by Angel Lawson
“She’s into the holistic natural stuff. Plants and runes and junk. I don’t get it, but she believes in it.” A week ago I would have mocked her with the rest of the guys in my unit. Now I’m defending a weird chick and her witch pebbles.
“Julian’s sister is probably pretty upset.” Her blond hair falls forward, concealing her expression.
“I’m surprised she doesn’t break out into some kind of psychic rash.” Guilt snarls up my brain the second I say it. I need to get in a fight or steal something.
“Walk to the field with me?” Danielle asks, piling her trash on top of her tray.
I hesitate, thinking about going to find Memory or consoling Faye, but Cherry has Jeremy and Faye is probably knee deep in Saint John’s warts or whatever. They don’t need me. Danielle walks next to me, but when I move to slide my hand around her waist she steps away, and turns to face me.
“Look, Ethan,” she says, then stops, smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’m not stupid.”
“I never said you were,” I say, confused. I tug on the belt loop of her shorts, trying to pull her closer.
“Whether you want to admit it or not, you’ve got something going on with Memory Erikssen.” When I start to shake my head, she calls my bullshit with a look worthy of my social worker. “There is no way I’m going to compete with that,” she says. “Not with her. And I think I’d like to walk away now, before this turns into a huge camp drama.”
“Okay.” I shove my hands in my pockets, and try to think of something to say. I’m used to girls breaking up with me, hell, a week is kind of a record, but I don’t know how to act around ones who are nice about it.
She reaches out, but not to slap my face. She untwists my camera bag strap and smoothes it across my chest. “Do me a favor?” she asks. “Send me a copy of the pictures you took the other night.”
“I can do that.”
She smiles then, for real, and nods her head up toward the hill. “They’re playing dodgeball in the upper field. Go join them.”
Yeah, she’s a smart girl, alright.
*
For the first time since I was six years old, I spend the night in a room to myself. The noises in the dorm ricochet off the walls, and I wake—if I’m ever truly asleep—with each urinal flush and slamming door.
I give up at dawn, take advantage of the privacy to jerk off, and Danielle is right, I do have a thing for Memory Erikssen. Figures I’d want the girl who kisses like a spike through the brain. Fuck.
I shower the thick night humidity off my skin, pack up my camera bag and head over to the art building. A security guard inside watches me punch in my student code, hands me a clipboard to sign, and buzzes the door that leads to the graphic arts lab.
The lab tech has a Mohawk and drinks black coffee straight from the carafe. I decide he is in fact, a she, after she asks if I need any help.
“Um. Can you help me figure this out?” I ask. “I need to print these.”
“Sure.” She helps me connect up to the printer network, swipes my ID card to charge the materials. She points to a picture of Memory, her face tilted into the sun, eyelashes casting long shadows on her cheek. “Nice. I like the way the sun makes her skin glow.”
The printing takes a long time and I’m late for study group, but Memory walks in after me. Her eyes are swollen under the make-up, and she’s moving like she’s half asleep, too, but she’s smiling.
“I talked to Julian today,” she says. “Well, not talked, I guess, but we texted. He says the cell service in the hospital is spotty and he had to walk down the hall before my messages came through. He was stung several times and the reaction was pretty bad, so they may make him wait another day before he can come back. The swelling and rash haven’t completely gone away yet, which I guess is making the doctors cautious, but he said he has faith in us to keep the project on track.”
“Did he hurt his head when he got stung? Since when does Julian have faith in any of us?” I joke.
I know,” she says. “I blame it on the drugs.”
“Did he say anything else?” Faye asks. “Any instructions or messages?”
“No, he said he talked to Mom and everything is fine and he’ll be back here tomorrow.” She opens her bag. “Faye, before we get started, do you want to fill us in on what you were talking about in Dr. Anders’ class?”
“Yeah, what was the other book you were talking about?” I ask Faye. “The one that relies on the book by the Vander guy?”
