Page 41

Chapter 41

DADDY-LONG-LEGS

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14

The ballroom is full of spiders.

Plastic spider rings are piled on every cocktail table, surrounding taper candles burning in centerpiece sconces. Tablecloths are patterned with cartoon spiders. Polyester webs are stretched across the ceiling. Even a massive spider sculpture made of plastic cups hangs from the ceiling by two strings like a marionette.

We go still in the doorway.

Blaze slams into my back. He starts to readjust his ghost sheet to see through the eyeholes. “Wherefore did we stop walking—?”

“NO,” Xavier shouts, and Robby lunges to cover Blaze’s eyes.

I lean closer to Delilah’s ear. “Don’t let Blaze see the spiders.”

Delilah nods despite her confusion.

The ballroom’s décor can’t compete with the strange behavior of our classmates. They huddle on either side, boys on one and girls on the other, pointedly—and irritably—avoiding eye contact. It feels dramatic until I remember the brother academy never received responses to their letters, and the sister academy believes they were never invited. On the best night of the year, everyone feels rejected.

Even more, failed by STRIP.

Without the support of the student body standing before us, this hundred-year tradition ceases to exist. Just like that. It’s happening right before our eyes.

We have to save this tonight.

Xavier frowns. “They don’t know what to do after relying on us for so long, huh?”

“Both sides must be angry and confused,” Robby surmises like I did, surveying the ballroom. “Xavier, you’ll distract Ms. Nallos on the left. P.M. has a few occupied too.”

“He’s here?” Jasper looks every which way for him.

I do too. He’s easy to spot, even among the crowd of instructors laughing with him. His suit may be black, but the slim stripe pattern and light pink tie are almost as bold as Jasper’s suit.

“Jasper should talk to his aunt,” Robby says. “She’s already herded tons of other instructors. Charlie and I will cover Mr. Stern—”

We turn to look at him; he’s standing at one of the cocktail tables bordering the walls. He hands a stuffed gnome to Ms. Lyney, whose face matches her red gown in color. William Stern is etched on the gnome’s belly.

Robby pinches the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. They’re gone. We’ll stand guard in the back to monitor any suspicious activity.”

Everyone splits off.

As Robby and I claim a table by the plastic cup spider and speakers to keep an eye on the operation, the bass of “Thriller” booms. I watch Delilah and London from a distance as they whisper a direction to Blaze. He zooms off and rams into three other girls, then hands one a wrapped candy letter. Once she opens it, her eyes light up. She searches the ballroom for her date.

Maybe this will work.

“How’re you holding up?” Robby says loudly enough to be heard over the electric guitar and synthesizers. He’s picking out pumpkin and triangular candy corns from a bowl and dividing them on the table.

“We have the easier task tonight,” I say, popping a few of the candy corns in my mouth. “So, not too nervous.”

“I mean still being roommates with Jasper. Isn’t he what started your incurable illness?”

“Wha—” I choke on my candy corn and spit it out on the table.

Robby stares at the orange-and-yellow goop. “Not trying to pry. I just wanted to check up on you. As a friend.”

In a desperate attempt to stay totally calm and cool, I join Robby in dividing up candy corn. “D-did someone say that? Who said that?”

“No one.”

“Then how did you know—? Er.” Butcher me.

“It’s always something new with you two. Burning hatred, total obsession, utter indifference. Anyone with a brain can see something’s up. Unfortunately for you, as top ranks, we have those.”

“We?”

“Xavier and me.”

The embarrassment hits hard. “I’m still surprised you figured it out. I thought Jasper was straight.”

Robby giggles and peeks up from the candy corn. Once he notices I haven’t joined in, he presses his lips firmly together. “That wasn’t a joke?”

“No? Jasper only realized himself a few weeks ago.”

His brow lifts incredulously. “The jewelry-wearing, more-dramatic-than-a-whining-baby-pony, long-haired poet?”

“I mean, a straight guy could act that way too.”

“Technically, but I also think the odds were in your favor.”

I search for Jasper across the ballroom. He stands by his aunt, as commanded by Robby, gesticulating and blabbering in a way that almost comes off heated, like they’re having an intense heart-to-heart conversation. Knowing him, though, he must just be speaking passionately about ancient Sumerian poetry’s lack of syllabo-tonic versification to distract her. He claims they aren’t close.

