Dark Companion (23 page)

“Do you think Aubrey should have broken the promise?”

“Absolutely, especially since his secrecy endangers others and he gets absolutely nothing from the relationship.” I paused to reflect on the characters’ dynamic. “If Lord Ruthven
needed
Aubrey in some way, if there was reciprocation and affection, it would be different. But there’s no unique bond between them, so why is Aubrey so delicate that he goes crazy?”

“It’s a metaphor,” a senior said.

“A metaphor represents something, and I don’t think this does,” I answered. “The author believes Aubrey’s stupid, too, because he describes him as trusting poetry over reality.”

Constance raised her hand. “I agree with Jane. I don’t think the author put a lot of thought into the story. The structure was clumsy, the writing awkward, and the characters were cliché. The young girl is described as…” Constance skimmed her notes and read, “having an ‘almost fairy form,’ and being so innocent that she is ‘unconscious of his love.’ How could she be so oblivious of Aubrey’s passion for her? Is she a complete idiot?”

Mrs. Radcliffe said, “She’s young and naïve. There are always things that we don’t recognize due to inexperience, as well as those things which we consciously or unconsciously choose not to see because they don’t fit our expectations and desires.”

Her comment echoed what Mrs. Holiday had mentioned about vision and perception.

The other students began speaking up about “The Vampyre.” “The vampire is only used as a mechanism. The author could have used a werewolf, or a ghost, or any Big Bad. It doesn’t matter, because he has no larger meaning to the story.”

Mrs. Radcliffe looked at all the raised hands. “Do you see any similar themes running through these works?”

We all began discussing how the main characters’ pursuit of pleasure caused them to dismiss forewarnings of danger. Mrs. Radcliffe steered the discussion to the symbols for life and death. She was tying together themes and I remembered Jack saying that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

I was thinking of this, feeling that I only had a few pieces of a large puzzle and wondering how they fit together as I walked to Latin class and bumped right into Catalina in the doorway.

“Sorry.” I stepped back to let her go through first.

She pursed her full lips. “Clumsy girl!”

“I
said
I was sorry.” I followed her into the room and we both sat at our desks.

“You require too much attention for such a tiny thing.” She arranged her books and took out her silver pen. “Sage is envious of anyone close to the Radcliffes and she’s always trying to climb the social ladder. You, at least, have no pretensions. I can’t believe all this pettiness over Lucian, who’s so handsome, but this is such a small town.
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatu
.”

I had studied the quote before: The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived. “What do you mean by that?”

She tossed her hair back. “I’m bored with you now.”

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatu.
It seemed to fit into the Night Terrors discussion, and I could use the quote in my essay on “The Vampyre.”

*   *   *

The days that followed were agonizing. I kept my arms covered during school and tried to pay attention to my lessons, but all I could think about was Lucky. I thought about the shades of honey-gold in his hair, his voice, the stretch of his long body, and the way he moved.

I wanted to hear him tell me that what we had was special … that
I
was special and not merely some mousy girl. If only I could be patient, then he would let people know that Lucky Radcliffe and Jane Williams had a
thing
. I wasn’t quite sure yet what that thing was.

When Mr. Mason asked me to help set up another lab on acids and bases, I was glad because it prevented me from obsessing … at least for a few hours while I set out the glass beakers, color pH charts, and protection goggles.

Mr. Mason checked on a completed station. “Nice work, Jane. I appreciate your help.”

“It’s calming thinking about how acids and bases neutralize each other.” I aligned a box of borax with a bottle of alcohol. “When you know the rules, you can predict what will happen.”

“Usually, not always.”

“But when we can’t predict, it’s our own lack of knowledge—it’s not as though things behave…” I paused to think of the right word. “Quixotically.”

“You have an excellent vocabulary for someone who says she dislikes the language arts.”

“I try to find words that are precise because language is so ambiguous. Why can’t all words be qualitative and quantitative?”

“So that we could calibrate communication precisely?” Now he chuckled. He removed his white lab coat and hung it on a knob by the door. “I have to run off some copies of tomorrow’s worksheet. If you finish before I come back, please lock the door on your way out. Thank you, Jane.”

“Good night, sir.”

When I completed setting up the experiment and went to get my book bag, I noticed a folded sheet of paper on the blue linoleum near Mr. Mason’s lab coat. The edges were worn as if it had been handled a lot. I opened it to see a photocopy of a handwritten page. The heading read “Dearest Albert” and knew I should stop reading. But I didn’t.

Dearest Albert,

By the time you read this, you will know what I have done. I did not want you or anyone else at Birch Grove to find me so I will leave it to the ocean to wash away what remains of the body that I offered as a map of my love.

You believe that my grief is the result of a chemical imbalance which requires medical and psychiatric treatment, a fresh start somewhere new. But my grief is real. I loved this last baby with every atom of my being, and I believed that my love could make him healthy and whole. He was the incarnation of my passion, everything I have hoped for since I first came to Birch Grove.

Love is a poisonous drug, Albert. The first drops were so intoxicating that I felt I could possess the world. But as time passed, I wasn’t satisfied with those meager drops. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Even now that I have drunk the cup of poison, I still crave more.

You are a good and kind man and you deserved better. I now set you free to find another who will value your worth and give you a family. I ask for no one’s forgiveness, but I hope that someday you will understand why I had no choice. My traitorous body has become a map of pain and I am trapped and lost within it. There is no escape. My heart and soul will always be at Birch Grove.

Ut incepit fidelis sic permanent.

