Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

“Miss Deveaux?” He said my name elegantly, like someone who knew French and knew where the proper emphasis should be. He said my name way better than I did, that was for sure. And his voice was surprisingly deep.

“Um,” I said. I had gotten a lot less articulate since I woke up that morning. He didn’t seem to care what I replied. He knew exactly who I was, and he barreled right on.

“And you’re Julianne Benton? Her roommate?”

“Yes,” Jazza said, in her smallest of tiny voices.

“You were together last night at two A.M.?”

“Yes,” we said, at the same time.

“You saw a man?” he asked me.

“Yes. I told—”

“And you didn’t,” he said to Jazza. It wasn’t a question. “You’re sure?”

“No, I . . . no.”

“Even though he was directly in front of you?”

“I . . . No. I . . . No . . .”

Jazza was fumbling. The way this guy was saying it, it was like she had failed a test.

“Both of you,” he said. “Don’t speak to anyone from the press. If they approach you, walk away. Don’t give your name. Do not repeat anything you told the detective this morning. If you need assistance, phone this number.”

He handed me a small piece of paper with a phone number written on it.

“Phone it any time you need assistance, day or night,” he said. “And if you ever see that man again, even if you just think you see him, you call that number.”

He turned and walked away. Jazza and I wasted no time in running into the building, right up the stairs, and into our room. I slammed the door behind us.

“What happened?” I asked.

“They just took me and . . . they asked me about what we did . . . and I told them about how we went out and went to the roof . . . and they didn’t care about that, really . . . They wanted to know about the man . . . but I didn’t see the man . . . I don’t know how I didn’t see him, but I didn’t, and that’s all they wanted to know about, and I couldn’t tell them anything so . . . oh, God.”

She dropped onto her bed. I sat next to her.

“It’s fine,” I said. “You did fine. They promised we wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“I don’t care about that! I don’t understand how I didn’t see him. And who was that? That policeman? He didn’t look like a policeman. He looked our age. Can you be our age and be a policeman? I suppose you can, but . . . he doesn’t look like one, does he? Though, I suppose . . . I suppose policemen don’t look like any particular kind of person, but still. He doesn’t look like one, does he?”

No. He didn’t look like a policeman. Policemen were supposed to look . . . not like him. He did look young. More than that, he looked a little too well kept, with fancy designer glasses and smooth, pale skin.

Jazza took the card from my hand and examined it.

“This is a mobile number,” she said. “Shouldn’t a police card have the number of a main switchboard or something? Shouldn’t you just dial 999 if there’s a problem? I’ll bet you he’s a reporter. He has to be a reporter. It’s illegal to masquerade as a policeman.”

None of this was helping my queasy feeling. I began to pace.

“I think you should go back to the library and report what just happened,” she said.

“I don’t really want to go back out there right now.”

We had a few moments of independent fretting, then Jazza got up with a determined look on her face.

“If Claudia suspects something, that we went out, she might tell Charlotte. Charlotte’s her minion.”

“So? Charlotte doesn’t know we went out.”

“But she knows about the window bars in the toilet. Come on.”

I followed Jazza back downstairs, where she proceeded to the bathroom in what I suspect was supposed to be a very stealthy way. It was a little more rabbitlike, with quick moves and nervous glances. She dashed into the bathroom and, once she checked to make sure it was empty, went right to the window, opened it, and gave the bars a shake. They were firmly bolted again.

Jazza gripped the bars until her knuckles went white and closed the window.

“I hate her,” she said.

Even I wasn’t sure that it was fair to blame Charlotte for the fact that someone had become aware of the window bars. But Jazza needed to blame Charlotte. It was important for the balance of her mind. Someone had to be blamed if we went down for this, and I was glad it wasn’t me.

“We’re having tea,” she said calmly. “And we are not going to get upset. I am going to make the tea.”

With that, she strode back upstairs. She grabbed two mugs off the shelf above her desk and two tea bags from her jar of special tea bags. I left her to it, pulled my robe on over my clothes, and went to the window. Outside, the line of police was still marching down the green. They stretched from one side to the other, no more than two feet apart. The only area they avoided was the part with the white tent, which had its own staff searching the ground. They were quite literally looking at every single inch of the green.

Last night felt like it had happened years before.

And then I noticed that right below our building, down on the cobblestone street, was the young policeman. He was staring right at my window, right at me. Jazza was right. He couldn’t be a policeman. He looked really young. Yet, there he was, standing around in the middle of half the police in London. You would think that they would notice if there was a fake policeman in their midst.

I made eye contact with him, making sure he knew I saw him. He quickly walked away.

15

THE WHITE TENT WAS THERE ALL DAY SUNDAY. It glowed at dusk, when it was illuminated by dozens of high-powered work lights. The press was there too, hovering on the edges of campus, watching. The school sent around an e-mail saying how really, really safe it all was, even though there was a homicide investigation going on on the green at that very second, and several psychologists were being called in to talk to anyone who felt like they needed support.

And people were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back at home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford, some people just aggressively pretended nothing was happening. Eloise, for example, sat in her room and smoked and read French novels. Charlotte patrolled the halls, poking her big red head into our rooms. Angela and Gaenor drank their way through a small crate of wine bottles they’d smuggled in, staggering into our room at points with mugs full of red wine. One of them hung a pink bra from our lighting fixture. I left it there. It was a nice bra.

At night, you could hear high-pitched nervous chatter through our halls. No one could sleep, so everyone talked. I think things were largely the same over at Aldshot. Most of the guys showed up at breakfast with red eyes with deep shadows under them, indicating either lots of reading or lots of booze.

My parents tried to put me on a train to Bristol, but I insisted that I had to stay, that we were perfectly safe. And we were, really. We were knee-deep in police and all of our movements were recorded. They eventually accepted this, but they also called every two hours or so. My entire family called. Uncle Bick and Cousin Diane called several times. Miss Gina called. And then there were the e-mails. Everyone from Bénouville wanted the story. I spent most of Sunday holding a phone in one hand and typing with the other.

I didn’t mention to anyone that I had actually seen the killer. It was hard to keep this fact quiet. I had the best gossip on the planet, and yet I could say nothing. I was still the Only Witness in the Case, and at any moment, Scotland Yard was going to yank me in and quiz me for hours. Then everyone would know who I was. I’d be all over the news.