She was surprised when no one came to tell her when to go to bed or turn off the light. They treated her like an adult, as her father had, and they seemed to assume she could regulate herself. She liked that. They respected her, and expected her to live up to it. She got undressed, brushed her teeth, said good night to the photo of her father, and turned off her lamp with the little blue lambs. The bed was hard, but the pillow she’d brought with her was familiar, and she slept with her father’s sweater next to her, so she could feel him near her, and smell his cologne. It was a brave new world, but not a bad one, just very different.
And as she fell asleep, she had an idea for a story that she wanted to write the next day. It would be the first one she had written in months, since her father started failing dramatically, and the fact that she had an idea for a new story seemed like a good sign. As odd as it was to be here, she was home, and she drifted off, feeling peaceful and safe.
Chapter 6
Alex’s new school was much bigger than what she was used to. The classes had more students, conditions were crowded, and the kids were rougher. They had to go to mass before their first class every day. The teachers were both secular and nuns, but since none of the nuns wore habits, it was hard to tell which was which. And she was shocked by how little homework they were given. It was a good school, but much less demanding than her exclusive private school. But here she knew she would get even better grades. When she got back to the convent at the end of the day, she went straight to her room and finished her homework in less than an hour, and then got to work on the story she had thought of the night before. It was particularly violent, and the crime itself even more disturbing than usual, and the surprise ending she conjured up even surprised her. She sat back looking pleased when she took the last page out of the typewriter, and was smiling to herself when Sister Xavier knocked and walked in.
“Need any help with homework?” She noticed that Alex was smiling, and hoped she’d had a good first day at her new school. “How was it?”
“It was okay, and the homework was easy. I just finished a story. I think it’s really good.” She grinned and Sister Xavier smiled.
“Can I read it?” Alex nodded and handed the ten pages to Sister Xavier, who sat down on the bed, and looked up several times with a startled expression as she read. She was dazed when she finished and glanced back at Alex.
“What do you think?” Alex asked her, anxious for her opinion, since she liked mysteries and had read a lot of them.
“Do you always write like this?” She wondered if she was even more disturbed by her father’s death than they thought, and was reacting with violence.
“Yeah. Sometimes they’re bloodier than that, but this is about right.”
“You write some brutal stuff!” she commented, but she had to admit that it was seamless, the pace relentless, the characters haunting, and the story very tight. She wrote like an adult, and she had talent. But definitely a quirky mind, or a lot of experience reading crime thrillers. She had written a detective into it inspired by some of the thrillers she’d read, she told Sister Xavier, and she was pleased. It struck the nun that her story was much tougher than anything she normally read, and she would have guessed it was written by a man, and surely not a fourteen-year-old girl. The writing was brilliant. “I like it,” Sister Xavier said once she recovered from the shocking crime and surprise ending. “I just didn’t expect you to write something like that. Have you ever tried publishing your stories?” she asked with interest.
“My father was going to do it for me, but then he got sick, and he never got around to it. I’ve got three binders full of my stories, I brought them with me.” They were under her bed with his books.
“You should try publishing them,” she encouraged her. And then she laughed. “I can see why you don’t read Agatha Christie anymore and loved Silence of the Lambs, given what you write. I couldn’t sleep after a story like that.” Alex laughed too, pleased with the effect on her new friend.
“I’ll give you some of the other stories in my binder,” Alex promised. She loved having someone to show her stories to, although Sister Xavier readily admitted she preferred a different type of mystery.
“Not at bedtime, please,” Sister Xavier said, and mentioned the story to the superior later. She was still worried about it, even if it was flawlessly written, and Mother MaryMeg looked intrigued.
“It’s shocking for a child that age to have thoughts like that,” Sister Xavier whispered to her. She liked crime fiction herself, but Alex’s story had been extreme.
“Is it lewd or inappropriately sexual?” the mother superior asked, mildly concerned.
“Not at all, but it’s the most violent thing I’ve ever read. Brilliant, though. There’s everything from murder to dismemberment to cannibalism in it, and the crime is committed by the man’s wife. The story is complicated, and she kept me turning the pages, but it was still very upsetting, all in all. I thought about it for hours afterward, it haunted me.”
“Maybe that’s a skill, and not an aberration. Apparently her father encouraged her and shared his favorite books with her. According to my cousin’s husband, who knew him, her father thought she had real talent.”
“She does, unquestionably,” Sister Xavier agreed. “It’s just disturbing to think that comes out of her head. She looks so innocent.”
“Are you afraid she’ll kill us all in our sleep, and chop us up and eat us?” Mother MaryMeg teased her.
“No…but it’s very scary stuff, if that’s what’s on her mind.”
“I’ll have a look,” the mother superior reassured her, and said to Alex later that Sister Xavier had been impressed by her story, and she’d love to read one.
Alex looked serious at the mention of it. “I think I upset her. I’ve been working on that kind of story for a long time. I was inspired by some of the writers my father liked. He always passed his books on to me after he read them.” She gave the story to Mother MaryMeg to read after dinner, and the older nun was stunned. It was even more powerful than Sister Xavier had said, and the mother superior thought it was brilliant. She had an incredible way of telling the story. Her timing was flawless, and her character descriptions and development showed great insight into the criminal mind. Mother MaryMeg handed it back to Alex with a look of profound respect.
“You are a very, very talented writer, Alex. That’s a gift. Don’t waste it.” Alex thought that she was going to tell her to write gentler stories about saner people, but Mother MaryMeg seemed to approve wholeheartedly. “I’m sure you’d win an award with it, if you publish it one day. Keep working at it, to develop your gift.” She walked away duly impressed and saw Sister Xavier again later. “I think we’re living with one of the future great writers of the era. She really has an extraordinary mind.”