The Cinderella Hour (9 page)

“But it’s
illegal
.”

“Not really. Not here. It
was
illegal in Chicago. The men were strangers. But my Quail Ridge men are wealthy friends giving gifts
to a widow from Atlanta, helping her out, especially since her wedding planning
business has failed. They want to give me money, Snow. A lot of money. You get
what you pay for, these rich men believe. And they like expensive things. The
more something costs, the better it is.”

“They’re married!”

“They’re
mergered
. Money wed to money. The men know
it. The wives know it. They’re not suffering, Snow. The wives. You’d be amazed
how many have satisfying affairs of their own. Jared Kilcannon may be dead and
buried, but there’s a sexy new golf pro at the club.”

Jared Kilcannon. Luke Kilcannon. The ache, always so near the
surface, pierced through. And as her mother spoke dispassionately about things
that should have been sacred, Snow understood that Luke had known all along
what Leigh did.

What Leigh was.

Leigh’s choices had worried Luke. Troubled him, too.

“People know.”

“I’m sure they do,” Leigh acknowledged. “But not because of
me. The talkers are the men themselves, four in particular who live on the
Hilltop near the Larken estate. Trey Larken isn’t one of them, by the way.
Either he’s as enthralled with Marielle as everyone says he is, or he’s finding
his entertainment elsewhere. Trey’s friends, though—well, they’re extremely
competitive about everything, including me. I’d have thought that knowing they
were sharing me would have made me less special. But the opposite’s true. Men
have remarkable egos when it comes to sex. That’s a little tidbit, some motherly
advice, that might come in handy for you some day. While I’m at it, men want
sex. Period. If you feel like seducing a man, you can.
Easily
. So
easily, it’s ridiculous. I have four obscenely rich men competing over me. Who’s
the best lover? Which one do I prefer? I never commit myself. Never would. It’s
a game for all of us. But I’m the one—no,
we’re
the ones, Snow—who are
winning. Believe me, our future is secure.”

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“Wrong or right isn’t relevant. It is what it is. These men
would be having affairs whether or not I’d moved into town. And they’re far
better off being involved with me than with some gold-digger in search of a
wedding ring. I’m helping their marriages stay together, not tearing them apart.
I’m not going to get pregnant. And I’m not going to fall in love.”

“Again.”

“Again?”

“You’re still in love with my father.”

Leigh smiled. “That’s right. And these men are in love with
their lives. They wouldn’t dream of jeopardizing the social status they enjoy,
much less their joint bank accounts, with divorce. I’m not a home-wrecker,
Snow, and thanks to these men, we have a good life. Don’t we?”

What could she say? She was warm, clothed, fed, sheltered,
safe. And she had luxuries, unused by her, that would thrill most other teenage
girls: her own phone, her own credit card, and a drawer filled with cash if her
allowance ran short. And, although her sixteenth birthday was still two years
away, she would have a car if she wanted one. Leigh didn’t drive, preferring
the convenience of taxis and the glamour of limousines, but if a car was
something Snow wanted, it was hers.

“Snow?”

“Yes. We do.” Snow prepared to stand, as Leigh already had, a
signal that their mother-daughter talk was over. For Snow, the process of going
from sitting to standing took both hands. She looked up before pushing up from
the living-room couch. “Have you noticed that I’m overweight?”

“Of course I have.”

“What do you think about it?”

“Your weight? That you’ll lose it when something becomes more
important to you than eating.”

An exercise, required of every
member of the debate team, was to present compelling arguments on both sides of
a topic. Snow had intended such a presentation on legalized prostitution, an argument
for it and against. And, on either side, she would urge compassion for those
who had run from sexual abuse to sexual exploitation.

In the end, she argued the pros and cons of legalized drugs
instead. She couldn’t do prostitution, not both sides, with the conviction a top-tier
debater should. She could have, if Leigh had been a sexually abused runaway.
But she wasn’t. And Snow believed that what Leigh was doing was wrong—as
not
nice as the kind of decisions Leigh’s heroine, Scarlett, often made.

Snow became a respected junior-high debater. She would be a
welcome addition to the debate team at Larken High. The high-school debate coach
told her as much during a state-wide competition in the spring of her final
year at Hale. He also commented on the voice that would eventually become
indistinguishable from Leigh’s.

It was powerful in its uniqueness, he said, and in its
emotional range. People would listen to her. She had a responsibility to choose
carefully what she would say.

