“What do you mean?”
“Roslyn’s shroud. You took it.”
Sarita was trying to keep her face straight, but her chin started to wobble. “I was going to give it back. And then I thought maybe it would give me luck.” She hung her head. “I’m so ashamed.”
She would have stayed standing that way forever if I hadn’t grabbed her shoulders and given them a tight shake.
“Sarita,” I said. “Sarita, you need to lighten up.” I turned back to my bag and pulled out a belt made of silver discs.
“Here.” I thrust it at her. “Put this on. It’s from Méhico. ”
Sarita looked unsure. I frowned at her, so she knew I wasn’t playing a trick, and she bit back a smile and put the belt around her waist.
“Wear it lower—it’s supposed to sit on your hips.”
“Like that?”
“Exactly like that.”
Mom said, “Sea-glass is special.” It shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s just broken glass: bottles smashed at beach parties, fishermen’s whiskey left in the rocks, champagne cracked over ships’ prows, missives flung from the starboard deck. It’s just remnants buffed to infinity by a billion, trillion grains of sand, and you will never find two pieces of sea-glass that look the same. “Riley, no one looks like you. No one is like you. You are unique. ”
16
Fatal Flaws
“My personal possession is this belt,” Sarita told the Honeyeaters. “It’s from my Mexican penpal, Paco. He’s in prison in Juarez. He was caught trying to cross the border. His English is dire, but he is an excellent silversmith.”
“Bull!” Richard coughed into his palm.
“In all honesty!” Sarita protested, blushing.
“Okay, and what does your personal possession say about you?” Roslyn coached.
Sarita held one of the silver discs in her fingers. She turned it over and said softly, “It is not the kind of thing that I ever would have picked out for myself. But when I wear it I feel special. Like I have my soul on show, and it’s all shiny and intricate, and so it makes me feel like there’s more to me than everyone thinks. That is all.” She hung her head and I could see beads of sweat on the top of her forehead.
Roslyn broke the silence. “That’s really beautiful.” She looked thrown by Sarita’s response, and it was funny because I knew it wasn’t true, but at the same time, it was honest. “Really … great. Riley?”
“Oh, I don’t have anything.” I strung my little finger along my necklace. Try making me talk, sister. I hadn’t been the first person to foil Roslyn’s party game. Dylan had been my inspiration. When Roslyn had called on him, he’d shaken some pills out of his little vial and rolled them around his palm like they were diamonds. “I call these my drifties,” he’d said. “One gives you a kind of fuzzbox effect. Two make your eyelids feel like they’re made out of cement. Three is the magic number. Three’s when you start to drift away. After four, it depends on your tolerance. Start counting backward from one hundred and see how far you get.” He squared his shoulders. “Prescribed for pain relief. Street value—”
Craig cut him off. “Thanks for the how-to. Real responsible.”
Dylan didn’t respond. I started to wonder if maybe he had taken a couple before coming to class. No one knew what to say, they were all just looking down, picking at their toenails, pushing dead leaves around the dirt.
Roslyn held her hand out. “Let me see.”
Dylan tossed her the vial. She read the label and then tossed them back.
“Did you know I used to be a nurse?” Roslyn said smartly. Then her face softened. “Dylan, you’re not a wild boy. You don’t have to pretend here. We’re your friends.” Dylan went red. He shoved his vial back into his bag. Roslyn shook her head and looked to the clouds.
Now she was shaking her head at me.
“Really,” I insisted, “I had a look and I don’t have anything.”
Roslyn sighed. “Riley, this is your time to tell us about yourself.”
“I just did.”
“Riley.”
I smiled. Roslyn started to say something, then stopped. “Fine,” she said. Another bad apple. She clapped her hands together. “Who’s next?”
