“As I watched her, she held her hands over the pots, and two plants grew in them—in thirty seconds she grew two full-sized tulip plants! But when the flowers opened, they were pink instead of orange and yellow. She made a tsking noise and then she blew on one of the flowers, and the pink flower gradually turned orange yellow. She did it again and again, until all the flowers on both plants were the right color.
“I sneaked away and went back to my dad, and then the florist found us. She was carrying the two tulip plants she had just grown in the back, and I couldn’t tell the difference between those two and the other six.
“The greenhouse was only a few blocks from my grandparents’ house, so I went back as soon as I could get away. When I told the woman what I had seen her do, she was alarmed, but then I told her about the hydrangea at my house, and everything changed. ‘You must be new!’ she said, and asked me to try it with a rhododendron bush she had there. I’ll never forget it—she said, ‘Rhododendrons are really easy to train,’ like they were pets or something. And sure enough, the rhododendron flowers followed me as I walked past, just like the hydrangeas had.
“The woman started to tell me things, but customers kept coming in. I kept sneaking back to the greenhouse that whole visit, until my parents thought I was crazy. I only got the basics from her: I’m one of the Kind. My powers grow stronger if I fulfill my admonitions. I have to keep everything a secret, and I must only use my powers for good. If I use them for bad, even once, I will cross over to the Unkind, and it’s really hard to get back. She told me I would learn a lot more on my own just by keeping my eyes open and paying attention, and she was right. My first admonition came to me on the ride home. We were driving through Marietta, and the sign—the one on the edge of town that tells you what city you’re entering—didn’t say Marietta, Next Five Exits or whatever. It said Mariette, Write This Down. My parents and my brother didn’t notice. I grabbed my diary, and for the next twenty miles, every time we passed a road sign, billboard, anything, a phrase of my admonition was on it. As soon as I finished writing one line down, I would look up and the next line would be coming up on the next sign. And my parents, my brother, never noticed anything.”
“That’s amazing,” Celia said. “What did you have to do?”
“My first one was pretty easy, though the way it was worded, it wasn’t clear right away. But my parents were going to give me a choice between going to Suburban for high school or going to a private school, and the admonition told me to choose Suburban. I didn’t understand why. Nothing happened last year to make it clear why I was supposed to have chosen Suburban. But this year, I’m starting to think I’m there for a reason.”
“To fight the person—one of the Unkind?—who has the evil admonition?”
“Perhaps,” Mariette said, more shyly than Celia had expected. “I’m still learning. I have so much to learn. I don’t think it ever stops.”
“So there isn’t a school for the Kind?”
“Not a building or anything like that. This isn’t like a profession that you learn. It’s your life, and my life. Each of us develops different powers. It’s going on all the time, wherever we are. Once you get started, it’s like a machine turns on that runs by itself, and then the world around you becomes your school. You get to see things other people don’t see. You receive information from places you never expected. And you try things, when you’re ready. It’s like the world becomes your chemistry lab, but you have to be careful, because there’s no teacher with a fire extinguisher if you blow something up.”
“So what’s up with chemistry, anyway?”
“I know!” Mariette laughed. “There was no way I could hide it. I have this sense of how things are going to work together. Like when you pour cream into coffee, you look for it to turn a certain shade, and then you know it will taste the way you want it to? I get that from every natural substance. I can tell if two of them are going to work together, or if there’s too much of one or the other. I don’t know if we all have that instinct, but since I’ve freed mine up, it’s been really useful.”
“Hey, we’re acing chemistry, so no complaints here.” Celia smiled. “And considering the number of kids who failed Mr. S.’s other classes first semester, that’s no small feat.”
“You seemed to come to terms with my lab skills pretty quickly.” Mariette smiled back.
“But the woman in the flower shop—do you know other people? Others of the Kind?”
“Not really,” Mariette said. “I go see her when we visit my grandparents, but that’s only once or twice a year. She has helped me, and our powers overlap a little, but it’s not like she can just teach me to do the things she does. A couple times strangers have given me some sign that they recognize me, but it’s been in the middle of a crowd of citizens, so it wasn’t like we could talk about anything, really. That’s why I was so excited to meet you.”
“Me?”
“Don’t you see?” Mariette said. “The only reason I’m telling you all this, the only reason I didn’t hide all of this from you—the reason you noticed the things I was doing in the first place—is because I think you’re one of the Kind, too.”
“Me?” Celia stared. “Why do you think I’m one of the Kind?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I’ve heard that as Kind grow stronger, they are able to sense one another, like magnets or something. I don’t know if only some Kind can do it, or if they can detect all Kind or only some, but I felt something with you, the first day of school. I can’t describe it, but I can sense something in you. I think you’re one of the Kind.”
“I—I don’t have any powers.”
“You’ve never had anything happen that you can’t explain?”
Celia tried to come up with something, but she kept returning to the thought that nothing inexplicable ever had happened to her—other than what she had experienced with Mariette. Sure, plenty of her experiences with the Rosary had felt miraculous, but not in the way Mariette meant. Then she remembered the night before.
