Haunted

by Alexandra Inger

  “Yours is. Raven.” I reached out as if to touch it, but he flinched away from me.

  His face changed. He seemed flustered.

  “I should go. You haven’t touched your food. I’m interrupting yet again.”

  And just like that he was gone.

  I was stung. Had I overstepped some boundary? Was I a complete fool to think - to hope - that something was happening between us and that we were both feeling something beyond friendship? He just had recited a beautiful love poem to me. Was I stupid to think? Or was it just his peculiar, antiquated way of expressing himself and I had misinterpreted? I was burning with humiliation and could think of nothing I’d rather do than die at that moment.

  But since there was nothing I could do, I flung myself down on my bed and lay there in a state of catatonia until sleep finally, mercifully took me. My salad and my dessert sat on my desk untouched.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was now Friday and plenty of students had started to arrive. I feared that I had passed my last quiet night in this dorm and it was to be chaos from here on in. I had been hearing some sort of commotion down at the other end of the hall near the shower room all morning, and since I needed to shower anyway, I thought it would be a good excuse to investigate.

  I padded down the hallway in my bathrobe carrying my little basket of soap and shampoo, when a tall black haired girl with porcelain skin and navy blue eyes poked her head out of her room, saw me, gasped a little and exclaimed, “I see a new girl!” Then she started calling in a sing-songy voice, “NEW GIRL! NEW GIRL! Everyone come look at the NEW GIRL!” I was taken aback, she was so loud I’m sure everyone for a square mile must have heard her, but she was grinning at me from ear to ear. Then a redhead popped out from the room behind her.

  “Hello!” I greeted them both, hoping they would be friends, not foes.

  “Hey! Welcome to Hell! Ha ha – just kidding! What’s your name?”

  “Catherine,” I said.

  “I’m Cheryl and this is Lisa. What room are you in?” the black haired one just grinned and grinned while the redhead stood behind her as if sizing me up.

  “The last one at the end of the hall,” I replied.

  “Oh my god!” she exclaimed as if I had told her I’d been bunking down in a pile of nuclear waste, “You poor thing! You’re probably rooming with that little troll doll! What’s her name?” she turned to the redhead, “Midge? Madge? I can never remember her name. I know it’s something stupid!”

  “Margie,” I corrected her. “She seems really nice so far.” I shrugged.

  “She’s here already!?” The black haired one seemed horrified as she turned to the redhead who remained standing there looking bored and angry. “You know, you can totally change rooms if you want. It’s not too late. Come on, I’ll take you down to administration right now.” She grabbed my elbow.

  “Well I’m not quite dressed!” I laughed.

  “You know her last roommate got knocked up and had to drop out of school?” Cheryl was staring at me, her blue eyes wide as saucers.

  “How could that have been Margie’s fault?” I laughed but Cheryl didn’t get the joke. “It’s okay. I like my room. And Margie seems fine. She’s not here right now, she went to see her boyfriend.”

  “Oh is she still dating that guy?” her voice was dripping with contempt. “Doesn’t he work in a coffee shop or something?”

  Record store, I thought, but I didn’t bother correcting her.

  “Oh my god! You were on your way to the shower!” she finally noticed that I was stood there in bare feet and a bathrobe. “Go, go – have your shower and then after come back here and we’ll all go for breakfast together!”

  She huddled me into the shower room and I could hear her singing, “Yay! We met a new girl! What fun!” as I walked through the shower stalls.

  I almost laughed out loud to myself as I wondered, What the hell just happened?

  Then it hit me: those two must be the model girls Margie had dubbed The Ugly Stepsisters. It made sense now – they were both quite striking, both had an aura of glamour, and yet they weren’t quite beautiful. Everything about the black haired one was big and loud and over the top including her facial features. She had great big eyes framed with heavy black brows and great big round cheekbones with plump lips and a strong nose. The redhead on the other hand was little and sharp: she had small green eyes and a pointy chin with pinched cheeks. But she had the most gorgeous mane of fiery curls that cascaded nearly down to her waist and she was exceptionally tall and thin. I couldn’t tell if Cheryl was a big giddy ball of fun, or if she was just plain crazy. I guess I would find out shortly. If nothing else, her explosion into my day had taken my mind off of Stefano’s sudden disappearance last night.

