Dark Companion (11 page)

Ms. Chu reviewed editing symbols and the newspaper production schedule. “The file cabinets are our archives and they have every article
Birch Grove Weekly
has ever published. Always make a hard copy, no excuses, because we lose records whenever the technology changes. Your assignments will not be accepted as complete until they are filed in the archives.”

Ms. Chu talked about the five
w
’s of reporting: who, what, where, when, and why. “Our first issue comes out in two weeks and your five-hundred-word story is due Wednesday. I want succinct prose. Quote at least two sources, and if
any
of your facts are incorrect, you
will
fail the assignment. I don’t have to tell you to proofread now, do I?”

When a student asked about the computers, Ms. Chu said, “You’ll get access to the
Weekly
account, and your use is restricted to submitting articles and formatting the paper.”

I stayed after class to ask her about a topic for the first assignment. She suggested a feature on the lacrosse team, and when I frowned, she said, “Or write a piece about the Birch Grove Foundation, which administers our scholarships. Twenty percent of the student body receives some form of financial aid. A student started a feature on it last year, but she got the flu and never finished it. You can ask Mr. Shaunessy in the administrative offices about the foundation.”

*   *   *

I forgot the frustrations of my day when I unlocked the door to my cottage and heard the phone ringing. I ran inside and grabbed it up. “Hello!”

“Hey, Jane? It’s Lucky.”

My throat constricted. “Oh, hi, Lucky!”

“How’s it going?” His voice was lighter than Jack’s and didn’t have that annoying, sardonic edge. “School okay?”

“It’s good. I’m taking Night Terrors with your mom.”

“Everyone loves that class. Okay, you know that tutoring thing? Chemistry? My parents say I should start it right away and not fall behind. I can come over there on Saturday around noon if that’s okay.”

“That would be great.” I spoke too fast in my eagerness. “I mean, I’m available then.”

“Okay, see you then.”

“See you.”

I hung up and thought,
Lucky and me and money for tutoring
. I closed my eyes so I could imagine his face, his long body, the wink he’d given me, the smell of him, the feel of his breath against my cheek. I knew absolutely and without any doubt that girls like me never got guys like Lucky, but that night in my own bed, I imagined him and what it might feel like to kiss him and to have his hands exploring my lonely, unloved body.

As the evening comes on, an incomprehensible feeling of disquietude seizes me, just as if night concealed some terrible menace toward me. I dine quickly, and then try to read, but I do not understand the words, and can scarcely distinguish the letters. Then I walk up and down my drawing-room, oppressed by a feeling of confused and irresistible fear …

Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla” (1887)

Chapter 10

The next day, Constance and I had Mrs. Radcliffe’s Night Terrors. The headmistress stood in front of us holding a thick book with a maroon leather cover. “Let’s begin with a poem written in 1748 by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. It’s called ‘Der Vampire.’”

She waited until the room was completely silent and then she recited the poem:

“And as softly thou art sleeping

To thee shall I come creeping

And thy life’s blood drain away.

And so shalt thou be trembling

For thus shall I be kissing

And death’s threshold thou’ it be crossing

With fear, in my cold arms.

And last shall I thee question

Compared to such instruction

What are a mother’s charms?”

She opened her hands, letting go of the book, and it hit the floor with a loud slap. Many of the girls jumped in their seats and several laughed nervously. Mrs. Radcliffe smiled. She said, “Does everything that goes bump in the night have a nasty bite?” We laughed more comfortably.

“Why does every society, every culture have stories about monsters, such as those that drink blood?” she asked. “The universality of these tales says something about our own humanity, but what? Are we afraid of what is outside lurking in the night, or do we dread the darkness of our own souls?”

We went through the poem line by line, and I discovered it was about a man threatening to give a vampire’s kiss to a pure maiden. Mrs. Radcliffe caught my eye and I thought,
No, please don’t call on me
, but she did. “Jane, what are your thoughts?”

“Well, he’s like, um … He’s like a pimp. He seduces the innocent girl and she thinks he loves her, but he’s only using her. He’s taunting her even at the end about her powerlessness to resist him and about everything she’s lost … a mother’s love.”

“That’s a good analogy, Jane, but could the author have used the supernatural to represent a more real fear? What could blood symbolize?”

I brooded on the poem through the discussion that followed. When someone mentioned menstrual blood, I expected giggling, but the students were serious as they made associations between fertility and blood, fear of death, and the penetration of a bite and coitus. They even used that word, coitus, and the only other time I’d heard another girl use it was Mary Violet, when we’d met.

“Thus life, death, blood, sex, power, innocence, and corruption all come together in these two brief stanzas,” said Mrs. Radcliffe. “Please read Johann Ludwig Tieck’s ‘Wake Not the Dead’ for our next class.”

The bell sounded and we began leaving the classroom. Mrs. Radcliffe stopped me as I passed her desk. “I’m glad you participated, Jane. Did you enjoy the class?”

“It’s definitely more interesting than Western Classical Lit.” I paused. “The poem’s disturbing.”

“It is, isn’t it, even after more than two centuries. I’ve always been fascinated by our perception of those things outside the norm.”

“Jack told me you read fairy tales to them at night.”

“Lucian wasn’t interested, but Jacob always loved hearing folktales from the Old World about goblins, elves, will-o’-the-wisps, magical kingdoms … Some kids have an imaginary best friend, but my son had a whole grove of make-believe creatures. He was less interested when I discussed fairy stories as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution.” Mrs. Radcliffe handed me a few pages. “Here’s the syllabus, and you can pick up your books for this course in the administrative offices.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Radcliffe.” As I took the pages from her pale hand, I thought of the line “in my cold arms” and I also thought of Lucky’s warm hands as he bandaged my cut.

