The Lonely Girls Club by Suzanne Forster

Author:Suzanne Forster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

26

Mattie was surprised at the beauty. She could remember only fear and ugliness, but a golden spire split the clouds overhead, haloing the campus in sunlight. She’d expected to feel revulsion, but it was burning sadness that rose inside her as she followed the tree-lined paths that rambled through groves of ferns and feathery greenbelts.

Summers here had been her favorite time. Ms. Rowe was usually away on sabbatical and with the day students gone it had felt like the campus belonged to the scholarship girls. Only Ivy had a home to go back to. She lived somewhere in the Napa Valley, but she never spoke of her family, not to anyone.

Mattie almost didn’t mind having nowhere else to go. The long break was serene and hopeful, the way all her time at Rowe Academy should have been. It was the people, not the building or the grounds, she reminded herself. People made things ugly.

Raindrops brought her out of her reflections. One splashed on her cheek. Another hit her eyelash. The air smelled of dust from the paths, the way it did be for ear a in storm. When the sky opened up, the grounds would get a good soaking, and everything would reek wonderfully of wet dirt and sweet green grass.

Mattie’s senses mercilessly tugged her back, torturing her with pleasure and pain. How would she deal with this? Memories would flood her, and she feared she wouldn’t be able to handle them, even the good ones. Perhaps the good ones would hurt the most because they were so few and so precious, each a tiny diamond, bright and sparkling, chopped out of black carbon. A tiny diamond, sharp enough to cut.

Stop, Mattie, or this will overwhelm you. You’re here to find the videotape, not reminisce.

She put her head down and dashed across a gravel parking lot toward the halls and buildings that surrounded the courtyard. The layout rather reminded her of a Norman fortress, but the flourishes were gothic, and today she was headed for the one with the corner bell tower, Steuben Hall.

She slowed to a walk as she entered the courtyard. It still felt too close for comfort here. Gray stone monoliths surrounded her on every side, looming guardians that blocked the light. Her legs grew heavy as she approached the crumbling brick tower where the headmistress had lived.

The slower she went the faster the rain came down.

From somewhere behind her drifted the coo of a mourning dove. Desolate, that sound. She’d never seen the bird, but she’d heard the haunting cry every day of her four years here. It couldn’t be the same bird. Not twenty years later.

Her silk blouse and linen slacks were drenched by the time she reached the steps of Steuben Hall. She should have worn a jacket. She’d lived in the Bay area all her life, and nothing about the weather could be predicted, except its unpredictability. Her bare feet squished around in the spectator pumps that Breeze had insisted she wear.

A burst of white light confused her.

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