Dru got two surprises when she got home.  One was that Merry had a steady boyfriend.  She had had a crush on him for almost the whole year before, Dru already knew.  So she found out Merry was going steady with Neil Wilkes.

The other surprise was a birthday gift.  Dru’s mother had bought her a car for her birthday! Later, she told Dru it was a joint present from both her and Dru’s father, but Dru loved it!  It was a shiny, dark blue Jeep.  She bought a pair of oversized dice to hang on the rear-view mirror and got a cool license plate frame from Jill.

So Dru started her Senior year with a beautiful ring, wonderful attitude, and a brand new car.  Every day she picked up Jill and they drove to school together.  Dru offered to pick up Merry, too, but she said she would rather walk since it was only two blocks.

The threesome of friends were disappointed because  they were all in different homerooms.  When they got to school Dru parked her car for the first time in the school parking lot and hopped out of it.  Jill and Dru said good-bye and went their separate ways.

Dru was almost fifteen minutes early so she sat down in a seat and started reading a book. About ten minutes later, someone behind Dru tapped her on the shoulder.

Dru turned around and found myself staring into the face of the most beautiful person she had ever seen.  “Can you tell me why everyone except you is looking at me strangely?” the girl whispered.

Dru forced herself not to laugh.  “You’re new here this year, right?” Dru asked.

She nodded her head yes.

“For that reason, then.  Don’t worry about it.  I was the only new kid here last year, they are just interested in anything new,” Dru assured her.

“Thanks,” she looked relieved.  “I thought maybe I had a big bug crawling through my hair or something.  My name is Ivey.”

“Mine is Dru,” Dru laughed.

She was beautiful!  She had frosted light brown hair that hung in mini-ringlets down about half of her back.  Her chocolate-colored eyes twinkled whenever she smiled, which Dru suspected was most of the time.  She talked with a small trace of a Southern accent, almost as if covering it up was a major priority.

Brian was also in homeroom with Dru and Ivey.  Once again he asked her out and once again she gave him an emphatic,  "No!"

“Don’t you ever learn?” Dru asked him.

He grinned,  “Nope!”
“You’d better learn soon, I don’t put up with nagging,”  Dru thought.  He was lucky she had put up with this much!  Their relationship was actually very fun.  They were always bantering and teasing each other, which offered a delightful sidetrack from everyday life.  Too often Dru’s life was too busy to enjoy.
 

News traveled fast through the school.  By the time the lunch bell had rung Dru knew that there were three new students this year.   Two seniors, one named Cade and the other Ivey Kincaid.  There was also a sophomore named Randi.

The school had been undergoing changes over the summer.  They had torn down the cafeteria and gym.  They rebuilt the gym first, as that was more important.  Until the cafeteria was finished the students had been advised to brown bag it and had to eat under the trees.
Dru saw Ivey on the way to lunch and invited her to sit with her friends and herself.

“Thanks, I haven’t really made any friends yet,” Ivey replied.

They saw Merry sitting by Neil and made their way over toward them.  Ivey and Dru got there at the same time as Jill.  “This is Ivey Kincaid,” Dru told them.

Neil was looking over his shoulder.  “Cade!” he yelled.  “Over here!”  Someone whom Dru had not seen before walked over and sat on the other side of Neil.  His build was nearly the same as Neil’s: big.  They both had wide, broad shoulders with the rest of their bodies following suit.

“Hi,” Ivey said to Cade.

Cade obviously had not yet seen Ivey sitting between Jill and Dru.  “Oh, I thought it was someone else.  Hi, Ivey.”

Dru was confused.  If Ivey had been in homeroom all morning with her, how would she know Cade, who wasn’t in their homeroom?

“Cade is my brother,” Ivey explained.

“Twins?” Jill asked.

“No.  Ivey skipped a grade level back in grade school,” Cade said.  Cade, too, talked with just the slightest hint of Southern accent.

“Cade and I have been in the same class ever since,” Ivey laughed. “He is more than a year older than I am.  He’s already eighteen and I won’t turn seventeen for three months, yet!”

“That explains it,” Merry laughed.
 

“Cade?”  Neil nearly yelled.

“What?”

“What’s with you?  We’ve been trying to get your attention and you are like, staring off into space!” Jill laughed.  Cade was wondering what Jill was like.  She had already a couple of times been on the borderline of rude.  The girl on the other side of Ivey, however, was not only polite, but stunningly attractive.

“Cade!  You’re doing it again!”  Ivey exclaimed.

“Oh, sorry.”

“Anyway,” Neil said,  “I was asking you if you are doing any sports this year?”

“Uh, yeah.  I’m on the football team and thinking about soccer.”

“That’s great, I’m on the football team, too.”

As the conversation wandered to different topics, so did Cade’s mind.

As his eyes traveled around the circle of people sitting on the cool grass his eyes rested on the girl next to Ivey.  Who is that? he wondered.  Why has Ivey not yet introduced us?

The girl was eating a sandwich of tuna on whole-wheat bread.  Sitting next to her was a can of 100% real fruit juice.  She must be one of those health nuts.

She looked up and caught him starting at her.  He looked into her bright jade-colored eyes and wondered if they were real or contacts;  they were too bright to be real.

From the recesses of his mind he was reminded of a portion of La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats:
 “I met a lady in the woods,
     Full beautiful-- a faery’s child;
 Her hair was long, her foot was light,
     And her eyes were wild.”

If that didn’t apply to this beauty he didn’t know what did.

Cade heard a bell ring in the distance and looked at his watch.  “Lunch is over,” he announced.

As he got up Ivey hurried over to him.  “Cade,” she whispered,  “did you see the girl sitting next to me?”

