Shattered Memories Page 9

  I looked down and shook my head. “How did this happen? In hours, it all turned around so that I’m the normal one here.”

  “You always were,” he said, and hugged me. “You were always the normal one, Kaylee.”

  He kissed me, and we walked back to Eleanor Cook Hall holding hands as if we never walked together without doing so. We paused at the parking lot.

  “So I guess I’ll just take off,” he said. “Girls don’t want fathers hanging around. I feel confident you’re in a good place with good people, and I’ll impress that fact on your mother.”

  “Okay, Daddy.” My voice sounded so young, so helpless. I hated it.

  “Hey, hey, you’re going to be fine, honey, fine.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll call you, or you call me whenever you feel like it, no matter what time of day or night,” he said. “I’ll stop by to see your mother as soon as I get back and give her a report. She’ll come around. You’ll see.” He hugged and kissed me again.

  I stood there and watched him go to his car, get in, back up, and start out. He paused and opened his window.

  “You’re never alone, Kaylee, never,” he said, and then he drove off. I stood there until he was gone.

  Finally, out of his sight, I started to cry.

  Then I saw Claudia with her father at his car. He was lecturing her forcefully about something, perhaps telling her this was her last chance. The whole time, she had her head down. When he stopped, she kept her head down. He gave her a quick, mechanical hug during which she remained stiff, her arms extended downward, her hands like claws, and then he got into his car and drove off without waving to her or anything.

  She turned and saw me. She looked surprised to see me waiting for her when she stepped forward.

  “How does it compare?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “Littlefield, our orientation with the principal, any of it, to your other private schools.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think I ever noticed,” she said, and walked faster, like someone who didn’t care to walk together.

  I kept up with her, and we entered the dorm. Mrs. Rosewell was waiting for us.

  “Right this way, girls,” she said, and led us to her office. She had a small desk, but she had us sit on the settee and then pulled a chair up to face us.

  “I want you both to feel comfortable here at Cook Hall, but I want you to treat the building with respect and at least as well as you would treat your own home. It is, after all, your home away from home,” she added, smiling.

  She reached over to her desk and picked up copies of the rules that were posted on our bulletin board.

  “Let us begin to read them together,” she said, handing us each a copy. She read the rules as I imagined Moses read the Ten Commandments to his people. She emphasized no alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes dramatically but seemed self-conscious when she read the rule forbidding any boys in our rooms.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ve done what we’re supposed to. I have no doubt you two will be ideal residents. If either of you has any problems, no matter what, you should know my door is always open. I wish you both luck.” She stood.

  We thanked her and went to our room. The moment we arrived, Marcy popped out of hers and threw herself onto my bed.

  “First impressions of Mrs. Thatcher,” she declared, and pointed to me.

  “That’s loading the question,” I replied. “If you call her that, you’ll influence our opinions.”

  “What?” She widened her smile. “Are you going to be a lawyer?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m right, right, Claudia?” I asked as she continued to organize her things.

  She paused and looked at us. “Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t listening.”

  “Not listening?” Marcy sat up. “There’s not a lot of conversation going on in here, so you have to pay attention. We might say very important things.”

  Claudia simply stared at her. Her dark eyes weren’t registering anger. In fact, they were almost void of any emotion and more like glass marbles.

  “Whatever,” Marcy said. She looked at me. “So what about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters, spoiled or otherwise?”

  “No.”

  “Neither?”

  “It’s not unusual,” I said, smiling to keep her from having any suspicions.

  “I’ll say. I’m a child of divorced parents.”

  “You, too?” I said. “Divorced?”

  “You mean yours are?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Wow. We’re almost the majority here at Cook Hall. There are eight others. My parents divorced when I was only five. I grew up thinking that marriages were supposed to last only five or six years and people traded in wives and husbands like they do cars. I thought there could be too much mileage on a marriage, too.”

  I looked at Claudia, who suddenly seemed very interested in what we were saying.

