Dark Companion (8 page)

The cafeteria was a long, open, bright room. At one end was a lounge with rugs, potted plants, and sofas. Between old black-and-white photos of the school were student-made posters extolling excellence, honor, and duty. Tables with food and drinks were set along a wall. Girls mingled in groups and I felt their eyes on me as I got a plate of fruit salad and a glass of juice.

“Hi, Jane.”

I turned to see the pretty auburn-haired girl I’d met in the drugstore. Her shining hair was in a sleek ponytail and she wore small gold earrings with pearls. Her hazel eyes were framed with long, thick lashes. She was several inches taller than me and slim, but with curves.

“Hello. We met in town, right?”

“Yes, I’m Hattie, Harriet Tyler.” She smiled with even white teeth. “I’m a junior, too, and Mrs. Radcliffe asked me to show you around. Come meet my friends.”

She wasn’t the type of person who was usually friendly to me, so I was wary as I followed her to the lounge area, where older girls were hanging out. She introduced me to a dozen girls and we exchanged bland hellos.

A beautiful, plump girl named Mary Violet asked, “Are you living in the groundskeeper’s cottage?” Her hair was a cloud of silver-blond curls and she had a golden tan. She was wearing shiny pink lip gloss and thin gold chains around her neck and wrists. She leaned toward me eagerly.

“Yes, I moved in last week.”

“It must be
fabulous
to live in your own place!” She raised her cornflower-blue eyes toward the ceiling. “If I lived alone, I would have many passionate affairs with debonair
men
!”

The other girls giggled, and someone said, “You’d have a short commute.”

“Yes! I would rise from my silk sheets late after a night of untamed sexual coitus, bid my lover adieu—he would beg me to stay—and then I would dash breathlessly to class as the last bell rang. My hair would be romantically tousled.” Mary Violet waved her arm, sloshing juice over the rim of her glass.

“You mean you’d be a disaster and wouldn’t have the common courtesy to shower,” said Constance, a thin girl with dark brown skin, braids, and huge glasses that magnified her almond-shaped eyes. She had introduced herself with a handshake, saying, “I’m Constance Applewhaite. Pleased to meet you.” Her voice had an attractive lilt, and I wondered where she was from.

“Let me have my fantasy!” Mary Violet said. “Bebe got up only ten minutes before class. She was hardly ever a mess. Well, there was that time—”

The group became quiet, and Hattie said quickly, “We don’t need to gossip.”

Mary Violet pouted. “Why can’t I mention Bebe? She’s the one who dumped us after promising we’d go to the Ivies together and stay BFFs.”

“MV, we don’t want Jane to feel that she’s a replacement.” Hattie looked at me. “Bebe was here on full scholarship, too. She moved overseas at the end of last year.”

“And she’s never written to one of us, not even me!” Mary Violet said. “That is utterly heartless. All our slumber parties and cram sessions meant nothing, nothing, nothing to her. She was all talk-to-you-
never
-biatch!”

“Stop being so self-centered, MV,” Hattie said. “Bebe’s too busy. Mrs. Radcliffe’s heard from her twice this summer and she really does miss us.”

“Huh!” Mary Violet twirled a silvery gold curl around her finger. “Where did her mysterious uncle come from anyway? I thought she didn’t have any relatives.”

Constance said, “
Everyone
has relatives, Mary Violet. We don’t appear out of thin air. You might know that if you paid attention during biology.”

This was enough to divert the girls onto Mary Violet’s study habits.

Hattie remembered that I was there. “Jane, how’s your class schedule?”

“It’s okay, except that I was supposed to be in AP Chem, but it says Honors Chem on my schedule.”

“It counts as the same as AP Chem, but Birch Grove doesn’t offer courses that ‘teach to the test,’” Hattie answered. “Honors Chem is more in-depth and ex—”

“Exceptional classes for exceptional girls!” the others said together, and cracked up.

Mary Violet told me, “The joke is that we pretend we don’t believe it, but we totally believe it.”

“Well,
you
are exceptional, MV,” Constance said. “Exceptionally absurd.”

