Outrun the Moon (11 page)

Elodie sneers at me. A tense moment passes, and then another, during which Headmistress Crouch's gaze shifts between us. Not even the devil's own breath could melt the chill in the room.

“Good night.” Abruptly, the headmistress switches off the
light and breezes out. Maybe she realizes trying to unsnag this line isn't worth her paycheck.

After we hear her footsteps marching away, we get into it.

“What do you suppose Headmistress Grouch would say if she knew you were a phony?”

“I haven't the foggiest, Elodie,” I spit back, feeling reckless. It's hard to care about anything right now. “Why don't we tell her and see? Of course, all your
commendable
work at the hearing will have been for nil. Plus, I doubt Papa would be very proud of you when his reputation goes down the sewer. The scandal it would cause.”

“You think you're so clever. But you don't belong here.” Her words rip across the six feet of space between us. “Class is not something you can connive your way into.”

“Not like your father did, you mean.”

She kicks up her sheets. “Maman's people were of the highest caliber.”

“There is a saying. ‘All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.' You are the former; I, the latter.”

“Your Celestial proverbs don't make a whit of sense.”

“That was said by an American. Maybe you've heard of him: Benjamin Franklin.”

That cooks her cabbage. She flips onto her side so her back is to me.

In the silence that follows, the ceiling begins to creak. This time, there are scraping sounds and moaning. Though ninety-nine
percent of me doesn't believe in hungry ghosts, the remaining one percent suddenly becomes an annoyingly vocal minority.

Elodie stops rustling her sheets and lies very still, nose pointed at the ceiling. Sensing how scared she is takes the edge off my own frayed nerves.

At least she is good for something.

TOM SWOOPS IN AND OUT OF MY DREAMS, too high to touch and too fast to catch. I wake to the moans of the ceiling, and in my half-dreaming state, a different terror slips under the covers with me. I still can't shake Tom's image. But now he's cold as death, and there's an emptiness to his eyes. In place of his mouth, there's a gaping, screaming hole. The mouth of a hungry ghost.

Finally, the morning dawns, ending my torture. I wake, drenched in sweat, my cheeks streaked with salt. Tom will board the
Heavenly Blessing
soon, crossing the watery mountains to a new life. I thought he would be around forever, but maybe people are like the boats in the harbor, always coming and going, and sometimes never returning.

“
Joi-gin,
” I whisper.

May he hear our Cantonese word for good-bye, which means “see you again.” He may never be my partner in business or in life, but I hope his boat will return one day.

Unlike Mr. Waterstone, our embroidery teacher Mrs. Mitchell dictates where we sit by pointing with her embroidery hoop.
“You can't lairn to be a good hostess if you stick with your comfy sitch-uations,” she lilts in her Scottish brogue. Her accent is twice as thick as my father's, but with her white face, it seems no one accuses
her
of being a foreigner.

The girls hurry to their places with deferential nods and “Yes, ma'am”s.

Mrs. Mitchell directs Ruby and me into a square grouping. I've learned to ignore the number four when I'm in this room. Elodie is corralled with us as well, and she maneuvers to the seat on my right, saving us from having to look at each other.

Francesca arrives, braids pinned neatly around her head, her shawl arranged just so on her shoulders. Spotting the empty seat, she starts toward us but stops short as she realizes Elodie is part of the package. I wouldn't want to sit here, either. She searches for somewhere else to park, but seeing all seats accounted for, she resignedly takes the last chair in our grouping.

Mrs. Mitchell bounces on her toes, clutching her hoop. “Girls, I have a surprise for you. The young lads from Wilkes College will be takin' breakfast with us day after t'morrow.”

Excited tittering breaks out from the girls, and Mrs. Mitchell raises her hand for quiet. “Therefore, you must have your hankies done by then so's you can shows them off”—her brown eyes become sly—“maybe even gives yars away to one of the gents. But don't tell you-know-who I said that,” she quickly adds. I warm to her, figuring she means Headmistress Crouch. In my short tenure here, I've noticed it's not just the students who snap to when she's around. “Now start yar stitching, and put some love into it.”

Spools of embroidery floss have been placed in baskets on each table. I snip a length of orange thread for the tiger I'm embroidering on my handkerchief. I will have to make it extra large to cover a bloodstain I left there on Friday.

