Paige raised her voice a notch. “Annabelle, you’re going to have to speak up. I want to hear your apology.”
Annabelle’s eyes remained focused on her water-stained running shoes.
“Sorry,”
she said a little louder but still unrepentant.
Mikki pranced over and bumped her leg with a wet nose. She bent down to scratch his neck. He rewarded her by licking her leg. Unexpectedly, Annabelle giggled.
Paige said, “Annabelle, look at me. I want to know what you’re sorry for.”
The girl’s chin jerked up, showing angry red splotches on her cheeks. She straightened her spine, four feet ten inches of defiance. “Chill
out
, I didn’t fucking do anything.”
Bert Falkenberg stepped forward and to Paige’s visible relief put a firm hand on her shoulder, taking charge. “That’s
enough,
Annabelle. Don’t you ever cuss at Mrs. Sorensen.”
“
Fine.
I apologize for having an opinion.”
“Having an opinion isn’t the problem,” Claudia said, thinking it was time to add her two cents. “It was the way you expressed yourself that made you look bad in front of everyone.”
Surprise flared on Annabelle’s face, making her thoughts transparent: I
looked bad? I thought I was making you look bad!
Very subtly, the balance of power had shifted. Claudia looked to Paige. “Maybe Annabelle and I could speak privately for a few minutes?”
It was Bert Falkenberg who spoke. “Anna, take Ms. Rose to your room, please.” It was more an order than a suggestion and Claudia waited for another display of rebellion, but Annabelle merely sniffed her contempt for them all and headed for the door.
“What
ever
.”
Chapter 8
“Do all the girls live in?” Claudia asked for the sake of making conversation as they ascended to the third floor, where the residential girls lived.
Annabelle walked a few feet ahead, scuffing her shoes on the carpet. She treated Claudia to the nonchalant one-shoulder lift. “Most of them live at home with their
loving
parents.”
Probably dropped off in an endless line of high-end SUV mommy mobiles,
thought Claudia, taking note of the girl’s sarcasm.
Annabelle’s room was furnished in ultrafeminine Laura Ashley that seemed out of synch with her temperament. Twin beds with white iron bedsteads, puffy duvets with gingham trim, matching wallpaper, matching window treatments on dormer windows. Two study desks, each with a laptop computer that slammed the Victorian decor into the twenty-first century.
One of the beds was home to a menagerie of stuffed animals and Beanie Babies. An assortment of books and a boom box shared a shelf above.
Annabelle plopped onto the other bed, which had no decoration and looked desperately barren by comparison. Maybe at fourteen she considered herself too grown up for stuffed toys. Or maybe the attempt to end her own life had propelled her beyond the desire for childish comforts.
Only one item adorned Annabelle’s nightstand, a framed photograph positioned away from the casual onlooker. Claudia angled herself so that she could see the picture—a small child with dark hair, around four or five years old, cuddled in the arms of a laughing beauty. Neither guessing that their time together would be so violently cut short.
When she caught Claudia looking at it, Annabelle grabbed the photo and turned it facedown on the nightstand.
“Is that your mother?” Claudia asked, although she had already recognized the starlet, Valerie Vale.
“What do you care?”
Despite her defiant words, Annabelle’s voice held a note of such melancholy that Claudia wanted to reach out and put her arms around her. But the girl’s body language warned her to tread lightly.
“Actually, I do care.”
Annabelle’s lips curled in disdain. “Why should you? You don’t even know me.”
“Not yet, but maybe if you would show me your handwriting I could start to.” Claudia drew a chair from the desk and sat down. “So, how about it? I’ll tell you what it says about you, and just
maybe
you’ll find out that handwriting analysis doesn’t really suck ass.”
Annabelle shot her a quick glance from under her lashes, probably surprised that an adult would quote her own rude words back at her. “I bet Paige already told you everything about me.” Defiantly using the headmistress’ first name.
Claudia smiled. “I don’t think Paige
knows
everything about you.”
