10
“What’s it like living in Ridgeway?” Troy asked as we left Asper Hall and headed for the boys’ dorm parking lot. One thing I had noticed about him immediately was that whenever he asked me anything even remotely personal, he avoided looking directly at me. The new amateur psychiatrist in me suggested he had been hurt deeply in some way and, like me, was nervous about getting too close to anyone. Lately, however, it seemed like I was diagnosing many people similarly, perhaps hoping to find kindred spirits. Misery truly loves company, which was probably why I got along so well with Claudia.
Maybe, I told myself, Troy really was just shy despite his great looks, his intelligence, and his obviously wealthy family. Shy people were too often mistaken for arrogant people. Perhaps all the girls in this school, including me, were unfairly judging him.
I had hardly gotten to know him, and here I was already looking for ways to rationalize being with him. However, I had seen the way the other girls had looked at us when we left the cafeteria, and I anticipated Marcy pouncing on me.
I walked with my arms folded over my breasts, my hands buried under them. Nights were cooler now, bordering on chilly. I hadn’t chosen a warm enough jacket, only a light sweater over my blouse, but I didn’t want to complain and have to return to my dorm. Troy had on a soft-looking black leather jacket, and as we walked, he began putting on black leather driving gloves.
He turned to me when I didn’t answer his question. “You left lots of friends back there, I imagine.”
“Some.”
“They resent your going to a private school.”
“Some,” I said.
“Did you really want to come here, or were you pressured into it?”
“You mean you don’t know all about me from watching me so closely?”
“I think you’re like classified.”
“Classified?”
“For national security. I overheard two dissectors discussing you outside room twenty-two the other day. One said, ‘Getting Kaylee to talk about herself is like pulling teeth.’ I wanted to turn around and ask her if she had ever pulled teeth. Sometimes it’s not so hard to do. Apparently, not only don’t you gossip about others, but you don’t gossip about yourself. How do you expect to survive your teenage years?”
“Very funny. Naturally, I miss Ridgeway. I’ve lived there all my life,” I said, in the tone of a captured soldier giving name, rank, and serial number. He wasn’t too far off the mark. I was behaving as though most of my life were classified. Here at Littlefield, that wasn’t far from the truth.
“One of the few places in the state I’ve never been to, so I can’t comment. I like taking long rides. That’s my car ahead, third from the end.”
“I heard about it. A brand-new red Jaguar convertible.”
“Birthday present when I turned seventeen in August. It was a bribe.”
“A bribe? To get you to do what?”
“Turn eighteen,” he said. He didn’t smile or laugh.
He unlocked the passenger door and opened it for me. The interior was so new and pristine it was like no one had ridden in it yet. The leather still had that new-car scent. He closed the door and went around to get in. I waited until he was settled behind the steering wheel to ask about what he had just said.
“You’re not serious about that bribe, right?”
“I said that’s why they gave it to me, but I didn’t say it was justified. My parents think I’m too . . .” He started the engine. “Dark,” he said. “Seat belts,” he added, clicking his own on and waiting for me to click mine. He backed out of the parking space.
“I can’t imagine why your parents would think such a thing.”
He gave me one of his rare direct and intense looks. “I hate being so right on my first impressions of someone all the time, but I sure was right about you.”
“I know that’s a compliment, but I’m not sure if you’re complimenting me or yourself.”
This time, he laughed. “I guess you’re just going to have to wait and decide.”
We drove out of the parking lot and down the drive to the school entrance. It would be my first time off the campus since I had arrived. It felt as if I had swum out too far in the sea. I hoped he couldn’t see how nervous it made me. I had this recurring nightmare in which I went off campus with Marcy and the girls, and someone stopped us on the street in Carbondale and asked, “Aren’t you that girl from Ridgeway who was abducted?”
If that really happened, I’d probably transfer out the following morning.
“So where are you from?” I asked Troy as he turned right. Getting people to talk about themselves usually kept them from asking probing questions of me.
