ψψψ
I started the first day of the term utterly alone. Luce was avoiding me, while I was avoiding Cassius, and Grace and I had spent so much time apart that I didn't know where to begin with her. If I did meet her, I guessed I should thank her for sending Cassius to come get me. Although that might open up a Pandora's box of questions.
Instead of a first-period class, they sat all of us seniors in the auditorium to tell us about the upcoming college application season. Our counselors would schedule several meetings with us to help us whittle down a list according to our ability. Then, recruiters would come to the school on their tour of private schools across the country.
I slipped lower into my seat, legs crossed in front of me. They projected several schools that Fortuna students tended to go to. The most elite private colleges of course. Some of the "public" elite schools in the South and on the West Coast. And of course, the school of Fortuna's blue-bloods, Cornelius. Everybody who was anybody went to Cornelius. The principal had gone. All the senior faculty. Most of the parents of the full-paying students. I wouldn't be going there. Not while I was living. I wanted out of New England, snowy winters, and isolated backroads. I had a couple of schools in California on my list, a couple in Texas, some in Maryland and Virginia. I didn't have to get into the "perfect school." I didn't need a school that everyone wanted to go to. I needed a nice scholarship somewhere where I could go unnoticed, somewhere where I could be a blade of grass in a rolling plain of faces. And that was certainly not Cornelius.
I left the presentation and headed toward my next-period class. By the door of it, I saw Cassius turning his head, scanning. I stopped, before thinking better and slipping into the next stream of walking traffic. If I had stood there like an idiot, he would have seen me quicker. But still, I had to get to class, and by the looks of it—and the passing minutes—he was willing to wait beyond the bell for me. Couldn't I go one day without dealing with any of my problems? Was that too much to ask?
Yes, when they're problems of your own making.
I turn back around. He was still there. I stepped out of the shuffling lines to try and cross the hall. Instead, I ran into a body headfirst. I stumbled, but I didn't fall. Some books did though, though after I opened my eyes and patted myself down, I realized they weren't mine. I blinked and realization dripped in. The other Ambrose Devil—Liliana stared at me with narrowed eyes and a red mouth folded slim.
"Excuse me," she said. She hustled around me and I glanced over what had fallen on the ground. Not one, not two, but three books. I frowned and looked closer, folding my body. They were leather bound and...old looking. I lifted my head. Was she going to come get them back? I couldn't see her at all in the thinning crowd. I gathered the books up and set them, one by one, in my bag.
Finally, when that was done, I went back to class. Cassius was still there, checking his watch and staring down the hall in the opposite direction, but when my shoes squealed across the floor, he looked my way. He lifted himself from the lockers.
"I haven't been able to find you anywhere," he said. He reached for me and I stayed still as he held my arms. "I knocked on your dorm."
"I haven't been in the dorms too much. You know. Roommate trouble."
He searched my face and paused a moment, before saying. "I have a single." He paused again. "If you want."
I could imagine a lot of the things we would end up doing in the single. His eyes grew hotter, and I swept my hands as if to dust them away.
"No, I'm okay. I want to make up with her quickly."
"But she doesn't like me."
"She doesn't have to."
He looked at me and I stared back with a clenched jaw. The bell rang. "Cassius. I have to go to class," I said.
"Come find me later," he said. He squeezed my shoulder. It didn't feel romantic. It didn't feel lustful. It felt like a warning. "I want to see you."
He left, walking with no urgency. I dipped into class, made a dozen apologies for my lateness, and dumped my newly heavy backpack onto the ground.
ψψψ
At the end of the school day, I had a few minutes to sit before I had to go to practice. I sat down at my desk in the empty bedroom (as now both Luce and Grace stayed out as long as possible) and opened my backpack. I sighed. How did it come to this? My friend group dissolved at the start of my senior year, but my problems with the student body were erased. I thought if everyone left me alone that everything would just...stop. But I didn't feel better. I felt the same kind of lousy as always. I shook my head and lifted a book from my bag.
I stared down at the leather-bound book that Liliana Ambrose had earlier dropped. I'd give them back to her at practice today. But you would think that she notice a fucking brick had fallen out of her bag.
