All The Pretty Dead Girls (5 page)

I’m so lame,
she groaned inwardly.
I don’t even know how to flirt.
Still, she kept the smile pasted on her face and tried to think how Becca would act in the same situation.

The officer examined Sue’s documents, then handed them back through the window. “Yes, ma’am, you were,” he said. “I clocked you at sixty-five in a fifty zone.” He took off his mirrored sunglasses, and his eyes were a chocolate brown. “That’s a pretty hefty fine, Miss Barlow.”

“Oh.” She bit her lower lip.
Granpa is going to kill me—he might even take the car away. A huge ticket on the first day I have the car.

“You haven’t been driving long, have you?” His teeth flashed in a smile. Sue shook her head no.

He’s kind of cute,
Sue thought. She didn’t have a lot of experience with guys. Not once since kindergarten had she ever gone to school with boys. While her classmates were always talking and giggling about boys, she’d always sat there clueless. Whenever she met her friends’ boyfriends, she found them immature and childish—no matter how cute they were. The occasional guy that Becca would fix her up with always turned out be dull and uninteresting. The one boy she’d liked—a guy named Tom Parker she’d met at one of Becca’s family bashes in the Hamptons—had been a studious, smart boy who told her he wanted to study astrophysics and understand the interaction between matter and radiation in outer space. Sue hadn’t known what the hell Tom was talking about, but his intensity had been sexy, and she wanted to see him again. But he never called. She suspected her grandfather had found about it and turned the boy away. What was the use anyway?
Why would he want to go out with me when I have to be home by ten on a Saturday night?

“You need to focus on your studies,” Granpa always argued. “Boys are a distraction.” Many times Sue had thought about protesting, holding out for even eleven o’clock as a curfew—but decided it wasn’t worth it. She’d be in college soon enough, she reasoned, and besides, she never knew what to say or how to act around most boys anyway. She certainly didn’t want her breasts pawed at the way Becca described. She didn’t like how Becca and the other girls acted around guys, turning into imbeciles and behaving like fools.

She focused her attention on the eyes of the young man peering through the window at her.

“No, sir,” she said, “I haven’t been driving long. I just got the car last night, in fact.”

She kept her voice deferential and respectful. Another lesson from her grandfather:
When dealing with the police, always be polite and show respect. They are doing their jobs. Be cooperative, but never give away any information that they don’t ask for. And if you think you could be in serious trouble, ask for a lawyer immediately. If there’s any question in your mind, ask for a lawyer. It’s your right.

“I suppose I could just let you go with a warning.” The officer was still smiling. “Seems like a bad way to start your school year, with a ticket and all.”

“That would be so great.” All the tension built up inside of her since she heard the siren was swept away and she gave him a real smile. “Wilbourne students are probably a real pain in the ass for you, huh?” she asked in a sympathetic tone.

He shrugged. “Not really. There’s hardly ever any trouble up on the campus, and girls aren’t as big of troublemakers as boys, you know. This your first year then?”

She nodded. “Freshman. Guilty as charged.”

“You’ll like it here. It’ll take some getting used to after Manhattan, because it’s awful quiet around here.” He shook his head. “You’re probably going to miss your boyfriend.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He took off his sunglasses and leaned on the door, bringing his face closer to hers. He
was
good-looking, Sue decided. He had big brown eyes with thick lashes, a strong nose, thick full lips over strong white teeth. He looked strong, but in a lean narrow-hipped kind of way rather than those thickly muscled jock idiots Becca Stansfield preferred. There was some stubble on his cheeks and chin.

“My name’s Perry Holland,” the cop said.

Taking a chance, Sue buzzed the window all the way down. “Sue Barlow.” She giggled. “But then you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“Nice to meet you.” They shook hands through the window, and then fell silent for a few moments. Perry watched her face for a few moments more before standing back to his full height. “You’d best be getting on to school, Ms. Barlow.”

“Sue.”

“Sue.” Perry nodded. “Be seeing you around.”

I hope so,
she thought as she put her window back up. He winked at her before putting his sunglasses back on and walking back to his patrol car. Sue sat there, watching him in the rearview mirror as he made a U-turn and headed back down the shady lane in the direction of the highway.

Sue giggled.
Becca would be proud.

The campus was on the other side of Lebanon, and she made sure she followed the speed limit as she drove through the center of town. There was a town square with a courthouse, and little businesses lined the streets that surrounded it. Church spires poked up through the trees. People milled about on the sidewalks, some of them still in their church clothes. Sue drove on, the businesses and houses growing farther and farther apart until she was out of the town and in the country again. Through the bushes on the side of the road, Sue soon became aware of a brown brick wall. It was high and imposing, and Sue realized she had reached the campus. The wall seemed so coldly impenetrable to her—keeping people out of Wilbourne, and keeping the girls in.

