Thresholds (3 page)

On the other hand . . .
mice
? Okay, a dodge, and not a very convincing one. Secrets. Maya was happy with the prospect of secrets.

“You have mice?” Maya said. “We have a dog. We just moved into the house next door.” She pointed.

“Oh? ” said the girl. She smelled faintly of incense. “You’re in the Spring House? I’m Gwenda, and these are my cousins, Rowan”—Gwenda pointed to the taller boy—“and Benjamin.”

“Maya,” Maya said, wondering if they would shake hands. Gwenda didn’t stick out her hand, so Maya didn’t, either. “Nice to meet you. My little brother really likes animals. I’m sure he’d like to see your mice.”

“We don’t—” Rowan began in a cold voice.

“The mice are kind of shy,” said Benjamin. “Maybe later.”

“Cool.” Maya checked her watch. “Oh, no!”

“What time is it?” Gwenda asked.

“Eight.” Homeroom started at 8:15. Maya didn’t want to be late on her first day in a new school. She tightened her backpack straps and ran.

Their footsteps followed her.

Benjamin caught up with her. “Hoover Middle School?”

“Yeah. Seventh grade. You?”

“Same,” he said as they ran. “All three of us.”

Hope stirred in her chest again. “Maybe we’ll have some classes together.”

“Probably. Are you—” He paused and panted. They kept running. “Are you a traveler? Are you
chikuvny
?”

“Huh?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

“Oh. Nothing.” He flashed her a sweet smile.

He looked so nice she wanted to trust him. “Do you believe—”
in fairies?
No, she couldn’t say that to somebody out of the blue.

Just because they talked about visitors in their tea room didn’t mean they were strange. Old-fashioned or English, maybe, but not necessarily hosts to fairies.

She peeked at Benjamin. He looked like a perfectly normal kid.

She glanced over her shoulder at Rowan and Gwenda. Nope. Not exactly normal. Rowan loped easily where Maya was puffing, but it wasn’t just his athleticism that impressed her. There was definitely something strange about him.

Gwenda looked like a gypsy.

Maya wondered if they would let her paint them or if she would have to do it on the sly.

“Do I believe what?” Benjamin asked when Maya had been quiet for half a block.

“Do you believe we’ll make it in time?”

“It’s the first day. Everything’s nuts on the first day,” he said. “Even if we’re a little late, we should be okay.”

Cars sped by them on Passage Street, pulled into the loop of road that led past the front of the yellow brick complex that was Hoover Middle School, and dropped off kids. A couple of empty school buses pulled out of the side lot.

Oregon kids looked a lot like kids from her old school in Idaho. She glanced down at her clothes and at other people’s. Gwenda’s dress was the most interesting outfit.

Maya slowed as they came even with the front entrance, and so did Benjamin. Rowan and Gwenda moved up beside her. Maya waited for new-kid chemistry to kick in, for all the powers that were to notice her, judge her, decide whether to snub her for the rest of the year or give her a break. She’d seen it happen to new kids at her old school. This was the first time she was the new kid. The first time she didn’t know a soul at school.

Then she thought:
Hey. I’m not alone.

She didn’t even know these kids, but she was already in a group.

She felt warm and happy.

For about two seconds.

“Hey! Tovah! How was summer camp?” Gwenda cried, and ran off to talk to a short girl with masses of dark crinkly hair.

Rowan stalked past Maya toward the front entrance, not looking at anybody.

She glanced at Benjamin. Was he going to take off, too? “Gee,” she said, “is he always that friendly?”

Benjamin smiled. “You bet.”

She pulled out her class schedule. “I have Mr. Ferrell for homeroom first period. Room M44.”

Benjamin said, “Me, too.”

“What does ‘M’ mean?” she asked.

“M is the main building. This place is kind of a maze. Follow me.” Benjamin headed toward the front entrance.

“Cool,” she said. A boy she already knew was in her homeroom, and he lived right next door. Plus, he’d agreed to be her native guide without her even asking.

