Laura Kasischke - The Raising

Karess Flanagan followed Perry out of class, down the hall, and around the corner. He’d turned right when Professor Polson hurried out of the room, following at what he hoped was a considerate distance. He didn’t want to annoy Professor Polson, but he also needed to speak with her. Often she stuck around until all the students were gone—erasing the board, packing up her things, turning off the lights, and closing the door behind her. But today there was something wrong. She’d said it to the class, although she hadn’t needed to. They could all see it in her expression when she’d walked in. Her eyes were puffy.

Perry thought of her husband and that angry slamming of the phone.

Something had happened—and besides wanting to talk to her about the postcard, about Craig (he had to ask her what he should do: was it okay to tell Craig about the photograph, about Lucas, about Patrick Wright?), Perry also didn’t feel right not going up to her office, asking her if there was something he could do. He knew they weren’t friends exactly, but he was not, any longer, just her student either.

And the look on her face: her hand over her mouth, staring back at the class. He’d wanted to stand up right then and go to her. He’d imagined, so easily, putting his arms around her, maybe kneeling in front of her, taking her heart-shaped face in his hands.

He hadn’t, of course, but he’d followed her out of class. After all the other students had turned left out of the classroom, Perry headed to the nearest stairwell, the one that led to the hall where Professor Polson’s office was (she was still close enough that he could hear her heels clicking on the stairs), and because the others were leaving from the other direction, Perry couldn’t help being aware of Karess behind him, her pointy black boots striking the linoleum sharply, in quick succession. She was hurrying after him, it seemed. Perry began to walk faster himself, and it occurred to him that if he turned around he might find that Karess was actually running to catch up with him. He hoped not. He had absolutely no interest whatsoever in having any kind of conversation with Karess Flanagan at the moment.

“Hey!” she called out just as he reached the foot of stairwell. The heavy fire door was propped open. “Hey. Perry! Can I talk to you a sec?”

Reluctantly, he stopped and turned around.

There she was, the whole glittering thing of her, only a few feet behind him: Karess Flanagan in some kind of purple leggings and thigh-high boots, some kind of blousey top that was half shirt, half dress. Her hair was floating around her shoulders in luxurious curls, ablaze with expensive highlights and lowlights and whatever else brunettes like Karess got done to their hair to make it too dazzling for mere mortals to behold. She had tiny silver half-moons dangling from her ears, and was wearing a sheer red lip gloss that made it look as if, recently, she’d been kissing a raspberry patch so deeply that her lips had begun to bleed. “Okay?” she asked, stopping, taking a step toward him. “Can we talk?”

Perry didn’t answer. He tried to look at her as if he didn’t understand her, as if that might make her go away, but it didn’t. She stepped closer.

“Like, can I ask you what’s going on?”

She said it in the same tone in which she said everything: “Do we need, like, a blue book?” “Are we supposed to, you know, have a title page?” “Is there, like, a special font or something we’re supposed to type in?” “Is the universe, like, expanding?” No matter what she said in class, she always sounded half-exasperated, half-confused, and pretty stupid. Apparently she sounded that way outside of class, too.

“What?” Perry asked.

“Well?” Karess said, holding up her palms. They were pale, and for a crazy second Perry considered looking into them, and felt pretty sure that if he did they would be completely unlined. “What’s going on with you, and this class?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Perry said, although he was afraid he might.

“First, like, why are you in this class? It’s a freshman seminar. You’re not a freshman.”

Perry just stared at her.

“I mean, maybe it’s none of my business, but—”

“ Maybe it’s none of your business?”

She laughed good-naturedly about this, maybe even blushed a little. She was wearing so much blush already that it was hard to tell, but he gave her credit for it. He’d sounded hostile, even to himself, and she seemed unfazed. Or maybe a little genuinely embarrassed by herself.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s definitely none of my business. I’m just, I guess, really curious. I don’t expect you to tell me, since, like, why would you, since we don’t even know each other, but something really weird seems to be going on here. I mean, I don’t necessarily believe it, but a lot of people in the class think you’re sleeping with Professor Polson.”

Spontaneously, Perry choked out a wild little laugh, and then he could feel himself blushing, a rising burn from his chest to his scalp. Karess shrugged and made a wistful little smirk, as if she’d caught him at something and felt a little bad about it. She crossed her arms, waiting, it seemed, for him to speak, but Perry couldn’t even take a breath. Finally, she cleared her throat, and said, “Well, that was awkward.”

Tucking a dark ringlet behind her ear, Karess licked her lips and went on, “Well, I’m not saying anyone cares. You’re a big boy, and she’s obviously got some domestic issues, but between that and all this shit in the dorm about Nicole Werner and Alice Meyers and that girl who ran away ” — she emphasized every few words with both her intonation and a rolling motion of her hands, as if to churn the air around each new item on the list—“and all the Internet photos of Nicole Werner’s roommate having metro-sex with the music prof, and then this weird-as-fuck class, going to the morgue next time, and Professor Polson having, like, a nervous breakdown in front of us today. I for one am starting to wonder what the hell kind of college this is. I mean, I got into Columbia. I came here because I thought it would be calmer .”

“Josie?” Perry managed to ask after moving backward through her monologue, searching it for meaning.

“What?” Karess asked.

“Nicole’s roommate. Josie?”

“I guess so. That sorority chick. It’s been all over the Internet. I got it forwarded to me from like four hundred different people. I don’t think her name is there, just all these disgusting pictures, but people have been saying she was Nicole Werner’s roommate.”

“That’s Josie,” Perry said.

“Well, whatever,” Karess said. “So, like, my parents hear about this, and they want to know what the hell is going on down here? I was in a parochial school before this. I mean, we might be from Hollywood, but we’re Catholic . ”

“Who’s Alice Meyers?” The name was familiar to Perry, but he couldn’t attach a face to it.

“Oh, God, you don’t know? Everybody knows. She’s the ghost of Godwin Hall.” Karess opened her eyes wide and made a fluttering gesture in the air with her hand, which Perry supposed was meant to indicate ironic spookiness.

“What are you talking about?” Perry asked.

Karess tossed her book bag onto the floor against the wall, as if she intended to stand there in the basement of Godwin Hall talking to Perry for a very long time. She jerked her thumb behind her.

“The study room,” she said. “You know. Alice Meyers? She disappeared in, like, the sixties or something? No one’ll go near that study room because they say she’s still in there.”