The Suburban Strange

by Nathan Kotecki

  Celia screamed. She felt the air rushing around her, growing colder and colder until it felt as if she were in a blizzard. Her skin prickled as if she were being attacked by thousands of slivers of ice. She raised her hands, trying to ward off whatever was coming at her in the darkness.

  The cold wind died down, and the lights came back on, at first so dim Celia could see only shadows around her. But they slowly regained their brightness, and she could see Mr. Sumeletso in the same spot in front of her, his feet on the floor, looking winded. Mariette’s book had fallen by his feet.

  “You are stronger than I thought,” he said. “Not Kind? Of course you are. No matter. The power I will gain for killing Mariette will make me much stronger. The lunar eclipse is coming. I bet you knew that, too, didn’t you? And I’ll be able to find you wherever you go.”

  His face was gruesome, but Celia glimpsed insecurity there. The cracks in his façade closed as he issued his threat. “Soon it won’t matter where you are. It won’t matter what you do. I’ll be able to get to you no matter how far away you run. So say goodbye to your gloomy friends. Your time is almost up!” He snapped his fingers and the chandelier flashed brightly, then faded back to a steady dimness. The outer lobby doors banged open, and he rose off the floor again and floated out into the night. The inner doors slammed apart, and Celia ran as fast as she could in her heels.

  She fled down the dim hall and veered into a bathroom and then into a stall, sinking down onto the seat, hyperventilating at the horror of what she had just experienced. Why didn’t he kill me? What did I do? She opened Liz’s clutch and took out the cell phone.

  “Hello?” It had felt like an hour before Tomasi came to the phone, but Celia was relieved he was there and his mother had allowed him to take the call.

  “Tomasi? It’s Celia.”

  “Hi! Are you at prom? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my chemistry teacher! He killed Mariette. He thinks I’m the one who’s been protecting girls all year! I knew he was the one, but I thought he didn’t know I knew and so I was safe, but he figured it out, except he thinks I was the one protecting the girls, instead of Mariette! And he told me he’s going to kill me after the eclipse!” Celia tried to keep herself from crying.

  “Wait, wait. You knew it was your chemistry teacher? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want to make things worse for you with your parents!” Celia thought she heard the line click, but Tomasi answered her.

  “Well, I’m glad you told me. There are people who can help us.”

  “What can they do?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out. Tell me what happened.”

  “Liz had left her purse in a side lobby where no one else went, and I went to get it, and he cornered me. He has this power to make the lights go on and off, and he was levitating—” There was a gasp on the phone, and Celia stopped. “Was that you?”

  “No,” he said. “Who was that?”

  This time Celia was sure she heard the click of a phone hang up. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here—” Tomasi was interrupted by voices in the background. “What are you doing? Were you listening?” he asked angrily, and Celia knew he wasn’t speaking to her. She heard his parents’ voices, and the sounds of a scuffle. Then the phone went dead. She tried calling back several times, but the line was busy. Finally she put the phone back in Liz’s purse.

  Celia looked around. She was alone, in a strange bathroom in an unfamiliar place. There was nothing, no one to whom she could turn for even a fleeting sense of security. “You have to get it together,” Celia said to herself. “You have to go back to the others and pretend nothing happened. You have no choice.” She pulled herself up, tried to make her face presentable in the mirror, and then returned to the ballroom.

  Almost everyone was gone. “Where have you been?” Marco said as they gathered around her. “Are you okay?”

  “I—I got locked out. Your purse was in that side lobby,” Celia said, handing it back to Liz. “But someone must have locked the inside doors, because I couldn’t get back in. I had to walk around the building.” The lies roll off my tongue so easily now.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Brenden said.

  “No, no ghost. Someone startled me. That’s all.”

  “All right, let’s go home.” Ivo took Celia’s arm and they went out to their cars. Celia was relieved Regine was tired. They barely spoke on the drive home, and Celia was free to focus her will on her heart, which still beat so fast she might have been running down a dark hallway with Mr. Sumeletso chasing her.

  24. THE SKY’S GONE OUT

  THE NEXT DAY CELIA arrived at the bookstore with one thought that had expanded to force out all the others. She took her place at the front desk and waited for the Troika to break up. Finally they walked out of the office, and Lippa said goodbye to her friends before she turned to Celia. “My dear, you don’t look at all like yourself today. What is wrong? Wasn’t your prom last night? Did you not have a good time?”

  Celia had hoped she wouldn’t break down, but she was crying before she could speak. “I need your help!”

  “Oh my goodness! With what? Tell me.” There were no customers, and Lippa led Celia to a pair of wingback chairs in an alcove and sat down with her.

  “When you told me about the Kind and the Unkind, I didn’t believe you. I thought you were crazy.”

  “You and almost everyone else,” Lippa said pleasantly, confused.

  “But you’re right. My friend Mariette was one of the Kind.”

  “Your friend who died?” Immediately Lippa grew serious.

  Celia nodded. “Everyone thinks she drowned by accident, but our teacher killed her—he’s one of the Unkind. And last night he told me he was going to kill me when his power gets stronger from the admonition he fulfilled by killing her!”

