The Education of Bet Read online

  "Gardener's sister really was something!" Stephens said to the table at large.

  To my surprise, there was a chorus of approving murmurs. Who would have ever guessed I'd be such a success with so many? But then, the night of the dance, I'd really only had eyes for James, so perhaps I'd failed to notice some of the other things that were going on around me.

  "Yes, she really was," Stephens went on enthusiastically when it became apparent that the others were going to do no more than murmur in reply. "So pretty. And so sharp, by all accounts."

  I must say, I did feel rather flattered on my own behalf.

  "And what a fine dancer!" Stephens said with awe in his voice, as though the girl he was talking about had somehow invented dancing. "Wouldn't you say so, Tyler?" he said, addressing James.

  "She was adequate," James allowed, refusing to look up from his meal.

  At first I was offended at this—adequate?—but then I realized from the dejected slope of James's shoulders that he was no doubt still smarting from the discussion we'd had about when Bet might or might not make another appearance.

  "I'd say she was more than adequate," Stephens said. He turned to Little. "Wouldn't you say so, Little? Why, I was sure I saw you spin her around the room at least once."

  "It was ... it was ... it was the time of my life," he finally hiccupped out. Then he blushed in my direction. "I hope I haven't offended you, Will."

  "No offense taken," I reassured him.

  "The time of your life," Stephens echoed thoughtfully. "Yes, I could see how someone could feel that way about such a girl. Wouldn't you say so, Hamish?"

  Hamish scowled.

  "Oh, that's right. You wouldn't know, would you?" Stephens spoke the words with such oversweetness he might have been a nasty girl about to steal her grandmother's last tart. "Gardener's sister refused to dance with you."

  Hamish scowled some more, but Stephens wouldn't leave it alone.

  "Gardener's sister even danced with Little—with Little!—but she refused to dance with you."

  That's when Hamish lunged at Stephens's neck.

  ***

  Once you have heard a thing, no matter how hard you might try to forget it, it is impossible to unhear it. And so it was with the words James had spoken on the night of the dance: he regarded me—Will— as his best friend. It was therefore now impossible for me to think of myself in any other way.

  In the aftermath of Hamish's lunging for Stephens's neck at dinner, James was shaken.

  "I don't see how," he said, "the masters can chalk this up to yet another instance of 'boyish high jinks'!"

  "You know how things are around here," I said softly. "It doesn't do to expect it ever to be any different. And as Little always points out, there's no point in running from it."

  "But did you see the marks on Stephens's neck?"

  Of course I had seen them. We all had.

  "Come on," I said. "At least we tried."

  This was true. For once not content to sit idly by and watch as one of our number was physically abused, James and I, as though thinking with one mind, had attempted to restrain Hamish. Not that it had done much good. So angry was he at Stephens, Hamish had had the strength of three boys, shrugging off our efforts as he'd proceeded to throttle Stephens.

  "Come on," I said again.

  And then I did something I should never have done, made a mistake far graver than thinking I could fight Hamish. Wanting to make James feel better—not even sure in the moment if I was thinking of myself as Will, the roommate James regarded as his best friend, or as Bet, the girl who liked James—I reached out and covered his hand with mine.

  "What are you doing?" He snatched his hand back as though I'd burned him.

  "I'm, I'm sorry," I stammered. "I don't know what I was thinking."

  "I should think not," he said hotly. And then, for the second time in our acquaintance, in our friendship, he stormed from the room.

  I stood there, alone, confused.

  I no longer knew exactly what I felt at any given moment, no longer knew who I was or who I was supposed to be.

  ***

  Worse had come to even worse, and now, if at all possible, it had come to worst.

  I spent my days—and even more, my nights—in a constant state of confusion, unsure how to act around James. These feelings I had for him, they were like nothing I had ever experienced before in my life. It was as though my brain was as confusingly labyrinthine as the lair of the Minotaur; my heart, no better. And my body! It was bad enough that my hand appeared to have a persistent memory of what it felt like to have James hold it during that short dance we'd shared together. It was bad enough that the first thing I thought of upon waking in the morning and the last thing I thought of before falling asleep was what it had felt like to briefly—oh, too briefly—press my lips to his. But now my whole body, places that I'd never expected could feel wanting, tilted in his direction, as if he were a star pulling me into his orbit.

  Unable to act on these longings, in my frustration I turned to other physical activity.

  I returned to fencing.

  "En garde!" I screamed at Hamish.

  He all but laughed in my face. After our last fencing incident, and Mrs. Smithers's subsequent request that I be excused from compulsory sports for a while, I'd been careful to avoid all physical contests. The most I would do, when it was still warm enough and before the earth became covered with snow, was run around on the cricket field like a lunatic, as far away from the action as I could get.

  But I was ready for contact now.

  "Are you sure you want to try this again?" Hamish stood there, his guard down, laughing.

  "En garde!" I cried again, this time thrusting at him.

  "Hey, you're serious!" Late, too late, he brought up his foil to parry my thrust.

  But he was moving far too slow, or perhaps he still believed he could beat me with one meaty hand tied behind his back.

