by Joanna Wiebe
Moments pass like this. I’ve never had a reading done, but they’re common enough where I come from that this isn’t completely absurd. Just semi-absurd.
All at once, though, a shudder overtakes my body, and I’m caught off-guard by the strongest sensation of being not entirely myself any longer—of being invaded by some sour presence that lumbers its way around under my skin.
“Wait,” I begin, but my voice catches in my throat.
I twitch involuntarily, as if my body is shaking out an intruder.
It’s as though Teddy’s reaching into my soul, and my soul is trying to shove him out. But that’s impossible. Teddy is just a guy. The effect, the unnerving sense of having company under my own skin, can only be the result of some manipulated pressure point on my hands.
“Remain absolutely still, Miss Merchant,” Teddy warns.
Keeping still is the last thing on my mind. A wave of nausea runs over me, and I suck my tongue to avoid getting sick right there on the creaking wooden floors, squeeze my eyes shut tighter, and tell myself to breathe. What’s happening? Moments creep by. The sense that this might never end washes over me.
But still I stand, motionless, doing as I’m told, finally realizing that this—whatever this is—is the manner by which all students have their PTs selected. And I, like everyone else, am expected to stand quietly while I’m mysteriously, telepathically prodded.
Opening my eyes during a brief moment of calmness, I watch Teddy’s long head rumble on his neck, teetering and bouncing like a bobble on the end of a radio antenna; his eyes are still closed. My stomach is once again on the brink. My skin feels tighter every second. And the idea, the absurd notion that Teddy could somehow be penetrating my soul, my aura, whatever you want to call it—that idea is flipping over and over in my mind. Without a resolution. My brain tells me it’s impossible. My body makes a shockingly compelling argument against my brain.
“Yes.” Teddy’s tongue slithers. His tone is peril personified, but I’m glad for the noise, for the promise of this all being over soon. “I see it. It’s you. I see your PT.”
See my PT?
“Your soul is very old yet invigorated. It is…so seductive.”
“Gross.”
“Hush now. A shadow hovers over you.”
With a sharp, unexpected gasp, Teddy suddenly lifts my hands high in the air. My eyelids pop open. His eyes flash wide, glowing oddly, bloodshot beyond repair as his gaze fuses with mine. Briefly, in that moment, I feel, in spite of myself, as if our souls are real, as if our souls are touching each other, as if I can see his and—to my great surprise—it’s not all dark. But then, without warning, he whips my arms down. Hard. So hard, I hear a snap, and my shoulders feel like they’ve popped right out of their sockets as he releases me.
With a howl of shock and pain, I hobble away. I balance myself after a spell of stumbling and lean against the foot of my bed, rubbing one shoulder, then the other. The only consolation, and it is a significant one, is that I feel like myself once again, even if I’m struggling to catch my breath, even if a dull creaminess coats my tongue.
“I have seen your PT. You have in your aura a tendency toward—” Teddy hesitates, standing in the midst of a great, long, exaggerated pause “—seduction.”
I collapse against the bed and, baffled by the whole experience, start laughing. “Are you kidding me?”
“Miss Merchant,” Teddy says, holding his hands up, “I assure you that your spirit does, in fact, lean toward a hyper-sexualized state.”
“Or you wish it would,” I counter, glaring up at him as the smile leaves my face. “If my PT were to sleep my way to the top, or whatever it is you have in mind, then tell me, dear Teddy, how would you grade me on that?”
He flinches. “You can’t be suggesting…”
“Having your way with me here? Nightly stripteases in your bedroom, Teddy? Is that close to what you were thinking?”
“That would be an abuse of power! I would never!”
“I’ll have you know that my uniform is as tight as it is because someone got my measurements wrong!” I get to my feet, wincing at the pain, and stride to the top of the stairs, gesturing for him to leave the attic. “I won’t sign anything that says that’s my PT. In fact, maybe I’m not interested in the Big V after all. Maybe I’ll be just like Pilot and turn my back on this idiotic race.”
