to party. Which they did with some of us girls. We left the camp and broke into an empty house and had a good time.” She paused. “It was important to keep the guards happy. If one of them liked you, you might get extra food or a blanket.”
I understood why Matt didn’t want to hear any of this. And I started to understand why Alex and Carlos were so desperate to protect Julie.
“There were lots of girls at the camp,” Syl continued. “The guards had their pick, so you did whatever they asked and you tried to make them feel important, like they were the star quarterback and you were head cheerleader.”
“Matt isn’t like that,” I said.
“No,” Syl said. “Matt isn’t anything like that. Neither is Hal or Charlie or Alex. The guards wouldn’t have been like that, either, probably, if things hadn’t changed. But things did change, so they were full of themselves, and if you wanted some extra food, you acted like they were the greatest people on Earth. They loved reminding you how powerful they were.
“We were all a little bit drunk that night, and they started bragging about how many people they’d killed. Then they started talking about the first time they’d killed someone. And one of the guys said the first time he’d killed people was when he’d been assigned to clear out a college to make it a safe town. It was funny, he said, because it was Sexton University and he’d applied there and been rejected, and there he was, shooting professors who were resisting. I said I hope he got the dean of admissions, and he laughed.”
“How can you remember the name,” I asked, “if you were drunk?”
“I wasn’t that drunk,” Syl said. “And I was still trying out different names, so I thought about Anne Sexton, only Anne is pretty dull and you can’t call yourself Sex. So I went with Sylvia Plath instead. I like her more anyway.”
I had no idea who she was talking about but it didn’t matter. “Did the guard say where it was?” I asked. “Sexton University?”
Syl shook her head. “He’d said too much as it was,” she said. “The next day I heard the girls who’d been at the party were being rounded up and put in a holding pen. I left before they found me.”
“But if you knew the name, couldn’t you have found it?” I asked.
“I didn’t care where it was,” she said. “I was trying to make my way east to see if any of my family was still alive. Which they weren’t.”
“You have family now,” I said.
“That’s what Matt tells me,” she said.
There was nothing I could say to that, except to ask Syl not to tell anyone I’d been asking. I didn’t want Mom to find out, I said. Syl agreed.
And now I’m in my closet, writing all this down, trying to figure out how to find out where Sexton University is and what to do if I can find out.
I have no idea how many colleges there are in the United States, or how many there were, because for all I know now there aren’t any. But Dad used to work at Denning College, so I figured there was at least a chance he’d heard of Sexton University and might know where it was.
The only problem was I’d have to give him an explanation why I was asking. It’s not like I could say, “Well, I’m thinking about applying there next year because I’ve always wanted to go to a school named for Anne Sexton, whoever she is.”
I have a feeling he’d believe me more if I said I always wanted to go to a school that had Sex in its name, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe there are still colleges out there, but unless they’re biking distance from Howell, PA, I won’t reach it in time for orientation.
I’d have to come up with a different reason why I wanted to know, and there wasn’t one. It’s not like I could say it came up in conversation or in a game of Name the Most Obscure University. And Dad can always tell when I’m lying.
I figured he could break me down in two steps, if it took that long.
Most likely Mom’s heard of Anne Sexton, but that doesn’t mean she’s heard of Sexton University. And she could break me down in one step without even trying.
Back in the time when life was easy, the Internet would have told me what I needed to know. The great thing about the Internet was it didn’t care why you were asking.
But even though we have electricity more often than not, we don’t have phone, or cable, or Internet. Maybe they do in safe towns, but I don’t live in one.
I tried to remember how people found things out before the Internet existed. They had to have questions, after all, and they couldn’t always ask their parents. Or teachers. Or librarians.
Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet.
There was only one problem: The Howell library closed months ago.
But that didn’t mean all its books were gone. Maybe there was a book that listed all the universities in the country. And if the library ever did have a book like that, it was probably still there, because who would have stolen it?
The next question was whether I should go to the library and see if I could find the book and get Sexton University’s address. If I don’t, I won’t have to tell Alex. But if I do go, it’s specifically to tell him, because why else would I want to know where Sexton University was located, except to fantasize about going to a school that had Sex in its name?
If I told Alex, he would leave. It wouldn’t matter how far away it was. He’d wait until he was sure Julie was up to the trip, and then they’d take off and I’d never see either one of them again, unless I went with them, which apparently would require the approval not just of Mom and Dad but the eyes of God and the Church.
But how could I not tell him? And how could I be certain Syl wouldn’t let something slip during Bible studies with Lisa and Charlie? Alex would hear about Sexton University, and he and Julie would leave, but he’d leave hating me.
If we were never going to see each other again, I wanted him to at least feel bad about it.
So I biked to town. I lied to Mom, saying I was going to Dad’s to play with the baby, and Mom didn’t try to break me. I guess some lies are more believable than others. My bike was in the garage, but she didn’t notice when I got it, or if she did, she didn’t run out to demand an explanation. Nobody else did, either. I biked the four miles to town all on my own.
I don’t like going to town. It’s a reminder of everything that isn’t anymore. It was never a big town, but there were places to eat and to shop and to hang out. And now it’s dead, except for City Hall, open on Mondays to hand out food. For as long as that lasts.
As I biked to the library I thought about having to break one of the windows to get in. That seemed horribly immoral, as bad as breaking a window of a church. But lucky for me, someone else didn’t feel that way, because the window was already broken. I let myself in.
It was filthy. I don’t know why that surprised me, since we scrub frantically to keep the soot manageable and there was no one at the library to do that. But there was something about the library being so cold, dark, and dirty that broke my heart. It felt like losing Horton again.
I didn’t cry, though. There’s enough to cry about without shedding tears over a building. Besides, if a miracle happened and Mom went to Dad’s and found I wasn’t there, I’d be grounded for life, which I pretty much am anyway, but this time it would be official.
I walked over to the reference section. Most of the books were still there. Of course most of the books had nothing to do with colleges. I had to dust off the covers of a lot of no longer useful books before I found what I’d been looking for: The American College Guide.
I almost didn’t pick it up. I told myself I could pretend I hadn’t seen it and bike back home before anyone noticed I was gone and forget all about it, and Alex and Julie would stay with us. At least Jon and Julie would be happy. Didn’t I owe it to Jon to keep Julie from going? And Dad and Lisa? And Charlie? And if Jon was miserable, then Mom would be miserable, and if she was miserable, she’d make Syl miserable, and that would make Matt miserable. And everyone would make me miserable.
Ignorance is bliss.
I picked up the book.
