According to Jane

by Marilyn Brant

  As Mrs. Leverson moved on to secondary players in the story, I flipped through the novel, reading random paragraphs until I saw the first mention of the Wickham guy on page sixty-three. I skimmed the section, getting the flavor of this man who, since he didn’t wind up with the heroine at the book’s conclusion, couldn’t really be as admirable as he seemed, when I heard a lady’s voice in my ear.

  Beware, Ellie, the voice said before following this up with a decided tsk or two. Sam Blaine is your Mr. Wickham.

  Fear seized my throat and all-out panic gripped my stomach. Okay. Who said that?

  I blinked, then glanced wildly in every direction. Even Sam was keeping his distance, for once.

  “What?” I said aloud to the unidentified voice. A few students nearby turned their heads to shoot me an odd look.

  Sam, sounding sulky, muttered, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t do anything.”

  I squinted at him, suspicious.

  You would do well to heed my advice, friend, said the voice, and I could’ve sworn I heard an ironic little laugh right along with an unmistakably British accent. I am well acquainted with men of his ilk, and they are disinclined to be honourable. You had best keep your distance.

  Not that I doubted her words or anything — she’d nailed Sam’s character in a sentence — but this whole hearing voices thing seriously freaked me out. I considered the possibilities:

  • Maybe I’d been whacked in the head one too many times with a volleyball that week. Gym class had been brutal.

  • Maybe my depraved sister had slipped some acid into my lunch. My turkey sandwich had tasted a little off.

  • Maybe I’d been studying too hard. After all, keeping up a 4.0 GPA was draining. Or, maybe —

  You are neither ill nor suffering from head injuries, Ellie, the lady’s voice said, her tone still amused.

  I couldn’t believe I was going to respond to this, but, hey, it seemed my life wasn’t weird enough already. Even if replying put me into the Potentially Insane category, I needed to know who this woman was and what she was doing in my head.

  So I asked, in silence this time, Who are you?

  I heard the twittery laughter again, but not one of my classmates had uttered a sound.

  Why, I am Miss Austen, of course, the voice replied. But you may call me Jane.

  As you can well imagine, Jane’s manifestation in my life created some complications for me at school.

  Since I was reasonably sure I’d be sent off to a psych ward if I didn’t figure out what was going on, I ignored Mrs. Leverson’s structured reading assignments and inhaled the whole novel in two days, snatching moments to polish off a chapter or two between classes, at lunch or late into the night. I was a girl obsessed.

  Jane’s voice in my head, instead of lessening, grew stronger with every page turned. While she insisted it was too early to explain why or how she’d chosen to inhabit my mind instead of, say, Sam’s, Tanya’s or Mrs. Leverson’s, she sure was right about that Mr. Wickham character. What a prick he turned out to be.

  And — fine, call me crazy — I went along with it all. I asked her endless questions, of course, about her sudden appearance in my previously silent mental world. I responded skeptically, sure, to her reticent but ever-proper replies that there was “a good reason” for her being with me (one I was frustratingly unable to pry out of her ghostly lips). But I was an egocentric teenager. I expected to be Special. I expected the Universe to have a Grand Plan for me. And I supposed this Jane thing was part of it.

  Or, maybe, I was just really lonely.

  Regardless, I got used to Jane being there, real fast. I rejoiced in the secretiveness of our conversations and started to enjoy the company. To count upon it.

  As for Jane, she chatted, not constantly, but pointedly. She had her figurative index finger aimed in full accusation at human folly. According to her, there was plenty to criticize about her nineteenth-century era and homeland, and she didn’t exactly spare me her sarcastic opinions of my time period.

  Take gym class, for instance.

  Young ladies engaged in sport with the gentlemen? Jane said that first day, her tone incredulous. How barbaric.

  I stretched in my assigned spot, wishing I were anywhere else. “Barbaric” is the word. It’s downright gladiator-like. Gym is an endurance test to see how much humiliation you can tolerate before you die.