After another mile, she saw the massive brick entryway into the campus. A huge wrought-iron arrangement of curlicues and flowers branched from one brick column to the other, and in Gothic letters was spelled out
WILBOURNE COLLEGE
. Driving through the gates, she followed the campus map the school had sent to her. She was looking for her dormitory, Bentley Hall. All around her, girls were meandering across the campus, some carrying books, most of them in little groups. A pang shot through Sue’s stomach.
They all look like they know everybody already. I know no one.

Up ahead, she saw the sign for Bentley Hall. The parking lot in front was already full, but Sue pulled up underneath a big oak tree and sat there for a moment.

This is it,
she thought,
I’m finally here.

Excitement and trepidation warred within her. She was thrilled to be on her own, but also suddenly frightened. She supposed the fear was normal. She’d grown up very protected, very sheltered. Now she was taking her first steps on her own.

But there was something else, too.

She glanced up at the windows of Bentley Hall. They seemed so dark. Almost as if the glass were painted black.
They’re tinted for privacy,
she supposed. But for some unknown reason, those black windows terrified her.

Watching from inside her car, Sue felt as if she had entered another world. All noise from the outside world was cut off by the sturdy construction of the Lexus. As she watched the girls stroll past, their lips moving in conversation without making any sound, Sue shivered. Why was she suddenly so afraid?

Get over this,
she told herself.
You’re here. Go for it!

There were no signs prohibiting parking, so she figured she could leave the car here, at least for now, at least until she got her parking sticker and found her way around. Sue took a deep breath and got out of the car. She stood there for a moment and looked around. The grounds of the campus were immaculately kept. A huge fountain in the middle of a big expanse of lawn bubbled to her left. Bright yellow marigolds and sunny pink petunias bordered the paved pathways leading from Bentley Hall to the other buildings, most of which were red brick, with a few hewn out of brownstone.

Sue’s heart was thudding in her ears as she removed her suitcase from the trunk. Everything else she’d shipped on ahead of time. Ahead of her, there was considerable activity in the dormitory parking lot. Several girls were dragging boxes and suitcases out across the pavement toward for the front door. Sue was glad that Gran had insisted on shipping everything. She pulled up the suitcase’s tow bar and started rolling it through the parking lot, and pulled it up over the curb.

Bentley Hall was enormous. Four floors high, made of neat red bricks and those large dark windows heading off in either direction from the main entrance. A wrought-iron statue of a woman in nineteenth-century clothing stood right beside the entrance. Sue stood there for a moment, staring up at what would be her home for the next four years. Her eyes went from window to window, wondering which were hers, wishing she could see some light—some life—behind one of them. The packet from the school had indicated she would be rooming on the second floor. She began moving her eyes across the line of second floor windows, when something just above—on the third floor—caught her eye.

What was that?

She stared back up at the window, but there was nothing there now.

She shook her head.

She could have sworn she’d seen a girl’s face there.

And it looked as if the girl was screaming.

Sue made her way up to the second floor, wrestling her rolling suitcase into an elevator that was packed with other girls and boxes. The other girls all seemed to know each other, laughing and joking and teasing, and Sue felt very alone. She tried to smile at the other girls, nodding and saying hello. She told them her name when they asked for it. But mostly, she just went her own way, and the other girls let her. She knew she should make more of an effort to talk to them, to make new friends, but she couldn’t get what she’d seen—what she thought she’d seen—out of her mind.

I must have imagined it,
she told herself as she rolled her suitcase down the hallway on the second floor, looking for her room.
My mind was playing tricks on me, that’s all that was. I’m more tired than I thought from getting up early and the long drive up here. It’s my first time away from home, and I’m nervous and a little jumpy.

But still, she couldn’t get the image of that face out of her head.

Ahead of her, to the left, was Room 227. The door was already open, and dance music was playing loudly. Sue walked in, and saw her boxes and luggage stacked in one corner, near a window. The room was larger than she expected, with two twin beds set out on opposite sides of the room. Each side of the room had bookshelves built into the walls, and there were matching closet doors on either side of the room. Another door on one side led into what she assumed was the bathroom. That had been a reassurance for her when she’d read the material sent by the college. All the rooms in Bentley Hall had their own bathrooms. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get a room in Bentley—her grandfather’s influence most likely—but she wasn’t going to question her luck.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anybody home? Hello?”

A dark-skinned girl walked out of the bathroom wearing a pair of low-riding jean shorts and a tank top. She was drying her face with a towel. Her hair was in long braids that hung down her back almost to her waist, and she had dark eyes and a large forehead. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall.

“Are you Sue?” the girl asked. Her voice was soft, low, the intonation almost singsong. She smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Malika.”

“Hi.” Sue shook her hand and looked around the room. “Is this my side?” She gestured to where her boxes were piled.

