Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (20 page)

“What is it?” Wendy waved her flashlight around wildly.

“Oh.” In the yellow glow of her flashlight, Gilda realized she had merely glimpsed an old scarf hanging from a coatrack. “Never mind.”

As Wendy pulled the Ouija board from her kitty-litter purse and began to set it up, Gilda found Dolores’s ring. “Look,” she said, handing it to Wendy. “This belonged to Dolores.”

“Looks like a real amethyst or something.”

“It is real.”

Wendy held up the ring and examined it with her flashlight. “What’s the deal with everyone wearing real jewels these days? What ever happened to fake stuff?”

“I wear fake stuff all the time.”

“You’ll wear anything that glitters.”

Gilda and Wendy sat cross-legged on the ground with the Ouija board resting on their knees so that it balanced between them. They closed their eyes and placed their fingers lightly on the planchette.

“Dolores,” said Gilda, “give us a sign if you are present with us.”

They heard a sound from outside—the faint murmur of a girl’s voice swallowed by wind.

Wendy grabbed Gilda’s wrist and squeezed hard.

“Ow!”

“Did you
hear
that?” she whispered.

Gilda nodded and told herself to focus on her breathing, to remain calm.

Wendy placed her hand back on the planchette and bit down on her lower lip.

Gilda was about to question Dolores’s spirit again, when they heard faint giggling sounds and the crunching of footsteps drawing closer.

“Someone’s really out there!”

“Then I told Dinkel, ‘I can’t drive you all over town. You have to get your own car fixed at
some
point.’”

Gilda recognized Nikki Grimaldi’s voice. She grabbed Dolores’s ring, slammed the Ouija board shut, and searched for somewhere to hide.

Panic ensued as Gilda and Wendy waved their flashlights wildly and bumped into each other, looking under tables and chairs for a hiding place. Without a second to spare, Gilda managed to conceal herself behind the draperies while Wendy crouched in a dark corner behind a chair.

Gilda heard the door swing open. A flashlight flickered across the room.

“Damn, it’s cold out there!” Nikki declared.

Someone shushed Nikki.

Straining to comprehend the murmur of voices, Gilda wished she could will her ears to turn into eyes for just a moment. Who was in the room with Nikki? Had Wendy found a good hiding place? She heard rustling and scraping sounds—pieces of furniture being rearranged. Gilda prayed that nobody would move the draperies.

“No,” someone said. “Put it over there.”

That sounds like Danielle
, Gilda thought.

Then it was all Gilda could do to remain silent when she heard another voice that sounded very familiar—the clear, smooth voice of Priscilla Barkley.

“The Ladies of the Lake are called to order,” Priscilla declared.

W
e will now recite the sacred oath of the Ladies of the Lake.” Still dressed in her Cleopatra costume, Priscilla perched regally on her chair and regarded her subjects—Danielle Menory and Nikki Grimaldi. Concealed in the shadows of the room, Gilda and Wendy tensed their muscles and struggled to remain completely motionless.

“We
still
have to do that?” Danielle complained.

Priscilla regarded Danielle with a withering gaze. “Yes, Danielle, we still have to do that. Especially since you’re both having so many issues.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Nikki asked.

Ignoring Nikki’s question, Priscilla began to recite the secret oath, and the other two girls quickly joined in:

“The Ladies of the Lake pledge to stick by one another no matter what and to remain best friends forever no matter what, to become powerful, popular girls and never to reveal the name, location, meeting times, or anything else about the identity of our club to anyone without the full agreement of all members.”

“The meeting is now called to order,” said Priscilla. “Have you brought your precious belongings?”

Nikki and Danielle nodded.

“Please show the group what you have brought to sacrifice to the lake, and explain its value.”

Danielle removed a book from her backpack and placed it in the middle of the floor. “It’s a book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay,” she said. “It was one of my grandmother’s favorite books, and she gave it to me when I started going to Our Lady. I don’t know exactly how much it’s worth, but it’s an early edition, and pretty valuable as far as books go.”

“Okay.” Priscilla eyed the book skeptically.

Nikki tossed two tickets into the middle of the floor. “All I can say is, you know I’m freaking out if I’m giving up these tickets to the Ohio State game. Dinkel is totally going to kill me when I tell him I gave them away In fact, let me know if you have any ideas for an excuse I can make up because—”

“Nikki, I don’t think we need to hear another saga about Dinkel right now,” Priscilla snapped.

Nikki’s mouth hung open in mock surprise at the reprimand. “Ooookay.”

Priscilla unzipped a metallic bag that matched her Cleopatra costume and removed a small, worn teddy bear.

“This is Teddy. He’s worth less than some of the other things I’ve given away in terms of monetary value, but for me, this is like giving away a member of my family.”

Danielle and Nikki gave each other a knowing glance.

“Teddy has been my best friend since I was a little girl, and he’s been with me through every experience in my life, good and bad. This is the most meaningful object I’ve ever sacrificed.”

The teddy bear lay helplessly on the floor, its glass eyes staring up at the ceiling sadly, as if hoping to be rescued.

“I thought your best friends were the Ladies of the Lake,” said Danielle, observing the stuffed bear coldly.

“You
know
what I meant, Danielle.”

“She means the teddy bear is like a security blanket,” Nikki explained helpfully, “and those are definitely hard to give up. I had a wanket until I was like, seven years old, and I’d scream if my sister took it away.”

“A
wanket
?”

“My favorite blanket.”

“Can you two save it for the Senior Common Room? Considering the problems you’ve both been having lately, I would think you’d take this more seriously.”

Danielle stared at the forlorn objects lying in the middle of the floor. “The problem, Priscilla, is that this
isn’t
going to work.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have a gut feeling it’s all over.”