  Lippa stared at her. “Your friend was one of the Kind, and your teacher is one of the Unkind?”

  “I didn’t believe you before, but it’s true! I’ve seen their admonitions, and I’ve seen them use their powers! You have to tell me what to do! He’s going to kill me!”

  “Celia, calm down.” Lippa took her hand. “You have to pull yourself together.” She waited while Celia worked to slow her breathing and wipe her eyes.

  “My boyfriend, Tomasi—you remember when he came to see me here—he’s one of the Kind, too, but he hasn’t developed his powers. I asked him for help, but his parents think he’s evil because they found out about him and they don’t understand, and now I’m pretty sure they’ve sent him to his grandfather’s because he isn’t responding when I write to him. He can write in my notebook from wherever he is, so something must have happened. My teacher actually tried to kill me last night, but he said my power was stronger than he realized, and I don’t even know how to use it! I wouldn’t have asked you, because you said you’ve only heard stories, but I don’t have anyone else to ask. Do you know anyone? Do you know anything I can do?”

  “You’re one of the Kind, too?” Lippa’s voice was calm and careful.

  “I don’t know—Mariette thought I was, and Tomasi does, too, but I didn’t think so. But last night my teacher didn’t kill me, and he said it was because of my power, so I don’t know. Maybe I am?”

  “Celia, I know you lost your friend, and it’s been a terrible time for you. But I think you’ve become a little susceptible to the stories I’ve told you.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  Lippa spoke slowly, trying to make Celia hear it the way it had sounded to her. “You think you, and everyone around you, are one of the Kind or the Unkind . . . When someone dies, we all grieve differently, but many people are tempted to latch onto anything, no matter how fanciful, to help them deal with the loss.”

  “You don’t believe me,” Celia said again. It felt as if the ceiling had dropped a foot or two closer to their heads.

  “It’s not about what I believe,” Lippa s
aid sadly. “What you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like something I should believe or not believe. It sounds like someone who has been under a lot of stress these past months, and who has seized onto a conspiracy theory I told her about, in a desperate attempt to make sense of why bad things happen.”

  “I thought— You said . . .”

  “I shouldn’t have. If I had known it would plant seeds in you that would grow into these ideas that everyone around you was part of a crazy supernatural world, I never would have said anything. I never would have invited you to join the Troika.” Lippa patted her hand. “Do I believe the Unkind and the Kind might exist? Yes. But your friends, your teacher, you—this is not the same thing. You know that. I’m sorry.”

  Celia nodded again. She had pinned her hopes on Lippa, and now she felt even more alone. The death threat was drawing closer to her moment by moment, and as an added bonus, now her boss thought she had lost her mind.

  CELIA FELT LIKE A SLEEPWALKER during the last week of school. She turned in final exams and couldn't remember a thing she had written. She passed books back in and stared into space until someone called her name or everyone got up to leave. Gradually her locker emptied out, becoming hollow and unrecognizable, like she felt. She wandered the halls between periods, preoccupied and unseeing. After two mornings of asking what was bothering Celia, Regine had given up. The rest of the Rosary seemed to think she was taking her turn to be moody, not an unwelcome trait for their collective persona at Suburban. Part of Celia wished they would press her more, but the other part was scared to be asked, because she didn't know what she could say.

  For so long, her life had felt so full. She’d had an amazing group of brilliant friends who were constantly showing her new things. Now they were a distracted cluster of kids on the verge of splintering in several directions.

  Before, she’d had the attention of a beautiful guy who would break out of his own house if necessary, just to see her. Now she assumed he had been shipped off to his grandfather’s farm for some kind of puritanical remediation. No one ever answered the phone at his house. Every night she opened her notebook, hoping to find something new from him, but it held only the words she’d written before: Are you there? Are you there?

  Before, she’d had a lovely friend whose exuberance for life could overpower the gloom of an entire classroom. Now she had a letter and a necklace, and a second funeral in her young life. Before, she had been a sophomore whose life seemed to grow broader every day. Now she had been promised death by an Unkind who had killed her friend, a man who was only waiting for an eclipse to deliver the power he needed to do it.

  To Celia, being in shock felt like being zipped inside a sleeping bag—she sensed the real world out there somewhere, but it couldn’t reach her. Her mind spun continuously in the middle of these thoughts, but her body felt nothing.

  She paused on the stairwell to look out at the Rothko trees, flush with new leaves so green they seemed to grow larger as she watched them. Off to one side a recently deposited construction trailer was occupied by the people who would spearhead construction of the new wing as soon as the students were out of the way. In the fall there would be yet another ridge in the school’s backbone. If she lived to see next year, she might be asked to draw it all over again for the school newspaper. It all seemed so pointless.

  She went to her last chemistry class, where they spent the time cleaning the lab before the summer break. The lights still flickered overhead. Everyone believed it to be a reminder of Mariette, but Celia knew it was the remnants of Mr. Sumeletso’s Unkind energy lingering in the room. She looked out the window, hoping to see a hummingbird, but found blank sky instead. Once this final period was over, Celia might never come in here again.

