Deception

by Lee Nichols

  Most of the time, my fixations didn’t pan out. Once I got to know the guy, I’d find he had a Wii problem or said the word pubic or—worst of all—he’d simply disappear from my life altogether. But Jared had yet to break the deal. And even though we’d done nothing more romantic than sitting together in a movie theater, he’d become my friend.

  The whole group had, really. Daniel and I wrote skits in Latin class. Who knew how funny Marcus Aurelius could be? Maisy and Caroline and I bonded over scarves, and Primus introduced me to the pleasures of a mocha red-eye chai.

  So things were getting better … until I closed shop one night, went upstairs for my cup of chamomile, and realized there was someone in the house.

  When I passed the hallway that I’d been avoiding—the one with my dad’s funeral urn collection—I heard a rustle of fabric.

  I spun and saw a shadow of a man hovering among the urns.

  I froze. You know you’re a city girl when you take a deep breath and flip on the light, instead of running away shrieking.

  There was no one there. Had he slipped into Dad’s study? A breeze wafted toward me from the hall. Maybe I’d left a window open and that rustle of fabric I’d heard was the curtains—that could sound like a person lurking in the hallway.

  Right?

  I didn’t want to check, but it’s not like I could sleep upstairs wondering if someone was in the house. Maybe I should’ve dialed 911, but if this turned out to be nothing—all in my head—the cops would find out I was staying here by myself. I wasn’t sure what they’d do, but I knew it’d be nothing good.

  Especially since the murder. Some poor girl, five or ten years older than me, had been slaughtered in her apartment a few months back. Nobody knew exactly what happened—the police weren’t saying—but gossip at school said the killer carved every inch of her dead body with strange designs.

  They called him the Curlicue Killer. The whole thing sounded like an urban legend to me, like alligators breeding in the sewers or wild parrots living in Golden Gate Park—oh wait, that was true. Still, if there was a kernel of truth, the cops wouldn’t let me stay here alone, so I had to handle this on my own.

  Besides, I was sure this was nothing. Definitely nothing. Completely and absolutely nothing.

  A mantra ran through my head: No one here. No one here. Ooohm. No one here.

  As I stepped down the hall, voices whispered behind me, strange, wordless sounds. There was an almost familiar tingling in my body. I yelped and turned but saw nothing except a wisp of smoke wafting from one of the funeral urns like a cobra from a basket.

  I blinked and breathed and closed my eyes—willing my imagination into submission—but when I opened them a dozen more spirals of smoke curled toward the ceiling from the other urns.

  The spirals wove together in braids, forming a thick billowing rope. It twisted toward the end of the hall and wound itself into a figure, like a mummy formed from snakes of smoke, twisting and thickening. It drifted toward me with a slow, malicious purpose. I opened my mouth to scream and tasted ash; I couldn’t make a sound.

  The whispering sounded like a thousand snakes hissing in my ears.

  Eosssss, eosssss …

  I couldn’t move. My feet were buried in ash and I sank deeper, the ashes dragging me downward like quicksand as the figure crept closer.

  Neosssss, neosssss …

  Panic rose in my throat as I furiously tried to free my legs. The smell of the smoke mummy smothered me as it staggered toward me. I held my breath until my vision blurred.

  Then I woke in bed. The clock said 7:03 a.m.

  A dream?

  Of course a dream. Here I was in my pajamas, staring at my empty teacup on the bedside table.

  But in the bathroom as I brushed my teeth, the taste of ash was still in my mouth. I swirled water and spat into the sink. Oh God. Oh God. I stepped, trembling, into the shower and turned the heat to scalding, pretending the smoky figure in the hallway didn’t remind me of the terror of my childhood, the man from the Incident.

  A man who wasn’t there when I was seven years old. Who couldn’t possibly be here now.

  I pretended until I almost believed.

  At lunchtime, I followed Natalie off campus, wishing she were Abby.

