Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (19 page)

Gilda noticed that Mr. Panté’s face looked pink for some reason. He seemed to be struggling to control his facial expression.
Had the part about Dulcia’s see-through nightdress been too risque for him to handle? Had the image of Dulcia French-kissing the lips of her dead husband been too graphic?

As she gazed out at her classmates’ inscrutable, painted faces, Gilda felt as if she were facing an audience of clowns. It was Halloween day, and at Our Lady of Sorrows,
everyone
came to school in costume—even the freshmen. Wearing a wig with long, black hair and a white silk dress from a vintage clothing store, Gilda was dressed as a “Lady of the Lake” from Arthurian legend. She loved the romantic feeling of the long, fake hair falling over her shoulders and the silkiness of the dress. Her costume was also a serious part of her investigation: when people asked, “Who are you supposed to be?” she watched closely for any unusual reactions as she replied “I’m the Lady of the Lake.” So far, no new suspects had emerged.

With a pair of sparkly, purple antennae bouncing on her head, Sheila stood up and applauded. “Standing ovation,” she said. “That was the best story I’ve ever heard in school.”

The other girls politely joined her with more subdued applause.

I was wrong about Sheila
, Gilda thought with gratitude.
She’s a genius
.

“Thank you, Gilda,” said Mr. Panté, smiling a little too broadly. “Comments, anyone?”

“It was weird!” Ashley complained.

“What do you mean by ‘weird’?” Mr. Panté asked.

“I don’t know. It was kind of icky.”

“Well, sometimes Gothic literature
is
‘icky.’ I thought Gilda certainly captured a Gothic atmosphere, didn’t you?”

“It seemed a little wordy,” said Amelia, whose own story had been very spare.

Mr. Panté nodded. “I do agree, Gilda, that you could pare down the adjectives in your writing. Sometimes less is more.”

“And sometimes more is more,” said Gilda.

The girls laughed, and Mr. Panté looked annoyed.

Gilda left class feeling disappointed. As she’d read her story aloud, she had imagined Mr. Panté slapping her on the back and immediately sending her story off to New York for publication. Later, they would sit in the back of the classroom and secretly split a bottle of champagne to celebrate her literary success. “You’re the most talented student I’ve ever had in my life,” Mr. Panté would whisper.

Instead, Mr. Panté had merely pointed out the overuse of adjectives in her writing.
Dad would have loved that story
, Gilda thought glumly.

The atmosphere in the school hallways reminded Gilda of a carnival. Unlike Gilda’s old school, where only a few students dared dress in costume for Halloween, the girls at Our Lady of Sorrows—particularly the juniors and seniors—had no qualms about looking ridiculous. The costumes had a liberating effect, and the boisterous laughter and shouting between classes was five times as loud as normal.

On the walls, posters announced the annual Halloween dance that would take place that night: GET SPOOKY! DON’T MISS THE HALLOWEEN DANCE! BRING A DATE, A FRIEND, OR JUST BRING YOUR SCARY SELF!

Gilda decided to put aside her disappointment with Mr.
Panté’s response to her Gothic tale.
I have to stay focused
, she told herself.
I have an investigation in progress
.

So far, Gilda’s plan to interrogate Danielle about her suspicious work for Mrs. Lambert had been thwarted; Danielle had skipped the last
Petunia
staff meeting, and she also seemed to be going out of her way to avoid Gilda in the hallway.

Gilda decided to turn her efforts to “Plan B”—getting information directly from Dolores’s ghost. She would bring Wendy to the Halloween dance as a guest. Then, when nobody was looking, the two of them would sneak down to the ruins to conduct a séance. After all, Gilda reasoned, what could be a more promising time to speak to Dolores’s ghost than Halloween night, when the spirits of the dead were supposed to intermingle with the living?

