New Year's Eve (3 page)

Always sunglasses.

Some teachers made her take them off. Without sunglasses Gwynnie would blink steadily. If the teacher complained, Gwynnie would reply that bright light was destructive to her personality and it was essential to filter it.

She had as many wigs as she had sunglasses. A black sleek twenties' wig that curved over Gwynnie's cheek, frozen as if it were made of metal. A white-blonde wig of hair that reached her waist and stuck out on the sides an almost equal distance, so that she resembled a tent of hair. When she wore this Gwynnie had difficulty fitting in the classroom doorways.

Once in math Gwynnie gave herself a pedicure on her desk. The class watched fascinated as Gwynnie removed her orange running shoes and then two pairs of socks: high chartreuse argyle knee sox, next white ankle socks with turquoise lace trim. Gwynnie placed one large bare foot on her desk, brought out a little zipped leather foot-care kit and started in on her nails.

The math teacher deliberately ignored her.

They went on with their trigonometry, pretending nobody could hear the little rasp of Gwynnie's nail file.

Gwynnie was knitting a vast scarf on tiny gauge needles. The scarf appeared to use whatever yarn Gwynnie had found in the gutter or at a tag sale: all weights and colors knit haphazardly on the thin needles. The scarf was probably eight feet long now, but Gwynnie kept knitting. Whenever a class was boring, and often when it was not, Gwynnie would pull out her knitting, and begin another row.

Gwynnie's real hair was short with a single tiny braid right over her forehead. She frequently paused during tests to rebraid it. She was very good at braiding and could do three, four, or five strands. Beth Rose nearly failed a history quiz in November watching Gwynnie's thin fingers keep track of five skinny strands of hair and braid it down over her eyes, and nose, and mouth.

Sometimes Gwynnie sat with Beth's group at lunch. Anne might say, “I was thinking of going to Lord & Taylor's to look at lingerie.” And Emily would moan, “I'd go but I'm so broke. I might fall in love with something I can't get.” And Kip would say, “I never care about whether I can afford it. I just like to look at it and touch it.”

Gwynnie would say, “I prefer the West Indies.”

Everybody would sit for a moment studying their Jell-O and chicken noodle soup and wonder what to say to that.

It was Beth Rose's opinion that Gwynnie was not human.

“Then what is she?” Kip asked. “A vampire?”

“That seems all too possible,” Beth Rose admitted.

Nevertheless, they were all going to Gwynnie's after the ball at The Hadley. This was partly just to see Gwynnie's house. Her parents (who appeared to be quite normal for people whose daughter was a vampire) had built on a hill on the outskirts of Westerly. Easily visible from the road, the house was enormous and very modern, with vertical light-gray sheathing and windows that rose two stories. The house sprawled over the hillside and stabbed the sky. Beyond the four-car garage was an indoor swimming pool with jungle-like vines growing against the glass walls. A long driveway curved through a meadow, and the meadow became velvet lawn, and the lawn turned to manicured gardens. The doorway was marked by a six-foot piece of polished marble, which curved like a welcoming hand to show you where to enter.

In winter, the gray and glass house was sculpture against black silhouettes of trees and white billows of snow.

You would think that anybody who lived in that house would go back and forth to school in her own Jaguar. You would think the girl who lived there would look like her house: tall, sleek, elegant. But no, it was crazy Gwynnie who got off the schoolbus.

Beth Rose had always been afraid that Gary would drift on. Staying in one place did not suit his personality. But how—how!—could Gary have chosen bizarre, semi-human Gwynnie over her?

New girl in town. She took my man.

Oh, it sounded like a bad country and western song, didn't it? The Other Woman. The New Girl In Town. She Stole My Man.

Beth Rose forced herself to think about the ball.

Beth Rose had never been to The Hadley.

She did not have the kind of parents who dined there, or the kind of boyfriend who would take her, and she certainly did not have the money to go herself. The Hadley was the tallest building in Lynnwood, right downtown, part of the successful urban renewal in that city. Everybody said The Hadley would fail, nobody would rent offices there, nobody would open stores in the interior mall, nobody would park in the huge parking lot beside it. Most of all, everybody said nobody would pay all that money to eat in the revolving restaurant on the top floor.

