The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) (12 page)

“Come on,” Ivan spoke in a commanding tone. Blaire’s shaking hand grabbed Ivan’s again, as he yanked her with even more raw power than the first time. For a moment, she was not sure if he was pulling her to safety or dragging her back into something more dreadful than falling to her death.

Planting her knee onto the edge of the roof, she was able to get a sturdy grip on the top of the grating with both of her hands. Blaire threw one of her legs over, and then the other before she turned and pressed her back into the slanted roof. She placed her forearm over Ivan’s chest, pushing him back against the roof next to her.

Adrenaline and fading waves of fear pulsed through every part of her body. He stared at her, and his eyes traveled down her body to her thighs, which were covered as they always were. He cocked his head slightly, and then lifted his eyes back to hers as if he were disappointed in some way, and Blaire knew exactly what he was looking at, what he was seeing through her pants.
But how could he know? How could he possibly know?

“Blaire!” she heard Travis’ voice coming from the deck.

Vesna was waiting for them in her robe at the bottom of the stairs, a splenetic frown set deep in the wrinkles of her face.

After securing the roof door, Travis ushered Blaire and Ivan safely down the stairs to the
third
floor hallway, where he locked the door to the roof securely, turning to Blaire to speak in a whisper, “What the hell happened?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“W
HAT THE HELL HAPPENED?” Marko exploded, giving the same
spine
-tingling effect as the sound of a glass dish crashing onto a hard floor. Blaire jumped. Her nerves were not helped by the fact that she had not slept since coming off the roof the night before.

“Marko, I am so sorry! I don’t know what happened.”

“What were you thinking?” Marko slammed his hand into his desk.

“I don’t know. I must have left the keys in one of the rooms when I did the bed check. I don’t know how I missed them.” Her confession was muddled by her profound attempts to recall the point at which she had left her keys behind, but it was useless and mattered little. Anxiety rose in her like it would in a chained magician who had somehow forgotten the trick in a tank full of rising water.

“This is why we have strict rules when it comes to the children! This is why their doors are locked at night! And if I didn’t know better, I would venture to say that you may have left the door unlocked on purpose in some misdirected protest to what you consider inhumane!”

“No. God, no! I swear that was not it!” Blaire cried out while wondering if she had subconsciously allowed her personal views to intervene on her conscious action.

“Marko, it was not intentional, I swear. I made a mistake.”

“A mistake?” he interrupted.

“An enormous mistake.” Blaire updated the seriousness of her foul in her admission. “A completely idiotic, ridiculous, careless, mindless, crazy mistake that will never, ever happen again if you give me another chance. I’m so, so sorry,” she concluded with no other
self
-loathing insults left in her repertoire for the pathetic apology.

Marko looked at the young teacher and grunted deeply like an animal in the wild, giving up a fight with an already defeated foe before turning, mercifully, away.

“You put one of my children at risk, Ms. Baker.”

“I know.”

“You put yourself at risk. I just cannot have that here. Do you know what would have happened if one or both of you had fallen from the roof? Not only would you have been severely injured, if not killed, but this place could be shut down. The other children would have nowhere to go. I don’t think that you understand the gravity of what could have happened last night.”

“I do, Marko. I have learned an invaluable lesson from this.”

“I’m not here to teach lessons, Ms. Baker. I am here to provide for the children.” Marko’s voice cut through her
self
-pity swiftly and without remorse.

“I understand. Nothing like this will ever happen again. I assure you,” Blaire pleaded.

“You are here voluntarily, and I know that your work is important to you and even more importantly…we need the help; therefore, I am not going to let you go.”

Blaire tried to find an appropriate reaction to the news that she was not being fired from her
volunteer
job, but it was difficult.

“Thank you so much.”

“One more chance, but if anything like this happens
again
—”

“I know, I know,” Blaire stated, not allowing him to finish, feeling that just the speaking of the incident, the voicing of the details, would reopen the event like tearing stitches away from a wound long before it healed. “It won’t happen again,” she added.

Marko sat behind his desk, nervously fiddling his hands, raising his eyebrows, and then letting them fall again.

“Fine, but from now on we keep all of the rooms locked at night, do you understand? All of them, including yours. I don’t want
anyone
getting hurt,” he said waving her away. It was a gesture she would have usually protested immediately, but in this situation she felt lucky that he had forgiven her negligence and took the dismissal in submission, like a naughty puppy.

“I will apologize to Ivan,” she said.

