Dark Companion Read online

  “At least I have boobs,” Mary Violet snipped back.

  “Or you are a giant one.”

  I hoped they’d just let me listen to their conversation, but Mary Violet asked, “Jane, where is your family? Do they mind you living away from them?”

  People usually dropped the subject after I gave them a few basic facts. “My mother died and I have no idea who my father is or where he is.”

  Mary Violet’s eyes went wide. “How tragic! You could hire a detective to find him. Think of how excited he’d be to find out that you’re attending a top school. You’re the crème de la crème. That’s French for ‘all that and a bag of chips.’”

  “I think if he cared, he would have stuck around,” I said uneasily.

  Hattie said, “Jane is doing okay on her own and we’ll be her family. She won’t be able to get rid of us!”

  I stared at Hattie in disbelief. “Hattie, you know, I’d be more comfortable if you were straight up with me. I’m not interested in being a charity project.”

  “I told you that inviting Jane to lunch was overkill,” Mary Violet said to the others before turning to me. “Mrs. Radcliffe asked us to include you in things so you won’t hate Birch Grove. I want her to give me a letter of recommendation for college. She only gives out a few each year so we’re being completely extorted to be your new bestest friends. I only hope Mrs. Radcliffe doesn’t ask me to murder someone for her, although I’m sure I’d commit the perfect crime.”

  “Mary Violet!” Hattie gave the girl a hard look.

  “Wasn’t that you five minutes ago yodeling about living for the truth?” Mary Violet answered obstinately. “Jane, another thing is that we’re so tragically bored with one another that we’re thrilled to meet anyone from the outside world. Greenwood is like one of those luxury prisons, where inmates can decorate their rooms and play tennis, but only get day passes.”

  “I wish Mrs. Radcliffe hadn’t done that, because I’m fine on my own and besides, I’m not that exciting.”

  Constance said, “I’m not doing it for the letter of recommendation.”

  “Well, Constance, you’re friendly to everyone,” Mary Violet said critically. “You’re such a friendship slut and I find that deeply disturbing. Jane, I hope you aren’t as wildly promiscuous with your friendship.”

  “No one’s ever accused me of that,” I said, which made her giggle.

  Hattie shook her head. “I’m not doing it for the letter, either—”

  “Because you already know you’re getting one, headmistress’s pet,” Mary Violet cut in. “You always do everything Mrs. Radcliffe wants.”

  “Excuse me, but you were ready to plot the perfect murder for a letter of recommendation!” Hattie said. “So, Jane, we’re happy to show you around and if we all get along, fine. If not, that’s okay, too, and we’ll act friendly in front of Mrs. Radcliffe so she lets it go. Deal?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Good. Have you met Mrs. Radcliffe’s family yet?”

  “I had dinner at their house. They were really nice.”

  “Especially one of them.” Mary Violet pinched Hattie’s arm. “Your loverrrrr!”

  Hattie looked away. “It’s not that serious.”

  My heart dropped, but I kept my expression even. “Lucky seems like a cool guy.”

  “Not Lucky,” Hattie answered. “His brother, Jack.”

  “Jack? Really? He doesn’t seem…” I paused awkwardly.

  “He’s really smart and talented,” Hattie said. “And mature.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t go off to college?” Mary Violet asked. “He’s psychotically in lust with Hattie. There’s something terribly intriguing about him, as if he has a dark and depraved secret.”

  Constance sighed. “Mary Violet, if we cut open your skull, I have a feeling all we’d find would be hair products and chick flicks.”

  “And silk lingerie and chocolate truffles!” Mary Violet said.

  Constance asked me, “What do you think about our no-tech rules?”

  “I think that because older people grew up without all the technology, they’re incapable of multitasking and refuse to believe that we can.”

  “If you say that to Mrs. Radcliffe, she’ll show you a dozen studies that say that technology is destroying our cognitive and analytical skills. We always agree with her and do whatever we want anyway.” Constance shuffled through her tote and lifted out a silvery blue phone. “Let’s all sync up. What’s your number, Jane?”

