by PAMELA DEAN
Mutant Boy had challenged Juniper and Crystal to answer Jason’s accusation, and Crystal had answered that yes, Juniper was another alias of hers. Gentian giggled; Junie had a devious mind. Crystal had received two admiring messages and a storm of abuse. Gentian supposed that people had a right to be upset about being fooled, but they didn’t have to be so malicious or so illiterate. She gave up on the romance echo and looked at the culture echo.
They were still going on about women in combat. The Light Prince was citing a lot of sociobiology, whatever exactly that was, and Juniper seemed a bit at a loss. Quote to him out of The Mismeasure of Woman, if he won’t read it, thought Gentian irritably. Tell him about those studies NASA did that showed women would make better test pilots and astronauts than men, statistically. How can you want to go out with this creep?
She posted a short message recommending the NASA studies to Juniper’s attention, and got out of there before she did something she would regret. Her debating skills were miles ahead of those of most of the posters, but The Light Prince was pretty smooth. Besides, it would irritate Junie. She put Pounce back on the chair and went upstairs, fuming. Juniper’s room was empty. She might come back from Sarah’s at any time. Gentian went into the sunroom anyway and extracted the diary.
Juniper had gone on that date, all right. If she and The Light Prince had talked about anything real, she didn’t mention it: just a lot of sheeps’ eyes and handholding and kissing and romantic compliments. Gentian thought about throwing up. She read on. In the outer room, a cat jumped from some high place.
Gentian slapped the book shut, thrust it into the cushion, zipped the cushion up so fast she caught her finger in it, and bolted into the bedroom. The black-and-white cat stopped rolling on the floor to hiss at her. Somebody was coming up the stairs, and it was Juniper. She came into the room in a billow of green velvet, windblown and flushed with cold. She flung her hat on the bed, said, “You are the best cat in all the universes,” and saw Gentian.
She grew cold, still, and furious in an instant. It was almost like watching a shape-changer. “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“I wanted to use the computer.”
“Use Daddy’s.”
“I don’t like the keyboard.”
“Did you scare my cat?”
“Yes, of course I did, you know I just hate cats, I jumped up and down and shrieked at it.”
The cat stood up and sniffed at Gentian’s left foot. “You are an exceedingly fine beast,” she said to it. “What’s your name?”
“Yin-Yang,” said Juniper. “I don’t want you poking around in my room. If I so much as set foot on your whole floor you’d raise a stink that could be heard on the moon, so just stay out of here.”
“What am I supposed to do when I want to use the computer?”
“What do you want it for anyway?”
“There are astronomy groups on the Internet,” said Gentian. This was, of course, quite true, even though it was not an answer.
“Oh, God,” said Juniper, flopping down onto her unmade bed. “Then they’d better get me a new computer and you can have the old one. If you start reading Internet newsgroups it’ll be like having a roommate. I’d have to move out.”
“Will you help me coax them, then?”
“Maybe. It’s more than you deserve for invading my privacy.”
Gentian felt simultaneously affronted because using Juniper’s computer hardly constituted invading her privacy, and guilty because she had actually done far worse than that.
“Is it too late to ask for it as our Christmas present?” said Juniper.
“What do you mean, our? You’d be the one with the new computer; it’d be your present. I need those color filters for my telescope. I need a camera.”
“Look, don’t present this to me as a collaboration for our mutual benefit one moment and then say, it’s all your present, it’s nothing to do with me, the next. If they spend that much it has to be for more than one of us.”
“Talk to Rosie, then. She lives on the same floor.”
“Oh, no. I’m not having her in here. She leaves apple cores on the floor and spills stuff in the keyboard.”
“Let me think about it,” said Gentian. She wanted to leave now, but Juniper’s cat was sniffing earnestly up her leg, probably reading any messages Maria Mitchell had left there.
Juniper got up and ostentatiously hung her coat and hat in the closet, probably the first time she had done that in five years, or in her whole life.
“How’s your sociological experiment going?” said Gentian.
“Fine. I’ll thank you not to interfere with it.”
Gentian opened her mouth and shut it again. Juniper was far more likely to say, “I’ll kill you if you do” than “I’ll thank you if you don’t.”
“I haven’t truly, even though I was tempted,” she said.
“Thanks for thinking of The Mismeasure of Woman,” said Juniper. “I don’t agree with a lot of it, but at least it would give those bozos something to chew on.”
Juniper’s cat finished with Gentian’s left foot and started on the right. Gentian said, “Do you think The Light Prince is a bozo?”
Juniper’s face darkened. She sat down on the bed again. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s contradictory. Anyway, he’s the only literate person on there except all of me.”
“I wondered about Hot Dud,” said Gentian.
“I think he’s dyslexic, so it’s not his fault. And he’s sharp. But he’s not really interested in discussing things seriously. He likes to dart in, make a snide remark, and dart out again. Which is okay, but not for me.”
Juniper’s cat butted its head into Gentian’s ankle. She reached down cautiously and petted it along the spine. It purred thunderously. Juniper looked thunderous herself.
“I’d better go,” said Gentian. “I’ll think about the computer.”
