The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove (12 page)

and if we all get along, great. If not, that’s okay, too. Deal?”

I shrugged. “Deal.”

Hattie smiled and said, “Have you met Mrs. Monroe’s family yet?”

“I had dinner at their house. They were really nice.”

“Especially one of them,” Mary Violet said and pinched Hattie’s arm.

“Your loverrrrr!”

Hattie rolled her eyes and said, “We’ve only gone out a few times.”

I had no reason to feel disappointed. Of course, Lucky would already have

a girlfriend and the girlfriend would be someone like Hattie. “Lucky seems like a

cool guy.”

“Not Lucky,” Hattie answered. “His brother, Jacob.”

“Jack? Really?”

“He’s really smart and talented,” Hattie said. “And mature.”

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“Why do you think he didn’t go off to college?” Mary Violet asked. “He’s

psychotically in lust with Hattie. There’s something terribly intriguing about him,

like he’s sexually depraved or something.”

Constance sighed and said, “Mary Violet, if we cut open your skull, I have

a feeling all we’d find would be hair products and chick flicks.”

“And silk lingerie and chocolate truffles!” Mary Violet said and laughed.

Constance asked me, “What do you think about our no-tech policy?”

“It’s interesting,” I said.

She grinned and said, “Interesting like completely crazy and antiquated,

right?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a silvery blue phone. “Let’s all

sync up. What’s your number?”

“I only have the phone in the cottage.”

“Oh, we’ve already got that,” Mary Violet said. “It’s Bebe’s old number.

She didn’t have a real phone either. Mrs. Monroe is viciously anti-TSGs and we

have to sit through an assembly every year about how they’re destroying

civilization and how it’s more important to live life than text it, blah, blah, blah.”

“Do you mean STDs?” I asked.

“TSGs is trendy status gadgets,” Hattie said. “TSAs is trendy status

accessories.”

“I like labels, because they tell you whether something is good or not,”

Mary Violet said. “What I want is a TSB.”

Constance and Hattie looked puzzled for a few seconds and then said

together, “Trendy Status Boyfriend?”

“Yes! I’m drawing up a list of candidates and starting with A’s for

Ashton.”

“I’d love to hear them, but I’ve got to get home,” Hattie said.

When I looked up at the tea-kettle shaped clock on the wall I was surprised

to see that two hours had passed.

Hattie drove us back to Birch Grove parking lot, and the girls shouted

goodbyes. As I walked back to the cottage, I thought of how the wealthy

expected and received special treatment with the same blasé attitude that City

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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta

Central kids expected and received violence and misery.

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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta

“Our curriculum is evaluated each year in consideration of the school’s

philosophy, student needs, current state education requirements, and college

and university requirements.”

Birch Grove
Student Handbook

ON THE
first day of classes at Birch Grove, I joined the other students filling up

the hallways and found my locker. Since I was an upper classman, I got the top

row. I twirled the combination, opened the clean green metal locker, and put my

books inside. I tacked a photo of the Alphas and my class schedule on the

corkboard inside the door.

The first bell rang, lockers clanged shut, and I headed to the day’s first

period, which was homeroom.

I was glad to see Hattie sitting in the classroom. She waved me over and I

sat in the chair beside her.

A man with short graying hair and glasses stood at the front, looking over

papers on the broad oak desk. On the blackboard, he’d written “Mr. Albert

Mason.” He was also my chemistry teacher.

When the bell rang at 8:30, he said, “Good morning, students. I’m Mr.

Mason, your homeroom teacher.” He had a pleasant voice and a wide smile. He

wore a navy blue jacket, a white shirt, a navy and maroon tie, and khaki trousers.

He was thin all over except for a small belly. While he wasn’t handsome at all,

there was something very likeable about his intelligent expression.

“Let’s go around and make sure everyone is here.” He read a roster aloud,

and when he came to “Jane Williams,” he looked up at me and smiled.

“Here,” I said.

“You’re our new transfer student. Good to have you at Birch Grove, Jane,

and I’m happy to have you in honors chem.”

“Thank you, sir.”

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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta

As he finished the rest of roll call, I looked out the window at the greenery

beyond. None of this felt real.

Mr. Mason picked up a sheet of paper and said, “Let’s get to the

announcements.” He went through the list of notices and deadlines for various

forms. I took the handouts for upcoming events. I was used to keeping track of

school information and deadlines since Mrs. Richards didn’t care.

As we left the classroom, Hattie said, “What do you have next?”

“Western Classical Literature.”

“Me, too. I wonder what else we have together.” We compared schedules

and found out that were also in the same history course. “I love learning about

the past,” she said. “’Whereof what's past is prologue.’”

“Is that a quote from something?”

“It’s Shakespeare,” she said. “It means that what’s happened in the past

determines what will happen in the future. That’s why we’ve got to know history

in order to understand the present and predict what will happen in the future.”

“But whoever writes history puts his spin on it, so it’s always distorted.”

“You’re very cynical,” Hattie said.

“I’m realistic.”

We’d arrived in the classroom. There were only ten students in the class

and the teacher had us put our desks in a circle. When she handed out the

syllabus, it was worse than I’d thought: Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, readings from

the Bible, Chaucer, Milton and Shakespeare.

The teacher, Mrs. Baybee, spoke in a flat drone that made me zone out.

Today’s class was 90 minutes, and after 15 minutes, I gave up trying to

understand what she was talking about. I took down notes that made no sense to

me. I never felt so stupid in my life.

I dragged my feet to my next class, Honors Chem, thinking that I’d return

the rest of my clothes and cram in tutoring so I’d have more cash in case I flunked

out.

