The Broken Girls

Sonia already knew this Latin lesson. She had read ahead in the textbook ages ago; she couldn’t help it. Books were in short supply at Idlewild. There was no library, no literature class, no kindly librarian to take My Friend Flicka from the shelf and hand it over with a smile. The only books at Idlewild were sent by friends or family, dropped off on rare Family Visit Days, or brought back by the lucky girls after Christmas holiday visits home. As a result, every book in Idlewild, no matter how silly or dull, circulated through a hundred hungry hands before finally disintegrating into individual pages, which were often held together by an elastic band until the pages themselves began to disappear. And when there were no other books to be had, the most desperate girls read textbooks.

Barely listening to the lecture, Sonia flipped the pages of the textbook over, looking for the handwriting. Pencil writing, just as Katie had shown them in her own book under the light of a flashlight. She turned to the first page of the textbook’s index and stared at the writing in the margin.

Mary hates the teachers more than she hates us.

Jessie Dunn, January 1947.

Sonia turned away from the page again and looked up at Mrs. Peabody. She was writing on the blackboard, her wide rear end on full display, her thick waist pinched painfully by her ill-fitting girdle beneath her polyester dress. Idlewild’s polite fiction that its girls would leave educated, ready for great things—Bryn Mawr, Yale, Harvard—was one that no one believed, not even the teachers.

Her temples pounded, an aftereffect of yesterday’s episode in the dining hall. The details were shaky and juddery in places, like a film coming off its reel. She had frozen at supper, watching the girls fight, listening to the angry shouts from the teachers. Her friends had taken her back to their room while she’d fought the memory of something awful and terrifying, a thing she didn’t want to look at or touch anymore.

Charlotte Kankle was sucking the side of her thumb, licking the blood off. She watched Mrs. Peabody with a sort of hypnotized focus, a half-asleep concentration. Sonia envied her, the way she could turn her brain off, think about absolutely nothing. It was a trick Sonia herself had never learned. That was what books did—they turned off your thinking for you, put their thoughts in your head so you wouldn’t have your own. Her own treasure was her copy of Blackie’s Girls’ Annual, found on a shelf in the dorm, left by some previous occupant and quickly squirreled away so she could stare at its thirty-year-old plates and read its strange stories of English schoolgirls’ picnic outings over and over again.

Books, Sonia had decided, were what she would live with when she finally left this place. She would work in a library—any library, anywhere. She’d sweep the floors if she had to. But she’d work in a library, and she’d read the books every day for the rest of her life.

Sonia’s chair jerked: Katie, kicking her from the desk behind. Sonia had never seen a girl who got bored as fast, or as dangerously, as Katie. Roberta had the ability to be still, and CeCe rarely got bored at all, but behind Katie’s tilted, dark-lashed eyes lurked a restless intelligence that sometimes looked for trouble.

Sure enough, seconds later a scrap of paper sailed over Sonia’s shoulder and landed on her desk. Sonia uncrumpled it to see a crude drawing of Mrs. Peabody, wearing a witch’s hat, sporting a wart on her nose, riding a field hockey stick, her black skirt hiked up and a pelt of dark hair visible on her knobby legs. The caption beneath the drawing read, SPORTSMANSHIP, GIRLS! SPORTSMANSHIP!

Sonia stifled a laugh. Sportsmanship was Mrs. Peabody’s hobbyhorse, the lecture she gave out regularly, whether the topic was test marks or proper ways to line up in the dining hall or actual sports. Lack of sportsmanship, in Mrs. Peabody’s view, was the root of most problems with Idlewild girls. Like Lady Loon’s constant use of “ladies” or Mrs. Wentworth’s spitting as she spoke, it was a tic that became more noticeable with the suffocating familiarity that was life at a boarding school, and it made for good satire. The sportsmanship lecture was unavoidable for any student who spent years in Mrs. Peabody’s class.

Sonia slipped the paper into her textbook just as Mrs. Peabody turned around. “Miss Winthrop,” the teacher said with dark intent.

“Yes, Mrs. Peabody,” came Katie’s voice from behind Sonia.

“You are disturbing my class for the third time this week.”

Though she wasn’t facing her, Sonia could imagine Katie’s lip curling. “I didn’t do anything.”