“Here. Carbondale,” he said. “I’ll drive past our house. It’s kind of historic, once the home of a prominent coal mine owner who at one time employed most of the people living here. My mother wanted the house as a trophy, but she has this preoccupation with dust, as if the original owner came home covered in coal dust every day and it’s embedded in the walls or something. She has air filters everywhere and has our two maids do a top-to-bottom cleaning practically every other day. Drives my father nuts. He claims their bedroom could be an OR.”
“OR?”
“Operating room. It’s that immaculate. Most of the year, my sister and I aren’t there to make any sort of mess, not that we would. We’ve been brought up dabbing our mouths with a napkin after every bite.”
“Where is your sister?”
“Jo, short for Jocasta, a name she hates, attends Merrywood, a private junior high school in Philadelphia. She’s twelve.”
“Interesting name, Jocasta.”
“My mother was into Greek mythology. She was determined we’d be different. Jocasta is the mother of Oedipus.”
“What about you? Troy? How is that mythological?”
“Helen of Troy, the city of Troy. Achilles and his heel . . . all of it.”
“Your father went along with that?”
“My father chooses his priorities carefully,” he said. “Which is another way of saying he didn’t care as much as my mother did about our names. He wasn’t into naming us after dead relatives or anything like that. He was into ‘Get it over with. I’ve got a meeting.’ ”
I laughed, even though he didn’t even smile when he said it.
Then he did smile. “I see you’re someone who appreciates a dry but honest sense of humor. I like that.”
“What’s your father do that he has to have meetings?” I asked.
“He’s the CEO of a major telecom company, Broadscan. It has international reach, so we’ve done some extensive traveling when my mother felt like going along. I’ve been to all the major European capitals, like Paris, Madrid, Rome. What’s your father do?”
“Runs a software company. My parents are divorced,” I added, hoping that would end the questions about family before they could really start.
“My parents should be divorced, but my mother is made of Teflon.”
“Meaning?”
“The things other women would rage over just slide off her. I think she stayed married to my father just to get revenge.”
“Revenge? For what? What’s he done?”
“That’s a list, arm’s length,” he said. “Besides, I don’t like talking about parents, do you?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “but most of my classmates would agree with you, I think. My roommate certainly would.”
“Claudia, right?”
“If you come up with my social security number, I’m not going to be surprised.”
This time, he really laughed. “I can see that there will be little or no pretending with you,” he said, and was silent as he made one turn and then another. “About a minute more to the Dust Mansion.”
“That’s close by.”
“I practically fell out of my bed to get here the first day.”
“Are we going in?”
“Not tonight. My mother is not someone who tolerates surprise visits. Even by me alone,” he added. “So how do you like this school, really?”
“I like it. I hope that’s cool to say.”
He shrugged. “I like most of my teachers. It’s like anything else, I guess. It is what you make of it.”
“I believe that, too.”
He glanced at me to see if I was sincere or simply humoring him. “Do you really?”
“Yes, but beware. I’m not in the habit of agreeing with everything people say, especially people I meet for the first time. It gives the wrong impression.”
“You sure you haven’t taken fencing lessons?”
“I’m sure, but maybe I should.”
“You’d be a natural.”
Would I? I wondered. Is that what Haylee really did to me, made me forever defensive with any boy I’d ever meet? How much would any boy have to tolerate in order to develop a relationship with me? Would anyone think I was worth it, especially after he had learned the truth about me? Could I find someone with that sort of patience and sensitivity? Guys our age weren’t exactly willing to overlook anything unpleasant. It was the snapshot generation. You could meet, fall in love, and break up the same day. There was little time for true compassion.
“Say,” Troy said, “neither of us had any dessert. How about I take you to the place that makes the best ice cream sundaes in Pennsylvania?”
“With that description, how could I refuse?”
He sped up but didn’t go over the speed limit. “Now, besides your favorite movie star, singer, color, fruit, and television show, what interests you?” he asked.
“What would you say if I said myself?”
