The Glory Hand (14 page)

'Can we help it, Cassie,' Chelsea said, 'if God is dead at Casmaran?'

'He's not dead,' Melanie interrupted her. 'He just couldn't get in!'

it
is
kind of weird,' Cassie said. 'I mean, a camp as tight-ass as this . . . you'd think they'd have some kind of chapel or something.'

'We're sitting in it,' Iris said.

'What?'

'This building. It used to be a church.'

'Sure it was.'

¹
Right, Iris.'

'Really.' The sudden certainty in Iris' voice forced the others to pay attention. She pointed to the raised platform at the end of the room where extra dining tables and benches were stacked. 'There's where the preacher stood. And the pews were here.' Little holes, like animal tracks, extended across the wood-planked floor, as if nails had been ripped out. 'It wasn't a
Catholic
church, of course,' Iris continued. 'It would have had much more elaborate detail: vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows . . . that kind of thing. This church had no windows at all. It must have been built by one of those rigid, old-time Protestant sects. Maybe even Puritan.'

'If this was a church,' Chelsea said, 'where's the "Big C"?'

Iris pointed to the wall above them. An elk's head, its antlers laced with cobwebs, peered down at them with

glazed eyes.

'Good one, Iris:

'She's right,' Cassie said. 'Look.' Partly concealed by the animal's head was the silhouette of a cross, a shadowy afterimage, like the mark left when after years of hanging in the same place, a picture frame is removed from a wall.

'Now I know how Iris won the scholarship,' Robin said. 'She's smarter than all you dipshits put together.'

Iris started to smile, but Chelsea cut it short: 'She may have a 175 IQ, but she's only got a twenty-eight bust.'

'Just cool it!' Cassie said. This time the others didn't laugh.

'Why would anyone build a church in the middle of nowhere?' Robin asked.

'The ice men,' Cassie said.

'The what?'

'Sarah told me about them . . . these guys who used to work here in the winter, a hundred years ago, before Casmaran was started. They would cut the ice up with these huge blades, and sell it in the cities during the summer. A lot of them must have drowned in the lake - or frozen to death. That explains the old graveyard out back; they Probably needed a church for all the funerals.'

'The church must have been abandoned when they left,' Iris said, gazing up at the spot where the cross had hung.

Cassie looked at the leathery meat on her plate. 'Casmaran seems to have a thing about leftovers, even leftover buildings.' The girls at the table laughed, and she was glad for the chance to distance herself from the religious talk. She had avoided churches since the memorial service for her mother in the Capitol chapel, where the minister's words had echoed hollowly off the statues of the saints lining the vaulted nave. His assurances of Eternal Salvation had sounded as empty to her as campaign promises.

Melanie passed a plate of Oreos around the table, and the girls stuffed handfuls in their pockets for later. But Iris toyed with the cooked carrots on her plate.

'What's the matter?' Chelsea looked Iris' frail body up and down. 'On a diet?'

'She pigs out on Communion Wafers . . .'

Iris hunched on the bench as if bracing for another barrage.

'Watch this!' To stop the taunts, Cassie grabbed a straw, bit off the end of the wrapper, then dipped it in the mashed potatoes. She tilted her head back and blew - the wrapper sailed up towards the stuffed elk's head and stuck on its nose. The girls stamped their feet and shouted encouragement, but before she could do it again, a hand snatched the straw from her mouth. 'You're a regular riot.'

It was Sarah.

The others plunged their straws back into their fruit punch, awaiting Cassie's punishment. But instead, Sarah offered her a hand up from the bench. 'You've got a call.'

'How does
she
rate?' Chelsea exploded. 'I thought we weren't allowed to use the phone up here,!'

it's an emergency,' Sarah said.

'So? My boyfriend's an emergency.'

Robin eyed Cassie suspiciously: if it's Todd I'll kill you.'

But Cassie didn't hear her. She was already halfway to the phone, her mind racing.
Something's happened to daddy, I should have stayed with him . . . now they've got him, too.

