A place as old as Atwood has endless rules and traditions that no one thinks to explain to you, but failing to follow them will mark you out immediately as someone who doesn’t belong. For instance: No one tells you that the Tuesday dinner before courses start is semiformal. No jeans, no sweatpants, no—God forbid—pajamas. The girls wear skirts, the boys wear suit jackets, but no one wears uniforms.
I don’t have anything to wear except the clothes I came in: jeans and a simple blue top. Nothing suitable for the welcome dinner. And there’s no sign of my luggage. At least I still have my messenger bag, with my laptop and sketchbook.
In desperation, I open the closet in the bedroom. It’s still full of Aubrey’s clothes. Her school uniforms are hung on the right—jackets, skirts, slacks folded over hangers. There’s a set of hanging shelves with socks and stockings, and a neat line of shoes along the floor. On the left are casual jackets, along with a few dresses. I run my hands over a wool skirt. It looks expensive.
It seems wrong to wear them, but I can’t go to dinner like this. I’d be sent back to change. And worse, my name would be on the list that never gets written down but is tracked precisely nonetheless. The ones who don’t belong.
I’m the same size as Aubrey. I pull on a knee-length brown wool skirt, fitted at the hips with a bit of flare. I grab a crisp white button-up blouse hanging conveniently beside it and throw on a soft cardigan that smells faintly of lavender at the collar. I pull my long hair free from the collar and turn to face the floor-length mirror that stands in the corner of the room. The fit isn’t exact. My hips are a touch narrower than Aubrey’s, my breasts large enough to make the buttons gap slightly. But it’ll do. And I’ll write Aubrey a note, I think, to let her know I’m borrowing her clothes. Apologizing for not having the chance to ask. Thanking her.
So it won’t be too strange that I’m slipping on her ankle-high boots, which fit me perfectly. That I’m slipping into the hall with her clothes against my skin.
“Aubrey?” a voice behind me says, confusion cracking the syllables apart.
I freeze. Turn slowly.
The door at the top of the stairs is open, visible through the glass of the lower door. A slim figure looks down at me from the top step. The light is behind her; I can barely make her out.
“No, I’m . . .” I trail off. “I’m Eden White. I’m your new—I’m staying here.”
A long moment of silence. Then, “Can you open the door?”
“Mrs. Clarke said it’s supposed to stay locked,” I say. I don’t want to open the door. I shouldn’t be afraid of Delphine. She’s just a sick girl. But I am.
“Only at night,” Delphine says. “Because I sleepwalk. I try to get out sometimes, and if I did, it might kill me.” Matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know the code.”
“I do. It doesn’t work from this side, though.” She rattles it off for me, and, out of excuses, I creep over and punch it in. The handle is heavy, and it’s awkward managing the keypad and the door one-handed. When it opens, there is a faint hiss of air.
“There’s a light just inside,” Delphine says.
I grope to the right and find it, flick it on. It’s harsh, washing out all the shadows instantly.
The first time I saw Delphine, I thought she looked like a doll. She still does. My eyes catch at the hollow of her throat, the deep notch of her clavicle, the knobby bones of her wrist. Her skin has a sallow cast to it. Her hair, a coppery red, falls to the middle of her back, most of it loose except for a single small braid down one side. Her clothes seem made for a younger girl or a different time—a green dress with a Peter Pan collar, shoes with silver buckles.
Her eyes, though, they’re large for her face and look down at me with a kind of solemnity I’ve never seen in someone my age. She’s thin—gaunt, even—and her lips are thin, too, her mouth wide and set in a straight line.
Looking into those large, serious eyes, something seems to shift, like a camera coming into focus, and I don’t know how I could have thought she looked young. Set aside the clothes, the silver buckles on her shoes. Look at her. Imagine how you would sketch the line of that long neck, capture the shadows in her gaze. Trace the waves of the copper hair that spills down as if she stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. She is ethereal, almost otherworldly, and there is something feral and fascinating in her expression.
There’s a painting of Ophelia I’ve always loved. Ophelia with flowers in her hair and carried in her skirts, making her way to the water. In Hamlet, Ophelia drowns herself, gripped by madness, but in the eyes of the Ophelia of the painting, I’ve never seen madness or despair. Something more like calm—and condemnation. Delphine looks down at me with those eyes.
I have the abrupt and fierce conviction that whoever has chosen those clothes for her doesn’t know Delphine Fournier at all.
“This is kind of awkward, isn’t it?” I say, because if I don’t say anything I will keep looking at her forever.
“I don’t know. Is it?” Delphine asks. She leans against the doorframe at the top of the stairs. “I’m not really a good judge.”
“Did they tell you I was coming?” I ask. What I want to ask is if she remembers what happened that night. If she remembers my part in it.
“They said they were going to find someone. I told them not to bother,” Delphine replies. If anyone else had said it, it would have sounded hostile. But Delphine’s face is untroubled, no blame in her voice for me.
“You don’t want a companion?” I ask. My voice sounds raspy, and the light behind her keeps shifting her into shadow.
“I don’t want friends who have to be paid to spend time with me,” Delphine replies, and again there’s no anger in her voice. It’s more like it doesn’t occur to her not to tell the plain, unvarnished truth.
“What about Aubrey? Did you not want her here, either?” I ask. Her openness makes me intrusive. Her face closes for a moment; she looks away.
“Aubrey was different,” Delphine says. Her eyes flick over me. “You’re wearing her clothes.”
I flush. “I don’t have any of my own.”
“I thought you were her for a moment,” Delphine goes on. There is a soft, puzzled sadness to her voice. It’s like fingers trailing lightly over the strings of a violin.
“I heard what happened. About the accident,” I say.
“What did you hear?” she asks.
It sounds like she’s asking something else, something deeper, but I can’t work it out. “She fell in the pool and almost drowned. Right?”
“No,” she says softly. “It wasn’t the pool. It was right outside. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear them. I saw the ambulance come.”