SCENE 26
This was the best night ever. All the problems from earlier in the day had disappeared. Hesta looked great, the bands sounded great, everybody was having a good time. Thomas couldn’t believe he was at Montpelier with all of these girls around. They were everywhere: tall girls who stooped over self-consciously, short girls with cute little doll faces, hefty girls who laughed a lot, skinny girls whose eyes dared you to try them out. Thomas loved the way girls behaved, the way they linked arms with each other or danced with each other, the way they sat with their backs so straight, the way they shook their hair back from their faces like beautiful horses. It was almost too much for him, all these curves and mounds and valleys vaguely concealed by a few millimeters of cloth. Even if Hesta had not been there, it would have been wonderful.
But for Thomas it was as though he and Hesta were the only two people in the room. Or as though the other people in the room were not capable of understanding what kind of electrical connection Thomas and Hesta were making. He had this stupid grin on his face all the time, and she was smiling, too, and they were talking in spite of the loudness of the music about everything in the world. Thomas had never felt so happy.
The Prodigals were playing a bunch of oldies—stuff by the Four Tops and the Beatles and the Beach Boys. It was as though every song was played for them. He was loose. His body just moved to the beat of whatever tune they were playing, and Hesta, well, Hesta was always a good dancer. He loved to watch her shake her head at him during a fast song while she still kept her eyes on him. And when they played a slow song and he and Hesta got up close and actually touched all the way down their bodies, that was it, that was paradise, that was the ultimate merger of body and soul. Yet the longer they danced, and the more they touched, the more Thomas was aware of the heat pumping through his veins, of the quickness of his breath, of the growing, throbbing energy in his loins. He wanted to kiss her so badly, but there was no way here, not with all the guys around, not on the dance floor in front of all the teachers.
He remembered Robert Staines in the locker room talking about how all girls wanted it really, about how you had to be aggressive, and he thought about how Staines was like some damn dog that needed to mount something every week or so. He wondered confusedly, though, whether maybe Staines could be wrong even if he was successful. Thomas knew what he desired, knew what he was going to do if he got the opportunity, and knew that the moment of truth had arrived. He would ask her a question, and if she turned him down, then fine, it wasn’t meant to be.
He was going to ask her if she wanted to leave the mixer. She would know that he was asking her to go fool around, and it would be all up to her. Surely she must feel the same way he did, that everything was just so right and so true. Surely she wanted to as much as he did. And if she didn’t, well, that was it then; they would stay here.
“Do you want to go outside?” he whispered in her ear. Then he pulled back his head and looked at her eyes.
She looked straight back at him. He knew what she was going to say before she spoke.
“Yes,” she said.
His excitement grew.
SCENE 27
Richard was sold absolutely.
“You’re a great detective,” he said. “This has got to be Farnham’s apartment, and this has got to be a tunnel leading to Stringfellow.”
They were back in the Archives Room looking at the blueprint. Richard was convinced that Greg had made a significant discovery. But the more Richard raved, the more dubious Greg became.
“It’s just a couple of lines running off a basement,” Greg said. “We can’t be sure it’s the old library.”
“Of course it is,” said Richard. He pointed out the scrawled identification “GYMNASIUM” on the back of the drawing. “There are three fireplaces in the gym, correct?”
“Correct.”
“It can’t be the lobby fireplace. That’s the old caretaker’s cottage, where the fireplace is on the south side of the room. You can see very clearly in this diagram that the fireplace is at the top of the page and the tunnel runs off toward the left-hand corner. In which case, the tunnel would lead across the Quad toward buildings that went up a zillion years after that cottage was built.”
“I know,” said Greg. “I’m the one who told you.”
“McPhee’s fireplace is on the east side of the room, so if this is a drawing of the old kitchen, then the tunnel leads away from the Quad and into the playing fields.”
Greg said it was possible to have an outside escape tunnel. He had seen them at plantations along the James River.
“Yeah,” said Richard, “but remember the legends. They always mention the Homestead and Stringfellow Hall. They always talk about tunnels from building to building.”
Greg said they were making too many assumptions.
“So what do you want to do?” said Richard. “Go back to the dorm and study?”
Greg admitted that he had nothing better to do on a Saturday night with no date.
“The worst we can be is wrong,” said Richard. “We can have some fun, kill some time. Maybe pull the ultimate prank. And if we don’t find a tunnel, we don’t tell anybody how we spent our evening.”
“Let’s make a copy and get on with this,” said Greg.
“Yeah,” said Richard. “The squirrel in this bag will thaw.” They contributed a nickel each to the
