Age of Consent Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Amanda Brainerd

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Brainerd, Amanda, author.

  Title: Age of consent: a novel / Amanda Brainerd.

  Description: New York: Viking, 2020. |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019042729 (print) | LCCN 2019042730 (ebook) |ISBN 9781984879523 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984879530 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Coming of age—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Sex—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | New York (N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B745 Ag 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.B745 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042729

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019042730

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Brianna Harden

  Cover photograph by Celia Francis

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For Chip

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Part Two

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART

  one

  ONE

  Connecticut, September 1983

  “Let me out,” Justine said.

  “It’s only a hundred yards to the dorm,” her father replied.

  “Stop the car!”

  Miles pulled the wheezing orange Volvo onto the shoulder, and Justine surveyed the Griswold campus through the bug-spewn windshield. Manicured lawns with a mix of brick and clapboard clustered around a quad they called “the Green.”

  “Lugging that heavy suitcase is a lot more embarrassing than showing up in the rust mobile,” he said.

  “Oxygen,” she said, opening the door and hauling her suitcase out of the back seat.

  “Honey?”

  He needed a shave and his eyes were moist with tears. “Don’t forget . . .” he trailed off.

  “I won’t!” She shut the door and began walking across the lawn.

  Don’t forget what? Now the suitcase was making ugly divots in the perfect grass. She glanced around to see whether anyone noticed, but nobody was there.

  Justine arrived in front of the dorm, sweating. She blew a wave of hair out of her face. A few weeks ago, sitting at their kitchen table in New Haven, her mother had pushed aside the toast crumbs and dirty teacups to read the letter describing Justine’s new roommate, pausing here and there for dramatic emphasis.

  “Tierney Worthington, 234 Victory Gardens, Moodus, Connecticut,” Cressida had mused. “Moodus, how unusual. Not the predicted Greenwich or Darien?”

  Justine fought the urge to snatch the letter back.

  “Maybe Griswold isn’t so homogenous after all,” Cressida continued. “More than just heiresses and tennis champions.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Miles grunted, frowning over his glasses.

  * * *

  —

  The dorm was a small colonial house with a columned porch. Justine saw several similar quaint houses around the Green with harried parents unpacking trunks in front of them.

  As she hauled her suitcase up the steps, a silver car pulled in, a chrome panther leaping from its hood. A man in Bermuda shorts opened the trunk and heaved a suitcase onto the gravel.

  “Tierney, exactly what did you pack? Rocks?”

  A Tretorn sneaker appeared from the back seat, followed by a pretty, freckled girl with a ponytail.

  Justine trudged up the steps and opened the door.

  A living room off the stair hall had two sofas, a framed impressionist poster, and aggressively floral wallpaper. The carpet was hunter green, worn down from years of Tretorns, Justine thought, looking down at her pointy hot pink flats. She’d bought them at a thrift shop in New Haven, and until seconds ago they had seemed so cool. Now she realized they were trashy and cheap.

  She climbed the stairs and found her room. It was cramped, with wooden bunk beds and matching dressers. At some point it must have been a real bedroom, Justine realized, as she noticed the wainscoting and the paneled doors. A dormer window framed the lawn. It could be charming, if only her mother were here to work her magic.

  Tierney and her father were arguing in the hall.

  Would she and Tierney undress in front of each other? Despite the features she hated, short legs and big nose, Justine had perfect breasts, and anyone who had ever seen them (five boys and one full-grown man) agreed. She unpacked her teddy bear, Henry, and set him down on the bottom bunk. The view from the top would make her dizzy.

  Her roommate appeared, narrowing her eyes as her father struggled through the door with a suitcase. An errant piece of iron-gray hair was hanging down his sweaty forehead. He stuck out his hand. “Whit Worthington. You must be Justine.” His grip mashed her knuckle joints together. “Where are your parents?”

  “My dad had to take off.”

  “And miss Family Orientation Day?” He set the suitcase down and looked around.

  “They have to work.”

  “Don’t we all,” he said, smoothing his hair back into place.

  “This room is disgusting,” Tierney said.

  The pictures had been deceiving, Justine had to admit. Hadn’t there been a photo somewhere of white bedspreads and flowers in a vase?

  “And I have two more suitcases.”

  “Couldn’t you have brought less?” Mr. Worthington said, rubbing his elbow.

  Tierney stared her father down like a snake until he left the room. The same lime-green eyes now assessed Justine. “I’m Tierney. Nice shoes,” she said. “Where’d you get them?”