  “I only have the phone in the cottage.”

  “Oh, we’ve already got that,” Mary Violet said. “It’s Bebe’s old number. She didn’t have a real phone until last spring. We have to sit through an assembly once a year about how it’s more important to live life than text it, blah, blah, blah, because Mrs. Radcliffe is so viciously anti-TSGs.”

  “Do you mean STDs?” I asked.

  “TSGs are trendy status gadgets,” Hattie said. “TSAs are trendy status accessories. Mrs. Radcliffe dislikes obvious logos and labels.”

  “I adore labels, because they tell you whether something is good or not.” Mary Violet applied lip gloss using the napkin dispenser as a mirror. “What I want is a TSB.”

  Constance and Hattie seemed puzzled for a few seconds and then said together, “Trendy status boyfriend?”

  “Yes! I’m drawing up a list of candidates and starting with A for Ashton and working my way to Z for Zach.”

  Hattie said, “I’d love to hear them, but I’ve got to get home.”

  When I glanced at the teakettle-shaped clock on the wall, I was surprised to see that two hours had passed.

  Hattie drove us back to the Birch Grove parking lot, and the girls shouted good-byes. As I walked back to the cottage, I brooded about how these privileged kids expected and received special treatment with the same blasé attitude that City Central kids expected and got violence and grief.

  “I will be as good a friend as such a mite of a thing can be to such a noble creature as you. And be a friend to me, please; I don’t understand myself: and I want a friend who can understand me, very much indeed.”

  Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, I joined the other students filling up the hallways and located my locker, which was on a top row because I was an upperclassman. I twirled the combination, opened the metal locker, put my books inside, and headed to the day’s first period, which was homeroom. I was glad to see Hattie already at a desk. She waved me over and I sat beside her.

  A short man with thinning brown hair and glasses stood at the oak desk at the front of the room shuffling through papers. On the blackboard, he’d written “Mr. Albert Mason.” He wore a navy blue jacket, a white shirt, a navy-and-maroon-striped tie, and gray trousers. He was thin all over except for a small round belly. His nose was like a deflated balloon drooping on a string, his cheeks were hollow, and his ears protruded, yet there was something very likable about his intelligent expression.

  When the bell rang at 8:30, he said, “Good morning, students. I’m Mr. Mason, your homeroom teacher.” He had a pleasant smile, but I could tell that it was like mine, something he was wearing to please others. “Let’s go around and make sure we’re all here.” He read a roster aloud, and when he came to “Jane Williams,” I raised my hand and said, “Here.”

  “Welcome to Birch Grove, Jane, and I’m happy to have you in Honors Chemistry.”

  As he finished the roll call and went through announcements, I gazed out the window at the greenery beyond. None of this felt real. I’d known that there was a world outside Helmsdale, but my conception of that world had been flat, like the image on a television. I felt as though I had stepped through the screen into another dimension, and I was astonished that everything had depth and detail. I noticed the grain of the wood desks, the scent of floor wax, and the burnished brass doorknobs.

  As we left homeroom, Hattie asked, “What do you have next
?”

  “Western Classical Literature.”

  “Me, too. I wonder what else we have together.” We compared schedules and saw that we were also in the same history course. “I love studying the past,” she said. “‘Whereof what’s past is prologue.’”

  “Is that a quote from something?”

  “It’s Shakespeare. It means that what’s happened in the past determines what will happen in the future. That’s why history is so important.”

  “But whoever wins battles gets to write history, so history is the winner’s version.”

  “You’re terribly cynical, Jane.”

  “I’m realistic. The only lesson in history is that it’s better to be stronger and more vicious.”

  “Like I said, you’re cynical. I kind of agree, but I still think it’s important to study history.”

  I followed Hattie to the classroom and we sat at desks in the front row. When the teacher, Mrs. Baybee, handed out the syllabus, it was even worse than I had thought: Homer, Virgil, and Sophocles, readings from the Bible, Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare. Mrs. Baybee spoke in a mind-numbing drone, and I jotted down notes that were totally incomprehensible to me.

