Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [11]
Adam let the car coast in a free fall down the hill toward town. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty. “Guy was nuts,” he said.
Patrick carried the coffee into the parking lot across the road from his old dorm. Even though it served no actual purpose, Buildings and Grounds kept the grass surrounding the lot neatly mowed. He circled the tidy, green perimeter, headed for the depression in the lot’s far corner, one of his favorite resting spots. He liked to stretch out in the sun in that particular grassy dimple, obscured from the road and the rest of campus by the cars in the lot. But today a black Mercedes sedan was parked at an awkward angle, half in the lot and half in the grass. The car bore Connecticut plates and a Greenwich beaches parking sticker. It was the car he’d learned to drive on, and it was in his spot.
“Shit,” Patrick swore, about to turn and run. After all these years they’d finally come after him. Then he noticed the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. His parents hadn’t smoked when he lived at home, and it was doubtful they’d taken it up since then. He moved closer to the car and put his nose up against the driver’s-side window. Gum wrappers and cassettes littered the passenger seat, along with a rumpled white Greenwich Academy sweatshirt.
The door was unlocked. Patrick slid in behind the wheel and put his coffee in one of the cup holders between the seats. Closing the door, he sank back into the cushiony tan leather. The car smelled stale and sweet. He touched the steering wheel with his fingertips. It was hot.
Shipley had been nine years old when he left for boarding school. Whenever he got kicked out, he’d return home for a brief stint before moving on to yet another school. But even as the years passed, he still thought of his sister as that nine-year-old girl, dutifully setting the table, a headband in her blond hair. Her fingernails were clean, she chewed with her mouth closed, she wore a tutu. How could anyone be that good all the time? She was fourteen when his family dropped him off at Dexter. She wore braces and dangly earrings, but she was still good. And she seemed frightened of him, as if his complete disinterest in pleasing anyone else would somehow rub off on her, cause her to miss the school bus.
Was it possible that Shipley was now at Dexter?
He removed a cigarette from the half-empty pack and lit it with the little yellow lighter that was tucked inside.
The summer he was sixteen, he’d gone on an Outward Bound hiking trip in the Canyonlands of Utah. The group consisted of seven kids between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, three other guys, three girls, plus two trip leaders who were both male and in their twenties. He was the only kid whose parents had paid for the trip. The others had been sent as an alternative to juvenile detention or drug rehab, and their tuition was subsidized. His sister was up in Vermont at sleepaway camp, learning to ride horses and shoot a bow and arrow. She’d begged their parents to go. He hadn’t made any plans at all. So there he was, in Utah.
“Let’s gather around in a circle,” one of the leaders said on that first morning, after a van had dropped them off in the middle of some dusty nowhere and they’d strapped on their packs and hiked for a few miles. Except for the provisions that had been distributed evenly among them, Patrick’s pack was empty. Outward Bound had sent a list of what to bring, but he’d left his bag on the plane. He was totally unequipped. He didn’t even have a toothbrush.
“We’re going to do a little get-to-know-you exercise,” the leader explained. He wore a pair of Smith ski goggles on his head even though it was summer.
“Just say your name and then the first thing that comes into your head,” the leader continued. “We’ll start with you first.” He smiled at a skinny girl with bruised shins.
She squirmed