The Tenth Girl

by Sara Faring

  I try to call up happier memories with her, anything that might give me a feeling of warmth in the tomb of my room, but all I can recall in the darkness, at first, is the cyanide tooth and Manuel’s teary-eyed face. And then Michelle’s little round face drifts into view, coupled with the stench of scorched concrete and sweet gunpowder. A flash of the blackened crater where my classmate’s apartment had been.

  During that period of visiting cousins, some time after my mother encouraged me to think of Manuel’s suicide with pride, she hosted a rowdy group she would not let me see. This was unusual: Toward the end of our time together, I was encouraged to participate, to bask in that particular glow of her righteousness. If her exclusion of me was an indication of hesitation or of fear on her part, I cannot now know.

  Locked in my room, I listened as their voices waned and waxed, whispers to shouts. I overheard grainy talk of the horrific kidnappings, rapes, and torture committed by the military junta, of far-left guerrillas as young as sixteen—my age. I knew about all these graphic crimes, or much about them, at least, and I pressed my ear closer to the door, puzzled as to why I was excluded. And then my mother’s voice, clear as a bell, sounded out: She said the name Falcone.

  I recoiled, my stomach a bundle of live wires. Falcone: an empty-headed bureaucrat ignorant of the evil he spreads with every scratch of his pencil. My classmate’s father. Feeling unclean and unwell, I tucked myself into bed and waited for my breathing to slow.

  Her visitors were gone before I woke.

  The following week, I was working on homework in our apartment when a powerful blast unlike anything I’ve ever heard shook the earth around me.

  I dropped to the floor, then crawled toward the window. Nothing was visible outside except a distant cloud of smoke. Soon after, I heard the sirens and smelled that choking odor.

  My mother was teaching that day, and I waited inside, chewing my nails to shreds, for her to arrive with news of what had occurred. But she arrived so late that night, smelling of wine, that I pretended to be asleep when she entered my bedroom and kissed my cheek.

  I learned about it in school the next day. The Falcone apartment had been bombed by guerrillas. An amateurish operation, said one snippy nun to another, for the intended target—Mr. Falcone, the government worker—had been speaking with the building superintendent at the time. My classmate, whom I imagined had been working on the same assignment I had been working on several blocks away, had been the only one to die.

  When I told my mother this, as she read the last of that morning’s newspaper after dinner, she did not react. I prodded her, and she stood ever straighter, avoiding my eyes as she told me how tragic it was when the innocent died.

  I knew, in the marrow of my bones, that she was in some capacity involved in this act. I knew which three syllables I had heard her say, at this very table, only a week prior. Fal-co-ne. And, without passing moral judgment—for I was ill-equipped to do so—I wondered how she believed she could keep this dark truth from me. How could she believe I would blindly follow her bright ideals, ignoring the existence of their darker shadows?

  I sat there, chewing at the insides of my cheeks, remembering my Tío Adolfo sitting at this same table and denouncing terrorism on both sides, warning it would pitch us into civil war long before it did so. He had been right. Folding my shaking hands atop my napkin, I asked my mother to tell me what I could do to help our people without fomenting bloodshed, like Tío Adolfo.

  I’ll never forget how she looked at me, then, her eyes falcon-sharp, injured by my clueless criticism. She snapped at me to not be so naive. Once so much blood had fallen, the time for talk of peaceful protest was over. Those who had committed so many atrocities deserved everything that was to come.

  My trembling worsened as I tucked myself into bed alone that night. If only we had all listened to people like Tío Adolfo before our country was locked into this cycle of hostility and brutality, I thought to myself. If only it were that easy, I heard my mother’s voice reply, inside my head.

  The Falcone girl’s face was burned into my memory after that. I don’t know what I might have done to help her—nothing, I suppose. I felt as powerless, then, as I had hearing about so many young left-wing victims. But I swore I would never forget that the world wasn’t as black-and-white as my mother claimed—that within the shades of gray lived delicate truths important to Tío Adolfo’s peace, if not my mother’s brute strength. This was a knowledge I was desperate to protect and expand upon: Inside the gray was an answer, an answer needed in the future, but I would not find it unless I stayed alive to learn it. I have never felt so strong an instinct as that one.

