The Serpent's Coil

by Christy Raedeke

  Monsieur Didier must have caught my look, because he says, “Should you need gowns, the school has an exquisite collection of vintage couture, donated by alumnae.”

  Of course.

  Justine’s eyes are gleaming and we share a giddy smile.

  “Your housemother, Señora Garza, can help you to the archives where they’re kept.”

  The word “archives” reminded me of the Dunhuang Caves. Because I’m distracted by the elegance and promise of the new school, this works like smelling salts to snap me back to the reason we are there in the first place: to leave.

  “It has been a pleasure, Mademoiselles Luxton and Devereux,” he says with a bow of the head. “Ramón will take you to your dorm. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the Senior Mixer.”

  “Of course,” Justine says.

  “Lovely to meet you,” I add.

  As soon as Monsieur Didier is through the door, Justine and I grab each other’s arms and start squealing.

  “Vintage couture?” she squeals.

  “I know!” I say, “We’ve hit the jackpot of schools!”

  Mr. Papers squawks from inside the carrier. “Sorry pal,” I say, looking in through the mesh front. “Didn’t mean to scramble you when I jumped.”

  “I’m dying to see our room,” Justine says. “Let’s go!”

  Ramón leads us back to the car. As we drive around the administration building, I look in through the floor-to-ceiling windows at what looks like a foreign film: gorgeous boys in suits and ties milling around girls with sparkly jewelry and light-as-air chiffon dresses you only see in magazines. Tuxedoed waiters glide through with silver trays of hors d’oeuvres and champagne glasses—it’s feast of fabulousness for the eyes.

  One boy gazes out the window and seems to look right at me. He stands with that indefinable posture, sort of a relaxed elegance, that Europeans have. His long, straight nose might look out of place on a smaller, less masculine face, but his strong square jaw balances it and also works like a display shelf to feature the most unbelievable mouth I’ve ever seen. He’s more Italian marble than human.

  Justine elbows me. “Check it!” she says as we drive slowly by.

  “Is that a guy or a statue?” I ask.

  “Either way, it’s art,” she replies. “I love it here already.”

  ––––––

  Ramón parks in a roundabout in front of another building similar to the administration building but bigger. Standing in the door is a short, round woman wearing a skirt and suit jacket she can barely close.

  “¡Hola amigas!” she says, as if she has been waiting all day just for us. “I am Señora Garza.” After we introduce ourselves, she leads us into the residence hall. The first floor has a dark wood study room, a kitchenette with a small eating area, and a student lounge complete with leather sofas and oversized armchairs you could get lost in.

  “Eat only in the dining area and no boy past ten at night in this building,” she says, leading us to an elevator. “And no boys anywhere but first floor!” she adds as she pushes the “Door close” button. We get off on the second floor and walk to the end of the hall before Señora Garza stops at room 260.

  That’s the number of days in the Tzolk’in and a key number in all Mayan calendars. I take this as a good sign.

  “Your room,” she says, with a sweeping gesture as she opens the door. It’s small but beautiful, like a boutique hotel room. There are two large desks with bookcases attached, two beds with beautifully carved headboards and white linens, and two large armchairs with ottomans. The furniture all looks expensive, not like standard institutional furniture you see in college dorms. The walls are painted a creamy yellow.

  Señora Garza pulls back the curtains to reveal a tall glass door that opens to a small balcony. Enclosed by a wrought-iron railing with all kinds of scrolls, the balcony is just big enough for two chairs and a table.

  “Perfect,” I say, setting Mr. Papers’ bag down on the bed close to the window and unzipping the top.

  Jumping out of the bag, Mr. Papers hops onto the railing in one leap. Señora Garza screams and tumbles backwards.

  “Oh, no! I’m so sorry! It’s just my pet, Mr. Papers. He’s totally tame!”

  “¡Un mono!” she says, clutching her chest.

  “He’s fine. They said I could bring him. He’ll be no trouble,” I promise her. “Just look at him!”

