Chapter 6
CeCe
Barrons, Vermont
October 1950
She wished she weren’t always hungry. At fifteen, CeCe was hungry from morning to night, her body empty as a hollowed-out log. Idlewild fed them three meals per day, but everything CeCe ate seemed to vanish as soon as it passed her lips. It was embarrassing, not because she was fat—she wasn’t; she was round, that was all—but because it made her look forward to meals in the dining hall. No one looked forward to meals in the dining hall, because the dining hall was horrible.
It was the supper hour, and CeCe followed Katie from the counter through the throng of girls toward a table. Even in the Idlewild uniform, Katie looked pretty. You could put a scratchy plaid skirt, a cheap white blouse, and a thick winter cardigan on her, and she still looked like Hedy Lamarr. CeCe knew that her rounder face and short dark hair were pretty enough, but she felt like a yeti next to Katie’s glamour. Katie knew everything, and she was scared of nothing, which was exactly how CeCe wanted to be. Since CeCe was one of the few girls Katie didn’t hate, CeCe clung to her like glue and brought her tidbits of gossip when she found them.
Today she had a good one, and she was excited. “Guess what I’m getting tonight,” she said in a conspiratorial voice as they slid onto a bench at one of the tables, bumping two other girls down. She leaned closer to Katie’s ear. “Pat Claiman’s copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
Katie stared at her, fork in midair, her dark-lashed, sultry eyes wide. Pat Claiman’s brother had smuggled her the book on Family Visit Day two months ago, and it had been passed from girl to girl ever since. Every girl at Idlewild was crazy to get her hands on it. “You’re kidding,” Katie said. “How did you do it?”
“It wasn’t easy. I had to give Pat ten dollars.”
Katie’s eyes went even wider. “Ten dollars? CeCe, where did you get that?”
CeCe shrugged. “My father sends me money, you know. It was either that or read Sandra Krekly’s stack of Life magazines, but those are all two years old.”
Today’s dinner was beef, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and a sticky-sweet bread that CeCe thought was supposed to be corn bread, but tasted like nothing at all. Katie picked up a scoop of potatoes on her fork and put it in her mouth, her expression thoughtful. CeCe watched as Katie’s gaze roamed the room, her eyes narrowing and calculating. She always saw things going on around them that CeCe was too stupid to see. “You’ll have to read us the good parts aloud,” Katie said.
“I can’t.” CeCe blushed. “No way. When I get to the racy bits, I’ll give the book to you.”
“Fine, I’ll read it.” Katie tossed her hair and poked at her potatoes again. “It’s probably nothing I haven’t seen anyway.”
This was Katie’s usual line. She came across like she was experienced with men, but CeCe was starting to notice that she never gave any details. She didn’t care. “I hear it’s juicy,” she said, trying to keep Katie strung along. “Pat says there are even bad words in it. And they do things.”
But Katie’s attention was drifting. In the back corner, Alison Garner and Sherri Koustapos were arguing at their table, their heads lowered. Sherri had an angry snarl on her lip. Katie watched them warily. She seemed to have a radar for trouble, as if she could detect it from any quarter.
CeCe tried to distract her. “Hey, there’s Roberta.”
Roberta was crossing the room, carrying her wooden tray with her dinner on it. She sat at a table with her field hockey team, the girls jostling and giggling while Roberta was quiet. CeCe looked down at her plate and realized she’d already eaten everything on it, so she put down her knife and fork.
“Do you ever wonder,” Katie said, “why Roberta is here? Her grades are good, and she’s an athlete. She doesn’t seem to belong.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” CeCe said without thinking. “Her uncle came home from the war and tried to kill himself. Roberta walked in on him doing it, so they sent her away.”
“What?” Katie stared at CeCe, and CeCe realized she’d scored an even bigger point than she had with Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “How do you know that?”
“Susan Brady isn’t just the dorm monitor, you know,” CeCe told her. “She knows everything. She heard Miss Maxwell telling Mrs. Peabody about it, and then she told me.”
Katie seemed to process this. “That doesn’t make any sense. If the uncle is crazy, why was Roberta the one who was sent away?”
“Maybe she saw blood,” CeCe said. “Maybe she had a nervous breakdown or something. If I saw something like that, I’d want to get as far away as possible.”
It was a fair point. They looked at Roberta, who was eating her dinner in silence, her face pale. “Keep your head down,” Katie warned after a minute. “Here comes Lady Loon.”
The argument at the back table had escalated, and Sherri Koustapos had jumped up, shoving the bench with the backs of her knees. Alison was still sitting, eating her creamed corn, but her face was red with silent fury. CeCe had felt Alison’s wrath only once, in her first month at Idlewild—Alison had called her a “fat cow” and hit her with one of the broken badminton rackets from the locker storage room—and she never wanted to feel it again. Alison hated everyone, and when she hit, she hit hard.
Striding across the room, heading for the commotion, was Miss London, the teacher everyone knew as Lady Loon. Her dirty blond hair was frizzing loose from its topknot, and the armpits of her flowered polyester dress were damp. She was in her twenties, Idlewild’s youngest teacher, and after only six months of teaching here she was still woefully unprepared. The girls’ moods drove her crazy, their dramas riled her up, and their lack of discipline always enraged her. With over a hundred teenage girls, most of them unsalvageable, riding her nerves every day, she spent most of her time in a crazy rage that would have been funny if it didn’t have an echo of hopelessness about it.
“Ladies!” CeCe heard her say over the din of the fighting rabble of girls. “Ladies. Sit down!”
The girls didn’t notice. With a gasp, CeCe watched Sherri lean over and spit on Alison’s plate. Alison barely paused before she jumped off her bench and hit as hard as she could, her heavy, waxy fist making contact with Sherri’s nose with an audible crack.
The other teachers, who had stood milling at the edge of the room, reluctantly began to move, muttering. Lady Loon—it was her habit of calling the girls ladies that gave her the title—wrenched Alison by the arm and dragged her from the table. The din was deafening. Girls were shouting, Sherri was screaming and bleeding, and the teachers were moving in as a group. CeCe couldn’t hear her voice, but she could see Lady Loon’s lipsticked mouth forming the words: Calm down, ladies! Calm down! She watched as blood dripped between Sherri’s fingers and spattered on the floor, and she inched a little closer to Katie. “I hate blood,” she said.
She followed Katie’s gaze, which had left the melee and focused on something else. Sonia was standing in front of one of the large windows, behind a knot of excited girls. The French girl was still, her face pale. How had CeCe never noticed how small she was? Sonia always seemed so strong, like a blade, narrow but impossible to break. Yet she was shorter than all the American girls around her, and when one of them bumped past her to get a better view, Sonia was knocked almost off-balance, like a rag doll.