Daughters of Eve (8 page)

"I thought that dumb dub only met on Mondays," Peter grumbled. "That's what Ruthie keeps telling us. You seem to be involved in it twenty-four hours a day."

Bambi pulled the car door open and got in, shoving her books over on the seat between them.

"She's right, the meetings are only once a week," she said. "You can't do everything during those, though. Like tomorrow we're going door-to-door selling raffle tickets to benefit the school athletic fund. The Homecoming Queen does the drawing, you know, so it's only a couple of weeks now. That's what I had to talk to Irene about. I'm in charge of assigning the girls to their districts."

"You'd better not assign Ruth to one," Peter told her. "That kid's in enough trouble at home without taking off for a whole day on the weekend. You ought to talk to her, Bambi. She's acting really weird lately. I think she's got a screw loose or something."

Bambi pulled the door closed and leaned back, smiling at him.

"I did talk to her," she said. "I congratulated her. I think she's great, sticking up for her rights the way she's doing. Frankly, I didn't think she had it in her."

"She's nuts," Peter said. "What does she think she's going to accomplish, anyway? So she abandons ship every Monday afternoon; she ends up grounded every weekend. She's not gaining anything except to keep the folks riled up all the time and have her chores doubled on Tuesdays, and make Mom a wreck worrying over what Eric's doing with nobody around to watch him."

"You or Niles could watch him," Bambi suggested.

"No way." Peter gave the key a vicious twist and started the engine. "Basketball season's just around the corner, and we'll be practicing. Besides, baby-sitting is a girl's job, and all Ruthie's yipping about it isn't going to change that. She's making a big show out of this independence thing, but she's not going to hold out. Tomorrow, for instance, there's this birthday party she wants to go to. Dad's not going to let her. A few rounds of that sort of thing, and she's going to back down pretty quick."

"I'm sorry she won't be going to Holly's party," Bambi said quietly. "We'll miss her."

"What do you mean—we?" Peter turned to look at her with surprise. "You're not going to that party."

"Well, of course I am," Bambi told him, equally surprised. "I got the invitation over a week ago. I told you about it, Pete; it's a dinner and slumber party for Holly's seventeenth birthday. It ought to be lovely."

"You didn't tell me it was on a Saturday."

"I'm sure I did," Bambi said. "You just didn't listen. You're never interested in hearing about anything I'm doing unless you're part of it. This is just an all-girl get-together with the Daughters of Eve bunch. I wish Ruth was going to be there."

"Well, don't worry about it," Peter said, "because you're not going to be there either. You and I are going to the drive-in over to Adrian just the way we always do on Saturdays. That's our regular date night—or are you too wrapped up in being a 'Daughter of Eve' to remember that?"

"I didn't think it mattered all that much," Bambi said. "My gosh, Pete, a drive-in's a drive-in. We can go tonight instead, can't we? What's the difference?"

"The difference is that I don't want to go tonight," Peter said. "I've got other things I want to do tonight."

"Like what?"

"Like—oh, I don't know. Like going bowling with the guys, maybe."

"You thought that up this very minute."

"So what if I did? Is it any different for me to want to go bowling than for you to want to go to a slumber party?"

"You're being ridiculous," Bambi said. "The party's already scheduled, and the bowling can be anytime. What's with you anyway, Peter? You're really pushing me."

"Look who's talking!" Peter exclaimed angrily. "It's you who's doing the pushing, Bam, and I'm not going to take it. You're supposed to be my girl, right? We're going steady, right? What do you think that means? That I sit around on Saturday night and twiddle my thumbs while you're out chattering and giggling with a bunch of girl friends?"

"I thought it meant we cared about each other," Bambi said. "I thought we were supposed to 'relate' to each other, not own each other outright. I do my best to make you happy, Pete—"

"Like shit, you do!" Peter exploded. "You put out just about as much effort as an ice cube. It's a laugh. All the guys at school would give their eyeteeth to change places with me. There's lucky Pete, going steady with the hottest-looking chick in town. Boy, he must really be getting some, huh? What a farce!"

