When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (8 page)

“A virgin?” Sylv suggested with a smirk.

But my mind went to the man in the balaclava. Woman, I corrected myself, remembering her hands. I shook my head, snapping myself out of my daydream. “This is non-negotiable,” I told the girls. “We have an assignment. Do you want me to flunk art studies?”

“When will you girls understand that grades are not life and death?” Sylv asked.

“Tell us that when your dad cuts up your credit card,” Jo said.

Jackson was walking across the quad. He waved and I waved back, but like a moth to a flame, my eyes moved to Tom, who was leaning against brickwork of the main building. I was surprised to find him looking at me with an intensity that made me blush. He straightened and for one heart-stopping moment I thought he was going to walk over and strike up a conversation, but then he turned and disappeared inside.

“I remember now,” Jo said suddenly. “We played cards during detention. You, me and Jack O'Lantern. I mean, Jackson. I think it was Snap. Or Uno?”

I squinted as if my memory went hand-in-hand with my eyesight and then shook my head. “Not coming to me, sorry.” It was like my brain had become a sieve and my memories had fallen through the holes, hanging on like strings of spaghetti. Like my inability to remember how I knew Tom; how I knew his scar.

I guess I was in good company. They say Einstein had a bad memory. He had once forgotten where he lived and had to phone Princeton University for his address. It was the one piece of trivia that I knew about him BT – Before Tom. Now I also know that they say he had schizophrenia, that his mother thought him deformed when he was born and that he had been expelled from high school. He must have had a principal like Turnip.

 

When I went to sleep that night I thought I would have another date with death, but instead I found myself with Tom.

We were surrounded by lilies; tiger lilies, oriental lilies, asiatic lilies. They sprouted from pots at our feet or hung in baskets above our heads and I realized we were in a greenhouse.

I followed Tom to the edge of a small pond. It was also filled with lilies – water lilies. The sunlight filtered through the glass walls and ceiling, making the surface of the pond sparkle.

I watched a goldfish swim between the lily pads, as Tom sat on the concrete wall that circled the pond. He dipped a hand into the water and splashed me, making me squeal. He laughed as I splashed him back and as he did I knew it was a dream. Tom laughing? As if.

I was scooping up another handful of water when he grabbed my arms and pulled me towards him. My heart fluttered as I leaned in for a kiss and, at that moment, I woke.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to return to the dream. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze. Damn. Damn. Damn.

It had been so detailed that I could recall his scent and the scent of the lilies. I put my hand out in the dark, searching for the warmth of his body, but found only empty space instead.

 

9

 

I took my time preparing for my date with Jackson on Saturday. Yep. You heard me. I had turned into Jo and was calling it a date, even though I knew our outing was for business, not pleasure. The thought of being picked up by a boy had my butterflies in a flutter. If it had have been Tom instead of Jackson I think I would have been completely carried away.

My selection of “date” clothes was limited. I pulled on my good pair of jeans – dark blue denim with a skinny leg cut – and tried on the three tops I had laid out on my desk the night before.

One was a white linen top with embroidered yellow flowers around the collar.

“Too hippie-ish,” I muttered, throwing it back on the desk.

Another was a pale pink t-shirt with a sketch of a donkey on the front. “Too casual.”

The third was a crème-colored halter-neck top made from satin, which billowed around my waist.

“Hmmm…” I turned in front of the mirror. It looked good, but I pulled it off over my head. “Too formal.”

I yanked open the window to check the outside temperature, holding out my hand and letting the sunlight warm my palm. I ended up pulling on the donkey T-shirt, deciding there was no need for a jacket.

I applied my mascara and cherry lip gloss, and brushed my hair at least a hundred times before putting it up into a ponytail and then letting it down again. The girls said wearing it up showed off my cheekbones, but I knew it also showed off my pointy ears, which was why I let my hair hang straight, a hand-length past my shoulders day after day. It must have been a decade since my ears had seen sunlight.

I checked my reflection again, tilting my head up and down, and pursing my lips as I applied another layer of gloss. I considered asking Deb for her concealer to cover my dark circles. Thanks to the nightmares, I was starting to look like a vampire.