  I see, she replied, but I didn’t think she had any idea. Gym was my daily nightmare. Having Jane with me, though, made those forty-two minutes of hell pass far more quickly.

  On her second day, she turned her dry wit to the world of academia. And, more specifically, to my place in it.

  Our history teacher asked, “Who can name the three-word motto the people of France chanted during the French Revolution?”

  I’d read the chapter and could answer this, but I didn’t want to be the one to raise my hand. Sam, who was sitting across the aisle from me and knew the answers to everything, ignored the teacher completely and played with the Velcro on his Trapper Keeper. Our teacher, however, shot us pleading looks, and, to me, it felt cruel to refuse to offer him some kind of lifeline. So, I made brief eye contact. Big mistake.

  After another twenty seconds of silence, the teacher sighed and said, “Okay, Miss Barnett. Why don’t you tell us? We all know you know the answer.”

  The class snickered as I murmured my now obligatory “liberté, égalité, fraternité” and some smart-jock buddy of Sam’s whispered, “She can remember that, but she can’t remember to ‘bump, set, spike’ in volleyball?”

  Sam laughed loudly at that one, as did most of the class, and I vowed then and there never to bail out our history teacher again. But Jane, at least, came to my defense.

  Do not be embarrassed, Ellie. Let them enjoy their amusement now. For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

  Her confidence grounded me and helped me remember not to take myself so seriously. It was a reminder I desperately needed throughout high school.

  And then there was Stacy Daschell, the girl I despised most in our entire sophomore class. On day three, while changing back into our regular clothes after gym, an item Stacy wore beneath her red-and-gold cheerleader’s sweater snagged Jane’s attention.

  Pray, what is that? Jane inquired, her voice horrified.

  I didn’t own such an item myself, but I’d heard about Stacy’s purchase ad nauseam that week. It’s a lavender Victoria’s Secret demi bra. Heavily padded, I answered silently.

  The slender, pointy-nosed Stacy, who’d recently returned from a trip to San Francisco where she’d encountered the first of these soon-to-be-famous stores, swept a cascade of blond curls off her shoulder, giggled seductively at her mirror image across the room and showed off her orthodontically perfect incisors right along with her enhanced cleavage. “It’s called the ‘Emma,’” Stacy informed her friends. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  Jane sniffed. Strumpet.

  My good friend Terrie, in an independent assessment at her locker next to mine, used the modern American equivalent. “Slut.”

  I laughed at their comments and, consequently, was rewarded with an extra-nasty sneer from Stacy.

  Then she, with her Victoria’s Secret uplift and her cheerleader’s outfit snugly back on, adjusted her leg warmers, slipped on her gold-glittered Nikes and blotted her hot-pink lipstick with a tissue as she tracked my far-less-fashionable footsteps down the hallway toward algebra.

  Unfortunately, coming from the opposite direction strode my other worst nightmare.

  A gaggle of senior girls materialized like a firewall, blocking our path. There were four of them — all big hair, big boobs, big attitude. The leader crossed her arms over a thin, low-cut sweater, which emphasized her abundant chest, and nudged one of the other girls to speak.

  A leggy blonde — more specifically, Stacy’s older sister — turned to Stacy. “Where do you think you’re off to?”

  “Math,
” Stacy said with a weary flip of her hair. She tossed a disgusted look in my direction. And, though she was failing algebra, she added, “Anything’s better than gym class with losers.”

  The seniors cackled and broke the human wall open just wide enough to let Stacy pass through.

  “Well?” another girl said, expecting me to defend myself.

  I kept my mouth shut. There was no way to win this kind of battle. I could only wait it out.

  Their leader finally stepped forward, shaking her head so the long ash-brown strands brushed her shoulders. Her squinty eyes glittered with general malevolence, her expression pure scorn.

  “Ellie, Ellie, Ellie Barnett,” she said. “What exactly is your problem? How is it that you’re so competent with classroom shit, so very responsible in your stupid little academic life, but such a fuck-up in everything else?”

  Jane chose this inopportune moment to chime in. This young woman hardly seems a paragon of virtue. What manner of conduct is this?

