The Society of S

by Susan Hubbard

Page 13

  Do you see letters and words in color? Since I can remember, the letter P has always been a deep emerald shade, and S has always been royal blue. Even the days of the week have special colors: Tuesday is lavender, and Friday is green. The condition is called synesthesia, and it’s been estimated that one in two thousand people is a synesthete.

  According to the Internet, virtually all vampires are synesthetes.

  And this is how I spent my mornings: surfing the Internet on my laptop computer, looking for clues, which I copied into my journal. (I’ve torn them out since, for reasons that will soon become clear. ) Page after page of Internet lore I copied, and I realized I wasn’t any less inane than Kathleen and her role-playing friends with their black notebooks filled with chants and spells.

  But even though at times I doubted my research and questioned what I learned, I kept at it. I didn’t know where it was going, but I felt compelled to proceed. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. Even when the puzzle isn’t assembled, the pieces scattered in the box contain the picture.

  Mrs. McG made a big point of insisting that I spend the weekend with Kathleen. She reminded me of it every day that week, and on Friday, when she drove home, I was with her. (For me, Friday is always vivid green. For you, too?)

  Kathleen didn’t seem different to me. By now I was accustomed to her dark clothing and excessive makeup. She looked a little more on edge, perhaps. We spent Friday night watching television and eating pizza with the family. Michael sat apart, not saying much, watching me, and I allowed myself to relish his attention.

  On Saturday Kathleen and I slept late and then went to the mall, where we wandered for hours, trying on clothes and watching people.

  It was an ordinary weekend until Saturday night. Mrs. McG insisted that we all go to Mass. Kathleen said we had other plans. Her mother said those could wait.

  Without much more protest, Kathleen gave in, and I sensed that this fight was part of their weekend ritual.

  “I’ve never been inside a church,” I said.

  The McGarritts stared at me as if I were a space alien.

  Kathleen muttered, “Lucky you. ”

  The church was rectangular, built of dingy bricks — not at all the imposing structure I’d expected. It smelled musty inside, like old paper and stale cologne. Behind the altar, several stained-glass windows depicted Jesus and his disciples, and I kept my eyes on them through most of the service. Stained glass always makes me daydream.

  Among the congregation sitting in the pews, I saw three of Kathleen’s friends from the vampire game, including the boy who had wanted to “sire” me. He saw me, too, but pretended he didn’t. All of the role-players were wearing black, and it struck me as a little strange to see them mouthing the words of hymns and prayers.

  Next to me, Kathleen kept crossing and uncrossing her legs and sighing. Later tonight the role-players would be meeting at Ryan’s house for another session, and she’d promised me a real part to play. I wasn’t much looking forward to it.

  At the altar, the priest was quoting the Bible. He was an old man with a singsong voice, easy to ignore — until suddenly his words broke through my reverie.

  “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. ” He raised a silver goblet in both hands.

  And he went on about eating flesh and drinking blood, and people began filing down the aisle toward the altar. All of the McGarritts stood up and moved out of the pew, but Kathleen whispered to me, “Wait here. You can’t take Communion. ”

  And so I waited and watched as the others ate the flesh and drank the blood and were consecrated. The priest murmured, “Memento homo quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris” (Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return).

  A strange buzzing began in my head. Was someone watching me? As the McGarritts filed back into the pew, the buzzing grew to a drone. Mrs. McGarritt’s face looked refreshed, and she smiled with contentment. You shouldn’t be here, a voice inside me said. You don’t belong.

  Michael had outpaced Bridget to sit next to me. While the others sang and prayed, he pressed his hand into mine, and the buzzing began to fade.

  “Look at this garbage. ” Kathleen tossed a book onto my lap.

  I read aloud the title: “A Guide for Catholic Teens. Is it better than On Becoming a Woman?”

  We were in her room, and she was putting on her vampire makeup before we headed over to Ryan’s house. I sat cross-legged on the bed. Wally the dog curled up next to me.

  “It’s exactly the same stuff. ” Kathleen had teased her hair into small mounds, to which she now applied gel, then twisted the mounds into spikes. The procedure fascinated me. “It’s all this crap about saving your virginity until your honeymoon, and taking Jesus with you wherever you go. ”

  I thumbed through the book. “‘A woman’s body is a beautiful garden,’” I read aloud. “‘But this garden must be kept locked, and the key given only to her husband. ’”

  “Do you believe that crap?” Kathleen threw down the hair gel, then picked up a mascara wand.

