Pull Down the Night (The Suburban Strange)

by Nathan Kotecki

  “I got lucky,” Bruno said. He helped Tomasi roll onto his hands and knees and somehow managed to get him on his feet.

  “Where are we?” Tomasi croaked.

  “In the library at Suburban.”

  “Don’t they have lights?”

  “Not back here,” Bruno said. He picked up the lantern and pulled Tomasi’s arm around his shoulders to support him. “This way. We have to get out of here.”

  “I can do it,” Tomasi groaned, but he sagged into Bruno and they went down. “I’m sorry!”

  “I’ve been back here too long, too,” Bruno said, willing his quivering legs to hold him up while he hauled Tomasi back onto his feet. They knocked back and forth between the shelves, groping their way to the main aisle.

  Gardner stood waiting. Tomasi bristled at the sight of him. “What are you doing here?”

  “It makes far more sense for me to be here than you,” Gardner told him.

  “You trapped me here!” Tomasi said weakly.

  Gardner chuckled. “That doesn’t change what I said.”

  “Come on!” Bruno tried to take more of Tomasi’s weight against his shoulders, but he nearly went down again. He looked at Gardner once more. “I will deal with you later.”

  “Oh, you will, will you?” Gardner walked into the darkness, deeper into the Ebentwine, as Bruno and Tomasi started back toward the tiny light that looked miles away.

  “I don’t think I can . . .” Tomasi pulled them over to the end of a shelf, and they leaned there.

  “You have to,” Bruno said, trying to convince himself of the same thing.

  They made it another few rows, and then their legs tangled and they went down again. Bruno wasn’t sure if he lost consciousness for a moment, but Tomasi was out cold. “Help!” he yelled, sure no one could hear him. “Help!” He looked down the aisle toward the reading area and thought he saw a flashlight. Then he passed out for good.

  WHEN BRUNO CAME TO, he was sprawled on a table in the reading room, and someone was stroking his hair. He tried to sit up but collapsed back onto the hard surface. Mariette looked down over him. “Give it another minute.”

  “Oh, good!” Lois exclaimed, coming over.

  “Did you get us out?” Bruno asked, rubbing his head.

  “The two of you are heavier than my sofa at home,” she said. “I’m pretty worn out myself.”

  When Bruno was able to get up, he saw Tomasi on his back on the next table, eyes closed, unmoving. “Is he . . .”

  “Celia’s working on him.”

  There she was, off to the side, her face ashen as she labored over her sketchbook.

  “How did you get here?” Bruno jumped off the table, but his legs failed him and he fell onto the floor. Lois helped him up.

  “Did you think I was going to just wait in my room, when you left the closet door open?” Celia said without looking up.

  “It’s a good thing she did,” Lois added. “I can’t do what she’s doing.”

  They fell silent, watching Celia. She stopped drawing, looked at Tomasi, and said, “C’mon! I finished! I guess I’ll draw him again?” She turned the page and started another portrait. After a minute, Tomasi’s eyelids fluttered and he inhaled deeply. Soon he put his hand to his head and then rolled onto his side. “Where . . . What happened?” He saw Celia and tried to roll toward her. She set down her sketchbook and went to put her arms around him.

  “Bruno got you out,” she said, kissing his forehead. “I should keep drawing you, to help you get more of your strength back.” She kissed Tomasi again and returned to her sketchbook.

  “Why did he do that? That man?” Tomasi asked Bruno. He saw Lois and gave her a small, confused wave.

  “Gardner. He seems to be in charge of the Ebentwine.”

  “Why would he do that to me? Did I do something wrong?” Tomasi asked. He noticed Mariette, who was standing away from the rest of them. “Is that . . . I heard you were around.”

  “Hi!” Mariette smiled.

  Lois stepped closer to Tomasi. “In a strange way, you have done something wrong. But I don’t think you could guess what it is.” She paused, looking at Celia. “As I’m sure Bruno has told you, I wasn’t very familiar with Ambassadors. I’ve never met one before Celia. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. I hope you didn’t take it personally.” Celia shook her head. “It’s just that there is as much bad folklore about Ambassadors as there is good, and I didn’t know what to believe.”

