Daughters of Eve (23 page)

"Now, would he do that if everything wasn't on the up-and-up?" Tammy asked triumphantly.

"I want to see them," Kelly said.

"You're in his second-period class. You'll get to see them tomorrow."

"I want to see them now." Kelly's voice was flat and hard. Staring across at her, Tammy could hardly believe this person was one of her two closest friends. There was something about this face she had never seen before. The softness was gone from it, so was the warmth. The eyes that challenged hers were a stranger's eyes, cold and distant and outraged.

Outraged at what? At me? At my father? What has Dad ever done to Kelly? Dad likes her. He's always liked her. That very first day she came over, he told me afterward, "That's a darned nice girl."

What has happened to Kelly? What has happened to us all?

"I want to see them now," said the stranger with Kelly's face.

"I don't think we can get into the science room," Ruth told her. "The janitor will have it locked."

"I have a pass key," Irene said quietly. "It works for all the classrooms."

"Then you think we should go look?" Jane asked her.

"Of course, you must go look. Did any good ever come from hiding one's head in the sand? That is what women have been doing for far too long, girls, hiding their heads, closing their eyes, because they have been unwilling to face the fact of discrimination."

"My mother's one of those," Holly said.

"My mother created the role," Kelly said bitterly.

"But your generation is different," Irene said fiercely. "You are our hope! You must not be afraid to open your eyes and see things for what they are. Only then will you be able to begin correcting them! Poor Fran! In her own way she has been as badly hurt as Laura. Fran's future has been taken away from her."

"She'll have other chances for college," Tammy objected. "There are all sorts of academic scholarships she can apply for. Fran's GPA is so high, she'll be in the running for a lot of things."

"But nothing this big," Paula said. "Besides, she has a right to this!"

"But, maybe Gordon—"

"Bag it, Tammy," Kelly said viciously. "We don't need to listen to that sort of shit."

For a moment, there was silence. The words, and the tone in which they had been uttered, stunned them all.

Then Bambi said slowly, "Kelly's right, Tarn. If you're for Gordon, then you're not for Fran. And if you're not for Fran, then you don't belong here. This is a sisterhood. We support each other. Either you're one of us or you're not."

"Then, I guess I'm not," Tammy said softly.

"Oh, Tammy, of course, you are!" Ann said in distress. "Kelly's just upset. She didn't mean to say what she did. And Bambi too. We're all of us concerned about Fran, and so are you."

"But I can't be part of—the thing you're going to do," Tammy said.

"What do you mean?"

"It was bad enough—the thing with Peter—but, at least, we knew he deserved it. With this, we don't know anything at all! It's just feelings! Everybody's so angry, but it's not really Gordon—" She felt the sentence unfinished before the blank expressions that surrounded her.

Even Ann was regarding her with bewilderment.

"What do you mean, 'the thing we're going to do'? Nobody's suggested doing anything except going down to the science room and looking at the projects. How is that going to hurt anything?"

"Girls, Tammy must make her own decision," Irene said. "We mustn't pressure her to remain a member of Daughters of Eve if she doesn't want to. Perhaps we shouldn't have coaxed her to return when she rejected us the last time."

"You're right, Irene. I should never have come back." Tammy shoved her chair back from the table and stood up. "I won't be coming to meetings anymore. You can take my name off the membership list."

"You're still bound by the oath," Kelly reminded her. "You can't get out of that. You swore that you would reveal nothing sacred to the sisterhood."

"I know. I won't say anything to anybody about—about—anything."

"That includes Peter Grange."

"Yes—and—the other." Suddenly she could not wait to get out of the room, to leave them all behind her. "The thing that's going to happen—today."

"Hey, Fran! Wait up a minute, will you?" The tall boy with the wheat-colored hair was shouting to her from half a block away.

Fran's first reaction was to quicken her pace as though she had not heard him. Then, when he continued shouting, she stopped walking to allow him to catch up with her. He did so at an awkward lope that reminded her absurdly of an adolescent giraffe.

"I didn't know you were going home," Gordon Pellet panted. "I thought you had some sort of club meeting on Mondays."

"I do, but I decided not to go." Fran began walking again, and he fell into step beside her. "I felt like being alone for a while."

He ignored the hint. "I don't blame you. I bet you're plenty mad. I sure would be if I were in your shoes."

"It's my fault," Fran said. "I should have discussed the project with Mr. Carncross in the very beginning. I was just so unsure of what the results would be that I wanted to work through it all myself before I talked about it to anybody. And then, when I realized the way it was turning out, I wanted to surprise him."

"You surprised hind, all right."

"Yeah," Fran said ruefully. "But not as much as I surprised myself."

"Look, Fran—I'm sorry. That's straight. I'm really sorry. You deserved to go to state. Your experiment was incredible. You've got something you just can't compare with the usual stuff that comes up in competitions like this." He paused. When she did not answer, he continued, "If I could do something to make your project go through, I'd do it. I know how mine compares. I feel like a dope even going to state, much less participating."

"It's okay," Fran said. "Like I said, it's my own fault."

"But, it's not right."

"Yes, it is. Like, we all have to learn to live in the real world, right? So, I should have talked the thing over with Mr. C. If I didn't want to do that, I should have read all the small print in the regulations. I should have known the rules about using animals."

"You didn't hurt those damned rats."

"In a way I did. Nobody turns into an alcoholic without being hurt, does he? Human or rat? It does stuff to your liver."

"An alcoholic is an alcoholic. You didn't make those rats that way. That was what your experiment was all about. You were proving that they were that way to begin with because of heredity."