  “No wonder you’re so happy,” she told Marcy. “Your divorced parents probably spoil you.”

  “Probably,” Marcy sang. “Viva la Divorce!” she cried, and even Claudia had to smile. Finally.

  I finished my unpacking and glanced at the pamphlet.

  “The cafeteria is in Asper Hall?”

  “We call it Regurgitation Central,” Marcy joked.

  “Do we have to wear anything special to dinner?”

  She tapped the rules on our bulletin board. “No shorts, no bare midriffs, no bare feet, and this vague reference to no inappropriate blouses, shirts, or otherwise. Otherwise anything else. Terri Facilities and I will escort you two. You can get rid of us after today, if you like,” Marcy added, more for Claudia’s benefit than mine. She looked at me.

  “Well, we certainly don’t want to be a burden,” I said, sounding as if I meant it. Almost as soon as the words left my lips, I thought I sounded more like Haylee, dripping with sarcasm. I quickly smiled.

  “No worries. We’re both trained professional busybodies,” Marcy said.

  “I think I’ll take a shower and change,” I said.

  “Good idea. There are a few boys you’ll want to impress,” Marcy said, looking at both of us.

  Claudia raised her eyebrows at being included.

  “I mean, we’re not really here just for an academic education, are we?” Marcy added. She did a little pirouette and headed out.

  “I like her, don’t you?” I asked Claudia.

  “Sure,” Claudia said dryly. “I like everybody.”

  She began to draw school supplies and her computer out of her bag and get her desk organized.

  Later for that, I thought, and chose something to wear to dinner.

  “Off to the shower,” I said. Claudia glanced at me and then back at her computer.

  “You need a password for the Wi-Fi,” she said. “No one told it to us.”

  “I’m sure they will. See you soon,” I said.

  There was no one else in the showers when I entered. As the water cascaded over me, I imagined it was washing away all traces of my nightmare abduction. Perhaps my father’s hopes for me could be realized. I could make new friends and create a world with only me in it, no Haylee to refer to, no Haylee to consider. There were only my feelings now, my dreams. The warm water felt wonderful. This is a magic shower, I thought. It erases your past.

  When I returned to our room, Claudia was still in front of her computer. She had gotten the password and had put it on my desk for me. She looked like she was in a heavy instant-message exchange with someone. I didn’t want to seem nosy, so I didn’t look over her shoulder. Instead, I concentrated on what I would wear. There was a sense of freedom about it. I didn’t have to consider what Mother would think or if Haylee liked my choice. Better yet, I didn’t have to conform to what she wanted. I put on a turquoise blouse and a dark blue skirt.

  “I thought you were wearing a wig!” Marcy exclaimed as I was brushing my short hair to give it some sense of style. There were obviously
no locks on our doors. Right now, I looked like Joan of Arc or someone. There were women who had their hair cut as short as mine deliberately, of course, but I had always been so proud of mine, of ours.

  “I’m sorry I got talked into that,” I said. “My father felt sorry for me and bought me the wigs.”

  Claudia was now giving me her full attention. “My father forbids me to cut my hair,” she said.

  “What’s he going to do if you do, disown you?” Marcy asked.

  Claudia shrugged. “Too late for that. He did that years ago,” she said.

  Marcy widened her eyes and then laughed because she didn’t know what to say. Neither did I. She turned to me.

  “You have one of those faces that can’t be damaged by a bad hairstyle,” Marcy said. “I’ll poke you in the ribs if one of the boys I’m after looks at you with too much interest.”

  “What?”

  “Kidding,” she sang, and smiled at Claudia. “You didn’t change for dinner?”

  “I had other things to do,” Claudia said. “It’s not the Ritz, is it?”

  “The what? Oh.” Marcy laughed. “No, it’s definitely not the Ritz. It’s not even McDonald’s, but it’s all we have,” she said dramatically. “Cherish it, darling,” she added. “Mrs. Rosewell calls everyone darling. Or dearie. I hate dearie, don’t you?”