Annabelle went over to the window and threw it open. The sun had disappeared behind the clouds and a fine drizzle had started up again. She dipped her hand into her pocket and brought out a crumpled pack of Winstons, shook one loose, and stuck it in her mouth. Without looking at her, she offered the pack to Claudia. “Smoke?”
This is a test
.
“No thanks,” said Claudia. “I don’t smoke. And I’d rather you didn’t while we’re together.”
Annabelle snorted. “You gonna rat me out?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Give you an excuse to stay angry.”
“I really don’t give a fuck,” Annabelle said with elaborate casualness, but she hesitated, jammed the cigarettes back into her pocket. The next dive into her pocket produced a piece of grape Bubblicious.
Annabelle unwrapped the bubblegum and popped it into her mouth. This girl had built a solid wall of defenses, but at least she wasn’t going to force a showdown on this issue.
“So, you gonna write something or not?” Claudia asked, relieved that she wasn’t going to have to deal with a display of defiance.
The girl stared at her, chewing hard, daring her to complain about the gum. Her need to defy anyone she viewed as an authority figure was so transparent that Claudia almost smiled.
“How do I know you’re not just guessing?”
“Hey, kiddo, if you don’t want to do it, it’s fine with me. I don’t have anything to prove.” Claudia got up and started for the door.
Before she reached it, Annabelle spoke up. “Why
should
I do it?”
Claudia thought about that. “Is there anything in your life right now that’s not working the way you’d like it to?”
The girl gave a rude snort. “What do
you
think?”
“I think there’s a thing or two you might like to change.”
“What’s that got to do with how I write?”
“Your handwriting shows how you feel and how you deal with life. There might be ways to do some things better, but we won’t know unless we check it out. It’s up to you.”
Annabelle mused on that for a moment, blowing her gum into a big pink eruption, then sucking it back into her mouth. “I still think it’s crap . . . What do I have to write?”
“Let’s start with a few lines about anything you like. I’d also like you to draw a tree and a picture of your family doing something.”
A hint of suspicion crept into the dark eyes. She was obviously bright, and she’d probably had enough of being put under a microscope by the shrinks in the hospital. A suicide attempt would have netted her a battery of psychological tests even if her father
was
a big shot. Still, curiosity sparked there, too.
“I thought you were going to analyze my
handwriting.
Why do I have to draw all that stuff?”
Claudia took several sheets of blank paper and a pen from her briefcase and put them on the desk closest to Annabelle’s bed. “Because your handwriting is still developing. The drawings give me some additional information.” She reached back into the briefcase and took out a magnifying glass.
Annabelle slid off the bed and edged toward her. Not too close, just enough that Claudia could sense that she was interested.
Like a wild animal—curious, but afraid of human contact.
“Draw a tree?” the girl asked.
“Mm-hm.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind you want.”
The tree was part of a projective test that would show Claudia how Annabelle viewed herself, her family, and her attitude toward her life. Deliberately refraining from giving her any explicit instructions, Claudia left her the freedom to express herself uncensored in the drawing.
Annabelle pushed her laptop to one side and sat down at the desk. Picking up the pen Claudia had left there, she uncapped it and sat staring down at the paper, tapping the end of the pen against her teeth.
Claudia watched her pondering what to write and guessed that she was trying to figure out how to do it without revealing anything of herself.
“Just so you know,” Claudia assured her, “our conversations are confidential. The only exception is if you told me that you planned to hurt yourself or someone else. Then I’d have to report it. But aside from that, anything else you say—or write or draw—is between you and me.”
Annabelle turned her head and stared at her for a long moment, chewing slowly. She blew an enormous sticky pink bubble, which expanded and thinned until it burst, splattering her nose and mouth. Wordlessly, she peeled the gum off her face and popped it back into her mouth. Then she began to write.