Apart from outing Sarita’s spin ability, Roslyn’s game held few surprises. Fleur’s personal possession was a “friendship ring” given to her by “someone special” (she went all doe-eyed when she said it, but her toes were pointing straight at Craig); Lisa and Laura shared the same personal possession, a signed photograph of Del Sebastian, Christian soul superstar (To two special girls, PeaceLoveJesus, Del Sebastian); I felt sure Bird would say his binoculars, but he picked his sneakers. He said he liked the lights because they made him feel calm; Richard’s personal possession was a science fiction paperback called The Mansions of Space (“It’s about the hunt for the Shroud of Turin in the twenty-fourth century.”); and Ethan’s was a Swiss Army knife, which Roslyn promptly confiscated.
Craig went last. He took off his Youth Leader vest and shook his head a few times, looking at it with pride, and then he went into this unexpurgated ramble about him and Dylan and the good old days.
And I couldn’t imagine them.
Craig ended with: “It’s so cool, looking over and seeing that Dylan has the vest, too. I’m stoked. When we were twelve, we started this book where we wrote down all the Youth Leaders. Remember, D? We used to write their names, and everything about them—their attributes, what we could learn from them. Like, Mark Monroe could spot a bed wetter at fifty paces, but at the same time if you had a problem you could tell him and he wouldn’t laugh at you, he’d just be straight up. And Dylan used to write their fatal flaws. You know, room for improvement.”
At this Ethan interrupted him. “What’s your fatal flaw?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.
Craig stopped short. “Shit. I don’t know.”
“Language!” Roslyn interjected.
Then Bird spoke up—and Bird never spoke up. “What’s his?” He nodded to Dylan but wouldn’t look at him.
Dylan smiled a sad, flat smile and pointed to his legs.
The Word ended with “meditation.” Roslyn had us all hold hands while she read from a little green book.
“This is just something to go away with:
‘A firemist and a planet;
A crystal and a cell;
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
A face turned from the clod—
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.’ ”
The bell rang, and we all let go and wiped our hands. Roslyn said, “God is behind everything. Behind the trees and the earth and the sea. That’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? I want you to think about this for tomorrow’s discussion.”
I put my hand up. “Roslyn?”
“Yes, Riley.”
“I call it evolution.”
“Save it, Riley.”
Roslyn closed her little green book.
The Honeyeaters walked as a group to the mess hall for lunch. My silver belt gave Sarita a new swagger. I wondered what Dylan would make of it. She wasn’t doing her usual head-down, stumble-bum wander, she was sailing. I was smiling at this when Richard and Ethan fell into step beside me. Ethan elbowed me in the side. “You’re going to hell,” he said. Richard jabbed me in the other side. “Slut.” They stormed off ahead. I was too stunned to respond. I stopped walking. I felt a tightness growing in my chest. I knew that feeling. It’s the start of tears that never come. The first time I felt it was at Mom’s funeral, when I couldn’t cry. That was all hands on deck—everyone rubbing my back and going, “I know, I know,” and “It’s okay,” and “Let it out, love,” but no tears ever came. Call me Concrete Girl.
“Riley—are you okay?”
I looked up. Dylan was looking at me like I was a case.
“Fuck off.” I said it without
thinking. He stared at me, then jammed his hands down on his wheels and shot off ahead.
17
Field Recordings
After lunch, the Honeyeaters were told to assemble outside the rec room. I waited with Sarita. We leaned on the pinewood pole and listened to Neville attempting to coax some conversation out of Dylan.
“So.” Neville shook the arm of Dylan’s chair. “Big changes.” He paused for comic timing. “Long hair.”
Dylan sniffed.
Neville adopted an exaggerated macho stance and gave his chair the once-over. “What’s your ride?” He was trying to be cool, but Dylan wasn’t having any of it.
“I could do with some of your hair,” he continued, touching his own head lightly. “I don’t know what God wants with mine, but He seems intent on taking it.”
“Maybe you should get a hat.” Dylan sounded bored.
Neville considered this. “I could,” he said. “I could get a hat. Hats could become my thing. Everyone needs a thing, right?”
Dylan shrugged. There was a long silence.
“What about you?” Neville asked him. “Are you into doing weights? If you are we’ve got some hand weights, barbells … Bibles,” he joked.
