If We Were Villains: A Novel

I didn’t get out of the infirmary until after eleven. My nose was broken, but not badly. A splint had been taped over the bridge to keep it straight, and beneath that, red and purple bruises were spreading under both my eyes. Gwendolyn and Frederick had been to see me, asked what happened, apologized profusely, and then requested that I keep it as much to myself as possible and call it an accident if other students asked. We didn’t, they said, need any more gossip or any more trouble. By the time I got back to the Castle, I hadn’t decided whether I would comply or not.

I went immediately upstairs, but not to the Tower. It seemed unlikely that James would be there, but I didn’t want to risk it. Instead I knocked softly on Alexander’s door. I heard a drawer scrape shut, and a moment later he appeared, one hand on the doorknob.

“Fuck, Oliver,” he said. “Pip told me what happened, but I didn’t think it’d be this bad.” His eyes were bloodshot, his lips dry and cracked. He didn’t look much better than I did.

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Can I help?”

“My head hurts like a bitch and right now I’d rather not feel anything above the neck.”

He opened the door wider. “The doctor is in.”

I didn’t go in Alexander’s room often, and I was always surprised by how dark it was. Sometime in the last few weeks, he’d tacked a tapestry over the window. His bed was buried under a pile of books, which he gathered up and dropped on the already cluttered desk. Crumpled rolling papers, broken matches, and dirty clothes littered the floor. He gestured at the bed, and I sank gratefully down on the mattress, my pulse pounding hard between my temples.

“Can I ask what happened?” he said, as he rummaged in the top drawer of his desk. “I won’t make you talk about it. I just want to know whether I should shove James in the lake next time I see him.”

Unsure if the remark was simply Alexander’s morbid sense of humor or something more deliberate, I shifted on the bed, chalked it up to lingering paranoia, and decided to ignore it.

“Have you seen much of him lately?” I asked. “I feel like he’s never here.”

“He comes in and out. You’d know better than I would.”

“He usually comes in after I’ve gone to bed, and by the time I get up, he’s gone.”

Alexander shook a few little florets of weed out of a film canister and crumbled them into a cigarette paper. “If you ask me, he’s getting a little too deep into his role. Method, you know? Doesn’t know where he stops and Edmund starts anymore.”

“Well, that can’t be good.”

He looked up at me and my busted nose. “Clearly.” He made a face like he’d just bitten his tongue. “Did they give you some kind of painkillers for that?”

I produced a bottle of little white pills from my pocket.

“Grand,” he said. “Gimme two of those.”

I handed them over. He crushed both under the film canister and sprinkled the resulting powder on top of the weed in the paper. Then he reached into the drawer again, came up with another mysterious pill bottle. He popped the top off, tapped it on the heel of his palm. Another white powder, finer. He added this to the joint without telling me what it was. I didn’t ask.

“So what happened?” he said, as he started rolling. “You guys were doing the Five-Three combat and he just clocked you?”

“Basically.”

“What the fuck. Why?”

“Believe me, I’d love to know.”

He ran his tongue along the sticky edge of the paper, then pasted it down with one fingertip. He twisted the end into a tiny curl and handed the joint to me. “There,” he said. “Smoke that in one go and you won’t feel anything for a week.”

“Terrific.” I stood and grabbed onto the back of his chair. My head was throbbing.

“You all right?”

“I will be in a few minutes.”

He didn’t sound convinced. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” I felt my way to the door like a blind man, hands moving from one piece of furniture to the next until I reached the wall.

“Oliver,” he said, as I opened the door to let myself out.

“Yeah?”

He tossed me a lighter when I turned, then pointed at his nose and smiled sadly. I reached up to my face. There was a fresh spot of blood on my upper lip.

As a rule, we didn’t smoke in the Castle. I exited through the side door and stood in the driveway with the joint, spliff, whatever it was pinched tightly between my lips. I inhaled how Alexander had taught me two years before, deep into the lungs. It was cold, even for February, and my breath and the smoke came out of my mouth together in one long spiral. My sinuses felt heavy and thick, like they’d been plugged up with clay. I wondered when the bruises would fade, if my nose would look the same in three weeks’ time.

I leaned against the wall and tried not to think anymore, certain I’d drive myself crazy if I did. The forest was quiet and at the same time brimming with small sounds—the distant hoot of an owl, the dry rustle of leaves, a breeze slithering through the treetops. Somehow, slowly, my brain disconnected from the rest of me. I still felt pain, still twisted in the grip of indecision, but there was something between me and thought and feeling and everything else—a fine mist, a backlit scrim, shadow-puppet silhouettes moving softly on the other side. Whether it was the cold or Alexander’s joint I couldn’t say, but inch by inch I began to go numb.

The door opened, closed. I looked toward it without expectation or curiosity. Meredith. She hesitated on the porch for a moment, then came down. I didn’t move. She took the joint out of my mouth, threw it on the ground, and kissed me before I could speak. A dull throb of pain went up the bridge of my nose to my brain. Her palm was warm on the side of my face, her mouth magnetic. She took my hand like she had so many weeks ago and led me back inside.