“Are you grounded? No, of course not. You wouldn’t be here. You’re not sick are you? Omigod. Of course. I’m an idiot. It’s your thing with cats, isn’t it? You hate cats, only you’re afraid to tell me.”
“I don’t hate cats.”
“Hello. Do me the courtesy of being honest. You told me the story about your Mom’s accident.”
What had I told her? I didn’t think I’d said I didn’t like cats. “I didn’t mean to imply I don’t like them. Cats are fine.”
“So what is it then?” She was puzzled and a little irritated.
I should have said it was cats.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said. “I just came here to tell you in person that I won’t be there. And to give you a pledge.” I pulled out my wallet, grabbing at the wad inside. “It’s enough for twenty dollars an hour.”
Gwyn walked over, looked at the money, then at me. “You don’t have to do this, Sam. I’d rather you’d just be honest. I’m okay if you don’t like cats.”
“It’s not the damn cats!”
We stared at each other.
“Okay, whatever,” she said coolly. “I need to grab a shower. It’s going to be a long day.”
She turned to go.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I stood there, not wanting to leave.
“Uh–huh,” she grunted, as she walked away. “Close the door tight when you leave.”
Excerpted from the private journal of Girard L’Inferne, approx. 1943
Experiment 31, Control Group B
I tell Matron to replace the children’s down comforters with woolen blankets, one for every two children. The matron murmurs she will clean the eiderdowns. I tell her the children must develop strength and endurance to serve their Fatherland, their Führer.
The children turn to bed that night as the ground freezes hard outside.
“Give me that bedspread!” shouts Helga, who has just discovered her blanket is gone.
“It’s mine,” says Elfie. She is small for her age. “It was put on my bed.”
“Fight me for it,” says Helga.
“No,” replies Elfie. She knows Helga is a fierce opponent.
But the choice to avoid fighting is not available. Elfie will fight or she will give up the blanket. Helga grins, white teeth gleaming in the dark, cold night.
–translation by G. Pfeffer
Chapter Thirteen
COVER UP
I stared at my bike, in front of Las ABC. I didn’t want to bike; I needed to run. What had I done to my friendship with Gwyn?
The weather had shifted again, from stormy to sultry. The hoodie had been a mistake, but not my biggest one today. My bike could wait; I needed to run.
I took off into the sticky morning, my feet carrying me up into the hills, along the 7K trail. Up through oak branches, leaves drooping with rain, up the patches slick with new mud. On and on until the ache eased in my chest, until the confrontation with Gwyn looked like something we could both move past.
This was why I ran. Because it was the only way I had to move through the pain of being alive to a space where it became bearable, seemed possible.
I ran on and on until my feet brought me back to Las ABC, and then I hopped on my bike without looking to find out if Gwyn or Bridget could see me.
At home, I was into my swimsuit in minutes. The pool glimmered invitingly, but in spite of the morning rain–shower, the water was right below bath–temperature. I felt restless in the pool, and soon I took off down the path to my lookout where I knew I could count on a breeze to pass over my wet, warm skin. On the way, I saw Sylvia, picking late raspberries and corn. She smiled and held out a handful of my favorite fruit. The raspberries were large, firm, and sweet with a hint of acid–tang that made them my favorite. I gleaned a few she’d missed, popping them in my mouth, too.
“First two weeks of school behind you, huh?” she asked softly.
“Yeah,” I replied, pausing a moment beside her.
“So how are things going?”
“Classes are fine.” I wanted to tell her more, but I didn’t know how to explain my thing with Gwyn.
“School’s a lot more than classes, huh? That’s what I remember from the olden days.” She passed me a couple more berries, and I sat beside her.
“That hasn’t changed,” I agreed.
“Things okay with you and your friends?” She was good at catching small shifts in my mood.
“Fine,” I said. The half–truth pulled color to my face. “Well, sort of fine.”
She waited, patient beside me, rustling through the vines for scarlet fruit.
“I don’t know what I should do. I made Gwyn really mad at me, and I didn’t mean to, and I can’t figure out how to fix it.” My eyes swilled with stinging tears.
“I thought maybe something was wrong, baby. So you’re worried you won’t be able to patch it up?”
I nodded, tears spilling onto my cheeks, salty as they trailed down past my lips. She passed me a paper–towel from the roll she was using to pad between layers of raspberries.
“You know you can tell me anything, right baby?”
No, I can’t, I thought.
“What is it honey? Tell me.”
“I can’t,” I said, my throat contracting as several more tears escaped.
Her eyes narrowed and she gazed out over the ravine, following birds that dove and swooped as if to celebrate the earlier rain. “Okay, then. So what do you think you should do, honey?”
“I need to apologi—ize,” I said, my breath catching in a hiccup as I forced myself to stop crying.
“You are a very smart young woman. ’I’m sorry’ goes a long way. You’ll find a time when you can tell her, all by yourself. It’s your first falling–out, right?”
I nodded.
“Ah, Sammy.” Sylvia reached over and gathered me into a tender embrace, rubbing my shoulders and back. “We only argue with the people we really care about. You girls are going to figure this out just fine.” I let her hold me, feeling grateful and comforted.
