The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

by Claire Legrand

  Feeling much better about things, Victoria reached the Prewitt house and rapped with the knocker. A minute passed and no one came. Victoria tapped her foot against the porch. Lawrence had probably overslept or something. Of course.

  She knocked again. She knocked three times. She knocked four times.

  Victoria frowned at the door. She tried to look in the side windows, but the drapes and blinds were closed. She looked around the corners of the house into the ivy gardens. A hose had been left on, streaming water into a soggy mess of ruined flowers and overturned gnomes. Victoria wrinkled her nose at the smell of gook and slime, and turned off the spigot.

  She went back to the porch and shouted, “Hello.” She ignored the knocker and pounded on the door with her fist.

  The door glided open, and the person standing there stared down at Victoria in silence.

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Prewitt?”

  Mr. Prewitt smiled at Victoria like someone had pins in the corners of his mouth and was slowly pulling them back toward his ears. It looked just like a smile should look. In fact, it looked better—wide and bright and shining.

  “Hello, Victoria,” Mr. Prewitt said. “How nice to see you. What can I do for you today?”

  Victoria blinked. “What do you mean?”

  Behind him, Mrs. Prewitt appeared, stirring something in a bowl.

  “Hello, Victoria,” she said, in the same crisp, cheerful tone as Mr. Prewitt. “How nice to see you. What can I do for you today?”

  Victoria took a step back and narrowed her eyes. “I’m supposed to meet Lawrence and walk to school, of course.”

  Mrs. Prewitt nodded and stirred. Mr. Prewitt said, “I’m sorry, Victoria. Lawrence isn’t here.”

  “Well, where is he?” said Victoria.

  Mrs. Prewitt paused her stirring. Mr. Prewitt tapped his finger against the door. Cold raced past Victoria, and she couldn’t tell if it was from outside the house or inside the house. Either way, she pulled her coat tighter.

  “He’s visiting his grandmother upstate,” said Mr. Prewitt at last. “She’s gotten sick. Pneumonia, you know. Poor thing. She loves little Lawrence.”

  “She loves him,” added Mrs. Prewitt, smiling. She started stirring again.

  Victoria tried to inspect their faces, but they looked pretty normal: Mr. Prewitt distinguished and bald, Mrs. Prewitt, striking and dark headed. Victoria couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly, made her think something was very wrong.

  “Well, when will he get—?” Victoria said, but before she could finish, Mr. Prewitt took her by the shoulders and helped her off the porch. His hands pinched her skin.

  “Off with you,” he said, flashing his grinning teeth. Behind him, Mrs. Prewitt smiled and stirred. “You wouldn’t want to be late for school, now, would you?”

  “But—”

  “Be good,” Mr. Prewitt said, patting her head. The last things Victoria saw before the door clicked shut were the Prewitts’ flashing smiles.

  Victoria stood there for a long time, frowning at the doorknob.

  “What was that about?” she said, but no one answered. It was quiet. It was too quiet. The porch gleamed with fresh white paint and bright red flowers, and for some reason, Victoria didn’t find it pretty at all.

  “Good-bye,” a muffled voice said—Mr. Prewitt, tapping on the window over and over. Beside him, Mrs. Prewitt smiled and waved.

  “Good-bye,” said Victoria, waving back. She walked away quickly, a sharp, sick feeling tickling her insides. Why she didn’t know. Mr. and Mrs. Prewitt looked normal, except perhaps for those too-bright, too-perfect smiles. But they could have just been very happy today. Maybe it was nice to have some peace and quiet without Lawrence banging around with his Mozart and Bach. Victoria wouldn’t blame them for that.

  All the same, an unsettled feeling rolled around in her stomach. It felt like when Beatrice stacked one of Victoria’s boxes the wrong way after dusting; Victoria could always tell something was off, the moment she stepped in the room.

  At the street corner, she looked back over her shoulder. The Prewitts hadn’t followed her; Mr. Tibbalt’s dog must have gone inside; the Home’s gate remained shut. Nothing was there except for a pair of those same big black bugs, skittering across the street toward the Prewitt house. Victoria wrinkled her nose and turned away.

  On the way to school, Victoria thought about what the Prewitts had said. Old people did get pneumonia. Victoria seemed to remember something about a grandmother a couple of Christmases ago. It all added up. Mostly.

