The Stranger (2 page)

Nicoletta rarely initiated friendships. She tended to let friendship come to her, and it always had: through classmates or seatmates, through group lessons or neighbors. But she wanted to look into this boy’s eyes, and unless she spoke to him she would not have the privilege.

Privilege? she thought. What a strange word to use! What do I mean by that? “Hi,” she said to his departing back. “I’m Nicoletta.”

The boy did not register her voice. He did not turn. He might have been deaf. Perhaps he was deaf. Perhaps that was his mystery; his closure from the rest. Perhaps he really was hidden away inside his silent mind.

She stopped walking but he did not.

In a few moments he vanished from sight, blending with crowds and corridors.

After school, Nicoletta saw Christo, Cathy, Rachel, and several of the others. She ran up to them. They would have spoken to Ms. Quincy again. She could hardly wait for their report.

“Hey, Nickie,” said Christo. He rubbed her shoulders and kissed her hair. Affection came easily to Christo. He distributed it to all the girls and they in turn were never without a smile or a kiss for him. But that was all there was. Christo never offered more, and never took more.

Nor did he say a word about the first Madrigal rehearsal in which Anne-Louise, and not Nicoletta, sang soprano.

“So?” said Nicoletta teasingly, keeping her voice light. She was mostly talking to Rachel, her sidekick. Her fellow sufferer in soprano jokes. (Question: A hundred dollars is lying on the ground. Who takes it—the dumb soprano or the smart soprano? Answer: The dumb soprano, of course. There’s no such thing as a smart soprano.)

Rachel looked uncomfortable.

Cathy looked embarrassed.

Even Christo, who was never nervous, looked nervous.

Finally Rachel made a confused gesture with her hands, like birds fluttering. Awkwardly, she mumbled, “Anne-Louise is really terrific, Nicoletta. She has the best voice of any of us. She is—well—she’s—” Rachel seemed unable to think of what else Anne-Louise might be.

“She’s Olympic material,” said Christo.

Rachel managed giggles. “There’s no soprano division in the Olympics, Christo.”

But it was very clear. Anne-Louise was miles better than Nicoletta. Nicoletta was not going to get back in. She was not going to be a Madrigal again. Her friends had put no arguments before Ms. Quincy.

“But come with us to Keyboard, Nickie,” said Rachel quickly. “There’s so much to talk about. You have to tell us about Art Appreciation. I mean, is it wall-to-wall duds, or what?”

Keyboard was the city’s only ice-cream parlor with a piano. Perhaps the world’s only ice-cream parlor with a piano. For years and years, before Nicoletta was even born, the high school Madrigals had hung out there, singing whenever they felt like it. They sang current hits and ancient tunes, they sang Christmas carols and kindergarten rounds, they sang rock or country or sixteenth-century love songs. In between, they had sundaes, milk shakes, or Cokes, and stuck quarters in the old-fashioned jukebox with its glittering lights and dated music.

Okay, thought Nicoletta, trying to breathe, trying to accept the slap in the face of Anne-Louise’s superiority. We’re still friends, I can still—

Anne-Louise joined the group.

She was an ordinary-looking girl, with dull brown hair and small brown eyes. But the other singers did not look at her as if
they
saw anything ordinary. They were full of admiration.

She’ll wear my crimson gown, thought Nicoletta. She’ll put my sparkling crown in her plain hair. She’ll sing my part.

Christo rubbed Anne-Louise’s shoulders and kissed her hair exactly as he had Nicoletta’s.’ Anne-Louise bit her lip with embarrassment and pleasure, and said, “Are you sure you want me along?”

“Of course we do!” the rest chorused. “You’re a Madrigal now.”

And I’m not, thought Nicoletta.

Rachel and Cathy protested, but Nicoletta did not go to Keyboard with them. She claimed she had to help her mother at home. They knew it was a lie, but it certainly made things easier for everybody. With visible gratitude, the new arrangement of Madrigals left in their new lineup.

Nicoletta headed for the school bus, which she rarely took. Christo had a van and usually ferried Madrigals wherever he went. But she did not get on the bus after all.

