“Her bark is worse than her bite,” Marcy called after us as Claudia and I joined our fathers, who were standing together in the lobby.
“How’s it going?” my father asked, looking at both of us for an answer.
“Good,” I said. Claudia didn’t respond, and her father didn’t wait to see if she would.
As we walked across campus to Matthews Hall, where the administrative offices were, our fathers remained ahead of us, talking. I imagined they had a lot to share, both apparently having daughters who needed some special tender loving care. My father, of course, would mention nothing about Haylee or what I had survived. I wondered what reason for my being here he did tell Claudia’s father. He would probably give him the reason most were here. Their parents had little faith in public schools and could afford to send their kids to one of these places, so why not try it?
I glanced at Claudia, who walked with her arms folded tightly across her chest, her head high and her neck stiff. Three private schools, I thought. She’d been through these orientations twice. No wonder she looked only vaguely interested.
“So why have you gone to so many private schools?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “My father says it’s like trying on shoes. Even though a pair might be your size, they might still squeeze here and there or simply be wrong for your feet.” After a moment, she added, “However, if Littlefield doesn’t work for me, they’ll ship me to a nunnery.”
“Seriously?”
“Who knows?” she said. “My mother thinks I’m an unhealthy influence on my little sister. If she could, she’d keep Jillian in a plastic bubble or keep me in the attic.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve stopped feeling sorry for myself,” she replied. When she spoke, she quickly glanced at me and then shifted her eyes to look down before she finished a sentence.
Everyone had family problems, I thought. Some were only skin deep and could be shrugged off, but some were so deep that they’d affect who you were forever. Here I was arriving with so much emotional baggage that I thought there was little chance I would succeed at anything, especially making new friends, and the first person I had to get along with seemed to be a walking tragedy.
Since I had arrived, I hadn’t thought much about Haylee, and, mor
e important, I wasn’t thinking about how she would react to things. I had begun to feel optimistic. Now I couldn’t help wondering what Claudia would think if she knew my story. Would she avoid complaining about her own life? She did have that “top this” attitude, as if she were the poster child for parental neglect, and as funny as it might sound, I was betting she didn’t want anyone else to draw more pity than she could. Maybe she didn’t feel sorry for herself any longer, but she sure seemed eager to get others to feel sorry for her, whereas I wanted to avoid it like the plague.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Claudia asked, as if she could hear me thinking. It was like a bell I was waiting to hear ring. Marcy had yet to ask, but I knew she would as soon as she could.
“No,” I said. It wasn’t an instantaneous decision for me to deny Haylee’s existence. I had been thinking about the question constantly during the ride to Littlefield and concluded that for now, being an only child was the best answer. Besides, right now, as far as my father was concerned, and apparently even Mother, I was the same as an only child.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “Is your mother seriously ill?”
“She’ll be all right,” I replied, rather than making up something. There was obviously no way to tell the truth.
We walked silently for a while. I saw that my father was having a good conversation with Claudia’s father.
“What’s your father do?” I asked her.
“He’s a private business manager.”
“My father runs a very successful software company,” I said, then decided not to sound too perfect. Misery, after all, loves company. “My parents are divorced.”
“Are they?” She paused and looked thoughtful. “I wish mine were.”
“What? Why?”
“Children of divorced parents get more attention, because each parent wants to show the other that their child or children love them more. My mother had been trying to get pregnant again for years, so when my sister, Jilly, came, they treated her like she was a gift from the angels. I became the back-burner child. Everything I wanted was put on the back burner until Jilly’s needs and desires were met. My mother hates when I call her Jilly instead of Jillian. That’s why I do it.”
She walked faster.
“I’m sorry,” I said, catching up, “but being the child of divorced parents is not better than being a child in a happy family, believe me.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I haven’t had either type.” She sounded like someone who had been deprived of food.
Our fathers waited for us to catch up when we reached the entrance to Matthews Hall. They were of one serious face full of worry. Suddenly, the beautiful sunny day looked overcast to me, and there weren’t more than a few puffy, cotton-candy clouds moving lazily across the sky. Depression was insidious, crawling over the grounds toward me, smiling and reminding me that I was always only a short memory away from its firm, tight grip. My father started to reach for my hand, but he stopped when he glanced at Claudia’s father, who was already turning to enter. Maybe he thought I didn’t want to seem like a little girl next to my new roommate, when in truth, that was really what I felt like.
A lean woman in a gray skirt suit and high-necked blouse was there to greet us. She wore her dull gray hair severely drawn back and pinned with a black hair clip. She easily looked like she was in her sixties, but I bet myself she was probably no more than forty, someone who thought the older she looked, the more respect she’d command. Later I would learn that she was Mrs. Mitchell’s personal assistant, Pamela Cross. Marcy would tell me, “She’s the cross Mrs. Mitchell bears.”