Alyzon Whitestarr

by Isobelle Carmody

  Somewhere in the house a door banged, and I gave a start and nervously listened, but there was no sign of Serenity. There was another bang, and I guessed that she must have left the screen door unlatched.

  I knew I ought to put the book back before I was caught, but I turned to the last chapter, wanting to get some sense of what the book was leading to. The chapter heading was “Commitment.”

  A coldness crept through me, because hadn’t the bouncer type who had stopped Harrison from going into Serenity’s poetry meeting said something about commitment? And the name of the group—the Morality Complex—almost sounded like it could have been a chapter heading in the book. I read some of the last chapter.

  That we must protest against evil and wrongdoing, against cowardice and avarice and cruelty, is obvious to anyone who can think or feel and who professes to be human and the bearer of a soul.

  But there come moments in every life when we could do far more than merely protest or stand against evil. In these moments, it is possible that a single action may cause a beacon of light to blaze out, which would illuminate and inspire all who see it, and change the world forever.

  You say that single actions do not change the course of the world? Look at history and see that it is not so. A person with the courage to act in the right moment could change the world. But most people fail the test of such moments. Their vision is dim or nonexistent and their minds clouded with doubt and fear or with inappropriate attachment to people or to material possessions.

  Do not fail to grasp the moments of destiny that come to you and in which you may be a true and decisive force for change. Make your mind and spirit strong and resolute enough to reject the doubts that will rear up in your path like snakes.

  Commit to the moment and act, for in this moment, by acting, you reveal your deepest self.

  The door slammed again. Suddenly panicking, I dropped to my knees, but in trying to close the book to put it back under the bed, I managed to flip open the last page.

  What I saw made me freeze in disbelief, for here was the swastika with snakes that I had seen before. Only this one was not graffiti or a doodle. It was printed.

  And there were words under it: “Beyond this point there is only action.”

  “How dare you touch my things,” Serenity hissed.

  I spun around in fright, leaving the book on the ground. Serenity darted across the room and snatched it up.

  “Jesus, calm down,” I said, my words languid enough to belie my pounding heart. “What is it, anyway? Your diary?”

  She actually looked as if I had hit her. The blood drained from her face and she looked deathly ill or else terribly old, except for her eyes, which seemed to go from molten dark blue to stony black hardness. “You have no idea, do you?” she asked in a low, passionate voice. “You’re like some cow in a field, chewing on its cud.”

  “You need help, Serenity,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” she said, and walked out, closing the door behind her with contemptuous care.

  I stared at the closed door for a long time, shocked by her swearing. Not by the word itself, but by her use of it.

  As a family, we didn’t swear. It was not forbidden so much as regarded as dull-witted. Da had gently drummed into us that a person with a good vocabulary could say anything and everything with great precision and emphasis. A swearword was like throwing a lump of dung at someone by comparison. It might connect, but it was dull and imprecise and you got dirty using it. I had grown up, as we all had, to see swearing as a form of stupidity.

  But something more frightening than stupidity was going on. What did it mean that Serenity had a book with a swastika in it that was supposed to be the emblem of some violent gang in Shaletown? And what had the book to do with the poetry group at the library?

  “A pretty weird sort of poetry group,” Harrison had said after following Serenity that night, and I cursed myself for wallowing in premature relief. What sort of poetry group had tough-looking skinheads minding the door? What sort of poetry group demanded commitment to ideals from its members?

  * * *

  Da still hadn’t returned by dinnertime, so we ate his celebration dinner without him: me, Jesse, Serenity, and Mirandah, who had made pumpkin ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese. I barely tasted the food. I was desperate for Da to come home, not just because I wanted to see he was safe, but because I had to talk to him about Serenity.

  I had expected to smell rage on her, but her face was wiped clean of all emotion. Her thin pretense of eating seemed to come from habit rather than from any real desire to seem normal. When she got up from the table, I didn’t go up after her, because I was determined not to go to bed until I had spoken to Da.

