The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove (22 page)

you’re too girly-sissy.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It is
not
,” Constance answered. “Jane, tell her it’s not the same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I said.

Constance said, “Even if Lucky suddenly realized that you’re…”

“Gorgeous and brilliant and sexy,” Mary Violet said.

“Sure, why not?” her friend said. “Why would you even want to date the

headmistress’s son? It would complicate everything at school for you.”

“Hattie dates the headmistress’s son, and you don’t give her grief.”

“That’s different. Hattie’s a Tyler. They’re as old as the Monroes here.

Mrs. Monroe couldn’t object even if she didn’t like Hattie,” Constance said.

“Why do you care about Lucien Monroe anyway? He’s kind of…”

“He’s stunning!” Mary Violet turned to me and said, “Isn’t Lucky

stunning?”

“Yes,” I said, but I asked Constance, “He’s kind of what?”

“A little too perfect. It’s all polished surface like a mirror reflecting what

you want to see, and I wonder if there’s anything else. He’s boring.”

“You’re crazy! His manners are divine,” Mary Violet said. “Don’t you

remember in sixth grade when the boys came to Miss Harlot’s School of Croquet?

Jack put on his blazer backwards because he thought it was funny—“

“It
was
funny,” Constance said to me.

“Okay, it
was
funny, but Lucky was the only one who bowed after a waltz,”

Mary Violet said. “He does the two-step like an angel.”

I tucked away all this information to think about later, and I asked, “Has

Lucky ever gone out anyone at Birch Grove?”

“Frosh year he was a total womanizer,” Constance said. “He was going

through all the juniors, but we heard that Mrs. Monroe put a stop to that.”

Mary Violet said, “We thought there was something going on between him

and Hattie. When we asked, she said there wasn’t. I don’t know if I completely

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believe her.”

Constance waved her narrow fingers as if she shooing away a fly. “You

imagine them together because they
look
good together. They’re more like

brother and sister.”

“By that thinking, so are Jack and Hattie,” Mary Violet said.

Constance shrugged. “You said it, not me.”

“If Hattie likes Lucky, she’d date him, right?” I said. “What’s to stop her?”

“Not a blessed thing,” Constance said. “MV finds it impossible to believe

that Hattie would choose an interesting personality over good looks, although I

think Jack is way hotter than Lucky.”

“Lucky has gorgeous looks and fantastic manners,” Mary Violet said.

Constance smiled at me and said, “We’re such losers, aren’t we? We have

so few guys here that we get worked up over the headmistress’s sons. I hope that

some of the Evergreeners have gotten more interesting over the summer.”

We arrived at the Heyers’ house and went through the back entrance. Mrs.

Heyer was in the kitchen swirling chocolate frosting on cupcakes. We all said

hello.

“Mother, dearest,” Mary Violet said, “we’ll be in the Wardroom Museum.”

Mrs. Heyer looked at her daughter and said, “You are
not
allowed to

borrow any of my gowns. Nothing with a low décolletage.”

“I know, I know, no bounteous cleavage.”

As soon as we were away from the kitchen, Candace said to me, “Mary

Violet is still in trouble for sending photos that almost showed nip to a guy she

met last summer.”

“It was only sideboob,” MV said primly.

I said, “So that’s why your mother checks all your online activity?”

Mary Violet nodded. “But she was totally overreacting. Nothing actually

showed. She’s so much worse. Once she made pink cupcakes and put Hershey’s

strawberry kisses in the center of each one. It was appalling.”

“They tasted good,” Constance said.

“I had to close my eyes to eat them. We had an intervention and begged

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her never to make vulva cupcakes.”

“No, you didn’t,” Constance said.

“We did, and I read my poem, ‘Ode to an Artistic Mother.’” Mary Violet

dropped her bag, held out her arms, and recited:

“Your cupcakes are tender and quite delish,

But won’t you grant your children’s wish?

A mother’s love is what we cherish

So please no coconut as pubic hairish,

Nor gummy worms as labial lips

Or any substance for a clitoris.

We firmly support your creative expressions

But vulva cupcakes will cause insurrection.”

Constance and I were laughing so hard that we were doubled over, and

Mary Violet said, “And she has the nerve to tell me not to dress skanky.”

“Please don’t ever change, MV,” I said.

“Only my clothes.”

MV opened the door to a room near her mother’s art studio. Three sides

had chrome clothes racks like a department store, and the fourth wall had shelves

of purses and shoes. There were full length mirrors and a bench with pale blue

velvet cushions.

Several dresses hung from one rolling rack.

“Voila!”
she said, holding her hand toward the rolling rack. “I picked these

out last night.”

The dresses were all my size and looked as if they’d never been worn.

Clearly they’d been chosen for Agnes: there wasn’t a pink or frilly one in the

bunch.

“Do you like them?” Mary Violet asked.

“Of course!” I caressed a chocolate brown velvet dress.

“Agnes won’t even try them on. She’s afraid it will affect her standing as a

potential lesbian even though I tried to convince her that lipstick lesbians wear

dresses.” She lifted the skirt of sleeveless cotton dress. “What about this one?”

Constance picked out a scoop neck with a peach and white swirly pattern.

“This is pretty.” She held it up in front of me and I looked in the mirror.

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My hand went to an emerald green dress and I took it off the rack and held

it in front of me.

Mary Violet said, “Empire waist, which makes the most of your slip of a

figure, and the color’s fabulous on you.”

They made me try on all the clothes. When I stripped down to my

underwear, I made sure to let my hair fall over my left shoulder to hide the scar,

but I heard Constance gasp.

“A tattoo! Jane Williams, you’re a wild thing.”

“What is the H mean?” MV asked. “Is it gang ink?”

“It’s for my friend, Hosea. He got meningitis and died.”