  And yet: I fear the gray now, delving into those dark nooks Yesi spoke of. I find myself burying the past, just as the De Vaccaros do, and desperate to uphold their incomprehensible rules, as if they will protect me in the future.

  In my tiny bedroom, I fashion a pocket of air inside the blanket and breathe, fogging up the space. Hundreds of kilometers away, young people as courageous and principled as my mother fight and die every day, while I hide myself here, pondering the mysteries of an old house. Why has my classmate returned to haunt me here, in the form of a student? What could her resemblance mean?

  It means the past will not remain hidden, no matter what you do.

  Waiting in silence to feel tired, I hear a rhythmic creaking and distract myself with thoughts of the girls’ first assignments. A rumbling follows, as if a train passes underfoot. At night, the house breathes and groans audibly.

  That same damned draft’s ice-tipped tendrils weave in through the closet door and circle me as I squeeze my eyes as tightly shut as I can manage. At one point, when my toes are twitching back and forth to frantically combat the cold, I hear soft laughter from beyond my room.

  “Yesi?” I call into the pass-through.

  Hard at work defining the ghostly house noises, or so I imagine, she does not answer.

  8

  ANGEL: 2020–300

  Once I’m fed, I cook up an elaborate plan: a way to explore Vaccaro School in full, while hiding in plain sight. It’s a grand plan I’d like to say I conceived of ages ago but forgot to follow through on—one that requires the help of one of my personal Vaccaro School all-stars. A hateful, pasty prince among pasty men (not to be confused with pastry women, like sweet-smelling Mavi).

  The whitewalker.

  After the teachers head off to their second day of achingly tedious classes, I find him, alone and dazed. He’s in his same royal-blue upstairs room, rolling a “special” big-boy cigarette—there are four butts in the ashtray already, but better there than in an unsuspecting teacher’s hair. He’s watching the ice melt through the window (spoiler: it’s not).

  “Do less, Domenico.” He could be waterskiing on the lake. Enjoying a bottle of chilled chardonnay on the terrace. Seducing the paltry ranks of women and men in the house (you know what they say about men with necks the width of fire hoses)!

  I grab him by the shoulders, as I did the other day, and mush him around. Can I squeeze myself into his arms? Into his head?

  He jitters forward at my touch and picks up the manila file before him. His day job at the house? Doubtful. The folder reads: PRIVATE—CARMELA DE VACCARO.

  “Okay, props,” I say as he flips through the pages. I can’t help but read over his shoulder: It lists staff details, collected for Carmela by a private detective by the name of Alack Sinner. To my deep and enduring sadness, the majority of the files are boring and predictable. But some salacious details do catch my eye.

  Dr. Molina’s page reads, Lack of discretion. Evidence of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  “Psycho,” Domenico says.

  “OCD is a serious mental illness,” I snap back. “And have you even watched enough true-crime documentaries to know what psychopaths are?”

  He flips on. Yesi’s page reads, IQ = 153.

  I cross my arms, waiting to see how he can insult a girl genius.

&nb
sp; Below it reads: Prone to delusions and lapses in memory.

  “Freak,” he says.

  I shake my head.

  Mrs. Hawk’s page reads, Delicate constitution, migraines, and narcolepsy.

  “Peasant.”

  “You’re not giving me a lot to work with,” I reply.

  Mr. Lamm’s page reads, Hypochondria. Possible evidence of inappropriate relationships with students in past teaching positions. My jelly eyes squinch up, trying to make sense of it, based on what I’ve seen of the man.

  “Pedo,” Domenico says, his creativity at its peak. I throw my hands in the air and give up.

  Then Mavi’s page. Mavi’s father left her family at a young age, and the government arrested her mother last year on suspicion of guerrilla activities and took her to a state facility for the worst enemies of the state. A hellhole described, chillingly, as one that no one ever returns from alive.

  I swallow hard. Mavi’s mother is as good as dead. And worse—her last place of residence is listed as none. Did Mavi outwit the detective? Or was she living on the street?

