Bittersweet Dreams (38 page)

The stairway with its mahogany banister had obviously been rebuilt. It felt solid beneath us.

At the top, we paused.

“I have you in that section that faces the lake behind us,” Dr. Marlowe explained to me. “The rooms are small, actually not much different from the way they were when the house was first built. There are two other girls in your section. They both arrived this year, too.” She turned to my father. “We had three openings occur.”

“Why?” Julie asked. “It's not graduation time, is it?”

“Our students have a different school year,” Dr. Marlowe said, looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes. “It's built-in.”

“Built into what?” Julie asked.

“Whoever they are,” Dr. Marlowe said, smiling.

“What?”

I laughed. Maybe I would like it here, I thought.

My room was spartan. It had a double bed with a small side table, a dresser, a desk, a mirror on the closet door, and a closet half the size of one of our hall closets at home. I was glad I didn't bring all that much.

Julie, despite trying desperately not to say anything negative that might turn me around, couldn't contain herself. “Oh, how small.”

“Our students don't spend very much time in their rooms,” Dr. Marlowe said. She looked at me.

“It's more than enough,” I said, and she smiled.

My father put my suitcases down. “You want any help unpacking?”

“No. Why don't you do the paperwork and take your tour? I'll be fine,” I told him.

We heard someone laugh in the hallway. Dr. Marlowe looked out and said, “Oh, great, Corliss and Donna, your neighbors. Hi, girls. Mayfair Cummings has arrived.”

The two came to my doorway.

“This is Corliss Simon,” Dr. Marlowe said, putting her hand on the shoulder of an African American girl with a slim figure. Her hair was cut rather short. She had almond-shaped ebony eyes and an arrogant tightness in her mouth.

“And this is Donna Ramanez,” Dr. Marlowe said as she turned to the light-brown-haired shorter girl beside her.

They both wore gray sweatshirts and jeans. Neither spoke. They stood in the doorway, looking in at us. We looked at each other like gunslingers sizing up the competition.

“Why don't we go to my office and let them get to know each other?” Dr. Marlowe told my father and Julie.

“Very good,” he said, and they followed her out.

I turned to my suitcases.

“Need any help?” Corliss asked.

“Offering?”

“She wouldn't have asked otherwise, genius,” Donna said.

I turned back to them and smiled. “What are you wearing, the school uniform?”

They looked at each other as if they had just realized they were wearing the same thing. Then they both laughed.

“Where are you from?” I asked Corliss.

“Nigeria. Originally,” she added. “West LA. You?”

“Garden of Eden originally. Beverly Hills.”

She laughed. I looked at Donna.

“My mother is from Ireland, and my father is from Costa Rica, but I was born in Arizona.”

“What are the others here like?” I asked.

“You have a good imagination?” Corliss asked.

“Yes, why?”

“After you meet them, you'll need it,” Donna said.

“Great,” I said, and began to unpack.

They started to help. We worked quietly. Neither of them commented on anything I had brought. I watched them out of the corner of my eye and then stopped and turned to them.

They paused, too.

“What?” Donna asked.

“Neither of you especially wanted to be here, either?”

“I won the scholarship,” Corliss said, “but it wasn't what I set out to do. It's supposed to save my life.”

“My choice was either to come here or go to Alcatraz,” Donna said.

“Alcatraz was closed a long time ago,” I said.

“So I had no choice,” she replied.

I laughed and then looked at them more intently.

“What?” Corliss asked.

“I was just thinking. You're the welcoming committee. This didn't all just happen.”

They smiled.

“Nothing here just happens,” Donna said. “If you belong, you'll know that, and you'll like it.”

I nodded.

It didn't take long to size me up.

Maybe, just maybe, I had found a new home.

I stood outside with my father and Julie after they had returned from their tour of Spindrift and it was time for them to leave.

Since my mother's death, my father and I really had only been separated a few times, including for a little more than a week during his honeymoon with Julie. Most of the other times, his business trips took two or maybe three days.

I could see that this fact was occurring to him, too, as he stood looking out at the beautiful grounds and the fence that surrounded Spindrift.

“This is quite an educational institution,” he said, still not looking at me. “We met all of the teachers you'll have, and they are all very impressive. I think you'll finally feel challenged. One thing's for sure,” he added, turning to me and smiling, “you won't be bored.”

“I saw a couple of very good-looking boys, too,” Julie added.

“Don't worry. It's all right,” I said.

“What's all right?” Julie asked.

“Your leaving me here. It's all right. Don't worry about it. You don't have to say anything more.”

