Dark Angel

  What had I done to gain their approval? I wondered.

  "How do you know so much about poverty and hunger?" asked Faith Morgantile, a very pretty, brown-haired girl in a clean but ratty-looking white sweater and pants.

  My heart skipped a beat. "You all know I am from West Virginia. That is coal-mining country. There is also a cotton mill there. The hills are full of very poor people who think an education is a waste of time . . . so naturally, I know about the people who used to live around me."

  "But you described the pangs of hunger so well in your theme paper," persisted Pru, "it's almost as if you knew hunger from firsthand experience."

  "When you have eyes and ears, and a heart that feels compassion, you don't really need firsthand experience."

  "How nicely you put that," said another girl, smiling at me warmly. "We've heard that your parents divorced, and your father won custody of you . . . isn't that unusual? Most of the time the mother wins custody, especially when the child is a girl."

  I tried to shrug nonchalantly. "I was too young to remember the details of the divorce. When I was older my father refused to talk about it." And with that I dismissed the subject as my fork stabbed into my tossed salad and speared the tomatoes and lettuce I liked most.

  "When will your father be coming to visit you? We would just love to meet him."

  You bet they would love to meet him! Luke Casteel would shock them into instant old age. I resented Pru Carraway, who was like a thorn constantly trying to draw blood. I felt the power of her background, her family, her heritage, the friends she had and I didn't, forming a barricade around her, while I was defenseless, with only my wits and new clothes to shield me. I finished my lunch with determination, eating every strand of spaghetti, relishing every morsel of the meatballs, and wanted in the worst way to sop up the spicy tomato sauce with what remained of my Italian bread, but I didn't dare. And they were watching me with such fascination I felt I was doing everything wrong; showing too much enthusiasm for an ordinary dish like spaghetti. Made hostile and angry from their insinuations, I decided to blast them with a little truth. "My father will never come to see me, for we don't like each other, and he is dying."

  Each one of those four girls stared at me with lips agape, as if I were an apparition straight from the cemetery of bad taste. And even as I'd said the words, the thought of Pa being dead filled me with strange, uneasy guilt. As if I had no right to hate him or wish him dead because he was my father. There was no reason why I should feel ashamed. None! He deserved every mean thought I gave him.

  Again Pru Carraway spoke, carefully: "We have in this school certain private clubs. Now, if you could arrange, somehow, for one of us to have a date with Troy Tatterton . . . we would be very

  appreciative."

  Thoughts of Pa had come between me and them. I was caught off guard. I sat with the last of my Italian bread held halfway to my mouth. "I really couldn't manage that," I said uneasily. "He's a man who makes up his own mind, and he's much too old and sophisticated for the girls of Winterhaven."

  "Troy Tatterton turned twenty-three only two weeks ago," stated Faith Morgantile. "Some of the students here are eighteen, and just right for a man of his age. Besides, we saw him with you on Sunday, and you are only sixteen."

  It stunned me that in a giant city like Boston I'd be spotted with Troy!

  So that was it! The reason for their sudden interest in me! They had seen me, or one of their friends had, in the coffee shop with Troy. I stood up. I dropped my napkin on their table. "Thank you for inviting me to your table," I said with real pain in my heart, for I'd so hoped to have friends here. All my life I'd never had a girlfriend, only Fanny, who had been kind of a family cross to bear. At my own table I picked up the books I'd left there and stalked from the dining room.

  From that moment on I sensed a difference in their attitudes. They had been suspicious of me before just because I was new and different. Now I had challenged them, and without any effort at all, I had made enemies.

  The very next morning I selected from my dresser drawer a beautiful cornflower blue cashmere sweater to wear with its matching skirt, and to my utter horror, my brand-new sweater had begun to unravel. And the wool skirt I'd laid out on my bed, brand new, was losing its hem, and very carefully someone had picked at the rows of stitches that held a front box pleat neatly in place. In the Willies I would have worn the sweater and skirt anyway, but not here, not here! Not when I knew that just yesterday both sweater and skirt had been perfect!

