her mentor, really… isn’t that what you told me Owen was to you, Heather? Your mentor?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Don’t be modest,” Tom says. “We’re all friends here. We know how badly seeing Owen like that freaked you out. You can admit it, Heather. This is a place of trust. I mean, seeing his blood spattered all over my old desk—”
“Oh, Tom, for God’s sake,” Gillian says, looking disgusted.
“I’m just saying. I really think Heather should be team captain,” Tom says piously. “After what she’s been through today, it would be cruel to make her wear a blindfold. She told me earlier that every time she closes her eyes, she sees Owen’s brain matter coating his Dilbert Month-at-a-Glance bulletin board—”
“Garfield,” I correct him.
“Would you two please—” Gillian begins, but Reverend Mark cuts her off.
“I agree with… Tom, is it?” Mark closes his eyes and shakes his head. “After what she’s been through, Heather should completely be team captain.”
“I think so, too,” Muffy says quickly. She looks at Gillian with tears in her eyes. “It’s only right.”
Dr. Kilgore looks like she’s about to have an aneurysm.
“Fine,” she says through gritted teeth, handing out the scarves she’s been handed by Dr. Flynn. “Everyone put on one of these. Everyone but Heather.”
“You, too, right, Dr. Kilgore?” Tom asks, with a smile.
“Me, too,” Gillian says grimly, tying on her blindfold.
“Mark,” Muffy says. “I can’t quite get mine. Can you help?”
“Oh,” Reverend Mark says. “Well, mine’s on already… but I’ll try… ”
Reverend Mark reaches out fumblingly for Muffy, and manages to grab a big handful of the boob she’s thrust directly into his palm.
“Oh my God!” he cries, blanching.
“Oh!” Muffy blushes prettily beneath her blindfold, though I know full well she’s thrilled. “That’s all right.”
“I’m so sorry!” Reverend Mark looks like he wants to kill himself. His handsome face has gone from snow white to beet red in three seconds flat. Even his neck, all the way to his shirt collar, is red.
“It’s not your fault. You can’t see!” Muffy reminds him. She manages to secure her blindfold the rest of the way herself, as she’d always been able to in the first place. “Oh, look at that. Never mind, I got it.”
“Are y-you sure?” Reverend Mark stammers. “Perhaps Dr. Kilgore… or Heather—”
“It’s all good,” Muffy purrs.
“Well, now that Heather is our team leader,” Gillian says dryly, “perhaps she ought to start leading.”
“Sure,” I say. “Mark, why don’t you show us how you make those wall thingies you’re doing?”
“Well, it won’t be easy,” Reverend Mark says. “Especially blindfolded. But I suppose, in the spirit of coming together as a team, I can try. First, you take a sheet of newspaper, and you tear it, like so—”
Gillian and Muffy both begin ripping strips of newspaper. Tom fumbles forward in an attempt to take a piece of newsprint off the pile, and leans in the direction of my ear—or what he approximates to be my ear, though it’s more like the top of my head. “This,” he whispers, “is the gayest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t think I should have to remind you that I am, in fact, gay.”
“Could you just keep making those pole things you were doing earlier, before the Origami Master came along?” I whisper back. “Because we’re never going to beat Wasser Hall at the rate we’re going.”
“Heather,” Tom says, giving me a mockly disapproving look. “This isn’t about winning. It’s about coming together as a team.”
“Shut up,” I say. “We’re going to cream Wasser Hall if it’s the last thing I do.”
In the end, of course, that’s exactly what we do. Our “house” is completed well before anyone else’s. I corral the members of my team into it, then raise my hand and call, “Dr. Flynn! Oh, Dr. Flynn! I think we’re done.”
Dr. Flynn, looking pleased, comes over and examines my team’s handiwork.
“Oh, yes,” he says. “Great job. Just great. Really excellent teamwork, all of you.”
“Can we take our blindfolds off now?” Muffy wants to know.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Dr. Flynn says.
Muffy, Reverend Mark, Gillian, and Tom all remove their blindfolds and look around at the newspaper house they’re sitting in.
“Isn’t it amazing, you guys?” Dr. Flynn asks. “Can you believe you worked together to build something with your own bare hands—while blindfolded? Sit back and relax while everybody else finishes theirs. And give yourselves a well-deserved pat on the back… ”
Gillian is staring in astonishment at the four flimsy newspaper poles that are holding up an equally flimsy newspaper canopy… like the cheapest wedding chuppah in the world over two extremely confused couples.
“But… where are the walls we wove?” Muffy wants to know.
“Oh,” I say. “That was going to take forever. So I made an executive decision not to use them and go with Tom’s idea.”
“Well,” Gillian says, looking down at her ink-blackened fingers—and the consequent stains all over her cream-colored linen suit. “You could have said something.”
“You guys were so enthusiastic,” I say. “I didn’t want to break your pioneering spirit.”
“Well,” Reverend Mark says, as he crawls out from beneath the paper structure. “That was fun. Wasn’t it? Oh, here, let me help you up… ”
“Oh, thank you so much.” Muffy does appear to be having some trouble climbing to her feet, especially considering how tight her pencil skirt is, and how high her heels are. She slips both her ink-stained hands into Reverend Mark’s and, looking up into his eyes, allows him to pull her to her feet.
“‘My love,’” Tom sings softly into my ear. “‘There’s only you, in my life… the only thing that’s right… ’”
“Do we have to continue with this pointless charade?” Simon, from Wasser Hall, rips off his blindfold to inquire. He pronounces charade the British way. “They won. So why do we have to keep on—”
“It’s not about who wins or loses, Simon,” Dr. Flynn intones smoothly. Even though, of course, when it comes to me and Wasser Hall, it most definitely is about me winning and them losing. “Please put your blindfold back on, and continue to help your team.”
“But that’s not fair. Heather and Tom have worked together before,” Simon whines. “They’re obviously compatible. I hardly know the people I’m teamed up with—no offense, guys—”
“Simon!” says Dr. Jessup, who is wearing a multicolored scarf around his eyes and sitting in the middle of what appears to be a semicompleted teepee made of newsprint. “Put your blindfold back on!”
It’s at this moment that the library door opens and a student walks in.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Flynn says to the student. “The library is closed for the afternoon for an important administrative staff meeting.”
The student looks around at all the grown men and women—presumably college officials, in professional attire—wearing scarves over their eyes and sitting in houses built out of old newspapers. His expression is, understandably, confused.
It’s only then that I realize that the student is Gavin McGoren.
“Um,” he says. “They told me downstairs I could find Heather Wells here?”
I quickly separate myself from my group and hurry toward him.
“It’s okay,” I assure Dr. Kilgore. “This will just be a minute.”
“Well, hurry back,” Gillian says, her brows knit with disapproval. “We still need to process what we’ve learned about ourselves here today.”
Yeah. Like how much I hate you? No need to process that, I already know.
I tilt my head toward the door, indicating to Gavin that he should join me outside, in the hallway. He does so, barely able to hide his amusement.
“What the hell is going on in there, woman?” he wants to know, as soon as we’re safely outside. “Some dude gets a bullet in his head and you all go completely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?”
“Gavin.” I quickly close the library doors. “We are trying to help each other process through our grief. What do you want?”