After class, I went to the admin offices, got my books, and visited Mr. Shaunessy to interview him about the scholarship fund. The older bald man rattled boring facts and statistics before walking me to the door. “A pity that Bebe isn’t here for your story. She was on full scholarship, like you, but abandoned the school for a European jaunt with some unreliable relative.” He sniffed.

I wanted to slap him, but I kept my voice calm. “Every foster kid I’ve ever known would give up anything,
everything,
to be with their family. I know I would.”

“Birch Grove
is
family.” He shut the door before I could respond.

I stormed into the hallway, where Mary Violet was using her reflection in the glass of a framed portrait to fluff up her silver-gold curls. “Why are you vexed? That’s what my mother always says. She says, ‘Why is my family determined to vex me?’” Mary Violet accompanied this statement by placing the back of her hand on her forehead, and I laughed.

“I’m vexed because I’ve had to deal with vexatious people. Mary Violet, do you know that Catalina had the nerve to say that my ‘new friends’ were snobs?”

“Oh, it’s absolutely true. If someone doesn’t think I’m fabulous, I’ll have nothing to do with her. Catalina’s not all bad, though. She thinks my hair is splendid. Why were you talking to Mr. Shaunessy?”

“I interviewed him for my story on the student aid program.”

“He’s a darling. My mother loooves him. She has him for tea, and they moan about how no one cares about culture anymore and Art with a capital
A,
and then she gives him massive checks.”

“Your mom donates money to the school?”

“Oodles. As fast as Daddy makes it, she gives it away.”

“Do you think I could talk to her for my assignment?”

“Sure. You can come to my house if you promise not to scream when you see my mother’s paintings. They’re
scandalous
!”

Mary Violet lived nearby and we walked to her house on narrow streets that didn’t have sidewalks. Often a car would slow down and the driver would call out a hello to her or a kid on a bike would wave and shout to her.

“It’s an itsy-bitsy little town,” Mary Violet said. “We know all the tedious details about everyone else. That’s why I was ecstatic that you came to Birch Grove. Of course, it would have been
more
fun if you were secretly a super-dreamy guy dressed in girls’ clothes and hiding out from the Mafia.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Oh, I’m already over it. Not every transfer student can be a super-dreamy guy on the run from the mob.” She sighed. “There isn’t any interesting new talent in Greenwood.”

“Talent?”

“You know, guys. You go to preschool and primary school with these boys and you can’t even think of them
that
way. It’s like incest without the thrilling wrongness. It’s boring wrongness. Brongness.”

“I used to feel that way about the boys in our group home. The fastest way to get over a crush is to share a bathroom with a guy. It’s way too much information.”

“Was it a horrible orphanage? Did you eat moldy gruel?”

“We ate stuff that came in giant cans from the dented warehouse store and could be microwaved. It was a group home, not an orphanage.” I told her a little about the ramshackle house and the rules.

“That sounds hideous! I could never ever get up at six every day. I’m sure it’s child abuse. How did you get to be so smart?”

“I had a friend who liked science and told me I should use my brain, so I started sitting at the nerd table in the cafeteria. They decided to use me as the subject in an experiment to see if anyone could be smart. That’s why I freaked out when we had to read
Flowers for Algernon
last year. I was paranoid that I might revert back to the feral kid I was.”

“That book is freaky anyway. I swear, the people who pick assigned reading must be high.
The Stranger,
ugh. How were you feral?”

I shrugged and my book bag slid from my shoulder. I pushed the strap back up while I thought of my answer. “I didn’t know how to communicate so all I did was cuss.”

“You?” Her blue eyes widened. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true. If you removed the obscenities from my vocabulary, the only things left would be
you,
can,
and
go
. I didn’t have the words to express myself so all I felt was an inchoate anger. Now I know when I’m aggravated, frustrated, anxious, exasperated, exhausted, fretful, infuriated…”

“
Inchoate
is an excellent word, but those are all negative feelings. What about when you’re hilarity-ated?”

“Do you make up words all the time?”

“Yes, because William Shakespeare made up words and he wrote poems, too, just like me. I believe I’m his spiritual heir.”

“I don’t think he wrote any poems about roadkill.” I watched a woman walking with a toddler across the road. “I got vexed when I talked to Mr. Shaunessy because he didn’t understand why a foster kid would do
anything
to be with family. I’d be happy to have even one relative.”

“Are you talking about Bebe leaving school? It is a little odd, but she had her own agenda. She’s the reason we have to be super careful about texting, because she was caught sexting.”

“Everyone who has a phone sexts.” I wondered what Lucky sexted.

“Not me, because I believe women must have mystique to be truly alluring.” When I stopped laughing, she said, “Bebe must have been sexting with someone from the
outside
because there was a humongous brouhaha that wouldn’t have happened with a Greenwood boy. I think it was someone older, because she was always going on about
mature
men.”

“If Bebe ran off with an old guy it would explain why she hasn’t contacted you.”

“You have a very naughty mind! We thought of that, but Bebe loved it here. We thought she was great, too.”

“I’m the replacement.”

“Don’t be like that. I like you
more
because you have a fabulous sense of humor and, besides, Bebe always seemed like she was only half listening to me while she was secretly plotting world domination.”

One thing caught my attention. “You think I have a sense of humor? Really?”

“Mais certainment!”
Mary Violet opened a gate in a hedge. “That’s French for ‘true dat.’ Home sweet home.”

The house was painted taupe and the paned windows had snowy-white trim. Ivy grew up to the second-floor balconies, and a brick path curved through a lush lawn to the red front door.

“It’s wonderful,” I said.

“It is, isn’t it? But wait until you see my mother’s Exposition of Vulgarity. She doesn’t call it that, though, so just tell her how lovely everything is.”