Doreen (23 page)

“Oh, yes. I know what you mean exactly. You have to be careful.”

Peter nodded. He looked at her with hungry-wolf eyes. Doreen pressed her leg against his and leaned back on the couch, thrusting out her chest. She rolled her head toward him and breathed into his ear.

“Wouldn't you like to kiss me, Peter?” She played with a button on his pink shirt. “Come on, nobody's here.”

The bar was more or less empty. Only a few people, the bartender, a girl sitting by herself typing into a tablet. Doreen took Peter's hand and put it on her hip. “Peter, don't you want me?”

And he did. He wanted her. Did he ever.

Well, they were young and nobody was married or anything. It was a pity they had to uphold these inane loyalties to people, people like Heidi Whelan. Heidi was only interested in Peter for what he could do for her. But Doreen didn't need Peter. She had her father now and everything that came with being Roland Gibbons's daughter.

Doreen gazed out the train window at the passing suburban landscape and considered whether she should change her name back. Gibbons was her rightful surname anyway. Gray. Blech! How much more dreary and lifeless could a name get?

Of course, changing her name to Doreen Gibbons would signal to her mother that she was taking her father's side against her. She would be heartbroken. People and their feelings—her mother, Heidi. How dull it all was! Peter wanted her, not Heidi. Her father wanted her, not her mother. Was any of that her fault? People will make their own choices in this life, she thought. If they choose her over somebody else, that was up to them.

She wouldn't say anything to Heidi about Peter. Let him break it off with her if he wanted to—or not. What did any of that have to do with her? She stepped off the train at the Hamilton stop and began her journey back to campus. Everything felt so different now than it had when she'd left the previous day. Yesterday she'd been her father's burden, his obligation. Now she was his prize. Peter would be lucky to have her. They all would.

Jane Vale turned onto Main Street about a minute after Doreen did. The two girls walked, separated by a few feet, past Bread the News Café and the Vale family's hardware store. Doreen checked her own reflection in the plate glass window of a clothing store and Jane paused, backed into a shadow. She could be patient. It would all be over soon.

After Doreen left the hotel bar with the pink-shirted boy, Jane found a twenty-four-hour diner nearby where she could await the dawn. She went over her notes, her recordings, her pictures, and made her plan. She was proud of what she'd compiled. The girl was hers; she was sure of it. Jane could not remember the last time she'd felt like she won something.

The energy of victory, along with cup after cup of acid coffee, kept her awake through the night until it was time for the early train back to Hamilton. She didn't find Doreen on the train as she'd hoped, but it made no difference. She could wait. In Hamilton she sat on the bench in the station until she spotted the raven hair, the red coat.

They approached the Peabody Street Bridge.
If she looks over the edge
, thought Jane,
if she thinks of Simon even once, even in passing, I will delete everything. I will call it off.
Of course, Doreen didn't even pause, made no indication that the place meant anything to her. Was Jane relieved? Happy? Vindicated? She turned to her phone. She had all the pictures lined up. She was prepared. Her finger trembled as she pressed
send
.

The cell phone beep shook Doreen from her daydream. Probably it was Heidi checking in. She would have to come up with a story. She'd say her father got her a room at the Mandarin. Of course! They had a sweet little breakfast together, and he dropped her off at the train.

But the text came from an unrecognized number. And there was no message, just a picture of herself—with Peter. They were sitting beside one another at the hotel bar. “What the hell?” she said. She looked around. Was somebody following her? Her cell phone dinged again. Another picture. This one of Doreen and Peter kissing. And another—one of his hands up her shirt, the other with a firm grasp on the back of her hair, empty glasses crowding the little table in front of them.

Was this someone's idea of a joke? “Ha ha,” Doreen wrote back. “Very funny.” But the pictures didn't stop. The next one was of Doreen in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental, her father's arm around her neck. Then she was on the street, looking around as her father vomited behind a trash can. Then she was in the restaurant, her face lit up and happy as she sat across from her father. That was the most humiliating picture of all—even worse than the trashy ones from the bar. Her face was so open and willing, so vulnerable. Doreen's desperation for her father's affection was so obvious it made her sick. That smile! So revoltingly eager to please. “Delete!” she yelled. “Delete!” Finally, in the last picture, she saw herself in the Hamilton train station, perfectly coiffed, waiting for the train to Boston.

“Who are you?” she typed to her torturer. She felt violated, and queasy with fear. Someone had been following her, but who? And for how long? What were their intentions? The wind whipped the back of her neck.