  One sweater after another I took from the drawer and inspected! Five of my sweaters were ruined! I ran to the closet to check on my skirts and blouses and found them hanging as I'd left them, still in good shape. Whoever had done this hadn't had time to ruin everything I owned. That Tuesday morning I didn't have time to eat breakfast. I went to class wearing just as blouse with my skirt, and no sweater. None of the girls ever wore topcoats to class, scorning thoughts of colds and chills, even though most of them sat with their arms crossed over their breasts and shivered from time to time. Hardy, puritanical souls ruled Winterhaven, seeing that none of us experienced too much luxury. The classroom was not much warmer than the cabin in the hills had been in late October. All morning I shivered, thinking I'd run to my room at noon and pick up a lightweight jacket.

  I ate my lunch so fast I almost choked on it, then I dashed upstairs to my room; the door was never locked. I ran to the closet to snatch from the rod one of the three warm jackets Tony had chosen for me. Two jackets were missing! The one remaining jacket was sopping wet!

  Were they so rich and powerful they thought they could get away with vandalizing my possessions? Shivering as much from anger as from cold, I ran down the hall with the wet jacket extended before me. I barged into the bathroom. Six girls were in there smoking and giggling. The moment I came through the door a deadly quiet descended, while the cigarettes burned and created the worst kind of choking smoke. Using both hands I held up the wool jacket. "Did you have to put it in hot water?" I asked. "Wasn't it enough just to ruin my sweaters? What kind of monsters are you, anyway?"

  "Whatever are you talking about?" asked Pru Carraway, her pale eyes innocently blank.

  "My new sweaters are unraveled!" I yelled. I shook the water from the jacket so some of it flew into their faces. They drew back and formed a tight bunch. "You have taken two of my jackets and ruined the third! Do you think you'll get away with this unpunished?" I glared, with what I hoped was menace, into each pair of eyes that stared back at me. The very fact that they didn't seem intimidated by me or my puny threats made me even angrier. Their confidence grew as I hesitated, not knowing how to defeat them.

  Turning, I thrust the sopping-wet jacket into one of the two clothes chutes. The heavyweight metal door had a very strong spring that slammed shut. There was a multisectioned bathroom on each one of the three floors. With two hundred girls bathing or showering daily, hundreds of white towels were used. Each day maids brought up stacks and stacks of clean white towels and put them neatly behind the glass doors of the linen closets. The chutes took the wet, soiled towels quickly to the basement, where they fell into huge baskets.

  "Now," I said, whipping around and trying to build some fear into them, "that jacket will be found and reported to the headmistress. You can't take the evidence from me and destroy it, for the cellar is off limits to all of you."

  Pru Carraway yawned. The other five girls followed suit.

  "I hope they dismiss each and every one of you for willful destruction of property that didn't belong to you!"

  "You sound like a lawyer," moaned Faith Morgantile. "You scare us, really you do. What does a wet jacket prove? Nothing but your own carelessness for being dumb enough to wash it in hot water."

  I suspected as I stood there in that bathroom that no matter what I said they would not accept blame for what they had done. Then the sweet, pretty face of Miss Marianne Deale flashed behind my eyes, and her soft voice came to whisper in my ears: "It is
better to champion a losing cause that you believe in than to keep your silence and risk nothing. You can never tell what effect your argument will have later on."

  "Right now I am going to the office of Mrs. Mallory," I stated with fire. "I am going to show her the tears in my brand-new sweaters, and I am going to tell her about the jacket you just ruined."

  "You can't prove anything," said a small, plain girl named Amy Luckett, her hands moving in an agitated, betraying way. "You could have snagged your own sweaters, accidentally ruined your own jacket."

  "Mrs. Mallory saw me wearing the jacket Monday morning, so at least she will know its former condition. And when it is found in the wet towel basket, that will also prove what you've done."