  “This is about Celia?” Tomasi asked.

  “It’s about you and Celia. I never would have believed this was true before, but I think you’ve heard about the agon between Ambassadors and our Kind. We are invariably attracted to Ambassadors if we meet them. We have amazing chemistry with them, and we tend to fall in love with them. You fell in love with Celia,” Lois said to Tomasi. She turned to Bruno. “And so did you.”

  Celia added, “And Mariette.” Mariette nodded silently.

  “So, are you in love with Celia, too?” Tomasi asked Lois.

  “No, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because I’m straight. If I ever meet a male Ambassador, I will inevitably have very strong feelings for him.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” Tomasi looked at Bruno.

  “Do we ever choose who we love?” Lois asked.

  “I guess not. But I think you should start drawing Bruno,” Tomasi said. “He looks pretty bad.”

  Bruno had been trying to hold himself up, but he sat down hard in the chair behind him, and Celia quickly turned the page in her sketchbook. “I’m so sorry! You were in there, too!” She started drawing him, and immediately Bruno felt the lines of warmth spreading across his face.

  “Here’s the problem,” Lois continued. “This agon between an Ambassador and someone of the Kind is very destabilizing. In small doses it is good: It connects us with people who understand us and help us. It motivates us to follow through on admonitions, and makes us stronger. But if it becomes too deep, too serious, too lasting, it’s bad. If an Ambassador becomes too attached to one Kind, she’s less able to fulfill her duties to the other Kind around her. I think your relationship must have become too serious,” Lois told them. “And the forces of the Kind were bound to try to stop it.”

  “What are you thinking?” Celia asked Tomasi, who wore a strange expression.

  “She told me. Cassandra told me. The first time you took me to meet her. Remember? You asked me, and I told you she said I was to be good to you? What she really said was that my love would be my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. And I must learn to love you from a distance. At the time, I just thought she was warning me not to pressure you, to, you know . . . But she must have meant this.”

  “Oh, God,” Celia said, her eyes wide.

  “So that’s why Gardner ambushed you,” Bruno said. “I thought it was because he wanted me to have a chance with Celia.”

  “Well, he probably did want you to go after Celia,” Lois said. “If you had succeeded in breaking up Tomasi and Celia, it would have served the same purpose. But if you and Celia had become a couple, eventually Gardner would have done something to break you two up, as well.”

  “But I don’t want to stop dating Celia.” Tomasi turned to her. “I love you.”

  Celia put down her sketchbook again and went to him. “I love you, too,” she said in a voice Bruno wished he hadn’t heard.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Lois said. “Now that we’re pretty sure these stories are true, they would suggest that bad things will continue to happen if the two of you stay together.”

  “Will Gardner stop me again if I travel between books?”

  “If your relationship with Celia hasn’t changed, he might.”

  “What am I going to do?” Tomasi asked Celia.

  Lois said, “The other thing to keep in mind is that something could happen to Celia, too—anything that would separate you.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Tomasi said.

  “I�
�m sorry, you guys.” Bruno didn’t feel completely well, but he wasn’t going to ask Celia to return to drawing him now.

  Celia asked Lois, “What happens now?”

  “I wish I could be more helpful.”

  “You have been, though—no one else could have gotten Bruno and Tomasi out of there. I know you were thinking of leaving, and I’m so glad you stayed!” Celia said to Tomasi, “I think we should go back to my house. I can walk you home from there.” Tomasi nodded and stood up carefully.

  Celia turned to Mariette. “This is so crazy—I’ve barely talked to you! I didn’t realize you could talk at all! Can we . . . sometime?”

  “Sure,” Mariette said. She hugged Celia and turned to Bruno. “Let’s walk them to the liminal.”

  “Thank you so much,” Celia said to Lois, and was echoed by Tomasi and Bruno.