They pushed inside and entered a long, low-ceilinged hall where the odor of disinfectant and various people scents clashed. Kids crowded the hallway, talking fast and hard. Banks of lockers lined the walls, interspersed with doorways. Fluorescent lights ran down the center of the ceiling and made everyone look like they were in a bad movie.

An ear-battering bell rang down the hallway, cutting through conversations. “First bell. Five minutes,” Benjamin said. “This way.”

Unfortunately, Benjamin was short, and he was going fast. She lost him after one turn.

She jumped up and down, trying to see over people’s heads. No luck. She couldn’t find him in the sea of heads and backpacks.

She touched a tall girl’s sleeve and said, “Room M44?”

“That way.” The girl pointed to another hallway. “Take a right.”

“Thanks.” Maya rounded the corner and jumped up to search for Benjamin’s dark head again. When she came down, she slammed into a guy she hadn’t even noticed. She grabbed his arm to keep herself from falling.

She stared up into his dark blue eyes. He had short, wavy, auburn hair and a spatter of dark freckles across his face. He was a head taller than she was, and pretty muscular. This was easy to tell, because his gray T-shirt didn’t have any sleeves.

He smelled . . . strange. Sour, like maybe he’d just been sick. Shadows framed his eyes, and his skin was pale under his freckles. He radiated heat.

Her hand tingled and pulsed against the bare skin of his upper arm.

“Chikuvny,”
whispered the boy.

“Huh?” Maya said
.

“Chikuvny,”
he said.

Benjamin had asked her if she were
chikuvny
. What the heck was it, and what made these guys think it had anything to do with her? “Sorry, no,” she said.

“Where is the portal?” the boy asked. He gripped her wrists. His hands felt fever hot. His intensity scared her.

“What portal? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I must find the portal.” Sweat streaked his face.

“You’re sick,” she said. “Maybe you should see the nurse.” She glanced around. She wished she had a map of the school. She had no idea where the infirmary was, or anything else.

“No. No nurses. No doctors,” he said. “I only need a portal.”

“And I need to find M44. Do you know where that is?”

He shook his head.

“I have to go,” she said, trying to break his grip. He was way strong for a sick guy.

He didn’t let go of her wrists, just stared into her eyes.

She looked away. Kids were clearing the halls, funneling into classrooms.

Should she yell for help?

Sick Boy finally released her.

She rubbed her wrists and ran down the hall, then glanced back. He stood there, swaying like he was going to fall, still staring at her.

She was sure he needed help. She had no idea how to get it for him, and she didn’t want to get near him. She didn’t want him to grab her again.

Second bell rang.

She ran, checked room numbers, then glanced back again.

He had disappeared.

Nothing she could do now.

She found her homeroom at the end of the hall. Most of the desks were taken by people who already knew and were talking to each other. There were some empty seats in the front row, but who wanted to sit there?

Gwenda and Benjamin were in the back row, and there were empty desks all around them. Maya took the desk beside Benjamin and dug into her backpack.

Benjamin smiled at her, which was a relief.

“Guess what just happened?” she said.

“Settle down, settle down.” The teacher, a guy with carroty orange hair and a big red mustache, wrote MR. FERRELL on the green board. “Time for check-in.” He held up a computer printout. “Do we have an Albert Brandy here?”

A few girls giggled. One of them raised her hand. “I’m Brandy Albert,” she said.

Mr. Ferrell made a mark on his sheet and called more names.

Gwenda’s last name was Janus. Benjamin’s last name was Porta. When Mr. Ferrell got to them, kids turned in their chairs and glanced at them with strange expressions. Some muttered to each other.

Maya guessed the empty desks around Gwenda and Benjamin should have clued her in.

Maybe she’d picked the wrong friends.

She checked out the other kids. None of them looked as interesting, though some of them looked nice. Brandy sat with three other girls. All four of them had the same style of ponytail streaming from the left sides of their heads, though their hair color ranged from blonde to black. They were all chewing gum, too. No way she wanted to be part of the Brandy Brigade.

