I was having a better day all around. Although Mr. Denacio wouldn’t say anything nice about my playing that morning, I could see that he was cautiously optimistic about me again. I did better in all of my classes and got a ninety on a pop quiz in history. I could feel my confidence growing stronger all day and was quite convinced that I could walk that beam. I could do it all.
Grover was there waiting for me after school. I didn’t see Kiera, but I knew she was off to her therapist. Grover rarely said anything to me, but this particular afternoon, he smiled and asked how my day had gone. I think he saw something new, healthier, and stronger in me and wasn’t afraid that he might do or say something that would send a stampede of tears down my cheeks.
I even felt better about being in the limousine. I didn’t feel shut up and alone. Maybe I was catching Kiera’s arrogance, but I sat back and looked out the window at the other students emerging. I deliberately lowered my window so they could see me, too. Lisa Dirk stared at me a moment and then lifted her hand to wave. I flipped my hand like a queen I had once seen in a movie, and Grover drove us away.
Cinderella was in her carriage.
No pumpkins here, I thought.
25
Conspirators
Even though Deidre and Margot know you a lot better now,” Kiera began just before dinner, “they’re still a little nervous, and the other two are very nervous, about my bringing you to a meeting of the VA club. It’s a very private, secret club. You’ve practically got to take a blood oath that what you see and hear at Deidre’s tomorrow after school will never leave your lips, even if you’re not accepted. Can you promise to do that?”
I put down my math book. I had gone at my homework with a vengeance, partly because I was afraid that when she returned, she would take up all my time again, and I wouldn’t have time to finish or practice the clarinet.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go, then,” I said.
“Oh, no. I’ve assured everyone that you’re not the sort who betrays friends. In fact,” she said, twirling a strand of her hair, “I told them you were very excited about it after I described it to you. I told them that in your heart, you were one of us and definitely no prude. However, for this first time, I wouldn’t advise you to talk too much. Just listen, and look at me if anyone asks you anything you’re not sure about or think you should answer.”
“You didn’t really describe it all to me, Kiera.”
“We’ve got to leave something for a surprise,” she protested. “Believe me, you’re not going to be disappointed.”
“What do they really know about me?”
“Just what we’ve told them. I added that your mother was controlling, and you were frustrated. That’s why you never had a real boyfriend or even a friend with benefits. Except for Deidre, of course, they all bought everything I told them.”
“Can’t you at least tell me exactly what we do at this club?”
“We talk and advise and help each other.”
“With sex?”
“You’ll see. It’s better if you see and hear it all yourself.”
She stepped over to the dresser and looked at one of the pictures of Alena. There were about a dozen in the suite, but I noticed only one with both Alena and Kiera. Most of the others were of Alena with Mrs. March or both Mr. and Mrs. March. Either Kiera had been the one taking the pictures, or she simply hadn’t been around when they took them.
She lifted the one on the dresser and studied it a moment before putting it down softly.
“How old was she in that picture?” I asked.
“Ten. This was a school photo taken when she was in the fifth grade.”
“She would have been a very pretty woman.”
“We have the exact same eyes and nose.” She turned to me. “My therapist thinks it’s healthy that I see you now as more like a younger sister. I told her how my mother was trying to come between us.”
“Come between us?”
“She had a good explanation for it,” Kiera went on, pacing now, like some teacher explaining a new idea. “She said my mother was jealous of our budding new relationship.”
“She said that?”
She paused and looked at me with those narrowed eyes.
“She said my mother wants to dominate you, and the more she alienated you from me, the easier it would be for her to turn you into Alena. You don’t want to be turned into someone else, do you? Or do you?”
“No, of course not,” I said.
“Good.” She stepped closer. “Just be alert. My mother will continue to warn you against me, if not call me the devil outright. That’s why she was so angry when she saw you dressed in the clothes I gave you and wearing the makeup I put on you. That’s why she wasn’t for me taking you to school. She’d love to have you locked up in that limousine going and coming and then locked up in this room. She even has our servants working for her that way. They’re all a bunch of spies, so be careful about what you say and do in front of any of them.”
She smiled and relaxed her shoulders.
“But don’t worry. My father sees through all that. He’ll be on our side more and more.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. She was making it sound as if there was a war going on in that great house, and now I was the prize, the spoils.
“Don’t you love your mother?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I love her the way a daughter is supposed to, I guess, but I’ve always gotten along better with my father, and after Alena was born, my mother didn’t seem to care much about it, anyway. She doted on Alena. I could do nothing right, and Alena could do nothing wrong. It’s back to that since you came,” she said, but then she smiled again. “I don’t mind. I’m fine. And so will you be, because I won’t let her turn you into someone you’re not. You’ve become … my cause célèbre. How’s that? I learned something in French class,” she added with a flair as if she were on a stage. “Oh, I heard Ricky’s planning on getting his father’s boat and taking you and the rest of us to Catalina one of these weekends.”
“Yes, he said one of these weekends.”
“His father makes him work every other weekend in one of their pharmacies.”
