New England White 之 Vanessa

Vanessa, a high school senior, is the second child of Julia and Lemaster Carlyle. She is described as a strange, conflicted child, whose troubles could fill a book. She used to be a good student and everything had been all right, until almost a year ago, she decided to change her history term paper from the response in Landing to the Supreme Court's school desegregation decisions in the fifties to the death of her white friend Gina Joule. The two girls have lots of things in common: they're both loners - very shy, though creative; they're of the same age, height, and moderate smile. Their fathers both taught at the university. Merrill Joule, Gina's father used to be the dean of divinity school, and a leading candidate for president of the university before his death a quarter-century ago. The end of the first part of chapter 5 writes "the largest problem was that Merrill Joule had been in the ground a good quarter-century, and his daughter, Gina, had drowned at the town beach back when...." What mystery is hidden behind is not yet clear. Gina had been disappeared and her body was found days later and proved to have been sexually assaulted, while the only race riot in the country's history, which was caused by a slain black teenager by police, was taking place.

Back to Vanessa. Vanessa always had such illusion that Gina was with her. This could be the cause of her peculiar mania according to one theory, or just a manifestation of a deeper trauma. (We still don't know where this trauma originally came from.) Once she started working on the paper about Gina, she was no longer caring about her grades and her friends; she even torched her father's car as a fighting back to her father's measure on her. She explained: I did it for Gina.