“You know me,” I point out, and Mariette smiles. Back inside the house, we get beers and sit at the top of the basement steps, looking down at a vacuum cleaner and an overflowing Rubbermaid bin full of half-naked Barbies. Mariette is easy to talk to, about the show but also about how much we don’t want school to start again and the last season of Sherlock; we wind up playing slaps for like twenty minutes, both of us laughing so hard at one point that Mariette almost falls down the stairs. It’s a relief, chatting with a girl I’m not blindingly, unrequitedly in love with. I’m not worried about impressing her, so I can stop thinking about what I’m doing every second and just be normal. I wonder for a moment if this is how my brother and Taylor feel when they’re together, if it can be like this when the feeling’s mutual, and after that I try to push Taylor out of my mind once and for all.
“I’m sorry about last year,” I tell Mariette suddenly. It feels important to say it before we go any further. “After the party and everything. I was a jerk.”
“Oh,” Mariette says, coloring a little. “No, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” I say, taking a deep breath and putting my hand down on top of hers. “Can I maybe get a do-over?”
Mariette bites her lip then, gently pulls her hand away. “Rowena,” she says, “I have a girlfriend.”
I blink for a second. Absurdly, I almost laugh. “You do?”
“Yeah,” Mariette says, shrugging. “She goes to Edgemont. She’s skiing with her family over break.”
“Oh,” I say. I can feel my blush spilling everywhere, from my ears to the webs between my fingers, the creases behind my knees. “Oh, okay. That’s totally cool. Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” Mariette is saying, but now my throat is getting tight and weird anyway, which is ridiculous because I don’t even want to date her, not really. I’m just embarrassed. I just feel so lonely. I feel like everyone on earth is paired up with somebody but me.
“I should probably go,” Mariette tells me, pulling off her hat and then putting it back on her head again, her hair going a little staticky with the motion.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, even though both of us are already standing somehow, like both of our bodies are propelling us out of this encounter as quickly as possible. “It’s almost midnight.”
“That’s okay,” Mariette says. “My mom was a weirdo about me coming anyway, she thought people were going to like, drive drunk inside the house. I’ll see you at the shop, though?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice fake and bright as the light-up Santa on Bodhi Powers’s lawn. “Definitely.”
Once Mariette is gone, I make my way through the empty kitchen, where the table is littered with tipped-over plastic cups and capless liquor bottles, something sticky and congealed pooling under a place mat. The refrigerator is papered with Christmas cards, smiling families with their arms around one another on vacations in Montauk and Vail. The clock on the stove says it’s six minutes to midnight. There’s no reason to feel like I’m going to cry.
Some guys from the cross-country team brought fireworks to set off after the countdown, and everyone is heading out to the fire pit to watch. I edge my way along the floral runner in the hallway, past a couple of kids from my lit class kissing by the bathroom door. I retrieve my coat from the pile on Bodhi’s sister’s bed, winding my thick wool scarf around my neck; other people are doing the same, bundling up for the show, and no one says a word to me. I don’t even look out of place until I start heading toward the front door. Taylor and Steven are still playing chandeliers in the living room, too cool for sixteen-shot roman candles. I dart across the archway with my head down, but I’m not quite quick enough.
“You leaving?” Taylor calls, and like five people look over. I nod and give her a thumbs-up, don’t worry about it, but she catches me in the front hall. “Where are you going?”
“No place,” I say stupidly, then amend. “I mean, home.”
“You are?” Taylor frowns. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I tell her. “Just had enough.”
“Well, you can’t walk,” Taylor points out. “It’s way too far. You want me to drive you?”
“No thanks,” I say too forcefully, yanking the front door open, but she follows me out onto the lawn anyway. She’s wearing a party dress, black and sleeveless with a full skirt and golden elephants marching along all over it. It should look like something for little kids, but on Taylor it doesn’t. On Taylor it looks like she knows something the rest of us don’t.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask even as I’m heading for the sidewalk. It is too far to walk, Taylor’s right about that, but now I’m in this and I feel like I can’t admit that. It occurs to me too late that I don’t really have a plan.
