Song to the Moon (Damnatio Memoriae Book 2)

by Laura Giebfried

  I had gone over the events that had transpired after his departure so many times that they seemed to have punctured a hole straight through my skull, and yet no amount of going over them did anything more than send a pain from my leg up into my chest. I couldn't imagine telling him what had happened with Beringer on the cliffs or after I had woken up in the hospital. The diagnosis still sat on my tongue like a lie that couldn't be untold, and though I couldn't pretend that it hadn't been given, I couldn't believe that it had, either.

  I turned my head to stare out the window, trying to convince myself not to torture myself with finding the answer. He wouldn't say anything, I decided. He would laugh it off, or cite it as another one of his conspiracies that had been created and shaped by Karl and my father, and there would be nothing more to say on the matter. I wasn't crazy, and I wasn't confused, and Jack would make that all apparent as soon as he confirmed that everything we had pieced together and nearly solved had been true. And regardless of what everyone thought, Jack had been a good friend to me, and would always be a good friend to me, regardless of whatever poison had seeped beneath my skin.

  Considering as much, I pulled out the brochure for the farm again and stared at the fields of lavender, boring my eyes into the green and purple until I could picture him there upon the cover, bent low as he wiped his hair from his eyes and harvested the crop. When I finally looked away, the train had carried us far enough from the city that the view outside showed fields rather than factories splayed beneath the summer sun, and the image of him was still outlined against my vision.

  Ch. 11

  “You can still see it from here,” Jack said, raising himself onto his tiptoes in order to see past me onto the stretch of neatly-cut grass on the campus outside. The phone was still pressed to my ear as I waited for the call to be transferred to my father's line, and I stole a glance at the window to see if Jack was right. Surely enough, the Bickerby shield with the torched opossum on it was still smoking, sending horrible billows of black smoke up into the clear air.

  Jack cackled.

  “I wonder how long it'll take them to clean it up,” he mused, not able to hide the delighted smirk behind his tone. “We nailed it down pretty hard.”

  “Don't get your hopes up: Barker will have someone down here immediately.”

  “Nah, it'll take him at least an hour to calm down – not to mention get his voice back. I don't think I've ever heard someone yell quite that loud.”

  “Get ready, then. My dad's going to freak.”

  I adjusted the phone to make sure that it was still ringing. Though my father had been very calm during the entire phone call with the headmaster, I was certain that the same would not hold true for our own conversation.

  “Yeah.” Jack threw me a look before returning his eyes to the window. “Thanks, by the way – for taking the blame.”

  “No problem.”

  “You didn't have to, you know. I'd jump at the chance to get expelled.”

  “Right, but then I'd be stuck here all alone,” I said. “This way neither of us gets in trouble. Besides, it was my fault, anyhow.”

  He had only made the suggestion that we leave the dorm room to find something exciting to do because he had hoped to take my mind off of my mother's accident. It had been weighing on me for months now already, and with the semester coming closer to an end, the idea of returning home without her there to greet me had become unbearable. Initially we had just planned to walk into town, as it was one of the first nice days that Spring, but finding the dead opossum along the path in the woods had diverted our attention and alighted the mischievous look in Jack's eyes. Giving it a funeral had seemed like the only right thing to do; leaving it lying there to waste away was all too reminiscent of the woman doing the same at my grandmother's house.

  “I appreciate it anyhow, Nim.”

  I was saved from answering by the voice cutting across the line, and I drew the phone back a bit as it rang in my ear.

  “Enim.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  I responded cordially despite his enraged tone. Across from me, Jack was miming being hanged.

  “Enim, I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I am with you. What were you thinking? Burning an animal alive – in the middle of the campus, nonetheless? What am I going to do with you? What are people going to think?”

  I held the phone out so that Jack could hear the lecture. He clapped his hand over his mouth to suppress his laughter.

  “I guess they'll think I hate opossums,” I responded. Jack laughed harder.

  “Enim! I don't know what's gotten into you, or why you feel this need for unwarranted attention all of a sudden, but I want it to end right this instant. You're too old for this type of thing anymore, and you should have outgrown that friend of yours years ago. I want you to cut it out right now.”

  “I am cutting it out as we speak,” I said, not bothering to adopt a more serious tone. He was already thousands of miles away in Holland and largely incapable of disciplining me; my grandmother would think of her own punishment separate from his, and I was quite certain it would be much more reasonable and with greater understanding.

  “Enim, stop it. Drop that tone of voice, and drop Jack Hadler while you're at it. I've had enough of this.”

  “Right. You've had enough.”

  “Enim, I'm warning you for the last time –”

  “Alright, Dad. I'm sorry,” I said, attempting a solemn tone but largely ruining it with suppressed laughter. “I promise not to light any more opossums on fire. Scout's honor.”