  I really liked Natalie—she was funny and smart and freakishly self-confident—but I wasn’t comfortable telling her about my nightmare. About my problems and my fears. Not only because I’d seem like the head case I actually was, but because what could she say? That maybe I’d walked in my sleep and dug into the urns before returning to bed? And tasted the ashes of the dead?

  Too gross to consider.

  Maybe I didn’t know what was real anymore, but there was no way I would tell someone as together as Natalie about the Incident, or that I was thinking of calling my old doctor. That I’d actually gone through my mother’s papers, looking for his number, wondering if he’d remember me and help me, or just drug me.

  She wasn’t Abby, so I didn’t tell her about that stuff. I told her about my parents and Abby’s mom leaving instead, and she gave me a comforting squeeze.

  Inside the restaurant, I eyed the smoky motif nervously, my mind wandering until Natalie said, “So this is news. Emma’s living all alone.”

  “For how long?” Daniel asked.

  “Indefinitely,” Natalie told him.

  “Party?” Primus asked.

  “Private party?” Jared said with a half smile.

  I melted inside but said, “No parties! My parents would kill me.”

  There was a fair amount of cajoling and kvetching, but I didn’t give in. And then I thought … why not? Maybe this was exactly what I needed to forget about school, the store, and my nightmare.

  So I said, “Okay, party on!” and immediately regretted it. I lived in a mausoleum, remember? If anything happened to one of my parents’ relics—well, we’d finally know for sure how little they cared for me.

  Everyone else was beyond thrilled, so maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. At least I could pretend I was a normal teenager, hosting a bash while her parents were away. Which is exactly what I’d wanted. Right?

  On Saturday, I found myself alone in the shop, opening and cataloging the packages that arrived during the week. Not exactly a thrilling weekend, yet I eagerly checked each return address for some sign of my parents’ location.

  No luck—they were all shipments from a previous trip. Well, except for a package from Periwinkle Antiques on Charles Street in Boston, which contained the paperwork for an internship Max had finished. And there was one box from a London dealer.

  I opened it and found a mask concealed under layers of foam peanuts. It was stark white plaster, with no holes for the eyes or ears. The invoice read: Death Mask, 1700s, Anonymous. Apparently they used to make wax casts of corpses for keepsakes and, although this went out of vogue for some inexplicable reason, the masks were now prized by collectors. Well, some collectors.

  I stared at the mask, wondering what the dead person would think about winding up as a sculpture in an antiquities store. Some macabre rich person would probably hang him over the toilet in their powder room.

  The mask felt surprisingly heavy. I rubbed the outside with my fingertips, the cheeks and forehead, then the inside. The part that touched the person’s dead face. A shiver ran up my arm, a little thrill of horror as I felt the urge rising in me. Then I placed the death mask over my face.

  The mask suctioned to my skin like plastic wrap. My body began to tingle and I felt light-headed. I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe and the world twirled away from me.

  There was a great whooshing sound and I felt as though I were spinning. Around and around, until suddenly I stopped and could see again. I lay in an antique bed. My arms were withered like pitiful twigs and my skin had faded to cracked parchment. I was somewhere in the past. Someone else’s past.

  I smelled rot and sweat and cloying perfume. I couldn’t speak or move, and this definitely wasn’
t my body cloaked under the terrible weight of memory, of frailty and disease. I felt claustrophobic and suffocated. I clawed at my cheeks and yanked the mask from my face.

  That huge whooshing noise again, then I was alone—still in the store, breathing heavily, the mask in my shaking hands. I plunged the eyeless plaster beneath the foam peanuts like I was trying to drown it. Then I dragged the box into the farthest corner of the storage room and slammed the door.

  4

  I was still shaking when Natalie walked in. I stepped unsteadily away from the storage closet door as she wandered through the store, her fingertips trailing over a rare bronze statue of the Persian god Mithras. She paused there, interest flickering in her brown eyes, then she spotted me and smiled. “So this is where you lurk when you’re not failing chemistry.”

  “Hi,” I said, my heart still hammering from what had happened.

