Will noticed something peculiar about Sangren’s eyes. His left iris was solid black, as if dilated by an optometrist. Something about this weird contrast made it feel as if two different people were looking at him through the same set of eyes.
Sangren smiled again. Will didn’t like it. “I’m guessing none of our cuddly old softies in administration explained it this way.”
“Not in so many words.”
“Then let me be the first to use this many words: You have five weeks to make the grade. Best of luck to you. It appears you’re going to need it.”
Sangren strolled away, lifting onto his toes with each step, swinging his case, whistling “Singin’ in the Rain.”
Will watched him go. The little professor had just dumped ice water all over his sense of security. If Sangren was telling the truth, what if he didn’t make the grade? If they showed him the door five weeks from now … where in the world would he go?
Will wandered out into the hall. His only class for the day over, he felt lost and a little helpless, and paid no attention to where he was. He heard piano music from down the hall, classical, expertly played. A woman joined in, singing in a foreign language—French, he thought. Her voice stopped him cold; powerful but restrained, it was deeply emotional. He tracked it to a room and opened the door.
A grand piano stood in the center of the room. Sitting at the piano, both singing and playing, was Elise. She stopped when she heard him come in.
“Sorry,” said Will. “Please, don’t stop.”
She scowled at him. “You’ve never heard Lakmé before?”
“I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
“Well, don’t get all moony over it, Jethro,” she said. She started again, improvising the classical phrase she’d been playing into effortless jazz.
“Where did you learn …?” he asked, astonished by her skill.
“Dad’s a first violin. Mom used to headline at a nightclub in Hong Kong. So it’s not as if I had a choice, okay?”
“You sound embarrassed about it.”
“If you’re not embarrassed about your parents at our age,” said Elise, “you’ve got a plate in your head.”
Will listened as she riffed the same melody into pop, R & B, and hip-hop idioms. Dazzling.
“You ought to just turn pro,” said Will. “I mean it. Right now.”
Elise laughed. “And then what, spend my life giving piano lessons to the tone-deaf spawn of suburbia to subsidize my passion? No thanks.”
“So what is your passion?”
“The usual,” she said, running glissandos up and down the keyboard. “Writing. Recording. World domination.”
She looked straight into him with that wide-open unnerving gaze, but this time Will didn’t look away and he was struck by a feeling he’d seen her eyes before.…
“I saw Sangren grab you after class,” she said, turning back to the piano. “Did he gut-punch you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb, West. You know what I’m talking about.” Will fidgeted. “I guess he said a few things that caught me off guard—”
Elise slammed down the cover on the keys. “Would you just stop?”
Will jumped. “What? Stop what?”
She locked eyes with him. He tried to make himself blank, unreadable, which only seemed to make her angrier. “Stop hiding. Maybe that’s how you survived with the hicks back at Nowheresville High, but you’re not the only smart kid in the room now. And you’re not gonna make it unless you come out from under your rock.”
He realized she was trying to be helpful, reach out to him in her own complicated way, just as Ajay had earlier at breakfast. He took in a deep breath and tried to let down his guard as he exhaled: “I’m not sure how to do that.”
“Show yourself,” said Elise urgently. “Trust somebody. Lose your game face. Figure out who your friends are—that would be us, by the way—and ask for help. Be real with us, be who you are, or be gone.”
Part of him appreciated the advice. But the way she so effortlessly sliced through his defenses infuriated him. Before he even knew what he was saying, he heard himself lash back at her: “Is that what happened to Ronnie Murso?”
Elise flinched, as if the question had cut her physically. It came as a surprise that Miss Above-It-All could be wounded. Will immediately regretted it. He braced for a counterattack, but instead of baring her claws and striking back, she just looked at him, completely unguarded, and let him see how much he’d hurt her.
“Someday you’ll realize just how unfair that was,” she whispered.
Elise left the piano and brushed past him, out of the room, leaving him holding a big bag full of What the hell did I say that for?
“Damn it,” he said.
Will looked at his watch: He was due at the field house to meet the coach. He needed a run more than ever. He hurried outside and struck out across the commons for the field house. Elise’s voice echoed in his head: “Show yourself. Trust somebody.”
He’d been taught, trained, and conditioned to never trust anybody. Drop his game face? He’d been living with his guard up for so long that if his game face was taken away, he wasn’t completely sure who he’d find underneath.
After everything he’d learned the last two days, he wasn’t even sure he could trust himself.
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THE FIELD HOUSE
The field house stood on the far edge of the practice fields, and it was bigger than an airport hangar. It was made of sturdy weathered red brick, supported by latticed black wrought-iron struts and stately colonnades surrounded by a concrete plaza. The style reminded Will of an ancient ballpark, like a place Babe Ruth might have played. LAUGHTON FIELD HOUSE EST. 1918 was carved into the brick near the front doors, but everyone on campus called it the Barn.
A life-sized bronze statue of the school’s mascot, the armored knight pictured in the Center’s escutcheon, stood outside the entrance. Coiled and menacing, poised to attack, it carried a short sword and shield, and a hatchet hung from its belt.
The coat of arms was carved on the knight’s shield. The knight was depicted in the bottom panel, pointing its sword at the neck of a defeated foe. But the fallen figure on the statue’s shield had demonic horns growing out of its head and a forked tail, details missing from images of the crest he’d seen before. And up close, the knight’s armor didn’t look medieval at all, but sleek and fitted like a second skin. A shiny brass plate fixed to its pedestal said THE PALADIN.
Will wandered inside, into an immense, cavernous space crisscrossed by exposed steel beams. It was lit by casement windows near the roofline and circular spotlights suspended on long steel cables. An artificial turf field occupied half the structure, circled by a four-lane running track. A lacrosse squad practiced on the turf. Hardwood basketball courts filled the other side. Expanding wooden bleachers on rollers were collapsed and stacked against the walls on three sides. Spirited pickup games filled smaller courts subdividing the main one.
Following signs to the locker rooms, Will went through a door beyond the courts and then down a corridor filled with the pungent smells of liniment, ancient sweat, laundry soap, and, from somewhere, swimming pool chlorine. Framed black-and-white photographs of old school sports teams lined the walls: football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer. Each one bearing the school’s nickname: the Paladins. Will found the men’s locker room and felt as if he’d stepped back in time.