When we were little, we wanted so much to be older. Why was I thinking more often and more fondly now about my little-girl days, longing for them? In so many ways, I wished I was a little girl again. Other girls my age would surely think I was crazy, especially now, when you could do so much more on your own—drive, stay out later, and generally be responsible for yourself. Yes, I wanted to go back in time.
And yet, deep in my heart, I knew Haylee and I could never be those perfect twins again, certainly not the way Mother had envisioned us. Now it was difficult even to think of us as merely sisters.
“You didn’t come out to smoke, did you?” I heard.
At first, I didn’t see him standing there in the shadows, but he stepped out, and I recognized Troy Matzner. He was in a dark green pullover sweater and jeans tonight.
“What are you doing hovering in the shadows here?” I demanded. I felt spied upon.
“Not hovering in the shadows. I’m just taking a walk,” he said, coming closer and into more of the light spilling from the building and the outside fixtures. “I wasn’t hanging in the shadows listening to your conversation,” he added without smiling. “If that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“I’m not afraid of it.”
“Old boyfriend left back home?” he asked, nodding at the smartphone in my hand.
“My father, if you must know.”
He nodded and looked away, his arms folded. “You enjoying it here?” he asked, without turning back to me.
“So far,” I said. “How long have you been here?”
“Three years.”
I knew he was a senior. I didn’t cross-examine the other girls to find out about him or ask Marcy anymore, but whenever anyone made a reference to him, my ears perked up . . . whether I wanted them to or not.
“So if you’re not spying, what are you doing at Cook Hall?”
He turned back to me. “I’m getting some fresh air,” he responded sharply. “Actually,” he added, softening his tone, “I’m taking a much-needed break from my inane roommate.”
“Inane?”
“I’d say he’s about ten years behind on his emotional development. If I hear one more fart joke, I’ll be on trial for murder,” he said. I noticed that when he spoke firmly, he began looking at me but almost immediately looked to the side or down to finish.
Now that he was more in the light and closer to me than he had been, I could appreciate how handsome he was. His dark brown hair was layered softly with strands just over his forehead. It looked like it had been styled by someone who worked in Hollywood, sculpted and trimmed and yet very natural-looking. When I had glimpses of him passing in the hallways, I thought his eyes were unique, but now that I could see them clearly and closely, that impression was verified. They were hazel with a slight tint of green, perhaps brought out more by the lighting. He had full, sensuous lips and prominent high cheekbones complementing his male-model perfect nose. His good looks and the way he held his firm shoulders back, the way he held his head and just slightly tucked in the right side of his mouth, did give him an aristocratic arrogance that I was confident turned off most of the boys here and intimidated most of the girls.
“I did hear that you’ve had a new roommate every year and one year had none for most of the time.”
“Maybe I snore.”
“Somehow I doubt that was it,” I said.
He turned, and I thought he was just going to walk away, deciding he had given me enough of his royal time or something, but then he turned back.
“So were you complaining to your father? Is that why you came out to have the conversation? You were afraid someone might report you to the Iron Lady? She has her little informers, ass kissers, you know.”
“No,” I snapped back because of how condescending he sounded. “I’m not afraid of that. But now that you’ve brought it up, why do you continue attending school here if you’re so unhappy?”
Instead of saying something nasty and walking away, he smiled. “Who says going somewhere else would make me happier? I just have one more year, half a year, actually. I’ll grit my teeth and bear it.”
We heard some girls laughing as they came up a sidewalk in our direction. I felt myself calm down.
“Do you take a walk every night?” I asked.
“Just about.” He paused, like someone deciding if I was worth another few minutes. “So really, what’s your impression of the place? You haven’t been here a week, but it doesn’t take long to decide.”
“It’s fine. I like my classes and teachers, and the place is beautiful. Maybe my bar for satisfaction is lower than yours,” I added.
He didn’t laugh, but he widened his smile and looked away. “Where are you from?” he asked, again not turning back.
“Ridgeway. And you?”
“Carbondale,” he said, “but I consider myself an exchange student.”
“What? How are you an exchange student if you’re from Carbondale, Pennsylvania?”
“I speak another language,” he said, turning back to me.
“What other language?”
“English,” he said.
“Very funny.”
“Is it?” There was that pause again. He looked like he was fighting with himself to continue talking to me, like he would just walk away. “What brought you here? Why didn’t you begin your high school education here?” he asked, like a lawyer in a courtroom surprising a witness.
Of course, the question sounded alarm bells, but I also thought he wouldn’t have asked it if he wasn’t interested in me. Could flattery overpower caution?
“I had to finish my needlework project in arts and crafts before I could leave my previous school,” I said.
He stared, first in disbelief, and then a real look of appreciation washed it away. “Do you always finish what you begin?”
“Of course, don’t you?”
“Can’t wait to see it, then,” he said.
