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Oliver is an exceptional student at Duchsene, with one of the highest human IQ’s recorded for his generation. His academic performance has been stellar, although his participation in athletics has been the minimum required of a Conduit. He is a frequent visitor to museums and galleries, and is one of the youngest important collectors of antiquities in the world.
The Repository has long suspected that Oliver was instrumental in aiding and abetting Schuyler Van Alen’s yearlong evasion from Committee justice. However, the Committee is satisfied with his confession, and further investigation into the possibly illegal nature of his actions has been terminated. (Note: The Hazard-Perry family recently made a sizable donation into the Committee’s accounts.)
He was rumored to have be
en spotted at Kennedy Airport with Schuyler Van Alen the day after the Silver Blood attack at St. John’s Cathedral. However, details remain inconclusive, as conflicting eyewitnesses report that she was last seen with Jack Force, entering the International Terminal. Under the Vampire–Conduit Confidentiality Act of 1755, Oliver will not confirm or deny any of our suspicions of Schuyler Van Alen’s actions or whereabouts. In any event, with Schuyler missing, Oliver has been relieved of his duties as human Conduit and has chosen to serve the Committee in another position.
Current Status: Repository Scribe
Author’s Note: A request—more like a plea—I receive very often from my readers is to tell the story of Schuyler and Jack’s first meeting at the Perry Street apartment. So I thought I would write it, since I wanted to see it for myself.
THERE’S A FIRST (OR FOURTH) TIME FOR EVERYTHING, OR “MR. DARCY REQUESTS”
Schuyler’s Story
When Schuyler awoke that morning, she found that a book had been slipped underneath her door. It was wedged tightly in the narrow space, and she had to pull it out carefully so it wouldn’t bend or catch. The Plague by Albert Camus. She held it up and flipped through the yellowed pages. Inside the book was an envelope, and inside the envelope was a key. There was nothing else—no note, no address, nothing. Schuyler had no idea what the key was for, but she had an inkling that she should not ask Mimi about it.
She retrieved an old pair of Doc Martens from her trunk and removed one of the frayed shoelaces. She looped one end of the shoelace through the key and tied it around her neck so that it hung underneath her shirt collar, hidden. The book she put away in her backpack. She had read The Plague for class the year before and had not liked it very much; had found it depressing and severe. Why had he chosen to give her a copy? Because, of course, the moment she picked it up, she knew who had given her the book—there was no one else in the Force town house that even cared that she lived there now.
She tried to remember the story of The Plague: a terrible epidemic strikes a small town, which is then quarantined from the rest of the world. One of the main characters is separated from his wife—whom he longs for throughout the novel. He struggles to hold on, fighting despair only because he so desperately wants to see her again. Schuyler’s heart began to beat a little too fast. Was it possible that she was reading too much into this? Certainly. She tried to remember what she had learned in Mr. Orion’s English class. Wasn’t Camus’s story one of social breakdown and the futility of the human condition? The Plague was a story about rats and disease, wasn’t it? But what had he argued... Oh, she remembered now... He had argued that the story was about longing and exile... and love.
So what? Schuyler thought, running a hairbrush through her dark hair before pulling it back into a ponytail. So what if he’d given her a book and key? She was still miserable. She was still living with them and not her grandfather. Ever since she’d arrived, she had been made to feel as welcome as Jane Eyre at Gateshead with her rich cousins. She was lucky that Mimi hadn’t locked her in the closet yet.
And so what if he’d kissed her the day before? His kisses meant nothing. He had kissed her and run off three times now—the first at a party, the second at the masquerade ball, and the third in her bedroom yesterday. It was just yesterday. She tried to shake off the memory, pulled on her coat and headed downstairs. She wanted to leave while the house was still quiet; she didn’t want to risk bumping into anyone, wanted the chance to slip away as quietly as possible without anyone noticing.
She walked out and took a deep breath of fresh air. She couldn’t understand him. What did he want? He was bonded to Mimi, wasn’t he? And yet he had kissed her yesterday afternoon, and then had disappeared so quickly she had to assume he was repulsed by her, or perhaps repulsed by his attraction to her, which was just as humiliating. Maybe he only liked her when no one else was looking.... Maybe he was just playing a game... toying with her emotions while she churned with confusion and desire....