“Wait!” Teddy cries, coming after me. “You need to do this, Anne.” His expression is softer—almost kind—as he looks at me now. “There was something else in your aura.”
“Surprise, surprise. What is it?”
“I would encourage you to choose the one I mentioned, though. It is your greatest strength. There are many ways to use your sexuality to your advantage. It doesn’t have to be as obvious as you might think.”
“That’s BS. What was the other one? Tell me.”
Reluctantly, Teddy nods. “It is because you are an artist that this is in you at all,” he stammers, which, in combination with his thick accent, makes him that much harder to understand. “But I warn you that, although you are an artist in this life, you may not have been in other lives. Your soul has spent much longer in the role of the seductress than the artist.”
“Teddy! Just tell me.”
“Your alternative PT, Miss Merchant, is that you will succeed in life by looking closer. Beyond the surface. By asking questions and never accepting things at face value.”
“Looking closer?”
I can’t help but smile a little. It’s exactly right. I feel it immediately, and knowing that Teddy was able to land on this assessment of my strength—a strength that one art curator once commented on—makes me wonder, for the briefest moment, if he was actually somehow in my soul, reading it.
“This might only cause you trouble, Miss Merchant,” Teddy warns.
“It’s perfect. Let’s do it. What do I sign?”
“Very well.” Teddy’s voice shakes as he lifts the form to me. I scribble it down and turn to let him go.
“Not so fast,” he says. Turning back, I find him lifting a long, silvery needle from his case and holding it out to me.
I stare at it. “What’s that?”
“To seal the deal.”
“To what?”
“We seal our official forms with blood at Cania Christy. It’s in my guide.”
“You’re really funny tonight. But you should probably leave now.”
Teddy just holds the needle out to me.
“So we’re in the Middle Ages now?”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Teddy says. “Signing in blood is a tradition of this school, a tradition that goes back generations.” He thrusts the needle at me.
If I was alone, I might actually pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming because, so far, life at Cania Christy feels like life in a bad dream, like life on some planet filled with probing aliens.
“Everyone does it,” Teddy states crossly. Classic that he would use the line teachers and parents have condemned for years.
“My signature isn’t enough?”
“Thou must bequeath it solemnly!” he cries finally. With his hands trembling, with a hysteric gleam in his eye, he stomps on the spot.
“Teddy, come on! I mean, aren’t I supposed to be questioning stuff? That’s my PT, right? If I just gave in, wouldn’t I be, like, in violation or something?”
Settling down, though his chest still heaves, he agrees. “I understand. Well done. But now that you’ve questioned it and learned that it is what you must do, you must do it.”
Mental note: my Guardian will make up the rules as we go.
“What we have here is a learning opportunity,” Teddy declares, taking my hand and pressing the soft pad of my fingertip. “Once you learn who’s in control, I’ll learn that you’re worth fighting for on graduation day.”
With the needle, he pricks my finger and squeezes a drop of my blood onto the lower corner of each form. I press my thumb into the crimson d
rop; as I pull away, I stare for a moment at the fingerprint I’ve left behind, at the lines that swirl around the center like the walls of some fiery tornado around its funnel, at the mark they use to identify criminals, not students. I look at the tiniest flecks that the lines of my fingerprint leave, and I think of how those ridges are designed to fire signals to the brain when a surface feels dangerously sharp, dangerously hot.
Not long after, Teddy heads to campus for an evening meeting of the Guardians, and, relieved to be alone, I bolt downstairs to the kitchen, where an old-school telephone—the rotary kind, black—clings to the wall. I need to talk to my dad. I need to know how much this place is costing him and if he has any idea he’s sent me to a place where creepy Guardian-people crawl into your soul and suggest you get by in life on your back.
I pick up the receiver for the phone. But there’s no dial tone. A quick glance shows me there’s no cord connecting the two pieces.
“Ten bucks says Teddy took the damn thing with him.”
Restless and still shaken by the PT exercise, I slide on my boots and Gigi’s big, stinky jacket and head out the front door into the night air.
