Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (21 page)
Read Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake Online
Authors: Jennifer Allison
“Like I said; you go to the weirdest school.”
“Come on; let’s go see what they’re doing outside.”
Gilda and Wendy groped along the stone wall of the ruins in the darkness.
Standing on tiptoe and peeking over the edge of the wall, Gilda saw a light flickering on the bridge.
She beckoned, urging Wendy to follow her.
Gilda and Wendy scampered from one pine tree to another, crouching and peering through prickly branches to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. Closer and closer they crept toward the bridge, where they now saw the shadowy image of three girls. Huddled together in the darkness, the Ladies of the Lake resembled one lumpish monster with three faces. Priscilla stood in the middle. In the glow of her flashlight, the gold snake on her headband gleamed.
“I wish I could hear what they’re saying,” Gilda whispered. “I bet they’re chanting some kind of spell.”
One by one, each girl leaned over the railing of the bridge and let her “precious belonging” fall down to the cold water below. A book sank with a small splash, bits of paper flew aimlessly into the breeze, and a fluffy bear floated away without a sound.
The three girls stood and stared mournfully at the water, as if they expected someone to rise from the lake and thank them for their gifts.
Dear Dad,
Mom didn’t have to work today, so she made us pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast, just like you used to make. She had gone out with Brad the night before (and didn’t get home until 2 a.m., incidentally), but I decided not to say anything about that so we could just have a nice breakfast together for once.
“Brad is going through a tough time,” she announced, completely out of the blue.
“Too bad,” I said, reaching for another pancake.
“He’s been laid off from his job,” she said.
Dad, I remember when you were laid off, and how that was the best summer ever because you took us to the swimming pool each afternoon. I guess it’s different for Brad. He
loved
his job. I mean, how will he
be able to get through the day without being able to turn to someone and declare, “I’m director of regional sales!”?
“Maybe his coworkers got tired of his stories,” I suggested.
Mom slammed the refrigerator door shut. She looked tired. I bet she was up all night listening to Brad talk about his problems, and I guess she was in no mood to take a joke.
“Smoot’s dad just got fired, too,” said Stephen. “They might have to move.”
“If Smoot moves, who’s going to come over to play video games and throw up on our carpet?”
“Plenty of people.” (Stephen was acting pretty nonchalant, but I bet he’ll be devastated if his best friend “Smoot” really does move.)
“Well,
we
aren’t going to move,” I said, just in case Mom was getting any sneaky ideas. “But
Brad
should be willing to go to whatever state or country will take him. He might want to check out Alaska. Or maybe Afghanistan.”
“Gilda, I’ve just about had it with your rude comments.”
“What did I say?”
(Of course, I
knew
what I had said. Deep down, I think Mom feels a little guilty about dating Brad, and to be honest, I’ve been taking advantage of that by dropping mean comments here and there. Up until this morning, I’ve been able to do it without getting in trouble.)
“After all Brad has done for us, you could at least show a little concern when he loses his job!”
Mom started cleaning the refrigerator the way she does when she’s in a bad mood, grabbing old jars and containers and hurling them into the trash as if they’re smelly vagrants she just discovered camping out on her property.
As usual, Stephen took this as his cue to take his plate to the sink and leave the room. As usual, I stayed to see what would happen next. It was like Mom was a big thundercloud, and at any moment, she was going to burst.
“Why are you so upset just because Brad lost his job?” I asked. “It’s too bad, but why is that
your
problem?”
Mom opened a jar of pickles and made a face.
“Hey, I didn’t know we had pickles!”
“Well, now you know we do,” said Mom. “That’s what we have here. Old, smelly, two-year-old pickles.”
“My favorite.”
“Some people have beautiful homes and designer clothes and gourmet dinners, but we don’t need to worry, Gilda. At the Joyce household, we have pickles.”
Then I knew why Mom was so upset; she expected Brad to marry her and fix all of our financial worries, but now he’s unemployed, so that dream has just been flushed down the toilet. I knew it was wrong to feel happy, especially because we need the money, but I admit it: I felt a little bit happy.
“I
like
pickles,” I said.
By now, Mom had practically emptied the entire refrigerator. She stood there with the door wide open, just staring into it. “I’m used to dealing with problems,” she said, as if there was someone else sitting in the refrigerator who was actually listening to her. “Problems are what I know best.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant. “What
kinds
of problems?” I asked.
“
All
kinds,” Mom snapped. “I’m not feeling that great today, Gilda, so if you
could cut me some slack, that would be great.”
I guess it’s true that Mom has faced her share of problems. I mean, she’s a nurse, so sometimes people are really rude to her just because they don’t feel well, and other times, she’ll really start to like one of her patients, and the next thing she knows, they end up dying in surgery or something. I guess she now has one more problem: Brad Squib needs a job.
“I noticed they were hiring at McDonald’s,” I said.
“Go do your homework, Gilda.”
NOTE
TO
SELF:
Keep an eye on Brad to make sure he doesn’t steal all our loose change now that he’s unemployed.
LADIES
OF
THE
LAKE
UPDATE:
As if the turmoil in our household isn’t enough, I’m also hot on the trail of a secret ring of murderers disguised as innocent schoolgirls!
