Cloudburst

  I nodded but immediately began to think about whom I would choose. I knew it was very immodest of me to say it, but whomever I chose would be the object of envy for the other girls in my class with whom I was friendly. It wasn’t only because they would be coming to this extraordinary house with its game room and theater, its indoor and outdoor pools and tennis courts. I was far from oblivious when it came to how popular I had become at school for other reasons. In the beginning, it surprised me and even made me feel a little uncomfortable, but over time, I grew used to other girls vying for the seat next to mine or winning my friendship and approval. My phone was ringing too often, not only for Mrs. Duval and Jordan but for me as well. I hated gossip and backstabbing, especially when it came to girl bullying, but I would be a liar if I denied that being so important to them made me feel good.

  Of course, I wasn’t receiving phone calls and attention only from girls, but until now, I hadn’t settled on any one boy. Nothing seemed to annoy them more than my dating someone one weekend and then another the following one. I hadn’t dated anyone for weeks now. Despite what Kiera and her friends had ended up doing to me, I was impressed with how they all avoided long-term relationships. Long-term for them was two weeks. “Playing the field,” Kiera used to say, “is a lot more fun. Besides, our parents are right. We’re too young to get so serious.”

  Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I saw looks of envy and regret on the faces of the girls who were going steady. Their time was so dominated by their boyfriends they didn’t spend much of it with us.

  “Girls who go steady so young are insecure,” Kiera told me. “They don’t have confidence in themselves. They’re terrified that no one will ask them out.” She laughed and added, “Like Mrs. Caro is fond of saying, ‘A bird in hand is grand.’ But that’s not for me. I’d probably squeeze it to death.”

  How stupid it would sound to anyone if I told them that Kiera’s words were still important to me. “Look at what she did to you, getting you to believe in a club called Virgins Anonymous and literally having you raped on that boat ride to Catalina Island. Why would you think anything someone like that had said was important or significant?” he or she would surely ask.

  Because despite all that, I would tell them, I was still in her world, and no one knew better what rules to play by in that world than Kiera March. You have to give the devil her due. Besides, don’t forget, coming here from where I had been and what I had gone through was like landing on another planet for me.

  In the beginning, I was terrified that the other students would learn the truth about me, discover that I had been homeless and lived on the streets. I thought their parents surely would warn them to stay away from me. They would tell them that I could be diseased or something. Despite living in the Marches’ home, I would be like a leper.

  Ironically, at least in the beginning, Kiera was afraid that her friends would learn the truth about me, too, but of course, not for the same reasons. More students would know what she had done, and then she would be tainted not only by that crime but also by living beside a girl like me. To her, that was akin to some subtle punishment. So she went along with the story that I was her cousin who had moved in with her and her parents because my parents had been killed in a car accident. That was why I limped when I first arrived, why I had been injured, too.

  When everything was eventually revealed, thanks to Kiera’s nearly killing herself with a drug known on the street as G, the truth about me emerged. By then, everyone had accepted me in the school. I was doing very well in my classes and had become a lead clarinet player in the orchestra. To my surprise, after all was known, I became something of a heroine. Instead of the truth chasing my classmates away from me, it drew them to me. Everyone wanted to know more about me. Suddenly, being poor and downtrodden was romantic.

  Did I exploit all of this? Probably, but whom did I hurt? It felt good to take advantage of other girls and boys who had enjoyed so much, anyway. They weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They were born with a gold one. If it was all reversed and they could, they wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of me, I thought.

  Did I lead the other girls to believe that I was far more sophisticated and worldly when it came to sex and boys than I really was? Yes, but I enjoyed the way they looked up to me, spoke to me, competed for my attention. After all, I had not only survived what had been done to me here, but I had also survived the streets. I had been to hell and back. Who could claim the same or similar experiences? They made me feel like a local celebrity, a sort of Pygmalion, Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, educated and washed until she could no longer be distinguished from the blue bloods.

  All of that reverence and respect never ended. In fact, it was happening more than ever, and I couldn’t help but smile at the irony. I sat where Kiera had sat, walked where she had walked, and held court just the way she had. I was the queen now, and I wasn’t about to give up my throne over a pang of conscience. I told myself there wasn’t anything I could do to any of them in this school, anyway, that she or he couldn’t survive, not with their support systems.

  Enjoy yourself, Sasha, I told myself. As Mrs. Caro had said many times, “She deserves to be a little spoiled.”

  Mrs. Caro had my breakfast ready seconds after I sat at the table in what the Marches called their breakfast nook. Rarely did we have breakfast in the dining room since Kiera had gone off to college. The nook had bay windows that looked out on the beautiful gardens, the rolling lawn where the Marches had some statuary and stone benches. It looked like a private park. There was so much to maintain that they had more than a dozen employees for Alberto to supervise. For me, it was still too much to believe that one family had all this. What they spent on maintenance could probably feed all of the homeless people I had met and known. Kiera always took it all for granted. No matter what my response to something wonderful here was, she always said, “What’s the big deal? If we didn’t have it, someone else would, and why should they have it and not us?”

