I'm Not Who You Think I Am

by Felicitas Ivey

  I was impressed, since I’d thought he’d microwave them. I grabbed a mug from the mug tree and poured tea into it.

  “And what? Am I going to go back to nature and reject all modern conveniences? I’m not thinking of it,” I said carefully. “I just don’t know what I want to do with my life right now, and they’re horrified. My brothers knew what they wanted before they hit high school.”

  “And you’re not so focused,” Rat said as he threw the cheese into the pan, stirring it in with the eggs. It should have been awkward talking to his back, but I found it was easier. “It’s normal for most kids to flounder in college, I’ve been told.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  Rat turned and grinned. “I went into the Army. I got some tech training there, along with a lot of other things. I was going to go to college afterward. I still might take a couple courses. It’s not like there isn’t a perfectly good university nearby.”

  He turned back and stirred stuff around a bit. “Or not. I keep up with tech training. The Shawmut doesn’t skimp on sending its people for training or conferences and stuff like that.”

  Rat plated the eggs and presented them to me with a flourish. “Eat, and then we’re supposed to meet Josh at the Shawmut.”

  I nodded as I dug into my eggs. I gave a little to Mafdet and she purred in approval.

  “What kind of school do you go to?” Rat asked as he topped off his tea. He was snacking on some cheese to keep me company.

  “Expensive and private,” I said loftily. “Filled with spoiled girls who are going to get a shock if they ever hit the real world.”

  Not that I thought it would happen. All of them had enough money to protect them from life. Most of them would go to college, get married, and have kids because that’s what their parents had done. It was… nice.

  “Including you?” he drawled.

  I thought about it for a second and then nodded. “Including me.”

  Racial issues aside, I also had enough money to protect me from a lot of things. Real issues, at least. A mystic jerk seemed to be a different matter, which was just my luck.

  “You seem to have a good head on your shoulders.”

  “But I expect that no means no,” I said bitterly. “Or if I don’t have a Y chromosome, I should be taken as seriously as a man.”

  “Damn, you are spoiled,” he said sarcastically.

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t sound like an ass. I’m not living in a bubble, even though I am studying in one. Nightingale is giving me all sorts of advantages I wouldn’t get in a public school, even if my parents would send me to one. At an all-girl school, the boys aren’t there to be deferred to and encouraged over us girls. And it’s what would be considered a really safe space, because it’s a girls’ school. There aren’t even a lot of male teachers there.

  “When I look at colleges, I’m looking at their track record on dealing with sexual assault as much as anything. Tell me what man has to worry about that?”

  Rat didn’t say anything, but the look on his face told me enough. He’d never had to think of such things.

  “So where are you looking?” he asked.

  “No place any of my family went,” I said. “But since my parents and I are still arguing about what my major should be, I haven’t really looked seriously. And I have half a year to make up my mind. All I know are the places I want to avoid, for a number of reasons.”

  “You do?” he asked. “Like certain areas of the country?”

  I nodded. “It’s stupid, but I don’t know if I could live in the country after New York City.”

  “And how are you going to see if you want to go to that college?” Rat asked. “I never really thought about going, so I’m a little curious.”

  “College visits and all that stuff are like a ritual of your junior year in high school,” I replied. “But right now, that doesn’t seem important for some reason.”

  “But it is,” Rat told me. “This shouldn’t ruin your life. It’s not like you have to join a monastery or something. It’s just…. Who am I kidding? It isn’t nothing, but don’t let the bastard win.”

  “It would be a nunnery,” I muttered before continuing in a louder tone. “And how am I going to explain this to my parents? They’d never believe me.”

  “Why don’t we leave that to Josh to deal with. If you feel up to it, we can go to work now and see what else can blow up in your… our faces.”

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Rat sounded so excited about what trouble we could get into. He was acting like Xiu.

  “See, if you can still laugh, then things aren’t as dire as we think they are.” Rat grinned. “Let me give you a ride on my bike. You can see more of Boston that way.”

