The Suburban Strange (16 page)

“I couldn’t believe it. I took the book down to check it out, but they told me it was part of the permanent collection and I couldn’t take it home. I should have just sat down and read the rest of it. But I was running out of time, and I figured I would just come back another day and look at it some more. Before I gave it back, I copied the third admonition. I don’t know why I decided to do that—the admonition scared me, and I guess I thought if it had to do with Suburban and fifteen-year-old girls maybe I should keep it in mind. You remember how surprised I was when you said something about a curse, back in the first week of school?

“Anyway, a couple days later I went back to the library. But when I climbed up into that room, the book was nowhere to be found. I searched for
You Are Here
in the computer, and there was nothing. I even asked the librarian, and he couldn’t find it. He acted like I was playing a joke. It was so strange and confusing, and I was so disappointed, because there was so much more in that book, and I wish I could have seen it all. But I’ve learned that some pretty unbelievable things lurk around, right there in plain sight, that citizens just don’t seem to see. And I think this book was one of them—it was like it had come into existence just for that day, to give me this admonition. I think sometimes things appear at a specific time and place to pass something important along, and then they disappear. I don’t know where admonitions really come from. I guess they’re like oracles, but that book, it makes me think sometimes admonitions are supposed to be found by people other than the person to whom they’re addressed, particularly in situations like this, when someone is supposed to stop them from happening.”

“Wow,” Celia said.

“There might be a way to track an admonition back to the person to whom it belongs, but I don’t know how to do it. And there might be a way to cancel out an admonition so it doesn’t work. Maybe not. At first I wasn’t sure anything was happening—maybe the person wouldn’t try to fulfill the admonition? But when I heard that girl was stung on the first day of school, and then the other girl passed out, I knew someone was trying, and I had to do something. The only thing I’ve been able to think of is to try to protect a girl when I know it’s the day before her birthday, but I’m not doing very well with that, either.”

“What do you do?”

“I make a protective serum. I think it works, or at least helps. The injuries probably would be worse if I weren’t doing it. They would probably be fatal, and then the person could try to collect the girl’s final breath and fulfill the admonition. The serum might work better if I could figure out how to get more of it onto each girl.”

“How do you get
any
of it on them?”

“I put it on the lock on her locker at the end of the day before the day it’s supposed to happen. I figure everyone has to open her locker first thing in the morning.”

“Smart. And now I understand why you were making that chart listing everyone’s locker!” Celia laughed.

Mariette laughed, too, in surprise. “You notice everything! See, if you were a citizen, you wouldn’t pick up on these things! You have to be one of the Kind!”

Celia shrugged. “Well, no one has died, so you must be doing something right.”

“Yes, but there’s another possibility. The Unkind who’s doing these things might not be very strong, either. This Unkind might be a beginner, like me. If it’s someone our age, that’s likely. Maybe that person is doing a poor job, and when he or she tries to kill a girl, the spell is weak, so it’s only strong enough to hurt her. It’s hard to tell if I’m succeeding or if the Unkind is failing.”

“According to this, then, you have to kill the person to stop him? Or her?”

“Not necessarily. Admonitions are like oracles—often they don’t mean what you think they mean. The way it’s worded, it could mean the person doesn’t have to be killed but just made to appear dead—maybe just unconscious for a while. If I have to do it, I would definitely prefer that,” Mariette said sincerely.

“So you have an admonition?”

“I’m in between,” Mariette said. “Every member of the Kind usually has an admonition. They lead us to the next destination on our journey. Once we finish one, we get another one. As one chapter ends, the next one begins,” Mariette said. “I fulfilled my last admonition right at the beginning of school, and I’ve been waiting to receive a new one. Usually it doesn’t take this long. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been missing it.”

“What did you have to do for your last admonition?”

“Is it okay if I don’t tell you?” Mariette flushed. “I don’t—some admonitions are kind of personal.”

“Sure, I understand.” Celia turned her attention back to the Unkind admonition in Mariette’s notebook. “Can I copy this down? There’s so much there, I’d like to look at it again. Maybe I can help you.”

