Harbinger

by Sara Etienne

  Lying isn’t one either. I thought about my dad pulling that suitcase out of the trunk, and it stung all over again.

  We sat there, both lost in our own betrayals. Kel’s story was totally different from mine, but it was like looking at a blurry reflection of my own life. I rested my hand against the wall between us. The wood seemed to vibrate under my fingers.

  The boards creaked slightly as Kel shifted around on the other side of the wall, humming to himself. Was he waiting for me to say something? I wanted to. But I didn’t trust my voice. Or myself. As it was, it was hard enough to breathe in all this blackness.

  Kel’s hum died out. “You still there?”

  “Yeah?” My answer came out like a question.

  “Mind if I keep talking? This sounds crazy, but I feel like the dark is strangling me.”

  Sucking out all the air.

  “It’s like this at night sometimes. With all that smog blanking out the stars. But talking helps.”

  Then keep talking.

  “Though I guess you could be some sort of spy over there, waiting for me to spill my guts. You’re probably infiltrating the student ranks, a tiny tape recorder in one hand and fake psychosis in the other. But I’m too tired to care.”

  Pause.

  He cleared his throat. “The thing is, last night? I wasn’t really surprised when it happened.”

  I was. But I should’ve seen it coming. My parents had turned their backs on me years ago, I just never realized it.

  “I mean, some of the other kids in the van were. You could hear them yelling as the guards dragged them out of their houses. And some of them looked stunned, tears streaming down their faces while they got handcuffed to the van seats. But I just kept thinking, ‘Of course.’

  “It’s just that Dad and I never got along. Even when I was little, before the war, we always moved around for his job and he was never home . . .”

  I let Kel’s stream of words anchor me. My whole life, people had glanced at me and turned away. Whatever they saw in my eyes was enough to frighten them off. But with the wall, everything was different. Every word Kel spoke seemed to cinch us closer and closer together.

  “I guess he never really got me, you know? I’m not sure anyone did, except Mom. And then . . . well . . .” Kel’s voice went quiet. “She died. Cancer.”

  I pressed my hand into the wall. “I’m sorry.”

  Kel’s faint humming filled the dark again, a melancholy song that wrapped around me like a blanket. I breathed it in along with Kel’s spicy scent.

  Kel stopped mid-hum, as if embarrassed about a bad habit, and picked up the conversation again.

  “Thanks. It’s okay. Well, it’s not. But that’s what we’re supposed to say, right?” His words tumbled out in a rush. “After Mom died, the whole world went to shit. Then I got sick too, and, well, maybe Dad just couldn’t do any more hospitals or doctors.”

  Then Kel’s voice went hard and scary. “Like I could?” And a sudden blow struck the wall between us.

  I jerked in alarm, crashing my head into the platform I was lying under.

  “Shit!” Our voices chorused in the darkness. A bark of laughter came from the other side. Or was it anger?

  “Sorry,” we both said. And he laughed again. A real one, this time.

  “Wow.” The anger was gone from Kel’s voice. “That really hurt my hand. What’s that they say about an irresistible force meeting an immovable object?”

  I rubbed the sore spot on my head. “Maybe you’re not as irresistible as you thought.”

  “Ouch, that stings worse than my fist.”

  It was like learning a new language, this back and forth. Kel’s voice was sad and rough and funny all at the same time, and it made me want to tell him things. Things that had been chasing their tails around and around inside of me for as long as I could remember. But it wasn’t something I’d ever done before. I wasn’t even sure I knew how.

  The scrape and shush of Kel settling on the other side of the wall filled the quiet, and I held my breath. Waiting for him to speak.

  But instead he started humming to himself again. The closeness was intoxicating, even with the wall. Or rather, because of it. I knew only too well what would happen if it wasn’t there. He’d stay away like everyone else.

  Still, I ached for it to be real. So I took a deep breath and started talking.

