The Suburban Strange (9 page)

Marco gave her a smile. “Everyone does. Anyone who tells you they don’t practice their dancing when no one’s looking is lying.”

He left her to join the others on the dance floor, and Celia enjoyed watching them again. And again she sampled the strange feeling of being watched by a tall boy, dressed in black, whose gray eyes pierced her from the other side of the room. Just like the previous week, he stayed in place, watching her as though she were the most fascinating person there, and that made him the most fascinating person to her.

OVER HER FIRST SHIFTS
at the bookstore Celia gradually had let go of her nervousness. Her recent experiments in ignoring her fear —with Regine, at Suburban, at Diaboliques —made it easier to do with her first job. Her boss was a charming petite woman who favored clothes with lush textures: velvet, bouclé, angora, and ultrasuede. Her black-rimmed glasses set off her pale skin and white pixie haircut. Her name was Lippa Doeter, and Celia guessed she was German or Austrian, though her accent seemed to thicken and thin without warning. Lippa constantly chewed gum, barely moving her jaw and making small clicking noises that Celia found oddly relaxing. Lippa made her feel at home but quickly left her alone and returned to the back office, instructing her to call if she had any questions. There weren't many customers, so Celia had time to wander around and familiarize herself with the place. The walls were the color of mushrooms, and accent lights washed the chestnut wood shelves but left the rest of the room dim and cozy. Plush chairs upholstered in taupe linen stood waiting in alcoves. Lippa liked to play minimal classical music, and Celia kept returning to the computer screen to find out what she was hearing: Bach's unaccompanied cello suites, Schubert's piano impromptus, and newer works by Steve Reich and Hauschka.

Celia came to understand the bookstore as an act of civilized defiance on Lippa’s part. Space was begrudgingly given to the bestsellers and the mass-market successes, but that was not the customer she wanted to attract. Most of the store was devoted to enormous selections of literature, art, philosophy, and history, with subsections that were even more highbrow: criticism, cultural studies, performance theory, and linguistics. Celia figured she might have won the job because even if she wasn’t as refined as all these subjects, at least she didn’t look mass-market herself. Realizing this, she took care to dress the part. A few times Lippa complimented Celia on her outfits, and on her fourth day of work Lippa presented her with an unconstructed cropped blazer made of moss-colored crushed velvet.

“It’s by Romeo Gigli from back in the eighties. No one will design clothes like this ever again.” Lippa sighed, holding it so Celia could slip her arms into the sleeves.

“It—it’s gorgeous,” Celia stammered, looking down at her arms. “Maybe I should just borrow it?”

“No, it’s yours.” Lippa admired it on her for a moment. “I haven’t worn it in years. The sleeves are too long for me. It practically begged me to give it to you.”

Lippa’s attention shifted to the two women who were coming into the store. She left Celia to greet them, and Celia ran her hand over the soft fabric of the jacket, marveling at the gift. Lippa clustered together with the other two women. They looked like a trio of tiny birds as they linked arms and chatted. Celia gathered that the women were more than customers, and she smiled when they peeked over Lippa’s shoulder at her. They retreated to the end of an aisle to continue their conversation.

Celia decided the jacket was Lippa’s way of telling her she approved of Celia’s style at the bookstore, and she thanked the stars to have found a job where her newfound style was encouraged.

The clientele at Lippa’s was pleasant and Celia enjoyed helping them, but the evenings were a little slow, so she perused the shelves, finding treasure after treasure to explore. In the fine art section, she pulled down a volume of Mark Rothko’s paintings and had a delicious moment of déjà vu. The paintings with yellow reminded her of the golden gingko trees outside Suburban. She spent a few shifts with it at the front counter, and when she received her first paycheck she purchased the book and brought it home, putting it up on the shelf in her room to keep her sketchbooks company.

Her mother noticed it. “You like Mark Rothko?”

“I do. I wish I could see his paintings in person.”

“You did, when you were little. There was a retrospective at the National Gallery, and you saw the entire thing from a stroller. Most of them are really large. They take over your whole field of vision. It’s interesting that you like him, since your art is so different from his.”

