Paula Morris (3 page)

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in December, two in February -- the twentieth and twenty-first --
another in October, and one in November. All of the pages were blank, stuck on
the wall in a slapdash manner, as though Aunt Claudia was in a big hurry.
Rebecca wondered if she was patching holes in the wall, or if the entire
calendar had once been posted, page by page, on the wall and wilted off in the
damp. Nothing would surprise her in this place.

"Rebecca hasn't even seen her room yet!" Aunt Claudia
tugged the cake box out of Aurelia's hands. "Go and show it to her, and
then we'll all have a piece of cake --just a small piece!

Aurelia grabbed Rebecca's elbow and steered her down the hallway:
Her new room lay behind the fourth door on the left, between the bathroom and
Aurelia's bedroom. It was not, Rebecca noticed, exempt from weirdness. The room
was small with shuttered windows, quite dark because of the proximity of the
house next door: It looked close enough to touch. The walls were painted a
moody purple-gray color, and the bedspread was made from a slippery-looking,
pale blue satin. There were bookshelves but no closet: All Rebecca's clothes
would have to be folded and put away in a large wooden dresser, painted in
black-and-white harlequin diamonds. Aurelia swung the door shut, and pointed to
a clutch of wooden hangers dangling from an antique hook on the back of the
door. One bore her new school uniform -- that ugly black blazer and too-long
plaid skirt.

Everything was much more old-fashioned than her room in New York,
but it could have been worse, Rebecca decided, trying not to feel too
depressed. The bed was large

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and seemed comfy, and there was enough space under the expansive
dresser to line up her shoes. The worst thing about the room was the strange
wall decorations. There were sinister devil masks and some kind of doll; on the
top shelf of the bookcase sat a tiny skull with cavernous eyeholes.

"It's a monkey skull," Aurelia told her
matter-of-factly, flopping onto the bed. "We use it to prop up the
books."

Rebecca made a face. Aurelia leaned back, pointing to each object
in turn.

"That's a carnival mask from Haiti -- made from
papier-mâché." And that's a
djakout,
which is basically ... "

"A sack?"

"Yes. It's hard to explain exactly. That's from Haiti as
well. But the gris-gris bag," she said, wriggling her fingers at a little
red pouch hanging from the hook on the back of the door, "that's from
here. You should really carry it with you. There are herbs and things in it to
protect you."

"Do you really believe that?" Rebecca didn't want to be
rude, but this all sounded like so much hocus-pocus. Just because she liked
ghost stories and vampire movies didn't mean she was about to carry some voodoo
pouch with her everywhere.

"Maybe," Aurelia sighed. She scrunched up her pert nose
and giggled. "Maybe not. I like the Buddhist stuff better. The statues are
cooler. Sorry you got stuck with the voodoo room."

"That's OK," Rebecca told her, startled when Aurelia
scrambled to her feet and darted out the door. But within moments she was back:
Her arms were full of Marilyn the cat, back safely from her cemetery adventure.

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"Mama collects these to protect us from bad things,"
Aurelia explained, gesturing at the wall with an elbow. Rebecca squinted up at
the demented rag doll on a stick, made from scraps of old fabric, and -- worst
of all -- the rudimentary figure of an angel, hanging right above the headboard
of the bed. "It's her big hobby."

"I think I need protection from
this
stuff," she
told Aurelia. "Especially if that thing falls on me in the night. I
thought hobbies were things like stamp-collecting or keeping guinea pigs or
something."

Aurelia's eyes lit up.

"Did you have a guinea pig in New York?" she asked,
stroking Marilyn's fluffy back. The cat's purr was as loud as an outboard
motor.

"No, but I had a frog once," Rebecca told her. "And
two goldfish, Leo and Orlando, but they didn't last long. My father's allergic
to cats, and he says it's cruel to have a dog in an apartment as small as ours,
especially with nobody at home all day."

"Your father is ... Uncle Michael." Aurelia frowned.
"And you lived on Central Park West."

