“Yeah. Well, I promise I’ll look in on her regularly,” he said. “It might even get to where she thinks we never divorced,” he added, reaching for some humor.
I did smile. I sat back. “Tell me about your first day at college, Daddy,” I said. “You never told us much about that.”
He had, but I wanted to hear him talk. I didn’t want to think about what was happening and what I was doing, and I didn’t want him to feel any more uncomfortable than he was. Once he began, he was on a roll. As he spoke, memories returned. I could recall exactly where I was, or I should say where Haylee and I were, when he told us things. Sometimes it was at dinner; sometimes it was when we took long car trips. Mother was laughing then at his stories, too.
Despite their arguments concerning how Mother was raising us growing in intensity almost weekly, neither Haylee nor I had believed that divorce was an option. My father seemed endlessly patient and tolerant. However, as the disputes about us—really about her and the things she was doing with us and to us—continued, he eventually reached his limit and was tired of backing down. I saw that he wasn’t just walking away anymore. He’d linger and argue longer, the reasonableness in his voice darkening into anger until that anger became a different kind of retreat. Mother never gave in, not even for something as small as letting us wear different-colored hair ribbons. My father began to avoid us, all of us. He was coming home later and later, taking more business trips, and eventually even missing our birthdays. Mother didn’t seem to care until it was too late, and then she worked to turn us against him, putting all the blame on him.
I’ve got to stop thinking about all that now, I told myself.
When we drew closer to Littlefield, my father told me that there were about a dozen other girls enrolling today, too.
“I’ll hang around until you’re settled in. There’s a meeting with the principal, Mrs. Mitchell, right after we get your things into your dorm room. She’s very nice but also very firm.” He leaned toward me to whisper. “I overheard two of the teachers talking about her. They call her Mrs. Thatcher.”
“Thatcher?”
“The Iron Lady, British prime minister.”
“Oh.”
He laughed. I wanted to hear more, of course. He hadn’t told me all that much about Littlefield, other than that it was a senior high school, with students in grades nine through twelve, and that the population was about three hundred.
“The dorms are quite nice, but you have to share a room with one other girl,” he finally revealed. It brought a new fear to my doorstep.
“Who? What other girl?”
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “I saw a typical room. There’s plenty of space for two.” He smiled. “It’s twice as large as the dorm room I had when I went to college, and we had to share with two others. Plenty of closet space,” he continued, “and two desks, although your dorm has a study lab and a recreational area. There are no televisions in the dorm rooms, but you can play music, and you have your computer. A new computer,” he added. “It’s a surprise I have in the trunk. A great new laptop. There’s Wi-Fi at the dorm, of course, so we can email and Skype and stuff.”
For a moment, I considered asking him to turn around and go back. I’d rather return to homeschooling, something Mother had made us do until we were eight and ready for the third grade. My father saw the reservations and fear in my face. Although he was involved with computer software, and both Haylee and I were quite educated when it came to computer use, neither of us had mentioned the word computer since I had been rescued. It was through a computer that Haylee had designed my abduction, and it was fortunately because of a computer that my father had made the discoveries leading to my rescue. I hadn’t even turned mine on since I had been rescued and brought home. I had nightmares that if I did, Anthony Cabot would immediately appear on the screen.
But more important, I had never slept in a room with any other girl without Haylee sleeping over, too. Mother never permitted either of us to sleep at some friend’s house without the other. Consequently, neither of us did. I had never shared a bathroom or sat beside another girl and fixed my hair in her bedroom, any of the things other girls in our class had done, if Haylee wasn’t right there as well. I wasn’t simply too shy to share a room now. There was a bigger reason, a bigger fear.
Girls who had such an intimate relationship couldn’t be as secretive about their lives as I wanted to be. I had envisioned myself comfortably alone at this new school, taking my time to make friends and taking baby steps toward any social life. I dreaded the first question my new roommate was sure to ask: “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” My father had assured me that my horrible recent past would remain unknown at Littlefield. This was the main reason I was attending a school sufficiently far away from our community. How would I do that if I had a roommate?