She looks at us, and then her gaze falls to where Julian usually sits. “Ian Anders’ dissertation on the antagonist in folktales,” she says. Her voice is almost a whisper. “Julian thinks he plagiarized Johann Vanguard.”
“What, like word for word?” I ask. “He copied the book we have?
“No, like he found an unpublished manuscript or something. He said it’s the same language, the phrasing, the way he constructs sentences, it’s all the same. Like they could have been the same person.”
“That’s crazy. Julian couldn’t know that.” I stare at his empty seat. “I mean, he’s probably been influenced by his writing, sure, but stolen his work? That’s a pretty big accusation.”
“Writing has fingerprints,” Memory says. “That’s what Jules says. Like anyone can hear a Dr. Seuss book and know who wrote it.”
“Hemingway,” Faye says. “He has short choppy sentences.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I say. “Everyone who has read a Bachman book knows it’s really Stephen King, but I just can’t see Anders as a criminal.”
The girls look at me like I’d grown a second nose.
“You like to read?” Faye asks.
“What exactly does a criminal look like?” Memory asks. I shrug, nod once to Faye. There’s not a lot else to do in lock-up, except read. And pick fights. I ignore Memory, who turns back to the other girl. “What else did he tell you?”
“I don’t know more than that. He didn’t tell me much,” she mumbles. “We, I— Did he mention me at all? When he texted to you?”
Cherry shakes her head.
“Someone dropped his bag and laptop off in our room. I saw it on his bed last night when I got in,” I tell them.
“Do you have anything to share?” Memory asks me with a sigh. “That doesn’t accuse the biggest scholar in his field of being a fraud?”
I open my own bag and pull out my portfolio. “I printed out some photos in the art lab this morning. These are most of what I’ve taken since we arrived on campus.” I extract the stack from my bag and spread them across the table.
“There aren’t isn’t as many as I expected,” Memory says. “You’ve always got that camera in your face.”
“I’ve been told I’m a pretty good shot,” I say. The photo finish paper is expensive, and I hadn’t been sure how much money Mary had put into my student account.
Memory shakes her head but sifts through the images. She skips the ones of herself and Faye, picks up the ones from Sonja’s house. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says, holding up a picture.
“Nope. That’s the wallpaper in the dining room.”
“Look at all the names woven into the vines,” Faye leans over her shoulder.
“Weird. They’re handwritten. Like a giant family tree.” Memory glances at each one, moves onto the next, never lingering over any.
“It’s actually a fairly common practice, to paint your lineage on the wall. Especially in tombs, and nurseries. But this is too huge. Like it would have to be for thousands of years.”
“That whole house is weird,” Memory says. “I can’t believe Sonja grew up there, it’s so out of date and creepy. She’s always so put together.”
“Her mom is the one interested in the crows,” I tell them.
“It’s true,” Memory says. “Sonja’s room was a normal bedroom. All of the crow stuff was in the common areas.”
“Then maybe we should try to find her mother again. It seemed like she was only out for the day
or something—the door was unlocked,” Faye offers.
“We could, but I don’t know, it seems like a dead end.” I’m withholding the full truth, what Constance told me about Sonja’s mother and her fascination with the birds, but everyone seems on edge and the last thing I need is for one of the girls to go off campus again while Julian is gone. I grab another stack of photos, thumb through, split the pile and pass half to each girl. “Here.”
Memory snatches them up. “So we need to pick out the photographs that best support our project theme, right?”
“Or just illustrate it.” I say. “I mean, it’s kind of hard to ‘compare and contrast the significance of crows’ in photographs. I tagged the ones I thought were the most relevant. Or had birds in them. Most are of the chapel, but I took some shots of other buildings to compare, too. None of them have the really old doors, though.”
“That isn’t a crow, it’s a rooster.” Memory points to the weather vane, but Faye is staring at a picture of one of the chapel doorways, the one that had her bird nest in it.
