Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake, page 1
Warning: Keep your voice down around the dead.
When Gilda reached the center of the bridge, she looked down at the sparkling water beneath her. Surrounded by redwinged blackbirds perched on cattails and the soft rustling of trees under a cerulean-blue sky, she found it hard to imagine someone plunging through ice to her death. Still, there was something eerie about the sight of the ruins just across the water—something that made Gilda feel anxious despite the serenity of the scene. There’s a powerful vibration here, she thought.
Beneath the water, shadowy plants weaved back and forth like the flowing hair of water nymphs. Gilda glimpsed something gold beneath the water—something that moved. Was it a fish?
If you make any sound, she rises out of the water, screaming.
Summoning all her courage, Gilda decided to take a huge risk and find out whether Miss Underhill’s warning had any basis in reality. “Hey!” she yelled. Her voice sounded small and lonely in the outdoor space.
Gilda watched the water, but nothing happened. She walked to the opposite side of the bridge, leaned over the railing, and yelled louder: “HEY, DOLORES!”
She heard a small splash—a sound that filled her with trepidation.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” said a hoarse voice behind her.
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GILDA JOYCE
The Ladies of the Lake
JENNIFER ALLISON
SLEUTH
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006 This Sleuth edition first published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
9 10 8
Copyright © Jennifer Allison, 2006
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Allison, Jennifer.
Gilda Joyce: the Ladies of the Lake / Jennifer Allison.
p. cm.
Summary: Having earned a scholarship to a private girls’ high school, self-proclaimed psychic investigator Gilda Joyce investigates the circumstances surrounding the drowning death of a student whose ghost supposedly haunts the campus.
ISBN: 0-525-47693-8 (hc)
[1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Secret societies—Fiction. 3. Psychic ability—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.]
I. Title.
PZ7.A4428Gis 2006
[Fic]—dc22 2005021752
Puffin Sleuth ISBN 978-0-14-240907-7
Printed in the United States of America
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
To my students, with appreciation for all they taught me
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to executive editor Maureen Sullivan and Dutton Children’s Books president and publisher, Stephanie Owens Lurie, for providing a wonderfully helpful and supportive publishing environment for Gilda’s adventures. Many thank-yous to outstanding literary agent and friend Doug Stewart, whose ability to do fifteen things at once while keeping his desk neat constantly amazes me. Thank you also to the very talented Greg Swearingen for capturing Gilda’s world with his fine cover art.
Several friends and family members contributed their professional expertise: Captain John Phillips of the Pittsfield Township Police Department; Valerie Bijur Carlson, who teaches English and theater at Connelly School of the Holy Child; author Carolyn Parkhurst; and Professor Kenneth Brostrom, who shared his keen eye for detail in reading the final draft of the manuscript. I would also like to thank the relatives and dear friends who helped me look after baby Max during his first year: my husband, Michael (who made “Daddy and Max days” a routine); Eleonore Boussoukou (who is secretly an angel); Harry and Ariadne Magoulias (“Papou” and “Neh Neh”); Paula Allison-England (“Grammie Paula”); Barry England; and “Grandpa Ken.” Finally, a thank-you to some friends who use their boundless creative energy to help and encourage others: Nancy Finley, Diane McFarland, Martha Daly, Sean Smith, Matt Howe, and my aunt Nancy Pegg.
CONTENTS
Prologue
1 The Drowning
2 Our Lady of Sorrows
3 The Ghost in the Lake
4 No Escape
5 Going Undercover
6 The First Week of Suffering
7 Ghost Stories
8 Tiara
9 The Ghost in the Rain
10 The Flood
11 Shadows
12 A Foul Fish
13 The Petunia
14 The Interloper
15 Mysteries of the Senior Common Room Revealed
16 Miss Underhill’s House
17 The Ruins
18 The Ladies of the Lake
19 Charms and Curses
20 A Phone Call from a Ghost
21 Dolores Lambert’s House
22 Halloween Day
23 The Halloween Dance
24 The Secret Meeting
25 Turmoil
26 Cat and Mouse
27 The Drowned and the Damned
28 Friends and Enemies
29 The Play’s the Thing
30 The Threat
31 The Final Test
32 The Dark Side
33 The Bedpost Ghost
34 Mrs. McCracken’s Nightmare
35 Surveillance
36 The Runaway
37 A Nasty Surprise
38 The Detective
39 The Breakup
40 The Apology
41 Thanksgiving
Gilda Joyce:
The Ladies of the Lake
PROLOGUE
by Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator
If you think a school for girls is simply a place to wear ribbons in your hair and expose your dimpled knees, you’ve never been to Our Lady of Sorrows.