“You’re exceptionally no-fun,” Mary Violet retorted, and stuck out her tongue.

I tried to step away as the girls teased one another, but Hattie kept me in the conversation by addressing comments to me. I was herded into her group as they left the cafeteria and went to the auditorium for the welcome speech.

“Juniors get balcony privileges,” Hattie told me, and we went upstairs and into the first row of the balcony.

“You can see everything from up here.” Mary Violet peered over the railing. “I’m so glad I’m not a lowly underclassman. It’s tragic we can’t haze them and make them grovel like the miserable worms they are.”

“Mary Violet Holiday, you’re the most appalling girl I’ve ever known.” Constance shook her head, which caused her glasses to slide down her elegant long nose. I could see she was trying not to laugh.

“Can’t I ever say anything?” Mary Violet huffed. “What about freedom of speech?”

Hattie stared at her friend. “Mrs. Radcliffe always says, ‘Freedom of speech does not excuse freedom
from
thought.’”

A bell chimed and Mrs. Radcliffe walked in front of the blue velvet curtains to the podium. “Good morning, ladies.”

As one, the students answered, “Good morning, headmistress.”

“Let us rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

After we recited the pledge, an elderly woman in a boxy blue suit came from the wings and stood center stage. She blew a little round whistle and then began leading the students in the school song about the birch trees that ended:

Let us bend in the storm, yet never break

Let us offer others more than we take

Let us live for the truth and act for the good

Hail, Birch Grove, hail!

Mrs. Radcliffe returned to the podium. “Students, I am honored to be the headmistress of this exceptional school and all of you exceptional girls. I know you have come back to Birch Grove refreshed and ready to meet the challenges of this year. It will be intellectually stimulating and often emotionally demanding. The faculty, counselors, and I always have our doors open to you.”

She talked for several minutes about campus news and then said, “I am so happy to have you all back for the new academic year. I hope you will arrive every day eager to become the very best you can be.”

She waited for several seconds and a feeling of anticipation grew in the room. Then she began speaking in a quiet voice that grew stronger with each phrase: “Because I
believe
in your intelligence, talent, and goodness. I
believe
you are exceptional. I
believe
in you. I hope that you will learn to trust in
yourselves
. Trust in
goodness
. Trust in
Birch Grove
.”

She nodded and there was a moment of silence. Then the students began clapping and I was clapping, too, and when they stood and clapped louder, I clapped harder, too.

When we were dismissed, the atmosphere seemed energized as students streamed out of the building.

“She’s inspiring,” I said to Hattie.

“I know. She always makes me feel as if I can do anything.”

“She has that je ne sais quoi.” Mary Violet tugged my sleeve. “That’s French for ‘I’m totally clueless.’ French is the language of
amore,
and
amore
is Italian for love. What language are you taking?”

“Latin IV. It helps with scientific terms.”

“Do you want to be a doctor?” Hattie asked.

“I’m interested in forensic science.”

“Since all Romance languages come from Latin, it must be
terribly
romantic,” Mary Violet said. “I can come to you when I need details for my mysteries. Maybe I’ll write one about a Latin scholar who exhumes mummies and solves ancient murders.”

Constance said, “Mary Violet claims she’s going to be a novelist.”

“Why do you find that so difficult to believe?” Mary Violet demanded.

“Because you are the sissiest female in existence and I can’t see how you plan to write gory scary stories.”

“That’s why it’s called
creative
writing, because you make it all up. Let’s do lunch.”

They began walking toward the parking lot and I turned to go back to my cottage. Hattie came back and hooked her arm through mine. “You have to come with us. Our treat, as a welcome to Birch Grove.”

Hattie stood in the shadow of a tree, so I couldn’t read her expression. “It’s okay, Hattie. You don’t need to babysit me.”

“It’s not babysitting. It’s…” She shrugged. “It’s hard changing schools and figuring things out. I’d want someone to give me the dish.”

“Okay.” But I thought that she was being overly friendly.

As I walked with them to Hattie’s gleaming red BMW, a stunning tall girl with long, wavy tawny hair crossed the parking lot in front of us. She saw our group and sneered. “Hi, sad little juniors.”