  After I showered and dressed I went back down the hallway and knocked on their door.

  “Whooooooo is it!?” I heard Cheryl sing out.

  I laughed. “It’s me, Catherine. The new girl!”

  “Oh the Newwwwwwwwww Girl!” she trilled. Then in a deep voice she barked, “What’s the password?”

  I heard them both breaking up with laughter and then door flung open.

  “Yay! It’s so much fun to meet you!” Cheryl hugged me like I was a long lost relative.

  Lisa sat primly on the bed smiling stiffly at me.

  “Ready to go?” Cheryl swept out the door and Lisa rose to her feet and jammed her hands in her pockets. “I’m parked just out front,”

  “Oh,” I said in surprise. “Where are we going? I thought we were just heading downstairs to the dining hall.”

  “There’s a great little breakfast place in town. We’ll walk around after if you want.”

  “Oh okay. I’ll grab my purse then.” As I turned to dash back down the hall to my room I saw Lisa roll her eyes with impatience.

  “Sorry about that.” I was breathless from sprinting when I got back. The two of them were standing close together and looked as if they had been whispering about something in the brief moment it took me to grab my bag.

  “That’s okay,” Cheryl said in a babyish voice that was too sweet to be real. I got the feeling that making them wait ten extra seconds was decidedly not okay.

  There was only one car parked out front of the residence. It was fire engine red and convertible and a Porsche!

  “This is your car?” My jaw dropped in disbelief.

  “Yep! Got it for my birthday last year. Nice, hey?” Cheryl used the remote key fob to unlock the doors.

  “And you’ll be sitting in the back,” Lisa informed me as she opened the passenger side door and pushed the seat forward for me to climb in.

  It was a tight space and not terribly comfortable. I thought Lisa might pull her seat forward after she climbed in, but no. Should I say something? I rather suspected she wouldn’t take kindly to it.

  “Would you mind terribly pulling the seat up?” I asked tentatively.

  “I’m tall,” she stated flatly without even turning to look at me. Her seat remained in position.

  We cruised down the winding country roads with the top down. I hadn’t been prepared for this – my loose hair was being violently blown around and was whipping me in the eyes and I struggled to hold it back out of my face. I realized that while I had been in the shower, Cheryl and Lisa had both pulled their hair up and pinned it on top of their heads – clearly they had done this before.

  We arrived in the little town and Lisa and Cheryl both pulled their hair loose as they exited the car. Both of them had the fullest, thickest heads of hair I had ever seen – full of bounce and body. They would have put my fine, straight hair to shame even if it wasn’t a hideous tangled disaster as it was now.

  We sat down at a table in the little breakfast café, the two of them seated next to each other facing the window onto the street, and me by myself on the opposite side of the table from them.

  “So where are you from?” Cheryl began.

  “Pacific Northwest.” My mind was racing fo
r a way to avoid explaining that my parents had won the lottery. I suspected that to these girls, with their designer handbags that must have cost small fortunes, that I might as well tell them I had been born and raised inside a Walmart store as tell them that less than six months ago I was lower middle class.

  “Where’s that?” Cheryl frowned at me.

  “Washington state,” I explained. How did she not know what Pacific Northwest meant?

  “Oh.”

  They both seemed utterly unimpressed.

  “My family is from Manhattan, Upper West Side,” Cheryl offered.

  “Really? I’ve never been to New York.” I was interested in hearing more about it.

  “You’ve never been to New York? Oh my god, first long weekend we get, you’re coming with me. How can you never have been to New York? That’s insane!” She was nearly shouting in melodramatic fashion.

  Cheryl’s reaction was rather over the top and she was drawing the attention of the few other diners in the restaurant. I would come to realize that every moment in life was a melodrama to her and she could take even the smallest, most insignificant event and turn it into a great big deal.

