“No, no. I’m not your best authority when it comes to the truth. I majored in lying, in school and at home. I might even be in that Believe It or Not! book by now for telling the most lies for someone my age.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling like a little girl who expected she would get her Christmas presents no matter what, “but I’m sure all that lying was to protect yourself. You don’t have to lie to protect me, so you won’t. As Grandmother told me, you’ve been around the block.”
“Is that how she put it?” I shrugged. “I would have thought she would simply say I was promiscuous or undisciplined.”
“She saw something good in you, or you wouldn’t be here, I’m sure.”
“When did she tell you I was promiscuous?”
“When she was trying to talk me out of hanging out with you. She said you weren’t the sort of girl I would find interesting or admire because you weren’t a good student and had nothing to be proud of. She said she had a lot of work to do with you, on you.”
“She’s not wrong. I haven’t done much in my life except mess up.”
“I know, but that’s exactly why I want to be your friend and want you to be mine. I’ve never been down the block, much less around it. I want to hear all about it. You must promise never to be ashamed of anything you’ve done, especially so ashamed that you wouldn’t ever tell me. People aren’t always what they seem to be, anyway. If you give them half a chance, you’ll see first impressions are more the result of prejudice or false information. You’ve got a lot to share, especially with someone like me who sees the world through the rose-colored glasses my grandmother had fitted on my face. I have to know about these things, or I’ll be a little girl when I’m thirty. So you see, you’ll be tutoring and helping me as much as I will be helping you.”
“Oh, boy,” I said, sitting on my bed.
“What?”
“You’re a lot smarter than everyone, including your grandmother, thinks you are.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t just volunteer to help me with all that,” I said, nodding at the material Professor Marx had given me. “You want a little quid pro quo.”
I lay back on my bed. I’m in trouble, I thought. Mrs. Brittany wanted me to have a G relationship with her granddaughter, PG at most, and she was looking for at least an R.
“No, I want more,” she said.
“What more?” I asked, sitting up quickly.
“I want to be you, get into your mind, your memories, so well that I feel . . .”
“Feel what?”
“That I’ve been around the block,” she said.
“I thought you might have picked up that it’s nothing I’m proud of, Sheena.”
“It brought you here, didn’t it? You want to be here, don’t you?”
I stared at her a moment. This could work in reverse, too. If she drew honest answers from me, she could feed them to her grandmother. For a fleeting few seconds, I wondered if that was really Mrs. Brittany’s reason for permitting Sheena to be friends with me. Could Sheena be her grandmother’s little spy, making periodic reports about candidates? Maybe without her even realizing how she was being used? On the other hand, according to Randy,
Brittany girls weren’t permitted to get to know Sheena. Should I have believed him? I couldn’t help feeling as if everything I did and anyone I spoke to on this estate was in one way or another not to be trusted.
“I think so,” I said, trying to sound as neutral as I could. Again, I wondered how much she actually knew about her grandmother’s business. “It’s too early to tell. I’ve not exactly benefited a hundred percent from the decisions I’ve made for myself, Sheena.”
She nodded, but I didn’t think she was listening to me.
“I always wonder if my grandmother would have wanted me to work for her, too. I mean, if I didn’t have this,” she said, indicating her prosthetic leg. “What do you think? Would it be that much of a hindrance? If I wasn’t my grandmother’s granddaughter, would I have been discovered like you? You said I was pretty. Unless you felt like you had to say it to please my grandmother.”
“Well, you know now that I’m a good liar, Sheena, so I don’t know how to convince you that I’m telling you the truth.”
“Maybe . . . maybe we can double-date or something. Does my grandmother permit that while one of her girls is in training?”
Anyone could see she was fishing to find out more about her grandmother’s girls, I thought. Because I never worried too much about what I said, I found this to be quite a challenge.
“I can only talk about myself, Sheena, and I can assure you, your grandmother wouldn’t want me going on any dates while I was here.” I thought a moment. She had to know most of it. “You know who Mr. Bob is, I imagine.”