My stomach hollows out.
‘Of course I understand the point of what you did. But you put my interests last. Friends don’t do that to friends. That’s the bottom line. It was an arsehole move, Will.’
I’m about to reply when I hear the sound of heels on polished timber. The chatter in the hall falls away. Great. My only friend thinks I’m an arsehole, and because my day isn’t bad enough: enter our beloved principal.
Croon peers down calmly from the stage. ‘Friday night,’ she says. ‘None of you leave here until I find out who was responsible.’
There is the sound of shifting bodies as girls glance around at one another – intrigued, annoyed, amused. This part of the proceedings is broken by the dramatic sound of Deputy Davids pressing her full weight against the bar lock across the doors at the back of the hall.
Heads turn at the sound of the lock clicking into place, then turn back to the front, expecting Croon to say more.
Croon drags a chair to the centre of the stage and sits down on it.
What follows is a Guinness Book of World Records-breaking staring competition between the principal and the entire year level. I wait, along with everyone, for her to say something else. Anything else. Usually at this point in the ‘we sit here until someone fesses up’ exercise, teachers like to indulge in some rhetorical ranting. Now would be the perfect time for Croon’s signature ‘I find this behaviour deeply disappointing’ lecture, for example, but I can tell by the look on her face that this is too big for that. The humiliation of Friday night has genuinely shaken her.
About three minutes pass. Croon hasn’t spoken and people start exchanging disbelieving glances. Is she really doing this? How long is she going to keep it up?
Another five minutes pass. I wait for someone to crack. I know it won’t be Harriet or Nat. Both have too much at stake.
As for everyone else, they each have some useful information that might get them out of the Assembly Hall. For example, the name of Friday night’s venue alone would be enough to lead Croon to the Parnell family, and a call to Mr Parnell would surely lead straight to Harriet. And someone’s bound to make the connection between Harriet and The Sphere.
To my increasing surprise, however, no-one rises to the bait.
When ten minutes have passed it seems impossible that Croon hasn’t followed up her original threat with a single additional word. She’s proving herself to be Sovereign of the Psych-out. I feel a nearly overwhelming desire to shout something out, just to crack the silence.
I resist. I can tell I’m not the only one struggling. Twenty minutes in, girls are clearing their throats and shifting in their chairs. Palmer Crichton is coughing as if she’s just developed tuberculosis.
I use the time to turn Nat’s words over in my head. I don’t blame her for being angry. I would be too, if she’d done the same to me. She’s right, of course, about everything. They loathed me at my old school.
What a great job I did safeguarding myself against the same thing at Rosemead. Well played, idiot me.
Friends don’t do that to friends. It’s a telling-off, yes. But it’s more than that. The words have a certain snappy ring to them, like the final line Nat always publishes in the Messenger.
My mouth goes dry. It’s her sign-off line. That’s what it is. She’s signing off from our friendship.
I nudge her.
She doesn’t respond.
To take my mind off Nat, I focus on the rest of the room. We’ve reached the half-hour mark and the noises have settled down, almost as if the year group has entered a sort of meditative state. I wonder how long Croon is planning to string this out for. Doesn’t she have principal stuff to get on with? If this goes on much longer we’ll all miss our first class and people will start needing the bathroom. Soon after that it will be recess and hunger will come into play. Perhaps that’s what Croon’s counting on.
Another minute passes, and another. We reach the fifty-minute mark. Recess comes and goes. An hour and five. An hour and ten. Still nobody comes forward.
I doubt Croon expected this kind of resilience. A giddy feeling rises in my chest, possibly from the realisation that Nat is not going to forgive me, possibly a preliminary sign of starvation, or possibly something to do with the fact we’re reaching the point where the likelihood of someone saying something actually begins to decrease. The longer the collective spirit holds out – for that’s what appears to be in effect here, as crazy as it seems – the harder it will be to break that spirit, and the more likely Croon will have to start worrying about parents complaining of skipped classes and bladder damage.
An hour and a half in, I can see girls trying to keep themselves awake. Some have actually nodded off. We’re home and hosed if we can make it to twelve-thirty.
And with that thought another one follows: Harriet’s deadline. If anything is going to pressure her to confess, I realise, it’s that.
For the last ninety minutes I’ve been avoiding looking in her direction. I didn’t trust that a single glance wouldn’t give the game away. Now I look.
I can mainly just see the back of her and about a quarter of the side of her face, but it’s enough. Enough for my heart to swell in my ribcage. Enough to see how agitated she is. All the telltale signs are there: the foot-tapping, the wriggling, the obsessive glances at her watch. It makes sense. She’s caught between forfeiting her Tawney dreams if she doesn’t deliver those notes to Edie and, depending on how Croon decides to play things, potentially forfeiting everything else.
I
