The Devil and Danna Webster (12 page)

Kevin's first reaction was one of shock. Then his face clouded with anger.

"Don't you love what I've done with her?" Caron asked.

"Turning her into another Caron Moore?” he said, pointing an accusing finger in his sister's direction. Then he turned back to me. “Go wash your face!" he shouted at me. "And take off that dress. It makes you look cheap.”

I ran from the room because I didn't want to let any of them see that I was crying. I felt humiliated. How could Kevin have spoken that way to me? And in front of his sister and her friend! It was totally demeaning. I could barely manage to take the dress off; my hands were shaking that hard. I went to the adjoining bathroom and washed my face, then took a couple of deep breaths. I sat down on Caron's bed and gathered my scattered thoughts together.

Something wasn't right here. Before I denounced anyone, I needed to find out why Kevin had reacted the way he did. Had his sister played him? To her, embarrassing me might just be her form of amusement for the day. No, I wasn't going to let them have the satisfaction of seeing how this had gotten to me.

"Thank heaven," Kevin said when I returned, dressed in my own clothes again.

"Please take me home," I said coldly to Kevin. I walked over to Caron. “Thanks, it was nice being glamorous if only for a moment."

“I'm glad
you
liked it.” Caron threw an accusatory look at her brother.

"I'm sorry," Kevin said, once we were out of earshot and walking to his car. "I didn't mean to behave that way. I shouldn't have lost my temper. But I hated you looking like that! It was rotten of her to cause trouble between us. She knows the buttons to push. She knew how I would react. She did it on purpose."

"You really don't make a lot of sense sometimes. I thought you'd be pleased." I was bewildered by Kevin's attitude.

He put his arms around me. "I love the way you really are. Don't let Caron or anyone like her influence you to change. Don't let her recreate you as her clone. She'll corrupt you if you let her. You just be my angel. Okay?"

He put his arms around me and pulled me to him. Then he held my hand tightly as we walked to his car. I didn't know what to think. When I was with Kevin, I always became confused. I had a feeling of being swallowed whole and I began to feel claustrophobic. I pulled away from him.

"You're really angry with me, aren't you?" he asked.

"You're domineering. I don't like it when you behave that way. I need to be free. Stop being a control freak."

He reached for my hand again, but this time I withheld it. "Forgive me, Dani. I just don't want you to become anything like Caron. Maybe we're alike, she and I. I don't know, but I'd like to think we're not. Caron can be charming when she chooses to be. I don't want you to fall under her spell. She and her friends are not nice people. Don't let her get her claws into you. Promise me you'll be careful around her. Look, let's go somewhere together. Do you really have to go home right away?"

"I do. I still have to work on my geometry tonight."

He let out a deep sigh. "I guess I wouldn't feel the way I do about you if you weren't such a good person." He mussed my hair affectionately. "What can I do to get you to forgive me?" He got down on his knees raising his hands in a gesture of supplication.

I started to laugh because he really did look foolish. "Just say it won't happen again and please stand up!"

"Okay," he replied standing. "I'll take you home."

As we drove along, I remembered what Caron had said about the Halloween Dance. "It's the Sophomore Class dance for this year and I'd like to go."

He moaned. "I hate those things. Dances are bad enough, but costumes too? Ugh! So childish."

"You did say you'd do anything to be forgiven," I cajoled.

"All right, we'll go, but not with Caron and her friends. Understood?

I quickly agreed. I wasn't eager for any more nasty scenes either.

The dance was still on my mind when Kevin dropped me off at home. What was I going to wear? I didn't want to waste money buying a Halloween costume, but I would need a costume and I didn't sew. Mom was pretty good except she was so busy with work. I knew it wasn't fair to ask for her help. Then I remembered there had to be a bunch of vintage clothes in the attic trunk. I ran up the stairs at full speed. Mom didn't like me being there because she said some of the floorboards were rotten and needed fixing. When I was little, I sometimes used to sneak up there to play, but she'd be cross when she found me.

The attic was musty and dark, full of cobwebs too. I raised the shade on the window and began looking around. An old trunk sat in a corner like a sturdy boulder on the beach. I tried to open it, only to discover that it was locked. Why locked? I searched around the entire attic and finally found some ancient keys hanging on a peg over in one corner. I tried each in turn and discovered one that opened the chest.

My heart started pounding with excitement as I opened it. I felt like an old seaman discovering a pirate's chest. Would there be any treasure inside?

My first treasure was a bridal gown, a beautiful satin one with hand-stitched antique lace. How lovely it was! Much too fine to wear for a Halloween dance. I set it aside with care. I think I'd seen a photo of my grandmother wearing that gown on her wedding day. There were all sorts of odds and ends but nothing I could put together to wear to a dance. I was disappointed and just about to close the trunk when I noticed an old leather album. I glanced idly through it. There were pictures of my grandparents with their three children. Mom was really pretty and her older brother wasn't bad-looking either. The third child was still little in that picture. My grandparents looked old even then. But I remembered my mother telling me that they had married late in life.