  But it got later and later, and my thoughts swung from worrying about Serenity to worrying about Da. Close to eleven, Mum drifted into the room, looking fresh and alert. She kissed my cheek and said, “He’ll be here before morning.” Just as if she had read my mind.

  “Mum,” I said, hardly able to believe I was going to say it, “I’m worried about Serenity.”

  She nodded, and the movement sent her glorious red curls tumbling softly about her shoulders. “I am thinking of painting her, my darling.”

  I felt a surge of anger toward her. I wanted to scream at her to pay attention to the real world for once instead of only ever seeing it in terms of her paintings. There were things going on that needed taking care of, and people—Da and Serenity, and me too, maybe. I wanted to ask what kind of mother she was if you could never have a proper conversation with her. What good, I wanted to rage, was all that beauty and talent to us?

  My brief fury faded, because what would have been the use of my rant? Mum would probably just suggest painting me.

  She touched my cheek as she went out, and I saw a fleeting vision of flames that frightened me until I realized they were only painted. I went up to my room, feeling depressed and anxious. Serenity was already in her bed, of course, and turning to face her humped form, I focused my hearing on her breathing and heartbeat to reassure myself that she was asleep. But it was a long time before I slept.

  Madness, I thought, and realized that it was the first time I had allowed myself to think the word, and yet it was what I had seen in Serenity’s face when she had snatched up the book earlier. Madness or something very close to it.

  * * *

  That night I dreamed of myself as a wolf, but for the first time I felt myself hunted, or at least watched by hidden, malevolent eyes. And for the first time the unease I had occasionally felt during the wolf dreams coalesced into the distinct feeling that time was running out.

  Time for what? I wondered upon waking. Then I remembered Da and hastened out of bed with fear drubbing through me to find out if he was home. He wasn’t in the kitchen as he usually was, having a cup of tea in sweaty clothes after his morning run, and my heart sank. Then I saw Serenity in her school uniform standing by the window and staring out.

  “Serenity, is Da home?” I asked. She turned and looked at me as she calmly picked up her bag and went out the door.

  Only then did I spot the note propped against the toaster. I tore it open and read that he was sorry he had missed what looked to have been a memorable welcome-home dinner. But we shouldn’t wake him for at least a hundred years, whereupon we were to have shaving cream and a razor at the ready. It was so Da that I laughed aloud, and suddenly all my dark imaginings seemed absurd. What an idiot I was. Of course nothing could change Da.

  * * *

  On the bus I went back to thinking about the yellow book. To begin with, the statements in it had seemed strident but plausible. People ought to act on their ideals and stand up for what they believed in; and it was true that some of the most terrible things in the world had only been able to happen because good people stood back and did nothing. But there had been something ugly under the words, a sense that someone was being blamed; a hectoring accusation that erupted only occasionally into the open with vicious
diatribes against those who failed to act.

  And was that the aim of the harangue? That a reader should prepare herself to act? But to act how? Harrison had said the thug who stopped him going into the meeting room at the library had spoken of the need to prove his commitment. But what did that mean? It was like there was a haze of pompous and impressive words obscuring something harder and more sinister.

  The bus pulled up at the school, and I hung back to avoid being jostled by a couple of younger boys trying to see who could punch the hardest as they got out. These were the sort of kids a gang ought to be recruiting, I thought. What use would a gang have for a reclusive, troubled girl like Serenity, with her pacifist ideals? She was more like someone they would choose for a victim.

  * * *

  I could feel Harlen’s eyes boring into my back as we did a term test in English, and I felt sure he would say something after class about me avoiding him. I knew I should stay around and defuse his anger by letting him corner me, maybe even agree to another meeting somewhere very public, but I was in too much turmoil about Serenity. If I could, I would evade him again.

