Lark (5 page)

I stomped home, my mind flooding with all the times she broke our plans, how we always had to spend the night at her house, how she chose everything we did, whether it was beading or cutting up gossip magazines or baking cookies. I slammed my front door so hard, the pictures bounced against the wall. Then I opened the door and slammed it again. The pictures bounced and settled even more crookedly.
Good
, I thought. Every time I saw them, I’d remember how selfish Lark was. I wasn’t going to be her fan anymore.

Funny. The lie I made up about drawing became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The next week my mom signed me up at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. I took classes in art history, sculpture, painting, and drawing. A curator from the museum gave a lecture on Vincent van Gogh. He projected details of his letters to his brother Theo—flowers, windmills, portraits, and night skies; sketches of windmills and canals; the bare trees and fields he saw on his long walks through the country.

At home on the shelf where my parents kept the art books, I found a collection of his letters and a huge book of all his drawings and paintings. I copied a woman sewing by a window in a straight-back chair. I drew his stark, brittle trees, rays of light, the garden of the hospital where he went to recover from fits of epilepsy and nerves.

It was like Van Gogh’s feelings became mine. I stopped feeling my own because of Trevor, so I felt his instead. I read all his letters and copied out passages I liked on one wall of my room. “I want to get to a stage where it is said of my work,” he wrote Theo, “this man feels deeply.” I moved my grandmother’s dresser so no one can read them but me.

Chapter 15
Lark

I was found and buried in a stupid white dress. The woods thawed and filled again with snow. I’m transparent and pale. The dress falls to my ankles and gets in my way. The dead girls blink against the wind. I scrape away the snow to look into their faces.

I don’t want to be like you,
I cry.

It gets worse,
says one.
Some will say it’s your fault. For getting in the car. Or being alone. Or wearing a
leotard that was cut too low in the back.

Clouds tear apart. The narrow stream gurgles in the distance, strangled by reeds and rotting leaves. Everything is silver and blank like the back of a mirror. The girls’ arms are forced above their heads, strained into branches in terrible positions.

I hate this dress
, I say, plucking at the hem.

You’ll hate being a tree more,
says the one who almost got away. I can tell by the shape of her branches. It’s like she’s running in air.

They say I have to find someone who will look at me, someone who is willing to see what happened to me.

Someone who loves you,
says one.
Someone brave enough to learn what happened.

Then you’ll be free,
says the youngest.
Not trapped like us.

My parents?
I ask.

You can try,
says the one who kept watch.
They’re usually not up to it.

But I try anyway, and when I leave the woods for the first time since I’m transparent and flat, I slide between atoms. Electric charges dance on my skin and let me pass.

Porch lights glow a weary amber. Dead leaves and grasses are tipped in ice. I edge between a crack in the bricks into my house. My parents don’t see me in the hall. They don’t sense me following them into separate rooms—my father in the study, my mother in my bedroom. She opens drawers and runs her hands over my clothes. She pulls strands of hair from my brush, buries her face deep in my pillows trying to catch my scent. She can’t pick up the clothes I left scattered or wipe away the stain from my last cup of tea. She sleeps on the floor in my room, twisted in blankets, dreaming about finding me before I die. Her own room is silent. Clothes hang in her closet. Her shoes are perfectly arranged.

At his desk, my father searches the internet for support groups for parents of murdered children. He thinks my mother is the one who needs it most. The computer casts his face in blue light. His posture, as always, is perfect. Nearby are sharp pencils and a pad of yellow paper. He needs duties and goals to list and cross off. I lay my hand on his shoulder and breathe close to his ear, but my breath is an absence, empty as a zero, a spot of nothing in the air.

Dejected, I tell the girls they were right.

Think of someone else,
says another.
A friend, not a relative.

My mind sorts through faces and names. I didn’t realize how lonely I was in my life. My last true friend was Eve, but then we had a fight and never made up. The girls at gymnastics pretended to be my friends, but I knew they were happy when I injured my knee. At school I maximized my time, working on homework during free periods and at lunch instead of hanging out with friends. I stopped going to games and plays. I quit working on the newspaper.

Think!
says the youngest.
Or else you’ll be like us. Who was the last person you enjoyed spending time with? Who was the last person who made you laugh?

Nyetta,
I say.