To look at what? everybody demanded.

Horizons of Lynnwood and Westerly?

Maybe in New York they went up elevators in skyscrapers and sat in revolving restaurants, but not in Lynnwood. Those people are going broke, said everybody, nodding knowingly.

But they were wrong.

Everybody—even the people who said nobody would go there—went there.

And now, at last, Beth Rose would, too.

The Ball was being held in the revolving restaurant. They would dance far above the snow, and the floor beneath them would turn slowly, slowly, while the lights of the cars and the streets below became golden jewels in the dark night. The Hadley would fill with the throbbing rhythms of dance bands and the shouting screaming exhilaration of New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve, Beth Rose Chapman thought. I'm bald, my ears look like doorknobs, I'm going with Kip's little brother George, and I have an invitation to my ex-boyfriend's girlfriend's for breakfast.

The phone rang.

Her parents had already left for their New Year's Eve dinner and dance. She was home alone.

She picked it up.

“Beth Rose?” a peculiar voice said.

She didn't recognize the voice. “Yes?” she said.

“It's me,” the voice said.

Her mouth went dry. The voice was freakily high pitched. Somebody—somebody weird—disgusting—was this a—

“Beth Rose?” the voice said.

She tried to swallow. I should hang up, she thought. I'm alone. Somebody knows I'm alone.

Her hands grew slippery, and the telephone almost fell to the floor.

“Beth Rose, do you like dinosaurs?”

Well, it was not your typical obscene phone call, at least. “Oh, some of them,” she said. “Stegosaurus, he's kind of cute. Tyrannosaurus was never my favorite.”

“Oh, good. Kevin and Pete and I were just checking. Because Kip said if George really sent you a bouquet she'd shoot him, and we said that he could send it to us, we'd love to have a bouquet of dinosaurs. I guess he's sending it to you, though,” said the very high voice sadly.

“Jamie!” she exclaimed. “Jamie Elliott. You scared me.”

“I did?” Jamie said, thrilled at this compliment. “Wow.” And, totally satisfied by the conversation he hung up.

A bouquet of dinosaurs? Beth Rose thought. What word could he have misunderstood? She tried to think of flowers that sounded like dinosaurs: Orchids? Camellias? Red roses?

At last the doorbell rang. She ran down to get it, relieved to be away from her mirror, glad not to be alone in the house anymore. The phone call had spooked her. I won't tell Kip that Jamie called, she thought. Sometimes Kip gets awfully tired of four brothers, and she's as nervous as I am over how George is going to behave.

Beth Rose flung open the door to greet George and Kip and Mike.

A huge gorilla stood on her front steps.

Beth Rose screamed and tried to slam the door shut.

The gorilla put his foot in the door. “Get out, get away, go home!” Beth screamed.

“No, no, no! It's okay! I'm in a costume. I deliver balloon bouquets. I'm just making sure this is the right house! I'm not really a gorilla!”

Beth said, “Well, I am really having a heart attack. Why can't you deliver balloon bouquets like a normal person?”

“Oh, it's kind of an abnormal job, that's all. Sorry I shook you. Most people are half expecting these things, see.”

Beth Rose opened the door. It was quite odd to chat with a gorilla, and it was also cold. The snow drifted over the gorilla's shoulders. “Be right back with the bouquet,” the gorilla said, and he jogged out over the snow, doubtless starting a Big Foot legend in Beth's neighborhood, and came back from his van bearing a bouquet of Mylar balloons.

They were dinosaurs.

“Like it?” the gorilla asked anxiously. “It's a new one. I haven't delivered many yet. Your young man was very excited about it.”

Beth Rose took ten strings in her hand, and ten dinosaurs in silver, blue, scarlet, and gold bumped into her ceiling. “I was expecting flowers.”

“Oh. Well, you could pretend it's a wrist corsage. Here. I'll tie them to your wrist,” the gorilla said. His ordinary hands stuck out from the ends of his gorilla costume.

“I'm not sure I want them permanently attached, thank you,” Beth Rose said. So this was what Kip was going to shoot George for. A reasonable decision. She almost hoped Kip would. She said, “Thank you so much. And on New Year's Eve, too. You have quite a job.”

“Yup. Nine to go.”

