The Suburban Strange (10 page)

“Cocteau Twins’ version of ‘Frosty the Snowman,’” Brenden said distractedly, paging through a catalog. The wide knot on his necktie filled the space between his collar and the V-neck of his marled sweater.

Ivo looked over Brenden’s shoulder. “You’re really going to get a class ring?”

“Yeah.” Brenden smiled a little sheepishly. “I know it’s kitsch, but I want one.”

“So, that curse you thought was happening, on sophomore girls?” Liz turned to Celia. “It seems you’re not the only one.”

“Really?” Celia thought Liz was toying with her.

“What are you talking about?” Ivo asked.

Regine was happy to explain. “Remember when Elsie got stung in the parking lot on the first day of school? It was the day
before
her birthday. Then somebody noticed that the other four girls who’ve turned sixteen since school started have all had bad things happen on the days before
their
birthdays. Lacie passed out in the science wing on the day before her birthday, and they finally figured out she had mono. She’ll be out for the rest of the semester. Tillie had an epileptic seizure, Louisa got glass in her eye and scratched her cornea really badly, and Carol got her hair caught in a fan in shop class—all on the days before their birthdays.”

“Who is naming these girls?” Ivo said dismissively.

“Their parents, I would imagine,” Liz offered, and exchanged smirks with her brother.

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” Celia said.

“Or your friend Mariette could be casting spells on people,” Brenden said, making googly eyes at Celia and grinning.

“I never should have said anything about Mariette.” Celia smiled helplessly. She was pretty sure her friends didn’t think Mariette really was a witch. It was such a strange thing to think, anyway, but Mariette probably didn’t interest the Rosary enough for them to give her that much thought. The conversation made Celia realize she was fiddling with the lock on Pandora’s box. If anyone else witnessed the inexplicable things Mariette did, it couldn’t end well for Mariette. Celia hoped Mariette would drop back off the Rosary’s radar.

The birthday curse, however, had become a popular topic of speculation around school. It was sensational and ominous, and since there weren’t many facts, people felt free to embellish them as they saw fit. When another girl slipped and fell down the stairs on the day before her birthday, knocking out a tooth on the way, the curse was accepted as fact. Soon a list of girls with upcoming sixteenth birthdays was compiled and circulated, and it was taken for granted the girls on the list were at risk. The next girl who reached the eve of her sixteenth birthday spent the day under heavy scrutiny.

“The poor thing. I’d feel like I was living in an aquarium,” Mariette said, glancing over at the girl in question that afternoon in chemistry lab.

“It’s ridiculous,” Celia said. “People are ridiculous.” She was bored because they were going to finish their experiment early, as usual. Mr. Sumeletso was standing at the next table over, his hands on his hips as he advised their classmates. Celia picked up her pencil and idly began to sketch him from the back. She roughed in his shoulders and arms with a few lines and had started on the curl of his right hand when he flinched and pulled his hand up to his face as though he had been bitten. Celia didn’t see an insect flying away from him, and she wondered what had happened.

Her thoughts were disrupted by an explosion. A beaker shattered on the birthday girl’s burner two tables away, and the classroom erupted in shouts and screams. Mr. Sumeletso rushed to the girl and hauled her over to the big sink to rinse her eyes and skin. “Call nine-one-one! And someone go to the office!” he bellowed as the lacerations on the girl’s arms began to bloom red. Mariette and Celia stood back with most of their classmates, stunned into silence. Mr. Sumeletso wrapped the crying girl’s arms in towels and took her downstairs, and in a few minutes they heard the ambulance wailing toward the school.

“You know, I would be so on edge from being watched like that, I’d probably blow something up, too,” Celia said as they returned to their experiment.

“I don’t know. There could be something to the whole curse thing,” Mariette said, her tone more serious than Celia was used to hearing it.

“You think there is?”

“Well, it’s seven for seven now, which is a bit more than a coincidence, right?” Mariette brightened up. “At least my birthday isn’t until May, and you’re not until April. So I guess we don’t have to be too concerned for a while, hm?”

Celia nodded, watching Mariette casually toss solutions together, marveling that even an accident two tables away wasn’t enough to make her more cautious.

“Hey, do you want to hang out on Saturday? We could go get ice cream sundaes.”

