by Cate Martin
But try as I might, I couldn't feel anything odd about the building around me. Whatever Brianna was sensing, I didn't get the faintest hint of it.
But this time I didn't feel out of place. I doubted Mr. Trevor or Cynthia felt anything odd either.
In fact, I bet Brianna had all sorts of perceptions that normal people didn't. She certainly seemed "exceptional,” but not in a way that made me feel inferior.
Maybe we really were equals. She had feelings about the house, I sometimes woke up with feelings like compulsions that dictated my behavior. I just might belong here after all.
But the feeling of relief that washed over me turned cold as the doorbell rang again.
The last of us had arrived. And somehow the way she had rung the bell just sounded more authoritative than when I or Brianna had done it. What was this new girl going to be like?
Chapter 6
I lingered in the parlor as Cynthia once more wrestled the heavy door open.
"Ah, Miss Sophie DuBois," Cynthia said.
"So this is the right place," Sophie said. She sounded almost disappointed. What had she been expecting? Certainly not something bigger. "Can you hold the door open? I'll have the driver bring in my bags."
Bags? Was she expecting to stay longer than Brianna and I were?
I heard the sounds of a winded man struggling up the front steps, dropping something heavy, then shuffling back down to do it again twice more.
"Thank you so much," Sophie said. I couldn't place her accent. It sounded like she had been born in the south but moved to New York or something. Definitely a city dweller though. Even as she thanked the driver there was something a little… well, pushy in her tone.
"We'll leave your bags there for now," Cynthia said and she appeared in the doorway. She gave me a smile as she joined me near the fireplace. "Oh good, you're still here. I can introduce you to Miss Sophie DuBois. Miss Sophie, this is Miss Amanda Clarke."
I couldn't see Sophie's face as she came into the room. Her head was tipped down and the wide brim of her hat covered her features. I could tell by her bare arms that she was black and that she kept herself in amazing shape.
I'm not so bad myself. I started lifting weights in high school as part of my hockey training and I'd kept up with it. Mostly. But Sophie was leaner than I could ever hope to be.
She tipped her head to take her hat off with a flourish, running a hand through the patch of curls that rested on her forehead. The back and sides of her head were cut close, and she soon had the longer tangle of curls in the front standing prettily.
My own hair wasn't so kind when I wore hats.
"Pleased to meet you," I said, holding out my hand. Sophie was about my height but nearly half my size. But not in a scrawny way. From the way she moved as she stepped forward to take my hand I was certain she was a dancer or a gymnast.
"Charmed," Sophie said, looking me over. Her gaze swept past my shapeless sweater and worn jeans to linger on my beloved sneakers.
I didn't get the sense she approved. She was wearing sneakers as well, but the sort that cost a lot more than I would ever spend on shoes. They glowed up at me, flawlessly white, and I was pretty sure she had ironed her jeans.
"Mrs. Thomas? A moment?" Mr. Trevor asked from the doorway.
"Of course, please excuse me," Cynthia said with a smile for each of us.
I was starting to think these little conferences in the other room were a ruse, like they really just wanted to leave us alone together for a moment. What were they expecting to happen? Bonding?
Somehow, I thought I stood even less of a chance of bonding with Sophie than I had with Brianna. Still, I had to give it a try.
"It's lovely, isn't it?" I said, then waved a hand at the room around us when her puzzled frown told me she had no idea what I was referring to.
"Is it?" she asked, looking around. "I suppose it's about what I expected." She wrinkled her nose ever so slightly.
"You don't like it?" I asked.
Sophie tipped her head to one side and scrunched up her face.
"I prefer more modern architecture," she said.
"Like the condos next door," I said.
"Exactly," she said. "I would love to see inside that building."
"I met someone who lives there. Well, his grandfather does," I amended. "If I run into him again I can ask if he'll show us inside."
Sophie gave me an assessing look, but she seemed to be distracted by the sudden arrival of Brianna before she could come to any conclusions about me.
