by Nancy Holder
“Oh my God. They live in the stratosphere of richness. Their maids have maids.”
“Do you hang out with her?” I asked.
She shook her head with a faraway look. Her earrings were tiny enamel daisies.
“I had a horse at the same stable as Mandy for a while but we had to sell him. Mandy never really noticed me. There. Or here.” Her voice grew soft. I heard the longing in it, and I did the math: Mandy was on the inside, Julie not so much.
“You had to sell your horse?” I said sympathetically.
She looked down. “We’re, um, well, things are a little tight for us. For the moment. Just until the market bounces back.” It sounded practiced, as if it were what she and her parents had agreed she should say if anyone was gauche enough to ask her about their financial situation.
And now you have a roommate. I wondered if she was getting a discount on her room and board in addition to a human nightlight. Then I felt guilty for being critical. It revealed a lack of self-esteem. Dr. Yaeger and I both agreed on that.
“I hardly ever rode him anyway,” she continued. Then, with an air of sadness, she set the unicorn down in the exact center of her bed. “There, Caspi, you stay cozy.” She turned with a big smile on her face. “Let’s unpack you.”
I was as self-conscious of the things inside my suitcases as I had been of my outfit, back in Ehrlenbach’s office. But Julie had already breezed past me with an air of anticipation, and I knew she was going to see everything I’d brought anyway—unless I hid it somewhere and ordered some stuff online with the loaded debit card my dad had given me, for emergencies.
I moved first to my turquoise-and-chocolate backpack and unzipped it. I unwound the Bubble Wrap from my most treasured object—a framed photograph of my parents and me on our trip to Las Vegas. I had been twelve, and it was our last vacation before my mom got sick.
High school had turned out to be my casino, and getting popular was the game I played. I kept on paying with bits and pieces of myself, slowly, before I realized what I was doing. Soon the nice girl I had been had dumped all her old friends, stopped practicing the cello, and spent way too much time obsessing over her clothes. I raised the bar on biting sarcasm and left a path of hurt wherever I swaggered, like a tornado.
But I scored the big prize. In a matter of months, even though I was only a freshman, I was in the coolest clique at my high school; and Riley, my crush, was going to ask me to the winter dance.
Then I lost it all.
My heart began beating too fast. Again.
“That’s your mom, isn’t it,” Julie guessed, examining my picture. “You’re so young.”
I nodded. “She looks like she was really nice,” she went on. “How’s your stepmom? Is it weird having stepbrothers?”
“Not really,” I said. “They’re actually pretty good to me. And CJ’s okay. She’s just not Mom.” It was all true. CJ—Cathy Jean—and my dad had been married for about a year. I didn’t mind. I’d been busy with my own stuff.
Julie looked sad on my behalf for a few moments. Then she brightened as she handed back my photograph.
“Those guys in Jessel, y’know, Mandy? Lara St. Simone lives there, too. I think they have séances. Or something. Maybe you could ask them to contact your—”
I blinked, and she looked flustered.
“Uh, well . . . ” She trailed off, grimacing as if she wanted the floor to devour her. “Hey, your picture would look great on our nightstand. What do you think?”
I think I like you very much, I wanted to tell her. I think I really need a friend.
four
Julie left to slaughter the blue team, and I finished unpacking less than ten minutes later, even counting the time it took to hang things in my closet. It was tempting to take a nap; I was exhausted and I seriously needed to recharge my batteries. But Dr. Ehrlenbach’s pinched-perfect face loomed large in my mind. I didn’t want her to think I was a slacker, so I grabbed my map and my trendy boho bag and checked my hair in the mirror. Crazy, yes, but it did have a certain untamed wildness that looked . . . wild and untamed. Maybe that would be the new me, too. Wild, and untamed.
All false modesty aside, I did have a pretty face. It was my mom’s face. I pulled my hair back and looked at her big chocolate brown eyes and heavy black eyelashes—so many people told me I didn’t even need to use mascara—her high cheekbones, her wide mouth.
