Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (25 page)

Gilda was speechless. She didn’t know whether to be more offended by Mr. Panté’s implication that she was fibbing or by his use of the phrase “
potential
to be a very good writer.”

Mr. Panté folded his arms across his chest. “I’m sure you’ve been exposed to the ghost stories that circulate around the school.”

“But—”

Mr. Panté raised a finger. “Let me give you a little background about this situation. When Dolores Lambert died, the whole school was in a state of shock, and we’re still haunted by what happened. None of us can make sense of an accident like that, but in my mind, one thing is certain. Not a single one of the girls you’ve just pointed the finger at could be capable of the kind of behavior your theater group acted out.”

“But, Mr. Panté—”

“Priscilla Barkley, for example, is in the drama club, and I know her well. She’s an amazing talent and just a charming girl. Normally, I appreciate your imagination, Gilda, but I hate to see anyone falsely accused.”

“But I wouldn’t falsely accuse anyone—”

“My theory—and it’s shared by some of the other teachers—is that Dolores knew
exactly
what she was doing when she walked across the ice on the lake.”

Gilda paused. “You think it was a suicide?”

“In the words of Sigmund Freud, ‘There are no accidents.’” Mr. Panté proceeded to patiently explain how “when a person does something ‘by accident,’ it’s possible that her unconscious mind may have wanted to do that very thing
on purpose
.” He pressed his palms to the air in a cautionary gesture. “Now, I would never make an issue of this because there’s absolutely no way to prove it. And of
course, Dolores’s parents are devastated enough as it is, so there’s nothing to be gained by spreading this idea around.”

Gilda felt deflated. Mr. Panté’s explanation for Dolores’s death was so dreary. To make matters worse, he seemed to think that she had careless ideas. But if he was right, what could explain the things she had overheard during the Ladies of the Lake meeting?

There’s no way I’d let him kiss me now
, Gilda thought.

After school, Gilda made her way past a chain of minivans that crept through the parking lot like enormous, shiny beetles. The girls who normally stood with her at the bus stop were absent; today she waited alone, bracing herself against a chilly wind.

Winter had arrived suddenly, and the trees were now completely stripped of leaves. Something about the way their black branches splayed against the gray sky reminded Gilda of illustrations of blood vessels and capillaries in her biology textbook. She felt relieved to see the bus approaching.

Relief turned to shock when Gilda glanced back and saw Priscilla and Nikki marching quickly toward her.

Wearing white, furry boots and a matching fur poncho and white earmuffs, Priscilla looked like an angry snow bunny. Nikki slouched along wearing a shapeless black overcoat that she had left unbuttoned. She carried a crumpled bag of Doritos in one hand. The swiftness of the girls’ appearance just as the bus arrived made Gilda suspect that they had been watching her like predators for some time. She knew that neither Priscilla nor Nikki ever took the bus: both owned cars.

With brakes whining, the bus came to a stop, and Gilda
climbed the steps with Nikki and Priscilla close at her heels.
Stay calm
, she told herself. She could practically feel Nikki’s nacho-cheese-tainted breath on the back of her neck as she surveyed the seats in front of her. Gilda decided to sit close to the front, where a group of elderly people were clustered together. She reasoned that it would be more difficult for Nikki and Priscilla to harass her near the bus driver.

Gilda scooted into a seat next to a rotund lady who shifted her shopping bags grudgingly and made about three inches of room available. Nikki and Priscilla were forced to move to a seat farther back.

Gilda put on her cat-eye sunglasses because they made her feel safer, opened her notebook, and scribbled hastily:

She folded up the note and stuck it in the pocket of her coat. Turning to another page in her notebook, she wrote:

The woman sitting next to Gilda kept letting out little huffs of exasperation at Gilda’s decision to cramp her space.

“Someone’s trailing me back there,” Gilda whispered.

The woman merely shook her head and gazed out the window.

Gilda pulled a heart-shaped compact mirror from her backpack. She peered into the mirror, pretending to concentrate on carefully applying lip gloss while attempting to get a view of Nikki and Priscilla in the back of the bus.

Both girls watched her with blank, unwavering patience, like cats observing a tiny rodent.

What were they planning?

At each stop, several elderly people exited the bus. Under normal circumstances, Gilda would have been delighted to say goodbye to the large, irritable woman with whom she shared her seat, but now she felt a pang of anxiety as her traveling companion gathered her belongings and heaved herself down the aisle.

To Gilda’s disappointment, the people sitting in the seat behind her also left the bus.

Gilda peered into her mirror again and felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck as Nikki and Priscilla stealthily made their way toward the front of the bus. She steeled herself as they slid into the seat directly behind her. She caught a whiff
of Priscilla’s perfume—the scent of baby powder mixed with something that reminded her of Halloween candy.
People are like animals
, Gilda reminded herself.
If they smell fear, they’ll attack
.