  There were three essay choices, and I was relieved to see that one focused on The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. I settled to work, and did not stop until forty minutes later when Mrs. Barker called time.

  As we lined up to turn the papers in, Gilly whispered into my ear that Sylvia Yarrow had left school. I turned to stare at her, and she nodded solemnly.

  “Why?”

  “No one knows. I heard some kids talking about it before you got here.” We fell silent as we got to Mrs. Barker, and she smiled briefly as she took our papers. As we left the classroom, me hustling Gilly so we would be out of sight by the time Harlen got out, she asked if Da had got home safely.

  “He came home late last night,” I said, getting round a corner and out of sight of the classroom door with relief. “Let’s go into a room,” I said as the bell rang. “I have to tell you something.” I glanced around, and Gilly finally figured out that I was worried about Harlen. So she looked around with blatant furtiveness that made me want to laugh in spite of everything. We found an empty room, and I drew her to sit at a desk that could not be seen by anyone glancing in as they passed the door. I told her, then, about finding the book under Serenity’s bed and about the swastika. Suddenly she gave a gasp and bit her lip.

  “Alyzon, you’ve just reminded me. That neighbor who saw those two guys hanging around Gran’s house … but it can’t have any connection …”

  “What?

  “Well, the policeman said the neighbor thought they were some sort of neo-Nazis, because one of them had a swastika with yellow snakes around it tattooed on the back of his head!”

  I felt winded. “Did they say anything else about them?”

  Gilly shook her head. “The neighbor didn’t get close enough to be able to describe anything in too much detail. But, Alyzon, how could guys like that have any connection with some poetry group? It must just be a coincidence that they’re using the same symbol.”

  “Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t believe it.

  “What were the words?” Gilly asked. I stared at her blankly. “You said there were words under the swastika in the book.”

  “Beyond this point there is only action,” I told her, thinking sickly of Serenity being somehow involved in the house fire that had deprived Gilly and her gran of their home. But at the same time it was absolutely ludicrous to imagine Serenity setting a house on fire, or even approving it.

  It just didn’t make sense.

  The next class was a slide presentation from a kid who read in such a slow monotone that I had to struggle not to fall asleep. I was glad of the cover of darkness, though, because it left me free to think. I had made up my mind that I would go to the city library that night, and after Serenity’s meeting, I would follow whoever looked most like the leader of the group. I didn’t know what it would prove or reveal, but I wanted to see them and get my own scent impressions, if I could.

  I would have told Gilly what I intended at lunchtime, but a girl from our science class came hurrying in at the end of the slide show to say that she was wanted urgently in the science lab. Gilly grimaced resignedly as she went, but I knew she loved science and was pleased that Mr. Stravin relied on her so much.

  Left alone and seeing Harlen heading outside with some other guys, I went to the school library determined to learn the correct name for the reverse swastika. I sat down at a table to draw it so I could show the librarian without a lot of explanation. On impulse, I drew in the yellow snakes in case they meant something to her. Then I noticed Harlen standing on the other side of the desk. He had not yet seen me, but I could tell that he was searching.

  I was certain he had gone outside deliberately to make me think the coast was clear, and I had fallen for it. Since there was no way out of the library but past the desk and he would spot me at once if I moved, I forced myself to calm down. I might just as well stay where I was, wait for him to notice me, and play along.

  Harlen saw me, and I smiled and raised my hand. He looked really startled for a second, then he came toward me. To my astonishment, my danger sense went berserk. I clamped hard and tried frantically to think why it would react so violently when it hadn’t that morning in English. Fortunately, the librarian called out to ask Harlen something and, flustered with panic, I folded my drawing and stuffed it into my pocket. Like a switch being thrown, my keening danger sense fell silent. Curious, I took the drawing out again and at once my senses began to shrill. I stuffed the paper quickly into my pocket again and the shrilling died away, even though Harlen was approaching, his smell as hideous as ever.

  “Hello, stranger,” he said. “Glad to see you without your watchdog.”