Elodie chose to embroider the school mascot, a peacock. A fitting choice, if not very original. Her fingers nimbly work the needle with even pokes and draws. She glances across the table at Ruby, whose tongue sticks out of her mouth as she struggles to thread her needle. The hanging blade between Ruby's eyes is visible again.

“Why, Ruby, what a darling frog,” says Elodie. “Probably not what the young men will be looking for, but I'm certain it has a wonderful personality.”

Ruby turns as red as her namesake. It's clear to me that Elodie's needling has nothing to do with handkerchiefs, but she hides her zingers behind pretty words so Ruby isn't sure.

“It's—it's not a frog; it's a leaf,” she stammers.

“A leaf? Oh, I'm sure it will have a wonderful personality as a leaf as well.” Elodie licks her finger and rolls a decorative French knot on one of her peacock's feathers. “And will your young man be present for the breakfast, Francesca? What's his name again?”

Francesca glances up when she hears her name, and her eyelashes flicker. “Marcus attends Wilkes, yes, so I imagine he will be there. But I am not his keeper.”

Elodie's face becomes sly. “You two didn't have a lovers' quarrel, did you?”

Francesca says nothing, but her stitching accelerates. At her
rate, she'll have a whole bed of sunflowers on there before the class is done.

“Well, you do spend quite a bit of time in the chapel,” Elodie continues, “playing the organ
 . . .”

“Father Goodwin is a priest!” Francesca hisses. “And for you to make assumptions about something so—”

“Oh, come off your high horse, sister. We all know he has a cocotte.”

“A what?” I ask.

Francesca and Elodie lock gazes while Ruby looks on, mouth ajar. All embroidery has been forgotten. Mrs. Mitchell is helping Harry untangle a spool of thread and doesn't notice the knots developing on our side of the room.

Elodie drops her voice to a whisper. “His own special and very elusive ladybird. One wonders why he is always calling you to the chapel for extra ‘practice.'”

That mean old French pastry. Francesca would never do something so heinous.

Francesca has gone white. “That is a lie, and you know it!”

“There is only one way to be sure,” I say, trying to defuse the situation. The three girls turn their stares to me, and I open my right hand. “The palm. Fortune-tellers are revered in China—akin to your scholars—and they are experts in arranging marriages.”

Francesca frowns while Elodie's eyes narrow to chips of ice.

Ruby nervously coils a thread around her finger, causing the tip to swell like a grape. “Isn't it unchristian to tell fortunes?”

“Probably. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work. No one—at
least no one in China—wants to be married to a bore, a lout, or worse, a scoundrel.”

Elodie snorts. “Sounds like a heap of bunkum to me.”

I ignore her, and address Francesca. “Let me see your dominant hand.”

Reluctantly, she extends her right hand to me. I squeeze to let her know it's okay, then spread her hand open on the table. Her fingers are long and tapered but not weak, like a pair of gloves. They're the kind of hands that know how to kill a chicken, with clipped nails and muscular thumbs.

“This is the heaven line, governing matters of the heart.” I point to a crease that curves from the pinkie toward the index finger. “A chained pattern indicates a series of complicated and often tumultuous relationships. Yours is perfectly unblemished, meaning a steadfast relationship is in your future. Congratulations, you'll also have two squeakers.” I've watched enough of Ma's readings to know my way around the palm.

Elodie emits an unbecoming sound, but Francesca's eyes light up. “Boys, or girls?”

“Can't tell. But they'll be healthy.” I don't know that for certain, but it makes her smile widen.

“Oh!” Ruby sticks her hand out. “Could you do mine?”

I take her homely hand with its short fingers and wide palm, though I worry what I'll find there. I check her marriage lines—dashes between the base of the pinkie and the heart line—and, to my surprise, find a single perfectly inscribed mark. “You will find true love, though it might take longer because of your exacting standards.”

Ruby brings her other hand to her mouth, covering a smile so big, it pulls at her ears. Before letting go, I notice that her jade column, the central line of fate that governs her relationship with the world, seems shorter than normal. It could mean a lot of things.

“What is it?” she asks. Our eyes meet, and the hanging blade disappears.

I want to tell her that worry leads to chronic disease and accidents. That people with round faces and wide-set eyes are beloved because they are solid and trustworthy. But Ma would be tearing at her hair if she heard me making such statements when real fortune-telling is a complicated endeavor that involves so many factors, like star alignment, facial features, maybe even the last time you moved your bowels.

“Nothing.” I release her hand with a reassuring smile.