Her phone rang. “Hello? Hello?! Who is this? What do you want?” But nobody answered. Instead she heard the sound of her own voice—some sort of crazy person's remix of things she said over the course of the previous day. “Do you love Heidi?” she heard herself asking. “Don't you want to kiss me, Peter? Daddy? Daddy? Don't you—don't you—don't you want to kiss me? What's wrong Daddy? I'm too tired to go shopping. Daddy? Daddy? Don't you want to kiss me? There's nobody here.”

Doreen turned off the phone. She looked around. “Stop this! Stop what you're doing!” she yelled. She would kill whoever was behind this, she would strangle that person with her own two hands. “Reveal yourself, you coward!”

“Ha!”

Doreen spun around. A tiny hippie girl materialized near the bridge.

“Funny for you of all people to call someone a coward, Doreen Gray. Ha ha ha.”

Doreen marched over to the girl. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Personally, I think that a person who steps out with her best friend's boyfriend is pretty cowardly. But that's me. I have, you know, morals.”

“Who the hell are you?!” Doreen demanded. She gripped the girl's arm, but she seemed unperturbed by Doreen. She stood her ground in her alpaca sweater, her backpack. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to ruin your life,” the girl said, grinning.

“But I don't even know you! Why would a perfect stranger want to . . .” And then a picture came into Doreen's mind. A family portrait of a graduation. Simon, his mother, and a girl in a cap and gown. This girl, the deranged sociopath who was out to get her now. Doreen had paused over the photograph on the mantel of the house on Leaving Place because something in the girl's face disturbed her. While Simon and his mother leaned in with their heads and flashed their teeth, his sister's lips were pursed closed. She stared directly out of the frame as if challenging Doreen to look harder and deeper. Doreen had brought the frame right up to her face.
You think you see me?
The girl's face taunted from under her graduation cap.
You don't see me, I see you!

“Jane Vale,” Doreen said.

“Marvelous to meet you,” said Jane. “A real treat.”

Doreen's mind raced. What did she have on this girl? How could she stop her from sending out those pictures? She had to play it cool. Bullies want to see you freak out, and she couldn't give Jane that power.

“And I'm so pleased to meet
you
finally,” Doreen said in her most pleasant voice. She grasped Jane's rough little hand and shook it, looking deep into her eyes. She would have to think of something—fast.

Jane pulled her hand away. “Ha! You won't be so pleased when everyone you know sees these pictures!” She thumbed through the pictures on her phone. “Which one shall I send first? I have access to the whole school's e-mail, by the way. Let me see, the one with you and your best friend's boyfriend? Or maybe the one of your drunken buffoon of a father yacking all over Newbury Street.”

“Give me that phone!”

“I have to say, you sounded
pathetic
in that restaurant. Like a little baby. Oh
Daddy
, do you weawy think I'm pwetty? Do you wuv me, Daddy?” Jane laughed. “Meanwhile, the guy was sucking down scotches like they were cherry soda. You could tell he didn't give a shit about you.”

“Give me that phone! Now!”

“What, this phone? This one right here?”

“Yes!” Doreen seized the phone out of Jane's grip and hurled it over the Peabody Street Bridge. It shattered against the rocks.

“Well, that was dramatic. But worry not, your pictures are safe. I've got them all ready to send on my e-mail. Life with the Internet—glorious, isn't it?”

Doreen lunged at Jane. The girl was small, but she had a lot of fight in her. She elbowed and kicked, but Doreen got her arms behind her back. She pushed her up against the railing of the bridge.

“Delete those photos. Do it!”

“Or what? You'll kill me? Isn't that a little extreme? Even for you?” Jane squeaked. Doreen pushed her cheek against the railing. She had her fingers around her throat.

“Why shouldn't I? Who would miss you? You, rodent! Anyway, haven't I already sent one Vale over the Peabody Street Bridge?” She laughed. “Why not the whole family?” She laughed harder. “Your mom, too! And that horrible couch!”

“Stop laughing! Shut up!” With a mighty heave, Jane Vale pushed Doreen off her, into the dirt. She gasped for air. “You don't get to laugh at my family. Do you hear me? You don't have the right.”

“Don't I? But it's so funny! Ha ha ha.” Doreen stood up and wiped the dirt off the back of her red coat.

