Prologue
JANUARY 2008
If you had a choice between telling the truth and hurting someone you love or keeping a secret that eats away at you, which would you choose? I think most people would choose to keep the secret. We weren’t most people. That’s what we would discover in the last months of the twentieth century, those months that changed our lives forever.
Eight years ago, following that turn of the century, I arrived on campus before everyone else to confront Professor Douglas. It had snowed over the holidays, and with no students traipsing across the grounds in their Timberlands, the whole school looked like a cloud. Everything imposing and menacing about Chandler suddenly became innocent and fresh. Like it was a place of new beginnings, which I knew by then it wasn’t. Chandler was, and is, a place weighed down by history.
There was so much snow that it even covered the school motto on all the campus benches and buildings.
Veritas vos liberabit.
It’s as if nature knew that truth will not, as it turns out, liberate us all. It takes more than truth to liberate. It takes action.
I remember knocking on Douglas’s door five times before she finally opened it. Her trademark spiky auburn hair looked more electrocuted than ever. I pulled the pages from beneath my coat and handed them to her. She didn’t take them right away.
I followed her apprehensively, setting my massive backpack down. She must have sensed something was wrong, because she suddenly looked at the pages in her hand like they were a ticking time bomb. “So what’s it about?” she asked.
“Well, it’s personal,” I said. She waited for me to continue. “It’s about five students who are chosen for a writing workshop by a brilliant professor who . . .”
I never finished that sentence. It was too much to fit into one thought. It’s still too much. Maybe that’s why we wrote it all down.
Because sometimes stories are the only way to make sense of complicated emotions.
September 1999
Beth Kramer
If you take the interstate from New York into Connecticut, you might notice the pollution that has started to infest our highways—soda bottles, packs of cigarettes, gum wrappers. You might notice the red of the trees in the fall, the green of them in the spring. If you’re very observant, you will probably notice the hidden police cars, covertly stationed near the off-ramps, waiting for speeding luxury cars they can teach a lesson to—Connecticut being the capital of traffic violations.
“Mom, there’s the exit,” Beth Kramer tells her mom, Elizabeth, pointing to an unmarked off-ramp. Beth and her mom share a name and they’re both redheads with freckles, but they share very little else.
“It’s so confusing,” her mom says. “Can’t they just put up a big old sign like normal people?”
“No, because this isn’t a place for normal people.”
Here’s the thing. In 1958, when the interstate was first built, the Headmaster of Chandler Academy and the Headmistress of Plum School (they were still separate institutions then) petitioned the state for their very own interstate exit. Exit 75. The only catch is that they wanted it to be a hidden exit with no signage. Beth doesn’t say any of this to her mom, who hates everything Chandler represents and would bristle at the whole concept of a hidden interstate exit. Her mom would understand, like Beth does, that the whole point of Exit 75 is avoiding townies.
Beth is one of those townies, and yet here she is, arriving for her sophomore year. A second chance at convincing them, and convincing herself, that she belongs here.
Beth’s mom takes the unmarked exit and drives down the half mile of New England foliage that separates road from school. There’s nowhere to pull off and stop the car until they get to campus. Beth thinks of all the buried secrets in these woods. Trees carved with lovers’ initials. Decades of cigarette butts buried under leaves and dirt, because what happens here tends to stay buried.
But anything can be unburied.
As soon as her mom pulls into campus, Beth hauls her giant backpack out of the back seat. “Okay, thanks Mom,” she says.
“I could come help you settle in,” her mom offers.
“I’m not a third former this time,” Beth says. “It would be pretty embarrassing for a fourth former to have her mom help her put a comforter on her bed.”
“What’s a third former again?” her mom asks.
“It’s a freshman. So that makes me a fourth former this year. A sophomore.”
Her mom shakes her head. “I don’t know why this school can’t just use the same words as the rest of us.”
Beth could say again that it’s because this place isn’t for normal people, but she doesn’t.
“I see other mothers helping.”
“Those are nannies,” Beth says, half smiling.
“Okay,” her mom says with a sad shrug. “I don’t know the rules of this place like you do.”
