The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls (4 page)

Someone shoved ahead of her, hard.

“Be careful, Victoria,” Jill murmured in that low voice, rushing past, her hair rippling blood, her purse gleaming silver coins. Victoria watched her glide away into the crowd of students. At the corner, she saw Jill’s face, and it looked normal again.

Victoria pushed the fanciful images from her head. Surely, logically, Jill ran into her on purpose and said “careful” just to be the awful witch that she was. But Victoria couldn’t
help thinking Jill meant something else by that. Lawrence’s frightened eyes and how he had talked so fearfully about his parents, the wolfish professors, the wolfish Jill, the cold room—it all left an uncomfortable knot in Victoria’s belly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Victoria said to herself. Instead, she focused on the clicks of her shoes and on the gloss of her ribbon and curls in the courtyard windows. She held her head high and smiled. “Time for work.”

In algebra, when everyone traded quizzes for grading, Victoria scrawled blistering corrections all over Henry Calvary’s pathetic excuse for mathematics. He turned green when he saw it.

In biology, when her lab partner, Catie Vassar, got queasy and started to cry because she simply
couldn’t
cut up the poor dead froggie, Victoria snatched the scalpel, sliced everything open, pinned all the organs to their appropriate labels, and sat in disdain while Catie ran to the girls’ restroom to vomit.

By the last class of the day—History of the World, Building Four, Room Nine, Professor Alban—Victoria was back in her element.

She took her seat in the front row, folded her hands, and waited for Professor Alban to begin his lecture. She very much approved of Professor Alban. The other students complained about him because he was new. “He assigns too
much work to make up for the fact that he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” they said.

But Victoria thought Professor Alban knew exactly what he was doing. He did give them too much work, but it was a challenge, and Victoria liked nothing better than a challenge.

Nothing better, except for the sound of her name being called out at the year’s-end ceremonies. Every year since kindergarten: Victoria Wright, top of the class.

VICTORY
.

Abruptly, Victoria remembered that perhaps she wouldn’t hear her name this year. What if she never recovered from this B? What if instead she heard, “Jill Hennessey, top of the class”?

Unacceptable. That wouldn’t happen. It
couldn’t
. She would find a way to win.

All during class, Victoria took such fervent notes that her hand froze into a claw. Professor Alban kept glancing at her like he feared it would snap off. At the end of his lecture, he passed out a short quiz. Victoria snatched her paper. Behind her, Jill Hennessey snatched
her
paper. Their pencils scratched harder now, and it hurt a bit, but it was all worth it.

Victoria finished first, Jill just after. The bell rang. Victoria ran to Professor Alban’s desk and slammed down her quiz. Jill did the same, shoving Victoria out of the way.

“Whoops.” Jill laughed. “You’d better watch out, Victoria. You’ll get run right over.” Then she vanished out the door.

Victoria glared after her, seething. Professor Alban stared after Jill too. Victoria noticed for the first time that he looked a bit ill. His skin was pale, and his forehead was all furrowed like he was thinking about something really hard.

That same coldness crept through the air again. Victoria had never been one for fantasizing about things, but the cold had a skinny, stinging feel to it, like the cord of a whip or a snake on the prowl.

Victoria shivered.

Professor Alban shivered.

Their eyes met. Professor Alban took off his glasses and cleaned them, put them back on, and forced a smile. “How’s your hand, Miss Wright?”

Victoria said sharply, “It hurts,” and left.

That day, she didn’t wait for Lawrence at the front of the school as she usually did. Basking in the satisfaction of beating everyone at everything all day, she walked right past their usual meeting spot and didn’t even think about it. Later, once Lawrence was gone, she would remember this and feel sick to her stomach.

But it wasn’t later yet, so she happily walked home alone, making sure to click her shoes just
so
on the cobbled walk
down
INSPIRATION
, away from the prim silver circus of cars in front of the Academy.

