The weight of water - By Anita Shreve Page 0,110

followed a drinking binge, to judge from the number of beer cans on the floor. Perhaps there was a clue on a desk or a date marked on a calendar. It almost certainly had to have been on a Saturday night, because students had to be present for study hall in their dorms at eight p.m. weekday evenings as well as on the Friday night before a Class Saturday. There had been a school dance the previous weekend. Geoff Coggeshall, the dean of students, had mentioned that there had been the usual number of kids who had been caught drinking or who were suspected of it. The abuse of alcohol was impossible to stop and was at the top of the list of worries for nearly every headmaster or principal of every secondary school in the country. Though there had been many assemblies and seminars on the subject, it was Mike’s opinion that the problem was more severe than it had been in previous years. He sometimes wondered if all the focus on alcoholism, meant to promote awareness of the dangers of drinking, had not, in fact, subtly brought it to the fore in a way it had not been so blatantly important before. Every generation of students had done its share of binge drinking, but it was pretty clear, from all the data he had seen, that the drinking was starting at an earlier age and was both more habitual and more intense than it had been just a decade earlier.

He lay his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes. The house was empty and quiet. He could hear the wind skidding against the windows and, from the kitchen, the sound of ice cubes tumbling in the Viking, recently installed. Tasks now needed to be accomplished, students queried, the Disciplinary Committee convened, and all of this conducted beneath the radar of the press, which would, if they got wind of the story, revel in a private- school scandal. In this, Mike thought that private schools had been unfairly singled out. He doubted that such a tape would have been of any interest to the press had it surfaced at the local regional high school, for example. The tape might have circulated underground, students might have been expelled, and meetings might have been held, yet it was likely that the incident would have been greeted with indifference not only by the local newspaper, the Avery Crier (its editor, Walter Myers, could be talked down from just about any story that might cause embarrassment to local kids and parents), but also by the regional and national press. Mike thought the national media would scoff at the idea that sex and alcohol, even sex and alcohol involving a fourteen- year- old girl in a public-high-school setting, was news of any sort; whereas if the same set of facts, but in a private- school setting, were to pass across the computer screen of a reporter at the Rutland Herald or the Boston Globe, it was entirely possible that the reporter would be dispatched to Avery to find out what was going on. In such a story, there was juice, there was neat, there was blood. There was also, if this tape had been copied in any way, footage. Was it because private schools were held to higher standards, according to which such an incident ought to be nearly unthinkable? Or was it because everyone loved to see the elite (even if that elite involved a local farmer’s son on scholarship) brought down and ridiculed? A little of both, Mike guessed, with emphasis on the latter.

More troubling, however, was the thought of police involvement. Though Mike felt nothing but revulsion when he thought of the Silas and Rob he’d just seen on the tape (boys whom he had previously much respected and even, in Silas’s case, been quite fond of), the idea of them being led away from the administration building in handcuffs was appalling. (Did police routinely handcuff boys suspected of sexual assault, which was what this particular crime, in the state of Vermont, was deemed?) Police in this case meant either Gary Quinney or Bernie Herrmann, neither of whom would find any satisfaction in the arrest; Gary was, after all, Silas’s uncle. Would the boys then appear some months later in the dowager courthouse across the street from the gates of Avery, the building itself smug in its self-righteousness? Mike’s job would be at risk, and any number of teachers who were supposed to be supervising either the dance or the dorm that evening might be fired, for one could not expect the trustees to view the incident and its attendant legal fuss lightly. Would the boys then go to jail, to the Vermont State Prison at Windsor, where almost certainly they would be raped in turn?

Mike reined in his thoughts. He was getting carried away. No, he had to get a grip and act quickly. Three boys were in trouble, and a girl… well, presumably, if it did turn out to be a case of sexual assault, the trouble had already occurred to the girl, though the fallout for her might be endless.

Mike got up off the floor and sat on the sofa while he loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, as if increasing blood flow to the brain might help solve his problem. And it was then that the word containment entered his mind. And with that word, moral, ethical, and political choices were made, though Mike would realize the implications of these only later, when it occurred to him that he might have chosen at that moment another word, such as revelation, say, or help.

LOOK FOR THESE OTHER NOVELS BY Anita Shreve

Body Surfing

“Deceptions abound in this engrossing page-turner. The embittered family drama has unforeseen plot twists and character tiffs galore.”

— Alexis Burling, Washington Post

A Wedding in December

“Engrossing.… An excellent novel about new beginnings threatened by old memories that ultimately reveal uncomfortable secrets from the past.… By book’s end, lives are drastically changed, and Shreve has made readers care that they have.”

— Tasca Robinson, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Light On Snow

“An evening’s entertainment that will linger at the edges of your mind for days.… Shreve’s writing is spare, neat, and crisp, yet the principal characters are fully formed, and their lives worth caring about.”

— Lynn Hopper, Indianapolis Star

All He Ever Wanted

“Anita Shreve is up to her old page-turning tricks…There’s something addictive about her literary tales of love and lust. … She is a master at depicting passion’s ferocious grip.”

— Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today

Sea Glass

“Shreve simply has the Gift — the ability to hook you from the first page and not let go until the final word.”

— Zofia Smardz, Washington Post Book World

The Last Time They Met

“The Last Time They Met is a flat-out, can’t-put-it-down page-turner… . A riverting story that teases and confounds as it moves back in time from the end to the start of a love affair.”

Fortune’s Rocks

“Fortune’s Rocks kept me reading long into the night — and found me back at it right after breakfast.… Shreve renders an adolescent girl’s plunge into disastrous passion with excruciating precision and acuteness.”

— Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

The Pilot’s Wife

“From cover to rapidly reached cover, The Pilot Wife is beautifully plotted, tensely paced, and thoroughly absorbing.”

— Heller McAlpin, Newsday

Resistance

“A simple story set in terrible times. I reached the last chapter with hungry eyes, wanting more.”

— Danielle Roter, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Available in paper back wherever books are sold