  I was still thinking about the image. “Well, in some ways our bodies are like gardens,” I said. “Look at you — shaving your legs and plucking your eyebrows and messing with your hair and all. It’s kind of like weeding. ”

  Kathleen turned around and gave me her “Are you for real?” look: eyes bugged out, mouth open, head shaking. We both burst out laughing. But I thought what I’d said was true: in Kathleen’s world, appearance mattered more than almost anything. Her weight, her clothes, the shape of her eyebrows — these were matters of obsessive concern. In my world, other things mattered more than appearance, I thought, somewhat smugly.

  Kathleen turned back to the mirror. “Tonight will be special,” she said. “My horoscope said today is a red-letter day for me. ”

  “Friday is green, not red. ” I said it without thinking.

  Kathleen gave me another bug-eyed look, but I said quickly, “I didn’t know you read horoscopes. ”

  “They’re the only thing worth reading in the daily paper,” she said. “But I bet people like you prefer the editorials. ”

  I didn’t want to tell her the truth: at my house, no one read the daily paper. We didn’t even have a subscription.

  By the time we were ready to go to Ryan’s house, the buzzing in my head had returned, and my stomach was churning. “I don’t feel right,” I told Kathleen.

  She looked hard at me, and sick though I felt, I had to admire the thick tangle of her eyelashes and the impressive height of her hair.

  “You can’t miss the game tonight. We’re all going out on quests,” she said. “You need to eat something,”

  The thought of eating sent me straight to the McGarritt bathroom to vomit. When I’d finished, and rinsed my face and mouth, Kathleen burst in without knocking.

  “What is it, Ari?” she said. “Is it lupus?”

  In her eyes I saw concern, even love. “I really don’t know,” I said.

  But in a way I was lying. I had a strong hunch about the source of the problem. I’d forgotten to bring along my bottle of tonic. “May I borrow a toothbrush?”

  Michael met us in the hallway outside the bathroom, a quizzical look on his face. He’d left the door to his room open, and a monotonous voice was singing, “This world is full of fools. And I must be one…”

  Michael and Kathleen had an argument about whether I should stay at the McGarritts’ or go to Ryan’s house.

  I settled it. “I want to go home. ” I felt like a fool.

  Kathleen’s face fell. “You’ll miss the quests. ”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “But I won’t be any fun to be around if I’m sick. ”

  A car horn honked outside. Kathleen’s friends had arrived to drive her to Ryan’s.

  “Go on, have fun,”
I said. “Bite someone for me. ”

  Michael drove me home. As usual, he was quiet. After a while, he said, “What’s wrong with you, Ari?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My stomach tends to be delicate, I suppose. ”

  “Do you have lupus?”

  “I don’t know. ” I was sick of the words, and of the mosquito-like drone in my head.

  “Have you been tested?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The results were inconclusive. ” I was looking out the car window at the trees, gleaming with ice, and the icicles hanging from the eaves of houses. In a few weeks Christmas lights would be strung everywhere. Another ritual that I won’t participate in, I thought with some bitterness.

  Michael pulled the car to the curb and parked. Then he reached for me, and without thinking I went into his arms. Something happened, something electric, and then came an explosion of emotion.

  Yes, I know that explosion isn’t the right word. Why is it so hard to write about feelings?

  All that matters here is to say it was my first real appreciation of our bodies. I recall at one point pulling back and looking at Michael in the streetlight, his neck so pale and strong-looking, and feeling the urge to burrow into him, to disappear in him. Does that make sense?

  Yet part of me remained disengaged, watching as our hands and mouths went crazy. Then I heard my own voice say, calmly, “I don’t intend to lose my virginity in the front seat of a car parked outside my father’s house. ”

  It was such a prim little voice that it made me laugh. After a moment, Michael laughed, too. But when he stopped, his face and eyes were serious. Does he truly love me? I thought. Why?

  We said good-night, only good-night. No plans to meet the next day. No declarations of passion — our bodies had taken care of that.

  As I came inside, I looked automatically toward the living room. But its doors were open, and no lamps were lit. I realized my father hadn’t expected me back tonight, but somehow I’d thought he would be in his chair, as usual.

  Just as well he wasn’t around, I thought as I went up the staircase. One look at me, and he would have known how I’d spent the past hour.

  I paused in the corridor upstairs. But I felt nothing, no sense of any other’s presence. No one was watching me, that night.

  Chapter Six

  I awoke as if someone had called my name — opening my eyes, saying, “Yes?”

  My father was in the room. It was completely dark, but I felt his presence. He stood beside the doorway.

  “Ari,” he said. “Where were you last night?”

  I sat up, switched on the lamp next to my bed. The little birds jumped out of the darkness. “What’s wrong?” I asked.