“And stay out of my room when I’m not here.”
Gentian left without answering. She went upstairs and thought about Steph’s Plan. It would be fun, as anything theatrical was, as anything with the Giant Ants was. But it would take up a lot of time, including time in the evenings when she could be stargazing. She supposed she could do her astronomical work later and sleep in and just miss morning school.
But she was already committed to one project that would be time-consuming. What if Dominic suddenly wanted to start working on his project? She had said she would help; she had inquired after it several times.
She picked up the telephone quickly, before she could think about it. She called Directory Assistance and asked for the Hardys’ number, giving the street address and adding that it was a new listing. There was, she was informed, no such number. Gentian put down the telephone, feeling stunned. She supposed it might be unlisted; or perhaps they had no telephone at all.
If she wanted to get in touch with Dominic, then, she must either knock on the door of that house, or write him a letter. The latter seemed far easier, until she actually sat down to do it. Should she write it by hand, or use the computer, or borrow her mother’s typewriter? What should she say? I’m setting up my schedule for the New Year and want to know if I should include your crack-brained project?
She took out a sheet of the writing paper her father had designed on the computer for her twelfth birthday. Each sheet had a different small image of some interesting astronomical object in the upper right-hand corner, and along the bottom it said “Gentian B. Meriweather, Oak Street School of Astronomy, in the Milky Way.” The one she had taken out had the Crab Nebula on it. She found a pen and sat biting the end.
She had not yet told Dominic that she was an astronomer. He might have deduced that somebody in the house was, since the telescope’s dome was clearly visible, but he was more likely to think, as many people did, that this was her father’s hobby. He did know, if he had been paying attention, that she was the one who lived in the attic, but he might not have made the connection.
She dug about in the drawers of her desk, looking for other writing paper. She had some with calico cats, and some with astronomical motifs that did not say she was an astronomer, and some with dragons and unicorns, and some with Celtic knotwork, and a vast number of sets, in all sizes and shapes and colors, with gentians on them. Anybody who was a loss as to what to give her always produced stationery with gentians. Some of them found jewelry or towels instead, but most of them found stationery. Gentian chose one of the more botanical, less sickly, versions. He already knew her name, after all. She wrote out several rough drafts on the end page of her astronomical notebook, and finally produced the following:
Dear Dominic, I have been asked to take part in a very time-consuming project at school starting in January, and don’t know if I should agree, because I have a previous commitment to helping you with your science project. Could you please let me know when you plan to start it and how much work per week you think it will require? Yours sincerely, Gentian B. Meriweather.
She pondered this for some time. It was colorless, but it got the point across. It was probably best to sound businesslike. She sealed it inside a blue envelope and wrote Dominic’s name across the front.
Then she looked for Saturn. Its northern belts were still unusually spotty. The seeing was not very good, but she practiced ignoring the ripples and wavers and wobbles and concentrating on whatever feature she was trying to observe. She found several moons, which always pleased her; one day she must figure out how to tell which was which. She wanted to know when she was looking at Titan, which was bigger than Mercury and had its own atmosphere.
When Saturn grew so wobbly that her eyes rebelled, she refreshed them by looking again at Orion. But she was aware all the time of a kind of itch at the back of her mind, and finally realized that her letter was bothering her. Not the thing itself, but how to deliver it. It would be silly to put a stamp on it and drop it in a mailbox, to go all the way to the local post office sixteen blocks away and all the way back again. She would just drop it into Dominic’s letter box, or tuck it into some obtrusive spot on the front or back door, on her way to school.
The thought of meeting Dominic, or Mrs. Hardy, or the as-yet-unseen Mr. Hardy, made her nervous. She could go now. The house was dark as it could be; the night was cold; she could go quietly.
She put on her shoes and a sweater, got her flashlight, and went downstairs. Everybody was still up. Gentian said she wanted to go for a walk, received several offers of company, was obliged to say she wanted to be by herself, suffered expressions of scorn from Junie and commiseration from her parents, was made to put on a hat and jacket, and finally escaped out the back door.
The waning crescent moon had set at 3: 12 that afternoon and would not rise again until 6: 50 Sunday morning. It was very dark. The sky was high and remote, its glittering stars bright but seeming very small. The house next door, mean and low as it was by day, was a dark bulk. Gentian abandoned her plan of leaving the letter in the back door and went swiftly down the driveway. She had brought the flashlight from habit, but did not really want to turn it on; it might wake people up; they might think there were burglars. She went boldly up the Hardys’ front sidewalk, took the one step to the small concrete stoop, reached to open the screen door, and realized there was none. Silly, in Minnesota, but it made things easier for her. She took the cold metal flap of the letter slot in her fingers and tried to lift it. It stuck. She tugged at it. The cold metal burned her fingers.
“Night and silence, who is here?” said Dominic’s voice behind her.
Gentian did not scream, because she had clamped her mouth shut, but she made a short muffled sound that so infuriated her she forgot she was frightened.
“Don’t sneak up like that!” she whispered, turning. It must be her day for being caught.
Dominic was a pale face, a gleam of eye, a bit of darker darkness in more or less the shape of a person. He did not answer her.
