Red Glove (4 page)

“I bet Sharone Nagel will get stuck wearing the mascot fur suit to football games.”

“I bet the latin club will sacrifice one of its members at the spring formal.”

“I bet Chaiyawat Terweil will be the first person to get called into Headmistress Northcutt’s office.”

“I bet the new girl just got out of a loony bin.”

“I bet the new girl just broke out of a prison in Moscow.”

“I bet Mr. Lewis will have a nervous breakdown before winter break.”

I note down each bet for and against these in a code I created, and tonight Sam and I will calculate the first master list of odds. They’ll change as we get more bets, of course, but it gives us something to tell people at breakfast if they want to know where to throw their cash. It’s amazing how rich kids get itchy when they can’t spend money fast enough.

Just like criminals get itchy when we’re not working all the angles.

As we get up to go back to our rooms, Daneca punches my arm. “So,” she says. “Are you going to tell us why you’re such a moody bastard tonight?”

I shrug. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just tired. And an idiot.”

She reaches up to put her gloved hands around my neck and mock-chokes me. I play along, falling to the floor and pretending to die, until she finally laughs.

I’m forgiven.

“I knew I should have brought a blood packet,” Sam says, shaking his head like we’re humiliating him.

It is at that moment that Audrey walks by, hand in hand with Greg Harmsford. Audrey, who was once my girlfriend. Who dumped me. Who, when we were dating, made me feel like a normal person. Who I could have, maybe, once, convinced to take me back. Who now doesn’t even look at me as she passes.

Greg, however, narrows his eyes and smiles down at me like he’s daring me to start something.

I’d love to wipe that smug expression off his face. First, though, I’d have to get up off my knees.

I don’t get to spend the rest of the night putting away my stuff or joking around in the common lounge like I planned, because our new hall master, Mr. Pascoli, announces that all seniors have to meet with their guidance counselors.

I have seen Ms. Vanderveer exactly once a year for all the time I have been at Wallingford. She seems nice enough, always prepared with a list of which classes and activities are most likely to get me into a good college, always full of suggestions for volunteer work that admission committees love. I don’t really feel the need to see more of her than I already have, but Sam and I, along with a group of other upperclass-men, trudge across the grounds to Lainhart Library.

There, we listen to another speech—this one on how senior year is no time to slack off, and if we think things are hard now, just wait until we get to college. Seriously, this guy—one of the counselors, I guess—makes it sound like in college they make you write all your essays in blood, your lab partners might shank you if you bring down their grade point averages, and evening classes last all night long. He clearly misses it.

Finally they assign us an order for the meetings. I go sit in Vanderveer’s section, in front of the screen that’s separating her from the rest of us.

“Oh, man,” Sam says. He sits at the very edge of his chair, leaning over to whisper to me. “What am I going to do? They’re going to want to talk about colleges.”

“Probably,” I say, scooting closer. “They’re guidance counselors. They’re into colleges. They probably dream of colleges”

“Yeah, well, they think I want to go to MIT and major in chemistry.” He says this in a tragic whisper.

“You can just tell them that you don’t. If you don’t.”

He groans. “They’ll tell my parents.”

“Well, what is your plan?” I ask.

“Moving to LA and going to one of the schools that specializes in visual effects. Look, I love doing the special effects makeup, but most stuff today is done on a computer. I need to know how to do that. There’s a place that does a three-year program.” Sam runs his hand through his short hair, over his damp forehead, like he has just confessed an impossible and possibly shameful dream.

“Cassel Sharpe,” Ms. Vanderveer says, and I stand.

“You’ll be fine,” I say to him, and head behind the screen. His nervousness seems to be contagious, though. I can feel my palms sweat.

Vanderveer has short black hair and wrinkly skin covered in age spots. There are two chairs arranged in front of a little table where my folder is sitting. She plops herself into one. “So, Cassel,” she says with false cheerfulness. “What do you want to do with your life?”

“Uh,” I say. “Not really sure.” The only things I am really good at are the kinds of things colleges don’t let you major in. Con artistry. Forgery. Assassination. A little bit of lock-picking.