“I guess so.” Mariette sounded hesitant. “You have to make sure no one else sees it. Promise to keep all of this a secret. It’s very important.”

“Definitely.” Celia pulled out her sketchbook and was turning to a blank page when Mariette stopped her.

“I keep getting glimpses of your drawings, and I’m dying for a better look. Do you mind?”

“Of course not! You’ve shared so much with me.” Celia watched Mariette leaf slowly through the pages. She nodded when Mariette correctly guessed her mother and her father and identified Regine. Then she showed Mariette she was turning to the very last page before she copied the admonition as quickly as she could. “I won’t tell anyone about this.”

“Not even your friends. No one. Not even the smallest detail.” Mariette locked eyes with Celia. “Promise.”

“I promise. I swear,” Celia said.

“And who knows, maybe you’ll get your first admonition soon, and we’ll find out
you’re
the person to vanquish whoever’s hurting girls. Probably the reason I’m not being more successful is that it’s up to another Kind to put a stop to it.”

“Mariette, you should get help, and not from me—from someone really powerful. This could be dangerous. This person is trying to kill someone, and if you’re trying to stop whoever it is, you could get hurt, or worse. Have you told the florist?”    “No, I haven’t. We haven’t gone to my grandparents’ since school started. I don’t think there’s much she could do, anyway.”

“And there’s no one else who’s closer?”

“No one I know.”

“You should get help. Tell me you’ll get help.”

“I’ll tell the florist. I can probably find the phone number to the greenhouse.” Mariette sounded as if she were saying it only to appease Celia.

EVEN THOUGH MARIETTE SEEMED
convinced of it, Celia had trouble believing she herself could be one of the Kind. Sure, the list of inexplicable experiences had been growing since school started, but Celia never had been more than a spectator to any of them. Wasn't it far more likely she was a citizen who had glimpsed something that should have stayed hidden, as her boss at the bookstore apparently longed to do? Nonetheless, Celia felt a new devotion to Mariette, one that rivaled her devotion to the Rosary. Two days ago it would have been hard to convince Celia anything could have done that.

That night she sat in her room, trying to feel something. Would it be like a ghost limb she never had known was missing? Would it be a new sense, or new knowledge? She closed her eyes. The seam on her stocking was poking the bottom of her foot. Her calves were sore from the boots she had worn that day. She was hungry for dinner. She had a hangnail on her left index finger. She needed to wash her hair.

I am not one of the Kind.
Celia sighed.
Or if I am, I am the dullest, most unpowerful Kind ever.
She got up to work on her dancing.

"
TODAY IS THE DAY I'M
asking Ivo to the Sadie Hawkins dance," Regine said on Monday morning in the car. "Look at the invitation I made him."

With mixed feelings Celia examined the beautiful collage, then replaced it in the envelope. “I wouldn’t have guessed you would want to go to something like the Sadie Hawkins.”

“You’re right, but I don’t get to spend a lot of time alone with Ivo, so I’ll take the opportunity,” Regine said.

“I know Brenden and Marco are together a lot on the weekends,” Celia reflected out loud. “But when we go out as a group, it’s always obvious they’re a couple. You and Ivo don’t seem to act that way.”

“Ivo’s not like that. He doesn’t like to display affection. I can respect that. Maybe it’s unusual for people our age not to be so demonstrative with our feelings, but it’s kind of a relief, really. Ivo is very subtle when he likes someone. I used to be nervous he liked a girl at Diaboliques, because he talks to her almost every week, but they’re just friends, so it’s okay.”

Celia thought it wasn’t her place to help Regine understand how she was mistaken about Ivo, and then she wondered if friends were supposed to try in situations like this. Was she failing Regine somehow by not saying anything? Was today the day Regine’s feelings were to be crushed? Celia was nervous on Regine’s behalf, but it turned out there was no need. Ivo accepted the invitation, prompting more grumbling from Marco and even comments from Brenden and Liz.

“He does like that girl at Diaboliques—what’s her name, Isadore?” Brenden said. “I think he’s going along with this just because he doesn’t want the whole disaster of rejecting Regine. He doesn’t want the whole group to be affected, so he’s just waiting until the year is over.”