PROBLEM:
No motive. Why would Priscilla, Nikki, and Danielle kill Dolores Lambert?
I have a gut feeling about one thing: I bet Dolores was a “pledge” to their secret club. And they weren’t very nice to her either.
Gilda turned reluctantly to her English homework: “Please discuss the significance of the ‘play within a play’ in
Hamlet
.”
In her notebook, Gilda wrote:
Hamlet suspects that his uncle Claudius became king illegally, by murdering his brother (Hamlet’s father). Hamlet stages a play about a similar situation and watches Claudius to see if he acts guilty.
“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” Hamlet says.
Hamlet watches his stepfather’s response to the play very closely: King Claudius throws a big hissy fit. Obviously, this guy is guilty! Hamlet now knows his suspicions were correct all along: his stepfather is, in fact, a murderer.
As Gilda wrote about Hamlet’s plot to expose his stepfather, a plot of her own began to take shape in her mind. “Our Lady Arts Day” was approaching—an opportunity for students to perform dances, musical compositions, skits, and other artistic creations for the rest of the school. Gilda had been toying with the idea of staging a dramatic reading of her Gothic tale, but now she had a more intriguing concept:
What if I wrote a play that forced the Ladies of the Lake to reveal what really happened to Dolores? I bet seeing a
play about Dolores Lambert would totally freak them out! They’d either confess what happened right away or get really nervous and reveal some incriminating evidence by accident. Danielle might already be on the verge of confessing, so this plan might push her over the edge.
TO
DO:
Write, direct, and perform a chilling play about the death of Dolores Lambert, and make sure Nikki, Danielle, and Priscilla see it.
G
ilda discovered a tiny, meticulously folded piece of paper waiting for her at the bottom of her locker. For a moment, she wondered whether Marcie had resumed her old habit of slipping inspirational verses and cheerful messages through the vent in the locker door.
But this note clearly wasn’t from Marcie; it had been folded with maddening precision, almost as if the sender wasn’t sure whether she wanted it to be read. Finally, Gilda managed to uncover the crinkled message written in neat, anonymous, capital letters:
Gilda looked around, but the locker room was empty. The sound of water dripping from a leaky faucet echoed in the dreary room. The rows of lockers, the long mirror on the wall, the rust-stained sinks—everything suddenly looked sinister and threatening.
Gilda crumpled the note in her fist, slammed her locker
shut, and threw her backpack over her shoulder. As she walked through the locker room, she felt light-headed. She sat for a moment on a bench, resting her head in her hands.
I wonder if I’m getting the flu
, she thought.
I hope I don’t throw up. There’s nothing worse than throwing up at school
.
Gazing down at the wadded ball of paper in her palm, Gilda realized something: she felt
afraid
. She wished she could sit down at her typewriter and write a quick letter to her father, since this always made her feel safer. She did the next best thing and wrote in her reporter’s notebook:
Dear Dad,
I admit it: I’m scared. If the Ladies of the Lake were capable of killing Dolores Lambert, who knows what else they’re capable of?
Gilda remembered Priscilla’s snide comment during the Ladies of the Lake meeting: “She’s probably hiding under her bed right now.”
On the other hand, there are a few things the Ladies of the Lake DON’T know about me:
- I already know exactly who’s in their club.
- I
already
know they had something to do with Dolores’s death.
Maybe they’re the ones who should be scared of
ME.
Dad, please help protect me if you can. I need some luck!
With her courage bolstered, Gilda stuffed the note in her pocket, exited the locker room, and hurried down the hall toward her next class.
She arrived late to biology class just as Ms. Peebles was setting up the overhead projector. With scarcely a glance in Gilda’s direction, Ms. Peebles signed a detention slip and thrust it at Gilda. “Tardy,” she said.
Faint titters rippled through the room, but Gilda hardly noticed because something else caught her attention. Tiara sat at a desk right in front of her.
At first, Gilda almost didn’t recognize Tiara without her black eyeliner and lipstick. Everything about her looked softened: her hair had grown out slightly, and she no longer styled it with stiff spikes. The ends were still bluish black, but an inch of natural chestnut-colored hair showed at the roots, leaving her with an unusual two-toned color.
Tiara gave Gilda a perfunctory wave hello and went back to scribbling something in a notebook.
Ms. Peebles was one of the few teachers who arranged her classes in rows, and Gilda took advantage of the opportunity to slip into a seat directly behind Tiara where she could observe her more closely. She noticed that Tiara seemed to have new school supplies, as if it were the first day of school and she was starting with a resolution to be perfectly well organized. At the moment, she was dutifully recording the homework assignment written on the chalkboard—something that she never would have done in the past.
As Ms. Peebles began to talk about neurons, synapses, and
the electrical impulses of the brain, Tiara reached back to scratch the back of her neck and dropped a folded note on Gilda’s desk.
So What’s new around here? You never called me, by the way.
As Gilda scribbled a reply to Tiara, she suddenly had an urge to tell everything she had discovered about the Ladies of the Lake. Then she remembered Tiara’s unpredictability. Who knew what she would do with the information?
I’d better stay undercover
, Gilda told herself. When Ms. Peebles’s back was turned, Gilda dropped her note over Tiara’s shoulder.