Chapter 16
Nyetta

Hallie lets her sons watch TV and play video games. They eat processed sugar and drink nonorganic milk. My mom’s afraid I’ll be corrupted. She hates it when I go over to that house. My dad’s waiting for me in the driveway. He doesn’t like to come in because he says my mom always starts a fight.

“Call me if you want to come home early,” says my mom. She opens the door and watches me leave.

“Hey, you,” says my dad with a smile. He backs out the driveway and heads to the parkway. He’s in a big hurry. “The boys can’t wait to see you. They’ve challenged us to a Ping-Pong tournament.”

I sincerely doubt this, but I don’t say anything.

Hallie’s house is a big white farmhouse near Chain Bridge. It’s one of the oldest houses around, with an attic and a root cellar and a little closet in the kitchen called a larder that’s for things like onions and carrots. Everything is dirty in the right way, like a sprinkle of crumbs on the cutting board and flowers spilling petals from a vase on the windowsill.

She doesn’t mind if you spill your juice because she only has things that can’t be ruined.

“After all, I have boys,” she says, “and a hairy old dog.”

My mom’s house is totally different. We have lots of special things. Most of them are very old. Antiquities, to be exact. My mom started collecting them before I was born. We have mummy beads and urns, coins, oil lamps, a tiny alabaster Venus, and three pomegranates carved from stone. Each one is in a little case because they are so delicate and rare that even the dust shouldn’t touch them.

Downstairs in the basement, the boys, my father, and I are having the tournament. The boys slam the ball back and forth. They know how to use topspin and make tricky shots. Zeke dashes to the side of the table and taps the ball just over the net so it’s impossible to return. He almost has dreadlocks. Anders’s hair is straight. My dad and I are ahead because he makes the most shots.

Dad bought them the Ping-Pong table and turned the basement into his office. He has a tiny desk for his computer, a two-drawer file cabinet, and a few shelves of books. He used to work all the time when he lived with us. He stacked books in every room—on the dining table, the floor near his bed, the kitchen counter, and the coffee table. He took a laptop to bed every night. When he moved in with Hallie, he stopped stacking books and gave up his laptop.

Anders serves me an easy shot, which I return, but of course I miss the next, and the next, and the next. I can’t do anything with a ball, no matter what size it is. The boys pull ahead, and my dad starts missing shots, on purpose, I think. I stop even trying. Anders and Zeke lose interest. They turn on the PlayStation and huddle over the controls. I guess the tournament is over.

“Can we do something else?” I ask.

Upstairs in the kitchen, Hallie is making bread. She gives me an apron and shows me how to dust the top of the dough with flour so it doesn’t stick when you knead it. There’s always a project when I come over, like baking, or making jewelry, or sewing tote bags out of old fabric she bought at a flea market. She set up her loom in the guest bedroom, the room where I sleep, and she’s promised to teach me how to weave a blanket.

“That’s good,” she says as I fold the dough over on itself. She has Zeke’s curly hair—tight blond ringlets that start at her scalp and loosen at the ends. She’s wearing white yoga pants and a white long-sleeve T-shirt. A tiny gold Buddha dangles from a cord around her neck. A bracelet of rose quartz wraps around her wrist. Lark would say she’s too limber from all that yoga.

“You better strengthen your core,” I tell her.

“Think so?” she asks.

Then she jumps into a whole new topic.

“Your dad says you’re still home from school.”

I start kneading with more enthusiasm. I sprinkle flour and fold and push and fold. If I do everything right, Hallie might drop the subject.

She greases two bowls with a stick of butter. “He says you talk to the girl who died.”

I throw the dough on the breadboard and slap it a few times.

“Her name was Lark, right?”

I toss the dough from one hand to the other. It’s smooth and elastic, and I can smell the yeast.

“I talk to my therapist about Lark,” I tell her.

“Good,” says Hallie. “It must be awful to know someone who died in such a terrible way.”

“I try not to think about it,” I lie.

I watch her divide and smooth the dough into two halves. She puts each one in a buttered bowl and covers them with tea towels.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now we wait. You’ll see. They’ll double in size.”