Still, Principal Grimes nods like she’s paying attention. Like she cares.

It pulls a question to the forefront of my mind. “Do you know if Jasper has the same”—I pause, unsure how to phrase this—“values as his aunt?”

“What do you mean?” Robby asks.

“She’s the principal. Of this academy.”

“Ah. Well, two years ago she took over after the previous principal.”

“Jasper’s aunt is new?”

“Yup. Before, she was at some private LA school.”

Principal Grimes’s name likely wouldn’t have come up as a camper, but it makes even more sense now why I’d never heard of her. “She’s not as strict?”

“Nothing’s really changed since she started here. I doubt she’d create and implement the rules we have, but it also seems like she’s complicit with the status quo.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Too harsh?”

“No, you’re right.” But it’s nice, knowing I’m not alone in the feeling. I take another look around the ballroom. A few girls and boys have begun to mingle instead of avoiding contact at all costs from opposite walls. Matt St. Paul, in particular, stands one table away with a girl who holds a striped, lopsided candy wrapper that I remember folding one of my own blackout poems into, her face beet red and her grin wide.

It’s working.

A scream cuts through the ballroom, high and shrill. Blaze, who’s collapsed in front of the giant plastic cup spider dangling from the ceiling. The letters wrapped in candy foil are spilled across the floor.

“Today’s the day,” he mumbles beneath his white sheet.

A few chaperones peek over, even with Xavier’s massive back blocking their view.

“Need help?” Ms. Nallos calls. She’s already walking over. If she picks up just one piece of candy, it’ll feel too light to her.

My heart rate skyrockets. I look for Delilah and spot her; she’s as wide-eyed as I must be. Gradually, she reaches into her handbag and pulls out three sticks. Three sparklers.

Leaning toward the nearest taper candle on a table, she lights the tips with the flame, then chucks them toward the opposite side of the ballroom. They skitter across the floor as red-and-gold sparks crackle, pulling everyone’s attention.

Robby and I use the distraction to rush over to Blaze. As Robby scrambles to shove the candy back into the trick-or-treat bucket, I shake Blaze’s shoulders.

“The arachnids’ weaponry?” Blaze says, trading frantic looks between the sparklers and the spider behind me.

“Blaze.” I snap in front of his eyes. He barely peels his gaze off the spider. “Blaze, give me the trick-or-treat bucket.”

“But I must aid STRIP.”

“We made a promise—you helped with my love letters, so I assist you on the fated day. Okay? I can handle this spider.” I check over Blaze’s shoulder. Ms. Nallos is circumventing the chaperone circle inspecting the sparklers in confusion, and Robby has at least half the letters to still pick up.

We’re out of time. We need to buy some.

“You know what you can do to aid STRIP, Blaze?” I ask.

“What ho?”

“You got your slingshot with you?”

“Everlastingly.”

“Get out that slingshot and knock down that spider.”

I reach under Blaze’s white sheet and into his tracksuit pants pocket. Once I find the slingshot and marble, I pull them out and shove them into his tiny twelve-year-old hands.

A fire rushes to his eyes. Gripping my shoulder, he rises shakily to his feet and aims at one of the two wires. He shoots, and the marble goes soaring.

The spider shakes, tilts, and comes crashing down. The plastic cups explode, knocking into cocktail tables and classmates’ heads.

Every instructor rushes to the cups next, shouting if everyone is safe. Robby and I race to toss the remaining candy into the bucket.

“Mr. Charlie?”

I spring to my feet and spin around, tucking the bucket behind my back. Principal Grimes stands before me in all her glory. Between her usual high-quality pantsuit and blond hair clipped out of the way, she must’ve stepped out of her office right before the mixer began.

“H-hello, Principal Grimes,” I say.

A tug comes at the bucket behind my back. Robby.

“I’ll keep passing out the candy…,” he says, wandering away with it.

Principal Grimes smiles. “Everything okay over here?”

“Yep! Yeah. Awesome.”

She watches the unfolding commotion on the dance floor. “Always an unpredictable mess, these mixers. Although I can’t deny I get a bit of a kick out of it.”

Those are the last words I expected to hear from her. I don’t respond.

“Sorry to intrude on your supercool night,” she continues, “but I had been meaning to speak with you.”

Because I didn’t rank.

