The Suburban Strange

by Nathan Kotecki

  “What did you have to do for your last admonition?”

  “Is it okay if I don’t tell you?” Mariette flushed. “I don’t—some admonitions are kind of personal.”

  “Sure, I understand.” Celia turned her attention back to the Unkind admonition in Mariette’s notebook. “Can I copy this down? There’s so much there, I’d like to look at it again. Maybe I can help you.”

  “I guess so.” Mariette sounded hesitant. “You have to make sure no one else sees it. Promise to keep all of this a secret. It’s very important.”

  “Definitely.” Celia pulled out her sketchbook and was turning to a blank page when Mariette stopped her.

  “I keep getting glimpses of your drawings, and I’m dying for a better look. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not! You’ve shared so much with me.” Celia watched Mariette leaf slowly through the pages. She nodded when Mariette correctly guessed her mother and her father and identified Regine. Then she showed Mariette she was turning to the very last page before she copied the admonition as quickly as she could. “I won’t tell anyone about this.”

  “Not even your friends. No one. Not even the smallest detail.” Mariette locked eyes with Celia. “Promise.”

  “I promise. I swear,” Celia said.

  “And who knows, maybe you’ll get your first admonition soon, and we’ll find out you’re the person to vanquish whoever’s hurting girls. Probably the reason I’m not being more successful is that it’s up to another Kind to put a stop to it.”

  “Mariette, you should get help, and not from me—from someone really powerful. This could be dangerous. This person is trying to kill someone, and if you’re trying to stop whoever it is, you could get hurt, or worse. Have you told the florist?” “No, I haven’t. We haven’t gone to my grandparents’ since school started. I don’t think there’s much she could do, anyway.”

  “And there’s no one else who’s closer?”

  “No one I know.”

  “You should get help. Tell me you’ll get help.”

  “I’ll tell the florist. I can probably find the phone number to the greenhouse.” Mariette sounded as if she were saying it only to appease Celia.

  EVEN THOUGH MARIETTE SEEMED convinced of it, Celia had trouble believing she herself could be one of the Kind. Sure, the list of inexplicable experiences had been growing since school started, but Celia never had been more than a spectator to any of them. Wasn't it far more likely she was a citizen who had glimpsed something that should have stayed hidden, as her boss at the bookstore apparently longed to do? Nonetheless, Celia felt a new devotion to Mariette, one that rivaled her devotion to the Rosary. Two days ago it would have been hard to convince Celia anything could have done that.

  That night she sat in her room, trying to feel something. Would it be like a ghost limb she never had known was missing? Would it be a new sense, or new knowledge? She closed her eyes. The seam on her stocking was poking the bottom of her foot. Her calves were sore from the boots she had worn that day. She was hungry for dinner. She had a hangnail on her left index finger. She needed to wash her hair.

  I am not one of the Kind. Celia sighed. Or if I am, I am the dullest, most unpowerful Kind ever. She got up to work on her dancing.

  "TODAY IS THE DAY I'M asking Ivo to the Sadie Hawkins dance," Regine said on Monday morning in the car. "Look at the invitation I made him."

  With mixed feelings Celia examined the beautiful collage, then replaced it in the envelope. “I wouldn’t have guessed you would want to go to something like the Sadie Hawkins.”

  “You’re right, but I don’t get to spend a lot of time alone with Ivo, so I’ll take the opportunity,” Regine said.

  “I know Brenden and Marco are together a lot on the weekends,” Celia reflected out loud. “But when we go out as a group, it’s always obvious they’re a couple. You and Ivo don’t seem to act that way.”

  “Ivo’s not like that. He doesn’t like to display affection. I can respect that. Maybe it’s unusual for people our age not to be so demonstrative with our feelings, but it’s kind of a relief, really. Ivo is very subtle when he likes someone. I used to be nervous he liked a girl at Diaboliques, because he talks to her almost every week, but they’re just friends, so it’s okay.”

  Celia thought it wasn’t her place to help Regine understand how she was mistaken about Ivo, and then she wondered if friends were supposed to try in situations like this. Was she failing Regine somehow by not saying anything? Was today the day Regine’s feelings were to be crushed? Celia was nervous on Regine’s behalf, but it turned out there was no need. Ivo accepted the invitation, prompting more grumbling from Marco and even comments from Brenden and Liz.

  “He does like that girl at Diaboliques—what’s her name, Isadore?” Brenden said. “I think he’s going along with this just because he doesn’t want the whole disaster of rejecting Regine. He doesn’t want the whole group to be affected, so he’s just waiting until the year is over.”

  “I would say that’s noble, but it’s really just pathetic,” Liz said. “When is she going to wake up?”

  Celia predicted no one would confront anyone about anything, and then Regine would drag Ivo off to the dance. “I’m so glad neither of us is a girl, or you know Ivo would find a way to guilt us into going to Sadie Hawkins with them,” she heard Marco say to Brenden.

  "WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT me like that?" Mariette figured out the answer before she finished asking the question, and she set her pencil down. "You can't stop thinking about it, can you?"

  “Are you surprised?” Celia said.

