The Twisted Thread Read Free Page B

Exactly the right person to calm a dorm full of panic-stricken girls. Rob was a former history teacher and had a bristling head of brown hair and a square set of shoulders he’d used to great effect as a hockey player and coach. A good person to convey bad news to adults, because he’d be brisk about it, but the wrong choice for kids. Porter McLellan, once again, had made the right decision. Rob stalked off to alert the next faculty member he’d been slated to tell. No doubt he was working from a carefully denoted list about who was contacting whom. Porter was remarkably thorough. It was 6:50. Fred and Alice had a few minutes to gather themselves before they had to leave.
    He glanced at the group of Korean kids sitting in the corner where they chatted every morning. Breakfast was an optional meal at Armitage, and only the most dedicated of students got up this early. Jung Lee, a handsome senior, was laughing loudly at something Maya Kim had said. They had no idea about Claire, and Fred wasn’t going to tell them. He was desolate at the thought that he would never feel the same about these mornings in Alice’s tactful, pleasant company reliving the dramas of their baseball team as these serious children ate pancakes.
    Alice was wiping her forehead with a napkin. “Thirty-six years,” she said, staring out the bay window through which they could see a broad green bank leading down to the Bluestone River. This Saturday, Armitage was supposed to host a rowing regatta that Fred knew would now be canceled.
    â€œThirty-six,” Alice said again. “I’ve been here thirty-six years, and in that time only three other students have died. Alex Schwartz, in a car accident. Louisa Harper, of leukemia. One other, in a climbing accident. Kids just don’t die here. But this is different. I know this is different, Fred.”
    Later, Fred would not quite remember how he and Alice made it to the meeting, but he did know that he offered her his arm and was surprised to realize she needed his support. Alice was wrong. Another Armitage boy had died here, but it was before her tenure and almost everyone had forgotten about him.
    They took their seats in the Study, a mock Gothic, wood-paneled room off the main hall of Nicholson House, where the deans and Porter hatched administrative strategies on the first floor. The language lab lurked moldily in the basement, and the college counselors had spread themselves out for their embattled work across the second. The Study featured stained-glass panels of Pre-Raphaelite maidens and vaguely Arthurian knights posed among lilies. In the moony glow of these long-haired figures, almost seventy faculty members gathered each week to discuss everything from the curriculum to parents’ weekend, benefits packages to student morale. At a regular meeting, a buzz of chipper, sociable talk hummed through the room. This morning, however, teachers folded themselves into their usual seats and refused to meet one another’s eyes. It was so hushed Fred could hear a twittering flock of birds in the lilac bush that grew beyond the window.
    Then Madeline Christopher rushed in. Fred raised his hand and waved her over. Her disheveled, dark brown hair distinguished her from many of the other teachers and most of the students. One of the first things Madeline had said to him, rather crossly, was “Blondes. Working here’s like being trapped in some preppy, unfishy version of Iceland.” What had made Fred laugh was that she’d blushed unevenly and gulped “Sorry!” the moment she looked up at him and remembered his own tousled golden curls.
    Just yesterday, she was making fun of Mindy Allison and the staggering, Scandinavian braid that swung down her back, calling Mindy and her kids the Happy Elves. Even the baby seemed fantastically cheerful, she complained. Madeline, a grunter in the morning, unfunctional without infusions of caffeine, was