Walking purposefully down the road, knowing his destination, was the dark and silent boy from Art Appreciation.

The high school was not located for walking home. It had been built a decade ago in a rural area, so that it could be wrapped in playing fields of the most impressive kind. No student lived within walking distance. Yellow buses awaiting their loads snaked around two roads, slowly filling with kids from every corner of the city.

Yet the boy walked.

And Nicoletta, because she was lost, followed him.

T
HE FIRST TWO BLOCKS
of following the boy meant nothing; anybody could reasonably walk down the wide cement.

But then the boy turned, and strode down a side street, stepping on every frozen puddle and cracking its ice.
DEAD END
said the sign at the top of the street. Nicoletta had never even noticed the street. The boy surely knew everybody on his street, and he would also know that she did not live there, had no business walking there. That she had no destination at the
DEAD END.

At no other moment in her life would she have continued. Nicoletta was conventional. She was comfortable with social rules and did not break them, nor care to be around people who did.

But all the rules of her life had been broken that day. She had lost her circle, her pleasure. She had been found lacking, and not only that, she had been replaced by someone better.

The sick humiliation in her heart was so painful that she found herself distanced from the world. The rules were hard to remember and not meaningful when she did remember them. She was facing a terrible empty time in which the group she loved forgot her. If she filled the time by going home, she’d have a crabby sister, a small house, and a nervous mother. She’d have television reruns played too loud, a fattening snack she didn’t need, and homework she couldn’t face.

So Nicoletta crossed the road, and followed the boy down the little lane.

She had his attention now. An odd, keep-your-back-turned attention. He didn’t look around at her. At one point he paused, and stood very still. She matched him. He walked on; she walked on. He walked faster for a while; she did, too. Then he slowed down. So did Nicoletta.

Her head and mind felt light and airy. She felt as if she might faint, or else fly away.

She was mesmerized by the task of making her feet land exactly when his did. He had long strides. She could not possibly cover as much ground. She was carrying her books, hugging them in her arms, and they grew heavy. She hardly noticed. Her head was swimming and there was nothing in the universe but the rhythm of their walking.

The houses ended.

The road narrowed.

The trees that had neatly stayed inside hedges and yards now arched over the street. Latticed, bare branches fenced off the sky. In summer this would be a green tunnel. In winter it was grim and mean.

The asphalt ended. The road became dirt ruts.

Nicoletta would have said there were no dirt roads in the entire state, let alone this city. Where could the boy be going?

Trees grew as closely as fence posts. Prickly vines wrapped the edge of the woods as viciously as concertina wire. Stone walls threaded through the naked woods, the lost farms of early America. For a moment, she felt their souls: the once-breathing farmers, the vanished field hands, the dead wives, and buried children.

At the end of the dirt lane, an immense boulder loomed like a huge altar from some old-world circle of stones.

Nicoletta had the strangest sensation that the stone greeted the boy. That the stone, not the boy, changed expression. They knew each other.

Nicoletta kept coming.

Some boys would have readied for combat. They would have slipped into the athletic stance used for obstructing or catching. This boy was simply there.

Very, very slowly he turned to see whose feet had been matching his, what person had trespassed on his road. Dark motionless eyes, falling heavy hair, smooth quiet features. Not a word. Not a gesture.

People often asked Nicoletta if her shining gold hair was really hers. They often asked her if her vivid green eyes were really hers. The general assumption was that extremely blonde hair and very green eyes must be the result of dye and contact lenses. She hated being asked if parts of her body were really hers.

And yet she wanted to ask this boy—
Is that really you?
There was something so different about him. As if he wore a mask to be pulled off.

There were about twenty paces between them. Neither he nor she attempted to narrow the distance.

“Hi,” she said at last. She struggled for a smile, but fear gave her a twitch instead.

He did not ask her what she was doing, nor where she was going.

“I followed you,” she said finally.

He nodded.

A flush of shame rose up on her face. She was a fool. She was utterly pathetic. “It was just something to do,” she offered him.

Still his face did not move.

She struggled to find explanations for her ridiculous behavior. “I had a bad day. I lost all my friends. So—you were walking—and I walked, too—and here we are.”

His face did not change.

