The picture was exactly as I remembered it: her cowboy hat, her unruly hair, her smart, perfect face. Opening to the page it was on was like taking the first bite of cake, knowing the whole slice awaits you. If Dede would just leave, I could take the yearbook upstairs, I thought. It wasn’t like I would gaze at it endlessly. I just wanted to know it was mine, to look at when I needed to. I wanted to get in bed and turn out the lights; in the dark, I would be alone in my head, and I could have imaginary conversations where I made funny remarks and Gates laughed, but not in her being-nice-to-a-freshman way. It would be a laugh that meant she respected me and knew that I was like her.
I heard someone descend the stairs, so I waited, then went to the window, hunching down and peering over the sill. It was Dede. I lifted my blouse and stuck the yearbook in the waistband of my skirt-I seriously doubted it would be missed since I’d never seen anyone besides me look at any of them. Upstairs, I placed it on the shelf in my closet, underneath a sweater. As much as I wanted to, there was no point in going to bed, because Dede and Sin-Jun would return from dinner within the hour, flicking on lights and talking. Plus, I still needed to deliver the card.
It was folded into my dictionary, where I’d left it the night before. I unfolded it and set it on the desk. The second N in CONGRATULATIONS had smudged. I licked my finger and pressed it against the smudge, which made it worse. I wondered why I’d written Good luck at Harvard! That was stupid; it made it seem as if she were departing immediately, when she’d be at Ault for another seven months. The stars and vines looked, suddenly, like the efforts of a nine-year-old. And Love–love? Who was I kidding? We hardly knew each other. I picked up the card and tore it into long strips, then ripped the strips into thirds. The pieces of paper fluttered in the trash can before they settled.
I thought of Dede, her panicky denials, her fingers gripping my arms. I wanted to talk to somebody about what I’d seen, but everyone was at dinner. I picked up one of Dede’s celebrity magazines and lay on my bed, trying to read. The world outside Ault seemed strange and irrelevant, and I had trouble paying attention to the articles. Before long, I had set aside the magazine, removed the yearbook from my closet, and was looking at Gates’s picture again. When I heard voices outside, I hurried to the bathroom to avoid Dede’s return and hid in a stall for ten minutes. Then I went straight to Little’s room. “Am I bothering you?” I asked when she opened the door.
“I don’t know yet, do I?” She was wearing glasses and a gray sweatsuit.
“Can I come in?”
She stood aside to let me enter. I sat on her desk chair, though she hadn’t invited me to, and she sat on her bed, her legs crossed in front of her open textbooks and notebooks. I had never been inside Little’s room, and it was stark, without posters or tapestries or photographs. The only personal touches besides her bedspread and books were a clock radio on the windowsill, a plastic bottle of lotion on the dresser, and a small teddy bear at the foot of the bed. The bear wore a pale purple sweater; looking at it, I felt a plunging sadness that entirely eclipsed the suspicion and irritation I felt toward Dede. But the sadness was too large for me to understand, and then it passed.
“You won’t believe what happened,” I said. “I know who the thief is.”
Little raised her eyebrows.
“It’s Dede.”
Little’s eyebrows sank and scrunched together. “Are you sure?”
“I caught her red-handed. She was going through Sin-Jun’s dresser.”
Little murmured, “Dede Schwartz,” then nodded. “I believe it.”
“It’s so creepy,” I said. “It makes her seem like a pathological liar or something, the way she made sure she was the first one whose money was stolen.”
“I knew I didn’t like that girl. What did Madame say?”
“I haven’t told her yet. Dede begged me not to.”
“But you saw her digging around in Sin-Jun’s dresser.”
“Exactly.”
“If you don’t turn her in, she’ll just keep doing it.”
“I know. I don’t get why she would steal, though. She gets a huge allowance from her parents.”
“You try to understand a lot of folks here, all you’ll do is give yourself a headache.”
“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” I asked.
Little hesitated.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t need to.” I stood, embarrassed. “I have to see Dede sooner or later, right?” When I left the room, Little made no effort to stop me.
I hid again in the bathroom, this time in the corner shower, which was known to have low pressure and thus was never used. I still hadn’t changed out of my formal dinner clothes, and sitting on the blue tiled floor in my skirt felt odd and unclean. Once I heard the bathroom door open and Dede call, “Lee? Lee, are you in here?”
Before curfew, I went downstairs and found Madame. I opened my mouth to tell her about Dede, but standing in the entry of her apartment, I could feel the seriousness of the accusation, how much it would alter both my own life and Dede’s. I wasn’t ready yet.
“I’m going to bed,” I said. “Can I check in early?”
I shook her hand, then returned to the bathroom.
At the infirmary, six rooms containing only beds lined either side of the hallway. There was also the room where the nurse sat and where you had your temperature taken when you first came in, the TV lounge, and the kitchenette with a poster featuring nutrition trivia. Among other facts, the poster informed readers that eating chocolate released the same chemicals in the brain as being in love. From time to time during the years I was at Ault, I’d be at a lunch table, either listening to or participating in a conversation about any number of topics, and someone would say, “Did you know that chocolate releases the same chemicals in the brain as being in love?” And other people at the table would say, “I think I’ve heard that, too,” or, “Yeah, I remember reading that somewhere.” But you could never remember where until you were back in the infirmary, sick or faking sick, the rigidity of a normal day having given way to some long, pale, vaporous unfolding of hours: You slept, you ate pudding and toast, you watched daytime TV with other students who’d also ended up in the infirmary on this day, whom perhaps you were friends with or perhaps you’d never spoken to before.
This was my first visit to the infirmary. The previous night, I’d returned to my room after midnight, when I knew Dede and Sin-Jun would be asleep. At dawn, I rose, pulled on jeans, and left the dorm without even brushing my teeth. If I could just have another day to sort things out, I thought as I walked through the cool, still-dark morning, then I’d be able to decide how to turn Dede in.
The nurse took my temperature and assigned me a room, and I fell deeply asleep. When I awakened, the yellow light of late morning was shining through the shade, and I could hear the TV. I stepped into the hall in my socks.
A mousy sophomore girl named Shannon Hormley was in the lounge, and so was a senior guy, Pete Lords, one of the two boys who’d been holding a stereo speaker the day Gates had danced at roll call. They both looked up when I entered the room, but they didn’t say hello, so neither did I. I sat down. They were watching a soap opera. On-screen, a woman in a blue sequined dress said into a telephone, “But with Christophe in Rio, I simply don’t see how that’s possible.” I wondered who had selected the show. Already, I wanted to get up and leave, but I thought that doing so this quickly might seem peculiar. I glanced around the room. On the table next to my chair, several pamphlets were fanned out. I’m considering suicide, one said across the top. The next said, I was a victim of date rape, and the third said, Am I gay? Something in my stomach tightened. I averted my eyes, then glanced at Shannon and Pete to see if either of them had been watching me read the pamphlets. It seemed they hadn’t.