Jane Vale turned onto Main Street about a minute after Doreen did. The two girls walked, separated by a few feet, past Bread the News Café and the Vale family’s hardware store. Doreen checked her own reflection in the plate glass window of a clothing store and Jane paused, backed into a shadow. She could be patient. It would all be over soon.
After Doreen left the hotel bar with the pink-shirted boy, Jane found a twenty-four-hour diner nearby where she could await the dawn. She went over her notes, her recordings, her pictures, and made her plan. She was proud of what she’d compiled. The girl was hers; she was sure of it. Jane could not remember the last time she’d felt like she won something.
The energy of victory, along with cup after cup of acid coffee, kept her awake through the night until it was time for the early train back to Hamilton. She didn’t find Doreen on the train as she’d hoped, but it made no difference. She could wait. In Hamilton she sat on the bench in the station until she spotted the raven hair, the red coat.
They approached the Peabody Street Bridge. If she looks over the edge, thought Jane, if she thinks of Simon even once, even in passing, I will delete everything. I will call it off. Of course, Doreen didn’t even pause, made no indication that the place meant anything to her. Was Jane relieved? Happy? Vindicated? She turned to her phone. She had all the pictures lined up. She was prepared. Her finger trembled as she pressed send.
The cell phone beep shook Doreen from her daydream. Probably it was Heidi checking in. She would have to come up with a story. She’d say her father got her a room at the Mandarin. Of course! They had a sweet little breakfast together, and he dropped her off at the train.
But the text came from an unrecognized number. And there was no message, just a picture of herself—with Peter. They were sitting beside one another at the hotel bar. “What the hell?” she said. She looked around. Was somebody following her? Her cell phone dinged again. Another picture. This one of Doreen and Peter kissing. And another—one of his hands up her shirt, the other with a firm grasp on the back of her hair, empty glasses crowding the little table in front of them.
Was this someone’s idea of a joke? “Ha ha,” Doreen wrote back. “Very funny.” But the pictures didn’t stop. The next one was of Doreen in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental, her father’s arm around her neck. Then she was on the street, looking around as her father vomited behind a trash can. Then she was in the restaurant, her face lit up and happy as she sat across from her father. That was the most humiliating picture of all—even worse than the trashy ones from the bar. Her face was so open and willing, so vulnerable. Doreen’s desperation for her father’s affection was so obvious it made her sick. That smile! So revoltingly eager to please. “Delete!” she yelled. “Delete!” Finally, in the last picture, she saw herself in the Hamilton train station, perfectly coiffed, waiting for the train to Boston.
“Who are you?” she typed to her torturer. She felt violated, and queasy with fear. Someone had been following her, but who? And for how long? What were their intentions? The wind whipped the back of her neck.
Her phone rang. “Hello? Hello?! Who is this? What do you want?” But nobody answered. Instead she heard the sound of her own voice—some sort of crazy person’s remix of things she said over the course of the previous day. “Do you love Heidi?” she heard herself asking. “Don’t you want to kiss me, Peter? Daddy? Daddy? Don’t you—don’t you—don’t you want to kiss me? What’s wrong Daddy? I’m too tired to go shopping. Daddy? Daddy? Don’t you want to kiss me? There’s nobody here.”
Doreen turned off the phone. She looked around. “Stop this! Stop what you’re doing!” she yelled. She would kill whoever was behind this, she would strangle that person with her own two hands. “Reveal yourself, you coward!”
“Ha!”
Doreen spun around. A tiny hippie girl materialized near the bridge.
“Funny for you of all people to call someone a coward, Doreen Gray. Ha ha ha.”
Doreen marched over to the girl. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Personally, I think that a person who steps out with her best friend’s boyfriend is pretty cowardly. But that’s me. I have, you know, morals.”
“Who the hell are you?!” Doreen demanded. She gripped the girl’s arm, but she seemed unperturbed by Doreen. She stood her ground in her alpaca sweater, her backpack. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to ruin your life,” the girl said, grinning.
