Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake (9 page)
Read Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake Online
Authors: Jennifer Allison
QUESTIONS TO SLEEP ON:
Is there something “volatile” about Tiara that’s attracting Dolores Lambert’s ghost?
TO DO:
- Keep an eye on Tiara.
- More research needed to understand ghost motives: must learn more about Dolores Lambert.
PANTY JOKE PROGRESS:
Mr. Panté gave me two detentions today. The first one was for my “failure to return to the school building at the end of class.”
“It won’t happen again, Mr. Panty,” I said, pretending to accidentally mispronounce his name. Tiara was standing right there, and I thought I might as well try to get a laugh out of the situation.
I guess he had heard that joke before (the “slip-of-the-tongue” panty joke), because he wrote another detention slip
without a moment of hesitation. I had an urge to see how many detentions he would give me if I kept saying “panty,” but luckily I came to my senses and dropped it.
Good thing the weekend is here, because I have a lot to think about and research. T.G.I.F.!
Dear Dad,
I had planned to spend my Saturday reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet and researching poltergeists, but along comes Brad Squib with this “big surprise for the whole family.”
Gather ‘round, everyone! Slaughter the cattle and break open the champagne, because Brad Squib has saved the day with FOOTBALL TICKETS!!!
Sure, it was NICE of him to take us to a University of Michigan football game, but he acted as if he was this outrageous hero. He seemed to think that all our problems would be solved if we would just sit down and watch some butt-slapping men wearing helmets.
ME
: To be honest, Brad, I’ve never been that interested in football. I find it to
be a tedious, mind-numbing sport.
BRAD: Come on, Gilders. Lighten up a little!
MOM: Yes, Gilda. Try to enjoy life a little.
ME: YOU were never interested in football before.
STEPHEN: The problem is, Gilda just doesn’t
understand
football.
After that, Brad felt the need to educate me. He kept leaning over to shout things like, “NOW THEY’RE GOING INTO THE HUDDLE, GILDA!”
I made an effort to ask the dumbest questions I could think of (“Now that guy in the black and white–is he someone’s dad?” and stuff like that).
PEOPLE-WATCHING REPORT!:
I saw a girl from Our Lady of Sorrows at the game–one of the seniors. She stands out because she has wild curls and a really loud voice. I think her name is Nikki. She and her boyfriend kept standing up and screaming their heads off. I’m pretty sure they were getting
liquored up, too, which is kind of funny, since Nikki introduced the “Alcohol Awareness Club” on the first day of school.
AN EMBARRASSING MOMENT!:
I don’t mean to upset you, but when Mom and Brad were strolling together toward the stadium, I saw Brad stick his hand in the butt pocket of Mom’s jeans. You could tell they thought they looked like a fabulous couple, but the truth was, they looked like old people acting like seventh graders. I did my best to pretend I had never met them before in my life.
OTHER DISTURBING ISSUES:
I’m feeling paranoid about the idea that Dolores’s ghost could be “coming after me” because I yelled out her name on the bridge. So far, so good–but it’s starting to rain outside, and this is kind of spooky. I can imagine Dolores Lambert standing outside my window in the rain right now, just waiting for me.
Sitting behind the wheel of her new SUV, Nikki Grimaldi drove Highway 696 at an alarming speed and with a little too much confidence, given the steady sprinkling of rain that was now becoming
a heavy downpour. Her boyfriend, Dinkel, slept next to her in the passenger seat, wearing a sweatshirt that declared, M
ICHIGAN
K
ICKS ASS
. Every now and then, he let out a little snore.
As Nikki exited the highway, the Eminem song blaring on the radio became overwhelmed by static. Fiddling with the radio, she didn’t notice that the cars in front of her had stopped until it was almost too late.
Nikki slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision. She braced herself for a deluge of criticism from Dinkel, who woke up grumpy at the best of times, but to her relief, he only snorted in his sleep.
Creeping behind the line of backed-up cars, Nikki glimpsed a homeless person standing on the shoulder of the road, holding a cardboard sign.
Weird
, Nikki thought.
It’s a girl
.
Something else was strange. The girl stood motionless in the rain. She made no effort to approach car windows; instead, she appeared to focus very intently on Nikki’s car alone.
Why is she looking at me
? Nikki wondered.
I must be imagining it
.
But as Nikki drew closer to the stoplight, she could still feel the girl looking at her. She smelled something that reminded her of pine needles and the scent of a wet dog. She had the irrational sense that the girl was actually
inside
the car in some way.
Now the girl was right outside Nikki’s car window, and Nikki didn’t want to look; she didn’t want to see the girl’s sign, but something forced her to read the words:
Now she saw the girl’s face: the puffy cheeks, the blue eyes—so horribly familiar. The worst thing was that she was not sullen or angry; she was pleading and close to tears. She silently mouthed the words
Nikki … please
.