  “My dad told me we were just looking around.” I blurted it out and rolled right into the next sentence, afraid to stop now that I’d started. “Then he dumped me here. And my mom didn’t even bother coming to say good-bye.”

  “Did they say why?” The question hovered between us. Kel was looking for his own answers. But I could only give him mine.

  “I’m different.”

  “Everyone is,” he interrupted.

  He thought I meant cheerleader versus art nerd kind of different. Not letter jacket versus straitjacket.

  “No, I’m—” I’d never tried to explain before. Not to my parents, not to counselors, definitely not to other kids.

  This must be what confession is like.

  “I see things sometimes. Stuff other people don’t see.”

  A heavy silence filled the tiny room, choking me. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  “Like you imagine things?” he asked warily.

  “No. Not imagining.”

  How can I expect him to understand when I don’t?

  But he was still listening, and that in itself was something. “One day at school, last spring, I was standing by my locker. Everyone was laughing and shouting and elbowing each other. They were swarming through the hallway like rats, and suddenly, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to get out of there.”

  I felt the same anxiety now, just talking about that day. The same need to breathe fresh air. To see the sky. That morning, I’d bolted for the nearest stairway, my sandals smacking up the steps all the way to the roof, the door slamming shut behind me.

  It’d just rained, purging nearby Pittsburgh of its perpetual film of smoke and soot. Leaving us with one of those shimmering days that had been getting rarer and rarer.

  “Up on the roof, the sky was so clear that I could pick out the glare of beat-up solar arrays on the other side of the Monongahela River. The river was all yellow foam and mud, but all I wanted to do was follow it somewhere else.”

  Kel started singing the same tune he’d been humming, the words carrying softly through the wall. “I wish I had a river . . . I could skate away on. I wish I had a river so long . . .”

  The song tremored through me and I was lost in my memory. The dying river. The dirty city laid out in front of me. It wasn’t just that I’d wanted to get away from there. I’d searched the blue horizon, looking for something. Hungry for something I didn’t even understand.

  “What happened?” His voice came through the hole and latched on to me again. Tethering me to the now.

  “It was the first warm day we’d had, and I splashed through puddles up on the roof. I remember thinking how good the water felt on my toes.”

  I also remembered thinking that it smelled like the ocean, even though I wasn’t sure how I could know what the ocean smelled like. And I heard the steady rhythm of the waves.

  “Then, somehow, there was water everywhere, pouring in around me. I screamed and—”

  The fear of that first vision was still with me. I hadn’t slept in days. All week I’d been avoiding the dreams, but up there on the roof, I could feel them waiting for me. I still didn’t know what the trigger was—the airless hallways or splashing through that puddle or how tired I was—but the indigo waves came, vivid and dangerous. Pulling me into a waking nightmare.

  Just like today, I’d gasped for breath, drowning under the weight of all that water. Then a hand had grabbed my arm. The water disappeared and a fireman hauled me over his shoulder and lugged me down a ladder. The whole school was out there by then, along with the fire trucks and flashing lights, catching it all with their c
ell phones. I instantly went from being an invisible freak to a celebrity freak. And it wasn’t a good change.

  “After the fire truck showed up and they’d dragged me down, people just kept asking me, over and over, ‘Why do you want to kill yourself?’ And over and over, I told them that I’d just wanted to find somewhere quiet, where I could hear myself. But no one would listen.”

  Another Holbrook Academy brochure had showed up that same day. I remembered staring at it in a stack of mail on the counter, mixed in with the phone bill and our ration receipts, while Mom and Dad asked the same questions again and again. My parents latched on to that brochure like it was a godsend. I should’ve known then that my refusal wasn’t going to stop them.

  “A couple of years ago, Dad and I stopped talking and I took off for a while.” Kel’s words had an edge to them, and I guessed there was a lot more to the story than he was telling.

  Where does someone go when they “take off”?

  “There was this old building I camped out in. At sunset, I’d climb up to the roof. And I’d stand right at the edge, looking at all those desperate people down in the filthy streets. Kids huddled around smoky fires. Scroungers knifing each other over trash.”

