I was the only person getting off a private boat, and I sped up to be the first one on the bus. The driver barely looked at me. I sat in the back and put in my earbuds. I didn’t turn on my music, but at least it kept anyone from doing more than stare.
We stopped at a long string of weathered farmhouses and crappy little one-story cracker boxes, collecting more kids. The only one who sat next to me was a guy in a hoodie that had Pikachu ears. He spent the entire ride farting.
In sight of the school, we paused at a cluster of rusty little trailers—not double-wides, which I knew well, but the kind that looked like space pods from an old sci-fi movie. They were all more brown than silver, and laundry flapped sadly from a line strung between them.
A girl came flying out the door of the closest and jogged to the bus, getting there just as we started to pull out. She stumbled down the aisle and flopped into the seat directly ahead of me.
“Hi!” She stuck out her hand, and I blinked at it. “I’m Elizabeth. Elizabeth Tyler. Not Taylor. Everyone calls me Betty.”
“I didn’t know this was a garbage truck,” said a female voice from a few rows up. “But sure enough, we just stopped to pick up trash.”
I looked back at Betty’s hand. The last thing I needed was being seen making best friends with the school reject. But she looked so hopeful, like a cute, dumb puppy. Maybe I was still punchy from the night before, but I gave her a nod. “I’m Ivy.”
“That’s a pretty name! Are you new? I’m new. I mean, we moved here over the summer, but this is my first year of school. I’m a junior. I skipped a grade. My dad is a mechanic. Boats mostly. My brother works at the Bay View, that restaurant on stilts down by the pier. I worked there too, but I quit because of school. Where are you from?”
The bus jerked to a stop, and I held up my hands. “Betty, if we’re going to be friends, you are gonna have to take it down at least three notches. Okay?”
She nodded, smiling happily. “Sorry! I know I talk a lot. My mom used to say I could talk the hind leg off a horse. She’s dead. My mother, not the horse. I’m allergic to horses and most large livestock.”
A burst of laughter erupted from the same seats as we all got our stuff and shuffled off the bus. I shot a redheaded girl a glare that could strip paint. Loser or not, laughing at someone’s dead mom is shitty. If Ginger up there had been laughing at me in Betty’s spot, she’d be missing a big chunk of that hair and probably a few teeth, but it wasn’t my job to protect other people from the queen bee and her squad. If Betty wanted to handle it passively, that was her business. I still glared, though. Just to make sure Ginger knew I didn’t like her.
“What are you gonna do?” she said as we started up the wide stone steps of the school. “Cast a spell on me?” Her evil little pod of girl-thugs snickered.
“If I do, the first one will make all of your snaggleteeth fall out,” I said. “Which would actually be doing you a favor, since it’d detract from the freckles—oh no, sorry. My bad. Those are pimples.”
Girls like her are everywhere. They’re just insecure and paranoid, like most teenagers who are middle class enough to have no real problems and live in towns small enough where things like who’s the prettiest girl at the prom still matter. I stopped worrying about them at least five schools ago.
I thought I might shake Betty in the crowd, but she was right there with me, like a chirpy shadow or an incompetent stalker. “I can’t believe you talked to Valerie like that. What did she mean by cast a spell? I hope she doesn’t decide to pour bleach in my locker again.”
“People in this backwater apparently think my family made a pact with Satan for evil powers,” I said. “And I thought you said you were new. How can you already have a nemesis?”
“Summer school,” Betty said. “We move a lot, and I was really behind. Valerie was here for extra credit. She wants to be a doctor. We got along this summer, but when her real friends came back from vacation she decided she hated me.”
“Where’s the office in this place?” I broke in. Darkhaven High was in an old building, the high ceilings and stained glass mostly hidden under gross linoleum floors, harsh lights, and dented, rusty lockers. A faded football banner hanging in the front hall proclaimed it was the Home of the Moose.
I’d been a Wolverine, a Jayhawk, a Patriot, and, memorably, a Fightin’ Bearcat, but those schools had at least picked team names that used plurals. What were we collectively? Mooses? Mooseii?
