Dark Companion

by Marta Acosta

  I’d heard that Eskimos have a hundred different words for snow; we should have had a hundred different words for filth because everything in Helmsdale was covered with grit and grime.

  Jimmy said, “You can listen to the radio if you want, Miss.”

  “Thanks.” I clicked it on to fill the uncomfortable silence. It was preset to a news station, and we listened to the entire broadcast twice as Jimmy steered along a series of freeways that led away from the group house, through the city, and beyond. I was conscious of my shabby clothes against the leather seat, but the fold of bills in my pocket reassured me.

  Road construction slowed the trip, and three hours later we finally arrived in the town of Greenwood. It was set in a small valley below wooded hills draped with gauzy shawls of fog.

  Jimmy turned on his headlights. “This place is in a fog belt. It’s overcast all year-round.”

  I didn’t answer because I was too busy staring at a tree-lined main street with a row of shops, each with gleaming windows and colorful flower boxes. Jimmy took an avenue up a hill where enormous older homes were set back behind hedges. The color green was everywhere: deep green trees, vivid green lawns, and lush green bushes. I suddenly felt queasy and closed my eyes, but I could still see green, green, green, and I clasped my hands together and squeezed my eyelids tight.

  “Feeling carsick, Miss Williams?”

  Jimmy’s voice snapped me out of the weird feeling, and I blinked. “I’m fine.”

  “Here we are, Miss. Birch Grove Academy.”

  It was the first time, in a manner, that I had known space and air and freedom, all the music of summer and all the mystery of nature. And then there was consideration—and consideration was sweet. Oh, it was a trap—not designed, but deep—to my imagination, to my delicacy, perhaps to my vanity; to whatever, in me, was most excitable.

  Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)

  Chapter 2

  Jimmy turned right at a private drive marked by stone pillars and a lacy black ironwork archway in a leaf and branch design. A square brass plaque read BIRCH GROVE ACADEMY FOR GIRLS. The car’s tires crunched on the gravel road as we passed a garden. It looked like a park for the wealthy, with endless emerald lawns, flowering borders, and a pond with a fountain.

  As the car rounded a curve, I gasped as I glimpsed Birch Grove for the first time. Towering evergreens framed a magnificent dusky coral building that rose three stories against the leaden sky. The photos in the glossy brochure hadn’t prepared me for how … how intimidating it was. I clenched my fists so tight my chewed-up nails dug into my palms.

  Jimmy parked in front of the building, where wide white marble steps led to massive wood doors. I was so excited that I jumped out of the car before he even undid his seat belt. I walked to the steps, trying to take in all the details while Jimmy got my bag out of the trunk.

  Above the ornate doors, a carved banner with BIRCH GROVE ACADEMY FOR GIRLS arched over a shield with a lantern, a fox, and branches. I read aloud the motto beneath the shield, Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet, and then translated the words in a whisper to myself. “As loyal as she began, so she remains.”

  I tore my gaze from the building and saw sprawling sports fields to the right and a more modern building set back on the left.

  “There you go.” Jimmy handed me my bag. “Mrs. Radcliffe said that she would meet you here. Would you like me to wait with you?”

  “I’ll be fine. Thank you, sir.”

  “Good luck, Miss Williams.”

  The car drove off and I stood there alone in the fog, feeling bewildered and incredulous. I patted my pocket, making sure the folded bills were still there. I wanted to take them out and count them, but someone called out, “Hello, Jane!”

  I turned to see Mrs. Radcliffe, the headmistress, walking around the side of the building, carrying a basket filled with branches. Despite the weather, she wore a wide-brimmed straw hat with a white blouse, navy sweater, and navy slacks.

  The first time we’d met, I’d been puzzled when I was called out of class and sent to my academic counselor’s office. An unfamiliar tall, slim woman waited for me. She had smooth ivory skin, clear blue eyes, and sleek sienna-brown hair twisted back into a bun. She’d smiled graciously. “Hello, Jane. I’m Mrs. Radcliffe, the headmistress of the Birch Grove Academy for Girls. I’d like to talk to you about a scholarship.”