Taylor knows it too. “Yeah, I’m freezing, Rowena,” she tells me, sounding vaguely impatient.
“So then why are you out here?” I snap. “Go inside.”
Taylor puts her hands on her hips like somebody’s sitcom mom. “I want to make sure you’re okay.”
That’s too much. The last thing I want is for her to feel sorry for me, to be some little kid who tagged along and now needs tending. “Can you please stop trying to big sister me?” I ask snottily. “I know you’re probably going to marry my brother and everything, but can you just—you’re not—”
Taylor laughs out loud, an open-throated cackle. “Marry your brother?” she asks. “Do people still think that? I didn’t think anybody thought that since we were in, like, fourth grade.” Then her face abruptly falls. “I’m not trying to big sister you. That is . . . yeah. Rowena. That is, like, the opposite of what I’m trying to do here.”
Something about the way she says it, the expression on her face, stops me. “What are you trying to do, then?” I ask her, and it comes out a lot quieter than I mean.
Taylor looks at me like I’m being thick on purpose. “Rowena,” she says after a too-long pause, jamming her hands in the pockets of her elephant dress. “Come on.”
“You come on,” I say stupidly, my heart thrumming at the back of my mouth. If I am misreading this, it’s so much worse than Mariette. If I am misreading this, I might actually die right here on this lawn in the golf course development. “You never said—”
“You never said!” Taylor retorts, and I’m taken aback by how hurt she suddenly sounds. “I had to find out in the first place from your brother. If you wanted me to know, then—”
“Of course I wanted you to know,” I blurt. “You’re like, the one person who I really wanted to know, I just—”
“Okay. Okay.” Taylor is taking a step closer to me now, reaching for my wrist where it’s poking out of my coat. Her fingertips are very chilly. I smell dried lavender and snow. Inside the house I can hear people counting down to midnight, that rhythmic chant; Taylor tips her head and I’m honest to god 80 percent sure she’s going to kiss me in the moment before the front door creaks open and Steven pokes his head out, dark hair falling into his eyes.
“What are you guys doing?” he calls. Then: “Oh.”
Taylor laughs, and we lock gazes for a moment; I don’t know whether to cry or scream. But she doesn’t look annoyed, and to my surprise I find that I’m not, either. Whatever just happened here feels like a to-be-continued, a comma instead of a period. It feels like being suspended in the best part of a dream.
Steven looks at us for a moment, realization dawning on his face. The fireworks are going off in the backyard, more sound than light, but still somebody is definitely going to call the cops soon. I think of the riddle from Christmas Eve: first, strike a match.
“We’re getting out of here,” Taylor tells him, lacing her fingers through mine and squeezing tightly, bold and unmistakable. This is not a thing I am imagining here. “You coming?”
Steven peers back and forth between us for a moment. He looks, if this is even possible, both shocked and completely, enormously unsurprised at the situation. At the very least, he doesn’t
look pissed. “Whatever,” he says slowly. “Sure.” Then he nods at me. “You want shotgun?” he asks. His voice is so, so casual.
“Sure,” I say, nodding back at him, and the three of us head for the car.
Dread South
JUSTINA IRELAND
To the editor of the Savannah Morning News. This letter is in response to your editorial of February 1, 1876, entitled “The Women of the South Have No Need of Self-Defense Arts.” In your article you state that the nearly thirteen years since the Undead Rising at the tragic Battle of Gettysburg have led to unprecedented stability and that the Northern system of engaging Negro girl Attendants as protectors should be adopted here in the South. You go on to say that to encourage womenfolk to take up the defense arts would only lead to destabilized families and an increase in spinsters. This, sir, is wrong.
You have neglected fundamental aspects of the system. Many unfortunate families cannot afford to contract Attendants for their daughters. What of these poor girls, endangered by their poverty? Shall we let them be devoured by the undead? And how can the women of the South depend on Negroes to keep us safe? We are not Northerners. We know better the childlike temperament of the colored. Every Southerner knows that Negroes do not have the capacity to reasonably protect themselves or anyone else. . . .