A long purple book mark hung out of the pages. I ran my fingers across it. It was satin, I think. The leather, despite its age, looked strong. The pages had the thick, dusty smell of an old library. I wondered if she had taken this out of some archive for independent research. We were seniors now—maybe she wanted to do an extra project. I opened the book. Yes, it was none of my business, but this was Liliana we were talking about: I didn't like her.
The front page read, in looping, ink script, "the Diary of Mary Ambrose, née Browne." My eyebrows shot up to my hairline. As in their ancestor Mary Ambrose? My eyes drifted to the dates below. From more than three hundred years ago?
I kept flipping the pages. Entries began.
"Dear Mary Jr—
That Devil boy, he took my seat in class. I sit in the back now, I can barely see. I'm going to fail my exams and the teacher is going to wallop me good."
"Dear Mary Jr—
I'm going to begin to write smaller. I only have one extra leather-bound book--the one Papa got me for Christmas—and money is tighter. Papa, he will not tell me, but I know."
"Dear Mary Jr—
I don't know what money I'll have for dowry. A girl without dowry, what kind of marriage can she make? I'll be ruined, the business is ruined, oh I'll have to find work. It's the Ambroses, putting their money into that new man, the Scott down the street. It takes all the money out of our mill."
"Dear Mary Jr—
The new job and the caustic lye burns all my fingers right down to the reds, but it's work, honest work. Never mind it's on the Devil's property, that highborn finishing school, but Papa is not so well Mary. Won't you say a little prayer with me?"
"Dear Mary Jr—
The Devil boy has discovered me. He won't leave me alone. I'm afraid he'll chase me out. I'm afraid I'll die of hunger in the street. I'm afraid that I'll have to resort to things that will make God..." Her handwriting became shaky here. The page was discolored. "I will be strong, Mary, for my siblings. Soon, I may be all they have."
"Oh, Mary—
I've made a dreadful mistake! This is the end of me, I'm going to be a Pariah forever. I don't know what demon took over me and forced me to jump. But that boy—that man—he made me so angry! All his life, he's made me so angry, and then I...I'm ruined, I'm ruined, my siblings..."
I scratched my chin as I skimmed the rest of the entry. She must have attacked Cassius's ancestor after a fight in the laundry room. She snapped and attacked him after he'd spent years bent on destroying her. My stomach twisted. Mary's entries were reading like an echo of my thoughts.
"Dear Mary Jr."
I'm getting married. The town ladies turn their cheek at me, others tell me to be very grateful. I suppose this marriage will make me a respectable woman. These same ladies will probably kneel at my feet after. Oh Mary, terrified. How did this happen, how did I get caught? Why is it me?"
Mary's entries stopped there. I could tell there were pages ripped out, but I would never know if they were recent rips or the act of someone centuries ago. I set it aside and quickly turned my thoughts to the other journals sitting in my bag. Was Liliana writing a history of her family? I pulled out the other two diaries and laid them flat. Both were women, young women. Both entries stopped right after or soon before they married. I picked one up and flipped it open, fingers soft over the delicate pages.
This girl was named Eliza Bell. And her entries began when she must have been about fourteen. They started with a foreword: "On my fourteenth birthday, I was given this little book by my dearest Mama. Seeing as she is not here anymore, but you are, you shall take her name. Therefore, I christen you Hildeen, called Hildie."
At that same fourteen, Mary was seeing the tailend of a life of woe at the hand of her future husband. By all records, and what I'd learned of the town's history, he went on to build a library in school after her. He also spoiled her with imported goods for the rest of her life, before dying quietly a few days after her. How could a man change so much? I shook my head and set my eyes back on Eliza's diary.
"Some of our boys, union soldiers, came to the house. They asked for eggs, but Father gave them the fattest hen too. I know food is food, and we are never to name the animals, but I expected the laying hens to live longer lives and secretly I named them all. I almost screamed when I saw the soldiers poking Ren, thinking what fine stew she might make. She was young as well. I would've gone into the house to cry if one soldier hadn't looked at me in such a way that I ought to have beat him off with a broom. He had to have been a few years older than me. And he was a handsome fellow, with a voice like honey. Eyes too."