“Something smells,” said Nikki.

“You’re right,” said Priscilla. “Something really reeks.”

Priscilla and Nikki clearly expected her to sit silently, cringing from their barbs.

Summoning all her courage, Gilda turned her body sideways and put her feet up on the seat nonchalantly. “Maybe the two of you should start taking showers now and then,” she said, forcing herself to gaze directly into Priscilla’s cat eyes. “By the way, that perfume smells like someone puked candy corn.”

Priscilla curled her lip in response.

“Why don’t
you
take a shower,” Nikki blurted.

“Because I already
did
take one,” said Gilda, beginning to enjoy the inanity of the exchange.

“Then why don’t you go take another—”

“Oh, shut up.” Priscilla stared evenly at Gilda for a moment. “Your play sucked,” she said, switching tactics.

For a split second, Gilda was caught off-guard; Priscilla had managed to hit a nerve.

“Is that why it got a standing ovation?” Gilda countered.

“At Our Lady of Sorrows, everything gets a standing ovation—especially if the audience hates it.”

“Besides, the whole thing was total b.s. All lies,” said Nikki.

“Of course it was made up,” she said. “It’s just a play, right?”
Maybe if I use reverse psychology, I’ll trap them into confessing something
, Gilda thought.

“But you seemed to be
implying
something about us,” said Nikki.

“Gee, that sounds a little self-centered.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do tell.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“What Nikki is trying to say,” said Priscilla, sensing that she and Nikki were losing control, “is that we simply hate seeing crap on the Our Lady of Sorrows stage. As an actress, I find it personally offensive.”

“Do you find yourself personally offensive?”

Priscilla rolled her eyes. “That response is so public school. You know, Nikki, Mrs. McCracken really let standards decline when it came to picking this year’s freshman class.”

“It’s so true,” said Nikki. “She was really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this batch of freshmen.”

“Listen, Priscilla,” said Gilda, now crouching on her knees and leaning against the back of her seat. It wasn’t exactly a threatening position, but she felt she needed to face her adversaries as directly as possible. “You and I both know that you killed Dolores Lambert three years ago. I admit I don’t know exactly
how
you did it, but I know all about the Ladies of the Lake, and I know you guys did something awful to her.”

Something behind Priscilla’s eyes seemed to flinch. Was she actually afraid? Gilda noticed that her eyes were very green, and her pupils were tiny with hatred. Her skin was perfect, without a single zit or even a freckle.

Gilda noticed the familiar Woodward Avenue landmarks
signaling the approach of her bus stop. She reached up cautiously to pull the overhead wire, wondering if Nikki and Priscilla were planning to follow her home.
Run fast when you get off the bus
, she told herself.

“If what you’re saying is really true,” said Priscilla, “then Nikki and I could spend the rest of our lives in jail. Are you so sure you want to be responsible for completely ruining our lives?”

Gilda wasn’t sure how to respond. Would kids like Nikki and Priscilla actually get a life sentence if they were convicted? Weren’t they too young?

The bus stopped and Gilda jumped up quickly.

“Think about what I said, Gilda.”

“Yeah, and mind your own business for a change,” Nikki added.

Fighting the urge to break into a sprint, Gilda forced herself to walk calmly down the aisle and then down the stairs of the bus. She breathed a sigh of relief as the bus pulled away, taking Nikki and Priscilla with it.

Gilda approached the comfort of her familiar street, where children’s plastic toys and a combination of Halloween and Christmas decorations littered front lawns, porches, and trees. For once, Brad’s car wasn’t in the driveway, which meant she might actually have a quiet house all to herself. She wished she could simply go inside, make a peanut butter-banana-and chocolate sandwich, call Wendy Choy, and forget about the Ladies of the Lake entirely. Instead, she trudged straight upstairs to her bedroom, tossed her backpack on her bed, and immediately sat down at her typewriter.

The unfriendly exchanges Gilda experienced with Nikki, Priscilla, and Mr. Panté had left her feeling unusually glum and ambivalent. Hoping Balthazar Frobenius might have some words of encouragement or advice, Gilda opened her dog-eared
Master Psychic’s Handbook
to a section with the heading “Psychics and the Justice System”:

Maybe I’ll never have enough hard evidence to really prove what the Ladies of the Lake did
, Gilda thought.
Maybe I should just go to the police and hope for justice
.

The sight of her overstuffed backpack reminded Gilda that the Ladies of the Lake weren’t her only problem. She had neglected her homework while working on
The Drowned and the Damned
, and now, as she contemplated a long list of papers and assignments, she wondered whether it was even possible to catch up with her studies. Digging through the mess of folders and papers, she discovered a mysterious note in her backpack.

It was like finding a winning lottery ticket in the pocket of an old pair of jeans. Attached to the note were several handwritten pages entitled “Minutes of the Ladies of the Lake.”