  So, she had to walk to school alone. Well, there had been days before when Lawrence was sick or something. It was nothing to worry about.

  Soon enough, she stopped wondering about the Prewitts and how long Lawrence would be upstate. Instead, for the rest of the week, she thought about her dilemma.

  On Wednesday, when she allowed herself to reconsider forgery, she had to spend lunch trying not to be sick in the restroom. Forgery. The word sounded dirty. She had never thought she would turn criminal. It was messy to be a criminal.

  On Thursday, Victoria noticed two things:

  1. Professor Alban’s hair seemed more frazzled each day, like he had been experimenting with electrical currents. (Normally Professor Alban looked very together. Victoria wrinkled her nose to see him so decidedly apart. His eyes kept darting all around like he was trying to hide from something.)

  2. Donovan O’Flaherty was absent.

  To most of the students, this was particularly tragic. Donovan defied the Academy’s zero-tolerance policy on sweets to sneak in Mallow Cakes on Thursdays and cram as many into his mouth as possible during seventh-year lunch. Everyone thought it a spectacle of grand and entertaining proportions (except for Victoria, who thought it merely repulsive). The administration had tried every form of discipline, but nothing fazed Donovan. He got chubbier and chubbier every year till bits of flesh had recently started poking out of his clothes, but he still crammed the cakes in every Thursday. The seventh-year students laughed and cheered him on as sugar and icing dribbled down his face, but not because they liked him.

  But at lunch that Thursday, no one said, “Where’s O’Flabby?” or made disappointed noises because they had no disgusting display to watch and laugh about.

  In fact, no one said a word about Donovan O’Flabby’s absence. No one seemed to notice, except for Victoria.

  Probably ate himself to death, she thought savagely. And good riddance.

  A small part of Victoria’s mind thought it a bit of a coincidence for Lawrence and Donovan to be absent at the same time. Donovan never missed a Thursday, after all. Victoria knew that because every Thursday, she would sit stewing in fury as everyone made fools out of themselves to give him the Mallow Cakes they had snuck in, to make sure he had enough.

  Then Victoria thought about Jacqueline being gone too. The more she tried to focus on these thoughts, however, the fuzzier they became. She could not quite remember what Jacqueline looked like. And Donovan—what did he like to eat again? Who was Donovan? The harder she tried to think about them, the faster she lost her grip. It was like trying to hold on to a slippery bar of soap.

  But when Lawrence’s face popped into her mind, it was clear and steady. She had no trouble focusing on the memory of his face and how he shuffled alongside her when they walked together in the mornings and how he hummed to himself when he was happy.

  After thinking about Lawrence, she found that she could think about Jacqueline and Donovan better too—Donovan with his white, shiny face and crumby lips, and Jacqueline with tangled hair in her eyes and pen ink scribbled across her arms.

  I’m just nervous because of the report, she told herself firmly, frowning at her lunch tray and trying to ignore the panicky feeling in her throat. I’m not losing my memory, I’m only stressed is all. That stupid B is making me lose focus.

  All the same, a niggling bother of a thought kept scratching at the corner of Victoria’s mind as she chewed her sa
ndwich. She scanned the room, past the table where she sat alone. It seemed to Victoria that the cafeteria was emptier than usual, at least by a few heads. Of course, she couldn’t say for sure; she’d never really paid enough attention to who sat where and with whom and all that foolishness, and anyway, it was too noisy for her to concentrate.

  Still, something was not quite right. It was that same box-stacked-the-wrong-way feeling. Victoria put down her sandwich and pushed it away. Bad batch of lunch meat today, she decided.

  On Friday, Victoria knocked on the Prewitts’ door just like she had for the past three days. Again Mr. Prewitt opened the door with a smile and patted Victoria’s head. Again Mrs. Prewitt stood smiling and stirring. And again Lawrence was upstate.

  “But—” Victoria said, getting frustrated. She needed Lawrence to go with her to Professor Carroll’s office that morning. If Professor Carroll didn’t change her grade, she would have to show her parents the report. She couldn’t forge their signatures; she just couldn’t commit a criminal act. It had kept her up the last few nights, as had the tree outside her window with its strangely metallic taps.

  “Lawrence’s grandmother loves him so much,” said Mrs. Prewitt reassuringly.