"I
live
there -- present tense. I'm just staying here
while my dad's away."

"And your mother was Aunt Millie," said Aurelia, her
face screwed up with concentration. "She was tall, like you. But she died
when you were a tiny baby, and I never met her at all."

"You sound like you're about to take a test," Rebecca
teased. She lay back on the bed, trying not to skid off the icy cover onto the
floor. A water stain spread like a yellowing

21

bruise across the ceiling. Nothing here looked or felt or smelled
the way it did at home: She felt an intense pang of homesickness.

"Aunt Millie was my mama's cousin," Aurelia continued,
squeezing Marilyn more tightly; the cat let out a plaintive little cry in
protest.

"I don't think she was, actually ..."

"Oh, I know.'' Marilyn kicked free from Aurelia's suffocating
embrace and tore out of the room. Aurelia made a mock-sad face. "But we
have to pretend. Otherwise the school won't let you in."

"Really?" Rebecca sat up. She knew the school was
exclusive, but this seemed even more snobby than she'd feared. Aurelia nodded.

"Mama says so. Do you have any pictures of your
parents?"

"Just one of the three of us together." Rebecca reached
for her satchel and rummaged around for her wallet, flicking it open to show
Aurelia the small photo tucked behind a plastic window. She took it with her
everywhere. Everyone told her she looked like her mother -- tall and dark, with
the same uncertain smile.

"Dad says it was taken in Paris," she told Aurelia.
"We lived there when I was small ....What?"

Her little cousin was looking puzzled, staring at the dangling
wallet.

"There's nothing there," she said. "Has the picture
dropped out?"

Rebecca turned her wallet around: Aurelia was right. The
photograph was gone. She shook everything from her

22

wallet onto the bed and flung the empty shell down in frustration.
The picture was nowhere to be found in her satchel, either.

"But it couldn't just fall out," she said, more to
herself than to Aurelia. "And it was definitely there when I showed my ID
at LaGuardia. I remember looking at it before I put my wallet away."

"Maybe someone stole it?" Aurelia suggested. Rebecca
shook her head, sorting through the contents of her wallet one more time, just
in case.

"Who would steal a photograph and leave all the money?"
She'd had her satchel with her the whole time since she left the apartment on
Central Park West, aside from ten minutes in the Atlanta airport: Her father
had offered to sit with her stuff while she browsed through some magazines.
Surely he would have noticed someone rifling through her bag and removing a
photo from her wallet? Unless ...

Unless he'd taken it himself.

"It's too bad that you've lost it," Aurelia sympathized,
and Rebecca nodded, unable to speak. Her father removing the picture from her
wallet didn't make any sense; it was a copy of one he had sitting on the desk
in his home office. He didn't need it. Why would he take away the only thing
she had to remind her of home -- and of her family?

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***

CHAPTER THREE

***

THE WROUGHT-IRON RAILINGS SURROUNDING Temple Mead Academy were
spiky -- To keep the riffraff out, Rebecca thought, walking toward it on her
first day of school. Her stomach started twisting into tight knots as she and
Aurelia climbed a flight of broad stone steps, especially when Aurelia stopped
on the top step.

"I'm in the junior school," Aurelia told Rebecca, her
usual cheerful grin fading. "That means we have all our classes next
door."

She gestured at a modern building on the next" lot, all sheer
glass and hard edges, incongruous on this oak-lined street.

"But I'll see you at lunchtime, right?" Rebecca felt
even more nervous. She didn't know Aurelia very well, but at least she
knew
her.
And Aurelia was a friendly, bouncy little thing, clearly happy to have a
visiting older cousin, of sorts, staying for a while.

"Different lunchtimes," said Aurelia, shaking her head.
Chattering girls pushed past them, hurrying through the

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double doors. "But I'll meet you here on the steps, after
school - OK?"