There are two ways I could go: up-island to campus or down-island to the verboten village. Creeping over the grass under the twilight sky and onto the road, I look north at the endless stretch and then south through the haze to where a distant village I’m not supposed to enter sits in wait. Behind me, I can feel the presence of the Zin mansion, where the golden glow of warmly lit rooms fills just enough ornate windows to make me long for a life as pleasant for myself.
I turn left. And, emboldened by my “look closer” PT, walk toward the village.
Taking their cue from the cool weather, the leaves have started changing color. Spots of orange and violet spread through the woods on both sides of the road, their colors diluted by the gray air, which is crisp enough to turn my nose and fingertips red. Outside the village, I spy a craggy wooden sign that shows the population: 212.
My PT may have given me the push I needed to head in this direction, but it hasn’t empowered me to such an extent that I actually intend to go into the village. Given everything I’ve been told today, especially if I want to be valedictorian next year, that would be a career-limiting move worthy of detention, demerits, suspension, or whatever they do at Cania to punish disobedient students. Veering away from the village just as its old pale fishing shacks come into view, I head toward the flash of a lighthouse that passes through the woods on the west side of the island. On my way, I wander by a hillside spotted with enormous Cape Cod–style homes that are anything but what I expected the villagers to live in. These people are the inhabitants of an old whaling village, after all. They should live in shanties with dimly lit porches. They should have tattered clothes that reek of fish guts. And yet, judging by their homes, you’d think they were all millionaires.
“That’s not fair!” a man hollers suddenly. I can’t see him. He’s somewhere far ahead, on the other side of the woods.
For a moment, I worry he’s shouting at me, and I scramble away. But when it’s obvious he doesn’t know I’m here, I inch toward his voice, to the edge of the woods and to the top of a low cliff overlooking not only the vast, smooth ocean and the distant twinkling lights of the Kennebunkport coast but also the marina, which houses more mini-yachts than it seems to be built for. Standing on the dock below me, deep in a fiery conversation, are three men. Two I recognize instantly: Headmaster Villicus and the spectacularly handsome Dr. Zin. But I don’t know who the third man is. He’s Indian, and he looks truly angry—the kind of anger where you expect he might stomp on the spot while steam pours out of his ears.
Behind the trio, a sign warns visitors to report to Cania Christy or risk prosecution.
The men stand just a dozen yards away from me. At any moment, Villicus could look up and see me here, wandering the outskirts of the village like a prize moron, standing in the passing beam of the lighthouse. Sure, I live on the village side of the line, so I’d have an excuse if it came to that. But something tells me Villicus isn’t one for excuses.
I duck behind a tree. Shielded by its thick, furry trunk, which gives softly under my fingertips, I peek down.
“But Lord Featherly promised!” the Indian man, who has a strong Scottish accent, shouts. Unmistakably new to the world of the wealthy, he wears dark-wash jeans, a Gucci-print shirt—collar flipped up—and an enormous pink-gold watch that flashes as he throws out his arms, exasperated. “He said you’d take care of me, Dr. Zin. Or are you just this old freak’s lackey?”
“Lord Featherly has been loose with his information about this school,” Dr. Zin retorts coolly, his voice low and smooth like a cocoa-dusted truffle, like a deeper version of Ben’s. “And, allow me to remind you, he was in a different position than you are when he came to us, Manish.”
“A different position? My company went public last year. Public! How rich do I need to be to send my daughter here?”
“We are not talking about money,” Villicus interrupts. “You misunderstand the mandate of my institution.”
“I just want what you’re giving these kids,” Manish says, lowering his voice. I inch closer to hear more. “My wife and I want it for our little girl. A future. As I said, I’ll pay anything—”
“Our school starts in the ninth grade,” Dr. Zin explains. “Even if you had been invited and were not acting with such impropriety, your daughter would not qualify on age alone.”
“But her grades were exceptional. She could make a go of it as a freshman.” He looks wildly between the two powerful men. “Lord Featherly said something about special tuition. I can give you anything you want. What will it take?”
“Frankly, there’s nothing you could offer,” Dr. Zin says.
