Greta grinned. “I love that you’re such good friends you even talk for each other,” she said.
Isabella shot me a look as if Greta was an idiot dog scrounging for scraps that you had to humor because the owner was watching.
Greta had noticed the look. Her voice took on a pleading, explanatory tone. “Poor Bridge was feeling awful homesick, and I said she should just call and speak to her mom, but of course her mom’s not there.”
“Oh?” Isabella’s eyes moved over my face, a question in the tilt of her eyebrows.
“Because. Because she’s at the summerhouse,” I supplied woodenly. I radiated a silent plea for Isabella’s mercy. My lip twitched.
Isabella’s eyes flicked to and fro as if she were tracing something onto a map. “Sure,” she said eventually. She turned to Greta and said brightly, “It’s such a great house.”
I wanted to cry.
“Anyway.” I swallowed. “Let’s not talk about home anymore.”
Greta reached forward and put a paw on my ankle. “I know just how you feel, Bridge. Is your family coming for Christmas, at least?”
“What?” My mouth hung open, but she seemed not to have noticed my tone. She had picked another stem of grass and was occupied tying it into a bow.
“For the vacation.”
I yanked a piece of grass myself and tried to snap it in half, but it was so springy it merely bounced between my fingers. “No.”
“Izzy, are yours?”
“God no,” said Isabella, fumbling in her pockets and pulling out a pack of Lucky Strikes. “They’ll be in Colorado with my grandmom.” Isabella lit a cigarette. “I didn’t even invite them here anyway. I pretty much want to get away from them.”
Greta’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, Izzy, what a dreadful thing to say.” Her tone was mocking, but her expression was fearful, as if Isabella’s disdain might be contagious.
The dim sound of a bell tolled in the distance. Greta sat up on her knees and began threading a daisy through the knot of grass. Suddenly she dropped her arrangement and turned to me. “Bridge! You should write and ask your parents to come for the vacation,” she said, beaming. “Mom and Pops are meeting me in Florence.” Greta clapped her hands. “We could all go out for dinners together—it would be so much fun.”
I winced, not daring to look at Isabella. I flashed to an image of my family arriving at the grand wooden door of the academy. Mama conspicuously overdressed with that long chain of pearls that went out of style a hundred years ago. All the girls’ eyes switching between her and Dad. Convoluted explanations about Egyptian Christians. Sylvia measuring Rhona’s tiny wrists with a perplexed kind of envy. Rhona sleeping in the bed next to mine. Listening to Rhona rise in the night, the sound of her soft footsteps as she paced back and forth across the tiles.
“No,” I said finally, my eyes prickling. “They won’t. They have—we also—they can’t, this year.” My stomach was tight.
Isabella tapped the ash of her cigarette in a crevice between the stones. “Briddie hasn’t told you?” she said. “Her parents throw this simply lavish party each Christmas. It’s famous in St. Cyrus. With big platters of lobster and a woman harpist wearing ermine fur.” Isabella batted her eyelashes prettily. “It’s divine. The event of the season. The whole of St. Cyrus would be devastated if it were canceled.”
Greta’s eyes widened. “How dreamy. But you poor thing, you’re missing out?” She put her hand to her face. The diamond on her finger caught a shard of sunlight and pierced my eye.
I tried to smile but it snagged at the edge of my mouth. “It’s fine,” I said.
“It’s simply killing Briddie to miss out,” Isabella said. “She adores her family. I try not to talk about home so it doesn’t make her sore,” Isabella said in an artificial voice.
I let out a deep breath. It was a nice swerve—a marvelous swerve. I wanted to kiss Isabella’s hand.
“Oh, Bridge,” Greta sighed. “You’re just as bad as I am. Izzy, you’ll have to take extra-good care of Bridget over Christmas, then.”
“I will.” She smiled. “We’ll have the best time, just the two of us.” She saluted me with her cigarette. I was dazzled by my sudden reprieve. I felt light, airy. Isabella had saved me. I wanted to bundle her up and hoist her on my shoulders.
Nancy and Sister Teresa reappeared at the crest of the hill and began waving. Groaning, we climbed toward them over steep ground pitted where rabbits had burrowed into the earth and flung desiccated droppings that crumbled under my soles. The air was close and coarse, with a bitter, powdery taste, like brick dust. Sweat collected with my sunscreen and stung the corners of my eyes. Sister Teresa and Nancy were talking rapidly, Nancy gesticulating in stiff waves as if she were flagging down a taxicab.
Panting, Isabella leaned on my arm as we struggled through sand-colored burrs and dodged ankle-turning divots. “Thanks,” I whispered to her. “For covering.”
Isabella squeezed my wrist. “We can’t let the busybodies spoil our year of freedom,” she said.
Finally, we reached the top of the hill. It was mostly bare, scattered with prickly, sunburnt shrubs. Below us, fields of chapped grass and spindly wildflowers stretched out toward the Blue Mountains.
“This way,” Sister Teresa called, pointing to our right. Hidden behind a cypress tree was a whitewashed arch, where an oil painting of the saint was propped against the wood, faded and cracked from the sun. Candle stubs dribbled with fossilized wax sheltered in its arch, and around the shrine loose stones and pieces of flint had been piled to protect the candles from the wind.
As Sister Teresa approached the shrine, the rest of us hung back. She touched the top of the arch, crossed herself, then dropped to her knees in front of the shrine, her lips moving in prayer. I watched the fragile skin on the tops of her eyelids fluttering. When she opened her eyes, her gaze met mine directly, and she smiled. I looked away in embarrassment.
Then we each approached the shrine and made the sign of the cross. I took time to linger at the monument as if I were lost in contemplation, although really I was unmoved. How could one be sure St. Teresa had ever lived there? What if we were all observing a moment of reverence at a place of no significance to the real St. Teresa—her chicken coop, or her woodshed? Isabella was examining her cuticles. She looked up and, catching my eye, mimed a yawn.
10.
September
Our first term at the academy stretched its back into the last of the summer. The apple leaves in the orchard crimped around the edges, and scarlet berries of mountain ash trees smoldered in the hedgerows. White daisies glazed the hills, and each day as the sun rose, their petals filled the air with the smell of toasting sage. We were conscious that the warm days of the year were numbered, and girls sunbathed down by the lake in a frenzy of oil and lotions that baked greasy blotches onto the hot stones.