Three stolen kisses—it didn’t add up to anything, really. He was never going to be her boyfriend, she thought as she turned right onto 96th Street. He was never going to sling his arm around her as they walked down the hall, never take her to Winter Ball, never declare his love over the PA system by mangling the lyrics to “Come on Eileen,” as Jamie Kip had done so charmingly last week when he’d serenaded Ally Elly, before the head girl had cut him off. But Schuyler didn’t want any of that—did she? She had never yearned for popularity. It struck her as absurd anyway, to want popularity. Popularity was fickle and elusive, like trying to catch fireflies in a jar. You were either born with it or relegated to wallflower status according to the mysterious and unknowable workings of the universe.
It wasn’t something you strove for or wished for or worked for, no matter how many silly articles and teenage novels and Hollywood movies tried to convince you otherwise. Popularity was something other people decided for you—other people decided you were fun and pretty and interesting and wanted to be your friend. Hence, you were popular. Most people thought Schuyler was weird, and left her alone.
She arrived at school early and ate her breakfast by her locker. She’d brought a yogurt and banana taken from the Forces’ immaculate commercial refrigeration system (nothing so bourgeois as a fridge, of course; this was the size of a small closet). Classes wouldn’t start for another half hour yet, and she relished having the place to herself. Soon enough, the hallways would be filled with the sound of gossip and camaraderie, and Schuyler would feel even lonelier than when she was alone. It was so much easier when no one was around.
As much as she was not the kind of girl who wished he would claim her as his own in front of everyone to see, a little part of her could not help but wish for it nonetheless. The problem with being alienated is that one is never alienated enough, she thought as students began to trickle in before the first bell. She could swath herself in black clothes and hide behind her hair, shut off the rest of the world and listen to angry music on her iPod, but somehow it was all a pose, wasn’t it? Was she just a poser? Because why was she drawn to him, then, the kind of boy that every girl wanted to date? Didn’t that mean she was just like everyone else? If only she didn’t care so much; but she did. At heart, behind the quiet and the scowl and the indifference, she cared very, very much.
And then, there he was. Right in the middle of a group of laughing, joking boys—always right in the center, the tallest and handsomest one—the one you couldn’t help but stare at....
Jack Force. He must have just gotten back from crew practice on the Hudson. She could always tell when he had been rowing; she could smell the sea air on his skin, in his hair, his cheeks were ruddy and flushed. He looked happy.
For the briefest second he caught her eye—but then turned away.
Schuyler bent down to her books, biting her bottom lip. She had just imagined it, hadn’t she? The kisses, everything. They didn’t exist in the real world. In the real world, she and Jack were strangers. She wasn’t looking, and someone jostled her elbow so that she lost her grip on her bookbag, and the book—The Plague—tumbled out, and she thought, If this is what some people think is a love story, they are just kidding themselves.
But aren’t all stories about love in some way?
Schuyler startled to hear Jack’s voice in her head, and looked up, but the hallway was empty. The second bell rang, and she was late.
Only the good ones, only the good stories, she thought, wondering if he could hear her, if he was listening.
The next morning, another book had been slipped underneath her door. What was this all about? Was he building her a library? This time, since the book was too thick to fit completely, it had been shoved, stuffed in the opening between the door and the floor, halfway in and halfway out, so that when Schuyler pulled it out, the paperback was bent in the middle and the pages were creased. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This time, inside the book there was a note.
173 Perry Street. #10 N
. Midnight. Use the key.
She touched the key that hung around her neck, for luck. The Plague yesterday. Now Pride and Prejudice. Was it an alphabetical choice? she wondered, amused. Talk about a love story. Pride and Prejudice—so obvious, wasn’t it? Schuyler had always been skeptical of its pull until she had spent a long, heady weekend wrapped up in the joys of its combative romance. Elizabeth and Darcy don’t so much fall in love as fight their attraction every step of the way. Schuyler had come to love the book despite her misgivings, to hold its promise of carriages and Pemberley to her chest as stoutly as she believed that Elizabeth should have inherited the carriages and the estate on her own. It was so difficult to imagine such a stringent, corseted world for women; to imagine a life completely dependent on one’s ability to land the right guy. Still, there was something deeply appealing about such a story. It made the romance so much more... What did they call it? High stakes.
In any event, Pride and Prejudice was way more appealing than The Plague.