“I’ll show you!” Betty was clearly gearing up for another string of non sequiturs, so I cut her off.
“Just tell me.”
She pointed mutely to a wavy glass door, and I ran for it before she could start talking again. “I’m Ivy Bloodgood,” I said to the secretary. “My uncle registered me late, so I don’t have a schedule.”
She harrumphed but looked me up in her computer and gave me a schedule, my locker combination, and a student handbook. “Sit there until I can find someone to show you your homeroom,” she said, and went back to pecking on her keyboard.
“I’ll take her.” I snapped my head up and saw Doyle looking down at me. This day just couldn’t get any better. Maybe a meteor would smash through the roof and squash me, or the undead would rise from their graves and school would be canceled. That was the only way it’d improve at this point.
“Fine,” said the secretary. I followed Doyle back into the hall. He gave me a sideways glance as we walked and then sighed.
“You want to talk about what happened?”
“Hey,” I said. “I get it. My great-grandfather murdered your grandfather’s family, vendettas, curses—it’s all a big party on Darkhaven Island. And while you’re at it, you don’t have to tap-dance around my grandmother’s suicide. Very sweet of you and all, but as a person with now two female relatives dead by their own hand, it just makes me feel even more like there’s something wrong with me when people act like that. Not saying it can’t change what happened.”
“I meant about you,” Doyle said. “You were on top of the lighthouse. I thought you were about to jump.”
I stopped and stared at him, feeling flush creep up my face. “No! I was sleepwalking. I wasn’t . . .” I trailed off, words eaten up in a tangle. I wasn’t somebody who threw herself off towers. I didn’t have the demons my mother did. I was strong; she was weak. That’s why I was here and she wasn’t.
After the last few days, that was patently crap, but I sure wasn’t showing any cracks to Doyle. Emotionally unstable mopey girls don’t fit in, don’t get anything but ridicule or pity, and I was not letting myself in for a year of stares, whispers, and eating lunch with only Betty for company.
“I’m just glad you’re all right,” Doyle said. “And I’m glad I was there. And I’m sorry. About your grandmother, and your mom too. You’re right—people don’t talk about shit they should say out loud, and it’s crap.”
I lifted my chin. He was tall, but so was I. I looked into his eyes. “Thank you,” I said. “To set the record straight, I was not and am not trying to kill myself.”
“Good to know,” he said. “I’ll sleep better knowing I don’t have to repeat that lighthouse gig. I hate heights.”
“Why were you there?” I said. “Walking at night, fine, but trespassing in my backyard?”
Doyle cocked his head, a smile breaking out. His whole face warmed up when he smiled, and went from hard, carved chin, cheeks, and nose to something you could touch, someone you could trust. “Come on. Like you’ve never broken a rule?”
I tilted my head. “You just happen to show up when I’m about to sleepwalk myself off a creepy old lighthouse,” I said. “If I was a suspicious sort of person, I’d wonder if you had known what was going to happen.”
Doyle let out a low, skin-prickling chuckle. “Your side of the island has the best view out over the water. I like to stand on the cliffs and watch the mainland at night. And while we’re at it, you’re welcome.”
“I’m grateful you saved me from falling,�
� I said. “But that doesn’t mean I trust you.”
The bell rang, and the halls cleared out. We were suddenly all alone, and Doyle took a step closer. “You’re going to have to trust someone sometime, Ivy.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” I whispered. “I’m not that easy to scare, so either say something real or leave me alone.”
Doyle’s eyes went dark. “Fine. You want specifics? You need to leave. Today, if possible. Don’t get back on the boat. Go to the bus station and get out of town.”
“Uh, yeah, I’ll just skip town with my Black Card and trust fund,” I said. “Get real, Max.”
He looked confused, and I sighed. For a guy who played at being Mr. Coolest and Smartest, he sure didn’t know much. “Max, the creepy guy from Rebecca? It was a movie and a book. I’ve decided that’s your nickname.”
“I’m serious.” Doyle pulled me close, but after last night, when that closeness had kept me from falling to my death, I didn’t mind it as much as I had before. “Darkhaven isn’t the place for you, Ivy. Please, please find somewhere else to go before it’s too late for you too. You must have some other family you can stay with.”
