Where'd You Go, Bernadette(71)
“Yeah,” I said. “Do you want to go on it?”
“I do,” he said, all hopeful and touched.
“Have fun.” I grabbed my backpack and headed to the pool.
Choate was big and majestic, with ivy-covered buildings and jewels of modern architecture dotted on huge expanses of snowy lawn crisscrossed with boot paths. I had nothing against the place itself. It’s just that the people were weird. My roommate, Sarah Wyatt, didn’t like me from the start. I think it’s because when she left for Christmas break, she was living in a double all by herself. And when she got back, all of a sudden she had a roommate. At Choate, you talked about who your father was. Her dad owned buildings in New York. Every single kid, I’m not kidding, had an iPhone, and most of them had iPads, and every computer I saw was a Mac. When I said my dad worked at Microsoft, they openly mocked me. I had a PC and listened to music on my Zune. What is that thing? people would ask in the most offended way, like I had just taken a huge stinky poop and stuck earbuds into it. I told Sarah my mother was a famous architect who had won a MacArthur genius award, and Sarah said, “She did not.” And I said, “Sure she did. Look it up on the Internet.” But Sarah Wyatt didn’t look it up, that’s how little respect she had for me.
Sarah had thick straight hair and wore expensive clothes, which she liked to explain to me, and any time I said I hadn’t heard of one of the stores, she’d emit a little grunt. Marla, her best friend, lived downstairs. Marla talked all the time, and she was funny, I suppose, but she had angry acne, smoked cigarettes, and was on academic probation. Her father was a TV director in L.A., and there was lots of jabber about her friends back home who had famous people for parents. Everyone would gather at her feet as she yakked about how cool Bruce Springsteen is. And I’d think, Of course Bruce Springsteen is cool, I don’t need Marla to tell me that. I mean, Galer Street smelled like salmon, but at least the people were normal.
Then one day I went to my mailbox, and the manila envelope arrived. It had no return address, strange block writing that wasn’t Mom or Dad’s, and no letter saying who it was from, just all the documents about Mom. Then everything was better, because I started writing my book.
I knew something was up, though, one day after classes, when I got back to my room. Our dorm was Homestead, which was a creaky little house in the middle of campus where George Washington had once spent the night, according to a plaque. Oh, I forgot to mention that Sarah had this weird smell, like baby powder, but if the smell of baby powder made you feel sick. It couldn’t have been actual perfume, and I never saw any baby powder. To this day I still don’t know what it was. Anyway, I opened the front door and I heard some scurrying footsteps overhead. I went upstairs, but our room was empty. I could hear Sarah in the bathroom, though. I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, and that’s when I smelled it. That gross baby-powder scent hung in the air over my desk. This was especially weird because Sarah had made a big point about dividing the room in half, and there were strict orders not to cross the invisible line. Just then, she darted behind me, through our room, and downstairs. The door slammed. Sarah was out on the corner, waiting to cross Elm Street.
“Sarah,” I called out the window.
She stopped and looked up.
“Where are you going? Is everything OK?” I was worried that maybe something had happened to one of her dad’s buildings.
She acted like she couldn’t hear me. She headed up Christian Street, which was weird, because I knew she had squash. She didn’t turn to go to Hill House, or the library, either. The only thing past the library was Archbold, which is where the dean’s offices are. I went to dance class, and when I got back, I tried to talk to Sarah, but she wouldn’t look at me. She spent that night downstairs in Marla’s room.
A few days later, in the middle of English, Mrs. Ryan told me that I was to immediately report to Mr. Jessup’s office. Sarah had English with me, and I instinctively turned to her. She quickly looked down. I knew then: that weird-smelling, yoga-pants-wearing New Yorker with the big diamond earrings had betrayed me.
In Mr. Jessup’s office, there was Dad, telling me it was for the best that I leave Choate. It was hilarious watching Mr. Jessup and Dad dance around each other, with every sentence starting with “Because I care so much about Bee” or “Because Bee is such an extraordinary girl” or “For the good of Bee.” It was decided that I’d leave Choate and they’d transfer my credits so I could go to Lakeside next year. (I’d apparently gotten accepted. Who knew?)
Out in the hallway, it was just me, Dad, and the bronze bust of Judge Choate. Dad demanded to see my book, but there was no way. I did show him the envelope that came in the mail, though. “Where did this come from?” “Mom,” I said. But the writing on the envelope wasn’t Mom’s, and he knew it. “Why would she send this to you?” he asked. “Because she wants me to know.” “Know what?” “The truth. It’s not like you were ever going to tell me.” Dad took a breath and said, “The only true thing is now you’ve read things you’re not old enough to possibly understand.”
That’s when I made the executive decision: I hate him.
We took a charter plane from Santiago really early in the morning and landed in Ushuaia, Argentina. We rode a bus through the little plaster city. The houses had Spanish-style roofs and mud yards with rusty swing sets. When we arrived at the dock, we were ushered into a kind of hut, with a wall of glass dividing it the long way. This was immigration, so of course there was a line. Soon the other side of the glass filled up with old people decked out in travel clothing and carrying backpacks with blue-and-white ribbons. It was the group that had just gotten off the ship, our Ghosts of Travel Future. They were giving us the thumbs-up, mouthing, You’re going to love it, you have no idea how great it is, you’re so lucky. And then everyone on our side started literally buzzing. Buzz Aldrin, Buzz Aldrin, Buzz Aldrin. On the other side was a scrappy little guy wearing a leather bomber jacket covered with NASA patches, and his arms were bent in at the elbows like he was itching for a fight. He had a genuine smile, and he gamely stood on his side of the glass while people in our group stood next to him and took pictures. Dad took one of me and him, and I’m going to tell Kennedy, Here’s me visiting Buzz Aldrin in prison.