The Suburban Strange

by Nathan Kotecki

  “But the Kind—their admonitions are different.”

  “Only because they come from a different place.”

  “So what is mine? How am I supposed to stop him?”

  “You will know what to do when the time comes.” The fortuneteller patted Celia’s hand and released it. “Go back to your friends. Patrick is going to play ‘Second Skin’ by the Chameleons, and I know you love that song.”

  Celia couldn’t understand how this woman could send her away with the feeling she had learned something, when her answers never seemed to match up with Celia’s questions. Celia was tempted to hate her for not sharing every scrap of knowledge that might help Celia to save herself. She looked at the woman one last time, wondering if she would ever see her again, and then got up. At the bottom of the stairs she turned to look back, but in the sweep and flash of the lights she couldn’t see where they had been sitting. Back upstairs she joined her friends on the dance floor, and sure enough, as the song faded, she heard the slender keyboard notes that began “Second Skin.” Then the drums came, and the guitar, and while she knew the lyrics by heart, it was as though she was hearing them for the first time.

  I realize a miracle is due

  I dedicate this melody to you

  But is this the stuff dreams are made of?

  No wonder I feel like I’m floating on air

  Everywhere

  Oh, it feels like I’m everywhere

  Like when you fail to make the connection, you

  know how vital it is

  Or when something slips through your fingers you

  know how precious it is

  And you reach the point where you know

  It’s only your second skin

  Someone’s banging on my door . . .

  Celia cried a little as she danced, and she raised her eyes to the ceiling. At that moment, she felt so connected to the world around her, she might have been in a church. No mysteries were solved—they loomed on every side. But she felt more alive than she ever had before. For the rest of the evening the remnants of that moment trailed around her like a fog. Her mind was far away, chasing in all directions to find Tomasi, rushing down endless hallways in hopes of reaching Mariette in time, turning to see who was pursuing her in the darkness, clutching the armrest in the passenger seat of a car as the world flew by outside the window.

  Everyone told her she was strong, stronger than before, and Celia wanted to believe them. But she knew the weakness hidden within her. She could welcome it back whenever she wanted, and now seemed like an excellent time. For each thing she had gained, it seemed she had lost something. In one moment the haze cleared, and Celia thought with incredible clarity, I am going to die.

  Eventually it was time to go. Regine was sensitive to Celia’s mood. In the car, she put on music and stayed quiet. The whole way home, Celia tried to be hopeful. Her flame-haired advisor had assured her she could solve this problem, meet this threat on her own. Celia couldn’t fathom how, but she wanted desperately to rediscover her faith in herself. If she was going to survive, that had to come first.

  In her gray room Celia sat on the edge of her bed and felt the despair weighing her down like a lead overcoat. When she cleared away everything else—Mariette, Tomasi, the Rosary—she could see a straight line down the center of a very straight road. In less than twenty-four hours the moon would be eclipsed. Mr. Sumeletso would receive the Unkind power he had earned by killing Mariette and sucking away her dying breath. And his first priority, he had promised Celia, was to wipe away the only person who knew what he had done. He would destroy her in whatever way he could.

  If he became as strong as he seemed to expect, and everything truly was different, as the fortuneteller said it would be, then he probably was going to be able to kill her without touching her, as he preferred. Celia felt herself withering away like a tree in a punishing drought, with no idea how to save herself, nowhere to turn. She imagined doctors telling her mother they couldn’t diagnose her and there was nothing they could do.

  Or maybe she would be extinguished like a candle flame, gone in a single gust, her eyes instantly turned to glass. He would send a deadly spider, or an eighteen-wheeler, or just an aneurysm, and it would be over in an instant.

  He wouldn’t let her off that easily. He would torture her first, she feared. Her skin would turn to boils and flake away. Her bones would yaw and snap inside her body, stabbing her from the inside. Her tongue would swell up, slowly clogging her mouth and then her throat until she suffocated. Celia wept with fear.

  It was four in the morning. She ran a bath and sank into it. The fortuneteller would have told me something very different if I were going to die, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t have patted my hand and told me I didn’t need help and I would know what to do. Why am I placing so much faith in a woman whose name I don’t even know? What other option do I have?

  She had added more hot water to the bath three times, and a feeble light was peeking through the trees before Celia finally got out and dried off. She studied the wrinkles on her fingertips and then examined her face in the mirror. Her hair clung in strings to her skin, and she imagined this was how she would look if she drowned. She ran her fingers through her hair to get it off her face. “What do I have to do to live?” she asked her reflection, but her voice sounded hollow and weary.

  I will know what to do when the time comes. That’s what the woman said. Celia didn’t know what to do, so did that mean the time hadn’t come? She hated how she had used this strategy of being passive so many times. In the drawing class last summer, when Regine had walked up to her and taken charge. In the parking lot at the beginning of the year, when she had stood there like a calf, waiting to be led into school. At Diaboliques, when she had waited for Tomasi to come to her. In April, when it had been her turn to face the curse. She hadn’t known what to do, so she had done nothing. But this time Mariette wouldn’t come to kneel on her back lawn and cast a spell to keep her safe. Tomasi was gone. Finally her mind grew as exhausted as her body, and Celia slept. She didn’t have to get up until it was time to get ready for the graduation ceremony in the afternoon.

