“You didn’t, and you won’t,” I said. “Besides, you’re with someone you love and who loves you.” I got up and kissed him. I heard Kane’s horn.
“He’s early.”
“Eager to get to school and learn,” I said, and left him laughing as I rushed out the door.
Kane put up his hand as soon as I got into his car.
“What?”
“We don’t talk about the diary ever until we’re up in the attic from now on.”
“Well, I agree, for reasons I’ve said. I don’t want us to talk about it in school in case someone overhears, but when we’re alone, too? What’s brought you to that conclusion?”
“I thought about it a lot last night. We’ve got to give it authenticity, and that will come only when we’re in it, when we can feel it on us. I don’t want to make this into some school project. You know, like we’re studying a book in English class or for an exam. Do you?”
“No, but—”
“So good. Good,” he said, and backed out. He looked up at the attic before driving off. “It doesn’t exist except up there,” he added firmly.
At first, I thought his attitude was a bit extreme. Of course, I liked the idea that it would be kept an even better and tighter secret, but there was still something about it that bothered me. It didn’t frighten me or anything, and I certainly agreed about not turning it into some extra-credit book report. Like him, I wanted to step away from that sort of thinking. There was nothing personal about that. Maybe what bothered me was what had begun to bother me from the start. Kane seemed even more into this than I was, and I had far more reason to be. As distant as the relationship was, the Dollanganger children were still related to me through my mother. And it was my father who was working on the property and who had found the diary. What got me thinking harder about it was wondering why Kane was so into it. What was he bringing to it that I had never expected or could have known? At times, he seemed to be very critical of Christopher, but then he would suddenly embrace him. Our English teacher, Mr. Madeo, who also directed the school plays, once told us that an actor has to find something with which he can identify in a character he plays, even if he plays a villain.
What was it that Kane found in Christopher and the whole Dollanganger situation that enabled him to get so into it? Maybe there were some resemblances to his own family. The Dollangangers were a loving family at the start of the diary, but it was clear that with the loss of their father, the children were drifting away from their mother. They were almost like orphans. Kane did admit that he didn’t like his mother; he’d said he loved her like a child should love a mother, but he didn’t particularly like the person she was.
Even though I never spent any time with Kane and his sister together, I could tell that he had a very good relationship with her. Was she as critical of their parents as he was? Did they complain about them to each other? She surely must be complaining to him about her mother’s attitude toward her boyfriend. In how many families that I knew only on the surface were the children allied against their own parents? Even if I had a brother or a sister, I couldn’t imagine the two of us being adversaries of our parents, especially my father.
How ironic this was all becoming. In the beginning, I was afraid that I would be the one who revealed too much about herself, but it was starting to look like it might be Kane who did that. Was I ready for the revelations? Did I want to know them? What sort of a Pandora’s box had I opened by agreeing to read the diary with him? Of course, I didn’t bring up any of this, even after the school day had ended and we were on our way to my home. All day, I had tried to distract myself from these heavy thoughts.
The girls were all talking about Tina Kennedy’s party the coming weekend. Unlike Kane’s recent party at his home when his parents had gone on a trip, Tina’s party was promising to be wild. Her father owned lots of real estate, and one of the properties was an adult bar outside of Charlottesville, so everyone imagined there would be a good supply of booze, and Tina had an older brother in his third year of college who seemed to have an endless supply of mood-enhancing drugs. Lately, she had practically dared me not to attend. In her effort to win Kane’s attention, she was portraying me as the class “goody-goody,” who was capable of turning “state’s evidence” when it came to whatever my girlfriends and the boys did. She didn’t want me to be trusted. I complained to Kane about it, but he didn’t want to take any of it seriously. That was beginning to annoy me.
To counter her insinuations, my closer friends, like Suzette and Kyra, were telling everyone that Kane and I were really getting it on at my home after school almost daily. I wasn’t happy about any of that and was even a little irritated at Kane’s indifference to the chatter. Until now, that was his charm, his “coolness,” as most girls put it, but I had seen him be quite the opposite in the attic.
I suggested that he and I boycott the party.
“Why give her the satisfaction?” he said. “We can handle it. Don’t worry.”
We both had a light load of homework that day, which Kane took to mean we could spend more time on the diary.
“We’ll order in Chinese or something, okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. He drove a little faster than usual. Neither of us said anything more until we entered my house and went up to my room to get the diary.
“I just want to freshen up a bit,” I said when he turned to the door.
“Go to the bathroo
m?”
“Just freshen up. Go on ahead if you want,” I said, and to my surprise, he did just that.
I was even more surprised at what he had done by the time I got up there. He had moved furniture around so it resembled the Foxworth Hall attic as much as possible.
“Gives a better idea,” he said when I just stood there looking at it all. “Okay?”
“We have to move it back before we leave.”
“Oh, absolutely. No problem.” He got into the chair and looked at me. I moved to the sofa. He began.
Momma had told us about the grand Christmas party her parents were having, and Cathy pleaded and pleaded for us to be able to see it.