Finally, it felt like autumn. It had arrived late this year, summer stretching into late September. Now the air had that firewood chill to it. The sky seemed muted, burrowing into its own gray, waiting. The angry wind yanked red and gold and dying leaves down the street. It yanked Victoria and her curls along with them. Finally, at the corner of Silldie Place and Bourdon’s Landing, the wind yanked out Victoria’s hair ribbon.

She watched in horror as it flew down the road, a sensible satin pink mixed up in all the leaves.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said to the wind.

She ran after it, dodging clumps of mud and dirty puddles. For a moment Victoria wondered about that because it hadn’t rained lately, but then a gust zipped her ribbon even farther away, and she was running too hard to wonder. The wind pushed her on, keeping the swirl of leaves that had her ribbon just out of reach. She passed Six Silldie Place, where Mr. Tibbalt’s little red dog snapped at the gate. She paused to glare at its ugly, mashed-in face. It stared right back for a moment and then, just when Victoria’s eyes started to burn, the dog backed away, whining.

“Yes, that’s right, you’d better run away from me,” said
Victoria, and she kicked Mr. Tibbalt’s gate for good measure.

Finally, Victoria reached the end of the street, where the road curved and circled back. The mass of leaves holding her ribbon rushed into a gray brick wall with a black iron gate and crashed apart into whirling pieces.

Victoria stopped to find her breath. She peered past the gate’s iron curls of leaves and petals. Beyond the gate, a long drive wound back from the road into shadows and swaying tree branches. In front of the gate, white and yellow flowers bobbed in the wind. A brass plate on the wall read
NINE SILLDIE PLACE
and another, darker plate read
THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
.

A pale flicker caught Victoria’s eye—her ribbon, stuck in the brambles of a red-berried shrub near the gate. She grinned in triumph, bent to grab it, and heard someone say, “It looks like a tongue.”

Victoria froze. She turned and saw a man at the open gate. She blinked. The gate had been closed before, and she hadn’t
heard
it open, and there hadn’t been a man before.

“Excuse me?” she said.

The man smiled. He wore dark work clothes and held a rake in one hand. His brown hair was perfectly combed. His eyes moved quietly in place like he was seeing too many things at once.

“I said that it looks like a tongue. Don’t you think?” He took off one of his gloves, and clumps of dirt fell from it. His naked hand was large and white. He plucked the ribbon and held it out, towering over her. “Is it yours?”

Victoria snatched it from him, frowning. She should have been more polite, but she had tolerated enough strange people for one day, and this man was the strangest of all. It was something in the expression on his face, and how strangely he moved, and how the skin on his face and neck and hands bulged out all puffy.

“Yes, it’s mine,” she said. “I lost it in the wind.”

“The wind can be tricky,” said the man, smiling. “Especially this time of year.” He held out his ungloved hand. “I’m Mr. Alice.”

“It’s nice to meet—”

“And you’re Victoria.”

Victoria leaned in for a handshake and a demon dazzle so she could see just what, exactly, was going on with this man. But she couldn’t see anything except his darting eyes.

“How do you know who I am?” she said slowly.

“Oh, Mrs. Cavendish makes a point of knowing all the children in the area,” said Mr. Alice. “Professional interest, you know.”

Victoria pinched Mr. Alice’s hand and dropped it. She
hoped it hurt him. “Well, anyway. I have to go now. And thank you for getting my ribbon.” She started to walk away, smoothing her curls back into place.

“Maybe you can meet her someday,” Mr. Alice called out after her.

Victoria looked back. “Meet who?”

But Mr. Alice was gone.

The gate stood open. Victoria stepped closer and squinted beyond it. The pebbled drive circled back through a clean woodland park of oaks and pines and lampposts, already lit for the evening. At the end of the drive, far back in the estate, Victoria saw the faint shape of a wide, shallow house with three chimneys.

