The Dangerous Doors of Shannon Anderson

Chapter Six

My Wicked alarm woke me up at 6:00 AM sharp Monday morning. As I tapped the screen of my phone and cut off Elphaba mid-chorus, I was already regretting the time I'd spent on Baker Street after Aidan and Dad had gone to bed the night before.

Mrs. Hudson hadn't blinked when she saw me sitting at Sherlock Holmes' kitchen table. She just told me that the detective would be gone for quite a while and that I'd be better off calling again later. Before I knew what I was doing, I had informed Mrs. Hudson that I was Sherlock's niece, and that I had just moved to London to work on the West End, and that Uncle Sherlock had promised to show me around town. So she made us a pot of tea while I waited and we chatted for a while, but then I started to worry what would happen when Sherlock Holmes came back and outed me as an impostor. I managed to excuse myself before he returned, but by the time I crawled back into my room it was two in the morning.

I felt minimally refreshed after a shower. I pulled my NYU sweatshirt on over my Tisch School of the Arts t-shirt, unperturbed that the purple clashed horribly with the navy and burgundy tartan of my school skirt. It was one of our "privileges" as second-semester seniors to wear college shirts in lieu of polos and oxfords, though I was still disappointed that we had failed to convince the administration that letting the boys grow facial hair should be a senior privilege, too. And that was even after I pointed out that Jesus had had a beard.

My only exam that day was AP English, and it was more of a formality than a final since we'd already taken the AP test. It was also the only class I had with both Tucker and Jessa, and they were both already at their desks when I finally trudged in.

"Morning sunshine," Tucker said as I took a seat next to Jessa in the front row, slinging my backpack to the floor. He was wearing a bright yellow University of Iowa shirt; he was going to study theater there in the fall. We'd dated for a hot minute in the ninth grade, before Tucker came out. "You're looking chipper."

"I was up late," I said.

"Me too," Jessa said.

Jessa and I had been best friends since pre-school when I told her on the playground that I liked her hair. More aptly, I had been infinitely jealous of her hair, which had five pigtails to my two, each tied off with the kind of cherry red double baubles that my dad could never figure out how to tie. The first time I went over to her house, Jessa told her mom that I wanted my hair done, too. With a lot of patience and a little Vaseline, Jessa and I were hairstyle twins and freshly minted besties.

"I re-read Heart of Darkness straight through," Jessa went on, "but I hardly touched our poetry selections. Oh God, I am going to fail everything and IU is going to kick me out and I'm going to have to live in a cardboard box and eat cereal for every meal!"

"There are worse things than cereal."

"Tucker!" Jessa whacked him on the arm with her binder.

Some people claim they're going to do big things. "I'm going to make the Olympics," or, "When I graduate, I'm getting out of this podunk town forever and moving to London," or "Once I finish medical school, I'm going to pursue my passion for sculpting." Jessa was the kind of person who said those things and then did them. She'd gotten into MIT, but she was going to Indiana University because as she politely explained anytime she was asked, "Indiana is the MIT of ballet schools, and I can still study physics at IU, but I wouldn't be able to study ballet at MIT." Who knew that Bloomington was a hotbed for performance art and the hard sciences? I couldn't argue with Jessa's logic, though I feared her focusing on ballet might put a damper on her inventing a teleportation device before graduating. (Tucker and I had a bet.)

"It's not like these tests really matter," Tucker said.

"That's not true!" said Jessa. "That's totally not true! I was just reading an article on the New York Times blog about universities rescinding offers of admission when students bomb second semester senior year."

"Jessa, I really don't think you have anything to worry about," I said. "Breathe." She inhaled deeply through her nose, nodded, and turned her attention to organizing her pencils in order by size.

Me, on the other hand, I probably did have something to worry about. I rubbed my eyes, willing my eyelids to quit being so heavy and wishing I'd had time to get a coffee. But just as I was contemplating a mad dash for the vending machines, Sister Francis walked in carrying a stack of freshly printed tests. As far as nuns go, Sister Francis was pretty cool. She wasn't much older than us, and she was a solid teacher.

We all stood, Sister Francis prayed, and the next two hours were a sleepy blur of inference and satire and metaphor. I nailed the question about the use of allusion in The Power and the Glory, but by the time I got to the short answer on the frame story in Heart of Darkness, I was wishing I'd re-read it like Jessa instead of spending all night with Mrs. Hudson.

Thinking of Mrs. Hudson made me wonder about Dr. Van Helsing. Even though I knew how his book ended, I couldn't help but feel worried for him. Had he gone on the hunt for Dracula yet? What if my presence had messed up the continuity in the story and Dr. Van Helsing wasn't able to stop him? What if Dracula obliterated all the good guys instead? Would all the copies of Dracula in the world correct themselves to reflect my interference? Dad would be home, but I could just tell him I was going to take a nap, and Aidan would still be in school, so as long as I went straight home after the exam I could check up on the professor then.

Oh God, I was taking an exam. Right.

"Ten minutes remaining," Sister Francis announced from her desk.

I chanced a glance at Tucker who had already turned in his paper and was reading a book while he waited for Sister Francis to dismiss us. Jessa was beside me, chewing on the end of her pencil. I hastily tacked a half-assed concluding paragraph to the end of the last essay question and tried to convince myself to review the rest of the exam with the few minutes I had left. I couldn't do it. I was too busy imagining Dr. Van Helsing being hung by his toenails in Dracula's Transylvanian dungeon lair.

"Please put your pencils down and pass your exams forward," said Sister Francis.

It felt like the people behind me were passing their exams forward slowly on purpose, but as soon as I'd handed in the stack, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and bolted for the door.

"Shannon!" Jessa called after me, catching up in a few graceful strides. "Do you want to grab lunch at Brown's?"

No, I wanted to go home, crack open an old book, and make sure I hadn't led a kind old man to his grisly, untimely death.

"I can't today," I told her. "I - I really need to study. I need to look over my irregular verb list for German and I haven't even started pre-calc, which I hate with a fiery undying passion that burns with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, as you know."

"Oh, okay," said Jessa. "Well, let me know if you need any help with your math."

"Will do," I said. "See you Wednesday."

A/N: Back to reality for Shannon in this chapter! Do you think she passed her exam? Do you think Dr. Van Helsing is okay? Please let me know with a comment, and if you're enjoying the story, don't forget to vote or add it to you public reading lists. Thank you! <3