Of course, I asked why.
“It is unnecessarily cruel,” she said.
“What about a poet called Zarbra?”
She brightened. “Her work is marvelous. I read it when I was in college. I remember that it made me literally tremble with delight. She had a way of conveying ordinary life as if it were astonishingly beautiful. She made you see that a blade of grass was no less beautiful and complex, no less vital, than a human being or a deliberate work of art.” She laughed. “You could even say that she is one of the reasons I became a teacher. I was fascinated by the power her words had to move and thrill me.”
“Why did she stop writing poetry?” I asked.
“No one knows, because when she retired, she declined to give interviews. But how is it you came across her?”
I mumbled that someone had mentioned her to me and I had become curious.
“If you are interested, I can lend you one of her books. It is very precious to me and irreplaceable because her work is out of print now, but I think it would be safe in your hands.”
I told her I would love to borrow the book, and she promised to bring it to class Monday. Then other kids started arriving, so she left.
Jezabel Aster sat next to me, saying her sister had mentioned I had been in the magazine office. She asked if I was thinking of joining the committee. I hedged, enjoying her spicy scent as much as her wit. Toward the end of class, she finished taking notes from the board before me and started doodling. I glanced over and was startled to see that she was doodling a perfect copy of the swastika and snakes that I had seen on the wall of the bus shelter!
“What doodle?” Jezabel stared at me, uncomprehending, in the hallway after class.
“I told you. You drew it right at the end of history. A swastika and some snakes. You must remember!”
“I don’t know what doodle you’re talking about,” Jezabel insisted.
“Give me your history book and I’ll show you.”
She sighed and decanted her books onto a windowsill. I grabbed the notebook and flipped through until I reached the page. “There.”
She gazed at the drawing. “Jesus, how gross. I don’t even remember doing it. But so what? You think it means I have subconscious Nazi tendencies?”
“I’m not saying anything about your subconscious. In fact the Nazis usually had it face the other way. And I don’t think they ever had snakes around it. I was just wondering where you saw it.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I feel like I did see it somewhere, but I don’t remember where. You know how images sneak into your mind like advertising jingles. But why are you asking about it?”
“I saw it at a bus stop and some woman told me it was the symbol some gang used,” I said.
She shrugged. “Maybe I saw it at the bus stop, too.”
* * *
That night Ricki brought over a movie to watch. It was a pretty impressive effort, because he also had to lug over a TV and a DVD player. It was about two extremely stupid men searching for some valuable artifact, but I couldn’t seem to get the cleverness that Ricki claimed it showed. Halfway through, I drifted to the kitchen to do the dishes so Da wouldn’t come home to a mountain of them. I was restless, because I was actually just waiting for him to come home and prove to me that he hadn’t been hurt or changed by working for Aaron Rayc.
Ricki had also brought his dog over, a dog he had saved from death, as he often told people—usually after Nelson (named for Nelson Mandela) had chewed a shoe or some other item of clothing to pieces. Nelson had been relegated to the kitchen after having tried to eat the arm of the sofa, and now he was watching me fill the sink and giving off a strong pea-soup scent that communicated wistful longing.
“What do you want? Food?” I asked and also thought at him.
Nelson tilted his head and gave off an incense smell, which I understood as expressing astonishment at the clarity of my question, and a mint smell that expressed cautious hope. I laughed aloud and repeated my question. This time he responded promptly with the smell of the garden outside.
All right, but don’t run away, I thought firmly, and opened the door to let him out. The night air was enticing, so I followed him out and gazed up at the stars. They were diamond bright in the moonless night.
Nelson began to growl and give off a distinct gunpowder scent of warning. I looked out into the street, where pools of bluish light lit a line of cars parked by the gutter. Beyond them, a figure was coming along the street. I watched until the figure became Serenity, her eyes dark-shadowed and tired. She reached the gate before she spotted me, then her preoccupation became instant hostility. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Letting a dog have a pee,” I said with mild coarseness. “Library again?”