  How could I possibly keep up with girls who’d been to excellent schools all their lives? I dreaded going to my next class, Honors Chem on the third floor.

  Mary Violet was sitting at one of the tall black lab tables, sighing and staring out the window to trees beyond.

  I sat at her table. “You didn’t tell me you were in Honors Chem.”

  She smiled cheerfully. “Yes, I’m a Chem Ho, too. My parents are totally draconian and make me take all this math and science because they’ve got some delusion that I should be a surgeon, but I don’t want to deal with the insides of bodies, ew. I wish I had nothing but English and history classes.”

  “I’ve got the opposite problem. I just had Western Classical Lit with Mrs. Baybee.” Usually I hid my inadequacies, but Mary Violet was looking at me with such friendliness that I said, “I couldn’t make any sense of what she was talking about, even if I cared about the subject, which I don’t at all.”

  “I would be mortified if you were a cultural barbarian, Jane. That’s exactly what my mother tells my father when he complains about the symphony, though she doesn’t call him Jane. Mrs. Ooh-baby-Baybee is notorious for being boring. Her voice always makes me think of a mosquito buzzing somewhere in the room. Allow me to demonstrate.” Mary Violet made a buzzing sound.

  “That’s exactly what she sounds like. I thought it was just me.”

  “Oh, no, she’s always voted Teacher Most Likely to Inspire Mass Catatonia in our secret annual poll. Of course, I’m the one who invented the category. I keep hoping we’ll get a Teacher Most Likely to Spontaneously Combust. Why don’t you transfer to something more interesting?”

  “I could do that?” Of course I could do that—and it’s what I would have done immediately at City Central. “What else is there?”

  “I’m in Civility and Propriety of the Victorian Woman because I want to write fat, juicy historicals with lots of mayhem and I need to learn all about hysteria and corsets. But that’s at the end of the day and you’d have to shuffle your whole schedule. Constance is in Night Terrors and that’s the same block as Western Classical Lit.”

  “What’s Night Terrors about?”

  “It’s totally fabu. Fabulous to the nth degree,” Mary Violet said. “See, I also parlez geek! I’m multilingual, which sounds so dirty, don’t you think? Night Terrors is the only class Mrs. Radcliffe teaches. I’m taking it next semester.”

  Mr. Mason came into the room, hung up his blazer, and put on a white lab coat as the bell rang.

  I felt more confident now that I had a heavy chem book in front of me and sat in a room with shelves of specimens in display jars and racks of test tubes. An old cloth banner of the periodic table was stretched on a standing wooden frame.

  When Hosea had taken chemistry, he asked me to quiz him on the table of elements and I’d somehow memorized it along with him. He’d counted out the groups on his fingers, saying, “Alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, lanthanides, actinides, transition metals, poor metals, metalloids, nonmetals, halogens—”

  I’d cut Hosea off and put down the book. “This is so fu— I mean, soooo dang boooring.”

  He’d laid his big hand on my head, and I’d leaned toward him, like a dog enjoying a petting. “Little Sis, these are all the things that make the universe, and that’s a beautiful and amazing thing.”

  “I don’t get it.” I’d pointed at the Bible on the wooden crate he used for a bedside table. “How can you believe the world was made in seven days and believe that dinosaurs lived hundreds of millions of years ago? Pick one or the other.”

  His deep chuckle had rumbled through the room. “You been paying more attention than you let on, Little Sis. God created everything, including this universe and its scientific rules. Why can’t both religion and science be true?”

  “It can’t be both because they, uh…” I’d struggled to remember the term I’d heard him say once. “They’re mutually exclusive.”

  Hosea ruffled my hair. “You got a fine mind in that little head of yours. Pity if you didn’t use it. Promise me you’ll try.”

  I hadn’t tried, though, not until after Hosea had died.

  Mr. Mason began talking about our curriculum and I opened a wire-bound notebook. I’d already drawn a vertical line through each page. On the left side, I scribbled notes. Later, when I reviewed my notes, I would add details on the right side of the page.

