Family Storms (40 page)

“Theirs weren't permanent, then. They showed them to me to fool me,” I said. “I'm not lying. I didn't seduce Ricky
Burns on his boat. They gave me something to drink that was supposed to help my seasickness, only it made me feel weird. They were all in the room. I was raped!” I cried.

Mr. March stopped pacing and looked at Mrs. March. “This is no good, Jordan. We're talking about a first-class scandal here.”

“I know,” she said in a voice of defeat.

He pointed at me. “You don't go making such an accusation, Sasha. Tom Burns is an influential businessman. His chain of pharmacies is one of the most successful in the state. He'd destroy us in such a fight. I don't want to hear that you've told this story to anyone at school. Is that understood? Is it?”

“Yes, but it's true.”

“Don't dare speak it,” he said, punching each word. He turned to Mrs. March. “I want you to move her out of Alena's room for now. Put her in one of the guest rooms away from Kiera. I don't know what's wrong with you, Sasha,” he said, turning back to me. “Maybe your life on the streets made you sly and clever in your battle to survive. Maybe you saw an opportunity in Mrs. March. She's taken the loss of our daughter very hard. Maybe I need to send both you and Kiera to therapists. Whatever. But for now, I want no more talk about any of this. I'll look into seeing what the best alternatives for you are. For the time being, go to the school we have had you going to. Do your work, and stay out of trouble. Come directly home after your school activities, and do not go out and about on weekends. Am I clear?”

“Yes.”

“You did impress me when you first came here. I have to believe that indicates you have good qualities. My advice is for you to nurture them and nothing else. You want to add anything, Jordan?”

“No,” she said.

“Tell Mrs. Duval to move her things immediately, then.”

She nodded and looked at me. “Go up and put together what you want to take to the guest room, Sasha. I'm sorry, but Mr. March is right. We want you away from Kiera.”

“And out of Alena's room,” he emphasized.

“Someday you'll know that I wasn't lying, and you'll be sorry,” I said. “And I'll feel sorrier for you than I do for myself.”

I walked out and up the stairs, but I felt like a sleepwalker. When I reached Kiera's room, she opened the door. She must have been waiting right there, listening for my footsteps. She stepped out and smiled at me.

“I feel I should tell you something,” she began. “The second set of pills I gave you …”

“Where are they? What about them?”

“They were fertility pills. Ricky's father owns a drugstore chain, remember? He can get anything. Maybe you'll have twins.”

The heat that came into my face made me feel that I would go up in flames.

“Why did you do all this to me?” I asked.

She smiled. “My parents started to love you more than they loved me. That was the way it was when Alena was alive, and I wasn't going to let it happen again. Aren't my friends loyal? They're so wonderful.

“Besides,” she said, losing her smile of satisfaction to the hard, cold face I had first known, “I told you. It was your mother's fault. She shouldn't have crossed the highway there.” She closed the door softly.

I felt like someone in a coffin who wasn't really dead watching the lid being shut.

31
Darkness

A
lthough the guest room wasn't as large as Alena's suite and didn't have a sitting area where I could set up my schoolwork, it was luxurious, with a king-size bed and a thick-carpeted floor. It had a very nice bathroom, too, but the room was in a wing of the house that was darker and lonelier, not that I wanted to be anywhere near Kiera ever again. She claimed the same about me and wouldn't eat dinner if I was at the table at the same time. Her father accommodated her wishes and ordered Mrs. March to have me served my dinner an hour earlier than when they ate. Every night of the following week, I ate dinner alone in the kitchen nook. By now, all of the servants working for the Marches knew that something was seriously wrong, but no one asked me any questions about why I was being isolated, nor did anyone speak much more to me than was absolutely necessary, even though I could see sympathy in both Mrs. Duval's and Mrs. Caro's faces. I imagined they were all worried about losing their jobs.

Grover was driving me to school again but was back to his silent, formal ways.

I didn't know what to expect when I returned to school on Monday. At first, no one noticed anything really different until lunch hour, when I ended up sitting by myself. That was when the buzz began. The stories about me couldn't have been passed around quicker even in a general announcement over loudspeakers.

I had no idea exactly what the girls were saying about me yet, but Lisa Dirk couldn't wait to be a messenger. She came sauntering over and slid into the seat across from me.

“How come you're sitting all by yourself?” she asked. It was obvious that she knew the answer. My senior girlfriends didn't want me, and I didn't want them.

I didn't reply. I just ate with my gaze focused on nothing, least of all her.

“Is it true what we hear?” she asked. “About you and Ricky Burns?”

I put my sandwich down and leaned toward her. The expression on my face frightened her, and she pulled back.

“I don't know what you heard, and I really don't care.”

“We heard that you threw yourself at him on his boat. You called him from a stateroom, and you were naked,” she blurted.

“They're spreading lies about me,” I said, even though I knew it would be useless and a waste of time to defend myself. It was like holding back a waterfall with your bare hands. They were a chorus of gossipers, and I was a lone, lost voice.

“I'd never guess you were like that,” Lisa said, ignoring my denial. “To go after a senior boy so desperately is sad.”

