Dark Companion (14 page)

“She told me. I was a little … surprised.”

“Because he’s so grungy and she’s a goddess? Yeah, but Hattie doesn’t care that he’s a slacker. She thinks he’s artistic.”

“Being artistic is nice, I guess, but I’m more interested in real things.”

“You haven’t seen Jack play yet. He’s like a grimy, hairy Pied Piper, only instead of rats, he attracts girls. Hey, I’m taking up all your time.” He picked up his textbook and stood. “How about next Sunday around four thirty? Mom says you should come to the house and stay for dinner.”

I nodded and walked him to the door. “We can go over any assignments you have then.”

“I hate chem, but I’m okay in biology.” Lucky suddenly grasped my hand. Turning it over, he ran his finger on the inside of my wrist, tracing the blue veins. My wrist was so narrow in his large hand, and I felt vulnerable and nervous.

“Jane, did you know that the human body contains about five liters of blood?” His voice was quiet and intense. “It travels twelve thousand miles through your circulatory system every day.” His finger pressed on my wrist. “I can feel your pulse. It’s strong. The blood inside is warm, Jane, full of oxygen, minerals, and protein.”

I gazed into his eyes, able to see each eyelash and the gradations of silver and blue.

He wasn’t smiling anymore. His lips were parted and his expression was deadly serious and I thought he might lean over and … Then he dropped my wrist. “See you next week.”

Lucky walked out the door and sauntered off along the path.

My knees were weak from my desire for him. I went over and over what Lucian Radcliffe had said and done, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.

I came to an open spot of ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the stems of four great trees formed its corners, while their branches met and intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud of leaves over it, up towards the heavens. I wondered at finding a human dwelling in this neighborhood; and yet it did not look altogether human …

George MacDonald,
Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
(1858)

Chapter 12

Hattie and Constance arrived in the early evening, and Mary Violet showed up ten minutes later, saying, “
Bonne soirée, belles dames
. That’s French for ‘What’s up, my bitches.’” She threw a sleeping bag on the sofa and set a platter of brownies on the coffee table. “This cottage is like something in a fairy tale.”

Constance said, “I’m sure you’d be happier if it was made out of gingerbread and candy.”

“True, but getting boiled alive isn’t my idea of fun. Honestly, the old fairy tales are as bad as reading
The Stranger
.”

“Were halflings awful?” I asked MV.

“No, they were usually delightful. I meant gruesome old folktales, like the ones that inspired the Grimm brothers.”

“Don’t ask how MV knows these things,” Constance said. “She never remembers my birthday.”

“Yes, I do. It’s in one of those
M
months, March or May. Maybe Mebruary or Maugust.” Mary Violet smirked. “Someday I’m going to write stories with terrifying monsters and werewolves.”

“I thought you were writing mysteries and historicals,” Hattie said. “Besides, no one needs to hear scary stories about make-believe monsters.”

Mary Violet scrunched up her face as she thought for a moment. “I think we do because fear makes us feel alive. Besides, the supernatural is really about the id.”

“I don’t know what the id is, but
id
guess it’s something ridiculous,” Constance said.

“
Id
is not.” Mary Violet tugged one of Constance’s braids. “The id is your unconscious desires and fears. It’s your instinct for pleasure and survival. That’s what my mother says and she did her minor in psych.”

Constance said, “That sounds like something Mrs. Radcliffe would lecture about in Night Terrors. I think there must have been some huge psych fad when they were at university.”

“They probably had study sessions to analyze Madonna songs and danced like this.” Mary Violet began hopping around and swinging her arms up.

“And once again, MV’s dragged us completely off topic,” Hattie said. “I bet you love living here, Jane.”

“Totally, even though Jack Radcliffe tried to scare me about the trees walking at night. Please.”

“That’s his twisted sense of humor,” Mary Violet said as she continued hopping and swinging her arms. “It’s not as refined as mine.”

“Yes, I could tell that he’s a…” I paused to think of the right term. “He’s a major excrement-disturber.”