“What are you doing up?”
“Awful darkness and silence reign through the long long wintry nights,” said Dominic. He spoke in his ordinary voice, and Gentian cast a wild glance at his house and then at hers.
It was terribly dark. The sky was still clear, but the large bright stars of winter seemed dim and far.
“Yes, that’s a wonderful reason to wander around in the cold,” said Gentian.
“Where are you going, my pretty maid?” said Dominic.
“I was trying to put something through your letter slot. I think it’s frozen shut.” She held out the letter to him. Dominic reached to take it and then drew his hand back abruptly.
“Letters should not be known,” he said.
A breath of wind came through, and the darkness was less absolute. Gentian looked up, and her sky looked back at her. Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Orion’s Belt, Rigel, the tight small splatter of the Pleiades.
“All right, I’ll mail it.”
“The mail from Tunis probably,” said Dominic. As the sky regained itself, he seemed to look darker and larger.
“Good night,” said Gentian, backing around him. He did not follow. She turned and went quickly over the smooth lawn, jumped off the top of the retaining wall, landed on the driveway with a force that made her feet smart, and ran up the driveway to her back door. She looked over her shoulder three times while she got out her key and put it into the lock. The new house loomed like the mouth of a tunnel. Nobody was there. She wrenched the door open, leapt inside, shut the door, and shot the bolt.
In the warm kitchen, her parents looked at her in amazement. They were making themselves whiskey sours, which probably meant they had had some kind of an argument with Juniper. Gentian hoped Junie had not brought up the idea of a new computer in some idiotic challenging alienating fashion.
“Genny, what on earth,” said her mother.
“Did somebody bother you?” said her father.
“It’s just colder than I realized,” said Gentian; it took three breaths to get the words out.
The next morning she addressed and stamped the letter and took it to the mailbox on the corner.
On Monday the weather got warm and rather hazy. Gentian did not really have time to notice, because Steph collected the Giant Ants at her house to, she said, rehearse their strategy for the auditions. She had chosen five fairly short scenes that would show off each of the characters she wanted them to play, and she drilled them through each scene four times before relenting and letting them have their hot cider and popcorn. She wouldn’t let them just sit and read, either; she insisted on blocking the scenes roughly and made people stand and move and make gestures.
In Steph’s cream-colored room with its frieze of roses around the top of the walls, its curtains of eyelet lace and framed prints of Victorian fashions, they walked up and down on the powder-blue carpet, grimacing, repeating lines six times in different tones of voice, occasionally sitting down on the floor or flinging themselves across the rose-canopied bed in mock or real despair. Steph stood in the middle of the room and exhorted them.
Gentian was, in the end, impressed with everybody except herself. She did not think she had the stuff of a simple, affectionate sea captain in her. It wasn’t as if he had anything to say about navigation. Steph said she was just fine. Becky said, “I’ll practice with you again tomorrow, Gen.”
On Tuesday it sleeted. Gentian and Becky met after assembly in the library. They retreated to a well-cushioned corner by the oversized books and opened their copies of Twelfth Night. Maria and Antonio did not actually have any scenes together, which meant that Gentian got to practice but Becky didn’t.
“It’s all right,” said Becky. “I got a lot more chances than you did last night, because I’m in three scenes and you’re only in one.”
Steph had chosen the scene of Antonio’s arrest for Gentian to audition. Becky read Viola and the Officers, to let Gentian concentrate on Antonio.
When Antonio entered, Viola, in her boy’s clothes, had just b
een challenged by Sir Toby to fight with Sir Andrew. Viola said, “I do assure you ’tis against my will.”
Antonio said, “Put up your sword. If this young gentleman have done offense, I take the fault on me. If you offend him, I for him defy you.”
“Wait,” said Becky. “I think you should say, ‘Put up your sword’ to Viola, not to Sir Andrew. Steph kept telling you to say it more gently, and I think that’s why.”
Gentian read it again.
Sir Toby asked who Antonio was.
“One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more than you have heard him brag to you he will.”
“Slow down,” said Becky. “Mrs. Morgan says monosyllables mean slow down.”
“Should I be a little scornful with ‘to you’?”
“Mmm, try it and see.”
Fabian, Olivia’s clown, came to tell them to stop fighting because the officers were coming. “Just like The Three Musketeers,” said Becky.
When the officers arrested him, Antonio said, “You do mistake me, sir.”
“There,” said Becky, “he’s not quite as straightforward as you said.”
Antonio said, “I must obey,” and to Viola, “This comes with seeking you. But there’s no remedy; I shall answer it. What will you do, now my necessity makes me to ask you for my purse? It grieves me much more for what I cannot do for you than what befalls myself. You stand amazed, but be of comfort.”
Viola, bewildered, gave Antonio half of what money she had, since he had defended her. Antonio became upset; Viola repeated that she did not know him; the officers said it was time to go; Antonio told them that he had rescued Viola from the jaws of death; the officers asked what was that to them.
Antonio said, “But oh, how vild an idol proves this god! Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame. In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; none can be called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil are empty trunks, o’erflourished by the devil.”