I could almost hear my dad saying, “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” He used to come up behind her and plop his chin on her shoulder like a big, goofy puppy. She was taller than me. He had loved her so much. When I was little, I heard him call her “Emmy,” her nickname, short for “Emily,” and I started calling her “Memmy” instead of “Mommy.” Everyone started calling her that, even people outside our family—even her cancer doctor. I knitted her a soft cashmere throw in her favorite color, china blue. And I added an embroidered heart with MEMMY in it.
And that was the throw Jane and Riley rolled all over, when they had sex in my parents’ bedroom, and I was in the hall, and . . .
I’m at Marlwood Academy. I’m safe. I wiped my sweaty palms.
In the gloom, my face was a pale white heart. We were fourteen hours north of San Diego, high in the mountains, and it seemed that it was getting darker, sooner. The shadows were creeping across the room. I put the photograph on our nightstand.
The curtains in the turret window at Jessel billowed slightly, as if someone stood behind them, watching me as I hovered by my bed and wondered again about what I’d seen those girls in the courtyard doing. Holding a séance?
I walked down the hall, past the bad art, and out the door. I consulted my map and turned to the left. Within a few minutes, I was surrounded by dozens of girls in really, really good outfits on a blacktop path lined with white metal horse heads. The horses held swags of white chain in their mouths, and their eyes were blank and unseeing. The fog washed over and around them, blurring them so that when I looked away, I almost thought they were moving.
I decided that if there were any ghosts at Marlwood Academy, it was those silent sentries. There had to be hundreds of them.
Then I came to Lecture Hall 217, my American lit classroom, and walked inside. The hall was a large, dipping horseshoe of upholstered seats with pull-down desks. At the bottom of the shoe stood a cherrywood lectern in front of two large, blank whiteboards. About twenty girls were plopped down in random seats. The hall was built for at least three times that, and it had a kind of deserted, melancholy air about it—as if someone had made elaborate party preparations, but no one had showed up. Marlwood had opened its doors for freshmen and sophomores only; the idea was to build up the student population over the next two years. The current sophomores—my class—would become next year’s juniors. There wouldn’t be any seniors until two years from now.
My gaze rested on a thin girl with a retro beehive and large hoop earrings, wearing a charcoal-gray sweater that was even baggier than my sweatshirt, a wrap-around indigo sarong, then another one of wheat-colored fabric over that, leggings, and some kind of floppy boots. From the neck up, she reminded me of Amy Winehouse, from the good days, but the rest of her was bag lady. So, maybe my outfit wasn’t the worst after all.
Then I spotted Kiyoko, with her shiny hair and petite shoulders, and her forlorn, beautiful face. Her eyes were almond-shaped. She was seated next to a girl with brown hair. The other girl was holding out what looked to be a protein bar, and Kiyoko was shaking her head. They were dead center in the bottom row of the horseshoe, right up front where good students sat, at least at my old school.
A notebook was flipped open on Kiyoko’s pull-out desk and she was examining a pen, pressing the tip against the page as if testing to make sure it worked. While the other girl unwrapped the bar and took a bite, Kiyoko bent over and studied her handiwork, her dark hair grazing the paper. She laid the pen horizontal to the top of the notebook and carefully tore out the piece of paper she had used, folding it into halve
s, then quarters, and placing it underneath her notebook. She smoothed the fresh page with both hands.
With a whoosh of air, a door matching the cherrywood lectern opened to the left of one of the whiteboards, and a chubby man with freckly brown skin emerged with a pile of handouts balanced on top of a large hardback book. I glanced down at the prinout of my schedule. His name was Mr. Bhutto.
Kiyoko sat up straighter, giving him her full attention, while most of the others kept chatting.
“All right, ladies, please, settle down,” the man said.
I sat down quickly in an aisle seat.
“Today we continue our discussion of Nathanial Hawthorne,” he said. “As you know, he was a descendant of one of the original judges in the Salem witch trials. He struggled with an identity crisis, and added the w in his name to distinguish himself from his ancestors.”
Wow, I thought, Nathanial Hawthorne 2.0.
“Before we go, I’ll put you in pairs for your next project. Here’s the rubric. You can also download it and save one of our precious pine trees.”
Pairs? Project? Next project?
