Devilish (6 page)

I sidestepped as gingerly as I could between desks and made it to my own. Of course, once I was there, I had to get my books out. I had never noticed before how loud this was—the deafening rip of my zipper, the unbearable scratching sound of pages being turned. The fact that Sister chose to ignore me was about ten times worse than getting chewed out. It seemed to suggest that she was waiting to unleash something truly unholy on me at any moment.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that there was a strange girl at Allison’s desk. My brain played a bit of a trick on me because though I could see the girl was in a St. Teresa’s uniform, I first assumed she was a visiting student, sitting in on a class. Over the next few seconds, my brain re-scanned the image and told me something stranger.

That girl was Allison. In a wig.

At least, my brain said, that’s what it had to be because whatever was on her head was not the Ally fro I knew and loved. Instead of her somewhat washy red blond, her hair was a blitz of cascading deep red, with a blond streak coming right out of the front. Plus, most of it was gone. It had been chopped into a pert little bob, right at the point where her hair usually bent and started to look awkward. Now it looked like a little red helmet.

It was adorable. It even made her forehead look perfectly proportioned.

“Miss Jarvis,” Sister said, “as you’ve developed a very becoming slack jaw, perhaps you’d like to tell us about the kinds of rhetorical appeals that we may utilize in composition?”

I searched around in my head for an answer, but a tiny red-helmeted cartoon figure of Allison was running around, scrambling the normally well-ordered facts.

“There are three basic kinds of appeals,” I said. “There’s …”

All I could think about was that shiny red bob.

“… logos. That’s the appeal to …”

The shiny redness of it. That was my best friend’s
head
. The head of the girl who had had the same exact hairstyle since the sixth grade. A kind of … lumpy thing.

“… reason. There’s also …”

Nothing. White noise. I looked at Sister, but her image was hazy to me. My face fell soft and dumb and blank.

“I see,” she said. “The great Miss Jarvis does not know. Are you too warm, Miss Jarvis?”

I didn’t reply. Sister shifted her gaze to Allison.

“Miss Concord,” she said. “I see you have recovered. And it looks like you’ve spent the evening at the hairdresser. I think you might have spent it better sitting at home and reading your book. But perhaps you can contribute something to this conversation?”

The voice that came from the redheaded girl was calm
and clear, not the dry stuttering that was so soothing and familiar.

“There’s also pathos,” it said. “The appeal to emotion, and ethos, which is when you try to convince the audience that they should listen to you because you have a good character and you are knowledgeable.”

Sister stood very still and took a good look at Allison. It seemed like she was seeing her for the first time.

“Oh?” she said. “This is certainly interesting. Can you elaborate?”

“Well, Sister,” Allison said, “Cicero, maybe the most famous of Roman orators, said the last method, ethos, is really kind of conceited, but it works. He used it a lot himself. He felt that it should only be used in the exordium, the introduction.”

This was enough of a unusual occurrence to get the attention of everyone in the room. They were all looking at Allison now.

“Could it be,” Sister said, “that a St. Teresa’s girl has actually read her book and taken note of its contents? My prayers have not gone unanswered.”

I didn’t have to turn and look to know that the red-headed girl smiled. I could feel it in my spine.

I cornered Ally the second the bell rang.

“Your hair,” I said. “What did you
do
to it?”

She reached up and touched her head gently, as if she was petting a baby bunny I had just informed her was squatting there.

“I just decided I needed a change,” she said. “So I went out last night and got my hair done. Do you like it?”

“It’s nice,” I said uncertainly. “I’m just getting used to it. I wish you had told me.”

“I don’t actually need permission from you to get my hair done,” she snapped.

Ally had never snapped at me before.

“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I was just worried.”

“I think you’re pissed off that I knew something you didn’t,” she said. “Feeling stupid sucks, huh?”

And with that, she walked away.

I’d never argued with Allison before. Allison was my best friend. A fight between us was so unfamiliar and unexpected—something unthinkable, like someone in their first earthquake, unable to accept the fact that the earth is wiggling like jelly under their feet. Literally. I felt a little unsteady as I went down the hall.