“I know. It’s pretty much the opposite. I think that’s why I love it so much.” Celia wondered if anyone in the Rosary liked Mark Rothko.

6. MIDNIGHT TO MIDNIGHT

O
N A BRIGHT SEPTEMBER
afternoon, Celia thought if she could go back and meet up with the girl she had been in July, her two selves might not recognize each other. She spent her days differently. She thought about the world differently. She carried herself differently. She spoke to people differently. She wanted different things. At night Celia thumbed through the book of reproductions of Mark Rothko’s paintings. She read the preface, about how each painting had an emotional resonance that verged on the spiritual, and remembered Marco’s comment about Diaboliques being like church. He hadn’t been serious, but she understood how it was true, in a way. Celia had seen a quote on Liz’s notebook, from John Updike:
You must imagine your life, and then it happens
. She agreed. That was exactly what the Rosary did, and what she was trying to do, too, now. Liz used the cover of her notebook as a personal graffiti wall, and she had filled it with quotes from literary authors like Updike that Celia carefully transcribed into her own sketchbook.

“Have you read all these books?” she had asked Liz.

“Well, not all of them came from books—the Edith Wharton one is from one of her letters.” Liz pointed it out:
The human heart is insatiable, and I didn’t know, my own, I didn’t know!
“I’ve probably gotten half of these from books I’ve read. The others have come from other people, or from reading the quote somewhere. They make me want to be a better writer.”

As each Friday approached, Celia felt the growing buzz of anticipation for Diaboliques. She spent the week working on the new person she was becoming—stylish, a little mysterious, refined in whatever way it was possible for a sophomore in high school to be refined—and then she returned with her friends to the ideal place, Diaboliques, to see how her new persona felt. The music, the beautiful people, the sense of exclusivity—she loved it all.

Her fascination with the Leopard, as she’d secretly nicknamed the brooding gray-eyed boy who stared at her each week at Diaboliques, continued unchanged. He wasn’t spotted, of course, but he was lean and powerful, regal and untamed. Even though Regine had insisted the boy wasn’t a regular, he seemed like a fixture on the far side of the dance floor, always keeping his distance. Celia would find him across the room and they would stare for a moment at each other, making no gesture, no expression. And she would leave it at that and turn back to her friends. Except her heart beat faster, and she had to work harder to keep her expression cool and impassive.

As they were ascending to the top floor on their way to Patrick’s room on Celia’s fourth visit, she began to think about seeing the boy again, in his usual place across the room. Celia was in the front of the group this time, having realized no one was going to threaten her at Diaboliques, no matter how intimidating they looked. She enjoyed feeling confident. It made her want to do other confident things.

When she reached the crowded landing she turned back to the others just as a tall figure passed between her and them. Celia stepped back to give him room and realized a moment too late it was the Leopard. It was the closest by far he had ever come to her, and she felt a strange charge like a cloud of static electricity brushing against her as he walked by. If he had seen her, he didn’t stop. She turned to see his broad shoulders moving away from her as he made his way through the door into Patrick’s room. The Rosary were watching her expectantly, and Celia felt her confidence sputter inside her like a balloon losing air.    “Are you going to pass out, like that girl at school?” Brenden asked, his eyes laughing.

“Are you ever going to talk to him?” Marco asked her when they were inside Patrick’s room, safely across the dance floor from the Leopard. “Are you waiting for the clouds to part, for some kind of sign?”

Celia had regained her cool. “Maybe he’s waiting for a change in the weather, too. I don’t know what I would say.”

“I have a feeling you’ve thought about what you would say to him.”

“Maybe. But what happens? I find out he’s a jerk? Or we talk, and it starts out nice, but something goes wrong and then I don’t have this handsome fantasy guy staring at me anymore?”

“You sound like someone who has already crashed a handful of relationships, not someone who’s never had one,” Marco said. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“I don’t mean to be pessimistic. But I’m okay with this. I
am
. In case you haven’t noticed, I am not the fastest girl you’ve ever met. I don’t think I’ll ever be the kind of girl who plays with love.”

“Who said anything about love? How about some old-fashioned flirting? I’d just hate for him to lose interest because you didn’t give him any encouragement.”