  “Hi,” I said, sounding stiff to my own ears and wishing I was a better actress. But I intensely disliked him referring to good, kind Gilly as a watchdog.

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight until you name a time and place for our date.” His voice was caressing and amused but determined.

  I crossed my fingers and said brightly, “That would be great! We could meet after school one night in the mall. I love that cafe we were going to meet at before.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a drive-in,” Harlen said.

  “Drive-in?” I echoed, startled. “I didn’t think those things existed anymore.”

  “There’s one out on the back road between Shaletown and Remington. There’s a retro cafe attached to it,” Harlen said. “I can have a friend drive us there in my mother’s car.”

  Even though I was casting about desperately to find a good excuse to refuse the arrangement, a bit of me couldn’t believe how arrogant Harlen was assuming that his friend would chauffeur us around. But maybe the arrogance was just another symptom of infection.

  I said diffidently, “I don’t think my da would agree to a drive-in. I can ask him, though.”

  “Tell him it’ll be a comedy,” Harlen instructed. “And tell him I’d take very good care of his little girl.”

  I managed with great effort not to shudder. When he left, I took the drawing out again, and this time when I smoothed it flat, my senses were quiet.

  I played devil’s advocate with myself. Maybe it wasn’t that Harlen was connected to the Shaletown gang. Or maybe he was, and the swastika emblem was just a recycled logo like Jezabel had suggested. In which case there might be no connection between the Shaletown gang and the book under Serenity’s bed.

  But Harlen had gone to school in Shaletown, and hung around with at least one skinhead. And Serenity’s problems seemed to have begun in Shaletown. And the gang with the swastika logo was based in Shaletown. And besides all that, why would my danger sense go crazy at the possibility that Harlen would see the drawing I had made if there was no connection?

  Then a memory slid into my mind: Harlen giving me an unlabeled CD for Serenity.

  I realized then that I had to go back to Shaletown. I d
idn’t know how all of the stuff with the gang and the swastika connected to Harlen, but I wanted to find out. Because the thing I feared most was that Harlen, who carried a contagious sickness of the spirit, was involved with my spiritually wounded sister.

  The remainder of the day, I spent my time uselessly willing classes to go faster. I was like a dog tied to a stump, wanting nothing more than to be free to follow my own desires. But at last the school day ended. I couldn’t tell Gilly what I meant to do, because her grandmother was in their car waiting with Samuel. I hadn’t seen the old woman since the night I had gone to her home after my visit to Shaletown, and she looked startlingly frail and old. But she smiled warmly and told me to come and see them soon. Gilly was touchingly protective of her, and as I waved them off, I was glad I had said nothing about my intention to spy on Serenity’s poetry group. She had enough on her plate without worrying about me as well.

  I spent an hour doing homework in the school library to give Serenity time to get into her meeting. Harrison had said she had worked for a while before going into the meeting room, and I didn’t want to risk lurking in the city library where she might spot me. The other advantage of hanging around was that there was less chance of bumping into Harlen, though I felt as if our meeting in the library had taken the pressure off me a bit.

  There were only two older kids waiting for the city bus, and in a short time I was getting out at the city library. I was fairly sure I had left enough time for Serenity to get into the meeting room, but just in case I came into the entrance hall warily. There were six meeting-room doors, and the two nearest the front door were shut. I sauntered past them, but even with my hearing fully extended, I couldn’t make out more than that there were people in both. That meant there was soundproofing in the walls, like in Da’s shed.

  I checked my watch and then went through the library doors, which were opposite the meeting-room doors. I wanted to find somewhere I could position myself so that I could see everyone coming out. The best spot was the magazine racks, because if Serenity happened to come into the library after the meeting, she would never go there, and from behind them I could see through the doors and into the hallway. The shelves were waist high so I would have to squat the whole time, but being close to the door, I would be able to get out quickly to follow my quarry.