He glanced at me. He didn’t smile as much as his lips relaxed in the corners, and when an oncoming car’s headlights washed us in a moment of illumination, his eyes seemed to glow with pleasure. I didn’t want to be caught staring at him, but he was very good-looking, the way someone who was said to have a cinematic face was, and I felt like I was snapping pictures of him with my eyes. When he heard something that pleased him, his face lost its veil of gloom.
“I’d say you were one of most honest people I’ve met,” he replied. “Everyone is interested mostly in himself, but I don’t know many, actually any, who would admit it.”
“I don’t mean to sound self-centered. What I mean is I’m constantly wondering about my own thoughts and feelings, why I have them. So I guess I’m interested in psychology. When we read something in literature class, I’m usually intrigued with character motivation, like Iago in Othello. God, listen to me. I sound like some sort of intellectual snob.”
He laughed a laugh that reeked of amusement and pleasure. “If you’re an intellectual, most people, especially in our school, think you’re automatically a snob. I doubt there have been too many conversations in your dorm room or at the cafeteria table about why Iago did what he did to Othello.”
“No, but I’m fine with that. You do have to relax sometimes.”
He was quiet so long I thought I had just turned him off me completely. Part of why I was afraid even to attempt any sort of relationship with a boy now was that he might think I was too serious all the time. Here I was telling Troy it was important to relax, but I didn’t think I’d really had a single relaxing moment yet at Littlefield. I was too on guard, constantly distrustful, and worried that my story would emerge, break out like some horrible rash, and reveal every painful moment of my abduction and what my own sister had done to cause it. I’d be seen as some deeply wounded person, so scarred I might as well be an untouchable. There was no way to outlaw discrimination against my kind, victims.
“I think that’s why you drew my interest,” Troy said, and glanced at me.
“What?”
“Despite what you prescribe, you don’t seem to relax. I don’t relax, either,” he quickly added, like someone who when criticizing someone had to admit he or she suffered from the same fault.
“You could tell that so fast?”
“As they say, it takes one to know one. I’m one. I’m sure you have your reasons. I know I have mine.”
Now it was my turn to be silent. The obvious question was Why don’t you relax? I was afraid of the topic, afraid of how it would quickly lead to why I was not relaxed, so I avoided asking him his reason.
“There,” he said after about thirty or forty seconds. “On the right.”
I looked up at an enormous gray stone house at the top of the knoll. It was well lit and loomed over everything before it, rising higher and higher as we drew closer. It seemed to go on forever.
“What is it? The governor’s home?”
“Almost. That’s my house,” he said, “or, more accurately, my mother’s house.”
He slowed down so I could get a better look at it. The driveway looked like it was made of glass with black marble beneath it. There were lampposts on both sides all the way up. The driveway wound around and disappeared behind the rise. Even in the darkness, I could see that the grounds were elaborate, with trees and bushes so perfect they looked like set pieces on a movie lot.
“It’s so large.”
“It’s Georgian-style architecture,” he said, coming to a stop. “Thirty-two thousand square feet on ten acres. It’s one of the biggest houses in this area. We have seven bedrooms, a ballroom, a den with a pool table, a media center, my dad’s home office, and two kitchens.”
“Two? Why two?”
“One is solely for catered affairs like celebrations, business anniversaries. Sometimes my mother does a charity event. People pay five thousand dollars to attend and then bid on things donated, like a ten-day cruise or something. As I mentioned, we have two full-time maids, and we also have three regular grounds people. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a small building behind the house. The maids sleep there. It has a small kitchen, too. There’s a pool off to the left, with a cabana and whirlpool, and to the right are a tennis court and my dad’s putting green.”
“It belonged to the owner of a coal mine?”
“Yes, but my mother redid the whole place, changed flooring, replaced all the furniture, and added some new windows and lots of new curtains. My father modernized much of the technology. Those driveway lamps are all solar. About five years ago, they added a wing to the house, too. It’s mostly my father’s home office and library, his sanctuary where he can smoke a cigar and have meetings at home.”
