Unbroken

by Paula Morris

  Julie Casworth Young sashayed over, turning to stand at Marianne’s elbow as though she were a Miss America contestant taking her appointed spot on the stage. Rebecca hadn’t seen her for a year, but of course, she remembered Julie — blonde, pretty, spiteful. She was one of Helena’s exclusive set, one of the girls who used to hang out with Anton and Toby in the cemetery. As far as Rebecca could remember, Julie had never, ever spoken to her directly before.

  “Rebecca, isn’t it?” she squeaked. Anton was right: She did sound like a hyperventilating mouse. “And that’s …”

  She was peering at the locket as well. Really, these girls would make terrible spies. They weren’t subtle at all.

  The strangest look passed over Julie’s face, like a cloud passing across the moon, and Rebecca wasn’t sure how to read it. But she’d put up with their scrutiny long enough.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Ling, and they marched away, back toward the ballroom.

  “Have a good time at Jazz Fest tomorrow!” Marianne called.

  “How do they know we’re going to Jazz Fest?” Rebecca hissed at Ling.

  “Keep walking,” Ling murmured, and they wove through the obstacle course of tables as fast as they could. “Man, these girls are mean. You know why they hate you, right?”

  “Because I’m an outsider. I’m not one of them.”

  “Doesn’t matter where you come from,” said Ling, dodging a waiter carrying a tray of dirty plates. “You stole their number-one man.”

  “Anton?” Rebecca said, pretending to sound surprised.

  “Duh. Look around you. It’s like Brad Pitt surrounded by the seven dwarves. He’s like the crown prince of St. Simeon’s.”

  “He’s just a guy,” muttered Rebecca.

  “There are guys,” said Ling, sighing, “and then there are guys.”

  She nodded toward their table, where Phil was in the middle of some long and apparently hilarious story — though he was the one doing all the laughing.

  “If I were you,” she went on, leaning close to whisper in Rebecca’s ear, “I would dance with that guy of yours and drive these witches even wilder with jealousy. Why not? What have you got to lose?”

  Ling was right, Rebecca decided. So the next time Anton asked her to dance, she said yes. It was a slow number, which was better in almost every way. Slow dances were much easier for most guys to manage, because they basically involved walking and hugging. A slow dance also meant she could be close to Anton, feel his arms around her again. And, of course, Rebecca couldn’t help wanting to annoy the sneering Temple Mead girls.

  Anton pulled her close, and Rebecca relaxed into the warmth of his chest. The song playing was cheesy, but she didn’t care — everything about this dance was cheesy. She felt Anton’s lips on her hair and her skin flushed with delight.

  “You look real pretty tonight,” he whispered to her, and she hid her smile against his jacket lapel.

  She wanted to close her eyes and block the rest of the world out. But even if she could zone out the eyes boring into her, and all the muttered comments, it was hard to enjoy the moment. Too many distracting concerns were beeping in her brain like unanswered messages. Toby. Frank. The fake locket. The real locket. The house on St. Philip Street. Her father. Aurelia. Gideon Mason … beep beep beep beep.

  The dance let out around midnight, and she and Anton walked out with Ling and Phil. She held Anton’s hand again, squeezing it gratefully. Things were easier when they faced them together. And who knew what they’d have to face in the parking lot?

  Their little group walked slowly to Anton’s car, everyone trying to act casual but, Rebecca knew, intensely aware that Toby might pop up at any minute. Ling pulled Phil away for a moment, showing a sudden interest in a vintage Jag parked in the middle of the lot.

  Rebecca knew what she was doing. Toby was more likely to confront Rebecca if the only person with her was Anton: He thought Anton was on his side.

  The stupid locket was so heavy, it was giving her a neck ache. Rebecca couldn’t wait to be rid of it. It bounced against her dress with every step. She peered into the dark trees lining the golf course. Where was Toby? What was he waiting for?

  Anton was nervous, too, she could tell. He even checked the trunk of the car before they got in, as though Toby might be hiding inside. But there was no sign of him, and soon Ling and Phil rejoined them.

