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I look down again. Camera phones flash. Freshmen hang out of windows next door in Strong House, and juniors and seniors stand around on the grass in their pajamas and nightgowns, even though teachers are desperately trying to herd them back inside.
I give my best grin and wave, like this is all some enormous prank. “Cheese,” I say softly.
I wish my unconscious mind had thought to bring spray paint. If it had, I would have been a legend.
“Get down, Mr. Sharpe,” yells Dean Wharton. “I’m warning you!”
“I’m okay, Ms. Noyes,” I call, ignoring Wharton. “I don’t know how I got up here. I think I was sleepwalking.”
A siren wails in the distance, drawing closer. My cheeks hurt from smiling.
* * *
The last time I was in the headmistress’s office, my grandfather was there with me to enroll me at the school. I remember watching him empty a crystal dish of peppermints into the pocket of his coat while Dean Wharton talked about what a fine young man I would be turned into. The crystal dish went into the opposite pocket.
Wrapped in a blanket, I sit in the same green leather chair and pick at the gauze covering my palm. A fine young man indeed.
“Sleepwalking?” Dean Wharton says. He’s dressed in a brown tweed suit, but his hair is still wild. He stands near a shelf of outdated encyclopedias and strokes a gloved finger over their crumbling leather spines.
I notice there’s a new cheap glass dish of mints on the desk. My head is pounding. I wish the mints were aspirin.
“I used to sleepwalk,” I say. “I haven’t done it in a long time.”
Somnambulism isn’t all that uncommon in kids, boys especially. I looked it up online after waking in the driveway when I was thirteen, my lips blue with cold, unable to shake the eerie feeling that I’d just returned from somewhere I couldn’t quite recall.
Outside the leaded glass windows the rising sun limns the trees with gold. The headmistress, Ms. Northcutt, looks puffy and red-eyed. She’s drinking coffee out of a mug with the Wallingford logo on it and gripping it so tightly the leather of her gloves over her knuckles is pulled taut.
“I heard you’ve been having some problems with your girlfriend,” Headmistress Northcutt says.
“No,” I say. “Not at all.” Audrey broke up with me after the winter holiday, exhausted by my secretiveness. It’s impossible to have problems with a girlfriend who’s no longer mine.
The headmistress clears her throat. “Some students think you are running a betting pool. Are you in some kind of trouble? Owe someone money?”
I look down and try not to smile at the mention of my tiny criminal empire. It’s just a little forgery and some bookmaking. I’m not running a single con; I haven’t even taken up my brother Philip’s suggestion that we could be the school’s main supplier for underage booze. I’m pretty sure the headmistress doesn’t care about betting, but I’m glad she doesn’t know that the most popular odds are on which teachers are hooking up. Northcutt and Wharton are a long shot, but that doesn’t stop people laying cash on them. I shake my head.
“Have you experienced mood swings lately?” Dean Wharton asks.
“No,” I say.
“What about changes in appetite or sleep patterns?” He sounds like he’s reciting the words from a book.
“The problem is my sleep patterns,” I say.
“What do you mean?” asks Headmistress Northcutt, suddenly intent.
“Nothing! Just that I was sleepwalking, not trying to kill myself. And if I wanted to kill myself, I wouldn’t throw myself off a roof. And if I was going to throw myself off a roof, I would put on some pants before I did it.”
The headmistress takes a sip from her cup. She’s relaxed her grip. “Our lawyer advised me that until a doctor can assure us that nothing like this will happen again, we can’t allow you to stay in the dorms. You’re too much of an insurance liability.”
I thought that people would give me a lot of crap, but I never thought there would be any real consequences. I thought I was going to get a scolding. Maybe even a couple of demerits. I’m too stunned to say anything for a long moment. “But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Which is stupid, of course. Things don’t happen to people because they deserve them. Besides, I’ve done plenty wrong.
“Your brother Philip is coming to pick you up,” Dean Wharton says. He and the headmistress exchange looks, and Wharton’s hand goes unconsciously to his neck, where I see the colored cord and the outline of the amulet under his white shirt.
I get it. They’re wondering if I’ve been worked. Cursed. It’s not that big a secret that my grandfather was a death worker for the Zacharov family. He’s got the blackened stubs where his fingers used to be to prove it. And if they read the paper, they know about my mother. It’s not a big leap for Wharton and Northcutt to blame any and all strangeness concerning me on curse work.
“You can’t kick me out for sleepwalking,” I say, getting to my feet. “That can’t be legal. Some kind of discrimination against—” I stop speaking as cold dread settles in my stomach. I seriously contemplate the possibility that I was cursed. I try to think back to whether someone brushed me with a hand, but I can’t recall anyone touching me who wasn’t clearly gloved.