I lift the towels for one last look. It’s hard to believe the dough will rise to the towel, but two hours later it has. And then we punch it down and knead it some more, and then it rises again, and then we bake it. I can’t wait for it to cool, so Hallie lets me cut one loaf even though you shouldn’t cut warm bread. The butter melts as soon as I spread it. It runs between my fingers as I take my first bite. The taste is full and rich, a little salty sweet. It’s like I am eating a world of cottages and water mills, wildflowers and deer that come out of the forest to eat from my hand. Hallie watches me and smiles, and for a moment I almost forget where I am.

Chapter 17
Eve

It’s almost seven fifteen, and I’m rushing through breakfast. My parents have been up for hours, as usual, working in their studios. They’re taking a coffee break, but also hanging out in the kitchen to check in with me before I go to school. It’s their new habit—checking my vitals from a distance. My mom creeps around and stares, then throws in little conversation openers, like

“The kids at school must be really upset.” (Not really.)

Or

“Do you ever get frightened because of what happened to Lark?” (Yes.)

Or

“This must be very sad for you.” (It is.)

“I talked with Lark’s parents last night,” says Dad. He’s sitting at the breakfast table with the paper spread out in front of him. My mother sips her coffee. Her apron is stained with clay fingerprints. “They’ve put the house on the market.”

“Are you kidding?” I ask.

“Seems like a good idea,” says my mom.

“Maybe no one will buy it,” I say. “Who would want to buy the house where a dead girl lived?”

“We live in a very good neighborhood,” says my father. “Even in this economy, I think it will sell quickly.”

“I hope not,” I say. “I hope they decide to board it up for a while, then move back.” I can imagine all the furniture covered in white sheets and the shutters closed.

My mom has something to say, but she’s unsure about how to bring it up. I can feel her trying to take my pulse from her vantage point at the stove. I hurriedly scoop up the last bits of cereal at the bottom of the bowl, hoping she’ll think I’m in too much of a rush to bother. It doesn’t work.

“Eve, have you thought about taking that women’s self-defense class?”

“No.”

“I think it would be good for you.”

“I think it would freak me out more.”

She starts to say how the class might “empower” me, but I shush her before she gets it out.

Last night it dropped below freezing. The last bits of snow froze over again. Tiny icebergs at the corners of driveways glint in the sun. Up ahead, some boys are packing them into hard snowballs and throwing them full force at one another. They’d sting like hell if they hit the neck or the face, but the boys don’t care. They’re aiming and throwing, running and dodging like they’re playing war. One of them isn’t wearing gloves, and his hands are pink with cold. He laughs and takes aim at his friend, who crouches behind a car. The wind has picked up. I tuck in my chin and brace against it.

Throughout the day, my mind wanders between Lark’s house and my new book on Van Gogh. I don’t think about how Lark died anymore, more about little things, like what it’s going to be like to see a For Sale sign in her front yard and then how weird it will be if another family actually moves in. Mr. Haus goes on and on about the Persian wars and why the Greeks finally won. I’m copying his notes from the chalkboard and trying to finish the sketch of the fountain in the courtyard of Van Gogh’s asylum at the same time. Poor guy. He wore himself out looking for God and arguing with Gauguin. I’m drawing from memory, trying to capture the ellipse of the fountain and the sharp angles of the trees. My right hand is flying. My left is holding up my glasses so they don’t fall into my notebook. The bell rings, but I don’t move. My drawing is almost finished.

“Eve,” Mr. Haus says softly. “You’re going to be late.”

In Debate, Ms. Curren has mercifully decided it’s our group’s turn to research in the library. Scott and Darren give each other high fives. Judith takes the pass for the four of us, and off we trot. The boys take a side trip to shoot some hoops, while Judith and I dutifully hit the books.

“Look for a quote from some expert or official,” Judith orders, passionless. “I’ll get some statistics about the high cost of research.”

Between the two of us, we could finish all the research we need in about three hours. Darren and Scott are mostly a hindrance. We don’t even bother to think of something for them to do.

I type in “opposition to stem cell research” and am flooded with hits. Senators, ministers, scientists, and right-to-life advocates all have something to say. There’s massive concern for the unborn. I scroll down until I find the speech of a molecular biologist who reminds us that Congress declared life begins at conception. Therefore, harvesting stem cells is tantamount to murder. It’s irritating to take notes on why the government shouldn’t help scientists find cures for diabetes and multiple sclerosis, but I’m happy to be here and not in the classroom. My pen glides across paper.

