by Gayla Twist
“Our mother and father value education,” I had to admit, even though it pained me. I did not want to go back to school. I wanted to keep working. I wanted to be near Jessie.
“I had not anticipated you leaving here so soon,” Mrs. Denkler said, scowling some more. “I might not be as happy with a new girl.” Then she looked me in the eye. “But you’ll stay until your school begins again?”
I assured her that I was happy to stay.
Since we were firmly established at the castle, Mama and Papa thought it would be okay for us to ride our bicycles to work as the weather grew fine. They were more concerned about us riding home as the sun was going down, so we had to promise to stick together and ride single file, even on the country roads. Some of the local boys liked to race their jalopies in the country and mother was constantly concerned that one of us might be knocked down by the reckless youths. We had to promise to pull off the road immediately if we heard the rattle of a car engine.
Riding to work each morning was one of my favorite times of the day. I knew it was foolish, but I always held out hope that I would see Jessie. Not to speak with him or anything, but maybe just to catch a glimpse of him.
The fields and meadows that we rode past on our bicycles were decorated with the cheerful faces of wildflowers. They reminded me of a dream I’d had the previous night where I was lying in a field, holding Jessie’s hand while the sun shone down on us and birds performed a serenade. It was a silly dream. Mrs. Denkler had made it clear that the Vanderlinds did not fare well in the sunshine. It made me sad to think about it, especially for poor Arthur. His life sounded very hard, always being confined to his room.
“Hold up a minute,” I called to my sister, pulling over to the side of the road.
“What is it?” she called, turning to look back at me as she slowed her bike. “Did your chain slip?”
“No,” I told her, pushing down my kickstand and hurrying into the nearby field. “I just want to gather some flowers for Arthur, to cheer up his room.”
“You’re not allowed in his room,” Lilly reminded me.
“I know, but I can put them in a vase and the nurse can take them up the next time he needs a transfusion.”
Lilly made a little noise of disapproval that she’d learned from our mother, but she didn’t try to stop me. “Just hurry up, please,” she said. “I don’t want to be late.”
I quickly gathered what I could, laid the flowers in my bicycle basket, and then hurried to catch up with Lilly, who had already started pedaling, once she saw me returning to my bike.
“What are those doing in here?” Mrs. Denkler asked, giving the flowers a disapproving look when I brought them in.
“They’re for Arthur,” I explained. “I feel so sorry that he can’t enjoy the lovely weather we’ve been having, so I thought maybe I’d bring a little nature to him.
Mrs. Denkler opened her mouth to say something, closed it again, and then frowned at the flowers some more. “I think there are some glass vases under the sink in the kitchen,” she said. “One of those should serve for wildflowers.”
I knew this was the closest I was going to get to Mrs. Denkler’s approval, so I hurried to mostly unused kitchen. “Leave the flowers at the bottom of the stairs and the nurse will take them up,” she called after me. “And don’t take all day. You’re not being paid to fuss over flowers.”
That night, Lilly and I were both rousted from our sleep by a commotion. The phone started ringing and a few moments later someone was pounding on the front door. “What is it?” Lilly wondered aloud as we both leapt out of bed to grab our robes.
“I don’t know,” I told her. But then I sniffed the air. “Smells like smoke.” Then we both shivered. Somewhere there was a fire.
The door to our room opened and Mama stuck her head in. “Girls, the school is on fire. Get dressed.”
Before we could pepper her with questions, she shut the door again. Lilly and I looked at each other. “How did the school catch fire?” Lilly voiced the questions that I was wondering.
After we both were dressed, we hurried downstairs to catch Papa just as he was leaving. He gave Mama a kiss and said, “It’ll be alright, Lillian,” and then he hurried out the door to hop in a car that was waiting for him.
“What’s happening?” I asked, as soon as he’d left.
“The school caught fire,” Mama told us. “Nobody knows how, but it’s a big one. Bundle up because we’re going to have to help with the line.”