That’s when I noticed that all of those flyers were gone. Not even a piece of tape remained to show where they had been.

At the end of the day, all I really wanted to do was go home. I still had no keys, though. That meant I had to go all the way across town to The Pink Peppercorn to borrow my mom’s. I snagged a chunk of apricot cheesecake on the way out and ate it with my fingers right out of the bag.

As I was leaving, a little sports car approached. It was small and tight in an autobahn-ready kind of way and was a steely shade of silver. The back of it was swollen and curvy, and the front was very small, with the two front wheels set off from the body of the car. It pulled along the curb. A man in a very neat pin-striped suit stepped out and came over to the menu case, near where I was standing with my hand in a gloopy mess of cheesecake.

“Can you tell me,” he said, “what time this restaurant opens? I have heard some very good things about it.”

“I think … five, maybe?” I said.

“Don’t you work here?”

“No.”

He stepped back and looked me up and down, then nodded in satisfaction.

“That is a school uniform you’re wearing,” he said. “Not the uniform of a waitress. My apologies.”

“Don’t worry about it. But it is a good restaurant. My mom works here.”

“
Does
she?” He seemed delighted by this. He leaned over me to examine the menu in its little glass box, mumbling some appreciation under his breath.

“A pumpkin risotto. How apropos for this time of year. And a lovely lamb chop with sauté of baby vegetables. Oh yes. Delectable. I do like my food
young
. But what would
you
recommend?”

This was unpleasant and affected but not entirely unexpected. Providence does attract a lot of freaky foodies.

“The squid’s good,” I said. “They stuff it with fennel. Or something.”

“Ah. Calamari. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

A dog’s black muzzle popped out of the car window and sniffed at the air eagerly.

“Providence is a fine town for dining,” the man went on, tapping on the glass with his finger. “I think it rivals New York. And so many fine houses. Many of the lovely houses in this town …”

He stopped tapping and swung his gaze up suddenly.

“Do you know what paid for many of them?” he asked.

I remained silent, like you’re supposed to do when
someone wants to impress you with something they know.

“Slavery,” he said, grinning slowly, revealing a mouth full of small, delicate teeth. “Strange how there’s a dark underbelly to so many beautiful things.”

“There’s a lot of ugly history,” I said. “I guess every place has a hidden story.”

“That is absolutely true,” he said. Something in my answer seemed to have pleased him because he extended his hand in a very businesslike fashion. I’m not used to getting handshakes, so I took it uncertainly. His hand was freezing, and his skin was almost gray, but his nails were better manicured than mine (meaning, they were manicured) and his grip was firm. If he noticed the traces of cheesecake on my fingers, he didn’t show it.

“My name is Mr. Fields, by the way. And what is yours, young lady?”

“Jane,” I said.

“An excellent, simple name but one of greatness! And certainly one with history. There was a queen of England named Jane. She was queen for nine days.”

“Jane Grey,” I said. “I know. I was named for her.”

This was true. I was named for Jane Grey, and my sister was named for Joan of Arc. Both great women of history—both met very bad ends. I don’t know what my parents were trying to tell us with that one.

“This interests me very much,” Mr. Fields said, pulling a pair of round glasses from his breast pocket and putting
them on hastily to examine me more closely. “You were named for her, you say?”

I nodded.

“You must be an exceptional young lady,” he said. “I can see that. Lady Jane Grey—she too was an exceptional young lady. Fifteen years old and nine days of total power before they beheaded her.”

He seemed to be drawing a line with his eyes across my neck. I pulled up the collar of my coat.

“It was a pleasure speaking to you, Jane,” he said. “We will return at five to enjoy some lamb chops, which I am certain will be excellent. Have a very good day.”

He walked back to his car and drove off. He slowly wove away, leaving me to wonder about the general weirdness that was following me. There was something wrong in Providence today, and I, for one, was going home to hide from it.

