Vicious Little Darlings (7 page)

“It's a naked party,” adds Keiko.

“A what?” I ask.

Keiko takes a bite of her mashed potatoes and, mouth full, says, “A naked party. Everyone has to go naked. Guys
and
girls. I've never been to one, but I heard they're fun. You just have to leave before it turns into a massive orgy.”

Amber lets out a short laugh. “The good thing is you don't have to worry about what to wear. Any old trench coat will do.”

Trench coat? I don't even own a
regular
coat. She can't be serious. Who would show up at a party in nothing but a trench coat? “What if you don't want to go naked?” I ask.

Keiko grins. “Well, then you have to pay the fine. It's, like, five dollars.”

“That's not so bad,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Amber, “but the whole point is to go naked.”

The thought of going naked scares me. But aside from that, do I even want to be partying with a bunch of naked people while I'm fully dressed? Wouldn't that be awkward? Still, I'm desperate for a distraction, so I say, “What time are you leaving?”

“Around eight,” says Keiko. “My roommate's driving us. We'll swing by your room before we leave, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, and hurry back upstairs.

When I open my door, I'm shocked to find Maddy and Agnes packing up the contents of the room. Maddy emerges from behind a tall stack of cardboard boxes, runs up to me, and hugs me forcefully, nearly knocking me over. Agnes stays in the corner at first, and then comes over and gives me a kiss on the cheek. It's an odd gesture, completely out of character for someone who has never even touched me before.

“Where did you guys disappear to?” I ask, feeling strangely shy. The week apart has made things tense. Do I even know these girls anymore?

“We went to New York to buy furniture for the house,” Maddy says.

“For the whole week?”
Liar.
“Why didn't you call? I was worried.”

“I'm sorry,” says Maddy. “We were just so busy. And we wanted to make the house nice for you. As a surprise.”

I glance at Agnes. “So you got the house?”

“Of course,” she says. “I told you I would. Now help us finish packing. We're moving in tonight.”

I shake my head. “I can't. I'm going to a party.”

“Seriously?” Agnes furrows her brow. “Why would you want to go to a party
here
?”

“I'm not going to a party
here
. It's at Yale and it's supposed to be good,” I say.

Agnes looks skeptical. “Who are you going with?”

“People.”

“Who?”

“Nobody you know.”

I glance at Maddy. She looks troubled—no, it's more than that—she's … angry. Why? Just because I'm going to a party without her? When she notices my gaze, she tries to regain her composure and says, “Why don't we move your stuff for you? You can come to the house after the party. We'll pick you up.”

“The thing is … I'm not sure I want to move,” I say, annoyed that they packed my things without asking me first. “I kind of like it here.”

Agnes looks at me like I've said something amusing, then tosses Maddy's Pucci-printed headband into an unsealed box.

“Don't be mad at us, Sarah,” Maddy says, throwing Agnes a nervous glance.

“I'm not mad,” I say. But I
am
. They abandoned me for an entire week. Did they think they could make it all better just by coming back? And then to lie to me on top of everything. Buying furniture? Do I look that dumb? I have a life here now. I'm making new friends. I'm going to a naked party. I don't need them.

“You'll love the house, Sarah,” says Maddy. “It's really spacious and it's got a fireplace in every room. It's almost completely furnished and Hope is already settled in, and she loves it. You'll have your own room, which is twice as big as this one …” Maddy trails off, probably sensing I'm not impressed. She's right; I'm too angry to be impressed. “Don't you want to be with us?” she asks.

Again those words:
be with us
. She's good at guilt-tripping, but I'm not falling for it this time.

“I don't know,” I say. “I can't discuss it now. Keiko and Amber will be here soon.”

Agnes rips off a piece of sealing tape. The sound is loud and aggressive. She finishes taping up a box and says, “Forget it, M. Let her do what she wants.”

Maddy looks deflated.

And then I start to feel bad. Her wounded look always gets me. The poor girl has had such a tragic life. And she actually believes she's going to die young. I can't help but worry I just shaved off a few more hours.

Still, I don't back down.

“Okay,” Maddy finally says. Her tone is curt. She turns away from me toward Agnes, and an awkward silence fills the room. Then Maddy turns back around and flashes me a wide grin. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Before things have a chance to get any weirder, I grab my jacket and leave the room.

The naked party turns out to be a bore, with all the ugly guys naked and all the cute guys fully dressed. I keep my clothes on and pay the five dollars, while Keiko and Amber strip down to nothing and get in for free. They're surprisingly fit. They must work out constantly.

Toward the end of the night, I meet a guy named Finn—a naked Yalie with curly red hair and chewed-up nails—who's kind of dull and looks like a cross between Richard Simmons and Little Orphan Annie. But does that stop me from making out with him?

Sadly, no.

8

W
hen I get home from the party, I find a cream-colored envelope on my bed. I tear it open. Inside is a note written in Agnes's perfect cursive:

Sarah,

I need to talk to you. It's important.

Call me ASAP.

Agnes

I pick up the receiver on my desk and dial Agnes's cell.