“Oh, I’m supposed to encourage him?”

“Just a little.” Marco grinned, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Regine and Liz,” he said. “If you want, I’d be happy to distract them.”

“I don’t know. I kind of like it like this,” Celia said. “Everything is mysterious here.”

“Including you.” Marco held up his thumbs and forefingers to make a frame and peered at her through them like a photographer setting up a shot. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”

In the safety of real life, away from Diaboliques, Celia liked to daydream about the Leopard. She did think he admired her, even though she didn’t have a clear idea what was supposed to happen next. She couldn’t decide if she should be concerned. After all, the Leopard looked as though he easily could throw her over his shoulder and walk away with her, but she couldn’t find anything threatening in his stare. Celia really liked that he was so tall. She loved the idea of actually looking up into his steely eyes, if she ever stood close to him. And she could make herself blush simply by thinking about the way his clothes fit his athletic body, something she never could have brought herself to say out loud, even to Marco.

What would happen if the Leopard ever spoke to her? She couldn’t imagine his voice, but she could visualize him walking smoothly down the stairs from Diaboliques and out into the street and then climbing into some dark car, perhaps an old European model, forest green, which he drove to a secluded house, maybe sitting up until the late hours watching foreign films. Her fantasy went off the rails at some point, and she could no longer recognize the tall, quiet boy across the dance floor in it, but she kept trying, whenever she had a spare moment.

The Leopard took up a regular presence in Celia’s thoughts during the week now, as well. The chemistry class took their field trip to the local water purification plant, and on the bus Mariette quickly noticed that Celia’s thoughts were elsewhere.

“What did you say?” Celia asked her when Mariette’s voice broke through her daydream.

“I
asked
you if you’d ever seen any of Pedro Almodóvar’s movies. What are you thinking about? Or should I say, about
whom
are you thinking?” she asked.

“A guy I’ve seen at the club I go to on Fridays.”

“Diaboliques?”

“How did you know?” Celia was startled.

“Just a guess, based on your friends. I’ve never gone,” Mariette said. Celia was relieved, and then felt guilty for it. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him. We just stare at each other.”

“That’s cool.” Mariette smiled and looked out the bus window. “Maybe you’ll talk to him soon.”

“Maybe.” Celia looked up at Mr. Sumeletso as he came walking down the aisle of the bus. He smiled pleasantly at her, and she smiled back.

Confident she had Celia’s attention, Mariette began to chatter. “So, I’m trying to memorize the periodic table, but I can’t decide: does it make more sense to do them in order? One is hydrogen; two is helium; three is lithium; four is beryllium. Or if it’s better to know them by columns because they share properties, like the halogens: nine is fluorine; seventeen is chlorine; thirty-five is bromine; fifty-three is iodine . . .”

Celia rolled her eyes and let her thoughts wander again. She liked the way the Leopard took the whole Diaboliques scene on his own terms, leaving the theatricality of it to the others, the Rosary included. She liked the way he kept his distance from her—except for that one intoxicating near miss—while always making it clear he was interested. Mariette had fallen silent again, and Celia glanced over at her. Her lab partner had raised her hand to the bus window and was touching it absent-mindedly with her index finger. At each tap, ice crystals flared out across the glass, only to sublimate away a moment later. Celia didn’t say anything.

7. SCARY MONSTERS

A
S SEPTEMBER WORE ON
, the first cold snap of the season brought out new elements of the Rosary’s wardrobes for Celia to admire. “Best cover version.” Liz looked around the lunch table, a large stone-encrusted cross hanging from a chain around her neck over a chunky black turtleneck sweater. “I say Echo and the Bunnymen’s cover of ‘People Are Strange’ by the Doors.”

“Too faithful. Martin Gore’s version of ‘Gone’ by the Comsat Angels,” Ivo suggested. His knit blazer had cables running down the sleeves.

“Siouxsie and the Banshees’ cover of ‘Trust in Me’ from
Jungle Book
. Actually, that whole album of covers,” Regine said. She wore a dark wool dress with a series of kilt pins closing it down the front.