  “You’re welcome. Please forgive me for not—for not believing Bruno sooner.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll come to see you; we have a lot of catching up to do, if I’m going to be your Ambassador. I really hope you’ll stay here.”

  “I think I have to, now.” Lois smiled.

  “I’ll be back,” Bruno told Lois, and he went with Celia, Tomasi, and Mariette down the hall to the janitor’s closet.

  Celia embraced Bruno, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you, Bruno,” she said softly.

  “You’re welcome.” They smiled at each other in a new way.

  Bruno and Tomasi looked at each other, and then Tomasi stepped in awkwardly and hugged him. “I owe you.”

  “No you don’t,” Bruno said.

  “There were a couple times I really wanted to deck you.”

  “I probably deserved it.”

  Tomasi and Celia went into the closet and were gone. Bruno glimpsed the light from Celia’s bedroom through the mops; then he heard her door close on the other side. He closed the door. Mariette glowed faintly in the darkened hallway.

  “You are a hero. A tragic hero, but a hero all the same.”

  “I don’t feel like one.”

  “Here, take this,” she said, and without thinking he held out his hand. “As if you haven’t had enough for one night.”

  “Really?” Bruno looked down at the piece of paper she had given him. When he looked back up, Mariette was gone.

  Lois was waiting for him back in the library. “Why were you here tonight?” Bruno asked her.

  “My admonition told me to come,” she said. “But I had no idea . . .”

  “You and me both,” he said. “I just fulfilled two-thirds of my admonition.”

  “What’s that?” Lois pointed to the paper in Bruno’s hand. He opened it and read, Perilunas tennis court, Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.

  BRUNO’S HEART BEAT FASTER as he approached the clearing. Gardner was waiting for him. “There you are,” said the man in the mackintosh, as though nothing had happened.

  Bruno knew he couldn’t stay long. “What you did was wrong.”

  “That’s like saying the moon coming up is wrong,” Gardner said plainly. “It doesn’t matter if you think it was wrong or not.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “I have never lied to you, and you know I have no motivation to do anything other than to keep this place—this world—in order.”

  Bruno stared at him. “It’s wrong to try to kill someone.”

  “Yes, it is. But it is not wrong to go about your life knowing it may be dangerous at times. In fact, it is the right thing to do.”

  “Are you saying you knew Tomasi wouldn’t die?”

  “That is not what I said. He will die someday, you realize. If it’s not now, it will come. But that’s no reason to flee from anything that is difficult, or anything that’s worth struggling to attain.” Gardner looked at Bruno in a way that reminded him of Cassandra. “Tomasi wouldn’t have died. I would have pushed him out before that happened.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s up to you. Are you on your way somewhere?” Gardner seemed to know when the light spots began to swim around in the corners of Bruno’s vision.

  “No.” Bruno turned and went back home.

  18

  watching you without me

  REGINE SAT DOWN WITH Bruno and Marco in the cafeteria, and Bruno noticed that Marco didn’t make a sarcastic comment about her decision to grace them with her presence. Her eyes flicked in Marco’s direction, but when she spoke, it was to Bruno.

  “I feel like I owe you an apology,” she said quietly. “At the beginning of the year, I could tell Silver wanted to have this group to himself, and I took his side. I didn’t really give you a chance.”

  “It’s okay,” Bruno said.

  “But . . . things haven’t turned out the way I thought they would, and I know that’s not a surprise to the rest of you. I just really wanted . . . I shouldn’t have been mean to you.”

  “It’s okay,” Bruno said again. “I’m sorry about Silver.”

  Regine looked at the ceiling. “I think about it, and I try to figure out what I should have done differently. And I guess I shouldn’t have tried so hard. But would it have been so crazy? Why shouldn’t there have been a Rosary this year? We did all the same things. We were the same kind of group.”

  When Marco spoke he sounded sad but earnest. “You still don’t understand, do you? Everyone has a Rosary, whether they call it that or not. The Rosary is the group of people who keep you alive in high school. That’s what matters.”

