Paula Morris (25 page)

"It's all right," she said, looking forlorn. "I
have to pull myself together before class. Everything's just really starting to
get to me."

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Marianne wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, brushing back a
damp strand of hair.

"I'm sure they'd let you go home," Rebecca suggested.
"You know, if you're not feeling well."

In fact, she was sure that the principal would let Marianne go
home for any reason whatsoever, even if she was in the best of moods and/or
health. That was the thing about being one of Them: You got special treatment,
whether you were a student at Temple Mead or a float in the Septimus parade.

"It's all right," Marianne said again, though her voice
faltered, and Rebecca wondered if she was trying to convince herself. "I
have a French test this afternoon that I shouldn't miss. It's just so hard to
concentrate when I'm so worried about Helena, and ... I mean, we've been
looking forward to being maids in Septimus f
or years,
and now it looks
like it's not going to happen."

"Maybe she'll be feeling better by then?" Rebecca
thought that not riding in Septimus was the least of Helena's problems, but she
knew how important this kind of thing was to girls at Temple Mead. "Or
there's always next year."

This was the wrong thing to say. Marianne's eyes welled with tears
again.

"There may not
be
a next year," she said, her
voice catching. "That's the thing."

The bell signaling the end of lunch chimed through the
loudspeaker.
Saved by the bell,
Rebecca thought with some relief: She
just didn't know what to say to make Marianne feel better. All she could do,
when Marianne began scrambling to her feet, was extend a hand to help her.

"Thanks." Marianne gave a weak smile, dusting off her

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skirt. Rebecca couldn't help thinking that Helena would not
approve of this little scenario. She certainly couldn't imagine Helena taking
her hand or giving Rebecca any kind of grateful smile. "And ... Rebecca?
You won't tell anyone about this, will you? About finding me crying, I
mean."

"Of course not," Rebecca said. She had nobody to tell,
but Marianne didn't know that. "Don't worry. Just ... you know, take care
of yourself."

It was pretty lame, she thought, but she didn't know what else to
say.

"I will," Marianne said, smiling again. "You, too,
OK?"

That was an odd sort of reply,
Rebecca thought later, climbing
the stairs to her next class, but maybe Marianne didn't know what to say,
either. This whole acting-civil-thing was entirely new to them both. Who knew
where it would lead?

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

***

That afternoon, rebecca decided to skip her usual café routine and
walk home with Aurelia. At home, she dumped her blazer and bag in her room and
sat down at the kitchen table. She wasn't in the mood for homework just yet, so
she had a yogurt and idly picked at a box of crackers, flicking through that
day's copy of the
Times-Picayune.

The society pages were a gallery of debutantes, clusters of tight
white gowns and severe updos and anxious smiles, the pictures taken at balls
held by various krewes or social clubs. Some of the groups of girls were white
and some were black, but -- even though their gowns and tiaras were
interchangeable -- they seemed to belong to segregated clubs and attend entirely
separate social events. Rebecca scanned the captions looking for names she
recognized, and there were several -- probably the older sisters of girls at
Temple Mead Academy.

Aurelia had scurried out to the backyard, clapping her

218

hands to summon the elusive Marilyn, but now the younger girl was
back, on the hunt for cookies.

"Re-bec-ca," she said, in a tone that Rebecca had come
to know: It was always a prelude to Aurelia wanting to borrow something or beg
a favor.

"Au-re-lia," Rebecca croaked back. "What do you
want
this
time?"

She was only teasing, but the look on Aurelia's round, angelic
face was quite serious. Her cousin leaned against her, gazing down at the
beaming faces of the debutantes.

"Wouldn't it be nice," Aurelia said, "if we took
Helena some flowers?"

Rebecca shrugged.

"I'm sure she has lots of flowers already. Don't worry about
Helena, Relia."

"I know we're not supposed to be friends with her,"
Aurelia persisted. "But I feel bad about her being sick and all. She's
missing all the fun."

Rebecca breathed out a long sigh. Maybe her little cousin was
right. Helena wouldn't get to ride in Septimus, and a privilege like that meant
everything in the world to a girl like her. Maybe Rebecca was being
hard-hearted, only thinking about herself, just as Anton had said. Helena was
too sick to go to school, too sick to leave the house. It couldn't be much fun,
stuck in that quiet house all day, obsessing about the ghost who crashed your
Christmas party and wondering if you were about to die some sudden, mysterious
death. Marianne was clearly pretty worried about her, so her condition had to
be serious.

219

"I don't even know where we'd buy flowers," she said,
thinking of her walks to nearby Magazine Street: She'd never spotted a flower
shop.

"We can take some from the garden." Aurelia sounded
excited, realizing, perhaps, that Rebecca was going to give in.

"I don't think there's much in the way of flowers...."
Rebecca began, but her cousin had already fished a pair of rusty scissors out
of a drawer in the kitchen and was on her way out the back door. A few minutes
later she was back brandishing some hacked-off branches, all waxy green leaves
and drooping red blooms from the camellia bush.

"So I guess we're doing this," sighed Rebecca, using the
society pages to create a taut newspaper cone: The heavy flower heads would
plop off en route to the Bowmans' if they weren't supported by something.
Aurelia rummaged in the Christmas-wrap box -- housed, inexplicably, in the
pantry -- for a suitable red ribbon, and then raced off to retrieve her
collection of glitter pens to make a card.

The warmth and light were already seeping out of the day by the
time they walked back up Sixth Street. For once, Rebecca was grateful for her
woolen blazer.

"We could just leave them on the front porch if nobody's
home," she told Aurelia, half hoping that this would be the case. Rebecca
didn't particularly want to see Helena herself, or her mother, both of whom
would treat them, no doubt, with pained condescension.