Beth throws her backpack onto the ground outside the car. She leans into the car, stretches her body until she’s able to give her mom a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mom.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” her mom says. A loaded question.
She nods instead of answering. She knows that if she engages in this conversation, her mom will use it as one more opportunity to suggest therapy. Okay, she’s a little anxious sometimes. But she’s not see-a-therapist anxious. “Will you be able to find your way back to town?” Beth asks.
“I think so. They make getting out a lot easier than getting in.”
Beth slams the car door shut. She waves until her mom’s Volvo is out of sight. It stood out like a sore thumb among all the luxury cars. She imagines her mom weaving her way back to the highway. Beth thinks about how she’s a little like that hidden exit herself. No one notices her.
And why would they? Look at these kids pouring into campus. New haircuts. Freshly pressed summer dresses purchased from the racks of fancy New York City boutiques. Bright whitened smiles. Stories about summers in the south of France, internships at banks and magazines and movie studios. All the markers of belonging that Beth still hasn’t achieved because, well, she can’t afford to.
She smiles at the fellow fourth formers she remembers from last year. Amanda de Ravin. Sarah Sumner. Rachel Katz. They all look right past her like she’s made of cellophane.
As Beth gazes around the campus, she marvels at how much she knows about it. She’s basically a Chandler encyclopedia, her lifelong obsession with the campus having resulted in useless trivia about it filling her brain. Probably taking up space that could be occupied by more important things. She could’ve at least volunteered to be an orientation guide this year, but she was too scared. Too committed to staying invisible.
In the distance, she sees Sarah Brunson guiding a new family across campus. Her wavy brown hair and forced smile bring Beth right back to rooming with her last year. Brunson wears a rust-and-gold CAN I HELP YOU? T-shirt that swims over her fitted jeans. Of course she’s an orientation guide. Beth wishes she had that kind of self-assurance.
She wonders if Brunson knows as much about campus history as she does. Like, does Brunson know that the new Math Building was a gift from Moses Briggs, the mutual fund manager from the Class of ’64 who swindled countless people out of their life savings? It was supposed to be called the Briggs Building. The name was taken off, but the school still took the money. Does she know that the Main Lawn isn’t even real, the school having invested in very expensive fake grass that looks real but can withstand the countless games of ultimate Frisbee and hacky sack that students play?
“Beth!”
Beth looks up in surprise and sees someone waving to her. No, not just someone. Amanda Priya Spencer. Spence.
“Hey, Beth! How was your summer!” Spence asks as she exits the back seat of a Mercedes. Her nanny drives the family car, and Beth can’t help but notice that she is wearing the Prada outfit Spence wore to last year’s First Huzzah.
Beth freezes, her mind full of questions. How does Spence know who she is? Is Spence just being polite or does she truly care? Should she walk away? Make up an interesting story about her summer?
She does none of these things. Instead, she just stares at Spence for an uncomfortably long time. Spence is probably used to the stares, because her beauty stops people in their tracks.
“Beth!” Spence calls out again as she ties her shiny black hair into her signature high ponytail, a hairstyle duplicated by girls across campus without ever pulling it off the way Spence does. “Hi!”
It’s like there are exclamation points after everything Spence says. That’s her. Confident. Optimistic. Chosen.
Beth studies Spence like she’s studied every effortless Chandler girl she saw in town as a kid. That time at Toppings when three girls in the shortest shorts ordered a single scoop of mint chocolate chip to share, then let it melt as they discussed someone named Tucker’s ass when he played lacrosse. That time she and her mom went to Mamma Mia to pick up pizza, and she saw a Chandie girl smoking a cigarette alone in a booth as she furiously underlined Great Expectations.
“Oh yeah, fine, I’m sorry,” Beth says. “I didn’t know you knew me.”
Spence laughs. “Of course I know you. You did lights for A Chorus Line last year, right?”
“Yeah, I did, that’s right.” It’s not that Beth hid all through her first year. It’s just that she chose activities that allowed her to disappear, like being a techie for the school musical.
