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?”
“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.”
I looked across the room at Rob and Ben. Everyone at their table was gazing at us as Rob spoke to them. Who knew what he was telling them now? Once you cast a lie into the sea of gossip, it was like trying to find a drop in the ocean, impossible to retrieve.
“She’s not kidding,” Terri said. “Wait until she starts with her fake English accent. She has a terrible crush on Mr. Edgewater, our lit teacher, and thinks if she speaks more like him, he’ll ravish her.”
“He will . . . someday.”
“Dream, dream, dream,” Estelle said.
“Why not dream? The truth is so boring,” Marcy continued. “Right, Claudia?”
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be,” she replied dryly. She began to poke at her food as though she were looking for something disgusting, like a hair or a dead fly.
“Huh? What’s that mean?”
“Kurt Vonnegut,” Claudia said.
“He’s an author, right?” Terri asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t care what he is. I hate warnings,” Marcy declared, souring her face. “They are such downers. There are too many ‘bewares’ in the world. We don’t need to add any.”
Claudia retreated after that and didn’t utter another word.
“What did you think of Rob?” Marcy asked me, keeping her eyes, still full of reprimand, on Claudia, who had closed herself like a clam.
“Cute,” I said. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“Not yet, but I’m going to sleep with him,” she predicted without the slightest hesitation. “Not my first, but my first was a disaster, in ninth grade. How about you?”
Everyone, including Claudia, leaned toward me.
“Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” I said.
Marcy tilted her head. “Isn’t that supposed to be absence makes the heart grow fonder?”
“Oh, damn, I made a mistake all these years.”
Everyone but Claudia laughed, and Marcy poked me with her shoulder.
“We’re going to be great friends . . . or else . . .”
“Or else what?”
“Bored,” she declared, and I laughed, too, probably the most free and honest laugh in a very long time. Claudia looked surprised, but in her look, I detected a desire to be part of whatever was forming between Marcy and me.
Something was, for sure. As our conversations continued, I did begin to feel more and more relaxed. Everyone who had advised me was so right. Attending a new school with people who didn’t know me or my family was the prescription for a healthy, happier future for me.
As we put our trays and dishes on the shelves set out for them, I happened to glance toward the far right corner of the dining hall and saw a boy sitting alone at a table. I didn’t want to stare at him, but it looked like he was staring at me. Of course, I realized he could be looking at someone near me. However, it struck me as odd that he was sitting completely alone and, instead of talking to anyone, had a textbook open. He wore his dark brown hair longer than most boys here, and he was dressed better, with what looked like a Robert Graham shirt and a pair of dark slacks rather than jeans. My father wore those shirts, so I knew about them and how expensive they were. I thought this boy was good-looking in a mature way. He had the air of someone quite self-confident.
I told myself I could be reading all this into just a glimpse and looked away quickly. But then I turned to Marcy and asked, “Who’s that boy in the corner?”
“Corner?” She looked. “Oh,” she said, dropping her voice. “That’s Troy Matzner or, excuse me, Troy Alexander Matzner the Thirtieth or something.”
“Why is he sitting alone?”
“There’s no one here good enough to stand in his shadow. Even the teachers treat him special, like he’s one of them and not us. There’s a four-point-oh without pretending. Some people think he’s gay, but I also heard a rumor that he’s seeing an older woman.”
“How much older?”
“Maybe in her thirties or something. I don’t know anything for sure, but don’t waste your time. He won’t give you a minute, much less an hour, of his day.”
“No worries. I have time to spare,” I said.
She laughed and took my hand to pull me along. “C’mon. You don’t have any homework yet. We can hang out in my room and tell each other secrets without either of us knowing what’s true and what isn’t.”
I looked back at Claudia, walking behind us, her head down.
“I should get to know my roommate, don’t you think?”
“The voice of darkness? Whatever,” Marcy said. “I’ll hang out with you guys and watch you open the coffin. Just kidding. She’s a breath of stale air.”
