And Then Everything Unraveled (4 page)

I’d already freaked her out enough, so I didn’t point out that it didn’t matter since I’d be back at West Palo Alto High as soon as T.K. returned. I just said, “I don’t have a lot to choose from until my boxes get here. Besides—it sounds like I have to wear a uniform.”

“You can’t really think I’d let you go to Prescott?” said Charley, like Prescott was some sort of cult or polygamist compound. “I barely survived the place myself. No, Patty’s not the
only one who can pull strings. I asked around, and I heard about the most fabulous new school, with a revolutionary alternative curriculum. That’s where you’ll be going, Delia.”

“What’s alternative about it?” I asked. “Or revolutionary?”

“Everything. Conventional education can be so structured and limiting, but the Center for Academic and Spiritual Growth believes in nurturing a sense of self-direction in its students. I’ve heard Brad and Angelina are thinking about sending Maddox there when he’s old enough. But we’d better get going. We have an outfit to plan. Some of my things might work, though they might be a little long. Or wait—I have a better idea! Have you ever been to Scoop? Or Barney’s Co-Op?”

“T.K. hates shopping,” I admitted. “Mostly we just order my clothes from catalogs.”

Charley had been pretty calm during the entire T.K. discussion, but now she almost dropped the plate she was holding. “Catalogs?”

“Catalogs,” I confirmed. “She likes them because they present a finite range of options.”

“That is an absolute tragedy,” she said. “But one I’m uniquely qualified to remedy. I can be ready to go in four minutes. What about you?”

Palo Alto isn’t exactly a fashion-forward sort of town, but I’d always considered myself on the more stylish end of the spectrum. I mean, it was true that most of my clothes came from catalogs, but at least they came from different catalogs than the ones my mother uses to order her khakis and sweater sets.

It turns out that the stylish end of the Palo Alto spectrum stops where the frumpy end of the New York spectrum begins. And while Charley might have been a little scattered about things like when her temporarily orphaned niece’s flight would be arriving from the West Coast, there was nothing scattered about her in a retail environment. She attacked each store like an invading army, plucking items from racks with military precision and marshaling salespeople like a drill sergeant.

We shopped our way from TriBeCa to SoHo and from there to the Meatpacking District, with a stop in the middle at a restaurant called Balthazar for
pommes frites
and profiteroles because Charley said we needed to keep our strength up. Most of the places we went were completely unfamiliar to me—stores like Olive & Bette’s and Intermix—and the day flew by
in a blur of dressing rooms and three-way mirrors. By the time we got back to the loft, I had a whole new wardrobe, and it had been me vetoing the things I thought were too edgy. At home, T.K. does all the vetoing.

We picked up tacos for dinner and stayed up way too late figuring out what I should wear the next day. This was mostly because of Charley. I like clothes as much as the next person—in fact, I probably like them a lot more—but worrying about the impression I was going to make at a new school was pretty low on my list of priorities.

Charley, on the other hand, was like a little girl with her first Barbie. She insisted that I try on every possible combination of the items we’d purchased, and it wasn’t just because she was trying to keep my mind off my mother, either. She was seriously intense when it came to planning outfits.

We eventually settled on a Paul and Joe shirt in a reddish-pink color (“too fabulous with your skin tone,” said Charley) and a pair of Rag & Bone skinny jeans, but deciding on my top and bottom took so long that we ended up going to bed without resolving footwear. Which meant that we had to reconvene in my room directly after breakfast the next morning to figure out which pair of new shoes worked best with the clothes we’d picked out.

So that’s where we were when a car screeched to a halt on the street below, triggering a bunch of nearby car alarms. We could hear the noise five floors up, but neither of us paid
much attention—we were too caught up in debating a pair of Christian Louboutin ankle boots I’d vetoed but Charley had bought anyhow.

“I just don’t know if they’re me,” I was saying. I’d embraced most of Charley’s choices, but it was an extra-long leap from J. Crew flip-flops to Louboutins, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it.

“They can be you,” said Charley enthusiastically.

“Maybe you should try them instead?” I suggested.

“I wear a size ten,” she pointed out. “You wear a seven. And, lucky you, these just happen to be a size seven.”

“Won’t I be late if we don’t leave soon?” I asked, thinking maybe I could distract her.

“The Center doesn’t believe in strict timetables or taking attendance or anything like that. It’s impossible to be late.”

I was still trying to get my head around a school where you couldn’t be late when suddenly the determined clatter of high heels sounded in the living room.

“What’s that?” I asked, on instant alert. It seemed like the wrong hour of day for a burglar, but Nora’s warnings were still fresh in my mind—it was hard not to feel at least a small jolt of alarm.

“It couldn’t be,” said Charley in disbelief. The Louboutins slipped from her grasp.