  “Think of it this way,” Mariette said. “Your drawings are just as amazing and miraculous and completely impossible as any of the things you’ve seen me do. I’ll never understand how you can do that with a pencil.”

  “My drawings don’t do what you can do,” Celia said.

  “Of course they do. You bring people to life. That’s more powerful than anything I can do.”

  Celia thought for a little. “Still, why do you do all this normal stuff?” She gestured vaguely at the classroom around them. “You could be doing anything else, if you wanted. I mean, couldn’t you?”

  “Not really. When something is extraordinary it’s because all the ordinary things make it extraordinary by comparison. I’m not explaining it well. If it was your birthday every day, after a while it wouldn’t be special anymore. It would just be another day. The other three hundred sixty-four ordinary days are what makes your birthday special, right? It’s weird, but as awesome as it is to have powers, I really like being ‘normal’ most of the time, just a high school girl—it helps me appreciate the powers. Does that make any sense?”

  “I think so. But I’m still going to stare at you sometimes,” Celia said.

  “Okay, go right ahead,” Mariette said, smiling in a way Celia hadn’t seen before.

  That night at the bookstore Celia watched Lippa and the rest of the Troika when they came in. The three petite women clustered together as they walked to the back of the store, looking like a benevolent creature in a bundle of astrakhan coats, with three heads and six legs, engrossed in a conversation with herself. Celia wondered what they thought they knew about the Kind and the Unkind. She had no intention of betraying Mariette's trust, but it was like knowing someone who searched for UFOs, and knowing a space alien, and not closing the triangle.

  Later, after she had accompanied her friends to the door and unlinked arms with them, Lippa came over to Celia at the counter. “You seem interested in the Troika.”

  “I was thinking of drawing you,” Celia lied.

  “I thought perhaps you were still thinking about what I told you before. Stories like that, about the Unkind, are fascinating, aren’t they?”

  “But do you believe them?”

  “You asked me that before. For centuries people have whispered about the Unkind. Most of them have never seen an Unkind in person, despite spending their lives trying. But something about the sto
ries is so compelling, people believe it anyway, without proof. At some point it’s not really about belief, then. It’s something that tells us about ourselves. No matter how rational we are, why is there always a part of us, deep down inside, that believes in monsters?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to have proof?”

  “Like meeting an Unkind, or a Kind? It’s just so unlikely. Other people have tried much harder than I have and failed. I think I mentioned stories about mysterious books that appear and disappear, which contain a supernatural history and give messages to the Unkind and the Kind. Having the bookstore, I sometimes wish one of those books would appear here, in the stacks, and I would have a moment to glimpse it myself before it vanished again. That would be proof enough for me.”

  On her way home Celia pondered the irony of it all. Lippa had told Celia what she thought was a fanciful tale, but it corroborated Mariette’s story about the Kind and the Unkind. Celia had witnessed things Lippa had given up on ever seeing, but Mariette had sworn her to secrecy, and Celia understood why.

  When she got home Celia pulled out her sketchbook to draw the Troika. Her drawing output had dropped considerably since the beginning of the year. It wasn’t difficult to understand the cause: In previous years she had spent every free moment at school drawing. Now she spent that time with the Rosary or Mariette. In previous years every night had been spent hunched over her sketchbook. Now she worked at the bookstore, or went to Diaboliques, or danced around her bedroom. She still carried her notebook everywhere with her. She would have felt naked without it. But the comfort it gave her was more symbolic now.

  12. THE ART OF FALLING APART

  CELIA NOTICED A PALPABLE suspense in the seniors, which grew as December began. First, Ivo got the letter accepting him into the architecture program at his top school, Metropolitan. The next day, Liz found out she was going there, too, as a creative writing major. Finally, Brenden’s letter came, accepting him into Metropolitan’s interdisciplinary studies program, which he wanted so badly to enter. It was exciting, but there was bleakness to it—it was the first indication that the days of the Rosary were numbered. Metropolitan was a few hundred miles away. When Liz caught the flu, her absence gave them a firsthand experience of what it was like to have someone missing from the group, and no one could ignore the sober truth that lurked behind the seniors’ good news about college.

  The afternoon after Brenden received his letter, Celia went to meet Marco in the library, but she didn’t see him at their usual table. She wandered through the stacks and finally turned a corner in the farthest reaches of the room to find him at a carrel by himself, his head down on his arms. The black rosary beads around his neck between his curls and the aubergine collar of his shirt told her he was trying to reassure himself the Rosary was intact. She put her hand on his shoulder and he looked up, wiping his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m just thinking about him leaving,” Marco said softly. “I know it’s not for another nine months, but he’s going to leave. And I knew he would, but it wasn’t real until he got accepted.” Marco looked drained. He glanced around to see if anyone else was nearby. “Metropolitan’s four hours away, so it’s not like I can visit him that easily. He won’t be able to come home most weekends.”

  “I’m sorry,” Celia said, largely because she didn’t know what else to say.

  “I do love him,” Marco said. “And he loves me. I know we’re young, and maybe I’m foolish for thinking he’s the one.”