“Don’t!” he stopped her sternly. “You have done enough when it comes to him. Vesna will look after him for today, and you should probably keep your distance for now. I’m sure you scared him to death.”

Back in her room, Blaire rifled through her bottom drawer until she found her cigarette box, but it was empty. She threw it back into the drawer and continued sifting through things until she uncovered a little pouch. She opened it and sighed in relief when she discovered an unopened pack of cigarettes.

Blaire locked herself in the bathroom and began unraveling the wrapping that covered the box. She patted her pants for a lighter, but was disappointed when she realized she had put on a long, cotton, pocketless skirt that morning. Blaire put the cigarette in her mouth and spotted the lighter in her pouch just as a glimmer caught her eye. Carefully, Blaire pulled out the straight razor. Like a great lover mistaken for dead, suddenly turning up on her doorstep, she eyed it with peculiar affection. She thought that she had gotten rid of all of these and had not noticed it when she packed the little pouch for her trip. Blaire worked hysterically to lift her skirt as if her history would disappear. There would be no escape, no one escaped, no one ever escaped.

There they were on her thighs, stripes of comfort and of shame. Defacing by the razor’s edge started a couple of years after the accident. Initially, her legs were scarred by shards of glass lodged into her during the accident. Those scars had always been meaningful, as they were the scars of a survivor and they healed over time, but no one ever told her about the scars that were on the inside, the ones that never healed. Those inner scars were so excruciating that all you could do to numb the pain was to create more pain, pain that sprung fresh and created red flowing fountains that instantaneously allowed the poison that was on the inside to seep out as one watched in relief. They too were external scars that she had earned, extensions of the ones she received on the day of the accident, scars that were a road map of the person she was on the inside. The most recent scar was months old. Blaire stopped this ritual shortly before coming to St. Sebastian as a testament to the changes that she was making in her life, shortly before picking up the smoking habit. Things would be different here.

She closed her eyes and pressed the rusty razor into her thigh, not hard enough to do any damage, just enough to feel the sweet, lusty tingle flow down her spine, teasing herself with the dangerous opportunity to, once again, take the pain out of her heart and put it somewhere it could heal. She pressed harder and felt the initial pierce, the pain of the skin breaking, the high of her emotional tensions preparing to pour out of her body.

BLAIRE
. She heard her mother calling to her in a deep voice choked with ashes and smoke.

Blaire’s eyes popped opened, and she threw the tool into the toilet’s mouth in a rush to flush the object as if it were an animal that would fight to get back out like a frightened crab in a pot of boiling water. Frantically, Blaire pulled out waves of white tissue paper from the dispenser and pressed the soft white mound against the small laceration on her thigh. Sinking into the corner of the stall she smoked two cigarettes.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
s soon
a
s
Blaire
st
e
pp
e
d out of
the
fr
ont door,
t
h
e
bi
r
ds began chirping loudly,
a
nd
the
sun shone so b
r
i
g
ht
l
y
on h
e
r
f
ac
e
t
h
a
t she
h
a
d to blo
c
k it with one
h
a
nd. The
w
o
r
ld outside
the
w
a
lls of
St. Sebastian
w
as so unlike the one
insid
e
.
Blaire
st
a
tion
e
d
h
er
s
e
lf
in s
e
v
eral ra
ndom spots in
fr
ont of
the
building,
a
tt
e
mpting
to
g
e
t
e
no
u
g
h reception to pho
n
e
Emm
a
.

She crisscrossed the side of the building, looking as if she were playing a bizarre game of red light, green light, but could never gather enough bars to place the call. She gave up for the moment and decided to poke around the shed for more things for her classroom, and then maybe she could get some reception by the pool.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, Blaire looked up to the spot on top of the building where her life had hung in the balance just two nights before. She shook off a chill before continuing toward the shed. At the end of the drive, she stopped and looked down the backside of the building, eyeing the place where the cement steps led underground.

There’s something in the basement,
she could hear Ivan’s soft voice echoing.

Until that moment Blaire had been so caught up in the aftermath of the incident that she had forgotten Ivan’s solemn words, and the more she thought, the more she realized that he had spoken those words to her not once, but twice. A chilly breeze blew over her ballet slipper shoes and coasted up her legs, soon enveloping her entire body.