  I nodded. That did sound like fun. But I had one more question before we left. “What exactly does the Shawmut do? Is it some sort of secret government organization or what?”

  Rat looked embarrassed. “We never really explained that part to you,” he said. “I’m going to be a pain and ask you to wait for Josh to tell you what the Shawmut is. We should have started off with that.”

  “I think the language-by-icky-kiss sort of distracted everyone,” I assured him. “So I’ll wait and see what your supersecret organization is all about.”

  Chapter Seven

  RAT AND I arrived at the Shawmut Institute after a very interesting motorcycle ride through South Boston and Dorchester. I hadn’t seen much during the ride—I’d just held on tight and buried my head into his back. Rat was what a lot of people would call an “adventurous” driver. His driving style blended in with the aggressive craziness of Massachusetts’s nonrules of the road. With some of the moves Rat had made getting us through traffic, I just wanted to get off the bike as soon as possible before we got hit by a car or ran over a pedestrian.

  We pulled up behind an immense black granite building. The rough-hewn blocks made the place look like a fortress. The central section was three stories tall, and the roof was peaked so the snow would roll off its tiles in the winter. The wings were two stories, and then stepped down to one story. There looked to be some patio seating on both sides of the first-story wings.

  There was a stained-glass half-circle door on the second floor, the design some sort of abstract blue pattern, framed by a pair of towers topped with crenels. There were rectangular windows on the first two levels, the third having arched ones.

  “It’s on the historical register,” Rat said. “For the architectural style.”

  “Early fortress?” I quipped as I got off the motorcycle and shook out my skirt. I checked to see if everything was in my purse too, after that wild ride.

  Off in the background was a collection of buildings. A couple of apartment complexes were on the city side of the institute. Toward the bay were two huge buildings. I recognized one as being the JFK museum Rat had pointed out to me this morning. That run seemed like it had happened days ago.

  “The peninsula sort of settled in around this place,” Rat explained. “And the powers that be didn’t want to make too much of a fuss, since then people would be asking why.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “So there’s a branch of the state university behind us, and a couple of apartment complexes, which are filled with students, I swear, because there are no dorms here,” Rat continued. “Harper’s got a place in one of them. The short white building is some sort of political thing. Not seen, behind that, is a stone bunker, otherwise known as the Mass State Archive Building. It’s a nice area to walk around here in the summer, but the wind is a bitch once it drops below fifty degrees.”

  I wouldn’t have known this was where Uncle Yushua worked, except for the discreet metal plate next to the front door. It simply stated the name of the place. The building had the year 1886 carved into it.

  “Romanesque,” he said. “It helps.”

  Helps what? I wanted to ask as we went in the front door. There was a small entryway and a glass door, which opened into a larg
e reception area. The floor was stone, and there were scattered oriental rugs in odd places. There were bookcases of dark wood on the bottom floor, with the second and third floors open and overlooking the lobby, with balconies running along three sides of the room. Huge chandeliers lighted the place, with three running up and down each side. On the left and right side were a pair of sweeping, wide staircases, leading to the second floor. From the second to the third floor were hanging staircases. The place gave me the impression I’d walked into some sort of Victorian men’s club. However, it was the back wall, which dominated the enormous lobby, that was the most impressive part for me.

  There was a map of Ancient Egypt etched on it, the cities along the Nile marked with various mosaics, the nomes or provinces outlined and named. The names of the cities were the original Egyptian ones, with the Greek or Arabic ones underneath. The two ladies who guarded Egypt, the “Beloved Land,” framed each side. The goddess Nekhebt, the vulture goddess and guardian of the South, or Upper Egypt, was on the right. On the left, guarding Lower Egypt and the Delta, was Wadjet, the serpent goddess of the Northern section. The map was colorful and expressive, stretching out about a hundred feet, and up about fifty.

