The Girls of No Return (13 page)

“What a nightmare.”

“It was,” I said. “Everything, absolutely everything, was beige. And it was like Terri tried to match all of her outfits to the room: beige khakis, beige blouses. She even had these sensible, cream-colored canvas shoes. Like she was trying to kill me with monotony.”

“Oh my God.” Gia laughed, and I was filled with a warm glow. I loved it when I made her laugh. “She sounds terrible,” she said. “Typical evil stepmother syndrome. They're always jealous of the daughters. They pretend to try, but it's all just an act.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, though I was remembering something else: me, nine years old, playing alone in my bedroom with Raggedy Ann, whom I knew I was too old to love but loved anyway. I was sitting on the floor, following Raggedy Ann as she waltzed through her day, shopping for groceries, going to a dance. There was a knock on my bedroom door, and Terri opened it. She was smiling — uncertainly, I could see now — and she had a small plate of cookies in one hand.
Oh, hello, Ann
, she had said to my doll.
I wonder if I might join you and Lida.

I shook my head.

“What's wrong?” asked Gia.

“Nothing,” I said, as I tried not to remember what happened next: the expertly aimed throw, the doll making contact with the plate, the cookies falling like fat tears onto the carpet, the door swiftly shut, the footsteps receding. “She's always been a bitch,” I said.

“Sounds like it. Hey” — Gia's voice dropped lower — “I never asked. When did your mother die? I mean, how old were you?”

I focused on the distant orbs from the other girls' headlamps. “Eight,” I said. “I had just turned eight.” I held my breath, glad she couldn't see my face.

“Wow,” Gia said. “That must have been hard.”

I nodded, hoping she could see the back of my head. I didn't trust my voice.

There was quiet in the canoe as I took first one breath, then another. We rocked from side to side. The other canoes were ahead of us now, and I knew that we had to start moving or risk Margaret's wrath. I picked up my paddle and dug into the water again. Behind me, I heard Gia do the same.

“Hey — you don't have a stepmother, do you?” I said. Gia had never mentioned anyone in her family but her father, and even that had been in passing. We usually stuck to safer subjects: Alice Marshall, the other girls, Terri, strange things she'd seen during her travels. I never pressed her to talk about things she didn't want to go into, and she normally afforded me the same courtesy. She couldn't have known how her last question had affected me.

“I used to,” she said. “I've had a couple, actually. They never last.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why not?”

“I guess Dave finally sees the light. Or something.” There was a pause, and then she said, “One of them was okay, I guess. Leslie. She used to let me wear her jewelry.”

“What happened? Why'd she leave?”

“Why does anyone leave? She was a bad fit. She just wasn't right for us,” Gia added, something sharp in her voice. “Dave said that if she couldn't control —” She stopped talking.

“What?” I wondered what about Leslie had been so wrong that she wasn't worth keeping. I cleared my throat. “What did your dad say?”

“Nothing. He told her to leave, that's all.” Her voice sounded distant.

“Were you mad at him?”

“Mad at him? Why would I be? He always does what's best for the two of us.” I could almost feel her nodding in agreement with herself. “I'm his highest priority.”

“You two must be close,” I said, but I guess she didn't hear me, because she didn't say anything after that. We drifted on, edging closer to where the other canoes were now clustered near the northern shore of the lake, directly across from the school.

Margaret was already talking by the time we joined the group, twenty canoes bobbing silently on the still water. We pulled up in the shadows, and I could only see Boone's outline behind Margaret. I doubted she could see who was in the canoe with me, if she even looked.

“We would have hiked here,” Margaret was saying, “but, as most of you know, Bob's circumference is not entirely navigable. I don't think that the school's insurance policy covers scaling the cliffs on the west side of the lake.”

She paused while a few girls giggled. It was well known to everyone there but Margaret that one girl had scaled those cliffs in order to dive off them into the deepest part of the lake, and that girl was sitting right behind her in the canoe.