Victoria shivered.
It’s just the wind
, she scolded herself as the autumn chill swept her home. When she reached Three Silldie Place, she squinted back down the street. The Cavendish Home’s gate was now closed.

That night, as Victoria fell asleep, something tapped on her window. Her half-asleep mind imagined that the tapping came from the prongs of a rake, and she dreamed of gardens that came alive and had hands and mouths.

LAWRENCE DISAPPEARED THE NEXT DAY, TUESDAY,
which had always been Victoria’s least favorite day of the week because it had no point to it. Monday was the beginning. Wednesday was the middle. Thursday was a prelude to Friday. Friday was the end. Saturday and Sunday were for studying, cleaning, getting ahead on everything, and sometimes shopping, if Mrs. Wright found herself in a buying frenzy, which she did quite a lot. Given all that, Tuesday was simply a placeholder.

(Later, Victoria would have quite a different reason for hating Tuesdays, and she would think about how fitting it was that all the trouble had started on what had always been her least favorite day.)

So, Victoria awoke the morning of Tuesday, October 11, already miffed due to the nature of the day. Then she remembered three things:

1. her imperfect academic report;

2. Lawrence skunking about school yesterday (and Jill teasing her about being his
girlfriend
, for goodness’ sake); and

3. Mr. Alice holding out her ribbon in the wind with his bulging white hand.

Victoria’s mood darkened even more. After allowing herself the customary extra one minute to stew about Tuesdays, she remembered the
tap-tap
on her window from the previous night and got out of bed to peek outside. She saw only her street and a wet, leafy autumn day. There was no rake, and the flower gardens below her window had no mouths or fingers as she had dreamt.

“Well, of course the gardens don’t have mouths or fingers,” she muttered, fluffing her curls into place. “Don’t be stupid.” She could not afford to let such ridiculous thoughts distract her; she had to think about more important things, like what to do about that awful B.

Obviously, she couldn’t give the report to her parents to sign, because that would mean admitting her failure to them. Obviously, she had to turn in a signed report because
otherwise she would receive a demerit on her otherwise perfect record.

It was a dilemma.

Victoria pondered it at breakfast while her father stirred his mint tea and watched the morning news stream on the television. Mr. Wright nodded at the shouting newscasters and said, “Isn’t it all a shame?”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Wright, poring over a catalog of facial creams and hand creams and foot creams. She marked the good ones with circles. “It really is.”

Beatrice set down Victoria’s breakfast, and Victoria pushed the plate away. “I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat your breakfast,” said Beatrice. “It’s good for you. Got to stay strong, don’t we?”

Something about the way Beatrice said that last part made Victoria look up. She met Beatrice’s eyes, which were old and tired and gray in flawless skin. Beatrice got facials every week. Mrs. Wright wouldn’t hear of having an ugly housekeeper.

Beatrice nodded at Victoria’s breakfast as if to say,
Well, eat up
—but then Victoria saw a slip of paper wedged beneath her plate. She looked up in surprise, glanced at her parents, and looked back to Beatrice, who shook her head. Mr. Wright kept sighing at the state of the world. Mrs. Wright
found a new eye cream and clicked her pen in triumph.

Victoria pulled the hidden paper to her lap and unfolded it to see two simple words in Beatrice’s handwriting:

BE CAREFUL.

Victoria glared at Beatrice, who stood at the island chopping shallots. That same inexplicable coldness from the day before swept through the room. Victoria’s parents didn’t notice; they tended not to notice out-of-the-ordinary things. Beatrice, however, kept glancing over at Victoria, pointing to the note with her eyes.

Victoria got up and slammed in her chair, wondering why everyone felt the need to be so
strange
lately, even Beatrice, who was normally more no-nonsense than even Mr. and Mrs. Wright. And now here she was passing strange, secret notes at the breakfast table. It infuriated Victoria.

“Not so loudly, Victoria,” Mrs. Wright murmured distractedly, but Victoria was already out the front door.