“Look,” she breathes. “Perth.” She points to the door. The flash has heightened the contrast, and a symbol shows up in faint relief on the surface, at the top. “I didn’t see it, when we were there.”
“It’s not in this one,” Memory says, pointing to the shot with natural light. “Are you sure it’s not just a weird shadow?”
“Isn’t that a Greek letter?” I ask “Like the ones over the fraternity dorms? Sigma or something.”
Both girls shake their heads. “Sigma looks like this,” Memory says, sketching a symbol that’s crooked in a different way.
“It’s a rune. Perth,” Faye says. “Or pertho, or perthro, depending on where you are from and when and what futhark you are using.”
“What does it mean?” I ask, despite myself. The stone she gave me is still in my pocket.
“Magic. The feminine mystique. Sometimes luck or secrets. Do all the doors have these?” She rifles through the photos, but only the one has the mark. “Can I keep this?”
“Sure,” I tell her. “Keep them all.”
“Are we finished?” Memory asks. She covers a yawn with her hand.
Faye half raises her hand. “I have one thing.”
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Yesterday, when I went to the library so early, it was to gather information about psychic connections. Our revelations the other day sparked my interest, and I’d never given it much thought, other than your basic paranormal theories, but the fact we had this similar connection—a bridge almost, between ourselves and the birds, I wondered if we were missing something.”
“Did you find anything?” I ask.
Cherry folds her arms across her chest, glances at the ceiling.
“The amount of information out there is endless—” Faye begins again.
“Yeah, and my brother and I have read all of it,” Memory says. She drums her fingernails on the tabletop.
“I guess the tricky part is separating fact from fiction, and there is no real way to measure or qualify that. I focused on shared and co-dreaming. Julian gave me some pointers on what to look for.”
“He was there?” Cherry drops the attitude.
“Yes. He helped me rule out astral projection. I did gather information on interpretations of dreaming about crows, meaning—”
“Crows represent death. And darkness.” Memory interrupts. “Or maybe annoying habits. We know all this, Faye. How did my brother look? Did he say anything about me? Was he still mad?”
“He was fine.” The tiny girl pouts. “And I wasn’t saying you haven’t looked, I just thought, maybe that I could find something different, a new angle.”
“Julian and I have researched the hell out of this topic. There is no stone unturned. We’re freaks. Twin freaks that must have had some kind of damaging occurrence in the womb. Maybe our mother drank the wrong kind of tea or took too many vitamins. Maybe she ran over a crow and it’s our curse. There’s nothing you can find that we haven’t already combed through.”
Faye shakes her head. “There has to be more. I refuse to believe this is a coincidence.”
“Drop it, Faye!” Memory’s tired eyes snap with irritation.
I watch the girls; I’ve seen them both pissed off, and I’d take even bets if it came to an all-out cat fight. Might be fun to see. But because I’m the kind of fool who fights a six-foot-twelve guy named Bruno over the last non-pink shirt in the laundry room—some gangbanger drops a red bandanna in the whites at least once a week—I suggest to the girls who are glaring across the table, “Maybe we should call it a day. Cherry, you look like you need a nap. Faye, give her a little space.”
Memory responds with a long middle finger. Faye bursts into angry tears and mutters at me under her breath. Both leave the room scowling, but at least not at each other. The black looks of feminine death are focused in my direction now. I can admit I’m a little intimidated by Cherry, but Faye? That chick may hex me while I sleep.
18.
Mannaz
I walk slowly in my lace-up wedges. Faye still takes nearly two steps to every one of mine. “He’s right,” I say. “I am exhausted. He just didn’t have to be such a condescending jerk about it.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be so intrusive.” She flashes me a tentative smile. “It’s just terribly fascinating, and I’m not very experienced when it comes to interpersonal relationships with people my own age.”
“You’re fine. It’s just a tender topic, sometimes.”
“You’re not a freak, you know. Every girl on campus would like to be you. Even the ones who—”
Three guys, all in black jeans and black long-sleeved shirts, walk past us on the path, reciting what sounds like Shakespeare put to a hip-hop tune.