“Shut up! Shut up, I said! I'll send the pictures right now. I have my tablet, you know. I can do it right here. I'll destroy you. I'll end you, Doreen Gray!”

Watching the red-faced girl stumble toward her backpack, Doreen realized she knew how to stop her. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it before?

Jane dug around in her backpack. “Wait until everybody sees what you've been up to. Then you won't think it's so funny!”

“And who is going to show them, you?” Doreen asked coolly.

Jane held her tablet in the air. “You're damned right I am. And you haven't even seen the half of it. I have the goods on you, Doreen Gray. You're going to rue the day you ever heard the name Simon Vale.”

“You're not stupid, Jane. And I don't think you are a liar. So why don't you give up this whole charade? Give me the tablet—or don't. Actually, it makes no difference. You and I both know you are never going to publish those pictures.”

“That's where you're wrong, you dumb tramp. Don't even think for a second that you can stop me.”

“Stop you?” Doreen shook her head and clucked her tongue. “I have no intention of stopping you. I won't have to. You see, on the day those pictures go public, I will walk over to Hamilton Hardware. I know the clerk there, you know. He hasn't been himself lately, but I am sure he would enjoy hearing from me—about how much I love him. I need him. How I can't live without him.”

“Leave Simon out of it!”

“Oh, Simon, I'll say. Every day without you has been torture.”

“I'll keep him from the store! I'll hide him from you, don't think I won't!”

“And I'll keep at it. Day after day. I'm patient, you know. Soon we'll be taking walks together. I'll let him tell me how he feels and I'll let him think I feel the same way. Won't he just love that? Won't it just fill him with joy?”

Jane covered her ears. “Leave him alone! Haven't you done enough?”

“And then one day—” Doreen gazed meaningfully over the railing of the Peabody Street Bridge. Her hair whipped her face in the wind. “One day I'll turn to him and I'll tell him how I despise him.” A dark disgust crossed her face. “‘Love you?' I'll say, ‘I could never love you! You're an insect. You're less than nothing!'”

“That would kill him!” Jane said. “That's what you're saying, you know. You're saying you would kill my brother, a boy you claimed to love! He's already—” Jane looked down. Her hands were shaking. “Haven't you done enough?”

“I don't know, have I? It's up to you. This could end right here. You destroy those images and disappear from my life. And I will disappear from yours . . . and Simon's.”

Jane nodded. She hunched into herself. “Okay. Okay. You win.” Doreen almost felt sorry for her. But the girl had brought it on herself. Nobody messes with me, Doreen thought, not anymore.

“Give it to me.” Jane handed over her tablet. Doreen threw it over the railing into the ravine. The girl said she had already uploaded the pictures, but Doreen felt safe. Jane would never put her brother in danger.

“If I see anything,” Doreen warned.

“You won't.”

“I'd say it was nice to meet you, but I think we both know that's not true.”

“I hate you, Doreen Gray. You—I despise you.”

“That's your right, I suppose.” Doreen left Jane peering out over the bridge railing—at her broken electronics? Her broken future? Whatever it was no longer concerned Doreen. It had been, all things considered, a remarkably easy and satisfying encounter. But there was one thing she still didn't understand. She turned back to the girl.

“Why did you show me this? I mean, if you had the addresses, why didn't you simply send the pictures out? That's what I would have done.”

“I don't know. I guess I wanted, I thought, I mean if Simon loved you . . . and Simon is so good. I wanted to give you a chance to . . . to . . .”

“Apologize? Redeem myself?”

Jane shrugged miserably.

“Oh,
honey
,” said Doreen with a laugh and skipped on toward home.

What was the lesson? All she did was identify Jane's chief weakness and exploit it for her own benefit. Love, that was Jane's problem. What Jane had done to avenge Simon's broken heart required patience and selflessness. Doreen could not think of a soul for whom she would go to such trouble—or who would do anything of the kind for her. Except, of course, Simon Vale. Was that irony? “
Oh well
,” Doreen thought. “
Probably it's all a bit overrated. Love.
”

She was proud of herself. She'd grown accustomed to a certain kind of life and Jane Vale threatened to annihilate it. Without consulting Heidi, Doreen had quashed the problem. That success, along with her triumphant reunion with her father, seemed reason enough for Doreen to feel happy.

But she didn't feel happy, not at all. She was aware of an aching dread in the depth of her chest as she approached her dorm. What she had done to Jane was efficient and thorough—but it was basically blackmail. She may have saved her reputation, but what was she doing to her soul?