  “Well, so much for your brilliant plan,” Rebecca said to Anton when everyone was safely in the car, doors locked. “Marianne was interrogating me in there, but where’s Toby?”

  “I have no idea,” Anton admitted.

  “I’m still wearing this locket. What happens now?”

  Anton started the engine, staring straight ahead.

  “And Marianne knows all about us going to Jazz Fest tomorrow,” Rebecca added.

  “That means Toby knows it, too,” said Anton.

  Rebecca felt a stab of fear. “He’s not going to attack me in public, is he? Not with thousands of people around.”

  Anton frowned. “Easy to get lost in a crowd. Easy to steal things as well.”

  “I went to Times Square last New Year’s Eve,” said Phil, “and someone stole my wallet.”

  “You’re such a tourist,” said Ling. “Who goes to Times Square on New Year’s Eve? And who would go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve and carry a wallet?”

  “I’m coming with you tomorrow,” Anton announced, looking at Rebecca. “You have to wear the locket. But don’t worry — I’ll be there the whole time with you. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “I’ll come, too,” volunteered Phil from the backseat. “Because, dude, whatever’s going on, I think you need my help. I never told anyone here this, but I totally know judo. Three years when I was in elementary school, my friends. Three years!”

  “I take back all those mean things I just said,” Ling told him. “You’re clearly a superhero.”

  Any sort of hero was better than nothing, Rebecca thought. She did feel slightly better, knowing that Anton would be with her tomorrow. Whatever Toby was planning next was sure to be very, very bad.

  REBECCA’S FATHER WAS IN NO SHAPE TO COME TO Jazz Fest and walk around the fairgrounds all day. His ankle was throbbing and swollen, and Aunt Claudia was coming over to take him to the hospital. Friday could be a busy work day for her, especially with all the tourists in town for Jazz Fest, but it was a wet morning, threatening to develop into a truly sodden afternoon.

  “Miss Cissy’s grandbaby is going to be a wet little chicken today,” said Ling, gazing out the kitchen window at rain plopping onto the banana leaves.

  “At least Anton or Phil can use my ticket,” Rebecca’s dad said, wincing with pain. “And you’ll keep an eye on Aurelia, won’t you? Claudia said she’s been acting up this week. Something about not getting to spend enough time with you. Maybe ’cause Ling’s here … ow!”

  Rebecca felt a pang of guilt. She’d forgotten all about the one-on-one talk with Aurelia that never happened. On Wednesday night, by the time she and Anton left the cemetery, the little party at Aunt Claudia’s was breaking up, and her father had already ordered a cab to take them home. Aurelia had seemed a little sulky, but Rebecca had other things on her mind — mainly, she had to admit, that long kiss with Anton. Since then so much had happened that she’d barely given Aurelia a second thought.

  “I’ll spent lots of time with Relia today,” she told her father. She did want to talk to Aurelia, but part of her wished her little cousin wasn’t coming at all that afternoon, not with Toby on the loose. Whatever went down with Toby today, he had to leave Aurelia alone. She’d done nothing, absolutely nothing, to make him want to hurt her.

  Beep beep beep. Rebecca’s brain was in overload again. What about Frank and the locket in the boarded-up house? By this time tomorrow, she and her father and Ling would be packing up, about to fly out of New Orleans. She needed someone’s help. Someone with a clue.

  Rebecca knelt by the sofa, seein
g if her father’s shoe would go on despite his injured ankle. It wouldn’t.

  “Dad,” she said, standing up and handing him the useless shoe. “Tonight when we get home, could you and I talk about something? It’s about Tremé and those houses that are going to be demolished next week.”

  “Sure, honey,” he said. “Whatever you want to talk about — I’ll be here. I’m going to have to hop to Claudia’s car, aren’t I?”

  “Mr. Brown,” Ling called from the kitchen. “I texted Phil, and his father is going to make sure they take care of you at the hospital. He’s going to come down there himself.”

  “I just feel so useless,” Rebecca’s dad said. “I was really looking forward to today.”

  “So was I,” Rebecca lied.

  “You should have brought rain boots with you,” he said. “It’s going to be bad out there. If it’s too wet and you’re not having a good time, you just come home, OK?”