  Regine slowly breathed out and looked at Bruno. “What does it mean if your Rosary keeps you alive but beats you up along the way?” Bruno thought she could have been talking about him, too.

  Marco spoke more gently than Bruno ever had heard him. “So you haven’t been lucky in love. That doesn’t mean your Rosary hasn’t been one of the best things in your life so far.”

  “It’s just so hard to separate those things, you know?” Regine looked at him, her façade gone. “It’s all one complicated mess.”

  “Well, everything’s about to change again, in a month or so. And then it will keep on changing. When you leave Suburban, you can leave behind whatever you’d like. I just hope you’ll keep the good memories.”

  Regine nodded. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “IF YOU KNEW SOMETHING about Regine, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” Sylvio asked in the car on the way to Diaboliques.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, if she’s going out with somebody.”

  “Is she? Wait, why would you care? You broke up with her months ago.”

  “I know.” Sylvio sounded irritated. “But I didn’t think we’d stay broken up.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Forget it,” Sylvio said.

  “Were you just dating her so you could get a Rosary bracelet?”

  “No!” Sylvio sounded even more irritated. “No. I mean, I really wanted it to be the way they all described it last year. I guess it’s a little late now. But I do like her. I did like her.”

  “You still like her,” Bruno said, and Sylvio didn’t bother to reply. “And now you wonder if she’s moved on. Well, I haven’t heard anything.”

  When they were parking outside the club, Sylvio said, “Don’t tell Marco it’s my fault, okay? It’s humiliating enough as it is.”

  “Why do you think I would tell Marco?”

  “C’mon, you two tell each other everything.”

  “That’s not true. Anyway, I don’t think Marco cares.”

  “Or Celia.”

  “Celia either. She thought you were a nice couple.”

  “And I screwed it up.” Sylvio opened the car door.

  But that night the issue wasn’t going to go away quietly. They arrived upstairs in Patrick’s room to find the St. Dymphna boys already there. The six of them saluted from across the dance floor. Then without saying anything, Regine crossed over to them, and they clustered around her like courtiers around their queen. As if on cue, Patrick put
on “Over the Shoulder,” and Regine and her new admirers stepped out onto the floor, where they danced in weaving patterns around her as she pinwheeled her arms.

  “What’s going on there?” Marco was at Bruno’s side.

  “I don’t know,” Bruno confessed.

  “They invited her to one of their performances—their string sextet, or whatever it is,” Celia said. “She said it was amazing.”

  “They only invited her?” Marco asked, and Celia nodded. “Is Silver going to be okay with this?”

  “I don’t see what it has to do with him.”

  Bruno empathized with his brother; he knew what it was like to watch an object of affection being happy with someone else. But Sylvio had made his choice, and now he had to accept the consequences.

  Later in the night, Celia bent close to Bruno’s ear. “I’m going to say hello to Cassandra. Do you want to come?”

  “I think I’ll stay,” Bruno said. “I think it’s better for you to be my only Ambassador.”

  She nodded, obviously pleased, and went out of the room.

  “WHEN YOU GOT THE NOTE, what was the first thing you thought?” Marco stepped up onto the bench and sat down on the top of the picnic table, looking around the tennis court. Dried leaves from winter still clustered around the net. It was Tuesday, and it was nearly time.

  “All I could think was that somehow Celia and Tomasi would wind up here.” Bruno sat down next to him.

  “Well, I can’t imagine they would come over to your backyard to make out.”

  “And it wouldn’t fit the pattern of Mariette’s predictions, anyway. Other than them being here for no reason, there wouldn’t be anything unexpected about it.”

  “So you think it’s going to be more like what happened with Celia’s mom? Not someone you’re romantically involved with?”

  “Well, I’m not romantically involved with anyone, so, yeah, probably.”

  “If it’s here in your backyard, it’s probably someone in your family.” On the far side of the court the color was draining out of the tall bushes as the sun dipped low. “You don’t really use this place, do you?”