  “Call me anything,” I said, recalling one of my father’s pet expressions. “Just don’t call me late for dinner.”

  “That’s good!” Marcy cried. “C’mon. Let’s march in together like the Three Musketeers!”

  “I’m really not hungry,” Claudia said.

  “Hey, wait until you see the food before you say that,” Marcy replied, and shocked her by scooping her under one arm and then holding her other arm out for me.

  It was going to be difficult to be depressed in Marcy’s company, I thought, and for both Claudia and me, she was just what the doctor ordered.

  The question was how long before she would flee our company.

  7

  An explosion of chatter and laughter confronted us when we entered the dining hall. Although the tables and chairs resembled any school cafeteria’s furnishings, the walls had a rich-looking light brown paneling, and there was decorative framing around the large four-panel windows, most of which looked out on the manicured lawns and bushes. Hundreds of recessed light fixtures brightened the room, which had an immaculately polished dark brown tile floor. Off to the left were the familiar counters and metal shelf along which students moved their trays to choose their entrées and side dishes as well as drinks and desserts. Every table had a bouquet of flowers that looked real.

  Although Marcy kidded us about the food, it looked quite a bit more elaborate than the usual public-school fare. Four women and a tall man who was obviously the head chef served the students. The kitchen was in full view and looked immaculate, with stainless-steel fixtures. Of course, it occurred to me that much of this was dressed up to appeal to the parents more than the students. The parents were paying the bills.

  Obviously, most of the students in the dining hall knew one another, some for years, perhaps. As I had seen in the orientation meeting, there were only a little more than thirty new students. Most, like me and now Claudia, were still being escorted by girls who had been assigned to help them get oriented, but just like in my public school and probably every other school in the world, there were groups of students who clung to one another, cliques or what Haylee called “clacks.” Marcy and Terri naturally steered us to theirs, a table with four other girls from Cook Hall and two boys, Haden Kimble and Luke Richards, both seniors. There was something about them that immediately told me they wouldn’t be lusting after my or any other girl’s bod. Right now, that gave me some relief.

  What I really appreciated was that neither Claudia nor I was immediately bombarded with personal questions. In fact, it was as if we had always been students here. After Marcy introduced us, Haden and Luke continued their argument about face piercing as though we were simply a minor interruption. Someone else might have resented the lack of attention and interest, but both Claudia and I were grateful, for obviously different reasons.

  “Teenagers are so damn predictable,” Haden said. He wore a pair of thick black-framed glasses that settled comfortably halfway down the bridge of his thin nose. “A fad catches on, and most everyone who does it does it simply not to seem ‘different.’ ” He made quotation marks in the air.

  “Ditto,” Luke said.

  Estelle Marcus, the girl they were looking at when they spoke, had a silver dot in her left nostril. She hadn’t had it when I had seen her earlier in the dorm hallway.

  “It’s not a fad for me,” she shot back indignantly. “I wear it when I want to wear it and because I want to wear it. The emphasis,” she added, imitating Haden’s quotation marks in the air, “is on ‘when I want.’ ”

  “Don’t you have to wear that all the time or the hole will close up?” I asked her. Mother wouldn’t permit Haylee or me even to have pierced ears. There would be no deliberate changes in our bodies for fear that one would not be exactly like the other.

  “I wear it enough to prevent that,” Estelle snapped back. She took a second look at me to see if I was favoring the argument the boys were making.

  “If she wore it to class, Mrs. Mitchell would have her expelled,” Terri said. She almost added, And rightly so. The words were spelled out in her disapproving look.

  I thought that was that, but then Claudia suddenly blurted, “You wouldn’t be at the last school I was at.”

  Everyone turned to her. She looked shocked at herself that she had spoken, as shocked as I was, especially because she sounded like she was in defense of piercing, but then she added, “However, they needed the money, so you could practically get away with murder there.”

  “What school was that?” Estelle quickly asked, sounding like she would transfer in the morning.

