Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [64]
“Are we done here?” he asked Professor Rosen. “Because I have a lot of work to do.” He’d finished the top two-thirds of Shipley’s portrait, but he still had the entire bottom third to do.
“Same time, same place tomorrow night and Friday. Don’t forget,” Professor Rosen reminded him. “And I like the disheveled look, but try to find something to wear without any paint on it,” she called as Tom barreled toward the exit. “Jerry doesn’t paint.”
Adam remained onstage. “Shouldn’t I wear a suit?” he asked. “Peter goes to the park from his job. He works in an office. Wouldn’t he be wearing a suit?”
“Just wear whatever you have,” Professor Rosen said. “He’s sitting in the park. He’d probably take off his tie and his jacket. Just a nice white shirt and a pair of trousers and loafers would be fine. And maybe a suit jacket and tie to put down on the bench next to you.”
The only suit Adam had ever owned was the Frankenstein suit he’d worn for Halloween three years running. And he’d never had any need for a tie. “Can’t I borrow something from the costume department?”
Professor Rosen laughed. Dexter’s theater department was tiny. Adam made them sound like the Metropolitan Opera. “You could ask your father,” she suggested.
Adam nodded. His dad didn’t wear ties either, but his mom’s favorite store was called Family Clothes of Yesteryear, a used clothing store lovingly run out of a trailer beside the Baptist church in the next town. She could probably rustle up something there.
One of the doors in the back of the theater swung open. It was Shipley and Eliza, dressed all in black except for Eliza’s hot pink earmuffs—long black coats, black boots, black gloves, and black wool hats. They looked like spies.
“Oh!” Shipley exclaimed when she saw Adam onstage. Her face flushed. “I’m so sorry. We were looking for someone else.”
Ever since they’d returned to campus, she and Eliza had been fast friends. They dressed together in complementing colors. They ate together in the dining hall. They even peed together, giggling through the walls of the stalls.
It was Eliza’s idea to make a game of finding Patrick. Of course it was Patrick who’d borrowed Shipley’s car for days at a time, leaving those surly notes and storing food in the trunk. It was a wonder he hadn’t left any books behind. He never went anywhere without a book—Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, George Orwell’s 1984, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. He even carried around Mein Kampf for one long, scary week in Barbados. And he never took off his jacket. What a jerk. As a child Patrick was forever stealing Shipley’s thunder. Now he was stealing her car.
Shipley found it completely infuriating. Patrick had always gotten all the attention with his hyperactive tantrums and need for specialists. He was ADD. He had sleep apnea. Chronic ear infections. Reflux. Doling out his medication alone took over breakfast and bedtime. And then there were the special private skiing instructors and running coaches because he was so good at sports. Five boarding schools, and he’d managed to get kicked out of every one. Meanwhile there Shipley was, the younger sister, trying not to cause any trouble or attract any attention.
Patrick didn’t know her anymore. He’d never taken the time to get to know her. To him she was still the little girl he’d always ignored, teased, or outshined. More than anything, Shipley feared his presence would somehow cause her, out of sheer habit, to revert back to the demure simpleton she used to be. And her new life—the life she’d made for herself at Dexter—would be taken away from her.
They decided to lure him by displaying the clothes Shipley had bought for him on the front seat of the car. It didn’t take long. They’d returned from Greenwich on Sunday night. Fifteen minutes later, the car was gone.
Tonight it was back.
“We’ll just look everywhere until we find him,” Eliza declared that night at dinner.
But Shipley wasn’t so