“Who? What other girl?”
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “I saw a typical room. There’s plenty of space for two.” He smiled. “It’s twice as large as the dorm room I had when I went to college, and we had to share with two others. Plenty of closet space,” he continued, “and two desks, although your dorm has a study lab and a recreational area. There are no televisions in the dorm rooms, but you can play music, and you have your computer. A new computer,” he added. “It’s a surprise I have in the trunk. A great new laptop. There’s Wi-Fi at the dorm, of course, so we can email and Skype and stuff.”
For a moment, I considered asking him to turn around and go back. I’d rather return to homeschooling, something Mother had made us do until we were eight and ready for the third grade. My father saw the reservations and fear in my face. Although he was involved with computer software, and both Haylee and I were quite educated when it came to computer use, neither of us had mentioned the word computer since I had been rescued. It was through a computer that Haylee had designed my abduction, and it was fortunately because of a computer that my father had made the discoveries leading to my rescue. I hadn’t even turned mine on since I had been rescued and brought home. I had nightmares that if I did, Anthony Cabot would immediately appear on the screen.
But more important, I had never slept in a room with any other girl without Haylee sleeping over, too. Mother never permitted either of us to sleep at some friend’s house without the other. Consequently, neither of us did. I had never shared a bathroom or sat beside another girl and fixed my hair in her bedroom, any of the things other girls in our class had done, if Haylee wasn’t right there as well. I wasn’t simply too shy to share a room now. There was a bigger reason, a bigger fear.
Girls who had such an intimate relationship couldn’t be as secretive about their lives as I wanted to be. I had envisioned myself comfortably alone at this new school, taking my time to make friends and taking baby steps toward any social life. I dreaded the first question my new roommate was sure to ask: “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” My father had assured me that my horrible recent past would remain unknown at Littlefield. This was the main reason I was attending a school sufficiently far away from our community. How would I do that if I had a roommate?
“I don’t care about the space or a computer, Daddy. I don’t know if I can live that closely with another girl yet. Can’t you get me a room by myself?”
“Now, stay calm, Kaylee. They don’t have single rooms. They want their students to develop a social life as well as an academic life. It’s part of what Littlefield sees as its educational goals, its philosophy. I’ve had a nice discussion with your therapist, of course, and she agrees that it’s time you had new relationships. There’s a great danger that you will retreat so deeply into yourself that you’ll never be able to do these things again. She believes you’re ready for it. I believe you are, too. You’re a very strong person. Look what you’ve survived. This will be a piece of cake,” he said, smiling. “You’ll figure out how to handle touchy subjects.”
I couldn’t help it; I was trembling.
“I don’t know,” I said, near tears.
“Look,” he said, “if you have a big problem with it, we’ll think of something else, but give it a chance, okay? Please, Kaylee.”
“Okay,” I said. I was sure he and my therapist were right. I had to find the strength to do this. “I’ll try.”
“Thatta girl,” he said.
We drove on until he slowed, made a turn, and nodded at the campus ahead of us on the right. A sign in what looked like brass read, Littlefield. Under it was a quote: I am still learning. —Michelangelo.
Nothing was truer for me, too. The difference was, I had more than simply knowledge to learn. I had to learn how to be a different person.
5
My father hadn’t exaggerated about the beauty of the campus. The pictures on the brochure also did not do it justice. It was close to two hundred acres. There were two main academic buildings side by side, Matthews Hall and Asper Hall, each named for the philanthropist who had paid for the buildings. Asper, the building on the left as we drove up the driveway, had been constructed nearly twenty-five years before Matthews, which was built to accommodate a growing population. My father explained that Matthews contained an updated library with computers and more than forty-five thousand books.
There was a separate gymnasium building, Holmes Gymnasium, built shortly after the first classroom building was constructed. The school had tennis courts, a baseball field, and a running track. Everything appeared to have someone’s name attached.
“Successful early graduates and their families contributed to the campus,” my father said when I mentioned that. “This started as an all-girls school,” he said. “That’s why the girls’ dormitories, two buildings on our left, were across campus from the two buildings that housed the boys.”
I was in the Eleanor Cook dormitory, the one farther on the left.
There were parking lots in front of all the dormitories and parking areas in front of the gymnasium and both academic buildings, but it was the grounds that were most impressive, with their fieldstone walking paths; maple, hickory, and oak trees; trimmed hedges, fountains with statues of birds, one circular fountain with a giant peacock; and redwood benches and flower beds evenly spaced. I saw that the area had extensive lighting, with lampposts and fixtures on the outsides
of all the buildings.
“It’s hard to believe this is just a high school. There’s a lot of money in here, isn’t there?”
“A lot,” my father said, smiling.
“How expensive is the tuition?”
“Worth every penny,” he said, without telling me.
We turned toward the Eleanor Cook dorm. I saw two other cars with their trunks open and parents helping the girls move their things into the dorm. We pulled alongside one. A tall, slim girl, easily five-foot-eleven, with long arms and a small, almost flat bosom, stood a little to the right, watching her father pull her suitcases from the Lincoln Town Car trunk. She was wearing an ankle-length black skirt and a gray long-sleeved blouse. The man was tall, too, with a similar shade of dark brown hair, and he wore a gray pin-striped suit and a black tie. He put a smaller bag beside the two suitcases, but the girl made no effort to pick it up. I saw him raise his arms, and she moved forward reluctantly to take it and press it against herself, as if she would never let it go.
Her father closed the trunk and picked up both suitcases. I wondered where her mother was. But that signaled that others would wonder where mine was. My father popped our trunk.
“Your new home sweet home,” he said, smiling and holding his arms out toward Eleanor Cook Hall.
I got out slowly and watched the tall girl walk behind her father, her head down, her steps slow and small, almost like a geisha. My father began to take out my suitcases. I picked up my smaller bags and waited, looking out at the campus.
There was a warm breeze gently swaying some of the tree limbs. If I were a little girl, unafraid of her imagination, I could easily believe all of them were waving to me, greeting me. The grounds were so beautiful and calming, with the fountains and flowers, that it was difficult not to feel welcome, optimistic.