“It has occurred to me lately that we tend to forget to be surprised in life,” she went on. Her voice took on the musing quality that it often had when she was thinking out loud. The giggles immediately died down. “Surprised by anything — the mundane, the beautiful, even the wicked. We think we can see everything coming our way, don't we? That it's already planned out, like a road map. And then the surprise, when it comes, is unwelcome.” Margaret reached up and turned on her headlamp's high beam. “My challenge to you all this week is to welcome the surprises that come your way — both good and bad. If you can, even embrace them.” She turned, shining her light on the rock wall behind her. We turned our lamps on too.

At first, it just seemed like the rock was wet, glistening and gray in the light. Then more lights were turned on, and suddenly the whole waterfall was visible, cascading down from what could easily have been the very top of the mountain. This was no trickle; the water coiled and rolled through deep crevices and out over the bare roots of trees before thinning near the bottom and slipping easily into the lake. Flowers jutted out of the rocks that lined the waterfall, their colors more vibrant in contrast to the inky night around them: blue columbine and pink monkey flowers, shining moss of the deepest green.

There was, I'll admit, a fairly audible collective sigh, followed by uncomfortable laughter. My face flushed with pleasure. We were just across the lake from the school, and not one of us had known the waterfall was here.

Margaret was right. It was a surprise. A beautiful one. And yes, I was delighted by it. But I was also delighted by the flaxen-haired girl in the boat with me, and by the prospect of the long ride back to shore. I wanted to stay and stare at this thing that had been here all along, graceful and lovely even before it had been seen, but I equally wanted to turn the boat and steer away from it, out toward the middle of the lake where I could be alone once again with Gia.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Jules and Lucy had drifted next to us, and Jules reached over and grabbed the side of our canoe, holding on to it with one hand so that if one boat moved, the other followed. Our headlamps were still on, pointing in unison at the waterfall, but the other girls had started whispering and laughing among themselves.

“Yeah.” I swung my head around to look at Jules. The light from my headlamp hit her in the eyes and she ducked her head down until I turned it off. Lucy sat in the back of the canoe, glaring down at her life jacket. “I'm surprised no one knew about it,” I said, wondering how long we'd have to endure this conversation.

Jules laughed. “Maybe Boone did,” she said. “Maybe she swam over here after she jumped off the cliff.”

“I highly doubt that,” said Gia softly from behind me. She hadn't turned her headlamp on when the rest of us did, and her voice came from shadow.

No one said anything for a moment. Jules played with the strap on her life jacket with one hand. “Hey,” she said finally, “you should come over to our cabin sometime, Gia. Sneak in during Toes-Up or something, you know?”

Gia didn't say anything. Lucy's scowl deepened, and as though Jules could feel it hitting her back, she added, “You too, Lucy, of course.” The scowl relaxed. Jules kept going. “It just seems like, if we all just hung out a little more . . .” She let her voice trail off.

Then what, Jules?
I wanted to ask her.
What do you think will happen? Gia and Boone will become bosom buddies? We'll all sit around singing “Kum-ba-yah”?

In the distance, I could hear Margaret telling us to head back in. “It's the witching hour, ladies,” she said, the words seeming to echo over the water.

Gia's voice came from behind me again. “Thanks for the offer,” she said, “but I try to stick with places where I'm welcome.” Her voice was friendly but firm.

“Yeah, but —” Jules started in again.

“Jesus, Jules, take a hint,” I said sharply. “You're not, like, a genie. You can't just snap your fingers and make everyone get along. Don't be simple.”

Jules let go of our canoe suddenly as though it were a scalding pan, and rubbed her arm. “Oh,” she said, “I didn't mean . . .”

Lucy sighed with resignation and thrust her paddle in the water. The two of them started to float away toward the school with the rest of the group.

“Forget I said anything?” Jules's voice was small.

Gia waited until they were out of earshot before she spoke again. “She doesn't get out much, does she?”

“Clearly not,” I said.

We turned the canoe around, and our boat moved slowly across the lake, at least five lengths behind anyone else. Bats swooped around us, skimming the water before lifting off and veering away. I had slipped into my fleece and buckled my life jacket over it while we were looking at the waterfall, but the slight wind that we created as we moved still seemed to seep through, tickling my skin.

