Locked Inside (2 page)

Perhaps it had been then—and not at Skye’s death—that she had begun to feel the deep fear.

Now Marnie slumped in her chair and waited, unthinking, for the bell and release. She had the beginnings of a headache. It was lack of sleep. Only that.

She blamed the Elf. Before he came online, she used to play for only two or three hours a night.

Ms. Slaight worsened the headache immediately after class. “I have English,” Marnie said to her. “Can’t we do this later?” But she wasn’t surprised when the peculiar teacher merely pointed, silently, at the chair next to her desk. Marnie sat down sideways, on the edge. Then, as Ms. Slaight spoke, Marnie mouthed the words just a breath behind her. She’d heard it all recently, from other teachers. Ms. Slaight was not very original. And she spoke almost robotically, as if she’d memorized the little speech from a book on teaching methods.

You’re not trying. You’re a smart girl, clearly able to do the work. I’m willing to hear about any personal problems. I would like to help. We can arrange a conference.
…

Marnie didn’t say anything, and Ms. Slaight got more and more angry, even offended. “Look at me!” she exclaimed finally. Marnie did so, with her best blank face. Ms. Slaight had gotten quite red. She was practically spitting. Marnie wondered, idly, if you could have a heart attack when you were only around thirty, or if you had to spend decades working yourself into fits first.

“Marnie Skyedottir,” Ms. Slaight said. Again she leaned viciously on Marnie’s last name. “You really think you’re someone.”

Marnie stilled. Then her tired mind replayed the exact way the chemistry teacher had pronounced
Skyedottir
just now, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. At once Ms. Slaight made sense. All this rage was somehow aimed at Skye. This was a person
who had found Skye—her idiosyncratic belief system, her writings and speeches, her wealth and success, her oddities, her flaunted fatherless daughter—personally offensive. There were such people. Max had a whole file cabinet filled with old hate mail. Marnie had once overheard him speaking with Mrs. Shapiro about it.

Marnie discovered her fists were clenched. She might criticize Skye herself sometimes, in the far reaches of her own head, but that anyone else should dare!

“In this world,” Ms. Slaight had gone on, “you’ll find that princessy behavior will get you precisely nowhere. In this world, an attitude like yours—”

Marnie stood up and, startled, Ms. Slaight stopped speaking. Marnie looked her right in the eye. In a heartbeat, several possible things to say flashed into her mind. What she, Marnie
Skyedottir
, thought of creepy skinny ugly chemistry teachers and
their
attitudes. The fact that she, Marnie
Skyedottir
, was rich (or would be) and Ms. Slaight wasn’t and
that
was what the world cared about, not chemistry tests. That Ms. Slaight needed to get a life, quick, because the one she had right now was a pretty sorry excuse. In the opinion of Marnie
Skyedottir.

She did not say any of these things. Instead, she carefully turned her head to the side, presenting Ms. Slaight with a full view of her right cheek. Then, as carefully, and smiling, she turned her face the other way, showing the other cheek.

Matthew 5:39.

Ms. Slaight got it. She gasped. Marnie coolly brushed past her and walked out of the classroom. She even made it to English on time. That would have made her laugh if, underneath it all, she hadn’t been so angry.

It wasn’t important, she tried to tell herself. People like Ms. Slaight were not important. Skye would say … well.

Actually, Skye would not approve. Skye would say that Marnie had misapplied Matthew.

But then, Skye had never been Skye’s daughter.

Marnie took in a calming breath. She would not think about it. She would not.

Tonight she would track down the Elf and get back her spellbook. He’d be online; he always was lately. In fact, he’d been teasing her, or rather, the Sorceress, very particularly for a few weeks now. It was time to crush him for his impertinence.

Maybe in the tunnels below the city? Marnie knew Paliopolis better than anyone except its programmers and the Dungeon Master, and even without her spellbook, she had a trick or ten.

As her English teacher drew a triangular diagram of a well-constructed essay on the white board, Marnie planned her evening, mentally mapping out the tunnels and sewers and traps and dangers of the cyberspace world of Paliopolis. The Elf had the overconfidence of a lucky newbie. And okay, he was a little smart, too. But that didn’t matter. If she didn’t get him in the next few
days, she’d get him next week during spring break. She’d said no to Max about going home to New York, and so she’d be right here at school. She’d have long uninterrupted hours available to go online.