I called Jo for a pep talk, but there was no answer either at home or on her cell. I guessed she was at work and left a voicemail message asking her to call the cops if I was missing in the morning.

Deb was sitting at the kitchen table, which was strewn with beads and gemstones and tangled heaps of fishing line. She barely batted an eyelash when I told her I was going out. I suppose I should have added “with a boy,” but I wanted to save myself a talk on Venus, the Goddess of Love, or worse, the Three Virgin Goddesses.

Her eyebrows crumpled with concentration as she beaded. She had been commissioned to make fifteen necklaces for Tree of Life. I saw she was halfway through her first and was wrestling with a knot in the line, cursing under her breath.

I decided to give her a hand, considering I had about forty minutes before my so-called date. I made a necklace with a mixture of clear beads and pink gemstones.

“Rose quartz,” Deb commented as I connected the clasp and held it up to the light. “The crystal of love.”

I hesitated as she restarted her first necklace, wondering if she knew about Jackson. I held the necklace against my chest and turned to check out my reflection in a saucepan on the stove. Maybe I should wear it around Tom, I thought.

This thought was cut short by a knock at the door. I peered down the hallway and saw my “date” through the front window. He was twenty-five minutes early.

“I have my cell,” I told Deb, as I dropped the necklace on the table. I raced down the hallway and barreled past Jackson. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he responded, surprised by my speedy getaway. “I thought your mom would want to meet me, check my license and registration, and all that. Maybe call the cops to check my record, which is clean, by the way.”

I laughed. “If you knew my mother you would know how silly that sounds.”

“Hmmm…” He made a show of racking his memory, putting a closed fist under his chin and squinting up at the sky. “Happy pants? Peace beads? Camper van?”

I laughed again. “OK. You remember Deb.”

“I remember she came to school in third grade to teach us how to tie-dye T-shirts.”

I cringed. “Really?”

“And she took you and Jo to one of those Rainbow Retreats at Elkhorn Crossing after fifth grade. You guys were gone for like half the summer,” he said as he opened the passenger door.

“Wow. What a memory,” I said, as I sank into the passenger seat. I wondered whether I should be worried and my mind went to my stalker, the man-slash-woman in the balaclava. A cold shiver ran down my spine and I closed my eyes, conjuring up the red light of my aura and doing aura aerobics until my body temperature rose a few degrees. I know. Just call me Deb.

Jackson drove an old hatchback which was off-white with pockets of rust on the hood and side panels. The tan seat covers sagged like granny panties under my body weight.

He was as tight-lipped about our destination as he had been at school.

“You realize I know these roads like the back of my hand,” I told him, as he turned onto a road that led to the railroad crossing. “This road goes to the vineyards.”

He frowned. “I should have blindfolded you.”

“What can I say? Sixteen years in Green Grove versus…?”

“Eleven.” He paused to check for trains, before driving across the tracks. The railroad crossing marked where the landscape went from sepia to color, as we went from the dustbowl that was Green Grove into a world without water restrictions.

The Open Valley had been a well-known wine region before prohibition in 1920. They had reopened it in the Eighties, dividing the private estate into seven wineries again. The valley was as refreshing as a cool glass of water on a stinking hot day. Yes, the vineyards themselves – row after row of grapevines – could get old, but there were also the formal gardens that belonged to a few of the wineries and the old brickworks, on which I had used up a ton of film over the years.

We passed a couple of vehicles as we drove down the narrow avenues, out-of-towners on a weekend getaway. Jackson hugged the side of the road as a red SUV flew by and a white sedan followed, throwing up pebbles. I flinched as they sprayed against the side of the hatchback like a hail of bullets.

Jackson laughed. “Are you worried about the paintwork?”

I smiled, but sudden sounds were not my friend at the moment. Last night Deb had dropped a spoon on the floor with a clatter and I almost had to breathe into a paper bag for half an hour afterwards, as if the man-or-woman in the balaclava was going to spoon me to death.