Just before we left Asper and headed for Cook, I looked back and saw Troy Matzner leaving the dining hall. I wasn’t imagining it. He was looking in my direction. Despite all my fears and trepidations and especially Marcy’s warnings, I couldn’t help but be a little interested in him. Maybe it was more than a little.
I turned away quickly and continued walking. The night air was chilly but sharply fresh. The moon wasn’t visible, but the partly cloudy sky gave us glimpses of bright stars and familiar constellations. There was something liberating about being away from home and away from anyone who knew me. I felt invigorated, hopeful, and especially generous. I paused once to let Claudia catch up. She looked surprised at how I wasn’t going to ignore her. She had fewer expectations for any sort of happiness than I had.
“Food wasn’t really that bad, was it?” I asked her. I had watched her picking at her food. She ate little. “Maybe you should have tried the chicken. You’ll probably be hungry later.”
“No, I won’t. Anyway, it wasn’t worse than my mother’s,” she said. “Which isn’t saying much.”
“We’re not supposed to keep any food in our rooms,” Marcy said, “but I have some great energy bars if you do get hungry later,” she told Claudia.
“Thanks,” Claudia said, “but I don’t think . . .”
“Oh, you’ll get hungry later,” Marcy insisted. “I’ll give you one to hide under your pillow or in your pajamas.”
I smiled at her. She was determined not to permit Claudia to cast a negative or depressing net over us. It amazed me. How did she become so optimistic and stay so happy with divorced parents and a broken home? Whether she was all pretend or not, I thought, she was exactly what the doctor ordered, someone who could vacuum up any sad thoughts or at least sweep them under the rug.
“You guys know that we can leave the campus on weekends, go into town and to a restaurant, mall, or movie, right?” Marcy asked as we walked on.
“No,” Claudia said, and shrugged as if to say What difference does it make?
“It’s not exactly Fun City here on weekends, and you can get better things to eat, not to mention drink.”
“No one said anything to me about that,” Claudia claimed.
“It’s on the contract your parents signed with the school. They had to agree that the school wasn’t responsible for what you did off campus, but you have to obey the curfew. No later than midnight back in your bunk and no leaving the campus on school days except Fridays and holidays . . . or . . .” She traced a line over her neck. “Twelve is not hard and fast. The bed check is random, meaning if Mrs. Rosewell is still awake or not, and most of the time, she’s drifted off. We also occupy her attention if we know someone is going to be late, so don’t worry.”
“How do we get to town?” I asked.
“There is a bus at the corner, but seniors have driving privileges. Most of the boys have their own cars. Rob does,” she added, nudging me. She leaned in to whisper. “Double dates are possible. Interested?”
I didn’t answer.
The concept of dating, starting a relationship, was truly at the tail end of my immediate concerns right now. Survival was number one. Survival meant somehow burying the immediate past so deeply that it wouldn’t come up even in nightmares. Every time I saw a cat or heard a sound that resembled the rattling of a chain, I cringed. The sight of any man whose head and body from behind vaguely suggested Anthony Cabot, my abductor, still sent ice water flowing along my spine and seized my breath. My utmost fear was that someone, someone like Marcy or Terri, would notice my reactions and begin to ask questions.
I saw how everyone had responded to Claudia’s reference to a girl at her last school being gang-raped. How would they react to having a girl who had been abducted and kept chained in a farmhouse basement, a girl whose hair had been chopped away and who was often naked and exposed? When and if that story spread, what boy would want to date me anyway, and what girl would want to become close friends with me? I would avoid all this as best I could.
However, soon the inevitable questions would come: Why did your parents want you to attend Littlefield? Why did they want you out of the public school? If you’re an only child, why would they want you out of the house so soon? The whys would come raining down around me and make my head spin, but my reaction had to be credible.
I had my stock answers prepared. My classes weren’t challenging enough. Even my teachers admitted it, citing their burden of having to teach so many of the basics that the other students never learned or mastered. They tried to give me individual attention, but the public-school class sizes were just too big. Cutbacks, you see. Who wouldn’t believe all that? Some or most of it was why they were sent here, too.
