I’d have new, more positive thoughts come to mind.
She also said it could take a while.
The building was freezing. During the day, they shut the heat down to conserve electricity. It came back up again at night and in the morning, but it was never really that warm. In Bristol, my parents had kept the house so hot, the windows would steam. This was considered very American, but in our defense, we are Southern. We get cold.
I was not going to be a baby about a little cold. I put on my fleece and set to work unpacking boxes and bags. I refilled my drawers, trying to remember the exact way I had arranged things before my untimely departure. I piled all my textbooks in order of subject. Further maths, French, English literature (from 1711 to 1847), art history, and normal history. I stepped back and examined my effort. Yup. Those were my books. Familiar, yet foreign, a wealth of information stashed behind every spine.
What I needed to do now was figure out how behind I was. That meant going through all the notes my teachers had been sending me while I was gone, marking off chapters, counting up assignments.
I pulled out the lists I’d been given: the pages I was supposed to have read, the essays I was supposed to have started, the problem sets I’d been given. I did the math. It didn’t take long. Zero plus zero plus zero plus zero equals zero. When should I tell my teachers that I hadn’t actually done anything since I left?
I flipped to the front of my binder and looked at the term schedule. Just about two weeks. That’s all that was left of the term. So what if the exams started in . . . twelve days?
I shut the binder. One step at a time. Today’s step was just getting back to school. No need to take it all in at once.
I turned my mind to other matters. I still had no idea where Stephen, Callum, and Boo were, but now that I was back in London, it seemed like I’d have a much better chance of finding them. Possibly. I wasn’t exactly sure how. They didn’t really have a beat or a known routine. The only one who was ever in the same general place was Callum. He covered the Underground network. I guessed I could ride the Tube for hours and hours, trying to catch a glimpse of him at some station. That wasn’t much of a plan. London is a very big place—one of the biggest cities in the world—and the Underground went on for hundreds of miles and had dozens of stations and millions of riders.
I would think of something. In the meantime, I needed something to do, someone to talk to. And there was someone here I could have a chat with. But to do that, I needed to put the uniform back on. Back on with the gray skirt and the white blouse. I could feel myself becoming a Wexford person again through the feel of the fabric—the slight polyester squeak of the skirt, the stiff collar of the shirt. But it was always the tie that did it for me. I looped it around my neck and fumbled with it for a moment until I had it right. I was Wexford property again.
Alistair spent most of his time in the library because he thought Aldshot smelled bad. His favorite spot was up in the stacks, in the romantic poetry section, in a dark little corner by a frosted glass window. This was where I found him, spread out in his usual way.
Alistair died in the 1980s, when overcoats were big and hair was even bigger. He was used to people walking past him, or over him, or through him, so he didn’t really pay any attention when I stood by his Doc Martens.
I was careful to leave a lot of distance between us. Blowing up one potential friend by accident, well, that can happen. Blowing up another would be carelessness.
“Hey,” I said, “Alistair.”
A slow drawing up of the head.
“You’re back,” he said.
“I’m back,” I replied.
“Boo said they took you to Bristol. That you wouldn’t be coming back, ever.”
“I’m back,” I said again.
Alistair wasn’t the hugging type, but I took the fact that he hadn’t already started reading again as a sign that he welcomed my presence. I slid down the wall and took a seat on the floor, tucking up my legs so we didn’t tap into each other.
“One thing,” I said. “Never touch me. Don’t even get near me.”
“Nice to see you too.”
“No, I mean . . . something’s gone wrong with me. And now I am bad for you. Really. No joke.”
“Bad for me?”
It’s really hard to tell someone you can destroy them with a touch. It’s not the kind of thing that should ever come up in conversation.
“I’m unlucky,” I said, in an attempt to cover. “I attract nutjobs and trouble.”
“So why’d you come back?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You got stabbed,” he said.
“I got better. I was bored sitting around at home.”
“And you came back here? Why didn’t you go back to America?”
“Someone’s renting our house,” I said. “And my shrink said I needed to come back to get my normal life back.”
“Normal life?” That got a dark little laugh.
It was good to see Alistair was the same cheerful entity that I’d left behind.
“So the Ripper,” he said. “The news says he died, that he jumped off a bridge. That’s a lie. They covered it all up. Typical. The press lies. The government lies. They all want to keep people in the dark.”
He scraped the rubbery sole of his shoe against the library floor. It made no noise.
“I don’t think that many people in the government actually know what happened.”
“Oh, they know,” he said. “Thatcher and her kind always know.”
“It’s not Thatcher anymore,” I said.
“Might as well be. They’re all the same. Liars.”
I heard footsteps approaching. The library wasn’t very populated during the day, and not many people made a point of coming to this corner of the second floor. This is why Alistair liked it. It was the literature corner, full of works of criticism. It was also a bit dim and cold.
Whoever was coming seemed to really want some criticism, because the footsteps were sharp and fast. The person hit a switch, waking up the aisle lights, which reluctantly flicked on one by one.
“I thought you might be here,” he said.
I recognized Jerome, obviously, but there was something very strange, something almost a little foreign. His hair had gotten just a touch shaggy and was falling into a center part. His tie was a bit loose. He seemed about an inch taller than I remembered, and slouchy shouldered. And his eyes were smaller. Not in a bad way. My memory had screwed everything up and adjusted all the measurements.
“Oh, God,” Alistair said. “Already?”
I’d gotten