Tiburon had a volunteer fire department, of which our father was a member. But when a fire was quite large, every able bodied person was expected to help out, usually as a link in a bucket line. Citizens would form a line from the fire to the nearest well or pump. Then we would pass full buckets down the line to the firemen and bring empty buckets back up the line to be refilled. If the fire was very large, then several lines would form on several sides of the burning building. Most fires were handled by the volunteer firefighters, so when they immediately called for a bucket brigade, we knew things were not going well.
We could see a weird orange glow in the sky as we got in the car. Even though we were some distance from the school, the smell of smoke filled the air. Mama drove along, cautiously, immediately pulling off the road if anyone was trying to get by. She didn’t want to delay any members of the fire department who were trying to catch up with the rest of the volunteers.
“I think we’ll park at the library and then walk over,” she said as we approached the center of town. “That way we won’t be clogging up the roads.” Other members of the bucket brigade must have had the same idea because the library parking lot was almost full when we pulled in.
“Come on, girls,” Mama said, immediately hurrying out of the car. “Stick together and stay out of the firemen’s way.”
As soon as we saw the school, we simultaneously gasped. The entire building was engulfed in flames. Mrs. McGreevy, head of the bucket brigade, hurried over to us. “Come on. We’re wetting down the neighboring buildings to try to stop the fire’s spread,” she shouted over the racket of the fire. “If the wind picks up, the whole town could go.”
We spent the next several hours passing full and empty buckets up and down the line. A few times the firemen thought they had the blaze under control, only to have it flare up again with the night wind. As dawn started to warm the sky, the fire quieted down and the bucket brigade was told that the fire department could handle things from there and everyone else should go home. No neighboring buildings had caught fire, but the school was just a smoking pile of ashes and cinders.
“It looks like arson,” Papa said, late the next morning when we had all finally crawled from our beds. Mama called us in sick to the castle and Mrs. Denkler was apparently very understanding about the whole thing.
“Looks like the entire perimeter of the school was doused with gasoline,” our father went on. “Thank the Lord Mr. Green wasn’t about or this could have been a real tragedy.” Mr. Green was the school’s janitor. He usually stayed there most evenings, but sometimes he went to visit his sister in Cincinnati during the summer.
“What are they going to do about classes?” Lilly asked. “Where will everybody go in the fall?”
Papa rubbed his chin. “That hasn’t quite been figured out yet,” he said. “Might be that school is just delayed until the town can get enough money to build a new one.”
“Arson,” Mama repeated, shaking her head. “And the whole school gone. Who would do such a thing?”
I was as upset as everyone else about the school, but also, secretly, my heart was singing. I’d received a reprieve. I’d be able to keep working at the castle.
Chapter 30
Colette
A few days after the fire, I left the house a little earlier than usual so that I could gather a proper bouquet of wildflowers. Mrs. Denkler frowned some more when she saw it. Shaking her head slightly, she said, “Just hurry up with that nonsense. Leave the vase at the bottom of
the stairs.”
“I’m so excited for Saturday,” Lilly told me later that day as we scrubbed the kitchen floor, even though it was already spotless.
“Saturday?” I said vaguely. Was something happening on Saturday? I couldn’t remember.
“It’s the dance,” Lilly exclaimed, giving me a look that let me know she thought it was an event that was impossible to forget. “In Mansfield,” she went on. “At the country club.”
“Oh.” It was my turn to exclaim. “Is that happening already? I thought it wasn’t for a few more weeks.”
“It’s this Saturday,” my sister said in a voice that let me know that she was going to brook no excuses. “I’ve already asked Mrs. Denkler if we can leave early.”
“Oh,” I said again. “What did she say?”
“Well, she didn’t like it, but she agreed,” Lilly told me. “Just as long as we come in early on Monday to make up the hours.”
“That’s nice,” I said, although even I knew there was no enthusiasm in my voice.