  Natalie wove between display cases of Roman vases and ancient Greek jewelry. On good days, the place looked more like an art gallery than an antique shop. She stopped at the mummy of a cat. “Um. Is this a cat mummy?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “People pay for this stuff?”

  “Ha.”

  “I’d never sleep again.”

  “Heh,” I said.

  She finally noticed my inability to say anything but monosyllables and crossed the room toward me. “Emma, are you okay?”

  No. No, I wasn’t. What was happening to me? Slipping into the past of someone else’s life had seemed so effortless, so real. But that was impossible.

  I tried to wipe the goose pimples from my arms. “I’m just cold.”

  “Oh, here.” She took off her black cardigan and draped it around my shoulders. “Is that better?”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  “I stopped by to talk to you about our party.” She cocked her head. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Um, about the party? I’ve changed my mind. Natalie, my parents would kill me, and with everything else I’ve been going through …”

  Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “What else have you been going through?”

  “Nothing.” How was I supposed to explain about the ashes and the death mask? She wouldn’t believe me, even if I did tell her.

  “You just need to chill,” she said, pulling a flyer from her bag, with “CATSAWAY PARTY” in letters cut from a magazine. The date and my address were handwritten in a Gothic font. I recognized Primus’s arty hand. “Cool, right?”

  “Except you spelled castaway wrong,” I said, frantically trying to figure how I could get out of this. “And don’t expect palm trees.”

  “It’s not castaway, Emma,” she said. “It’s cat’s away. As in, the mice will play. This is going to be the best party our school has ever seen. Kids from Uni are coming.”

  “What?” Uni is short for Unity, the private high school in Pacific Heights, full of self-important posers. Max went there. “How do they even know about it?”

  “The flyers are everywhere, Emma. There’s no turning back now.”

  “Wait,” I said. “This is today!”

  “Don’t worry, we have six hours to get ready.”

  I guess six hours were enough, because by midnight the house was thumpin’. I’d like to think it was because I was so popular, but I’m pretty sure it was the kegs.

  Actually, I wasn’t sure, because I was Elmered to the front door all night, with my thumb pressed to the security print. Every time I tried to step away and assess damages, the doorbell rang again.

  The Natalie gang arrived first with the kegs. I hadn’t seen any of them since they set up in the kitchen. You’d think at least Daniel would’ve swapped Latin verses with me. And where was Jared? I wore my black miniskirt and no leggings just so he’d notice my boots again.

  But the only one who noticed was a senior from Uni who said, “Sexy boots,” right before he yukked next to them. That’s when I left my post at the door and searched for Natalie.

  I found her in the living room. With Jared. Making out. On Nefertiti’s head.

  As I stood there, mouth agape, a hand snaked around my waist. “Baby, we’re all hooking up. I get you.”

  I spun around and found Primus leering at me. I shoved him. “No, you don’t.”

  “C’mon. Jared gets Natalie, Daniel gets Maisy.”

  “That leaves you Caroline,” I said.

  Primus pointed to the corner where Daniel, Maisy, and Caroline were locked in a threesome. I wanted to be blasé and cool with it, but I sort of felt: yuck.

  And this whole time, the doorbell was ringing and dinging and driving me insane, and Natalie suddenly broke away from Jared and looked at me. “Why aren’t you answering the door?”

  “Party’s over, Natalie! Some guy from Uni just puked in the hall!”

  “Don’t be silly, everyone’s having the best time.” Natalie slid a proprietary hand over Jared. “Especially me.”

  Jared didn’t even look at me—he was too entranced with Natalie. I’d always hated his Rip Curls anyway, whatever they were.

  The doorbell continued to jangle. “Let them in,” Natalie told me.

  “No.”

  “Then I will,” she said.

  I followed her down the hall. “How are you going to open it without my thumb?”

  “That can be arranged.” She sidestepped the vomit. “Ew.” At the door, she turned to face me. “I know you didn’t want this party, Emma, and I’m sorry. About everything.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not done yet.”

