Bittersweet Dreams (36 page)

“Maybe we should take you to a doctor for that,” my father said.

“It's not from the injury,” I replied.

“She would know,” Julie quipped.

I didn't bother to respond.

When I went up this time, I was drawn to my closet to look in the carton that contained some photo albums, birthday cards, and old report cards. I sat on the floor and looked at everything slowly. The pictures of my mother and me, all three of us, brought back some of my warmest memories. I didn't cry, but I pretended I was back there and wished that I could magically turn back time. I wasn't one to fantasize or dwell in my imagination long, unless I was trying to project what something might be like after more technological advances.

When I was the little girl in those pictures, I wondered why I didn't react to toys in a similar way to how other girls my age did. I knew I wasn't much fun for them, and after a while, none really asked for me. I went to their birthday parties, but I guess I never looked like I was having fun. I was smart enough already to know that other girls' mothers considered me quite strange. Some were even worried about their daughters playing with me. I probably said things to them that confused and maybe shocked them, things they told their mothers. I recalled how hard my mother had tried to get me to enjoy myself. She would even say, “Remember, Mayfair, they are just little girls,” as if she thought I might be more understanding and gentler with them, something only someone much older would do.

It never occurred to me back then that my mother might be sad or unhappy about me, maybe even disappointed. She probably feared that I wasn't going to be the young daughter she'd dreamed of having, the one she could dress up and slowly guide into a wonderful adolescence filled with new discoveries about myself almost daily, discoveries she remembered having and was so determined that I would enjoy. Mothers relived their own youth through their daughters, and even the short time we had together could have been something more wonderful for her.

How my heart ached now, for so many reasons.

I closed the albums and put everything back into the cartons and then the closet. I prepared for sleep and went to bed wishing I needed to suck my thumb or something. I curled up in the fetal position and hugged my oversize pillow, but nothing helped me sleep. I dozed and woke, dozed and woke, until the morning light slipped around my curtains like fingers of gold searching for a way to touch me.

Everything on me ached. I guessed I had been too flippant about the head injury. My neck was sore. I moaned and just fell asleep again. I never heard Allison come into my room, but I did sense her presence and opened my eyes.

“What?”

“Mom wants to know if you're going to school today. You'll have to hurry.”

“Mom? Tell her no. You just go on without me.”

“Are you sick?”

“Sick of.”

“What's that mean?”

“Forget it, Allison. Tell her I'm taking the day off.”

“Daddy had to leave early.”

“Lucky him,” I said, and turned over.

I thought that was it for the day, but a little more than an hour later, my phone rang. It was my father.

“What?” I said. “Don't worry. I don't need to go to a doctor.”

“I'm not taking you to a doctor. I'd like you to get dressed and be ready to go to the school with me in about an hour. We have a meeting with Mr. Martin.”

“Mr. Martin? What about?”

I imagined I was to make some sort of confession, but he surprised me.

“Your educational future,” he said.

“What, is he a fortune-teller now, too?”

“Mayfair.”

“Okay, Daddy,” I said. “I'll be ready.”

“Good.”

I got dressed. Julie was nowhere to be found, which didn't make me unhappy. I wondered if she would be with my father when he came for me, but her car was gone, and she didn't return before he arrived.

I stepped out just as he opened his door, and I ran around to get in.

“What is this really all about, Daddy?” I asked as he backed out of the driveway.

“A solution,” he said. “For all of us.”

Mr. Martin handed my father and me copies of the Spindrift School brochure.

“It looks more like an old mansion than a school,” I said. “An eclectic Queen Anne. How can it be a school?”

“Everything about it is unorthodox. You'll see as you read,” he said.

I glanced at my father to show him my skepticism. Not that I was afraid of going to a school away from home, but a part of me was hoping he would say, “It won't be that long before she's completely away from us. Why rush it?”

“As you can see, the grounds are beautiful,” Mr. Martin continued in a seller's tone, as if he were getting a commission.

It occurred to me that maybe he was. Maybe I was being exploited and victimized once again.

“It's fenced and walled in, a very private place with the most sophisticated technological security. As you will see, it has most anything any really good school or college would. Turn the page. See that modern laboratory, that computer room, and look at that library. There are a thousand volumes, covering law, science, literature, anything you can possibly think of researching, plus the most up-to-date internet access, of course.”

“Impressive,” my father said.

“This is actually a specially designed school for students like you, Mayfair. It's a school at which you live and work in a totally unorthodox learning environment. The principal is a renowned child psychologist, Dr. Jessie Marlowe. You might have already read some of her studies.”

“Yes, I think I have. I have some questions about some of her conclusions.”

“I'm sure you have,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, they take in only fifteen students.”

“Only fifteen?” Daddy asked. “All this for only fifteen?” Now he sounded like the one getting a commission.

“Exactly. Frankly, there are not many students who would meet the criteria, Mr. Cummings, and Spindrift is very selective about choosing from the list of those who do. However,” he added, “I already know that Mayfair would be very welcome. I took the liberty of getting them some preliminary information. No sense in wasting your time or theirs, right?”

“Where is Piñon Pine Grove?” I asked.