  It had seemed too good to be true, but here I was.

  “Hello, Mrs. Radcliffe.”

  “Welcome to Birch Grove. Let me put these inside. Then I’ll give you a tour of the school and show you the cottage.”

  I wanted to see the cottage where I’d be living right away, but I said, “That would be great,” and we went up the steps to the building.

  “How was your drive here?”

  “Fine, ma’am. It’s a long way.”

  “Yes, it is. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to visit your old friends often, but I know you’ll make wonderful new friends here.”

  “I hope so.” I slowed down my speech and movements so she wouldn’t see my nervousness. I wished there were someone who could cue me in on how to act with rich people. “I heard that someone from Helmsdale came here once. Do you know who she was? Maybe I could say hello to her if she lives nearby.”

  “That’s an excellent idea, Jane. I’ll try to find out her name, but it may be a while. We lost records in a recent computer upgrade and some of our older information hasn’t been digitized yet.” She guided me down a hallway with shiny indigo-blue linoleum. Awards and trophies filled glass cases, and portraits of white-haired women hung on the walls. “Birch Grove girls become friends for life.”

  Mrs. Radcliffe opened a door that had ADMINISTRATION in old-fashioned gold letters on the glass inset. A counter separated the front reception area from desks and file cabinets. She directed me around the counter. “This is my office.”

  She opened a door to a room with antique furniture, Oriental rugs, lamps with amber shades, and gold-framed certificates. It could have been a room in one of the Masterpiece Theatre shows we had to watch in English class. Although everything seemed to be very old, there were no chips, cracks, or dirt.

  “Excuse me while I put these in water.” As Mrs. Radcliffe passed close to me, I recognized her fragrance from our earlier interviews. It was a pleasant smell, like a newly mown lawn. She went through a doorway, and I heard running water.

  Rows of yearbooks stood on a nearby shelf, and one was open on a polished table. I flipped through it and saw photos of girls with funny old-fashioned names: Emily, Susana, Grace-Ann, Roselyn … I was about to check the date of the yearbook when Mrs. Radcliffe returned with the slender arching branches in a vase.

  “There.” She placed the vase on her desk.

  The arrangement was unexpectedly pretty. “Those are so graceful.”

  “I think so, too. They’re from the European White Birch tree. Our school’s founder planted a grove of them here because they’d grown in his village in Romania. Now let me show you the school.”

  I walked beside her to the end of the hall. “I was quite pleased with your end-of-term grades, Jane, and with your excellent health exam. I hope you didn’t mind the blood test.”

  “No, I’m not scared of needles, ma’am. Does everyone go through medical testing?”

  “We keep health records for all our students, primarily to take precautions if someone has a condition. We want the best for our girls.”

  Mrs. Radcliffe showed me homerooms, the teachers’ lounge, and the nurse’s office, which had one wall covered with degrees and certificates. We doubled back to the middle of the building and she stopped at a series of tall carved doors. “Here’s the auditorium, where we hold assemblies and student performances.”

  The auditorium at Helmsdale City Central had looked and stunk like a prison dining hall. This one had pale wood paneling on the lowest section and murals of white-barked trees that stretched all the way to the curved balcony. Midnight-blue
velvet curtains on the stage matched the leather seating.

  “The paneling here is birch, and when we meet here, it’s as if we’re gathering in our grove.” Then the headmistress took me to see the classrooms, which had older-style oak desks and chalkboards, and the gym. I’d never seen anything like the locker room, which had individual shower cubicles and private dressing rooms.

  Mrs. Radcliffe noticed my baffled expression. “Young ladies were quite modest in the days when this school was built, and we’ve been discussing a renovation since I was a student.”

  “It’s like stepping back in time here, isn’t it?”

  “You might find us a little anachronistic, but we believe that quality is timeless.”

