Daughter of Darkness

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  It occurred to me almost immediately that Buddy had lived up to his promise and surely expected me now to live up to mine. If I didn’t, he might very well go back to Ava, either to spite me or because he wanted what she offered. At school the following day, I stepped out between classes and called him. He didn’t pick up, but I left a message that I would call when I was free. Right before lunch, my phone rang. If anyone’s phone rang in class or even in the hallway, the principal would take away the phone privilege for the rest of the year and suspend the student for at least two days. Before anyone could hear it ring a second time, I charged into the girls’ room.

  “Hello,” I said, thinking it might be Daddy.

  “You called me,” Buddy said, his voice rich with excitement. “You lived up to your promise. I wanted to believe you, but I couldn’t help being skeptical.”

  “How did you get my number?”

  He laughed. “Don’t you know that it registered on my phone? Mine probably registered on yours.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t use yours much, do you?”

  “No.”

  “So, does this mean I have earned our night out? What about this weekend?”

  “Things are a little hectic at home. I don’t know exactly when or where we can meet again yet, but I wanted you to know I was happy you did what you promised.”

  “I can’t even think of breaking a promise I make to you, Lorelei. How about meeting after school again? I’ll go anywhere you say.”

  “I can’t. I have to take my younger sister home today.”

  “What about afterward?”

  “I can’t today,” I said.

  “Bummer. You’re not going to break your promise now, are you?”

  “No. I’ll call you as soon as we can meet.”

  “I’m going to sleep with this phone,” he said.

  I laughed. Two girls from my class, Shirley Fox and Patti Jonston, came in giggling about something. They stopped when they saw me.

  “I have to go to class. I’ll call you,” I said quickly, and flipped my phone closed.

  “You can get suspended for doing that,” Patti said.

  “I was suspended last year,” Shirley said, “and all I did was text my boyfriend. It didn’t even make any noise.”

  I thought about it a moment and then smiled. “Thanks for the advice,” I said. They both smirked when I smiled and left them.

  Right before the late bell rang for my next class, I pretended my phone had rung, and I stood outside the classroom doorway, listening and whispering. The late bell rang, but I did not go into the classroom. Moments later, my teacher, Mr. Trustman, stepped into the doorway and looked out at me. There was no doubt in my mind that one or more of the other students had told him I was outside on my cell phone.

  “Lorelei Patio!” he shouted.

  I acted surprised and flipped the phone closed. “Sorry,” I said.

  “So am I, and very, very disappointed in you. Not only are you late, but you’re on a cell phone? Go directly to the principal’s office right now,” he ordered, holding his long arm out with the same stiff forefinger he used to make his points in class.

  I lowered my head and hurried down the hallway. Because of the intercom system, the principal’s secretary, Mrs. Winters, knew exactly why I had been sent to the office before I arrived. She was a plump five-foot-two-inch woman with dark gray hair and a cherubic face. Most of the time, she acted as if she was everyone’s surrogate mother, gently chiding those who violated rules and praising those who had received some accolade. She had a personal bulletin board on which she pinned any student’s outstanding achievement, from sports to spelling bees. She was shaking her head as I entered.

  “What a disappointment,” she said. “You of all people. What a disappointment. Dr. Phelps is waiting to see you. Go right in,” she told me, and shook her head again.

  Our principal was a tall, thin, forty-five-year-old man with brown hair and a habitual look of distress and fatigue. Normally, he spoke so quietly, it was difficult to hear him if you didn’t give him your full concentration. I had seen him in action when it came to discipline. No matter what the violation, from chewing gum too loudly to defacing a part of the building, he always had the same initial reaction, taking it very personally and feeling sorry more for your parents than for you or even himself. It was always “We’ve been let down. What are we to think and do?”

  With some students, it worked, and they were sincerely remorseful, but most saw it as getting off easy, despite what punishment followed.

  “I have met your father only a few times,” he began when I entered his office, “but I know how much we’ll both be disappointed by your actions, Lorelei. Up to now, you have been a model student, doing very well in your work, behaving like a little lady in and out of your classes. No one has anything but good things to say about you. How could you suddenly turn like this and so blatantly violate one of the most important rules of our school?”

  I didn’t respond, but I tried not to look too remorseful or apologetic. I was afraid he might lift the punishment and give me a second chance. However, this was a private school, with everyone sensitive about anyone else getting special treatment simply because outside the school, it was the norm. The kids were generally from well-to-do families with some influence. I had often heard students bragging about how their parents got them out of traffic tickets or into places from which they would normally be barred. Special favors resulted from financial or political muscle. No one was more sensitive to this than Dr. Phelps.

  “You might as well leave that phone home from now on. If you should use it again in this building or on this property, you will be expelled from school,” he said.

  His long pause had me worried that he would do nothing more.

  “As per our regulations,” he added after he had obviously mulled over what he would do, “you are suspended for two days. I’ll count today as one of those days, even though it is half over. You are to leave the building. A call will be made to your father, of course, so my advice to you is to go right home.”

