The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (3 page)

A CLUSTER OF ANGRY RED BUILDINGS SAT HIGH ON
a hill on the western edge of Belleville, overlooking the entire town—Impetus Academy: Where Tradition Meets Innovation.

Victoria and Lawrence approached the Academy up the familiar cobblestone streets, which were lined with iron-framed black signs saying things like
INSPIRATION
. Upon the Academy’s construction, the town planners renamed the surrounding roads with appropriately educational words:
INTEGRITY. CURIOSITY. MOTIVATION
.

Victoria’s chest pricked with satisfaction upon seeing those signs.
DISCOVERY. KNOWLEDGE.

VICTORY.

That one was Victoria’s favorite. It was as though her parents had always known she would be a winner. Her very name spoke of trophies, medals, and honor rolls. She thought of that ridiculous B and imagined it was that ugly bug she’d seen earlier on the walk. Then she imagined stepping on that bug, feelers and all, pop and crunch, its unacceptably mediocre guts splattering beneath her shoe.

The image helped. Victoria thinned her lips against the strange memory of Mr. and Mrs. Prewitt at the door of Lawrence’s house, and what Lawrence had said afterward. They’d been talking about his music, he said. That didn’t seem so awful—unless the Prewitts had finally grown tired of Lawrence doing nothing but pounding away at the piano. She couldn’t blame them for being angry, if that was the case; together, Lawrence and his music could drive anyone out of her mind.

Victoria glared over at him. Other students were joining them from the surrounding neighborhoods. “Tuck in your shirt,” she hissed at him. “For heaven’s sake.”

Lawrence shivered as they passed beneath a tree. “No,” he said, and when Victoria opened her mouth to say more, he cut her off. “Don’t, Vicky. Not today.”

Victoria paused at that. Lawrence shoved his hands into his pockets, his lanky shoulders so hunched they almost
brushed his ears. He kept glancing around them from beneath his hair. When another student bumped into them, Lawrence jerked back like someone had smacked him.

Victoria looked closer, narrowing her eyes into that awful, cutting look that Lawrence called her demon dazzle because it both terrified and paralyzed its victims. Lawrence hadn’t ever been truly scared of it, but he often humored her by staggering back, collapsing, and gasping for mercy. Victoria secretly found this incredibly amusing and gratifying but never told him so.

But Lawrence didn’t do anything like that this time. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice the dazzle. He ducked farther down between his shoulders and squeezed his book bag till his knuckles turned white.

The whole effect left Lawrence looking rather like a terrified skunk. But as odd as this was, Victoria was in no mood to pity him. He and his music and his understandably frustrated parents were not her problems. Her B burrowed into her brain till she could see nothing else.

“You’re hopeless, Lawrence Prewitt,” she snapped, and stalked away.

At the circle drive in front of the Academy’s entrance, silver cars lined up one after another. All the doors opened at once, and all the satellite radios were silenced with a
voice command from their drivers. All the children stepped out of their cars and onto the curb. All their parents waved good-bye and said, “Have a good day, Madison,” or Brooks, Avery, Harper, and on and on.

The cars zipped away in silent, orderly lines, over and over, circling through the Academy drive like busy metal creatures until more took their place. As Victoria passed their open doors, she heard the parents chatting and chirping about fancy soaps and organic tomatoes, diets and weight-loss something-or-others, salons and massages, the maid and the nanny. Their children filed into the Academy between mighty pillars. Then the next set of shining cars glided into place in a triumphant mechanical ballet till the first bell rang at seven forty-five.

Victoria marched straight into Building One, Room Seven, for Round Table. For half an hour each day before first period, everyone in her year gathered to discuss current events and Academy business. But what really happened, to Victoria’s disgust, was that the professors on Round Table rotation gossiped over yogurt, and the students played stupid truth-or-dare games, kissed their girlfriends and boyfriends, and snuck over to Room Eight, where the older kids were. Victoria caught bits of conversation from here and there, about who was going out with whom, the dress Bailey
Hightower had bought for the fall dance, and lip gloss.

Victoria turned up her nose in disgust at them all.
Doesn’t anyone talk about anything important?
she wondered.