Mr. Ferrell finished attendance and said, “Are you in the seats you want for the rest of the semester? I’m going to make a seating chart, so be sure.”

“You could still move,” Benjamin whispered to Maya.

“I like it here,” she whispered back.

A couple of kids shifted in their seats and looked around. One girl moved back a row.

“Okay. I’m charting you now,” said Mr. Ferrell. “I may have to ask for names again. Help me out.”

Maya pulled out her class schedule and showed it to Benjamin. “You have any of these classes?” she whispered.

Before he could answer, the door opened and a boy with long, ragged blond hair slouched in. He was taller than anybody else in class. He looked like he worked out with weights. The knees of his worn jeans had giant holes in them, and his white T-shirt was marked with dark stains, as though he’d dunked his hands in grease and then wiped them on it.

“Mr. Finnegan,” said Mr. Ferrell in a mean voice. “So nice of you to grace us with your presence.”

The boy burped, a long, melodious one, which made everybody laugh. He shambled toward Maya and collapsed into the desk next to hers, yawning. He didn’t have a backpack or anything, not even a pencil. He smelled like fried bacon.

“So here’s how it works at Hoover,” said Mr. Ferrell, and he launched into a monologue.

Benjamin tapped
Spanish
and
Art
on Maya’s class grid. Oh, good. She sat back, then leaned forward. She had all kinds of questions.

She got her binder out of her backpack. On a fresh piece of paper, she wrote:

 

 

After checking to make sure Mr. Ferrell wasn’t looking, she edged the paper over onto Benjamin’s desk.

He looked at the note, then glanced at Gwenda, who was watching them. She leaned forward and scanned the note. She sat back, her eyebrows up.

Benjamin wrote on the paper, showed it to Gwenda, who nodded, and passed it back to Maya.

 

 

This was
so
not what she expected.

 

 

 

She cocked her head sideways to see if she could get a different view of Benjamin. He had to be joking.

She sniffed the back of her hand, still watching him. He shrugged, half smiled. She sniffed her palm.

Carnation and cinnamon.

Fairy dust! Tiny gold glints still gleamed in the lines of her palms, though she had washed her hands before breakfast. Or had she?

Was there really a strong enough scent left to make two different guys accuse her of wearing some perfume she’d never heard of? She stared at Benjamin, and he stared back with dark, serious eyes.

Maybe fairy dust had made her hand tingle when she touched the guy in the hall.

She reached toward Benjamin, wondering what would happen if she touched
him
. Then she thought,
No, this is way too weird.

He held out a hand, though. Her hand moved toward it.

“Miss Andersen!” yelled Mr. Ferrell from the front of the room.

She jerked her hand back.

Everybody turned to stare at her.

“Yes, Mr. Ferrell?”
Maya said.

“You should know my policy on note passing. When I observe notes being passed, I confiscate them and read them aloud to the whole class. Since this is your first offense, I’ll let you off with a warning, but I want everyone in this room to understand I’m serious about this.”

She felt her face heat. She stared down at her notebook.

The blond guy on her other side grabbed the note off her desk, wadded it up, and stuck it in his mouth.

“Mr. Finnegan!” Mr. Ferrell yelled.

The boy chewed.

Mr. Ferrell sighed. “Welcome back, Mr. Finnegan. It seems you haven’t changed since the last time you were in seventh grade.”

The boy swallowed. “Thanks, dude.” He turned to Maya, raised his eyebrows, and smiled.

She tried to smile back at him, but the truth was, she was mad. She’d been let off with a warning. She could have kept her note. She liked how Benjamin wrote: his letters were spiky and close together, but they were all there. Her first note. If something dire happened and nobody liked her after this morning, it might be her last friendly communication at Hoover.

“One more stunt like that, Mr. Finnegan, and you will visit Principal Clark,” Mr. Ferrell said. “Does anyone have any legitimate questions?”

Maya raised her hand.

“Miss Andersen,” said Mr. Ferrell.

“Is there a map of the school? I got lost trying to find this room.”