  “New Haven.”

  Tierney opened her clutch, pulled out a lip gloss, and applied it. “Does your father teach at Yale? What’s his name?” She dropped the t
ube in the purse and closed the bamboo clasp.

  “Miles. He runs a theater.”

  It took Tierney a moment to process this information. “Oh! Maybe I’ll check it out when I’m enrolled. Loads of Worthingtons went to Yale,” she added.

  Tierney spotted Justine’s stuffed bear. “No, wait, I have to have the bottom bunk.”

  “I’ll barf if I have to sleep up there,” Justine pleaded.

  “I have acrophobia. You know, fear of heights.” Tierney threw her clutch on the lower mattress.

  Justine moved Henry to the top bunk. His button eyes stared down at her forlornly.

  “Is that all you have?” Tierney asked, pointing to Justine’s suitcase.

  Justine nodded, suddenly anxious to get outside. “See you in a bit, I’m going for a butt.”

  “A what?”

  “Um, a cigarette.”

  Tierney looked aghast. “What kind of parents would give their kid permission to smoke?”

  Justine’s parents, that’s who.

  Justine had filled out the permission forms herself, checking off “yes” for everything. Her father had signed without reading them. Yes, you can smoke, yes, you can stay home alone while we go to England, yes, you can stay out all night drinking and puke on our front steps, yes, you can lose your virginity in our bed.

  “I’d never, ever, ever smoke,” Tierney continued. “Daddy’s a plastic surgeon. He says when you cut people open you can tell if they smoke by how their blood congeals.”

  * * *

  —

  Justine walked across the sloping avenue that bisected the campus. It was a cloudless day, and a breeze rustled through the maples. Her parents were firm believers in public education, and in theory, she was too. But the day after her friend Raoul overdosed on heroin in the boy’s bathroom, she’d called Griswold and requested an application. An envelope arrived a week later, enclosing a glossy brochure. The cover bore a coat of arms with the school’s motto, “Incipit Vita Nova,” which Cressida proudly translated as “Here Begins New Life.” Reading the course catalog, Justine felt a thrill of possibility—an entire semester on Faulkner, another on Emily Dickinson.

  She was accepted with a full scholarship. At home, heated discussion ensued. Justine worried about keeping up with the wealthy kids. She wasn’t concerned about the boys; boys were something she did well. But the money. She barely had enough to buy a soda. But all her parents could fret about was their daughter being corrupted by privilege. In the end, despite her parents’ misgivings and her own, Justine enrolled.

  An old friend from New Haven who had gone to Griswold had described townies roaring through in Camaros, chucking flaming beer cans and screaming, “Gas the Geeks!” The pristine campus was indeed a sharp contrast with Wormley, the sorrowful town that surrounded it. Justine didn’t blame the townies for resenting this idyllic world.

  She walked along lush playing fields, the white goalposts gleaming against the cerulean sky. Around the back of a brick athletic building were trash cans and discarded athletic gear. Next to this was a sandy patch with a few wooden benches and airport-style ashtrays. She saw a boy in a long trench coat, boom box on his shoulder, swaying like a cobra. Another boy, a jock, balanced a girl on his lap who was blowing smoke rings.

  Down the bench sat a girl with lanky legs stretched out in the dirt. Calculatedly sloppy, Justine thought, but everything she wore, from the soft leather of her jacket to the polished toe of her combat boots, looked expensive.

  Was Justine the only scholarship student here?

  “Do you have a light?” Justine asked her.

  The girl looked up from under a tangle of dark hair and chucked matches at Justine, who just managed to catch them.

  “What’s the Cat Club?” Justine asked, looking at the matchbook.

  “Nightclub in the city. A.k.a. the Litter Box.” The girl pulled a package of tobacco from her motorcycle jacket. Placing a pinch in the crease of a rolling paper, she fashioned a cigarette that looked like a joint.

  Her fingernails were painted cobalt blue.

  Justine glanced back at the blond jock, admiring the sharp arc of his cheekbone and the curve of his lats, visible through his T-shirt in all their masculine glory.

  The girl leaned toward Justine. “Bruce Underwood,” she whispered, “and yeah, he’s a hunk of burning love.”

  Clearly, she needed to be much less obvious when interested in a boy. “I’m Justine Rubin.”

  “Ah ha! Fellow member of the tribe. I’m Eve Straus.” Eve made quote marks with her fingers. “Diversity.”

  “Yeah, I’m rooming with Miss Country Club.”