Snow looked forward to high-school debate. To high school
itself. She would be the youngest student at Larken High—and the heaviest of
its girls?

Perhaps.

But she vowed to be less heavy.

By summer’s end, she had lost forty of the seventy pounds she
was determined to lose. She looked better, felt better, and, for the first time
since Luke went away, she felt optimistic about what lay ahead for her.

Sophomore orientation was held on the Friday afternoon before
the start of school and was hosted by Girls’ Club president Vivian Larken.
Vivian wasn’t alone on the auditorium stage. The club’s four other officers
joined her. All four, Vivian told the assembled sophomores, had been her
friends since preschool.

Vivian introduced her friends. When she was finished, Girls’
Club treasurer Lacey Flynn introduced Vivian herself.

“Our fearless president is fabulous in every way—just take it
from her! I’m kidding. Vivian is the best friend anyone could ever have. And
the smartest. She also happens to be dating an incredibly sexy
hunk
—”

“With a midnight curfew,” Vivian interjected. “Oh, well!”

Years ago, Mrs. Evans had forecast that Snow and Mira Larken
would meet and become friends at Larken High. Next year, maybe they would. At
the moment, it was Vivian who was dazzling Snow . . . and who, it seemed, was
reading Snow’s mind.

“My own little sister, Mira, is only in the ninth grade.
Unless I fail to graduate this spring, I’ll never have the chance to guide her
through her high-school years.”

“Valedictorian Viv,” Lacey said, “
isn’t
going to fail.”

“Let’s hope not,” Vivian replied. “So, if all of you don’t
mind, I’ll impose my big-sister bossiness—and maybe a little wisdom?—on you.
Ask me, ask
us
, anything. Really! Larken High can be the three best
years of your lives. It won’t just happen, though. You have to get involved,
take part in everything the school has to offer. I’m not only talking about its
excellent academics. I want everyone in this auditorium to pledge here and now
to attend the Glass Slipper Ball. Some of you already know about the ball. You
have family members who are Larken High alums. For those of you who don’t, the
Glass Slipper Ball is the winter prom for sophomore girls—and the boys they
choose to invite. It’s one of the school’s oldest traditions, inaugurated
before World War II. Our avant-garde grandmothers decided the dance would be
girl-ask-boy, and that there would be, for each girl, a glass-slipper charm. Do
you get why that’s so great? So
modern
?”

The question was rhetorical. Every enraptured sophomore knew
the answer was forthcoming. Even those who might have answered remained mute.

The explanation would be more special coming from Vivian’s
smiling lips.

“After Cinderella dashed away, she had to bide her time until
Prince Charming got around to placing her lost slipper on her foot. But your
charm, your slipper, belongs to you. And it symbolizes the fact that you’ll
never have to limp around waiting for some man to come and rescue you. We don’t
have anything against men. Not at all! We just don’t need them to fulfill our
every
dream. Do we?”

When the mesmerized audience whispered no, Vivian raised her
delicate wrist for their inspection. Her four friends followed suit. All five
wore golden bracelets with a single charm. “As you can see, we keep our
Cinderella slippers with us. And as those of you in the first few rows can
probably see, the charm doesn’t have to be glass. Ours was gold, with a
stiletto heel. It’s left to each sophomore class to design its own slipper. The
only way the charm becomes yours, though, is by attending the ball.
No
exceptions
. The charm’s tied to the dance-program tassel. I want everyone
in this room to go. Okay? The guy doesn’t have to be your Prince Charming. You
can even go without a date. We’re modern Cinderellas, after all.”

“Especially Vivian,” Lacey teased. “As she’s already said,
the midnight curfew’s for her Prince Charming, not for her.”

“It’s quite amazing,” Vivian remarked to Lacey, loudly enough
for the girls in the front rows to hear, “what fun things one can do before
midnight.”

Returning to the adoring throng of surrogate little sisters,
she said, “Anyone interested in being on the Glass Slipper Ball committee
should sign up here. Your main task will be to design the slipper and have it
approved by your classmates in time to get it to the jeweler. We, the senior
girls, will be your fairy godmothers. We’ll hand out the dance programs, let
you know if your lipstick is smudged, serve the nonalcoholic punch, and
distract the chaperones if it seems that you and your date want a private
moment. Oh, and there will be no fleeing Cinderellas. You’ll dance right past
midnight, till
1
:
00
a.m. The Fairy Godmother brunch, which we hold the following
day, will be your first opportunity to wear your charm. By tradition, it
remains tied to the tassel until you get it home. So mark your calendars,
little sisters, for the second Saturday in January. The ballroom at Hilltop
Country Club is already booked. I want all of you there. Any questions? If not,
have a super weekend and we’ll see you first thing Monday morning.”

