Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Maxwell, a sort of mad Phineas T. Barnum in crimson velvet jacket and cane, completely ignored his date, Kimmie Kaczynski (a sad, dejected mermaid in green satin unable to lure her sailor) and presided with delight over his sideshow of freaks, the bleary-eyed, burnt-out Jelly Roll Jazz Band.

“Pardon me,” said a voice behind me.

It was Jade, my knight in shining armor. Immediately, however, I noticed something was wrong. Donnamara Chase in her unwieldy pink Liberty Bell dress and her date, lip-licking Trucker, and a few others, like Sandy Quince-Wood, Joshua Cuthbert and Dinky, a living, breathing booby trap, arms tightly clamped around the neck of poor, destined-for-captivity Brett Carlson, they’d all stopped dancing and were staring at her.

I saw why.

She was wearing a thin silk dress the color of tangerines, the neckline plunging down her front with the force of a skydiver’s free fall. She was drunk, in possession of neither a bra nor shoes, and though she surveyed Zach and me with a hand on her hip, her customary gesture of intimidation, now it simply looked as if she was doing her best to hold onto herself, in case her self fell over. She was holding a pair of black stilettos.

“If you don’t mind, coup — coupon”—she lurched forward; I was terrified she might fall—“I need to borrow Gag for a minute.”

“Are you okay?” Zach asked.

Quickly, I stepped forward and grabbed her arm. Force-feeding a smile to my face, I pulled her after me, hard, but not so hard she dissolved into a puddle of orange juice on the dance floor.

“Geez. I’m sorry I’m late. What can I say? I hit traffic.”

I managed to move her away from most of the faculty chaperones, and pushed her straight into a crowd of freshmen tasting the gâteaux au chocolat et aux noisettes and the French cheeses. (“This tastes like ass,” someone said.)

My heart was pounding. Within minutes, no, seconds, she’d be spotted by Evita and would be arrested, in Gallwanian terms, “roundtabled,” inevitable suspension, Saturday morning community service with men who licked their lips at her when she served them lukewarm vegetable soup — perhaps even expulsion. In my head, I began to stitch together an excuse, something to do with an accidental pill slipped into her 7-Up by some pimply psycho; there were plenty of articles I could reference on the subject. There was also, of course, simply pretending to be stupid ( “When in doubt, feign oblivion,” Dad chanted in my head. “No one can fault you for being born with a lean IQ.” ). But before I knew it, we were slipping past the buffet table and the bathrooms and out the wooden doors, undetected. (Mr. Moats, if you are reading this, I’m certain you saw us. I thank you for simply replacing your look of marked boredom with one of cynical delight, sighing, and doing nothing more. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, ignore the above.)

Outside, I yanked her across the brick patio ringed with wrought-iron love seats (“Ow. That hurts, you know.”) where Gallway’s most earnest couples were marooned.

Glancing over my shoulder to be certain no one followed, I yanked Jade across the lawn, down the mineral-gritty sidewalks, through the orange floodlights where our thin shadows dragged farther and farther behind us. I didn’t let go of her until we were in front of Hanover, where it was dark and desolate, where everything — the black windows, the wooden steps, a folded sheet of Algebra homework mumbling in its sleep — was nightwashed, uniformed in grays and blues.

“Are you out of your mind?” I shouted.

“What?”

“How can you show up like this?”

“Oh, stop yelling, Gag. Gaggle.”

“I — are you trying to get kicked out?”

“Fuck you,” she said, giggling. “And your little dog too.”

“Where is everyone? Where’s Hannah?”

She made a face. “At her house. They’re making apple pie and watching Heaven & Earth . You guessed it. They ditched you. Thought this scene would be a bore. I’m the one with loyalty. You should thank me. I take cash, check, MasterCard, Visa. No American Express.”

“Jade.”

“The others are traitors. In our midst. Aye too brew tays. And in case you’re wondering, Black and that little petunia are off somewhere doing the nasty in a cheap motel. He’s so in love I want to kill him. That girl’s a Yoko Ono and we’re going to break up —”

“Get a hold of yourself.”

“For Pete’s sake, I’m fine. ” She smiled. “Let’s go somewhere. Some bar where the men are men and the women are hairy. And have smiles of beer.”

“You have to go home. Now. ”

“I was thinking Brazil. Gag?”

“What.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

She did look ill. Her lips had faded into her face and she stared at me with huge nocturnal eyes, touching a hand to her throat.

I took her arm with the intention of directing her toward the crowd of now ill-fated young pines to our right, but suddenly, she made the short, high-pitched squeak of a kid when it didn’t want to eat some final piece of cauliflower or get strapped into a car seat, and she tore free, sprinting up the stairs and across the porch. I thought the doors would be locked, but they weren’t. She disappeared inside.

I found her in Mirtha Grazeley’s admissions bathroom on her knees in one of the stalls getting sick.

“I hate throwing up. I’d rather die. Kill me, would you? Kill me. I beg you.”

For fifteen sickened minutes, I held her hair.

“Better,” she said, wiping her eyes and mouth.

After she rinsed her face in the sink, she collapsed facedown on one of the couches in Mirtha’s Greeting Room.

“We should go home,” I said.

“Give me a second.”

Sitting there in the quiet, the lights off, the green floodlights from the M. Bella Chancery lawn spilling through the windows, it felt as if we were at the bottom of the ocean. The thin shadows from the bare trees outside stretched across the wooden floor like sea grass and sargassum weed, the grit dappling the windows, a little bit of zooplankton, the floor lamp in the corner, a glass-rope sponge. Jade sighed and turned over onto her back, her hair stuck to her cheeks.

“We should get out of here,” I said.

“You like him,” she said.

“Who?”

“Coupon.”

“Like I like noise pollution.”

“You’re going to run off with him.”

“Right.”

“You’re going to have tons of sex with him and have his gift certificates. Seriously. I know these things. I’m psychic.”

“Shut up.”

“Hurl?”

“What.”

“I hate the others.”

“Who?”

“Leulah. Charles. I hate them. I like you. You’re the only one who’s decent. The others are all sick. And I hate Hannah most of all. Ugh.”

“Oh, come on.”

“ No. I pretend I don’t because it’s easy and fun to go over and have her cook and watch her act like St. Francis of friggin’ Assisi. Sure. Blah blah. But deep down I know she’s sick and repulsive.”

I waited for a moment, enough time for, say, a spinner shark to swim by seeking a school of sardines, for that peculiar word she used, repulsive, to disband, dissolve slightly, like ink from a cuttlefish.

“Actually,” I said, “it’s a common feeling for people to feel intermittent antipathy toward individuals they’re familiar with. It’s the Derwid-Loeverhastel Principle. It’s discussed in Beneath the Associated —”

“ Fuck David Hasselhoff.” She raised herself up on an elbow, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t like the woman.” She frowned. “ You like her?”