After dinner and after I’d let Mary Violet trim an inch off my hair (which became three inches because she kept trying to make it even), she said, “Mr. Mason seems so lonely since his wife died. Jane, when did your mother die and how long did it take you to recover?”

“She died when I was six and I had an accident then. The doctors put me in a coma while I healed, and when I woke up, I didn’t remember anything—not the accident, not my mother, not my life before. The official name is retrograde amnesia, and because my brain went without oxygen for a long time, those memories are gone forever.”

There was a long and awkward silence, and my friends switched the conversation to the guys at Evergreen and how they’d changed during the summer.

“None of them is much improved,” Mary Violet said. “Jane, tell us about your boyfriends in the hood. Was it like those movies with the smart girl and the dangerous boy, hopefully with a big dance-off?”

“Not hardly. I’m always in the friend zone because I look like a little kid.”

“You mean you have had no carnal knowledge at all?”

“Mary Violet!” Hattie said. “Let a person have some privacy.”

“Just because you won’t talk about your lover doesn’t mean Jane doesn’t want to talk about her experiences.” Mary Violet pouted. “I confided in you how Teagan Bartholomew stuck his tongue down my throat and then dropped trou with no warning whatsoever. After my mother’s paintings, I’d assumed everyone had a hoo-ha and I was so shocked that I screamed. I thought he had a disfiguring tumorous growth. True story!”

“You’re totally making that up,” Constance said, and Hattie spit out her soda, and we were all howling.

“I’ve been deeply traumatized ever since,” Mary Violet continued. “I’ll probably die a virgin.”

Hattie’s phone trilled and she answered it with a terse “Hello.” Then she said, “How did you know I’d be here?” She went out to the porch to talk, closing the door behind her.

Constance said, “MV,
you’re
the one with the crazy dentist theory.”

I tried to puzzle this out. “Okay, I give up. What do crazy dentists have to do with anything?”

“I’m so glad you asked!” Mary Violet brushed brownie crumbs off her shirt. “Your wisdom teeth get removed only once in your lifetime. Some people have them taken out too early because they want to get it over with, but the surgery’s more complicated if your teeth are impacted. And some people go to any old dentist as if it doesn’t matter, but a bad dentist can make it a horrible,
horrible
experience.”

“Okay, I get that,” I said, “but you can’t compare the sex with dental surgery, because dental surgery is always going to be scary and painful, but—”

MV shook her head, tossing her curls. “My point is about the
memory
of a unique and significant incident. You can’t control each individual factor, but you can wait for the right time and choose the right dentist, because you’ll live with that memory for the rest of your life. That’s my dentist theory and it’s not crazy.”

I searched her earnest face before telling Constance, “I hate to say this, but she’s making sense.”

Constance sighed. “Sometimes she does. That’s the danger of hanging out with her.”

We crashed about two
A.M.
Mary Violet slept on the sofa, and Constance had gone to the bedroom to escape her friend’s snoring. I awoke under my comforter on the floor. Hattie’s sleeping bag was empty.

I checked around, but she was gone, so I put on shoes and a sweatshirt, got my flashlight, and walked outside. “Hattie, Hattie,” I called in a whisper. I began walking along the trail toward the Radcliffes’ house. “Hattie!”

“Over here!” Hattie’s voice came from the direction of the amphitheater.

The blackness wasn’t as dense in the clearing. A full moon was barely visible through the clouds. Hattie sat on a bench, cloaked in a blanket. She was as still and pale as a statue. The lace hem of her long white cotton nightgown skimmed her bare, narrow feet.

She saw me and smiled. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was wondering where you were.” I sat beside her, the cold stone bench chilling me through my thin cotton pants.

“I woke up and felt like taking a walk. Isn’t this place magical? In the moonlight it’s like a black-and-white photograph.”

“How did you find your way here?”

“I know the grove and, besides, I have great night vision.”

