Con Academy (16 page)

“I came by your room,” I say. “I saw the light on.”

“Will.” Gatsby lowers her eyes. “That whole thing. It was a mistake.”

“Which part?”

“When you invited me to the dance . . .” She looks back up at me. “I shouldn't have said yes.”

“Why not? Is it something I did?”

She shakes her head. “You didn't do anything.” Somewhere down on the field something happens and the crowd cheers, and we just keep looking at each other.

“Listen,” she says, “I'll see you around, okay?”

“Sure,” I say, and my voice sounds strange to me, like it's being piped in from some completely different person.

And I watch her go.

I look down at Brandt and Andrea, snuggling together under the blanket. I couldn't care less what they're doing, but I find myself wondering if Brandt's said anything to her about our trip down to Lowell last night. Then, right on cue, Andrea turns around, looks up at me, and wrinkles her nose.

On the field, it's halftime, and I see Dr. Melville walking across the playing turf with a microphone. Behind him, a pair of students are carrying out some kind of banner, unfurling it along the field. From here I can see that it's a flag, deep blue with white and orange bands and a star in the upper left corner.

Which is when I realize that it's the flag of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Which is the last thing I need right now.

“Hello, everyone,” Dr. Melville says. “I'd like to invite a very special student down to talk to you.” He gestures up to the stands, to where I'm sitting. “A young man whose background and ambition are the very definition of the opportunity that Connaughton Academy offers to those with the willingness to advance in the world . . .” He pauses. “Alumni, parents, and faculty, please welcome William Shea.”

The applause is thunderous.

“What is this?” I mutter, rising up slowly on knees that don't seem to be working quite right, and make my way down the aisle toward the field.

As I walk past Andrea, I feel her reach up and swat me on the butt. I look around at her.

“Did you do this?” I ask.

She grins. “Go get 'em, tiger.”

“M
ANY OF YOU MAY NOT KNOW
,” D
R.
M
ELVILLE IS SAYING
as I make my way out onto the field, “that Mr. Shea comes to us from halfway around the world, hailing from a remote Pacific Island called Ebeye.”

From out in the crowd, I hear a single cackling laugh. I don't have to look up to know that it's Brandt. I can tell he's grinning at me. Dr. Melville ignores the distraction and presses dutifully on.

“I received an email last week from another student asking if Mr. Shea could come up and speak to all of us today about his homeland, about some of the ongoing difficulties that they've been facing for the past fifty years since the government began testing nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands.” Dr. Melville's voice becomes solemn. “The student who wrote that email is here with us today, and I'd like to invite her down as well.” Turning, he gestures up to the stands again. “Andrea Dufresne?”

More applause. Andrea glides down on it like a pageant queen on a parade float of destiny. “Thank you, Dr. Melville.” She takes the microphone from him and gives me a quick glance out of the corner of her eye—and now I don't even know her angle. I've clearly been snookered so smoothly that I didn't even realize it was happening, but I don't even know what else Andrea has up her sleeve.

“As many of you know,” she says, “I'm a scholarship student myself. My parents were U.S. aid workers who lost their lives in the Balkans. I'm attending Connaughton thanks to the gracious support of the administration and alumni endowments. But when I heard about the obstacles that Will has had to overcome after the tragic death of both of his parents—who were flying medicine to an orphanage when their lives were so unexpectedly cut short—and the way that his community came together to send him here for school, well . . . I knew that I'd found not just a kindred spirit for myself, but an inspiration for all of us.” She looks up at the flag. “Will, can you tell us a little bit about your country's flag?”

As she leans over to give me the microphone. I cup my hand over it, still smiling, and whisper, “I will
so
get you for this.”

“Sure,” she whispers, and smiles back.

I look up. The crowd has fallen silent, their eyes on me. Over my shoulder I can hear the flag flapping and popping in the breeze.

“This flag . . .” I begin, and take a breath, wondering why I never bothered to learn what “my” flag represented. “Of course, the deep blue symbolizes the ocean. These orange and white stripes you see here are the symbol of hope and . . . ah, good stewardship. And the sun in the corner represents . . . uh . . . the sun. Which is extremely bright in my country. And hot.”

I glance over at Dr. Melville, but he's not smiling anymore. He actually looks a little confused. Walking over, he takes the microphone from my hand and turns to look at the flag.

“Excuse me, Mr. Shea,” he says, “but when I wrote my doctoral thesis on the Marshall Islands, it was my understanding that the twenty-four-pointed star in the corner is a representation of the twenty-four municipal districts. And the orange and white bands symbolize the Ratak and Ralik chains?” He turns back to me, extending the microphone. “Isn't that right?”

“Actually,” I say, “no.”

His eyebrows hike up halfway to his hairline.
“No?”

“No. Because, you see, the flag was actually redefined last year. All those symbols mean different things now. The government changed it.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. “They
changed
it?”

I nod. “They took a vote, and the people decided they wanted it to mean something different. It was called the, uh, Cultural Transition Initiative. It's really fascinating, in fact. You should read up on it.”

“I'll be sure to do that,” he says, giving me back the microphone and taking a step back, looking more bewildered than ever. Up in the stands, people are beginning to lose interest, and I realize that halftime is going to be over soon but not quite soon enough. As the band marches out onto the field, Andrea steps forward and takes the microphone from me.

“As a special treat,” she says, “Will has volunteered to sing us his country's national anthem, ‘Forever Marshall Islands.'” She turns to me. “Ready, Will?”

“Actually, I don't think—”

“Our marching band has already learned the music. Don't leave us hanging.”

I take her hand. “Only if you join me.”

“I don't know the words.”