"Sophie, this is Brianna," I said as Brianna ground to a halt in the doorway, almost as if she had expected the parlor to be empty.
"Hello," Brianna said, once more looking at the floor.
"Hey yourself," Sophie said in a lazy drawl.
"Brianna is from Boston," I said, and Brianna nodded vigorously. "I'm from northern Iowa. Dairy farm country. I can't place your accent?"
"My accent is Creole," Sophie said, and I could tell she was telling me that with all the extra Creole she could muster. "I'm from New Orleans, born and bred."
"Ooh, I've always wanted to go there," Brianna said, so excited she almost looked directly at Sophie. "So much history."
"Indeed," Sophie said. "I never want to live anywhere else." She looked around the room again, still disapproving.
"Doesn't New Orleans also have a lot of old homes?" I asked.
"I don't mind old things," Sophie said, her tone almost chastising. "I just prefer new. Old things come with so much baggage."
I had the nearly overwhelming urge to point out that Sophie herself had arrived with quite a lot of baggage for a weekend stay, but I managed to bite my tongue just in the nick of time.
"I know what you mean," Brianna said, lowering her voice nearly to a whisper. "This place feels older than it is."
I expected Sophie to laugh that off, but she didn't. She bit at her lip and got a faraway look in her eyes.
"Parts of it are older than others," I said. "That's what you said before, right, Brianna?"
Brianna didn't seem to hear me, but Sophie said, "yes."
"It pulls to one side," Brianna said, not quite meeting Sophie's eyes.
"It does," Sophie said, sounding as if she were surprised to find that to be true.
"What does that mean?" I asked. "How does a house pull?"
"Don't you feel it?" Sophie asked.
"Feel what?" I closed my eyes and tried to sense… anything. But there was nothing. "What are you feeling? Like the house slopes to one side? Like it's settling more on one side than the other?"
I opened my eyes to find them both staring at me like they thought I was trying to pull a prank on them.
Like I was lying. Just pretending not to know what they meant.
"No," Sophie said. "That's not what we mean."
She looked like she wanted to say more, but Cynthia was back in the parlor with Mr. Trevor in tow.
"Miss Sophie, this is Mr. Trevor," Cynthia said, and Sophie gave me one last backward glance before crossing the room to shake his hand.
"I see you have a lot of luggage," Mr. Trevor said.
"I'm between gigs," Sophie said. "They wouldn't hold my place," she added to Cynthia. Her face remained impassive, but I was certain that Sophie was fighting to hide a huge amount of disappointment about something mixed with a certain amount of resentment directed at Cynthia.
"I am sorry," Cynthia said, clutching her hands together. "You'll understand tomorrow night why we really couldn't move the date."
Sophie nodded. I didn't think she was so much agreeing with Cynthia as that she didn't trust herself to speak in that moment.
"Shall we?" Mr. Trevor said.
"Certainly," Sophie said, picking up her hat from where she had set it on the back of one of the chairs.
"I can help bring some of the bags upstairs," I offered. "Which room?"
"The room on the right side of the hall," Mr. Trevor told me. "Do leave the heavier bags for me."
"No need," I said. "I'm stronger than I look."
I felt a touch on my arm and looked over to see Brianna standing beside me, giving my biceps a probing squeeze. "You look plenty strong," she said.
"Thanks?" I said. "I used to play hockey on a team full of farm girls. Now they were seriously strong."
Sophie gave a soft laugh, but I could see by her eyes that she was genuinely amused by my comment and not mocking me. I smiled back.
"I'll help too," Brianna said. "Just the light bags for me though."
"Remember, dinner at 6:30," Mr. Trevor told us as I picked up two of the bags then promptly handed the lighter of the two to Brianna and reached for something heavier.
"Just enough time to freshen up," Cynthia said.
"Do we dress for dinner?" Brianna asked, as if she wasn't already in a skirt. "I mean, it is a charm school. That feels like a dress for dinner kind of place."