“Is friendship always … this hard?” I asked in a whisper.
Sylvia laughed softly. “Only the friendships that are truly worthwhile.”
I dabbed at my face, clearing away the salty tear–tracks left behind by the heat and breeze. I felt a little better.
Hunkering down beside one of the garden beds, I looked for stray weeds hiding among the raspberry canes. It was a small way I could show gratitude to my step–mom. Something up the path to the house caught my eye: Mickie.
Sylvia noticed her and called up a greeting. “Hi, Mackenzie! You finally made it!”
“It’s been long enough, huh?” Mickie grinned that huge white smile I knew so well from seeing it on her brother’s face. “This is wonderful,” she said, pointing to the vista down the ravine.
Sylvia beamed.
“Hey Sam.” Mickie smiled at me.
“Hey.”
“I’m here to check out Sylvia’s famous berries.”
Sylvia straightened up, her knees and back popping. “Right. Let’s go over to the far bed. Those are the boysen—well, the syllaberries,” she said, making an effort to call them by their proper name. Dad had named them for her.
I remained quietly foraging for stray fruit as Sylvia and Mickie talked about the challenges of growing valley–bred syllaberries at our higher and colder climate.
When they said their goodbyes, Mickie turned to me. “We’re taking off to Fresno early tomorrow for some shoe shopping. Las Abs is sold out of everything in a size eleven. Will thought you might have his hoodie? It’s getting colder driving in the morning with the top off the Jeep.”
“Uh, yeah, I’ve got it in my bedroom. So you guys are missing the cat fundraiser, too?” I asked, surprised.
“Crap.” She frowned. “Guess we’ll have to, ‘cause no way am I letting Will wear out his new running shoes around school another week, and nothing else fits.”
I und
erstood. Good shoes for cross–country were a big expense, and they wore out fast enough without using them for everyday.
As we climbed up the railroad–tie stairs, I glanced over and recognized an expression on her face. I’d seen that look when Will concentrated.
“Will and I want to ask you something,” she said. “Will says you know the French teacher pretty well? Old family friends?”
“She and my mom: they were friends.”
“I have this book from my former advisor, Dr. Pfeffer. He thought it was important enough to send it to me right before he was murdered. I want to know what the book’s about, but it’s in some language I can’t figure out.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, I wondered if you might be willing to take a couple of sentences and ask the French teacher if she recognizes the language. I mean, Will could ask her—”
“Better to keep Will one additional step removed from the book and Dr. Pfeffer.”
“Well, yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” She dropped her eyes, embarrassed.
“That’s smart.”
She looked up, gave me a sad smile, then pulled the book from her bag, and handed it to me. “It might not be anything. Anyway, the sentences translated into English are some pretty weird stuff. But Pfeffer thought it was important enough to send to my keeping.”
“I’ll let you know what I find out.”
We paused at the sliding glass door.
“Thanks, Sam,” she said. “I’ve worried about keeping Will safe so long, I don’t know the reasonable fears from the far–fetched ones any more. When we were kids I had to keep what he could do hidden from Dad—not a good secret to share with an addict. Then I started worrying the CIA would haul Will off or he’d end up a lab–rat somewhere. And now with Pfeffer and the Helmann’s carriers being killed …”
“I don’t blame you. Not for a minute.”
“Thanks,” she said. Her mouth pulled into a sad half–smile. “So I bet Will loves this door,” Mickie tapped the glass as she closed it behind us.
I nodded, smiling.
We reached my room and I grabbed the hoodie off my desk chair and passed it to her.
Mickie looked around my room. “Nice. Real home–y.”
I saw a flash of yearning, but it disappeared quickly.
“Speaking of home, my brother gets steamed if he’s got dinner done and I’m not there. Time to go.”
I led her down to our front door, holding it opened.
“I’ll be seeing you,” she said.
“Bye, Mick.” I watched as she walked out to her Jeep, my mind an astonished whirl. Mickie had just handed me a book that her brother said she wouldn’t let him touch. A smile spread across my face. She trusted me.
I settled into my bean–bag chair and opened the book. The handwriting was cramped but neat. The individual letters were all part of the alphabet I knew, which meant it had to be European, and there weren’t any strange additional letters or symbols like those from Germany or the Scandinavian countries. Will was right about Latin. Not enough “hic” or “hoc” or words ending in “ibus.”
As I flipped through the pages, I noted short phrases scrawled in margins and once, on a page by itself:
Lisaba es partida.
Or sometimes:
Helisabat es partida.
And often:
Helisabat es morta.
I knew how to translate that one. Helisabat is dead.
Tuesday morning I asked Madame Evans about a couple of phrases I’d jotted down. Everyone else had filed out of the classroom. Gwyn hadn’t spoken two words to me, and I hoped that was because she was exhausted after the Panning Event.
Madame puzzled over the phrases. “Where did you run across this writing?”
“An old journal.” I didn’t trust myself to create an elaborate lie.
“Your mom’s side of the family, I take it?”
I made a noise that could be interpreted as agreement.
