Donna Tartt - The Secret History

Pulling on my jacket in the hall, I saw Judy Poovey walking briskly towards me. She was all dressed up, for Judy, and she had her head to the side attempting to fasten an earring.

'You coming?' she said when she saw me.

'Coming where?' I said, puzzled, my hand still on the doorknob.

'What is it with you? Do you live on Mars or what?'

I stared at her.

'The party,' she said impatiently. 'Swing into Spring. Up behind Jennings. It started an hour ago.'

The edges of her nostrils were inflamed and rabbity, and she reached up to wipe her nose with a red-taloned hand.

'Let me guess what you've been doing,' I said.

She laughed. 'I have lots more. Jack Teitelbaum drove to New York last weekend and came back with a ton. And Laura Stora has Ecstasy, and that creepy guy in Durbinstall basement – you know, the chemistry major -just cooked up a big batch of meth.

You're trying to tell me you didn't know about this?'

'No.'

'Swing into Spring is a big deal. Everybody's been getting ready for months. Too bad they didn't have it yesterday, though, the weather was so great. Did you go to lunch?'

She meant had I been outside yet that day. 'No,' I said.

'Well, I mean, the weather's okay, but it's a little cold. I walked outside and went, like, oh shit. Anyway. You coming?'

I looked at her blankly. I'd run out of my room without the slightest idea where I was going. 'I need to get something to eat,'

I said at last.

'That's a good idea. Last year I went and I didn't eat anything before and I smoked pot and drank, like, thirty martinis. I was all right and everything but then I went to Fun O'Rama. Remember?

That carnival they had – well, I guess you weren't here then.

Anyway. Big mistake. I'd been drinking all day and I had a sunburn and I was with Jack Teitelbaum and all those guys.

I wasn't going to go, you know, on a ride and then I thought, okay. The Ferris wheel. I can go on the Ferris wheel no problem I listened politely to the rest of her story which ended, as I knew it would, with Judy being pyrotechnically ill behind a hot-dog stand.

'So this year, I was like, no way. Stick with coke. Pause that refreshes. By the way, you ought to get that friend of yours you know, what's his name – Bunny, and make him come with you. He's in the library.'

'What?' I said, suddenly all ears.

'Yeah. Drag him out. Make him do some bong hits or something.'

'He's in the library?'

'Yeah. I saw him through the window of the reading room a little while ago. Doesn't he have a car?'

Well, I was thinking, maybe he could drive us. Long walk to Jennings. Or I don't know, maybe it's just me. I swear, I'm so out of shape, I have to start doing Jane Fonda again.'

By now it was three. I locked the door and walked to the library, nervously jangling my key in my pocket.

It was a strange, still, oppressive day. The campus seemed deserted – everyone was at the party, I supposed – and the green lawn, the gaudy tulips, were hushed and expectant beneath the overcast sky. Somewhere a shutter creaked. Above my head, in the wicked black claws of an elm, a marooned kite rattled convulsively, then was still. This is Kansas, I thought. This is Kansas before the cyclone hits.

The library was like a tomb, illumined from within by a chill fluorescent light that, by contrast, made the afternoon seem colder and grayer than it was. The windows of the reading room were bright and blank; bookshelves, empty carrels, not a soul.

The librarian – a despicable woman named Peggy – was behind the desk reading a copy of Woman's Day, and didn't look up. The Xerox machine hummed quietly in the corner. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and went around behind the foreign language section to the reading room. It was empty, just as I'd thought, but at one of the tables near the front there was an eloquent little nest of books, wadded paper, and greasy potato chip bags.

I went over for a closer look. It had the air of fairly recent abandonment; there was a can of grape soda, three-quarters drunk, still sweating and cool to the touch. For a moment I wondered what to do – perhaps he'd only gone to the bathroom, perhaps he'd be back any second – and I was about to leave when I saw the note.

Lying on top of a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, a grubby piece of lined paper was folded in half, with 'Marion' written on the outer edge in Bunny's tiny, crabbed hand. I opened it and read it quickly: old Gal Bored stiff. Walked down to the party to get a brewski. See ya later.

I refolded the note and sat down hard on the arm of Bunny's chair. Bunny went on his walks, when he went, around one in the afternoon. It was now three. He was at the Jennings party.

They'd missed him.

I went down the back steps and out the basement door, then over to Commons – its red brick facade flat as a stage backdrop against the empty sky – and called Henry from the pay phone.

No answer. No answer at the twins', either.

Commons was deserted except for a couple of haggard old janitors and the red-wigged lady who sat at the switchboard and knitted all weekend, paying no attention to the incoming calls.

As usual, the lights were blinking frantically and she had her back to them, as oblivious as that ill-omened wireless operator on the Califomian the night the Titanic went down. I walked past her down the hall to the vending machines, where I got a cup of watery instant coffee before going down to try the phone again.

Still no answer.

I hung up and wandered back to the deserted common room, with a copy of an alumni magazine I'd found in the post office tucked under my arm, and sat in a chair by the window to drink my coffee.

Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. The alumni magazine was depressing. Hampden graduates never seemed to do anything after they got out of school but start little ceramics shops in Nantucket or join ashrams in Nepal. I tossed it aside and stared blankly out the window. The light outside was very strange.

Something about it intensified the green of the lawn so all that 2.97 vast expanse seemed unnatural, luminous somehow, and not quite of this world. An American flag, stark and lonely against the violet sky, whipped back and forth on the brass flagpole.

I sat and stared at it for a minute and then, suddenly, unable to bear it a moment longer, I put on my coat and started out towards the ravine.

The woods were deathly still, more forbidding than I had ever seen them – green and black and stagnant, dark with the smells of mud and rot. There was no wind; not a bird sang, not a leaf stirred. The dogwood blossoms were poised, white and surreal and still against the darkening sky, the heavy air.

I began to hurry, twigs cracking beneath my feet and my own hoarse breath loud in my ears, and before long the path emerged into the clearing. I stood there, half-panting, and it was a moment or so before I realized that nobody was there.

The ravine lay to the left – raw, treacherous, a deep plunge to the rocks below. Careful not to get too near the edge, I walked to the side for a closer look. Everything was absolutely still. I turned again, towards the woods from which I had just come.

Then, to my immense surprise, there was a soft rustle and Charles's head rose up out of nowhere. 'Hi!' he called, in a glad whisper. 'What in the world?'

'Shut up,' said an abrupt voice, and a moment later Henry materialized as if by magic, stepping towards me from the underbrush.

I was speechless, agog. He blinked at me, irritated, and was about to speak when there was a sudden crackle of branches and I turned in amazement just in time to see Camilla, clad in khaki trousers, clambering down the trunk of a tree.

'What's going on?' I heard Francis say, somewhere very close.