Deadly Little Lessons

by Laurie Faria Stolarz

  “So, what now?” I ask Wes.

  “Perhaps you’re forgetting who wears the psychic pants in this relationship. Go sculpt out some answers.”

  “Because it’s totally that easy.”

  “Well, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier if you bring this notebook with you,” he says, tossing it into my lap. “It’s sure to provide inspiration. Either that or creepy nightmares.” He points to an evil-looking beetle (with devil horns and a pitchfork) drawn in the corner.

  “You’re right,” I say, stuffing the notebook into my bag and thinking about the way my power of psychometry is still evolving. Why else would I have been able to picture Sasha’s watch when I touched her jewelry dish? “Maybe I’ll be able to sculpt something really telling.”

  “There’s the attitude.” He gives me a corny wink, complete with an even cornier thumbs-up. “I have a sneaking suspicion that things are going to be turning around for you very soon.”

  “What do you know?”

  Wes zips his lip and then pulls away from the curb. As he drives us back to campus, I check my cell phone for messages, noticing a couple of texts from Kimmie. Apparently, she spotted the most perfect Roller Derby outfit for me (as if I’d been on a desperate mission to find one). There’s also a message from home and a missed call from my dad.

  I play the message from home right away. It’s from my mom. She tells me about being at the Tea Tree café, sitting by the water fountain, and trying to read her book. Only she couldn’t stop reminiscing about our old Wednesday afternoon routine there, when she’d pick me up from school and we’d chat over cups of steaming chai.

  “Is everything okay?” Wes asks, after I hang up.

  “It will be,” I say, confident that it’s the truth.

  A few minutes later, we arrive back on campus. Wes drops me off in front of the sculpture building. Before going in, I sit down on one of the benches and pull my cell phone back out.

  I try calling my dad first, but it goes straight to voice mail. I text Kimmie that I’ll need a stylish tote to go with my Roller Derby garb. And then I dial home.

  Mom picks up right away. “How are you?” she asks. “Are you enjoying your classes?”

  “I’m actually making a wreck of them,” I say, opting for honesty. “The professor absolutely hates me. I can’t seem to make it to class on time.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Camelia.”

  “I’ve been having more psychometric visions,” I explain, “and so my work has been pretty disastrous. Meanwhile, the other kids are sculpting all this amazing stuff.”

  “Just be true to yourself, Camelia.”

  “Are you referring to my psychometric visions?” I ask, surprised if she’s condoning them, never mind if she’s acknowledging them.

  “I’m referring to everything,” she says. “How brave you are—always doing what you feel is right, despite how difficult it is. Don’t let anyone take that away.”

  Her words give me goose bumps, because her approval means so much to me, and I haven’t felt it in a long time. “Have you been talking to Dr. Tylyn?” I ask, suspicious that this new perspective may be the result of at least a couple of therapy sessions.

  “I have, and she wanted me to remind you that you can call her whenever you want.”

  “I know,” I say, grateful for Dr. Tylyn’s support. “But I kind of want to figure things out on my own this time. I feel like I have all the tools.”

  “That’s what it’s all about,” she agrees. “Learning more, evolving into a better person…”

  I can picture Mom sitting in her sacred corner in the living room, with all her happy things: her yoga mat, her Buddha dolls, her embroidered pillows from India.

  She takes one of her Kundalini breaths; I hear the familiar dog-panting sound. “You’ve been a real inspiration to me,” she says, finally.

  “Wow. I mean, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say that you’ll continue to be true to yourself.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I say, at first disappointed that she doesn’t ask about the psychometric episodes I’ve been having in sculpture class. But then I take a deep breath, too, and remind myself that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and that Mom’s accepting me for who I am is monumental on its own.

  BEFORE HEADING into the sculpture building, I text Ben to tell him I’m back from Mrs. Beckerman’s and will give him a call later.