"But an alcoholic with no access to liquor is a dry alcoholic. I made those rats wet alcoholics. There's no way they'd have gotten liquor if I hadn't given it to them. So those 'cruelty to animal' regulations do really apply."

"Your experiment was great. Just great."

"Thanks, Gordon."

"I mean it. If I could I'd switch places. Do you believe that?"

"I—yes. Yes, I do." Fran turned to look at him, really look at him, for the first time since they had begun to walk together. What she saw was a young man who was too tall and too thin and who had a shock of hair so blond that it was almost white. He wore glasses, as she did. His Adam's apple was too big. When he talked, it bobbed up and down so fast that it seemed to vibrate. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes were a clear, clean gray, like snow clouds. They were quiet eyes, intelligent eyes. He had acne on his chin. Not a lot. Just enough to show that his chin was real. It wasn't a weak chin; in fact, it was surprisingly strong, considering the narrow lines of his face.

"You could have put together a worthwhile project," Fran said. "Why didn't you? That solar system was a copout."

"I know. I didn't realize I had any competition."

"That's no excuse."

"You're right. Next time I'll know better. I'll know people like you are waiting behind the bushes." He cleared his throat. "Fran—are you mad?"

"Not at you or Mr. C. At myself."

"I'd like to see your experiment set up. I'm really turned on by the whole idea of it. When we were talking with Mr. Carncross this afternoon, all you had there were the records and notebooks. I'd like to see a demonstration with the rats and the bottles and everything. Would it be all right if I stopped over sometime? Like, when you're feeding them or something?"

"I feed them mornings and evenings," Fran told him.

"Could I come over tonight?"

"I'll be feeding them around eight."

"That would be great." He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "After you feed them, maybe you and I could go out for a Coke or something. Okay?"

"I guess so," Fran said. "I mean—sure. Why not?"

She wasn't smiling. When you saw a year's worth of research go down the drain, smiles didn't come easily. But—quite suddenly—she did not feel quite as terrible as she had.

CHAPTER 17

On Tuesday, December 5, Tammy Carncross did not get up to go to school. She lay in bed with her eyes closed until her mother stuck her head in the door to check on her.

"I have cramps," Tammy told her.

"Bad ones? Do you need some Midol?"

"I already took some, thanks."

She hated having to lie to her mother. It was far too easy. Lil Carncross always accepted everything she was told at face value, so deception was no challenge. Still, there was no way this morning that she could tell her the truth—that she simply could not face the day.

So Tammy lay guiltily in her bed, listening to the usual morning sounds of a house coming alive—water running, toilets flushing, her father's electric razor buzzing in the bathroom across the hall, the clank of pans in the kitchen. Eventually there was the sound of the front door opening and closing and the car engine turning over in the driveway beneath her bedroom window.

That receded, and almost immediately it was replaced by the clatter of her mother's electric typewriter.

Huddled beneath the bedclothes, Tammy could picture her father parking his car in the faculty lot and entering the school building. Stopping by the office to check his mailbox. Walking down the hall to his classroom. Inserting his key in the lock. Turning the knob.

I should have prepared him, she thought miserably. But, how could I? I did take the oath. I can't go back on that. Besides, it's not as though I really know anything. Like Ann said, all anybody talked about doing was going in to look. Perhaps that's all that happened. Perhaps—

She sighed and closed her eyes, trying to block out the unwanted certainty.

She did know.

"My, God, Dan, I've never seen such a mess in my life!"

Mr. Shelby stood in the doorway of the science' room, looking as though he had been struck in the face.

"Neither have I, Shel. That's why I called you down here. I didn't have the words to describe it. You had to see it for yourself to have any idea of what must have gone on." Dan Carncross glanced helplessly about him, his eyes moving from one disaster area to another as though desperate for a place to light. "If a bomb had gone off in here, it couldn't have done more damage."

"Do you have any idea who's responsible?"

"None at all. I was here a good half hour after school yesterday talking with a couple of students about their science fair projects. The three of us left the room together. The building was pretty much empty by then except for a club meeting going on in one of the classrooms down at the end of the hall. Nobody seemed to be hanging around. There wasn't any indication that anything was brewing."

"Did you lock up?"

"Of course, but Mr. Moore hadn't been in to clean yet. He must have forgotten to relock after he swept up. The room was open when I got here this morning."

"Is there anything that can be salvaged?" the principal asked.

"Not much, I'm afraid. They destroyed almost everything of value—the lab equipment, the test tubes, the burners. Gordon Pellet had his project set up over there on the table. That's smashed. My desk top was swept clean; everything on it was dumped on the floor. The drawers were pulled out and emptied. I had a photograph of my wife and daughters in the middle one; somebody ripped that to shreds and poured chemicals on it." Dan shook his head in disbelief. "It's crazy. It's sick. What more can I say?"

"This isn't the sort of thing that comes out of nowhere," Mr. Shelby said slowly. "Something must have triggered it. Have you had any run-ins with students recently?"

"No. Absolutely not. This has been a good semester."

"What about the kids you saw after school yesterday?"

"Gordon Pellet and Fran Schneider? There's no way one of them was involved in this."

"You were only able to select one to represent Modesta High at state, weren't you? That must have caused a few hard feelings."

"I don't think it did. Fran's an intelligent girl. She understood the problem. She was disappointed, of course, but certainly not vindictive."

"What 'problem' was it she understood?" Mr. Shelby asked.

"She had a project that would have been disqualified by the judges at state. There's a special committee that has to certify all experiments involving live animals. There's a strict list of requirements, and Fran's project doesn't meet them."