She glared at me. “None of your business.” She looked down at Nelson, who was standing on the path between us. I noticed that he was not wagging his tail. “Get that great brute out of my way,” she said coldly.
“He’s Ricki’s. At least, he came with Ricki.”
“Get it out of my way,” she said again.
“Is something wrong?” I asked as mildly as I could.
She sliced a look at me, and the contempt in her eyes shocked me with its intensity. “You don’t get it, do you? Being in this family is an accident. Nothing more. There’s no reason I should feel anything for you just because you’re my sister, and I despise it that you can worry about me and yet not give a shit about people all over the world who are starving and dying and desperate. And when you do decide to sit up and care about someone who isn’t from your family or your country, you feel it so deeply that when she and her family disappear you just go on with your life. People like you make me sick. What would it take to wake you up to how pointless your life is?”
“I didn’t just forget about Aya, Serenity. I—”
“I am Sybl,” Serenity gritted out between clenched teeth. She turned and went inside, and I stood there staring at the closed door with my mouth open, feeling as if she had spat into my face. Only then did I notice that Nelson was growling deep in his throat again, his face turned to the door through which Serenity had just gone.
* * *
I spent the first half of Saturday babysitting Luke, cooking pumpkin scones, and making yellow Play-Doh as I worried about Serenity and Da. He had left a message on the answering machine saying he would not be back until late that night, and Serenity was still in bed. I didn’t know whether to be glad or not. I didn’t want to face her, but at the same time the things she had said the night before seemed to confirm that what had happened to Aya was at the heart of her anger, so maybe I should talk to her. But what could I say? I couldn’t get out of my mind how Nelson had growled at her, but when I had tried to get him to tell me why, he had only offered me a watered-down version of Serenity’s licorice scent, as if this were the answer.
I gave some of the Play-Doh to Luke, but he was too little to do much more than squish it and try to eat it, so I had to keep an eye on him as well as on the food. It was all a bit of a balancing act, especially since, for some reason, Nelson had stayed over even though Ricki and Mirandah had gone out. I had tried to have another conversation with the dog, but he had not seemed to want it. In fact, his attention was on Luke, and I had to keep pushing him away so that Luke would not grab an enthusiastic handful of his rather loose and floppy face.
Don’t worry, Nelson’s scents assured me. He smells good, but I won’t eat him.
By the time Mum returned with Jesse, who had driven her to meet Rhona at the gallery where she was to have her show, I was ready to go. I handed Luke over and set off for the mall, determined to listen to Angel Blue at the music shop before I caught the bus to meet Gilly at the Marceau. I wanted to see if Angel Blue’s work had taken the same turn as Oliver Spike’s and Dawed Rafael’s, becoming harder, colder, less hopeful. I still had no idea why or how this could be Aaron Rayc’s doing, but there seemed to be a pattern.
It was cloudy and looked like it
might rain, but I walked anyway. Unfortunately, the music store didn’t have any Angel Blue CDs in stock, but the older woman behind the counter told me she was grim, for all that kids loved her. “All that death and gloom and life’s-shit-and-then-you-die.” Which was as good as saying Mallory Hart had changed for the worse after getting tangled up with Aaron Rayc. Oddly, I felt reassured by this, because if Aaron Rayc was making people change by hardening them and turning them cynical, he had picked on the wrong person in Da.
Just as I got to the hotel it started raining hard, and I was congratulating myself on my luck until I got inside and the receptionist handed me a note from Gilly asking me to meet her in a cafe a few streets away. I thanked the receptionist and went back outside, sighing. There was nothing to do but make a run for it, and fifteen minutes later I arrived at Medusa’s Tearoom drenched to the skin.