Elodie makes a face that looks like she hasn't moved her bowels in days. She pops up from her seat. “Mrs. Mitchell,” she calls loudly. “I would like to switch seats. The conversation in this circle is rather scandalous.”

Mrs. Mitchell lifts her head from where she's helping Harry. “Well, aren't you the lucky one,” the teacher lilts. “The more scandalous the conversation, the more
I
want to hear it.”

“But she's nothing but a phony and a faker!” Elodie spits, glaring at me.

Soon, everyone is looking at me.
So this is it.
Even the embroidery hoops with their half-finished pansies, roses, and bluebells seem to pan their disapproving faces at me.

Mrs. Mitchell bears down on us, her bustle bouncing.

From one table over, Katie gives me a hesitant smile. Today there are purple smudges under her eyes, all the more visible against her pale skin. She is not wearing her shawl, though the morning is cool.

Maybe that snake Elodie needs a reminder that I bite, too. I pull out a brown spool of thread from the basket and pretend to match it to the tiger on my handkerchief. “If it's
scandal
you wish to avoid, I suggest you sit down.” The look that I give her could bend an iron bar.

Elodie's skirts swish about as she shifts indecisively from side to side. Mrs. Mitchell grabs the backrest of Ruby's chair. “What happened, Ruby?”

“Mercy was just reading our fortunes.”

The woman's scraggly eyebrows lift, but then her softly wrinkled face grows thoughtful. “Well, my granny used to look for our fortunes in cracked eggs, she did. It's called cultural differences, and that doesn't mean she's a phony, Miss Du Lac.”

Elodie's lips have turned white from clamping them so hard, and her blond curls have gone limp. Perhaps they're playing dead after sensing her murderous mood. She glowers at Mrs. Mitchell, but her venom cannot penetrate the woman's serene demeanor.

A hundred black emotions gust through Elodie's delicate features. I hope she's thinking about her own future at St. Clare's if it were found out that her father lied to the school board. I imitate Mrs. Mitchell, face serene, though my breath stalls in my throat.

“Does it now, Miss Du Lac?” Mrs. Mitchell repeats, this time with more bite.

Finally, Elodie shakes her head.

“I suggest you keep your tatties in the oven and sit down.”

Elodie falls back into her seat. I wonder if she will kill me in my sleep.

The door opens and in strides Headmistress Crouch, holding a shawl. “Excuse me, Mrs. Mitchell. One of our students is missing her shawl. Miss Quinley?” She looks directly at Katie, who blanches and glances at the door, as if weighing whether she should make a run for it.

“Our groundskeeper saw two girls exiting the garden late last night from his second-story window.”

An uneasy feeling slips through me, quiet as a fin moving through water.

“When he went to investigate, he found this shawl with your name on it. Did you or did you not leave the property?”

No trace of Katie's fire remains. “Yes, ma'am.”

The footsteps behind me last night. She must have followed.

“I thought we had learned our lesson after what happened last year.” Headmistress Crouch brings the shawl to Katie and drops it into her lap. “You are
my
charge, and I cannot have you cavorting about in the streets. It is unseemly, and a flagrant show of disrespect.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

In a stark tone to match her dress, the headmistress says, “Now, if you will tell me who your partner in crime was, you may split the punishment with her.”

Katie's fingers pull nervously at her shawl, and I swear her eyes stray to me for a split second. She shakes her head.

“Are you sure?”

Katie nods.

“Four lashes, then.”

A whipping?
Headmistress Crouch said she did not believe in sparing the rod. But, in front of everyone? Somewhere in the churning recesses of my being, I know that number is meant for me.

Katie meekly rises from her chair and goes to stand behind it. She flips up the back of her skirt, exposing her pantaloons, then leans over the chair back. The guilt wraps me in a scratchy blanket.

Harry, Ruby, and Minnie Mae are frozen in place, watching as Headmistress Crouch unsheathes her ruler. Francesca sits with her hands clasped under her chin, as if praying. Mary Stanford's leg jiggles, making her skirts swish, and her neighbor is chewing on her lip. The only one who looks unruffled is Elodie, who continues to pull her embroidery thread without missing a beat.

Katie covers her face with her hands as the ruler is pulled back, and—

“Wait!” I cry. “It was me. I needed a walk to clear my head. Katie was just trying to stop me.”

Headmistress Crouch's mouth twitches. “Is there something
wrong
with your head?”