“I’m wondering if it’s Cajun, because of your mom’s Lousiana roots. See this: ‘aver besonh de’ sounds a lot like avoir besoin de, to have need of. And ‘la rason perqué’ is similar to la raison pourquoi, the reason why. Maybe the person who wrote this lacked the knowledge of proper spelling and simply gave his or her best guess. This one, ‘ne sabi pas res,’ has the French ‘ne pas’ structure, but the two other words are anyone’s guess. ‘Sabi’ could be a corruption of savoir, I suppose: to know.”
“So Cajun is French?” I asked.
“Cajun is a language in its own right, but its roots are French. We’ll listen to some music and dialog in your third year French class. That’s my best guess, Samanthe, with your mom’s family history.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks a lot. Merci beaucoup.”
Of course my mom’s background had nothing to do with this black book. Still, the idea of a version of French was a good one. There were moments when I felt like I could almost understand some of the sentences. We just had to find a language derived from French instead of from Latin, like Will and I had been thinking.
I didn’t catch up with Gwyn to ask her how things had gone with the fundraiser that first day back. On Wednesday and Thursday, she remained cool towards me, and I began to worry this wouldn’t blow over soon. I couldn’t apologize because I couldn’t catch her attention.
Will asked me what was wrong on Thursday.
“Gwyn hates me,” I said glumly.
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. She thinks I hate cats, and that’s why I didn’t gold pan, and I told her I don’t hate cats, and she thinks I’m lying to her.” My throat tightened as I spoke.
“She didn’t say anything to me about missing the fundraiser. Actually, she hasn’t said anything to me all week. Maybe she’s mad at both of us.”
All too likely, I thought.
Friday, Will’s sister was taking him to lunch. Eating alone was nothing new to me, but I wasn’t going back to snarfing in the halls and hiding in the library like I used to. I walked towards a table where Gwyn sat, alone for the moment.
She looked up at me without smiling or frowning, scanning my face, looking for bruises or heavy layers of cover–up. She spoke first.
“Do you know what I see looking out our back window?”
“The cat kennels?” I guessed.
She looked away for a moment. “The night someone took a shot at the cats, I looked out and I thought I saw Will climbing over the back fence. Did he come for target practice on our cats?”
“What?” I didn’t believe what she’d just asked.
“I’d really like to be friends, and I know Will’s had some rough patches in his life. But I can’t stand the dishonesty, Sam. He needs to get help for this kind of problem because it won’t go away on its own. It’ll get worse, Sam.”
She didn’t wait for me to respond.
“I didn’t want to believe it—Will seems like such a nice guy—but all the clues line up in one direction. And there’s his dad and all. Violent criminals often start with violence directed at animals.”
“Will’s not violent with animals or people.” My voice was a whisper.
“Sam, you can get help. I saw the bruise, remember?”
I shook my head. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Sam, I think you know the truth about Will. I think you were with Will that night. Am I right?”
I blinked frantically, but it did no good. Tears forced their way past my closed lids. I couldn’t tell her the truth. But I couldn’t lie either; she’d know if I did.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I choked out.
“You’re a really bad liar.” She shook her head. “You said you like that I give it to you straight. Well, this is me, giving it to you straight. I thought you were a lot smarter than this, Sam. No guy is worth this. I can forgive a lot of things, but lying and abuse are two things I won’t tolerate.” She stood up. “And neither should you.” She left the table.
&nbs
p; I heard big, gulping sobs coming from somewhere. From me. I ran to the track where I cried with abandon.
***
Sylvia asked me the next morning what was wrong. I wanted to tell her the truth. But I just said I needed to be alone. When I went outside, she didn’t hover. There are times I want to put this woman up for saint–hood.
Wandering to the far side of the deck, I stared across the pool at the waterfall, but it had no power to soothe me. I could have Gwyn as my friend, or Will, but not both. Gwyn would continue to cold–shoulder me unless I explained what had really happened that night. But Will and his sister would leave town if I told anyone about rippling. And that meant letting Gwyn believe I was in an abusive relationship with a guy who tortured cats for fun. That’s what this came down to. I had to choose who I could bear to live without.
For about an hour, I considered lying to Gwyn. Saying that I had a thing for shooting critters, and that I knew I needed help and would she point me to a twelve–step program for cat–haters? I saw myself in a room full of people confessing to terrible compulsions, all encouraging each other to take that energy and build squirrel feeders instead.
But I couldn’t lie my way out of a paper bag, and Gwyn knew it.
So who could I live without? At the moment, I was experiencing life without Gwyn. It sucked. Sure I had Syl, but she was a mom, not a girlfriend. Mickie was my friend, and a girl, but it wasn’t the same.
Life without Gwyn.
I felt a lump forming in the back of my throat.
But if I told Gwyn the truth?
Life without Will.
His sister would take him away, and I’d never see him again. Will punching me on the shoulder like I was his best friend. Will holding me safe in the creek, bringing me back to safety and life. Will and his grin aimed straight at me, his eyes crinkling as he smiled, so he looked sleepy and sexy at the same time.
Life without Will.
I couldn’t breathe.
I tasted all the bitterness of this choice, because if life were fair, I wouldn’t have to choose between them. But life is never about fair.
Rippler Page 13