“I would say that’s noble, but it’s really just pathetic,” Liz said. “When is she going to wake up?”

Celia predicted no one would confront anyone about anything, and then Regine would drag Ivo off to the dance. “I’m so glad neither of us is a girl, or you know Ivo would find a way to guilt us into going to Sadie Hawkins with them,” she heard Marco say to Brenden.

"
WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT
me like that?" Mariette figured out the answer before she finished asking the question, and she set her pencil down. "You can't stop thinking about it, can you?"

“Are you surprised?” Celia said.

“Think of it this way,” Mariette said. “Your drawings are just as amazing and miraculous and completely impossible as any of the things you’ve seen me do. I’ll never understand how you can do that with a pencil.”

“My drawings don’t do what you can do,” Celia said.

“Of course they do. You bring people to life. That’s more powerful than anything I can do.”

Celia thought for a little. “Still, why do you do all this normal stuff?” She gestured vaguely at the classroom around them. “You could be doing anything else, if you wanted. I mean, couldn’t you?”

“Not really. When something is extraordinary it’s because all the ordinary things make it extraordinary by comparison. I’m not explaining it well. If it was your birthday every day, after a while it wouldn’t be special anymore. It would just be another day. The other three hundred sixty-four ordinary days are what makes your birthday special, right? It’s weird, but as awesome as it is to have powers, I really like being ‘normal’ most of the time, just a high school girl—it helps me appreciate the powers. Does that make any sense?”

“I think so. But I’m still going to stare at you sometimes,” Celia said.

“Okay, go right ahead,” Mariette said, smiling in a way Celia hadn’t seen before.

That night at the bookstore Celia watched Lippa and the rest of the Troika when they came in. The three petite women clustered together as they walked to the back of the store, looking like a benevolent creature in a bundle of astrakhan coats, with three heads and six legs, engrossed in a conversation with herself. Celia wondered what they thought they knew about the Kind and the Unkind. She had no intention of betraying Mariette's trust, but it was like knowing someone who searched for UFOs, and knowing a space alien, and not closing the triangle.

Later, after she had accompanied her friends to the door and unlinked arms with them, Lippa came over to Celia at the counter. “You seem interested in the Troika.”

“I was thinking of drawing you,” Celia lied.

“I thought perhaps you were still thinking about what I told you before. Stories like that, about the Unkind, are fascinating, aren’t they?”

“But do you believe them?”

“You asked me that before. For centuries people have whispered about the Unkind. Most of them have never seen an Unkind in person, despite spending their lives trying. But something about the stories is so compelling, people believe it anyway, without proof. At some point it’s not really about belief, then. It’s something that tells us about ourselves. No matter how rational we are, why is there always a part of us, deep down inside, that believes in monsters?”

“Wouldn’t you like to have proof?”

“Like meeting an Unkind, or a Kind? It’s just so unlikely. Other people have tried much harder than I have and failed. I think I mentioned stories about mysterious books that appear and disappear, which contain a supernatural history and give messages to the Unkind and the Kind. Having the bookstore, I sometimes wish one of those books would appear here, in the stacks, and I would have a moment to glimpse it myself before it vanished again. That would be proof enough for me.”

On her way home Celia pondered the irony of it all. Lippa had told Celia what she thought was a fanciful tale, but it corroborated Mariette’s story about the Kind and the Unkind. Celia had witnessed things Lippa had given up on ever seeing, but Mariette had sworn her to secrecy, and Celia understood why.

When she got home Celia pulled out her sketchbook to draw the Troika. Her drawing output had dropped considerably since the beginning of the year. It wasn’t difficult to understand the cause: In previous years she had spent every free moment at school drawing. Now she spent that time with the Rosary or Mariette. In previous years every night had been spent hunched over her sketchbook. Now she worked at the bookstore, or went to Diaboliques, or danced around her bedroom. She still carried her notebook everywhere with her. She would have felt naked without it. But the comfort it gave her was more symbolic now.