He started to drive again. I looked back once.
“Very impressive,” I said.
“It’s like living in a museum, believe me,” he said.
“No wonder your mother thinks your father is a nobleman. We have a big house, but that’s really a mansion.”
“Home sweet home,” he muttered. “If you want, I’ll give you a tour. You just have to take off your shoes, take a shower, change into a visitor’s uniform, put a plastic cap over your hair, and put on a pair of surgical gloves before you touch anything.”
“You’re kidding, of course.”
“Yes, but if you ever did meet my mother in that house, you’d understand that I’m not exaggerating as much as you think. Okay. We’re coming to it, the best sundaes in North America, not just Pennsylvania.”
He slowed down as we approached a strip mall with half its stores already closed. A few looked empty, out of business. The mall didn’t look like anything special, so I was surprised when he pulled into the parking lot. There were very few cars.
“Here?” I asked. “The world’s best sundaes?”
“It’s a big secret. No one else at our school will know of it.” He nodded to the right at a small shop whose sign advertised toys, magazines, and stationery goods. “The owners have an old-fashioned soda fountain. You’ll see,” he said, getting out. He moved around quickly to open my door and reach for my hand. “It’s the proper way for a lady like you to get out of a royal carriage,” he said.
For a moment after I stepped out, he continued to hold my hand and then suddenly realized he was doing it and let go.
As we drew closer, I saw the place was simply called George’s.
“How did you find it?”
“I have this fountain pen my father’s younger brother gave me for my sixteenth birthday, one of those two-hundred-dollar fountain pens. George Malen, the owner, special-orders the replacement ink tubes for me. He was quite impressed with the pen when I stopped by to see if he could get the tubes, and then I saw the soda fountain and ordered a sundae. His wife, Annie, works the fountain. I think they’re both in their late sixties. This is a true mom-and-pop operation.”
He opened the door for me, and we entered what looked like a very cluttered place. The shelves were stacked with a variety of notepads, envelopes, files, and other office supplies. There were desk lamps and office wastebaskets lined up under the shelves. Another set of shelves had board games and toys for very young children. Maybe the place had started out as a toy store. Smack in the middle of it all was a soda fountain with six well-worn black vinyl stools. The counter had displays of candy, and just to the right of that was a magazine rack and a rack of paperback books. It looked like a store that was frozen in time. I saw little of technology, computer supplies, and the like.
At first, I thought there was no one there, but then I saw a man with graying light brown hair shift in a rocking chair toward the rear and look up from the magazine he was reading. His face brightened instantly, and he stood. He was wearing black slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had muscular forearms and looked like someone who worked with his hands, rather than the owner of a small store.
“Hello, Troy,” he said. “How you doin’?”
“Fine. Mr. Malen, this is my friend Kaylee. She attends Littlefield, too.”
“How you doing, young lady?”
“Well, thank you.”
“You out of ink tubes already?” he asked Troy.
“No. We came for sundaes,” Troy said.
“Annie,” Mr. Malen called, and a woman with stark white hair brushed and tied neatly in a bun at the back of her head emerged from a room at the rear of the store. She wore an apron over a midcalf-length floral-patterned dress. “Annie’s the sundae expert,” Mr. Malen told me.
“Troy,” she said, smiling. Her nearly wrinkle-free face looked misplaced below her gray hair. “How is school?”
“Oh, it will survive,” Troy said, and indicated which stool I should take.
Mrs. Malen went around the counter.
“This is Kaylee Fitzgerald,” Troy said. “She attends Littlefield, too.”
It was apparent that he wasn’t simply an occasional customer. If he had been, he wouldn’t find it necessary to introduce me, I thought.
Mr. Malen sat on the stool beside him. There were no other customers in the store. “Where are you from, young lady?” he asked me.
“Ridgeway.”
“That’s not far,” Mrs. Malen said. “Your parents could visit often.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling.
“What’s your flavor?” Troy asked me. “They have chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. You can have all three. It’s a three-scoop sundae.”