  I stared in fascination, only moving when Rat nudged me forward. I’d seen this map before, but I didn’t know where or, even scarier, when.

  Halfway across the room, there was a woman behind a huge wooden desk. It looked like it weighed a ton, and I wondered how they rearranged the furniture, or if this place had stayed the same since it opened. There was a phone and a computer on it, but other than that, it was empty. Nothing personalized. It seemed weird.

  “Hi, Gin.” Rat smiled at the woman. She was in her midthirties, dressed in a smart dark blue suit, with discreet diamond studs in her ears, and her blonde hair pulled back in a flawless chignon. She was pretty and looked like a doll. Not a china one—a Barbie doll, minus the unrealistic breasts. Corporate Barbie in the flesh. “This is Kay. She’s Josh’s niece and here for a visit. He thought it would be nice for her to see where he works.”

  It was still weird to hear my uncle referred to so casually. I’d have to ask him about that sometime, because I could never think of my uncle as “Josh.”

  Gin smiled, even as she stared at her computer, typing quickly. “When I first came to work here, that piece was enthralling.”

  She made it sound like it was boring now, beneath her attention for any reason. And that made me sad, because it was a beautiful piece of art.

  “It’s a wonderful work,” I mumbled.

  She made me feel awkward. I hated that. There were too many times in my life I’d felt like that.

  A printer underneath her desk spit out a badge, and Gin leaned down to grab it. She stood up and handed it to me, finally acknowledging I existed, it seemed.

  “This gives you access to reading rooms only. There is no eating, drinking, or cell phone conversations allowed in the reading rooms. There are locked study areas; those are for graduate students,” she said crisply, spitting out a memorized speech. And giving me the impression she thought I was a waste of printing out a badge. “There are quiet conversation areas in the reading rooms for those who are doing joint research. Please use them if you are going to have a prolonged discussion with someone. They are not to be considered a private area or a phone booth.

  “You don’t have access to any storage areas, and any texts you require must be requested, since you don’t have access to the stacks. You are not the only person using the library either. Please be considerate of others in your area.”

  And the “don’t bother the serious students” message came through loud and clear. I wanted to tell her being here wasn’t my idea of a good time either, but that would hurt Uncle Yushua more than her, so I kept quiet.

  I smiled back at her, taking the badge and slipping it into a pocket in my bag. I’d hitch it onto my school lanyard, next to my school ID, later.

  “Thank you, Gin,” Rat said. “We’ll go bug Josh and Harp right now.”

  “It’s always good to see you.” Gin nodded. “And a pleasure to meet you, Kay.”

  Her tone indicated otherwise, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. I was someone important’s niece, so she had to be nice to me. I think she had visions of me ruining a rare text or something. Teenager doesn’t equal destructive!

  “Don’t mind Gin,” Rat said as soon as we were out of earshot. “She does that to everyone.”

  “I’m a teenager, so she thinks I’m going to be bored out of my mind in a minute.” I paused. “To be honest, before… it might have taken me a week or so, depending on how much I could read here.”

  Rat chuckled and headed up the left staircase. “Offices are on the third floor, so we’ll head there first. And then figure out where you need to hang for the day.”

  “Why?”

  “The reading rooms are divided into the three eras of Egyptian history: Old, Middle, and New Kingdom. There is some stuff from the Roman occupation too,” Rat explained. “So you’re going to be in one of them to do your reading, since materials don’t leave their era. As much as they want to, no one can keep the good stuff in their office.”

  “But….” I didn’t know how much I should say out in public.

  Why had he called Rome annexing Egypt into its Empire an occupation? He sounded like he’d been there or something, and the Romans had spent most of their time saying nasty things about his family. It was strange, but I didn’t feel comfortable asking him about it.

  “I know the Old Kingdom is important in this, but you never know what else we have to poke at,” he said.

  “We?” I echoed.

