The Unwanted

by John Saul

  “Sure they do. We all grew up together.”

  “What … what if they don’t like me?”

  Eric looked at Cassie curiously. “Why wouldn’t they like you? There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?”

  Cassie hesitated, then shook her head. “But I’m new. And at home whenever someone new came in, everyone … well, everyone just sort of ignored them at first. You know what I mean?”

  Eric shrugged. “I guess. But nobody’s going to ignore you. I know everyone, and I’ll introduce you around. Who’s your homeroom teacher?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to go to the principal’s office to find out.”

  “Right. It’s on the main floor, on the left. There’s only two classes in our grade, so if you’re not in my homeroom, I’ll see you at lunch. Okay?”

  Cassie nodded, and started up the steps toward the front doors of the school, threading her way through the groups of students chattering among themselves before their first classes began. As she passed among them, they all fell silent around her, as if her very presence had silenced them. Then she stopped, her back tingling once again with the eerie sensation of eyes watching her. The memory of the crowd in front of the church the day before was still fresh in her mind, and when Cassie turned, she wasn’t surprised to see the same blond girl staring once again, her angry eyes fixed coldly on her. She was a little smaller than Cassie. When Cassie met her gaze, the other girl quickly looked away, then moved over to Eric Cavanaugh, and slipped her arm through his.

  Suddenly Cassie thought she understood. The other girl must be Eric’s girlfriend, and she must have thought Cassie was trying to cut in on her. But before she could go over and say anything, the first bell rang and the students on the steps began pushing through the front doors. Eric, with the blond girl still clinging to his arm, disappeared into the building.

  When Cassie entered the principal’s office a few minutes later, a friendly looking woman of about forty peered up at her over the tops of horned-rimmed half glasses and smiled cheerfully.

  “Good morning. I’m Patsy Malone, and you must be Cassandra Winslow.”

  Cassie’s head bobbed. “H-how did you know?”

  “You’re the only new face I’ve seen in seven months,” the woman replied. “Besides, your stepmother called us last week. You can go right on in—Mrs. Ambler is waiting for you.”

  For the first time, Cassie noticed the door to an adjoining office; CHARLOTTE AMBLER was neatly stenciled onto the opaque glass set into its upper half. She hesitated, then twisted the knob without knocking. As she slipped inside, though, she could feel Patsy Malone still watching her.

  Charlotte Ambler looked up from the papers on her desk, then removed her reading glasses and let them drop. They were fastened to her neck with a heavy gold chain, which was the only jewelry she ever wore. The glasses came to rest on her ample bosom; she had grown so used to having them there that she rarely noticed them anymore, sometimes searching her desk for several minutes before she remembered where to find them. Once, to her chagrin, her secretary had caught her unconsciously putting the glasses on in an effort to make the search for them easier. Though the secretary had said nothing, Mrs. Ambler noted that she was unable to keep from grinning. The next day she’d brought an extra pair of glasses to her office. “So I’ll have something to find when I start hunting,” she’d explained. As Charlotte hoped, by the end of the day the story had spread through the school, and her carefully nurtured reputation for being just a little vague had grown a little larger.

  Charlotte Ambler, though, was anything but vague, and as she rose from her desk to greet her newest student, she used the two seconds to size up the girl who stood nervously next to the door.

  “Troubled” was the first word that came to Mrs. Ambler’s mind, but she quickly dismissed it. Given Cassie Winslow’s circumstances, it would be remarkable if she looked anything but troubled. “Is it Cass, or Cassie?” she asked.

  “Cassie.”

  “Good,” Charlotte replied, smiling warmly. “Cassandra’s a lovely name, but a bit formal. And Cass is too short. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Cassie moved across the small office and lowered herself into the wooden captain’s chair next to Charlotte Ambler’s desk. “Well, what do you think of things so far? False Harbor isn’t much like California, is it? And I guarantee you that our school is different from the one you went to at home.”