  Rebecca wanted nothing more than to stay home all day, with the doors and shutters closed, hiding from the world. But there was the matter of a locket that needed to be stolen, and another locket that needed to be found. Time was running out for both.

  The threat of heavy rain wasn’t putting off the crowds at the Fair Grounds Race Course. Anton had to park a twenty-minute-walk away, taking care to find a space on the “high ground” side of the street in case the gutters flooded. When they reached the pedestrian entrance, thousands of people were making their way through the turnstiles, many of them laden down with backpacks, baby strollers, folded ground tarps, collapsible chairs, and golf umbrellas. Some people were already wearing transparent rain ponchos, alert to the dark clouds swirling overhead.

  “At least it’s not all sandy and dusty here,” Anton told them as they crossed the racetrack. “Some years I go home all covered in grit.”

  This year, Rebecca soon realized, they would go home covered in mud. The combination of overnight rain and thousands of trampling feet had turned every stretch of grass into a slushy mire. Aurelia — given permission to leave school at lunchtime, thanks to a note from Aunt Claudia — was the only one in their group wearing rain boots with her shorts and T-shirt, but soon all her bare skin was flecked with dirt. Anton and Phil, both in jeans, looked like they’d been wading in a swamp. Rebecca and Ling were wearing the sneakers they’d worked in this week, already dirty. Even though the day was warm, Rebecca kept her hoodie zipped up, so only the chain of the locket was visible around her neck.

  After the rain returned in a series of emphatic bursts, girls in flip-flops or Crocs found themselves suctioned into the mud. Many gave up, walking around barefoot, up to their ankles in oozing dirt. Phil, soaked to the skin in the first downpour, threw away his shirt and bought a dry souvenir T-shirt and a rain poncho. He also managed to buy and eat — within the first two hours of arriving — crawfish bread, sausage and jalapeño bread, boudin balls, alligator pie, a soft-shell crab po’boy, and a shrimp flauta.

  “I don’t know even know how you’re still standing,” Ling said to him, sipping on a huge rosemint iced tea. Whenever the rain stopped, the muggy heat seemed to intensify. Rebecca’s hair was frizzing into an unruly mane.

  “They should rename this Food Fest,” said Phil. “I think even my digestive system is in overload.”

  Rebecca hadn’t realized there’d be so much to see here, or so many ways to spend money. There were tents where you could buy CDs or books or posters, and stalls selling crafts or jewelry or paintings. They wandered in and out of music tents where people were listening to gospel choirs, blues guitarists, and jazz acts. There were Cajun fiddlers on one stage, a Caribbean reggae band on another, a tribe of Mardi Gras Indians on another; they even sat awhile to listen to a barbershop quartet in one of the smaller tents, waiting for the rain to pass.

  The area in front of the biggest stage was packed with people sitting on plastic sheets or fold-up chairs, banners, and flags marking their spot. From a distance it looked like a medieval tournament, multicolor banners fluttering in the wind, spectator stands lined along the side ready to watch the jousting. These stands, striped like circus tents, were for VIP ticket holders, Anton told them.

  Aurelia was in a strange mood. She wasn’t as chatty as usual, or as bouncy, but occasionally Rebecca caught her smiling to herself, as though she were thinking of some glorious secret.

  “I’m really sorry I haven’t had much time to hang out,” Rebecca told her. It was midafternoon and they’d spent an hour listening to Lucinda Williams on the Gentilly stage. Rebecca loved Lucinda Williams, and standing next to Anton, swaying along to the music, singing along with “Car Wheels On a Gravel Road,” she could almost forget about everything going on right now. Almost.

  Rebecca hung back from Ling and the boys, so she and Aurelia could walk together. She put a protective arm around her cousin’s shoulders.

  “Whatever,” Aurelia said, shrugging off Rebecca’s arm.

  “You can’t still be mad at me!”

  “You promised we’d talk on Thursday, but then you just went off with Anton.”

  “I’m really sorry about that. We were talking about Toby Sutton. I told Anton that he’d been chasing you in the Quarter. How did that all happen, anyway?”