  Inside the pottery studio, there are a couple of students working. One boy is carving into a tree stump, making a bowl of sorts, reminding me of what I love so much about sculpture: the possibilities are absolutely endless. There’s a girl using the extruder and someone else in the kiln room. But there’s no one I really recognize. Until Ingrid walks in.

  She spots me, too, and walks over.

  “Hey,” I say, remembering that she asked Wes about me. I open up my bag of clay, pretending that her presence doesn’t affect me.

  “So, you haven’t really been around much,” she says, getting right down to it. “I haven’t seen you since you got booted by Barnes. I mean, what was up with that?”

  “Which time?” I ask, using a wire to slice myself a thick hunk of clay. “I guess I’ve had a lot on my mind. My sculptures haven’t exactly been coming out so great.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her mouth drops open, exposing her ginormous yellow teeth (as Wes so kindly called them). “People are still talking about that hand.”

  “Just call me the Queen of Creepy,” I say, thinking about the W that I carved into the wrist.

  “More like the Queen of effing Genius,” she says, her eyes bugging out. “How is it possible that you’re able to sculpt that much detail in under thirty minutes? I mean, you had freaking knuckle lines, for God’s sake. The nails, the individual joints, the wrist bones…After class, a few of us flipped the hand over. The palm looked so eerily realistic you could’ve asked a palm reader to come in and tell a fortune.”

  “Wow,” I say, surprised to see a side of Ingrid that isn’t totally bitchy. “Thanks.”

  “Did you take lessons in figure drawing?”

  “Actually, yes,” I reply, perking up. Of course, I didn’t exactly make it to all of those classes, either.

  “I guessed, from all that detail. Anyway, Barnes is an idiot for not noticing, but word is he’s a stickler for following directions, which is probably why he’s a no-name,” she says, lowering her voice. “I mean, hello, where’s his six-figure art show?”

  “Wow,” I repeat, at an utter loss for words.

  “So, can I just ask? Of course, you don’t have to tell me. But what was with the W? Like…what does it stand for? A few of us were trying to guess. Someone said ‘war.’ Someone else thought ‘warrior.’”

  “It actually stood for ‘winter,’” I say, playing along. “As in, the death of that which lives…”

  “Whoa,” she says, closing her eyes. “That’s totally deep. Barnes has got you pegged totally wrong.”

  When Ingrid eventually goes off to pursue some work on the wheel, I wedge out my clay, slapping it against my board and pounding it with my fist. Sasha’s notebook positioned in front of me for inspiration. I can’t help thinking how surreal this is. I mean, just weeks ago, I’d barely even known her name. And now I’ve been in her house and taken something from her room.

  I wet my mound of clay with a sponge and watch the drops slide down like tears. Then I close my eyes and listen for Sasha’s voice—her crying—picturing her lounging in bed, talking on the phone, and doodling Tommy’s name.

  A series of images runs through my brain. And suddenly it feels like I’m holding a movie camera, like I’m flying high above the scene, getting footage of things below me. I see a tiny house with broken shutters and collapsing stairs. It borders a forest. On the opposite side of the forest is farmland—rows and rows of dead cornstalks and overgrown weeds. There’s a tractor with missing wheels parked beside a dilapidated garage.

  My mind’s eye focuses harder
, moving closer, behind the tractor, where there’s a pile of brush, like someone was raking, trying to clean up the area. I zoom in even closer on the pile until I feel like I’m swimming in it. Leaves and sticks are kicked away; at the bottom of it all is a wooden slab. It takes me a second to realize that it’s actually a trapdoor. Someone grabs a metal handle. I can see a man’s hand; it’s stained with dirt, and it pulls the handle upward. I look to see if there’s a W on his wrist, but there isn’t.

  My heart beats fast. Now it feels like I’m stuck in the scene—as if I’m in this man’s skin. I start down a ladder able to hear it creak beneath my feet.

