The Headmaster's Wife(170)

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll work on him. And it’ll help that we go to the same school, even if we are in different divisions. Will the American School take me? My grades are sort of sucky this year, what with everything and—”

“They’ll take you,” Jimmy said. “Your mother’s already asked. I don’t think they’re going to get overly worried that you’ve got a B minus average this year instead of an A minus one, assuming they’re going to ask for a transcript at all, since that school of yours seems to be imploding. Your mother says she hated that place from the start. Why didn’t you?”

“I have to hate every place that she hates?”

“No,” Jimmy said, “but I met some of those people. You should have known better.”

“They weren’t the same people I met,” Mark said. “They weren’t on the admissions committee or anything. Never mind. London. For three years. I wonder if I could take A levels even if I am in the American School. I’ll bet they get people who want to do that. Maybe I could go to Oxford. Wouldn’t that be a gas?”

“I thought you wanted to go to UCLA and study film.”

“There’s always grad school,” Mark said. “Listen, I’m going to go make something to eat, okay? I’m starving to death. I actually jogged into the Depot. You want me to make you something?”

“No, thanks. I’m at that age where if I eat it, I wear it.”

“Right.” Mark had no idea what Jimmy was talking about, but it didn’t matter. He was very, very happy, and he went down to the kitchen thinking he’d actually take some trouble this time and cook the frozen pizza in the oven instead of doing Pizza Rolls in the microwave. Geoff wasn’t going to be happy at first, but he’d be able to change that. He knew he would. He wondered if Christina still lived where she was living the last time he was in London. He remembered her from Westfields Primary School, and she’d beencute then; but when he’d seen her last year, well—that had really turned out okay. Better than okay.

In the kitchen he threw the newspaper on the counter and went looking for frozen food. Alice Makepeace’s face stared up at him from a smudged photograph in those odd colors the Times used when it was trying very hard not to be black-and-white.

Something about the light, or the angle at which he was standing, made the picture seem to shimmer and change.

All of a sudden, Alice Makepeace looked like a gargoyle.