“I don’t show it to just anybody. You have to earn the right.”
“And just how do I go about doing that?”
“Figure it out,” I said. “I’ll give you the rest of the year. Got to get back to my homework and tease the Iron Lady’s little spies. Enjoy the rest of your walk.”
I didn’t look back. Haylee used to be firm about that whenever we dated or flirted with a boy. “When you walk away, you don’t look back. If you look back, you commit and give them an advantage. Never show how interested you are, Kaylee,” she’d instructed.
I paused now, thinking about that, and then I shook my head and continued walking.
No matter what, as crazy as it seemed to me and probably would seem to anyone who knew about us, I was still relying on Haylee’s advice.
9
What slows down time? What makes it pass faster? Certainly, the minutes felt like hours to me when I was locked in Anthony Cabot’s basement. Even the days immediately following my release seemed to last more than twenty-four hours. There was so much recuperating to do, so much therapy to endure, and so much horror to hide, even from myself.
During the first few weeks at Littlefield, the days were long to me because I was under tension, despite how welcome I felt and how comfortable it was. On most of the early days, I became tired earlier than I expected and certainly earlier than Marcy wanted, but tension is subtly exhausting. She had boundless energy and an insatiable appetite for intimate conversations, which usually became more intimate the later it became in the evening. She was constantly fishing to learn about my experiences with boys. I knew when I was getting tired enough to slip and mention something that might lead to my real reason for being here.
“I hate going to sleep,” she told me when I pleaded for a breather and time to prepare for bed this evening. “Either I lie there regretting things I didn’t say or do, or I fill with fear that tomorrow won’t be any more exciting than today.”
“Why does every day have to be exciting? Try not to be so intense about it,” I said. “Constant
expectations diminish good results.”
Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?” She looked at Claudia, who, despite how she would seem to be intent on reading or writing a paper when we talked, was really listening to every syllable we uttered.
Claudia didn’t nod in agreement with me or say anything, but her face was full of reinforcement.
“All I’m saying is you’ve got to relax a little more, take your time, Marcy. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” I smiled. I knew how old and wise beyond my years I was sounding. “We just read that in Alexander Pope’s poem, remember?”
“Alexander Pope? That’s what you’re thinking about now?”
“What’s the point of reading great things and great words if we don’t learn from them?”
Marcy leaned back on her hands and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “What have I done to make you bring back my grandmother?”
We both spun around when Claudia laughed. She finally laughed at something outrageous Marcy had said, and the first week or so not a day passed when she didn’t.
“Sorry,” she said, looking shocked at herself.
Neither of us spoke.
“When you mentioned your grandmother, I thought of my own,” Claudia said. “She was a walking book of lessons concerning how I should live. Her claim to fame was having sex only to give birth to my mother and my uncle Matthew, who became a priest and moved to Canada before he was twenty-three. He joined the church to escape from her.”
I glanced at Marcy. Neither of us wanted to interrupt her, especially Marcy. Sometimes Claudia was so quiet Marcy forgot she was in the room with us.
“She was always giving my mother advice about how to bring me up,” Claudia continued. She had apparently loosened the knot that was choking her personal memories. “Her favorite expression was ‘There will be time for that sort of thing later,’ which was why I didn’t go to parties when other girls my age were going to them or wear lipstick when they were wearing it. ‘That sort of thing’ took in everything that was any sort of fun. Sometimes I thought she was made of wood and I’d get splinters when she hugged me like a robot.”
“And your grandfather put up with all that? I mean, didn’t he want sex?” Marcy asked.
“My grandfather owned a car dealership, and although no one came right out and said it, he was in an affair with his bookkeeper at the company for years and years. When he died, the bookkeeper left to live with her sister in Cancún.”
“Mexico?” I asked.
“Yes. She was Mexican and very pretty. I liked her a lot but could never admit it in front of my mother and father and especially not in front of my grandmother.”
She paused and thought for a moment. “Funny,” she said. “No one told me to be quiet about it, but even when I was only nine, I sensed I’d better be.” She shrugged and returned to her reading.
Marcy looked at me and smiled. Then the smile flew off her face as her thoughts returned. “Never mind her grandmother. What makes you so wise?” she asked me. “Sometimes you act twice, even three times your age.” She pointed her right forefinger at me. “I’ve been watching you. You’ve got secrets, Kaylee Blossom Fitzgerald.”
I could feel my face flush. Claudia stopped reading again and looked up. Marcy was saying something that Claudia felt about me, too, I thought.
“Do you know when you’re really naked?” I asked Marcy.
“I think I can figure it out without a mirror.”
“Maybe not. You’re really naked when you have no secrets.”
She slapped her right palm against her forehead. “It’s true!” she cried. “My grandmother has been resurrected. Okay. I’m exhausted. I might fall asleep without fantasizing about Rob Brian. Thanks to you.” She stood and turned to Claudia. “If you find out any of those secrets that keep her from being naked, don’t forget to share them. Good night, Grandma.” She smiled and left us.
