Dark Rooms by Lili Anolik Page B

molding, as well. The wayward part stayed the same, though. And for a school that’s primarily boarding, Chandler, with its two-strikes policy, is tolerant of rule-breakers. Consequently, each fall it winds up with a high number of students who’ve either been rejected from or given the boot by its stricter rivals.
    If Chandler’s reputation is only a cut above so-so, its campus, which looks more like that of a college or a small university than a high school,is anything but. The central building, aptly named Great House, is red brick, impossibly old, and covered in ivy. Great House is set among a trio of shorter and only slightly less grand buildings: Noyes, de Forest, and Perkins. To their left is Burroughs Library, pillared, marbled, silent as dust; and to its right, Amory Chapel, its bell plundered from some bombed-out church in Europe by an enterprising alum at the end of World War I; and, a little farther on, Francis Abbot Science Center and Caroline Knox Abbot Theater. Stokes Dining Hall is south. The hockey rink and tennis courts and various athletic fields are east. So is Houghton Gymnasium and the Health and Counseling Center. And way east, so far east you can’t quite see it from campus, is Chandler’s boathouse, the Gordon T. Pierpoint, a stone’s throw from Trinity College’s boathouse, Bliss, on the banks of the Connecticut River. The dormitories—there are four of them: two for the boys, Endicott and Minot; two for the girls, Archibald and Amory—are west. They’re separated from the main campus by the graveyard, controversial real estate at Chandler even before Nica’s body was found there. The graveyard belongs to the City of Hartford, and technically school rules don’t apply to it, making it a sort of gray zone for boarders, a moral no-man’s-land. It’s the hub of what the administration refers to as “narcotics-related activity.” Is also the hub of alcohol-related activity. Sexual-related activity, too.
    I start toward the quad, the air sharp with the smell of cut grass and lawn fertilizer, fresh paint. Campus is empty, all the students in chapel, extra-long this morning because it’s the first day of the new school year. Empty except for a lone figure, a hundred yards or so ahead. And though this person has her back to me, I recognize her instantly. It’s the walk, tight and clipped and harried: Mrs. Amory, Jamie’s mother. She’s looking primly chic in a tailored gray suit, the skirt, meant to be fitted, puckering slightly on her no-ass frame, her sheer-stockinged calves tensed and shadowed by high heels, black and wickedly pointed. She changes paths and I can see her in profile now.Her face, behind its dark glasses, is as hard and brittle as an eggshell. As plain as an eggshell, too.
    I slow down, not wanting her to spot me, though there’s little danger of that, so intently is her gaze focused on the doors of Great House. It’s no surprise finding her on campus. She’s been in charge of the Parent Giving Association for as long as I can remember and does a fair amount of volunteer work at the school besides. Plus, she’s constantly ferrying Jamie to and from his squash lessons. Or at least was until the administration agreed to let him keep a car in the student parking lot for that purpose.
    It wasn’t always from afar, though, that I saw Mrs. Amory. Once upon a time I saw her up close on a regular basis—in the days when Nica and Jamie were together, and the three of us would spend whole afternoons and evenings hanging out in his house. She made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t wild about having my sister and me around. Whenever she happened to open the door and we were on the other side, she’d draw back her thin lips in an even thinner smile, say, “Welcome,” in a tone intended to convey the opposite.
    Sometimes Jamie would use his mom’s ice-cold mannerliness against her,