Bernie turned the page. “Here’s something.” And she cleared her voice and began to read. “We have dance lessons tomorrow in the gym. They’re going to teach us all the steps because we have a mixer in two weeks. I don’t want to go, because no one is going to want to dance with me, because I’m fat. Amethyst says I’m too clumsy to learn how to dance, anyway. I told the housemother I don’t want to go, but she said I had to. Everyone has to. I told her I couldn’t learn the steps, and she told me that was ridiculous. Then I told her that no one would dance with me, and she said that that was just plain silly. Lots of the boys liked me, and anyway, everyone had to dance with everyone else. It was the rules. I’m going to run away.”
Bernie stopped reading. “We never had dance lessons.”
“I hated the dances,” Marvin said. “My hands used to get all sweaty. It was embarrassing.”
Brandon stood up and stretched. “Well, I liked them. I used to sneak out and have a smoke with Daisy Dixon.”
“Just a smoke?” Bernie demanded.
Brandon grinned. “No.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Bernie.
Sean cleared his throat. Everyone turned toward him. “Can we get back to the journal please?”
“No problem,” Bernie said and resumed reading. By now the wind had picked up, and the rain was splattering the windows. “Let’s see.” She started running her finger down the pages as she scanned them. “More stuff about classes. She’s doing well in everything. More complaints about Amethyst and her friends.”
“Do we know who they are?” Clyde asked.
Bernie shook her head. “So far she hasn’t mentioned them by name.”
“Pity,” Clyde murmured as Bernie went back to the journal.
“Here’s another entry about the shadow lady. She says, ‘I saw her in the east wing near the kitchen. I’m never going to sneak food again.’ That would certainly cut down on midnight snacking,” Bernie noted as she went on. “Okay.” She continued turning pages. “Same old. Same old. Aha.” She stopped. “This is something new.”
Bernie continued reading. “Dear Diary, We had our first dancing lesson today. I knew I was going to hate it. All the other girls had pretty skirts and blouses on, and I just had my old stuff. Mrs. Richards practically had to push me into the room. And then I kept tripping over my own feet. Why do I have to learn to dance, anyway? No one is ever going to ask me. But the worst was when we had to dance with the boys. We formed two lines, and everyone had to rotate every five minutes or so. All the boys looked unhappy when they had to dance with me.”
“Poor thing,” Libby murmured.
“And then,” Bernie continued, “I danced with the headmaster’s son, Ken. He said he had heard a lot about me and that he had wanted to meet me. I thought he was just being polite, but when the dance ended, he said he’d meet me tomorrow by the maple tree outside the girls’ wing. He had something he wanted to show me.”
“Boy,” Brandon interjected. “If that isn’t a classic line, I don’t know what is.”
“Be quiet,” Bernie said to him. Then she coughed to clear her voice and went on. “I couldn’t sleep all night long. It’s probably nothing. His father probably told him to be nice to me. I mean, he’s so cute, so why should he pay attention to me?
“But I couldn’t help it, I put on my plaid gray kilt and my good red V-necked sweater and my Sunday loafers and my last pair of clean white kneesocks, anyway. I even used a little bit of Amethyst’s rouge on my cheeks. I hope she doesn’t find out, but I don’t see how she could, because it was just a little dab. Then I tried to get both sides of my hair to turn under the way the cool girls do, but one side kept flipping up. Good grief!
“I got there five minutes early even though I wanted to get there five minutes late. My mom says it’s always best to make the boys wait. Ken wasn’t there. I felt so silly standing there that I was going to leave, but then I looked up and saw Ken walking toward me. He was holding something out to me. A book. ‘I thought you’d like this,’ he said. It was a book of mythology, only this one was about the Celtic people.
“He said they had lots of stuff about Halloween in there, because that’s where it came from. I was so happy, I didn’t even say thank you. ‘Don’t you like it?’ Ken asked. I told him I loved it, that that was the best thing anyone had ever given me, and he smiled. He has a great smile. It turns out he likes books, too. He even likes fairy tales, which is fairly weird, but he’s going to give me some of the old ones. He says they’re different. Also, he said he can help me when I start Latin. We’re going to go for a walk tomorrow after dinner. I can hardly wait.”