  "You talk like a second-rate lawyer," sneered Pru Carraway. "The faculty here can't touch us. Two years ago we told our parents not to continue donating cash gifts to this school, which would go under without them. They didn't even appreciate all the money we saved them when we stopped wearing those crappy French schoolgirl uniforms. We always win when we unite and fight. We have our parents behind us. Our rich, rich parents. Our influential, political parents. You have no friends here. You are not one of us. No one will believe what you say. Mrs. Mallory will look down her nose at you and think you mean-spirited and spiteful because she knows we will never make you one of us. She will believe you damaged your clothes yourself, just so you could put the blame on us."

  What she said made shivers race up and down my spine! Could anyone believe such a thing? I wasn't wise or experienced in the ways of the world. I hadn't been to school in Switzerland, and learned how to handle a situation like this. Still, I had to believe they were bluffing, and I had to bluff as well. "We'll see," I said, turning and leaving the bathroom.

  With my arms full of ruined sweaters, I entered the dean's office. Mrs. Mallory looked up with annoyance clearly written on her round face. "Aren't you supposed to be in your social studies class, Miss Casteel?"

  I dropped the sweaters on the floor, then picked up what had been a lovely blue one, and held it high for her to see. A finishing thread had been pulled so the neckline was half raveled. "I have never worn this sweater, Mrs. Mallory, and yet it is full of holes and raveling."

  She frowned. "You really should take better care of your clothes. I hate to see money thrown away on ungrateful children."

  "I take very good care of my clothes. This sweater was neatly folded in my second dresser drawer, along with others that are also falling apart because threads have been pulled or cut."

  For the longest time she was silent. One by one I displayed the sweaters. "The jacket you commented on Monday morning when I checked in was soaked in hot water while I was in my morning classes today.

  Her red lips pursed. She adjusted the halfglasses she wore on the tip of her nose. "Are you making accusations, Miss Casteel?"

  "Yes. I am not liked here because I am different."

  "If you want to be liked, Miss Casteel, you don't tattle on schoolmates who play tricks on all the new girls."

  "This is more than a trick!" I cried, dismayed by her indifference. "My clothes were ruined!"

  "Oh, come now, you make too much out of what appears to me just careless packing. Sweaters catch in zippers, in luggage locks. You tug to pull them free and holes appear, and threads ravel."

  "And the jacket, that accidentally fell into a tub of hot water, on its own?"

  "I don't see a jacket. If you had further evidence, why didn't you bring it with you?"

  "I dropped it down the wet towel chute. You can find it in the laundry room."

  "There's a sign above that chute. All wet washable clothes are to-be put into the smaller chute."

  "Mrs. Mallory, it was a plaid jacket! It could stain someone's clothing."

  "Exactly what I mean. It could also stain white towels and washcloths."

  My lips began to tremble. "I had to put it somewhere so the girls who did it couldn't hide the evidence and say it never happened."

  She fingered the pretty blue sweater, looking thoughtful. "Why don't you take these sweaters and try to mend them with needle and thread? I have to confess, I really don't want to find your wet jacket. If I do, that means I will have to take action and question all the girls. Things like this have happened before. If we side with you, will that help you to be accepted here? I'm sure your guardian will buy you new sweaters."

  "You mean I should let them go unpunished?"

  "No, not exactly. Just handle this yourself, without our aid." She smiled at me in a tight way. "You must remember, Miss Casteel, though they want you to think you are scorned and beneath their contempt, there isn't a girl here who is more envied. You are very lovely and have a touching freshness that is rare. You seem like someone from a hundred years ago, shy and proud and much too sensitive and vulnerable. Those girls see what I see, what everyone here sees, and you frighten them. You make them uncertain about what they are, and what their values are. And, you are also the ward of Tony Tatterton, a very admired and successful man. You live in one of the finest old homes in America. I realize you have a past that has scarred you, but don't let it wound you permanently. You have the potential to become anything you set your mind to be. Don't let silly schoolgirl pranks ruin what can be the best learning years of your life. Now, I can tell from your expression that you are outraged and want some sort of revenge or recompense for the clothes you have lost. But aren't clothes relatively unimportant to you? Won't they be replaced? Did those girls ruin something of real value you might have hidden in your room?"