Snow lost three pounds in the two days before classes began.
She was revved up, churning with eagerness.

On Sunday evening, she went to the clearing in the forest.
Touching the scar on her wrist, where his blood and hers had become one, she
made promises to herself and to her faraway friend.

She would be okay, and Luke would be, too.

Snow’s friend was more than okay.

And he was close by.

Luke Kilcannon was a senior at Larken High.

He was also Vivian Larken’s incredibly sexy boyfriend.

Snow noticed Vivian first, her petite frame, her long brown
hair. Vivian was leaning against her lover, who was leaning against a wall.
Lover was the right word. Snow knew such words now. And, although she had no
firsthand experience, she recognized the sexual intimacy between Vivian and—

“Luke?”

Her query separated the lovers as if she was the most prudish
of chaperones.

As Luke looked at her, stared at her, she saw what he had become.
Taller, stronger, a man in every way.

An angry man. The grown-up version, with its grown-up anger,
of the boy she had startled in the forest on that long-ago Christmas Day.

Who the hell are you? he had demanded then.

His question now was just as demanding.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m a sophomore. I skipped a grade. You’re . . .”
here
.
In Quail Ridge. And you’ve been back long enough to have fallen in love. Long
enough to have visited me.
But you didn’t
.

Forget about me, Snow, he had said. Like I’m forgetting about
you.

Luke had been true to his word.

“You two know each other,” Vivian observed.

“In a different life,” Luke replied.

“Oh.” Vivian’s expression conveyed her knowledge of the life
he was referring to, the ugliness he wanted to remain buried in the past. She
gazed from him to the plump symbol of that ugliness. “You knew each other in
Pinewood.”

“Yes.” Snow was backing away, needing to run, vowing to walk.
“A different life.”

“Snow . . .”

There was softness in his voice, the special way he had always
said her name, as if she was special, unforgettable, not the forgotten friend
he hadn’t bothered to see.

“I’d better go,” she said. “I don’t want to be late for my
first class.”

Luke had neither walked away, nor run away, from Quail Ridge.
His broken body had been carried away.

And he had swum back.

There had been no choice about swimming. Rebuilding his muscles
in the fluid resistance of water was the best way, perhaps the only way, he
would walk again.

The boy who had thrown snowball after snowball and done
chin-up after chin-up—long past the time when his flogged muscles screamed
their pain—applied the same punishment to the swimming he was obliged to do,
driving himself harder than his father ever had.

Luke also had no choice about swimming back to Quail Ridge.
He had become a legend in the reformatory. His academic excellence was a rarity
among the inmates. But it was his driven body, not his searching mind, that
sent him home.

There wasn’t a coach at the reformatory. The warden, however,
knew enough about swimming to clock Luke’s times as he churned through the
hyperchlorinated water of the pool.

The warden contacted the swim team coach at Larken High, and
the coach called Trey Larken. Being number one mattered to Trey, so much so
that he wanted Luke on the team even before receiving assurances that Noah
Williams had probably been right.

No psychopathic tendencies had been detected in Luke during
his incarceration at the reformatory. Truth be told, the warden said, Luke had
leadership potential. Even the most hardened of the institution’s other inmates
viewed him with respect. Not that Luke seemed interested in leading. He studied.
He swam. And spent what little time remained in his waking hours as if he was alone
in the overcrowded facility.

The town would be safe enough if Luke returned. But where
would he live?

There was a tantalizing possibility, if Noah would agree. The
retired arson investigator had staked his reputation on Luke’s innocence. Would
he be willing to stake his life?

Noah didn’t worry that Luke would set a match to his home.
And even if he did, so what? Noah’s days were long and empty. The nights were
worse.

Sure, the kid could move in with him. And since a midnight
curfew was a condition of Luke’s probation from the reformatory, he would try
to see that Luke adhered to it.

There were other probationary mandates, ones that fell upon
the entire town to enforce.

Their parolee could neither smoke nor drink, and his grades
had to be maintained, and he had to apply himself to swimming as rigorously
outside the reformatory as he had within.

Luke wasn’t consulted. He had no say. He was a ward of the state.
Besides, it seemed inconceivable that he would decline the reprieve he was
being offered—much less that he would not view it as a reprieve at all.