“Looks like things are picking up for our Bessie,” Marvin said.
Bernie grunted as she kept reading. “Okay. Nothing about Amethyst or being homesick or schoolwork on the next five pages. They’re all about Ken. She says, ‘Ken gave me a book about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table today. Ken and I went for a walk, and we found some bright red leaves on the ground. Ken and I held hands. Ken is the cutest guy in the whole school.’ Here’s one page with Bessie Marak written all over it. Here’s another page with little hearts and the initials KM & BO written in them. Looks like our girl is in love. Okay. Here’s something. She says, ‘Ken kissed me.’”
“At last we’re getting to the good stuff,” Brandon said.
Bernie clucked. “Don’t you ever think about anything besides sex?”
“No. Not really. What does she say about it?” said Brandon.
“This. ‘Dear Diary, This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this except with my cousin Jerome when I was six. I was really worried that Ken’s braces and my braces would lock, but they didn’t. We kissed for a long time. It was lots better than I thought it would be. We only quit because we heard someone coming. I’m meeting him tomorrow night in the kitchen, and I don’t care about the shadow woman, even if she is creepy. I can’t believe I made out. I never thought it would happen to me!!!!’” Bernie paused. “That was a four-exclamation sentence,” she noted.
“Then Bessie goes on and says, ‘Amethyst was up when I came back to my room. She was smiling at me, which she never does. Talk about creepy. Anyway, she told me that she thought that Ken was real cute, and that I was very lucky to have a boyfriend like that, and maybe we could all go out together some time. I didn’t want to get her angry, so I told her that was a neat idea, even though I don’t think it is. I think it’s a very bad idea. Then she smiled at me again. I wish I had teddy.’”
“Trouble in paradise,” Libby commented.
“There always is,” Bernie observed, thinking back to some of her run-ins with women like Amethyst.
“Go on,” Clyde urged. “Tell us what happened.”
Bernie shook her head to clear it and continued. “Bessie’s next entry takes place the next day. It starts: ‘We met in the kitchen. It was really spooky. Lots of shadows, but Ken said I’m just imagining things. He says the shadow people are lots of bunk, so I shouldn’t be worried. I’m trying to do what he says, but I keep thinking I’m hearing somebody talking in my ear. I think she’s jealous that I’m going to be kissing Ken and she can’t kiss anyone. Or maybe shadow people do kiss, and we just don’t know it. We did lots of kissing, anyway. Ken says he’s going to get me a circle pin, and we’re going to go steady. That would be really neat.’”
Bernie looked up. “However, the next day she says, ‘I saw Amethyst talking to Ken at lunch. He was laughing. When I asked him what was so funny, he shrugged his shoulders and said she’d told him a joke and that he didn’t think she was as bad as he’d heard she was. I told him she was awful, and he said I was being silly and walked away. When I got back to my room, Amethyst was smirking at me. I told her to leave Ken alone, and she said, good grief, it was a free country, and that she was just talking to him. What was wrong with that? Maybe I’m being silly, but I don’t like this at all.’”
“I’d say her instincts are pretty good,” Sean com
mented.
Libby’s stomach rumbled. “Sorry,” she said, mortified.
Her dad laughed. “I think we could all use a little something to eat.”
“Cookies would be nice,” Clyde suggested.
“More than nice,” Konrad observed. “Especially the gingersnaps.”
That was the nice thing about baking, Libby thought. It made people happy.
For the next fifteen minutes, everyone helped themselves to the plates of chocolate chip cookies, gingersnaps, and molasses cookies, and to the decaffeinated tea and coffee that Libby and Amber brought up. Bernie got up, got a bottle of brandy from the bottom shelf of the cabinet, poured a little in her coffee, then passed the bottle around.
Konrad raised his cup. “A toast to Bessie,” he cried.