The bedroom door crashed open against the wall, and I let out an involuntary shriek. A blond-haired woman in an austere
black suit stood in the doorway. She was as thin and angular as a store mannequin, and diamond earrings the size of small boulders competed for attention with the massive diamond on her ring finger. A Louis Vuitton garment bag was slung over her arm.

Her glare landed on Charley. “What kind of absurd excuse for an academic institution is this supposed to be?” she said, brandishing a brochure for the Center for Academic and Spiritual Growth.

“How did you get in?” demanded Charley.

“With a key,” said the woman. “Obviously.”

“But who gave you a key?”

The woman didn’t answer but just turned her icy blue eyes to me. “Cordelia?”

I was tempted to hide behind Charley, but I managed to restrain myself. “Um, yes?” I said.

“I’m Patience Truesdale-Babbitt. Your aunt. The one who’s not utterly insane.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, though mostly it was terrifying.

“I’m also the aunt whose attorney just assured her that your mother’s will definitively gives me final say over your education.”

“But—” began Charley.

Patience spoke over Charley like she wasn’t even there. “Me, and not my crackpot sister. So you can imagine my surprise
when the registrar at Prescott informed me that said crackpot sister had made other arrangements—not to mention the inconvenience I’ve already endured this morning undoing those other arrangements. If you can call this”—she looked with distaste at the brochure—“this
place
an arrangement.”

“But—” began Charley again.

Patience ignored her again. “Now, we’re already behind schedule, and if you think that what you’re wearing is appropriate, Cordelia, then you have been recklessly misled. Please hurry and put this on.” And with that she unzipped the garment bag and yanked out a neatly pressed school uniform.

Charley gasped in horror, like there was a rattlesnake or cobra dangling from the hanger. Gingerly, she reached out a finger to touch the navy blazer. “It hasn’t changed a bit,” she said. “And it’s still that same awful material. I tried to burn mine after I graduated but it only melted. You’d think for such a fancy place they’d insist on natural fibers.”

“Prescott is the finest private day school in Manhattan, and it is an honor to wear its colors,” said Patience sternly, thrusting the uniform in my direction. “Cordelia, I’ll wait for you in the other room while you change. And please don’t dawdle—the clock is ticking.”

The door slammed shut behind her, and Charley immediately reached for the phone to get her own lawyer involved. But I stopped her before she could start dialing.

I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I thought I might as
well go somewhere halfway decent while I was in New York so that I wouldn’t be completely behind when I got back to my old school. And I had to admit, I’d had doubts about the Center for Academic and Spiritual Growth, too. After all, the brochure began with “Greetings, Voyagers!” and that was pretty out there, even for a Californian. I was starting to see why my mother had put certain decisions in Patience’s hands—she was definitely scary—but she might be useful to have around in situations like this.

It took some convincing, though I think that was mostly because Charley objected automatically to anything Patience wanted. She only yielded after I promised I’d let her know immediately if I had second thoughts about Prescott. She also insisted on drawing me a map of her favorite escape routes from when she was a student. “You never know when this might come in handy,” she said, zipping it into a pocket of my book bag.

“Maybe I should have some garlic and a wooden stake, too,” I said. “Or do you have one of those revolvers that shoot silver bullets?”

“You won’t be thinking that’s so funny when you see what you’ve signed yourself up for,” she warned, just as we heard a long scraping noise from the other room, followed by the squeal of something heavy and metal being dragged across the floor.

“I don’t believe it,” said Charley in amazement. “Is she really rearranging the furniture?”

As if to answer her question there was another scraping noise, and then a thud and the sound of shattering glass.

“Patty, you better not be doing what I think you’re doing,” Charley yelled in a tone that made her sound as scary as Patience. She was already halfway through the door.

I had the feeling that it might be dangerous to leave my aunts alone together, so I hurried to change into the navy-and-red plaid kilt and the blazer with its gold Prescott Day School crest. After the jeans and top we’d chosen so carefully, it all felt itchy and strange and weirdly formal. Even the Louboutins seemed a lot more appealing now that I’d seen the lace-up saddle shoes that went with the uniform.

There was more scraping and another thud from the other room, and also the clipped tones people use to argue when they’re trying to argue and still keep their voices down. I knew I should probably get out there before things got any worse, but I paused in front of the mirror.

My reflection looked like it belonged to a totally different girl than the one who’d been surfing Ross’s Cove just a few short days ago. For a moment, I wondered what my dad would think, and what T.K. would think, too, if either of them could see me now.

Then I went to join my aunts.

It was probably a good thing I got there when I did. Charley and Patience were eyeing each other like feral cats stalking the same prey, and I was pretty sure my presence was the only thing standing between them and physical violence.

Patience seemed a bit miffed that not only did I fit into her daughter’s castoffs, everything was a little loose, but she wasted no time shuttling me out of the loft and into the elevator. Charley was calling after me even as the elevator doors closed, reminding me to phone if I needed anything, or wanted her to come get me, or craved anything special for dinner, or just wanted to talk.

