Alarming though Wexford could be at times, I had no desire to leave it. In fact, I was certain that if I did, I would miss crucial things—all the things that would allow me to adapt and last the entire year.
“Well, I have class on Saturday morning,” I said, “then we eat lunch. And doesn’t it take, like, hours to get there? So I wouldn’t even get there until Saturday night, and then I’d have to leave in the middle of Sunday . . . and I need all that time to do work. Plus, I have to play hockey every day, and since I don’t know how to play, I have to do extra practice . . .”
Jazza didn’t look up, but I could tell she was listening to every word of this. After ten minutes, I had convinced them that it wasn’t a good idea to leave, but I had to swear up, down, and sideways to be careful and to never, ever, ever do anything on my own. They moved on to describing their house in Bristol. I was scheduled to see it for the first time during a long weekend break in mid-November.
“Your parents are alarmed?” Jazza asked when I hung up.
I nodded and sat down on the floor.
“Mine are as well,” she said. “I think they want me to come home too, but they aren’t saying. The trip to Cornwall would be too long, anyway. And Bristol is just as bad. You’re right.”
This confirmation made me feel a bit better. I hadn’t just been making things up.
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked her.
“I thought I’d stay in and work on this German essay. And then I really need to put in a few hours of cello practice. I was in terrible shape this morning.”
“Or,” I said, “we could go out. To . . . a pub. With Jerome.”
Jazza chewed a strand of hair for a moment.
“To a pub? With Jerome?”
“He just asked me to ask you.”
“Jerome asked you to ask me to go to a pub?”
“He said it was my job to convince you,” I explained.
Jazza spun around in her chair and smiled broadly.
“I knew it,” she said.
Jazza and Jerome, I supposed, had had an ongoing flirtation, and now they had me to bring their love to life. If that was going to be my role, it was better if I accepted it. Or, at least, looked fake cheerful about it.
“So,” I said. “You and Jerome? What’s the story?”
Jazza cocked her head to the side in a decidedly birdlike fashion.
“No,” she said, laughing. “Don’t be disgusting. Me and Jerome? I mean . . . I love Jerome, but we’re friends. No. He’s asking you out.”
“He’s asking me out by asking me to ask you?”
“Correct,” she said.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to ask me?”
“You don’t know Jerome,” Jazza said. “He doesn’t do things the easy way.”
My spirits perked right up again.
“So,” I said, “do you want to go, or . . .”
“Well, I should,” she said. “Because if I don’t, he might get nervous and not go. He needs me there for support.”
“This is complicated,” I said. “Are all English people like you guys?”
“No,” she said. “Oh, I knew it! This is perfect.”
I loved the way she said perfect. Pahh-fect. It was pahhfect.
In order to go out, Jazza worked without pause the entire afternoon. I sat at my desk pretending to do the same, but my mind was wandering too much. I spent about two hours online quietly trying to look up what you were supposed to wear to a pub, but the Internet is useless for things like that. I got a terrible range of advice, from American travel sites (who advocated a wardrobe of non-wrinkle travel basics and a raincoat) to a bunch of English sites about how all girls at all pubs wore skirts that were too short or heels that were too high and how they all fell over drunk in the street—which prompted another half hour of angry searching about misogyny and feminism, because that kind of thing drives me nuts.
My problem sets, sadly, did not do themselves during this time. Nor did my reading read itself. I tried to tell myself that I was learning about culture, but even I wasn’t going to be fooled by that. It was five o’clock before I knew it, and Jazza stirred and said something about getting dressed. On Saturday nights, you could wear whatever you wanted to dinner. This would be the first time I would greet Wexford as a whole in some Actual Clothes.
Since I still didn’t know what to wear, I delayed a bit by switching on some music and watching Jazza change. She put on jeans; I put on jeans. She put on a light blouse; I put on a T-shirt. She put her hair up; I put my hair up. She skipped the makeup, but there, I diverged. I also wore a black velvet jacket. This was a present from my grandmother, one of the few things she’d ever gotten me that I wasn’t skeeved to wear in public. Since I’m pretty pale—years of excessive sunscreen and being slowly bled to death by swamp mosquitoes—the rich black looked dramatic. I added some red lipstick, which may have been a touch too far, but Jazza said I looked nice, and she seemed to mean it. I also wore a star necklace, a gift from Cousin Diane.
The refectory was only three-quarters full, if that. Lots of people, Jazza explained, just skipped Saturday dinner entirely and started their evenings early. I got to look at the clothing choices of those who had stayed, and was happy to see that I had been wise to copy Jazza. Nobody was wearing anything too fancy—jeans, skirts, sweaters, T-shirts. Jerome was dressed in a brown hoodie and jeans. We ate quickly and headed out. I was shivering in my jacket. They didn’t even need jackets. It was also still quite bright, even though it was after seven. We walked for several blocks, Jazza and Jerome chatting about things I neither knew nor understood, when Jazza began to look around in confusion.
“I thought we were going to the pub,” she said.
“We are,” Jerome replied.
“The pub is that way,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction. “Which one are we going to?”
“The Flowers and Archers.”
“The Flowers and . . . oh. No. No.”
“Come on, Jazzy,” Jerome said. “We have to show your roommate here around.”
“But it’s a crime scene. You can’t go into a crime scene.”
Even as she said this, we caught the first glimpse of it all. The news trucks came first, their satellites extended. There were maybe two dozen of those. There was a whole section of sidewalk filled with reporters talking at cameras. Then there were the police cars, the police vans, and the mobile crime scene units. Then there were the people, so many people. Some sort of cordon had obviously been put up, so the people grouped around it. There had to be a hundred or more, just watching and taking pictures. We made it to the back of the crowd.
“Just let me get some pictures, and we’ll go to a real pub,” Jerome said, zipping off and squeezing through.
I stood on my toes a little to try to catch sight of the Flowers and Archers. It was just an ordinary-looking pub—black, large windows, cheerfully painted wooden arms over the door, a blackboard sign out front advertising a special. Only the dozens of police officers swarming around it like ants gave any indication of the terror that had occurred here. I suddenly felt uncomfortable. An unpleasant chill went up my back.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s stand back.”
I almost walked straight into a man who was standing right behind us. He was dressed in a suit with a slightly too-large jacket. He was completely and smoothly bald. His lack of hair highlighted his eyes, which were feverishly bright. When I apologized, the eyes grew wider, in what appeared to be shock.
“Not at all,” he replied. “Not at all.”
He stepped aside to let me pass, smiling widely.
“People are treating this like it’s a party,” Jazza said, looking at the people standing around with bottles of beer, taking photos on their phones and holding up video cameras. “Look how happy everyone seems.”