Claire

By the time I read the signature, the page shook in my unsteady hand. I folded it quickly and put it in the pocket of Mr. Mason’s lab coat. I hurried out of the room and was down the hall before I remembered to go back and lock the door. Then I ran down the steps, across campus to my cottage.

*   *   *

All week, Claire Mason’s words repeated in my mind. I noticed that Mr. Mason patted his pocket the same way that I always did when I had money. How could this letter reassure him? I thought about Claire Mason and poisonous love after school, when I changed into jeans and a short-sleeved t-shirt, because I knew the mark on my arm excited Lucky, and I became more desperate with each day that went by. I didn’t bother cooking dinner and subsisted on candy bars, which I could eat quickly and then be available. I turned down an invitation to go to dinner with MV and Constance. Several times, I checked the phone to make sure it was working.

I couldn’t focus on my schoolwork, so it took twice as long. Anger had motivated me in the past, but now I dreaded that if I didn’t do well, I’d be sent away from Birch Grove and never see Lucky again, so I second-guessed everything I did. I regretted calling his friend an ass, scolding Lucky to be nicer, and revealing my emotions.

I’d go outside in the gloaming and stare up the hill at the Radcliffe house and think,
Please, please, please,
as if my desire and need could be transmitted if I only concentrated hard enough.

I was watching the sky grow darker when I heard the familiar sound of a bike’s wheels crunching on leaves. A second later Jack came on his bike from the direction of the drive.

He skidded to a stop and hopped off his bike, propping it against the porch banister.

“Hey, Halfling, what are you doing outside in the cold?” He was breathing hard and his gray t-shirt clung damply to his wide chest.

“Are you going to tell me I shouldn’t stand outside because you
always
know what other people should and shouldn’t do?”

“Stand wherever you want, and, yes, I know what you
shouldn’t
do, if it’s letting a drunk jerk into your place in the middle of the night. Especially when the guy’s mother could expel you.”

“Why would she expel me when he was the one—”

“Moral turpitude.
Turpitude.
It’s in the handbook. Your headmistress disapproves of impropriety and she also disapproves of the appearance of impropriety.”

“You keep telling me how important appearances are, yet you don’t care how you look or what you say.”

“Irritating, isn’t it?” He wiped his brow with the hem of his t-shirt, showing a glimpse of his firm tanned stomach and abs.

I looked away before he caught me staring. “Yes, it’s irritating.”

He let the shirt drop back into place and sighed. “When I saw you standing here, so motionless, I was afraid an evil witch had transformed you to stone. What would bring a pixie back to life? A jar of angel’s tears? Or maybe I’d have to answer three trick questions.”

“I’m sure you could answer any trick question. You like playing with people.”

“Not me. I don’t play with people.”

“You play with language, which is the same thing.”

“No, it’s not, but you know that,” he said. “At night, I look down the hill and think of you here surrounded by the trees.”

A frisson ran through me at the thought that Jack might have been staring down the hill at the same time that I was staring up toward his house.

“I think,
Has my halfling become habituated to the sounds? Should I visit her?
But I get the feeling that you don’t enjoy our conversations and you don’t like my friendly neighborhood visits.”

“Why should I? One minute you’re nice to me, and the next you’re lecturing me.
You’re
the one who asks trick questions, and talking to you is an exercise in futility.”

His eyes darkened and his smile was as chilly as the breeze. “Hattie doesn’t think so. I understand her and she understands me. Isn’t that what love is, knowing another person so perfectly well that there are no surprises?”

“You always bring up Hattie as if you’re complimenting her, when you’re really just putting me down, Jack. I know Hattie’s beautiful, talented, and sophisticated.” I felt myself losing control even though I knew that’s exactly what Jack wanted. “And I know that I’m small, plain, and no-class. I
accept
those facts. I
accept
that no one will ever fall in love with me because I’m pretty and fun, but I hope that maybe someday someone will get to know me, and he’ll find out that I have a heart and a mind just as good as any pretty girl’s.”

“And you would love him no matter what he looked like?”

“If he
needed
me, yes! I would be loyal to him and I would never give up trying to make him happy.” I tried to blink back my tears.

“That’s not love, Jane, that’s letting yourself be used.”

I felt as panicked as a bird caught in a room, battering against a closed window. “If you want to know what love is, ask someone who’s been loved, ask Hattie, because I
don’t
know what it means!”

Jack watched me somberly and then his green eyes moved down and he saw the yellow and violet bruising around the scab on my arm. Stepping to me, he gently put his calloused hands on my wrists and heat from him went through my body.

I tasted the salt of my tears as they slid down my face. I wanted to wipe them away, but Jack still held my wrists.

“Oh, Halfling, what have you done?” he murmured. “What have you let him do to you?”

Anguish rose up in me and I couldn’t bear it anymore. Jack’s head dropped so that his chin rested lightly on my head, and I had an inexplicable urge to lean into him, to have him hold me, to breathe in his scent of leaves and earth and sun, to weep until nothing was left inside of me but a void free from pain and aching need and loneliness.

Why did I feel this way? Why did he make me feel?

Then my phone rang, and I wrenched my wrists away from Jack’s hands and ran inside, slamming the door behind me.

I got to the phone on the second ring, thinking
Lucky’s calling,
and choked out “Hello?”

“Hi, Jane, this is Penelope from Latin. Do you want to join our study group?”

The phone call was brief, and when I peeked outside, Jack had left, and the last of the dim light was gone, leaving only night and the trees and my confusion and misery.

When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me. I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window I could find; but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings. When I look back after a few hours I think I must have been mad for the time, for I behaved much as a rat does in a trap.

Bram Stoker,
Dracula
(1897)