On the trolley home, I tried to read our English assignment, the first two chapters of
Moby Dick
. It was a fish book. I wasn’t feeling it. I took out a vampire novel called
Fondled by Shadows
that Ally had given me a few weeks before and tried to lose myself in that. Vampires had never done much for me, but Ally loved them. (Basically, if it had a witch or a vampire in it, Ally was there.) I tried as hard as I could, but I bailed at the first glint of pointy teeth and shoved it back into my bag.

I looked out of the window to see that the sky had gone from gray to a kind of milky green, and it had begun to move, like it was being slowly stirred by a great celestial spoon. The heat that had crushed us the entire day lifted all at once, and by the time I got off, there was a decidedly cool edge to the air. Weather, I knew, was not supposed to change that quickly—and if it did, something was about to happen. I had several blocks before I would be home, and I wanted to make it.

As I exited the trolley, I felt a sharp sting on the soft, very thin skin just under my right eye. It felt exactly like the time Allison accidentally pennied me in the face when we were sophomores. I wiped it off my face. It was a tiny piece of ice.

“Not good,” I said to myself, speeding up.

Something landed by my feet—something that looked like a small Ping-Pong ball but was also a piece of ice. I heard a
clunk
. A car alarm behind me went off. Another clunk came from next to me. An ice ball bounced heavily off the hood of a car. The sound of ice hitting metal and the echo of car alarms ran the entire length of the street.

I broke into a full run and the pelting really began. A chunk of ice punched right through someone’s mailbox like it was made of paper. My legs were pumping harder than I’d ever forced them to go. I heard a windshield break at the same time I felt something like a baseball hit my ankle and I went down in the street.

“Move, Jane,” I told myself as I got to my feet. Ice clipped my ear, my left hand. I was hobbling, and I wasn’t sure where to go. There was ice smacking down all around, golf-ball-sized and getting bigger.

Suddenly, an arm was scooping me up and hustling me along. I glanced over at its owner, a tall, young-looking guy.

“Over there,” he said, dragging me in the direction of a large blue house with a full wraparound porch. We literally threw ourselves up its steps and under its overhang.

I took a closer look at the guy who had just plucked me from the street. He was a very reedy Sebastian’s student. His uniform was grossly oversized, cinched together by a belt. He had slightly shaggy light red hair and a very finely featured face, with a tiny nose and thin, peaked eyebrows.

“I don’t know about this porch roof,” he said, looking up at the beams overhead. The volley of ice struck our shelter with such force that it was hard to hear him speak. I had to move closer.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t think we have much choice. It’s not like we can rebuild it right now.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully, as if this had been a serious proposition.

The rain gutter came down with a deafening clang, spearing a shrub like a big white toothpick through a cocktail olive.

“You should get your weight off that ankle,” he said. “Sit down.”

He helped me onto a rocking chair. I pushed down my sock and examined the fist-sized blue mark that was blossoming there. It immediately overshadowed the marks I’d gotten on my knees that morning.

“I bet that hurts,” he said, squatting to have a good look. “But it’s probably not broken.”

I realized I hadn’t had a chance to shave my legs that morning and pulled the sock up.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m Jane, by the way.”

“I’m Owen.”

“So, you’re a freshman at Sebastian’s?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Your uniform,” I said. “It has the freshman look. It’s too big.”

I didn’t mean anything by it, but he pulled selfconsciously at his shirt. Sometimes I forget that guys also care about what their clothes look like.

A small black cat scrambled up onto the porch and joined us. As soon as it had reached safety, it started meowing plaintively and ran to me as if it knew me. It wanted to rub against my ankle, but it was too sore. Owen found a plastic bag in his backpack and made me an impromptu ice pack, then he patrolled the edge of the porch, watching the progress of the storm.

“So how do you like Sebastian’s?” I asked.

“All high schools are the same,” he said. “I guess it’s kind of easier having all guys. It keeps you focused.”

This was not the point of view of the average freshman Sebastianite. When not snorting, bouncing soccer balls off their heads, or destroying the mansion they occupied, they were up to other equally high-minded pursuits. These ranged from becoming acolytes just so they could hang out in our chapel, to clinging to the fence after school and shouting things like, “I like your bra. Can I see it?”