A bell tinged delicately as I entered the cafe, which had low coffee tables surrounded by mismatched but comfortable armchairs and sofas, all covered in lurid purple plush. There were no other customers, and an open fire made it just about perfect. The woman behind the counter noticed me and looked horrified. I promised hastily to stand in front of the fire and dry before I sat on her cushions. “It’s not the cushions I’m worrying about, dearie,” she said kindly. “You’ll catch cold if you stay wet through like that. I’ll get you a towel.” When she brought it, I dried my hair and arms and face gratefully, and pressed some of the wetness out of my clothes. The woman then made me sit close to the fire on a stool and insisted on bringing hot buttered crumpets and tea. The funny thing was that her essence also smelled of crumpets. I panicked a bit when I saw the lovely silver tray with a delicate white china set and pretty doilies, but a hasty examination of the menu calmed me, because I could afford to pay.
I was impressed by this woman’s kindness to a bedraggled teenager. Most adults seem to see any teenager as a walking time bomb waiting to explode. When the fire got too hot, I shifted to a seat by the window and sat contentedly watching people running by with sodden newspapers tented over their heads until Gilly arrived.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, hugging me and then grimacing at my dampness. She had an umbrella, of course.
“How is your grandmother?”
“She’s just a bit shaken still,” Gilly said. The woman who owned the cafe came over, and Gilly said that we would both have hot chocolates.
I protested, but she said I must have one because drinking hot chocolate alone was like drinking alcohol alone and it was her treat. Then she asked how school had gone, and I told her that I had managed to avoid Harlen the whole day. As we drank the chocolate, I told her what I had learned about the various artists. It was hearing that Mum had known Oliver Spike before he had become famous that really got her attention.
“Let’s just call him,” she said eagerly, pulling out a cell phone. She tapped in the number for information and gave them his name before I could stop her.
I mouthed that he was famous and wouldn’t be listed, and she mouthed back that you never knew. I shrugged, but to my horror a moment later she was asking if she was speaking to Oliver Spike. Too late, I realized that she had been directly connected by the operator. Worse, before I could get the receiver from her, she had told him my name and said my mother knew him.
My danger sense was going crazy, and I grabbed the phone from her, terrified she would mention Aaron Rayc as well.
“Zambia Whitestarr?” Oliver Spike was saying in a flat, boneless voice. “I don’t know the name. Was that her maiden name?”
My danger sense was going absolutely nuts.
“I think I’ve m-made a mistake,” I stammered, hoping he wouldn’t notice the change of voice.
“Zambia … wait, there was a girl at school,” Oliver Spike went on in his weary, wintry voice. “What was your name?”
My danger sense was reacting so strongly now that I was feeling sick. “Forget it,” I said and thought as hard as I could. Forget this call. Forget the names. It was a wrong number.
“A wrong number?” Oliver Spike said, sounding confused.
I could hardly believe I had done it again, and over the phone! It was a wrong number, I thought again, very deliberately. It’s a nuisance. Erase the number.
“Just be more careful,” Oliver Spike said after a moment. “It’s a nuisance, because now I’ll have to erase this number.” There was a click as he hung up.
I handed the phone back to Gilly, who was staring at me in complete bewilderment. “What happened? You changed color about ten times on the phone, and what on earth were you saying about a wrong number? I gave him your name.”
“I just felt I shouldn’t be talking to him,” I said inadequately.
Thunder cracked loudly, and a flash of lightning lit the room.
“Storm must be right overhead,” Gilly said quietly, as if speaking loudly would attract its wrath.
Harrison burst in through the door. “Come on, you two. I’ve got a taxi waiting. If we dinnae take it, there’ll be an hour’s wait for another in this.”
We paid hastily, and I was glad of the bustle because it stopped me thinking about what had happened on the phone. The figure on the taxi’s meter made me feel sick all over again, but in a less eerie way. I would just have to swallow my pride and ask Gilly if I could owe her. But as the taxi sped through the rain-streaked city, Gilly announced that she would pay because her gran had given her the money. Harrison began to argue, saying he would pay for his bit, but then he glanced at me and suddenly gave in. I was startled to find his essence scent infused with lavender. I had no idea what it meant, of course, and I wasn’t about to ask and have them start feeling self-conscious about my extended senses.
