Pretty Please (Nightmare Hall) Read online

  Pretty Please

  Nightmare Hall

  Diane Hoh

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  A Biography of Diane Hoh

  Prologue

  SEVERAL YEARS EARLIER…

  It’s such a nice day. A pretty day. The sun is shining. I wonder what it would feel like on my face. Warm, I think.

  I wish I could go outside. There are other kids out there, I can hear them. They’re laughing and shouting and they sound like they’re having so much fun. Their school is out for the summer and they’re so glad to be on vacation. I wish I could be on vacation with them.

  I wonder what it’s really like outside? In the daytime, I mean. I wish They’d let me go out before dark.

  But I know They’re right. If They didn’t love me, if They didn’t care about me, They’d let me go out. And then everyone would laugh at me and call me names and run away from me. That would hurt so bad. That would hurt more than it hurts me to look into a mirror. And that hurts a lot.

  I shouldn’t complain. It could be a lot worse. Like They say, I could have been born to people who didn’t care about me, who didn’t mind if I got hurt, people who would let me go outside and be treated cruelly. I’m very lucky to have Them. They protect me. They always have. And They always will.

  She said They’re getting me a video game for my eleventh birthday. So I’ll have something new and interesting to do.

  I’m really grateful to Them. I love Them very much. Sometimes I think I hate Them, but I make those bad thoughts go away.

  Because why would I hate Them?

  Chapter 1

  IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN a great Friday night. Second semester was underway, it was good to be back on campus after the holidays, Johanna Donahue had a party to attend and a hot new outfit to wear.

  What better way to start the new semester?

  She should have been excited.

  But she wasn’t. Instead, she found herself moving through the motions of slipping into the new green dress and arranging her long, wavy, auburn hair and applying mascara to her gray-green eyes as if she were slogging through molasses. Every movement took effort.

  You would think, she told herself as she applied lip gloss, that I was headed for a final exam instead of a party. What is wrong with me?

  Something just didn’t feel right.

  “How about if we blow off this party and head for a movie instead?” she asked Kelly Benedict, her roommate at Salem U. Kelly, already dressed, was brushing her short, black hair in front of the dresser mirror. “Wouldn’t you rather sit through a bad movie than put up with Missy Stark for a whole evening? She’s been bragging about giving this party for weeks. But I have a funny feeling about it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Kelly continued brushing her hair, arranging thick, glossy bangs in a curve over one eye. “I’ve been slaving for two whole hours to get ready. You want me to waste this on a movie?”

  Jo sighed. She hadn’t expected Kelly to agree. And it probably was silly. She didn’t even know why the party seemed, suddenly, like a bad idea. “Like you really needed two hours.” Kelly had a natural, fair-skinned beauty that required far less effort than she put into it.

  A knock on the door of room 428 Lester dorm was followed by the appearance of a sleek, blonde head. “Okay to come in? I’m ready to be told I look incredibly perfect. Don’t disappoint me, guys.”

  The girl who came in was tall, with long, silky hair and doe-shaped turquoise eyes.

  “Well, as usual,” Jo said, “you look like you just stepped out of a glamour magazine. A story on How To Look Absolutely Stunning With No Effort At All, featuring Nanette Solomon. It’ll sell, Nan, I guarantee it.”

  “Oh, it takes effort, Jo,” Nan said, smiling. “As my mother always said, you don’t get something for nothing. I work at it.”

  “Right.” But not very hard, Jo thought. The basics were already there.

  “Nan,” Kelly said in awe, “where did you get that dress? Not here in Twin Falls.”

  Nan laughed, revealing small, perfect white teeth. “Don’t be silly, Kelly. New York, of course.” The dress was wine velvet, with a short skirt and a camisole top with tiny spaghetti straps. It suited Nan’s cool sophistication perfectly. “You like?” She twirled in front of the roommates.

  “I like. You look gorgeous. But,” Kelly glanced at Jo, “our friend here is having second thoughts about Missy’s party. She’s not sure she wants to go.”

  Nan’s perfectly arched eyebrows slid upward. “Why not?”

  Jo felt foolish. Why not? She didn’t know why not. She only knew that for the past couple of hours, a niggling little voice in the back of her head had been saying, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go….

  When she didn’t answer, Nan added, “What kind of a party would it be if The Beautiful People didn’t show up?”

  “Oh, I really hate that expression!” Jo sputtered. Someone on campus had bestowed the nickname on the group of five, which included Nan and Kelly’s boyfriends, Reed Jameson and Carl Vader, after they’d all modeled for a department store advertisement in the local newspaper. The society editor of the Twin Falls Gazette had picked them out of a crowd attending a pre-Thanksgiving football game on campus. The woman had approached them, taken their names, and two days later, Nan had received a phone call. Would she and her friends like to model in a holiday newspaper ad for a local department store?

  Yes, they would. It might be fun.

  The ad had been so successful it had grown into a series of photo spreads, earning the five a little money and a lot of attention on campus. People still occasionally came up to Jo at a party or basketball game and said, “Hey, weren’t you in the newspaper? You’re one of The Beautiful People, right?”