“One? How many do they own?”
“About ten, I think. He expects Ricky will become a pharmacist, too, and take over someday. They have a beautiful boat. He hasn’t invited many girls. I told you he likes you. I hope he can get it. His father lets him take it because he trusts him. My mother won’t let my father give me use of the boat, even if I have someone like Ricky do the driving. Someday, though.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “For the first time after a session of therapy, I’ve got an appetite. See you downstairs,” she said, and left.
I rose and looked at the picture of Alena she had been looking at so intently. I didn’t think they had the same eyes and nose, not at all. Alena’s features were more dolllike, and her eyes looked warmer, friendlier. According to Kiera, Alena was only in fifth grade when the picture was taken, but she had an innocence that did remind me of myself, vulnerable, eager to trust and believe in someone and in the future. It wouldn’t be all that difficult for Mrs. March to turn me into this girl. I was closer to her than I was to Kiera.
I returned to my homework and even got in twenty minutes of clarinet before I went down to dinner. Everyone was there. Kiera gave me a knowing smile, winking slightly as if we were conspirators now, both working her parents, manipulating them.
During dinner, Kiera reminded Mrs. March that we were staying after school to audition for the school play. Before her mother could say or question anything, her father went on and on about his own dramatic experiences when he was in high school.
“I was in a play called Harvey, the one about the invisible big rabbit.”
I wasn’t familiar with it, and apparently, neither was Kiera. He went on to tell us practically the whole story.
“Oh, Daddy!” Kiera cried when he described the ending. “That sounds like so much fun.”
“It
was. It is. In fact, your school should do it. At least, you guys should read it or maybe get the movie.”
Mrs. March moved her dish to the side and said, “We have had that movie in our theater, Donald, and Kiera was bored and left.”
He looked stunned for a moment, thought, and then nodded. “Yeah, I do remember that. Right.”
“I was younger then,” Kiera said quickly. “Besides, you never told me you were in the play when you were in high school, Daddy. I would have paid more attention and watched it to the end.”
“He did tell you that, Kiera,” Mrs. March said softly, “right before we began watching it.”
“Well, I don’t remember.” She looked at me before firing back at her, “You’re always finding something wrong with me.”
“I’m just …”
“Just jumping on every opportunity you can to make me look bad in front of Sasha,” Kiera added, and leaped to her feet. “I don’t know why I’m still in therapy. I go there, make some progress, and then come home to have you ruin it,” she moaned, and left the dining room.
The silence that followed was as deafening as that right after a bomb.
“Donald,” Mrs. March finally said, “she can’t …”
He put up his hand for silence. “Let’s just finish our meal in peace,” he said, and that was how we ate it, the three of us performing a show of simple gestures, passing dishes, salt and pepper and butter, as if we all were deaf.
When I went upstairs, I heard Kiera sobbing in her suite and knocked softly on her door.
“If that’s you, Mother, go away.”
“It’s Sasha,” I said.
She opened the door and then turned away quickly and returned to throw herself on her bed.
“You see? You see why my therapist is right? You were there!” she cried, and pounded the mattress. “No matter what I do or say, she’s ready to destroy me.” She turned to face me. “How can anyone be a better person in this house? Tell me that, will you? You were there. You saw it. You heard her.”
She waited for my response. I didn’t want to take sides, but I nodded.
“Well, we just have to stick together more,” she said, sitting up. “Next time she’s critical of me, something I do or say, you might come to my defense, say something.”
“What could I say?”
“Say … ‘Kiera’s trying.’ Just say that. My father will pick up on it. I can see he likes you. Maybe then my mother will get off both our backs.”
I didn’t think she was really on my back, but I didn’t disagree.
Kiera smiled and reached for my hands. “Thanks for stopping by to see how I am, Sasha. That’s very sweet of you. I don’t deserve it, of course. I don’t deserve even your being civil to me, but I plan on deserving it someday. Now, go practice the clarinet. I know it’s important to you and you want to do well. Besides, I like hearing it through the wall.”
I started toward the door.
“You can leave my door open a little,” she said. “And yours, too. That way, I’ll hear you better.”
“Okay, but I’m not that good yet.”
“You’re better than me, not that that says much.”
“Didn’t you ever play an instrument?”
“The heart,” she said.
“You mean the harp?”
“No. The heart,” she said, and laughed.
For a moment, I thought she did look like Alena, innocent, young, and vulnerable.
Downstairs, you became deaf, a voice of warning inside me said. Up here, you became blind.
I practiced for more than an hour before getting ready for bed and reading ahead in my English textbook. I had forgotten that I had left my door open. Before she said anything, Mrs. March must have been standing in my doorway a while just looking in at me. I finally sensed someone and lowered my textbook.
She smiled. “Seeing you lying there like that, reading, reminded me so much of Alena. She was a voracious reader, unlike Kiera. She read all of those books you see on the shelves here, every single one. I know, because she would spend hours telling me the stories or talking about the characters. She always got so involved. She’d talk about her books with anyone who would listen.”
She stepped in.