“Well, thanks for making me look good,” Spence says with a beaming smile. Like Spence needs lighting to look good. Please. “So, did you have a good summer?”
“Uh, yeah, fine.” Why does it take this much effort to answer a simple question? Maybe because unlike the rest of these kids, Beth stayed in town and worked at Toppings. “I’m sure yours was more exciting than mine,” Beth continues in a nervous stammer. “Where were
you? St. Tropez? Biarritz? Gstaad?” She pronounces each of these words in a clipped mid-Atlantic accent that makes her sound like a Saturday Night Live sketch about Chandies. She observed many things about her classmates last year, and one of these observations is that they mock themselves mercilessly. To belong to Chandler, you apparently need to make fun of its ways.
Spence laughs. “You’re hilarious, Beth!”
Okay, she’s a lot of things, and hilarious isn’t one of them. But Beth can’t help being flattered just the same.
As Spence walks away from her, Beth thinks about how much she knows about Spence despite barely ever interacting with her. Like, she knows that Spence’s paternal grandfather went to Chandler and played crew, and her paternal grandmother went to Plum and played the lead in Antigone. Her maternal grandparents, both doctors, moved from India to New York in the late ’60s after a new immigration act was passed. Her father, Class of ’78, is now some movie-exec big shot, and her mother is a supermodel and activist. Still working as a model despite pushing fifty. Those are the kinds of genes Spence has. Meanwhile, Beth’s mom has worn the same elastic-waisted jeans for the last decade, and people regularly mistake her dad for her grandfather because life has worn him down so fast.
She walks toward Carlton House, her fourth-form dorm, trying not to let the Benzes and BMWs and Maseratis intimidate her into feeling bad about herself.
Behind her, she hears Spence greet Henny Dover. “Hey, Henny! How was your summer!”
Beth’s heart sinks a little, suddenly feeling a little less special.
Beth reaches a finger into her scalp, but stops herself. She’s vowed not to pull in public. She rushes toward her dorm and falls hard on the pavement, catching herself with her palms.
She looks around, praying no one saw her. But they did. Of course they did. Well, fine—let them laugh. She takes a moment to feel the sting. At least it reminds her she’s alive.
“You okay?” Henny asks.
Thankfully, Spence is walking away. Maybe she didn’t see what happened.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says.
“Are you new?” Henny asks. “I’m Henny Dover. I can walk you to your dorm if—”
“I was here last year,” Beth says. “We know each other.”
“Oh right,” Henny says, squinting.
In a way, Henny not knowing who she is makes her feel more at ease than Spence knowing. It confirms her core belief about herself: that she’s insignificant.
She walks away, chewing on her hair. Her fucking hair. If she could change one thing about herself, it would be the hours she spends thinking about her hair.
Walking to Carlton House, Beth takes in the campus in all its glory. For years, she only saw the campus in brochures, even though it was only two miles away from her home. Those brochures that she pored over didn’t even come close to capturing the real thing. And that website. It drains the place of all its magic with its low-resolution images. There’s nothing low-res about this place.
She knows most of the girls in her fourth-form dorm from last year. But not a single one is a friend. She may have survived one year as a Chandie, but she certainly didn’t make any friends.
At least she’ll be living in a single this year. Brunson avoided her for most of last year. And why wouldn’t she? Brunson was just pretty and confident enough to fit right in with the other girls. She made friends quickly. Packed her schedule with extracurriculars and social plans, never once inviting Beth along to join. When Brunson and her friends congregated in their room to eat Twizzlers and do homework together, Beth would just put her headphones on and drown them out. Better to ignore them than to be ignored. It wasn’t an ideal existence, but it worked.
And then Brunson went and ruined everything by complaining to their dorm parent about Beth’s red hair being all over their room. Brunson told Beth that she empathized deeply with hair loss, which was such an odd thing to say, but she also said that she was grossed out by the hairs that found their way into their shared Crock-Pot. In a meeting between the two roommates and their dorm parent, Brunson suggested that Beth wear a hairnet in the room, and the only grown-up in the room said that sounded like a perfect compromise.
