Lessons from a Dead Girl (10 page)

“It’s a shame you two aren’t friends anymore. But I guess you grew apart. That always happens in high school, when you take different classes and things.”

I nod, feeling the line across the doll’s middle with my finger.

“My goodness were you two inseparable! Remember, Lainey?”

“How does Leah like her new school?” I ask. I look up at Mrs. Greene to show her I really do want to know.

Her face is grayish, her makeup cakey. She seems older than I remember.

“Oh, well, Leah’s a little too big for her britches these days. Says she wants to quit school because she isn’t learning anything. Ah, Laine, I never should have started her in kindergarten a year late. But I wasn’t ready to let go of her! I think she hated being almost a year older than all her classmates, though. I think it was hard on her, even though she was always such a good student. But she developed so early, anyway, and then — well, you know. Leah has always looked a lot older than she is. When we took her out for her thirteenth birthday, the waiter thought she was eighteen! He couldn’t take his eyes off her.”

She says the last bit proudly. I see Sam dancing with Leah and Brooke in the living room, watching their bodies, while Mr. and Mrs. Greene smile proudly. I feel ill. I want to hurl the doll across the room.

“You should see her now, honey,” Mrs. Greene goes on. “She thinks she’s going to be a
model.
I wish I had the pictures from her portfolio to show you. We had them done at a studio in Boston. The photographer told us she was a natural. So of course now she thinks she can just quit school and become the next supermodel.”

Just like Sam said,
I think.

“Well,” she says with a sigh, as if it’s all too much to think about. “And what about you, sweetie? What have you been up to? Thinking about college yet?”

But she doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Oh, I had such high hopes for Leah. For Brooke, too. You know about Brooke, don’t you, Laine?”

I shake my head.

“She’s going to go to school to become a court stenographer.”

“A what?” The doll feels heavier and heavier in my hand as I try not to remember that night.

Please, Mrs. Greene. Just go away.

“A court
stenographer.
It’s the person who types out what people are saying in a court case. You know. Like a trial. She’s really excited. Thinks she’s going to be able to witness all the interesting cases.
I
think it would be boring. At least she might meet some lawyers, though. You know, she really is pretty.”

I manage to smile, even though I desperately need to blow my nose.

“So, a touch of the flu? I hear something’s going around.”

I sniff.

“And here we are still standing!”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I feel like a child standing in my pajamas with my blanket. When I move aside, she heads straight for the kitchen. I didn’t even know she knew where it was. I follow, my blanket trailing behind me, wondering what I’m supposed to do next. I’ve never spoken to Mrs. Greene for this long in my life.

“Can I make you some tea, Laine?”

In my own house? “Um … OK,” I say quietly. I place the doll on the kitchen table and sit down.

Mrs. Greene turns the doll so she’s facing me before she walks to the stove to start the kettle. She hums while she searches for and finds two teacups and the tea bags. She seems peculiarly happy. Like she’s trying too hard. Mrs. Greene was always so proud of how beautiful her girls were. Still are. Maybe too proud.
If you’ve got it, flaunt it,
she’d told them. But at what price?

We drink our tea while the doll watches us.

“Do you know why it’s called a nesting doll, Laine?”

I shake my head.

Mrs. Greene reaches for the doll and separates her. She pulls out each doll, lining them up in a row as she goes until she gets to the last doll. Then she puts them all back inside each other again. “Each doll nests inside the next biggest one. And the largest one of all keeps the others safe, like a mother hen.”

“That makes sense,” I say, taking a sip of the tea. It tastes better than the way my mother makes it — it has lots of milk and sugar. I wonder if she makes tea like this for Leah.

As soon as I finish, Mrs. Greene gets up to leave. When I thank her for bringing the nesting doll, she gives me a close hug. Her breasts smoosh up against me, but it doesn’t make me feel bad, like I’d imagined when I saw her do it to other people, though never Leah or Brooke. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her hug them.

From the window next to the door, I watch her hurry across the driveway to her new white Cadillac. She waves as she pulls away. I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.

I go back to the kitchen and find the nesting doll still sitting happily on the table.

I hate that Mrs. Greene took her from Leah. I hate that Mrs. Greene must have found the doll and confronted Leah about it. It would have reminded Leah about that night and my broken promise. I can still see the strange glance between Sam and Leah when she took the doll from me the next morning. How he almost seemed to know she’d do it, and so it had really been a gift for her all along. But mostly I can still hear the sound of her quiet cries in the dark the night before.

I take the doll up to the doll closet and throw it inside. The doll breaks apart when it hits the floor. I shut the door before the pieces rattle to a stop.

By the end of my sophomore year, I pretty much give up on ever having any real friends. I’ll get through this torture they call school, and then I can go live as a hermit someplace.

Only just as I make up my mind to live my life in exile, Jessica Lambert comes up behind me and tells me I have a pen mark on my shirt. I try to cover the spot by holding my books in front of it.

“It’s not a big deal,” she says. “That happens to me all the time.” She smiles at me.

“Thanks,” I say, looking at my shoes.

I’ve known Jess, which is what everyone calls her, since grade school. But we’ve never been friends. Leah never liked her for some reason. Leah made all the decisions about who would be in our “group.” None of those girls ever felt like real friends to me. I knew they only talked to me because of Leah. And Leah knew it, too. Sometimes I think Leah liked it that way.