But a bigger question haunted me. I didn’t think it would come up so quickly. That was naive on my part, I guess, a symptom of the overly protected life I had lived under Mother’s rule. I knew that if our roles were reversed, Haylee would have landed a date by now or certainly wouldn’t have shied away from any and every opportunity to date someone.
The question was, could I ever commit to or feel safe in any sort of relationship? I didn’t have to have a daily psychological evaluation to know that my feelings and emotions were still quite fragile. Just the thought of someone touching me made me shiver. It disturbed me deeply to think I could be this withdrawn for the rest of my life as a result of what terrible things had been done to me. I could be emotionally handicapped, psychologically crippled forever. I certainly was feeling that way right now, and there was no one here I could go to for advice or help with these feelings. I’d have to go home and see my therapist, Dr. Sacks, whom I was scheduled to see again in six months.
“I think it would be best for me to get comfortable with my work and my teachers and my new dorm life first,” I told Marcy.
“Dulllllllll,” Marcy sang. “That’s all easier than you think. Leave it to me. I’ll fix you up with the right guy or guys. It will be easy, considering what you look like, and it will make things easier for me, too. Now, Claudia,” she said, stepping closer and whispering, “that will be my biggest challenge.”
“Then maybe you should begin with her,” I suggested.
She stopped walking, but I continued moving forward. “What?” She hurried back to my side. “Find her a date? No way, José.”
“She’s my roommate. It would be terrible to leave her alone, especially on the first few weekends,” I added.
Marcy’s excitement dwindled quickly. I smiled to myself. Amazing how clever I could be when I was looking for ways to avoid a crisis, I thought.
Marcy looked back at Claudia and then shook her head. “And here I was thinking my social life was about to skyrocket,” she moaned.
“Maybe it will,” I said. “Think of how impressed everyone will be if you play Cupid successfully for her.”
“Sounds too much like a homework assignment,” she complained.
We walked on. When we got to the dorm, Marcy went quickly to her room and returned with some energy bars.
Claudia reluctantly accepted one. “I probably won’t eat it,” she said.
“If you change your mind, at least you’ll have it,” Marcy said.
Claudia put it in her night-table drawer. Almost immediately, Marcy began asking Claudia what she thought were key questions related to dating while I organized my desk. It took all my self-control to keep from laughing. But then I thought, What if she’s really good at this and finds Claudia a boyfriend?
What excuse would I have then?
“So did you have any boyfriends at your two other private schools?” Marcy asked her.
“Not exactly,” Claudia replied. “Not how you mean,” she quickly added.
Marcy looked to me with an amused expression. She had planted herself on the floor between Claudia and me and sat in the lotus position.
“How do I mean?”
“Sex,” Claudia said bluntly.
“You haven’t had any sex?”
“No, not how you mean.”
“What is this with what I mean? It’s not rocket science. Are you a virgin? How close did you come to losing it? Was there a boy you liked enough to do it with? They are not multiple-choice questions.”
“They are to me,” Claudia said.
“Huh?” Marcy looked at me with frustration.
I looked away, secretly pleased at Marcy’s frustration.
“If you could have the boy of your dreams, what would he be like?” she asked.
“I always felt hypothetical questions were a waste of time,” Claudia replied. “Something like that should be spontaneous anyway. It’s my big bang theory.”
“What?” Marcy looked like she wasn’t sure if she should laugh and turned to me for some hint.
I said nothing.
“Do you mean big bang like I think or hope?” she asked.
“I’m going to brush my teeth and wash up for bed,” Claudia said instead of replying. She gathered her bag of toiletries and walked out.
“What language does she speak? Can you think of another reason to have a boyfriend? What did she mean by saying they are multiple-choice questions to her? And what is a big bang theory?” Marcy asked after Claudia was gone.
I shrugged. “I think I know what she means. Companionship could be one reason other than sex, I suppose.”