I looked further and saw some photos of my stepfather and mother. His hair was cut short in the military style. He looked so tall and proud in his uniform. It made me shiver to realize how much he had changed since then.

Finally, there was Lori, no longer a baby but a teenager like me. She wore her hair very long and straight. She was dressed in faded jeans, denim work shirt and a fringed leather vest. She was smiling and waving at the camera. There was something very familiar about her face, although I had never seen her picture before.

I closed the album and put it back. As I did, I caught sight of something else. It looked like a book, actually a diary. The letter "L" had been written on the front in what appeared to be black marker. Did I have the right to look inside? Why not? Lori was long dead, so it didn't really matter, did it?

The stuff she'd written was boring at the beginning, about school and friends, just like any other kid's life. It could have been my life, in fact. Then I started getting into it. Lori dreamed about being a writer someday and talked about taking creative writing in school. She said she was waiting for a special boy to come into her life. She wrote about all the romantic novels she loved. I remembered what my mother had said about Lori. I could tell she was a great romantic. Could my mom have been that way too before life forced her to change?

I began to wonder about Lori. Why had she died so young? Was there anything in her diary that would tell me? It was a mystery that I wanted to solve. I started glancing through the end of the book, but as I did, I heard noises downstairs. Quickly, I put everything back where I had found it, except for the diary. I put that on an old bureau and quickly went downstairs.

“What were you doing up in the attic?" my stepfather demanded.

"Just looking around for a Halloween costume to wear to a dance."

"Did you find anything?"

"Nothing," I replied.

"Ask your mother tonight. Maybe she can help you." He sounded irritated. What was bothering him?

I excused myself to start my homework. There never was much for my stepfather and me to say to each other.

That evening, I asked my mother about costumes.

"I could make something if you like."

"No, you have too much to do already. I'll think of something."

"There's the old bridal gown in the attic. You'll probably want a new one when the time comes. That one was my mother's and then I wore it too."

"I couldn't take that," I told her. "It wouldn't be right. It's too fine to be used as a costume."

My mother furrowed her brow, her dark brown eyes as warm as toast. "Well, things were made to be used. I don't think it'll be used again. Why don't we look it over this weekend and decide?"

I kissed my mother's cheek.

"You're always so generous to me."

"Not as much as I'd like to be," she said with a weary sigh.

****

Caron was especially friendly in school that week. She asked me to join her at lunch. Since Joyce and I were barely speaking, I agreed. At first, I felt uncomfortable, but Caron went out of her way to make me feel welcome. She told her friends what a talented artist I was, how I'd done a portrait of her, and how I was going to help with posters for the class dance. Caron was class secretary. Every girl who sat with her was popular. That would show Joyce that I didn't need her, I decided with satisfaction.

Friday, I stayed late to work on posters in the art room. I turned out seven in less than an hour and a half and figured that would take care of my commitment to Caron.Kevin stopped by as I was near finishing.

"How did you know I'd be here?" I asked him.

"Because you're always here. These are really nice. Too good for the kids in this school. They'll probably write graffiti all over them."

"What a pessimist!"

He grinned. "I thought you already knew that about me. I don't have a very high opinion of human nature."

“How sad to see in one so young.” I offered a dramatic sigh.

Kevin laughed. “I'll let you try to convert me.”

I cleaned up and locked the door to the art room. Then Kevin took me to Sal's for pizza. It had become a Friday tradition for us. I told him I hadn't yet figured out what to wear to the dance.

"Good," he said, "maybe you'll change your mind and see that it isn't worth the trouble."

"I still love dressing up for Halloween," I said. "Maybe I'm just a kid at heart."

Kevin leaned over and kissed me, a quick, playful peck.

Saturday morning, bright and early, Mom and I went up to the attic. I had forgotten to lock the trunk and Mom looked at me questioningly.

"I was up here looking through things on Monday."

She looked upset. “You shouldn't go up here by yourself.”

It was so frustrating. Why, I wanted to ask!

We pulled out the bridal gown, examining the pale satin skirt and the finely embroidered bodice.

"What do you think?" Mom asked.

I shook my head. "It's much too good for the dance. I'd hate for it to get messed up. I'll have to think of something else. Got any era-type clothes? You know, stuff from the sixties or the seventies maybe?"

"We gave most of the old stuff away to charity years ago."

"Never mind," I said, "I'll think of something."

My mother found the key on the peg and locked the old trunk again. I noticed that she put it in her apron pocket.