  Despite Mary Violet’s complaints about chemistry, she was writing diligently with a fountain pen that had purple ink. Her script was old-fashioned with big loops and swirls. While Mr. Mason was handing out the week’s assignments, she drew a small flower on the page border.

  “It’s a violet,” she whispered to me. “My trademark.”

  I didn’t know why I liked Mary Violet so much, and I couldn’t help returning her bright smiles. I liked her pink and golden plump cherub prettiness and the way she blurted out anything that came to mind.

  Class seemed to go by quickly. Mr. Mason spoke clearly and paused for questions, which he answered easily. As we were leaving, he stopped me. “May I have a word, Jane?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mason?” I moved to the side of his desk.

  “We go at a brisk pace in this class, and I want you to know that I’m here to help if you find yourself getting swamped.”

  “Thanks. I can keep up in Chem, but I’d like to transfer out of Western Classical Lit.”

  “Is there a problem with it?”

  “I can’t really connect to the subject. Mary Violet Holiday suggested Mrs. Radcliffe’s nightmare course.”

  “Night Terrors. I’m surprised the headmistress didn’t sign you up for that. It’s an excellent course. I’ll talk to the registrar at my break, and you can stop in at her office after school today to get your revised schedule.”

  “I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir.”

  Mary Violet was waiting in the hall for me. “Mr. Mason’s so valiant and tragic. What did he want?”

  “He was checking on me. He’s going to talk to the registrar so I can transfer to Night Terrors.”

  I wanted to ask her why she thought Mr. Mason was tragic, but she said, “You were staring at the periodic table. Which element are you?”

  “You’re perplexing me. Do I have to pick one?”

  “Perplex is a good word. You can have any element but potassium. That’s mine.”

  “I thought you might pick something, um, noble like neon instead of a humble poor metal.”

  “Oh, so you think I’m gaseous! Really JW, you wound me deeply.” She bumped my hip. “I’m potassium because when it comes into contact with water or air, it instantly combusts—kaboom!—into violet flames. Violet. You should have figured that out. Knowledge is power.”

  “Or I could have guessed because metals are sonorous and I bet you m
ake a ringing sound when you’re smacked hard.”

  “Don’t you dare, Jane Williams! Do you have lunch now? Let’s go to the café-teria.”

  As we walked down the stairs together, Mary Violet told me that they usually went off campus for lunch. “We go to the Free Pop or get something from the deli in the market. Everything else in town is too slooow and takes too long. On days with long blocks, we’re stuck here.”

  “Why aren’t there any fast-food places around? At my old school we had them right on campus.”

  “The Birch Grove Alumnae Club makes the mayor’s life a living hell any time there’s a rumor that a fast-food place might move in.”

  We went into the cafeteria and I smelled the wonderful aromas of Italian food and something baking, like cookies. “I’d rather use my lunch pass anyway. What’s good?”

  “The salad stuff is always fresh, and the pasta’s good. Everything’s homemade and organic since the alumnae are terrified that we’ll have mutant babies if we eat anything with pesticides.”

  “You sound like you’d like a mutant baby,” I said as we served ourselves mixed lettuces that I didn’t recognize.

  “I’d prefer an alien baby with soft fur, like a kitten, but violet, of course.” Her big blue eyes opened wide. “Quick! Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “In Helmsdale, they would say, You hella crazy, bitch!” Which made her burst into giggles.

  “See, that’s why I adore new students. Hattie would never say that or threaten to smack me. Constance always says she’ll hit me, but she hasn’t done it since we were seven and I stole her black Barbie to add to my collection. What color are you, by the way?”

  “I’m a tannish or brownish, I guess.”

  “I would call you a café au lait shade. If anyone asks what color I am, you can say that I have a peaches and cream complexion—doesn’t that sound yummy? But what are you?”

  “Mixed up, like someone poured all the leftovers from soda bottles into a glass. My mother was part Mexican, and everyone thinks I’m whatever they are.”

  “It’s called ‘projection’ in psychology. Why did your mother name you Jane?”