“It used to break my heart when she tried describing a story to Kiera, and Kiera would brush her off, tell her it was silly or a waste of time. I know Kiera can be a very exciting young woman, Sasha. She is beautiful, and boys trail after her like ants following honey, but she hasn’t quite reached the level of maturity and responsibility she should, and I worry about her. Now I have to worry about you, as well. Please be careful,” she said. “I know how easy it is to fall into traps when you’re the age you are. Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“No. I’m fine, Mrs. March.”
“I hope someday you’ll be able to call me Mother. Not that I want to replace your mother,” she quickly added. “I just want us to be closer.”
“That’s still difficult for me to do right now, Mrs. March,” I said.
I saw how hard she took my answer. For a moment, she looked like she might burst into tears, but then she managed a smile. “Of course. Everything has its proper time and place.”
She gazed around, smiled again, and said good night, closing the door softly behind her. Less than a minute later, the door opened again. I thought she had forgotten something, but it was Kiera.
“You left my door open a bit, remember?”
“Yes.”
“I heard everything she said. I don’t read. I wouldn’t listen to Alena. I’m not mature and responsible. See what I was saying? That was a lie. I always listened to Alena. She would sit on the floor next to me and tell me her stories while I sat there filing my nails or doing my hair. Why, she’d even come in while I was soaking in the tub and sit on the bathroom floor and recite them.”
Now she was the one who looked as if she might burst into tears.
“I hope you never call her Mother,” she said. Then she turned and rushed out, closing the door sharply behind her.
It sounded so ridiculous, even outright funny to say it, but I muttered to myself, “Maybe I was better off in the streets.”
26
The VA Club
I was nervous from the moment I got into Kiera’s car the next morning and never stopped being nervous all day. I did well enough in instrumental class to avoid any looks or words of dissatisfaction from Mr. Denacio, and I got an eighty-eight on a vocabulary test in English, but all through the day, I would have these moments when my heart would race and I would have a shortness of breath. I knew that this was because I was attending Kiera’s secret VA club meeting and because of our lying to Mrs. March about a school play audition. If and when she found out, she would be very upset that I had gone along with it, but I felt that if I changed my mind, Kiera would return to the way she had been when I had first arrived.
I was good at keeping it all to myself. Ricky was the only one who sensed anything different about me. Kiera and her other friends were their usual buoyant selves, laughing, gossiping about other girls and boys in their classes and teachers as well. No one noticed that I was especially quiet. It wasn’t until the very end of lunch period that anyone said anything about the VA club. Deidre came up beside me as we were all leaving for class and said, “We’re all looking forward to you coming today.”
Before I could say anything, she walked away and left me with Ricky, who now looked even more suspicious.
“What was she whispering about? What are you she-devils up to today?” he asked.
The first thing that came to my mind was that if I said anything that even suggested we were meeting after school, he would mention it, and Kiera and the other girls would think I had already betrayed them.
“Nothing very important,” I said. “Girlie stuff.”
“Well, that’s no fun,” he replied, and walked the rest of the way wearing an impish grin. Kiera never mentioned any boys knowing about or going
to the VA club. Was that one of the surprises that awaited me?
When the final bell rang to end classes, my heart felt like a yo-yo. Kiera was at my classroom door before I got to it myself. She must have run all the way from her wing of the building the second the bell rang. She had told me that sometimes she faked a desperate need to go to the bathroom just to get a head start on leaving.
“C’mon,” she said. “We can’t stay at Deidre’s longer than we would have stayed for a play audition, remember.”
I followed her out as quickly as I could. I hated it when she or someone else made me move so quickly that my limp became more pronounced. I knew there were students, even in my own classes, who ridiculed me. I didn’t see any of the other girls in Kiera’s group of friends when we reached the parking lot. When I asked about them, she told me they had already left. Deidre had actually feigned an excuse to leave before the last period.
“They always get excited when we agree on a possible new candidate for the club,” she said as we got into her car. “There are lots of girls who would love to join, but we’re very particular. Usually, we don’t ever consider a new student to the school, but since I vouched for you and all of them except Deidre believe you’re my cousin, they agreed. Excited?”
“I don’t know. I still don’t know or understand what the club does.”
“Oh, you will before today’s meeting ends.” She stopped the car as we reached the driveway to the parking lot and turned to me, her face tightened into a look of seriousness and intensity I had not seen. “Nothing we can do together, nothing we say or promise each other, will ever bring us closer together than you being in the VA,” she said. “I can assure you. We’re closer than real sisters, and every girl in the club would rather tell her most secret thoughts and things to one of us than she would to her own real sister.”
She drove out. I sat back, impressed. Never had I dreamed I’d be close friends with girls older than I was and in a new school, too. Now, according to Kiera, I would be even more special. I felt as if I had stepped onto a rocket ship, and it wasn’t only because of Kiera’s driving, either. Trips to Disneyland, parties, boat trips, all of it lay before me like some promised land filled with delight and pleasure. Months from now, I thought, I won’t even remember living on the streets.