The phone hung on the wall of the Library Corner, where three unraveling wicker chairs faced an L-shaped bookcase lined with dusty Nancy Drew books, and a complete set of
The Book Knowledge,
1948 edition. Cassie grabbed the dangling receiver and stood on tiptoe to reach the mouthpiece of the old-fashioned wall phone.

'Hello?'

'Cassie!' It was Clay's voice.

She realized that she had been holding her breath, and let it out in a long sigh. 'Are you okay?'

'What about you?'

'You scared me. They said it was an emergency.'

'It is. I miss you!'

Cassie laughed with relief. 'I miss you, too.' The words had spilled out automatically, but she realized as soon as she'd said them that they weren't true

'I've been thinking, honey ... I know you thought camp was a good idea at the time . . .'

'You
did, too!' She knew what was coming.

'But maybe this summer ... I mean, wouldn't it be better if . . .?'

'I'm fine here. Really.'

A pause on the other end. She knew he was rethinking his strategy, formulating a new argument. 'Honey, it would be okay with me if you invited Robin to come down to Washington. We've got plenty of room, and . . .'

'I want to stay, Dad. The kids are great, and the counselors are neat, too.' The silence on the other end of the line told her he wasn't convinced. 'Can you do me a favor?' she added. 'I forgot my ballet shoes. They're in my closet. Do you think you could mail them up here?'

'You're dancing! That's great!' The elation in his voice said that he'd let her stay. 'You'll get them day after tomorrow. Special delivery.'

'You'll come up and see me, won't you ? On visiting Day?'

'Visiting Day?'

'They put on this program . . . Mom danced in it, and I . . .' She stopped herself, fearing that she might not get the part.

i wouldn't miss it, honey.'

'I'll see you then.' A sudden silence in the lodge startled her and
she
turned around. The girls had stopped eating. They were all staring at her, all eighty of them, gazing at her as if she had committed some terrible crime. Her voice rang hollowly in the stillness: 'Dad, I've got to go.'

'I'll call again tomorrow.'

'No, don't. Please.' She glanced nervously at the sea of faces. Everyone in the room was staring at her: the campers, the counselors, even, it seemed, the stuffed animal heads on the wall. 'They don't like us using the phone.'

'So . . . I'll tell them it's

'No emergencies! No one
else
has their parents calling.'

A pause. 'I understand.'

'But I'll see you on Visiting Day. Okay?'

'Of course ... I love you, Cass.'

i love you, too,' she said quickly, then hung up the phone.

The click of the receiver on its cradle echoed off the walls. So did her footsteps as, eyes lowered to avoid the stony gaze of the others, she started back to her table.

"Cassie is a Daddy's girl
..." the chant began softly at first, '
Cassie is a Daddy's Girl. . . Cassie is a Daddy's Gir
. . .' The girls began pounding their mugs on the table in rhythm:
'Cassie is a Daddy's Girl. . . Cassie is a Daddy's Girl
. . .'They stomped their feet, shoutingthewords:
'Cassieisa Daddy's GirlV

Cassie's face flushed hot and she forgot where her table was. The floor shook under her from their stomping feet.
'Cassie is a Daddy's Girl . . . Daddy's Girl
. . .' She sidestepped between two tables and someone stuck out a foot, sending her sprawling on the hard wooden floor.

'Cassie is " Daddy's Girl. . . Daddy's Girl. . .!

'Lay off !«*!'

The voic^ rang out from the far end of the room and the others hushed. Cassie scrambled to her feet, but she couldn't see who had spoken - a camper? a counselor? Someone who had stoppe'
¹
the jeers cold. By the time Cassie found her table and s^ down, the campers were eating dinner as if nothing had happened.

'Abigail saved your ass,' Jo said.

'Abigail?'

'She's a senior,' Melanie said.

'She thinks she's hot shit,' Chelsea added.

'Face it,' Jo said. 'Abigail
is
hot shit.'