Five minutes later, she's at my door. She looks flustered and her white button-down shirt is slightly wrinkled. Right next to her nose is a huge zit, haphazardly covered with a big glob of cakey concealer. Funny, I didn't notice that earlier. I didn't think Agnes ever got zits. She must be stressed. I try not to stare at it (though it's difficult)—not because it would embarrass her, but because staring at zits is a risky thing to do. If I so much as look at a zit, or even think about zits, I'll wake up with my very own cystic nightmare the next morning. Zits are telepathically contagious.

“You're looking at my blemish,” Agnes says accusingly.

“No, I wasn't.”

“I saw you looking at it.”

“I wasn't looking at anything,” I say, keeping my eyes locked on hers.

“Well, don't look at it.”

“I won't.”

“Fine.”

“So, are you going to tell me what's going on?”

“Not here. Let's go for a drive.”

“It's late,” I say, yawning emphatically. “I don't want to go out again. Can't we just talk here?”

“Too risky.”

I feel a twinge of anxiety. “Why? What's going on? Is it Maddy?”

“Maddy's fine. She's sleeping. Let's go to that diner next to the highway.”

“No,” I say a little too quickly. I can't risk running into Scissorhands.

“Why not?”

I shrug.

“Come on.”

“Fine,” I say. But damn, he'd better not be there.

Everything at the diner looks exactly the same, including the people. The same frizzy-haired waitresses. The same greasy truckers.

The waitress leads us to our table. I scan the diner one more time to make sure Scissorhands isn't hiding in a corner booth. When I see that he isn't, I feel an unexpected surge of disappointment. I sit down opposite Agnes.

“So, are you going to tell me what this is all about?” I ask after we've ordered. Paranoid as ever, Agnes refused to talk about Maddy in the car. To Agnes, it makes more sense to talk about private matters in bright, crowded diners.

She looks at me. “I wanted to tell you what really happened last week. You probably figured out we weren't just furniture shopping the whole time.”

“That was pretty obvious,” I say.

“We did shop on the last day—yesterday. God, it feels so long ago. But the rest of the time we were in Vermont.”

I think of trees and outlet malls and people dressed in L.L. Bean. “What were you doing there?”

“Well,” she says, licking her lips, “remember how hysterical Maddy was that night she stormed off?”

“You mean, after you bad-mouthed Sebastian?”

“I didn't bad-mouth him. But I'm no fan, that's for sure.” She looks out the window, then back at me. “I thought Maddy was having a breakdown that night. She can be pretty unstable at times. It worries me. Did you become obsessed with death after your parents passed away?”

My right eyelid starts to twitch, and I blush with shame. “My parents aren't actually dead.” I look away. “But they might as well be.”

“I see.” She seems both unfazed and uninterested. Which means there will be no further questions. Thank God.

The waitress appears out of nowhere and slams Agnes's pancakes and my burger onto the table. The noise is jarring. Agnes glares at the waitress, who has orange hair and Tammy Faye eyelashes, but the woman is oblivious.

“Country bumpkins,” Agnes mutters with a sigh.

I take a huge bite of my burger and watch Agnes pick at the edges of her pancakes.

She puts down her fork. “Remember when Maddy ran out of the room and I went to look for her?”

“Yeah,” I say, my mouth full, “but I don't remember anything after that.”

“Well, I searched the whole dorm but couldn't find her anywhere, so I decided to take the car and drive around campus. That's when I realized my car key was missing and I just
knew
Maddy had taken it. When I got to the car, there she was, sitting in the driver's seat, ready to drive off to God-knows-where. I was lucky to have found her in time. Who knows what she would've done?

“So we came back to the room. By that time you had passed out. I thought of leaving you a note, but we were in a hurry, and, besides, I wasn't sure where we were going. Maddy was delirious and I was getting panicked myself, so I snatched the fawn and we got in the car and drove and drove until we ended up in Vermont. We stayed at an inn overlooking a small lake. The surroundings were good for Maddy. Almost immediately she went back to her normal self. Having the fawn there also seemed to help. Otherwise I would've let the poor thing go. I'm not fond of that animal at all—the mess and the awful smells—but at least it's quiet. I'd go nuts if I had to listen to it yap all the time.”

“Me too,” I say, nodding. I take a bite of my pickle and look at Agnes. “So then what happened?”

“Things were fine until about the fourth day, when Maddy became hysterical again. She started coming up with all sorts of nutty ideas. She composed a list of all the things she wanted to do before she died.”

“Like what?” I lick my fingers.

“There was something about skydiving and meeting the Dalai Lama.” Agnes pauses. “And losing her virginity,” she says, looking flustered.

“To Sebastian?”

“To
anyone.
She wanted to find a random Vermonter and take him back to our room.”

I cringe and semi-lose my appetite. Sure, I could see myself doing something like that—but Maddy the virgin?