“I hope you don’t mind.” Malika said. “I got here Friday—and so I picked this side of the room. I like to be close to the bathroom.”

“That’s fine.” Sue gave her a smile before wheeling her suitcase over to the pile of boxes. She climbed onto her bed and moaned. “I don’t even want to think about unpacking.” The bed was comfortable. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

Malika sat down at her desk and folded the towel. She closed her laptop, and the music stopped. “I understand you’re a freshman,” she said to Sue.

Sue rolled onto her side. “Yeah. Aren’t you?”

Malika shook her head, her braids flapping vigorously. “I’m a sophomore.”

“I kind of figured I’d be with all other freshmen.”

“No. Bentley is mostly sophomores and juniors.”

Sue smiled. “Wonder how I got in here then.”

Malika’s dark eyes seemed to study her. She didn’t reply.

“Well,” Sue said, sitting up on the bed. “I guess I should just be glad. So what’s your major?”

“Poli sci,” Malika told her.

“That’s going to be my major, too.” Sue grinned. “Prep for law school.”

Malika shrugged. “You and about half the girls here. Me, I want to go work for the United Nations, work in under-developed countries.”

“Well, that’s noble of you. Where are you from, Malika?”

“Tanzania.” The other girl’s chin went up proudly. “My parents both work for the United Nations, helping countries put together systems of law and develop their economies. It’s God’s work.”

God’s work.

Malika kept talking, but Sue wasn’t really listening. The phrase had kicked up some memories for her.

“God’s work” was a favorite phrase of her grandfather’s, one he used so frequently, it had seemed to lose its meaning. The Barlows were regular churchgoers, devoted parishioners of Saint Matthew’s Lutheran Church on the Upper West Side. Sue never remembered ever missing a Sunday service. Even when they were on vacation, they managed to find a place to worship. “God’s work” to Granpa meant pretty much going to church, paying your taxes, voting in every election (for a Republican), and saying grace before meals. Sometimes, Gran would joke about it. “What’s Granpa doing?” Sue would ask, catching her grandfather nodding off in front of the television set. “He’s doing God’s work,” she’d tell her.

“Did your parents drop you off?” Malika asked.

Sue smiled. “No. I drove up from the city.”

“New York?”

Sue nodded. “My grandparents gave me a car. I’ll have it here on campus, so if you ever want to get away for a bit—”

Malika smiled. “As if the deans would ever allow that. You’ll see, Sue. It’s pretty strict around here. They’ll let you keep the car—but they just won’t let you drive it.”

An image of that tall brick wall encircling the campus flashed through Sue’s mind. “I’ll find ways to drive it,” Sue vowed.

“So if your grandparents gave you a car, you must be a little rich girl,” Malika said, smiling. “What did Mommy and Daddy give you?”

Sue felt numb—the automatic reaction she always felt whenever anyone asked about her parents.

“My parents are dead,” she told Malika.

The other girl’s face instantly became sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Sue. I didn’t—”

“Of course you didn’t. How would you know?”

She stood, moving from the bed to the window. She could see the tinting on the glass, but from the inside the windows didn’t seem nearly so black. They let in the sun, for which Sue was glad. She gazed down at the green campus, the fountain bubbling in the center of the yard, watching little groups of girls moving across the grass.

“My parents died in a car accident when I was very young,” Sue told her roommate. “I don’t remember them at all. But my mother went to school here. I suppose that’s the biggest reason why my grandparents sent me here as well.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” Malika asked.

Sue shook her head. “Just Gran and Granpa. Only family I have.”

“I can’t imagine. I have three brothers and two sisters and I grew up with cousins and aunts and uncles…” Malika’s voice faded away as she seemed to catch some sadness in Sue’s eyes.

“Not me. My mother was also an only child, so there are no cousins.”

“What about your father?”

“I don’t know. My grandparents rarely speak of him.”

But of her mother, there was plenty of evidence. Given that she had been Gran and Granpa’s only child, she was pretty much enshrined in their apartment on Central Park West. Pictures of their darling Mariclare were everywhere. In one room were photos of Mariclare as a young girl. In another, dozens of snapshots captured her graduation from high school. There were pictures of her on beaches and in boats, in convertible cars and at the top of the World Trade Center, always laughing and looking happy. As a little girl, Sue had been jealous of this Mariclare, who had seemed to lead such a more outgoing life than she did. Mariclare—the apple of Gran and Granpa’s eyes.

Studying the photos of her mother, Sue didn’t see much of a resemblance to herself. Mariclare had thick red hair and wide blue eyes. She was model-pretty, with none of the flaws Sue saw in herself. Yet for all their devotion to their departed daughter, Sue’s grandparents rarely spoke about Mariclare directly. It was too painful, Sue understood. On the rare occasions Sue got the nerve up to ask Granpa about Mariclare, his eyes would glaze over and he’d shut down completely. Her only source for information was her grandmother, who doled out information in small doses.

