Ivy Secrets (10 page)

Charlie gestured across the now clean kitchen. “I just ate,” she said. “And besides, we could go for a walk, but Viktor would never allow it, I’m sure.”

“Viktor would not have to know.”

Charlie turned and looked at her.

“I did not pull up my shade to one-quarter. As far as Viktor knows, I am sound asleep in my cozy little bed.”

Charlie checked her watch as though she had another engagement. “Well …”

“Please, Charlie. I need to get out of here. I need to do something without Viktor watching over my shoulder.”

Charlie looked at Marina’s suede coat. “With my luck, he’d spot you. He’d have the hounds after both of us in nothing flat.”

Marina thought for a moment. “Not if I were dressed in your sweatshirt.”

“We could switch clothes? But I’m so much taller than you.”

“Exactly. If Viktor looked out his window he would be looking for a five-foot-two-inch girl in a suede jacket. How tall are you?”

“Five six. Almost five seven.”

“Perfect,” Marina answered and began slipping off her coat.

“But what if …” Charlie began.

“What if something happens?” Marina laughed. “Do not be absurd. Nothing is going to happen. We are in Northampton, Massachusetts. In the United States of America. The only people who get shot here are drug dealers and presidents.” She reached out her hand for Charlie’s sweatshirt.

Charlie hesitated a moment, then pulled it over her head. She assumed Marina knew what she was doing. “We could go down by the pond,” Charlie said, as she handed the princess her shirt. “I jog down there. It’s beautiful. There are ducks—even two swans. Though I don’t know how much we’ll see in the dark.”

“I don’t care where we go,” Marina answered as she got into the sweatshirt and tucked her long hair inside the hood.

Charlie picked up Marina’s jacket. A warmth spread through her as she felt its softness. She ran her fingers across
the smooth, butter suede, savoring its touch. It was not unlike some of the garments that Felicia sold: supple, luxurious, and extremely expensive.

She glanced at Marina, who looked ridiculous in Charlie’s gray sweatshirt: a princess dressed like a pauper. Charlie slipped her arms into the cool silk lining and zipped the jacket. The sleeves were too short, but surprisingly, the jacket fit. She tried not to let Marina see her feel the suede again. Someday, Charlie promised herself, she would have a jacket like this of her own; someday she would have more than one.

“Lead the way,” Marina said.

Charlie hesitated again, then stepped in front of her, and headed out the kitchen door.

    It felt strange, walking beside a princess. Charlie looked around, hoping someone—some of the girls—would see her, would see them together again, Charlie O’Brien and the princess. She wondered if any of them would notice that she wore Marina’s jacket, and if they would then conclude that they were best friends.

“What is that building?” Marina asked, pointing toward the crew house.

“That’s where they keep the boats,” Charlie answered. “Canoes, row boats, crew boats.”

Marina looked thoughtful. “I have never been on a boat. Except for a yacht.” She laughed. “I guess it is not the same thing.”

Charlie laughed, too. “Not really. Canoes are fun. My older brother taught me how to paddle one summer when we went to the lake on vacation.”

Marina scuffed her feet. “It must be nice to have an older brother.”

“Are you kidding? That’s the only thing he ever taught me. After that, I became something too much like a girl. We could take a boat out sometime if you’d like. I could show you how to paddle a canoe.”

Marina was quiet a moment.

“Oh,” Charlie said. “I forgot. Viktor.”

Marina raised her head and looked around. “How many kids in your family?”

“Six. Three boys. Three girls.”

“It must be fun.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. But didn’t you say you have a sister?”

“Not a sister. More like an arch rival. She is my twin, but we couldn’t be more unalike.”

“What’s her name?”

Marina stuffed her hands in her pockets and muttered, “Alexis.”

Charlie sensed that the princess wanted no more questions about her arch rival sister, so she kept silent. Yet to herself, Charlie repeated the name Alexis.
Alexis
, she thought,
what a beautiful name for a princess.