Priscilla Barkley twisted her hair into a messy bun. She grabbed the English paper she had just finished writing, the script for the school play, and her Cleopatra Halloween costume and hastily stuffed everything into her backpack. It was nearly 10:30 in the morning, and she had skipped her first two classes of the day in order to turn in her advanced-placement English assignment on time. If she didn’t hurry, she would miss yet another class.

With her pink, logo-covered Coach purse in one hand and a mug of bitter coffee in the other, she ran out the door into a surprisingly heavy downpour.

“Crap!” Priscilla yelled, racing toward her car without an umbrella or raincoat.

As she sprinted through wet grass, her open backpack filling with rainwater, an invisible object seemed to place itself in
front of Priscilla’s shins. Everything went flying. For a moment, Priscilla remained frozen on her hands and knees, trying to absorb the horror: her khaki pants were now stained with grass and mud and that her cashmere sweater was sopping wet. What really scared her was the feeling that someone had stuck out a mean-spirited foot to trip her
on purpose
. Had she heard an impish giggle in the rain—a split second of evil laughter at her expense?

Or was she starting to lose her mind just like Danielle and Nikki?

“You’re breaking the rules,” Priscilla yelled into the rain as she stood up and attempted to walk with some degree of dignity back to the house to change clothes.

Priscilla liked rules, providing that she was the one who made them up. Until this year, her rules and rituals had worked, and Dolores’s ghost had left her alone. Why didn’t they work any longer?

What does she want
? Priscilla wondered as she went back inside and dropped her backpack and purse on the kitchen floor.
I already gave her a Dior scarf and a Dolce & Gabbana purse and gold earrings from Tiffany
.

“
But you shoplifted those things
,” a voice in her head replied. “
How could they really matter to you
?”

Maybe that was the problem. She had broken her own rule about giving away something of genuine value, and now she was paying the price. As she trudged upstairs to change clothes, Priscilla decided that they would do the ritual again, and this time it would work. This time, she would sacrifice something that truly mattered to her.

H
ey! There are cute boys here!” Wendy exclaimed, causing a group of boys to turn and check out her “black cat” costume, which included a long tail and a purse constructed from a bag of kitty litter. “I thought it was just going to be a bunch of nuns!”

“I told you a boys’ school was invited,” said Gilda.

The ornate, feminine ballroom at Our Lady of Sorrows had been transformed to look like a nightclub. Music boomed from enormous speakers surrounding the darkened room, and a large screen on the stage pulsed with the bright, fragmented images of music videos.

“Okay, let’s leave a little more room here, kids!” Gilda observed Miss Appleton shining a flashlight on a group of boys and girls who were touching one another in a manner she considered “too lewd.”

“You mean we can’t freak-dance here?” Wendy seemed disappointed.

“Since when do you freak-dance?”

“I love it,” said Wendy. “I’ve been doing it all year.”

“You have not.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Freak dancing is for people who don’t know how to dance.”

“Then you should try it.”

Gilda was just about to reply with a scathing comeback when she spied Danielle, Priscilla, and Nikki chatting with two boys in a darkened corner of the room. Even from a distance, Gilda could tell that both boys were fascinated with Priscilla’s Cleopatra costume: she wore a gold bustier, heavy bracelets around her bare arms, thick, black eyeliner, and a gold headband shaped like a snake. One of the boys had his arm around Nikki, who appeared to be dressed as an Ohio State football fan who had taken a beating; she had smudged dark eye shadow beneath her eyes to look like bruises. Danielle looked awkward in an angel costume with cumbersome wings and a silver halo that hovered above her head, suspended by a bit of wire.

Gilda was about to move closer to see if she could insinuate herself into their conversation when Wendy grabbed her arm and pulled her into the middle of the dance floor. “Hey, it’s our favorite song!”

The song was called “Bits of Love,” and Wendy and Gilda had a special dance that went with it: first, they acted out the melodrama of the lyrics, mouthing the story about how “You chained me, then shamed me; you sent me downtown on the city bus! You claimed me, then you lamed me; you kicked me right in the nu-uts! Thrown on the floor and stomped on; like broken bits, broken bits of love!” Then they bounced around the room to the chorus: “Broken bits, broken bits, broken bits! Little broken bits of lo-ove!”