Mrs. Peabody’s eyes went hard. She was a fiftyish woman with a face pockmarked with old acne scars. She handled the girls with more dignity than Lady Loon, but she was tough as nails and usually mean, her fingers and teeth yellowed with nicotine. Sonia wondered what had caused Mrs. Peabody, like the other teachers, to take a job at Idlewild instead of at a normal school. “Your rudeness is only making it worse for you,” she said to Katie.

“I didn’t do anything, you old hag,” Katie snapped back.

Sonia felt clammy sweat on her back, beneath her blouse. Charlotte Kankle had stopped sucking her thumb, and Cindy Benshaw was staring, openmouthed. Stop shouting, Sonia thought. She remembered having the same thought in the dining hall yesterday.

“Katie Winthrop!” Mrs. Peabody picked up a ruler and smacked it hard on the desk, making all the girls jump. “You are the most disobedient—”

Next to the blackboard, the classroom door flew open and hit the wall with a bang.

The girls jumped again, including Sonia. The sound was as loud as a gunshot, the doorknob crashing into the wall. There was no one in the doorway, nothing to see beyond it but an empty hall.

Let me in, a voice said.

Mrs. Peabody dropped her ruler. There was a breath of silence in the room, a waft of cold air down the back of Sonia’s neck. She slid down in her chair, her body wanting to fold in on itself. What was that? Sonia looked around. Rose Perry had her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. Charlotte Kankle was gripping the sides of her desk with a white-knuckled hold. Had everyone heard it? Or was it just her?

“What is this?” Mrs. Peabody nearly shouted, her voice harsh and shrill. Fear, Sonia realized. She recognized fear. It was crawling through the depths of her own stomach right now. “Is this some kind of prank?” The teacher stared at them, her eyes blazing.

The room was silent. Even Katie didn’t speak. Someone giggled, the sound terrified and completely devoid of humor. Someone else whispered, Shh. Sonia stared at the open square of doorway. What if something is coming? Right now? Down the hallway toward the door, slow and steady, closer, and when it reaches the door, it will—

“Fine,” Mrs. Peabody said into the silence of the room. “Since no one will confess, Miss Winthrop, get up. You’re going to detention.”

“That’s unfair!” Katie shouted. “I didn’t do anything.”

Mrs. Peabody marched out from behind her desk and up the classroom aisle. Her face was red now, her cheeks mottled. “Get up,” she said. “Right now.” She yanked Katie out of her seat by the arm, jerking her upward in a bruising grip. Katie’s limbs jumped like a marionette’s, and her face set in an expression hard as granite. As Mrs. Peabody yanked her mercilessly back down the aisle, Katie caught Sonia’s eye and her look was cold.

The girls watched as Katie was taken from the room, her shoes clapping uneasily on the old wood floor as she tried to keep her balance in Mrs. Peabody’s grip. Then both of them were gone, and the air was heavy with silence. Not one girl breathed a word.

I should have done something, Sonia thought softly to herself, staring down at her textbook again. I should have stood up. It’s too late now.

And suddenly, she felt like crying.

Chapter 9

Barrons, Vermont

November 2014

At ten o’clock that night, Fiona arrived at Jamie’s. She brought her laptop, her notebooks, and the promised six-pack of beer.

Jamie lived on the top floor of a duplex in downtown Barrons, an old Victorian house that had been restored—to a degree—and rented. The lady who owned it was more than happy to rent the top unit to a cop, and the family with two small children who lived in the bottom unit were happy to have him for a neighbor. The street was a treelined lane that had been wealthy a hundred years ago, when Barrons had seen better days. Now its big Victorians were split into apartments for blue-collar parents and retirees, and rusty bikes and abandoned kids’ toys littered the half-mowed lawns.

He was sitting at his own laptop at the kitchen table, wearing worn jeans and a gray T-shirt, when she came in. There was a single light on overhead, the rest of the apartment in darkness. He didn’t look up from the file he was reading when she closed the door behind her. “You eat?” he said. “There are leftovers in the fridge.”

She dropped her things on the table across from him and hesitated. She hadn’t eaten. He knew that. She probably should, but her brain was buzzing with everything she’d found, and she wanted to get to it.

Jamie looked up at her as if reading her mind. “Eat, or this doesn’t get done,” he said.

She sighed. “Fine.”

He waved her away and went back to his file. She knew exactly how he felt. She dug in the fridge and found pasta and meat sauce, cold. She dumped some into a bowl, added a spoon, pulled two beers from the six-pack, and walked back to the table.