Nikki slammed her foot down on the gas pedal as the light turned green. Driving on the shoulder of the road, she passed several cars, then swerved onto Woodward Avenue, accelerating to create as much distance as possible between herself and—and whatever it was she just saw.
She felt queasy and short of breath, as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in the car.
I’m just imagining things
, she told herself.
It was a homeless person
. But why had she seen her own name on the cardboard sign?
Nikki felt sure that she had seen a ghost.
A
s her alarm went off at 7:10, Gilda awoke groggily, remembering a bad dream. There had been something about being lost in the Garden of Contemplation. Tiara was there, trying to lead her somewhere, but someone else kept yelling, “You’re going the wrong way! It’s over here!” The frustrating thing was that she couldn’t see who was yelling at her. Gilda would have liked to spend more time analyzing her dream, but she was running late.
Her morning routine involved savoring every last second of sleep before rushing to catch the 7:20 bus to Bloomfield Hills. The school uniform was crucial to this routine: had Gilda felt the need to
think
about what she might wear, she would never get to school on time.
Gilda jumped out of bed, found her uniform lying crumpled on the floor, showered, brushed her teeth, detangled her hair, and stuffed a bagel into her backpack. She was out the door by 7:19, with one minute left to catch the bus.
The rain had continued all day on Sunday, all night, and into the morning—a series of thunderstorms with tornado watches throughout the state. Gilda dashed through the downpour toward the bus, her untied shoelaces trailing in the mud and
her broken umbrella violently inverting itself like a frightened octopus.
Stuffed with umbrellas and open newspapers, the bus bristled with the early-morning hostility of people on their way to work. The only passenger wearing a school uniform amidst a sea of business attire, Gilda noticed people staring at her bare knees as if offended by their presence. “Yes, they’re
knees
,” she explained to a crisp-looking man in a suit whose eyes lingered on her legs too long. “They’re exposed for the purpose of my education.”
The businessman quickly hid behind his newspaper.
Gilda stared out the window at the buildings that sprawled along Woodward Avenue—Starbucks, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, the Royal Palms Motel, the Fur & Feathers pet store—and thought how strange it was that in a matter of minutes she would be in an environment that looked like a castle. She opened her notebook and wrote:
I should be heading to school with excitement and eagerness to learn, but today I feel only weariness and foreboding. “Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”
(
That’s from
Hamlet
.
)
Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
fascinated Gilda because the main character of the play was a young man who spoke to his father’s ghost. She continued:
I feel like I have something in common with Hamlet. For one thing, he obviously misses his dead father. He also can’t stand his stepfather, and he’s really mad at his mother for
going out with him in the first place. Of course, Brad isn’t my stepfather yet
(
thank God!
)
and of course, he didn’t kill my father like Clandius did in Hamlet (as far as I know). Still, I think old Hamlet and I have something in common, especially on a gloomy day like today.
When Gilda stepped into the school hallway, she drew stares and rueful smiles because of her wet hair and clothes. She made her way toward the freshman locker room, located at the school’s basement level, then turned the corner and gagged as she walked into the pungent odor of mildew and a shallow lake of standing water.
“You don’t want to go in there!” Ashley splashed toward Gilda, covering her nose with her hand. “It’s totally flooded!”
Curious to see for herself, Gilda took off her shoes and tiptoed through the water toward the locker room.
Inside, a group of freshmen giggled and yelped as they waded barefoot through ankle-deep water to retrieve books, papers, and sweatshirts from their lockers. “Gross! It smells like a whole aquarium of fish died in here!” someone complained.
Gilda noticed Sheila purposefully dropping her English paper into the water.
Maybe she’s not so dumb after all
, Gilda thought.
She knows the flooding is a good excuse for a paper extension
.
A loud scream pierced through the noise in the locker room. The girls fell silent and turned their attention to Tiara, who stood paralyzed, pointing at a spot on the ground.
“I see her,” she said. “Right … there!” She seemed genuinely petrified.
Because of her rebellious insistence on black lipstick and leather accessories, many girls kept a safe distance from Tiara even when she was behaving normally. Now, rather than rushing to see what had terrified her, they simply gawked like motorists gazing at a car accident.
Propelled by curiosity, Gilda alone hurried over to see what Tiara was looking at.
“It’s
her
again!” Tiara seemed close to tears.
“
What is she talking about
?” the girls whispered amongst themselves. “She’s so weird!” someone said a little too loudly.
Gilda stared into the floodwater, but try as she might, she couldn’t see anything except the murky liquid in which several ruined, sopping notebooks floated.
Tiara turned to face the other girls in the locker room. “I just saw a
ghost
, in case any of you are interested.”
