Embittered Ruby (26 page)

What do you really think of this place?
No. Leila would be all sunshine and roses.

“So, meatloaf for dinner?” Leila’s words intruded the silence.

That’s what she picked as a conversation opener? Meatloaf. “Yeah. Smelled like it might be good.” Carmen shrugged. Who cared?

“I didn’t know it would be like this. It looked like the tables in there were set up like a restaurant. Want to sit with me at dinner?” Leila looked down at her hands and pulled at a Claddagh ring stuck around her middle finger. The ring didn’t move.

“Why not? No one wants to eat alone, right?”

Leila nodded. “That’s like my biggest fear—that I’d have to sit there at a table by myself like every day in school.”

Carmen’s heart sank. Poor girl. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, you can eat with me every day.” Not like offers were beating down Carmen’s door. But maybe soon they would be.

But…oh no. What if some cooler girls wanted Carmen to join them, but now she’d promised Leila? How would she break her promise? Well, she’d have to face that dilemma when it happened. At least for now she wouldn’t be eating alone.

“Is your finger okay?” The puffiness probably didn’t matter, but the red looked menacing.

Leila grimaced. “My ring is stuck. I’m not sure how to get it off. I should have never put it on, but I wanted to wear it.”

“Come with me. We’ll get it off.” Carmen gestured toward the bathroom, where she ran Leila’s hand under cool water and squirted some soap from the wall dispenser right onto the ring. It grew slippery, and Carmen shimmied it off Leila’s hand.

“Oh, great. I had no idea what I was going to do. Thanks.” Leila rubbed her sore knuckle.

Carmen rinsed the ring and then inspected it. “It’s an Irish thing, isn’t it? What’s it called?”

“It’s a Claddagh ring. There are a few legends about what it means, but yeah, it’s Irish.”

“Cool.” Carmen handed it back to her. Her fingers rubbed the spot where her engagement ring had been.

Lelia glanced in the mirror, pulled the sleeves of her white Maui sweatshirt down past her wrists, and gripped them in her fists. She left the bathroom, climbed into the lower bunk, and pulled a paperback from her carry-on.

Looked like social time was over.

What was Carmen supposed to do? Could she go explore the grounds by herself? Or was she expected to stay in her room and wait? She probably wasn’t free to inspect outside, but maybe they weren’t even allowed to wander the house alone. Surprisingly there wasn’t anything like that in the rules, except where it said she had to keep to the schedule at all times. As far as she knew, she had nowhere to go, and wandering didn’t seem to be breaking the rules. Like Dad always said, it’s a lot easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Carmen looked at her watch. The rest of the girls wouldn’t be back for more than an hour still.

A snore came from the bottom bunk.

That settled it. Carmen reached for her cell phone—oh right, confiscated—and bolted from the room before she changed her mind.

She walked down the hallway, sure no one would be around, then crept down the stairs, hoping they wouldn’t squeak. At the bottom of the stairs, she opened the door one inch at a time. What was she so afraid of? It’s not like Ben could fault her. She wasn’t told where to be or what to do.

A right turn and a short walk led her to a door she hadn’t seen yet. Probably locked. Carmen put her hand on the ancient knob.
Please don’t open to Ben Bradley on the toilet
. Maybe she should knock. But that would give her presence away to anyone nearby. She turned the handle as slowly as the second hand of a clock. It opened easily. Was the lock broken?

She peered through the doorway and waited as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. A dirt-and-stone stairway looking like it had been carved right into the mountainside led down to cavernous darkness. Now what? She’d come this far. But how could she walk down the stairs in such a creepy place and enter a room or, whatever, blindly? Was she crazy?

A foot lowered onto the first step. Apparently she was.

Another step.

Carmen waited for a creak. Of course none came. The earth itself didn’t make scary noises.

Toes reached below for another step.

Seventeen stairs later, Carmen felt both feet on a landing of some sort. She patted the earth around where she stood. Why was there no light? Something tickled her face, and she squelched a scream. She waved her hands in front of her face in case it was a spider. But if not a spider, what?

There. Carmen grasped a string of some kind and pulled. Light flooded the narrow space. She stood inches from a wooden door. Of course she would open it. She hadn’t come so far to turn back without knowing where the journey would have ended. She wriggled to the side, but the space was too small to open the door while she stood beside it, so Carmen backed up three steps, reached forward, and swung it open.

Cool air blasted her face. Was she outside? Carmen peered through the doorway. Another hallway? No, more like a passageway.

She stepped through, leaving her sanity somewhere on the stairs behind her. Was she starring in some weird horror movie?

The lower ceiling forced Carmen to hunch over, and she crept along the dark tunnel that smelled of minerals and musty earth. The scent reminded her of family trips to Meramec Cavern in Missouri. Exploring the caves and running her fingers across the stalactites and stalagmites—one went up and one went down. Carmen could never remember which was which…but Dad always knew.

She plodded on and on in that weird half-hunched position. When would she reach the end? What would be there when she did? And what if the door was locked when she got back? Nah. One thing at a time. No sense letting her nerves get the best of her.

Wham!
The top of her head banged into something solid. Carmen rubbed her skull then patted the object with both hands. It was cool like metal, but smooth and flat like a door. Where was the handle? Ah. There it was. A little lower than where it should have been.

Locked.

Carmen felt the dirt wall on both sides of her body. Her hand brushed against something—a key! She carefully placed her hand over it and closed her fist around it so she wouldn’t knock it down. It would be difficult to bend over and search the confined area in the dark.

The key slipped easily into the lock, and Carmen readied herself to move through. It opened without a squeak or moan. Carmen leaned forward into the mountain air. Outside. She was outside, beyond the house quite a ways. Behind the horse barn? It hadn’t felt like she’d walked that far, but she must have.