'Seniors get the best table, the best cabin. They even get their own shower.' Chelsea pointed a finger at the table in the corner near the fireplace, as if she were aiming a pistol.

Even though Cassie knew Casmaran allowed no campers over fifteen, from the well-developed bodies of the girls sitting there she would have guessed that they were seventeen or older. One tall blonde wore a halter top that barely covered her cleavage; a redhead in short shorts had long, slender legs; and all of them had on lipstick and eye makeup. But it was more than that. There was something else about them, something Cassie couldn't quite put her finger on, that made the seniors look different: the self-confidence on their faces, a self-confidence bordering on arrogance.

'Which one is Abigail?' she asked, but before anyone could answer, Cassie knew. It had to be the girl sitting at the head of the table. Her nose was perfectly straight (Cassie considered her own turned-up nose much too girlish for a dancer) and her skin was tanned nut-brown (Cassie knew she wouldn't be able to match that tan in an entire summer). Abigail had the slender but finely-muscled body of a dancer, yet Cassie thought she looked more exotic than a ballet dancer. She reminded Cassie of the dancers from India she had seen perform at the Kennedy Center, who had been supple and feline - controlled, yet somehow spontaneous.

Their eyes met, and Cassie shot Abigail a look of thanks. The senior returned it with a wide and generous smile before turning to the other girls at her table, who all seemed to be courting her.

'Everybody loves Abigail,' Melanie said. 'Even if you hate her, you love her.'

Chapter 11

Abigail's face was painted white, her eyes outlined in black, so that in the glow of the candle she held, she looked both ghostly and chaste, like a pale statue of a forgotten saint. In her black turtleneck, her long raven hair flowing over her shoulders, she stood perfectly still before a wooden podium at the end of the main lodge. Cassie guessed it must have once been the church pulpit, and the cold wooden bench beneath her made her feel as if she were sitting in a pew. She straightened up, like her cabinmates who were seated beside her - six of them in the shadowy, cavernous room, facing Abigail and a dozen flickering candles of black wax.

It was hard to hear. Abigail spoke softly, and her voice echoed off the rafters. At first Cassie could only pick up snatches of her speech: 'A privilege . . . Tonight . . . Consecration . . .' Cassie glanced up at the stuffed animal heads on the walls. The candlelight sparkled in their eyes, endowing them with a glimmer of life, as if they were listening, too.

'This is your year to face the test of Consecration,' Abigail said, 'just as the girls of Lakeside have always done . . .' The reverence with which she spoke, the combination of awe and respect, compelled Cassie to listen. 'Tonight will be an initiation, yes. And for those who can make it to the end, a legacy. We seniors will entrust it to you, just as the seniors entrusted it to
us
when we bunked up in Lakeside. Next year, when you're seniors, you'll carry on the tradition with the younger girls, to continue the chain, unbroken.'

Hokey, Cassie thought. It all sounds incredibly hokey. So why were the girls from Lakeside sitting here so politely, so wide-eyed? Why wasn't Chelsea groaning, or Melanie rolling her eyes or Robin sticking her finger down her throat as though she were going to puke?

Abigail raised her left hand: 'Take the Vow. Swear your loyalty to Casmaran, that you will uphold the legacy. Swear that once you enter the forest tonight, you won't leave until you have been consecrated in the name of the Sisterhood. And that you will tell no one -
no one
- what you have seen and heard.'

They raised their left hands, murmuring their assent, and for a moment, Cassie wondered why she had joined in so instinctively, without so much as a twinge of doubt. Then she understood. She didn't know about the others, but for herself, at least, swearing loyalty to Casmaran meant making the same pledge her mother must have made.

'You have taken the vow,' Abigail said. 'Now take the journey!' The girls squirmed on the bench. 'I know what you're thinking.' Abigail smiled. 'You're thinking you'd have to be out of your mind to go into the forest at night. But even that fear is part of the tradition, part of what the girls from Lakeside have always had to go through, since there's been a Casmaran.'