  She opened the door, the alarm wailed, and the police were waiting outside.

  5

  The cops weren’t here about the party. They came because they got a report that I was living alone. Standing next to me in the doorway, Natalie became someone else. That bitchy girl who’s inexplicably always hated you.

  “That’s right,” she confirmed. “She doesn’t even know how to get in touch with her parents.”

  “I do too,” I blurted. “They’re just on vacation! Natalie!” Why was she doing this to me? What had I done to deserve this?

  Natalie smiled sadly. “Oh, Emma, don’t lie. They can check.”

  “We already have,” the cops said. “Child Protective Services is on the way.”

  They let me stay long enough to clean the floor and make sure that nobody walked off with one of my mom’s Day of the Dead dolls. But they didn’t let me spend the night. Instead, they took me to a halfway house.

  Halfway to what? Nowhere I wanted to go. The only good thing was that I didn’t dream—not about death masks or ashes or ghostly figures.

  Probably because I was already in hell.

  The next afternoon, I met with my CPS caseworker, a cadaverous man who looked way deader than anything in our apartment. Plus, his office smelled like formaldehyde, as if the embalmment had recently begun.

  “You have two options, Miss Vaile,” he said, his voice devoid of inflection. “The first is—”

  “Can’t I just phone my parents?” I asked.

  “You may place a call, Miss Vaile, but according to the file, you don’t have your parents’ contact information.”

  “But I do! It’s not like they’ve abandoned me.” Saying the words made me sick; it was exactly like they’d abandoned me. But I summoned a weak smile. “They’re just on vacation.”

  The Cadaver opened a manila envelope and pulled out my cell phone, confiscated at the door of the halfway house. I guess they worry you’ll order out pizza … or crack.

  I dialed, then paused as if listening to a ring, then said, “Mom! It’s me. No, things are fine. How’s the beach? What? No, that’s Max, you know I don’t like paragliding.” How come my mother preferred Max even during imaginary conversations? “Listen, I lost the information—when are you getting back exactly? Tomorrow night? That’s great, because …” I covered the mouthpiece and whispered to the cadaver. “I don’t have to tell her about all this, do I? I’m
gonna be in so much trouble.”

  “Hand me the phone,” Cadaver said.

  “That’s okay, I’ll tell her,” I said. “Mom, don’t panic—”

  Cadaver plucked the phone from my hand. And listened to “The customer you are dialing is out of the service area.”

  “I guess she went through a tunnel,” I said.

  He didn’t bother arguing. “Your first option is to stay in the halfway house until your parents are located.”

  “No way. And those other kids shouldn’t have to stay there, either. Don’t you have better options for them?”

  “Yes, there’s the street,” he said.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s a better … oh.” Irony from the Cadaver.

  “Your second option is to be placed with a foster family.”

  “My parents are coming back.” I began to panic. “Why can’t you understand that?”

  Cadaver shuffled papers on his desk. “You’re in luck. The Belcher family is available. They specialize in children with behavioral problems.”

  Behavioral problems? What exactly was wrong with my behavior? It’s not like I set fire to the halfway house. “Is this about the fake call to my mom?”

  “If you are unaware of what—” He stopped when the phone on his desk rang. He lifted the receiver and listened a moment. “For Miss Vaile? I find that hard to believe. Paperwork? Well. Send him in.” He hung up and told me, “There’s someone here for you. He claims he’s your legal guardian.”

  Dad! They came back for me! Except no, Cadaver would’ve said my father was here, not my “guardian.”

  Oh, maybe it was Max—he would pretend he was my guardian. Unless he really was my guardian, because Mom and Dad were … I swallowed hard, fighting back tears, and turned as the door opened.

  It wasn’t Max. It was Bennett.

  “Hello, Emma,” he said. “I—are you crying?”

  “No.” I wiped at my eyes. “Just the last twenty-four hours … they haven’t been great.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to make things better,” Bennett said.

  “My hero.” I would’ve fallen in love with him then and there.