Once the question of who would pay had been resolved, Harrison told us about Sarry’s transfer to Bellavie. He had called her already and she was deliriously happy, saying it was the most beautiful place she had ever been and she couldn’t wait for the weather to get better so she could go outside.
At last the taxi pulled up to the front of a stone church. I couldn’t see the houses on either side because it was raining harder than ever, but when the taxi door opened Gilly tumbled out and ran up the walkway to the church door. Harrison did the same, and when I saw him hammer at the door, I gaped.
“You planning to set up house or what?” the driver grumbled.
I mumbled an apology, got out, and did my own splashing dash to join the others. The immense wooden door to the church opened as I reached the top of the wide stone ramp, and there was Raoul looking more casual than I had ever seen him, barefoot in jeans and a dark sweater. Behind him was a wide hallway with a very high roof and low wall lighting, stretching away to the rear of what I now realized must be a renovated and privately owned building. For a long startled minute I had actually thought Raoul might be some sort of priest.
We entered, our footsteps instantly swallowed by the muffling softness of thick dove-gray carpet. The door swished closed and cut off the sound of the storm as Raoul led us down the corridor, past a series of black-and-white photographs showing blown-up details of stonework that I guessed were bits of this very building before it had been altered.
Raoul stopped by the door to an enormous white and sea-glass green bathroom and invited us to dry off. Harrison got towels from a cupboard with the ease of familiarity, and Gilly took out a hair dryer from a drawer. Ten minutes later we were all dry, if tousled, and Raoul asked if we were hungry. When we shook our heads, he wheeled the rest of the way down the hall to what he told me was his computer room.
When the door at the end of the hall swung open, I gasped because we had come to a vast room that took up the entire back portion of the church. The roof was very high and sharply angled, and on either side there were stained-glass window inserts that must have been original, transforming the dulled light of the day into jewel-bright smears of yellow and crimson and glowing indigo on the polished floorboards. The entire back wall of the house was glass and loo
ked out into what appeared to be a minor jungle inside a huge greenhouse. The glass roof of the greenhouse was a smooth extension of the roofline of the church, and I gazed in wonder through two layers of glass to where soundless lightning flashed and forked in a bruise-dark sky.
Raoul’s wheelchair gave its soft hydraulic hum, and I turned to see that there was a bench running right along the wall through which we had entered. It was laden with more electronic equipment than I had ever seen in my entire life, even in a store. There were at least six computer monitors with keyboards, at least nine cameras, a movie camera on a tripod, a scanner, a DVD player, amplifiers, recording equipment that would have made Neil’s mouth water, and a hundred other bits of stuff that I couldn’t even identify. Under the bench there were shelves stacked with CDs and DVDs and books.
Raoul had installed himself at a gap in the bench, and he was booting up a computer. Harrison grinned at me, acknowledging my wide-eyed wonder. He and Gilly opened a door in the side wall and brought out three folding chairs, arranging them around Raoul. I sat down, still lost for words but no longer startled at the idea that Raoul would pay for Sarry’s convalescent home or have a specially modified car. Gilly’s grandmother was well off, but Raoul’s wealth was of another order entirely.
Raoul said, “Before we do anything else, I just wanted to show you this.” We watched silently as the screen came to life, revealing four enigmatic lines of text.
“You’ve gotten deeper in?” I guessed, my heartbeat quickening. I felt Harrison and Gilly stir as they realized what they were looking at.
Raoul shook his head. “That’s the interesting thing. I haven’t. I have never come across such complex protections, but what I have been able to figure out is that to go any deeper into the program, you have to have certain code words and numbers. That means no one is meant to enter it but those for whom it was created. Now, companies do this all the time, for the sake of privacy, but why would a Web site open to the public work in this way?”
“Could it be for secret agents who might have to link in from an Internet cafe?” Gilly asked. She flushed and laughed when we all looked at her, saying she had spies on the brain because she had watched an espionage movie the night before.
Alyzon Whitestarr Page 22
