Cara said.
“Well,” Mrs. Johnson conceded, “you probably do. But I say we get to work and keep working until we hear we shouldn’t, because if we don’t work, it will surely turn out we should have. Let’s go in to the auditorium and wait. Maybe it’ll be warmer in there. Candy?”
Candy went “mmm,” and then, realizing that both Cara and Mrs. Johnson were looking at her, forced a smile. The boulder felt bigger now, enormous, and Candy was doing as much as she could just to remember how to breathe. Cara and Mrs. Johnson were staring at her as if she were the stupidest person in the world—which, in Candy’s opinion, they had every right to do. Candy knew she was stupid in much the same way she knew she was ugly. She could look in the mirror and tell.
Candy backed up a little and made herself take a deep breath. “Excuse me,” she said. “I think I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Are you feeling ill?” Mrs. Johnson asked her.
“There’s that nasty flu going around,” Cara said. “It could put you in bed for a week.”
“I just have to go to the bathroom,” Candy said again. Then she turned her back on them and began to move faster, chugging down the hall, heading for the polished wooden door with “Ladies” printed on it. Behind her, Cara and Mrs. Johnson were muttering to each other. For one awful moment, Cara’s voice floated into the dead silence and steam-heated calm.
“God only knows what the committee was thinking of when they picked her,” Cara said. “She can’t think her way out of a paper bag.”
“ Shhh ,” Mrs. Johnson said, sounding frantic.
Candy got through the ladies’ room door, across the carpeted expanse in front of the vanities, down the tile corridor in the back room and into a stall. Then she shut the stall door and locked it and laid her forehead against the cold comfort of the gray metal partition wall. She didn’t care what Cara said about her mind. Everybody said that kind of thing about her and had been saying it for years. She didn’t care what Mrs. Johnson thought ought to be kept a secret, either. She knew enough about secrets to start her own college of witchcraft. What she did care about was—
All of a sudden, it felt very quiet in the ladies’ room, quiet and ominous, the way the house got just before Reggie really took off or just before her stepfather used to come into her room. That was another house, of course, but it all ran together, it was all one and the same place except for here. Here was different. Here was air that was full of oxygen and quiet that was comforting instead of dangerous and laughter that never got crazy and out of control, and here would be that way as long as she, Candy George, went on being somebody else in a long robe with an angel to come and visit her. That was the key. That was the small wedge of light in this sea of black ink. When the Celebration was over, she would go back to being what she really was, and that was… that was—
Suddenly, Candy George got a very clear picture of a woman she had seen only two or three times in her life. She was Tisha Verek, and in Candy’s vision, she was standing next to a small German car at the side of a road, looking like a deer that had frozen at the sound of an approaching hunter.
7
It was ten minutes after nine when Gemma Bury got her third and last call of the morning about Tisha Verek’s lawsuit, and it was nine-twelve when she decided that the situation was likely to drive her straight into a nuthouse before it was resolved. Gemma Bury liked putting it that way to herself—straight into a nuthouse—almost as much as she had once liked smoking cigarettes in the boiler room at her very expensive girls’ boarding school in Virginia. There was something about indulging in the forbidden that produced a kick nothing else could. Gemma was thirty-eight years old, and she had spent much of her life in search of that kick. At school, it had been easy to find. Gemma’s
“Well,” Mrs. Johnson conceded, “you probably do. But I say we get to work and keep working until we hear we shouldn’t, because if we don’t work, it will surely turn out we should have. Let’s go in to the auditorium and wait. Maybe it’ll be warmer in there. Candy?”
Candy went “mmm,” and then, realizing that both Cara and Mrs. Johnson were looking at her, forced a smile. The boulder felt bigger now, enormous, and Candy was doing as much as she could just to remember how to breathe. Cara and Mrs. Johnson were staring at her as if she were the stupidest person in the world—which, in Candy’s opinion, they had every right to do. Candy knew she was stupid in much the same way she knew she was ugly. She could look in the mirror and tell.
Candy backed up a little and made herself take a deep breath. “Excuse me,” she said. “I think I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Are you feeling ill?” Mrs. Johnson asked her.
“There’s that nasty flu going around,” Cara said. “It could put you in bed for a week.”
“I just have to go to the bathroom,” Candy said again. Then she turned her back on them and began to move faster, chugging down the hall, heading for the polished wooden door with “Ladies” printed on it. Behind her, Cara and Mrs. Johnson were muttering to each other. For one awful moment, Cara’s voice floated into the dead silence and steam-heated calm.
“God only knows what the committee was thinking of when they picked her,” Cara said. “She can’t think her way out of a paper bag.”
“ Shhh ,” Mrs. Johnson said, sounding frantic.
Candy got through the ladies’ room door, across the carpeted expanse in front of the vanities, down the tile corridor in the back room and into a stall. Then she shut the stall door and locked it and laid her forehead against the cold comfort of the gray metal partition wall. She didn’t care what Cara said about her mind. Everybody said that kind of thing about her and had been saying it for years. She didn’t care what Mrs. Johnson thought ought to be kept a secret, either. She knew enough about secrets to start her own college of witchcraft. What she did care about was—
All of a sudden, it felt very quiet in the ladies’ room, quiet and ominous, the way the house got just before Reggie really took off or just before her stepfather used to come into her room. That was another house, of course, but it all ran together, it was all one and the same place except for here. Here was different. Here was air that was full of oxygen and quiet that was comforting instead of dangerous and laughter that never got crazy and out of control, and here would be that way as long as she, Candy George, went on being somebody else in a long robe with an angel to come and visit her. That was the key. That was the small wedge of light in this sea of black ink. When the Celebration was over, she would go back to being what she really was, and that was… that was—
Suddenly, Candy George got a very clear picture of a woman she had seen only two or three times in her life. She was Tisha Verek, and in Candy’s vision, she was standing next to a small German car at the side of a road, looking like a deer that had frozen at the sound of an approaching hunter.
7
It was ten minutes after nine when Gemma Bury got her third and last call of the morning about Tisha Verek’s lawsuit, and it was nine-twelve when she decided that the situation was likely to drive her straight into a nuthouse before it was resolved. Gemma Bury liked putting it that way to herself—straight into a nuthouse—almost as much as she had once liked smoking cigarettes in the boiler room at her very expensive girls’ boarding school in Virginia. There was something about indulging in the forbidden that produced a kick nothing else could. Gemma was thirty-eight years old, and she had spent much of her life in search of that kick. At school, it had been easy to find. Gemma’s
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