“Something happened last night that I can’t explain, but it wasn’t me—it was this woman at Diaboliques. I thought she was a fortuneteller, but she wouldn’t tell my fortune. Instead, she told me all these weird things about how the guy I used to see there wished he could see me, and how I was going to meet you today to talk about this.”
“That’s wild! She’s probably Kind. She didn’t tell you anything about yourself?”
“No. She said I wasn’t ready to hear it, whatever that means.”
“Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s too late now. You know my secret! I bet something happens very soon, though, and you find out you have powers, too. I think a lot of Kind discover who they are in high school. But I could be wrong about that, too.”
“So, what powers do you have?”
“So far, my thing seems to be very much about nature,” Mariette said. “I’ve always been an outdoor person, kind of a tomboy, so it makes sense. Most of what I’ve learned has to do with plants and natural substances, and physical and chemical changes.”
“Like the frost on the window?”
“You did see that. I wasn’t sure. Daydreaming is my worst enemy, because I do things without remembering where I am. Yeah, the frost.” Mariette tapped her glass on the table between them and ice crystals appeared, quickly melting away.
“And your shadow?”
“My shadow?”
“One day I saw you getting off the bus, and you were getting teased by some kids and your shadow flickered, like you were turning invisible.”
“Really? I actually hadn’t noticed that. It must mean that I’m getting closer. I really want to be able to turn invisible, but you don’t get to pick your powers. Maybe it’s coming though, and my shadow is the first thing to go. That would be so cool! I hate the bus. There are three guys who must spend every night thinking of new things to say to me in the morning. They don’t know anything about all this, of course. They’ve just chosen me for their a
musement. They don’t play fair, and they shout so much I can’t hear myself speak to respond. It makes me insane to be around them.”
“I could tell you were upset, or stressed. The leaves on the tree above you changed color.”
“I have a really strong relationship with plants,” Mariette said. There was a half-dead rose in the bud vase on the table. Mariette stroked it with her knuckle and the color flushed back into it, and the sere edges smoothed out. The flower pulled down toward the stem, like a child ducking its chin to its chest when tickled. Celia caught her breath, partly because of what she was seeing, and partly because the fortuneteller at Diaboliques had described Mariette as the one who touches roses.
“So what happens next?”
“Well, nothing, really. I go to school, and I do everything you do. But at the same time I’m studying, trying to improve myself, and hopefully learning to do more things. I’m not trying to be hugely powerful or anything. You have to be a fool not to realize even a little power carries a huge responsibility, and if you screw it up it’s going to kick your ass.”
“What about the person who’s trying to kill a girl in our class, then?”
“There is a dark side,” Mariette said. “Some people get started, maybe by the wrong person, or maybe they get started by the right person but then they make bad decisions. And they turn from the Kind to the Unkind. They seek the darkness instead of the light. They try to develop their powers in ways that break things down rather than building them up.”
“Can the person who’s doing those things at school be stopped?”
“I think I’m supposed to stop it—maybe that’s why I was supposed to go to Suburban. But I haven’t figured out how yet. Maybe we’re supposed to do it together! It’s so frustrating, though, because I haven’t been able to figure out who it is. If I had more experience, if my powers were more advanced, I think I’d be able to pick the person out blindfolded, but I’m not sensitive enough. And I don’t have any experience trying to counteract the actions of someone else. I’m just a beginner, you know?” Mariette grinned. “I’m pretty sure it’s someone at school, because all the bad things take place at school or right outside. So it’s probably someone there. The best I’ve been able to do so far is to find this.” Mariette pulled her school notebook out of her bag and opened it. Celia eagerly looked onto the page, but even upside down she could see it contained nothing more interesting than chemistry notes.
Then Mariette passed her hand over the paper and the surface changed. The chemistry notes were wiped away, and other text in Mariette’s handwriting appeared in their place. “I was so happy when I learned how to do this!” she said. “It’s so much less to carry around.” She turned the notebook around so Celia could read. “I found an admonition that I think is addressed to the Unkind person behind all this,” Mariette said.
“So tell me, what is an admonition? Where do you find them?”
“An admonition is like the instructions for your personal quest. It tells you what you have to do to get to the next place in your journey, and things to be wary of as you go. There are all sorts of admonitions, and they’re usually very specific, to one person only. They’re hard to understand, and they’re even harder to understand if they’re not for you. I’ve seen some admonitions and been sure there wasn’t an atom of meaning in them, but of course there must be, to someone. You’ve never found a twelve-line poem in a strange place?” Celia shook her head. “If you’re Kind, your admonition tells you to do good things and rewards you with good powers. If you’re Unkind, your admonition tells you to do bad things and rewards you with bad powers. If I’m right, and this is the right admonition, these are the only clues I have to find the person who’s causing all the trouble at school.”
Celia read:
The shortest path to greatest power
Is found the day before the hour
An innocent girl attains sixteen
Her dying breath does not turn sour
Collect it with your kissing lips
And wait for the next moon’s eclipse
Then a new blood, dark and rich
Will flow through your own fingertips
Only beware a different girl
With talent hidden like a pearl
Her hands may render you as dead
And stop your power in this world
“An innocent girl. So that’s why nothing happened to the girls who have had sex?”