The Elf had better watch out.

T
his year, eleventh grade, was Marnie’s fifth year of boarding school, but she had never become accustomed to the communal meals. It wasn’t the food—if there wasn’t something edible served, you could always have salad, or toast with peanut butter. No, it was all the people. There was always someone looking at her, even after all this time at the school. People never stopped looking, covertly, at Skye’s daughter. Marnie used to wonder what they were hoping to see. That had been one reason why, when she was fourteen, she’d chopped off most of her hair and then bleached the rest white as dandelion fluff. With the careful half-inch of dark at the roots, it screamed fake. Marnie loved it. It gave the gawkers something real to talk about; something that was her choice. On top of that, any time she got really scared, really shy, she’d paint huge circles of black eyeliner around her eyes. If she also put on
her favorite neon pink T-shirt—far more noticeable than black—and her entire collection of heavy silver rings and chains, she could face just about anyone.

Marnie’s first boarding school—her first school, in fact, because before that Skye had taught Marnie at home—had been a bigger, coed institution, with a cafeteria. Marnie had looked ordinary then, except for the shocking resemblance to Skye. In that cafeteria, she had had to walk through the press of tables that were full of other kids, teachers, and the occasional headmaster or dean before she could finally get into line with a tray. She’d felt everyone watching her back while she went through the line. Then, when she’d finally emerged with food, she’d had to turn and survey the sea of faces again, looking for a table at which she could reasonably sit and eat.

It didn’t help that there were at least a dozen other “celebrity” kids at that first school. Their parents were famous actors or corporate titans or rock stars. Whereas Skye was an ex-gospel singer who’d started her own … well, some said it was practically a religion. Suffice it to say that Skye was not the same kind of celebrity parent that those other kids had.

Strange, was what the other kids called Marnie. Maybe it was true. Marnie suspected that there was more to strangeness than the dictionary would have you think. As Skye had often said,
If you want things to be simple, sweetheart, you should go ahead and end it all right now.
Which was not typical advice, Marnie now knew, to give to your daughter when she—for example—complained about long division.

The feeling of being watched always came back at mealtimes.

Halsett Academy for Girls, located in semirural Halsett, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, did not have a cafeteria. Instead, there was a rather pretty Victorian dining hall, with floral wallpaper and tables of dark wood at which you had an assigned place. Initially, Marnie had thought this a better system. But you could always leave a cafeteria, while here, during dinner, you had to sit for a full hour, passing platters under the eyes of the staff. Marnie hadn’t decided if it was better or worse now that, because she was an upperclasswoman, her table was free of a permanent, assigned supervisor.

This evening, Marnie came to dinner at the last possible moment—she’d have skipped the meal if it wouldn’t have stirred up more trouble than she wanted to deal with just now—because she’d been putting the finishing touches on her plan to confound the Elf. Even now, as she slipped into the last available chair at her table, she was still thinking about it. She’d had one idea after another, fountaining, all afternoon. She nodded a vague hello to the table of girls and quickly bowed her head for grace.

Grace at Halsett Academy was a gentle melody with inoffensive, nondenominational lyrics. (
Might as well sing to your big toe, if you’re not going to bother even mentioning God
, Skye would have said.) Marnie didn’t join in, but she didn’t mind listening, either. Some of the girls had nice voices. Jenna Lowry had a clear soprano; Tarasyn Pearce a powerful alto, almost a tenor. Tarasyn’s voice had actually shocked Marnie the first time she’d heard it, so similar
was it to Skye’s. But here in the dining hall, it was muted somewhat by the other voices, including a couple that could have flattened small hills. Marnie herself, for reasons she’d never bothered to investigate, had never done more than mouth the words. She just didn’t care to sing publicly, she had explained early in the year. She knew they’d probably thought she’d inherited Skye’s voice. Ha.

The song ended, and the bustle of the meal began. Barb Schulman asked for the butter and Marnie passed it over, for the first time looking up fully and seeing—Mrs. Fisher. Mrs. Fisher, dorm counselor, was sitting two tables away with a group of sophomores. But she was regarding Marnie steadily, frowning slightly. Defiantly, Marnie caught her eye and stared right back.