“Hi, Catalina,” Hattie’s group responded.

The girl’s amber eyes settled on me. Her full lips curved downward sullenly. “You’re new. Who are you?”

“I’m Jane Williams. I transferred in,” I said with a sharp edge in my voice. I almost preferred her direct hostility to the other girls’ unnatural friendliness.

“She’s living in the groundskeeper’s cottage,” Mary Violet said.

Catalina frowned. “What happened to Mrs. Radcliffe’s charity project?”

“If you mean Bebe, she went to Europe.” Hattie opened the car door. “See you later, Cat.”

“TTF Never.” The tall girl walked off with a swing of her hips.

Mary Violet said, “I call shotgun.”

We got in the car, and I asked, “Who was that?”

Hattie started the engine while Mary Violet fiddled with the music. “I’m feeling Pink today,” she said, and “Trouble” began playing. “That was Catalina Sachs-Montes, the Argentine princess. Not that she’s really a princess. She just acts like one. She speaks five languages, including Russian, so she thinks she’s special.”

“I speak four languages,” Constance said.

“Five is the tipping point,” Mary Violet answered. “Cat’s little sister, Adriana, is starting this year. She’s much nicer. She had class after me at Miss Harlot’s School of Croquet.”

“Mary Violet means Miss Charlotte’s School of Ballet,” Constance said. “That’s where we met when I was six and moved to Greenwood from Barbados. All the other girls wore leotards, but MV was a roly-poly thing flouncing in a pink tutu.”

“I was as graceful as a swan and I had a fabulous sense of style even then.” Mary Violet adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see me.

“Why are we always talking about you, Mary Violet?” Hattie moved the mirror back as she maneuvered around students to the street. “Jane, Catalina’s a senior and she’s very … very Catalina. Don’t let her get to you.”

Mary Violet twisted to face me. “She’s one of those foreigners who thinks Americans are gauche, which is French for oh-my-gawd-how-tacky. Unlike Constance, who thinks Americans are frivolous.”

“Not all Americans, only you,” Constance said.

I automatically scoped for cops as Hattie drove us off campus, but no one else seemed concerned. “I thought you had to be eighteen to drive other teens.”

“Oh, no one pays attention to that here,” Hattie said. “It’s fine as long as you live in Greenwood.”

Mary Violet said, “My grandparents let my mother drive when she was fourteen. She was an excellent driver and hardly ever got in accidents. She did run over a possum once and we can make her cry about it if we pour her a second tipple of Dubonnet and ask her about its darling furry paws and adorable whiskered snout.”

I tried to remember
dubonnay
and
tipple
so I could find out what they meant later.

“You don’t,” Constance said.

“We absolutely do! My father is the worst. He always talks about the heartbroken possum husband searching for his dead possum wife. Sometimes I recite my poem ‘Requiem for a Marsupial.’”

Mary Violet switched off the music, and then threw out her arms as far as she could in the confines of the car.

“Oh, once you gamboled happily in a wood

Living, loving, gathering food…”

Constance said, “
Food
doesn’t rhyme with
wood,
” but we were all laughing, and Mary Violet continued:

“You cross the road exploring afar,

When you are crushed by a speeding car!

Alas, poor possum, you draw a last breath,

A Birch Grove girl has crushed you to death!”

She bowed her head.

“Brilliant as always, MV,” Hattie said. “Jane, as long as you’re wearing your uniform or you let people know that you go to Birch Grove, they’re okay. If bigger problems come up, Mrs. Radcliffe can take care of them. It’s easiest for everyone that way.”

Hattie parked in front of a small café called the Tea Stop, but the girls called it the Free Pop and explained that Birch Grove students always got a free soda with meals.

When I opened one of the laminated menus, Hattie said, “They don’t actually serve anything that’s on the menu. You have to order from the chalkboard. Our favorite is crab sandwiches on toasted white bread and Caesar salad.”

“I always get the cup of soup,” Mary Violet said. “Salad gets stuck in your teeth.”

Constance said, “Soup gets dropped on your boobs.”

“At least I
have
boobs,” Mary Violet snipped back.