“Sad?”

I was holding back a flood of truth with a dam made of paper. It was charging down my tongue. I was moments away from telling it all.
I'm not Kiera's cousin. While she was high on some drug, Kiera ran my mother and me over and killed my mother. Her mother took me in, enrolled me in this school, and made up that story.

For a moment, I thought I had actually shouted it all, broken through the dam, but I quickly realized that what kept the dam secure was my fear that telling the truth about myself would only alienate me even more from my classmates. Who would want to be friends with a homeless girl? No one in that school would want to be seen talking to me. That was for sure.

I couldn't skip all of that and defend myself by telling Lisa I had been raped, either. Mr. March had forbidden me to say it. I could only swallow it all back and ignore everyone, but that was hard to do. By the end of the day, I felt covered in cobwebs of lies and distortions. There wasn't an eye not looking my way or a tongue not wagging about me. I might just as well have been walking around naked. My limping was nothing when it came to drawing attention compared with the globs of mud thrown at me. In fact, they almost didn't notice my limp, because they were too busy elaborating on the lies about my sexual exploits and sly ways. They saw only this promiscuous new student who probably had a bad reputation at her old school. In their minds, that was why I was so mysterious when it came to my past.

I did the best I could in my favorite class, art, but when I tried to start a new calligraphy project, I could only think
of the horrible tattoo on my back and sat there for the longest time staring at blank paper. Mr. Longo kept coming over and encouraging me, but by the time the bell rang, I had hardly begun anything. I was the same earlier in music. I played my clarinet mechanically and so poorly that Mr. Denacio threw one of his famous fits.

“If I don't see an improvement in you soon,” he threatened, “I will have to reconsider appointing you to a position in the school band.”

I didn't protest. I had no enthusiasm for anything and plodded my way through the corridors from class to class. Occasionally, I caught sight of Kiera looking at me from across a hallway. At one point, I thought she looked amazed at how well her plan had succeeded. She seemed in awe of herself.

Ricky never gave me a second glance. A few times, I was tempted to walk up to him to ask him how he could be so cruel, but he and Boyd were always laughing, and I was sure that if I did speak to either of them, they would make me feel foolish and even more embarrassed than I already was.

Except for band practice on Tuesday and Thursday, I returned home immediately after school and went up to the guest room. I didn't start right in on my homework as I used to do. I sat for quite a while just looking out the window, wondering what I could possibly do now and where I would eventually end up. I was terribly worried about becoming pregnant. I had no idea what I would do if my period didn't come. I wanted to visit Mama's grave, hoping that somehow she would talk to me and tell me what I should do, but I was afraid to ask Mrs. March for anything.

Mrs. March didn't say much to me all week. When we
confronted each other, she looked as sad and as lost as I did. I was numb by now, but she still appeared to be on the verge of new tears. She did tell me that Mr. March was still researching what was best for me under the new circumstances. I understood that this didn't include my staying with them even like this. Sometimes, when I thought about all that Kiera had managed and how they had accepted everything she and her friends said as being true, I became more angry than sad for myself. I recalled the advice from Jackie, the nurse, and was tempted to threaten them with a lawsuit. I'd find my father, and he'd come back to do it.

Oddly, though, no matter how poorly I was being treated now, I couldn't harden my heart against Mrs. March, and I actually felt sorrier for Mr. March. Kiera had him so tightly wrapped around her finger that he couldn't see. Eventually, he would suffer some great tragedy. I went from wishing for it to chastising myself for wishing such evil things on someone.

In the midst of my misery, my loneliness in the dark side of the March mansion where my own footsteps echoed, I would find myself recalling some happier, sunnier moments with Mama, even on the streets after we had sold more than we had expected. She would splurge, and we'd have ice cream sundaes or get foot-long submarine sandwiches and sit out on the beach as if we were back to being as we once were. She didn't buy any alcohol with the extra money, so she was more like my mother again. She would tell me stories about her own youthful days in Portland, her boyfriends in high school, the plays she had been in, and the parties afterward.

I had heard many of the stories before, but for me, they were like the fairy tales other parents read to their children. Kids never heard them enough. You could recite them and know exactly what was coming next, but there was something special about having your mother or father read them repeatedly to you. It made you feel safe, wrapped securely in their love and in the magic they could conjure with their voices. The hard, cold world was kept outside. Nothing bad could happen, and you could slip softly into a comfortable sleep, unafraid of the darkness it necessarily had to bring along with it. There was always the promise of tomorrow.

Now there was no promise of tomorrow, and the cold, hard world had found its way to come back at me. There was no escape, no safety, and the darkness that came with sleep now was terrifying, not because it brought old ghosts and nightmares but because it made me blind and afraid to take another step forward, to have another thought, to dare to make another wish.

On Friday, Kiera broke her vow of silence when it came to me and approached me in the cafeteria, but it wasn't to express any regret or remorse. She didn't sit at my table. She stood across from me, keeping her distance as if she were afraid I might attack her.

“I see you're still having trouble making new friends,” she began, nodding at the empty chairs.