"I didn't mean 'make you happy' that way," Bambi said coldly. "I told you from the beginning that I wasn't going to have any part of that. I've got a modeling career ahead of me, and I'm not going to take any chances on botching it up."

"No girl gets pregnant anymore unless she wants to," Peter said. "There are all kinds of ways to prevent it."

"And I've picked the best of them. Absolutely foolproof." Her voice shook slightly. "If that's what you're after, then you've wasted six good months of your precious time, because you're not getting it. There are girls in the world who have to pay for their dates that way, but I'm not one of them. If you don't want to go with me on those terms, then say so."

There was a moment of silence. When Peter spoke again his voice was tight and controlled. "Are you going out with me Saturday night?"

"I told you, no. I'm going to Holly's party. We can go out tonight instead."

"No way."

"Then maybe you'd better let me out of the car," Bambi said. "I don't think there's anything else we need to talk about. Besides, you'll need the rest of the afternoon to go bird-dogging. God forbid you should have to 'twiddle your thumbs' on a Saturday night."

"That's cool." Peter gave the wheel a twist and brought the car over to the side of the road where the tires grated against the curbing for a ten-foot stretch before the vehicle came to a stop. He turned to glare at the girl beside him. His handsome face was dark with fury.

"I suppose you expect me to come around and open the door for you, Your Majesty?"

"I think I'm capable of managing that." Bambi reached over to gather up her books. "Have a wonderful time at the drive-in."

"I plan to."

"Be sure to keep the car heater on so you won't freeze."

As usual, she had managed to get in the final word, slamming the door upon any further retort. In outraged frustration, Peter sat gripping the steering wheel as he watched her walk away with her long, model's stride, her legs flashing straight and slim beneath the provocative flare of her short skirt. After several paces she gave her head a toss, flipping the long, blond hair across her shoulders in a gesture that sent Peter jerking backward as though the shining strands had struck him in the face.

"Bitch," he whispered under his breath. "Keep the car heater on, huh? That's one thing I won't need to do."

He had driven only three blocks further when he saw a heavyset figure plodding along the sidewalk and slowed the car to pick up Laura Snow.

"Mom and Dad, I have something I want to discuss with you," Tammy said. "I've done something I guess was pretty dumb."

"Dumb, how, Tarn?" Mr. Carncross raised his eyes from the pile of student papers he was grading to focus his attention on his daughter.

In the chair across from him, his wife was engrossed in proofreading a manuscript. She too glanced up, quickly alert to the note of distress in the girl's voice.

"What is it, honey?" she asked.

"It's dumb in that I didn't think it out. I just did it on impulse." Tammy drew a deep breath. "Brace yourselves—you'll never believe this. I dropped out of Daughters of Eve."

"You're right, I'll never believe it," her mother responded. "Whatever got into you? That club's been your main extra-curricular interest for the past two years."

"That's why it's so dumb. I just don't know what got into me." Tammy laughed nervously. "I was sitting there during the initiation ceremony when all of a sudden I got this—this really weird picture—in my mind. It was so real that at first I thought I was actually seeing the thing, but, of course, I wasn't. It was just my mind doing one of those things it does sometimes. But it scared me. I got up and ran out.

"The next day I wrote Fran a note and told her I was resigning."

"And now you're sorry?" her father asked.

"All my best friends are in Daughters of Eve," Tammy said miserably. "Now I'm an outsider. I hadn't realized before how tightly we were all bound up with each other."

"Surely the mere fact that you've dropped out of a club won't cause you to lose the friendship of the girls you've always gone around with," Mrs. Carncross said reasonably. "There's a lot of life beyond the activities of a club group. You're still Tammy, even if you're no longer a member of Daughters of Eve."

"Holly Underwood is having her birthday party tomorrow," Tammy said. "I wasn't invited."