When I first entered the school, I was all set to tie my hair in a ponytail, get a fake tan, and write my homework assignments in pink gel ink. I was prepared to hear girls bragging nonchalantly about the BMWs and diamond earrings they received for their birthdays. I almost looked forward to hearing the flashlight-wielding nuns tell me to “leave room for the Holy Ghost” when I danced lewdly with messy-haired prep-school boys.
What I didn’t expect was the ominous warning: “Keep your voice down around the dead.”
I didn’t expect the broken sculptures that watched me with their stony eyes, the dungeonlike locker rooms where tarantula-sized spiders lurked in the corners, the floods of murky water that devoured homework and caused mass hysteria.
I didn’t expect the ghost of a drowned girl to wander the hallways.
I certainly didn’t expect to make the most chilling discovery of all: the secret of the Ladies of the Lake.
1
The Drowning
In the moonlit landscape surrounding Our Lady of Sorrows, a blindfolded girl stumbled through the snow. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and only hours before, she had looked forward to several days of Thanksgiving vacation away from school. Now the idea of turkey and sweet potatoes seemed a remote, unlikely image—something that part of her mind realized she might never experience again.
Where was it that she had been trying to go? Was she truly alone, or were they still watching her?
She touched the smooth fabric of the blindfold that was tied so tightly across her eyes, it almost cut into her cheeks. Her nose and lips were numb, and as she struggled to remove the blindfold with clumsy fingers, it seemed that she might as well be touching someone else’s face. She gave up and left the blindfold on. They would only make her pay some price if she disobeyed the rules.
Waving her arms in front of her, she discovered that there were no longer tree branches to push out of the way. Maybe I finally found my way back onto the main path, she thought.
But now a new emptiness surrounded her—a fresh, frozen silence, as if the world were waiting for something to happen. She walked a few steps and found that the earth had suddenly become perfectly, absurdly flat. As she took another step, her tennis shoes shot out from under her and her tailbone hit the ground with a thump.
Ice. For a moment, she lay on the comforting ice, the snow as soft as a powdery blanket. She had an overwhelming urge to give up—to allow herself to fall asleep. But falling asleep could mean freezing to death, she told herself. You have to keep moving.
She rolled onto her side, forced herself to move onto her hands and knees, and stood up shakily.
I don’t care anymore, she thought, struggling once more to pull the freezing blindfold from her face. This time, she lifted the fabric enough to peek out at her surroundings with part of an eye.
The world was surprisingly bright in the moonlight: blank, white snow edged with a row of naked trees that seemed to observe her from a distance—a row of quiet, cold skeletons.
I’m standing on the lake. The girl forced the blindfold over her temples and finally freed herself from it completely.
Disoriented because the snowfall blurred all boundaries between the lake and the shore, she decided to make her way toward the trees that beckoned with thin, leafless arms.
A soft crunching sound broke the silence—a sound that did not bode well.
Weren’t there people across the ice, waiting for her? A group of slender girls? If only she could hurry across before it was too late!
She took another step, and the sickening crunch of ice beneath her feet grew louder. A series of cracking sounds followed like gunshot—multiple fissures hacking apart the flat surface of the ground.
Cold shot through her body, as if ice water had suddenly been injected into her veins and poured into her skull. The shock of plummeting down, down, down into a world without air; the lead weight of the chains on her limbs that only a split second before had been mere clothes. She gasped for oxygen and inhaled icy water; her struggling lungs were paralyzed, then crushed in a liquid black hole.
As her pain receded, she glimpsed the water nymphs who reached toward her with slender hands and flowing hair, pulling her down, deeper into the water to join them where they lived at the bottom of the lake.
2
Our Lady of Sorrows
Dear Dad,
Sometimes I don’t understand Mom at all. I know she hates miniskirts, so why is she so excited about the prospect of her daughter donning a Britney Spears outfit and going to a private school for girls?
