“We don’t know what kind of a party it is,” Lana exclaimed when I didn’t give them any specific answers. “Is he having it catered?”
“Catered?”
“Well, they’re so rich. His parents would let him do that,” Missy Meyer said. “He might even have people serving.”
I just shrugged. My mind was still on the Dollanganger children and their being locked away in that mansion. Neither Cathy nor Christopher was going to go to any parties for years. For years, how Cathy wore her hair wasn’t going to be important. For years, Christopher would not experience a girl flirting with him, nor would he be able to meet a girl and have a conversation with someone his own age. For years, they would never know what music was popular with their friends, what movie was exciting everyone in their class, what television show was being talked about at school, or even what was happening in the news that kids their age would be interested in. If they would complain that they were half alive, they wouldn’t be wrong, I thought.
“I don’t know any more about his party than you do,” I told them.
“Well, you were with him yesterday after school,” Lana said.
“You’ve been spending most of your time with him, haven’t you?” Suzette asked. “So?”
I thought about it for a moment and laughed.
“What?”
“We never rea
lly talked about his party,” I said, and went to my desk as class began.
Whenever Kane was close enough after his classes, he was waiting for me to walk me to my next class.
“The girls are driving me crazy asking me for details about your party,” I told him.
“Let’s have it be a surprise. I’ll come for you around six thirty, okay?” he said the first time.
“Six thirty? So early?”
“We have a lot to do to prepare for the party. I’m ordering in pizzas and salads,” he told me. “You can help me warm things up. Our housekeeper has been given the night off.”
“Sure,” I said.
I had never been to Kane’s house, but everyone talked about it. It was a refurbished antebellum built of whitewashed brick and timber that people half-jokingly called Hill’s Tara, referring to the great house in Gone with the Wind. It was one of the largest estates in the area, about nine miles outside of Charlottesville.
“And I thought it would be nice to have some private time before it all starts. Not that we won’t later,” he added. “Tell your father I’ll bring you home, too. It will be a good way to throw everyone else out.”
“Is that your only reason?” I asked when we stopped at my next classroom.
He just gave me that grin, tossed his head to the side, and sauntered off to join the boys who were waiting for him down the hall. I watched them close around him as if they could draw his energy into them and glow like he did. When I turned to go into the classroom, I found I had the same sort of thing awaiting me, my girlfriends gathering around me, still asking questions about the party and obviously trying to be my best friends.
I knew all of this was coming at me because now it was even more obvious that Kane was very fond of me, and as far as most of the girls in high school were concerned, he was the most desirable boy. Who wouldn’t want to be his girlfriend, at least for a little while?
Today there was something else going on, however. I think they could all sense that there was something different between us, and there was. This wasn’t just another little romance. Even I had to admit that I was feeling that was true. Perhaps it was because of the time we had spent at the Foxworth lake yesterday. Maybe he had felt something special there, too. Throughout the day, every moment he could be, he was with me. We were behaving as if we were oblivious to everyone and everything around us. I imagined that the contrast between how nonchalant I was about him before and how I was acting this day raised eyebrows and started a chorus of whispers.
There was no reason for me to be surprised about that. Anyone, even our teachers, who usually didn’t pay attention to such things, could see that we were looking at each other more intently. Those feelings, those moments gazing at each other so long that they could be called staring, were not easy to hide or prevent. Neither of us seemed to care if anyone knew about our deeper feelings for each other, anyway. Kane always seemed to me to be someone like that, but it was new for me. Suddenly, I wasn’t as bashful or concerned about what other people were thinking of me.
When I thought about it, I wondered how Corrine and Christopher Sr. had hidden their passion for each other from her parents, at least in the beginning. Probably, they reached a point when they knew they couldn’t any longer, and that was when they had decided to run off together. I couldn’t help but imagine them sneaking around that mansion at night, clinging to each other in shadows, terrified they would be discovered, and hating that it had to be that way. It made them feel as dirty and as sinful as her parents would think they were, and who could live with that?
Kane and I had known each other for a long time. Were he and I always going to be this passionate about each other? Were my feelings for Kane and his feelings for me always this obvious to everyone else but me? My girlfriends were always telling me that he liked me more than he liked other girls he had dated, but I didn’t dwell on it, especially during these last few days when I was reading Christopher’s diary. Besides, I was always skeptical about Kane. To me, it still looked like he was shopping around, and I was reluctant to be easy, anyway. I thought my girlfriends knew that. Maybe those others he had disappointed just wanted me to be another victim caught in Kane Hill’s web.
Or maybe it was always my fault. Maybe I was simply too afraid of being disappointed. Was I more like Uncle Tommy than I was like my father? Being deceived and betrayed after you had exposed yourself in a commitment could be devastating. You’d never trust any boy after that. Kane, despite what he had said and how he had behaved, especially at the lake, was so casual about everything he did that it was easy to have this feeling, this fear. Even now, it sneaked in under my growing affection for him. What if he began to date someone else the following week? If just like that, he turned away from me? How was I supposed to take it?
Too many of the girls I knew, especially in the junior and senior classes, were satisfied with what they called “hooking up.” Committing themselves to one boy for a long period of time was for the insecure. It was more fun to circulate. “What’s your goal, to be the king and queen at the prom or something? Please, give me a break.” I overheard these conversations, and they weren’t only coming from envious girlfriends. Many, if not most, believed it.
Maybe they were right to think that way. How did you know the right decisions to make when you were our age? How many of my girlfriends really had close enough relationships with their mothers to get some guidance, and how many even wanted it? Everyone seemed suspicious of her parents. Whose mother would ever suggest intimate relationships, much less condone them? But everyone was titillated with the prospect, including me, although that was my most secret thought.
Would Cathy have these thoughts before she left Foxworth? She’d have no experiences, no chances to develop even small relationships. Suddenly, she would find herself dropped into the world my girlfriends and I were navigating but without the benefit of growing into it, developing. It would be like taking a sixth-grader, having her in a coma for three years, and then pushing her into the teenage world.