  Mr. Papers is sitting on the railing taking deep breaths of the warm, moist Argentine air with a tiny smile on his face.

  Señora Garza scrunches up her nose and hisses, “Bestia asquerosa.”

  Justine puts her hand on Señora Garza’s arm and says, “Mr. Papers is not revolting, and he’s not a beast.” Then she takes Monsieur Didier’s card from her pocket and adds, “Shall we talk to someone in administration?”

  Señora Garza shakes her arm away from Justine and says, “No. It is not a problem. No need for Didier.”

  Then she looks at us both as if we’ve just pulled something over on her, turns on her toes, and heads for the door, tossing two keys on the bed as she leaves.

  “Wow. Señora Crabby is going to be a lot of fun,” I say. “You mind if I take the bed by the window? That way I can make a little space for Mr. Papers over here.”

  “Don’t mind at all,” Justine replies, opening the door for Ramón, who has our suitcases on a rolling cart.

  When he’s finished bringing them in, Ramón asks us if we need anything else. Then he gives us his card and says to call whenever we need to go anywhere. We thank him and I reach in my wallet for a tip, but when I try to give him a ten, he puts up his hand in protest.

  “Gracias, but no tips. Against school policy and I am paid well.”

  Just as the door is closing behind him, Ramón slips his head back in the door. “Amigas, one last thing. Monsieur Didier sees all. Careful with him.”

  “Thanks?” Justine says, closing the door and looking over at me. “Uh, that was weird.”

  “Good to know, I guess,” I say, not wanting Justine to get too freaked out her first day here—I need her to stay. But it was odd.

  In order to give Mr. Papers his own space, I pull the side table that was by the reading chair over to the corner next to my bed. The pillow from the puppy carrier fits perfectly underneath the table, and he scurries in and gives me a happy squawk. The walls cover two sides of the table but it still doesn’t seem like quite enough privacy, so I grab a scarf and put it over the whole table.

  I peek under and see Mr. P. reclining on his back, hands clasped behind his head. It makes me happy to see him comfortable; I’d been feeling guilty about taking him from his home, but he seems to be really digging the change of scenery.

  There’s only one last thing to do.

  “So, should we light this candle?” I ask Justine.

  She looks at me sideways. “What now?”

  “I’m thinking of emailing the Tzolk’in to the whole Escuela Bohemia, like I did at the Academy of Cruelties.”

  “Do you have the email list?”

  “Remember that welcome email we got? It was to the group ‘All Students,’ so I can try to reply all and change the body of the mail.”

  “Perfect overachiever move. Let’s get this thing rolling the first day here!”

  I use Bolon’s secret PayPal account to get an email name with a shady company that guarantees absolute privacy, even when authorities are involved. I need this account name to be ultra mysterioso and untraceable. Then I type up a message.

  “Should I go short and sweet?” I ask Justine. “I’m thinking of just saying, ‘Have you ever wondered about the Mayan calendar? Here is your chance to explore it. Click here to start.’”

  “Perfect,” she says. “That gives them just enough to want to click through.”

  So tired I’m barely able to write the email, I send it off and hit the pillow.

  But I have a bad feeling in my chest. Maybe it was too early to send that email.

/>   EIGHT

  The first thing I see when I wake up is Mr. Papers sitting next to me with an origami banana in his hand. How can you not laugh? “Sorry pal,” I whisper as I fish around for the bag with food in it.

  The sound of me opening the dried mango package wakes Justine, who grabs the clock and yells, “Holy crap!”

  Mr. Papers and I both jump.

  “It’s 9:40, Caity! We have to be at orientation at ten!”

  We scurry around, splashing water on our faces and trying to find our least wrinkled clothes, then both take a handful of dried mango. I crack the balcony door for Mr. Papers so he can get some fresh air if he wants, and then we run out. We’re late and everyone else has already gone so the halls are empty, which is kind of creepy. As we run through the lobby, we see Señora Garza by the door holding two cups.

