Thomas needed to get this business with Staines cleared up. It was interfering with everything in his life: classes, basketball practice, paying attention to his manners here at the Homestead.
Little grains of tea were floating around in the bottom of his teacup. That wasn’t normal, was it? Did the Somervilles have holes in their teabags? Maybe this was just an extraordinarily bad Wednesday for everyone.
Wednesday was Hump Day out in the real world. If you could get through Wednesday, you were over the hump, and you had only two more days till the weekend. Here at Montpelier, though, Wednesday was just the third day in the week. When you have classes on Saturday morning, it’s hard to find a Hump Day.
Today, however, was significant in one way: it was Wednesday, December 1. November was over for good, and there were only sixteen more days, not counting today, until Friday, December 17, when Christmas vacation began. And only fifteen days, not counting today, until Thursday, December 16, when Thomas Boatwright turned sixteen years old. He liked the idea of turning sixteen on the 16th. It was an event he’d looked forward to all his life. Maybe the driver’s license was it, or maybe the driver’s license was just a sign that you were more independent and more grown up. He’d been practicing his driving and studying his handbook during the Thanksgiving holiday and thought he had both the driving and the rules down pretty well. Of course, the way Montpelier made you wait until Friday the seventeenth to get out for the holidays, he’d have the weekend to practice up before he went down to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get his license. Years ago they had dropped a requirement for you to parallel park, but Thomas could parallel park anyway. As soon as he got his license, he was going to drive his mother back home, drop her off, and drive over to Hesta’s house, where he’d pick her up and they’d go off to some secluded spot and park and then, just to make the day complete, they’d go all the way and make passionate love.
That was his favorite fantasy lately. The problem was that there weren’t too many secluded places in northern Virginia, and he wasn’t at all sure that his mother would just let him drop her off and solo like that on his very first day with his license, even though he knew perfectly well that he was an excellent driver. It just had to work out that way. Monday, December 20, was going to be the real Hump Day.
“Thomas?”
He realized that Mrs. Somerville had just spoken to him. Greg and all the other guys and Mr. Somerville were staring at him like he’d just had an epileptic seizure or something. It was quiet as hell, but you could see the guys getting ready to laugh. He hated it when he was caught daydreaming.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you repeat the question?”
Then all the guys did laugh.
She hadn’t asked him a question. She had invited him to try one of the scones on the table next to him.
“Thanks,” he said. He picked up one of the flat brown biscuits and popped the whole thing into his mouth. Everyone in the room laughed again. Even Mr. and Mrs. Somerville cracked a smile. Thomas realized he was the only one in the room eating a biscuit.
“Perhaps you’d like to pass the plate to the boy on your left,” said Mrs. Somerville. Thomas knew as he passed the plate that this would be the last time he was ever invited to tea at the Homestead.
Greg stepped in to rescue him. “Mr. Delaney told us there was a secret tunnel from this building to Stringfellow Hall,” he said. “Does anybody here know where it is?”
Horace Somerville reacted immediately. “I don’t have much patience with that kind of speculative history,” he said. “We’ve had tales of secret passages around this school since I enrolled here over fifty years ago, but I’ve never seen an actual tunnel. There’s plenty of documented campus history here. Learn the facts.”
It sounded as bad as class, but then Mrs. Somerville told her husband not to be so harsh with their guests. She asked him to entertain them with some tales.
Mr. Somerville was more inclined to lecture than to entertain. “There used to be three buildings where the gym is now,” he said. “Up at this end, where the boiler room and Mr. McPhee’s apartment are, used to be the old kitchen for the Homestead.” He said the kitchen had been outside for safety, in case there was a fire.
“The lobby of the gym is the old caretaker’s cottage,” he said. “You can still see the old brick fireplace and the remains of the chimney on the outside. And at the south end, at Mr. Farnham’s apartment, is the site of the original school library.”
Greg asked why they tore down all those old buildings.
“Didn’t tear them down entirely,” said Mr. Somerville. “Swallowed them up. You can still see some of the old foundations if you go snoop