“Mi’lady.” A heavy, dark-skinned boy bows with a flourish and a brilliant smile as he steps to my left.
“No, every girl on camps wants to look like me,” I tell Faye. “Even the ones who what? Call me names behind my back? Say I’m trashy?”
She looks at the ground. “They say things about me, too. I’m the ‘orphan girl’, right?”
“I tell you what,” I say, throwing my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll come live with you in your cardboard box.”
“By the campfire under a railroad bridge?” She giggles. “Okay, but you’ll have to teach me how to wear scandalous skirts and smutty lipstick. And bras.”
“Short skirts aren’t hard to wear; you just put them on and go.”
“It’s the walking in them that looks hard,” she protests. “And none of the girls in the dorm can figure out how you sit down without giving a view all the way up your fallopian tubes.”
“Gross!” I gesture for her to go ahead of me up the steps to the dining hall, but stop before we go into the cafeteria doors, and dig in my bag for my buzzing phone.
The doctor doesn’t want to discharge me while I still have a fever. They’re moving me to an outpatient room. Looks like another night of mystery meat and Jell-O.
I show my brother’s text to Faye. She pouts.
I type: How are you feeling?
“Tell him about the book I found,” my roommate says, standing on tiptoe to see the screen when it vibrates again. “About the Native American myths.”
“That would be torture for Jules,” I murmur. “Talking about a book he can’t read.”
Tired. The rash is gone, though. Mostly. Faye leads me though the double doors and through the line while I work my thumbs over the phone, but another message comes through before I hit send. Have to go. Allergist is here.
Faye grabs an extra plastic tray, slides it along next to hers and plunks a salad on it. I erase what I’ve written, and start again: Tell me what they say. And when they think you can get out. Faye and Ethan miss you.
“Can’t we go see him?” Faye asks. “The Dean would give you permission, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe, but I’d have to find a way to get there.” I hand th
e cashier my meal card, and frown at my phone.
I miss them too.
He really is doped up. Faye pays for her food, and leads the way to our usual table. “You could take a taxi. Or maybe they’d let Jeremy take you. You could bring him the book. It would give him something to do for the project. There are several in there with bird tales. I like the Cherokee stories about the Tla-Nu-Wa. They were huge magic birds who could speak the language of men. I marked them in the book. There’s a very traditional one where a medicine man casts five baby magic birds into a cave where a bottomless river flows. The comparisons are fascinating.”
Ethan is eating at the table by himself. His hair has grown in a little more, a lighter blond than his eyebrows. I wonder if it’s straight or curly, and if he always shaves it, the way swimmers do. Danielle is sitting several tables away, laughing with girls in her project group. Interesting.
Faye claims a spot several spaces away from him, without saying hello. I ignore him, too, setting my tray down. I sit, and then pivot, swinging my legs over the bench in a practiced move.
“It’s all in the knees,” I tell Faye. “I actually keep them together a lot more than people assume.”
Ethan coughs, takes several swallows of soda, but continues to stare at his food.
*
“So what exactly are you looking for?” I ask, fanning my face with one of Ethan’s photographs. Twenty minutes of rain has done nothing to tame the heat, and now steam rises from the trees around the little church.
“I want to see if the other doors have rune markings, and if they are all the same.” My roommate has shed one sweater, in polite acknowledgement to the sun.
“So what do you need me for?” I ask her.
“I’m not tall enough to reach them,” she says, making a face.
“Okay. I’ll do this, but you have to promise me something.”
“Of course. Anything. What?”
“That you’ll go see Dr. Anders before class, and apologize for yesterday.”
“Why?” Her face scrunches up even more. “He asked us to ask questions, but was rude when I did. Then he deflected my inquiry and switched the subject, and treated me like a child!” She drops her sweater and her book bag under a tree. “And I think Julian is right. There’s something weird about that book.”