Sarita poked me in the ribs. I saw Dylan’s face close up. Fleur and Craig were approaching. They were walking in step and looked like a shampoo commercial, all sun-kissed and leggy and happy. As soon as they saw Dylan they separated. Craig put his hand up for a high five. Dylan ignored it, said something to Neville, and then pushed off back to his cabin. After that no one seemed to know where to look, except for Sarita, who was staring at Craig with such longing that I had to snap my fingers in front of her face.
“We’re going to do a trust walk,” Neville announced. He winked at me and put forth a shoe box. “Pass these around, Riley.” I stared at the box, then my eyes moved up to his badge. He didn’t need a hat—wacky badges were his thing. This one was black and white and basic. I’m into Jesus. I passed the box around while Neville barked, “Grab a blindfold and a partner.” At the sight of the usual suspects clutching to each other, Neville stressed, “I want you to pair up with someone you don’t know very well. Laura, Lisa, come on. Don’t make me ask twice.”
I tried my blindfold on. It worked. I stood absolutely still and listened to the group get its thing together. Bird was humming, Laura and Lisa were pleading with Neville. I could hear shuffling and giggling. I was expecting Sarita to take my arm when I felt a column of warmth at my side. “I saw this in a magazine once.” Craig’s breath in my ear gave me the shivers. Two seconds later someone pinched my arm.
Fleur hissed, “Sorry.”
I heard Craig trying to appease her. “But Fleur, I know you.” His voice had laughter behind it. Was he laughing at me or Fleur? It was impossible to know.
Neville’s voice rang out. “The game is leader/follower. The leader has to lead the follower around the camp. This is a nonverbal, nonvisual experience. Use your senses to explore the world around you.”
Craig took my hand, and I was acutely aware of how sweaty mine was.
He led me over the plain. I felt spidergrass tickling my bare ankles. Then we were in the scrub, and sticks snapped beneath my feet. I could feel the temperature change when we walked in and out of trees. I had the sense that we were getting farther away from the group. The idea of our seclusion made my temperature soar. The silence was claustrophobic. But it wasn’t true silence—there was still activity and electricity in the air. It made me think of field recordings. I could hear: our footsteps on the hard ground; Craig’s key chain clinking; our breath out of sync; bird calls; insects rubbing their legs together. And all of this was weirdly sexy.
Craig stopped walking and dropped my hand. I felt him come behind me and push me forward. I panicked, thinking I was falling, but then my body bounced against a rope fence. Craig lifted my blindfold. “Look down.”
I looked. Twenty feet below was a gaping hole in the ground. It looked like a giant’s footstep. Or a natural well—only there was no water in there, just dry reddish mud decorated by crazed cracks and feral tracks.
“This is the crater,” Craig said. “Legend has it this is where the European settlers threw the bodies after they massacred the Aborigines. The mud is red because of the blood. Cool, isn’t it?”
“Is this where you take all your girls?” I quipped.
Craig nodded. “When we were Bronzewings, Sarita fell down here. I was the one who found her. I tied a rope to that tree, tied the other end around my waist, rappelled down, put her over my shoulder, and pulled us both up. Awesome.”
I looked around. “I thought we were supposed to be nonverbal.”
There, at the edge of something vast and ancient, Craig lurched forward and kissed me. It wasn’t a sweet kiss. His lips felt rubbery. He pulled back and stared at me. “Will you meet me tonight? Midnight?”
“Where?”
“At the merry-go-round.”
“Okay.”
Craig turned. In the sharp sunlight his profile was perfect, he had what Chloe would call Greek god–ness. Then a shadow fell and a sly look entered his eyes, and I had a sudden paranoid flash that he might push me and I would become part of the legend.
I put that thought out of my head and stayed still as he put my blindfold back on and led me back to the group.
18
The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth
The Honeyeaters’ table was getting elbow-roomy. Fleur and Craig were sitting with the counselors. Bird had permission to observe the fairy wrens breeding by the recycling cage. Dylan still hadn’t surfaced. I pictured him flaking out in his cabin, watching the dust motes dance in the sun’s fading rays. Sarita was too excited to eat. She pushed her tray aside and whispered, “What was it like being partnered with Craig?” She looked from me to Fleur, as if trying to gauge when the catfight was going to break out.
