Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (16 page)

D
anielle skated across the sheet of ice that covered her entire school. She watched herself moving swiftly on sharp blades—doing her homework, turning in assignments, speaking to the Eating Disorders Awareness Club, gliding through mass in the chapel. She was delighted when she looked down and saw the familiar pom-poms she used to wear on her figure skates when she was a child, but she didn’t like her figure-skating costume; it made her feel naked and exposed. She realized she was wearing the short, pink skirt of her freshman uniform.
Why did I wear this? I’m not a freshman anymore
. Danielle’s legs were cold, and she noticed that everyone looked with great disappointment at the cellulite that jiggled like gelatin on her thighs as she skated through each activity.

“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to fall?” The girl who spoke had blond hair and looked somehow familiar, but she had no name.

“Whatever you’re doing isn’t helping your cellulite.” It was Priscilla Barkley’s voice.

Danielle looked for Priscilla, but found that she was alone, standing on frozen Mermaid Lake. There was something
ahead—a dark spot on the ice. She knew she should move away from this shadowy object, but her skates seemed to have a will of their own and they sped perversely toward it.

The spot became clearer; something protruded from the ice. As she drew closer, Danielle saw that it was half of a person.

With her lower body completely buried in ice that fanned out from her waist like a vast, flat skirt, Dolores Lambert calmly waited for Danielle.

Why isn’t she frozen to death
? Danielle wondered.
Why isn’t she dead
?

Cracks radiated outward from Dolores’s body, crisscrossing the surface of the lake—a web of lines that broke apart the perfect surface of Danielle’s world as she awoke in a sweat.

“How’s the college essay going?” Gilda asked, handing Danielle the news article she had written about Miss Underhill. The headline read
underhill flees position due to “unhappy presence” struggles to support dilapidated mother
!

“Don’t ask.” Danielle’s eyes looked glassy and sunken, as if she were coming down with a case of the flu.

“Are you okay?”

“I just had a bad night, that’s all.”

“Too much partying?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Bad dreams?”

Danielle flinched. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Gilda found Danielle’s reticence maddening. She sat down and waited for Danielle to read the article about Miss Underhill.

Danielle wrinkled her nose.

“You hate it.”

Danielle shook her head. “It’s interesting. But I thought we already talked about not perpetuating these ghost stories.”

“But Miss Underhill
told
me she thinks the school is haunted; she said she always felt like there was an unhappy presence watching her.”

Danielle covered her mouth with a childlike fist and chewed her thumbnail for a moment. “Mrs. McCracken will never let us print the stuff about a ghost.”

“Why not?”

“Well—it freaks people out, for one thing. Before you know it, crazy rumors start circulating around the school, and nobody can get any work done.”

Remembering the hysteria that ensued after Tiara saw a ghost in the freshman locker room, Gilda had to admit she saw Danielle’s point. On the other hand, wasn’t it her duty as a journalist to tell the whole truth?

“We’ll just tone that part down,” said Danielle. “And let’s get you working on a new story—something more fun.”

“I already have another story idea.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You know the Martha Jackson Reading Room—that place in the ruins?”

Danielle seemed to stiffen. “What about it?”

“I found something there.” Gilda handed Danielle “The Ladies of the Lake Guide for Pledges.”

Danielle stared at the pages without actually reading them.
She rubbed her nose vigorously, as if suddenly allergic to something. “You aren’t supposed to go down to the ruins by yourself,” she said. “You’ll get a detention.”

“I know, but don’t you think this is interesting? Have you ever heard of this secret club?”

Danielle shook her head. “It’s probably totally made up,” she said. “I don’t think stuff like this goes on here.”

“Why would somebody make this up?”

Danielle shrugged. “I think Miss Appleton does an assignment where you have to imagine a really exclusive, mean club and then talk about why we should avoid cliques. That’s probably it. I’ll bet it’s just someone’s old assignment.”

Gilda felt disappointed as she stuffed “The Ladies of the Lake Guide” into her backpack. She had felt certain that she’d made a big discovery.

“Oh, I also found something that belongs to you.” Gilda pulled Danielle’s charm bracelet from her backpack.

Danielle gaped at the bracelet as if Gilda were handing her a dead tarantula.

“I found it by the lake,” said Gilda. “It’s still a little dirty. It is your charm bracelet, isn’t it?”

Danielle nodded, but didn’t reach to reclaim the bracelet. She didn’t seem the least bit happy to see it.

“I guess you must have dropped it.”

“Keep it.”

“But—it’s your charm bracelet.”

Danielle shook her head. “I really, really don’t want it anymore.”

Gilda stared at the charm bracelet. Why was Danielle so
repulsed by the piece of jewelry, as if it were something hideous—a gift from someone she now loathed?

There’s something very strange about Danielle
, Gilda told herself.

When Danielle left the library to walk to her next class, Gilda decided to follow her. Walking behind at a slight distance, she noticed that Danielle shuffled along with a hunched posture, as if protecting herself from some imminent attack.