I know I’m the one who wrote the application essay and everything, but that was when I thought there was no way they would give me a scholarship! The last thing I want is to hang around a bunch of debutantes who will probably give me the stink eye because I live on the “wrong” side of town.
There is NO WAY I’m going to Our Lady of Sorrows.
“Gilda, you should at least give this school a chance.”
Gilda slumped in the front seat of her mother’s Oldsmobile and fanned herself with the glossy brochure from Our Lady of Sorrows School for Girls. The air conditioner in the car was broken, and in the August humidity, the panty hose her mother had forced her to wear with her skirt and blouse made her feel as if she were sitting in a tropical swamp. Everything about the outfit she was wearing—the high-heeled, secretarial pumps purchased at Payless Shoes, the polyester blend of her navy blue skirt (not to mention her fear that there might be sweat stains on the armpits of her blouse following the ride in a sweltering car), felt just plain wrong. At the moment, Gilda felt intense irritation with her mother, the whole notion of a private school for girls, and the entire world in general.
“Gilda you’re being way too judgmental. Don’t forget, I went to a private school myself, and I am obviously no debutante.”
Gilda knew that this was true; her mother was a hardworking nurse who wasn’t afraid of things like needles, blood, and drains clogged with hair. On the other hand, Gilda knew that the Catholic school her mother had attended in Southfield had little in common with the rarefied, exclusive atmosphere of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, commonly known as “one of the wealthiest communities in the entire United States.”
They passed a sign announcing the Bloomfield Hills city limits, and the neighborhood of well-groomed lawns through which Mrs. Joyce had just driven suddenly became a landscape of progressively larger, more elaborate houses.
“Who lives in these places?” Gilda’s mother wondered, slowing down and gaping at an enormous white house with pillars. The house seemed to peer down at Mrs. Joyce’s aged, unwashed car with disapproval.
“The girls who go to Our Lady of Sorrows live in these places.” If the houses in this neighborhood seem to look down their noses, Gilda thought, what will the girls at Our Lady of Sorrows be like?
“Gilda, they don’t give out many scholarships, so keep in mind that this is a rare opportunity. Especially considering the fact that your grades from junior high were all over the place, I think it was very nice of Brad to pull some strings and convince the headmistress to consider your application so late in the summer.”
“Nobody asked Brad to pull any strings.” Brad Squib was Mrs. Joyce’s new boyfriend, and since Gilda found him annoying, she resented the fact that he had done something to help her. Now she would have to display gratitude and appreciation rather than sullen grimaces when he was around. “Besides,” she added, “plenty of total geniuses have gotten bad grades.”
Gilda stopped fanning herself with the school brochure and paused to examine the image on its cover: a pretty girl sitting next to a lake, gazing dreamily into the distance.
OUR LADY OF SORROWS
Our Lady of Sorrows provides a beautiful, stimulating environment for girls who truly want to learn. The school also provides structured discipline to protect girls from potentially unhealthy influences.
Originally built as a country estate by automotive tycoon Stanton Jackson and his wife, Martha, in the year 1900, the Castle House that is now Our Lady of Sorrows reflects the Jacksons’ passion for medieval and Renaissance architecture and the couple’s love of the arts. Surprise, beauty, and mystery are found at every turn.
The Jacksons willed part of their estate to an order of nuns who opened Our Lady of Sorrows in 1951. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Our Lady of Sorrows was an elite finishing school for young women who wished to improve their skills as future wives, mothers, and elegant hostesses.
Our Lady of Sorrows has evolved into a school with an outstanding academic program that emphasizes both creativity and the scientific method. Many of our graduates have continued their education at Ivy League colleges.
What do students say about Our Lady of Sorrows? “I feel so at home here! Everyone is so nice all the time!”
—Marcie
“At my old school, I used to spend hours putting on makeup and picking out clothes to wear every morning. Now I can roll out of bed and get dressed in ten minutes! Who knew I would love wearing a uniform!”
—Eloise
“I’ve been able to concentrate better on my studies without having boys around all the time.”
—Nichole
“You know,” said Gilda, tossing the brochure aside, “since I’ve never actually had a boyfriend, I find it a little strange that I’m being locked away in a convent where I’ll never get one.”
“I always found plenty of chances to meet boys when I was a teenager at a girls’ school,” said Mrs. Joyce. “Probably too many.”
