Cloudburst (42 page)

“Are you related?” the tall girl asked.

“No.”

“What did she do, try to steal your boyfriend?” she asked.

I started to shake my head and stopped. “I guess in a way, she did,” I said.

They all lost their smiles.

Something else occurred to me. “Did she always have a room upstairs? I mean, did she move recently?”

“No. It's one of the few single rooms,” the redhead replied. “There are only four in this dorm, and they're all upstairs.”

But she had written that she was on the first floor, I thought, and in one e-mail claimed that was why she was able to sneak Richard Nandi Chenik into her room. I took a step back toward them.

“I don't know why she would be stealing other girls' boyfriends. Doesn't she have a boyfriend, someone she's been seeing for quite a while? A boy who goes to school here?”

No one spoke.

“A boy from England? Maybe some of you know him. Richard Nandi Chenik?”

They all looked at one another.

“This is a pretty small school,” the dark-haired girl said. “There's no one named Richard Nandi Chenik from England.”

“Who are you?” the redhaired girl asked me, more interested now.

They all waited for my answer.

“Another victim,” I said, and headed for the stairway.

I paused in front of her door. The sign was there. It was probably her way of convincing herself that she had to fight off friends. Things had obviously turned sour very quickly for Kiera at this school. I was surprised that she continued
to attend, although if she hadn't, she would have risked everyone learning how unpopular she really was. She had been used to being a star at Pacifica and probably came on too strong here, where there were girls who were just as sophisticated and as self-confident, if not more so.

I knocked on the door. There was no response, so I tried the door handle, and it turned and opened.

The room was dark because the shades were drawn on the two windows, and there were no lights on. I saw her in her bed, lying on her stomach. I waited to see if she had heard me enter, but she was apparently asleep, dressed in jeans and a black sweatshirt. I looked for a light switch and then closed the door softly. She didn't wake even when I turned on the lights.

I picked up the chair at her desk and set it down where I could sit and look at her. For a moment, I wondered if she had taken some drugs and maybe overdosed again, but her eyelids fluttered and opened. She stared at me without speaking and slowly pushed herself up, the confusion twisting her face. She sat back against the headboard.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

“I came to ask you why you did it,” I said. She started to speak, and I quickly added, “Don't say, ‘Did what?' ”

“So my father told you everything, is that it? I can't believe you drove up.”

“I wanted to look at you when you answered, Kiera. I wanted to see what was in your face so I would know what was in your heart. Do you have a heart?”

“Oh, don't go into any of that,” she said.

“What?”

“Analysis.”

“I won't. Analysis implies wanting to help you. I don't want to help you. I was just curious. I remember all those nice things you said after you almost died taking that drug. I remember how you cried and how you apologized and told me about your nightmares. I remember how much you said you missed your little sister and regretted not spending more time with her and being kind to her. I remember your great desire to be my older sister, to be my pal. I remember it all, Kiera, down to every last syllable you spoke and every promise you made.”

“Don't you talk to me like that. I did try to be a big sister to you, and what did you do? You tried to take my place.”

“Take your place? Where?”

“In my house! In my father's eyes! You were the good one, the perfect new daughter, outstanding in school, playing Alena's clarinet so well, getting the best grades, charming him into buying you that car and jewelry, and when that wasn't enough, you tempted him to come to your bedroom.”

“What? Is that what he said?”

“He didn't have to say it. I know.”

“What did I ever do to make you think such a thing?”

“It's all right,” she said, nodding. “I know.”

“So this was why you called to tell him about Ryder? You were trying to make me look bad again? That didn't work the first time you tried. Why did you think it would work now?”

She didn't answer.

“You planned it all, didn't you? You talked me into getting Ryder to meet me at the motel, all along plotting to turn us in, right?”

“I was sick of hearing him tell me how smart you were, how talented, and how beautiful you were becoming,” she admitted. “He never gave me credit for being smart. Yes, he told me I was beautiful, but not like he talked about you. You were exotically beautiful, special, a weed that became a rose. And my mother . . . I told myself that if she bragged one more time about you, I would curse her so badly that she wouldn't speak to me again. At least, it would stop.”

“Don't you realize what you've done? What a terrible thing you caused to happen?”