“Oh, look. The Skunk’s in top form today,” Victoria heard someone whisper as she took her seat. She turned and saw Lawrence scurry in. He didn’t join her at the front table, where they usually sat alone—Victoria ready with her notebook open just in case one of the professors got ambitious, Lawrence scribbling in his composition notebook or doing something equally pointless.

Instead, Lawrence darted into one of the back corners and sat down as close to the wall as possible. He clutched his bag to his stomach and stared at the floor, his face set in grim lines.

Victoria frowned—at first because she wanted to slap Lawrence upside his head, and then because something cold slithered through Room Seven like a slow breeze. Victoria crossed her arms and shivered, but no one else around her seemed to notice.

The older, senior professors standing around the room stopped talking to watch Lawrence. Their eyes flickered over to him, and their posture sharpened. Some of their eyes flashed, and some of them seemed frightened for some reason, and some of their faces twitched with tiny, sharp
smiles. The smiles and twitches passed from one to the next and the next.

They seemed like wolves eyeing Lawrence as a possible snack.

Then the cold vanished.
Maybe it was only a little chill from outside
, Victoria thought.

The professors started talking again. Their eyes stopped flashing, and they looked normal once more.

“I think the Skunk’s finally losing it,” someone whispered, and Victoria turned to see Jill Hennessey leaning toward the others at her table. She stared right at Victoria, smirking.

“What do you think,
Vicky
?” Jill said, louder. She batted her eyelashes and flashed her perfect teeth. Some of the girls around her laughed. “You’d know, wouldn’t you? You two being so . . . 
close
.”

Victoria hated a lot of things about the world. She hated when Beatrice didn’t iron the pleats in her skirt right. She hated Mr. Tibbalt and his evil red lapdog, both of whom lacked any sort of personal hygiene and unfortunately lived just down Victoria’s street. She hated things that didn’t make sense.

She hated the B on her academic report.

She even hated Lawrence a little bit right now, what with how strangely he was acting.

But she hated none of that more than she hated Jill Hennessey, her nemesis, the one person in all the seventh-year students who cared about school as much as Victoria did. Jill, who fought with Victoria to be the first to answer questions, to write the longest papers, to be top of the class.

Jill, who could never,
ever
know about Victoria’s B.

Victoria stared at Jill and her frozen smile. Jill tossed her shining red hair and let it slide around her neck. Immediately, her friends all did the exact same thing.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Victoria. She tossed her curls, which were the best in their year because she had made sure of it. It was part of the plan—perfection, achievement, the top, the best. Victoria’s face burned with pride and hardened into a fierce dazzle.

The other girls blinked, but not Jill. She kept staring at Victoria, her eyes sharp like all those professors glaring at Lawrence, and Victoria felt a tiny bit sorry, but she just couldn’t keep it in: “I don’t care anything about the Skunk,” Victoria said. The words came out without her permission and twisted her chest uncomfortably, but she shoved the feeling away. This was not the time to feel sorry for anyone.

Jill laughed. “What’s it like,
Vicky
? Being a Skunk’s girlfriend, I mean?”

Victoria tried to stop herself from blushing, but it happened
anyway.
Girlfriend?
Her mouth dried up, and she suddenly had no idea what to do with her hands. They would not stop fidgeting. Lawrence’s smiling face popped into her head, and she scowled. “I’m no one’s
girlfriend
,” she snapped.

“He’s always creeping around like a bug,” said Tate Gardiner. “Like a—like a
skunk
.” Obviously, Tate thought herself very clever.

Victoria gave her a withering look. “Brilliant. No one’s ever come up with that before.” Turning away to her notebook, she began copying out -
er
verbs for that afternoon’s French quiz. She tried to push all thoughts of Lawrence and girlfriends and stupid Jill Hennessey out of her head.

Manger
. To eat.

But it was no good. Victoria heard them still whispering. She felt Lawrence sitting in the corner of the room and felt a little bad for calling him the Skunk, but, well, there was such a thing as hair dye, after all. His face popped into her head, this time looking sad and pathetic. She ignored it and kept working.

Je mange.
I eat.
Tu manges.
You eat.
Il mange.
He eats.

Behind Victoria, Jill cleared her throat.

Victoria frowned and pressed her pencil harder.