“Oh,” they said together.

The dark green fit the best. The narrow cut made me look taller. I was

about to slide on my too-big plastic sandals when my Mary Violet said, “Wait!

We have a present for you.”

Constance went to her suit bag and unzipped it. She took out a cloth bag

tied at the top with a big white ribbon. “This is from us to you.”

I took the bag and felt the lumpy weight inside. Then I untied the ribbon.

Inside was a pair of pretty black open-toe heels. “How did you…” I began,

touching the smooth leather. “They’re my size.”

“Well, duh,” Mary Violet said. “I looked in your closet when we spent the

night and I knew you needed heels. We all pitched in.”

“Thank you,” I said and my eyes welled up.

My friends put their arms around me and said, “Group hug!”

They helped me pick out a small black velvet evening bag and a black

cashmere shawl.

Agnes poked her head in the wardrobe museum, took one look at me, and

said, “It fits you. Keep it. I hate dresses.”

It took me only ten minutes to dress for the evening, and a few minutes to

put on my makeup and brush out my hair. Constance wore a turquoise and black

geometric print dress and twisted her hair up on her head, holding it with clips

decorated with silver butterflies that matched dangling silver earrings.

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Constance and I sat on the bed and watched Mary Violet’s elaborate

preparations. She kept trying on different combinations of clothes, before

choosing one of her many pink outfits.

Then MV spent ages messing with her blonde curls, before letting her hair

down as it had been when we left campus. When she was finished, she took a

look at me and said, “Jewelry.”

She wanted me to wear big hoop earrings. “Even Constance is wearing

earrings and a bracelet and she’s practically a Puritan.”

“I am not a Puritan,” Constance said. “I don’t need to decorate myself like

a Christmas tree every time I go out.”

“I don’t have pierced ears,” I said, “and those bracelets you’re looking at

are too, uhm, clanky for me. I don’t need anything.”

Mary Violet huffed out a breath. “Okay, baby steps.”

As she drove us to the party in her mother’s black Saab, I kept smoothing

the silky material of my dress and the soft shawl. The thought of seeing Lucky

made me so apprehensive I couldn’t pay attention to the conversation.

We took winding, dark roads into the hills and stopped at a gate with an

elderly guard at the booth. A narrow sign read
Greenwood Country Club
in small

white letters.

Mary Violet opened her window and said, “Hi, Mr. Haggerty.”

“Hi, sunshine,” he said and pushed a button so that the big gate swung

open. “Have a good time.”

“See you later.” Once we got through the gate, we drove along the golf

course. “Mr. Haggerty has been here since the dawn of man,” Mary Violet said.

“He once caught my mother and her friends skinny-dipping, and she still gets as

red as a tomato when she sees him. That’s why you should never skinny-dip near

home.”

“Thanks for your wisdom, MV,” Constance said.

“If you’re going to be so ungrateful, I’m going to stop sharing important

life lessons with you.” MV parked in a lot by a low building near swimming

pools that glowed aqua in the night. Another older and more impressive building

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was set farther back.

Constance said, “This warehouse is the teen center.”

“They keep us away from the civilized people,” Mary Violet added.

Kids were getting out of cars and going into the building. The guys wore

suits, most of them with loosened ties and tennis shoes, and the girls darted to

great one another, like dragonflies in their vivid silk dresses. I recognized lots of

Birch Grove students. They looked much older dressed up like this.

“Does anyone ever crash these parties?” I asked. At my school there cops,

security guards, and cyclone fencing at every event.

“They can’t,” Constance said. “We know everyone and if an outsider even

drives into town, the sheriff stops them.”

We walked inside to a large dark hall. A DJ, stationed on a platform in the

corner, was spinning an indie tune that sounded familiar. Strings of lights

radiated out from central points on the ceiling, like starbursts.

Chairs, benches, and trees in large pots created nooks around the periphery

of the room. Tables with refreshments were set up at one end of the hall. At the

other was a stage with band equipment. Kids hung out in groups, laughing and

talking, with the ease of knowing they belonged.

I followed my friends. Constance turned back to me and said, “We always

find a good place to survey the terrain and then we go on reconnaissance

missions.”

Mary Violet said, “Have you been watching the Military Channel with your

dad again?”

“He wants to bond with me,” Constance said.

They claimed a bench near the DJ’s stand and we put our sweaters and

shawls there. Mary Violet and Constance left their clutches on the bench, trusting

that they’d be safe. I kept hold of my small bag, which held my keys.

We went to the refreshment table where people were ladling red punch

from big silver bowls to glasses.

“It’s the famous Greenwood Country Club punch,” Mary Violet said. “The

secret recipe is ginger ale, sugar, raspberry puree, lemon juice, orange juice, and

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ice. In the old days, someone always put rum in it. Now the club’s so strict that

we have to drink outside like animals.”

Constance said, “You can’t drink anyway. You’re the designated driver.”

“They let you drink?” I asked.

“Only if everyone pretends it isn’t happening,” Constance said. “It’s part of

Greenwood’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil moral code.”

“Hey, guys!”

We turned to see Hattie coming toward us, holding hands with Jack.

Hattie’s tousled dark hair hung down her back and she wore a strapless scarlet

dress showed off her beautiful smooth skin. Glittering gold earrings with red

gems dangled from her lobes.

I felt a complicated pang of admiration for my friend’s beauty and hurt that

I would never be as pretty. I remembered Jack’s comment about the importance

of looks and wondered if he’d meant it snidely or sincerely.

Standing beside Hattie, Jack looked less ramshackle and more arty and

sophisticated. He wore a battered corduroy jacket over a t-shirt, ancient jeans and

black boots. He hadn’t shaved and his curly hair looked as if he’d come back