“To Bessie,” everyone repeated, and they clinked their cups and drank.
“To proving my cousin innocent,” Curtis said.
Everyone drank to that, too, but this time the response was less enthusiastic. Bernie poured another slug of brandy into her cup and passed the bottle around again. Then she took a sip, opened the journal back up to the page she’d marked, and began to speak.
“Okay,” she said. “The next page has more hearts with Ken’s and Bessie’s initials in them, except down at the bottom, where Bessie’s written Amethyst’s name and she’s drawn a hatchet through it. See?” Bernie passed the book around.
“Not a happy camper,” Clyde commented as he looked at the page.
“That’s because she knows what’s coming,” Amber said, “and she doesn’t know what to do about it.”
Bernie nodded her agreement as Libby handed the journal back to her. Bernie took another sip of her coffee and picked up where she had left off. “Dear Diary, I hate Amethyst. She says she wants to borrow the book on Norse mythology that Ken gave me. She says it’s so interesting, and maybe she and I can discuss it some time. I told her I didn’t want to lend it to her, and I guess she told Ken, because when I met him in the kitchen, he asked me why I wouldn’t give it to her. I tried to explain, but he said I was just being silly. He said she was just misunderstood, and that she had a really bad mother and lots of problems at home, and I had to be understanding, so I told him about the cupcakes, but he said that just proved his point. We spent all this time talking about Amethyst and almost no time kissing, and when we did kiss, it wasn’t very good. I could tell his mind wasn’t on what he was doing.”
Bernie turned the page. “The next day we have, ‘I think Ken likes Amethyst better than me. Yesterday I followed them. They didn’t see me, because I hid behind the bushes. And they walked down the path that Ken and I walked down. They were both laughing and talking. Amethyst doesn’t even like him. He’s not her type. And she has lots of boyfriends. She just wants him because I like him. It’s so unfair.’
“New entry. ‘Tonight I was supposed to meet Ken and take a walk. I got all dressed up and everything. I even set my hair in the rollers Mom brought me. Then he called on the house phone and told me he was sorry, but he couldn’t make it. Amethyst was really upset about her social studies test that was coming up—she didn’t understand the chapter—and he had to stay in and help her. I’m so mad I don’t know what to do. Amethyst smirked at me when she came in.
“'My mom says I should just ignore them both. That I’m just playing into Amethyst’s hands by doing what I’m doing, and that boys don’t like girls that run after them. Then she said that I’m much too young to be in a relationship, anyway, and that I’m at the Peabody School so I can better myself. She just doesn’t understand!!!!’ That’s another four-exclamation sentence.”
Bernie turned the page and read, “When I got back this afternoon, Amethyst had her friends in our room. They were laughing and drinking and smoking out the window. I think one of them was smoking weed. One of them was even sitting on my bed. I told them they couldn’t do that, and they all laughed some more and said they could do whatever they want.
“I was so mad I stomped out of the room, but on the way, I think I saw something on Amethyst’s dresser that said Social Studies final. I’m not sure, but I think I did. I’m going to check when we go to dinner. I was right. I did see it. Oh my God. I bet she stole it. Or maybe Ken gave it to her. That would be too horrible to contemplate. I don’t know what I’m going to do! I wish teddy was here.”
“Then what?” Marvin asked as Bernie paused to eat a part of her chocolate chip cookie.
Bernie wiped her hands on a napkin before continuing and perused the page. “Let’s see. We have more angst. No more hearts and initials. No more Bessie Marak. Instead, we have, ‘Last night Amethyst came in and told me she and Ken kissed in the kitchen, and that they’d done other things too, things that Ken really liked. I started to cry, and she laughed and said he had told her that he went with me because he felt sorry for me because no one else would because I was so fat, and that he doesn’t like me at all, and he thinks I smell bad, and all the kids are making fun of me.’” Bernie stopped reading for a moment and looked up. “You know, judging by the picture of her hanging on the wall in Amethyst’s apartment, Bessie wasn’t fat at all. She looked good.”