I shifted my attention to the window and saw that Jackson had put ten miles or so between us and Green Grove. Here the road merged into one lane with ponderosa pines crowding us on either side. I wondered what would happen if we came across an SUV now. Not that we would. If Green Grove was the middle of nowhere, then this was the middle of the middle of nowhere. All we needed now was an abandoned farmhouse.

My eyes moved to Jackson, who was humming off-key and nodding his head in time to the music that blared from the radio. The speakers crackled with the heavy bass as his fingers tapped the steering wheel. They were slender, like the hands of the man-slash-woman in the balaclava.

He caught me watching and grinned. “Got you now, Lillie.”

My armpits prickled with sweat. Had I misheard him? “What?”

“You thought you knew Green Grove. What did you say? Oh yeah. Like the back of your hand.” He laughed and then looked through the windshield with a smug smile. His tone was bright though as he added, “Jackson: One. Lillie: Zero.” He was like a ray of sunshine compared to Tom. If one of them was my killer it would be the latter.

I allowed myself to sag into the seat again.

Jackson eased off the gas as the woods ended and we passed through open gates. My stomach stirred, as if with homesickness, as I looked at the ornate wrought iron. The stone pillars that supported the gates bore a well-polished plaque.

“Rose Hill,” I read, my lips wrapping around the words as if embracing a long lost friend. I had this sudden sensation that I was coming home. The words stuck in my mind, like corn in my teeth. What did I mean by coming home?

I consulted the filing cabinet of my mind, looking for a reason for the familiarity, but found locked drawer after locked drawer, until a memory from when I was about five or six years old opened.

Deb had brought me here. We had dressed up as if we were going to a wedding or an expensive restaurant. I had worn a yellow sundress, and Deb had worn a red dress and white sandals, instead of her uniform of happy pants and peace beads. Her hair had ended at her shoulders back then and I remember her spending half an hour or so in the bathroom, blow-drying it into shape while I sat as stiff as a board on the couch.

As Jackson drove down the avenue of trees, I caught glimpses of freshly mown grass and a man-made lake, rectangular like the Reflecting Pool in DC, but deep and dark. I wound down the window to breathe in the fresh air and listen to the trill of birds as they flitted through the branches. Red birds. Like in my dream, I realized with a start.

The tires crunched on the white gravel, sounding like someone shushing us – or shushing Jackson, who was commenting on the size of the lake and wondering about catfish.

“I should have brought my rod.”

Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.

The driveway curved and I drew in a deep breath as a white building came into view. I exhaled, as another drawer unlocked in my mind. I remembered Deb holding my hand as we had walked up the front steps. I had been complaining about a piece of gravel in my shoe.

“Ow. Ow. Oooow!”

Deb had crouched to pull off my shoe, giving it a shake. I must have been younger than five or six, maybe four, because she had also wiped my nose with a tissue and combed her fingers though my hair, before rocking back on her heels to study me, giving me a nod of approval.

“…a hotel,” Jackson was saying as I tuned back in to his channel. “It has, like, fifty rooms. How much do you think it costs a night?”

I shook my head.

“Go on. Guess.”

“A lot?”

He laughed, but before he could answer his own question, a man dressed in old-fashioned coat-tails met us in the circular drive. He looked at the hatchback like a cow had ambled into Rose Hill, but he told us we could view the gardens, provided we minded the out-of-bounds signage.

As we walked towards the front entrance I was overcome by my connection to the estate. “I am in love,” I breathed.

Jackson grinned. “Good. Because I was thinking we could call our major work ‘From Green Grove with Love.'”

I wrinkled my nose. “James Bond?”

“Bingo.”

“From Green Grove with Love,” I repeated dubiously. Boys.

I stopped a few feet from the steps that led to the front entrance and raised my camera to take a photo. The shutter clicked as a figure descended and my heart rate suddenly went through the roof. Tom.

I tried to remain cool, calm and collected, but I knew I was gawking. I have to say, he looked like he belonged at Rose Hill. He was dressed in a light gray T-shirt which hugged his chiseled frame, and there were no tears in his designer jeans today. Jackson looked like a kid in comparison, with his loose shirt, baggy jeans and skate shoes.