  I nodded. My failure to say I was sorry or to say anything that sounded remorseful obviously annoyed and hardened him.

  “Perhaps we have misjudged you.” He narrowed his eyes. “We’ll be watching you a bit more closely from now on, missy,” he said, his taut lips revealing the anger stirred up inside him. I nodded again. “You’re dismissed,” he said.

  I rose and walked out slowly, but the moment I stepped into the hallway, I hurried toward the exit. As soon as I had left the building, I took out my phone and called Ava. Even though she was at college, she sounded as if she had been sleeping. It took her a few moments and a second explanation from me to get her to understand.

  “Suspended? For answering your cell?” I could practically see her suspicions exploding. “Who called you?”

  “I thought it was you,” I said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have answered the phone.”

  “I didn’t ask you who it wasn’t. Who called you?”

  “It was someone calling the wrong number. She spoke in Spanish, and it took me about a minute to get through to her that I wasn’t Lourdes or someone, but by then it was too late. One of my great new friends, or maybe two of them, told my teacher, and he sent me to the office. I have to leave the property. You’ll have to pick up Marla at the end of the day.”

  “I don’t know why we ever gave you that phone.”

  “Daddy gave it to me,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, well, you lucked out there, Lorelei. He and Mrs. Fennel are gone for two days. She left our dinners to be warmed up. You can have that privilege.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Probably to see about your new home.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t run around here imitating you and asking questions all day.”

  “When will there be a new little sister livi
ng with us?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? I don’t cross-examine Daddy, and especially not Mrs. Fennel. Does Marla know what happened to you?”

  “No. I had to leave the building immediately. You have to pick her up today and tomorrow.”

  “Why didn’t you just wait for her?”

  “For three hours in the parking lot? Besides, the principal wanted me off the grounds,” I said, exaggerating. “It won’t be a problem. If you’re just in the parking lot at the end of the school day, I’m sure—”

  “Yeah, thanks. I have to go somewhere first. Now I have to rush,” she said, and hung up.

  As soon as she did, I called Buddy. It was clear to me from his whispering that I had caught him in a class.

  “Hang on,” he said. Moments later, he was able to speak louder.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your class. Did you get into trouble?”

  “Are you kidding? No. You did me a favor. You interrupted my sleep. This guy could bore a charging bull to death. I think he was put here to test our powers of concentration. He works for the CIA or something.”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” I said. “I’m in trouble and can’t look or be happy.”

  “You’re in trouble? What happened?”

  I told him, and he immediately got onto the same train of thought I had been riding.

  “You have about three hours before your sisters get home?”

  “About.”

  “We’re wasting time,” he said, and described where we should meet in Brentwood. “I’ll be there before you,” he promised, and described his car.

  “Are you sure? Won’t you be missing other classes?”

  “I’m walking toward the parking lot as I speak,” he said. “Call me if you get lost.”

  I got into my car. My heart was thumping like a flat tire. There was a civil war going on inside me. A part of me was screaming warnings, sounding alarms, while another part was raging with new excitement and defiance. Less than a half-hour later, I turned onto a residential side street and saw Buddy standing and leaning against his parked car in the driveway of the address he had given me. It was in a cul-de-sac. I pulled up beside his car and got out.

  “I feel like I just walked into my own dream,” he said, his face beaming like a little boy’s. “I had this dream last night, this hope, I guess you could call it, that we would meet here.”

  I stood while he approached me, put his hands on my shoulders, and leaned in to kiss me softly. I said nothing when he lifted his lips from mine, but he kept close enough to kiss me again easily. I felt the tingle of his kiss travel through my body as if it were floating on my blood and through my veins, electrifying my heart.

  “Did I tell you how beautiful you are?”

  “You mentioned it,” I said. I looked around. “Whose house is this?” I asked. “Should we be standing here like this?”

  “It’s my uncle Frank’s house. He’s my father’s youngest brother. He got divorced about two years ago, and as part of his settlement with his wife, he kept the house. He travels a lot, and since I’m close by, I sort of watch over it for him when he’s away.” He smiled mischievously. “He’s away now, and when the cat’s away…”

  He reached for my hand, and I walked with him to the front door. He smiled again, opened it, and stood back for me to enter. Yesterday, I thought, I had been determined to stay away from him, and today I was entering a house to be alone with him. Had I lost my senses or gained them? I knew I should have been more frightened, more nervous, and certainly more reluctant, but I walked in quickly, and he entered and closed the door behind us.

  “It’s a comfortable old house,” he said, gazing around the entryway. “It’s probably only about an eighteen-hundred-square-foot ranch, but in this neighborhood, it’s worth about three, maybe four million.”

  I looked at the living room. It was half the size of ours, and the furnishings looked as if they came from a department-store sale. I could just hear Daddy disdainfully calling the decor “Imitation Tasteless.” To him, most modern furniture lacked class, style, and a sense of history. “A house without any antiques is a house without any soul,” he would say. “Heritage is the life blood of character.”