  Cassie’s eyes widened in surprise. “How do you know about Harrison?”

  “I don’t, really,” Mrs. Ambler admitted. “But according to your records, you were ranked fifty-fifth in a class of over four hundred. That makes your class alone twice as large as our entire school. It’s got to be different.” As she spoke, she opened a thick folder on her desk and put her glasses back on.

  “What’s that?” Cassie blurted out, and Mrs. Ambler glanced up once more.

  “Your records. Harrison’s computer transferred them to ours on Friday afternoon. Amazing, isn’t it? It used to be that you couldn’t count on records arriving at all. Now they send you more than you could ever want. Sometimes I wonder if computers are really a blessing at all.”

  As Charlotte Ambler went back to the file on her desk, Cassie sat perfectly still. She stiffened as the principal’s brows rose slightly at something she’d read in the file, but the woman said nothing, merely flipped through a few more pages then leaned back and smiled at her. “Well, it doesn’t look as though you and I are going to be spending too much time together,” she said. “According to these, you managed to get through almost three years at Harrison with no problems at all. Mind telling me what your secret was?”

  Cassie felt her face flushing. “I—I guess I just never had time to get in trouble,” she said. “I just went to school, and then went home and studied.”

  Charlotte Ambler cocked her head. “Then you were something special,” she remarked. “The way I hear it, most of the big schools are having all kinds of problems now. It seems some of the students only come to school about half the time,” she added pointedly.

  Cassie said nothing, but her heart sank. Apparently someone had noticed all those afternoons she’d cut.

  Though she’d been careful to keep her tone light, the principal had watched Cassie’s face carefully as she spoke, and she was certain her words had struck home.

  Cassie said nothing. After a few seconds of silence that seemed to her to go on forever, Mrs. Ambler finally spoke again.

  “I’m putting you into Mrs. Leeds’s class for your homeroom, and as it happens, we were able to work in most of the same classes you were taking at Harrison, except for Advanced Art. I’m afraid we’re just not big enough to offer anything past Art Two, and that’s only for seniors. We can either give you a drama class or a study hall.”

  “Study hall,” Cassie said immediately. This time there was no mistaking Mrs. Ambler’s frown.

  “Drama might be a better way to get acquainted with people,” she suggested, but Cassie only shook her head. Charlotte Ambler hesitated, then decided not to push the issue. She made a note on an enrollment card, then handed it to Cassie. “Just give this to Mrs. Malone and go on along to room 207, upstairs at the other end of the hall. Mrs. Leeds already knows you’re coming.” She stood and started around her desk to walk Cassie to the door, but Cassie was already on her feet. Clutching the registration cards in her hand, she hurried out of the office.

  Charlotte Ambler waited a few seconds, then sat down at her desk again and reopened Cassie Winslow’s file. Slowly, wanting to miss nothing, she read it through for the third time.

  All she could see were the records of a very bright girl whose only problem was that she had never truly applied herself to her schoolwork.

  “Highly imaginative,” “very creative mind,” and “potential beyond her performance” were the phrases her teachers had most often used to evaluate Cassie. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for her lackadaisical attendance record, Charlotte assumed tha
t Cassie would have been at the very top of her class.

  Then why was it that the moment Cassie had come into her office, all the instincts Charlotte had developed over the years immediately set her antenna to quivering?

  “Troubled” was the word that had come instantly to the principal’s mind. And now, as she sat alone in her office, reflecting on Cassie Winslow’s arrival in False Harbor, the idea still hung in the atmosphere. For some reason Charlotte Ambler couldn’t quite put her finger on, she was certain that Cassie Winslow was going to cause trouble.

  Cassie paused in front of room 207, then pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  The room was small, and looked old-fashioned. Instead of the green chalkboards she was used to at Harrison, the walls at Memorial High were covered with old-fashioned slate blackboards. Dark-stained wainscotting rose four feet up from the floor; above, the walls were painted a stark white. The wood-framed windows, double hung from the wainscotting to the ceiling and running the full length of the eastern wall, were covered with ancient venetian blinds, and the old student desks were solid wood, their surfaces deeply carved by the knives and ballpoint pens of generations of students.