“Let’s consider universities, then. Last year I talked about you choosing some schools you’d really like to try for, and then some safety schools. Have you made that list?”

“Not a formal, written-down one,” I say.

She frowns. “Did you manage to visit any of the campuses you are considering?”

I shake my head. She sighs. “Wallingford Preparatory takes great pride in seeing our students placed into the world’s top schools. Our students go on to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Caltech, Johns Hopkins. Now, your grades aren’t all we might hope for, but your SAT scores were very promising.”

I nod my head. I think of Barron dropping out of Princeton, about Philip dropping out of high school to take his marks and work for the Zacharovs. I don’t want to wind up like them. “I’ll start that list,” I promise her.

“You do that,” she says. “I want to see you again in a week. No more excuses. The future’s going to be here sooner than you think.”

When I walk out from behind the divider, Sam isn’t there. I guess that he’s having his conference. I wait a few minutes and eat three butterscotch cookies they have put out as refreshments. When Sam still doesn’t emerge, I stroll back across campus.

The first night in the dorms is always strange. The cots are uncomfortable. My legs are too long for them and I keep falling asleep curled up, then straightening in the night and waking myself when my feet kick the frame.

One door over, someone is snoring.

Outside our window the grass of the quad shines in the moonlight, like it’s made of metal blades. That’s the last thing I think before I wake up to my phone shrilling the morning alarm. From a look at the time, it seems like the alarm has been ringing for a while.

I grunt and throw my pillow at my sleeping roommate. He raises his head groggily.

Sam and I shuffle to the shared bathroom, where the rest of the hall are brushing their teeth or finishing their showers. Sam splashes his face with water.

Chaiyawat Terweil wraps a towel around himself and grabs a pair of disposable plastic gloves from the dispenser. Above it, the sign reads: PROTECT YOUR CLASSMATES: COVER YOUR HANDS.

“Another day at Wallingford,” Sam announces. “Every dorm room a palace, every sloppy joe a feast, every morning shower—”

“You enjoy your showers a lot, do you?” Kyle Henderson asks. He’s already dressed, smoothing gel into his hair. “Think about me while you’re in there?”

“It does make a shower go faster,” Sam says, undaunted. “God, I love the Wall!”

I laugh. Someone whips a towel at Sam.

By the time I’m clean and dressed, I don’t really have enough time for breakfast. I drink some of the coffee our hall master has brewed for himself in the common room, and eat raw one of the Pop Tarts Sam’s mother sent.

Sam gives me a dark look and eats the other.

“We’re off to a good start,” I say. “Fashionably late.”

“Just doing our part to keep their expectations low,” says Sam.

Despite having spent the whole summer going to bed around this time in the morning, I feel pretty good.

My schedule says that my first class today is Probability & Statistics. This semester I also have Developing World Ethics (I thought Daneca would be pleased I chose that for my history requirement, which is why I haven’t told her), English, Physics, Ceramics 2 (laugh if you must), French 4, and Photoshop.

I am studying the slip of paper as I head out of Smythe House and walk into the Finke Academic Center. Probability & Statistics is on the third floor, so I make for the stairs.

Lila Zacharov is walking through the hallway in the Wallingford girl’s uniform: jacket, pleated skirt, and white oxford shirt. Her short blond hair shines like the woven gold of the crest. When she sees me, the expression on her face is some kind of mingled hope and horror.

I can’t even imagine my own face. “Lila?” I say.

She turns away, head down.

In a few quick steps I’ve grabbed hold of her arm, like I’m afraid she’s not real. She freezes at the touch of my gloved hand.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, turning her roughly toward me, which is maybe not an okay way to behave, but I’m too astonished to think straight.

She looks like I slapped her.

Good job, me. I’m a real charmer.

“I knew you’d be mad,” she says. Her face is pale and drawn, all her usual ruthlessness washed from it.

“It’s not about that,” I say. But for the life of me, in that moment, I have no idea what it is about. I know she’s not supposed to be here. And I know I don’t want her to leave.

“I can’t help—,” she says, and her voice breaks. Her face is full of despair. “I tried to stop thinking about you, Cassel. I tried all summer long. I almost came to see you a hundred times. I would sink my nails into my skin until I could stay away.”

