Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

I leaned up against the wall, feeling the cold of the bricks against the back of my neck. Jerome brushed my hair back from my face, because the wind had kicked up a bit and blown a few strands into my mouth. (Oh, the ongoing love affair between hair and mouths. Hair always goes for the mouth. The mouth opens, and hair says, “I’m going in! I’m going in!” like a manic cave diver.)

“Is this all right?” he asked. He was using that very low, somewhat husky universal kissing voice.

“Huh?” I said, because I am sexy.

“This,” he said. “Are you…all right?”

“Oh. Yeah. No. Yes, I mean, fine. I’m fine. We can do this.”

Now it was awkward. Never get stabbed—it makes everything awkward.

He leaned in slowly, and I found myself caught somewhere between two very different emotions. One was the gushy warmth and general excitement, the tingling. And the other was the bald awareness that kissing is kind of weird. The half closing of the eyes. The O shape of the mouth. Seeing that little bit of the inside of the lips when someone purses in preparation for the kiss.

He stopped just short of my face.

“This isn’t all right,” he said.

“It is,” I said. “It is. Come here.”

I pulled him forward and pressed his mouth to mine. I think he liked the forcefulness of it—although maybe I was a bit too forceful, because I felt the delicate clink of tooth on tooth. After a moment or two, I started to relax and closed my eyes fully, sliding my hand up into his hair, feeling the general warmth of the whole thing. It was all going well until a couple of guys from Jerome’s building passed by and started to snicker, and then one of them interrupted to say his door handle was broken.

“I suppose we should get back,” he said.

On the way to Wexford, we passed the local pub, the Royal Gunpowder. The sidewalk surrounding the pub was covered in flowers and candles stuck into liquor bottles.

“What’s all that?” I said.

“Oh. Yeah. That happened after you left.”

“What happened?”

“One of the staff murdered the owner,” he said.

“There was a murder next to Wexford?”

“It’s not connected. The guy who did it had a drug problem. The press made a big deal about it because of the Ripper stuff and the timing, but it was just one of those things.”

“Just one of those things” is probably not the best way to describe a murder, but I knew where he was coming from and what he was trying to do. A murder around the corner was freaky and unwelcome. Julia had mentioned that I might hear about other violent things on the news and imagine connections or have unpleasant memories. But I understood—these things do happen. They’re not good, but they’re also not all connected. I was calm about it.

I think. I may have walked away kind of quickly, but aside from that, I was calm about it.

We could have stayed out a bit longer; it wasn’t curfew yet. But the night felt over. Going to the restaurant and talking—that had been exhausting. The kiss had been good while it lasted, but it had taken a bit of effort to get it going. And we’d concluded the night by walking past a murder scene. It was jimjam time for Rory.

We had a quick kiss in front of Hawthorne—not a full-on one, but enough to catch the attention of anyone around. It was a statement kiss. Then I let myself back in and took the creaking steps back upstairs. Jazza was still out making Teutonic merriment, so I had the room to myself for a little bit. I put on my pajamas and tucked myself into bed.

Why had tonight been so weird ?

I had a very uncomfortable thought—I wasn’t actually sure why I liked Jerome, aside from the fact that he liked me. And he was English. And he was cute. Mostly cute? What was “cute”?

His head was kind of large.

Where did that thought even come from? By what standard was I supposed to judge? His head was fine . Did looks matter, anyway? I liked making out with him. I liked that we were together, that people saw us together. I liked the general feeling of it all.

Maybe that’s what relationships were.

I was overthinking this. I hadn’t accomplished much in my time with Julia, but she had told me that I might react weirdly in “emotionally and physically intimate situations.” Things might feel weird at first. All things considered, I was doing well. (Also, I had clearly been paying a lot of attention to what Julia said. She had gotten in my head.)

I got out of bed and trundled next door. Gaenor and Angela were around. Gaenor and Angela were easily the two loudest people on the hall, possibly the building. Possibly the world. They never minded me coming into their room and shooting the breeze for a while. That’s how I would dispel the creeping darkness—be normal.

Just be normal. That’s all I had to do.

9

WHEN I WOKE UP ON SUNDAY, JAZZA WAS GONE. THIS was because I woke up at noon.

At home, I’d been getting up at noon on the weekends, but I’d never done that at Wexford. Nobody did, unless they were sick. There was something unspeakably decadent about it. I felt wanton, like I should stroll around Wexford in the creepy silky-polyester robe my grandmother had bought me for my birthday. My grandmother basically wears whatever the Disney star of the moment is wearing, and she tends to buy me matching items. These things include the aforementioned silky robes, matching pajama sets of shorty-shorts and tank tops, see-through lace body suits, and fishnets. I hadn’t brought that robe to Wexford, because I didn’t think the good people of England really needed to see the poly-silk outline of my thighs as I shuffled along in the morning.

Also, I realized I was alone yet again. Before—the great before, which seemed so long ago and so very different from the now—I never felt like I had any privacy. There was always someone else in the room. Often Jazza, and definitely Boo, who shadowed me everywhere I went. But now Jazza was gone a lot. It was the week before exams, after all, and her calendar was full of study groups and rehearsals. Room 27 was all mine. It was big and lonely and cold. I put on my fleece, which served as my bathrobe, my jacket, and my safety blanket.

As I walked down the hall, I noticed how quiet it was. A few people had their doors cracked open, and when I peered inside, I saw them hard at work, bent over computers and books. I was the only one swanning down the hall, freshly awake. I showered and dressed and tried to slide into the rhythm everyone else had set. I left the door open just a crack and settled in at my desk. (The slightly open door was to invite visitors, and also I felt I was more likely to work if everyone could see me.)

And I did work. I did some reading. I did a little French. I did a few problem sets.

I paused when I noticed it had gotten darker—not dark, but there was a dim quality to the daylight, a low fade made worse by the overcast sky. Three in the afternoon, and already it seemed like dusk. I reviewed what I had accomplished, thumbing through pages read and counting up assignments completed. I had done reasonably well, better than anything I had done in previous weeks, but it wasn’t even in spitting distance of enough.

It dawned on me, perfectly and clearly, that I was going to fail everything. I’d known this. I’d even said it out loud. But I’d never really breathed that fact in. Smelled it. Tasted it.

This was failure. Doing all you could and yet knowing that it just wasn’t going to cut it.

I shut my door to panic alone.

Why was I here? They’d brought me back, and now what was I supposed to do? I felt like I was faking all of this, like I was playing the part of a student. I had the costume and the props, but I didn’t really belong here. I’d pinned notes on the stupid corkboard backing of my desk, and I’d highlighted things…But it was all so meaningless.