“But I don’t even know you! Why would a perfect stranger want to . . .” And then a picture came into Doreen’s mind. A family portrait of a graduation. Simon, his mother, and a girl in a cap and gown. This girl, the deranged sociopath who was out to get her now. Doreen had paused over the photograph on the mantel of the house on Leaving Place because something in the girl’s face disturbed her. While Simon and his mother leaned in with their heads and flashed their teeth, his sister’s lips were pursed closed. She stared directly out of the frame as if challenging Doreen to look harder and deeper. Doreen had brought the frame right up to her face. You think you see me? The girl’s face taunted from under her graduation cap. You don’t see me, I see you!
“Jane Vale,” Doreen said.
“Marvelous to meet you,” said Jane. “A real treat.”
Doreen’s mind raced. What did she have on this girl? How could she stop her from sending out those pictures? She had to play it cool. Bullies want to see you freak out, and she couldn’t give Jane that power.
“And I’m so pleased to meet you finally,” Doreen said in her most pleasant voice. She grasped Jane’s rough little hand and shook it, looking deep into her eyes. She would have to think of something—fast.
Jane pulled her hand away. “Ha! You won’t be so pleased when everyone you know sees these pictures!” She thumbed through the pictures on her phone. “Which one shall I send first? I have access to the whole school’s e-mail, by the way. Let me see, the one with you and your best friend’s boyfriend? Or maybe the one of your drunken buffoon of a father yacking all over Newbury Street.”
“Give me that phone!”
“I have to say, you sounded pathetic in that restaurant. Like a little baby. Oh Daddy, do you weawy think I’m pwetty? Do you wuv me, Daddy?” Jane laughed. “Meanwhile, the guy was sucking down scotches like they were cherry soda. You could tell he didn’t give a shit about you.”
“Give me that phone! Now!”
“What, this phone? This one right here?”
“Yes!” Doreen seized the phone out of Jane’s grip and hurled it over the Peabody Street Bridge. It shattered against the rocks.
“Well, that was dramatic. But worry not, your pictures are safe. I’ve got them all ready to send on my e-mail. Life with the Internet—glorious, isn’t it?”
Doreen lunged at Jane. The girl was small, but she had a lot of fight in her. She elbowed and kicked, but Doreen got her arms behind her back. She pushed her up against the railing of the bridge.
“Delete those photos. Do it!”
“Or what? You’ll kill me? Isn’t that a little extreme? Even for you?” Jane squeaked. Doreen pushed her cheek against the railing. She had her fingers around her throat.
“Why shouldn’t I? Who would miss you? You, rodent! Anyway, haven’t I already sent one Vale over the Peabody Street Bridge?” She laughed. “Why not the whole family?” She laughed harder. “Your mom, too! And that horrible couch!”
“Stop laughing! Shut up!” With a mighty heave, Jane Vale pushed Doreen off her, into the dirt. She gasped for air. “You don’t get to laugh at my family. Do you hear me? You don’t have the right.”
“Don’t I? But it’s so funny! Ha ha ha.” Doreen stood up and wiped the dirt off the back of her red coat.
“Shut up! Shut up, I said! I’ll send the pictures right now. I have my tablet, you know. I can do it right here. I’ll destroy you. I’ll end you, Doreen
Gray!”
Watching the red-faced girl stumble toward her backpack, Doreen realized she knew how to stop her. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it before?
Jane dug around in her backpack. “Wait until everybody sees what you’ve been up to. Then you won’t think it’s so funny!”
“And who is going to show them, you?” Doreen asked coolly.
Jane held her tablet in the air. “You’re damned right I am. And you haven’t even seen the half of it. I have the goods on you, Doreen Gray. You’re going to rue the day you ever heard the name Simon Vale.”
“You’re not stupid, Jane. And I don’t think you are a liar. So why don’t you give up this whole charade? Give me the tablet—or don’t. Actually, it makes no difference. You and I both know you are never going to publish those pictures.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, you dumb tramp. Don’t even think for a second that you can stop me.”