  Buddy took my hand again, and we entered the living room to sit on the small brown sofa. The pillows were worn so thin we sank quickly and both laughed.

  “It’s like sitting on marshmallow,” he said. “So, you got into trouble at school. First time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it my fault?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, and he looked surprised.

  “When I called?”

  “No, not then. That’s what gave me the idea.”

  “You mean you… let me understand. Are you saying you deliberately got yourself suspended?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “To see you,” I said.

  “But… why couldn’t we see each other later or even tomorrow or, better yet, this weekend?”

  “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to see each other again,” I said.

  He recoiled. “Huh? You’re not making any sense. I thought it was your sister who was wild and crazy.”

  “She’s more than that, Buddy. She’s dangerous. You keep your promise to me and stay away from her.”

  “Dangerous? How could she be dangerous, unless sex is poisonous?”

  “Just take my word for it. She’s dangerous.”

  He stared with a half-smile of incredulity on his face. “What’s happening here?” he asked. “Are you and your sister playing some sort of game with me?”

  “No, no, absolutely not.”

  “I remember how the two of you teased the guys at Dante’s,” he continued, the suspicion lingering. “You’re kidding me, aren’t you? I mean about deliberately getting suspended just so you’d have an opportunity now to see me?”

  “No. I’m telling you the truth. I… my father is very strict about my socializing.”

  “Huh? Wait a minute. Your father is strict about your socializing, but he let you and your sister go to Dante’s?” He shook his head. “You’re not making any sense now, Lorelei. In fact, you’re scaring me a little. You sound wacky.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t mean to sound that way.”

  He laughed. “C’mon,” he said, leaning toward me and bringing his lips close to mine again.

  “Wait,” I said. “Let me explain. The night you saw me at Dante’s really was the first night I was ever out without my father.”

  He studied my face to see if I was kidding him, and then he sat back. “You certainly didn’t act like any girl out for the first time, at least any girl I’ve ever met or seen,” he said.

  “I had a good instructor that night,” I said.

  He squinted. “And who was that?”

  “My sister,” I said.

  “Well, why was your father so lenient with her and not with you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said. I paused. Every word I uttered now had to be well thought out first. “I’m adopted.”

  “Adopted? You didn’t tell me that. You told me your mother had died.”

  “That’s why I was adopted. I don’t reveal that. I don’t like the effect it has on other girls and boys.”

  “Oh.” He thought a moment and then smiled. “I didn’t think you and your sister looked that much alike, but now that you’ve mentioned it, why does your being adopted make any difference in the way your father treats you as compared with Ava?”

  “There were promises made,” I said. I thought that was safe and somewhat logical even though a bit cryptic.

  “Oh, so your father did know your mother?”

  “Yes, he knew her.”

  “Well, what about your real father, then? Where was he at the time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He nodded. “I see. This is a little complicated.” He was thoughtful again.

  I hated making all this u
p, but I saw no other way. “I’m all right with it. I love my father very much, and he’s very devoted to me, to all of us.”

  “That’s good. Maybe if your father met me, he would see I’m a decent guy and—”

  “No,” I said, perhaps too quickly and vehemently. “No,” I added softly. “Not yet. For now, I’d like to keep everything as it is.”

  “Okay. Whatever you say. I’ll do whatever you want, as long as I can be with you, Lorelei. Besides,” he said, smiling again, “we’re wasting precious time.”

  He leaned in to kiss me again. His lips moved off mine, to my cheeks, my chin, and my neck. Any girl doing this for the first time had to feel anxious and even a little afraid. She wouldn’t want to seem cold and awkward, so innocent and unsophisticated that she would make a fool of herself. I was sure that just as I was caught in an emotional tug of war for my own special reasons, any girl would be pulled in opposite directions.

  One half of her would want to test her own passions, discover whatever wonderful surprises her body had waiting for her. She could read about it, imagine herself as a character in a romance novel or in a movie, but to feel a boy’s lips actually on hers, moving over her body, his hands touching her in places never touched by anyone other than herself, in short, to enter her private space, her private places, and stir whatever wonderful part of her had been in waiting since she first felt she had stepped into maturity, was impossible to dismiss or belittle. Could a girl really ever be a woman without bringing all that to life?

  But there was also that second part of a girl, the part that resisted, that pulled her back, that system of alarms her parents, her teachers, and other adults planted in her mind and heart, those warnings that told her not to go too far, not to surrender herself too quickly and risk losing all those years of joy that lay ahead. How confusing it was to think that something that brought her so much pleasure, made her feel so much like the woman she was meant to be, could at the same time destroy a significant part of her, steal away her most precious years, those years before she had to be sensible and responsible. Surely, a part of life was meant to be carefree. The laughter was different then. Even the air she breathed seemed different. Mornings and nights were certainly different. She felt immortal, capable of doing anything, going anywhere. All of that was at risk.