Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

JAZZA WAS KNITTING A LARGE BLUE TUBE.

It seemed to fit in with the way my day was going. Spend the morning at a mental hospital. Blast a murderous ghost into oblivion. Come home, and the roommate is knitting some long tube. Why not?

“You’re knitting a big tube,” I said. “You knit?”

“When I’m nervous,” she said.

The tube looked to be about four feet long and was pretty narrow. Jazza’s German books were scattered all over her bed, partially obscured by wool. It looked like she was trying to read and knit at the same time.

“Is it…for a snake or something?”

“I just learned how to do sleeves for sweaters, and I can’t stop making them. I’m going to fail German.”

“You’re going to be fine,” I said automatically.

“I’m not,” she said calmly. “Which is why I’m knitting. It’s very meditative. Where have you been? You weren’t answering your phone.”

“Oh…” I quickly turned toward my closet and opened the door. “I was at the National Gallery. Doing research for an art history project.”

I’d come up with that excuse when I was about three feet away from the door.

“Oh. Right. Is…that my skirt?”

“Oh. Yeah. I borrowed it. Is that okay?”

“Course,” she said. “I was just wondering.”

Jazza allowed me to borrow her clothes, although I usually asked before I did so. But being Jazza and a nice person, she didn’t grill me on why I needed to wear her black skirt to go to the museum to do research. I slipped off the skirt and hung it up in her closet. Then I went into my own closet and needlessly busied myself going through my clothes, dragging the hangers across the rail with a terrible squeak that ate away at the edges of my nerves. I smelled of mental hospital. The tang of it was in my shirt. I pulled it off and threw it into my laundry bag.

Behind me, I heard the clickclackclickclack of Jazza’s needles gently striking together. The light clinking of the radiators kicking into life. Everything was clicking and clanking. What was I doing all day? Oh, I just solved a murder, is all. Solved a murder, took out the murderer. What was the point of that, though, if you couldn’t tell your roommate  ?

“Revision party tonight,” she said.

I’d forgotten all about this. The revision party was just a long study session in the refractory. The school kept it open late and served snacks.

“I may not stay,” she said. “I have to speak out loud to get ready for the German oral. Do you think you’ll stay over there?”

“I…maybe?”

“Are you all right?” Jazza said. “You seem a bit…”

I guess she didn’t know what I seemed like, which was fair. Neither did I.

“Headache,” I said. “I’m going to shower. Warm up. My blood is too thin for this weather.”

I scoured the hospital stink from my skin with copious squirts of body wash that slicked the shower stall tiles and caused me to slip twice and bang both my elbow and head into the wall. I cranked the water up to the maximum temperature, reveling in the great clouds of steam I created. The ghost destroyer in her robes of mist. Alone at last, warm at last. I closed my eyes and let the water pour over me, and I thought about everything that had happened in the basement. It had been so simple—I’d just reached out and destroyed. It was no more complicated than stepping on a bug.

I allowed myself the fantasy of confronting Newman again, but as I was now. I saw him coming at me with the knife, and I just reached out and touched him with the tips of my fingers—

Then someone opened the bathroom door and I jumped.

“Who’s in there?” a voice called. Eloise’s, I thought.

“Rory!”

“It’s so steamy in here. I can’t even see where I’m going!”

“Sorry!”

I wrapped myself in my towel and pushed back the curtain. I really had done a job on the bathroom. All the mirrors were completely fogged, and the floor had a shiny veneer of moisture.

I did a quick little run back to my room and got changed for dinner. Jazza had stopped muttering German and was now just knitting, waiting for me to get ready. We walked over with Gaenor and Angela, both of whom had gone deep into exam madness mode. They laughed at everything. They cackled. They may have been drunk. I wasn’t sure.

We sat with Andrew and some other guys from Aldshot. When I asked where Jerome was, I got some not very specific replies about him being held up doing something. He finally came in during the last ten minutes of service, grabbed a plate, and sat down heavily. He made short work of a few pieces of pizza, and he didn’t have much to say.

Mount Everest, our esteemed, massive, and always angry headmaster, took to the raised podium that used to be the altar back when the refectory was a chapel.

“Everyone,” he began, “the dinner service will now be cleared for tonight’s revision party. Please assist by clearing your trays and putting them on the racks. The refectory will be open until midnight. Make sure to check in with your assigned prefect and let him or her know when you return to your building. While you may talk during tonight’s session, please remember to think of your neighbors and control your volume.”

“I’m going back.” Jazza stood up. “See you at home.”

Angela left as well, leaving Gaenor, Andrew, Jerome, and me in a group. A few people came over to ask the guys questions or tell them where they were going to be, and Charlotte came to check on me to see if I was staying. I pulled my books out from under the bench and tried to pick the subject I might have a chance of making some progress on. I decided on further maths. I could do some problems. Math problems gave me a feeling of accomplishment.

I was quickly distracted when the kitchen staff started putting out the study snacks—bowls of potato chips, trays of cookies, pitchers of pale lemon and orange drink. I immediately got up to help myself, but then the guy in front of me sneezed into his hand and dug the same hand into the chip bowl. I returned to my seat and tried to do more problems. I was also trying to make eye contact with Jerome, who was working on Spanish. I tapped my leg against his under the table, then I rubbed my calf against his. He lifted his head partway, but kept looking down at the table.

I pushed my notebook toward him and wrote, What’s wrong?

He scratched his nose, then wrote, Nothing. Just trying to work.

Which was fair. Everyone was working. I seemed to be the only one with her head on a swivel, unable to concentrate. I stayed for two hours, managing to get through about twenty problems. I poked through some pages of French as well.

“I may go back too,” I said quietly.

“I can take you back,” Jerome said. “I’ll let you in.”

I assumed this was Jerome saying he was ready for a study break in the form of face-sucking. I slapped my books closed and scooped them up.

When we stepped outside, I expected his arm to slip around my waist. That didn’t happen. He did head toward the darkness of the green, though, to a bench. It was under the shadow of a tree, which blocked the streetlight. I sat down next to him. The cold of the bench immediately attached itself to my butt and crawled its little fingers up my back. I leaned into Jerome for warmth. This is where he should have turned and put his face next to mine. Instead, he just sat there, slightly slumped forward over his knees. I reached over and pushed aside one of his longer half curls that was just brushing his ear. I would start there. Jerome liked those little kisses around the ear.

He shifted away ever so slightly.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I just wanted some air.”