“What'd you think of the waterfall?” I asked finally. I'd been enjoying the quiet camaraderie, but I wanted to hear her voice.

“Oh, that?” Gia laughed softly. “Very inspirational.” She shifted in the boat. “Sometimes this place is a little too touchy-feely for me, you know?”

“A little too
Sesame Street
.”

“So many lessons —”

“So little time.”

We laughed together.

“You'd think they'd get it by now,” she said. “This place isn't a rehab clinic. It's not even one of those hard-core wilderness schools where they practically chain you to a tree until you discover your oneness with nature. It's just a way station.”

“That's an attractive thought,” I said. Truth was, I thought it might be a bit more than that. Truth was, I kind of liked the waterfall. But I wasn't about to say that.

“Oh, you get it, don't you, Lida? We're all just waiting here, inert — like mail that's being held at the post office while the homeowner is on a trip.”

I smiled to myself. “Who are the homeowners?”

“Our parents, of course.” I could hear Gia breathing heavily as she paddled and talked at the same time. “I think Dave's hoping to keep me out of the house until I'm too old to return.”

“Oh no. I'm sure he —” I started to say, but she cut me off.

“Kidding,” she said. “That's not what I meant.”

“Okay.” But I wondered what she
had
meant, if not that.

Gia changed the subject then, and started talking about some guy from Ireland who'd sent her a letter earlier in the week. I tried not to listen too closely. I couldn't keep track of her admirers, and frankly, they didn't interest me that much. Gia could quote entire letters to me — she had a photographic memory, she said — but sometimes I wished she'd get a letter from a crazy aunt or a famous politician. Anyone but these love-struck boys.

We were the last ones to pull our canoe out of the water and hang our life jackets up in the ramshackle boat shed. Everyone else had already gone back to the cabins. We rushed to the Bathhouse, passing the rest of Gia's cabinmates as they headed toward their cabin, and brushed our teeth quickly and silently. The last thing either of us needed was Bev's steely eyes taking in our empty bunks during Lights-Out.

As we were finishing, two Fifteens came in. They'd clearly thought they'd have the Bathhouse to themselves, because the taller one had her arm slung around the other's shoulder and was whispering in her ear as they walked in. The girl being whispered to was blushing, and she was reaching up to grab the taller one's hand when she saw us.

“Oh,” she said, dropping the hand. Without even looking at each other, the two girls whirled in unison and walked back into the night.

“What was that about?” I asked Gia. I rinsed my toothbrush and zipped it back into my plastic shower kit.

Gia smiled impishly. “I think we interrupted a bit of a rendezvous,” she said.

“What, like — ?” I looked at the open Bathhouse door, and the darkness beyond.

“Yeah,
like
.” Gia shook her head, still smiling. “Young love. You've noticed what goes on around here, haven't you?”

I shook my head.

“But of course you've seen the ‘couples' around school. Right? Holding hands at campfire, sneaking off from the Smokers' Beach late at night? Tell me you've seen them.” She was laughing at me, and I blushed. “Don't worry. It's just playacting. As soon as they get out of here, these girls will go back to their lives and boyfriends and random hookups. But while they're here . . .” Gia shrugged. “Anything goes.”

“Oh,” I said. I stared down at the sink.

Gia elbowed me in the side. “Don't worry about it, Lida. It's as real as dreams.” She winked, and was gone.

I gargled some water and spit it back into the sink before turning off the lights and walking back to my cabin in the dark. Were the two Fifteens out there, waiting for me to leave? Probably. I closed my eyes. I stood still, seeing one hand reaching for another, feeling the charge like static between them as they touched, and then I opened my eyes again and kept walking.

By the time I got back to the cabin, the other girls were already lying in their sleeping bags with books or journals.

“Damn,” I said. “Has Bev already been by?”

“Bev's giving us the night off,” Gwen said, her voice sleepy.