Had Ms. Slaight talked to Mrs. Fisher? Even if she left out Marnie’s gospel-inspired insult—and for some reason Marnie figured she would—she could have displayed Marnie’s artistic chemistry test. More trouble … when all Marnie wanted, really, was to be left alone. Was that too much to ask?

Marnie broke eye contact with Mrs. Fisher. If only she could quit school altogether. But how would she live? She didn’t get Skye’s money for years, and Max had made it abundantly clear that she was to stay in school. Could she get a job? But doing what? Trouncing elves?

Still aware of Mrs. Fisher’s gaze, Marnie pretended to be as interested as the rest of the table in what Dorothea Polley was saying about college. One of the things Marnie liked to do was to imagine that the speech coming out of the other girls’ mouths
was enclosed in big cartoon balloons. When anyone got too bombastic, Marnie would pull out an invisible hatpin—a long silver one with a pearl on the end, she’d decided—deftly skewer the balloon, then watch the imaginary letters flutter to the floor in glorious disarray. Pop! Pop! Pop! It was
Sesame Street
run amok, and made dinner considerably more enjoyable.

“What I want,” Dorothea was now saying intensely, “what I think I need, is a really, really good drama department. And lots of opportunities to actually
act.
I mean, a college that doesn’t just offer a drama
major—lots
of places do that—but somewhere that does a lot of
productions.
A
range
of productions. Everything from
Shakes
peare to … to …” Dorothea’s arm swept the air. “… to, oh, you know, someone very modern like …” The arm again; Marnie groped in the seam of her jeans for her hatpin. “… like … like …”

“Like Chekhov?” Jenna Lowry supplied.

Almost against her will, Marnie turned her head to glance at Jenna’s expressionless face. Jenna, who was pretty, athletic, popular, and famous throughout Halsett for being gifted at literature … but who was not usually openly vicious.

Dorothea was bestowing a warm smile on Jenna. “Yes,” she said. “That’s
exactly
the kind of contemporary writer I mean.”

“I thought so,” murmured Jenna. Marnie watched her exchange a fast look with Tarasyn, with Barb. Dorothea, predictably, missed the byplay completely.

And suddenly Marnie was filled with a nameless
rage. So what if Dorothea didn’t know Chekhov from someone Jenna “Lit/Crit” Lowry might condescend to call “modern”? So what if Dorothea was uninformed, or even an idiot? She didn’t deserve to be mocked in public.

“Wait a minute,” Marnie said, interrupting the conversation Jenna had just started about some new movie. Everyone turned, in surprise, toward her; Marnie rarely spoke at meals. “I thought Chekhov was a nineteenth-century playwright,” she said aggressively to Jenna. “Russian, right?
The Cherry Orchard? Uncle Vanya?
”

A second passed.

Then Jenna said, blandly: “Ah, Marnie, you’re thinking of
Anton
Chekhov. Dorothea and I were discussing
Jessica
Chekhov. Jessica’s work is very, uh, avant-garde.”

“Yes, that’s right!” put in Dorothea emphatically. But she spoke a little too quickly, and you could see the alarmed white around her eyes.

Marnie ignored her. She gave Jenna a long stare. Jenna, also carefully not looking at Dorothea, lifted her chin and gave Marnie a very cool, challenging look right back.

Marnie felt her left hand clench in her lap. She had forgotten entirely about her imaginary hatpin. “I’ve never heard of this Jessica Chekhov. What plays has she written, Jenna? Enlighten my ignorance.”

Jenna’s chin had gone farther up. “Dorothea? Fill Marnie in.”

“No,” Marnie began. “Jenna, you’re the one who—”

But Dorothea had opened her mouth. “Uh, everyone knows about Jessica Chekhov … Her first play was … was on Broadway … Leonardo DiCaprio was in it …” She stuttered on, saying one ridiculous thing after another and, throughout, staring at Marnie—not at Jenna—with helpless, increasing hatred.

Everyone sat frozen at the table. Not one person moved to stop Dorothea’s babble as it increased in speed and volume and silliness—

Finally Marnie couldn’t stand it. “Shut up, Dorothea,” she said sharply. It worked like a slap. Dorothea drew a deep breath, looking as if any minute she would burst into a storm of tears. And in the piercing moment of complete silence that followed, all the other girls looked at Marnie as if
she
had done something awful.