  “Café con leche,” she says as she hands them to us. Stunned by the service, we thank her, then take the cups and walk as quickly as we can while sipping. Last night we looked at the campus map and worked out where the orientation would be, but the trees and bushes are so lush it’s hard to see the buildings. We finally make it to the right place almost five minutes late, and when we open the heavy, carved doors to the auditorium, all eyes turn to us.

  “Please mademoiselles, take a seat,” says Monsieur Didier from the stage. His voice is sweet, but calling us out in front of a packed auditorium is clearly a lesson.

  We sit in the far back. I try to take in as much as I can but I’m distracted by the sheer beauty in the room. Seriously, each and every one of these kids could be a model. Are there any nerds here? Any dorks? Where are the zit-faced World of Warcraft types or the bookish girls with bad glasses and thin hair? Who are these people? This is clearly not the public at large.

  Justine can totally pass as one of these beautiful, aloof creatures but I cannot. I glance at her and wonder if she’s ever embarrassed to be with me and my tall awkwardness and curly hair.

  Monsieur Didier blathers on about the philosophy of the school, the character it builds, the global citizens it creates—all standard brochure propaganda. I pull out my notebook as if to take notes, but instead sketch Señora Garza with two big crab claws. Just as I’m shading the bigger fighting claw, something sticks in the back of my hair.

  I reach back and feel a small paper airplane. It’s a crude folding job that Mr. Papers would be ashamed of. I look back, but no one is behind us; I look up at the balcony, but see no one there. Inside the poorly folded plane is written:

  You are not like the others. This may or may not be a good thing.

  I show it to Justine, who looks around. She can’t see anyone above us either.

  The plane’s creator has vanished, but the weird feeling in my stomach stays. Who is watching me?

  After the general orientation, where I learn nothing new, Didier brings up a matter of great importance. He looks at the audience, scanning every face, and says, “I was made aware of an all-school email this morning about the Mayan calendar. We pride ourselves on shaping students who look carefully and scientifically at things, students who do not get caught up in pseudoscience or chicanery. I ask you now, whoever sent the email with the link to the Mayan calendar, please reveal yourself.”

  The crowd falls dead silent, and everyone is looking around to see who will stand up. My face feels like it’s being stung by a hive of bees. I start looking around too, so I don’t look suspicious. I quickly run through all the steps I took in sending the mail, and am still confident he can’t trace it to me.

  “If no one comes forward to claim ownership of this email—and I assure you the authorities will eventually track you down—the entire student body will have one more day of school than originally scheduled.”

  A groan makes its way through the audience like a wave at a football game. And then something incredible happens: I start hearing the Tzolk’in tone of the day in the super-high Mosquito Tone—kids are playing the Tzolk’in app on their phones! First just a few, and then enough to make me wonder if Didier might sense it. Justine and I share a tenth-of-a-second smirk before looking down.

  “You will have twenty-four hours to accept culpability,” he goes on, clearly not hearing a thing. “If you do not accept responsibility we will prosecute you for illegal use of school property; every email name issued belongs to La Escuela Bohemia.”

  Didier is on fire, but if he’d just clicked through he would have seen the 404 Error page. At his age, there’s no way he could have heard the Mosquito Tone directions to the hidden site and he wouldn’t be making a federal case out of this.

  “We will not tolerate this kind of proselytization here. Unfounded ideas perpetuated as truth are dangerous and are exactly what we do not represent.”

  I nudge Justine—everyone knows that bad PR is the best kind of PR. After hearing the word “dangerous,” every kid in the room who has not yet looked is going to go back to that email and open it up out of sheer curiosity. You’d think after working with students for so long, Didier would get clued in to stuff like that.

  When he’s done unsuccessfully trying to shame the student body into admitting who did it, Didier finally excuses us to go meet with our Pedagogues. Our paperwork says that our Pedagogue is Dr. Clath, who will be waiting for us in room 312.

  “What do you think she’s like?” I ask Justine as we make our way up the grand central staircase, with its marble floor and scrolled wrought-iron handrail.

