Same old story,” Malcolm had warned her. “Impossible to get everything right.”
No matter how long they knew each other, Grace decided, he’d never stop being a psychologist.
The letter of acceptance arrived a week later. The owner-headmaster, Dr. Ernest K. Merganfield, was a short, slight man with little personal warmth but, somehow, an aura of reassurance. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt, plaid slacks, and rubber-soled blue cotton shoes, and Grace came to learn that was his daily uniform.
He had two doctorates: a Ph.D. in history from Yale and an Ed.D. from Harvard. The teachers were all Ph.D.’s, mostly retired college professors, with the exception of Dr. Mendez, the biology instructor, who was an elderly retired medical pathologist. Upper-class students — sophomores, juniors, and seniors — took their classes on the top floor, with some rooms offering nice views. Grace’s score on the exam qualified her to be a fifteen-year-old senior, but when she arrived to join her classmates she found she wasn’t the youngest in the class, not even close.
Sitting next to her was a twelve-year-old math prodigy named Dmitri, and behind her were fourteen-year-old twins from Nigeria, children of a diplomat, who spoke six languages fluently.
No one exhibited any curiosity about her entry in the middle of the school year and soon Grace learned why: Her brand-new peers were, for the most part, shy, introverted, and obsessed with scholastic achievement. Of the eleven students in her class, seven were girls, four quite pretty, but none with any fashion sense.
Then again, without Sophie, Grace figured she’d have been clueless about clothes, makeup, nickless shaving. How to walk and talk. How to hold a fish fork.
Merganfield students had biological parents who probably didn’t care much about anything but their getting into a top college. The twins had already been guaranteed admission to Columbia in two years.
The lack of maintenance Grace had noticed in the garden extended to the interior. Bathrooms were old and balky and papered with warnings not to flush anything but toilet paper and “scant amounts of that.”
Of the four boys in her class, one was obese with a stammer, two were shy to the point of muteness, and one, the oldest pupil in the senior class, was a tall, rangy, good-looking seventeen-year-old named Sean Miller, gifted in math and physics. He had dark curly hair, hazel eyes, nice features marred by virulent acne.
Also shy, that seemed to be the Merganfield way. But definitely interested in Grace, she could tell because every time she looked up from her notebook, she caught him averting his eyes. Just to confirm her hypothesis, she sidled up against him at the end of rhetoric class and smiled.
He colored crimson around his zits and lurched away, as if hiding something.
Definitely hiding something. The front of his khaki pants had tented.
This could be interesting.
Three weeks after arriving at Merganfield, having earned nearly straight A’s on every test and certain that she was considered “fully integrated,” she encountered Sean Miller as he left the garage/gym that hardly anyone used because P.E. was optional (though Dr. Merganfield did espouse “Grecian ideals of integrating mental and physical mastery”).
Not a chance encounter. Grace had observed Sean and he was predictable as a well-tuned clock, lifting weights and running on a treadmill every Wednesday after class. Grace had finally convinced Malcolm and Sophie to let her walk the mile and a half home, promising to keep to Sixth Street, with its busy traffic and easy visibility. Tonight, both of them would be coming home late due to meetings. Sophie had pre-cooked a tuna noodle casserole for Grace to microwave.
She wasn’t hungry for pasta and canned fish.
Sean Miller learned that quickly enough.
Soon, they were doing it every Wednesday, outside behind the gym, and Grace had shoplifted enough condoms from a local pharmacy to keep everything nice and safe.
The first time Sean attempted to talk to her afterward, she quieted him with a finger over his lips and he never tried that again.
Chapter 36
It was one p.m. when Grace drove away from Wild Bill’s, leaving the two punks gaping. If her energy held up, she could make the trip in six or seven hours. If she started feeling less than optimal, she’d stop in Monterey.
For the first fifty miles, she tried to empty her head by listening to music.
Unsuccessful; her brain pinged rudely through Bach and doo-wop and alternative rock and jazz, a heckler at a lecture.
Random noise clarified to a yammering voice reminding her.
She’d killed a man.
How did she feel about that?
She didn’t know.
Rationalization was obvious: bad guy, obvious self-defense. But still, it was odd. The fact that she’d actually ended a life.
The permanence.
The sound of her victim’s corpse bumping down the canyon grew to a drumbeat.
Her victim.
Not an everyday event, dispatching another human being. She knew from her training that soldiers had trouble getting used to it.
So how did she feel about it?
She really didn’t know.
Focus.
All right then, the old affective system, first. Mood-wise, she’d have to describe herself as calm, settled. Basically okay.