"It's not necessary," Cynthia said to my enormous relief. My bag upstairs might have cleaner clothes than what I had been wearing for the last thirty hours across two states by bus, but it didn't have anything fancier.
It took Brianna and I three trips to get all the bags up to Sophie's room on the third floor. We made a mountain of luggage at the foot of her bed then went back out into the hallway.
"I'm in here," Brianna said, pointing across the hall.
"I'm at the end, there," I said.
"Cool." She glanced from the toes of her own shoes over to the toes of mine. "See you at dinner."
"See you," I said. "I wanted to take a shower. Do you need the bathroom?"
"No, go ahead," she said, then disappeared into her room.
The moment I was back in my room I regretted skipping the opportunity for a nap. But surely no one would mind if I went straight to bed after dinner. The important events weren't until the next night anyway.
I found towels in the armoire, but also a lush bathroom of a deep royal blue that matched the rest of the room. I undressed, slipped into the robe, and hugging a towel to my chest headed down the hall to the bathroom.
I turned on the shower then closed my eyes as I waited for the water to get warm.
Try as I might, I couldn't sense anything about the house around me. It just felt like a house.
It was one thing for someone odd like Brianna to talk about sensing things, but Sophie seemed like someone who always approached things rationally, with cold logic. And yet she talked about sensing things too. Were they messing with me, or did they really have some kind of extra-sensory perception?
What did the exceptional in Exceptional Young Ladies mean, exactly?
I gave myself a shake then took off the robe and got into the warmth of the shower. I was being silly. The charm school had been around in the early days of the twentieth century, right? Clearly "exceptional" was nothing more than code for "rich."
Which meant that I definitely wasn't the kind of exceptional they were looking for.
So why was I here?
Somehow, I knew if I asked I'd just be told that it would all make sense tomorrow.
I wished it were tomorrow already.
Chapter 7
I lingered too long under that deliciously hot water, fogging up not just the mirror but the entire bathroom. I would have expected a house so old would offer the same showers I was used to in my apartment back home: lukewarm with very little water pressure. The moment I stepped under that blast of water it was like a full body massage, finding all the little aches and pains from my long day on the bus and spiriting them away.
I don't remember getting out of the shower. I do remember wrapping the robe back around myself, thick and fluffy like a blanket.
The hardwood floor in the hallway and bedroom was cold under my bare feet and I raced to the bed to stand on the rug while I dug out clean clothes.
At least, that had been the plan. But the zipper on my bag was stuck and I sat down on the bed to get a closer look at it.
Then, and this I don't remember at all but I must have done it, I laid down and drifted off to sleep.
It wasn't a really deep sleep. I kind of felt like I was still awake, but in too blissful a state to bother with moving.
I thought I heard a radio playing in some other part of the house, some trick of acoustics bringing the tinny sound to my ears. As I drifted closer to slumber the music would grow louder, then dimming again when I rousted almost to the point of opening my eyes.
It felt like this went on forever, but the spell was broken by a hand on my shoulder roughly shaking me.
"Wha…?" I stammered, clutching the robe around me as I hiked up on one elbow.
"You fell asleep," Brianna said, stepping back as if touching me had burned her. "The others are waiting in the dining room. It's time to eat."
"Oh!" I said, rubbing at my face and looking around for a clock. I didn't see one. "I'm sorry. I'll be right down."
"I'll tell them," Brianna said and turned to head back out the door.
"Hey," I said, snapping fully awake. "Did you hear music just now?"
"Music?" she said with a frown.
"At first I thought someone in the house had a radio on, but just now it sounded more like a live band in the backyard," I said.
"I think you were dreaming," Brianna said. "You should get dressed now. Mr. Trevor is waiting for you before he dishes up the stew, and I don't think Sophie is the most patient person in the world."
"No, I don't think so either," I said. "I'll be right down."