As she walked toward the steps, Blaire felt rebellious. Though there were never any instructions that the basement was off limits, she still felt like a child sneaking cookies from the jar before dinner, mischievous, but harmless. The black paint on the railing that led down the small flight of steps was rusted and peeling to a
reddish
-orange color. Damp leaves had gathered in the corners of the underground compartment just before the door. Blaire looked around cautiously before her descent. With every step she took down, there was less light, and the chirping of the birds grew fainter along with the unceasing splash of the sea waves. At the bottom of the stairs just out of the light, she found herself standing face to face with the foreboding door. Blaire jiggled the knob, which barely moved, and noticed that the door had a lock at the knob and a rusting silver padlock in another hinge a little further up.

If there was something in the basement, it was being guarded like the family jewels
,
Blaire thought to herself.

With her keys she began a lengthy process of trial and error only to realize that none of the keys fit either of the locks. They had given her keys to everything but the basement.

She bent down to examine the slit underneath the door, the place from where she imagined blood was spilling out on her very first evening at St. Sebastian. As soon as she placed her fingertips on the cold ground, the hairs on the back of her neck lifted. Something was behind her. Something sinister descended on her.

Slowly, she turned to see that several black crows now lined each of the concrete steps that led down to the basement. The dark creatures twitched anxiously as they eyed her, and Blaire’s lips curled in revulsion. They were a gang of black watchers, their heads all cocked at strange angles of curiosity, flaunting their flawless black coats and their sharp beaks that were ready to pluck out her eyes at the first false move. Worst of all were their beady,
white
-rimmed black pupils digging into her, pulling her insides out like a medical examiner performing an autopsy.

Even the crows knew that she had no right to be down there, she thought, but again perhaps they didn’t care about her at all, because they themselves wanted to know what peculiar thing was on the other side of the red door.

There’s something in the basement
,
the repeated whisper assaulted her from every angle. It seemed to be a ghost embedded in the very nature of this place, a part of St. Sebastian as much as its brick and mortar.

She feared the consequence of even the slightest movement as the pecking little devils examined her like an object of prey. Blaire shrank further back as a dark shadow came over the steps, blocking out the sunlight.

“Blaire!” a voice spoke, startling the birds, causing them to flap their wings and fly in every direction out of the pit. Blaire shielded herself from the chaos of the departing crows, and then she ran up the steps to see a clear image of Travis in his workout clothes.

“What are you doing down there playing with birds?” he asked.

She turned and looked back down the stairs in time to see one lonely black feather coasting back and forth on the currents of a light wind until it settled peacefully on the gray cement.

“I was not playing with birds, Travis,” she explained as she dusted off her clothes. “I was just…just…looking to see if there was any more stuff for my classroom in the basement.” She took off in a huff to make her way back around the building.

“Was there?” he asked, struggling to keep up with her.

“I don’t know. It was locked.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Blaire’s voice started to soften.

“Sure?”

“I’m sure. I’m just still a little upset about Ivan, I guess.”

“Blaire, everything will be fine. I’m going to finish up my workout, and I will be in my office in about an hour if you want to talk.”

“Fine,” Blaire answered coarsely.

Travis placed his earbuds back in his ears and jogged on ahead of her.

Inside of the building, she wrangled her windblown hair into a bun before rounding the corner toward her classroom, nearly colliding into a strange man.

“Oh, sorry,” the man said as he grabbed her shoulders lightly to make sure that she didn’t stumble.

“No, I’m sorry,” Blaire responded.

“No, I’m sorry.” He pointed out a dark smudge that his greasy hand had made on her blouse.

“Oh,” she said as she looked down. “It’s okay.”

“I’m Latif. I think we met a while back at Berek’s.” He held out his clean hand.

“Right, I’m Blaire.” She was trying hard to control her smile. “You work here?” Blaire asked noticing that he carried an oversized, dusty case.

“Marko hired me to take care of some handy work around the place.”

“I thought that was what Heinrik was for?”

“Heinrik takes care of odd jobs, but people call me when they need a real handyman. He wants me to fix the heating before winter weather sets in and the elevator too. I think he’s trying to impress you Americans.”

“Well, it will be nice to have the elevator working,” Blaire said, which was followed by a moment of silence that was neither empty nor awkward, but completely comfortable. “I better get going, I have a class.” She scooted passed him and continued down the hall. Before stepping inside of her classroom, she took one last glance at Latif who was headed toward the elevator.

After dinner that evening, Blaire found a quiet spot in the waiting area and tried to read, but was asleep within minutes.

When she awoke, her eyes fluttered lazily, and she was staring at the stained brown fabric of the couch. She turned onto her back and blinked her eyes to clear the blur of sleep that still lingered. At the end of the couch, an unidentifiable figure sat watching her.

“Why are you here?” a child asked.