Posted on Sunday, 15 July 2001
Wendy Darcy unconsciously bit her lip as she walked slowly into room 1306 just after the bell rang. She hugged her books tight to her chest, but still managed to walk casually as her purple skirt gently brushed against tan her knees. The spirals of her yellow notebook dug circles into her arm, but she clutched them still tighter, as if she was afraid they were going to runaway from her, as if losing them would make her life more miserable than it already was.
Those were her two nervous habits, besides interjecting "like" and "you know" too often into conversations. She was a chronic lip biter and book clutcher. But no one noticed, and if they did they were too scared to say anything. Wendy Darcy was the queen of Darbyshire Senior High.
Today things were different, though. DSH was a distant memory as she made her way through the crowded Algebra classroom. The classroom was filled with unfamiliar faces and eyes that observed this late arrival with curiosity. Who was she? What kind of girl came to a new school in the middle of the first quarter? Wendy only rolled her eyes and stepped over legs and squeezed her thin body between desks in order to get to the one empty desk, sitting untouched in the front row.
"Ah," Mr. Sterling said, looking over the rim of his thick glasses. "Miss Darcy. It's about time you showed up."
"Sorry," she muttered, rolling her eyes.
"Walking in late may be common practice in Darbyshire, but it is unacceptable here." His voice was thin and pasty like watered down glue. He slid a yellow half sheet of paper and a full size green piece of paper onto her desk. "This is a list of rules and regulations for my class and the syllabus. Read it and sign it. Then have your parents read and sign it. Bring it back to me tomorrow."
She bit her lip to keep tears from welling up in her eyes. She was Wendy Darcy. Wendy Darcy did not cry in public. She did not cry in front of perfect strangers. She had to pull herself together. It was hard when so much had changed so quickly.
Wendy and her little sister Gina had lived with their mother in Darbyshire, Illinois. For years they had lived in an apartment, but when Mrs. Darcy, a bank teller, was promoted and had received the raise she had been hoping for, she moved the three of them into a nice house with a spacious yard, big enough to keep even their little Carin Terrier, Penguin, busy.
Wendy was a senior in high school and Gina was a freshman. Wendy had some of the highest grades in the school and was popular and had everything going for her. Life seemed almost perfect, until he came into their lives.
Wendy's parent's had been divorced for years. Her father had moved to Hertfordshire, a dinky town on the eastern side of Minnesota. He was a writer, always claiming he was working on the next national best seller. He had only published one book, however, and it was a far cry from a best seller.
Wendy had hardly ever seen her father after he moved to Hertfordshire, but when she did, he told her things she should remember. "Never trust a man who uses his middle name," he told her one summer day, as they sat swinging their bare feet off the back porch of his small home. The grass softly tickled their toes as they sat listening to the bees hum around them.
"Why not, Dad?" she asked, she squinted her eyes in the sun when she turned to look at him.
"You know you have the biggest blue eyes I've ever seen," he said. He smiled and mused her dark blond hair. "I regret that I only see you on these summer visits." He let out a deep sigh and looked across the open field.
"And Christmas," she reminded him. She couldn't forget Christmas, when her dad made hot chocolate. She remembered watching as the bobbing marshmallow slowly disintegrated into white foam. When that happened, her dad always added more.
He smiled and put his hand around her shoulder and squeezed it tight. "And Christmas," he agreed.
Wendy hadn't given it much thought at the time. She had thought more about how she loved her dad than what he had said at the beginning of the conversation. "Never," his words later echoed through her mind, "trust a man who uses his middle name."
It hadn't struck her as odd at first when George Alexander Wickham entered their lives in Darbyshire. He was handsome, good-looking, charming, and he was after her mom. They worked together at the bank. After they started dating, Wendy was happy. Her mom had finally found a man who made her smile.
Names hadn't flooded her mind until after the fact. Names like, John Willkes Booth, and James Earl Ray. How could she have been so stupid as the let her mother get close to a man who used his middle name? She should have done something to stop it.
Three weeks earlier...
Lisa Darcy winked at George Alexander over the window of her counter as she counted the money out for an elderly woman who had come in with a social security check.
"Ten... twenty... thirty... and fifty cents. Have a nice day, Mrs. Belltone." She smiled sweetly at the old woman as she carefully tucked the twenty-dollar bill she had taken from Mrs. Belltone into the secret spot she and George Alexander had created. It had taken months, but George Alexander had slowly convinced her to take money from the people who came in. She had started with small change and slowly increased until, now, she took at least twenty dollars from most of the people. Of course she felt bad at first, but for George Alexander, the "foot-in-the-door phenomenon" had worked like a charm and by now he had Lisa taking money with a smile on her face and a "have a nice day" on her lips. She was his ticket to wealth. She was taking twenty's today... maybe hundred's tomorrow.
The best part about George Alexander's scheme was there was no connection to him at all. She couldn't prove that he had told her to do it. There was no sign of anything other than a social relationship, and no proof that he even knew what she was doing. It was a foolproof plan.
It came to no surprise to George Alexander when Lisa was arrested at 12:34 one afternoon a week later. She begged him for help, but he only shook his head sadly and said it was "such a shame" and he "never saw it coming."
Lisa was guaranteed a speedy trial, which she got, but it was hardly fair. Before she could stop to think about what had just happened, she found herself in Illinois State Penitentiary, all alone in the world.
Her children were taken to Hertfordshire, Minnesota to live with their dad and all four of them knew beyond the shadow of the doubt that life for them would never be the same again.
Eric Bennet ran into his Algebra class. He mentally cursed his choir teacher for making him late to his third hour class every day. The classroom was packed with bodies, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the class size dwindled. Most of the kids intended to turn over a new leaf and go to class every day, but by second quarter he could guaranty that half the class would be skipping and a third would drop it. Longbourn Area Senior High was not exactly known for its incredible scholars.
Eric hurried to the front of the room and tossed a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad on Mr. Sterling's desk. Mr. Sterling snorted and threw it in the garbage as Eric turned to his desk just in time to find someone sitting it, watching Mr. Sterling with intent blue eyes. She turned to look at him, rolled her eyes and mouthed, "What?"
Eric walked slowly to the back of the room and scooted in the seat with his girlfriend, Lydia Wickham-Bingley. He glared at the new girl who over his battered Algebra book the whole hour. As he pushed Lydia over in the tiny seat which seamed to have shrunk, he thought about how happy he would be when kids started dropping and skipping. He turned the evil eye on the chair-stealer. He hoped she would be the first to go.