  I’m now facing a wooden door; there’s a series of locks surrounding the knob. I push the door open. It’s already unlocked. I aim my flashlight beam inside the space. It’s small, about ten feet by ten feet in size. There are dirt floors and dirt walls. And there’s a separate room, too. A steel wall with a locked door cuts the room in half. I move a little closer, noticing a hole at the bottom of the steel door, just big enough to fit a soccer ball through. Is this a bunker of some sort? Or maybe a storage space?

  I move toward the separate room, noticing a light coming from just behind it. A beam shines through the hole, making a path across the dirt floor. I crouch down. At the same moment, something hits me from behind on the crown of my head—and I grunt.

  The next thing I know, the scene changes, and I’m inside a house, still stuck in someone else’s body. Is it the same person? I can’t at all tell. A rag is placed over my mouth. I gasp—a male voice—and feel my head go immediately woozy. My world starts to fade away.

  Only half conscious, I’m dragged from behind. Across a floor. Cold kitchen tiles.

  My eyes flutter open. I see someone—the blur of a figure. A mosaic of colors. The corner of a ceiling fan. A smile on someone’s face.

  “Surprise, surprise,” a voice says.

  Male or female? Older or younger?

  Suddenly, the scene shifts again. I’m still in the same kitchen—still stuck inside a man’s body—but now there are flames all around me, walls coming down all around me. A ceiling fan descends right on top of me. I’m burning up right along with the house. And it’s too late to find my way out.

  SUDDENLY, I FEEL myself being shaken. Ingrid is here. She sits me down on a stool, places her hand on my forehead, and then goes to get me a glass of water. I’m still in the pottery studio. The other two students are no longer here.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  I try to shrug it off—to look like I have everything under control, even though my heart is absolutely pounding.

  “You were whimpering,” she says, studying my face, noticing perhaps the trembling of my upper lip. “And flinching. Your whole body was, like, twitching—like you were having some sort of attack. And yet you kept right on working, so I wasn’t sure if that was just part of your process: getting both physically and mentally into your work.”

  I attempt to drink the water, but it laps over the rim of the glass. My hand quivers. A hiccup escapes from my throat. I get up from the stool. My legs feel like sticks of butter, mushy and unstable, like I could melt into the ground.

  My sculpture is about six feet away now, partially obscured by my bag of clay. I move in front of it, startled by what I see.

  A dressmaker’s mannequin, exactly like the logo on the front of the sewing factory—the same factory where Sasha was on the evening that she went missing. Is it possible that Sasha’s still there?

  “What’s wrong?” Ingrid asks.

  “I think I just need to get something to eat,” I lie.

  “Oh, are you a diabetic? Because I think I might have some candy.” She turns to fish inside her bag, and hands me a half-melted Kit Kat.

  “Thanks,” I say, sitting back down. I unwrap the candy and force myself to take a bite. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “Great,” she says, finally returning to her work.

  Meanwhile, I reach for my cell phone and dial Wes’s number.

  Wes picks me up from the pottery studio and we walk to the middle of the campus. He motions to an open spot on the lawn. “Think you can make it?” he asks, linking his arm through mine for support.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him. The sun shines down on my face and already I feel better.

  “Have a seat,” he says, pointing to a bench that’s already partly occupied. A girl sits at the end of it with her back to us. Her hair is a couple of shades darker than her giant pink purse.

  “Maybe over here,” I suggest, moving toward one of the empty benches, relieved to be out in the fresh air.

  “What, do I smell or something?” a voice snaps. I turn to look, surprised to find that it’s the pink-haired girl talking to me. She swivels to face us, and that’s when I see.

  “Kimmie!” I say.

  Her face brightens and she stands up from the bench.

  I hug her, my eyes welling up. “I can’t believe you’re here.” I take a step back to drink in her new look. Wearing a short purple dress and green rain boots, she still has a style that’s all her own, but it’s as if she’s taken it to a brand-new level.

  “And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that you were having psychometric visions again.” She folds her arms and glares at me.