As they made their way closer to the president’s house on the hill, sounds of music filled the air. Charlie pointed ahead. “That’s probably coming from the Quad. It must be party time.”

“Not like any party I have ever been to,” Marina said.

The music grew louder as they walked toward it. Then suddenly, above the music, came the sounds of thumping footsteps and loud laughter, moving in the direction of the president’s house.

“Let’s see what is going on,” Marina said, leaving the path and starting up the hill toward the house.

“I don’t think we’d better …”

“Come on.” She motioned impatiently to Charlie.

They crept up the hill through the rose garden, then slowly circled the garage. In the front of the house, throngs of girls stood, laughing, shouting. One of them went up to the door and banged on it with her fist.

“We want Mountain Day,” they began to chant.

Charlie could see cans of beer being passed around. “It’s the Quad Bunnies,” she whispered to Marina. She started to move forward; Marina stayed behind.

“We want Mountain Day,” the insistent chant grew in volume.

Finally the front door opened. A regal woman smiled and raised a hand to hush the crowd. “Not until I’m ready,” she said.

“When will it be?” someone shouted.

“Tomorrow?” someone else called out.

“Tomorrow!” several people joined in.

The woman at the door raised her hand again. “Okay, I’ll break tradition and tell you. Mountain Day will be—” she paused and let her hand drop. “Mountain Day will be before Columbus Day break.”

The crowd hissed and booed. Charlie ached to be a part of the laughter, part of their fun, one of
them.

“Now if you’ll please excuse me girls, I’m having a dinner party.” The woman retreated and closed the door.

The crowd of girls mumbled and grumbled some more, then began making their way back toward the Quad. Charlie couldn’t see if Tess was among them; it was too dark.

When she turned back to Marina, the princess was already walking away from the crowd, hands in her pockets, head down.

“Marina,” Charlie called, and suddenly realized that this was the first time she hadn’t called her Princess. “Wait up.”

Marina slowed her pace and Charlie skipped up to her. “What is Mountain Day, anyway?”

“I have no idea. Some ancient primal tradition, perhaps. We have nothing like it in Novokia.”

Charlie noticed that the curiosity had vanished from Marina’s face, replaced by disinterest.
Princesses
, Charlie thought as she followed her around the garage and down the hill through the rose bushes,
who can figure them?

Tess would know what Mountain Day was. She’d ask her after class tomorrow. Whether Marina cared about it or not, it seemed it was something important, something every Smithie should know.

Tess Richards sat in her room, her head pounding from the loud music, the shrill laughter, and the boisterous shouts for Mountain Day. She flipped through the pages of her art history book. It was bad enough she’d had to listen to the nonstop noise for the past hour; it was even worse when several of them had banged on her door and demanded she go with them to the president’s house. She’d refused.

Tess knew what Mountain Day was all about, and it was no big deal. One day, before Columbus Day break, the president rang the bells on campus and all classes were canceled. The students were then supposed to go off to “the mountains”—bike, walk, or do whatever, to take in nature and “stop and smell the roses” or some stupid thing. And though Tess usually liked tradition, this one seemed asinine. Almost as asinine as the Quad Bunnies demanding Mountain Day after only two days of classes.

One thing was for certain: Tess hated it here. The girls were all snobs who cared about nothing beyond makeup and hair and drinking beer; who talked about nothing but boys and sex, and the other girls behind their back.

Not that boys were so bad. After all, the only reason she’d agreed to come to Smith was because Peter Hobart was going to nearby Amherst College. How was she supposed to have known that Peter would be doing his junior year abroad in Geneva this year? Her father had not mentioned it until he arrived home from his summer trip to Singapore—the trip on which he’d started up production of yet another Hobart Textiles subsidiary, making more and more money
for himself and for Peter’s family, as if any of them needed more. The new plant would be churning out the polyester pantsuits that had become the rage, made from cheap material, by even cheaper labor.