“Where’s your house?” she said desperately.

At last he spoke. But he did not tell her where his house was. He said softly, “You can’t have lost
all
your friends.” His voice was like butter: soft and golden. She loved his voice.

“No,” she agreed. “Probably not. It just feels like it. It turns out I’m not as important as I thought.”

He said, “I’ll walk you back to the road while you tell me about it.”

She told him about it.

He simply nodded. His expression never changed. It was neither friendly nor hostile, neither sorry for her nor annoyed with her. He was just there. She wondered what his mouth would look like smiling. What his mouth would feel like kissing.

Nicoletta talked.

He listened.

She poured out her feelings as if he were her psychiatric counselor and she was paying by the hour. She had to face this boy tomorrow, and every day for the rest of the school year! And yet here she was describing the workings of her heart and soul, as if he were a friend, as if he could be trusted.

It was horrifically cold. She had not worn clothing for a hike in the outdoors. She shifted her books, trying to wrap her cold hands inside one another.

The boy took off his long scarf, which was plain, thin black wool, with no fringe and no pattern. He wrapped it gently around her freezing ears, brought the ends down and tucked them around her icy fingers. The wool was warm with his heat. She wanted to have the scarf forever.

She had to know more about him. She wanted to see him with his family, standing in his yard. She wanted to see him in his car and in his kitchen. She wanted to see him wearing jeans and wearing bathing trunks.

“Will you be able to get home from here?” he asked instead. They were standing next to the bright yellow
DEAD END
sign. A few hundred yards ahead, traffic spun its endless circuit.

She could not let their time together end. In fact, standing with him, they did not seem to be in normal time; they were in some other time; a wide, spacious ancient time. “Were you just going for a hike or do you live down there?” Nicoletta said.

He regarded her steadily. “It’s a shortcut,” he said finally.

He’s very, very rich, thought Nicoletta. He lives on an immense estate by the ocean. Acres of farm and forest between us and his circular drive. Perhaps his mother is a famous movie star and they live under another name. She said, “I’m Nicoletta Storms.”

“Nicoletta,” he repeated. How softly he sounded each consonant. How romantic and European it sounded on his lips. Antique and lyrical. Not the way her classmates said it, getting the long name over with. Or switching without permission to Nickie.

“What’s your name?” she said.

For a while she thought he would not tell her; that even giving out his name to a classmate was too much personal expression for him. Then he said, “Jethro.”

“Jethro?” she repeated. “What an odd name! Are you named for an ancestor?”

He actually smiled. She was lifted up on that smile like a swallow on a gust of summer wind. His smile was beautiful; it was wonderful; it was buried treasure, and she, Nicoletta, had uncovered it.

Their city was one of the oldest on the East Coast. She had never previously met a native, but there had to be some. Perhaps Jethro was a descendant of the
Mayflower.
That was the kind of name they gave boys back then. Jethro, Truth, Ephraim.

“Ancestors,” he agreed. The smile slowly closed, leaving behind only a sweet friendliness.

“How did you like Art Appreciation?” she said. She did not want to stop talking. “Do you know a lot about art or were the slides new to you?”

“Everything is new to me,” the boy answered, and gave away the first tiny clue. Slightly, he emphasized
everything.
As if not just art were new—but everything. The world.

“Let’s have lunch together tomorrow,” she said.

He stared at her, eyes and mouth flaring in astonishment. And blushed. “Lunch,” repeated Jethro, as if unfamiliar with it.

“Meet me in the cafeteria?” said Nicoletta. She wanted to kiss him. Rachel would have. Rachel would have stood on her tiptoes, leaned forward, and kissed long and slow, even the first time. Rachel felt kissing was the world’s best hallway activity. Teachers were always telling Rachel to chill out.

Instead the boy touched her face with his fingertips.

And Nicoletta, indeed, chilled.

It was not the hand of a human.

“O
F COURSE HE’S A
human,” said her sister Jamie. Jamie was absolutely disgusted with the end of the story. “Nick, you blew it. I cannot believe you turned around and ran!” Jamie was always convinced that she would handle any situation whatsoever a hundred times better than her older sister. Here was yet more proof.