Priscilla Barkley approached from the opposite direction, and Danielle caught her attention, motioning to Priscilla to stop. Turning their bodies away from the crowd of students who now filled the hallway with giggling and shouting, the two seemed to be in a very serious conference about
something
.

Wishing that she could magically attach an eavesdropping wire to Danielle and Priscilla, Gilda leaned against a doorway and observed as much as she could while pretending to read her dog-eared copy of
Hamlet
. Peeking over her book, she caught a glimpse of Danielle’s face. She appeared to be close to tears.

“Hey, Gilda!” With a feeling of annoyance, Gilda turned to see Marcie Dinklemeyer. “Aren’t you going to be late to your next class?”

“Maybe.”

“Well—what are you doing, then?”

“I’m
trying
to eavesdrop on a conversation.” Had Danielle just said something about “the lake”?
Why wouldn’t Marcie mind her own business
?

Marcie giggled. “You’re so funny, Gilda.”

“I’m kind of in the middle of something, Marcie.”

“But you’re just standing in the hallway.”

“It
looks
like I’m just standing in the hallway, but I’m actually extremely busy.”

Marcie dismissed these words as if they couldn’t possibly be true. “Gilda, I’m getting a committee together to help plan the next school dance, and I thought you could be on it!”

“Thanks, Marcie, but I have a ton of homework to catch up on.” Rejecting Marcie’s suggestions had become a habitual response for Gilda. These days, she didn’t even pretend to stop to think before saying no.

“But this will be fun!”

“Marcie, you should know by now that I’m not much of a joiner.”

“A joiner?”

“That’s right. I don’t join things. I stay on the fringe; that way I get more information.”

“More information about
what
?”

Had Priscilla just said the word
ghost
? How many clues was she missing? Frustrated, Gilda felt the urge to shock Marcie into leaving her alone. “You want to know the truth, Marcie? I’m actually a psychic investigator.”

Marcie frowned. “You mean, like an undercover
cop?”

“I investigate
psychic
phenomena—things involving ghosts and stuff like that.”

Marcie looked blank. “But I don’t really believe in that stuff.”

“Then I guess we must be imagining this whole conversation.”

“What?” Marcie felt confused, but she sensed that she and
Gilda might actually be getting in a fight. “I don’t know if you should be getting involved in that sort of thing, Gilda. Maybe you should talk to Miss Appleton about this.”

“Marcie, I don’t need to talk to our religion teacher. I also don’t need someone pretending to be my big sister all the time. Do you want to know the truth? You’re driving me crazy.”

Marcie’s expression wavered, as if a foundation beneath her face had just cracked. Tears threatened to leak out at any moment.

“Then I’ll just leave you alone,” she whispered.

“Marcie—”

But it was too late to apologize or attempt to soften the blow; Marcie had already hurried away.

Gilda’s face burned. She felt at once nauseous and oddly euphoric.

I feel guilty
, she thought.
I should go run after her and apologize
.

On the other hand, she was finally free.

Gilda turned to see if she could catch any more of the intriguing conversation between Danielle and Priscilla, but they were already gone.

Brad came over after school to help Stephen practice driving his fancy new car, and Stephen must have gotten really nervous, because he stepped on the gas when the car was in reverse and backed over the hedge that grows at the edge of the driveway.

I watched the whole scene from my bedroom window. Brad and Stephen climbed out of the car and pushed and pushed until their faces looked purple. Brad kept stopping to put his hands on his hips and shake his head. Stephen just scowled with that look he gets when he feels too bad to say he’s sorry. Finally, they removed the car from the hedge, which looked totally flattened and kind of offended, too, as if it were wondering why the hell it just got run over by a car.

Brad and Stephen examined the car’s body paint to look for scratches. I couldn’t see anything from my window, but Brad kept pointing to little flaws.

Finally, they climbed back in the car, and Stephen started the engine. This is the part where I literally fell down on the floor laughing.

Stephen stepped on the gas and KNOCKED OVER THE MAILBOX.

The car stopped, and nothing happened for a whole minute. They just sat there. Finally, Stephen climbed out of the car and glared at the mailbox as if it had thrown itself in the path of his car on purpose. I bet you a million dollars Brad was thinking twice about buying him that car.

After I stopped giggling enough to see straight, I looked out the window and saw that Brad and Stephen had a hammer and some nails. They were trying to fix the mailbox, but at this point, they weren’t saying a single word to each other, as far as I could tell.

I know you probably wish you were around to help teach Stephen to drive, so I thought you’d want to know that you aren’t missing much. At least you don’t have to explain the broken mailbox to Mom!

INVESTIGATION UPDATE:

DANIELLE IS HIDING SOMETHING!

In religion class this afternoon, I asked Miss Appleton, “When are we going to do the assignment where we make up a secret club with mean rules?”

“I’ve never given an assignment like that before,” she said.

VERY INTERESTING.