  “Well, if she’s really a doctor, that means she could teach college—why would anyone want to teach younger kids when they can teach at college?”

  “Maybe she’s into travel,” I say. “Or maybe she’s running from something … ”

  “Like the law … ” Justine replies as we make our way to the cracked door of room 312. “Hello,” she says, peeking her head through the doorway.

  “Oh, hello. Hi. Yes, come on in,” replies a nervous voice.

  As we push open the door, a tall woman with fuzzy brown hair and the kind of face that could be forty or sixty or anywhere in between stands to greet us. She’s wearing oversized, out-of-style glasses and a baggy La Escuela Bohemia T-shirt tucked into elastic-waist jeans that are just short enough to feature the kind of Velcro-adjusting black shoes they sell in the drugstore for diabetics. I may be unglamorous compared to the other students, but next to this woman I feel positively breathtaking.

  It’s almost as if she is trying to look like a “before” shot in a makeover story—to have made all the choices she did that day in her appearance would have taken a massive dose of personal disregard. I’m kind of intrigued by her, but I can tell Justine is let down. I mean, we have to spend the whole year with this person and she could, just by the look of her, be mildly insane.

  NINE

  As we say hello and walk toward her, she holds out her long arm stiffly. I know this is to shake hands, but it also feels like she’s putting up a barrier wall, as if to say, Don’t even think of entering my personal space. Part of me wants to give her a big bear hug to see if she’d freak out from human contact, but instead I shake her hand, keeping my distance. Then she motions to the two chairs set up on the other side of the table.

  “So. I’m Dr. Clath.” She smoothes out a perfectly flat piece of white paper in front of her, obviously nervous. “Tell me, girls, what exactly do you want to learn? Whatever you’re interested in, we’ll build a curriculum around it and make sure we hit all the subjects.”

  Justine and I glance at each other. She gives me the you go look, so I say, “Well, we’re very interested in symbols.” We already discussed the fact that we have to keep the Mayan stuff and the precession stuff on the down low, and work that into the curriculum on the side.

  “Alright. What kind of symbols?” Dr. Clath asks.

  “Mostly symbols that are found across different cultures but have mysterious origins,” Justine says.

  “Good, good,” Dr. Clath replies. “Like the Flower of Life, I assume?”

  “
Exactly! Do you know a lot about it?” I ask.

  “Only from a math perspective. It’s the blueprint for all geometry.”

  As she gets less nervous she seems less odd, and I get less worried about having to spend 24/7 with her this year.

  “What others, specifically, are you interested in?” she asks.

  Justine says, “The snake eating its tail—”

  “Good old ouroboros,” she interrupts. “Always a classic. Others?”

  “Well, the one we’re most interested in is the Three Hares,” I say.

  “Three hares? I’m not sure I’ve heard of it,” Dr. Clath says in a way that makes me think she doesn’t like not knowing stuff. “Can you refresh my memory?”

  I fish out my sketchbook from my bag and thumb through, looking for the drawing I’d done of the carved panel doors in my room at the castle. I don’t dare pull out the key ring that fits in the center of the Three Hares; I don’t want her to know that I have any personal investment in this study.

  “This is just a sketch, but you get the idea,” I say, pointing to the center of the drawing where the three rabbits all share the same ears.

  Justine adds, “It’s a symbol that’s been found all over the world, but no one knows exactly what it means.”

  “Interesting,” Dr. Clath replies, examining my sketch as if it were evidence of something. She takes the sheet of white paper before her, sets it over my drawing, and begins to trace the ears. “See the center part here? This is the beginning of the Flower of Life symbol.”

  Uncle Li had shown me that already, but I pretend to be as surprised as Justine is by it.

  “Yes, I could see this turning into a very interesting primary curriculum,” Dr. Clath says. She looks back at her tracings and then jots down some notes that I can’t read because her left-handed writing looks more like jagged lie-detector results than actual words.

  She looks back up at us and says, “Any ideas for a secondary subject? We must be studying two tracts at once, but they can overlap.”