"You can't read anything into that, dear," her mother said. "Nobody can include everybody she knows every time she gives a party. Holly's a junior, isn't she? She's not even in your class."

"But everybody else is going, even the new girls. Ruth Grange and Jane Rheardon are only sophomores." Tammy fought to keep her voice steady. "Even Laura Snow was invited. You can't appreciate that, Mom, because you've never met Laura, but Dad can tell you. She just isn't the type of girl who gets asked to many parties."

"I'm afraid you're right there," Mr. Carncross said. "I have Laura in my second-period general science class. She's overweight, and kids can be pretty cruel sometimes."

"It's worse than that," Tammy said. "She's sort of—cringing—you know? She's got that 'please, somebody, like me' look all the time. There's no way Holly would even have considered inviting her to anything last year, but now she's part of the sisterhood, she's included in everything."

"How did she get into the sisterhood if she's that unappealing?" Mrs. Carncross asked. "Members have to be voted in, don't they, as they would in a sorority? In fact, it is a sort of sorority, isn't it, when it comes to that?"

"We don't think of it that way," Tammy said defensively. "It's a club."

"But you do vote on members?"

"Yes," Tammy admitted.

"So how did this Laura get invited to join?"

"Irene—Miss Stark—our adviser, wanted her," Tammy said. "We all discussed it, and Irene explained that Laura is the kind of girl who needs sisters who can help her feel better about herself. Daughters of Eve isn't just for beauty queens."

"That's a nice concept," Mrs. Carncross said slowly. "Miss Stark is a new sponsor, isn't she? You girls must think a lot of her to respect her views so much."

"Everybody worships Irene," Tammy said.

"Why is it you feel that way?" her father asked her.

"For Gosh sakes, Dad, you've met her!"

"Of course, at faculty meetings, but I don't really feel I know her," Mr. Carncross said. "The principal seems impressed with her teaching ability. Actually, I've found her rather aloof and standoffish. In fact, I've heard several students express the same opinion."

"I bet they were boys. They don't know her the way the girls do," Tammy told him. "Irene's never aloof with us. Everybody thinks of her as sort of an older sister."

"Like Marnie?" her father suggested.

"No, not exactly. Irene is—oh, I can't describe it. Even the girls who voted against Laura felt guilty for doing it and were sort of glad when she made it in."

"What did Irene have to say about your resignation?" Mrs. Carncross asked.

"She said she was sorry and wished that I'd reconsider. Ann told me that at the meeting when Fran announced I was resigning, Irene said to table it for a while and see if I'd change my mind."

"Well, now that you've reconsidered, what do you think?"

"I just don't know." Tammy regarded her parents helplessly. "That day at the meeting the feeling was so strong. And then, afterward, when Irene came up to speak to me—I had to get out, something awful was going to happen! But nothing has. Everybody seems to be having a good time just like always. I think back now, and I don't see how I could have reacted the way I did over something that was just a picture in my mind."

"What was it you saw, Tarn?" her father asked her gently.

"A bleeding candle. That's pretty dumb, isn't it? It doesn't mean a thing. One of the candles of sisterhood had blood running down the side of it. Does that sound crazy, or doesn't it?"

"It doesn't sound 'crazy,' dear," her mother said. "We've all accepted for a long time the fact that you do seem to have a greater sensitivity to atmosphere than most people. You've startled us at times with some of these odd visions that materialize and predictions that really come true. The thing is, though, that there are other times when they turn out to be false alarms. Isn't that so?"

"Yes," Tammy said. "There have been times like that."

"Don't you think this could have been one of them?"

"Yes." She wanted to believe it so much that she said it again, trying to convince herself. "Yes, it could have been. Like I said, nothing has happened."

"You can't let these 'feelings' of yours completely control your life, honey," her mother said. "You have to use your common sense. Just what sort of 'awful' thing is going to occur at a club meeting in the middle of the afternoon?"