“Oh, I would, but I have to work at the bookstore.” Celia thought it would have been nice. She hoped Mariette didn’t feel like she was avoiding her.

CELIA WAS SURPRISED WHEN REGINE
announced that the Rosary would be attending the first school dance of the year. "You guys go to school dances? Really?"

“We do. It’s not nearly as much fun as Diaboliques, but I guess it is fun, in its own way,” Regine replied. “The student council is expected to attend, so Brenden has to be there, and we go to keep him company.”

“Most of the music is terrible, although sometimes Brenden convinces the DJ to play something cool, and then we all get to dance while everyone else looks confused,” Liz said, smiling. Celia thought she could imagine it, and smiled along.

“We set ourselves apart from most people around here,” Ivo said, “but we are part of the school, and I think some people almost expect us to show up. We are pretty well known, after all.”

“I don’t know about that,” Brenden said. “It’s a touch egocentric, isn’t it?”

“We’re in high school. Of course we’re egocentric,” Ivo replied matter-of-factly. “And there’s no doubt in my mind everyone here knows who we are.”

“I don’t think that translates to people hoping we’re going to show up at a dance,” Brenden countered.

“Anyway, we’ll leave as soon as Brenden can get away, and go straight to Diaboliques,” Regine said. “No school function is worth missing Diaboliques.”

The school dance matched up with Celia’s memory of the ninth grade dances she’d fled—far more juvenile than Diaboliques, and in no way picturesque. The difference was that this time it didn’t matter to her. She easily could remember the slow-motion panic she had felt before, lost in her own thicket of doubt in the darkened cafeteria of her old school, standing alone, then leaving alone, going home and crying and wanting to die . . . Now the kids flailing around, clothes askew, only made her long for the sophisticated darkness of Diaboliques. She held court with the Rosary on the first two bleachers off to one side in the darkened gym, and they watched the proceedings idly, rarely bothering to comment. Mr. Sumeletso stood in a cluster of bored teachers making small talk by the doors, and Celia thought of Mariette, who had told Celia she wasn’t coming, mumbling something about starting a quilt. Mariette’s list of interests grew constantly—unicycling, bonsai, meditation, sign language—but they all were things she did alone. Celia wondered if Mariette had any friends, and then it occurred to her that Mariette probably considered Celia a friend. She decided that was true.

Liz was staring across the gymnasium at Skip the football player, who was dancing with his date. Celia traded a knowing look with Marco. But in the next moment the dance came to an abrupt halt when a girl slipped and fell on her arm. Word spread that her wrist was broken, along with the news tomorrow was her sixteenth birthday. She’d been exuberantly celebrating having made it through her curse day unscathed.

“Still a coincidence?” Liz said to Ivo as they waited for the music to start again.

“It’s freaky, but would she have been jumping around so much if she weren’t relieved about dodging a curse?” Ivo said.

“That’s eight for eight,” Brenden said.

“Maybe we should ask Mariette,” Ivo said.

“This has nothing to do with Mariette,” Celia protested. They all looked at her and she weakly added, “She’s not even here.” She wasn’t sure what to think about Mariette and the curse, but she didn’t like to hear her friends impugn her other friend.

Marco didn’t let it go. “If she’s a witch, would she have to be here to curse someone? She could be at home putting pins in a doll or something.”

“We should conduct an investigation of our own, to see if there’s anything suspicious,” Ivo suggested.

“Anything suspicious where?”

“In her locker.”

Liz looked at him incredulously. “Are you kidding? Even if she
is
a witch, do you think she keeps her grimoire in her locker?”

“Well, this dance is particularly boring. What else are we going to do?”

“I could go request something,” Brenden said.

Ivo looked around at them with an uncharacteristic gleam in his eye. “I’ll get a bolt cutter from shop and meet you in the sophomore hall.”

They got up, and Celia appealed to Marco, “We shouldn’t do this. It’s not right, and it doesn’t make any sense anyway. You guys don’t really think she’s a witch, do you?”