“Companionship? With a boy?” Marcy grimaced as if the word left a bitter taste after it was pronounced. “That died for me once I had my first period. Unless he’s gay, any boy has one thing on his mind, no matter how safe you might think he is. Which is fine by me,” she added. “Don’t tell me that when you look at a boy, especially a boy you just met, the vision of what it would be like to sleep with him doesn’t come into it some way, sometime, even if it’s a ‘never happen’ thought. It’s still one of your thoughts, right? I mean, I’m not some nymphomaniac. I’m a well-adjusted, determined-to-be-sexually-active young woman. Okay, that’s enough confession from me. She has my head spinning. Your turn.”
“I suppose I think about it but not, as you make it sound, with every boy I meet. They have to be attractive and interesting enough for me to care.”
“I’m not saying I’d do it with just any of them, but it helps to imagine what it would be like.”
I looked away. All this sounded so immature to me now. Was it impossible for me to be a teenage girl again and have these kinds of discussions?
Marcy persisted. “All right. I’ll start from scratch. How about you? Any special boy you left behind?”
“There was one once,” I said. It seemed like decades ago. “My first real crush, I suppose. He moved away.”
“Lost contact?”
“Yes, but he set the bar for me.”
“Which means?”
“I tend to measure other boys against him, and so far, no one’s come close.”
She nodded, impressed.
I’m getting good at this, I thought, and again thought, out of self-defense.
Claudia returned, wearing her light pink robe and matching pajamas. “What time is lights-out?” she asked, putting away her clothes.
“Lights-out? This isn’t exactly the army,” Marcy said.
“Fine.” Claudia scooped a sleep mask out of her smaller suitcase.
“We’re trying to get to know each other,” Marcy said.
“There’s always tomorrow. I’m not leaving . . . for a while, anyway,” Claudia said, and put her sleep mask on before crawling into bed and turning her back to us.
“You want to come to my room?” Marcy asked.
“I think I should go to bed, too,” I said. “It’s been a long day. I’ll see you at breakfast, okay?”
Marcy was disappointed, but she stood up. “I hope you don’t turn out to be a good influence on me or something,” she said. “If you think of something shocking to tell me, don’t be afraid to wake me up. ’Night, newlyweds,” she chimed.
Claudia didn’t respond.
I smiled. “Thanks. ’Night,” I said.
She rolled her eyes and left. I changed into my pajamas and went to brush my teeth and wash up. When I returned, Claudia had turned onto her back and taken off her sleep mask.
“It’s all right with me if you want to ask for a different roommate,” she said.
“What for?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“We haven’t known each other long enough to dislike each other,” I said.
She turned to me. “I have never had a boyfriend. I haven’t gone to any parties or anything since I was in junior high school. I’m not gay, although I’ve been accused of being gay,” she rattled off, like someone who had to get it said and over.
“I wouldn’t frame it as an accusation if you were,” I said. “And I haven’t been Miss Popularity at my school, despite how Marcy thinks of me. She means no harm. Let’s just get ourselves started and organized, Claudia. It seems like a good school. I hope we’ll both be happy here.”
She studied me a moment to see if I was just telling her what she would want to hear and then nodded. She apparently decided I was sincere. “Okay.”
I got into bed, and after I put out the light, we were silent, but then she asked me what my class schedule was. We shared two classes.
“I’m better in math. If I wasn’t, my father would be disappointed,” she said.
“What about your mother?”
“She doesn’t even ask about my grades anymore.”
“I’m better in English and history, so maybe we can help each other.”
“Maybe,” she said cautiously.
“Good night,” I said.
“ ’Night.” She sounded so fragile.
Who was more broken? I wondered. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe in some way, I was lucky to have pulled her as a roommate. I wasn’t going to sleep worrying about myself for a change. And I would have less reason to think about Haylee.
That felt good. I never thought I would feel happy so quickly here. I was skeptical that I ever would, but I closed my eyes and considered that I might. I just might make something of a comeback after all.
That boy back at the dining hall came to mind again. Troy Matzner. I wondered why he kept to himself. Was it good to be curious or dangerous now? Why not start optimistically? I thought.
I might even fall in love with someone and come to the point where everything terrible that had happened to me would seem like it had happened to someone else.
Maybe I could pretend it had happened to Haylee.
After all, that was who Anthony Cabot thought he had kidnapped.