Gilda usually didn’t hesitate to dance as outrageously and ridiculously as she wanted, but something about the proximity of her colleagues from
The Petunia
and the sight of Mr. Panté leaning against the wall made her feel self-conscious.

She decided to go say hello to Mr. Panté just to be polite. As Wendy bounced wildly toward a group of boys, Gilda slipped away from the dance floor.

“Don’t you just hate these things?” Gilda leaned against the wall next to Mr. Panté, who observed the dance with a glazed expression, as if he wished he could magically transport himself to a bar stool in some other city.

“Oh, hello, Gilda. Having fun?”

Gilda shrugged. “I prefer more of a small cocktail-party atmosphere.”

Mr. Panté chuckled. “You’re too sophisticated for this low culture.”

Is he secretly making fun of me
? Gilda realized something annoying: she really wanted Mr. Panté to like her. “I just meant that it must be boring for you to have to sit here watching us act dumb.”

“Yes, the tables are turned for once.”

Sometimes Mr. Panté said the strangest things. Gilda didn’t have a chance to continue the conversation, because the Triplets suddenly planted themselves in front of Mr. Panté and gazed up at him with glittery faces.

“Are you having
fun
, Mr. Panté?”

“Loads of fun.”

“Because you look bored!”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Did you see us dancing over there?”

“Yes—yes, I did.”

“Hey, what’s the big idea of leaving me out there by myself?”

Gilda turned to find Wendy standing behind her, hands on hips and looking incensed. “For your information, I totally crashed into that group of boys over there, and they were like, ‘Watch where you’re going, kitty cat!’”

“I thought you wanted to meet boys.”

“I thought
you
wanted to do a séance.” Wendy eyed Mr. Panté with interest.

“Did you ever freak-dance when you were a kid, Mr. Panté?” Britney asked.

“No, can’t say that I did.”

Gilda noticed with resentment that the Triplets had managed to steal Mr. Panté’s attention. She was torn—part of her wanted to stay and see if she could get him to talk about Gothic literature or something. On the other hand, it was the perfect opportunity to slip away. Across the room, Miss Appleton was busy shining her flashlight on another groping couple.

“Okay.” Gilda braced herself to make a run for it. “Let’s go.”

Carrying miniature flashlights and shivering in the cold air, Gilda and Wendy made their way through the trees that surrounded the school. When they reached the bridge overlooking Mermaid Lake, they stopped and gazed across the black surface of the water. Clouds drifted past a full, white moon like smoky dragons wafting through the sky.

“I’m picking up a vibration.” Gilda felt a different sort of anxiety than the usual goose bumps associated with walking
outside in the dark on Halloween night. There was
something
—a presence all around them. If she’d been an animal, she would have lifted her nose in the air and sprinted away, certain that some predator was nearby, observing her. Was it simply her imagination, or was someone watching them?

“Why didn’t you tell me about your new boyfriend?” Wendy whispered.

“What boyfriend?”

“You know. Razor-stubble boy.”

“Mr. Panté?”

“I knew it!”

“Shush!” Gilda whispered fiercely. “We’re supposed to be quiet on this bridge!”

“I knew there was a reason you kept going on and on about that teacher and his panties!” Wendy lowered her voice to a whispered shout.

“I have not been ‘going on and on’ about him!”

“You don’t have to be so defensive,” said Wendy. “I think he’s kind of cute.”

Gilda and Wendy fell silent as a sudden surge of wind roared through the tree branches around them.

“Wendy,” Gilda whispered, “I really think we should get off this bridge.”

Both girls shivered as they tiptoed quickly toward the pale ruins that waited for them on the other side of the water.

Inside the reading room, Gilda gasped:
a girl with long hair stood stiffly in a corner
.