While Annabelle wrote, Claudia surveyed the room. No scuffed slippers peeping from under the bed, no notebook covers tattooed with teen idol names, as there were on her roommate’s side. No
Teen People
or
Elle Girl
magazines on her shelf, only a half dozen textbooks in an untidy pile. In fact, Claudia concluded, Annabelle’s space looked like she had just packed up her belongings in preparation for moving out. Wishful thinking? Yet Paige had told her that Annabelle hated going home.
The girl’s voice intruded on her thoughts. “I’m done.” She thrust the papers at Claudia with a look that challenged,
Okay, I dare you
.
The first page was the handwriting sample. Small, printed writing hugged the left edge of the paper, leaving virtually no margin on that side with an excessive margin on the right side.
The words themselves were compressed, but wide rivers of space flowed between them. Without reading what Annabelle had written, Claudia held the page at arm’s length for a moment, then turned it over and ran her fingers across the back.
“Why are you doing that?” Annabelle asked, forgetting to maintain her fortress of indifference.
“I’m checking to see how much you pressed the pen into the paper. You have very light pressure. That means you hold your feelings inside until you can’t stand it anymore, then they sort of explode. See how your writing doesn’t slant to the right or the left, but stays straight up and down? That’s another sign that you work really hard at controlling your emotions.” She paused to give Annabelle time to digest the information and respond, but the girl was staring at her with something like disbelief.
Claudia held the magnifying glass close to the paper, showing Annabelle the enlarged strokes and the small hooks that appeared at the beginnings and endings of her words.
“You chose to print instead of writing in cursive,” she continued. “Connections between letters are sort of like holding hands with other people. When you break the connections between the letters, which is what you have to do when you print, it’s like cutting off emotional connections. The amount of space you leave between words shows how close you want to be to other people. You leave very wide spaces between your words, which makes me think that you’re afraid to let anyone get too close.”
Annabelle glared at her. “I’m not afraid of
anything
!”
That’s what Paige had said.
“I’m sorry, bad choice of words. What I should have said was, you need a lot of space. Is that better?”
“Not really.”
Claudia ignored the smart-ass retort and turned to the second page. She had drawn a tree that was little more than a scrawny stump. About one-third up the trunk was a knothole filled with ink. A half inch higher, another smaller knothole. This one was just an oval shape, not filled in.
The poor little tree had a few shriveled branches that stabbed the sky. There were no refreshing leaves, no roots that would indicate feelings of stability.
“This is a sad tree,” Claudia said. “It looks like someone tried to cut it down.”
Annabelle hunched her shoulders, protecting herself. “It’s my tree. I can do what I want with it.” Including trying to kill it—kill
herself
by cutting her wrists.
“You’re absolutely right. Tell me about the knotholes in the trunk.”
“I don’t know. I just put them there. I thought you were gonna tell
me
about it.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you what it says to me. When you were about six or seven years old, you lost something or someone that you loved a lot, and you’ve never gotten over it. Then, when you were a little older, you had another big loss, but that one wasn’t quite as devastating as the first one.”
“How did you know that?” Annabelle demanded. “Who
told
you that?” The coal-colored eyes filled with tears. She pushed her fists against them, struggling to contain her emotions.
“No one told me,” Claudia said, telling the truth. The realization that the first knothole in Annabelle’s tree drawing had a direct correlation with the loss of her mother had not occurred to her until that moment. She still had no idea what the second one represented.
“Knotholes in a tree trunk are symbols of painful emotional wounds,” she explained gently. “Where you place them tells
when
the event took place. The top of the tree trunk is the present—now, when you’re fourteen years old. The bottom of the trunk represents when you were born. The first wound appears a little below the middle of the tree, so that would be when you were about six. The second one is a little higher, so I would say you were about nine or ten.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you know that.” Annabelle wrapped her thin arms around herself. She spoke almost in a whisper. “Marisa.”
“Who is Marisa?” Claudia asked, surprised to hear this unfamiliar name, rather than a reference to her mother.