Behind me there’s a rustle of backpacks and chimes from a cell phone. A mob of juniors pulls in. They descend on the computers, and the guy sitting down on my right is Ian, the writer for the paper, the guy whose eyes met mine at the end of the pep rally.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

“You knew Lark Austin, right?”

My face gets warm. My answer is muffled, like I’m speaking through a scarf. “Yes.”

“I did, too.”

“How?” I ask. His eyes are the blue in
Starry Night
, expansive and cobalt, surrounded by black lashes. My heart stirs a little, like it’s swimming inside me. If I ever wanted to draw him, I’d have to use colored ink—maybe Bombay blue.

“Lark took journalism last year.”

“She gave it up for gymnastics,” I say.

“Yeah, I remember. Too bad. She was a good writer. I drove her home once. I think I saw you. You live next door, right?”

He reaches over the keyboard to shake my hand.

“I’m Ian.”

“I’m Eve.”

His hand touches mine. There are muscles where the fingers meet the palm, and the hollow is deep, like it could cup water.

“How are her parents?” he asks.

“Not very good. They want to move.”

“I don’t blame them,” he said.

He logs on while I print out the speech of the molecular biologist. Scott and Darren tumble by to see if there’s anything to do. They’re red faced from shooting hoops in the cold. Their hats are on backward. All they need are little propellers and they could be Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They’re making a ruckus, dropping books and dissing each other. The librarian threatens to send them back to class. I get the speech from the printer and hand it to them.

“Read this,” I say. “Look for a quote we can use in our opening remarks.”

When I get back to the computer, Ian is looking at my sketchbook.

“Hey!” I say, grabbing it back.

“Sorry,” he says, “but you left it open. I didn’t touch it. You’re so good!”

“No,” I say. The sharp corner stabs the pad of my thumb.

“Yes! I like that old lady, and the windmill along the canal. Have you been to the Netherlands?”

“No,” I say, “but I’d like to. . . . I’m into Van Gogh. I’m studying his art. I copy a lot of his drawings.”

“That’s cool. I thought Van Gogh was famous for his paintings.”

“He is, but I like his drawings better.”

“That’s cool,” he said. “There are lots of great abandoned buildings in the Netherlands. You into that—ruined buildings taken over by nature?”

“Sounds interesting.”

“It is,” he says. He’s focused and lit up, like all sorts of ideas are firing inside his brain. “I know a bunch of cool websites to check out.”

I’m dying to hear more, but his friend calls out from the magazine rack. “Hey, Ian,” he says. “Here’s that interview you were talking about.”

“Gotta go,” he tells me. “Talk to you later.”

He bounds over to his crowd of juniors, not bothering to log off the computer.

Days later, he’s in the hall with the other journalism students passing out the new issue of the paper. He points to the story about Lark on the front page. There’s a photo of a grief counselor talking to a class, and another one of students huddling at a table in the library drawing pictures and writing poems.

“Why isn’t there a picture of Lark?” I ask.

“Look at the back.”

The entire back page is a blowup of Lark’s school portrait. Underneath, in wispy font, it says,

Lark Austin
Forever in our hearts
Finally, you can fly. . . .

“It’s disgusting,” I say.

“I know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, ‘Finally, you can fly’?”

“It’s supposed to ‘honor her love for gymnastics,’ says the senior editor.”

“Well, it’s disgusting.”

He shrugs and sighs. “I agree.”

I keep staring at the photo and hating it. Ian takes a step back.

“Well,” he says, “I gotta go. I wanted to make sure you saw it.”

He’s wearing a huge striped sweater that’s unraveling at the sleeves. He’d look lost in it, but his shoulders and back are all muscle because he’s on crew.

“Thanks,” I say. “I know it’s not your fault.”

“Hey,” he says. “This Friday I’m hearing a band you might like. Would you like to come?”

The concert is in an old movie theater that Ian says was built in the twenties when films were still silent and vaudeville acts used to perform on the stage. He takes a picture of me in the lobby between sconces shaped like candles; only the flame-shaped bulbs are burned out. Ian says he’s never seen them lit up. The walls are covered in painted fabric that’s been fading and unraveling for almost a hundred years.

“The owner is trying to sell,” says Ian, shaking his head. “Can you imagine what a tragedy it would be if someone knocked it down?”