  Mrs. Leeds sat at a large wooden desk at the front of the room, severe-looking in a dark blue suit and high heels. At home Cassie’s teachers had dressed almost as casually as the students themselves, but there was nothing casual about Mrs. Leeds.

  As the door closed behind her, the rustling of papers in the room suddenly stopped as one by one the students swung around to gaze curiously at the new student. Cassie did her best to smile under the scrutiny of her classmates, but almost immediately she spotted the girl who had been staring at her that morning. She was sure that the blonde, whoever she was, had already been talking about her to the rest of the kids.

  After what seemed an eternity to Cassie, Mrs. Leeds finally spoke. “There’s a seat next to Eric Cavanaugh. Why don’t you sit there?” Cassie saw Eric nodding to her, but beyond him she could also see the blond girl, her eyes flashing wrathfully. Cassie quickly scanned the room for another vacant seat, but there were none, so she reluctantly moved up the aisle and slid into the seat. As she did, she saw the blonde lean over and whisper something to Eric.

  “I’m afraid you’ve arrived in the middle of a test,” Mrs. Leeds went on. “Of course, I won’t expect you to take it—”

  “What’s it on?” Cassie asked without really thinking.

  The teacher hesitated a moment. “History,” she said finally. “The Vietnam war.”

  Once again Cassie found herself speaking without intending to. “I don’t mind taking the test,” she said, and in the silence that followed, she felt the class scrutinizing her again.

  “All right,” Mrs. Leeds agreed. “But if you don’t do well, I won’t count it.” Her eyes left Cassie and swept the rest of the class. “That doesn’t go for the rest of you, so you’d better get back to work.” She approached Cassie’s desk and handed her four sheets of paper stapled together in the upper-left-hand corner. “Don’t worry about finishing. There’s only twenty minutes left. Do you have your registration card?”

  Cassie nodded silently, handed the card to the teacher, then focused her attention on the exam. It was a combination of true and false and multiple choice questions, and covered the same material Cassie had studied in California only a month earlier. Fishing in her bag for a pen, she started working.

  There were still five minutes left in the hour when Cassie finished. She looked around, surprised to see that most of the class was still concentrating on the quiz. Finally she looked at Mrs. Leeds, who smiled sympathetically and beckoned her to the front of the room.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have let you take it after all,” the teacher said quietly when Cassie was next to her.

  “It’s all right,” Cassie replied. “I’m finished.”

  Frowning, Sarah Leeds took the quiz from Cassie and quickly compared it to the answer key on her desk. Her brows rose appreciatively as she marked an A in the corner of the paper. “Three minutes,” she announced to the class, and with a wink at Cassie, added, “and I might as well tell you that you have some new competition. Cassie Winslow has finished the test in twenty minutes, with only one wrong answer.”

  The silence that fell over the class this time was resentful rather than curious, and Cassie quickly realized her mistake. She shouldn’t have finished the test—shouldn’t have taken it at all. But now it was too late. Though she couldn’t bring herself to look at the rest of the kids, she could feel them all staring at her with the same hostility that earlier had come only from the girl next to Eric.

  She could practically hear what they were thinking: Her first day, and she’s already trying to look better than us.

  Then—mercifully—the bell rang, and suddenly the class was on its feet, milling around Cassie as the students dropped their test papers onto Mrs. Leeds’s desk before churning out into the hall on their way to their next classes. Only when the room was empty did Cassie start toward the door.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” she heard Mrs. Leeds ask, and stopped short, realizing that she didn’t. She turned back to see the teacher writing quickly on a piece of paper.