“Just follow my lead,” I say, as the band strikes up a stately tune that sounds oddly similar to “The Star-Spangled Banner” but that must, in fact, be the anthem of my homeland far away. When the moment seems right, I take in a deep breath and begin to sing, with as much gusto as I can manage:

Oh, Marshall Islands,

My home across the sea.

You are a very small island,

Extremely difficult to see.

Most maps don't include you;

You're not on any chart.

But oh, Marshall Islands—

You're always in my heart.

Somewhere across the field, Dr. Melville is shouting something over the music. He doesn't have a microphone, but I can read lips well enough to know what he's saying: “Those aren't the lyrics!” And he's right, of course—if the person who'd written the actual Marshall Islands national anthem were here now, he'd probably be ready to have me dragged away in chains for a year of cultural awareness training, which, quite frankly, would've come in really handy
before
I'd started telling people I was from there.

I turn to Andrea, who—against almost insurmountable odds—has managed to keep a straight face, and now she joins me in repeating the ridiculous words that I just made up on the spot. We're going faster now, upping the tempo of the song. Still belting out the lyrics, she spins around to the band conductor, grabs his baton, and swings both arms up in the air, kicking the drum majorettes into triple time as the rest of the band struggles frantically to keep up. Cymbals crash, and the stately anthem accelerates into a Dixieland swing. Our mascot, Colby the Connaughton Cougar, has run out onto the field and starts doing backflips in front of the band.

“You're not on any
chart
 . . .” Now the lyrics come out sounding like some alternate-universe combination of pep rally and New Orleans funeral. “You're always in my
heart
 . . .” Andrea pivots around to face the stands. “Come on, everybody,” she shouts, “on your feet! You know this part!”

I look out and I'm amazed at what I see. The music
has
done something to the students and faculty and alumni, and now they're on their feet, singing along while Andrea coaches them through it. As Colby the Cougar executes a perfect handspring in front of us, I lean in again and join Andrea for the third chorus. Encouraged by Colby and the response of the Connaughton crowd, the band is now doing some crazy drumline moves that I'm pretty sure nobody's seen before, and a few of them grab the flag and wave it high in the air. Dr. Melville is now trying to push his way through to grab the microphone, but he can't get through the majorettes and the color guard. Meanwhile, Andrea and I are bringing it home.

“But oh, Marshall Islands,” we finish together, “you're always in my heart!” And when the drums and trumpets thunder to a crescendo, the crowd erupts in a roar of spontaneous applause. I realize I'm smiling, and Andrea is too, and I can't tell if either of us really means it, but at the moment it doesn't matter. For the moment I've forgotten about Gatsby. I'm back in my element, doing what I do best, faking it like a champ, and it feels
good.

“Thank you,” Andrea says to the crowd, sounding a little out of breath. Her cheeks are bright red and her eyes are reflecting tiny darts of the early-November sunlight, and when she looks at me, the smile on her face is genuine. “You guys are the best.” She grabs my hand again. “Which is why I know you're going to be excited when you hear this next part—one week from today, next Saturday, the head of the Ebeye Children's Health Clinic is going to be here at Connaughton to receive the funds to build a new orphanage on the island that Will Shea calls home.”

“Wait . . .” I stare at her.

My thoughts go spinning in a corkscrew, fluttering to the bottom of my brainpan. Meanwhile, Andrea gestures to the band, and they reach down to unfurl a new banner, which reads:
Connaughton Academy Supports the Orphans of Ebeye!

“Many of our alumni have already made some extremely generous pledges,” she says, “including one special pledge from a very special individual that we all know very well.” Turning to the stands, she flicks the hair from her eyes. “Brandt Rush has graciously volunteered to donate fifty thousand dollars.”

Applause. Cheers.

I turn to stare at Andrea again.

Just in time to see her lean in toward me to whisper in my ear.

“Game over, Shea,” she murmurs, still smiling. “You lose.”

“W
HOA,
”
THE TWENTY-SOMETHING GUY BEHIND THE
monitor says admiringly. It's Iron Mike Mullen, one of the smalltimers that Uncle Roy brought up from Boston. The screen in front of him reads:
Connaughton Alumni for Ebeye.
“These people already have their own website.”

I don't say anything. I've got my books spread out on the floor of our rented office space in Lowell, and for some reason that even I don't understand, I'm trying to study for a U.S. Diplomacy midterm while everybody else scrambles to find a way to salvage the con. Roy's sitting in the corner, stewing in a robust marinade of his own silence. He's got a good reason for being furious with me. I wasn't up-front with him about my bet with Andrea, and now, within a week, we're going to lose everything.

“Why can't we just go ahead with the scam?” Dad asks him.

“Because she'll tip off the mark,” Roy says abruptly. “Haven't you been paying attention?” He swivels to glare at me. “That was the deal, wasn't it, William? The part that you didn't feel compelled to tell us? First one to fifty thousand wins? If she gets the Rush kid to pay out first, she ruins it for us.”

“So what?” Dad shrugs and glances at Rhonda, who's sitting across from him, painting her fingernails. “So we take the girl out of the equation.”

“Take her out . . . ?” I look at him. “Wait a second, what are you talking about? You can't—”

“Look,” Dad says. “Let's get something straight. I know you have a soft spot for this girl, but I'm not allowing your little high school crush ruin our shot at two million bucks. If you think I'm going to let that happen, you're reading all the wrong books.”

“It's got nothing to do with—”

“I don't care. I'm just saying, we take care of her.”

Uncle Roy gets up and walks over to Dad. “What are you saying?”

“We send her packing,” Dad says. “This is
our
deal. She wants to keep trying to fleece these millionaires for some made-up charity for a bunch of orphans, then that's her thing, but we're going to finish this.”

“She'll tip off Brandt.”

Dad shakes her head. “Then we don't give her that chance. We shut her down. Hard.”