Ian points to the huge chandelier in the lobby. Strings of crystals and beads drape from a recessed painting of peacocks and classical ruins.

“You could draw that,” he says encouragingly. “You’re good enough to draw this whole place.”

His hand is warm and smooth. I imagine the theater being taken over by trees. Saplings break through the floors. Vines suffocate the walls, pulling them into the earth.

All the seats on the first floor have been torn up so people can stand by the stage or dance. Ian leads me to the balcony so we can sit down and talk. The seats are the old-fashioned kind with inlaid brass numbers and velvet cushions. We sit in the front row, dangling our hands over the railing, looking down at the crowd that’s already pushed against the stage.

“Don’t hate me,” I say, “but my dad builds McMansions.”

“Oh, no,” he groans, rubbing my hands like I’m cold. “You poor girl.”

The DJ plays Brian Eno and Stone Roses and Joy Division, which Ian says are good choices since they’ve all influenced Sky Crush, the band we’re about to hear.

The opening act is a band from Portland called the Substitutes that projects educational filmstrips from the Cold War about personal hygiene, the growing threat of communism, and how to respond in case of nuclear attack. The songs are short and angry, with driving beats overlaying thrashing guitars. I put my hands over my ears, but the music is still so loud I can feel my bones vibrate. On the screen, primary-school kids are ducking under their desks. A map of the Soviet Union turns into an evil octopus spreading its tentacles over Europe and Asia. A high school girl points to a pimple on her chin and frowns.

At intermission we go downstairs to the little bar that used to be a hatcheck booth when people wore hats and gloves. Ian buys us each a Coke, then leads me outside to a patio where people go to smoke and get some fresh air. A woman with a boy’s haircut and silver hair lifts up her throat to laugh. Her date smiles at her with glittering wolf teeth.

Ian pulls out a tiny bottle of rum from his coat pocket, the kind you buy on airplanes.

“Want some?” he offers.

“Sure,” I say, and he pours some into my drink. “What about you?”

“I’m driving,” he says, shaking his head. “Gotta get you home safe. I promised your dad.”

I take a long sip of my drink. Rum clings to the ice cubes and makes me shudder. People around us laugh and talk. Their cigarettes glow and send out curls of white smoke. Above us a square of sky is speckled with stars. Ian pours the rest of the rum over the ice cubes, and a few sips later I’m instantly relaxed, as if I’ve let two heavy packages fall to the floor.

We drift back to the balcony. Other couples mill around us. Going down the stairs, I stumble a little. I’m not used to drinking, so I lean slightly into him and he puts his arm around me until we get to our seats. Onstage the roadies unwind cables and set up the mikes. Finally, the lights go down, and Sky Crush takes the stage. It’s a band of two, a girl and a guy, both skinny and tall with pale oval faces. They could be brother and sister, but Ian says they grew up together in a beach town in Delaware. In high school they started recording waves crashing and boardwalk sounds like the
whoosh
of the roller coaster, the calliope of the merry-go-round, and a wooden ball rolling up the skee-ball ramp in the arcade. He says they have a whole library of sounds that they edit and splice and include in their songs. The girl looks like she stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Her long auburn hair falls over her face as she sings and plays keyboards. Sometimes it sounds like an organ, sometimes a harpsichord. The guy plays gamelan and slide guitar, adding layers of sounds from a laptop hooked up to a tiny speaker. Between the vocals I hear distant laughter and bells, and the three-four rhythm of a ragged waltz played by old men in a plaza. The girl’s voice floats above the texture of sounds, coaxing you to listen like the waves in a shell. It makes me think of Van Gogh walking in the fog sketching windmills and geese, his red beard and blue eyes the only bright colors in an expanse of gray.

After the final song, the curtain falls, and the dusty chandeliers flicker awake. People put on their coats and leave their drinks on the floor. Outside it’s windy and cold, and the music still clings to me like a dream.

“Did you like it?” asks Ian.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m still dreaming.”

Ian laughs. “I knew you were the one to take to Sky Crush.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he replies, “you’re an artist. Like they are.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say, confused.

“I think it means you see things, hear things, that most people miss.”

I’m embarrassed and pleased, then suddenly disappointed. “So, would you take a different girl to a different concert?”