  I clutched my algebra notebook and pencil a little tighter, but I didn’t answer either of their questions.

  “You’re becoming quite a legend at school,” the leader said with her trademark mockery. She scanned me up and down, rolled her eyes and burst out laughing. “Just look at you! Scraggly hair. Dressed like a geek. No makeup. Digging yourself into a hole of permanent unpopularity. Sometimes I can’t stand to be in the same hallway with you. Make an attempt to get with it or I’ll make you sorry. You know I can.”

  Oh, yeah. I knew.

  The two-minute bell rang and, with a taunting shove to my shoulder, an “accidental” treading upon my left toes and an intimidating parting glare, the leader and her gang finally let me go. I hobbled the rest of the way down the hall.

  How deplorable, Jane whispered, and I could envision her pursing her thin lips with disdain. Who is this individual?

  Oh, she would be last year’s Homecoming Queen and this year’s titleholder for Most Likely to Get Laid on a First Date, I said. The leader had been away for two days on a college scouting trip and Jane hadn’t encountered her before. I envied Jane that, inhaled deeply and tried my hardest to laugh off the incident.

  But, even this early on, Jane had developed an unnerving habit of persistence. By what proper name is that young lady called?

  Ah, well, if you must know, most people call her Di, but her full name is Diana Lynn Barnett. I paused for dramatic effect. Otherwise known as my big sister.

  Just then, I saw Sam on the other side of the hallway eyeing me strangely before breaking into one of his smirkiest grins. With his index and middle fingers, he made a V for victory, which he held above his head, since his team had just annihilated mine in volleyball. Again. Then he switched the fingers around — index and thumb — to form an L for loser, which he directed at me.

  God! Why did I still like that guy? He was too competitive, too arrogant, too intense for me, or so I tried to tell my bruised ego. He added too many distractions to my already complicated life but, stupidly, I couldn’t quite let go of my fantasies about him.

  At the same moment, this other guy, a hotshot basketball player named Jason Bertignoli, walked by, too. He’d been on my losing volleyball team, but he didn’t blame me or mock me or ignore me. He turned around and said, “Don’t worry about the game, Ellie. We’ll get ’em next time.”

  I smiled. Jocky Jason was nice. Then again, he was new to the school and still being nice to everybody.

  Sam saw Jason talking to me, and he sent us the evil eye, which did not go unnoticed by either Jason or by Jane.

  Wickham, Jane said.

  “Asshole,” Jason muttered, glaring at Sam as he walked away.

  As for me, I sent Sam the evil eye right back before he disappeared down the hall.

  Little did I know, as my irrational heart trailed after him, that I’d just embarked on the Odyssey-like saga that would set the course of my romantic journey for the next two decades…

  Chapter 1

  There is meanness in all the arts which

  ladies sometimes condescend to employ for

  captivation. Whatever bears affinity to

  cunning is despicable.

  — Pride and Prejudice

  Almost seven years after Jane first spoke to me, the August late-afternoon sun beat down on my head as I bolted from the Glen Forest Public Library. We’d been short-staffed again, with two people out on vacation and one last-minute sick call. And, while I loved my summer job — well, most of the time — my day hadn’t been the greatest, and I yearned for a calm, relaxing evening.

  Dominic, my boyfriend of eight whole weeks, had other plans.

  “Can we take your car tonight?” he asked when he came to pick me up. “I’m running kinda low on gas and — ” He glared at his beat-up Pontiac. “I don’t trust the transmission.”

  I shrugged. “Fine,” I said, though it wasn’t really fine. We were going into Chicago — again — because he just had to meet with his loud, pseudo-radical friends who liked to think of themselves as “mavericks.”

  “We’ll only stay at the bar for an hour,” he promised when I told him I had a massive headache and wanted a quiet night. “Then we’ll grab a couple slices of pizza at the restaurant next door. Just you and me.”

  I wanted to believe him, but the reality was he couldn’t get enough of his discussion group. Once they started yakking, one hour had a way of turning into four. I wasn’t in the mood this time.

