you’re too girly-sissy.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It is
not
,” Constance answered. “Jane, tell her it’s not the same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing,” I said.
Constance said, “Even if Lucky suddenly realized that you’re…”
“Gorgeous and brilliant and sexy,” Mary Violet said.
“Sure, why not?” her friend said. “Why would you even want to date the
headmistress’s son? It would complicate everything at school for you.”
“Hattie dates the headmistress’s son, and you don’t give her grief.”
“That’s different. Hattie’s a Tyler. They’re as old as the Monroes here.
Mrs. Monroe couldn’t object even if she didn’t like Hattie,” Constance said.
“Why do you care about Lucien Monroe anyway? He’s kind of…”
“He’s stunning!” Mary Violet turned to me and said, “Isn’t Lucky
stunning?”
“Yes,” I said, but I asked Constance, “He’s kind of what?”
“A little too perfect. It’s all polished surface like a mirror reflecting what
you want to see, and I wonder if there’s anything else. He’s boring.”
“You’re crazy! His manners are divine,” Mary Violet said. “Don’t you
remember in sixth grade when the boys came to Miss Harlot’s School of Croquet?
Jack put on his blazer backwards because he thought it was funny—“
“It
was
funny,” Constance said to me.
“Okay, it
was
funny, but Lucky was the only one who bowed after a waltz,”
Mary Violet said. “He does the two-step like an angel.”
I tucked away all this information to think about later, and I asked, “Has
Lucky ever gone out anyone at Birch Grove?”
“Frosh year he was a total womanizer,” Constance said. “He was going
through all the juniors, but we heard that Mrs. Monroe put a stop to that.”
Mary Violet said, “We thought there was something going on between him
and Hattie. When we asked, she said there wasn’t. I don’t know if I completely
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believe her.”
Constance waved her narrow fingers as if she shooing away a fly. “You
imagine them together because they
look
good together. They’re more like
brother and sister.”
“By that thinking, so are Jack and Hattie,” Mary Violet said.
Constance shrugged. “You said it, not me.”
“If Hattie likes Lucky, she’d date him, right?” I said. “What’s to stop her?”
“Not a blessed thing,” Constance said. “MV finds it impossible to believe
that Hattie would choose an interesting personality over good looks, although I
think Jack is way hotter than Lucky.”
“Lucky has gorgeous looks and fantastic manners,” Mary Violet said.
Constance smiled at me and said, “We’re such losers, aren’t we? We have
so few guys here that we get worked up over the headmistress’s sons. I hope that
some of the Evergreeners have gotten more interesting over the summer.”
We arrived at the Heyers’ house and went through the back entrance. Mrs.
Heyer was in the kitchen swirling chocolate frosting on cupcakes. We all said
hello.
“Mother, dearest,” Mary Violet said, “we’ll be in the Wardroom Museum.”
Mrs. Heyer looked at her daughter and said, “You are
not
allowed to
borrow any of my gowns. Nothing with a low décolletage.”
“I know, I know, no bounteous cleavage.”
As soon as we were away from the kitchen, Candace said to me, “Mary
Violet is still in trouble for sending photos that almost showed nip to a guy she
met last summer.”
“It was only sideboob,” MV said primly.
I said, “So that’s why your mother checks all your online activity?”
Mary Violet nodded. “But she was totally overreacting. Nothing actually
showed. She’s so much worse. Once she made pink cupcakes and put Hershey’s
strawberry kisses in the center of each one. It was appalling.”
“They tasted good,” Constance said.
“I had to close my eyes to eat them. We had an intervention and begged
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her never to make vulva cupcakes.”
“No, you didn’t,” Constance said.
“We did, and I read my poem, ‘Ode to an Artistic Mother.’” Mary Violet
dropped her bag, held out her arms, and recited:
“Your cupcakes are tender and quite delish,
But won’t you grant your children’s wish?
A mother’s love is what we cherish
So please no coconut as pubic hairish,
Nor gummy worms as labial lips
Or any substance for a clitoris.
We firmly support your creative expressions
But vulva cupcakes will cause insurrection.”
Constance and I were laughing so hard that we were doubled over, and
Mary Violet said, “And she has the nerve to tell me not to dress skanky.”
“Please don’t ever change, MV,” I said.
“Only my clothes.”
MV opened the door to a room near her mother’s art studio. Three sides
had chrome clothes racks like a department store, and the fourth wall had shelves
of purses and shoes. There were full length mirrors and a bench with pale blue
velvet cushions.
Several dresses hung from one rolling rack.
“Voila!”
she said, holding her hand toward the rolling rack. “I picked these
out last night.”
The dresses were all my size and looked as if they’d never been worn.
Clearly they’d been chosen for Agnes: there wasn’t a pink or frilly one in the
bunch.
“Do you like them?” Mary Violet asked.
“Of course!” I caressed a chocolate brown velvet dress.
“Agnes won’t even try them on. She’s afraid it will affect her standing as a
potential lesbian even though I tried to convince her that lipstick lesbians wear
dresses.” She lifted the skirt of sleeveless cotton dress. “What about this one?”
Constance picked out a scoop neck with a peach and white swirly pattern.
“This is pretty.” She held it up in front of me and I looked in the mirror.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
My hand went to an emerald green dress and I took it off the rack and held
it in front of me.
Mary Violet said, “Empire waist, which makes the most of your slip of a
figure, and the color’s fabulous on you.”
They made me try on all the clothes. When I stripped down to my
underwear, I made sure to let my hair fall over my left shoulder to hide the scar,
but I heard Constance gasp.
“A tattoo! Jane Williams, you’re a wild thing.”
“What is the H mean?” MV asked. “Is it gang ink?”
“It’s for my friend, Hosea. He got meningitis and died.”