He stepped forward and extended his stack of handouts to Kiyoko. She took one and passed the rest to the girl on her right. When it came around to me, I skimmed. We had to create a presentation that centered on an American short story written in the first half of the nineteenth century. “While you’re looking that over, let me introduce our newest student. He paused and looked up. “Lindsay Cavanaugh, please stand up.”
And that was the second time that day I realized I should have changed my clothes. I got up slowly and I saw his eyes narrow; then, for some reason, I glanced over at the Amy Winehouse wannabe and she flashed me a huge grin. I wished it would make me feel significantly better, but I only cheered up slightly.
Mr. Bhutto took attendance. I missed the first couple of names on the roll, which went with poised, polished, glamorous girls who looked as if they were models. One of them looked very familiar, and I realized with a start that I’d seen her in a movie. Several, in fact.
There was Charlotte Davidson, kind of an upscale goth, slightly overweight; and a few others, but not many, who didn’t look like they were going to a fashion show. The beehive girl who had smiled at me was named Rose Hyde-Smith. Kiyoko’s friend was Shayna Maisel. Kiyoko was the very last. Yamato.
“All here, which is no surprise,” Mr. Bhutto said flatly. “Lindsay, you’ll be expected to attend class unless you’re in the infirmary. Open your text books, please.”
Call it wacky, but that was the moment I fully grasped that I was at a boarding school. That I’d eat all my meals with the girls I went to classes with; that I’d go to bed and wake up with strangers, and walk to my classrooms with girls who tied each other up behind hedges. Suddenly, I felt a little panicky. I had left everything behind. No one even knew I’d left to come here, except for my father, my stepmom, my two stepbrothers, my cousin Jason, and his boyfriend, Andreas. I hadn’t even said goodbye to Heather Sanchez, who had once been my best friend, back before I turned into a popularity addict.
I was crazy to think I could do this. I’d only made it in because of my killer personal essay on the application, and my extreme need to get out of town.
Mr. Bhutto explained the project in greater detail. I tried to focus, but it felt like everything was sliding away from me again, all the bits and pieces of the universe suddenly having not much to do with me. My heartbeat picked up.
Again.
Mr. Bhutto started calling out the pairs. I concentrated on my breathing and brought myself under control. No one could tell, of course. The turmoil was all inside.
“Susi Mateland and Gretchen Cabot . . . Rose Hyde-Smith and Charlotte Davidson. Shayna Maisel and Aliya Rashid . . . ” There didn’t seem to be a pattern. It wasn’t alphabetical or anything.
“Lindsay Cavanaugh and Kiyoko Yamato.”
“Huh,” I blurted, hopefully too softly for anyone else to hear. Kiyoko jerked up her head from her book and gazed around the room as if she had absolutely no idea who any of the people in the room were. I held up a finger. Kiyoko’s wandering stare landed on me and she nodded once, then returned her attention to Mr. Bhutto.
“Please join your partners,” Mr. Bhutto said.
Kiyoko glanced at me, obviously expecting me to move. I had a rebellious moment where I thought about digging in and making her come to me. Come to me, come to me . . . I felt a chill just remembering Mandy’s chant earlier that morning. But curiosity overcame me and I went to her.
“Hey,” Kiyoko said as I sat down in Shayna’s vacated chair. I felt a little awkward—after all, I had spied on her just a couple hours ago—but I managed a half-smile, half-nod in return. Her notebook was open; she’d taken extensive notes, and her handwriting was amazing. She had a French manicure. My nails were jagged, my cuticles even worse.
“I’m Kiyoko,” she said, shaking her silky black hair off of her shoulders.
“Lindsay.” But of course she knew that.
“So we need to pick a story for the project,” she said, moving on from the pleasantries. “What about this one?” She flipped the pages. She had the most delicate fingers I’d ever seen, like a pianist’s. “‘Young Goodman Brown.’ What do you think? It’s about a Puritan man who meets Devil worshippers in the woods.”
Before I could reply, she went on. “We’re supposed to use the story as a springboard for a project with more scope, right? So I was thinking we could do a report on the history of satanic rituals in America. Or is that too weird?” Her dark eyes widened.
