A Great and Terrible Beauty

"Aren't I the lucky one? I'll rush right out and buy a new bonnet for the occasion."



Felicity's eyes narrow, but her mouth never loses its smile. "There are girls who would give their eyeteeth to be in your position."



"Fine. Then ask them."



"See here, I'm offering you a chance to get on at Spence. To be a part of something and have the other girls look up to you. You might do well to think about it."



"To be part of something the way you made Ann a part of something tonight?" I say. I look back at Ann, several steps below me now, her nose running again.



Felicity sees this. "It's not that we don't want Ann involved. It's just that her life isn't going to be like ours. You think you're being so kind to her when you know very well that you can't be friends with her on the outside. It's much crueler to make her think otherwise, to lead her on."



She's right. I don't trust her farther than I can run full-steam in a corset, but she is right. The truth is hard and unfair, but there it is.



"If I were interested in joiningwhich I'm not saying that I ambut if I were, what would I have to do?"



"Nothing yet," she says, her face breaking into the sort of smile that doesn't make me feel at ease. "Don't worrywe'll come to you." She lifts her skirts and runs up the stairs, shooting past the rest of us like a comet.



CHAPTER SEVEN



It's the sound that wakes me. My eyelids flutter open, fighting off the remnants of dreams. I'm lying on my right side, facing Ann's bed. The door and whatever may be just inside it are down past my feet at the far end of the room. To get a good look, I'd have to move, sit up, roll over, and I'm not about to let on that I'm awake. It's a five-year-old's logic: If I can't see it, it can't see me. No doubt plenty of unfortunate people have wound up with their heads cut off by assuming the very same thing.



All right, Gem, no use getting frightened. It's probably nothing . I blink and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Fingers of moonlight reach through the crack in the long velvet drapes and up the walls, nearly touching the low ceiling. Outside, a branch scratches against the windowpane with a squeak. My ears strain for some other noise, something in the room with us. There's nothing else but the rhythm of Ann's steady snoring. For a moment I think I must have dreamed it. And there it is again. The creaking of floorboards under careful steps that tells me this is not my imagination. I let my eyelids close to small slits so that I can pretend to be asleep but still see. No one takes my head without a fight. A figure looms closer. My tongue feels thick and dry in my mouth. The figure reaches out a hand and I'm up quickly, smashing my skull into the overhang just above my bed.



I hiss in pain, forgetting my visitor and placing a palm on my throbbing forehead.



A surprisingly small hand clamps over my mouth. "Do you want to wake the whole bloody school?" Felicity leans over me, the moonlight catching the planes of her face in such a way that she is all wide, hard angles and milky-white skin. She could be the face of the moon itself.



"What are you doing here?" I ask, my fingers rubbing across the goose egg-sized lump rising along my hairline.



"I told you we'd come for you."



"You didn't say it would be in the middle of the bloody night," I say, matching her tone. There's something about Felicity that makes me want to impress her, show her that I'm a match for her strength and she can't win me so easily.



"Come on. I want to show you something."



"What?"



She speaks to me slowly, as she would a child. "Follow me and I'll show you."



My head still hurts from the bang. Ann is snoring lightly, completely unaware that we're having this conversation.



"Come back in the morning," I say, flopping back against my pillow. I'm awake enough to know that whatever she wants to show me at this hour can't be good.



"I won't make this offer again. It's now or never." Go back to sleep, Gem. This does not sound promising . It's my conscience talking. But my conscience doesn't have to spend the next two years making inane teatime chatter, bored to the point of catatonia. This is a challenge, and I've never said no to a challenge in my life.



"All right, then. I'm up," I say. Then, just to make sure I don't seem too soft, I add, "But this had better be good."



"Oh, it will. I promise you."



I find myself following Felicity out of my room, down the long corridor, past rooms of sleeping girls tucked away behind walls that house pictures of women from Spence's past, grim-faced ghosts in white dresses whose somber mouths are tight in disapproval of this little escapade, but whose sad eyes all seem to say go. Go while you can. Freedom is brief .