“Nine more dinosaur bouquets in that van?” Beth Rose said.

“Oh, no. Nobody but you is getting a dinosaur bouquet tonight,” the gorilla said, as if this was an honor. “Everybody else is getting boring old hearts and Snoopys.”

“How nice,” Beth Rose said.

She walked into the house with her snow-dusted dinosaurs. With difficulty she tied the dinosaurs to the ruffle of brocade. All things considered, it seemed best not to look at herself in a mirror again.

The phone rang.

It was Jamie.

“Did he do it?” piped the five-year-old.

“Yes.”

“Did you like the gorilla?”

“I loved the gorilla.”

“George thought you would. Kip said it was a good thing George was only kidding.”

“I guess he wasn't kidding,” Beth Rose said.

“Elliotts never kid,” Jamie told her.

A
NNE AND EMILY WERE
fixing each other's hair. Emily had just taken the hot rollers out of her dark brown hair, and Anne was holding up the elegant braided switch to be fastened onto her gleaming yellow hair.

Emily was suffocating in the little dressing room off Anne's private bathroom. Anne had had ruffled curtains with a dozen yards of fabric put on the one tiny window, so that pale pink ruffles were everywhere, tightly packed on the little rod, and falling by the armload to the pink tile floor. The closets had shutter style doors, and the tall narrow white folding doors seemed to jut out, preventing Emily from taking a deep breath. Emily pulled up the narrow pink designer blinds, saw the snow falling outdoors, and felt a little better.

Anne stopped brushing. “Somebody might see in.”

On the second floor—in the middle of the woods—at night—when the snow was falling and visibility was six inches?

Emily sighed. They had had to make a great many compromises when Emily's parents threw her out and she moved in with Anne. Emily had made more than Anne, which was only fair—it was Anne's house, Anne's generosity. So Emily said, “Whoops. Sorry about that.” She pulled the blinds down and pretended not to care that the room had gotten tight and pink and small again.

How thrilled she had been to move in!

There was an extra bedroom which Mrs. Stephens let Emily redecorate. (Her own mother had never given Em a cent to spend on her room.) Em had always known when she decorated, she would pick the colors of sunshine: yellow on white. She wanted the darkest days to be lit up and warm. Yellow silk daffodils in a white china vase, white curtains, yellow coverlet, and a yellow framed mirror like a window to sunshine. Decorating her new room had truly been a breath of fresh air in Emily's dark life.

It surprised her that Anne's rooms were done in pink, when Anne's color was so clearly gold, too. Anne's hair gleamed like precious metal. If Emily had hair like that, she'd be in front of the mirror all day just admiring herself and her golden tresses.

Just the right thickness, too: not so thin it slipped out of pins, and not so thick it was hard to put up. Tonight Emily was fixing Anne's hair to match her evening gown.

The gown was black. Emily detested it. Okay, so black was sophisticated. So black was fashionable. So Anne looked fantastic in it: like a jewel on velvet.

But black hardened Anne and aged her. Anne had a lovely Laura Ashley dress: cotton with tiny flowers sprinkled among tiny vines, with puffy sleeves and a sash that doubled her waist and tied gently and was still long enough to fall to the faraway hem. That was what Emily wanted Anne to wear.

“Don't be ridiculous,” Anne said. “I might wear that to a party next April. On somebody's verandah, overlooking the tulips. But to a New Year's Eve Ball?”

Anne was right, of course. Anne had perfect fashion sense, and her mother and grandmother had all the money in the world to cater to that fashion sense.

The black dress was very dramatic: the skirt was satin and velvet in horizontal bands, while the top was a wool knit into whose lace thin black velvet ribbons were threaded. Into Anne's hair switch Emily was braiding three glittering rhinestone and velvet ribbons. The thick golden braid lay on Anne's slender back, sparkling against the black wool and the suggestive holes of the lace.

Anne would, as always, be the loveliest girl from Westerly High.

Emily often wondered how it felt inside to be so beautiful. She had thought once she began living with Anne she would learn, but Anne seemed to accept being beautiful as if it were the same thing as having a nose, or two elbows. It was just there. Anne never remarked on it and did not actually seem to notice it much.

Emily was wearing one of Anne's old dresses to the ball because she had no money to buy one of her own.