  “Jesus Christ, Enim!” he began, but I didn't hear the rest as Jack and I sank into another fit of laughter. And it was lost on my father as to why it would be funny – because the dead creature charcoaled on the lawn outside and the four hours we had just spent in Barker's office certainly weren't funny at all – but the thought that the monotony had finally broken, and the concavity in my chest had finally filled with air again for the first time since Christmas, and that there was still time left to be foolish and adventurous and not care about the consequences but rather let the adults figure it all out between themselves was so welcome that it lifted me far higher than any of the sentiments that had been expressed concerning my mother that would do nothing but fill the air with empty words.

  “Enim – that's it! This is ridiculous; it's been ridiculous for a long time! I've sent you to one of the best schools – certainly one of the most disciplined and prestigious –”

  “And cold,” I nonchalantly put in.

  “– in New England, and you still manage to forgo every responsibility and every value I've impressed upon you to pull stunts like this! I've had it. Do you hear me? I've had it, and I won't allow it anymore!”

  He paused only to take a breath, the sharp sound hissing in my ear as though he was standing right there with me.

  “I've hired someone to watch out for you,” he said.

  “You've what?”

  Jack stopped making faces and straightened where he stood. I ran my tongue over my teeth anxiously, already regretting having not feigned remorse for my actions.

  “Like what kind of person?” I asked.

  “A professional. Someone who can figure out what's wrong with you and sort out this whole mess that's been caused –”

  “What mess? The opossum, or my mother?”

  “Don't –” His voice broke off unexpectedly. “Don't interrupt me.”

  I waited for him to go on, but his voice seemed to have gotten caught. I crossed an arm over my stomach to hold my elbow steady; the phone was shaking slightly in my hand.

  “What kind of professional, Dad?” I said more softly.

  “A psychiatrist.”

  “A – a psychiatrist? But I don't need –”

  “You need help, Enim! You need serious help, considering everything! You're slacking off, you're talking back to teachers, you're fooling around with Jack doing God-knows-what – and now this?”

 
“It really wasn't as bad as it sounds, Dad –”

  “You poured an entire bottle of alcohol onto an animal – and who knows where you got either – and lit it on fire! That's sick, Enim: it's the mark of someone who's very disturbed! And I'm not having it – I'm not having a disturbed son!”

  Jack had edged away to the window, presumably to pretend as though he was fully engrossed in the scene outside rather than listening to the conversation.

  “Right, well, Dad I – it was really just a one-time thing,” I said. “I – it won't happen again, I promise.”

  “It better not.”

  “So – so can we skip the psychiatrist? I really don't need it. I'm really not –”

  “You do need it, and you are having problems. I just hope we can stop it before it turns into something … else.”

  “But it won't. It won't turn into anything. You said yourself that the only reason I did it was because of Mom –”

  “I said that to Barker to keep him from expelling you! Do you think I believe that for a second? What happened to your mother is a completely separate event, and the fact that I had to bring it up – what should be a private matter and no one's goddamn business – only infuriates me more, Enim!”

  “Right. I'm sorry, Dad.”

  “You're getting the psychiatrist. He'll come to the island once a week and we'll decide what to do with you.”

  “For – for how long?”

  “Until you're normal.”

  I sucked in my cheeks to prevent any emotion from flickering over my face. I would have rather served detention for the next year, or been forced to recite an apology to every student and staff member at the school, than to sit with a psychiatrist.

  “I'm going now; I've wasted what should have been a productive day on this,” my father said abruptly. “Unless there's anything else I need to say?”

  I let out a short breath, too shallow and cold to be a laugh, and unclenched my teeth from my tongue.

  “Yeah,” I said. Jack crossed his arms and leaned against the window, giving me a sympathetic shake of his head. “'Happy birthday.'”

  “It's not my birthday,” my father said.

  “No, it's mine.”

  He paused.

  “Of course.” The apology never came. “The psychiatrist will begin coming the last week of March. I'll have one of the administrators talk you through the details.”

  He hung up before I could think to dispute him, but given the way my cheeks had hollowed and my jaw had stiffened as I attempted to keep my expression neutral, it hardly mattered anyhow. There was nothing that I could do to change his mind.

  “Nim?” Jack said, all hint of amusement gone from his voice. “Are you alright?”

  Though he was standing by the window, he suddenly seemed far away. The room tilted and I swayed as though my ankles had been caught to knock me over, and he lurched out of sight. His statement repeated over again, this time distant and echoing.

  “Nim, are you alright?”

  Water had pooled up from the ocean and flooded the grounds outside. It rose up and smacked against the window, shattering the glass and engulfing him in a wave of blue before I could warn him to move away, and then pulled out again through the hole in the building to drag him out to its depths. As I tried to move forward and grab onto him to pull him back, my legs solidified and rendered me paralyzed, keeping me from doing more than shouting out as he disappeared, and then the world rocked again and the ocean settled back down where it had always been, quiet and unassuming but for the fact that it had taken him away from me.

  I could feel myself pulling from the dream, but the tiredness that had come over me after so much time waiting for it wouldn't allow me to break from the sleep. I turned against the hard surface beneath me, flipping back and forth as I tried to find a comfortable way to lay, and my thoughts wore down to the ones gathering at the bottom of my mind as I lost the ability to distance myself from them.