  Not that I wanted to deprive him of his friends and make him cling only to me. He’d explained that this group was his lifeline, particularly during the summer months, since he was away from his nonconformist college buddies and living with his parents a couple of suburbs over. Unlike me, though, he’d get to see his university friends again in the fall. At nearly twenty-two, I’d just graduated. Dominic, already twenty-three, was on the five-or six-year plan.

  “But what about the guys at work?” I’d asked him a month before when we were at my sister’s wedding to her punk-rocker/ bank-manager boyfriend Alex Evans (i.e., irrefutable proof that there was a psycho out there for everyone). “I thought you all got along really well, especially since your neighbor and his cousin got you the job. Don’t you ever want to do things with them?”

  “Nah. Besides, I quit on Tuesday.”

  My eyes flew open at this news. “You quit the deli?” He’d only been working there a few weeks, but his hourly salary had been higher than mine at the library. “I thought you liked it there.”

  “The work wasn’t that challenging.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’d rather do something where I can use my mind, not just slice up salami or provolone, you know? I’ll get some other position in a week or two.”

  But he hadn’t and, therefore, he claimed he especially needed the outlet of meeting his friends after a stressful day of dealing with his nagging parents and their demands that he “grow up.”

  So we went to Chicago.

  “Can you spot me a five for a beer?” Dominic asked when we got to The Bitter Tap. “It doesn’t look real sociable if I don’t have one in my hand, too.”

  I sighed, but I bought him a beer and got myself a Long Island Iced Tea. Then I sat at the edge of the table, had a private conversation with Jane about the merits of combining multiple liquors in a single mixed drink, and listened to snatches of Dominic’s latest discussion. Something about the ethics of genetic engineering. One of the guys pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them to us.

  “No, thanks,” I said, but Dominic reached for one and lit it expertly. He waved it as he made each point, his face aglow with that feverish excitement I’d found so intriguing when first I spotted him in my final college semester’s Films & Lit class.

  He’d always hop on his soapbox, saying things like: “We’re privileged to be part of society’s free thinkers. We need to help others shape their understanding of our world while keeping it a positive, affirmative kind of activism. And it’s all here, you know. The change
.” He’d jab his thumb at his chest. “Here is where we need to make our decisions about the way we organize our culture. Not from pure intellect. Not from our pocketbook. Not from the restricted mores of our narrow-minded predecessors who call us ‘radicals’ — like it’s a bad thing.” He’d roll his eyes at the absurdity. “It’s only through a continuous dialogue about our creative and cultural life that we can achieve the kind of human connection we all seek.”

  It was still mesmerizing to watch him get into a debate, like a televangelist preaching the Word of God.

  He smoked five more cigarettes and mooched another beer off someone else before the first hour was up. I checked my watch and made polite conversation. An hour and fifteen minutes. An hour and a half. Still no sign of him wrapping things up. Time for a nudge.

  “Dominic.” I tapped my wrist.

  He nodded at me, held up his index finger in the Just-One-More-Minute position and resumed talking. For another half hour.

  Granted, I was tired, I was cranky and, now, I was hungry, too. I may not have been in the cheeriest of moods starting off, but that didn’t mean he could worm out of a promise, so I said, “Dominic, it’s been two hours.”

  “Okay, okay. Just five more minutes. Please. Let me finish this thought.”

  I picked up my purse, waved goodbye to the guys and walked out the door.

  I heard a “Shit!” from inside the bar and, a moment later, Dominic was by my side looking furious.

  “Dammit, Ellie, that was so fucking rude!”

  “You said one hour. I waited twice that long. I’ve had enough now, and I’m going home. Come. Don’t come.” I shrugged. “It’s your choice.”

  “I — ” Dominic looked between me and the door to The Bitter Tap, clearly considering. “Look, sorry. I just…I just really love being in that environment, and I’m…surprised, I guess, that you don’t, too.” He gave me a hurt look. “Those guys are my best friends.”

  I nodded. “Well, perhaps one of them can give you a lift home.” I turned and walked toward my car.