Claudia looked at the closed door. Despite the face she made and the way she seemed to be disinterested in anything Marcy and I did together or discussed, I realized she liked Marcy, too. Perhaps, just as I was on the days immediately following my rescue, she was locked away in herself, secretly hoping someone would find the key and let her out.
“I really had little to do with my grandparents,” I said. “They lived too far away and visited too little, and we visited them too little, too.”
“I wish I could say the same when it came to my maternal grandmother. My father’s parents were okay, but they retired to Costa Rica, and my mother hates traveling.”
“I want to do a lot of traveling,” I said.
“Yes, so do I.”
She glanced at her history text and quickly closed it. Then she sat there staring at me—or staring through me. Most people would have been put off by it, but I sensed she was struggling with the possibility of telling me something very serious, so I didn’t want to interrupt the argument she was probably having with herself.
All the time we had been roommates and shared schoolwork, I avoided asking her any questions about her personal life. She dropped hints about herself here and there, but I deliberately avoided picking up on any and starting a more detailed conversation. Whenever you ask someone something most would consider personal, you inevitably begin to reveal personal things about yourself, and until now, I had been on constant vigil to make sure I didn’t give even the slightest hints about what had happened to me, especially slipping and revealing that I had a twin sister. Despite all I had been through, including the therapy, it wasn’t easy to be on constant guard, measuring every sentence, every word I uttered to anyone. All my life, even during my horrible incarceration in Anthony Cabot’s basement, it was nearly impossible to think of myself and not think about Haylee simultaneously. The words my sister Haylee were practically engraved on my tongue.
I never doubted that was almost literally true. Even back when I was only eight and we were finally in a public school and not homeschooled, I mentioned her more than she mentioned me when I talked with other girls. Despite how alike Mother insisted we should be and were in her mind, in my mind, Haylee was stronger and especially wiser when it came to interacting with others our age. Common phrases for me were My sister Haylee says or My sister Haylee thinks. Whatever I was asked to do, my first thought was, Would Haylee do it? I’d even answer with Haylee wouldn’t do that. Or I’ll see if Haylee wants to do it.
Now, ironically, I believed I had to filter her out of my daily thinking in order for me to survive. Every morning when I woke up, I recited my mantra: Don’t mention or think of Haylee. It was only natural for me to study the way others looked at me whenever I spoke, to see if they somehow had seen through me and sensed that I was keeping a very big secret from them. Never telling anyone that I had a twin sister, a perfect replica of myself, was certainly a very big secret.
Although Claudia was so introverted and shy, especially when it came to meeting new people and making friends, and although she was unsure of herself when it came to socializing, I couldn’t help but suspect she was a great deal more perceptive than she made out to be or anyone thought she was. I often caught her looking at me intently at times and thinking deeply about something I had done or said. Perhaps there was something of herself that she recognized in me, or perhaps I wasn’t as invulnerable when it came to protecting my secrets as I thought I was. Maybe there was something I did or was doing that stirred her suspicions. You can’t live so intimately with someone without exposing something about yourself. The question was simply how perceptive was she?
Right now, I was expecting a question about myself, something she had sensed, but she surprised me.
“Despite what everyone thinks here, I’m not a virgin,” she said. She didn’t say it with any note of self-praise, nor did she say it like a confession to a priest. “Maybe I did it to get back at my grandmother or my mother. I can’t think of any other reason.”
“You didn’t like the boy?”
“He was a
ll right, I suppose, when it came to looks, but I didn’t have that special affection for him I guess you should have. Everything I’ve read or heard told me it should be one of the most important events of your life, even for boys.”
“You mean you weren’t even that attracted to him? Didn’t he arouse you first? I mean, didn’t he . . .”
“Physically, yes. I don’t know if I was that attractive to him. I think I was sort of an accomplishment. I certainly wasn’t infatuated with him the way Marcy is with this Rob Brian. I didn’t fantasize about him, exactly. I fantasized about the act.”
“So for you it was more like experimenting?”
“No. I think it falls more properly into what school psychologists call ‘acting out.’ Anger and frustration brought me to it.” She thought a moment. “Maybe it involved a little experimenting, too. After all, I had only what I read and saw in movies to go by. I wasn’t exactly anyone’s particular confidante in the schools I attended. And besides, that would be secondhand anyway. I’d say this comes under one of the things you have to do yourself.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Last year. That’s the real reason I’m here and not in the school I was in. The boy talked about it, and so did the girls when they found out. Somehow the story got to the dean, Mrs. Mintz, and she informed my mother that there were rumors she should check out. She had to be pretty explicit about the rumors, I’m sure. My mother is as good as any CIA interrogator.”