“Your grandfather still misses her—the pain has never really gone away,” her grandmother, a slight woman with silver hair who always was dressed as though going to a luncheon, told her one day as they stood side by side in front of the shrine to Mariclare.

“Why isn’t there a wedding picture?” Sue, thirteen at the time, asked.

Her grandmother smiled slightly. “Your parents eloped. I’m afraid your grandfather didn’t approve of your father.” She then added in a whisper, “He blames your father, you know. He was driving the car when they crashed.” She wagged a finger. “So don’t ever ask your grandfather about your father.”

“But didn’t my father have any family? Don’t I have any cousins or grandparents on that side?”

Gran shook her head, her heavily sprayed hair not moving. “He had no people.” She sighed, and picked up a photograph of Mariclare in her cap and gown at high school graduation. “Every day, I thank God you weren’t in the car with them.”

“Are you going to the opening ceremonies tonight?”

Sue’s thoughts were brought back to the present by her roommate’s question.

“Well, I haven’t really thought about it. I was just thinking as far as getting here and collapsing.”

Malika smiled. “Well, I’d like to skip it. But it’s mandatory, honey. Didn’t you know? If you don’t go, they’ll give you demerits or something. Besides, there might be a protest, and I don’t want to miss that.”

“Protest? Why?”

Malika shook a finger at her. “Susan dear, clearly you aren’t reading the official statements the school sends out.”

“Well, we got so many…”

“Joyce Davenport is here to welcome us all to the new school year!”

Sue smirked. “Okay, clue me in. Should I know who she is?”

“Do you not watch television?”

Sue gave her a small laugh. “Actually, no. My grandparents never allowed it. My grandfather would watch the news, but that was it.”

It was Malika’s turn to laugh. “Well, can’t say you’re missing much. Anyway, Joyce Davenport. One of Wilbourne’s esteemed alumnae. And a scary forked-tongue mouthpiece for the far, far, radical right.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She is the High Priestess of the Rapturous Right in this country. Basically, what you need to know is that she’s made a career out of smearing people she doesn’t agree with. She doesn’t debate them on the issues, she just calls them names. Traitors. Perverts. Faggots.”

“So some of the students might protest?”

“Wilbourne isn’t exactly a hotbed of liberalism,” Malika said, “but there are enough girls here who oppose Davenport’s brand of politicking that you see a few hecklers.”

“Well, she has a right to her opinions, don’t you think? Isn’t there such a thing as freedom of speech?”

“Oh, of course. I don’t want to shut her up. But if she has a right to spew her views, then the students have a right to say what they think, too.” Malika shook her head. “She’s really scary, Sue. Wait till you hear her. She’s written some really terrible books about politics—even one defending Joe McCarthy, if you can believe that. They always trot her out on the twenty-four-hour news channels to say something outrageous about women’s rights or minorities or gays. She suggested after 9/11 that the United States should just nuke the Middle East and be done with it. She calls the Palestinians savages.”

“Sounds like a real doll.” Sue suspected this Joyce Davenport was a favorite pundit of her grandfather’s. Politics weren’t discussed much in their household; indeed, as Sue quickly learned growing up, her parents weren’t the only forbidden subject for conversations. If Sue ever voiced an opinion that differed from her grandfather’s, she was told she was wrong—no questions asked. When she asked once why a woman couldn’t be a minister in their church, Granpa had said simply, “That’s God’s will,” and Gran had gestured with her hand to be quiet, to drop the subject, to not push Granpa too far. For when he was pushed too far, his anger could fill the entire apartment, leaving Sue and her grandmother suffocating for air.

Sue’s grandfather was a formidable man, despite his stooped shoulders and white, wispy hair. He was a senior partner in a large law firm that specialized in representing major corporations. Sue had often heard Granpa thunder about the evils of labor unions, welfare, minorities, women in the workplace—and every pronouncement that came from his lips seemed almost like a command from on high. He was convinced there was a massive liberal conspiracy to turn the country into a Communist welfare state with “everyone on the dole!” When he was in one of his rages, he would slap the dinner table with his hand and dishes would literally go flying. “Tax and spend, tax and spend, taking money from the hardworking to give to the shiftless and lazy!” he’d bellow. “That is not the America the Founding Fathers envisioned when they created this great country! No prayer in school indeed! Abortion on demand! Is it any wonder God has turned his back on this great nation?”

Opposing all of these horrible liberals was doing “God’s work”—and Granpa truly believed that was his mission in life. “And God has rewarded me,” he’d say, “not only for my devotion to His commandments, but for doing His work.” He’d gesture around at the massive dining room, the fine china on the shelves, the sparkling chandelier hanging over his head. “Look at the bounty He has blessed me with! Look at my beautiful young granddaughter, who will someday carry on my work!”