poke,” and led me to a table near the lounge area. “This is reserved for juniors,
although a few underclassmen might be allowed if we decide they’re worthy.
Naturally, I got to sit here last year even though Catalina had a fit.”
Hattie had a later lunch period, but Constance was already sitting there. I
took the seat at the end of the table. It was enough for me to have a hot meal and
listen to the others talk.
I must have looked puzzled at some of their slang, because Constance said,
“Everything here has a nickname. The main building, Birch Grove Hall, is BGro, and the other building, Founder’s Arts Building, is Flounder.”
The other students offered other definitions. The gymnasium was the Gin
Nauseum, and the Founders Memorial sports fields were called Fo-Mem.
Constance looked over my schedule and told Mary Violet, “She’s got Ms.
McSqueak for Trig.”
“Oh, you’ll love her,” Mary Violet told me. “Especially when she says
hypotenuse. You have to count how many times she says it over the semester.”
“We have a pool and it only costs a dollar to enter,” Constance said.
“Whoever’s assigned the front right desk has to keep it, and then there’s a prize to
whoever guesses the closest.”
Mary Violet said, “My mother won when she had Ms. McSqueak. She
guessed 217 and she was right. We’re all so proud of her.”
I found out what they meant when I went to trigonometry. My teacher, Ms.
McPeak, was an ancient, eccentric woman, who gesticulated wildly and was
covered with chalk dust. Her reedy voice broke upward on the last syllable of
every word, especially hypotenuse. I counted four times and wrote it on the
corner of my notebook cover.
Then I had history. As I’d told Hattie, it wasn’t my favorite subject, but at
least the tests didn’t ask for personal interpretation.
When the bell rang at the end of the day, I felt glad to have made it through.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
I can do this
, I thought. I put my book in my Birch Grove tote and went to the
Registrar’s office.
The Registrar took care of the three girls ahead of me. When it was my
turn, I asked to change classes.
“Hmm,” she said sternly. “Mr. Mason talked to me about that. Students
reserve their space in that seminar one or two years ahead of time.”
“But I just transferred in, ma’am,” I said. “If there’s a space…”
“There’s no space,” she said, closing the subject.
A voice behind me asked, “Jane, how was your day?”
I turned to see Mrs. Monroe. “Hello, ma’am. It was good, thank you.”
“Can I help you with anything?”
The Registrar, who’d been so unhelpful, suddenly said, “Miss Williams
wanted to transfer into your class, and I explained that it was full.”
“You’re quite right --the class is full, but I think we can make room for one
more. Would you please handle the paperwork, Mrs. Dodson? Thank you so
much.”
“Of course, Headmistress.”
As the Registrar completed the transfer and printed out a new schedule for
me, Mrs. Monroe said, “I’ll have Lucian call you to arrange weekly tutoring
sessions. Sometimes we can schedule them in early evening, and I’d like it if you
could stay for dinner with us.”
“That would be nice,” I said, but I was thinking,
money and Lucky and
good food
.
If this was a fairy tale, then Mrs. Monroe was my fairy godmother, all light
and kindness, watching me and able to wave her wand and make any problem
vanish.
My homework assignments kept me busy through the evening. I spread
all my books and papers on the floor and worked there. I made a scrambled egg
sandwich for dinner and reviewed the first chapter in my Latin text.
When darkness had fallen, I went outside and looked toward the Monroes’
house, thinking that I might spot their lights through the grove. The black
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
splotches on the white-barked trees looked like pale, amorphous faces. The more
I stared at them, the more they seemed to be gazing back at me.
I found myself wondering what they would tell me if they could, and then I
realized how crazy that was. They were only trees.
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
“Each student is assigned a locker at the beginning of the academic year.
Neither this locker or the combination to the lock should be shared with
anyone, nor may a student change her locker without permission from the
office of student affairs.”
Birch Grove
Student Handbook
I FELT
optimistic about Latin until I walked into the classroom and saw Catalina
arranging her books on a desk and then taking a silver pen out of a small leather
case. Her long tawny hair hung in lustrous waves down her back and small gold
earrings glinted on her earlobes.
“Please sit at your
assigned
seat,” said the teacher, who was standing at the
front of the room and looking right at me. She was a sturdy woman with a
cropped brush of hair the color of a dead lawn and brownish-yellow eyes behind
gold-rimmed glasses.
I looked at the desks and to my dismay I saw
Jane Williams
on a piece of
paper atop the desk beside Catalina’s. The beautiful girl glanced at me without
smiling. I said a low “Hello” to Catalina and took my seat.
The moment the bell sounded, the teacher, Ms. Ingerson, said, “
Salvete,
discipuli. Latine colloquamur
.” Hello, students. Let’s speak in Latin. She put us
through a series of rapid drills.
I could barely keep up, and I kept flipping through my dictionary, trying to
translate Ms. Ingerson’s instructions. When the bell rang an hour later, I felt as if
my brain had tried to run a marathon and collapsed half-way through.
Catalina gathered her things and stood gracefully, watching me as I quickly
scribbled down what I could understand of our homework assignment.
When I finished writing, Catalina said, “Maybe this isn’t the right place for
you.”
There were times when you couldn’t avoid a confrontation. Picking up my
books, I said, “If you’ve got a problem with me, guess what? I don’t care. You
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
don’t even know me.”
“I know you are the headmistress’s new scholarship student, some poor
little homeless thing.” Her accent was barely discernable, only evident in the rich
rounded vowels. “Harriet has adopted you, no?”
