Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“In case what?”

Jack grinned. “In case we need to beat a hasty retreat from the fashion police.” Or the headmaster, he thought.

“Might as well paint an L on my forehead right now,” a student murmured. “Loser.”

But in spite of the grumbling, they filed inside and then emerged one by one, each holding a stack of clothes. “You see?” Jack said. “Don’t you feel better already?”

The last girl to come out was Catherine Marsh. She was wearing her toga, too . . . but no tank suit. Her bare shoulder, smooth and tan, brushed Jack’s arm as she passed by.

Jack hid a smile. Girls this age-especially girls with crushes-were about as subtle as steamrollers.

He marched them to the soccer field, had them set down their bundles, and then line up. “Okay. At first, you’re all living in harmony, thanks to a peace treaty the Spartans signed.” Then he split the girls into two groups. “You Spartans,” he told the first bunch, “you want to fight a land war, because that’s what you’re good at. And you”-he pointed to the Athenians-“you want to fight a naval war, because that’s what you’re good at.”

“But how do we know who to kill?” one girl called out. “We all look the same.”

“Excellent question! Someone who’s your friendly neighbor one day is an enemy the next, simply because of a political issue. What do you do?”

“Ask before you draw your sword?”

Jack reached behind the girl who’d spoken, and pretended to slash her throat. “And in that second you hesitated, you’re dead.”

“Stay with your own kind,” one student shouted.

“Watch your back!”

“Strike first!”

Jack grinned as his listless group grew more animated, engaging in mock combat, until they were all rolling around the field, grass stains marking the knees and bottoms of their togas. Exhausted, they lay on their backs, watching cirrus clouds stretch across the sky like the long limbs of ballerinas.

A shadow loomed over Jack, and he looked up to find Herb Thayer, the headmaster of Westonbrook Academy. “Dr. St. Bride . . . a word?”

They walked out of earshot. “God, Jack. You trying to get us sued?”

“For what? Teaching history?”

“Since when does the curriculum include stripping?”

Jack shook his head. “Costuming. There’s a difference. Kids this age are like puppies; they need to get their blood moving before their brains kick into gear. And the classrooms are brutal in this heat.” He offered his most engaging smile. “This is no different from staging Shakespeare.”

Herb wiped a hand across his brow. “For all I care, Jack, you can put them through basic training to help them remember what you’re teaching. Just make sure they’re fully clothed before you send them out on the obstacle course.” He started off, then turned at the last minute. “I know what you’re doing and why. But the guy who’s crossing the street over there, who came in during the second act-he sees something totally different.”

Jack waited until Herb left. Then he approached his class again, curiosity playing over their faces.

“Who won?” Catherine Marsh asked.

“Well, Dr. Thayer is in favor of our mock battles but highly recommends that you do it in uniform.”

A groan rose from the group, but they began to gather the small bundles of clothing they’d carried out to the field.

“No,” Catherine said. “I meant, who won the war?”

“The Peloponnesian War? Nobody. Both sides believed their strategy would wear down the other side and make them surrender. But after ten years, neither had.”

“You mean they just stayed at war because no one would give in?”

“Yes. By the time they signed the Peace of Nicias, it wasn’t about who was right or wrong . . . just about not fighting anymore.” He clapped his hands for attention. “Okay, now. Let’s hustle.”

The girls trickled away. Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty, Jack thought, watching them. He took a step forward and felt something beneath his shoe. A wisp of fabric, a red satin bra accidentally dropped by one of the girls. Sewn along the inseam was a name label, de rigueur for any boarding-school student. CATHERINE MARSH, Jack read. Blushing, he stuffed it into his pocket.

Melton Sprigg’s office was by no stretch of the imagination impressive. It was a walk-up above the Chinese restaurant in Loyal, and the smell of kung po chicken was thick. There was no air conditioning, and papers littered the floor and the desk and the one filing cabinet. “Keep meaning to clean this up,” he huffed, moving a stack of journals out of the way so that Jack could sit down.

For one brief moment, Jack considered bolting. He forced himself to flatten his hands on the arms of his chair, to relax.

“So,” Melton said, “how can I help you?”

Jack realized he had never actually said the words before. They stuck like glue to the roof of his mouth. “I think I’m going to be charged with a crime.”

Melton grinned. “Good thing. If you said you wanted to order moo shu pork, you’d be in the wrong place. Why do you think you’re going to be charged?”

“The police said as much. They called me in to . . .talk. . . a few days ago. A girl . . . a student of mine . . . has implied that she and I . . . that we . . . ”

Melton whistled through his teeth. “I can guess the rest.”

“I didn’t do it,” Jack insisted.

The lawyer handed him a card. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

In spite of the heat, Jack went running. He put on his old college soccer jersey and shorts and took off dead east from the porch of his house. He ran two miles, four, six. Sweat poured into his eyes, and he gasped great drafts of air. He passed the town line and kept running. He ran the perimeter of a pond, twice. And when he realized that no matter how hard he tried he could not outrace his fear, he collapsed at the edge, buried his face in his hands, and cried.

Catherine Marsh remembered with vivid clarity the first time Jack St. Bride had touched her.

She had been playing forward, her eye on the ball, so intent on ring it into the goal of the opposing team that she’d completely missed seeing the other player hurtling toward her with the same single-mindedness. They smacked heads with an audible crunch, the last noise Catherine could remember hearing before she was unconscious. When she came to, Coach was leaning over her, his golden hair haloed by the sun, the way it always looks in the movies when the hero comes along. “Catherine,” he asked, “you all right?” At first she hadn’t been able to answer because his hands were running up and down her body, checking for broken bones. “I think your ankle is swelling,” he said. Then he’d taken off her cleat and peeled off her sock, examining her sweaty foot like Cinderella’s prince. “Perfect,” he pronounced. And Catherine had thought, Yes, you are.

She knew that there was something special between them, from the way he kept her after practice to show her a drill to the way he sometimes slung an arm over her shoulders when they were walking off the field together. When she’d confided that she was thinking of sleeping with Billy Haines, Coach had been the one to drive her to the clinic two towns over, to get birth control pills. Oh, he hadn’t wanted to at first-but he’d given in because he cared about her. And when Billy had dumped her two days later, Coach had let her cry on his shoulder.

She wondered several times a day what he’d done with the bra she’d left behind after that Ancient History class. It had fallen out of her bundle of clothes completely by accident . . . or maybe it was just fate, now that she got to thinking about it. She’d realized it was missing and had gone back to the field to retrieve it . . . just in time to see Coach pick up her bra and pocket it. Something had made her turn away without asking for it back. Maybe he slept with it beneath his pillow. Maybe he just let the silk slip through his fingers and pretended it was her skin.