  When she got home from the last day of school, Celia felt stifled. The freedom from homework only meant that another evening stretched out before her, with nothing to distract her from her fate. She changed out of her school clothes and pulled out the only pair of jeans Regine had allowed her to keep and her father’s sweatshirt with gray stains on it from when she had painted her room. She crept downstairs and went to the garage to pull out a bicycle she hadn’t ridden in years. Celia wobbled down the driveway and eventually found her balance halfway down the block. Her knees came up too close to the handlebars, but she kept pumping, trekking several miles across town to a place she hadn’t been in almost a year.

  The parking lot of the high school where she’d spent her first year was deserted. The flag hung limp, and the shadow of the pole lengthened in the evening sun. Celia wondered if she was being foolish, coming here alone when Mr. Sumeletso had promised to erase her at a time and place when the murder couldn’t be traced to him. But what difference did it make if he killed her now or in another twenty-four hours?

  Her old high school was a massive cube pierced at regular intervals with windows and doors—the exact opposite of the sprawling complex that was Suburban. She dropped her bike and walked toward the building, but she stopped before she got there. A faint breeze rose and played in her hair, and she felt the coolness of the approaching nightfall. She used to dread coming to this place, but now those days seemed so much simpler. She had leapt from this cauldron of misery with such relief, and for a long time she had been sure she was in a better place—for a while all the risks she had taken had paid off, more richly than she ever would have guessed. But now she found herself in the fire, looking back up at the cauldron and wondering if it had been so bad after all.

  The darkness loomed, and no one was going to come out of it holding a lantern to show her the way and make sure she got home safely. Her shoulders quivered as the evening air seeped through her sweatshirt. The chill finally forced her to take up the little bicycle and pedal back home. Her mother met her with concerned reproval and a plate of food. She was on her way out. Celia tried to eat and then went upstairs to prepare for Diaboliques.

  Hours later, Regine looked over at her in the car. “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong? You’ve been somewhere else since promenade.”

  “I miss Mariette.” It was the only thing Celia could think of to say.

  “Oh, of course. I wondered about that. You didn’t seem to mourn as much as I expected. I guess you’re still dealing with it?”

  “Yeah,” Celia murmured, looking out the window.

  At Diaboliques Rufus still called her Paperwhite out of affection. She tried to find some solace in her favorite place. Other regulars nodded to her now, and sometimes she even spoke with them. Ivo chatted with Isadore while Regine stood indifferently just a few feet away from them. Celia felt Marco at her side. “Did he ever go on a date with her?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “She is pretty. I could see them as a couple.”

  “I can, too.”

  “Who knows, if he had gotten up the nerve to ask her out a few years back, maybe they could have been.”

  Celia still knew how to be the quiet one, but what did these foolish secrets matter? She was too agitated to wait for the others to dance before she left the room. As she walked away she wondered if any of them would follow her, but she didn’t really care.

  Down on the mezzanine she found the woman with the fiery red plume of hair. Once again the woman looked as though she had been expecting her. Her perfect white smile beamed up at Celia, and she patted the cushion on the sofa. Celia sat down.

  “It’s been a little while. Let me see,” the woman said, and Celia willingly offered her hand. The tips of the woman’s nails moved lightly across her skin. It was so dark, Celia was sure the woman couldn’t possibly see anything on her hand.

  “There’s been some deepening, but it’s all here.” The woman closed Celia’s hand inside her own and looked up at her.

  “I need help!” Celia said. “I don’t know what to do!”

  “See, that’s not true,” the woman said easily. “You don’t need help, and you will know what to do when the time comes. Really.” She looked at Celia with com
passion. “I told you before you would be fine, and nothing has changed.”

  “But my teacher is one of the Unkind! He killed my friend who was one of the Kind, and he’s going to kill me!”

  None of that surprised the fortuneteller. “No, he is going to try to kill you.”

  “But what’s going to stop him from actually killing me?”

  “You are.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do? Please, please, you have to help me!”

  “No, I can’t. And, my dear, no one else can, either. The Leopard’s parents have taken him to his grandfather’s farm. I can tell you this.” The woman paused a moment to consider her words. “The thing that makes you who you really are is what gives you your power.”

  “I have power?” Celia asked her.

  “Of course you do,” the woman laughed. “How could you think otherwise?”

  “Is that why he didn’t kill me? How did I stop him?”

  “No, you didn’t stop him. The stupid man isn’t powerful enough to do what he tried to do, with his darkness and cold. He is a coward, after all. He only uses his bare hands as a last resort, you remember. But he is correct that his Unkind power is going to increase greatly, and then things will be very different.”

  “Do I have an admonition?”

  “What do you mean by that? Are you asking me if there are things you must do in order to become the person you want to be? Absolutely. But that is true of everyone. Every black bead on your chain has told you their admonitions this year.”

  “They have?”

  “Think back. At some point this year every one of them has told you something they know they have to do in order to become the person they want to be. If we are wise, we give ourselves admonitions our whole lives and do our best to fulfill them.”