“It was okay.”
“But what did you talk about?”
“Nothing. It was nonverbal, remember?”
“He’s perfect.” Sarita sighed.
“He’s okay.” I was outwardly cool, but on the inside my heart was racing.
Everyone else was talking about Dylan.
“It was a surfing accident,” Richard was saying. “He came off the board and slammed into a sandbank.”
“He doesn’t look like a surfer,” Laura said.
“He looks scary,” Lisa said. “What’s with all the black?”
“You’d look pretty scary if you’d lost the use of your legs.” Richard paused. “And the rest.”
The twins went, “Eww.”
“I wonder if he has a colostomy bag,” Ethan mused.
Richard sniffed. “Of course he does, idiot.”
I leaned over the table. “Do you think Dylan would like to hear you all discussing him like he’s some sort of freak?”
“What’s it to you?” Richard asked.
“Unh!” I made a face. “It’s rude, is what. And I’m eating. You people are weird. You’ve all been coming here for years—”
“We haven’t,” Lisa and Laura chirped.
“Okay, but they have.” I pointed to Richard and Ethan. I was trying to work out the group dynamic, if there was one. “I don’t get it. Isn’t Dylan your friend? Aren’t you all friends?” The boys exchanged a glance. I figured they’d made a pact not to speak to me because I was contaminated, but the urge to gossip was too tasty.
Richard said, “Thing is, Dylan used to be a bully.”
“He was a tool,” Ethan confirmed.
“Is this true?” I asked Sarita.
She nodded. “He was very competitive. He and Craig—”
“They thought they were rock stars,” Richard cut in. “You might call it hubris.” He held his fork aloft and smiled for a long time, and when I didn’t smile back he licked his lips nervously and looked away.
“You really believe that, don’t you?” I said. “That God’s got a plan for everyone. No b
ad deed goes unpunished. The geek shall inherit the earth. You think bad things don’t happen to good people? Wake up, Australia! Read the fucking paper.”
Richard put his hands over his ears. As soon as Ethan saw this, he did the same. They both closed their eyes and started chanting: “My God is a good God, is a just God, is the One True Holy Father.” La, la, la.
“You’re idiots.” I spooned some mudcake into my mouth. “My God is chocolate,” I said to Sarita, but she didn’t laugh, she just looked worried.
I missed Chloe.
Sarita was excited about the post-dinner charades, but I decided to give it a miss in favor of a long shower. I washed my hair and used a come-hithery body spray. I put my jeans back on, and my best bra, and a peasant blouse that gave me coverage without being a total sack. Then I lay in bed looking at the pictures in my bunker book. They were beautiful, but they depicted a world that was nothing like mine. In my world you didn’t see bright-eyed children with sparrows on their shoulders any more than you saw pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. My world was about white fat rolling over my waistband, guys with glazed eyes, girls on buses, at the beach, at the mall, whispering, laughing, bitching. Drinking shots with Chloe in the park until I couldn’t tell the difference between up and down. Dad’s look of disappointment. Random days when I felt most hollow, I’d sit by Mom’s grave and watch the ants make a matrix on her headstone.
I was too wired to sleep, so I started to read, and by the time Sarita came back I was engrossed.
‘What are you reading?” she asked.
“Utopia.” I put the cover down and gave her my report. “It’s about a made-up society where the inhabitants live in perfect harmony. There’s no crime or personal possessions and everyone practices ‘religious tolerance’—which means you can follow whatever God you want, but you can’t rag on anyone about who they choose.”
Sarita was looking confused. “But there’s only one God.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Certain.”
“Well, you’re lucky,” I said. Safe, I thought.
According to the introduction, Thomas More said Utopia was a satire because if he’d called it a manifesto he would have been killed. And then he got killed anyway for disagreeing with Henry VIII, the bastard king. The intro also said that Utopia spawned a whole genre. And utopian fiction kicks because the reader can’t not compare the imagined world with his own world and wonder about how things could change. And change—or the possibility of it—is the only reason we don’t all jump sixteen floors.
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