  Live where I have lived, be who I have been, and you’ll understand why it is a big deal, I thought, and then I thought, Well, maybe not you.

  “Just coffee for me and a piece of toast,” Jordan told Mrs. Caro. “I’m having a big lunch out today,” she added before Mrs. Caro could ask after her health.

  She’s going out to lunch and dinner, I thought. Lately, both she and Donald seemed to want to get away from their beautiful house and estate. Perhaps the memories of Alena were haunting them even more than ever with Kiera away. I was sure I didn’t fill the caverns in their hearts. Jordan had tried by having me wear Alena’s things, sleep in her room, and learn to play the clarinet. I was even using her clarinet. Even though it all distracted her from her sorrow for a while, it didn’t end it. Nothing would, just as nothing would end my mourning my mother’s terrible death.

  “Has Kiera been writing to you? I haven’t heard from her for more than two weeks,” Jordan said. I knew she suspected I had been reading something from Kiera on the computer.

  Although it was painful to tell her that yes, Kiera was communicating with me far more than she was with her, I didn’t want to lie to her again.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, has she said any more about this young man from England? Donald asked me last night, and I could tell him nothing.”

  “She’s still seeing him. She sounds happy about it, too.”

  “Um. I feel sorry for him,” she said. Mrs. Caro served her some coffee. She glanced at me, raised her eyebrows, and returned to the kitchen to get Jordan her toast.

  “She tells me he’s a proper Englishman,” I said.

  “Yes, I heard about that. She said his father was knighted. It’s hard to believe she would be with anyone proper,” she replied, and sipped her coffee. “I don’t enjoy speaking about her like this, but I am not one of those mothers who refuses to see her child’s flaws, especially this child.”

  I looked down and continued to ea
t my eggs.

  “I’m not saying I’m not happy that you and she have developed a friendlier relationship. If anything, I think that’s wonderful of you. The way you treated her with so much kindness after she did that stupid drug thing and all the other things to you impressed both Donald and me, but always be careful. You’re too sweet and trusting, just the way Alena was and would be today. You both have too much angel in you.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised. Lately, I wasn’t feeling anything angelic about myself. I was feeling more guilt because of the way Jordan often compared me to Alena.

  Mrs. Caro brought her the toast. She nibbled on it like a small rabbit and stared ahead.

  When I was in the hospital after the accident and Jackie Knee urged me to accept Jordan’s offer and take what I could from her and her family, she was surely envisioning what she thought was a pretty close to perfect world, a world in which everything you wanted was at your fingertips. She was right about it to a certain extent. What could I ask for now that I didn’t have materially?

  But as I looked at Jordan lost in her own sad thoughts for a moment, I thought this was far from a perfect world. Sadness was a permanent guest here. It crawled about through the shadows, walked freely during the night, visiting both Jordan and Donald and even me. Outside, the grass couldn’t be greener, the flowers brighter, the fountains more luscious and crystal clear, but despite the pleasures I was enjoying and the comfort I experienced, in the back of my mind, I knew it was wrong to begin here by standing in a dead girl’s shoes. I could feel the dread. Something sometime in the near future would make me regret the Marches’ generosity in ways I couldn’t imagine. It was coming. Like Mrs. Caro, I could sense things others could not, and deep down, I was afraid.

  “Oh, you’d better get a move on,” Jordan said. “Remember, no speeding. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you, too.”

  “I’m okay. I have plenty of time,” I said, but wiped my mouth and rose. I was going to bring the plates into the kitchen, but Mrs. Caro, as usual, was right on the mark, as if she had been hovering behind the door listening and waiting for her cue, as if we were all in a play.

  I thanked her again, gave Jordan a kiss on the cheek as I had started doing recently, and headed out. My schoolbag was in the entryway on the eighteenth-century wood bench Jordan had bought at an auction in France. I had gotten into the habit of putting it there after I had done my homework. If there was anything the teachers at my school hated, it was a student forgetting his or her books. On more than one occasion, my classmates would call home for something they had forgotten, and their parents would either bring it or send it along in a taxicab or limousine. It wasn’t so strange to see a uniformed chauffeur bring something into the school.

  I stepped out into another very warm late October morning with a sky as blue as a summer sky. Mrs. Caro always talked about the weather. Donald didn’t believe there was a man-made climate change, but she would always shake her head and mutter, “Somethin’s not right, and it’s not nature’s fault.”

  I walked to the garage. It wasn’t far, but lately it was practically the only walking outside of the school that I was doing. When we were homeless, Mama and I seemed to walk forever some days. Even when I had a new pair of sneakers, my feet would blister, and hers began to look like the feet of someone who walked on a bed of nails.

  Just before I reached the garage, my cell phone vibrated, and I paused to answer.

  “Hi,” I heard. “Have you left for school yet?”

  “Who’s this?” I asked, even though I knew full well who it was.

  Shayne Peters was a starting guard on the basketball team, six feet two, with a shock of rich golden brown hair. His father was a famous criminal attorney who had recently defended a congressman accused of murdering his wife. He had gotten him acquitted.