  I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdogs. It’s not so unlikely that Mavi and I would have been friends.

  Tendency to form inappropriate and intense attachments.

  “Guerrilla slut,” Domenico says to himself.

  I frown at him. “Seriously, Domenico, wash your mouth out with soap.”

  Toward the back, I recognize the face staring up at me as … Domenico De Vaccaro. Evidence of severe depression and self-destructive behavior. I let out a low whistle as Dom’s fingers close around the page, crumpling the edge. I catch, in minuscule print: Deeply manipulative narcissist. History of sadistic behaviors. Episodes of animal killing and sororal abuse.

  I shiver. He doesn’t have anything to say about his page, unsurprisingly. He flicks on his lighter and holds it up to the sheet until a flame licks at the lettering. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for him or hate him. I guess a bit of both.

  He takes another hit from his joint. He lifts the photo of Mavi attached to her evaluation and strokes it. “We’ll teach the little slut, won’t we?”

  Half of me gags—Who says that to himself? Out loud?—and half of me feels a judder of genuine fear. “No, we won’t, asshole,” I say, pushing his shoulder. I’m denser today, more crystal-concrete, thanks to Yesi, and my hands slow as they knead his flesh. But he doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even wince. Maybe he’s too stoned.

  He picks up a red pen, draws an x over her left eye. He repeats the process on her right one.

  Deeply manipulative narcissist.

  He draws cuts on her like some amateur graphic novelist, deep gashes dripping fake inky blood. He details every drop.

  History of sadistic behaviors.

  I remember the way he watched her from his window, like she was a fast-food meal he would devour and forget.

  He colors over her arms, leaving stumps. He draws in hash marks of rot. An exposed bone.

  Episodes of animal killing and sororal abuse.

  I remember his dropping a lit cigarette on her.

  I knew cruel cowards like him all my life. I dart fingers into his flesh to no avail, blazing with more and more rage that comes from a place I couldn’t even identify inside myself.

  People who take their strength, their power for granted. People without the emotional strength to be kind.

  I take hold of Domenico’s shoulders, and he shrugs to himself. But I am persistent. I hold on.

  He cracks his neck with a series of disconcerting pops, as if readjusting himself internally. I continue to press on. My fingers press in through the spongy parts of his body—the skin, the muscle—like glutinous syrup through a fine mesh sieve.

  I hear the first clicks, like teeny-tiny Legos attaching themselves to joints and bones, and my crystal material merges with every inch of Domenico’s muscle; it’s like pulling a coat around an unruly dog and strapping it up tight, tight, tighter, until the poor thing suffocates. It’s uncomfortable for both of us—at least, I imagine it must be uncomfortable for him—in its snugness, but I feel his matter accommodate mine, filmy as it is.

  He shudders, seizes. He murmurs, so animal and plaintive, but the sound dies in the back of his throat.

  I blink open my eyes and look out onto the ice, ripple-edged and gray in the morning haze. I think—

  I am him.

  Dom.

  Holy fuck.

  9

  MAVI: ARGENTINA, MARCH–MAY 1978

  How to describe the passing of time at Vaccaro School…? At first, I thought that time in a new place is a wild creature you can’t quite get your hands on, much less tame. You can only aspire to trick your brain into feeling comfortable with time’s quirks—into feeling it’s contained, or better yet, the experience of it, shared.

  But here, at Vaccaro School, time kicks the side of my head at random. I’m left out cold, wondering if I’m eight or eighteen or forty-eight; mothered, motherless, or mothering; dead, alive, or something in between. Then the feeling fades, and I go about counting seconds and minutes, logically, with only a growing dread in the base of my stomach. Waiting for the next kick.

