Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

She was trying to figure out what to ask the girl next when Jocelyn Smith appeared in the doorway, her features working as if she were a silent-screen actress.

“Ms. Cunningham, Ms. Cunningham? About my paper?”

“It’s okay, Jocelyn. I already told you it’s okay. You got the extension.”

“But it’s not about finishing it late. It’s about finishing ever . I have horseback-riding camp this summer, and then a killer schedule in the fall, and my parents pointed out that if I have an incomplete going into the fall, it could totally screw up my transcripts on my college applications…”

She was now in a state of near hysteria, admittedly a place never far away where Jocelyn was concerned. Alexa couldn’t help being annoyed by the girl’s selfishness. True, this was Jocelyn’s independent-study hour, when Alexa was supposed to be available to her, but hadn’t she noticed Eve sitting here? For all Jocelyn knew, Eve also was doing an independent study with Alexa and Jocelyn was stealing her time, her attention. But Jocelyn never worried about such things.

“Hold it a sec, Jocelyn. I’ll talk to you in the hall.”

She closed the door behind her, signaling that she was not through with Eve.

Eve, left alonein the classroom, found herself reaching almost automatically for Alexa’s cart. Her father spoke of people who stole as having sticky fingers, and while Eve understood the metaphor, it didn’t apply in her situation. Her fingers never felt drier or cooler than when moving through property that wasn’t hers.

Her parents had made her a thief, she reasoned. They would not buy her the things she needed nor allow her the part-time job that might subsidize such purchases, so she had learned to get what she wanted-what she needed-by seizing opportunities. Left alone to tend the produce stand, for example, she gouged the more gullible types, claiming that ordinary beefsteak tomatoes were a rare hybrid or that the corn was true Silver Queen. (Her father’s corn was actually better, but people thought they wanted Silver Queen.) And she was always on the prowl for untended money, because only a fool would boost things at the mall, although items without price tags were ripe for the taking. Once pocketed, these things were guaranteed, for how could someone prove you took it? Or you could pull a little switcheroo. That’s how she had gotten her big gold E, by switching price tags.

But money was the best. So her fingers moved through Alexa’s cart, looking for a billfold. Never take it all, was Eve’s motto. People noticed when everything was missing. But when it was one twenty-dollar bill out of three, the marks tended to blame themselves, assuming they had lost track of some minor purchase. This assumption worked with everyone but her father, who knew to the nickel how much money he had. That had been a hard lesson, but once learned, it was never forgotten. Eve didn’t make the same mistake twice.

But Ms. Cunningham, while so stupid in some ways, had taken her purse with her when she stepped out of the classroom. Really, Eve should be insulted. Did Ms. Cunningham think she was a thief? (Okay, she was, but Ms. Cunningham didn’t know that.) Would she have taken her purse with her if, say, Perri had been here? Perri, who had brought a gun to school, who had proved to be much more unpredictable than anyone knew? What about Kat Hartigan? But if Kat Hartigan had been a dog, you could have left her alone with a steak and she wouldn’t budge. No-Kat would sit and wait, and someone would bring the steak to her. That was the beauty of being Kat Hartigan. Everything offered up, everything done for her. All she had to do was exist.

Out in the hall, Jocelyn was now sobbing, the sobs growing fainter, as if Ms. Cunningham were trying to walk her away from this corridor, where several classes were in session. Ms. Cunningham probably thought she was doing Jocelyn a kindness, but Jocelyn cried precisely so she would get attention. Being deprived of an audience, Eve thought, was the opposite of what Jocelyn wanted.

There was a folder at the bottom of the cart, marked “Independent Study.” Eve opened it. The first paper, by Paige Hawthorne, had the word “pornography” in the title but also the word “semiotics,” which canceled out the promises of the first word. She tried to skip to the end, to see if it got juicier, but the final pages were sticky, almost as if something had been spilled on them, and when Eve finally got the last page to pull away, it was a different font, a different topic. A paper by Perri. Again it had a promising title but a dull treatment, and she skipped to the end. But instead of finding a great summing-up, she found a letter. A handwritten letter to Kat, stapled to the term paper.

Oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. Fuck. No wonder Ms. Cunningham wouldn’t leave her alone. If she had read this, she knew . Not everything, but more than she should. How had she gotten this letter? She had enough information to put it together, and now Eve would be accused of not keeping the secret, which she absolutely had. It was so unfair.

Wait, Muhly. (The voice in her mind was Val’s, calm and cool.) Wait . The paper wasn’t marked, not anywhere, and perfect as Perri was, not even she could turn in a term paper that didn’t merit one correction. It had been stapled to the back of Perri’s paper, which had been stuck to Paige’s paper until Eve had pulled it away. Maybe Ms. Cunningham hadn’t seen it. And even if she had, and it disappeared, then what could she prove? All Eve had to do was make this letter disappear, and then Ms. Cunningham couldn’t do anything.

Eve took the whole batch-Paige Hawthorne’s paper, Perri’s, the letter-reasoning that this caper should be played according to reverse logic: The more missing, the less suspicious it would be. No, better, an entire folder . She would take the folder, secure it inside her oversize binder and-

“I’m so sorry about that interruption, Eve. Jocelyn was very upset.”

“No problem. But I really should get to class. I have…a paper due.”

“For health? So late in the semester?”

“I’m behind. It’s on STDs-sexually transmitted diseases. Did you know that babies can be born with that stuff, even though they never had sex?”

“Well, they can be infected by their mother in utero-”

“They can be born blind .”

“All the more reason to use a condom.”

“Then there’s no baby at all.”

“Exactly, Eve. Exactly.”

Teachers were always bringing up condoms to Eve in this roundabout way, which amused and disappointed her. Even the teachers, even Ms. Cunningham for all her disavowal of gossip, thought she was a slut. Whereas her only true sexual adventure was that time on the bus, almost two years behind her now. Eve wanted a boyfriend, although no one really had them anymore. The problem was, the boys all thought she knew so much more than she did. Virginity, once gone, could never be reclaimed, a point that was made repeatedly in health class. But it was worse, Eve thought, to be a virgin and have everyone think you were this superslut who knew how to do everything. The only way she could keep her reputation intact was to stay out of the fray completely.

She almost wished she could be who she used to be. She loved hanging with Val and Lila and had no affection for her old outcast status. She was proud to be a skeezer. Still, there was something about the girl who had gotten on the bus to Philadelphia that day, the girl in her mom’s crocheted vest, with her uncool lunch of preserves on lumpy homemade bread. The girl who had taken second place in the juvenile fudge division the year before. She was nice, that girl. Nice and maybe even pretty. Talk to her. Get to know her. You’ll be surprised by how much fun she can be.