I remember sitting on the steps in my mother’s house last March, begging Lila to believe she’d been worked. I remember the slow way the horror spread over her features. I remember her denials, her final defeated agreement that we shouldn’t see each other until the curse ended. I remember everything.

Lila’s a dream worker. I hope that means she’s sleeping better than I am.

“But if you’re here—,” I start, not sure how I can finish.

“It hurts not to be near you,” she says quietly, carefully, like the words cost her something. “You have no idea how much.”

I want to tell her that I have some idea what it feels like to love someone I can’t have. But maybe I don’t. Maybe being in love with me really is worse than I can imagine.

“I couldn’t keep—I wasn’t strong enough.” Her eyes are wet and her mouth is slightly parted.

“It’s been almost six months. Don’t you feel any different?” The curse should have begun to fade, surely.

“Worse,” she says. “I feel worse. What if this never stops?”

“It will. Soon. We have to wait this thing out, and it’s better if—,” I start, but it’s hard to concentrate on the words with her looking at me like that.

“You liked me before,” she says. “And I liked you. I loved you, Cassel. Before the curse. I always loved you. And I don’t mind—”

There is nothing I want more than to believe her. But I can’t. I don’t.

I knew this conversation would happen, eventually. No matter how much I tried to avoid it. And I know what I have to say. I even planned it out, knowing that otherwise I couldn’t say the words. “I didn’t love you, though. And I still don’t.”

The change is immediate and terrible. She pulls back from me. Her face looks pale and shuttered. “But that night in your room. You told me that you missed me and that you—”

“I’m not crazy,” I say, trying to keep my tells to a minimum. She’s known a lot of liars. “I said whatever I thought would make you sleep with me.”

She takes a quick, sharp breath of air. “That hurts,” she says. “You’re just saying it to hurt me.”

It’s not supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to disgust her. “Believe what you want, but it’s the truth.”

“So why didn’t you?” she asks. “Why don’t you? If all you wanted was some ass, it’s not like I’m going to say no. I can’t say no to you.”

The bell rings somewhere, distantly.

“I’m sorry,” I say, which isn’t part of the script. It slips out. I don’t know how to deal with this. I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don’t know how to be this kind of villain.

“I don’t need your pity.” Dots of hectic color have appeared on her cheeks, like she’s running a fever. “I’m waiting the curse out at Wallingford. If I’d told my dad what your mother did, she’d be dead by now. Don’t forget it.”

“And me with her,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “And you with her. So get used to the idea that I’m staying.”

“I can’t stop you,” I say quietly as she turns away from me and heads for the stairs. I watch the way the shadows move down her back. Then I slump against the wall.

I’m late for class, of course, but Dr. Kellerman only raises his bushy eyebrows as I slink in. I missed the morning announcements on the television suspended over the blackboard. Members of the AV club would have explained what lunch was going to be and when after-school clubs were meeting. Not exactly thrilling stuff.

Still, I’m glad Kellerman decides not to give me a hard time. I’m not sure I could take it.

He resumes explaining how to calculate odds—something I am pretty good at, being a bookie and all—while I concentrate on trying to stop my hands from shaking.

When the intercom on the wall crackles to life, I barely notice it. That is, until I hear Ms. Logan’s voice: “Please send Cassel Sharpe to the headmistress’s office. Please send Cassel Sharpe to the headmistress’s office.”

Dr. Kellerman frowns at me as I stand up and gather my books.

“Oh, come on,” I say ineffectually to the room.

A girl giggles.

One thing’s in my favor, though. Someone just lost the first bet of the year.

CHAPTER THREE

HEADMISTRESS NORTH-cutt’s office looks like a library in a baronial hunting lodge. The walls and built-in bookcases are polished dark wood and lit by brass lamps. Her desk is the size of a bed and is made of the same wood as the walls, with green leather chairs resting in front of it, and degrees hanging behind it. The whole thing is designed to be intimidating to students and reassuring to parents.

When I’m shown in, I see Northcutt is the one that looks uncomfortable. Two men in suits are standing beside her, clearly waiting for me. One has dark sunglasses on.