  Jo still hadn’t figured out how to respond to the question. She found it silly and offensive. She hated labels of any kind. They never told much about a person. At least not much of value.

  But when she spouted her objections to her friends, they all said the same thing: “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? We are gorgeous, so why should we pretend we aren’t?”

  Well, yes, it was true. Jo knew that. Jo often thought “goddess” when Nan walked into a room, and Kelly was constantly being told she should become a model. Kelly always laughed and said, “Boring, boring,” but Jo could tell she was flattered. And Reed and Carl were definitely two of the best-looking guys on campus.

  And I’m no slouch, either, Jo admitted to herself as she fastened tiny white snowflake earrings on her lobes. She hadn’t been cursed with the freckles and pale lashes of most redheads, her hair was naturally curly, and she’d never needed braces on her teeth. Lucky, girl. But she had never thought of herself as “beautiful.” In high school, her friends had been average-looking, not asking for a whole lot more than an absence of zits. If they thought about beauty at all, they saw it as something in magazines, on television and in movies, and hoped like mad that it might come to them sometime in the future.

 
Now, here she was, surrounded by the best-looking people on campus.

  The truth was, while all the fuss over their looks sometimes disturbed Jo, she had to admit the attention was kind of fun. Better than being ignored during her first year of college. She had seen those girls on campus…the solitary ones, the quiet ones, too shy to make friends, too plain to be noticed. They looked so lonely. It seemed better, by far, to be part of a group with the silly title of The Beautiful People than not to be part of any group at all.

  “Never mind,” she told Nan. “I’m going to the party. I just had this funny feeling…”

  With every hair perfectly in place, Kelly turned away from the mirror. “Funny ha-ha, or funny weird?”

  “Funny weird. Like…” Jo shook her head, “like disaster’s waiting in that big, white mansion at the top of the hill.”

  Kelly and Nan flashed each other a look. Jo knew they thought she was being silly. “Okay, okay, I’m going.” She’d go and she’d have a good time. Why waste a great new dress on a movie?

  Yanking a white wool blazer out of the closet, she slipped it on. “Aren’t you two wearing coats? It’s January. You’ll freeze.” Deciding that she might as well get into a party mood, she playfully grabbed a rumpled gray University sweatshirt from the pile of clothing lying on her bed and added with a grin, “Anyone want to borrow this?”

  Kelly laughed and wrinkled her nose. “That thing hasn’t been washed in a month. Anyway, I have a jacket that goes with this dress.” And Nan added, “Mine came with a cape, but it’s ugly. Huge gold buttons. I’ll grab a coat from my room before we leave.”

  Reed and Carl arrived a few minutes later.

  Compliments about how they looked flowed back and forth. Jo felt oddly detached as she listened, as if she were in an audience watching a play. This was the first act, and the perfectly costumed, perfectly beautiful actors were all in place.

  So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that an unhappy ending was part of the script?

  Telling herself she was being ridiculous, Jo grabbed her clutch bag. She’d be fine once she got to the party. The feeling would go away and she’d have a great time, as always.

  It should have worked out that way. Jo wasn’t wild about Missy Stark, who was fond of bragging about her father, the head of the foreign studies department at Salem, but she was willing to admit that Missy threw a great party. Dr. Stark had married a woman with both money and taste, and the impressive Stark mansion, high on a hill overlooking the village of Twin Falls, was brightly lit, warm, and welcoming.

  But when they walked into the huge white house and were immediately surrounded by friends and good music and great food, the sense of relief Jo had been expecting didn’t come. She still felt as if she were watching from a distance, watching and…waiting….

  Chapter 2

  KELLY DRAGGED REED OFF to explore the mansion, and Nan and Carl drifted off to the ballroom to dance. In an effort to avoid her hostess, who was running around the house armed with a camera and eager to use it, Jo sought refuge in the library.

  She had never seen so many books. Floor-to-ceiling shelves, all the way around the huge, Persian-carpeted room. Heavy maroon draperies blanketed the windows, and a roaring fire blazed in the huge, wood-paneled fireplace centered in the far wall.

  It was too tempting. Maybe in this welcoming room, she could ease out of the unexplained anxiety she felt, like a snake shedding its skin. Then she could have a good time, like everybody else.

  “Couldn’t deal with it, hmm?” a deep voice said as she rounded a corner of the high-backed, cream-colored couch to approach the fireplace. “Can’t blame you. I had enough five minutes after I walked into this showplace.”

  The voice came from the couch. Lying there was a tall leggy guy in a pair, of jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt. He had a thin, angular face, a thick crop of coffee-colored hair, and blue eyes under thick brows. The lips were slightly curved in an amused half-smile.

  He wasn’t as model-gorgeous as Carl or Reed. But Jo liked that smile.

  “I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said defensively, backing away from the couch.

  He sat up. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything. I was complimenting you on having the good sense to escape that zoo out there. I’d bet my scholarship you were wishing you were somewhere else, right? Of course I’m right.”