  I took the hilt of my foil in both fists, gripped it as though it were an ax, and swung at his weapon with everything that was in me. My force ripped it from his hand. Keeping my eye on my target, I had the sense of his now useless weapon flying benignly over our heads.

  "Take that!" I said, thrusting my weapon at him one-handed now and causing him to take a step backward. "That is for Stephens, even if he doesn't totally deserve to be revenged."

  Was that a glimmering of fear I saw in Hamish's eyes?

  "Take that!" I said, thrusting again, causing him to take another stumbling step backward. "That is for Little."

  Now he looked as though he thought he was dealing with a lunatic. Well, let him think so.

  "Take that!" I thrust, my most powerful thrust yet. "That is for the rest of us."

  I thrust and I thrust until I had backed him against the wall. Once he was there, I held the ball-covered point of the foil to his neck as I ripped off my fencing mask.

  "You are just lucky," I said with a smile, "that the point has that little ball on it, or you would be dead right now."

  If I thought Hamish hated me before, that was nothing compared with what I saw in his eyes now.

  But oh, it had been worth it.

  ***

  Oh, this was worse than the worst.

  "I can't believe you went after Hamish like that!" James said.

  "I know." I rubbed my wrist. It was sore from swinging the foil so hard. "It was great, wasn't it?"

  "Great? It was bloody awful!"

  Oh.

  "You were like one of them," he said.

  I saw then that he was right. After the time Hamish had mercilessly beat me while fencing, I'd told myself that it would be wrong to allow myself to become like Little, cowering in fear before bullies. I'd wanted revenge on Hamish, had exacted out small revenges, like putting vinegar in his beer or dousing him with water, and I obviously still thirsted for revenge, given how I'd attacked him a short time ago. But what I hadn't seen after that original beating was that if it was wron
g for me to become like Little, it was just as wrong to become like Hamish, throwing the first blow for the sheer fun of it, no matter what the provocation or even if there had been any at all. It made me think of Will and his desire to go to war, the desire of so many boys to go to war, and I wanted no part of it.

  "You are—" I started to say but was cut off.

  "Ever since that dance," he went on, "which you didn't even bother going to, I might add, you've been different."

  "Different? How so?"

  "It's like you're not the same Will that I knew. Or it's like part of you is the same, but part of you is someone I don't remember meeting."

  "Maybe it's just that we're finally getting to know one another."

  "No, it's not that, I don't think. I don't know what it—"

  Just as I'd done instinctively on another occasion, I reached out and covered his hand with mine.

  "That!" he said, flushing furiously as he wrenched his hand away from me, taking a step backward at the same time. "That's something you never used to do!"

  I didn't know what to say, what to do.

  "You've just been behaving so strangely," he said, "like this ... this ... this touching thing." He rubbed his hand, as though he were physically wounded. "And sometimes when I see your face, in particular when you whipped off your fencing mask, I see her. It is most ... disconcerting." He paused, then surprised me by laughing, but it wasn't a happy sound. "I know now! The real reason you faked illness to avoid the dance. It's because you're scared of girls, isn't it? Or at least, you don't like them as such."

  "James."

  If you are lucky, every now and then you are granted a moment of clarity. And in that moment, I saw past my own confusion into a window on James's confusion. He liked Will—his best friend—but he liked Will's sister in a different way. And yet with Bet nowhere around, he had found himself increasingly attracted to his friend, and he was disturbed by this. I wished I could explain to him that what I was seeing now was something that had never occurred to me before: that we like, even love, those whom we have feelings for because of who they are as individuals, and not because of some external trappings. James had liked and admired Will before the advent of Will's sister—Will's sister, who looked pretty in jade, who may not have been a good dancer but who was sportingly game, and who was kind to Little. And he liked Will's sister for what he no doubt thought were entirely different reasons than he liked her brother, not knowing they were the same person. Would he still like her once he learned the truth behind what she'd done?

  I had no idea. All I knew was that he was in agony and I had to do something about it. Ever since the winter ball, we had been circling each other in a strange dance. It was time to put an end to that now.

  "James." I spoke his name in as steady a voice as I could, even as my heart hammered within my chest.

  "Yes?" he said, a trifle nervously. "I believe you've said my name once already."

  "It has been a long day," I said slowly, "and we are tired."

  "Yes," he agreed.

  "Perhaps we should just go to sleep and continue this in the morning?"

  Without saying another word to me, he crossed to his wardrobe and got his things out. For once, I turned my back to him as he changed, much as I enjoyed my glimpses of his naked body.

  "Shall I shut these for you?" he said. I turned to see him standing at the window, pushing it up so he could get at the shutters outside.

  "Not tonight," I said quietly. "Why don't you leave them open?"

  "Oh." I heard the surprise in his voice. Why, he must have been wondering, was this night different than the ones that had gone before?

  Without another word, he climbed into his bed.

  It was then I made my own preparations. Pulling from my pocket the key I always kept there, I unlocked my wardrobe, removed my nightshirt and one other item, and shut the door again. Then, with my back to James, I removed my jacket, my waistcoat, my tie, my shirt. Almost naked to the waist now, I began slowly unwinding the length of cloth that bound my breasts.