  Oh, oh! I hadn't thought of that! In the bottom of my hamper I had hidden a heavy box containing the silver-framed portraits of Keith and Our Jane! I had to check the moment I was back there to see if they had been taken or destroyed!

  I started to leave, then I turned and met the stern but sympathetic eyes of Mrs. Mallory. "I think you owe me something, Mrs. Mallory, for keeping my silence--and peace in this school."

  Her eyes went guarded. "Yes, tell me what you think I owe."

  "There is going to be a dance this Thursday evening, with the boys from Broadmire Hall. I know I haven't won enough credits in the time I've been here to deserve an invitation to that dance, but I want to go."

  For the longest time she stared at me, her eyelids half-lowered, and then she smiled, her eyes amused. "Why, that's a small thing to ask. Just see that you don't embarrass the school."

  The portraits of my two little ones were safe. I put them back until Friday when I would take them to Troy, so he could turn them over to the detectives he'd promised he'd hire to find my younger sister and brother.

  I thought of Tom, who had always been my champion. I knew what he'd want me to do now that I had things going my way: "Don't rock the boat," he'd say.

  Maybe it was having Farthinggale Manor for my home, with Tony as my guardian, with Jillian for a grandmother, even a reluctant one, and Troy for my friend that gave me more audacity than common sense should have allowed. For I was going to rock the boat. Come hell or high water, I wasn't going to let those girls get the best of me! I glanced in the nearest mirror and saw very little of the old Heaven Leigh Casteel in the image of a girl with shoulder-length, smartly styled dark hair that gleamed. But what to do? Already I knew Mrs. Mallory wasn't likely to do anything to risk her cash donations.

  I fell prone upon the bed, hanging my head over the side, and began to brush my hair up and over, so it fell like a dark shawl around my face, closing out the brightness of the three lamps. I heard the chimes in the bell tower beginning the evening melodies of patriotic songs flavored with faith in God. And my brushstrokes caught the timing as I stroked, stroked, stroked, as I plotted and planned how to get even with those six girls who had obviously waited in the bathroom, knowing just what I'd do with a dripping wet jacket that would ruin new green carpeting and earn for me several demerits.

  Back in Winnerrow I'd cringed and cowered in my shabby, ill-fitting clothes and scuffed, worn-out, secondh
and shoes, feeling too weak from perpetual hunger to fight back effectively. I felt too humiliated and ashamed of who I was, a scumbag Casteel, to find the right methods of proving my individuality and merits. But now, things were different. I had storebought courage, despite my ruined sweaters and jacket. I was still too well outfitted to cringe and cower like a Casteel.

  And as I brushed and brushed, forgetting to count, an idea was born. The perfect way to have my own revenge . . . and we'd see who won this game in the end. Boston boys were basically the same as boys all over the world. They drifted like bees to the prettiest, sweetest-smelling flower. And I knew I could be that.

  Eight The Dance

  . THAT VERY TUESDAY EVENING, WHEN ALL THE OTHER girls in my wing were obviously trying not to whoop it up too noisily, I heard my name mentioned several times, and always laughter followed. It made me uneasy to know I was the brunt of so many jokes. Still, I had a friend that I could call. Locking my door first, I put in a call to Troy. His telephone in the cottage rang and rang, giving me nagging fears that he wasn't there, and I didn't know where else to reach him. Then he answered, sounding very busy. And if his voice hadn't warmed when he knew who it was, I would never have requested what I did. "You want me to go into your closets and choose the party dress that will best make a sensation? Heaven, do you have several?"

  "Oh, yes, Troy. Tony had me try on at least ten, and though he'd intended to buy me only two, he ended up with four. I didn't bring any with me, thinking it would be a long time before I earned enough merits to be invited to one of their dances-- but here I am, invited."

  He kind of groaned. "Sure, I'll do what you ask, but I don't know much about what a fifteen-year-old girl should wear to one of those school functions."

  True to his word, late that very evening, while I hid in shadows of the front parlor and waited, and all the other girls slept, Troy eased his car into the drive of Winterhaven, and I slipped out the front door to meet him. Behind me the front door was kept from closing tight and locking by a thin book I had inserted.