  Maybe. But he couldn’t know the reason. She probably looked perfectly normal from the outside, not at all like someone whose nerves were all tied up in knots and didn’t know why.

  He stood up. “Evan Colt. And you are…?”

  “Johanna Donahue,” she managed, her voice stiff. “And I’m leaving now.”

  But when she turned to go, he reached out and stopped her, his hand on her left elbow. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so.” He smiled fully then, and it seemed to Jo that someone had suddenly ripped all of the heavy draperies from the windows and let in a warm, bright sun. “I told myself while I was relaxing on that couch that if a girl with the good sense to leave that dull crowd walked in here, I’d want to know her. I just didn’t expect her to look like you. Talk to me. Do people call you Johanna or do they corrupt it into something shorter?”

  “Jo,” she said shortly. Maybe she should give him a chance. He was, after all, the kind of person who had sought out the peace and quiet of the library, just as she had. That had to mean something.

  When he took her hand and led her to a seat on the couch, she didn’t protest. Talking to someone new and interesting might shake her feeling that she really wasn’t present at this party, that she was watching from a distance, and waiting….

  It was worth a try.

  And, for a little while, it worked. Evan was interesting. She liked to watch the expressions on his face change from a lighthearted smile to an annoyed frown, which happened often as he spoke. It was a great face, strong-boned and well-designed, like something chiseled on a mountainside.

  She liked the way he moved, light and easy on his feet, when he got up to stir the fireplace embers with a poker.

  But when he asked her if she was interested in dancing and they left the library to join other couples dancing in the ballroom, the feeling of anxiety swept over her again like a cold fog.

  She didn’t understand it. The music was great, she was surrounded by friends, and she was with a new and interesting person. And as they walked past the glass patio doors, she saw her reflection. The image was that of a very pretty girl with long auburn hair, wearing a green dress, dancing with a tall, good-looking guy.

  Perfection.

  She should have been having the time of her life, and instead there were tiny little insects of worry crawling up and down her spine. What on earth was wrong with her?

  I don’t get like this, she puzzled as she and Evan danced. I’m not the nervous type and I don’t get anxious in thunderstorms and I’m not the least bit afraid of the dark. So what is my problem tonight?

  She did think it was funny when Kelly and Reed walked into the ballroom and saw her dancing with Evan. Kelly’s perfect jaw actually dropped, and her elbow made a beeline for Reed’s ribs, alerting him. He, too, looked surprised when he saw Jo with Evan.

  Well, for pete’s sake, she thought, you’d think they’d never seen me with a guy! I’ve had plenty of dates since I got to Salem.

  And then it occurred to her that what was probably surprising her friends was not that she was with a guy, but how happy she looked about being with this particular one. It was a look they hadn’t seen before.

  Well, she thought, at least I look like I’m relaxed. My sudden attack of unexplained paranoia isn’t showing. That’s a relief.

  She noticed then, sitting alone in a chair along one wall, a tall, thin, plain girl with straight blonde hair. It was the look in the girl’s eyes as she watched the dancers that tugged at Jo’s heart. She didn’t know the girl, but she could see how desperately she wanted to be a part of the scene instead of being a spectator.
/>   That’s the way I felt earlier, Jo thought as the song ended, as if I were part of the audience instead of being in the play. It wasn’t a good feeling. That girl has probably felt like part of the audience ever since she got to Salem.

  What was it like to always be on the outside looking in? Even in high school she hadn’t felt that way.

  I don’t ever want to know, Jo thought emphatically.

  They were about to go forage for food at one of the long, narrow, white-clothed tables lining the walls when Missy, camera in hand, stopped them.

  “You are not taking one more step until I get your picture,” she said archly. “I bought a special album, just for pictures of this party. And you’ve been avoiding me all night long, Johanna.” Then she added snidely, “I suppose posing isn’t as much fun when you’re not getting paid.”

  Evan looked surprised. “You’re a model?” he asked.

  Jo shook her head, annoyed with Missy, but relieved that Evan hadn’t known about the newspaper ads. For a while after the ads started, they’d all been besieged by phone calls and notes from admirers. She was glad Evan hadn’t been one of them.

  “Look,” Missy said, “I insist on getting a picture of The Beautiful People—at my party.”

  Jo sighed. “Oh, all right. Wait’ll I grab the others and we’ll pose for one picture, Missy, that’s all. Just one, so you’d better do it right.”

  She dragged Evan with her as she moved around the ballroom collecting Kelly and Nan, Reed, and Carl.

  “What’s our fee?” Carl asked jokingly, and Reed, who had just filled a plate with food, groaned at being interrupted.

  “Put the plate down, Reed,” Jo warned, “or Missy will run over and snatch it right out of your hands. She means business.” She grinned as Reed reluctantly put the plate back on the table. “It’s hard being gorgeous, isn’t it, Reed? So many obligations….”

  Evan laughed.

  In spite of her eagerness, it took Missy an intolerable length of time to decide where they should pose. She finally decided on a long, narrow bench to the left of the glass patio doors. “Females in front, on the bench,” she ordered, “guys in back, standing. That way I can get you all in at the same time.”