  “But when will he be back?” Victoria insisted, and she stamped her foot before she could stop herself.

  The stamp must have triggered something. Cold rushed in, blowing the door open. For a flash of a second, Mr. and Mrs. Prewitt’s pretty smiles changed into enormous, wolfish grins. Mrs. Prewitt’s fingers clutched her bowl so hard that it smashed into pieces. Hundreds of fat black berries rolled across the floor like bugs. Victoria stared and wondered if they really were bugs, because some of them seemed a bit . . . leggy.

  “Lawrence will be back as soon as he’s ready,” said Mr. Prewitt, his voice strangely quiet, his smile stiff and bright. Mrs. Prewitt stepped next to Mr. Prewitt, her shiny shoes squashing the berries. They stank like food gone bad, burning Victoria’s nose.

  “It’s so nice of you to ask, Victoria,” said Mrs. Prewitt. She smiled, folding her hands at her waist. Her face and eyes were sharper, harder. “Lawrence is lucky to have such a caring friend.”

  Victoria refused to be frightened by them and their rotten berries and their strange, wolfish smiles. Instead, she said, “Thank you so much, I’m so sorry to be a bother, please do tell Lawrence I miss him,” and smiled and shook their cold, hard hands just to be extra polite. Then she walked away with her head held high.

  “Such a nice girl,” Mr. Prewitt whispered to his wife.

  Victoria pretended not to notice the goose bumps down her back. She tried not to think about how she had been afraid just then. She tried not to think about Lawrence. She thought only of her B. Focus, Victoria, she told herself over and over till her hands stopped shaking. Focus.

  Later that day, the lunch bell rang at eleven forty-five. Victoria rushed from biology to the restroom and waited for traffic to die down. Then she peeked out and snuck across the south courtyard to Building Five, where the music rooms were. This almost sent her into fits. Sneaking around during lunch was definitely not allowed.

  Lawrence loved Building Five. He often said it felt more like home than his own home.

  Victoria had always thought that a silly thing to say, but now it seemed strangely endearing. Lawrence’s face popped into her head—his lazy eyes, his messy hair, his crooked smile. She missed his humming.

  At Building Five’s front doors, she said to herself, “What? I don’t miss his humming.” She tugged hard on the doors and stepped inside.

  As she walked, she hid her report behind her back, even though the halls were empty. The idea of what she was about to do terrified her so completely that she couldn’t bring herself to care about the scuttling black shapes following her in the line where the floor met the walls. The whole town could be infested with bugs and it wouldn’t matter. As long as she could get her A, she’d put up with a thousand bugs a thousand times over.

  She knocked on Professor Carroll’s door. No one answered. Before she lost her nerve, she set her jaw and let herself in.

  Sunlight streamed through dirty windows into the main classroom, where pianos lined the walls and stood in rows across the room—black baby grands, open and waiting, keys shining. Sheet music covered everything in teetering stacks, strewn across keyboards, trailing between bench legs.

  Victoria wrinkled her nose at the unseemly chaos. After picking her way through fallen music stands and frayed violin bows, she found Professor Carroll in his office. The nameplate on his door hung crooked.

  “Professor Carroll?” Victoria said.

  He sat at his desk with his back to Victoria, facing a window overlooking the Academy lawn.

  She tried again, her palms sweating. She hoped the report’s ink didn’t smear. “Professor Carroll?”

  Professor Carroll turned slowly around in his chair.

  “Miss Wright,” he said in a voice much cheerier than Victoria had ever heard him use. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Well, I—” began Victoria, but she had to stop and stare, because Professor Carroll’s too-wide, too-bright smile was just the same as the Prewitts’ too-wide, too-bright smiles. The smile had frozen with his teeth just slightly apart. His eyes gleamed like they had been freshly polished.

  Beneath the reams of paper scattered across Professor Carroll’s desk, something rustled. Three pens rolled off the desk and hit the floor.

  Victoria jumped back.

  Professor Carroll’s hand whipped out and smacked the moving paper.

  The paper fell silent.

  “Well?” Professor Carroll said, tilting his head at Victoria. “Do speak, Miss Wright.”

  Victoria leaned in closer for a good, hard dazzle. “Are you all right? Because you don’t seem like it.”

  “I’m doing quite well, thank you, Miss Wright. What about you?”

  Victoria thrust the report at him before she could talk herself out of it. “I got a B this quarter.”