“No, actually,” I said. “This is it for me. And you still haven’t told me what I’m in danger from. The only one here who’s made me uncomfortable so far is you, Doyle.”
He sighed. “It’s not like that. I’m trying to help you. Save you, even.”
“Look, sleepwalking up a lighthouse aside, I’m not really in the ‘needs saving’ category,” I said. “And even if my uncle is freaky weird, considering it’s here or foster care, I’m gonna be staying, if that’s all right with you.”
A teacher carrying a sheaf of test booklets approached us and glared at Doyle over his glasses. “Get to class, Mr. Ramsey. This is not the way you want to start a new year.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Armitage,” Doyle said with a wide, white smile. “Dick,” Doyle muttered when he moved on. “Armitage is a total hard-ass. I gotta go, but promise me you’ll at least be careful around your uncle?”
“Because let me guess, he’s really part of a blood-drinking sacrifice cult and the whole nerd thing is an act to keep me around until the next full moon?” I said.
“You were the one who wanted a reason to go,” Doyle snapped. “I gave you one.”
“No, you actually gave me nothing except more reasons to think you’re a super-extra weirdo,” I muttered as Doyle jogged off down the corridor. He never did show me which homeroom was mine. I wasn’t going to run away, like he’d so charmingly suggested, but I decided I could use my time off the island to figure out some stuff about my family, find some answers that came from an impartial source. I scooted into the homeroom my schedule identified and took a seat as the bell rang.
This day wasn’t any different than my other first days. Homeroom was in a dusty high-ceilinged classroom with old maps pasted all over the walls and giant windows that looked down a hill to the harbor. If the fog hadn’t rolled in, I could have seen Darkhaven Island. I moved from class to class, sat in the back when I could, and tried not to talk.
The lunchroom had the wood paneling and weird cherub-infested wallpaper of a formal parlor, and the sticky orange tables bolted to the floor made the place look like the day room at Arkham Asylum. Doyle was sitting in the far corner with a group of other tall, good-looking boys, and I watched Valerie sashay from the steam table with a tray and sit on his lap.
“They’re dating.” Betty landed beside me like an unwanted hummingbird. “Have been since last spring fling. She told me all about it when we were friends. He won’t let her meet his family. Apparently they’re like hermits or repulsives or something.”
“Recluses,” I said.
Betty stuffed a tater tot in her mouth and shrugged. “Isn’t it weird, though? All of them out there on that island?”
“It’s not too weird,” I lied. “I live out there.”
“Shut the front door!” she exclaimed, the shortest sentence she’d managed yet. It didn’t last—she peppered me with questions for the rest of lunch. I told the truth where I could, and lied when I couldn’t. Betty ate it up, clearly so grateful to have anyone talk to her she was practically vibrating.
I looked at Valerie and Doyle again. She brushed the hair off his forehead and smiled down at him, while he grinned like having a hot girl in his lap was the way every lunch period went. It probably was. If I’d met Doyle for the first time today, I’d have rolled my eyes so hard at the sexy-alpha-male-jock routine.
“Do you have TV? Do you have electricity?” Betty said. I looked back, frowning at both her and what passed for lunch in this place. The tater tots looked radioactive, and for all I knew, the shapeless lump of casserole could have been made from people.
“Yes, Betty, we have electricity,” I said. “This isn’t Pride and Prejudice.”
“I love that book,” she sighed.
I zoned out again, unable to keep from sneaking looks at Doyle. According to my schedule and the dog-eared book sticking out of Doyle’s backpack under his lunch table, we had one class together—world literature, taught by the aforementioned hard-ass, Mr. Armitage, who right that second exited the steam line and came at me like a tweed-covered missile. He looked down at me over his half glasses as he dropped a copy of Jane Eyre on our lunch table. “You, new girl. Have you read this before?”
“Yeah,” I said, ruffling the dog-eared pages.
“Good,” said Armitage. “I had the other students preread over summer break, so plan to refresh yourself by tomorrow. For today, just sit in the back and be quiet.”
