All Girls by Emily Layden

Author:Emily Layden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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After the show—after the Songbirds perform “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” after Olivia invites the performers onstage for a final bow, after Mr. Banks waves red-faced and sweating to a standing ovation—Celeste follows Josie back across the Bowl to Lathrop, where their classmates sprint from room to room and gather in the lounge for the elaborate spread of snacks their Dorm Parents and Proctors have prepared.

“I’m gonna go put on sweats,” Celeste says, a hand on Josie’s upper arm, which is already reaching into a five-pound bag of Sour Patch Kids.

“Oh, but—” Josie whines, sucking on a blue candy, “don’t you know? It’s so glamorous to eat junk food in formal attire!”

“Since when?” Celeste asks.

“Since Jennifer Lawrence ate that pizza at the Oscars.” Josie pops another Sour Patch Kid into her mouth. “Anyway, I can’t promise you there’ll be any red ones left.”

But instead of going to her room, Celeste walks past her door and to the set of stairs that ladder down the back corner of the dorm. On the second floor she moves with the same kind of wordless viscosity that she does in the pool, all pulse thumping in her own ears, eyes trained on the floor beneath her. When she knocks on the door she does so with a quick rap-rap-rap; while she waits, she brings a hand to her temple, checking where Josie smoothed her hair behind her ears. She looks to her left, to Izzy Baldwin’s room, and again calls up the image of the Proctor with her ear to the wall she shares with Ms. Ryan’s apartment.

It’s Owen who opens the door, in a white V-neck T-shirt and baggy basketball shorts, the edge of navy-blue boxers just visible at his waist, patterned with the gray skeletons of little fish, spiny and bug-like. To an outsider it might seem odd that this adult man—who had to pass a basic background check to live on-campus with his wife but who does not himself have any actual professional ties to the school—lives with 150 teenage girls. But faculty spouses and partners are a regular part of boarding school life, where the private lives of teachers become paraprofessional: even now, as she wonders whether she’s thrilled or repulsed by the hair that furs Owen’s legs and the patch of chest above the V of his shirt, nothing about the arrangement strikes Celeste as strange, not even in this year of yard signs and allegations and Pedophile Playoffs.

“Hi,” Owen says finally. “You’re probably looking for my wife? I think she’s out in the common room with everybody.”

“Did you come to the show?” Celeste asks.

“Oh,” Owen says. He looks at Celeste directly, curiously. His eyes are gray-green, a kind of kaleidoscopic hazel. “Yes, yeah.”

“She was really good,” Celeste says.

Owen cocks his head to one side and curls his lips into a kind of half smile, half smirk. “What’s your name?”

“Celeste.”

“Celeste,” he says, nodding, his shoulders slipping slightly back. “Did you know she learned to play the bass just for this?”

“She didn’t already know how?”

“Nope.

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