  We visited a small plain chapel with windows of yellow glass that let in golden light. “Services used to be held here when most of our faculty lived on campus. Although Birch Grove is not a religious school, we encourage spiritual development. Do you follow any faith, Jane?”

  “No, but I once had a friend named Hosea and he was … well, someone described him as having grace. He would have liked the peacefulness of this chapel. He could have read his Bible without being disturbed.”

  “Hosea. Was he the boy who died of meningitis?”

  “Yes, he was in my group home. How do you know that?”

  “Your social worker told us that it was a difficult time for you.”

  Each foster kid was assigned a social worker, and I’d given permission for mine to talk to Mrs. Radcliffe. The same social worker had previously refused to take any more of my daily phone calls demanding that Mrs. Prichard be investigated for malicious negligence.

  “Hosea sounds very special, Jane.”

  “He was amazing.” I swallowed hard. When I next spoke, my voice was calm. “Your students probably don’t die of infections.”

  Something—maybe disapproval—flickered in her eyes, and I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. Then she said, “Bacterial meningitis can progress so rapidly that nothing can be done to save a victim. We are grateful for our many privileges here, Jane, but no one escapes death.”

  Mrs. Radcliffe led me out of the main building to the more modern building, which held classrooms and art studios that were set up with long working tables and easels. After touring the building, we went outside and I took a deep breath. Even the air here was better—damp and fresh and clean.

  “Let’s go to your cottage. It used to be for the groundskeeper.” Mrs. Radcliffe took me on a path around the art building and toward the back of campus. I was so excited about living on my own that I didn’t care if the cottage was a cardboard box with a sleeping bag.

  “Here’s the grove I told you about,” the headmistress said, and I saw the birch trees for the first time.

  The three-acre grove seemed as large as a forest to me, as it stretched up the hill and became lost in the mist. Ferns as tall as my shoulder lined a path and shrubs grew all around, making me feel enclosed by the greenery. The towering birches had ghostly white trunks with black markings, and their branches swayed gracefully and rustled in the mild breeze. The trees’ outermost layer of bark, as delicate as parchment, peeled away from the trunks.

  I shivered in the cool darkness.

  “Jane, are you all right?” Mrs. Radcliffe’s brows knit together.

  “It’s all so different than Helmsdale.” I smiled. Adults liked it when you smiled.

  As we walked along a shady path, Mrs. Radcliffe told me that registration would take place on Monday and classes would begin Tuesday, but I couldn’t stop listening to the shush, shush, shush of the branches.

  “My house is right up the hill there.” Mrs. Radcliffe pointed to a trail that continued into the deep shadows of the grove. “Please come by if you need anything or want company. Here we are.”

  The little white house had a porch with two wooden chairs and a clay pot of purple and white pansies. Mrs. Radcliffe opened the door and I followed her inside to a living room with robin’s egg blue walls and white trim.

  “It’s so pretty!”

  A loveseat and chairs with floral cushions faced a fireplace and built-in bookcases. A wooden desk with a vase filled with pink daisies was placed by a window with a view of the grove. A small television was tucked into the corner of the room.

  “We’ve tried to make it cozy. Here’s the bedroom.”

  Through the doorway was a pale yellow room that was barely big enough to hold a full-size bed with a white headboard and a white dresser. Next to it was a blue-and-white-tiled bathroom with a deep white tub.

  On the other side of the cottage was a tidy kitchen with a narrow stove, a refrigerator, a microwave, and a square table and two chairs.

  Mrs. Radcliffe opened a cupboard. “You’re stocked up with the basics. Cereal, milk, juice, eggs. Do you know how to cook, Jane?”

  “I helped make meals at the group home.”

  “What do you think?” she asked. “Will it do?”

  “It’s perfect and wonderful. Thank you, ma’am.”

  “It’s no more than you deserve, Jane.” She placed her pale hand on my arm and gave a gentle squeeze. “Please come to dinner at my house tomorrow, six o’clock. Follow the path up the hill and you’ll see it. Will you be all right by yourself tonight?”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “I thought you could use a few days to adjust and prepare before registration day. My home number is programmed in the phone and you’re welcome to call for anything. I’m really happy you’re here.”