  “I was walking up from Jackson Square,” Aurelia told her. “And I saw him, and thought he was following me, maybe so he could find out where you were staying. So I decided to take a weird route, trying to lose him, but when I started running he did, too. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept running all the way up to Rampart. I was trying to help you! And you’re not even grateful.”

  “I really am,” Rebecca told her, quickening her step so they didn’t lose sight of the others. With so many people trying to squeeze onto the pathways, which were marginally less muddy than the grass, it would be easy to get separated. Toby might very well be here somewhere, watching and waiting.

  “Well, if you were, you would tell me more about the cute ghost boy and what this whole locket thing is about. Instead of letting me hear about it from someone else.”

  “Who? Oh, you mean at school. Don’t listen to all that tittle-tattle. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m sorry that you had to get embroiled in all this.”

  “I’m not sorry.” Aurelia was smiling again, and that made Rebecca nervous.

  “The thing is, this whole locket thing is much bigger and crazier and possibly more dangerous than you realize,” said Rebecca. Aurelia could be so stubborn and willful sometimes.

  “You’re not the only one who can see ghosts, you know,” snapped Aurelia.

  “One ghost! You’ve seen one ghost!”

  “I saw hundreds of ghosts, actually, right there on Rampart Street.”

  “OK, but what I mean is, you’ve only talked to one ghost.”

  “You don’t know that,” Aurelia said enigmatically. “You don’t know anything. Maybe I know more than you do — have you ever thought of that?”

  She scampered ahead to catch up with the others, and Rebecca was forced to push her way through the crowd: She didn’t want to be alone if Toby did manage to find her.

  “I almost lost you,” she said to Anton, out of breath more from agitation than exertion, and he took her hand without saying a word.

  Near the Heritage stage they were pushed off the path by an effusive crowd of second-liners who continued dancing and hollering even after the band they were trailing stopped playing.

  “It’s Raf!” Ling shouted, pointing. Light rain was starting to fall, and she, Phil, and Aurelia seemed to be eddying away in the crowd. Raf, looking damp in a white shirt and dark tie, was marking time at the end of a row of musicians, dabbing at the mouthpiece of his trumpet. Rebecca pushed her way toward him, dragging Anton in tow.

  “Hey!” she said. “I didn’t realize you were playing here today.”

  “I got the call,” he grinned. “Thanks to Brando.”

  Rebecca looked for Brando: He was in the back row, almost comple
tely obscured by a tuba.

  “Why did you guys stop?”

  “Nobody moving,” he pointed out. Whenever one of the big acts finished playing, Rebecca had observed, people swarmed from one end of the grounds to another, clogging the concrete arteries of the racetrack. The social club members up ahead, dressed in vibrant orange, couldn’t find a way through the crowd. Rebecca introduced Anton to Raf, and they did one of those silent, eyebrows-raised, head-nod greetings that boys seemed to go in for.

  “So you got into the house already?” Raf asked Rebecca. “You didn’t waste any time.”

  “What are you talking about?” Someone passing by shoved Rebecca, and she let go of Anton’s hand.

  “The house on St. Philip. I went over there to take a look this morning, see if there might be an easy way in for you. That’s when I saw.”

  “Saw what?”

  “The boards off the back door. You didn’t do it?”

  “No!” Rebecca was shouting to make herself heard over the crowd noise. “You mean someone broke in?”

  “I guess. I thought it was you.”

  Rebecca felt her pulse begin to race. “I haven’t been back to Tremé since we were at your house. I was going to talk to my father about it tonight.”

  “Well, if you’re looking for something in there, you better hurry,” Raf said, raising his trumpet. “Anyone can get in there now. Anyone.”

  Someone was beating a drum: The second line was on the move again, taking Raf with it. Rebecca stood watching them march away, a familiar panic surging through her. If anyone could get in, they could find the locket. Maybe the floorboards had rotted away, and it was easily visible. Maybe she should go to the house right now and look for the locket herself before it was too late.

  “Rebecca!” Anton was shouting at her. “Come on, it’s starting to rain. I think the others went that way.”