“Well, I didn't mean . . . I mean . . .”

“You can get into the car, Julie,” my father said, surprisingly firmly. “I'll just take a few minutes with Mayfair, and we'll be off.”

“Okay. Good luck, Mayfair,” she said, and went to the car. She knew that if she hugged me or kissed me good-bye, it would feel like she had hugged or kissed a tree.

“Let's take a little walk,” my father said.

We stepped down and went to the right, where there was a small pond. We stood next to it, looking into the water and at the colorful rocks.

“I know you need this place or something like it,” he began, “but I hope you don't believe I failed you, Mayfair, even though I believe that.”

“We failed each other, Daddy. I'm not as smart as you think, and anyway, Julie's right. Brains aren't everything. I don't want to be just a brilliant student. I want to be a brilliant person, too. I have a ways to go. Maybe I'll find my way here.”

“I bet you will,” he said, smiling. He put his arm around me. “I love you, May. I'll never stop loving you.”

“I know, Daddy.”

“I have something more to leave with you,” he said, taking my hand.

We walked back to the car, and he opened the trunk to give me a package tied with a cord.

“I'm not good at making it look fancy.”

I started to open it, and he stopped me.

“No,” he said. “Open it when we leave.” He kissed me again and opened his car door. “I'll call, or you call us whenever you need anything or just want to talk, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“See you soon,” he said. “Show them what a real genius can do, will you?”

“I will.”

He smiled his winning smile and got into the car. I stood and watched them drive down to the gate. It opened, they drove out, and the gate closed.

I was about to feel very bad, but then I began to open the package.

I didn't have to open it all the way to know what it was.

He had brought me something I had forgotten, my special teddy bear, the first gift he and my mother had ever given me.

Pocket Books proudly presents

Sage's Eyes

By V.C. Andrews
^®

Available February 2016 from Pocket Books

Turn the page for a preview of
Sage's Eyes
 . . .

The long, dark pathway to the end of my dream was lined with hemlock, branched and graceful, with its white flowers and smooth stems marked with red. History and philosophy students probably know that Socrates used hemlock to commit suicide. I know that my ancestors recommended mixing it with betony and fennel seed to cure the bite of a mad dog.

I cannot tell you exactly how I know these things. I don't even know for sure who my ancestors were or where they lived. I don't know if I'm English, Italian, Dutch, or some combination. However, even when I was a young girl, probably no more than four years old, memories like these would come over me when I was least expecting them, but usually back then only when I was alone. Often that would happen when I was sitting outside on my small redwood bench on the rear patio, playing with a doll or some other toy my adoptive parents had given me for my birthday or when my father returned from a work trip.

My father was a commercial insurance salesman and often visited companies more than a hundred miles away. I was sure he could sell anyone anything. He was handsomer than anyone else's father I knew and had a smile that could radiate enough warmth to heat an igloo. With his perennial suntanned complexion, his green-tinted ebony eyes, his rich, thick licorice-black hair, always neatly styled, and his perfect facial features, he could have his picture next to the words
movie star
in the dictionary.

Whenever I was alone because my mother was doing housework and my father was away, I could lose myself in my own imagination for hours and hours. During that time, images, faces, words, and sights I had never seen in real life, in books and magazines, or on television would appear before me as if they were being beamed down from a cloud. I had always heard voices, and although I would never tell anyone, especially my parents, I still do.

The voices seemed to ride on the wind and come at me in waves of whispers clinging to the underbelly of the breeze, swirling about my ears. I often heard my name first and looked to see who was calling me from behind trees and bushes or around corners. There was never anyone there then, and there still isn't now. Sometimes the whispering trailed in the wake of a flock of birds flapping their wings almost in complete silence above me. And sometimes I would awaken suddenly at night, as if I had heard my bedroom door open, and I would hear the whispering coming from the darkest corners of my room.

It never frightened me and still doesn't. There was always a strong feeling of loving warmth in the voices that, if anything, comforted me. When I was a young girl, I never had to call for my parents after a bad dream. The whispering reassured me. My ghosts protected me. I could close my eyes again without any trepidation, turn over in my bed, and embrace the darkness, snuggling safely like a baby in the arms of her mother.

Back then, whenever I mentioned any of this to my father or especially to my mother, they would scowl. If they were together at the time, my father would shake his head and look at my mother as if he was about to throw up his hands and run off. She would kneel down and seize my shoulders tightly. If she was wearing her fake fingernails, she would dig them into me enough to make me squirm and bring tears to my eyes.