We sat quietly, listening to the whispering of the trees and feeling the damp air on our skin. Then Hattie said, “I know things are different for you here, Jane. Whenever you want, you can talk to me.” The moonlight caught the shine of her eyes as she turned toward me. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“It’s been so long since I’ve had someone I could really talk to that I forget what it’s like for most people.” Peaceful moments always reminded me of Hosea. “I had a friend, Hosea, at the group home and I could tell him anything. He was a few years older than me, and he was brilliant in a way that went beyond book smarts. His girlfriends never understood why he always let me tag along, but I loved being with him.”

“Did he get adopted?”

“No, he got bacterial meningitis and died. One day he had a fever and stayed in bed. By the time I got home from school, he was burning up.” My heart ached as I thought of seeing Hosea being wheeled on a gurney though double doors at the ER. “He died that night.”

“I’m sorry.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak for a few minutes. “He was the best person I ever knew.”

“When you were changing clothes, I saw that tattoo with an
H
.”

“One of my housemates did it for me. Her name’s Wilde. Well, her real name is Tiffany and she hates that. She read some graffiti in a bathroom that said ‘More is not enough. Oscar Wilde’ and that’s how she lives.”

“How did she do the tattoo?”

“With ink from a ballpoint pen and a needle.”

“That sounds painful.”

“Sometimes you suffer for the things that are important to you.” We were speaking very softly. I listened for other sounds, but heard only the wind in the trees. “Who comes to this place? Because someone broke the flowerpot on my porch while I was asleep the night before last.”

Hattie’s brow furrowed. “Sometimes locals come here, but no one should have been on your porch. Did you tell Mrs. Radcliffe? She’d really want to know.”

“Maybe it was the wind, or an animal. Please don’t say anything to her.”

“I think you should tell her, but it’s your call.” Hattie watched the play of shadows from the birch branches. “How did your tutoring lesson with Lucky go?”

“Good. He doesn’t seem to care about chem, but he solves the problems easily.”

“Lucky pretends to be incompetent and other people fall over themselves to do things for him because he’s so gorgeous,” she said bitterly.

“Hattie, good-looking people always get special treatment. So do rich people and people with connections.
Everyone
at Birch Grove gets special treatment.”

“We must all seem completely self-centered to you.”

“You seem … incredibly lucky. I think it’s hard not to believe you deserve the best things in life when you’re told you’re extraordinary all the time. People say that anyone can make it, but rare exceptions don’t make it true.”

“But you made it, Jane.”

“I’ve made it this far. But I can name dozens of kids at Helmsdale City Central who are amazing students and they’re trying to succeed without, well, everything. Saying that anyone can make it is an excuse for ignoring all those who need a little help.”

“I’ve thought about that. Bebe sometimes told me about what she went through. She’d laugh like it was nothing, but I could tell it still hurt. I think that people like me, people with advantages, should do something to make the world better.”

“The problem is finding a way to actually make a difference when there are so many obstacles in the way. I haven’t figured out how I can help yet, but I want to make a difference.”

In a lighter voice, Hattie said, “I hope Lucky will find friends who’ll bring out the best in him, instead of feeding his egomania. He’s got a good heart and he’s smart … But why are we talking about Lucky anyway? I’d rather talk about Jack. He looks out for me and he can make me chill out when I get riled.”

“What sets you off?”

“The usual stuff. Being treated like my opinions don’t matter. Being treated like I’m just a girl.
Just a girl.
Whenever people say that, it makes me want to punch them. What makes you angry, Jane?”

“Pretty much everything,” I said casually, as if it weren’t true. “Life isn’t fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you’re dealt.” The wind gusted and I crossed my arms over myself.

“You’re cold.” She took off the blanket and placed it over my shoulders. “Let’s go back.”

I used the flashlight, but Hattie walked as surely as a cat on the path. The hem of her white nightgown drifted behind her in the breeze.

I rearranged the blanket over me. “Anyone seeing us would think we’re ghosts.”

“You aren’t superstitious, are you?”

“No, there’s a rational explanation for everything.”