“No, nobody really thinks Mariette is a witch.” Marco sighed as the others walked out of the gym ahead of them. “This is a flimsy excuse to make a lame dance more interesting. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. We’re going to go up there, and Ivo’s going to show up and say that the shop was locked, and that’ll be the end of it. If he even goes to the shop in the first place. If he even knows where the shop
is
. We’re going to walk around in the dark hallways and startle each other, and then it’s going to be over, and we’ll have wasted half an hour before we can leave. The thing with Mariette is just an excuse. It’s an empty dare, like running up Boo Radley’s front walk. I promise.”

“Please tell me who Boo Radley is,” Celia said.

“Junior lit. You’ll read it.” Marco smiled, linking arms with Celia. “C’mon.”

They made their way up to the sophomore hall, which was darkened and still. Up ahead were the silhouettes of Regine, Brenden, and Liz. Marco crept up and tickled Liz, who shrieked.

“Stop that! Where’s her locker?” Liz asked.

“Over there.” Celia reluctantly led them to it, but she was confused when she got there. “I thought it was this one.”

“Without a lock? Are you sure?”

“It’s fourth from the left—yeah, I’m sure this is hers. I don’t know why there isn’t a lock on it.”

“Well, this will make our job easier,” Liz said. “Who wants to open it?”

They stood there looking at each other in the darkness. The exit signs glowed like jack-o’-lanterns over the stairwell doors at either end of the hall. “You should do it, Celia. You can always tell her you needed to borrow her notes or something.”

“I don’t want to,” Celia said. “She’s done nothing wrong, and she’s always been nice to me.” Marco gave her a look that said,
Humor them
.

Ivo arrived. “The shop is locked. I guess the Bloodhound Gang is done for the night.”

“Her locker is unlocked.” Brenden pointed.

“So, did you open it?” Ivo asked.

“Not yet. Celia doesn’t want to do it because she has a sense of integrity,” Liz said, and her approving tone reassured Celia.

“Well, I can respect that. It was my idea, so I should do it,” Ivo said. He went up to the locker and tried to lift the latch. “I think it’s stuck.” He jiggled the latch but couldn’t get it to rise. “It’s jammed.”

“Maybe that’s why it’s not locked. She got a new locker,” Liz said.

They stood there looking at the latch. Marco had failed to predict this outcome. Celia knew she had seen Mariette open that locker earlier that same day, but she didn’t want to prolong this excursion, so she wasn’t about to share that information. Brenden took a turn at the latch, and then Marco, but no one could open the locker.

“Oh well, I guess we’re done,” Ivo said. “But you should keep an eye on her, Celia. If bad things are happening and you’ve seen her levitating, she has to be considered a suspect in our curse investigation.”

“I haven’t seen her levitating!” Celia laughed in spite of herself. She wasn’t sure if she was more surprised that Ivo had made a joke or that he’d looked directly at her.

They took the long way back to the gymnasium, and then Brenden decided it was time to make his play with the DJ. “Okay, Book of Love, coming right up,” he said. When the song started, Marco pulled Celia to her feet, saying, “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?” She knew he was trying to distract her after the strange excursion upstairs, but she shook her head, not ready to try it, even here. The rest of them went out to the floor, and Celia enjoyed the way the rest of the students looked on in uncertainty as the Rosary danced.

“It’s amazing how none of these people will dance to a song unless they know it,” Liz said, passing close by Celia. The whole scene was the exact opposite of Diaboliques. Here the Rosary were the exception, not the rule. They were rebels instead of compatriots. The five of them had their moment, and then the DJ returned to the familiar format and the Rosary evacuated the dance floor as it filled back up.
It’s almost as though they gave a performance,
Celia thought.

8. UNKNOWN PLEASURES

O
N MONDAY MORNING CELIA
positioned herself in a doorway with a view of Mariette’s locker, which was still missing the lock. October was a few days away, and on the classroom door across from Celia a cardboard witch with green skin and a mangy broom ogled her. Soon enough Mariette arrived. Celia watched her touch her finger to the front of the locker, quickly tracing a symbol before she easily lifted the latch and opened the door.

Celia felt tangled in a web of concerns. Even though she had done her best to suppress the idea with her friends, Celia wondered: Did Mariette really have supernatural powers? Was there really a curse? Did Mariette have anything to do with it? Should she confront Mariette? Or should she try to protect her if someone else became suspicious of her? Did Celia have any real ability to protect her, even if she wanted to?