I was amazed. She was like a machine; I had never met anyone who was so . . . linear.
A little shadow passed across her angular face, but just as quickly, she was smiling again. “Hey, we can watch The Crucible with Daniel Day Lewis together.”
We can? I was caught off guard. I’d expected her to be cruel, like Mandy. Guilt by association—I’d been nice, too, before I started hanging out with Jane.
“We can probably download it. How about tonight after dinner?”
“I guess,” I finally said. This was all happening very fast. Then I realized how lucky I was to be her partner. There was no way she was going to allow us to get a bad grade.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she touched her finger to the corner of her mouth, and looked at it, as if she were checking her lipstick. She dropped her hand to her lap and turned, facing me squarely.
“Listen,” she said. “I . . . I think someone should, you know, help you out.” She looked at my hair, then at my clothes. “This is a very good place to be, Lindsay.” She flushed and reached down to a beautifully tooled shoulder bag. She pulled out a tissue and tapped her finger against it.
“Our parents, and the people they know . . . you can make connections that will get you anything you want.”
She searched my face. “I don’t know why you showed up so late. How you got in, no offense. Maybe somebody dropped. Someone I don’t know.”
Someone unimportant. Someone beneath your radar, I filled in, but I was listening.
“So . . . you need to make an effort.” She took a breath. “And here’s the dealio, Lindsay. I’m good to know, but Mandy Winters is even better.”
Whoa. I had not expected that.
“It’s incredible that Mandy Winters is here.” She searched my face. “Her parents know presidents and kings. And rock stars. Mandy had lunch at the White House two days before she showed up here.”
“Wow,” I said. Julie was right: the stratosphere of rich.
Sensing that she had my attention, Kiyoko leaned toward me. “She has a driver. She can ask her father for the jet. Her mother got her old boyfriend into Harvard on a phone call.”
“Yeah, and got him booted when they broke up,” Shayna declared, swinging her head around from a chair nearby.
“She did not,” Kiyoko said, but her voice was less firm.
“Whatever. She’s another rich you-know-what, but I can’t say i
t because my father is a rabbi.”
Shayna stretched her arms overhead and dropped them to her sides. “So, Lindsay, hi. Scholarship, huh?” She gave me a fakey wink. “Don’t freak. Everybody knows. Everybody knows everything. Including why Mandy’s here instead of that so-posh school in London.” She wrinkled her nose. “Marlwood is significantly closer to home. San Francisco.”
“We don’t know that,” Kiyoko said quickly.
“Mandy Winters and her brother Miles were found in bed in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. Together.” Shayna snorted and rolled her eyes. “So they sent Mandy here, in case they feel like checking in on her. And they sent Miles back to rehab. Again.”
“That is not true,” Kiyoko whispered, as she touched the corner of her mouth.
A chime sounded. I jerked. Kiyoko reached into her bag with a shaking hand and took out a bookmark, laying it over the page and smoothing it as if it were very precious and valuable. Smoothing it again. It was made of red cardboard with raised black lettering and a pentagram. RUNES, it read. San Francisco’s Premier Occult Bookshop. I thought again of the weird ritual I’d seen her doing this morning with Mandy and that other girl, Lara. Were they some kind of coven? Cult?
She pressed the book closed and started packing up. She was one of the most elegant people I’d ever seen, but kind of robotic.
“That was the dismissal bell,” Shayna told me.
“Thanks,” I shot back, and got to my feet. She moved out of my way, and I scuttled back to my chair. There was a lot of energy in the room, and some laughter. My fellow students were moving to the rhythm of academia and their already-established friendships. I wondered how many of them had been to boarding school before. And how many of them were dying to be friends with Mandy Winters.
I met my dorm mates at dinner. They were all very nice: Ida, who was Iranian; and Claire, very tanned—her mom owned half of Maui; and Julie of course. And April and Leslie, our soccer jocks. Haley wanted to study opera, but for some reason, everyone called her Elvis. And last was Maria del Carmen, who went by Marica. She was wearing huge emerald earrings, despite the fact that the Marlwood booklet had said to leave valuables at home.