  I peek at Wes, curious as to what he told her, exactly, and suspecting it’s why she’s here. “I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

  “Um, hello! You’re my best friend. It’s my job to worry. Did you not worry about me when my dad was stuck in a seventies time warp, complete with visible chest hair and gold medallion necklaces?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, I know,” she says, flicking a pink and black striped hair extension over her shoulder for added effect.

  “You look amazing, by the way,” I say, noticing how her green eye shadow matches her boots.

  “And you look like crap,” she says, never one for beating around the bush.

  I wipe my eyes, still trembling inside. Kimmie knows me like nobody else, even more than Ben, and so I can’t help giving her another hug, pulling Wes into our hug as well, so grateful that they’re both there.

  KIMMIE, WES, AND I move to the area by the edge of the lawn, where we can get a peek at the ocean below. We sit in a circle on the grass, as Kimmie explains that Wes filled her in on pretty much everything.

  “I can’t even believe that you didn’t tell me.” She gazes down at her shiny green nail polish, and I can see the hurt in her eyes.

  “It’s only because I didn’t want to ruin your time in New York,” I tell her. “And because I felt like you were so excited about the two of us doing things for our future—you with your internship and me taking classes here. I didn’t want to break it to you that the classes were just an excuse for me.… That coming here really wasn’t about my future at all.”

  “I did know that. At least, I did initially.” She shrugs. “But I don’t know. I think I was so psyched about my opportunity, I couldn’t really see beyond it. Anyway, I’m sorry. You’re my best friend—way more important than classes or internships.”

  I lean over to give her another hug. “And so are you,” I tell her, “which is part of the reason why I never said anything about my visions. I mean, it wasn’t as if my life was on the line, so why should you sacrifice an opportunity? And speaking of…” I segue, “shouldn’t you be preparing for a fashion show as we speak?”

  “For your information, I got special permission to extend my weekend a tad.”

  “Well, it means a lot to me that you’re here. But you can’t talk me out of helping Sasha. Doing this—helping people—it’s become a part of who I am. I need to be true to myself,” I say, surprised to hear my mom’s words come out of my mouth.

  “At the risk of your own dream?”

  “I’ll always love pottery,” I tell her. “It’ll always be a part of who I am. But what if dreams change? What if helping people is what I’m meant to do?”

&nb
sp; “Do you really think you can help this Sasha girl?” she asks.

  “I’m certainly trying. And, honestly, I wouldn’t trade a pottery bowl for her safety.”

  “Wow,” she says, reaching out to take my hands. There’s a curious smile across her lips. “What’s happened to you?”

  “I’m just reprioritizing, I guess. People come first.”

  “Especially best friends.” She gives my hands a squeeze.

  “Which is precisely why we’re all here,” Wes says.

  We continue to discuss the details of the case, including about how I feel that getting to know Mrs. Beckerman has really benefited me on a personal level. “It’s like I’ve been given this rare opportunity to get a different perspective—to see things through the eyes of someone who blames her secrecy for the fact that her daughter is missing. It’s helped me understand my own parents more.”

  “While that’s superdeep and interesting and all,” Wes says, “could we please get back to the fact that you looked like Night of the Living Dead coming out of the sculpture building?”

  “You did look sort of zombieish,” Kimmie agrees. “But I’d put you in the crack-addict category, with that pasty white face and those peaked eyes.”

  “Great,” I say, proceeding to tell them about the out-of-body experience I had—how I hallucinated finding an underground room and then getting knocked over the head. “I blacked out,” I tell them. “And then, when I came to, it was like I was someone else or someplace else…inside a house. Someone placed a rag over my mouth. It made me feel all woozy and disoriented.”

  “Probably chloroform,” Wes suggests.

  “Are we suddenly the resident expert on consciousness-altering drugs?” Kimmie raises an eyebrow at him.

  “No comment.” He smirks. “But chloroform usually renders people dizzy and confused, if not putting them out entirely.”

  “Was it you who got drugged?” Kimmie asks me. “In your hallucination, I mean.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was a man. I saw his hands. It was like I was in his body, feeling his anxiety.”