“Stop you?” Doreen shook her head and clucked her tongue. “I have no intention of stopping you. I won’t have to. You see, on the day those pictures go public, I will walk over to Hamilton Hardware. I know the clerk there, you know. He hasn’t been himself lately, but I am sure he would enjoy hearing from me—about how much I love him. I need him. How I can’t live without him.”
“Leave Simon out of it!”
“Oh, Simon, I’ll say. Every day without you has been torture.”
“I’ll keep him from the store! I’ll hide him from you, don’t think I won’t!”
“And I’ll keep at it. Day after day. I’m patient, you know. Soon we’ll be taking walks together. I’ll let him tell me how he feels and I’ll let him think I feel the same way. Won’t he just love that? Won’t it just fill him with joy?”
Jane covered her ears. “Leave him alone! Haven’t you done enough?”
“And then one day—” Doreen gazed meaningfully over the railing of the Peabody Street Bridge. Her hair whipped her face in the wind. “One day I’ll turn to him and I’ll tell him how I despise him.” A dark disgust crossed her face. “‘Love you?’ I’ll say, ‘I could never love you! You’re an insect. You’re less than nothing!’”
“That would kill him!” Jane said. “That’s what you’re saying, you know. You’re saying you would kill my brother, a boy you claimed to love! He’s already—” Jane looked down. Her hands were shaking. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“I don’t know, have I? It’s up to you. This could end right here. You destroy those images and disappear from my life. And I will disappear from yours . . . and Simon’s.”
Jane nodded. She hunched into herself. “Okay. Okay. You win.” Doreen almost felt sorry for her. But the girl had brought it on herself. Nobody messes with me, Doreen thought, not anymore.
“Give it to me.” Jane handed over her tablet. Doreen threw it over the railing into the ravine. The girl said she had already uploaded the pictures, but Doreen felt safe. Jane would never put her brother in danger.
“If I see anything,” Doreen warned.
“You won’t.”
“I’d say it was nice to meet you, but I think we both know that’s not true.”
“I hate you, Doreen Gray. You—I despise you.”
“That’s your right, I suppose.” Doreen left Jane peering out over the bridge railing—at her broken electronics? Her broken future? Whatever it was no longer concerned Doreen. It had been, all things considered, a remarkably easy and satisfying encounter. But there was one thing she still didn’t understand. She turned back to the girl.
“Why did you show me this? I mean, if you had the addresses, why didn’t you simply send the pictures out? That’s what I would have done.”
“I don’t know. I guess I wanted, I thought, I mean if Simon loved you . . . and Simon is so good. I wanted to give you a chance to . . . to . . .”
“Apologize? Redeem myself?”
Jane shrugged miserably.
“Oh, honey,” said Doreen with a laugh and skipped on toward home.
What was the lesson? All she did was identify Jane’s chief weakness and exploit it for her own benefit. Love, that was Jane’s problem. What Jane had done to avenge Simon’s broken heart required patience and selflessness. Doreen could not think of a soul for whom she would go to such trouble—or who would do anything of the kind for her. Except, of course, Simon Vale. Was that irony? “Oh well,” Doreen thought. “Probably it’s all a bit overrated. Love.”
She was proud of herself. She’d grown accustomed to a certain kind of life and Jane Vale threatened to annihilate it. Without consulting Heidi, Doreen had quashed the problem. That success, along with her triumphant reunion with her father, seemed reason enough for Doreen to feel happy.
But she didn’t feel happy, not at all. She was aware of an aching dread in the depth of her chest as she approached her dorm. What she had done to Jane was efficient and thorough—but it was basically blackmail. She may have saved her reputation, but what was she doing to her soul?
Ugh! She wouldn’t even care if it weren’t for that damned picture! The picture was always watching. And she couldn’t help but think of what it would look like now that she’d slept with Peter, destroyed Jane Vale, and more! There was Graham’s virginity (captured), Chastity’s hair (burned off). The time she made Brian Whitaker break up with Cynthia Stern because Cynthia supposedly told Whitney Owens that she thought Doreen was a snob. Or how she talked Alex Cummings into asking Madison Morrison to sit with him at dinner, knowing that she would reject him and it would make his stutter go bananas. Or how she’d gotten Mr. Bugiali to give her an A in choir even though she never attended a single class, rehearsal, or recital. It was her stage fright, she said, her eyes big, her eyelashes aflutter.