No one considered the possibility that it might bother Luke
to stand virtually naked before the crowds that would gather to watch him swim,
his body scarred with reminders of the night that had begun with vicious slashes
of a knife and ended with piercing assaults of glass, of nails, of shattered
bones.

Luke had to expose his scars at the reformatory. Privacy wasn’t
an option.

It would have come as a surprise to the warden, the guards,
and the inmates who regarded his scars as badges of honor that he detested
every second of the indignity and was counting the minutes until he could live
alone, his nakedness concealed, and never swim again.

Luke had no warning of his impending release. On June
fifteenth, after being given an hour to pack his things, he was transported by
van to Noah’s Quail Ridge home. The rules were spelled out to him that evening.
The following day, he participated in the first of the summer-long practices
that would take place in the recently completed Olympic-size pool at Hilltop
Country Club.

The swim team practices would have drawn crowds of teenage
girls without Luke. But his presence added interest, as did his scars . . . frosting
on the already dangerously attractive cake that was Luke.

The Hilltop heiresses were especially intrigued. All of them.
But when Vivian made her move, her friends got out of the way. Aside from the
fact that they routinely yielded to Vivian, they had to admit she was in the
best position to indulge in a summertime liaison with Luke. Trey and Marielle
were antiquing in Europe. Mira was riding horses in Jackson Hole. With the
exception of an occasional housekeeper, Vivian had the mansion to herself until
the second week of school.

In theory, Luke had some choice about remaining in Quail
Ridge. He could violate his parole. It would take numerous violations and
flagrant ones. Quail Ridge loved a winner. Within weeks, the coach forecast
that with Luke on the team, the Larken High Cougars were poised to relive the
glory years when, irony of ironies, Jared was coach.

Had he believed Snow would learn of his return, Luke would
have done whatever was necessary to be sent away. But Noah’s home was miles
from Pinewood, as Larken High was from Nathan Hale. And, although he would
probably set records in the four-hundred-meter butterfly and become a critical
member of all three relay teams, what publicity there was would be for the sons
of privilege with whom he swam.

Snow wouldn’t realize he had returned, and by the time she
enrolled in Larken High, he would have graduated and moved away. He would resist
the wish to see her from afar, to make sure she was the happy girl she deserved
to be.

She wasn’t that girl. In those startling moments in the
hallway, he had seen how unhappy she was.

He found her, after school, in their forest.

She was sitting on the log, the glass jar on one side, neat
stacks of coins on the other, arranged on a surface Luke had stripped of bark
long ago. Paper wrappers provided by the bank lay on the ground at her feet.

“Snow?”

She kept building her pillars of pennies, nickels, dimes. “It’s
been a while since I’ve converted coins to bills. It’s definitely time. There’s
a lot of money here. I’ve never stopped scavenging. And inflation has helped.
People throw away pennies these days, and I’ve even found quarters.”

“Snow?”

“I had this idea that you would still be scavenging, too. If
you could. That we would be doing it together, but far apart. Pretty dumb, huh?
Pretty delusional.”

“Not dumb,” he said softly. “Not delusional.”

He hadn’t been able to search for discarded coins in southern
Illinois. Reformatory inmates weren’t permitted such freedom. But his desk in
the home Noah had graciously provided contained a drawer of coins collected in
the past three months.

Snow wasn’t going to look up.

Luke knelt before her and peered at her face.

Tears spilled onto cheeks plump with the unhappiness of all
the years she had missed him.

“Don’t cry,” Luke whispered. “Don’t cry.”
You’re not
supposed to be sad.

He pulled her to him and kissed her hair as he spoke, caresses
of comfort, although he wanted so much more. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.
And he had never really been a boy.

But she was innocent, and he was tainted. He had been scarred
before they met, vast pieces of his soul already dead. More pieces had died the
night Jared did.

Snow was responding to his kisses as if she didn’t know how
damaged he was . . . and as if she, too, wanted so much more.

Luke released her. “This is wrong.”

“I know! I’m
sorry
. You’re in love with Vivian.”

“In love with Vivian? No.
No
. We . . .” The word would
have been a four-letter vulgarity for sex. Both he and Vivian derived pleasure
from their coupling. Neither of them cared whether they gave it.

He used Vivian. Vivian used him.

The arrangement worked well,
had
worked well. It ended
for Luke the moment he saw Snow. He had planned to tell Vivian after school.
She beat him to it, in a conversation that began with his telling her that he
was skipping swim team practice.