“I don’t care about the space or a computer, Daddy. I don’t know if I can live that closely with another girl yet. Can’t you get me a room by myself?”
“Now, stay calm, Kaylee. They don’t have single rooms. They want their students to develop a social life as well as an academic life. It’s part of what Littlefield sees as its educational goals, its philosophy. I’ve had a nice discussion with your therapist, of course, and she agrees that it’s time you had new relationships. There’s a great danger that you will retreat so deeply into yourself that you’ll never be able to do these things again. She believes you’re ready for it. I believe you are, too. You’re a very strong person. Look what you’ve survived. This will be a piece of cake,” he said, smiling. “You’ll figure out how to handle touchy subjects.”
I couldn’t help it; I was trembling.
“I don’t know,” I said, near tears.
“Look,” he said, “if you have a big problem with it, we’ll think of something else, but give it a chance, okay? Please, Kaylee.”
“Okay,” I said. I was sure he and my therapist were right. I had to find the strength to do this. “I’ll try.”
“Thatta girl,” he said.
We drove on until he slowed, made a turn, and nodded at the campus ahead of us on the right. A sign in what looked like brass read, Littlefield. Under it was a quote: I am still learning. —Michelangelo.
Nothing was truer for me, too. The difference was, I had more than simply knowledge to learn. I had to learn how to be a different person.
5
My father hadn’t exaggerated about the beauty of the campus. The pictures on the brochure also did not do it justice. It was close to two hundred acres. There were two main academic buildings side by side, Matthews Hall and Asper Hall, each named for the philanthropist who had paid for the buildings. Asper, the building on the left as we drove up the driveway, had been constructed nearly twenty-five years before Matthews, which was built to accommodate a growing population. My father explained that Matthews contained an updated library with computers and more than forty-five thousand books.
There was a separate gymnasium building, Holmes Gymnasium, built shortly after the first classroom building was constructed. The school had tennis courts, a baseball field, and a running track. Everything appeared to have someone’s name attached.
“Successful early graduates and their families contributed to the campus,” my father said when I mentioned that. “This started as an all-girls school,” he said. “That’s why the girls’ dormitories, two buildings on our left, were across campus from the two buildings that housed the boys.”
I was in the Eleanor Cook dormitory, the one farther on the left.
There were parking lots in front of all the dormitories and parking areas in front of the gymnasium and both academic buildings, but it was the grounds that were most impressive, with their fieldstone walking paths; maple, hickory, and oak trees; trimmed hedges, fountains with statues of birds, one circular fountain with a giant peacock; and redwood benches and flower beds evenly spaced. I saw that the area had extensive lighting, with lampposts and fixtures on the outsides
of all the buildings.
“It’s hard to believe this is just a high school. There’s a lot of money in here, isn’t there?”
“A lot,” my father said, smiling.
“How expensive is the tuition?”
“Worth every penny,” he said, without telling me.
We turned toward the Eleanor Cook dorm. I saw two other cars with their trunks open and parents helping the girls move their things into the dorm. We pulled alongside one. A tall, slim girl, easily five-foot-eleven, with long arms and a small, almost flat bosom, stood a little to the right, watching her father pull her suitcases from the Lincoln Town Car trunk. She was wearing an ankle-length black skirt and a gray long-sleeved blouse. The man was tall, too, with a similar shade of dark brown hair, and he wore a gray pin-striped suit and a black tie. He put a smaller bag beside the two suitcases, but the girl made no effort to pick it up. I saw him raise his arms, and she moved forward reluctantly to take it and press it against herself, as if she would never let it go.
Her father closed the trunk and picked up both suitcases. I wondered where her mother was. But that signaled that others would wonder where mine was. My father popped our trunk.