“It probably would have happened anyway. If anything, you should be thanking me for getting you out of what would have been a big mess later.”

“You can tell yourself that to make yourself feel better if you like, but you know it's a lie. Your whole life is built on lies. That's all you know. You're pathetic, even more pathetic than I first thought when I saw you after the accident.”

I stood up.

“Don't go off feeling superior,” she said. Her eyes were glassy, teary. “You aren't any different from me. You're just better at hiding it.”

“If that were true, I'd follow Ryder into the bottle right now.”

“Bottle? What bottle?”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“You don't scare me with your weird talk,” she said.

“I don't want to scare you. I came up here to bash your head in, but I see now that even that wouldn't make any difference.”

“Ha. You'll call me again.”

“Really? And where would I call, Kiera? Would I have to call England? Is Richard ever coming back, or has he left your imagination for good?”

Her lips trembled.

“You couldn't find anyone to love you in reality, so you made someone up.”

“Liar!” she screamed.

“You told your mother all those fantasies and sent me those ridiculous e-mails. Remember? Remember how you snuck him into your room easily because it was on the first floor? Your dorm mates told me you've always been up here.”

“They're lying. Everyone's lying because they're jealous. They're jealous!”

She was still screaming when I closed the door behind me.

I looked at her sign again.

Keep out.

Her tragedy was that she never let anyone in—not her mother, not her father, really, and maybe worst of all, not her little sister, who must have tried so hard to open the door.

Epilogue

I
didn't see Kiera for the remainder of the school year.

Not long after I left her dorm, she had what Jordan described to her friends as a nervous breakdown. She didn't want to get into the technical diagnosis involving an anxiety-depressive disorder. She couldn't remain at the college. Jordan made Donald handle the situation. He found a good clinic in Oregon, far enough away to help him pretend she was simply at another school.

I did graduate as the valedictorian. I didn't expect to see Donald there, but when I got up to speak, I saw him way in the back of the audience, standing as unobtrusively as he could. Since the night he had come into my bedroom drunk, we rarely saw each other, and when we did, his gaze always shifted quickly from mine. He fumbled with an awkward apology that I thought was more a demand of Jordan's than his own desire. I listened and just said, “Okay.”

What else was there to say? Anything more would have led to more discussion and maybe his belief that I was
forgiving enough for him really to reenter my life. I didn't want that.

He didn't put up any resistance to Jordan's legally adopting me, not that he could have. She went through the divorce, getting just about everything she wanted in the settlement. She didn't want to remain at the estate, but she made it seem as if that was her compromise. She found a beautiful home in Beverly Hills. Of course, it was far more modest, but almost anything else in California would be.

Her graduation gift to me was that she and I would travel to London for sightseeing and then on to Paris and the south of France. I had decided to remain in Los Angeles and chose to attend Occidental. I wanted to remain close to Mama's grave and visit it from time to time. I also overcame my aversion to the places on the beach where she and I had slept and sold our arts and crafts.

A few times, I went to the beach where Ryder and I had spent part of an afternoon. I sat about where I thought we had sat and just looked out at the ocean and watched the terns and pelicans. It reminded me of Mrs. Caro's description of the sweet silence. It took time, of course, time and all the distractions Jordan provided for me, but slowly, hope seeped back into me.

Maybe in that way, I was doing what I dreamed Ryder predicted.

Maybe I was going into his precious bottle.

And maybe, as he said, we were on his ship sailing to a place where no one could harm us again.

After all, wasn't that what we all dreamed we would find?

Pocket Star Books
Proudly Presents

INTO THE DARKNESS

V.C. Andrews
^®

Available in paperback
March 2012
from Pocket Star Books

Turn the page for a preview of
Into the Darkness
. . .

Prologue

H
e was looking at me from between the full evergreen hedges that separated our houses and properties. I don't know why he thought I wouldn't see him. Although, it was what Mom called a crown jewels day because there were no clouds and the bright sunshine made everything glimmer and glisten, even dull rocks and old cars with faded paint, scratches, nicks, and dents. The sun was behind me so I wasn't blinded by its brilliance. In fact, it was like a spotlight reflecting off his twenty-four-karat-gold hair.