  I had my answer. No one went to the cities anymore, unless they had no place else to go.

  It’d been years since my family went to Pittsburgh even though it was only twenty miles away. The closest I got was clips on the news about riots or raids on the hospitals. Now I thought past Kel’s voice whispering to me through the darkness. Who is this guy?

  Then I pictured him again, up on the roof, like me. He stood alone at the brink. Looking down into his own hell. And for the first time, I wanted this wall between us to disappear. I wanted to tear it down myself.

  Kel went on, his voice sharpening into a kind of savageness. “All those people scurrying around. Did they really think there was anywhere better to go? I’d look at them down there and tell myself, Just one more step.”

  Then Kel’s voice broke and the air resonated with his song again. “I wish I had a river so long. I would teach my feet to fly.”

  Kel held on to the last note, his rough voice easing off of it. Letting it fade into the darkness.

  Then Kel laughed. A solid, normal sound. “Please tell me they blew up one of those giant cushion thingies for you to jump on.”

  It took me a second to figure out he was talking about me, up on the school roof. Shaking off the misery I’d heard in his voice, I played along. “Sorry to disappoint. No cushion thingy. But I did ride in an ambulance.”

  Kel laughed again, low and soft. “You make me feel like I should throw a car chase or something into my story. Though I did have a little excitement. I was a little, um . . . irritated when I got here this afternoon. I think I might have punched one of the . . . what do they call them? Caretakers?”

  “I think just ‘Takers’ might be more appropriate.”

  “Takers. I like that.”

  Then something else Kel had said caught up with me. “Afternoon?”

  “What?”

  “You said you were angry when you got here this afternoon.”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  My mind raced. If the sun had come up around six, that meant Dr. Mordoch would’ve put me in here around seven this morning, eight tops. But I couldn’t have been in Solitary for more than a couple hours.

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. They took my cell phone. Maybe four o’clock?”

  Nine hours. I’d been in here for nine hours. The blackness and heat closed back in on me. I braced myself on the wall.

  It’s time. A prickly shiver spider-walked its way up my spine. I could feel the waves coming back for me. The drumbeats in my head.

  “Faye?” Kel’s voice was distant now. “You still there? Talk to me.”

  I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t answer. I was doing battle with the darkness. Kel knocked again and the joke came back to me. So crazy So crazy So crazy.

  No. I wasn’t going to do this.

  There was the scraping sound of a key in the lock. I sat up, hitting my head on the platform again in a bright flash of pain. I scrambled out and across the floor, pressing myself against the wall as the door swung open. Not wanting to give Kel away.

  I blinked into the sudden light, welcoming the ache. Dr. Mordoch came into focus. “Have you reflected on your situation? Faye, do you want Holbrook to help you?”

  I nodded. I’ve got to get out. I’ve already lost a day in this place.

  “I need to hear that you are willing to try, Faye, before I can trust you again. Do you want to try?”

  “Yes.” My voice came out strong. My throat ached as I thought about Kel, alone on the other side of the wall. But me staying here wasn’t going to help him. And what if they came for him too? Then I’d lose him anyway.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I want to.”

  “I believe you, Faye.” Dr. Mordoch sounded pleased. “Let’s go to dinner, then. I’ll let you sit with the rest of your Holbrook Family Unit.”

  “Thank you.”

  She’d locked me in the dark and I said thank you.

  7

  THE STINK OF CAFETERIA FOOD assaulted my nose as I entered the long, thin room that must’ve once been a ballroom. Rather than risk me exploding, Dr. Mordoch had been generous enough to let me use the facilities before dinner. So the dining room was already packed with misfits. Too fat. Too scrawny. Too angry. The kind that usually populate the neglected corners of lunchrooms.