“It's in the Coachella Valley, not more than two hours from Los Angeles. Not that far from home.”

“Maybe it's not far enough away,” I muttered, and glanced at my father.

“How long has this school been in existence?” he asked Mr. Martin, ignoring my comment.

“It was started ten years ago as the brainchild of someone who would have benefited greatly from it, Dr. Norman Lazarus, now one of the world's most renowned biochemists.”

“Lazarus? Did he rise from the dead?” I asked.

Mr. Martin smiled. “Maybe his ancestor did.”

“I think we should be a little more serious about this, Mayfair,” my father said. He looked at the brochure and read some more. “You're right, Mr. Martin. These students are very protected, apparently. There is a great deal of security. No one can just walk in on them. I like that.”

“Exactly. The philosophy is that their students are very valuable national assets. The graduates of Spindrift have gone on to do wonderful things in all fields. A number of them work for NASA. Many are doing things that are kept top secret.”

He turned to me. “The big point here is that you'd be studying and researching with students at your level of learning, students equipped the way you're equipped, Mayfair. I don't think it's much of a secret that your skills and intellect are not being challenged here.

“This recent incident you had with some of the other girls is characteristic of what happens with gifted students everywhere,” he continued, talking more to my father. “Other students either resent them or see them as . . .”

“Weird, freaky,” I finished for him.

He smiled. “I was just going to say unusual.”

“It's not cheap,” I said, noting the tuition. “Are all the other unusual students from wealthy families, too?”

“Most are. They do give out one scholarship a year to a candidate who fits the criteria but whose family can't afford to send her or him. One of the former graduates, who wants to remain anonymous, donates the tuition.”

“Walled in, high security, guards at the gate—probably makes it quite a curiosity to the locals. Piñon Pine Grove sounds like an exciting little city,” I said, reading from the description on the last page of the brochure. “Twenty-five thousand people, a few home building supply companies, other small factories, a mall and movie complex, and a senior citizens gated-home community with four thousand people. Wow. It's overwhelming.”

“The students at Spindrift don't have much, if anything, to do with the people in Piñon Pine Grove. There's a sizable entertainment area in the school, with a big-screen movie theater and all the music you or anyone there would want. There's a gym and an indoor pool. As you see, they even have an impressive telescope for astronomy. You probably wouldn't want to leave.”

“You sure this really isn't a mental institution?” I asked.

“Hardly, unless you call a place for developing your mind to even higher levels a mental institution,” Mr. Martin said.

“Very good. How do you just happen to know so much about it, Mr. Martin?” I asked.

“I have a good friend in the state education department who told me about it.”

“After you told him about me?”

“Exactly,” he said, and smiled. “No sense trying to put one over on Mayfair,” he told my father.

My father nodded and turned to me. “Well, what do you think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

There was no doubt in my mind that Julie was waiting for his call, waiting to hear that I was headed out of the house and especially away from Allison.

“Do you want a choice? Do you want to stay here in this school?”

I looked again at the brochure. “Spindrift,” I said. “From where we can look down on everyone else.”

“Which is exactly what you've been doing here,” my father said.

It stung.

I closed the brochure and looked out the window.

There were graduates of our school who had returned for visits from colleges they attended. They often gravitated to me because they could have a more intelligent conversation than they could have with other juniors and even seniors, not to mention many of their former teachers. We talked about the courses they were taking, the books they were reading, and the demands on their time for study and research. All of them always commented on how much they respected me for being so far ahead that when I went to college, it would seem like kindergarten. But many of them, especially the ones who were college freshmen, voiced some nostalgia.

“I wish I was a carefree high-school student again,” they might say. They'd look around and add, “I never thought I would miss this place, but I do. I had some happy times here.”

I didn't, but I wanted to very much. I wanted to miss this place someday, too. Would I ever be nostalgic for anything anymore?

It was going to be easy to walk out of this building, out of this school world, but ironically, that didn't make me happy. It made me feel empty. Oh, there were a few teachers I would miss because we had some good discussions, but those talks were too few and far between to amount to much, not enough to give me that sense of nostalgia those returning college students showed.

I had joined no clubs, had been on no teams, and had never been in a school show or the school band. I had no good memories of any social event. Probably, in weeks or even days after I left, I would be forgotten, and if I weren't, I'd be remembered as some sort of freak or monster to which students could compare each other when insulting each other.

“You want to be another Mayfair?” they might say.

Or they might turn my name into a verb. “You're Mayfairing me” or, simply, “You're Mayfairing.”

Poor Allison. If she weren't taken out of this school, she might suffer because of that, despite her current status as a little heroine. I hoped Julie wouldn't go back on seriously considering finding her another school even though it might alienate her from some of her precious lunch friends. She could very well think that because I was gone from the school, Allison would be fine.

Maybe she would be, I thought. What did I really know?

“Well, then,” Mr. Martin said. “I'll contact Dr. Marlowe today and get things arranged. They don't have semesters like ordinary schools, so it doesn't really make any difference when you enroll her,” he told my father. “I'll call you tomorrow, and most probably you can head up there this weekend. It'll be no problem getting the rest of her academic history to them.”

“Very good. Mayfair, any more questions for Mr. Martin?”