Nous mangeons.
We eat.

The words left indentations in the paper. The graphite tip snapped off Victoria’s pencil.

“Oh, by the way, Victoria,” said Jill, her voice smiling.

Victoria didn’t even have to turn around. She knew what was coming. She heard it in Jill’s tone. Bile churned in Victoria’s stomach and throat. A sick feeling raced down her arms. She got goosebumps and tried to will them smooth. Her heart had never pounded with such anger and fear.

“I heard,” Jill said, leaning forward, “that you got a B.”

The others gasped. Some of them laughed. Tate blurted, “Ha!” The sound echoed, and others turned.

Victoria turned too. She kept her face cold and raised an eyebrow.

“You got a
B
,” Jill repeated, grinning. “In music class.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Victoria.

“Yes, you do. On your academic report.”

Lots of people were watching now. Inside, Victoria raged. Outside, Victoria rolled her eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure,” she said.

“
I’m
sure,” said Jill. “I saw it in Professor Carroll’s gradebook. Victoria Wright, B. I got an A minus.” Jill widened her eyes and whispered, “You know what that means, of course?”

Oh, Victoria knew what that meant, and it made her ill.
She couldn’t contain her mortification any longer. A flush crept up her cheeks. Tate hid her mouth and giggled.

“It means,” Jill said slowly, relishing her triumph, “that now
I’m
top of the class.”

Victoria’s world heaved. Her mind rebelled against the very idea. Top of the class was hers and always had been. She owned it. She had fought from infancy for it. It was her blood, it was her soul, and everyone knew it. Victoria had never made a secret of her ambition. It was her identity: Victoria, the best.

Jill, the second best.

Lawrence, the Skunk.

Jill looked ready to burst out laughing.

“Oh, poor little ice queen, turning all pink,” Tate said, giggling.

Victoria grabbed for the only weapon she could find; it popped out from her mind in a rush of fury. That Jill dared gloat like this, in front of everyone, and make Victoria look stupid, when in fact she was the exact opposite of stupid, enraged her. That Professor Carroll had dared give Victoria a B enraged her. That Lawrence had dared to be born with the kind of musical talent that would earn him an A while Victoria was given a B enraged her.

Anger rushed from her head to her arms and the tips of
her toes, until Victoria could feel and see and think about nothing else. She glared at Jill and said, through clenched teeth, “And where’s your sister Jacqueline today, Jill?”

Jacqueline, the freak.

It was a sloppy move, to bring up Jacqueline, but Victoria needed time to gather herself. Normally she enjoyed arguing with Jill, because she liked making Jill look stupid. But now that people knew about the B, Victoria had no more wit. So instead she used Jacqueline, Jill’s ugly, strange, hated twin sister and the shame of the Hennessey family, as a distraction. Jacqueline, who talked to herself, who drew on her arms in class, who scribbled gruesome drawings in her notebooks. Jacqueline, who had splotchy, bumpy skin and hunched over when she walked and hid behind her tangled hair.

Jill laughed. “Jacqueline?” she said. Beside her, her friends looked just as confused. Their eyes looked a bit fuzzy. “Jacqueline who?”

“What do you mean, Jacqueline who?” Victoria said. “Your twin sister, you idiot.”

A rush of cold slid past Victoria. Jill’s eyes hardened into sharp little points. Her face sharpened like the professors’ had—all wolfish and watchful. This close, it was even more striking. Victoria blinked and looked at the others to see if they noticed, but they had turned away, laughing and
chatting to themselves with bright eyes and bright smiles.

“Jacqueline’s home sick for a while,” Jill said, but her voice sounded different now, lower and quieter. It matched her new, wolfish face. She smiled a small smile. “What do you care about Jacqueline, Victoria?”

“I don’t,” said Victoria. She didn’t know what to make of Jill’s strange behavior and decided she was imagining things. It was Lawrence’s fault; if he hadn’t been acting so weird earlier, Victoria would not be so out of sorts. She stood up in a huff. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re both idiots. I just thought maybe if you went to find her, between the two of you you’d have enough IQ for it to be a fair fight.”

The bell rang. First period would begin in ten minutes. Victoria spun away from Jill, slammed her books together, and marched toward the door.