  But unlike a normal school cafeteria, there was no talking. No food on the tables. Nothing but me, weaving my way through the hushed room, looking for my seat. Well, nothing but me and a hundred other students watching and waiting. Even the dim light of the old-fashioned chandeliers did nothing to shield me. I kept my eyes glued to the round, wooden tables. After everything else that’d happened today, I had no desire to see other people’s secrets.

  Finally, I found my assigned table and the rest of “Family Five.” I recognized the pudgy kid (Zach, I think) that I’d seen from the roof that morning. He was wearing a T-shirt, with a backward Superman emblem on it, that was big even for him. Like he was hoping to get lost in it.

  There was an empty chair on either side of him. To his left, a girl with hennaed hair and plaster-white skin had her feet kicked up on one of them. She made no effort to move. In fact, she ignored me with a studied “fuck-you” attitude. I had the urge to yank it out from under her feet, but with the entire room staring at me, I thought better of it.

  I pulled out the other chair, wincing as it grated against the polished floor. Thunder in the oppressive silence. Zach winced too, glancing up at me. He was definitely zoned out on something, the puffy skin under his eyes mimicking the same bruised blue of his glassy irises. I recognized the self-loathing in his eyes before they darted away from mine.

  Zach hurried to scoot over, as if sparing me the unpleasantness of being close to him. But his chair rammed into the one next to him, causing a loud thud and knocking the girl’s feet off of it. She glared and Zach flinched, shutting off his whole face.

  “Welcome to Holbrook Academy.” Dr. Mordoch’s voice boomed across the room as soon as I sat down. Her podium and the teachers’ tables sat on a short platform at the other end of the hall. I recognized Nurse, her pinched face matching her voice, sitting at one of the tables behind Dr. Mordoch. “Whether you know it or not, each one of you is at a critical turning point. If you are willing, there is still time to turn back from the terminal paths you have chosen. But Holbrook is your last chance. In the peace of these woods, we can lead you back to society, show you how to assimilate, nurture appropriate behavior. But if you turn your back on this final opportunity, the rest of the world will not be so kind.”

  I wasn’t sure who she was talking to. The tense faces around the room knew better than to expect kindness. I stole a glance at the rest of my table.

  I
wasn’t the only one looking. The henna-haired girl couldn’t keep her eyes off the guy next to her. He definitely had the tortured, angry thing going for him. His skin was the color of raw sienna, and against his black hoodie, black fingerless gloves, and black hair, it practically glowed. Making him beautiful and fierce at the same time.

  The guy on my right wasn’t bad to look at either. But where the hoodie guy was stretched thin and taut, this guy was all shoulders and chest and arms. His tan T-shirt tucked into camo pants made me think Marines. Without really looking, he gave me a subtle nod. The gesture was restrained, just like the rest of him. Hands resting flat on the table. Body perfectly straight and still in his chair. Even his hair was buzzed into submission. Like sketched charcoal against the burnt umber of his face.

  “The people at your table will be your Family for the next semester. You’re all newcomers here, and your Family will be your support as you find your way. They will be your peers, your disciplinarians, and your counselors.”

  How could these four strangers be my family? There was still an empty chair at the table, and I wondered what’d happened to the missing person. Were they locked up in Solitary? Was Kel still there too? Alone in the dark? I scanned the faces around the room, wondering if I’d somehow know him if I saw him.

  “Tomorrow you’ll meet each other, but tonight you will sit quietly and eat. In order to focus our minds and learn discipline, meals are to be completely silent. As Buddha said, ‘Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.’ To that end, here at Holbrook, you will not be distracted by what to wear, what music to listen to, or how to spend your time. There will be no communication with your families or friends outside this school. No phone calls. No letters. No e-mails.”

  “Eff that.” The henna-haired girl dug her chin into her sternum as she muttered to herself. Anger made her pale face even paler. Her heavy eyeliner popped bold against her skin, but did nothing to hide her radiating insecurity. As the girl continued her inaudible tirade, she kept tugging on the sleeve of her homemade T-shirt, which declared in dripping, red letters, MEAT IS MURDER!