No, Tess’s father had failed to mention that Peter would be going to Geneva to study business. It wasn’t surprising. Joseph Richards deferred to his wife when it came to matters of the heart or issues of the soul. Tess dearly loved her father and had often wished he’d take a stand against her overbearing mother. But when it came to passion, Joseph Richards reserved his for his work and for the elaborate watercolors he created in his artist’s studio. And when it came to Peter Hobart, Joseph remained emotionally detached. As it was, Tess saw Peter only two or three times a year when she accompanied her father to New York, or when Peter happened to tag along with his mother when she went to San Francisco. Tess first met Peter five years go when she was thirteen, and her mother had told her then and there that he was the boy Tess was going to marry. No one else would do.

And now, he was thousands of miles away, and the only advantage was that Tess wouldn’t have to wear the god-awful pantsuits her mother had packed, or the sable brown mascara her mother had said “brought out the richness of her lovely hazel eyes.”

Hazel. God
, she thought now, what an absurd name for a color of eyes that couldn’t decide if they were green or brown. In a way, it was like her mousy hair—not light enough to be called blond, not dark enough to be called brunette. Instead, her hair hung somewhere in between, and unlike her eyes, did not even have a designated color name beyond “medium.” Medium, mediocre, mediocrity. She tried to remember the quote from one American president, something about how people exist in the “gray twilight of mediocrity.” She wondered if her eye and hair coloring had intrinsically carved her destiny.

She closed her book and rolled onto her back. As the sounds of “Hold That Tiger” vibrated in the walls, Tess tried to determine if any of the other girls here had ever thought about such things as the names of colors or the path of their karma. Probably not. They were too focused on the really critical things in life, like when Mountain Day was going to be.

She shut her hazel eyes and knew that there was no way this was going to work. No matter how much it pleased her parents, Tess simply did not belong at Smith.

She sighed and reached for the phone beside her bed, then placed a credit card call to San Francisco. Her mother answered the phone.

“Darling!” her mother squealed. “How are you? I was hoping you’d call soon. How are things going? Don’t you just love it there?”

Tess gripped the receiver. “Actually, Mother,” she said, then pictured her mother’s enthusiasm—the ebullience that always reminded Tess that she was so very special, the only child of Joseph and Sally Richards, the miracle baby that had blessed their lives. “It’s wonderful here.” She squeezed her eyes shut again and frowned. Then she reached up and ran her index finger across the two deep lines that indented her forehead, crevices of distress that, according to her mother, she was “much too young to have.”

“What’s all the noise in the background?”

“Everyone’s calling for Mountain Day.”

Her mother laughed, delighted. “So soon?” she asked. “Tell me how the president responded. You all went to her house, didn’t you?”

Tess toyed with the phone cord. She knew that one of the reasons her mother had wanted her to attend school here was so that she could relive her own gleeful days at Smith—that, and the fact that every alum wanted her daughter to go to Smith. It was, after all, expected. “The president laughed at us,” Tess answered with what she knew her mother expected to hear. She had no idea if the president had indeed laughed, but she’d heard enough stories about Mountain Day and the Quad Bunnies to know what tradition wrought.

“Oh,” her mother crooned, “it’s so wonderful to think that some things never change.”

Tess’s thoughts raced. Her mother was so proud that Tess had come here. So proud that her otherwise unsophisticated daughter, who bore no resemblance to her friends’ daughters, who had no interest in picking out china or drooling over
Bride’s
magazine, had agreed to go to Smith. There was no way Tess could now tell her mother that she wanted to leave Smith, and Northampton, forever, or at least until next year when Peter was back at Amherst, when there
would be a concrete reason for her to be here. There was no way she could tell her that, if not for Peter, and for her mother’s plans for Tess and Peter, she would have preferred to forget college altogether and travel through Europe. But Tess knew that bumming from youth hostel to youth hostel would be frivolous—her parents would think it was frivolous, and Peter would think it was frivolous. People of their kind simply did not behave so irresponsibly.