  “Eh-nim? Eh-nim.”

  I woke up to find Ilona standing over me and started, sitting bolt upright so quickly that she jumped away from me, and thought that we must have arrived in Nice already. When I looked around, though, the train was still plodding along the tracks somewhere in the middle of the countryside.

  Ilona perched herself on the seat opposite me.

  “I get you lunch, yes? You have not eaten.”

  I shook my head, my mind still somewhere other than the car.

  “No. I'm not hungry.”

  “You do not eat today. You will be hungry.”

  “No, I'm fine.”

  She frowned but didn't argue, leaning back a bit as she looked off down the aisle.

  “You give me money for food, though, yes?”

  “Oh, right.”

  I quickly pulled out my wallet and handed her and assortment of bills and coins, having forgotten both that she would want to eat and that I had told her I would pay for her. She collected the money and moved down the aisle to another car to find something for lunch. When she had gone, I leaned my head against the window, wishing that it was cold enough to freeze my thoughts in place and keep them from wandering to places where I couldn't keep an eye on them.

  “I get you twice-espresso, yes?” Ilona said when she returned, handing me the cup of strong coffee. “And this is bread with apricot – you will like.”

  I shook my head; the pastry looked too flaky and sweet, and my stomach had only just settled.

  “You do not eat,” she said, stowing it in her pocket for later. “Maybe this is heart murmur, yes?”

  “Maybe.”

  Her eyes lingered on me as I took a sip of the drink.

  “You drink too much espresso, this is why you do not sleep,” she informed me, sitting down and carefully placing a cup of coffee and roll on the seat beside her. “You do not drink, you do not have bad dreams, and then you are rested.”

  I watched her counting her change and stowing it back in the pocket with the letter-opener before picking up the coffee cup and blowing on it to cool it down. I mimicked her and took another sip of the espresso, only noting the pounding in my head when I counted how long it had been since the last cup I had had.

  “How'd you know I have bad dreams?” I said.

  “You speak in sleep.”

  “I do?”

  She nodded, carefully taking a sip of the hot liquid and scrutinizing me over the rim of the cup.

  “Same thing as last night: 'burying her, burying her.' I should be worried, maybe, yes?”

  “What?”

  My neck cracked as I turned my head towards her, shaken by what she had said.

  “That you are burying someone, yes?”

  “No,” I said, though the thought of doing so was better than what the words actually meant. I shifted in my spot, my hands fiddling with the small espresso cup as I tried to look unconcerned. “No, I – I was dreaming – or – or having a nightmare, really – about my mother. Burying her.”

  Though there was no way for Ilona to know that I had never attended my mother's funeral, or so much as visited her grave, the idea that she might somehow see through the lie and get to the truth made my hands shake more violently. As I reached up to clutch at where a crick had formed in my neck, I felt the layer of sweat that had formed over my skin and noted how simultaneously warm and cold I was. My tongue ran over my teeth, itching for the medication that I had hated to take if only so that it could stop the withdrawal.

  “I see,” Ilona said. “You are sad, yes?”

  “What?”

  I tried to shake myself from my thoughts, but they had begun to pool up around me too quickly and my mind was getting lost somewhere inside of them. The memory that had played out in my dreams had not stirred up thoughts about my mother, though for once I wished that it had.

  “About mother. You are sad.”

  “Oh, right. Yes, I'm – I'm sad.”

  She eyed me skeptically at the flat note in my voice but then seemingly shook i
t off. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her lighter and waved for me to pass over the cigarettes.

  “I don't think we can smoke on the train,” I said.

  “What do they do? Throw us off?”

  I threw a glance out the window at the scenery whirring by and then at the other passengers, imagining them prying open the doors to fling us out into the fields and letting the heavy scent of smoke disperse into the air after us.

  “It helps, yes?”

  I pulled out the Parliaments and offered them to her before taking one myself, and she flicked open her lighter to light them.

  I sucked in my breath and bent my head down to rest against my other hand before blowing a stream of smoke to the floor. The combination of coffee and cigarettes mingling in the air were enough to bring me back to Bickerby, and I tried to ease the pain in my head by reminding myself that I would meet up with Jack soon enough. Another five hours – maybe six – and he would be sitting beside me instead of Ilona, smoking carelessly while letting out a shout of laughter at the ridiculousness of what had happened since we had been apart, and easing every thought that nothing else and no one else ever could.

  “You are much quiet,” Ilona said, breaking into my consciousness. “Most clients are speaking more.”

  “Right. I'm not really a client, though.”

  “You pay me, you are client, yes?”

  I sighed and took another drag from the cigarette, reminding myself of why I had paid her to come along in the first place. It wouldn't do me any good to slip back into the thoughts that the medication and sheer unwillingness had largely kept away, and I shoved the last bit of the dream from my mind to prevent myself from repeating the conclusion that I had untangled so many months ago in the hospital.