  Professor Carroll slowly looked down at the report. “Ah, yes, I see that.”

  Victoria took a deep breath, ignoring the cold in the room and the papers on the desk, which had started rustling again and clicking and scratching.

  “I was wondering if I could do any sort of extra credit to—”

  “No need to worry about that, Miss Wright,” said Professor Carroll as he delicately took the report from her. He used the Academy deblotter to erase the horrid B and stamp an A in its place. He uncapped his pen and scribbled new comments about Victoria’s dedication to her craft.

  “Such a good, well-behaved girl,” Professor Carroll went on. As he spoke, he changed her grade in his ledger from B to A. “Good girls who do as they’re told get all sorts of treats. Remember that, won’t you? Remember how I helped you.”

  It seemed too easy, but Victoria didn’t dare interrupt. Staring at the A, she could hardly breathe. Her heart soared. It was done. She stared at the fresh black A. Everything should have been perfect. With this A, her future was now safe. She could show her parents a spotless report, and they would smile proudly and show her off to their friends, who of course had much less remarkable children. And best of all, Victoria could now look Jill Hennessey right in the eye and gloat—tastefully, of course. One mustn’t be obnoxious.

  But that same sick feeling churned in Victoria’s stomach as she took the report from Professor Carroll. He sat there, staring at her and smiling. It wasn’t right, that smile. They weren’t right, those hard, gleaming eyes.

  “Really, is something wrong?” she said.

  “Now, now,” said Professor Carroll, “off with you. Leave me alone.” He turned back to the window, tapping his fingers on the papers, which rustled happily. He bobbed his head from side to side and hummed a minuet. It reminded Victoria of Lawrence, and she couldn’t seem to move her feet to leave.

  Suddenly, Professor Carroll said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” His voice sounded more normal tha
t time—not as cheery, and more like the professor who drilled them on scales. He jerked around in his chair and fell silent.

  Victoria stared at him. “Sorry for what?” she whispered.

  But Professor Carroll only smiled and sighed, much calmer now, and said, “Ah,” as if welcoming home an old friend. His smile stretched even wider.

  Several sets of gleaming black feelers poked out of the rustling papers to curl around Professor Carroll’s petting fingers.

  Horrified, Victoria turned and ran.

  THAT FRIDAY AFTERNOON, WHEN THE LAST BELL rang at three o’clock, Victoria rushed home through the beginnings of a storm, the sky tinged a sick, yellow color. She dodged piles of wet autumn leaves, slammed open the gate, and raced up the front steps of her house. With each step, she pushed the memory of Professor Carroll’s buggy fingers further out of her mind. Don’t think about it, Victoria, don’t think about it.

  “Victoria?” said Beatrice, from the kitchen.

  “What’s all that awful noise?” said Mrs. Wright from her parlor.

  But Victoria didn’t stop till she reached her bedroom. She shut the door, sat on the edge of her bed, and took out the report from her book bag.

  She stared at it, breathing hard, her throat stinging from the stormy air. There it was: A. “Victoria is one of my best students” read Professor Carroll’s new, scrawled comments.

  Victoria’s fingers trembled as she read those words over and over. They were a lie. She wasn’t one of Professor Carroll’s best students. Lawrence was.

  Lawrence, who hummed while he walked. Lawrence, who laughed and told Victoria she was funny, even though she certainly never tried to be.

  The words began to blur. Soon they were a soup of black and beige. Victoria let the report float to the ground and began to cry.

  All her life, Victoria had never been one for tears. When people cried, it made her uncomfortable. People who cried couldn’t handle their lives, and Victoria could always handle everything. Plus, crying messed up your face. It was disorderly and inconvenient.

  But she couldn’t help these tears. She didn’t miss Lawrence. She couldn’t. Victoria Wright had only one friend, and he wasn’t even a real friend; he was a project, someone to fix and whip into shape. Nevertheless, she could not stop thinking about him. Even with the beautiful A in her hands, which should have been all that mattered, Victoria could only wonder where Lawrence had gone and what those bugs had been doing on Professor Carroll’s desk and what the reason for this insufferable feeling in her chest was, this feeling of everything being not quite right. She wiped her cheeks till they hurt and balled her hands into fists and dazzled the floor in front of her, but the awful feeling wouldn’t go away.