“That’s what it’s starting to seem like. Like I said, the meaning isn’t always obvious right away.”
“So you can vanquish him,” Celia said, pointing to the third stanza.
“If it’s a boy. Who knows, it could be a girl. I’m pretty sure I have the right admonition, but the clues are so vague.”
“Where did you find it?”
“This is going to sound really weird—well, I guess all of this sounds really weird, doesn’t it?” Mariette grinned. “I found it in a book. Ever since I found out about all this I’ve tried anything I can think to learn more about it. I’ve turned up practically nothing, though. Anyway, a week before school started I went to the public library. I searched for different key words like ‘Kind’ and ‘admonition.’ And the computer gave me only one result: a book called You Are Here. I had to climb up into this tiny room in the top floor of the library, and when I found the book, it looked like it was a hundred years old, and it wasn’t like any book I’d ever seen before. Some of the pages were printed, but there was handwriting on other pages—I wish I had read more of it! There was a chapter with the title ‘Suburban,’ so of course I looked at that first, and it had three pages. The first page had an admonition that must have been older. It had a line about the dark ages, and I have no idea how it was connected to Suburban. The second page had my last admonition, which I hadn’t fulfilled yet. And the third page had this one.” Mariette pointed to the ominous admonition on the table between them.
“I couldn’t believe it. I took the book down to check it out, but they told me it was part of the permanent collection and I couldn’t take it home. I should have just sat down and read the rest of it. But I was running out of time, and I figured I would just come back another day and look at it some more. Before I gave it back, I copied the third admonition. I don’t know why I decided to do that—the admonition scared me, and I guess I thought if it had to do with Suburban and fifteen-year-old girls maybe I should keep it in mind. You remember how surprised I was when you said something about a curse, back in the first week of school?
“Anyway, a couple days later I went back to the library. But when I climbed up into that room, the book was nowhere to be found. I searched for You Are Here in the computer, and there was nothing. I even asked the librarian, and he couldn’t find it. He acted like I was playing a joke. It was so strange and confusing, and I was so disappointed, because there was so much more in that book, and I wish I could have seen it all. But I’ve learned that some pretty unbelievable things lurk around, right there in plain sight, that citizens just don’t seem to see. And I think this book was one of them—it was like it had come into existence just for that day, to give me this admonition. I think sometimes things appear at a specific time and place to pass something important along, and then they disappear. I don’t know where admonitions really come from. I guess they’re like oracles, but that book, it makes me think sometimes admonitions are supposed to be found by people other than the person to whom they’re addressed, particularly in situations like this, when someone is supposed to stop them from happening.”
“Wow,” Celia said.
“There might be a way to track an admonition back to the person to whom it belongs, but I don’t know how to do it. And there might be a way to cancel out an admonition so it doesn’t work. Maybe not. At first I wasn’t sure anything was happening—maybe the person wouldn’t try to fulfill the admonition? But when I heard that girl was stung on the first day of school, and then the other girl passed out, I knew someone was trying
, and I had to do something. The only thing I’ve been able to think of is to try to protect a girl when I know it’s the day before her birthday, but I’m not doing very well with that, either.”
“What do you do?”
“I make a protective serum. I think it works, or at least helps. The injuries probably would be worse if I weren’t doing it. They would probably be fatal, and then the person could try to collect the girl’s final breath and fulfill the admonition. The serum might work better if I could figure out how to get more of it onto each girl.”
“How do you get any of it on them?”
“I put it on the lock on her locker at the end of the day before the day it’s supposed to happen. I figure everyone has to open her locker first thing in the morning.”
“Smart. And now I understand why you were making that chart listing everyone’s locker!” Celia laughed.
Mariette laughed, too, in surprise. “You notice everything! See, if you were a citizen, you wouldn’t pick up on these things! You have to be one of the Kind!”
Celia shrugged. “Well, no one has died, so you must be doing something right.”
“Yes, but there’s another possibility. The Unkind who’s doing these things might not be very strong, either. This Unkind might be a beginner, like me. If it’s someone our age, that’s likely. Maybe that person is doing a poor job, and when he or she tries to kill a girl, the spell is weak, so it’s only strong enough to hurt her. It’s hard to tell if I’m succeeding or if the Unkind is failing.”
“According to this, then, you have to kill the person to stop him? Or her?”
“Not necessarily. Admonitions are like oracles—often they don’t mean what you think they mean. The way it’s worded, it could mean the person doesn’t have to be killed but just made to appear dead—maybe just unconscious for a while. If I have to do it, I would definitely prefer that,” Mariette said sincerely.
“So you have an admonition?”
“I’m in between,” Mariette said. “Every member of the Kind usually has an admonition. They lead us to the next destination on our journey. Once we finish one, we get another one. As one chapter ends, the next one begins,” Mariette said. “I fulfilled my last admonition right at the beginning of school, and I’ve been waiting to receive a new one. Usually it doesn’t take this long. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been missing it.”
The Suburban Strange Page 12