  "What...?" I heard the confusion in his voice.

  Trousers still on, I lifted up the nightshirt and pulled it on over my head, feeling it drift down over my body. Only then did I remove my trousers. And finally, at last, I donned the other item I had extracted from the wardrobe: my wig.

  The fear was on me again, that familiar fear of exposure. It was a huge risk I was taking. What if he did not feel about me as I felt about him? What if I was wrong and he really did prefer boys, and, seeing that I was a girl, he became repulsed and turned me in? But I no longer cared about the risk. No, that is not true. Of course I still cared about it, but I cared more about him, putting him out of his misery of confusion. And for once, just once, I wanted to be seen for who I really was, to be seen by him.

  Slowly, I turned around.

  "What?" James was out of the bed so fast he nearly stumbled at my feet. "Who...?"

  "Bet," I said as calmly as I could. "I have always been Bet."

  "Not Will?" he asked wonderingly.

  "Never Will."

  As though his body knew things his mind did not, he reached a hand toward my face and touched my cheek with the lightest feather touch, as though my skin were an exhibit in a museum.

  It took all the bravery I had left in me to ask one final question:

  "Would you like to kiss me?"

  ***

  One night not long after, as James and I studied in our room, pretending not to be as aware of each other as we were, a knock came at our door. A loud knock.

  Being closer, I opened the door, and Dr. Hunter sailed through, his black robe billowing behind him. I swear, Dr. Hunter always entered a room like that. It was as though he arrived with his own wind.

  "Gardener," he announced, "I wish to speak with you a moment in private." He turned to James and instructed, "If you would excuse us, Tyler."

  James cast a look of concern in my direction as he slowly made for the door, but that was all he could do. He couldn't very well refuse the headmaster, could he?

  "If you could perhaps move just a trifle faster, Tyler," Dr. Hunter suggested. "I did say it would only be a moment, but I'd just as soon that moment happen this evening and not have you take so long in exiting that I'm still here in the morning waiting for it."

  Once James was gone, Dr. Hunter shut the door with a decisive click before whirling on me.

  "You may not have been aware of it, Gardener, but ever since you first arrived here, I have been keeping a close eye on you."

  Oh no, I thought.

  "First, there was the matter of your dismal records from your previous schools. Honestly, Gardener, even MacPherson and Mercy have been sent down only three times. But really, four? Even you must realize how excessive a number that is. And from a headmaster's standpoint, it is hardly reassuring."

  Oh no, I thought again. Here it comes.

  "Then there was the matter of your thinking it was acceptable to make a complaint to me about your fellow students. That sort of thing says a lot about a ... boy's character. And now there is ... this—this thing that has happened that has caused me to rethink everything I thought about you."

  Here it comes, I thought. I knew it was a mistake for Mrs. Smithers to trust my secret to Mrs. Hunter on the night of the winter ball! She must have been unable to keep it from her husband—or perhaps she felt that an omission of the truth was the same as the commission of a lie; it preyed on her conscience too much, and finally she could stand it no longer, just as I was no longer able to keep the truth from James? Whatever the case, here it comes, I thought, surprised in that part of what I felt was relief.

  "...first in your class."

  "What? Excuse me, Dr. Hunter, but what did you just say?"

  "Gardener! Were you woolgathering as I was speaking to you?" He didn't wait for an answer, instead going on with no small degree of annoyance. "I said: Imagine my surprise when, given my previous reservations about you, Mr. Winter an
d all the other masters informed me that you have applied yourself so thoroughly here at Betterman that you are now first in your class."

  "First in my class?"

  "Yes, it means that of all the boys in your form, your ranking exceeds everyone else's. As a matter of fact, according to your masters, it far exceeds everyone else's."

  When I remained standing there, struck dumb, Dr. Hunter grew visibly impatient. "Honestly, Gardener," he said disgustedly, reaching for the door, "I am beginning to wonder if you can possibly be as intelligent as they all claim you are!"

  The door clicked shut behind him.

  First in my class!

  Chapter eleven

  "First in your class! First in our class!"

  James was thrilled at my accomplishment, and I was thrilled that he was thrilled.

  "I don't believe that I ever imagined," James went on, "in the days when I envisioned myself falling in love, that the object of my love would turn out to be more intelligent than I am, at least according to the masters, or that when we move up to the next form she'd be ahead of me."

  The next form ... I hadn't really thought that far into the future.

  He must have seen the look of dismay on my face, for he quickly added with a laugh, "Funny, but I think I have already grown used to it. Indeed, I suppose I suspected it all along."

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  "But I hope you do not start correcting my vulgus on a regular basis, for I fear that having a love who considered herself my constant teacher might be a little too hard to take."

  "I would never—"

  "I am teasing, Bet. I am only teasing."

  In fact, we had both had a lot to get used to since the night of my revelation, when I had informed James that I was Bet, had never been Will.

  That first kiss, after he finally knew who I was...