  25. BLACK CELEBRATION

  CELIA SAT WITH REGINE and Marco in the auditorium, waiting for their friends to march in. The stage looked like a meeting of the United Nations, with the faculty seated in departments, a number of flags arranged behind them. Celia could feel the clock ticking down to the eclipse, and she held her anger in check, knowing it was a desperate sword that would do nothing to protect her. When she had awakened in the early afternoon she hoped a plan would be waiting for her, but she felt no closer to understanding what she was supposed to do or how she was to escape the fate Mr. Sumeletso had promised her. At last the ceremony began, and they all stood and focused on the seniors in their caps and gowns.

  “It’s strange how they all look the same,” Marco said. “We try so hard to be distinct, and look, Brenden couldn’t even do his hair.” Brenden saw them and waved as he passed, his face a little unfamiliar under his mortarboard. “We’re going to visit Metropolitan in July. I can’t wait to see where he’ll be.” Celia tried to listen to Marco, but she didn’t really care.

  Once everyone was in place, Principal Spennicut stepped to the microphone. Celia was tempted to tune him out, but he spoke briefly about the tragedy the school had experienced that semester and asked for a moment of silence to honor the student they had lost. Celia looked at the floor, feeling Marco’s hand on her back, and her rage approached a boil again. Her mind unspooled the year, from Mariette’s funeral to the crazy things she had done to protect Celia, to the way she had cried over her gift, to Halloween, when she finally had shared her secret, to the inexplicable things Celia had witnessed, to that day in chemistry lab when she had laid eyes on Mariette for the first time. Celia had been so excited about the person she was becoming, about the people they all were becoming, but Mariette’s death was like a bucket of water over all those lovely hopes.


  Celia was jolted back to the present by the voice of the principal, who had moved on to the news of the new wing that would be built over the summer. He told the assembly about the money the graduating seniors had raised for a mosaic in the hallway of the new wing, commemorating their class. “I am happy to share with you now this artist’s rendering of their mosaic!” Principal Spennicut exclaimed, and an image of the drawing Celia had produced under Liz and Brenden’s direction was projected onto the screen at the back of the stage. The audience applauded, and Regine and Marco poked her, telling her how good it looked. She smiled for them, but when she looked up at her lines projected on the screen, she barely recognized her own work.

  IT'S NICE MY BODY WILL stand and sit, and smile sometimes and talk a little, without me having to tell it what to do, Celia thought as she wandered around the Fourads' home during the graduation party. Because I don't know what to tell it now. At a few points she thought her self actually might have left her body and she could look down on the room from somewhere up by the ceiling. She wondered if her father had felt this way, when he knew he was going to die. She wondered if there was some place where she might see him. She knew she should be taking this opportunity to say meaningful things to her friends, who were all so happy around her. If she was going to die, shouldn't she make the most of the time she had left? But she had no idea what she possibly could say.

  “You’re so quiet,” Regine said when she found her in the study, rereading the Lewis Carroll quote on the wall.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Celia said. She looked over at Regine and realized too late her eyes were filling with tears.

  “Celia!” Regine put her arms around her and stroked her hair. “Last night you were upset, too! You’ve been a shadow of yourself for a week! Is it Mariette? Is it the end of the year? It’s like the life has drained out of you.”

  “I don’t know.” Celia looked at the ceiling, searching her mind for something she could say. “I just feel like it’s all over.”

  “I know,” Regine said, and Celia was soothed by her voice. “I guess, in a way, it is. It won’t ever be the same. It makes me sad, too, when I think about it. But we have to carry on. Next year we’ll have to figure out how things are going to be. We have to stick together. And we will. We’ll be okay.”

  “What if we’re not?” Celia asked. “What if we don’t make it?”

  “Why wouldn’t we? And especially you? You’re the reason we’re all still together, don’t you realize? If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here now. You know it’s true.”

  “You guys would have been fine,” Celia said weakly.

  “Maybe, maybe not. But the way it happened, the way it really happened . . .” Regine was silent for a moment. “I wish I were as strong as you are.”

  “But I’m not! I’m not strong at all!” Celia caught a sob in her throat.

  “Yes you are! You may not feel like it, but I know better. I might have believed you when we met. But now there’s no doubt in my mind.” Regine pulled back and looked at her. “You look exhausted. Let’s go. It’s getting late, and it’s not like we won’t be together again soon. We have the whole summer to go to Diaboliques before anyone goes anywhere.”

  Regine steered her gently through the party. Celia hugged each of her friends, ignoring their looks of concern, not saying anything when Regine told them Celia was tired and emotional about the end of the year. Finally they made it outside, where dusk was creeping up behind the trees. “It’s kind of chilly.” Regine shivered. “It feels like it could storm, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  Celia settled into the front seat of Regine’s car, and impulsively she turned and pulled the gray cashmere blanket from the back seat, spreading it over her lap. Regine watched her and said, “I don’t think anyone has ever used that before.”

  “I’ve always wanted to,” Celia said. She looked out the window, where the sky ranged from orange to purple to indigo above her.