A hairnet.
HAIR. NET.
Beth said nothing. Just smiled. And then she wore the hairnet as suggested. But not just in the room. She wore it everywhere, to class, to tech rehearsal for A Chorus Line, to Chapel, to
all-school meetings. When people asked her why she was wearing a hairnet, she just shrugged. She didn’t need anyone to know why, except for Brunson. She wanted to throw Brunson’s petty cruelty back in her face.
In the hallway of her new dorm, Beth runs right into Jane King, who grew her thin hair out over the summer and now wears it in a Spence-like high ponytail. “Oh hey,” Jane says. “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean?” Beth asks. “This is my dorm.”
“I thought you were a day student,” Jane says.
Beth sighs. All she wants is to be one of these girls. Maybe someday to even date one of them. But they’ll always see her as a day student, even when she’s a boarder. Because she’s a townie. It’s like they can smell it on her.
“I’m not,” Beth says. “I mean, my parents live nearby, but I live here.”
“My bad,” Jane says.
Beth heads to her room. As she does, she overhears another returning sophomore, Paulina Lutz, whisper to a new sophomore. “Wait ’til you see Freddy Bello. He got even hotter over the summer. Frede-rico Suave.”
Beth rolls her eyes and closes the door to her single. With her own room, she’ll be free to spread out. No hairnet. She can let the strands she pulls go wherever they want to go.
She can already feel the release as she digs her right hand into the crown of her scalp, her thin fingers searching for the perfect hair to pull out.
Yank.
She stares at the long red hair in her hand. Then blows it away, onto that old, old carpet. Then she digs back in. She marvels at how each strand of hair seems to have its own texture. Some strands are smooth. Some are rough. She finds the roughest one she can and . . .
Yank.
Blow.
Yank.
Blow.
As she engages in her ritual, she thinks about the year ahead. She has to be chosen this year. She applied last year, but she didn’t even get an interview with Professor Douglas. This time, she has to make Professor Douglas see that she’s special, that she can write, that she has something unique to say that no one else does. If Douglas will just let her into the Circle, the other students will finally see that she’s more than just another townie. They’ll understand that the reason she was given a scholarship is because she’s fucking smarter than them. She earned her way in.
When she’s pulled enough hairs out to satisfy herself, she briefly feels the smooth skin of her scalp. She loves this feeling of freshness. Just new follicles waiting to grow new hairs. Regeneration. Like the school, which always admits new students, her head will always grow new hairs.
She digs into her backpack and pulls out her favorite book. Supplemental Facts by Hattie Douglas. It’s the only novel Professor Douglas has had published (twenty years ago, hard to find, especially as she does not allow the Chandler Library to carry it). Beth has so many questions, first about the book (Is it autobiographical?), but also about the publishing (Was it hard to publish a lesbian novel in 1979?).
As her submission essay for the Circle this year, Beth decides to gush about this book. She compares herself to the lead character of the novel, a woman who hides a secret lesbian life from her husband in the early 1970s. It is, of course, no secret that the professor is a lesbian, and that she was once married (her ex-husband still publishes, thirteen novels so far, and also four wives). Professor Douglas is, in fact, the only openly gay teacher on campus. Some might count Father Close, the school priest, who quotes Karen Carpenter in every sermon, but he’s, well, a priest. Beth’s analysis of Professor Douglas’s novel is deeply perceptive because she sees so much of herself in it.
And that title, Supplemental Facts. She loves that title. She thinks of all the supplemental facts no one knows about her, and she puts them into her essay. Like how it feels to be a townie who insisted on being a boarder. Like the feelings that stir inside her when she watches the way Chandler girls glide through life.
Before putting the essay in a manila envelope and dropping it off in the mailroom, she digs into her scalp and pulls the smoothest hair she can find. She closes her eyes and blows it into the air. This is her small offering to the whims of the universe.
She checks the inside of the envelope obsessively, making sure the essay is there, as if it could disappear into thin air without her watchful eye.
Then she seals the envelope.
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