Lilly stopped her scrubbing and turned to look at me. “Aren’t you the least little bit excited?” she asked.
“I haven’t exactly thought about it,” I told her, keeping my eyes on my work. Truth be told, I had thought about it from time to time, but always with a vague feeling of dread.
“You’ll probably feel differently with Lev twirling you around the dance floor,” she told me.
“I doubt that,” was my reply. “Are you sure he wouldn’t rather take some other girl? I mean, we could always say I twisted my ankle and then maybe...” I searched my brain for a substitute that Lev would find acceptable.
“Don’t even think about it,” Lilly told me. “You are not spraining your ankle. I agreed to go to the job interview here just so you would agree to go to the dance. Now I’ve held up my end of the bargain and it’s time for you to hold up yours.”
“But you like working here,” I insisted.
“That’s beside the point,” she informed me. “You agreed to go with Lev Wilson to the dance at the Mansfield Country Club, so you are going and you are going to have a lovely time.”
There didn’t appear to be any way to squirm out of it. Lilly could force me to go to the dance, and I wouldn’t sulk or anything, but with Lev as my date, I highly doubted the evening would be enjoyable. Not unless Lev caught laryngitis.
Lilly and I each had an organdy dress from a year earlier, when our mother’s youngest sister got married. We’d both grown a little since then, but when my mother made the dresses, she’d included a generous seam allowance. She was able to let both dresses out and lower the hems so that they fit perfectly. Lilly took extra time on my hair and managed, with the aid of hair tonic and about a hundred bobby pins, to fashion it into an upsweep that both she and Mama said was quite becoming. Papa had out his camera and took our picture before the boys came to get us.
Walter and Lev arrived looking freshly scrubbed, but it was obvious they were both in borrowed suits. Lev’s was a little too small and Walter’s was a little too big. I wondered if they would have been better off just switching what they were wearing, but I wasn’t going to say anything. I noticed that this time Lev’s right cheek had a faded yellow bruise on it and he had more plasters on his knuckles, which he tried to conceal by keeping his hands clasped behind his back most of the time. I didn’t know what kind of roughhousing he and his friends got up to, but they seemed a little too old for such violent hijinx.
“Here,” Lev said, thrusting a box at me. “I got you something.”
Inside was a wrist corsage with a single pink rose, surrounded by baby’s breath and tied with a pink ribbon. “Thank you,” I said. It was my first corsage and it was actually quite pretty. I only wished it had been given to me by somebody else. Anybody else, really.
Lev shrugged, as if it was no big deal. “I know girls like flowers and this reminded me of you.”
Walter presented Lilly with a nosegay of wildflowers, clumsily fashioned with a yellow ribbon. I knew she had secretly been hoping for a corsage of her own, but she acted like he had just handed her an emerald ring.
Papa wanted to make another picture, but he was all out of film, so we piled into Lev’s new car with our dates undocumented. Lev got the door for me. He hadn’t said much since arriving to pick us up and that made me feel a little better about the evening. Maybe it wouldn’t be so miserable after all.
“The Charlie Barnet Orchestra is going to be playing,” Lev told me as he drove us along. He kept the car at a reasonable speed and was considerate of other motorists out for an evening drive. “Barnet is almost still a kid, but I hear he’s a genius on the saxophone.”
I began to actually look forward to the evening. I did like to dance, and swing bands were starting to be popular on the radio. It would be neat to get to experience one in person. Plus, it was nice to have something to think about besides my longing for Jessie Vanderlind. Over the past several days, thoughts of him had taken up way too much of my time. I needed to stop fantasizing about him and live my life. I needed to go out and have new experiences; not spend every minute of every day pining for a man who could never be mine.
The Mansfield Country Club was practically glowing with the excitement of the evening. The bushes along the long driveway leading up to the main building had been festooned with twinkle lights. There were at least ten cars ahead of us, waiting for the valet service. Men in snappy uniforms and white gloves were helping guests out of their cars. We could already hear music drifting out of the building. Many of the ladies who were helped from the vehicles were older and dressed far more elegantly than I had been expecting. The men were all in suits, but not dressed quite as spectacularly as their wives and sweethearts.