  “Well she’s from the west coast,” Lisa said drily.

  “So they don’t have air travel from Seattle?” Cheryl went on. I was beginning to feel like an absolute hick and it was making me very uncomfortable. I didn’t even bother to mention that I wasn’t from Seattle.

  “Well, Lisa’s from California. I’m sure you’ve been there,” Cheryl was studying me now.

  Before I had a chance to tell her that no, I hadn’t, actually, I was saved by the waitress who came over to offer us coffee.

  As she poured it dawned on me what I could say to make me seem more worldly: “My parents have a place in Florida that they spend the winter in. We’ve always just gone there for vacations and stuff. “

  “Oh so you know Miami, then.” Cheryl’s interest in me seemed to perk up.

  “Not well,” I lied. I’d never been there at all. I didn’t dare tell them my parents’ place was in a sedate retirement community worlds away from Miami.

  “Hmm,” Lisa was rifling through the packets of sugar and sweeteners. It was a loaded “Hmm” and I can’t remember ever feeling as uncomfortable in my whole life.

  “Why don’t they have stevia? They never have stevia,” she groused as she tore open a packet of sweetener to pour in her coffee.

  “Okay, let’s decide what we’re having,” Cheryl said as she handed me a menu. “Everything is good here. Do you like eggs?” she asked.

  “Um, no, not really,” I answered.

  “Oh,” she pursed out her lips and it was like I had just insulted her. “Then I won’t recommend to you the egg white omelet!”

  I decided to let her tone roll off my back.

  “I think I’ll have the pancakes with fruit and whipped cream!” I said joyfully. I hadn’t eaten at all since yesterday afternoon and it just struck me that I was starving.

  “What are you carb-loading or something?” she muttered sarcastically without looking at me. Lisa just sat there stirring her coffee without looking at a menu, and I just smiled stupidly because I had no idea what Cheryl was inferring. (Although it was quite clear she was inferring something.)

  The waitress came over to take our order. I stuck to my guns and asked for the pancakes, Cheryl ordered an egg white omelet, and Lisa refused to order anything insisting that she wasn’t hungry. When our food arrived, and Cheryl’s omelet came with a side of toast, she became furious.

  “God! Why do they always bring bread? Obviously if I’m ordering an egg white omelet and I say nothing on the side, it means I don’t want them to bring me a plate of buttered carbs to go along with it! Jeez!”

  I was taken aback by the outburst. But not as taken aback as I was when Lisa simply grabbed the salt shaker from the table, unscrewed the lid, and poured the contents out all over the offending pieces of toast.

  “Thank you!” Cheryl said as if she had been lit on fire and Lisa had just extinguished it. “Did you see that waitress’s teeth? Has she ever heard of a dentist? Jesus, I should have just asked her to come back over and smile at me – that would have put me off my food!”

  I was cringing, because Cheryl wasn’t exactly whispering and I would have died if the poor waitress had heard her. But then she turned her critical eye to me.

  “How can you eat all those pancakes?” Cheryl looked at me and then at my plate with a horrified expression.

  “Um. I don’t know. I don’t eat pancakes all the time. I mean, once in a while isn’t going to hurt anything,” I suggested uncertainly.

  “Well she’s obviously not a model, Cheryl, so she doesn’t have to watch her weight like we do,” Lisa said as she eyed me up.

  “Oh, you’re models?” I asked, eager to change the subject from my food.

  “Yeah. I’m trying to find a new agency though; my agents right now haven’t been getting me anything good. Just some really small catalogue stuff. I’m so over it,” Cheryl explained. “Lisa’s agent is in LA, so she really doesn’t work during school, but I keep telling her she should try to get an agent out here. I think she’d do really well here.”

  “I just got back from Japan,” Lisa continued. “They love redheads over there. I worked all summer. I’ll look for an agent in a few months when I’m settled in,” she shot Cheryl a look and I got the feeling she wasn’t being entirely truthful. Why, I’m not sure. It’s not like she needed to impress me.