  Celia pulled the chair over from the next carrel. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think you guys are perfect for each other.”

  “When he goes to school he’s going to meet all these other amazing people. How can I expect him to want to stay with me, even if I get there the next year?”

  “You have to ask him that,” Celia said.

  “I know. I just don’t want to bring it up because I know he’s excited about getting accepted, and I don’t want to be a wet blanket. He deserves to be excited.”

  “Well, Brenden hasn’t said anything to me, but I bet he knows how you’re feeling, even if you haven’t talked to him about it,” Celia said. “He has to be thinking about the same things. I mean, who’s to say you couldn’t meet someone else while he’s gone?”

  “I don’t want to meet anyone else,” Marco said. “You know, I stay over at his house almost every weekend. His parents are so cool about us. On the weekends it’s almost like we live together. When we all had that ridiculous conversation about sex the other day, I wanted to say you don’t have to lose your virginity with someone you love, but when you love somebody, sex becomes something completely different.”

  “I thought we weren’t talking about my virginity until April.” Celia was happy to get a chuckle out of Marco. “Listen, you two can figure this out. You’re both great guys, and you have a great relationship. I think you should try to enjoy the rest of this year with him, and then figure out what’s going to work for you. Just don’t let it spoil the time you have left before he goes.”

  “I know.” Marco wiped his eyes again.

  “And no hiding from me in the library,” Celia said. “We’re supposed to be getting our homework done.”

  Celia’s heart went out to Marco. He was always so stylish and self-assured, yet she still could see the dreaming child in him, who gave his love and then depended on those he loved so much it made him fragile. She had decided to make portraits of the Rosary for Christmas presents, and she thought more about him when she was pulling up her mental pictures for his drawing. Marco’s joy was close at hand so often. The moments when it strayed, like that afternoon in the library, were shocking. Celia thought of love as a kind of miracle, something beyond her control, to be hoped for but never expected. Most of the relationships she saw at school were not nearly as convincing, but when Marco spoke of love with Brenden, she believed. Maybe love was a miracle, but there it was in front of her. Celia wondered when she might feel it herself.

  She thought about each of the members of the Rosary as she worked on their portraits—the way they carried themselves and the way they fit into the group. Celia was better at describing people with her pencil than she was with words, and she worked very hard to capture each of them. She had picked up another copy of The Awakening to give Mariette but decided she would make a portrait for her, too.

  As close as she had become to Mariette, Celia was even more at a loss to describe that relationship. She felt like a guest in Mariette’s world, where fantastic, inexplicable things happened—a world in which she didn’t have a place. On the one hand, she wanted to know more, wanted to see more, wanted to share with Mariette the things she had glimpsed. On the other hand, she was scared Mariette would be disappointed when Celia turned out to be merely a citizen who never should have been told any of this. She feared for Mariette, and she feared the terrible thing that was happening at Suburban—a plot that could kill a girl, and perhaps Mariette, if she got in the way of someone with Unkind powers and the desire to use them. How was Celia supposed to make sense of that? And what was she supposed to do, when every option she considered was laughably implausible? Celia focused her energy on the drawings. It was reassuring to do something familiar.

  AT HER LOCKER THE NEXT day, Celia was so preoccupied, she didn't notice that someone had approached her until he spoke. "Hi," he said. "Celia, right?"

  It was Skip. She had watched Liz watching him so many times, and they had crossed paths over a number of girls on their curse days, but it was a surprise to find him in front of her. “Yes?” Celia looked around, confused. He stood there, at ease in his denim shirt and orange sweater, smelling of cologne, a string of tiny shells around his neck. He was generically good-looking, in the healthy way jocks were, but there was too much gel in his bangs and not enough in the rest of his hair.

  “I’m Skip. You’re friends with Liz Fourad, aren’t you?” He was friendly and completely confident. Celia couldn’t imagine being so nonchalant when speakin
g to a stranger for the first time. She tried to be cool.

  “Yes, why?”

  “I was just wondering if she’s okay. She hasn’t been in school for a few days.” He looked her straight in the eye and smiled a little, and Celia fought the melting response she knew he was used to getting from girls.

  “She has the flu.”

  “She does? That’s too bad. Does she need anyone to get her assignments for her?”

  Celia was pleasantly surprised by his question and a little touched by his sentiment, but she couldn’t offer him any encouragement. “I think her brother is doing that.”

  “Sure, of course. Okay, well, thanks for letting me know. I hope she feels better.” He hesitated.

  “Do you want me to tell her anything?”

  “Um, you don’t have to,” Skip said. “I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference to her. I’ll see you around.”

  “Okay.” Celia watched him go. She turned back to her locker and was trying to make sense of the conversation when Mariette appeared on her other side.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Who? That guy? No. Well, kind of. Why?”

  “His name is Skip, right? He’s on the football team.”

  “Yeah, I know. Why do you care?” Celia had become accustomed to Mariette’s knowing unexpected things, but she couldn’t guess why Mariette would be interested in Skip.

  “I think he might be a suspect,” Mariette said, looking down the hall after Skip, who turned a corner and disappeared from view.

  “You think he’s a suspect? Why?”