  Shayne had been going with Sydney Woods, but they recently had broken up. The rumor mill blamed it on me. The story was that he had a big crush on me, and Sydney, finally disgusted with him, gave his class ring back to him. I don’t know how that had all started. I had done little to encourage him.

  “It’s Shayne!” he cried, obviously upset that I didn’t recognize his voice.

  “How can I help you?” I asked in the most formal tone of voice I could muster.

  “Huh? Look, my car won’t start. Can you pick me up on the way to school?”

  “No. I’m late,” I said. “Take a taxi.”

  “Wait!” he cried, anticipating my hanging up. “Are you going to the game Friday? It’s a home game, and I thought that after the game we—”

  “I’m not sure. I have an opportunity to see Madame Butterfly. Box seats.”

  “What?”

  “See you in school,” I said, and hung up.

  I had no opportunity to see Madame Butterfly, but the idea had just popped into my head. I smiled to myself as I got into my car. I could just imagine the look of surprise on his face, but I remembered the advice Kiera had given me about the boys in our school. “They like to take you for granted because they take everything else for granted. Make them work for every smile you give them, and don’t give them many.”

  I’ll e-mail her about it later, I thought. She loved hearing about my romantic exploits, especially when I appeared to be following her lead.

  Alberto waved to me as I drove out and waited for the gate to open. From the outside, it looked like a solid orange wall twelve feet high. There were security cameras everywhere. One of my friends who came here, Jessica Taylor, said, “The only thing missing here is a moat and crocodiles.”

  When I arrived at school, I parked in the student lot where all of us who had cars had reserved places. As I headed for the front door, I saw Shayne pull in, driving his own car and parking in his spot.

  His own car? Deception, I thought. So much for him needing me to pick him up. I wouldn’t ever go out with him, since the only way he could get my attention was to try to deceive me. If it’s there at the start, it will certainly be there throughout your relationship and at the end for sure.

  Mama taught me that.

  I felt confident that I could and would recognize it every time I saw it.

  But I was still young and idealistic.

  I had no idea what deception awaited me or the direction from which it would come—and certainly no idea about how close it was.

  2

  New Student

  When I first entered this school, I was nervous and self-conscious for many reasons, not the least of which was my limping. The injury I had suffered could have healed improperly because of how quickly and carelessly I was initially treated. I could have been limping all my life. One leg might not have grown as fast or as long as the other, but Jordan March brought in Dr. Milan, a top specialist who reset my cast, and after nearly a year, my limp grew less and less obvious, until eventually it was completely gone. Probably no other girl in the school took as much pride in her walk now as I did after that, although many interpreted it as my being snobby and absorbed with myself. I was simply grateful and more conscious of my posture and my gait.

  I don’t know how many girls can actually envision themselves when they walk or sit and talk, but I can. Maybe I’m thinking more about my mother than I am about myself, but I see a picture of a girl with a rich, unblemished complexion and silky black hair to go with her black onyx eyes, small nose, and perfectly shaped slightly raised lips. She is lithe, with a figure other girls envy and boys dream of when they fantasize. I always focus ahead when I walk, no matter where I am, and so I seemed undistracted and unconcerned, an exotic statue of self-confidence. Kiera was the first one to mention this to me. She called it my “wow factor.”

  “Every girl needs one,” she said. “Mine is the way I shift my eyes and turn my shoulders. I radiate sex. I can see it in their faces, women as well as men.”

  I thought she was simply jealous of something else about me, but under the note of envy in her voice, I did hear an ap
preciation and respect for something I did on my own. Because of her, even though people couldn’t tell, I was even more self-conscious about the way I walked and sat. Besides, in this school, I didn’t lack reminders.

  “You walk through the halls of this school as if you own it,” Ray Stowe told me earlier this year. I had stopped at my hall locker. He was one of the senior boys who were upset with my attitude toward them. Maybe they thought I should kowtow like some obedient Asian woman. “I know Donald March was one of the principal builders of it, but that doesn’t mean you own it.”

  Ray’s father was a builder, too. I imagined there was some friendly and maybe not-so-friendly competition.

  I looked first at my girlfriends who were standing by their lockers. They had overheard him.

  “Don’t slouch so much, and you can look as if you own it, too, instead of looking as if you’re ashamed to be here or don’t think you’re good enough,” I told him. Everyone around us laughed. Unable to come up with a good enough counter, he straightened his posture, looked at the smiling faces around us, and walked away.

  Some of the girls who hung with me repeated the things I said all day, especially when I took down one of the boys who was so full of himself. The school had only three hundred students from grades seven to twelve, so having the whole student body hear something someone else said or something someone else did was not difficult. That was especially true for the senior high. We had only sixty-two students in the senior class. Our class sizes were a quarter of what they were in many public schools. It was difficult, even for some of the more modest students, not to feel extra special and not to have their voices drip with pride about being a student at Pacifica.

  My memories of my public grade-school days were so vague now. It wasn’t all that long after my father deserted us that it became more and more difficult to attend the school I was at. However, like most children that age, I was still excited about going there every school day. After the initial days, older students seemed to be generally blasé about it, but not me. I was still as excited as ever about going to school.