  “Here’s your schedule, with all the room numbers and names of your teachers.” Mrs. Leeds handed her a scribbled list. “And don’t worry about the test. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I spoke before I thought. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Cassie replied after a slight pause. “I just … well, tests have always been easy for me. I just remember things.”

  “Like Eric Cavanaugh,” Mrs. Leeds observed. “I’ll bet he finished in twenty minutes, too, and I suspect he got a perfect score. But I’ll bet I’m the only one who knows how quick he is. He always spends the whole hour going over and over his answers, pretending he’s having trouble.” She winked at Cassie. “You might try that trick.”

  Cassie nodded, then hurried out of the room as the warning bell for the next period sounded in the crowded halls. She glanced at the paper in her hand and began working her way toward the staircase at the end of the hall. Suddenly she was bumped from behind and felt herself losing her balance. She reached out, grabbed the banister of the stairwell, and turned to face the person who had bumped into her.

  “Can’t you watch where you’re going?” a voice demanded.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie blurted, then recognized the blonde with the angry eyes. Once again the girl was glaring at her.

  “You should be sorry,” the girl replied. “And you shouldn’t be trying to show us all up just because you’re from California either!”

  “I didn’t mean to do anything—” Cassie began, but the girl cut her off.

  “And if you think Eric’s going to look out for you just because he lives next door to you, you’re wrong! He doesn’t even like you. Now, would you mind getting out of my way?”

  The girl pushed past Cassie, running down the stairs to catch up with two other girls, who were waiting for her on the landing below. As Cassie started down the flight, the other girls disappeared from her view and she heard a burst of laughter.

  They were talking about her. It was only her first day, but they were already talking about her.

  She told herself it didn’t matter, tried to convince herself that she wouldn’t even see the girls again.

  Except that when she found her second-period classroom, there was only one seat left, and in the next seat the blond girl sat whispering with someone on the other side of the aisle.

  “I didn’t mean to show anyone up,” Cassie said as she slid into the seat. “My name’s Cassie. Cassie Winslow.”

  The girl glared at her. “I know your name,” she replied, her voice mocking. “We all do. We just don’t care!” Then, twisting in her seat so her back was to Cassie, she went on with her conversation.

  For the next hour Cassie sat stiffly at her desk, staring straight ahead.

  She would give it until lunch
time. But if things weren’t any better by then—if something good didn’t happen—she wouldn’t be back in her classes when lunch was over.

  Rosemary glanced at the clock above the kitchen sink. She still had half an hour before the shop had to be open. Just enough time to change the beds and get the laundry started. She hurried up the stairs, then paused outside the closed door to Cassie’s room.

  Memories of the previous night came flooding back to her.

  Maybe she should ignore Cassie’s room, and leave a note for Cassie to change her bed when she got home from school.

  But that was ridiculous. All she was going to do was make the bed. Surely Cassie couldn’t resent anything as simple as that, could she?

  Making up her mind, she turned the knob and opened the door. The first thing she noticed was the chill in the room, and her eyes immediately found the open window. She walked the length of the room quickly and was about to close the window when she noticed the bent coat hanger holding the screen open. She paused, frowning at the mangled piece of wire, trying to imagine what it might be for. Finally, deciding that perhaps the screen had been rattling during the night and that Cassie had propped it open rather than wiring it shut, she took the coat hanger out, rehooked the screen, and shut the window.

  Then Rosemary went to the bed and began to pull the quilt back, intending to straighten the bottom sheet.

  An angry screech filled the room as the quilt came away from the bed, and a grayish form rose off the mattress and hurled itself at her. Instinctively she raised her right arm to shield her face, and a split second later felt the burning heat of claws sinking into the flesh of her wrist.

  Barely able to stifle a scream of pain and shock, she jerked her arm away from the cat’s claws and leaped backward. The cat dropped to the floor then shot across the room toward the window, leaping up to the sill as if it expected to be able to slip outside. Thwarted, it turned back, arching its back and hissing.

  Rosemary gasped, suddenly understanding why the screen had been propped open.