Jess and I both play the clarinet in band. For Christmas, my father gave me an old clarinet he found at a flea market. He fixed it up and insisted that I try to learn how to play. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of being a band geek, but once I tried playing, I liked it. I liked making noise without using my voice. Besides, if I’m going to be alone the rest of my life, who cares?

A few days after the shirt incident, I sit next to Jess at practice. She smiles at me and says, “Hi.”

“Hi,” I say back, a little too friendly.

This is the extent of conversation number two. But at the next practice, we sit beside each other again. This time she nudges me when Mrs. Hathaway, the band director, claps her hands and tells us we’re all brilliant.

“Must be deaf,” Jess whispers.

I snicker.

Two practices later, Jess asks if I want to share stands with her.

“Sure,” I say nervously. But when I put my music away to share hers, we realize she plays second clarinet and I only play third, and both sets of music won’t fit on the stand.

“Oh, well,” Jess says. “We can still push them together. That way Hathaway can’t see us write notes.”

Hathaway? Notes? Apparently, Jess has decided we’re friends.

I slide my stand next to hers so our music folders touch and Hathaway can’t see us. Jess gives me a satisfied smile.

After practice a few days later, Web Foster is waiting in the hall for Jess. I didn’t know they were friends, but it’s obvious they’re close by the way Web grins at her when he sees us. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me with Jess. He even knows my name and says hi.

The next day we’re sitting in chemistry, and Web sends Jess and me the same note.

We both look over at him like he’s crazy, but he winks and points to the clock.

I don’t think any of us will really do it, but as I watch the minute hand slowly making its way to the five, I decide I’m going to go for it. It’s the end of the school year. What’s the worst thing that could happen? What do I have to lose?

As the second hand nears the twelve, we exchange looks and nods. Then, just as the hand clicks onto the twelve, I take a deep breath and let out a “Wooh!”

Jess and Web echo my own pathetic, but victorious, howl.

When we stop, the room is deadly quiet. We look at one another, our faces bright red. I feel like I’ve just lifted a huge weight off my chest, and I’m smiling like a nut. I’ve never done something like this before. Leah would never do it. She’d say it was totally lame. She’d probably roll her eyes and say how juvenile we are, which is basically what the rest of the class does. No one looks at us. Mrs. Fiske, our teacher, just says, “Enough!” But no one in the class even acts like it was an odd thing to do.

After class, the three of us meet in the hall and burst out laughing.

“That was the weirdest experience I’ve ever had,” Jess says.

“Jess, you live a boring life.” Web sighs.

“But nothing happened,” I say. “No one did anything! We didn’t even get in trouble!”

“We freaked them out, that’s all,” Web says. “It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jess and I say at the same time. Then we all crack up again.

I have passed their initiation test. I have friends. I wonder what Leah would say to that.

Just when I finally make friends, they desert me. Two weeks after the scream, school vacation starts and Jess and Web go away. Jess goes to Maine with her parents, who run a dive shop there all summer. Web’s parents are making him go to private school in the fall, so he has to go to their summer-school program before he can enroll.

I’m alone again.

I decide to work in my parents’ antique store. Mostly I dust and polish things. My dad plays fifties music off the restored jukebox because he thinks it makes customers feel nostalgic. Within two weeks, I’m walking around with Buddy Holly and Fats Domino songs in my head. It is so pathetic. I’m convinced that I’m a complete failure and will be a hermit the rest of my life after all, humming to the tune of “Ain’t That a Shame.”

But then Jess IMs me and asks if I want to come spend a weekend with her.

I write back in all capital letters: YES!

She sends back a smiley face.

When I step off the bus, she hugs me close. I hug back and glance over her shoulder at the small wharf and quaint little shops by the water. As we embrace, I feel odd, like people are looking at us. I pull back quickly, but Jess doesn’t seem to notice.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she says. She has a dark tan. Something about her is different. She looks great. Maybe it’s because she seems so much more relaxed than at school. Maybe it’s just the tan.

“We’re gonna have a blast!” She grabs my backpack off my shoulder and drags me up a narrow street. Her parents’ summer place is right in town, a little apartment over the dive shop. Jess’s room is a tiny, renovated attic painted white with a round window with a view of the ocean. There’s a single bed under the eaves with milk crates stacked on top of each other for a side table.

“It’s not much, but we won’t spend time in here anyway,” Jess tells me. “C’mon. Get your suit on and we’ll hit the beach.”

She pulls her tank top up over her head and begins to unfasten her bra. I quickly turn away. My cheeks are hot.

“What’s with you, Laine? We’re both girls,” she says matter-of-factly.

I try to laugh and fumble through my backpack for my bathing suit.

I turn my back to Jess while we both get dressed. I’m sweating.

Please don’t let me have any weird feelings.

Please don’t let her look at me.

Please don’t let her be like Leah.

I dress as fast as I can, trying to hide myself as I do.

But when I turn around, suit on, Jess is already in her bikini, not even paying attention to me. I tell myself to get a grip. I put my T-shirt and shorts back on over my one-piece and we head out.