Daughter of Darkness by V.C. Andrews Page B

surprised me by getting up before me and being at breakfast. She had no early classes to attend at UCLA and usually slept until hours after I rose. That didn’t bother me in the least. I was happy to miss her in the morning. Most mornings, she was angry at everything, even the sun for having theaudacity to rise so early.
Why couldn’t night be longer?
she would petulantly ask.
    “Ava will have to move to Norway,” Daddy would joke, “or perhaps the North Pole and room with Santa Claus.”
    “Fine with me,” she would reply. “They are the luckier ones.”
    At the time, I didn’t realize she was talking about families like ours who really did live in Scandinavia. She saw it as some sort of a reward.
    “Once you spend a full winter there, you will change your mind,” Daddy told her. “I remember being stuck there for a few months during winter.”
    Was there anywhere on this earth where Daddy hadn’t spent some time?
    Contrary to her usual morning misery, Ava looked bright and cheery, babbling on with Marla about the fashions teenage girls wore these days. I was hoping to see Daddy at the table, but he had apparently left early on one of those secret missions Mrs. Fennel covered with the words “business trip.” Usually, Ava hated it when she was up and I said “Good morning,” but she said it before I could even think of it.
    “I’m taking you and Marla to school today,” she told me immediately. “And I’ll pick you both up at the end of the day.”
    “Why?”
    She glanced at Mrs. Fennel, who was putting out my bowl of her warm cereal, but Mrs. Fennel didn’t look at her or speak. She barely glanced at me, but when she did, I saw she had a softer, more pleased expression. Her eyesconfirmed that there was something very different about me, and whatever it was, it very definitely pleased her. Had Ava given her a report on our night out as well?
    “I need to spend more time with you,” Ava said. “Especially after last night.”
    Marla looked at me enviously. Ava wasn’t up this early talking to her because of her. She was up talking to her because of me. “What happened last night?” she asked.
    “Never mind,” Ava said.
    “I’m old enough to know,” Marla moaned. If she was looking to Mrs. Fennel for any help, she might as well look at the wall, I thought. Neither she nor Ava responded. Marla sulked, but when Mrs. Fennel glanced at her, she quickly returned to her breakfast.
    I sat and started on my cereal. Like everything else Mrs. Fennel made, it was different from anything my classmates would eat. From what I understood, many of them didn’t even eat breakfast, and if they did, it was some sweet cake or some supposedly healthy morning drink their mothers made them drink. Of course, they were starving at lunch. Mrs. Fennel always prepared our special lunch drink for Marla and me. We drank it with one of her unique crackers, which were always a dark gray color, nothing that appeared too appetizing to the other students who saw us drinking and eating.
    Recently, Meg Logan, pretending to have a change of heart about me, had sweetly asked me what I ate and what skin cream I used. As difficult as it was for her to admit it, she envied me for my complexion and my figure. Of course, I couldn’t tell her, because I really didn’tknow exactly what I was eating or what Mrs. Fennel put into her recipe for our skin creams. I couldn’t describe the flavors, either, at least not in ways she or any of the others would understand, and Mrs. Fennel had made it very clear, frighteningly clear, that we must never let anyone else taste our food.
    “Nothing unusual,” I replied, which she took as a blowoff.
    She pulled her head back and her nose up, as if she had suddenly smelled something horrible. “Well, excuse me for asking,” she said. “You might not eat anything unusual, but you’re certainly weird.”
    “Is that the only word in your vocabulary, Meg? Try ‘different,’ ‘strange,’