“It’s the first practice of the year!”

“I haven’t missed a practice all summer.”

“The team captain’s being elected today. It should be you.
You’re the best swimmer on the team.”

“I don’t care about being captain, Vivian. I don’t want to
be.” It was an opportunity for the limelight—and a college-application
credential—that the team’s second-best swimmer would embrace in a heartbeat. “I’ve
already told the coach my vote goes to Harrison.”

“That’s
crazy,
” Vivian said. “As crazy as skipping
practice. You’ll get kicked off the team and be sent back to the reformatory.”

“If that’s what happens, that’s what happens.”

“If you don’t attend today’s practice, Luke, even if you’re
allowed to stay on the team,
we
are through.”

“Fine.”

“You’re willing to risk breaking up with me?”

Breaking up implied more of a relationship than they’d had.
But Luke wasn’t about to argue semantics.

“I think we just did.”

He had left a disbelieving Vivian—how
dare
he?—in
search of Snow.

And here she was, imagining a happily-ever-after for him and
Vivian.

“You and your fairy tales.”

“I’m not as innocent as you think. Just because I’m fat—”

“You’re not fat, Snow. You’re lovely.”
And sad—oh, Snow,
don’t be sad.
“And innocent.”

“I’m not innocent, Luke.”

“You’re fifteen.”

“Almost sixteen.”

“In five months.”

Snow needed him to touch her, and kiss her, and more.
More
.
The need was neither casual nor whimsical. If Luke didn’t touch her again, at
least touch her, her heart would break . . . with no hope of ever becoming
whole.

She was fighting for her very survival.

And what ammunition did she have to wage this foreign war?
Words of counsel from her mother. Men have remarkable egos, Leigh had said,
when it comes to sex. That’s a little tidbit, some motherly advice, that might
come in handy for you someday. While I’m at it, men want sex. Period. If you
feel like seducing a man, you can.
Easily
. So easily, it’s ridiculous.

Mimicking Leigh’s sultry tone, Snow began.

“My fifteenth birthday,” she said, “was the first time I made
love. He was seventeen and knew what he was doing. He was
way
better
than my next two lovers, but
nothing
compared to the college boyfriend I
have now. He’s nineteen and thinks my weight is sexy. He’ll still like me, though,
want
me as much as ever, when I’ve lost the weight I’m planning to lose.
I’m good in bed, Luke. My mother’s daughter, through and through. You must have
thought I was an idiot not to see what she was doing.”

“You were a little girl.”

“Not anymore. My mother loves sex, and so do I. I can’t
imagine charging for it, though. It wouldn’t seem fair. I enjoy it far too
much. Although, my mother says, money adds to the pleasure, for both her and
the man.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m
not.’’

“You’re a virgin, Snow. You don’t have a college boyfriend.”

“Any boyfriend, you mean? Just because you don’t find me
desirable doesn’t mean other boys don’t.
Lots
of other boys, Luke. Lots
and lots.”

“Stop it.” Luke’s command was the one she had given him on that
Christmas Day, when she had found him, in the forest, throwing snowballs to
punishing excess.

Her words were causing punishment now, for both of them. She
saw his anger, how fearsome it was, and maybe, just maybe, his jealousy of her
make-believe lovers.

“
Make
me stop, Luke. Prove me wrong . . . or right.”

“Damn you, Snow.”

“Kiss me, Luke.”
Please kiss me
.

He swore again, and pulled her to him.

She was lost in the joy of it.

Luke was lost, too, in joy. And loathing. He didn’t hate her.
He never could. But he hated how expert she was, the certainty of her
passion—at this moment—for him.

If not so frenzied, the scene would have been romantic. The
warm sun, the soft grass, the birdsong wafting in the autumn breeze. The lovers
might even have undressed and made a nest of their discarded clothes.

As it was, Luke claimed her quickly—and heard her gasp, felt
her shock.

Her other boyfriends, he realized, were the fairy tales he
had suspected them of being.

And her expertise? Too late, Luke felt the truth of the
fingers that had touched his scars. Snow hadn’t touched them as Vivian—and
others—had, as carved-in-the-flesh proof of how dangerous he was.

Snow touched his scars gently, caring about his pain.

It was instinct, not experience, that made her body move in
harmony with his.

“You lied.”

“It’s not a lie anymore. Don’t go, Luke! Please.”