On the sidewalk outside the mansion, they paused, looking up at
the somber gray house. Without its Christmas lights, it didn't seem quite so
festive. The only concession to

220

Mardi Gras decorations was the Septimus flag flapping in the
breeze. Like many of the grand houses around here, in Rebecca's opinion, the
place looked shut up and empty.

The outside iron gate was closed, and when Rebecca tried
unlatching it, she realized it was locked. Aurelia rattled the black handle and
then, before Rebecca could stop her, leaned on the bell. Almost instantly, the
big front door swung open and out stepped the elderly black butler Rebecca had
seen for the first time that rainy morning at Temple Mead.

He might have been old, but he was light on his feet, hurrying
down the broad brick steps to unlock the gate. But he only creaked it open a
little way, blocking their entry, one hand firmly clapped on the gatepost.

"We've brought these for Helena," Aurelia breathlessly
announced, thrusting the floppy bouquet up at him as though it were the Olympic
torch.

"That's very kind of you, young lady. I'll make sure she gets
them." He nodded, lifting the bouquet from Aurelia's clammy grasp, and
started pushing the gate closed.

"Can't we see her?" Aurelia squeaked.

"No, Relia," Rebecca said quickly. She didn't want the
butler to think they'd come to stare at poor, unfortunate, sickly Helena.
"She doesn't want to be disturbed."

"That's right, I'm afraid." The butler shook his head,
his face solemn. "Miss Helena needs complete quiet right now. But I'll
take your flowers up to her right away, and I'm sure she'll be real pleased to
get them. You have a card here, too, I see."

On the card -- a square of cardboard cut out from an old cereal
box -- Helena's name was spelled out in large

221

sparkling letters, with LOVE FROM AURELIA VERNIER AND REBECCA
BROWN scrawled along the bottom in gold. Rebecca wondered if Helena would even
know who they were.

"Thank you," they chorused, and waited -- Aurelia
gripping the locked gate as though it was the barred door of a jail cell --
until the butler had disappeared back inside the silent, shuttered house. Then
they strolled off toward home, crossing the road to walk in the shadow of the
cemetery walls. Aurelia was disappointed about being turned away at the gate,
Rebecca could tell: Her usually bumptious little cousin wasn't hurdling
sidewalk cracks as usual or chattering about her day at school. She was walking
slowly, scuffing at the occasional twig dislodged from an oak tree by the brisk
wintery wind.

"I've never been in that house," she muttered. "Not
like y
ou."

"There's nothing much to report," Rebecca said, trying
to sound blithe: When Aurelia had asked her about the Bowmans' Christmas party,
wanting to know if all the reports about Helena's hysterical fit were true,
Rebecca had played dumb. She hadn't heard anyone screaming, she said; people
must have been exaggerating. It was a lie, of course, but Rebecca felt the need
to try and protect Aurelia -- from what, she wasn't entirely sure. Most of the
time, Aurelia seemed so blissfully removed from all the nasty dramas and
secrets seething in Temple Mead.

"I heard that Helena has a big bedroom on the third
floor," Aurelia said, turning around to point back at the Bowman mansion.
"It has its own walk-in closet, and ... look! There she is!"

222

Rebecca spun on her heels and looked up, following the line of
Aurelia's pointed finger. Her cousin was right: Helena was standing at a
third-floor window, gazing down at them. The pink tips of the flowers they'd
left were just visible; she must have had the bouquet in her hands. Aurelia
started waving.

"She wants to say thank you," Aurelia told Rebecca, but
although Rebecca murmured her agreement, she wasn't at all convinced that the
look on Helena's face was remotely grateful or friendly. In fact, for a moment
Rebecca wondered if Helena was going to lift the window sash and hurl the
flowers onto the street below, so strange was her expression. She was staring
down at Rebecca so intently, the way Marilyn looked when she'd cornered a bird
in the yard and was getting ready to pounce.

Helena smiled, much to Aurelia's delight, but it was an odd, tight
smile. There was something almost sinister about it, Rebecca thought, shivering
as the cold breeze whooshed through the trees. Helena turned her head a little,
talking to someone they couldn't see, and then another person appeared at the
window alongside her.

Anton.

"I thought that man said nobody was allowed in!" Aurelia
was indignant. Suddenly breathless and light-headed, Rebecca grabbed for
Aurelia's hand.

"Come on, Relia," she said, tugging her cousin's arm.
"We should get home."

Aurelia would have stood there all afternoon, waving up at the
local royalty, but Rebecca was taller and stronger than

223

she was, and dragging her around the corner, out of sight, wasn't
hard.

This was just horrible: The last person she wanted to see was
Anton. Especially in these circumstances. How humiliating, standing around in
the street, gazing up at Helena and Anton like peasants gawping at members of
the royal family.

No wonder Helena had that strange, thin-lipped smile on her face
this afternoon. Rebecca was out in the street; Anton was standing right by
Helena's side, exactly where he belonged. Helena wasn't smiling because she
felt friendly, or grateful, or touched. There was something cool and spiteful
about the way she looked. It was a smile, Rebecca realized, of triumph.

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***

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

***

"It was a week before the septimus parade, I and Rebecca
couldn't help getting caught up in all the excitement about Carnival. She stood
in the lunch line, waiting for her chicken fajita wrap, wondering how crazy it
was all going to be. Tonight, she and Aunt Claudia were planning to walk up to
St. Charles to watch three parades in a row: Aurelia was going separately with
Claire, because they had some giggle-fest of a sleepover planned that began the
second school finished and lasted until they finally conked out, exhausted with
chatter, probably sometime around dawn. On the way to school that morning,
Aurelia had explained how Rebecca
had
to take a bag with her to the
parades, so when she caught beads and other "throws" she could stash
them safely away. What she was supposed to do with all this plastic stuff when
they got home, Rebecca wasn't sure.