  “Have you ever tried to model?” Cheryl asked me in that tight, high voice of hers that suggested to me she was trying to disguise that what she was saying was completely opposite from what she was thinking.

  “No, it never even occurred to me. I mean, I’m only five-five: I’m too short, aren’t I?”

  Cheryl looked me up and down and it was clear from her face that she disapproved of what she saw. “Well. If you lost a tiny bit of weight. I mean, your face is really pretty,” she cooed in her saccharine tones.

  I hadn’t mentioned my weight. I had said I was too short.

  “And maybe if you got hair extensions,” she suggested.

  I put my hand up to my scraggly mess of a mop.

  “Oh, well, the car! I didn’t know you had a convertible!” I tried to laugh it off.

  “No, but your hair is really thin. Don’t feel bad – so is mine. Without extensions!” she winked at me.

  So that was their secret to super thick, full hair!

  “And you look like you tan.” Cheryl narrowed her eyes at me.

  “What do you mean? Well, I have a tan right now. I spent the summer in Florida,” I tried to explain. This conversation about my looks was beginning to make me squirm now.

  “But you should never let yourself get tan at all,” she scolded me. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

  I’m not quite seventeen! I thought to myself, but I said nothing.

  “Oh my god! There’s Chad! Hide me!” Cheryl was looking behind me through the window as she tried to duck.

  I turned to see who she was talking about and saw a tall, broad shouldered boy of maybe eighteen or nineteen walk past.

  “Cathy! Don’t look!” she hissed.

  Since when had she decided to call me Cathy?

  I turned back around. “Who is he?” I asked.

  “That’s Cheryl’s boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. They’re very on-again-off again. Right now they’re off again – it’s a bit complicated,” Lisa explained in clipped tones.

  “Ah, I see.” I tried to seem understanding, but none of my friends from home had ever really had proper boyfriends. “He’s really good looking,” I added, thinking I was paying Cheryl a compliment by remarking on the quality of guy she could attract. But she didn’t take it that way.

  “Yeah. He is,” she snarled. “And he’s mine. Don’t forget that.” Her tone was threatening.

  “Oh no – I didn’t mean it like that…” I tried to explain, but her sudden aggression h
ad rattled me and I didn’t know how to say what I did mean.

  “Was Trevor with him? I didn’t see,” Lisa interrupted.

  “No. He was by himself. Hasn’t Trevor called you yet?” Cheryl seemed to be implying something again.

  “No,” Lisa said curtly. “I’m sure he will when he gets in. I think they just got back from Bermuda this morning.”

  As Lisa spoke, I noticed that she had two very fine, silvery little marks, one on each side of her nostrils. Surgical scars, I realized. She’s had a nose job! Unfortunately she noticed me noticing and she scowled at me as she turned her head away.

  “Okay, let’s get out of here,” Cheryl announced like it was a command instead of a suggestion. “Let’s walk up and down the main street and see if we bump into Chad!” she added with mischievous glee.

  I had managed to take about two bites of my food and Cheryl hadn’t even touched her omelet, but I felt it was futile to protest.

  Everyone pulled up their handbags and started digging for money. Cheryl stopped and looked at mine.

  “Your bag is nice,” she said in her fake baby voice. “Where is it from?”

  “I don’t remember. Some store in a mall back home,” I answered with trepidation.

  “Oh.” She jerked her head back like I had just broken some surprising, unwelcome news that she couldn’t accept. “Don’t you want a designer bag?”

  “Well,” I began with an apologetic smile, “I’m not a model. I don’t even have a job. And my parents don’t believe in giving me much of an allowance.” I shrugged self-consciously.

  “Oh don’t worry! Your bag is really nice!” she demurred, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sincere or not.

  We paid the bill and ventured out onto the street, ostensibly to window shop. But the truth was that Cheryl was searching out Chad, desperately hoping to run into him. We passed by a shop and saw the dress that my mother had bought me in the window. I was just about to mention it when Lisa opined, “God that’s an ugly dress. Why are we even looking at clothes here? There’s nothing but these tacky little small town boutiques. Let’s go.”