“Your new home sweet home,” he said, smiling and holding his arms out toward Eleanor Cook Hall.
I got out slowly and watched the tall girl walk behind her father, her head down, her steps slow and small, almost like a geisha. My father began to take out my suitcases. I picked up my smaller bags and waited, looking out at the campus.
There was a warm breeze gently swaying some of the tree limbs. If I were a little girl, unafraid of her imagination, I could easily believe all of them were waving to me, greeting me. The grounds were so beautiful and calming, with the fountains and flowers, that it was difficult not to feel welcome, optimistic.
Maybe I really could start a new life here, I thought. My father was right. It would feel good to be on my own and not have all the heavy emotional turmoil to wade through every day. It could drown someone, especially someone like me. I was lucky to escape.
“Ready?” my father asked.
I nodded, and we started for the front entrance. Just inside were two girls, both with light brown hair, the taller one wearing thick-lensed glasses, her hair short and curly, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit with a keyhole neckline. The other was cuter, with bright green eyes and diminutive facial features. She wore a white polka-dot flared skirt and a black short-sleeved top. She stepped forward first. Her right cheek had a dimple that flashed on and off when she smiled.
“Welcome to Eleanor Cook,” she said. “I’m Marcy Ross, and this is Terri Stone. We’re sort of a welcoming committee.”
“We are the welcoming committee,” Terri said. “Marcy will escort you to your room, and I’ll show you the facilities.”
“Facilities,” Marcy mocked. “Toilets and stuff. You’re Kaylee Fitzgerald,” she said, as if she was assigning me my name.
I looked at my father, who was smiling widely.
“And I’m her father, Mason Fitzgerald.”
“Welcome to you, too, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Terri Stone said, again sounding more official.
“C’mon,” Marcy said, before I could say anything. She hooked my right arm and started marching me ahead, through the small lobby and down the hallway on our left. “I was going nuts waiting for you. Mrs. Rosewell assigned me to you. Terri is assigned to everyone. She’s the official facilities guide,” she added, her face beaming.
“Who’s Mrs. Rosewell?”
“Our house mother. Platypus,” she added, leaning in to whisper. “Only don’t call her that to her face or say it closely enough for her to hear.”
“Platypus?”
“She’s nice, but she’s built like one and has a way of pressing her lips out like a duck’s bill. She waddles when she walks, too.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s with two other newlyweds,” Marcy said.
“What?”
“That’s an in joke. We call new students newlyweds. You have to take so many oaths, follow rules that make it seem like you’re marrying the school. Don’t worry about it. Maybe we don’t break the rules, but we bend them.”
She stopped and turned me sharply to go down a short corridor on our left.
“I’m here, too, right across the hall with Facilities,” she said, pausing at an open door.
My father and Terri Stone caught up to us. Another girl came to the door. She was a buxom redhead about my height, wearing a Littlefield basketball team T-shirt and a pair of jeans, so I assumed she was not a newlywed and had probably been assigned to bring my roommate here. Her light complexion was peppered with freckles over the crests of her cheeks. She widened her eyes at Marcy and nodded to her right. We couldn’t see around the doorframe yet, but it was obvious someone was already in my room.
“Hi,” she said, offering her right hand. “I’m Toby Dickens, dorm president.”
“Kaylee Fitzgerald,” I said.
“She’s in here?” she asked Marcy.
“Good guess.”
“Good luck,” Toby muttered, and stepped past us.
When I looked back through the doorway, I saw the man who had carried in the tall dark-haired girl’s luggage standing there looking out at us. Marcy smiled at him and led me into the room. The man was studying me too hard, I thought. He looked like a research scientist peering through a microscope. What was he checking for, a sign of measles?
I couldn’t help being paranoid, of course. Maybe he knew who I was, knew everything, and wasn’t happy to have his daughter share a dorm room with me.
