Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [92]
“Well, that’s good. Your parents said you were having kind of a hard time,” Uncle Laurie countered. “Said you were thinking of transferring.”
Adam had forgotten all about transferring. He’d even met with Professor Rosen to discuss his options. As far away as possible, he’d told her, and she’d suggested Dexter’s brother school, the University of East Anglia, in England.
But after last night, all that was irrelevant.
“I think it’s getting better now,” he told his uncle. “Look, I had this party in the barn last night. I’d better clean up before they get home, okay?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Uncle Laurie laughed. “You take care. And say hello to your sister for me. I’ll see you at Christmas.”
“See you at Christmas,” Adam said, and hung up.
It took a long time to clean up the barn and put everything back where it belonged. Someone had thrown up into the muck bucket and on one of the old horse blankets. Rusty horseshoes were scattered all over the place, and one of the shovels was missing. When he was finished, Adam lined the kegs up by the barn door, ready for his dad to load into the pickup and return to the liquor store in town. Then he dragged the heavy-duty trash bags out to the end of the driveway and returned to the house to shovel and salt the porch steps. Back inside, he lit a fire in the fireplace, stoked the woodstove, and walked from room to room, matching up stray shoes and neatening magazines and loose bits of paper. He was just sitting down to the reheated piece of shepherd’s pie when the phone rang.
“Hello?” he answered, fork poised.
“This is Kennebec Regional Hospital. Is this Mr. Gatz?” said the person on the other end.
Adam put down his fork. “No. I mean yes. What’s wrong? Is there something wrong?”
“We have a Tragedy Gatz here. In the intensive care. I assume she’s your—”
“Sister,” Adam answered robotically. Out the window he could see his parents’ blue pickup make the turn into the driveway and amble toward the house with Ellen behind the wheel. He could see their innocent faces behind the thick glass of the windshield and wished they’d just keep driving, past the house, past Home, to a place with better weather and better news. “We’ll be there soon,” he said before hanging up.
He stood up and put on his coat. The shepherd’s pie sat untouched on its plate. His parents were just opening the pickup’s doors when he stepped out onto the porch.
“What the hell, Adam?” Eli shouted. “Didn’t anyone bother to bring in the goddamned sheep last night?”
Ellen remained uncharacteristically silent, her mouth rigid and her cheeks pale. She seemed to sense that something was wrong.
“Shove over, Mom, I’m driving,” Adam called, waving them back with his hands to indicate that they needed to stay in the car.
Ellen scooted over to make room for him behind the wheel.
“It’s Tragedy,” he explained as he closed the door and restarted the ignition. “She’s been shot.”
22
It wasn’t that long ago that Nick had waited outside his and Tom’s room while Shipley and Tom fooled around, creeping back into his bed after they’d gone to sleep and leaving again before they woke up. It wasn’t that long ago that Eliza had had to suffer through lunch in Coke’s dining hall, pretending to be oblivious as she ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Shipley and Tom felt each other up beneath the table. It wasn’t that long ago that Eliza had considered joining the Woodsmen’s team and becoming a lesbian, not necessarily in that order, or that Nick had considered signing up for “mental health” sessions with the nurse-practitioner to talk about his repressed anger toward his mother and his roommate. And it wasn’t that long ago that Tom and Shipley had been one of those Dexter couples everyone assumed would marry soon after graduation.
Not that long ago at all—days.
Now the tables had turned. It was Shipley who sat alone at her desk, pretending to study, while Eliza rubbed cortisone cream all over Nick’s mostly naked body beneath a flimsy cotton blanket.
“Do