Page 47 of The Identicals
“This letter, left at the nurse’s office,” Dr. Bentz says, pulling it out and setting it in front of Ainsley. “You wrote this? Saying that you’dheardCandace Beasley had alcohol and drugs in her locker?”
Ainsley looks at the typed paper. She had misspelled alcohol (alcohal) on purpose to make it seem like someone less intelligent than she wrote it. Her grades aren’t stellar, but at least she can spell. She doesn’t know if she should admit to the letter. Can they check it for fingerprints or check the ink type against her computer at home?
“Yes,” she says.
Dutch checks his watch. “Can we go?” he says. “I have a restaurant to run.”
“Yes,” Dr. Bentz says. “Everyone may go except for Ainsley and her guardian. I’ll handle things from here. Thank you for coming.”
It’s worse than the Salem witch trials, Ainsley thinks. Worse than Galileo or Joan of Arc. She, Ainsley Cruise, has beenframed. She is so flustered at the failure of Dr. Bentz to see past Emma’s bullshit and Dutch’s intimidation tactics that she can’t find the words to speak in her own defense.
“I’m giving you a three-day suspension,” Dr. Bentz tells Ainsley. “However, you will serve it in school, and you will take your exams. That’s a kindness from me. I’m well within my rights to assign you an out-of-school suspension and let you take zeros. Do you understand?”
Ainsley opens her mouth to speak.It was Emma’s idea, not mine. The baggie of cocaine was Emma’s contribution. She encouraged me to steal the gin. She said this was the only way to teach Candace a lesson—not only for stealing Teddy but also for trying to be popular, like us. Emma stole the locker combinations right out of Ms. Kerr’s filing cabinets during a fire drill.
But it won’t do any good because Ainsley started out with a lie. She lost all credibility, and there’s no getting it back.
She nods. Aunt Harper’s hand is still on her back, steadying her.
“I’m very sorry about this,” Harper says.
“It’s Ainsley who should be sorry,” Dr. Bentz says. “While serving your suspension I expect a written apology to Candace and her parents and one to Emma as well for leading her down a wayward path.”
Ainsley swallows. “Okay,” she says.
She has to start serving her suspension immediately. She is taken to a room in the interior of the school that she didn’t even know existed. She is being chaperoned by a teacher named Ms. Brudie, whose sex had remained a mystery for most of tenth grade. “Ms.” indicated female, but her appearance (crew cut, men’s polo shirts, flat-front khakis) said otherwise. Understanding of her job at the school had also been hazy. Now Ainsley understands that Ms. Brudie deals with discipline problems—serious discipline problems—one-on-one.
Ms. Brudie takes Ainsley’s phone and hands her a stack of loose-leaf paper. “Apology letters,” she says. Her voice is surprisingly delicate and feminine. “Then you may study.”
“What about lunch?” Ainsley asks. “What about the bathroom?”
“You’ll have a chance to get your lunch and eat it here,” Ms. Brudie says. “You get one five-minute bathroom break.”
The suspension room has no windows except for one in the door the size of an airport paperback. There is a desk and a chair; the walls are cinder block painted institutional beige.
It’s jail, and no sooner does Ms. Brudie shut the door—she will be sitting right outside—than Ainsley starts to cry. The loose-leaf paper on the table in front of her catches tears dingy with mascara, like so many sooty raindrops.
When she is allowed to go to the cafeteria—only long enough to stand in line and get her food, with Ms. Brudie as an escort—Ainsley declines. She can’t bear the idea of what people will say to her or about her. By now, news of her reversal of fortune will be everywhere. It’s possible—likely, even—that her friends have defended her and possibly even spoken to teachers and the administration in protest. It won’t do any good, but it makes Ainsley feel a little better when she imagines it.
The bathroom, however, can’t be avoided. Ainsley waits until the last possible minute, but then shehasto go. She stands and taps on the door. There isn’t a clock in the room, so Ainsley has no idea what time it is; all she knows is that it is after lunch.
Ms. Brudie sets down her book—she’s reading Dostoyevsky, which must be a joke or a prop—and writes Ainsley a pass for the bathroom. “You have five minutes before I come hunting you down,” Ms. Brudie says. “Use the bathroom outside room one-oh-seven. It’s the closest.”
She won’t lie: when she is in the hallway alone, Ainsley feels like running away. Out the door of the school, all the way home, never to return. She will be a tenth-grade high school dropout. She wends her way out of the dimly lit corridors to the main part of the school and finds a clock. It’s only 12:50; there’s still an hour and a half to go. Ainsley hurries to the girls’ room across from room 107, then she realizes that room 107 is her chem class. She looks in the open door of the classroom—they’re in lab—and catches Emma’s eye. Ainsley doesn’t know what she expects. An apology, some sign of contrition or desperation. Maybe DutchforcedEmma to say what she did; maybe he threatened to send her to a convent or even hurt her. But what Emma does is unexpected.
She gives Ainsley the finger.
TABITHA
Eleanor is a demanding and finicky patient. After she is released from the hospital, she and Tabitha repair to the town house on Pinckney Street, a place Tabitha had adored growing up but that now feels stale and glum. The house has a layer of dust throughout; there is a lavish bouquet in the niche in the entryway—a weekly delivery from Winston’s for as long as Tabitha can remember—that has died and browned to a crisp.
“Mother,” Tabitha says, “we need to bring Felipa up here with us. I won’t be your nurseandyour maid.”
Eleanor sniffs.
“Or we can hire someone new,” Tabitha says.
“Heavens, no,” Eleanor says. “I can’t have a complete stranger seeing me like this.”