“Yeah,” Amber interjected. “But she didn’t know that. I bet Ken didn’t even say those things. I bet Amethyst made them up.”
“Possibly,” Bernie said. “No. Make that probably. Poor Bessie.” Her finger tapped the bottom of the page. “Her last entry on this page is, ‘I called Mom and told her I wanted to come home now, and she said I couldn’t, not until Christmas. I told her I had to and she should come and get me right now, and she told me that I had to learn to stand on my own two feet and take care of my own problems, and that I’d thank her later for doing this. Then she hung up. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’”
Bernie paused. “The next entry takes place two days later, which is the night before Halloween,” she said. “Here Bessie writes, ‘I’ve thought and thought, and I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell the headmaster all about Amethyst. I’m going to tell him about her drinking and smoking and sneaking out and not being in class and about the test and about how I think she stole teddy. Then they’ll kick her out, and things will be like they were before. I already told Ken, and I guess he told Amethyst, because she said I’d better not. I told her I would.
“'Then she said I wouldn’t dare. I told her I would do it tomorrow. She was trying on her costume for tomorrow night—she’s going as Lucy—and she turned to me and said, “No, you won’t.” Then she went back to looking at herself in the mirror. I don’t know why I’m scared. I’m just being silly. There’s nothing else she can do to me. She’s already ruined my life, because I’ll never get over Ken.’”
“She’s not going to have the chance,” Amber said.
“What does she write next?” Sean asked.
Bernie thumbed through the pages. “Nothing. She wrote her last entry the evening before Halloween. She died the next day.”
Everyone fell silent.
Chapter 28
Libby looked at the clock on the wall. It was a little after eleven, and from the way things were going, she wouldn’t get to sleep for quite a long while. She’d been up since six in the morning and had wanted to be in bed an hour ago. The good news was that Konrad, Curtis, and Amber had finally left, which gave everyone a little more breathing space, not to mention giving her ears a rest.
“I’m glad we don’t have to listen to the tape again,” Libby said. Once was enough. Twice was definitely way too much.
“I can’t imagine why,” Bernie retorted. “I love hearing static at ear-piercing levels, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” Marvin said. “And I’m sure Amber’s mom will feel the same.”
“Yes, she’s going to be very welcoming,” said Bernie. She could see Amber’s mom’s prune face now. There was no way that Konrad and Curtis and the tape deck were going to get into Amber’s house at eleven o’clock at night.
Clyde reached for anot
her chocolate chip cookie. “A definite case of the emperor’s new clothes, if you ask me.”
“Well,” Libby said, stifling a yawn, “Amber claims she heard Bessie saying, ‘That’s private. Don’t read my journal.’”
Bernie snorted as she slipped off her boots and lined them up next to the sofa. “First of all, she wouldn’t have said journal. She would have said diary. And secondly, you’d think she’d want us to read it.”
Marvin leaned forward and snagged another cookie from the platter on the coffee table. “She probably thinks it makes her look bad.”
Libby turned and stared at Marvin.
Two dots of color appeared on Marvin’s cheeks. “That’s what she’d be feeling if she existed,” he stammered.
“But she doesn’t,” Sean said. “She did, but she doesn’t now. Otherwise, we might as well consult the Ouija board. It would be faster.”
“My dad has one of those in the attic. I can get it if you want,” said Marvin.
“I’m kidding, Marvin,” said Sean.
Sean patted the pocket in his pants where his cigarettes were hiding. He would give anything to have one now. They’d always helped him think. Picked him up and clarified his thoughts. In the old days, he’d tell Rose he was going to answer an emergency call, and then he’d drive a little ways, park on one of the town’s side streets, light up, and stare into nothingness. He’d always gotten his best ideas that way. Now, of course, that was impossible, because one or another of the girls was always hovering over him. At least, he thought, I’m well enough now, so I can walk down the stairs if I hold the banister and use a cane. Remission was a beautiful thing, and he was going to do as much as he could for as long as he could.
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