following quickly. 'We poor underlings had a rather uneventful dinner, except for the part where I accidentally spilled my hot soup on Patti Denning.' They all laughed again. 'How was Louis? At least tell us that much.'
'Very nice,' I said.
'Did you go groping in the dark with him?' she asked. Despite myself, I couldn't keep my blood from rushing into my cheeks. Gisselle's eyes widened. 'Did you?' she pursued.
'Stop it!' I screamed, and crossed quickly to my room. I slammed the door shut to cut off the laughter behind me. Abby looked up from her textbook, surprised at my abrupt entrance.
'What's wrong?'
'Gisselle,' I said simply, and she smirked with understanding. She sat up and closed the book on her lap.
'How was your evening?'
'Oh, Abby,' I cried. 'It was . . . so strange. Mrs. Clairborne didn't really want me there.'
She nodded as if she had always known. 'And Louis?'
'He's in great emotional pain. . . A very talented, sensitive person, as twisted and knotted inside as swamp grass in a boat motor's propeller,' I said. And then I sat down and told her all that had happened. It made us both melancholy, and after we had gotten undressed and into our beds, we lay awake for hours, talking about our pasts. I told her more about Paul and the terrible frustration I had experienced when I learned that the boy I was so fond of was really my half brother. She compared this horrible joke Fate had played on me with her own discoveries about herself and her family lineage.
'It seems both of us have been wounded by events over which we have no control . . . like we're being made to pay for the sins of our parents and grandparents. It's so unfair. We should all have a fresh start.'
'Even Louis,' I remarked.
'Yes,' she said thoughtfully, 'even Louis.'
I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the memory of his composition entitled 'Ruby.'
The week that followed began uneventfully, with the promise of being routine. Even Gisselle seemed to calm down and to do some real schoolwork. I noted a remarkable change in her behavior when she was at school. In the two classes we shared, she was quiet and attentive. She even surprised me by stopping her entourage in the hallway after English to have Samantha pick up some gum wrappers someone had discarded near the water fountain. Of course, she still held court in the cafeteria, sitting back like some grand duchess whose words were to be treated with royal respect and commenting on this one and that one, usually in a mocking fashion that stimulated choruses of laughter from the ever wing audiences she gathered around her.
But the sarcasm that had characterized her replies to questions in class and her ridicule of our teachers and our homework assignments were absent from her speech and behavior. Twice, when Mrs. Ironwood was standing in the corridors observing the students as they passed between periods, Gisselle had Samantha pause so she could greet the Iron Lady, who nodded back with approval.
But watching my sister's unusual good behavior made me feel like I was watching a pot of milk being boiled. It was bound to bubble up, lift the lid, and simmer over into the flames. I had lived with her long enough to know not to trust her promises, her smiles, and her kind words—whenever any spilled out from her cunningly twisted lips.
What happened next seemed at first totally unrelated. I would have to trace back the zigzag conniving that wrapped itself around my twin sister's evil mind before I could find her true purpose in all this. Ultimately, it stemmed from her initial anger over being brought to Greenwood. Despite her apparent good adjustments, she was still quite upset about it and, as I would learn, quite determined to get back to her old friends and her old ways.
On Wednesday morning, a message was sent into my social studies class, asking me to report to Mrs. Ironwood's office. Whenever anyone was called out of class to see the Iron Lady, the other students looked at the girl with pity and with relief that it wasn't any of them who had been summoned. After having experienced one session with our principal, I understood their fear. Nevertheless, I revealed no nervousness as I stood up and walked out. Of course, my heart was pounding by the time I arrived at the office. One look at the expression on Mrs. Randle's face told me I had trouble.
'Just a minute,' she snapped, as if she was an emotional extension of Mrs. Ironwood, mirroring her moods, her thoughts, her angers and pleasures. She knocked on the door and this time whispered my name. Then she closed the door and went back to her desk, leaving me standing in anticipation. She kept her eyes down on her paperwork. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and sighed deeply. Nearly a minute later, Mrs. Ironwood opened her door.
'Come in,' she ordered, and stepped back. I threw a glance at Mrs. Randle, who lifted her eyes and then lowered them instantly, as if looking at me was as deadly as it was for Lot's wife when she looked back at Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt.
I walked into the office. Mrs. Ironwood shut the door behind me and marched to her chair.
'Sit down,' she commanded. I took my seat and waited. She threw me a hard look and began. 'By this time it would not be unreasonable of me to expect that one of my new students had read the Greenwood School handbook, especially if that new student was scholastically outstanding,' she said. 'Am I correct?' she asked.
'Yes, I suppose so,' I said.
'You've done so?'
'Yes, although I haven't committed it to memory,' I added, perhaps too sharply, for her eyes narrowed into slits and her face whitened, especially at the corners of her mouth. Her frown deepened before she continued.
'I don't ask for it to be committed to memory so it can be recited word for word. I ask that it be read, understood, and obeyed.' She sat back and snapped open a handbook tearing back the pages and then slapping the book open.
'Section seventeen, paragraph two, regarding leaving the Greenwood campus. Before a registered student can leave the school boundaries, she must have specific, written parental permission on file with the administrative office. This must be dated and signed.