“Who’s hosting this dance?” I asked as we waited. Lilly might have mentioned it at some point, but I hadn’t been paying attention.
“An associate of my boss,” Lev told me. “He’s a very well connected guy from way back in the day.”
I scanned my memory to see if I had any inkling of what Lev Wilson did for a living. Didn’t his father sell appliances? Was that right? Did Lev sell appliances? No, that didn’t make any sense. Somewhere in the back of my brain I thought maybe I remembered he had something to do with security. I had no idea what kind of security. But, judging by the other guests at the dance, it was for people who had more money that anyone I knew. I thought it would be rude to ask Lev questions about his work when I knew he had probably already told me every detail about it, so I didn’t say anything else.
As we entered the dance, Lilly and I were both handed a dance card, done up with pink ribbon, each with a miniature pencil attached. “You won’t need that tonight,” Lev said with a grin. “You can pretty much count on dancing every dance with me.”
“Same goes for you,” Walter said, giving Lilly a nudge and then breaking into a wide grin.
Lilly nudged her date in return. “I could say the same to you.” They both laughed.
“Come here for a minute,” Lev said, herding us all to one side of the foyer. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a silver colored flask. “I know there’s a bar,” he said, uncorking it, “but it’s a cash bar, so I thought we might as well get a little warmed up first.”
Lev took a large slug out of the flask and then shoved it in my direction. I’d had a few sips of wine before, but I’d never tried hard alcohol and I didn’t think it was time for me to start. “No thank you,” I told him.
Flashing me a quick look of disdain, Lev then offered the flask to my sister. “No thanks,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s gives me a stomach ache.” I didn’t think Lilly had ever tried booze before either, but at least she had a good excuse.
With a sigh, Lev positioned the flask in front of Walter. “Don’t let me down, Wally Boy,” he said.
Walter accepted the bottle, shooting an apologetic look in my sister’s direction, and then took a modest sip. After which, he grimace a little as the liquor slid
into his belly. Lev grabbed the flask back from his friend and took another big slug out of it, just to show us how it was done.
After putting the cap back on the bottle, Lev said, “Come on. Let’s check out this Barnet fellow.” Grabbing me by the arm, he steered me through the crowd. “I’m ready to dance.”
The ballroom was very large, with two art deco chandeliers overhead that started with a ring of crystals in a large circle and cascaded into smaller and small circles until the crystals came to a point. The band was at the far end, just finishing up a song. The room was full, but not overly crowded. There was still room to breathe. I hoped there wouldn’t be many more people arriving after us. I didn’t want to feel squashed.
“My boss should be here, somewhere,” Lev said, scanning the crowd. His eyes must have encountered a presence in the room he didn’t like because he frowned. “Would you look at that pretty boy in the tuxedo? Does he think he’s at a coronation or something?”
I turned to look in the general direction that Lev was sneering and locked eyes with Jessie Vanderlind.
Chapter 30
Jessie
I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to follow Colette to the dance. It would be the height of foolishness. And I would be putting Colette, and everyone at the dance, in danger. I kept telling myself I wouldn’t go as I requested that Mrs. Denkler find my tuxedo and have it pressed. I was still a fledgling vampire, after all, which meant I had less self control than someone who had been a member of the undead for a century. I kept reminding myself I wasn’t going to attend the dance as I ordered a boutonniere from the local florist shop. If I was unmasked as a vampire, it would put my entire family at risk, and that was something I would never do. I even kept telling myself I wasn’t attending the dance at the Mansfield Country Club as I dressed in my tuxedo, launched into the air and made my way across the countryside.
“Tickets please,” a man at the door said as I mounted the front steps to the club. His nose was misshapen and had obviously been broken more than once.