  “You for the bulk of it.” He grinned, then sobered. “I’m sorry. We’re taking advantage of your misfortune.”

  “It wasn’t your fault he was a jerk.”

  I wanted to say something stronger but didn’t really have the words. Bastard seemed too tame. Various Egyptian curses sprang into my mind, but I ignored them. I was terrified if I started voluntarily speaking the language, I’d never stop.

  “Wasn’t yours either,” he said, frowning as we got to the top of the stairs.

  I looked around, noticing there were tables and chairs in the four corners of the third floor. It looked cozy. I wondered if Mother knew that if I’d ever seen where Uncle Yushua worked, she would have had trouble getting me out of here. That might be one of the reasons she never wanted to visit up here.

  “The rooms are laid out chronologically,” Rat said. “A bulk of the collection is in storage here for climate control and safety, but sometimes things end up over at the MFA when a big shot wants to do research. Someone usually hand-carries it over there when that happens. Harvard always sends its people over here, ’cause they never had the room for even a small research collection. It’s too built up over there, so we’ve become offsite storage for them.”

  I nodded in agreement as we headed toward the third-floor stairs.

  “There are always a lot of visiting scholars here from all over the place,” Rat continued. “Also a lot of requests to scan and send stuff someplace. There have been days when that was all I’ve done. But someone has to do it, and it justifies why I’m here to some people.”

  “Some people?” I repeated.

  Rat chuckled. “There are a lot of people who don’t think fixing computers is a legitimate job or even a skill. Well, I’m going to let Josh explain things to you. We should have done it this morning, but you weren’t doing too good.”

  That was an understatement. My eyes still felt scratchy from all my tears.

  “Harper actually has a degree in library science, so he spends most of the time poking at the books and keeping some sort of order in his reading room. Josh does most of the paperwork to keep the place from blowing up—you wouldn’t believe how cranky bureaucracy can be—and writes the occasional paper, because of the ‘publish or perish’ thing in academia. In our copious spare time, we deal with the odd bits of odd bits.”
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br />   “My parents complain about both those things all the time, bureaucracy and articles,” I said. “Both of them have to deal with various federal agencies and regulations for their research. And then there is peer-reviewing and publishing said research.”

  We found Uncle Yushua’s office. It was on the right side of the building. In his office there was a copy of the map that was in the lobby, taking up an inside wall. The whole thing had been made to look like a papyrus scroll and was a lot smaller than the one downstairs, but had the same exquisite detail.

  “Mykayla,” Uncle Yushua greeted as he got up to hug me. “You look good.”

  I hugged him back, tightly, wondering when I had gotten so touchy-feely. “I’m better,” I assured him.

  I don’t think he believed it, but I made a beeline to examine the map in detail. I’d wanted to do so as soon as I saw the map downstairs.

  “This is beautiful,” I said, staring at the spot that marked Abydos. “The Great Land,” I murmured, easily reading the hieroglyphs indicating the nome of the city.

  As I looked at that map, I saw the differences from the one downstairs. None of the more “modern” names were listed, and all the names were written in hieroglyphs. But more than cities and nomes appeared on this map—pyramids and other burial sites had been added. The only parts of the map in English were notes about dig sites, the ones Harvard University and the MFA had participated in, and their dates.

  “Why don’t we sit down and discuss things,” Uncle Yushua said.

  I nodded as I looked around his office. It echoed the men’s club theme from downstairs, with bookcases on two walls. The heavy stone outside wall was pierced with glazed arch windows, which took up most of the wall, flooding the area with light and giving a wonderful view of the ocean.

  There were four overstuffed chairs in the corner, which had been arranged in a circle. There was a tea cart with crystal bottles filled with what I assumed was liquor on the side, and a low table in the middle. I curled up in one of the chairs, feeling exhausted all of a sudden. Uncle Yushua and Rat sat down also. It felt cozy and safe here and I never wanted to leave it. The door opened, and Harper walked in and sat with us.