That soldier with the honey eyes. That was her Ambrose. I flipped through the pages I'd passed, filled with mundane narratives of deprivation and struggle during the civil war. She had to have been about sixteen when she first met him. "He said he'd be back. I said I would not be meeting him and he'd be swiftly court-martialed. I thought nothing of the encounter for another year--his regiment was on the move anyway."
"Dear Hildie—
The boy with the honey eyes came back in the night. He rode a black mare. He threw rocks at my window and I opened for fear he would wake Father and the baby asleep in the loft. I climbed down to reason with him. And Hilde, what I write next, let live only between us two and god. I am ashamed. I ended up in an embrace with him. His mouth on my mouth. It burned everywhere. At some point in the time we spent together in the shadow of the house, he asked me to elope, and I confessed I'd do no such thing with a stranger. He gave me a look I thought might kill! He must have thought I was a very low girl to kiss a stranger and then send him off. Papa now looks at me strangely. I fear he knows. I must hide this, for the sake of my future!"
I closed my eyes. So her Ambrose had been kind to her. He'd looked for a spur-of-the-moment marriage, but she never experienced anything like Mary...or I...did.
"Dear Hildie—
He came back, just three weeks after. He makes me so...he makes me so wretchedly confused, like a newborn babe, and alight with a feverish kind of shiver. I think...I think I'm going to pray that he stays away. There's nothing good about meeting a yellow-eyed stranger at night."
I turned to the next page. She hit her eighteen birthday. Her Ambrose stayed away and by all accounts, her prayer worked. She began to court hometown boys as they were on leave. She considered getting engaged, or even getting married to a boy who lost a leg and was sure to be home for the rest of the war.
"He's perfectly fine," she wrote of him. "If I were just a bit different, I could love him fair as he should be loved, the poor thing. But there is something missing from him. He's not like the honey-eyed soldier. I see him everywhere. He lives in my dreams and the things he does...I have been praying more these days and I hope God saves me."
I flipped to another page.
"Dear Hilde—
He came back and we kissed, three times now. I missed him, I missed him. Aren't I a terrible, devil-born girl? I did a thing no unmarried girl ought to. But the fever, the fever..."
I frowned. Eliza was going crazy slowly. The entries became longer, and longer descriptions of what she was seeing in her dreams with the man. Some of them made me flush, close my eyes and turn to the next page without finishing. Her father was beginning to suspect something was truly wrong, and one morning she found herself in front of the Pastor's wife, talking about the need to fight the Devil in all things. She was mortified, but that night in a dream, the honey-eyed man told her it was all right as they'd "committed no sin. For can love be a sin?"
The next entry was the last.
"Dear Hilde—
He came again and went up to my father. He said he was a rich land and business owner. He had the documents to prove it. He said he'd marry me right away if only for my father's blessing. Papa was bewildered—he hadn't seen this man since the day he came with his fellows. Seeing as the war had ended, the man said it was the right time for our wedding. My father wanted to send him out, but he said, "Eliza, don't stand in the hall so shy when we've already made ourselves man and wife." Oh I swear, Papa wanted to beat him dead, but instead gave his blessing when the man brought out a real fine golden watch. So I'm set to be married, very quick, before word of my indiscretion and immorality spreads. I've finally discovered his full name. His family is called Ambrose. Do you think it will be fine on me, Hilde? I hope so, for in three weeks, I'll be Mrs. Eliza Bell Ambrose. "
I set the diary down. Her story was romantic in a way. At least, compared to Mary's. But her description of the dreams, of the fire, of the compulsion that pushed her to decisions more and more reckless than the last was familiar to me too. I swallowed hard and checked the clock.
Damn. I had to go to practice. I shoved the books back into my backpack and my backpack under my desk. I'd be back for the third one later. Not tonight, because I had work, but as soon as possible. I was excited to know what the last girl had to say about her encounter with an Ambrose.