“Off to the shower,” I said. Claudia glanced at me and then back at her computer.
“You need a password for the Wi-Fi,” she said. “No one told it to us.”
“I’m sure they will. See you soon,” I said.
There was no one else in the showers when I entered. As the water cascaded over me, I imagined it was washing away all traces of my nightmare abduction. Perhaps my father’s hopes for me could be realized. I could make new friends and create a world with only me in it, no Haylee to refer to, no Haylee to consider. There were only my feelings now, my dreams. The warm water felt wonderful. This is a magic shower, I thought. It erases your past.
When I returned to our room, Claudia was still in front of her computer. She had gotten the password and had put it on my desk for me. She looked like she was in a heavy instant-message exchange with someone. I didn’t want to seem nosy, so I didn’t look over her shoulder. Instead, I concentrated on what I would wear. There was a sense of freedom about it. I didn’t have to consider what Mother would think or if Haylee liked my choice. Better yet, I didn’t have to conform to what she wanted. I put on a turquoise blouse and a dark blue skirt.
“I thought you were wearing a wig!” Marcy exclaimed as I was brushing my short hair to give it some sense of style. There were obviously
no locks on our doors. Right now, I looked like Joan of Arc or someone. There were women who had their hair cut as short as mine deliberately, of course, but I had always been so proud of mine, of ours.
“I’m sorry I got talked into that,” I said. “My father felt sorry for me and bought me the wigs.”
Claudia was now giving me her full attention. “My father forbids me to cut my hair,” she said.
“What’s he going to do if you do, disown you?” Marcy asked.
Claudia shrugged. “Too late for that. He did that years ago,” she said.
Marcy widened her eyes and then laughed because she didn’t know what to say. Neither did I. She turned to me.
“You have one of those faces that can’t be damaged by a bad hairstyle,” Marcy said. “I’ll poke you in the ribs if one of the boys I’m after looks at you with too much interest.”
“What?”
“Kidding,” she sang, and smiled at Claudia. “You didn’t change for dinner?”
“I had other things to do,” Claudia said. “It’s not the Ritz, is it?”
“The what? Oh.” Marcy laughed. “No, it’s definitely not the Ritz. It’s not even McDonald’s, but it’s all we have,” she said dramatically. “Cherish it, darling,” she added. “Mrs. Rosewell calls everyone darling. Or dearie. I hate dearie, don’t you?”
“Call me anything,” I said, recalling one of my father’s pet expressions. “Just don’t call me late for dinner.”
“That’s good!” Marcy cried. “C’mon. Let’s march in together like the Three Musketeers!”
“I’m really not hungry,” Claudia said.
“Hey, wait until you see the food before you say that,” Marcy replied, and shocked her by scooping her under one arm and then holding her other arm out for me.
It was going to be difficult to be depressed in Marcy’s company, I thought, and for both Claudia and me, she was just what the doctor ordered.
The question was how long before she would flee our company.
7
An explosion of chatter and laughter confronted us when we entered the dining hall. Although the tables and chairs resembled any school cafeteria’s furnishings, the walls had a rich-looking light brown paneling, and there was decorative framing around the large four-panel windows, most of which looked out on the manicured lawns and bushes. Hundreds of recessed light fixtures brightened the room, which had an immaculately polished dark brown tile floor. Off to the left were the familiar counters and metal shelf along which students moved their trays to choose their entrées and side dishes as well as drinks and desserts. Every table had a bouquet of flowers that looked real.
Although Marcy kidded us about the food, it looked quite a bit more elaborate than the usual public-school fare. Four women and a tall man who was obviously the head chef served the students. The kitchen was in full view and looked immaculate, with stainless-steel fixtures. Of course, it occurred to me that much of this was dressed up to appeal to the parents more than the students. The parents were paying the bills.
Obviously, most of the students in the dining hall knew one another, some for years, perhaps. As I had seen in the orientation meeting, there were only a little more than thirty new students. Most, like me and now Claudia, were still being escorted by girls who had been assigned to help them get oriented, but just like in my public school and probably every other school in the world, there were groups of students who clung to one another, cliques or what Haylee called “clacks.” Marcy and Terri naturally steered us to theirs, a table with four other girls from Cook Hall and two boys, Haden Kimble and Luke Richards, both seniors. There was something about them that immediately told me they wouldn’t be lusting after my or any other girl’s bod. Right now, that gave me some relief.
What I really appreciated was that neither Claudia nor I was immediately bombarded with personal questions. In fact, it was as if we had always been students here. After Marcy introduced us, Haden and Luke continued their argument about face piercing as though we were simply a minor interruption. Someone else might have resented the lack of attention and interest, but both Claudia and I were grateful, for obviously different reasons.
“Teenagers are so damn predictable,” Haden said. He wore a pair of thick black-framed glasses that settled comfortably halfway down the bridge of his thin nose. “A fad catches on, and most everyone who does it does it simply not to seem ‘different.’?” He made quotation marks in the air.
“Ditto,” Luke said.