  “Me, too.”

  When she left, the first thing I did was count the money in my pocket. Wilde had given me $70, and I hoped that Junior wouldn’t miss it and punish her. I put the money back in my pocket and then went from room to room, astonished that this was mine.

  I discovered lavender-scented sachets in the closet, brand-name shampoo and tampons in the bathroom, and cupboards filled with good food. The desk drawers were stocked with paper, notebooks, pencils, pens, and a calculator. A navy canvas book tote with the school emblem hung from the back of the desk chair.

  There was a tiny room behind the kitchen with a stacked washer and dryer and a rack to dry small items.

  I unpacked my clothes, which barely filled a dresser drawer, and placed Hosea’s worn Bible on a bookshelf where I could see it and think of him. Even though there was no snooping housemother or klepto roomies here, I put my money in a manila envelope and slid it in the narrow space behind the washing machine. I covered the envelope with lint from the dryer; only someone with a hand as small as mine would be able to reach it.

  The simple meal I ate—a grilled cheese sandwich, grapes, and chocolate chip cookies—seemed fantastic because I was the one who decided what and when to eat. I turned on the television and surfed the channels, watching junk celebrity shows that my classmates at Helmsdale City Central had talked about, but I’d never seen. I stayed up until two, when I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

  After washing up, I slipped between the crisp sheets, moving my legs to feel the smoothness of the fabric. I pulled the comforter up to my chin, closed my eyes, and listened to the trees outside. The branches shifted and brushed against the roof as if they were whispering.

  A weird sensation ran through me, and I remembered sleeping by a campfire long, long ago, but the memory was so faint that it felt as if it belonged to someone else.

  A tree gave a loud creak that sounded exactly like a door opening, so I got up and crept to the living room. The front door was closed and locked. When I peered out the window, there was only darkness and the darkness seemed impenetrable. I checked the locks on all the windows and the doors. Then I went back to bed and covered my head with the comforter so I wouldn’t hear the trees.

  Before I drifted off to sleep, I thought of all that I had done to get here. Mindless with fury at Hosea’s death, I’d started sitting in his seat in the cafeteria with the smart kids. They had ignored me at first, then jeered at me, trying to get me to leave,
but I’d stayed there, seething, hating them and the world.

  One day I’d heard someone say “full scholarship with living expenses.” I’d looked at the kids at the table: they were from the same lousy neighborhood as I was. If they could escape Hellsdale by getting good grades, why couldn’t I?

  I’d started doing my homework and paying attention in class. It had been a struggle to grasp simple lessons and then harder ones. My school had kept me tracked with the bad students, though, and my guidance counselor had said, “Be realistic about your abilities.” I’d sat in the hallway outside her office day after day until she transferred me into better classes.

  I’d spent hours after school attending free tutoring sessions at the library. I’d studied videos so I could learn how to speak properly. When a teacher offered extra credit for more work, I’d done it. The hardest—the most humiliating—thing I’d learned was to say, “I don’t get it. Will you explain it?” because I hated the smart-ass smirks from the other kids.

  Mrs. Prichard hadn’t believed I was at the library most nights. She’d follow me through the house, screeching that I was a slut, a drunk, a junkie, trash. I couldn’t have dinner until I’d finished my chores and sometimes it was midnight before I finally microwaved leftovers. I’d eat in five minutes, wash up, fall into bed, and start the whole thing all over again when the alarm clock buzzed at six the next morning.

  By the time I’d left Helmsdale City Central High, I’d transformed myself from an inarticulate loser foster kid to a college-track student who aced every test. I still sat in Hosea’s old place in the cafeteria, but the others didn’t ignore me anymore.

  Now when people met me, they saw an unassuming, hardworking, well-spoken girl. But inside I was still shrieking with rage for everything that I’d had to do merely to have the crumbs that others carelessly dropped.