Child of Darkness (Gemini 3)

I looked back, expecting to see Wade. Why was he always dressed and downstairs before us? I wondered. I had the answer before we reached the bottom step.

"Wade will meet us at the restaurant," Ami said. "He got tied up at work. And if he's late," she sang, "we'll start without him."

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I turned to look down the hallway; I could feel her eyes on me. There she was, Mrs. Cukor, standing just to the right of the den-office doorway with her back to the wall as though she was making room for someone to pass in front of her. Her head was turned my way. She glared in my direction.

What? I wanted to shout at her. What is it you want from me? What is it you expect I'll do?

"C'mon, silly," Ami chided, and headed to the garage.

We got into her sports car. She smiled at me and touched my face softly with her right hand.

"You look beautiful, Celeste," she said, "more beautiful than even I imagined you could be."

She stared at me a moment, her eyes looking as though they were watering with emotion. The depth of her feeling caught me by surprise. I loved the compliment, but something inside me sounded alarms I did not understand. She saw the confusion in my face and laughed.

"Sorry, I was so dramatic," she said, opening the garage door and backing out. Then she sped down the driveway, the car wheels screaming as we whipped out of the entranceway and around to continue on the street. She turned up the music.

"You don't know how to drive yet, do you?"

"Why would I? Who would have taught me? What would I have driven?"

"Yes, I just thought of that. We need to get you some private driving instruction immediately, along with those piano lessons I promised. I'll tell Wade tonight. When you drive up to the school in your own fancy car, you'll become Miss Popular instantly. You'll see how many new friends you'll have then."

"If they're becoming my friends just because I have a fancy car, they can't be very good friends," I said.

"Oh, stop. That's not you talking. That's one of the nuns or some goody-goody you were under all these years. Just like any princess, you're going to need your entourage," she continued. "When I was in school, I always had a half dozen or so girls surrounding me, wanting to do whatever I wanted to do, hanging on my every word. It will be the same for you soon. You'll see."

"How do you know that's what I want?" I asked. I didn't mean to be mean or contrary. I was simply curious as to what she had seen in me to give her these ideas.

She looked at me and smiled.

"Because underneath that dreary shell the state and these agencies and orphanages put over you, I know there beats the heart of a real woman just like me. I saw it in the way you moved, the way you held your head high, the way you looked at people and especially the way men looked at you."

"But how long did you watch me before you came to the orphanage?" I asked.

"That's for me to know." She laughed. "For a while," she confessed. "I couldn't just take any young woman into my life, could I?" she added in defense. "You understand, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, even though I didn't quite understand. It had bothered me before to know she had been spying on me at all and had spoken to my teachers, but now that she had confessed to doing it for a while, it was even more disturbing. Why hadn't I felt her eyes on me? Why wasn't I warned?

This was Noble's doing, I vaguely thought. He had dulled my senses to punish me for deserting him.

Now there were all these tiny alarms going off inside me continually, but I thought they might be there simply because I was doing so many radically new things. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I had been living under some shell all this time. Perhaps I had been kept emotionally and socially retarded. I deserve all this excitement and fun, I told myself. Be quiet, my troubled heart. And my tongue . . . stop coming up with platitudes that belong more on the lips of people like Mother Higgins.

What would be so terrible about being popular among my peers, having boys compete for my attention, and having girls want to be my friend? When had I ever experienced such a thing? When had I even dreamed about it? Ami wasn't tempting me toward some pit of disaster. She was giving me opportunity, opportunity to become just what she had described, yes, a vibrant, sexy, and confident woman. And wasn't that what all young girls hoped to be, whether they admitted to it or not?

Go back, my conscience, my paranoid fears, my visions of dark places. Go back into the vault and let me be. I'm not going to cry out for Noble and look for him in every corner. I don't need him now, I told myself. I strengthened my determination.

"Want a cigarette?" Ami asked suddenly.

"A cigarette?"

"Don't tell me you've never smoked a cigarette," she said.

I didn't say anything.

She laughed.

"Well, then," she said, "I guess you've never done pot either."