She climbed up the stairs to her floor, her head throbbing. The picture knew all about what she’d done. It frightened her to think of how it would look now, after every misdeed, every connivance, every time she used someone to get what she wanted. It was supposed to free her to do as she liked, and it had, but at what cost? Why did victory feel so foul? Back in her room, she collapsed on her bed, hugging Mopey tight. Was she lost? Doomed? Why couldn’t she just be happy to have won?
If only she could tell someone. Confess her secret, bare her soul! Certainly she knew someone worthy of her confidence, someone to whom she might bring her story, to seek comfort in candor and companionship. Heidi? Biz? They were her friends, weren’t they? They could offer her understanding. But then they would know. Everything she did would be subject to their judgment. They would think of her soul decaying into putrescence and so would she. No. It would diminish the gift. The only way for her to live this beautiful life was to endure the loneliness that accompanied it. It was the price she had to pay. Mopey would have to remain her soul confessor.
She threw her stuffed elephant off the bed and sobbed into her pillows. Small, grubby, pathetic Jane Vale had more than she did, more than she could ever have. She had love! And Doreen, despite how thoroughly she had trounced her enemy, felt jealous of her. Jealousy was the constant companion of her old life, and feeling it now put her right back in it.
Doreen turned to her reflection in the mirror. Even with tears in her eyes she looked flawless. No matter what was happening to her on the inside, everything she’d gone through had only made her more beautiful. She gazed at herself and allowed the sight of her own face to calm her aching heart. So she was lonely, so what? Anyone who possessed greatness had to feel a little solitary. It was the burden of excellence. And if she allowed herself to give in to despair, then there was no purpose to any of it.
Doreen straightened her back and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the corner of her old duvet. She felt herself returning. The whole miracle of the picture was that it could absorb any and all ugliness in Doreen’s life. The least she could do was enjoy it. And to prove it to herself, she spent the rest of the afternoon devi
sing a scheme to turn Misha and Miyuki against one another, just to see if she could.
It worked like magic.
When Jane finally left the bridge and walked back to Leaving Place it was with a heavy heart. Doreen’s victory over her had demolished her momentum and emptied her life of purpose. For as long as she could remember, she’d seen her mother bear the weight of what their father had done to her like wet clothes, and Jane swore she would never give anyone the means to defeat her so utterly.
So she was guarded; she had few friends. She let her ambition for herself be her only concern other than the welfare of her brother. And that had been enough. Let him have the social life—the athletic glory, the dates to prom. Let him live enough for both of them while she focused on her future. But now? When he jumped off that bridge he sacrificed more than his body and his potential. He had sacrificed Jane, too. Who was she now? The Peace Corps was done. She could apply to college, but with Simon sick, she would have to go somewhere local and the prospects were dismal.
It pained her to admit that being the quarterback’s sister had meant something to her. As much as she used to rib him about it, she was proud of his talent, the way he took charge of the field, how invulnerable he seemed. But no one was invulnerable, that’s what this whole thing had taught her. Everyone could be taken down—everyone, that is, except Doreen Gray.
Jane saw her house and stopped. She wasn’t ready to go in yet, to face her brother’s neutral gape in the light of the old TV. Through the kitchen window, she could see her mother heating up dinner with the same disappointed expression she carried around day after day. Jane felt her body stiffen as if she was afraid to take one step closer, afraid of what it meant to belong here.
“I’m still young,” Jane said aloud. The wind dried the tears on her cheeks. “Anything could happen. I’m young. I’m still so young!” But she didn’t feel young. She felt very, very old.
Black leggings. Black miniskirt. Black turtleneck sweater. Black boots. Hair tied into a low, messy bun. Clear lip gloss. Killer diamond earrings.
Doreen Page 19
