I smiled, started the car, and backed out of the driveway. He stood watching me. I waved and drove off. In my rearview mirror, I could see him still watching me, like someone who wanted to memorize every moment.
I knew that I did.
15
Outsider
Because of a sudden rainstorm and heavy traffic caused by an accident, I reached home only fifteen minutes before Ava and Marla arrived. I was anxious the entire way and even more so when I got home. I hurried into the house, afraid they were right behind me. To keep myself occupied and contain my nervousness, I changed clothes, set the table for dinner, and checked on the food Mrs. Fennel had prepared. When I heard Ava and Marla enter laughing, I stepped out of the dining room.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You,” Marla said. “Getting suspended. Little Miss Perfect with the perfect grades and perfect social graces. Wait until Daddy hears about it, how you messed up and brought unnecessary attention to us.”
“You don’t have to be so gleeful about my misfortune, Marla,” I said.
“You would be if it happened to me,” she countered, her face as full of venom as Ava’s could be.
I looked at Ava, who stared at me as if she was waiting for my reaction. “I don’t think so,” she said when I didn’t respond. “I don’t think Lorelei would be as gleeful.” The way she said it made it sound like a terrible fault.
“Well, I do,” Marla insisted, and marched off to her room. Ava remained.
“Everything’s ready for our dinner,” I said, hating the moment of silence between us. “What time do you want to eat?”
“The same time as always,
Lorelei. Why should tonight be any different?”
“I just thought you might have had something to do.”
“I do. Watch over you two,” she said, “like some babysitter.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
I started back to the kitchen, but she followed me.
“Of course I have to worry about you. Guess what?” she said. “I went looking for Buddy Gilroy after you called me and couldn’t find him. He cut his classes, apparently, all of his afternoon classes. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Maybe you scared him off and he withdrew from college,” I said, unloading some dishes from the dishwasher.
“You sure it wasn’t Buddy who called you at school today?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” I spun on her. “Stop talking about him, Ava. I know it hurts your ego that he didn’t fawn over you, but you’ve got to get over it.”
“What? Me get over it? Please. He’s a boy. I’ve been with men. I was obviously too much for him,” she said, but my sharp comeback was enough to get her to walk away without another word about Buddy.
I remained in the kitchen to pretend to do something more for dinner. My whole body was shaking, and I didn’t want her to see.
Later, at dinner, Marla insisted that I give her a blow-by-blow account of what had happened to me in school. I tried to sound bitter about it, even though I had deliberately arranged to get caught, but I was afraid that Ava saw I was overdoing it, so I stopped explaining and blaming the other girls.
“Why keep talking about it? None of this school stuff really matters to us, anyway,” she said. “We go through the motions to please Daddy. And Mrs. Fennel, of course. Can’t say as I’ve always pleased her,” she added with a laugh, which raised my eyebrows.
“What did you do to make her unhappy?” I asked, seeing an opening into one of the darker hallways in our lives. It wasn’t only Mrs. Fennel and Daddy who kept the keys to our vault of secrets. Each of us inherited some of that, Ava the most right now, since she was the oldest.
She laughed. “I guess it’s all right to tell you now. Once I brought a boy home to play a video game with me.”
“You did?” Marla exclaimed before I could.
“You don’t remember that, do you, Lorelei?”