“Right,” I say, my heart sinking. “I know my Excellence Scholar requirements—”

“I just received word we’re no longer applying the ranking system as a metric. Well, as a requirement for our Excellence Scholars at first. It takes baby steps with the board of trustees.”

I try to speak. To move. I’m too stunned.

“What changed?” I say, my voice barely a whisper.

“Jasper didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Principal Grimes sighs in a way that sounds half humorous and half exhausted. “Let’s just say he gained the support of a few other students with parents who are vital to our financial donor stability, and they wrote to a certain board of trustees, threatening to release quite the op-ed about the”—she pauses—“antiquated ways of Valentine.”

My head races over who he convinced to join—Xavier? Blaze? Did they know this whole time? Is this what Jasper was speaking to her about in the ballroom?

Even after what I told him last night?

“I had no idea,” I say.

“He came to me personally after the ranks released at first, but I told him it’s up to the board. Although I’ve never been a fan of the ranks either.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but my workload has thrown aside my priorities lately, trying to please the board. I’m admittedly proud of my nephew for causing a fuss. I really should get to know him a bit better, now that we’re in such close proximity.” She presses a finger to her lips. “Anyhoo, I haven’t told him the news that your requirements have changed. I wanted you to know first.”

Jasper really did this.

He’s why I’m staying.

My chest bursts with a joy I haven’t felt since I received my Valentine acceptance letter. I don’t even care that my eyes water in front of her. “Thank you, both of you.”

I have to tell STRIP.

No. Mom. I have to call her back.

“How is everything else?” Principal Grimes asks. Last time I met with her, stress oozed from her, but tonight, all of that is dampened. Maybe she’s felt the pressure of tradition too. Either way, it seems like Jasper taking matters into his own hands had an effect. “I hope your time here has otherwise been satisfactory?”

I could give the same response I always do. Busy. Full of studying.

But everything feels like it’s changing. Everyone here is really starting to feel like they’re on my side. “Principal Grimes, what’s Valentine’s stance on transgender students?”

The topic shift shakes her up at first, but then she hums more calmly than I expect. “I only started here recently, but I believe there was one student—we knew much later, postgraduation. None have made it known to us during, so I assume we’ve never addressed it as such.”

I prepare to once again speak what I swore I never would. My friends won’t let me go home. Jasper too. I know that now.

And I don’t want to hide. I can stand up for myself. “I had originally requested a single room, but there was a mix-up. This is why I requested one. For privacy.”

We stare at each other. “Thriller” starts to play. Again.

Then Principal Grimes nods, albeit unnaturally quickly. “We need to get that part of the guideline package fixed, then.”

Is that a good or a bad thing? “Fixed?”

“I’ll bring this promptly to the board of trustees at our next meeting. Goodness, getting paired with Jasper must’ve been a shock! What is this about a mix-up? If it makes you feel better, he’s recently gotten a room back in my instructor’s quarters, if you didn’t know. You should have a space to yourself soon, Charlie.”

With how fast both Jasper and his aunt barrel through conversations, it takes a second for me to process.

Am I dreaming ?

“Thank you. Again,” I say, my heart full. “I’ve heard a few other good ideas from other classmates. They might be worth hearing at that meeting too.”

“Oh?”

I glance across the ballroom until I spot Xavier, who slow dances with a totally innocent-looking Delilah despite her previous sparkler crimes. Xavier, however, looks seconds from a breakdown as he holds her, shoulders tensed to his ears. “Like, a coed lacrosse team.”

A grin pulls at Principal Grimes’s lips. “We can leave space for questions this month.”

As she walks away with a polite goodbye, I search the crowds more. Robby is passing a letter to another sister student. Luis stands at a table with Michael in his black suit and orange bow tie, a little too close to just be friendly. London must’ve also received a letter because she’s taken a break from her delivery duties to shyly talk with Griffin Li. Way more couples are paired up now. Talking. Laughing. Finally with each other instead of the gloom and doom we walked into.

The plan really worked.

Then there’s Jasper in his white suit and left-down hair and brilliant eyes. He’s patting Blaze’s back, most likely for fighting so bravely in the arachnid war. Suddenly, Jasper flicks his head my way. The first look I’ve gotten all night.

Across the sea of bodies, dancing and hugging during the most romantic event of the year, he smiles. Even though I pushed him away.

I made a mistake. A huge one.