It was as if Danielle’s words had suddenly punctured a hole in an airtight life-support system. Nikki simply gaped at Danielle. Priscilla observed her with narrowed eyes.

“You’re a very destructive person, Danielle.”

“I’m just looking at reality! For one thing, that freshman girl Gilda thinks she’s some kind of investigative reporter or something. Who knows what she’s already figured out?”

Behind the draperies, Gilda stifled an urge to cheer for herself.

“I thought you took care of her,” said Priscilla.

“She got a phone call, but that doesn’t guarantee that she’ll just give up and stop asking questions.”

So Danielle is the one who called me
! Gilda thought.
I knew it
.

“I sincerely doubt a freshman will keep poking around the lake after getting a call from a dead girl. She’s probably at home, hiding under her bed right now.”

Gilda couldn’t help but let out a very tiny, involuntary snort.

The three girls fell silent. “Did you
hear
something?” Nikki whispered.

Gilda held her breath and bit her lip until it almost bled.
Please don’t let them look behind the drapes
!

“I have that feeling again,” said Danielle. “I feel like someone’s in here, watching us.”

“Danielle,” Priscilla whispered, “you’d better stop undermining us.”

“I was just being honest,” Danielle whispered back. She twisted her arm behind her back awkwardly, attempting to scratch an itch beneath her cardboard angel wings. “This costume is driving me crazy!”

“If we keep fighting with each other like this, she’ll sense our weakness.”

“How do you
know
, Priscilla?” Danielle’s voice grew louder with frustration. “Sometimes I think you just make up all this stuff!”

“Hey, I agree with Priscilla,” Nikki interjected. “We’ve come this far without having anything really bad happen to us, haven’t we? If we stick together, the ghost will leave us alone, and that Gilda chick won’t get any more information either. Do you realize how totally screwed up our lives would be if someone like Mrs. McCracken found out what we did?”

“Nikki!”

“What?”

Priscilla spoke in a low, menacing tone. “Remember—there’s nothing to find out, because we didn’t DO anything.”

“Right,” said Nikki. “Sorry.”

Danielle tore the wire halo from her head angrily. “Priscilla, you can’t possibly believe that what you just said is true.”

“It is true.”

“Just because you
say
something’s true doesn’t make it true. It’s like you think you’re God or something!”

“Okay, time out!” Nikki jumped up from her chair and placed herself between Priscilla and Danielle like a referee. “Just stop it, both of you! Okay, so we’re not as close as we used to be. We just have to make it through this last year together so we can all graduate and go to great colleges and just move on with our lives!”

Her speech complete, Nikki sat down. Priscilla fixed Danielle with an icy stare, and Danielle kept her eyes downcast, looking sullen and uncomfortable.

“I just have this funny feeling,” said Danielle quietly “It’s this feeling that her ghost doesn’t
want
the ritual anymore. What she really wants is for us to finally get caught.”

“I’m beginning to wonder if
you
want us to get caught.”

“We’re not going to get caught!” said Nikki. “Listen, we’ve already done tons of community service, and we’re nice to everyone all the time. That makes up for
something
, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Danielle. “
Does
it?”

“I don’t know about
you
, Danielle, but at this time next year, I’m going to be drinking beers at fraternity parties—not rotting in jail. Call me
weird
, but I don’t exactly want my life ruined just because of some stupid thing that happened when I was a freshman!”

“Sometimes I feel like my life is already ruined,” said Danielle.

Neither Priscilla nor Nikki knew how to respond to this comment. It scared them.

“Well, that’s why we need to do this ritual, Danielle,” said Priscilla, after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “You aren’t alone with this, you know; the Ladies of the Lake are always here for you.”

“Right,” said Nikki. “And remember, there’s just a few more months of school to go and then we can finally just
relax
.”

“That’s why you’re going to be a big success in life, Nikki;
you
think positively.”

Danielle sighed.

“One thing’s for sure,” said Priscilla. “Either we all succeed together, or we all fail together.”

Priscilla and Nikki observed Danielle, waiting to see what she would do. Was she about to give up completely and reveal the secret they had managed to keep for three years?

“Okay,” Danielle said quietly.

“Okay, what?”

“Let’s do the ritual.”

Hurrying before Danielle could change her mind, the girls gathered their offerings from the floor and headed outside into the cold.

“Omigod!” Wendy whispered loudly, emerging from her hiding place behind a chair. “You go to the weirdest school ever!”

“Wendy, I can’t believe how huge this is.”

“They’re freaks! I mean, Danielle might be okay, but that one who’s the leader of the club is so bitchy.”

Gilda wished she had brought a tape recorder so there would have been some proof of the conversation she had just overheard.
Three of the most popular seniors at Our Lady of Sorrows are in the Ladies of the Lake
, Gilda told herself. She felt almost giddy at the impact of her discovery. “Wendy,” she whispered, “it sounds like they
murdered
Dolores Lambert!”

“But they never said they murdered her.”

“Well, they definitely did
something
bad to her, and they’re obviously afraid of her ghost. This ritual seems to be some weird attempt to bargain with her spirit.”

“I don’t get what they’re doing. Why would a ghost care about stuff like a teddy bear or football tickets?”

For some reason, Gilda remembered how, when her father was very sick, she had tried to make deals with herself.
If I can go a whole month without eating a single Twinkie, he won’t die
. Or:
If I can go an entire week without saying anything mean to Stephen, he won’t die
. None of the deals had worked.

“I bet Dolores’s ghost
doesn’t
care about a teddy bear or football tickets,” said Gilda reasonably. “But
they
care.” She remembered a sixth-grade lesson about the Aztecs, who sacrificed humans to the sun god to protect themselves from natural disasters. “I bet they made up a ritual to protect themselves,” she suggested. “If they give away something they care about, Dolores’s ghost is supposed to leave them alone.”