Extraordinary Means

I tried to picture all of us in a few years, sitting in some late-night diner over winter break and catching up on each other’s lives. Charlie with his music, and Marina with her fashion, Nick already building his business empire, and Lane, all collegiate, and still looking at me like I was the person he wanted to see most in the world. Maybe it was possible, and I’d study photography at some art school in San Francisco, near Stanford. Maybe Lane and I would drive to the diner together.

There was another collection on Friday, and Nick came with me, I suppose because he knew I’d “accidentally” forget his alcohol if he didn’t. It was cold that night, and dark, with almost no moon. The woods didn’t feel dark so much as thick, and finding a path through them was a challenge.

Nick didn’t say anything until we were halfway there, and then he sighed, loudly.

“What?” I asked.

“So you and Lane,” he said.

“That’s not a sentence, an opinion, or a question,” I told him.

He snorted, clearly not amused.

“Well, good luck with that,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not actually thinking you’ll stay together after Latham, are you?” He said it with this wide-eyed concern, but I could see right through him to his trembling, jealous little soul.

“Maybe. What’s it to you?”

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Wow, thanks for the concern,” I said. “You’re such a good friend.”

I hadn’t meant it to come out as sarcastically as it did, but it was too late now. Nick scowled at me in the moonlight.

“I never wanted to be friends,” Nick muttered.

“Well, haven’t you heard?” I said. “Life is full of disappointments. I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to check my name off your fuck-it list.”

“Is that what you think I wanted?” Nick asked, shocked. “I thought you knew.”

Knew what? I wondered as his expression softened. And then he pulled me toward him, going for a kiss.

“Get off!” I said, pushing him away. “I can’t believe you!”

“Sorry,” Nick said, embarrassed. “I’m really sorry.”

“Nick Patel, you can be a real buttpocket,” I told him.

“Just forget it happened,” he said. “Please.”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

We’d reached the place where we usually met Michael, but he hadn’t arrived yet. So I stood around seething at Nick and wishing he’d get over himself. Or, I guessed, over me.

After a minute, I heard leaves crunching in the distance, and then the beam of a flashlight passed across a nearby tree trunk. It was Michael, carrying our stuff.

“Sorry,” he said, doing this combination cough and sniffle thing. “Not feeling that great. You have the money?”

Nick handed over the envelope, and Michael counted it out. He charged us triple, and while paying thirty dollars for a ten-dollar bottle of vodka wasn’t a bargain, it was the only option. I guess Nick and I were supposed to mark things up even more and take a commission, but we never did. Well, except for the people we couldn’t stand. Genevieve’s Milk Duds had cost her five bucks a box.

“Looks good,” Michael said, stashing the envelope in his jacket. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Yep,” I said.

“You kids stay out of trouble now.” He stared straight at me while he said that last part, like it was a warning.

MARINA’S BIRTHDAY WAS on Saturday. She was turning seventeen, the youngest of our group, and we’d always joked with her about it when we watched R-rated movies or smuggled Nick’s booze, even though none of us were old enough for that.

I always hated having my birthdays at Latham House, because I wondered if anyone actually cared that it was my birthday, or if they were just so relieved that I’d made it another year. This was Marina’s first birthday at Latham House, and she’d missed the awkwardness of what it had been like for Nick and Charlie and me. But we gave her our tradition anyway.

We stuck an unlit candle in a plate of pancakes and sang to her at breakfast.

“Happy birthday, dear Marina, happy birthday to you!” we finished.

“And many morrrre, since there’s a cureeeee,” Charlie added, before coughing into his handkerchief. His notebook was out, and his eyes were glittering like he’d been up all night slamming contraband energy drinks.

“How’s the music?” I asked.

“It’s good,” Charlie said. “Yeah, I’ll let you guys hear it soon.”

“We can already hear it,” Lane reminded him. “Open windows, remember?”

“That’s just the bare bones,” Charlie said. “I’m doing the whole thing on the computer, adding in different layers with virtual instruments and stuff. You’ll see.”

“Oh really, that’s what you’re doing on the computer?” Nick said, and we all laughed.

“Shut up,” Charlie muttered. “I’m trying to create a legacy here. There’s a specific energy to different moments, and once you lose it, it can’t be recaptured. You’ve got to record it, or you’ve got nothing.”

He stood up to bus his tray.

“Where are you going?” Nick asked.

“To keep working,” Charlie said.

And then he stalked off.

MARINA INSISTED ON having a birthday party that night, and the plan was to sneak out of the dorms and rendezvous in the woods for some late-night revelry. We’d meet at the dried-up creek bed a little bit west of the rock. It was far enough from Latham that flashlights wouldn’t be visible, but not too deep in. The theme was a toga party, and the plan was to bring our bedsheets. We could just stick them in the contaminated laundry chute, for bloodstained sheets, so it didn’t matter if we ruined them.

Marina and I spent the afternoon with craft glue and leaves, attempting to make laurel crowns for the party. Mostly, we just wound up ruining our manicures, since the craft glue got everywhere and refused to dry. In the end, we had to staple the leaves together, which took about thirty seconds and made us feel like idiots for not thinking of it in the first place.

That night, Marina and I went through the routine of putting on our pajamas, just to make it feel even more illicit, and then we went back to our rooms and waited for the hall nurse to come check.

Lane called, which he usually did.

“So, what are you wearing?” he asked.

“Lane!”

“I mean under your toga.”

“Mm-hmm, sure,” I teased.

“Although, come to think of it, what are you wearing?”

I giggled, and then I heard footsteps in the hall.

“It’s the nurse,” I said. “Wear jeans and a hoodie. I’ll see you later.”

And then I hung up and tried to look i

“You’re ru

She handed me an aspirin, and I rolled my eyes and gulped it down.

“You’re a champ,” she said, reaching for the light switch. “Sleep well now.”

Which, obviously, I didn’t.

Marina knocked on my door an hour later, wearing her backpack.

“Ready to go?” she whispered.

I grabbed mine and flipped up my hood, and we snuck down the dark hallway together. The dorm echoed with coughing, and I wondered if I coughed in my sleep, too, and if it sounded that bad.

It wasn’t hard to get out of the dorms after lights-out, just a little inconvenient. The doors locked, but the windows didn’t. So all you had to do was slip out the window that led onto the back porch, and then jump down onto the grass. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d properly snuck out. The real thing, not just snuck into the boys’ dorm before lights-out.

Marina and I wiggled out the window and jumped off the porch, and then, in the thin light of the moon, we crept across the grass and into the woods.

I switched on my flashlight as soon as I dared, illuminating the tree trunks and the thick, moldering leaves that covered the ground. I loved the woods best in the summer. They felt warm and welcoming, with golden shafts of light filtering through the trees. But the woods were changing now that it was November. They felt cold and bleak, almost like they were dying.