Downstairs, a driver was waiting to whisk us away in a big German car. Patience (“Do not—
not
—call me Patty,” she informed me briskly as the car pulled away from the curb) spent the entire ride uptown extolling the virtues of Prescott, pausing only long enough to occasionally mutter under her breath about her crackpot sister and Chia Pets. On the bright side, at least I didn’t have to work too hard to keep up my end of the conversation.

Prescott occupied two adjoining stone-and-brick town houses on a leafy side street in the East 80s, not far from Central Park. Patience insisted on accompanying me to the headmaster’s office, and she strode through the front door like she owned the place. I got the sense that she thought I’d try to make a break for it if her attention lapsed for even a second. I was quickly learning that my aunt took her responsibilities very, very seriously, and it was more than a little unnerving to find out that I was one of them.

Prescott had marble floors and dark wood paneling where my school at home had Mexican tile and Mission-style stucco, but otherwise it felt the same, with metal lockers lining the hallway and bulletin boards and posters on the walls. Even the headmaster, a staid-looking older man named Mr. Seton, reminded me of Mr. Olivaro, the principal at West Palo Alto, though Mr. Seton wore a suit and tie where Mr. Olivaro always wore khakis and a button-down shirt.

Mr. Seton only convinced Patience to leave after assuring her that he’d personally supervise my registration, and he seemed nearly as relieved as I was when she finally took off, though he probably had a better poker face. On the way to the registrar’s office, he told me he’d been at Prescott for more than thirty years, which meant he’d known my mother and her sisters when they were students. “All so different, and with such unique personalities,” he said, though the way he said “unique” made it sound like a euphemism for something less diplomatic.

T.K. had graduated while Patience was still in the Middle School and Charley in the Lower School, but they’d all left their marks. I saw T.K.’s name on a plaque listing the class valedictorian for each year on one wall, and on another wall there was a photograph of a teenage Patience posing with a trophy she’d won in a debate tournament. Mr. Seton even showed me a side door that he said was Charley’s favorite escape route for cutting class. I knew from Charley herself that her favorite was actually a window on the opposite end of the building, but it didn’t seem wise to correct him.

He deposited me with the registrar, and if the uniform hadn’t already clued me in, the schedule she handed me made it clear that Prescott was going to be a lot more challenging than the Center for Academic and Spiritual Growth was likely to have been. My classes were nearly identical to what they’d be at home, with only one exception: Instead of computer science, at Prescott I’d been enrolled in drama.

“I’m sorry, dear,” the registrar said when I asked, but she sounded more surprised than sorry. “That’s the only elective that would fit with the rest of your schedule. Most of the students love drama, you know. Mr. Dudley, the instructor, is a favorite around here.”

I had to admit to being a tiny bit curious about drama. But I could also hear T.K.’s voice in my ear, telling me that Mr. Dudley might be a favorite, but drama didn’t help much on the SATs. At least it wouldn’t start until the following week, since
he was wrapping up a one-man show in summer stock, whatever that was. By then, maybe everything would be back to normal or, at the very least, I’d have figured out a way to change my schedule.

“Do you want directions to the science lab?” the registrar asked. “Your advanced physics class has already started, but I’m sure Dr. Penske will excuse your tardiness this one time—oh—” she said as my phone rang in my bag. “We don’t allow our students to use their cell phones in the building. You’ll have to turn that off, dear.”

I quickly silenced the ringing and listened politely while she told me how I could find the lab. But as soon as I was in the hallway, and since I was already late anyhow, I ducked into the nearest stairwell to see who’d phoned.

I’d texted the previous day with both Justin and Erin, but it was still pretty early in the morning on the West Coast for one of them to be trying me, and I had a funny feeling about this call that I couldn’t quite explain.

The log on the caller ID just said “Out of Area” so I knew it couldn’t be anyone whose number was already programmed into my phone. There was a single voice mail waiting, and my fingers felt strangely stiff as I punched in my password. I tried to tell myself it would only be Thad, calling to nag about my executive training or something like that, but somehow I knew that wasn’t it.

And it wasn’t. At least, if it was, there was no way to tell.
Because all I could hear was static. I played the message over again, and then I played it a third time. But each time I heard the same thing: sixteen seconds of static.

I’d been so proud of how I hadn’t cried once since that moment when Nora sat me down at our kitchen table, but now I felt a prickling in my eyes. I stared at the wall, willing the prickling to stop. Had I really thought it would be a message from my mother? The sudden shiver of doubt that swept through me was even worse than the threat of tears.

“Didn’t anyone tell you that cell phones during school hours are strictly
verboten
?” asked a teasing male voice.

I started and spun around, but I didn’t see anyone.

“Up here,” he said.

A single figure was on the landing above. He was tall, with thick, sand-colored hair, and he leaned against the windowsill with casual ease. The sun poured through the glass behind him, gilding his outline, but even when he’d stepped out of the pool of light he still looked like a god.