thirty?” he asked Eustacia.
Say no, say no, say no, say no .
No one ever said no to Wilson Cleary; saying no to him was almost always the wrongheaded thing to do; but I knew that if anyone could, if anyone would, it would be Eustacia.
But Eustacia sighed and— damn her—said, “Yes.”
WHAT I MISSED MOST about my old life was that there had never been dread, not true, blue, ice-in-your-chest dread. There hadn’t even beenmuch worry. Mostly, my old life was smooth as a silk, each hour, day, week slipping easily into the next.
The flip side of the old life was that there had been also almost no eagerness. Wait, I don’t mean that. Sure, I’d looked forward to things: new books, field trips with my parents, summer tomatoes, running at dusk, snow. But when everything is pleasant, nothing leaps out of the darkness, flashing silver like the moon, and announces itself as extraordinary. Nothing dazzles you so much that you get short of breath wanting more of it. To employ a cliché, what I learned is that in order to have a silver lining, you need clouds, and my new life had plenty of those, clouds upon clouds upon clouds.
What my new life also had—cue the fireworks and the soaring music!—was lunch with Mr. Insley. The silverest silver lining you would ever wish for.
The story of our lunches began where such stories often begin: at rock bottom—except that, since Eustacia had yet to drop into my world like a ticking bomb, I only thought it was rock bottom. Still, it was bleak enough and maybe the bleakest part was the setting: the east wing stairwell of the Webley School.
As I may have mentioned, Webley was a private school, although I found that no one called it that. They called it, and schools like it, “independent,” no doubt because “private” sounded too exclusive (which of course Webley was) and also somehow full of secrets (it was that, too), whereas “independent” conjured images of freedom and power. Ha ha ha groan. But despite its independent state, its high-tech, high-ceilinged classrooms, and its noble, oak-paneled, marble-floored foyer, Webley harbored, within its bowels, pockets of pure desolation, and the worst spot of all was the east wing stairwell, stuffed away behind an unmarked door in the darkest corner of the main building. A word to the wise: if you ever want to create a truly grisly, soul-killing place, choose Band-Aid beige with black freckles for its floor, paint its walls smoker’s lung gray, and make it smell like cherry mouth rinse at the dentist’s office. Such a place is no place to be; certainly, it is no placeto sit down and eat food , but that is exactly what I was doing when Mr. Insley found me.
Truth: I wasn’t just eating, I was shoveling forkfuls of lamb vindaloo and brown rice into my mouth as fast as I could shovel. I couldn’t help it, I tell you. I was hungry! It was nearly two in the afternoon, and, as had become my habit, I’d spent lunch period in the library where eating was strictly forbidden. Most days, I could wait until after school to eat. Stick-to-your-bones breakfasts were part of our household religion, but that morning, I’d slept through my alarm clock, and my mother, after a bad night, had slept through hers. Consequently, I’d run out of the house without eating a thing. So, after finishing my history test with time to spare, I asked to go to the bathroom, tucked my lunch bag unobtrusively under my arm, and made a break for the east wing stairwell, praying hard that no one would walk in and find me.
I was nearly finished when: footsteps in the hallway, door creaking, a man saying, “Willow?”
Even though I knew, in an instant, his voice, his scuffed brown wingtips, his very pant cuffs, I didn’t raise my head to look at him. How could I ever look at him again? To be caught mid-gobble, hunched like an animal over my sad thermal food container in the ugliest stairwell on the planet? Oh, I wanted to die. Instead, I did something much
Say no, say no, say no, say no .
No one ever said no to Wilson Cleary; saying no to him was almost always the wrongheaded thing to do; but I knew that if anyone could, if anyone would, it would be Eustacia.
But Eustacia sighed and— damn her—said, “Yes.”
WHAT I MISSED MOST about my old life was that there had never been dread, not true, blue, ice-in-your-chest dread. There hadn’t even beenmuch worry. Mostly, my old life was smooth as a silk, each hour, day, week slipping easily into the next.
The flip side of the old life was that there had been also almost no eagerness. Wait, I don’t mean that. Sure, I’d looked forward to things: new books, field trips with my parents, summer tomatoes, running at dusk, snow. But when everything is pleasant, nothing leaps out of the darkness, flashing silver like the moon, and announces itself as extraordinary. Nothing dazzles you so much that you get short of breath wanting more of it. To employ a cliché, what I learned is that in order to have a silver lining, you need clouds, and my new life had plenty of those, clouds upon clouds upon clouds.
What my new life also had—cue the fireworks and the soaring music!—was lunch with Mr. Insley. The silverest silver lining you would ever wish for.
The story of our lunches began where such stories often begin: at rock bottom—except that, since Eustacia had yet to drop into my world like a ticking bomb, I only thought it was rock bottom. Still, it was bleak enough and maybe the bleakest part was the setting: the east wing stairwell of the Webley School.
As I may have mentioned, Webley was a private school, although I found that no one called it that. They called it, and schools like it, “independent,” no doubt because “private” sounded too exclusive (which of course Webley was) and also somehow full of secrets (it was that, too), whereas “independent” conjured images of freedom and power. Ha ha ha groan. But despite its independent state, its high-tech, high-ceilinged classrooms, and its noble, oak-paneled, marble-floored foyer, Webley harbored, within its bowels, pockets of pure desolation, and the worst spot of all was the east wing stairwell, stuffed away behind an unmarked door in the darkest corner of the main building. A word to the wise: if you ever want to create a truly grisly, soul-killing place, choose Band-Aid beige with black freckles for its floor, paint its walls smoker’s lung gray, and make it smell like cherry mouth rinse at the dentist’s office. Such a place is no place to be; certainly, it is no placeto sit down and eat food , but that is exactly what I was doing when Mr. Insley found me.
Truth: I wasn’t just eating, I was shoveling forkfuls of lamb vindaloo and brown rice into my mouth as fast as I could shovel. I couldn’t help it, I tell you. I was hungry! It was nearly two in the afternoon, and, as had become my habit, I’d spent lunch period in the library where eating was strictly forbidden. Most days, I could wait until after school to eat. Stick-to-your-bones breakfasts were part of our household religion, but that morning, I’d slept through my alarm clock, and my mother, after a bad night, had slept through hers. Consequently, I’d run out of the house without eating a thing. So, after finishing my history test with time to spare, I asked to go to the bathroom, tucked my lunch bag unobtrusively under my arm, and made a break for the east wing stairwell, praying hard that no one would walk in and find me.
I was nearly finished when: footsteps in the hallway, door creaking, a man saying, “Willow?”
Even though I knew, in an instant, his voice, his scuffed brown wingtips, his very pant cuffs, I didn’t raise my head to look at him. How could I ever look at him again? To be caught mid-gobble, hunched like an animal over my sad thermal food container in the ugliest stairwell on the planet? Oh, I wanted to die. Instead, I did something much
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