This had to be against the rules. She’d better get back before she got caught.

Maybe she should tell someone about how easy it was for her to get out.

Or maybe she’d keep that tidbit of info to herself. At least for now.

Feeling her way back along the passage, Carmen tripped over her feet and stumbled forward, planting her face in the dirt. She sputtered and spat, flecks of mud flying from her teeth. Gross. She stood as high as she could and brushed the front of her pants. Why had she worn her light jeans that day?

Her back throbbing from being bent over for so long, Carmen hurried on. The slight chance that the door would be locked and she’d never be found niggled at her and hurried her along.

Finally back at the doorway to the stairs that would take her up to the main house, Carmen stepped through and pulled her body fully upright. She stretched her arms up and lengthened her spine then pulled the cord, dousing the light. Seventeen stairs back to the top.

Carmen’s shoulder bumped into the closed door at the top. She reached for the door handle, prepared to turn it slowly so as not to alert anyone to her presence. Hopefully she could make it back to her room, change, and maybe even shower before anyone realized she’d been gone.

Her wrist turned the knob. Nothing happened. She tried again. The handle didn’t move even a fraction of an inch.

Locked.

W
ho would have locked it without looking to see if someone was in there? Unless it was like the bedrooms and locked automatically. Which would make sense for security purposes, but made things really tricky for Carmen.

Carmen needed a moment to figure things out, so she sat on the top step.

She had to get out of there. What could she do? No matter how she did it, she’d be in trouble. If she pounded away on the door, someone would come, but it might be Ben. If not him, maybe a staff member or one of the girls, and then word would get around that she’d been prowling around outside. If she went back through the passage and tried to use the front entrance, which Ben hadn’t locked, she’d almost surely bump into him.

Carmen had no choice. She’d have to knock and face whatever happened.

Tap. Tap
. If it were possible to whisper a knock, Carmen managed to do it several times. But no one came. Maybe no one was out there. She’d wait until she heard voices or footsteps.

Minutes went by and turned into what felt like hours.

Was that laughter? Carmen pressed her ear against the door and wished for supersonic hearing. Yes. The sound was definitely laughing.

She carefully knocked loud enough that they would hear her, but quietly enough that hopefully no one else would.

“Did you hear that?”

“I think so. Was it knocking?”

“Do you think?”

“We could look.”

Yes. Great idea. Look. Carmen knocked two more times a bit harder.

“Here, help me open it.” Sounded like feet scrambling on the floor just outside.

Should she talk to them? They hadn’t spoken to her. Kind of odd the girls weren’t worried about who they were letting in.

The space opened up to bright light shining around two smiling faces. Carmen’s rescuers. She recognized one as the beautiful black goddess who’d visited her church. What was her name?

The other girl—compact like a gymnast and blond—was a complete stranger. “Carmen, I presume? What on earth are you doing out here?”

“Um…just checking things out?” Carmen shrugged. Would these girls turn her in?

“Hey. I’m Tricia, this is Kira.”

Carmen let her eye adjust to the light. Ah. Tricia. That was it.

Carmen dusted a hand off on her already-soiled jeans and reached it out. “Carmen.”

The girls nodded, a smile tugging at the corners of their mouths. “We’re your new roommates.”

Laughter bubbled to the surface and spewed over.

Kira’s ponytail bobbed. “Yeah, it’s a really odd predicament to get yourself in on your first day here. Whatever possessed you to go in there?”

Carmen shrugged. “Just adventurous, I guess.”

“Well, you’d better get back up to the room and clean up before someone finds out.” Tricia fought against the laughter.

“You mean they don’t know?” But would they soon? “Nah. Kira and I got back from skiing and found one girl sleeping on the bottom bunk and the other nowhere to be found. That’s almost never a good sign.” She chuckled. “Can’t say I’ve ever found someone out here. Finding and using the phone is the typical new-girl scheme.” Tricia began to walk toward the bedroom stairs.

Carmen followed closely. She might actually get away with her foolishness. “So you’re my roommates?” Great first impression. She’d have to be a lot more careful from now on.

“In the flesh.” Kira flashed a million-dollar smile. “We’ll get along fine, I’m sure. Only…”

“Only what?” What could Carmen have done already? Well, besides the obvious.

Kira looked at Tricia and jerked her head back toward Carmen. “Ask her.”

“That girl sleeping up in the room right now, have you heard her snoring? It’s like a train rumble.” Tricia grimaced. “I mean, I don’t want to gossip or be mean, but I’ve got to get my sleep.”

“We’ll figure something out.” Kira smiled and nodded as a girl passed them looking horrified at Carmen’s appearance. “In the meantime, we need to get her back to the room so she can pay the shower a nice long visit before dinner.”

“Oh, and about dinner.” Tricia grinned as she held open the door to the staircase up to the dorms. “You can sit with us.”

Oh great.

“Feel better?” Tricia looked up from her magazine when Carmen let the steam out of the bathroom.

“Yeah. I was pretty grimy.”

“I’ll bet you were.” Kira winked.

Carmen slicked as much moisture from her long, thick hair as possible. There was no way it would dry before dinner, even if she pulled out the blow dryer. She twisted it into a knot and secured it with a giant claw clip.

Leila bustled around her dresser and bed area, still wearing her travel clothes. Come to think of it, her sleeping clothes, too. And where were all her bags? Was that why she made it to the van so fast? No suitcase?

“Looking pretty homey over here.” Carmen touched the plastic flower leis hanging from the drawer handles and picked up what she assumed was a family photo. She squinted at the faces—no way those super tiny, gorgeous Koreans were Leila’s family. The black-haired woman and two teenage girls wore bikinis—and deserved to—and the man was muscular and tanned. They held absolutely no resemblance to Leila at all. “Who are these people? Friends from Hawaii?”