Louisa Aiken, 1876
It was five miles into the city proper from Landsfall, the Aiken family plantation, and Louisa felt every single one of them drag by as she sat in the rider’s compartment of the pony with her mother.
Once, they would’ve traveled to town in a finely appointed carriage, with coachmen and a matched set of four horses. But that was before the restless dead stalked the woods and flatlands, hungry for flesh. Horses were a beacon for the undead creatures and rarely survived the encounter, so instead people traveled in ponies, carriages pulled along by a smoke-belching, steam-powered engine compartment. In the winter, Louisa loved traveling in the pony, when the rider’s compartment wasn’t nearly so stuffy and insufferable from the Georgia heat. But today her mother generated enough hot air that even August would’ve been hard-pressed to compete.
“Mrs. Helmsley told me that Bradley Winterbrook has already come to call on Rebecca three times. Three! She’ll be matched by the end of March, mark my words. Why, I’m sure if you’d just declare your intent for Ashley Ellis, he would’ve come to call and you’d have a betrothal by now.”
Louisa schooled her expression to blankness. Mrs. Aiken had been the most beautiful debutante in her year, way back in 1856, her blond curls and blue eyes and perfect pearlescent skin peerless throughout the Low Country. Now the bloom of her youth and her beauty had faded into something dull and unbelievably sad, like an overblown rose with only a few petals clinging. Louisa shared her mother’s looks, a fact her mother frequently brought up whenever Louisa wore a color her mother deemed “unflattering.”
At seventeen, Louisa knew her own mind well enough, and her mother’s criticisms always put her in a bit of a snit. The only reason Louisa had agreed to accompany her mother into town was the letter to the editor of the local newspaper tucked into her bodice, a letter that Louisa needed to post without her mother’s knowledge.
Louisa pulled her attention back to the conversation within the pony. “Mother, the Ellis family’s property is nothing but salt marsh. I do not want to live on a salt marsh.” It was easier than pointing out the fact that Ashley Ellis had buckteeth and was overfond of groping the servant girls. The last thing she wanted was a husband who was going to put a babe in every colored girl he met.
“Well, what about Everett Hayes? He danced with you twice at the Christmas Cotillion. And he has called on your father about courting you.”
“He has?” Louisa fell silent as she thought about Everett. He was the most eligible bachelor in all of Chatham County, and handsome to boot. A few years older than Louisa, he had dark wavy hair, blue eyes, and pale skin that bore the kiss of sunshine. He hadn’t just danced twice with her. He’d asked her to step outside with him for a glass of punch, and while they’d been alone he’d told her she was the most beautiful girl at the entire cotillion. The admiration in his eyes had made her heart grow wings.
He hadn’t kissed her, of course. That would’ve been entirely too forward. Even if she was reasonably sure she would have kissed him back.
That being said, his attentions hadn’t stopped him from dancing with Sophie Parker, a fact that Louisa had been trying to forget even as she nurtured a secret hope that she would see Everett again. It was understandable that she hadn’t, though. Travel was dangerous, and as the only son of a shipping magnate, Everett’s family preferred he stay inside the safety of the city walls. Those in the city rarely traveled outside of them for fear of the undead.
The pony came to a screeching halt. Louisa fumbled for a handle while her mother yelped in dismay. “Why are we stopping?”
The window between the driver’s compartment and the passenger area slid open. A dark face appeared in the space. Herman, the family coachman. “There’s a pack of shamblers in the road, ma’am. I’m waiting for them to clear.”
“Well, can’t you just ram them?” Mrs. Aiken demanded, a quaver in her voice. The undead were a reminder of the trials and travails of the war and the failed attempt at secession. Neither was a subject Louisa’s mother liked to think about. The war years had been hard on their family, leaving Mrs. Aiken’s brother Louis, for whom Louisa was named, a feral, mindless monster.
Herman shook his head. “There’s too many, I’m like to get the wheels mucked up with shambler if I do. Sorry, Miss Alicia. If we’re lucky they’ll wander off.” He slid the window closed, effectively ending the conversation.
Mrs. Aiken flushed and began adjusting the button closures on her gloves. “These damned undead,” she swore as she slammed back in her seat. Louisa bit back a smile. On any other occasion her mother would’ve corrected the help, told them forcefully what to do. But not when the restless dead were involved.
