I watched her waving at people as they put their head around my door, blowing them kisses, calling them darling.
Skipper’s popularity seemed effortless; she just had to walk into a room and people turned to her like sunflowers. In comparison I was stilted and self-conscious, chewing on the inside of my cheek, my hair flopping over one eye. While I should have been jealous of Skipper, the precise opposite was true—in her company I instantly felt wittier and more likable. Take that away and I felt I’d wilt, reverting back to the pale, bookish misfit I believed myself to be, one of those ill-fated girls, like Gerry Lake, who had no one to share a dorm with, were doomed to eat alone, and had to ask a housemistress to order another Divine just to walk to Woolworths with them, some indignant classmate plucked at random from the refectory line or rec room. This was the future that awaited me without Skipper’s friendship, I thought, looking over at Gerry Lake’s empty bed.
I would have done almost anything to protect it.
Sitting on my bunk, Skipper’s hairless legs formed a bridge over my own. There was a prolonged period of silence, unusual for us, which made me nervous. A year ago we had been close as sisters, and we never shut up. I became aware of the sound of my breathing; one of my nostrils was whistling, and I attempted to quiet it by pinching my nose. I mined my brain, trying to think of something clever or amusing to say to keep her interested. It was obvious. The moose. All I had to do was lean back a couple of inches and tug the photograph out of its hiding place. Her reaction would have been seismic. I pictured the high shrieks, first Skipper’s, then other Divines stampeding into my room to find out the gossip, their hands covering their mouths in shock. Suddenly I realized the enormous power I had.
“Actually, I’ve got something to show you,” I said, pulling out the photo.
But the door slammed open, thrust violently against my bunk.
“Well, look who it is.” Skipper rolled her eyes, let out a sigh. “The Poison Dwarf.”
9
Gerry Lake. Five feet one in skates, by far the shortest girl in our year, with lean, short limbs, doll-like in her proportions. She had a pert nose that turned slightly at the end, minuscule ears, cat eyes that seemed to be tugged by the severity of her high ponytail into two upwards slants, and a dark mole on her chin, a beauty spot that she covered with makeup. She glared at Skipper sitting on my top bunk, then, without comment, she unzipped the sports jacket she was wearing, made from a slick waterproof material with a number of team badges on it, and tossed it on her bed.
“Geraldine, love,” we heard her father calling down the corridor.
I pushed the Polaroid photo back in place.
Mr. Lake lumbered into our dorm room after his daughter, wheeling a large zippered holdall with the name of Gerry’s skating team on the outside.
“There you are,” he said, and then, startled to catch us dressed in just our nightclothes, flushed with embarrassment.
“Sorry about that, girls. We’ll get unpacked, won’t we, Gerry, then I’ll be out of your hair. This one’s yours, is it, love?” and he gestured at the bed.
Mr. Lake opened Gerry’s wardrobe and began shoveling the contents of the bag onto shelves—sparkly beige tights, leotards, silk skirts. All the while his daughter looked on sullenly, not bothering to help. Her father pulled out a drawer, almost dislocating it completely from its socket, and when it was overflowing with Gerry’s clothes, he bent over and began to pump its contents down with his fist as if he was plunging a blocked sink. To my vexation, girls in the corridor—hearing Mr. Lake’s groaning and the slamming of drawers—came to stick their heads around my door to see what was happening. Mr. Lake was a stout man with a large gut who wore brightly colored suspenders, a manager of some description, something to do with the sale of stationery, I think. Literally, a pen pusher. Each time he reached to pull out another drawer he grunted in discomfort, and when he stood up straight, he let out a loud gasp of breath as if surfacing from a long underwater dive. He placed two photos on Gerry’s desk, one of her with the teammates we had never met—though in months to come we would see their bloodshot eyes and crumpled, puffy faces in all the newspapers—the second a family photo. Mrs. Lake, Gerry’s stepmother, was, in contrast to her husband, a thin tall woman, a nurse who had once, to our amusement and Gerry’s disgust, come to give a sex education talk to our year. Mr. Lake was loud, Mrs. Lake was dour, neither of them at ease amongst the Divine.
Skipper nudged me with her toe and pulled a face at Mr. Lake’s back as he attempted to string his daughter’s ice-skating costumes onto coat hangers, his large fingers working clumsily, stretching the fabric onto hooks. Off body, Gerry’s leotards, bejeweled and sparkling, looked implausibly small. Tiny pelts. Gerry caught Skipper’s look and narrowed her eyes at us, her arms crossed.
Finally Mr. Lake plucked one or two of Gerry’s stuffed toys from the holdall and climbed up the first rung of her bed to rest them on her pillow. He swore in frustration. The bed was stripped and unmade.
“Come on, love, lend a hand,” he said to Gerry. “Daphne’s waiting in the car.”
Gerry’s mouth, I remember, pinched together at the mention of her stepmother. She dumped her folded bedsheets in his arms then picked up her wash bag and pajamas and stomped away in the direction of the bathrooms.
Mr. Lake muttered something under his breath, then he smiled apologetically at Skipper and me. Climbing back up the ladder, he flapped the bedsheet, crawling on all fours over Gerry’s bed, stabbing the corners of the sheet into place with his fingers. It was rare to see parents up in dormitories, let alone clambering around like an orangutan. Divines said their good-byes at the foot of the shoe tree, a curt kiss to each cheek from their parents, a wave from the car window. Gerry, unsurprisingly, had always been babied by her parents. She was, her father would later say to the press, their special girl, their princess, their gem.
By the time he had finished making Gerry’s bed Mr. Lake was sweating in his suit, I remember, red all over, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Again, Skipper nudged me with her foot. Mr. Lake, suddenly aware he was being scrutinized, glanced sideways, caught sight of our naked thighs, and turned an even deeper-colored purple.
A bell sounded. Lights-out. Skipper spun her legs ninety degrees, rocked forward and back, and jumped off my bed. Likewise Mr. Lake scrambled down the ladder just as his daughter came back, dressed now in her pajamas. He rolled down his sleeves and put his suit jacket back on, flustered, as if he’d been caught in the act. Gerry looked from her father to Skipper.
Outside girls were darting from room to room, trying to say their final good nights before the headmistress began her rounds. Skipper held the door open so that Mr. Lake could pass through, wheeling Gerry’s empty bag behind him.
“Au revoir,” Skipper said to me. “See you in the morning.”
“Brill,” I answered automatically, trying not to show how miserable I was to be left alone with Gerry. “À tout à l’heure.”
That was the way Divines spoke to one another, always truncating our language or speaking in French. Merde, we said when something went wrong. C’est la vie.
Skipper caught arms with Dickie Balfour, who was walking back along the corridor from the shower. I pictured the whispered conversations Skipper would have at night with the twins, the dorm room gossip, the private jokes I wasn’t party to and felt sick with anxiety. All my worst fears seemed to be coming true. I felt again how unfair it was that I was stuck with Gerry, in this term of all terms. Our last few weeks as juniors before we crossed to the Other Side. Or so we believed.