“How could I not?  She’s stunning!”

“That’s Dru Bassey.”

Cade felt his face drain of color.  “No!”  Cade exclaimed.  “Not now!”

Several people turned to look at him, but he didn’t notice.  It wasn’t fair; he couldn’t carry out his duties on this girl, although he would like to in a different setting.  But he wouldn’t even think about doing it to her.  Any other girl he could handle, but not even the threat of his father could make him do this!
 

“Hey, Ivey,” Dru said as the bell marked the end of the day.  “Where do you live?  I could give you a lift home.”

“You don’t need to, I live real close to school.”

“No, I insist.  I know how hard it was last year until I made a few friends.”

“Well . . . all right, I guess.”

Dru waited for her to get her things together and they walked out to Dru’s Jeep together.  Jill was already waiting there.

“Where do you live?” Dru asked Ivey as she pulled out of the parking spot.

“In a little apartment building on 23st Street.  We’re waiting for the people to move out of the house we bought last month.”

“You live real close to my house,” Jill said.  “My street is the one past yours.”

“Oh?” Ivey commented.

“Yeah.  Mine is 21st.”

“That’s the street we bought our house on.”

“Really?” Jill was surprised.  “The house your family bought-- is it gray with dark green trim?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“You’ll be living three houses down across the street from me.”

“Cool.”  Ivey seemed to like talking in mono-syllables.

“Stop.  This is the one,” Ivey said.

Dru pulled in the short driveway and Ivey hopped out of the back seat.  Her brother, Cade, was walking up the stairs already and turned around to wait for Ivey.  Before she disappeared into the building she turned around and yelled,  “Thanks!”

Dru waved and started toward Jill’s house.

She may be sixteen, but she acts our age in every way, Dru thought to herself.

“She seems like someone we would like,” Jill said.

“I agree.”
 

“Well, you certainly did your job in a hurry,” Cade said as he and Ivey walked into the apartment.

“This is a joke!”  Ivey exclaimed.  “All I did was say “hi” to her in homeroom and she has been buddy-buddy with me ever since.  I really haven’t even tried to do my job!”

“Lucky.”

Ivey looked at Cade.  She felt sorry for him, his job wouldn’t be so easy to accomplish.  But she felt even sorrier for Dru.  She seemed like a real nice girl.  It wasn’t her fault her father interfered with someone’s plans.

“That poor girl,” Ivey said softly. “This isn’t fair to her. And she’s so nice!”

“I’m not going to do it,” Cade announced.

“What!  You can’t be serious!”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

“And go against Daddy?”

“If he hadn’t told me to ruin the girl’s life I wouldn’t be in this dilemma in the first place.”

“Come now, Cade.  You must be used to living like this by now.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

“I can’t say I ever wanted to be the daughter of a, well, you know, but we have to obey him.  We’ve seen what he has done to others; who knows what he would do to us?”
 

The next day followed basically like the first day of school.  Dru insisted on driving Ivey home again.  “Why walk in the hot sun if you can sit down in an air-conditioned vehicle?” was her reasoning.

Dru was delighted that Merry, Jill, and Ivey were in history with her.  Merry was also English Literature with Ivey and Dru, and Jill was in Biology with her.  The only class no one was in with Dru was Advanced Calculus, but she didn’t expect anyone else to be stuck in that class with her.

Dru’s favorite class of the day was Advanced Calculus.  It was the most boring, but also the easiest.  She hardly did anything and got an ‘A.’  The teacher, Mr. Yee, said she had the mind of a mathematician.  He said that if she kept up at it she could have a brilliant career in mathematics.  Dru could not exactly say she was happy about that, because she wasn’t.  Math did not interest her.  She planned to become a correspondant with some great newspaper. She would go all over the world and write of her experiences, starting with South Africa.

Dru’s mother, however, was excited she was so clever in math.  Dru had long ago told her mother she would never follow her by being a marine biologist.  Dru’s mother was happy that she could still have a career in a ‘good’ profession.  Dru did not dare tell her yet that she was not going to follow that aspect of her life. Telling her mother now could have very negative effects. Her mother was acting very peculiar, lately.

Dru’s father sent a letter to  her, saying he would be coming home in six months.  He was leaving South Africa in three months, then would be going to various hospitals in Europe and observe their techniques before he returned.  Dru was understandably excited, actually beyond excited.  She was floating on air.

He would stay in the guest bedroom at the Bassey house.  Dru spent the weekends of September and October decorating the guest bedroom to what she thought he would like.  Dru was proud of the final product.
 

Ivey looked at Cade, who sat across the table from her.  “Well, what do you think we should do?” she asked him.

Cade tilted his head in a way that made the December sunlight cast a shadow on half of his face and brightly light up the other half.  The first side of his face looked drab and worrisome, while the lighted up side looked determined and thoughtful.  But both of his brown eyes, the same brown eyes Ivey had, were full of concern.

“I guess we have to tell Drake,” was Cade’s reply.

“Tell me what?” Drake, their elder brother, asked, entering the kitchen.

“We just got a FAX from Daddy,” Ivey said.

“What does it say?” Drake asked.

“I’ll let you read it yourself,” Ivey said handing it to him.

Drake read the short notice.

“What did you say she looked like?” Drake asked Ivey.

“She’s beautiful, but what does that matter?” Ivey asked.

“Cade?” Drake questioned.

“Positively gorgeous.  But Ivey is right.  You cannot do it to her.  She doesn’t deserve it!”

“The way I see it,” Drake started,  “I would rather let her suffer a bit than let myself die.”

“You don’t honestly think even he would kill us, do you?” Ivey asked.

“If he would kill Marjorie,” Drake said,  “he would kill anyone.”

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