Louisa scooted closer to the tiny window to get a glimpse of the figures moving just beyond the bars. Louisa could see movement, but it was too far off to discern whether she’d known them or not. It was always quite a scandal when a family got turned. Some part of Louisa secretly hoped she’d see dark-haired Sophie Parker out there, dragging along in her familiar emerald green.
There were a few far-off pops, and the window to the driver’s compartment slid open once more. “Looks like the patrol is clearing them out, ma’am. We should be moving in a bit.”
“There are Federal troops out there?” Louisa asked.
“No, Miss Louisa, it’s the Negro patrol. Well, here we go.” The carriage lurched, and they were on their way once more.
Louisa sat back in her seat and grimaced. Negro patrols. No wonder they had had to wait so long. Federal troops would’ve made sure that the undead never made it to the main road to begin with. But the Federal troops were gone, headed back north thanks to President Rutherford B. Hayes and his Corrupt Bargain.
“This is why you need an Attendant, Louisa,” Mrs. Aiken said, fidgeting in her seat. “We both need Attendants. I’ve heard no self-respecting woman in New York leaves her house without her Attendant. Can you imagine, your own Negro girl to protect you? I’m not sure why the fashion hasn’t caught on here. We have more than enough Negroes milling about, shiftless as all get-out.”
Louisa’s lips twisted, but she said nothing. She shifted in her seat, the letter containing her thoughts crinkling as she moved.
A Negro girl to keep her safe from the undead.
Not if she had any say in the matter.
By the time they pulled into Ellis Square, Louisa was ready to be finished with the whole day, and her mother besides. After a quick stop at the health inspector’s to show that they were healthy and untouched by the Undead Plague, the carriage was admitted through the city gate. As soon as the pony stopped, Louisa hurried out as quickly as she could without looking unladylike, which wasn’
t nearly as fast as she would’ve liked.
“Louisa, where are you going?” her mother called as Louisa headed down the sidewalk to the post box. Louisa ignored her.
“Louisa!” Mrs. Aiken shrieked, several feet to the rear and not at all ladylike.
Louisa turned toward her mother’s call without slowing her pace, which was a mistake. One that sent her hurtling headlong into the arms of Everett Hayes.
“Miss Aiken,” he said in surprise, his voice rumbling delightfully as he caught her. A spate of goose bumps sprang up under the sleeves of Louisa’s dress, emanating from his hands on her arms, and her breath floundered.
“Mr. Hayes. I am so sorry. Please forgive my clumsiness.”
“Already done,” he said with a smile, and Louisa’s mouth went hopelessly dry. The Hayes family owned a shipping business, and Everett was a skilled sailor in addition to being a gentleman. He certainly seemed steady on his feet as he gently helped Louisa regain her balance.
“Louisa! You mustn’t go rushing off like that—Mr. Hayes! How lovely to see you here in the square.”
Louisa stepped back, putting some distance between her pounding heart and Everett’s gentle smile. He tipped his hat at Louisa’s mother, even though his eyes were still on Louisa.
“It’s a welcome surprise,” he said.
“What are you about, Mr. Hayes?” Louisa asked, regaining her composure.
“Well, a couple of the boys down at the shipyard got bit and had to be put down, sad to say. So I’m heading over to the market to hire some help.”
The market in Ellis Square was well known throughout Georgia. When Louisa was very little, Daddy had taken her to see the Negroes brought in for sale. She didn’t remember much about the trip except for the dark faces, their expressions stoic, and the sugar candy her daddy had bought her for being a good girl. But that was long ago, before the War of Northern Aggression and the dead walking, before a single bite could turn a man feral.
Negroes were no longer sold in the market. The Great Concession had ended both slavery and the Confederacy, in exchange for the assistance of Federal troops. So now the market was the place to hire extra help, both colored and white. It was said by some that the labor contracts offered to the whites looking for work were better than the wages offered Negroes, but everyone knew that Negroes were naturally inferior, so no one who mattered made much of a fuss.
Three Sides of a Heart Page 3
