The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(16)
He and his wife, Lacey, had recently separated—a secret, he said, that almost no one knew. He’d met her in a seminar the spring of his senior year, and married her six months after graduation. “She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever been with, and she loved me, and I didn’t want her to leave me, so I asked,” he said. “I remember feeling life was blowing by like a tornado and I needed to grab hold of something, anything I could. Our families came, we had a live band, a big cake, the whole nine. At the end of the night, I vomited in the bushes. That was the first time I disappointed her, definitely not the last.” Molly was amazed by how easily he opened up to her, the unflattering depths he was willing to plumb. She saw that his failed marriage was a tender subject that he still found hard to talk about, and she liked that he trusted her enough to tell her this. Most of all, she liked that the two of them could avoid the faculty-lounge cliques together and tell themselves it was a choice.
THE LOVERS
At seventeen, Abigail Cress knew she wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t modelesque Elisabeth Avarine, trailed down Miller Avenue by grown men in Lexus sedans. She wasn’t even ordinary-pretty like Cally Broderick, her former best friend. Although black hair fell in glossy curls over Abigail’s shoulders, beneath it were small gray eyes and a thin sharp face and a nose that would have been too big on a boy. In her track uniform—a red sports bra stretched flat across her chest and silky blue shorts that ballooned around her hips—her body was skinny and hard as a coin.
She believed unprettiness was something to atone for, so she made herself an A student, track captain, president of the Valley High chapter of the National Organization for Women, editor of the yearbook. She enrolled in Mr. Ellison’s class to prep for the June SAT, and on weekends wrote out careful, color-coded flashcards for the vocabulary words she didn’t know. She believed high school was easy: you just did the work. She believed love was bullshit, teenage boys idiotic. She made plans: Dartmouth for college, or another competitive school on the East Coast, where she believed she would fit in better than she ever could in Mill Valley, California. Where her life would click into focus and her unprettiness transform to specialness, or glamour.
She shopped. Bluefly.com, Piperlime, Nordstrom, Saks. Her parents paid her credit card bill each month without comment. She accumulated stuff she didn’t even want. James Perse T-shirts ($65 each) and J Brand skinny jeans ($169). Tory Burch “Aaden” ballerina flats ($250). A Marc Jacobs “Eugenie” quilted-leather clutch ($495). She’d once spent $500 on black satin lingerie from Agent Provocateur just to see if they’d notice; while waiting for the package to arrive, she’d drifted to sleep each night to the image of her bedroom door bursting open in a flurry of outrage, her father’s gray suit rumpled, her mother’s black hair frizzed. But they’d never said a word about it. Her best friend, Emma Fleed, had seen it hanging in the closet with the tags still on and made such a big deal about it, Abigail had told her to take it all.
She was grateful for Mr. Ellison: thirty-two years old, tall, with sloped shoulders and a barely noticeable paunch over his belt. When he taught, he wore striped dress shirts, Gap jeans, and a braided leather belt that had started to fray but held some special meaning for him—Abigail teased him about it once, offering to buy him a new one from Michael Kors or Ferragamo, and he pouted until she changed the subject. He wore square-rimmed glasses over his hazel eyes. His hair was strawberry-blond and thin and his face clean-shaven. There were little nicks of blood around his jawline and neck. His teeth were straight, his fingers freckled and strong. He had a degree in English literature from Berkeley, which was a hard school to get into, and his favorite book was A Confederacy of Dunces, written by some guy who’d killed himself before the book was published and won the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Ellison talked about this story often, seeming to cling to it in a way that made no sense to her.
He was the yearbook adviser. He edited her write-up of the drama program, and she liked to watch as he scrolled red pen across the page, striking through lazy phrases, lassoing commas that had no place.
She liked to watch him pace around the yearbook room in the afternoon light. The walls were cream, and the ancient windows, arched and warped, sealed them in a golden heat. The building, Stone Hall, was over a hundred years old and always smelled like something baking. It was her favorite place.
—
Mr. Ellison asked for her number at the beginning of junior year, in case important yearbook issues arose.
In September and October, their texts were strictly business: When is football article due?? and Editorial mtg Tues 3pm.
Their dialogue evolved gently, slowly. By November: What r u up to? She’d text, In pjs in bed still studying, just enough to make a picture in his mind. By January he’d begun to text her deeper questions:
What do you care about?
I don’t know. Grades I guess. College. Beating my sprint time. Making the best yearbook ever!!
Is that your answer?
What do u mean?
I don’t believe you. I think there is more.
Maybe…do u rly want to know?
What do you want?
Why r u asking?
What have you never told anyone else?
I don’t know.
Tell me.
Ok. Here’s something. I’ve always hated summer. Since I was a kid. I’m already dreading it.