“Three? Okay,” I said. “That sounds great.”
“Two, please, Mrs. Malen,” Troy said. “With the works.”
“Coming up, two deluxe sundaes.”
“Sounds overwhelming,” I said.
“That’s what he should do, overwhelm you,” Mr. Malen said, moving closer. “Forty years ago, I overwhelmed Mrs. Malen, but not with sundaes.” He winked at Troy.
“Oh, you did, did you? Seems to me it was the other way around,” Mrs. Malen told him as she began cutting a banana. “He brags and blusters, but he was as easy to mold as this ice cream.”
“Only because I wanted to be,” he said. “The secret to a good marriage is letting your wife believe she is in charge.”
Mrs. Malen tilted her head a bit and pressed her lips together. “Wanted to be? You know how long it took him to ask me on a date? Two weeks. I nearly gave up on him after ten days and finally decided he needed a little more encouragement.”
“I was doing my research,” he pleaded.
“You were just shy.”
Troy and I smiled at each other, and then he quickly looked away.
“What class are you in, Kaylee?” Mrs. Malen asked.
“Troy’s,” I said. “Senior.”
“You just enter Littlefield? Or did it take him a few years to ask you out?” she followed, looking at Mr. Malen.
I glanced at Troy.
His cheeks reddened. “She just enrolled,” he answered for me, and for himself. “But I don’t just bring anyone for these sundaes. I do my research, too.”
“He’s picking up bad habits from you,” Mrs. Malen told her husband. “And how is your sister doing?” she asked Troy.
“I guess okay. There have been no flares shot into the sky.”
Mrs. Malen smiled. She smothered the ice cream balls in strawberries, adorned them with slices of banana and covered that with chocolate syrup before spreading the whipped cream over it all. She was neat about it, too.
“It’s a work of art,” I said when she placed mine before me. “I doubt I can finish it.”
“Eat as much as you want,” Troy said.
After she made Troy’s sundae, she nodded at Mr. Malen, and they retreated to the rear of the store, clearly to leave us to ourselves. A customer for stationery came in, and then a woman and a young girl entered to shop for a board game, so they were occupied for a while.
“I guess you’ve been here quite often,” I said.
“Yeah, sometimes I just hang out and talk to Mr. Malen. They had a son who was killed in Iraq, and they have a daughter who lives in New York City. She never got married. Works for a fashion designer. How’s your sundae?”
“Unbelievable. I might just finish it,” I said.
He nodded. “Thought so.”
“But how come you hang out here? Are you related or something?”
“Something.” He ate some more, staring ahead, looking lost in his own thoughts for a few moments. Then he turned back to me. “Let’s just say we fill gaps for each other. I have no relationship with my grandparents and barely one with my father,” he confessed. He leaned toward me so no one else would hear. “This is like an oasis in the desert I travel.”
I didn’t speak, because I had an intense urge to tell him I was traveling in a desert, too. Our conversation was in danger of becoming too heavy, and I knew where that might lead. I was happy when the Malens returned after their customers left and the conversation centered on what their youth was like. I think Troy and I circled their revelations and memories like two moths around a candle.
Mr. Malen was honest about how awkward he was when first courting Mrs. Malen, and whenever he tried to brag, she gently brought him back to “the way it really was.” We were all laughing before we left, and on our way out, they both gave me a hug. Mrs. Malen hugged Troy. He didn’t retreat from her affection. From the very little he had told me about his own family and home, I didn’t imagine him getting many hugs like this one there.
“Come again,” she said. “We’re thinking of getting some pistachio ice cream. Mainly because George likes it.”
“I love pistachio,” I said.
“I knew you found the right girl to bring here,” Mr. Malen told Troy. “About time.”
Troy reddened a bit again, nodded, reached for my hand tentatively but held it tightly when I clasped his, and opened the door for me.
“That was fun,” I said. “Of course, I’ll have to walk ten miles to work off the calories.”
“Thanks for going there with me. I know it’s not exactly what you anticipated.”