  On the post above their car, the streetlamp blinked on and then flickered, struggling to wake up. It reminded Celia of the fluorescent lights that had sputtered and pinged in the chemistry lab and the chandelier in the lobby at the country club, where Mr. Sumeletso had made his threatening intentions clear. She closed her eyes for a moment and listened for the music from the car stereo. It was a song she liked, but something about it was stale now. She’d heard it too many times. Celia opened her eyes again and stared out the window.

  Regine drove at her usual stately pace down the street. As they passed under the next light post, the oval lamp flickered on like an alien eye lurching to life above them. Farther down the street the lights remained dark. Celia waited for the next post, and as they passed under it, the lamp sputtered and lit up. “He’s coming,” she said under her breath.

  “What did you say?” Regine asked her.

  “Drive faster,” Celia said.

  “What?”

  “Drive faster!” Celia pleaded with her. Outside the window the next streetlight blinked on ominously over them. “I need to get home.”

  “Okay.” Regine sped up to the actual speed limit, and still each streetlight came awake just as they passed underneath it. Panic filled Celia like a cat in a burlap sack, thrashing around inside her as it heard the sound of the rushing river coming closer. She fought to keep her fear from escaping up her throat and past her lips.

  The daylight was almost gone, and when Regine turned a corner the full moon swung into view out the front window, impossibly large, pale, and alone. On this street, too, the lights stayed dark until their car approached; then they blinked and flickered to life. Celia thought she could hear them pinging overhead, as if a large white moth were struggling to get out of each glass. Why didn’t Regine notice? Regine had lapsed back into her customary slow speed, and Celia was in agony counting down the blocks, lifting her eyes to each new Unkind sentry quivering like a dying firefly above the car.

  Celia opened the door before the car had completely stopped at her front walk. “Are you going to be okay?” Regine asked.

  “I don’t know.” Celia got out and pushed the door closed before Regine could say anything else. Once again there were just two girls as she and Regine stared at each other through the glass. Inside the car the first girl looked scared and hurt. She gave Celia a searching look. Reflected in the window, Celia could see only the silhouette of the second girl. The chilly wind pushed by her, and the trees creaked overhead. Regine got out.

  She implored Celia across the black roof of the car. “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?” The wind pushed her bob into the corner of her mouth.

  “When we met in that class last summer, why did you choose me? Why did you bring me into the Rosary?” Celia asked.

  “Because . . . because I could tell. You were right for us, even if you didn’t know it.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Well, I wasn’t wrong, was I?” A tear escaped Regine’s eye. “Are we still right for you?”

  “Of course you are! I’m sorry. I’m just . . . There’s something I have to do alone. I’m sorry.”

  Finally Regine drove away. Up and down the street in both directions the streetlamps shone, but they took turns switching on and off, threatening her like giants rattling their sabers. The cold breeze lifted her hair above her head. Celia looked in every direction, but she saw no one. Overhead, the full moon was large and orange, and the earth’s shadow had begun to slice into one side.

  And then everything was calm. The wind died. The streetlamps shone evenly. There was no sound, no movement. On the eclipsed edge of the moon a bloody red tinge was seeping across the orange face, like the first leak of death after a guillotine has fallen. Celia turned and ran into her house.

  Her mother was waiting for her. “How was graduation?”

  “It was fine. It was long.” Celia tried to escape to her room, but her mother stopped her.

  “Wait—how about the party?”

  �
�It was nice.” She hated shutting her mother out, but if she tried to explain anything at all, it would only get worse.

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  “Kind of. I need to go upstairs.” Celia had no idea what she was going to do, but she needed to escape her mother’s small talk.

  “Well, are you hungry? There are some leftovers in the fridge.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Can we talk later? I haven’t caught up with you in a while.”

  “Can we talk tomorrow?”

  “Okay. Is everything all right?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure. I think so.” Celia tried not to run up the stairs, but halfway up she lost the battle and sprinted the rest of the way.

  In her room she sank onto her bed, but she didn’t feel any safer than when she had been standing on her front walk. Four walls, a locked front door, her mother—none of that was going to make any difference. Celia looked around helplessly.

  Nothing happened. What is he waiting for? she thought in anguish. I know he’s close by. He must be waiting to get stronger.

  She thought about dying. Celia knew all the versions of the story: a bright light, her life flashing before her eyes, the stranger who would appear to escort her to the other side. Now Celia guessed it would be different from all those things. There was going to be terror, and then there was going to be nothing—infinite nothing, deeper and darker and colder than the deepest space in the universe, so absolute it would instantly drive her insane, except by then it wouldn’t matter. Celia wondered what she was supposed to do with these final minutes. She reached for her sketchbook.

  She paged through the pictures she had drawn of her father and her mother. She found the sketches she had made of Liz and Ivo, of Marco and Brenden, of Regine, and of Mariette. She looked for a picture of Tomasi, but she never had drawn him, and her heart grew heavy with regret. I don’t really love him, she tried to convince herself. It will be so much easier to lose him if I don’t love him. If she believed that, she could stick to a depressing but neat equation that balanced the two people she loved in the world: she was going to leave her mother behind and be with her father again.