Rebecca nodded mutely, watching Aurelia scamper back down the
stairs and across the stone-paved yard. Another wave of girls in plaid carried
Rebecca through the doors and into a cool, dark foyer. A long staircase swept
up to the next floor; paintings of pale young women wearing ethereal ball gowns
lined the paneled walls. From the portraits to the chandelier hung high above
Rebecca's head, it felt more like a palace than a high school.

The receptionist in the small side office told Rebecca to wait to
see Principal Vale. Rebecca pressed herself against a wall to keep out of the
way. Her new school uniform felt itchy and heavy. Normally in the fall she wore
a uniform of a different kind to school--jeans, Converse sneakers, a sweater,
and an amazing pale blue suede jacket she'd found in a vintage store downtown.
All her books were loaded into the Chrome messenger bag her father had given
her as a birthday present. But here everything was regulation, including the
ugly shoes and bag. If her friends back home saw her, they'd think she was
living in another era, not just another part of the country.

No matter how hot it was, the girls of Temple Mead Academy
had
to
wear their blazers while walking to and from school. Aunt Claudia had impressed
this on her last night. Today was mild and cloudy, and even the short walk from
home had made Rebecca sticky with perspiration. She didn't know how the girls
here put up with it in the spring and summer. But maybe they suffered in
silence, like proper little

25

ladies: Everything about the neighborhood seemed to belong in a
different century.

Outside, rain had begun to fall again, and girls hurried in,
shaking off wet umbrellas, pushing back hanks of damp hair. They all looked
incredibly prissy, Rebecca thought. And there was another strange thing about
the students at Temple Mead Academy: They were all white. Back in New York, the
kids in Rebecca's class were black, white, Asian, Hispanic. Every ethnicity and
religion and fashion fad in New York was represented. Here everyone looked the
same.

The bell rang, and this made her smile, in spite of herself: Even
the bell here was more genteel than the one at Stuyvesant -- a ladylike ding
rather than a crude electronic beeping. Suddenly the foyer was deserted, wet footprints
the only sign of the throng of girls. Rebecca felt a surge of anxiety. Soon
she'd have to walk into a classroom full of strangers and be introduced, have
all these girls stare at her.

The front door pushed open again, and two people bustled in. One
was a pale-skinned girl around Rebecca's age. She wore her dark hair in a loose
ponytail tied with a black plaid ribbon. The Temple Mead blazer and skirt
somehow looked more fashionable on her, as though it was a costume rather than
an ugly uniform. Behind her stood an elderly black man, wearing a khaki
raincoat, carefully lowering an umbrella.

"I'll be back for you after school, Miss Helena," he
said, and the girl turned away without speaking. She looked at Rebecca and
paused for a moment, a bemused and haughty look on her face. Rebecca didn't
feel hot anymore: A chill rippled down her spine.

26

This Helena was very pretty, Rebecca thought, but there was
something about her -- something imperious or spoiled -- that made her look
unhappy. The girl said nothing; she walked up the sweeping staircase with slow,
deliberate steps, clearly unconcerned about being late. The old man nodded over
at Rebecca and then stepped outside again. She heard the umbrella click open
and then footsteps slapping down the wet stairs. Surely he wasn't this girl's
personal umbrella holder? Rebecca thought only narcissistic celebrities paid
people to do things like that. It didn't seem possible that a girl her age
would have someone to escort her to school in the rain. Why couldn't she carry
her own umbrella?

Rebecca decided to ask Aurelia about her after school, although
after she was ushered into the office of the principal -- Miss Vale, a petite,
elegant, middle-aged woman who seemed too busy to even
look
at Rebecca
-- and then led to her first class, she quickly forgot about Helena. There was
so much to take in that first day. Her new teachers were OK -- no one too mean,
no one especially nice. The history teacher asked Rebecca where she came from
and then wrinkled her nose at the words "New York." The math teacher
grumbled for a while about Rebecca starting the semester so late, and the only
male teacher she had all day, for French, looked distraught when he realized
the class now had twenty-one students: He liked the girls to work on spoken
exercises in pairs, he said, and then paused, as though he was waiting for
Rebecca to offer to leave.