Mary Violet was sitting at one of the tall black lab tables in the third-floor

classroom, sighing and staring out the window to trees beyond.

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I sat at her table and said, “You didn’t tell me you were in honors chem.”

Her bright smile made me feel better. “Yes, I’m a Chem Ho, too. My

parents are totally draconian and make me take all this math and science because

they’ve got some delusion that I should be a doctor. I wish I had nothing but

English classes.”

“I’ve got the opposite problem. I just had Western Classical Lit with Mrs.

Baybee. I couldn’t make any sense of what she said, even if I cared about the

subject, which I don’t at all.”

“I would be mortified if you were a cultural barbarian, Jane,” she said.

“That’s exactly what my mother tells my father when he complains about the

symphony, though she doesn’t call him Jane. Mrs. Baybee is renowned for being

boring. Her voice always makes me think of a fly buzzing somewhere in the

room.”

“I thought it was me.”

“Oh, no, she’s always voted Teacher Most Likely to Inspire a Coma in our

secret annual poll. Why don’t you transfer to something more interesting?”

“What else is there?”

“I’m in
Civility and Propriety of the Victorian Woman
because I want to

write fat, juicy historicals with lots of mayhem and I need to learn all about

fainting and corsets. But that’s at the end of the day and you’d have to shuffle

your whole schedule. Constance is in
Night Terrors
and that’s the same block as

Western Classical Lit.”

“What’s
Night Terrors
about?”

“It’s totally fabu. Fabulous to the nth degree,” she said. “See, I also
parlez

geek! It’s the only class Mrs. Monroe teaches. I’m taking it next semester.”

Mr. Mason came to the front of the room, the bell rang, and class began.

I felt more confident now that I had a heavy text in front of me. I looked

around the room at the shelves of specimens in display jars, and racks of test

tubes. An old cloth banner of the periodic table was stretched on a standing

wooden frame.

I’d memorized it once, and now I looked at the groups: alkali metals,

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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta

alkaline earth metals, lanthanides, actinides, transition metals, poor metals,

metalloids, nonmetals, halogens, and noble gasses.

These are the things that made up the world, and even humble elements,

like soft and gray potassium, could have fierce power.

I glanced out the third-floor window through the trees and toward town. I

wondered about Orneta’s story of a woman dying at this school. Who had she

been and where had she fallen?

Mr. Mason began talking about our curriculum and I opened a wire bound

notebook. I’d already drawn a vertical line through each page. On the left side, I

took notes. Later, when I reviewed my notes, I would add details on the right side

of the page.

Despite Mary Violet’s complaints about chemistry, she was writing

diligently with a fountain pen that had violet ink. She wrote in a beautiful script

with big loops and swirls. While Mr. Mason was handing out the week’s

assignments, she drew a small flower on the page border.

“It’s a violet,” she whispered to me. “My trademark.”

I didn’t know why I found myself liking Mary Violet so much. Although

she was silly, I couldn’t help returning her bright smiles. I liked her pink and

golden prettiness and the way she blurted out anything that came to mind.

Mr. Mason explained everything clearly and paused for questions, which he

answered easily. When class was over and we were leaving, he said, “May I have

a word, Jane?”

“Yes, Mr. Mason?” I moved to the side of his desk.

“I know we go at a fast pace in this class and I want you to know that I’m

here to help if you find yourself getting swamped.”

“Thanks. I think I can keep up in chem, but I’d like to transfer out of my

Western Civilization Lit course.”

“Is there a problem with it?”

“I can’t really connect to the subject. Mary Violet suggested Mrs.

Monroe’s nightmare course.”

“
Night Terrors
,” he said with a smile. “I’m surprised the headmistress

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The Shadow Girl of Birch Grove – Marta Acosta

didn’t sign you up for that. It’s an excellent course. I’ll talk to the Registrar at

my break, and you can check in at her office after school today.”

“I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir.”

Mary Violet was waiting in the hall for me. “He’s valiant and tragic,” she

said. “What did he want?”

Since she used
tragic
the way some people use
like
, I didn’t take her

seriously. “Just checking with me. He’s going to talk to the Registrar so I can

transfer to
Night Terrors
.”

We both had lunch break, and we walked down the stairs together. The

girls heading up walked on the right of the staircase, and the girls heading down

walked on the left and no one blocked traffic to hassle others or conduct drug

deals.

Mary Violet told me that they usually went off-campus for lunch. “We go

to the Free Pop or get something from the deli in the market. Everything else in

town is too slooow. The town is too slooow and on days with long-blocks, we eat

in the café-teria and do the salad bar.”

“There aren’t any fast-food places around?”

“Oh, no, my mother would shriek at the horror. The Birch Grove Alumnae

Club makes the mayor’s life miserable every time there’s a rumor that one might

come in.”

“I’d rather use my cafeteria pass anyway. What’s good?”

“The salad stuff is always fresh, and the pasta’s good. Everything’s

homemade and organic since the alumnae are terrified that we’ll have mutant

babies if we eat anything with pesticides.”

“You sound as if you want a mutant baby,” I said as Mary Violet and I

served ourselves small plates of salad.

“I’d prefer an alien baby with soft fur, like a kitten.” Her big blue eyes

opened wide and she said, “Quick! Tell me what you’re thinking.”

I smiled and said, “In my old school they would say,
You hella crazy,

bitch!
” which made her laugh.

We went to the hot entrees counter and I got something called pasta

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primavera, which was noodles and vegetables, warm bread, and an oatmeal

cranberry cookie.

I hesitated and Mary Violet turned toward me and said, “Come on, slow