I stared up at the taller girl. “She’s friendly, but no one’s ‘adopted’ me.
I’m an emancipated minor.”
“Hattie was friendly to the other scholarship girl, too,” she said critically.
“Another
pobrecita
like you.”
Catalina didn’t need to know that Mrs. Monroe had asked Hattie and her
friends to be nice. “The world is as full of poor girls as it is of nasty snobs.”
I was walking away when I heard Catalina say, “Perhaps the world is, but
not Birch Grove. Just as one poor girl disappears another fills her place.”
Catalina’s level of bitchiness was nothing compared to the homegirls at
City Central, who would stab someone with a long hat pin while her friends used
a camera-phone to record the good times. Five minutes later, I forgot her
comments.
When Constance invited me to go off-campus with them, I said I was
staying on-campus. I went to the cafeteria, picked up my lunch, and approached
the table that I’d sat at before. I watched their reaction to see if I should move on
somewhere else.
The girls who were already there looked up at me and smiled, carrying on
their conversations in a perfectly normal way. A girl from Chem Ho said, “Have
a seat,” so I did. We talked about the work load and tests. Her older sister had
taken the course and she offered to share notes.
The last class of the day was Expository Writing. The classroom was in the
Founder’s Arts Building, aka Flounder. I went through the main door, but I
couldn’t find the classroom. I dashed upstairs and down again before I asked
another student.
“Go outside and around to the back,” she said. “The only way to get to that
classroom is by a door leading downstairs.”
“Thanks. I never would have found it.”
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
“That’s why this hall is called Flounder,” she said.
I got to the class room out of breath and a few minutes late. Ms. Chu gave
me a nod toward an empty chair and continued to take roll. The first thing I
noticed was a row of computers on tables against the wall. So there were
exceptions to the no-computers for class work rule.
Wooden file cabinets lined another wall and framed copies of the
Birch
Grove Weekly
hung from the walls, along with a poster displaying editing
symbols.
Ms. Chu reviewed editing symbols and the newspaper production schedule.
The wooden file cabinets held the archives, the files of every article for the
Birch
Grove Weekly
.
“Always make a hard copy,” she said. “Your assignments aren’t counted as
complete until they are filed in the archives.”
Ms. Chu talked about reporting as “the four w’s: when, where, what, why,”
which seemed pretty straight-forward.
“Our first issue comes out in two weeks,” Mrs. Chu announced. “The
seniors will be writing the op-eds.”
Ms. Chu saw me beginning to raise my hand. “Op-ed is short for an
opinion dash editorial column. You’ll catch on to the jargon soon enough. Your
first story is due Monday,” she said. “Five hundred to seven-hundred-and-fifty
words, third-person. Pick a topic about the upcoming academic year. Quote at
least two people, and if
any
of your facts are incorrect, you
will
fail the
assignment. I don’t have to tell you to proofread, now do I?”
Why couldn’t teachers just tell you what they wanted so you wouldn’t
screw up the assignment? I wrote down Ms. Chu’s office hours so I could check
on a topic with her.
When I returned to the cottage, the phone was ringing. Having my own
phone was as exciting as having my own bathroom. I grabbed it and said,
“Hello!”
“Hey, Jane? It’s Lucky.”
I took a deep breath and tried to sound calm even though my nerves pitched
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
my voice unnaturally high. “Oh, hi, Lucky.”
“How’s it going?” His voice was lighter than Jack’s and didn’t have that
sardonic edge. “School okay?”
“It’s good. I’m taking
Night Terrors
with your mom.”
“Everyone loves that class. Okay, you know that tutoring thing?
Chemistry? My mom says I should start it right away and not fall behind,” he
said. “I can come over there on Saturday around noon if that’s okay.”
“That would be great,” I said too fast. “I mean, I’m available then.”
“Okay, see you then.”
“See you.”
I hung up and stood there thinking,
Lucky and me
.
There were things that I knew. When a car turns a corner, burning rubber,
duck down behind something solid. When the cops ask if anyone saw anything,
say nothing. When you get on a downtown bus, take a seat by a badass, because
no one will bother him. If you have to walk home late, stay away from dark
doorways.
But there were so many things I didn’t know, like how regular people
behaved, what families were like, how to live without caution dictating my
actions. And I didn’t know how to be cheerful and outgoing, or how to act when I
was alone with a gorgeous guy.
My imagination raced at the thought of Lucky’s smile, his face, his body,
the wink he’d given me, the smell of him, the feel of his breath against my cheek.
I knew absolutely and without any doubt that girls like me never got guys
like Lucky --but I could still dream. That night in my own bed, I thought about
Lucky and let my hands explore my lonely, unloved body.
THE NEXT DAY
Constance and I had Mrs. Monroe’s
Night Terrors
. The
headmistress stood in front of us, in a simple long-sleeved white blouse and
straight navy skirt. She held a thick book with a dark maroon leather cover and
said, “Let’s being with a poem written in 1748 by Heinrich August Ossenfelder.
It’s called
Der Vampire
.”
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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta
She waited until the room was completely silent and then she recited the
poem:
“And as softly thou art sleeping
To thee shall I come creeping
And thy life's blood drain away.
And so shalt thou be trembling
For thus shall I be kissing
And death's threshold thou' it be crossing
With fear, in my cold arms.
And last shall I thee question
Compared to such instruction
What are a mother's charms?”
Inexplicably, though I did not understand the poem, a chill ran through me.
I looked around at the other students and saw their spellbound expressions.