“Oh,” they said together.
The dark green fit the best. The narrow cut made me look taller. I was
about to slide on my too-big plastic sandals when my Mary Violet said, “Wait!
We have a present for you.”
Constance went to her suit bag and unzipped it. She took out a cloth bag
tied at the top with a big white ribbon. “This is from us to you.”
I took the bag and felt the lumpy weight inside. Then I untied the ribbon.
Inside was a pair of pretty black open-toe heels. “How did you…” I began,
touching the smooth leather. “They’re my size.”
“Well, duh,” Mary Violet said. “I looked in your closet when we spent the
night and I knew you needed heels. We all pitched in.”
“Thank you,” I said and my eyes welled up.
My friends put their arms around me and said, “Group hug!”
They helped me pick out a small black velvet evening bag and a black
cashmere shawl.
Agnes poked her head in the wardrobe museum, took one look at me, and
said, “It fits you. Keep it. I hate dresses.”
It took me only ten minutes to dress for the evening, and a few minutes to
put on my makeup and brush out my hair. Constance wore a turquoise and black
geometric print dress and twisted her hair up on her head, holding it with clips
decorated with silver butterflies that matched dangling silver earrings.
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Constance and I sat on the bed and watched Mary Violet’s elaborate
preparations. She kept trying on different combinations of clothes, before
choosing one of her many pink outfits.
Then MV spent ages messing with her blonde curls, before letting her hair
down as it had been when we left campus. When she was finished, she took a
look at me and said, “Jewelry.”
She wanted me to wear big hoop earrings. “Even Constance is wearing
earrings and a bracelet and she’s practically a Puritan.”
“I am not a Puritan,” Constance said. “I don’t need to decorate myself like
a Christmas tree every time I go out.”
“I don’t have pierced ears,” I said, “and those bracelets you’re looking at
are too, uhm, clanky for me. I don’t need anything.”
Mary Violet huffed out a breath. “Okay, baby steps.”
As she drove us to the party in her mother’s black Saab, I kept smoothing
the silky material of my dress and the soft shawl. The thought of seeing Lucky
made me so apprehensive I couldn’t pay attention to the conversation.
We took winding, dark roads into the hills and stopped at a gate with an
elderly guard at the booth. A narrow sign read
Greenwood Country Club
in small
white letters.
Mary Violet opened her window and said, “Hi, Mr. Haggerty.”
“Hi, sunshine,” he said and pushed a button so that the big gate swung
open. “Have a good time.”
“See you later.” Once we got through the gate, we drove along the golf
course. “Mr. Haggerty has been here since the dawn of man,” Mary Violet said.
“He once caught my mother and her friends skinny-dipping, and she still gets as
red as a tomato when she sees him. That’s why you should never skinny-dip near
home.”
“Thanks for your wisdom, MV,” Constance said.
“If you’re going to be so ungrateful, I’m going to stop sharing important
life lessons with you.” MV parked in a lot by a low building near swimming
pools that glowed aqua in the night. Another older and more impressive building
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
was set farther back.
Constance said, “This warehouse is the teen center.”
“They keep us away from the civilized people,” Mary Violet added.
Kids were getting out of cars and going into the building. The guys wore
suits, most of them with loosened ties and tennis shoes, and the girls darted to
great one another, like dragonflies in their vivid silk dresses. I recognized lots of
Birch Grove students. They looked much older dressed up like this.
“Does anyone ever crash these parties?” I asked. At my school there cops,
security guards, and cyclone fencing at every event.
“They can’t,” Constance said. “We know everyone and if an outsider even
drives into town, the sheriff stops them.”
We walked inside to a large dark hall. A DJ, stationed on a platform in the
corner, was spinning an indie tune that sounded familiar. Strings of lights
radiated out from central points on the ceiling, like starbursts.
Chairs, benches, and trees in large pots created nooks around the periphery
of the room. Tables with refreshments were set up at one end of the hall. At the
other was a stage with band equipment. Kids hung out in groups, laughing and
talking, with the ease of knowing they belonged.
I followed my friends. Constance turned back to me and said, “We always
find a good place to survey the terrain and then we go on reconnaissance
missions.”
Mary Violet said, “Have you been watching the Military Channel with your
dad again?”
“He wants to bond with me,” Constance said.
They claimed a bench near the DJ’s stand and we put our sweaters and
shawls there. Mary Violet and Constance left their clutches on the bench, trusting
that they’d be safe. I kept hold of my small bag, which held my keys.
We went to the refreshment table where people were ladling red punch
from big silver bowls to glasses.
“It’s the famous Greenwood Country Club punch,” Mary Violet said. “The
secret recipe is ginger ale, sugar, raspberry puree, lemon juice, orange juice, and
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
ice. In the old days, someone always put rum in it. Now the club’s so strict that
we have to drink outside like animals.”
Constance said, “You can’t drink anyway. You’re the designated driver.”
“They let you drink?” I asked.
“Only if everyone pretends it isn’t happening,” Constance said. “It’s part of
Greenwood’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil moral code.”
“Hey, guys!”
We turned to see Hattie coming toward us, holding hands with Jack.
Hattie’s tousled dark hair hung down her back and she wore a strapless scarlet
dress showed off her beautiful smooth skin. Glittering gold earrings with red
gems dangled from her lobes.
I felt a complicated pang of admiration for my friend’s beauty and hurt that
I would never be as pretty. I remembered Jack’s comment about the importance
of looks and wondered if he’d meant it snidely or sincerely.
Standing beside Hattie, Jack looked less ramshackle and more arty and
sophisticated. He wore a battered corduroy jacket over a t-shirt, ancient jeans and
black boots. He hadn’t shaved and his curly hair looked as if he’d come back