But the moment she left the room, rather than reaching for my clothes I hopped off the bed and looked out the window that overlooked the backyard. Nothing but plants and trees, and I wasn't hearing the music any longer.
But I really didn't think I had dreamed it. It must be some quirk of old house acoustics. Mr. Trevor looked like he could be a Cole Porter fan. Cynthia too for that matter.
I shook out clothes that had gotten woefully wrinkled while packed together in my bag and pulled them on then sat on the bed again to get my sneakers back on. I was about to go charging out of the room when I caught a glimpse of myself in the little mirror over the dresser.
I had laid down on the bed face-down, but not entirely. At some point I had rolled my head to one side so I could breathe. And I could totally tell which side. Sleeping on wet hair was never a good idea. Now I had the mother of all cowlicks spinning over one temple, throwing my bangs in disarray and making one side of my thick curly hair look oddly flat.
Brushing through it only made it worse. I dug a hairpin out of the front pouch of my bag and twisted the side up and back then pinned it down over the cowlick. Not the most elegant of hairstyles, but it would have to be good enough.
If Sophie ever lightened up I would have to ask her what her trick was for getting her own curls to obey her finger-combing even after being crushed by a hat. That sort of thing could really come in handy.
I thought I would save some time by running down the narrower back stairs, but I had to slow way down as the steps were narrower and steeper and, honestly, felt like they wanted to kill me.
I startled everyone by bursting into the dining room from the doorway opposite the one they were all watching. Sophie at least made an effort to pull the scowl from her face by pursing her lips and looking down in her own lap.
"Sorry," I said. "Unscheduled nap."
"We completely understand," Cynthia said, and Mr. Trevor murmured his agreement as he got to his feet and removed the cover from the tureen sitting in the center of the table to start filling bowls with steaming brown and orange stew. I started to slide into the closest empty seat but realized it was the one at the head of the table. There was no place setting in front of it, just the box still resting there as if waiting for something. I backed away from it and took the only other empty chair.
Why had Mr. Trevor taken that box back down?
Why did I still have the almost overwhelming urge to lift the lid?
What if I woke up in th
e morning and the "almost" dropped off that "overwhelming?" I had never fought that compulsive feeling before. But if I opened that box, what would happen?
I forced myself to shift my focus from the box to the other people around the table.
"Amanda had the longest journey," Cynthia was telling Brianna and Sophie.
"I thought she came from Iowa," Sophie said.
"I came by bus," I said. "I actually had to catch a ride into South Dakota first to get to the nearest bus station."
"That sounds terribly remote," Brianna said, giving a smile in the general direction of Mr. Trevor as he handed her a bowl of stew.
"I guess that's why they call it flyover country," Sophie said, not unkindly.
Mr. Trevor handed me my bowl last and we all dug in. It was every bit as good as he had promised, and I wasn't just thinking that because I was so hungry and so sick of gas station sandwiches and prepackaged snacks.
We ate in companionable silence for a bit, but curiosity kept poking at my mind. Finally I looked up at Cynthia and said, "I heard music, earlier. Cole Porter, I think? It sounded like it was coming from the backyard."
"I didn't hear it," Brianna reported between spoonfuls.
"Well, it is Friday night," Cynthia said, not quite looking at me. "It's a bit chilly for outdoor entertainment, but there are always a few hardy souls around here who will barbecue in a blizzard without batting an eye, so anything is possible."
"I think she dreamed it," Brianna persisted. "She was asleep when she heard it."
"A good night's sleep will do wonders," Cynthia said and smiled at me again before taking another bite of stew.
"I didn't sleep at all on the bus," I admitted. "Too many crank kids. Too many stops."
I really wasn't looking forward to the ride back. I doubted I would be well enough rested before it was time to go the day after tomorrow, especially as the reading of the will wouldn't start until midnight.
So many crazy stipulations. Miss Zenobia Weekes may have run a very fine school for exceptional young ladies back in her day, but she had also clearly been an eccentric.