  Eve smiled. “Lot of those around here. I got Tabitha the Texan. She’s already put up tacky animal posters. You know that one with the kitten dangling from a branch that says ‘Hang in there, baby’?”

  “Please say you’re making that up.”

  “I wish!” Eve flicked her cigarette in the dust.

  The boy in the trench spun in a circle, ear to the boom box.

  Bruce was braiding the girl’s hair.

  “How do you know that guy?”

  Eve started rolling another cigarette. “I got into that special art studio that started Tuesday, so I’ve figured a few things out, like who the hot guys are.”

  Art studio? Justine hadn’t seen that in the brochures. Maybe they didn’t offer it to the scholarship students.

  “I should have stayed in Paris.” Eve sighed, and Justine could just imagine her at a café table behind dark sunglasses, cigarette smoke curling over the boulevard.

  “The only place I’ve been in Europe is England,” Justine said.

  One summer her parents had traveled to London, her father looking for new plays for his theater. They rented a National Trust cottage in the Cotswolds and brought Justine along. She loved that time—the AGA stove, the rain streaking down the leaded-glass windows, the narrow streets of the stony village. There was no television and no radio, and they had spent hours on a picture puzzle of a unicorn under a waterfall.

  “I hate England,” Eve said. “Rains nonstop. The food sucks.”

  “Yeah,” Justine agreed, even though her parents had cooked at the house to save money. “I could barely eat a thing. I was so skinny when I came back.”

  “You’re so frigging skinny now!”

  “I think she’s a fox.” The blond god materialized in front of them, cocking his head at Justine. She felt her face flush.

  He sat on the bench between them.

  “I’m Bruce.”

  Justine fought to find her voice. “Justine.”

  “Sophomore?”

  She nodded.

  “You spoken for?”

  She shook her head. Boys did not usually fluster her.

  “Cool. I’ll drop by sometime,” Bruce said, with a confident nod.

  Justine watched him go.

  “Like how he just assumed we knew who he was, and where you live.” Suddenly Eve jumped up. “Oh fuck.” She dropped her cigarette and dashed around the other side of the building.

  A bearded teacher with a clipboard headed over with long strides.

  “Name?”

  “Justine Rubin.”

  He looked down at her with cool gray eyes, then checked his clipboard.

  “Would I be correct in assuming we have a signed smoking form?”

  “Yes.”

  He checked the clipboard again, running his finger up and down, flipping through the pages. Justine began to fear that the permission slip had gotten lost in the mail.

  “Ah, yes, Rubin,” he finally said, a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “Sophomore. See you first thing tomorrow in class. English, as in the language.” He strode off.

  Justine sank down on the bench and pulled out another cigarette, but realized that Eve
had taken the matches. The Litter Box? A nightclub? How divine. Justine tried to imagine growing up in the city like Eve—the museums and restaurants and clubs. Someday she would live there, she thought, digging into her schoolbag for another pack of matches. She found some tucked into her copy of Baudelaire. The book was a treasure, clothbound in black with faded gold lettering. She read “Spleen” for the umpteenth time. Justine loved the line about the hearses passing by, slowly, in his soul. How many times had she fallen prey to the same ennui?

  When Justine looked up at the playing field, she realized that the teacher must have frightened everyone away except for that strange boy, still twirling with his boom box. She watched him sway. He was tall and lanky, with fair, fine hair. With the speaker pressed to his ear his eyes slipped closed in ecstasy—no wonder, she thought, recognizing Bowie’s “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide.” Oh no, love, you’re not alone!

  “Hey!” she called, standing up and walking over.

  His eyes opened, bulging and pale. He stared at her, without focus, and tilted his head closer to the speaker. I’ll help you with the paaaaain!

  She tugged at his sleeve.

  “Are you tripping?”

  He turned his back, shimmying out into the field.

  She followed him.

  The song ended with an abrupt stroke of strings. He whipped around. “Bowie’s my drug.”

  “I’m Justine.” She stuck out her hand.

  “I don’t touch people. Your parents fans of Sade?”

  “Who?”

  “The Marquis de Sade. He wrote a book called Justine. About S and M.”

  She shook her head, wondering if Miles and Cressida had named her that on purpose. It would be just like them.

  “I have it in my room. You can borrow it.”

  His stare was as intense as a religious zealot’s. She could see the backs of his eyeballs.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Stanley.” There was a slight twang in his voice. He looked down at the grass under his tattered sneaker, held together by duct tape.

  “Where’re you from?”

  “Oklahoma. I’m a stranger from a strange land.”