Knight - At Briarwood School for Girls

Dogfight & Other Stories

Divining Rod

Goodnight, Nobody

The Holiday Season

The Typist

Eveningland

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright 2019 by Michael Knight

Cover art and design by Jill Knight

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or .

FIRST EDITION

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic edition: April 2019

This book was set in 12.75-point Perpetua Std

by Alpha Design and Composition of Pittsfield, NH.

ISBN 978-0-8021-2842-3

eISBN 978-0-8021-4630-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

19 20 21 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Helen

We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only object.

Michael Eisner, former CEO,
Walt Disney Company,
internal memo

J ENNY : Are you a dream?

E LEANOR : I dont think so.

J ENNY : Do you dream?

E LEANOR : I remember. Thats like a dream.

Eugenia Marsh, Act 1, Scene 3,
The Phantom of Thornton Hall

In November of 1993, hoping to capitalize on the existing base for historical tourism in the area around Washington, DC, the Walt Disney Company announced its intention to build a theme park called Disneys America in rural Prince William County, Virginia. Which of the following was/were among the proposed attractions in the original plan?

A) A Native American encounter area, featuring a white-water rapids ride modeled on the journey of Lewis and Clark.

B) A turn-of-the-century steel town highlighted by a roller coaster that would plunge guests on a harrowing journey through a replica blast furnace.

C) A virtual-reality experience in which guests would be pursued by baying hounds and armed slave hunters during a thrilling Underground Railroad escape.

D) All of the above.

A ll boarding schools are haunted. Not infrequently by suicides. So it was at Briarwood School for Girls. According to campus lore, a young woman named Elizabeth Archer hanged herself with a bedsheet in Thornton Hall, her fianc mustard-gassed at Belleau Wood, the thought of life without her love too much to bear. Ever since, residents had been reporting sudden drops in temperature, flickering lights. Actual sightings were rare but not unheard of. These brushes with the afterlife were easily debunked, attributable to drafty windows, touchy wiring, quirky ductwork, but there was a certain kind of Briarwood girl who longed to hear the creepy sounds at night, to behold a spirit, vague as mist, hovering through the wall.

It was not altogether remarkable, then, to come upon a group of students huddled around a Ouija board in the common room, candles reflected in the blank TV. On this occasion, Lenore Littlefield was outside looking in, hands cupped like parentheses beside her eyes, her breath fogging the window in the door. Poppy Tuttle and Melissa Chen pressed in close to peer over her shoulder. Lenore swiped condensation with the cuff of her peacoat, then mashed her nose against the glass again. She could see her roommate, Juliet Demarinis, and three other girls, bodies hunched over the board, hair hanging in their faces, shadows jumping in the candlelight. Lightly, doubtfully, Lenore rolled her fingertips against the pane. The dorms were locked at ten oclock. After curfew, you were supposed to buzz the RA. The Ouija girls could have let them in without alerting anybody, but Juliet just smirked and waved.

What the fuck? Poppy said.

I ate her Valentines candy.

Somebody sent Juliet Demarinis Valentines candy?

Her dad. Italian truffles. I offered to buy her another box, but she said they had to be special ordered from Naples or someplace.

Shed been in bed listening to her Walkman to drown out her roommates snoring. The scent of hazelnut heavy in the air. Her hunger was overwhelming, irresistible. Shed devoured the whole box. Even when she felt sick, Lenore was hungry all the time. Shed confessed first thing in the morning, and Juliet burst into tears.

Lets just wait, Melissa said. Somebody normal will come along.

Briarwood School for Girls was tucked away among old oaks and gentle hills between the towns of Haymarket and Manassas, a location that provided an abundance of field-trip opportunities and made for a picturesque brochure but offered next to nothing in the way of Friday night amusement for its boarders. Melissa, however, had a new black Jetta and a permission slip to drive off campus, so, after Lenore finished basketball practice, theyd cranked the radio and bolted, Poppy manning the music, Lenore stuck in the back, shuffling her feet among cassette cases and empty Slushee cups and leaning forward between the seats to keep up with the conversation. Theyd stopped for beer at every convenience mart and country store for miles, but not one of them had a fake ID, and theyd failed to meet a sympathetic cashier or a man of legal age willing to make the purchase on their behalf. A wasted night, in other words, and in the end, at Poppys insistence, theyd gone for fried-egg burgers at the Depot, and the waitress had taken forever with their check.

Poppy sat on the steps, scrounged a pack of Marlboro Lights from the pocket of her jeans, poked a wrinkled cigarette between her lips.

Dont be stupid, Melissa said. Youll get busted.

The cigarette twitched up and down as Poppy spoke. In order for me to get busted, someone will have to open the door, and thats a good thing. Its bitter out here.

Thornton Hall leaked watery light over the grass, an illuminated boundary beyond which the rest of campus seemed far away, the pillars and arches, the modest slope of the grounds, the trees on the quad a tangle of black boughs. Lenore could close her eyes and picture Briarwood like a map, athletic fields and stables and a gatehouse down by the road, where the land was leveled off. Then the academic buildings, Murray Hall and Everett Hall and Brunson Hall and Ransom Library, all laid out around a quadrangle shaded with oaks and capped on one end by the Herndon Administration Annex and on the other by Hanover Chapel, its steeple silhouetted against the night. Above the quad, a little farther up the hill, were Burke Gymnasium and Beatrix Garvey Memorial Auditorium and then the dorms, Thornton and Blackford Halls, and Briarwood Manor, where Headmistress Mackey lived with her husband. At the very top of the hill, across a street called Shady Dell Loop, was Faculty Row, the houses one story, simple brick, painted white, most of them divided into duplexes. No moon tonight, or else it was hidden by smeary clouds. A bulb blinked on in the gatehouse, the security guard suddenly visible in its glow, hitching his pants, breathing into his hands. Hed be making his rounds before too long.