He stalked in the direction of the teachers’ lounge, and I had to agree with Doyle—this guy was a dick. My opinion of him didn’t improve in class that afternoon. Armitage spent a minute slamming the sliding blackboards around and then turned on us. I looked over at Doyle, but he was grinning at Valerie, so I turned around again. It wasn’t like he had to talk to me. Just because he’d saved me from falling didn’t make us best friends. I tried not to let that sting. Being ignored is never awesome, even if I wasn’t entirely sure where I stood with Doyle.
Not that I was gonna cry about it. “Some boy ignored me” was wayyyy down my list of current problems. I didn’t need a boyfriend distracting me this year, anyway—I needed to graduate on time, so I could get a job and save up money for the few months between the end of high school and me turning eighteen. A real job that didn’t involve conning people. Once I’d saved up enough for a ticket and a deposit on a place in San Francisco, I could finally stop. Stand still. Be in the place I actually wanted to be. I could do whatever I wanted, with nobody looking over my shoulder, asking me to stay with them, to do this and do that and never leave their side. I’d be on my own, not just alone. No more Darkhaven, no more Bloodgood family drama. I stuffed Jane Eyre into the bottom of my bag as the bell rang and headed for my next class. Just a little over a year, I told myself. A measly four hundred something days, and I’d be free. Surely I could last that long.
Chapter 12
“Somebody talk to me about the symbolism of the chestnut tree,” said Armitage the next day, with even more acid in his tone than in our first class. Everyone stared back with a blank face, except Doyle, who didn’t bother looking up from the distinctly not Jane Eyre book he was reading.
Normally I would have been super happy to do just as Armitage had said for me to do and stay quiet. Not just today but permanently—because it wouldn’t be long until Mom got itchy feet and I was the new girl all over again. But that wasn’t happening here. I was stuck here for the entire year. I knew the answer. And I already didn’t like this guy. What the hell.
I raised my hand. “The tree is struck by lightning and split apart but still connected at the root. It’s telling us Jane and Rochester will be torn apart but ultimately their bond, not only of love but of shared hardship, will keep them connected.”
Someone—probably Valerie, the ginger witch—let out a small, ladylik
e snort. “What is this, Twilight?”
“Shut up, Valerie,” Mr. Armitage said. “When you have something meaningful to contribute to the class discussion, that’s the day I cash out my 401(k) and retire, because the end times are clearly upon us.”
I blinked, surprised that anyone would take my side, never mind Armitage, who was leading the pack for meanest burned-out teacher I’d ever run into.
“And you,” Armitage said. I flinched away from his finger. Maybe I’d hold off on jumping up on the desk to recite poetry in his honor for now.
“This isn’t some soppy love story where true love conquers all,” Armitage snarled. “This is love cast in the harshest light. Lightning strikes the tree because love is a destructive force. Love shatters what’s good and pure in Jane’s world. It does nothing but bring her misery.”
I felt heat creep up my cheeks, and the words flew out before I could make myself be quiet. “That’s your opinion. Maybe Charlotte Brontë wanted to show how sinister forces are conspiring against Jane but she’s stronger than they are. You can destroy the branches of a tree, but if the root survives, it can grow back.”
We glared at each other. Finally Armitage sniffed. “Fair enough, Ms. Bloodgood. Since you’re so convinced you’re right, you can write me a paper for tomorrow defending your evidently very strong opinions about Ms. Brontë’s intentions in this scene.”
Valerie snickered. I stared at the back of her head and wished I could shoot deadly lasers out of my eyes and into her brain. We moved on, and I didn’t raise my hand again. I should have learned by now trying to impress teachers never ended well. You either came off as a kiss-ass or an overachiever, neither of which would make my life at Hell High any easier.
After last bell, I went outside and saw Valerie and half of her posse heading down toward the field in bright shorts and tank tops, even though to me it was practically winter. I saw another group of girls stretching and lacing up shoes, and against my better judgment I followed them. Being on a team was the easiest way to fit in, and it’d get me off the island on weekends. So what if Valerie was the queen b-word of the track as well as the school?
Dreaming Darkly Page 7