“You’re on the right side,” Marcy told me, nodding at the single bed with a gray blanket and a large white pillow. The bed looked like it had been made by a drill sergeant—tight, perfect. I saw the desk at the foot of the bed. To the immediate right of the door was a closet about a quarter of the size of mine at home, but Haylee’s and my rooms and closets were way bigger than the rooms and closets our classmates had. Mother had insisted on that.
Something had kept me from turning to my left too soon. It wasn’t that I realized my roommate was the girl I had seen in the parking lot, a girl who struck me as strange to start with. I was still trying to get used to the idea that I would share my intimate places with someone new.
She didn’t smile or offer to introduce herself. Looking at her more closely now, I didn’t think she was unattractive, but I did think she was almost sickly thin. She had her lips folded inward, her gray-black eyes wide like someone very frightened. Her dark brown hair fell straight to the base of her neck. It looked dull, lifeless. Her shoulder bones were prominently outlined beneath her thin blouse.
Marcy was the first to blow up the pregnant silence with a big “This is your roommate, Kaylee Fitzgerald.”
“Say hello, Claudia,” her father ordered.
“Hello,” she said, and immediately raised her eyes toward the ceiling.
My father was right behind me, still holding my suitcases in his hand, but he dropped them both quickly and offered his hand to Claudia’s father.
“Mason Fitzgerald,” he said.
“Bob Lukas.”
Again, there was an uncomfortable silence.
“Facilities,” Marcy sang, and Terri stepped forward.
“Before you two unpack and get settled, I’ll show you our bathrooms, showers, study, and recreational area, and the extra storage room, should you need it. Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Lukas, Mrs. Rosewell is waiting in the recreational room with some coffee and cakes. Marcy will take you to her.”
“Daddies, this way, please,” Marcy said.
My father looked at me. I gave him a quick nod.
“So where are you from?” he asked Mr. Lukas as they followed Marcy out.
I looked at Claudia. She didn’t smile as much as she relaxed her face. She folded her arms, lowered her head, and followed me as I followed Terri out. Terri obviously had a memorized tour, describing how to use the bathrooms an
d showers, with that added “Always be considerate” tag to everything she said. We followed in single file, because Claudia seemed to want it that way. I had yet to say another word to her. We met two other girls in the bathrooms and then were shown the extra storage space before being brought to the study hall, which was furnished with half a dozen desks, one large one with eight chairs, and two brown leather settees. The floors were a dark wood, and there were four windows with views of the grounds.
A doorway led us into the recreational area, now populated with half a dozen parents besides Claudia’s and mine. Terri brought us quickly to Mrs. Rosewell.
I immediately understood why Marcy had referred to her as a platypus. She had a narrow face but with protruding lips that looked like some plastic surgeon had tried to drown them in Botox. She was short, maybe only five foot one, with wide hips and a heavy bosom. Her grayish-brown hair was too short for her face, barely reaching her earlobes, but she had a very warm smile, motherly, and hazel eyes that should have helped any nervous newlywed to relax a little. She hugged us like a grandmother, her large breasts forcing both of us to stand straighter. Claudia looked terrified at being so warmly embraced and kept her arms stiff, her fingers extended.
“Now, girls, we’ll have our little chat about the house rules after you’re settled in and after you and your parents visit with Mrs. Mitchell,” she explained. “If you like, have some cake and milk. We don’t encourage our girls to ingest caffeine and urge them to avoid soda. Too much sugar,” she told the parents standing nearby. I saw my father smiling at me, holding back a laugh. That, more than anything, helped me unwind a bit more.
“You want some cake or a cookie?” I asked Claudia.
“No,” she said, grimacing. “She just said soda has too much sugar. Why do they have cake and cookies?”
“She didn’t say no sugar,” I said, shrugged, and walked over to the refreshment table, where I met two other new girls, Jessie Paul and Estelle Marcus, who were rooming together. I looked back at Claudia. She was standing alone, just a few feet behind her father, my father, and two other men with their wives.