"Let me just look around here a little more, okay? I'll be careful."

"You won't find anything, but go ahead," she said.

After my mother went downstairs, I went to the old bureau, picked up Lori's diary and started reading it again.

Half-way through, it got interesting. Lori described how she'd met this boy at the beach. He was older than her. She was sixteen and he was eighteen. She fell in love with him right away and he felt the same way about her. She wrote how strong their feelings were for each other. It was romantic stuff.

I turned more pages. She described writing stories for English class. Lori told about how she'd become a woman on her seventeenth birthday. I skipped ahead. Somehow that seemed kind of private.

Now Lori wrote how miserable she was. Her boyfriend had gone away, joined the army and left her. I moved forward again, glancing through her comments for something more about her love life.

“
Dear Diary,

He hasn't written back to me in such a long time. I've been so upset. I thought it was because of what I wrote to him, but it wasn't. He says we will get married as soon as he returns from his tour of duty. I hope it's true. My life is over if we can't be together.”

There were a bunch of blank pages, then some shaky handwriting. “
I will never see Danny again. I can't bear it! I can't cope with life anymore.
” More skipped pages. Then a final entry: “
I was missing so much school, feeling sick. I finally dropped out. Mom is heartbroken. Sis is disappointed in me. I'm lonely for my friends. I don't know how long I can go on this way
.” What made her drop out? I decided to look back at what I skipped over.

"What are you doing?" My mother had returned. I tried to put the diary behind my back.

"Nothing," I replied in a guilty voice.

"What have you got there?"

It was no use. I sucked at lying. "It's Lori's diary. I was just looking at it. I found it in the trunk."

My mother sank down on an old chair. "I was afraid someday you would. I should have thrown the thing out years ago, but somehow I couldn't. All her talk of being a writer, and this was the only piece of writing she left. How could I throw it away?"

"No, you shouldn't! Mom, how did Lori die?"

"I don't want to talk about it.”

I knelt down beside her. "Why can't you talk about her? Why are there always secrets in this house? It bothers me a lot. I'm not a little kid anymore. Treat me like an adult."

"Why should I talk about something that's painful to me?"

"Was she in some kind of accident?"

My mother shook her head. “No accident,” she said.

“Was she sick? Did she have a fatal illness?”

“No.” My mother's eyes wouldn't meet mine.

A lump formed in my throat. "She killed herself, didn't she?" My mother still wouldn't look me in the eye.

"Yes," she finally answered.

I was horrified. "Why?"

"Because she was very unhappy."

"But why was she unhappy?"

"What difference does that make now?" Mom sounded angry.

"Should I phone Uncle Craig and ask him?"

"Don't you dare! Why is it so important for you to know?"

"I don't know. It just is! Why did Lori take her life? Why is it some terrible secret?"

My mother sighed. She looked up and I saw there were tears in her eyes. "Our Lori was a foolish, romantic girl, in love with love. It was the fault of those silly books she read. They gave her a false idea of what love is all about. It isn't always kisses and hugs, flowers and music, or fancy dates to New York."

I knew the last remark was aimed at me, but I ignored it.

"Some people turn dreams into reality. Lori took reality and turned it into dreams." Mom placed my hand in her own and held it tight. "She met a boy and they fell in love. The next year, he went off to the army.”

“But why should she kill herself over that?" I asked, feeling deep inside that it was important for me to know.

My mother looked away again. "She was such a romantic."

"Mom, that doesn't explain anything! And why did she drop out of school?" Suddenly, it dawned on me. Maybe Kevin was right, I was too much of an innocent after all. "Oh no! She was pregnant, wasn't she?"

My mother didn't look at me. "She got carried away with that boy, so in love with him. She didn't stop to think, to use her head at all. A smart girl, but no common sense. But then, I suppose, common sense is really not so common. He left her. Went off to the army, got himself killed. It broke her heart."

"Did she have the baby?" Mother didn't answer. I prodded her on. "Mom, did she have the baby? Please tell me."

"Yes, and it was all too much for her. She was a child trying to care for a child of her own, and she simply wasn't ready for it. She was emotionally fragile. She couldn't cope with the responsibility or the loneliness. Of course, my mother and I tried to help her. But I worked and your grandma was ill by then. Anyway, Lori was deeply depressed."

"So she killed herself?"

My mother nodded.

“How?”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes.”

"She drowned herself in the ocean. Now you see why we didn't want to talk to you about it? It's such a sad story, such a terrible waste of a young life!"

Something suddenly occurred to me. "What about the baby, Lori's baby?"

My mother wouldn't answer.

A terrible idea crossed my mind. I had to be wrong. "Mother, please tell me what happened to Lori's baby."

Tears ran down her face. She shook her head.