  “Saddle Brook,” Claudia said. “A girl was gang-raped the year I attended, but the school managed to keep it out of the newspapers.”

  No one spoke.

  “She was my roommate,” Claudia continued.

  Marcy and I looked at each other, surprised at how talkative Claudia suddenly was, and how revealing.

  “Really?” Luke asked. “How horrible for you, but, of course, more for her.”

  Everyone looked at Claudia as if she had just missed being gang-raped herself.

  “She’s in a nuthouse right now,” Claudia said. “Catatonic.”

  “Catatonic?” I asked, too quickly perhaps. “I mean, I think I know what that is.”

  “It’s like a coma with your eyes open,” Claudia said. “Most of the girls there seemed catatonic to me,” she added without the slightest hint of humor.

  A heavy silence followed. In moments, Claudia had wiped away all smiles and excitement. The potential dangers and horrors of the world that hovered just outside the boundaries of our special, privileged, private world flashed behind everyone’s eyes. The lesson was clear to me. If you brought sadness and horror in, you were as marked by it as Cain was marked with sin. It was a clear “blame the messenger” message. No one here, I vowed to myself, would learn what I had endured.

  “Let’s eat before I lose my appetite,” Marcy suddenly declared, practically leaping to her feet.

  Terri and I, with Claudia following slowly, rose and went to the food line. Marcy glanced back at Claudia and widened her eyes at me.

  “I feel sorry for you if you get to tell each other bedtime stories when the lights are out,” she whispered. “She’s like a female Norman Bates from Psycho. You could ask Mrs. Rosewell to arrange a room change.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Just shout if it ever gets too much. I’ll bring the depression extinguisher,” she said, then moved quickly to deliberately bump against the boy ahead of us.

  He turned with annoyance until he saw who it was and then smiled. “A bit clumsy?”

&n
bsp; “Only around you,” she told him. “You have that effect on jeunes femmes.”

  He widened his smile and looked at the three of us. “New victims?”

  “Freshly served,” she said, and introduced us to Rob Brian, a senior with curly dark brown hair and an impish smile. He seemed a perfect match for her. He introduced us to Ben Kaplan, a boy about Claudia’s height with a similarly lean build, a face peppered with orange freckles, and short apricot-colored hair.

  “Welcome, girls,” Rob said. “Be skeptical of everything Marcy tells you about us.”

  “Kaylee doesn’t need to be warned. She can handle herself. She was prom queen at her last school and is a brilliant student with a four-point-oh. I plan on stealing all her homework,” she declared, “and raising my grade average enough to get my father to buy me a car.”

  I felt my face flush when the boys looked at me with even more interest.

  “What about you, Claudia?” Ben asked. He looked like he would be a teenager until he was fifty.

  “Claudia was arrested twice for speed dating,” Marcy quipped. “Her bite is worse than her bark.”

  The boys laughed.

  “Put me on your dance card,” Ben told Claudia before they walked off. “I’m not afraid of being bitten.”

  I looked at her to see if she was offended, but she wore her usual indifference to everything she had seen or heard. I watched her select her food as if she were navigating through potential poison.

  “Vegetarian?” I asked when I saw her avoid the chicken and beef dishes.

  “Tonight,” she said.

  After we had gotten our food and gone back to our table, I attacked Marcy, but half-heartedly.

  “How could you make up stories like that about me? I never said I was a prom queen, and I never told you about my grades. Did they believe you?”

  “What did she do now?” Terri asked.

  “She told those boys stories about us . . . exaggerations!”

  “Marcy hasn’t said a serious thing since I’ve known her,” Estelle said.

  “What difference does it make?” Marcy said, shrugging. “No one will check up on it. We can be whoever we like here.” She turned sharply to Claudia. “You don’t have to be yourself anymore. Forget all that about your old school. You can be reborn here. Pick out a new you. I have a catalogue in my room if you need choices. I try to be a different person every week.”