“No, it was fun. I really mean it.”
He searched my face for sincerity and opened the car door for me. “It’s not exactly the kind of thing your girlfriends would agree to do on a Friday night,” he said as he got in.
“Stop apologizing. I enjoyed it, and I don’t look to them for social guidance,” I said.
“Who do you look to?”
Once, I thought, what seemed long ago now, I had looked to my twin sister, who was far more sophisticated than I was. Despite everything, that answer was still lined up ahead of anything else in my mind and ready to be spoken. But even suggesting it would crack open the dam that held all the horror I had endured. It would come rushing in and surely kill this budding relationship between Troy and me. Maybe for that reason more than any other, I slammed the door shut on even a hint of it. The sad thing I knew in my heart was that no relationship could flourish on a ground of lies and deceptions. Nothing could come of this. I was teasing myself and probably him.
“Myself,” I replied.
I knew he wanted to talk more about himself and learn more about me, but I was too frightened to ask any more questions. Twice he tried to initiate a conversation about families, relatives, our early lives, but I didn’t say much of anything. We were both silent all the way back. I was sure he was wondering if he had made a mistake asking me to take a drive.
After we parked and got out of the car, I realized it had gotten even colder. I hugged myself again, not looking forward to the long walk to my dorm.
“You’re really cold,” he said. “I guess you weren’t planning on doing much tonight.”
“No, but I’m all right.”
“No, you’re not.” He took off his jacket. “Wear this. I’ll walk you back.”
“But won’t you be cold?” I asked as I put on his jacket.
“I’ll risk it, but let’s move.”
He reached for my hand. Then he started to jog. I laughed and kept up with him.
“Feels like it might snow tonight,” I said.
“When it does, keep track of when the first flake hits your face. That’s a lucky moment.”
“Who told you that?”
“No one. I made it up.”
There wasn’t anyone outside my dorm when we arrived. We both shot into the entry and caught our breath in the pool of warmth. His face was red, and mine felt on fire, but in a good way.
“Got rid of some of those calories,” he said.
I took off his jacket and handed it to him. “Thanks. Thanks for the sundae, too. I haven’t gone for ice cream anywhere for a long time, probably not since I was a little girl. Now it’s usually a cone of custard or frozen yogurt at the mall. And I don’t do that often, either.”
“Yeah, we grow up too fast these days. That’s what George says. I mean Mr. Malen.”
We stood there just looking at each other for a long moment.
“Well, I guess I’ll put on some warm PJs and snuggle up with some English lit. My roommate went out on a double date tonight.”
“Really? Then there’s hope for me,” he said. “How about I take you to get some pizza and go to a movie tomorrow?” he blurted, like someone who wanted to say it before he could think about it and hesitate.
“Okay.” I said it without hesitation, but he could have no idea how difficult that was for me to say, despite the good time we’d just had.
“I’ll come by for you at six.”
“Okay.”
He offered me his hand first, but when I took it, he pulled me closer. The memory of Anthony Cabot’s face hovering over me while I was trapped in that basement bed flashed before my eyes. I couldn’t stop it. I jerked back. Troy looked devastated for a moment and then quickly regained his composure. It was as if I had slapped him across the face. My heart raced with regret and residual fear.
“See you at six,” he mumbled, then turned and hurried out.
I stood looking after him and feeling terrible. In a frightened moment, I had wiped away the warmth and happiness we had just enjoyed.
I can’t do this, I thought. Not yet. I’ll call him tomorrow and cancel. Feeling defeated, I lowered my head and walked to my room. Some of the girls were laughing in Terri’s room, but I didn’t stop by. I put on my desk lamp and then fell back onto my bed and looked up at the ceiling. I knew I was imagining it, but that didn’t make it less devastating.
Haylee was looking down at me and smiling.
“You can’t do this without me,” she was saying. She had said it so many times. “We’re the Mirror Sisters. We need each other.”
I turned over and buried my face in the pillow to stop the tears from reaching my lips.