“Please,” Manish begs, dropping to his knees. He throws himself at Villicus’s feet and wraps his arms around his old brown shoes. “Please. If you are the man I’ve been told you are, you can do this.”
My eavesdropping is cut short when I hear leaves crunching behind me. My heart stops with a dull thump. My fingers claw into the tree bark. I close my eyes, and I freeze in place.
I’m sure I’ll turn around and see Teddy. If not him, then some wild animal’s about to maul me. I don’t know which worries me more.
“Man,” a girl says—and I promise, I nearly pee my pants. I suck my lips in to keep from screaming. “It’s hard to hear them when they whisper, isn’t it?”
Whipping around, I find a black-haired girl smiling at me as she lightly punts the kickstand on her bike. She tiptoes to my side, still grinning—she has braces—holds my arm, and peeks over my shoulder to spy on Villicus, Zin, and Manish.
“Oh, they look mad,” she giggles. “Who’s the rich idiot in the guido shirt? He looks almost as stupid as Villie.”
I’m too stunned to move. Questions about who this girl is set in quickly. She’s on this side of the line and she’s friendly—so she’s probably not from Cania. Not to mention that I’m sure I didn’t see her at orientation today.
“Stop staring at me. You’re missing the whole show,” she whispers, her gaze fixed on the entertainment below. “That guy’s laying it on thick. He’s actually begging!”
“You’re from the village.”
Her black eyes flick in my direction. “Yep. I guess you’d better run away from me now. And I’ll run away from you.” She chuckles quietly. “Stupid rules.”
Even still, I back away. My dad gave up way too much for me to compromise things now. As I back away, the girl turns to me. I’m taller than she is, but she’s got a toughness about her that makes her seem larger.
“Come on. Be nice—I’m nice,” she says. “Do you even know why the rules are what they are?”
I shake my head. Something about keeping things exclusive, but I don’t say that.
“Exactly. You only know what Villie tells you. I’ve lived here my whole life. I know the rules. So trust me when I say that I know they’re wor
th breaking. I know what I’m doing when I’m breaking them.”
“Which you are,” I say.
“Which you are, too. Or, what, did you miss that bright red line on the road back there? You had to cross it to get here, right?”
“I live on the village side of it.”
Leaning against the spot I’ve given up on the tree, she fits her fingers into the same rivets I held in the bark and glances over her shoulder at me. Her eyes twinkle, and her skin is olive-toned, which makes her teeth, behind the metal, look very white. Unlike the kids at Cania, she’s got a few blemishes, and her eyebrows are untamed.
“Oh,” she says, “you’re you. You’re the new kid. The weird one.”
“The weird one?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” I fire back. “Only teen in a creepy village. Kinda weird.”
Surprisingly, she beams. “I know, right? It’s not just weird. It blows.”
Manish’s voice booms out suddenly, and I sidle next to the girl to watch the events unfolding below.
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” Manish hollers.
“It’s imperative,” Dr. Zin quickly cautions Manish, “that you keep this quiet.”
“Impossible! Your policies are ageist and exclusionary. If my money can’t get her in here, my money will shut this place down.”
With that, Manish grabs his jacket and storms to a speedboat at the end of the dock. As he does, Villicus flicks his eyes up to exactly where the girl and I are standing—Oh, crap! Freaked, we both stumble backward, falling out of his sight to the mossy, crunchy earth. I hear her squeal, but I don’t make a peep—because my heart’s temporarily stopped.
Hushed, we wait motionlessly and soundlessly for the voices below to go away.
“He saw me,” I finally whisper.
“He saw me for sure,” she says, clutching her chest. “But I don’t think he saw you. The tree shielded you. And I’m allowed to be here.”
“Are you sure? If he saw us together, I think I could get in serious trouble.”
“We both could,” she adds, but it’s obvious she’s enjoying the excitement of the moment. She tears her hand away from her chest and sticks it out at me. Her white ceramic watch makes a clinking noise against her diamond tennis bracelet. “I’m Molly. Molly Watso.”
