The Hand on the Wall(25)

“Your room is next to mine,” she said. It was a simple fact, but it sounded weird saying it out loud. “Do you need help? Setting up or unpacking or . . . ?”

“Sure.”

She followed him back into the room, number three, at the end of the hall by the turreted bathroom. The room was no longer filled with peacock feathers, colorful clothes and tapestries, paints and colored pencils, art books and cabaret costumes. The bits of French poetry that had been illicitly painted on the walls were still in evidence; the maintenance crew had yet to repaint. One thing Stevie clearly remembered about Ellie’s room—she threw her underwear on the floor, proudly. Dirty panties. She could toss them around as easily as a dude threw his boxers on the floor. Where they had been, there were now shopping bags, the new sheets still with the folds from the package.

“I heard you got me some of this stuff,” he said.

“Well, the school did. I picked it out.”

Hunter picked up the heavy puffer coat Stevie had purchased for him and slipped it on.

“Thanks,” he said. “This is a serious coat. We don’t have coats like this in Florida. I feel like I’m wearing a mattress. In a good way.”

He examined his arms in the coat, then looked around at his scattered belongings. There were not many to speak of. It’s easy to pack when everything you have goes up in flames.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “About your aunt. And you. With the fire. Are you . . . okay?”

The words tumbled out of her mouth clunkily, like wooden blocks.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sore. I have a few burns, but they aren’t too bad. My throat hurt a lot at first, but that’s getting better too. I’m supposed to rest this week, so I’ll be your neighbor who lies around a lot. I get to live here, at least until the end of the semester. Then the university should be able to get me a place on campus. They’re waiving my room and board, and they’re letting me keep the tuition discount, which is nice. And in the meantime, I get to live in a place that is super cool that I’ve always wanted to see. I’m actually kind of making out. . . .”

He pulled off the coat and placed it carefully on the bed.

“That didn’t come out right,” he said. “Nothing comes out right. I sound like an asshole.”

“It’s fine,” Stevie said, shaking her head.

“No, it’s not. . . .” Hunter sat on the edge of his new bed and looked around at the spare, empty room. “I didn’t know my aunt very well. I didn’t . . . like living there? It was dirty and it smelled bad, and I couldn’t help her. I was thinking about going home. The tuition discount wasn’t worth it. Obviously, what happened was horrible, but I can’t act like we were close. Just so you know, this is where I’m at.”

This was the kind of sentiment that Stevie could understand completely.

“You’ll like it here,” she said. “Pix is nice.”

“She’s an archaeologist?”

“And anthropologist. She collects teeth.”

“Who doesn’t?” he said.

“And Nate is a writer, and Janelle makes machines. She’s doing a demonstration tonight. You should come.”

“I’m staying here,” he said. “I don’t go here. I don’t know if I’m supposed to go to stuff.”

“You can definitely come,” she said. “See something normal for once.”

“For once?”

That was probably an odd thing to say. But this was Ellingham, after all.

“Sure,” he said. “Okay. Might as well meet my new housemates and their machines.”

He smiled at her, and for a moment, Stevie felt like maybe life here could be normal. A balanced, happy guy with reasonable reactions to things—that could make for a nice change. Maybe this was the moment everything would change for her. Maybe now the school year was beginning in earnest.

That was perhaps burdening the moment with more expectation than it could bear, but, Stevie figured, something about this year had to give.

It was a good turnout in the art barn.

Along with Stevie, Vi, Nate, and Hunter, a solid group of around thirty students had shown up to watch, which was impressive, considering that was about 30 percent of Ellingham’s student body. Ellingham was the kind of place where, if your classmate was going to an engineering competition, a certain number of people would stop composing music, writing books, singing operas, and doing advanced mathematics to come have a look.

Kaz was there, of course. As the head of the student union, he offered his support to every project and smiled his astonishing smile, the one like an open-plan kitchen full of white cabinets from a home improvement show.

(After months of being here, Stevie had little idea of what the student union did or even if it was a real thing. This either said something about the student union or about Stevie. She suspected it was both. She had been similarly clueless about the student council in her old school. She knew that elections had taken place and that the winners were four people with good hair. Their campaign promises had something to do with recycling, parking, and vending machines. They got an exemption from daytime phone jail because of their positions; Stevie sometimes saw them walking the halls at a good clip, typing importantly into their phones. Nothing ever changed with the parking or recycling or vending machines, so it seemed like the student elections were a popularity contest draped with the thinnest veil of legitimacy. Perhaps Stevie was just suspicious of politics in general because of her parents. It was an aspect of her own psychological makeup she would explore at some other time, when she had figured out all her anxiety triggers and when she wasn’t trying to solve multiple murders. People have limits.)