  Here are the only consistencies: Nights stretch on endlessly. They are cold and empty corridors to be walked alone. Nightmares rise through the floorboards, ooze through forgotten cracks in the walls: Usually I hear echoes of my mother’s voice, fervently discussing government policy as a young, soft teacher with Tío Adolfo years ago or proselytizing young, soft students as a hardened professor. Or she herself appears, disappointment thick in her eyes, from a slick-walled well of a prison; or Michelle materializes, that unlikely double of my lost classmate. Ragged holes and sores spread through their flesh, as if my unconscious mind can’t even be bothered to sculpt them in full, creating gruesome impressionistic mannequins instead. Tears dry on my cheeks as I wake (do I?) to the sound of the closet doorknob shaking. I don’t know who’s trying to get in, but I fear it, because I do know that seeing its face will change me beyond recognition. I cocoon myself in my coat and four (yes, four) new blankets, dumped in my room by a grim member of the cleaning staff. The air around my bed is always frigid: a pocket of misery in the damp confines of the house.

  What’s worse: I also feel watched. Sweat pours down my neck as I fail to shake the feeling that I’m not alone in the privacy of my bedroom. It’s as if the invisible demon inside my closet can see me through the walls and enjoys watching me squirm as it rattles my door.

  In a fit of rationality (or not…), I become convinced a child has been visiting my room and causing the disturbances; I hear girlish whispers at night from underneath my blanket and in between the webbing of my dreams; I smell the headiness of dairy—spoiled milk, as if the girl sips on a repulsive refreshment while she observes me. But which girl could it be? Who would do such a thing?

  None of them, beastly as some seem. It can only be stress. Altitude. A panic attack. Homesickness, Yesi says in the light of day, because I haven’t mentioned that I lacked the main prerequisite for that feeling—a home.

  Days, blessedly—perhaps expectedly—are as short and sweet as nights are long. Once the evening gloom evaporates, I wake to Yesi humming in the bathroom, and we breakfast with her beloved bowl of blueberries. It reminds me of my old morning routine with my mother: eating medialunas together, flakes dotting the kitchen table. Her hands holding up the newspaper. The scratch of the pencil tip. Circling. Underlining. ¿Que pensas de esto, Mavi? she would ask in the Argentine voseo, pointing to a bit of news and waiting for my every unformed opinion. Endlessly patient in helping me hammer it out. When I saw the special logic in her view, she smiled at me like the sun. I can hear the birds that gathered near our windows in the mornings when summer turns muggy, preening and cooing calmly. There are few animals here, and no newspapers at all—only the ice outside the window and the occasional work of fiction. But the ritual of it grounds me. It allows me to affix a smile on my face and pretend I am not
hing more than a good teacher, oblivious to the world beyond this rock.

  Breakfast is followed by a rush of class, and lunch with Yesi and Mole of ham-and-cheese sandwiches or simple salads and more chicken milanesas on the patio. And Mole—immune to Morency’s suspicion—persuades her to let us enjoy a Yesi-style nightcap of chamomile tea (we’re still afraid of breaking Carmela’s no-drinking rule) after dinner so that I can slip off to bed sleepy and toasted warm. We take over one of the sitting rooms we’ve discovered, off the winding brocade maze, full of first-edition books. It’s a treasure trove, to say the least, and we delight in flipping through them, in marveling at what may very well be precious leftovers from the previous incarnation of the school. Mr. Lamm joins us on a couple of occasions, with his secret snifter of brandy, regaling us with stupid jokes that have, to my chagrin, begun to make me laugh.

  Lamb is a gem. During our second week, on what will end up being the final beautiful day of the fall, he finds us all at breakfast to invite us and the girls to a special outing for lunch, precleared with the powers that be. We ask what we can bring, but he tells us, with a mischievous grin, to bring only ourselves and meet him by the front steps of the admissions entrance. When Yesi and I arrive, we find the girls whispering around Lamb, who beams, extending his hand to us like a boy asking the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen for a waltz. He escorts us down in the rickety funicular—my first time seeing the contraption that I should have taken the day I arrived, covered as it is in vines—and we see that he has already spread a checkered picnic blanket and propped open baskets filled with finger sandwiches of cucumber and smoked salmon and chive. The ice field looms before us, an earthly sky with constellations of fissures. We toast to the parallel lines with the iced mint tea in our glasses and while away the afternoon. Even the girls break out into grins, fall back onto their elbows, and chatter among themselves about lipsticks and half-remembered boys and the chameleonlike butterflies landing on our shoulders, their wings churlishly stealing the color from our shirts for themselves.