Wanting Sheila Dead(49)

The waterfall really wasn’t a waterfall. It was the turn wheel of an old mill, placed in the river in such a way that the water should have turned it as it passed through. Ivy wasn’t sure why the wheel wasn’t moving. She wasn’t sure of the name of the river, either. She didn’t think there was a major river that went through Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, but then she was only sketchy at geography. It was other things she was good at.

“A girl who got herself thrown out of history class in the eighth grade by throwing Brandenburg v. Ohio in the face of her history teacher is not going to be happy for life with a guy whose highest ambition is to have really neat body art,” her mother had said.

“I like really neat body art,” Ivy had said, but she hadn’t gone on with it, because of course her mother was right.

Janice poked her in the arm. “Ivy? Are you all right?”

Ivy shook her head. She wondered what compromises you had to make to become “accomplished,” as her mother had put it. She didn’t like the idea of making compromises at all.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about the Kennedys.”

“You mean the political Kennedys?” Grace said. “Why?”

“It was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis I was really thinking of,” Ivy said. “When we came in here, I thought that it wasn’t very realistic, putting us in an empty restaurant without other people in it, because in real life, celebrities eat with everybody else—”

“Not really,” Grace said quickly. “They go to places that keep most people out.”

“Most people, not all people,” Ivy said. “And lots of times they go to places that are stuffed with people. That’s why you get all those awful stories about people like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. But then I remembered about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.”

“What about her?” Janice said.

“They used to clear places for her,” Ivy said. “When she was still married to Onassis. If she wanted to shop, you know, they’d send a team of people in and they’d clear out the entire store if they had to, and then she’d come in and shop. And at Vail, too, they’d clear an entire slope. There are celebrities who live in a sort of bubble.”

“Well, I know something else celebrities do,” Grace said, “and I’m going to do it. I don’t see I have anything to lose. If I’m not the first person eliminated this week, I’ll be shocked out of my skin. Are they letting us order things?”

“I don’t know,” Ivy said.

She looked around. The waitresses were working their way through the tables, holding out menus, which did make it seem as if ordering was on its way. The menus did not look like they could be the ones the restaurant used most of the time, since they were only two sides of a single piece of laminated cardboard. Maybe it was the kind of place that served very small portions of everything to women who couldn’t eat anything and still maintain the weight they wanted to be for social occasions.

Ivy tried to think. She didn’t really know what she was doing here. She didn’t know if she wanted to win the competition, or just get some air time on television, or if she was just wasting time generally and, as her mother said, letting Dennis down gently. And other people’s private lives weren’t her business. But still . . .

She looked around the room. Sheila Dunham had left Andra’s table and gone on to another one, this one with only three girls at it. She looked so old up close like this, and so tired, and so unhappy. The lines in her face were all hard, and all the wrong kind.

“I’m sure she’s had absolutely a ton of plastic surgery,” Janice said, leaning in close. “She always looks so bitter. Did you ever notice that?”

“Did you ever wonder why we’re all here, trying to be just like somebody who’s so bitter?” Grace asked.

“We all think we’ll do it better when we do it ourselves,” Ivy said, but that wasn’t what she was thinking about. She was thinking about that first day, when that girl had stood up and fired that gun at Sheila Dunham’s head.

At least, that was what Ivy thought had happened.

The waitress had arrived at their stable. She took Suzanne’s order first, something with chicken and French words in it.

Then she turned to Grace.

Grace put the menu on the table.

“I’ll have steamed broccoli on a bed of white rice,” she said.

Ivy paid attention. The waitress looked startled.

“We don’t actually have—” she started.

Grace waved her away. “I’m sure the kitchen can make it up for me,” she said.