“It didn't happen,” says Agnes. “I wasn't going to let it happen. That's why we left Vermont. You're lucky you weren't there. Maddy was such a wreck. She kept rambling about suicide and the afterlife. I couldn't calm her down and I became quite edgy myself. At one point, she started screaming and pulling out her hair. I didn't know what to do, so I started talking about the house—all the fun things we were going to do and how great it was going to be with the three of us living together. That seemed to work. She got very excited and stopped talking about death—it was a miracle—and then suddenly she wanted to go buy furniture and house stuff so we went to New York.”

I put my burger down. “Why didn't you call me?”

“I know. I should have, but there was nothing you could've done.” Agnes picks up her fork and starts poking holes in her pancakes.

I wipe my fingers on my napkin and take a sip of water. “Did you call Maddy's aunt and uncle?”

“Are you kidding? They don't care about her. They only care about her parents' money. If they had seen her in that manic state, they would've had her committed.”

“Does Maddy go to a shrink?”

“No,” she says, swallowing visibly.

“Then how did she get all those prescription pills?”

“From her stepdad. He's a psychiatrist.”

“He treats her?”

“No, he just sends her whatever medication she wants.”

“I thought he was still mad about her parents' affair—”

“He's getting over it. Maddy calls him whenever she misses her mom. She doesn't really take those pills, other than the occasional Ambien. Trust me, Maddy is not a pill popper. But having them in her drawer gives her comfort, knowing she doesn't have to suffer if she doesn't want to. Personally, I don't like drugs of any kind; I won't even take an Advil when I have a headache. But if having pills around is reassuring to her, then I guess that's fine.”

I scratch my head.

“Anyway, once we got to New York, she was okay. We got a room at the St. Regis, left the deer there, spent the whole day shopping, eating, and wandering around Soho, and Maddy's spirits seemed to improve.”

“So, that's it?”

“No, I'm just getting to the disturbing part.” She licks her lips. “So, last night we had dinner in Chinatown. As we were leaving the restaurant, Maddy bumped into an old Gypsy woman, knocking her bag off her shoulder. Everything spilled onto the street. Maddy, of course, helped the woman, but instead of saying ‘thank you,' the Gypsy said, ‘Your parents miss you too.' Well, Maddy just froze. We both stood there in shock, not knowing what to say. I don't usually trust those Gypsies, but this woman was different. Of course, Maddy insisted on having a reading.”

I get a chill.

“But the woman refused, saying it was late. I had to do something, so I took out all my cash—a little less than two thousand—and offered it to the woman. She became very nervous. At first she refused the money. I thought maybe she suspected it was counterfeit, so I took one of the bills and held it up to a street lamp. Of course, it was dark and you couldn't really see anything, but I wanted to show good faith.

“And it worked. She took the money, and we walked a couple of blocks to her dingy apartment. Maddy and the old woman went into a back room to do the reading, and since I wasn't allowed to sit in, I waited in the living room. It was such a strange room, Sarah. There were candles and Catholic knickknacks everywhere. Imagine hundreds of Jesuses and Marys staring at you.”

“Weird,” I agree. “So what did the Gypsy tell her?”

“I don't know!” Agnes throws up her hands. “She came out of the reading with a big smile on her face, but when we got back to the hotel, she wouldn't tell me anything—except to say that the Gypsy had confirmed what she'd known all along.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I have no idea.” Agnes rubs her temple. “That's why I'm worried. I hope the Gypsy didn't confirm Maddy's delusions about dying young. That would be evil, and yet it's exactly the kind of thing Maddy would want to hear.”

“Maybe the Gypsy told her the opposite, and Maddy was relieved.”

“I hope so.” Agnes pauses. “But Maddy wouldn't have been so happy if that were the case.”

I rest my head in my hands. “Why is she so eager to die anyway? I can't even imagine dying at our age. I've never even had the chicken pox.”

“Her parents' death really unhinged her. But there's also a part of her that just wants to be right. She desperately wants to believe in destiny and in her own intuition. I'm not even sure how good her intuition really is. What if she's getting bad signs? And what if her beliefs end up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“Like what?” I ask, reaching for my water.

“I'm just worried she'll do something rash, like give up on life just because of what a Gypsy said. You've got to help me convince Maddy that she has a long life ahead of her. She trusts you, Sarah.” Agnes stops to chew on a nail, then looks at me. “Will you move in with us? Maddy said she wouldn't leave Haven House unless you moved in.”

Is this why Maddy seemed irritated with me earlier? Because she really wants me to live with them?

“The rent is paid for,” Agnes says. “My father's accountant is taking care of it, so you wouldn't have to pay anything, if that's what you're worried about. I know your family isn't very generous with you financially.”

Not knowing what to say, I look out the window.

“Here. Take this,” Agnes says, sliding a key across the table. “Say you'll move in.”

I can't help but feel that I'm getting in way over my head. I don't know how I'm supposed to convince Maddy to live if she really wants to die. And it doesn't seem right that she should have all those pills when she's potentially suicidal. The whole situation is kind of frightening. And yet a part of me thinks that Maddy is just acting, creating all this drama to get attention.

“Please?” Agnes begs.

Agnes never begs. How can I say no? So, ignoring my fears, I take a deep breath and say, “Okay.”

“You won't regret it,” she says with a smile.

God, I hope not.