The Suburban Strange

by Nathan Kotecki

  Now she was tall and elegant and mysterious, standing with her friends to the side of the dance floor. Tomasi stood with her, and the Rosary were arranged around the two of them in a darkly beautiful pose. Marco had been speaking with Tomasi while holding hands with Brenden. Regine was at Celia’s elbow, with Liz next to her and Ivo not far off. Celia thought she might be glowing with the satisfaction of having them all together in this perfect place. At the first notes of “Stranger” by Clan of Xymox, the rest of the Rosary stepped onto the dance floor, and Tomasi looked at Celia to see if she would follow.

  She brought her lips close to his ear. “I want you to meet someone.” He nodded, and when she took his hand in hers he squeezed it twice. Even though they had known who Tomasi was for almost a year, the Rosary were just getting to know him now, and even from the dance floor they still watched her with him. She loved them for it.

  Celia led Tomasi out of Patrick’s room. On the landing the man with metal spikes protruding from his face waved to her, and she waved back. She took Tomasi down the stairs to the mezzanine. At the bottom she paused, peering into the shadows.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “I hope she’s here,” Celia said, as much to herself as to him. Then she caught sight of the plume of red hair in its familiar place on the couch under the stairs and drew Tomasi along with her.

  “You look particularly lovely tonight,” the fortuneteller said when Celia perched on the cushion next to her. Tomasi hesitated over them, and the woman patted the cushion on the other side of her. He stared down at her, and Celia saw the red-haired fortuneteller through his eyes—so regal, so self-possessed. Tomasi carefully took the seat she had offered. She turned back to Celia, and they bent their heads together as they had before. “Perhaps it is this lovely new accessory you are carrying.”

  “I wanted you to meet him,” Celia said.

  The woman turned to him. “Hello, Tomasi. I’m Cassandra. It’s nice to meet you.” He clumsily let her manicured hand take his and mumbled hello. Keeping his hand in hers, Cassandra bent her head toward him, and he dutifully leaned in to hear her words, looking past her at Celia as he did. His eyes widened for a moment; then he nodded and sat back. Cassandra exchanged a look with him and he stood up, his hands covering his lap, and carefully leaned over to kiss Celia’s cheek.

  “I’ll see you upstairs,” he said, and moved off in the shadows toward the stairs.

  “What did you tell him?” Celia asked Cassandra.

  “Something he needed to know. But there is something you need to know, too.” Cassandra took Celia’s hands, and Celia felt the tips of her fingernails grazing her palms. “Isn’t there anything you want to ask me?”

  “Will you give me an answer if I do?” Celia asked, and Cassandra’s amused eyes said Touché. She nodded.

  The invitation opened a kaleidoscope of questions in Celia’s mind. She tried to sort through them and choose the most important one. Cassandra waited patiently, and Celia cleared her head.

  “Why haven’t I received an admonition?” she asked finally, and Cassandra’s smile told her she had chosen well. Then her face became serious.

  “Because you are not one of the Kind.”

  “Oh . . . okay.” Celia wasn’t sure what to say. Part of her was relieved. She had witnessed Mariette and Tomasi do amazing things, but they had paid high prices for their gifts. Celia had spent the year staking her claim as someone who cultivated her legitimate strangeness, who was different because she was being true to herself, not just for the sake of being different. But given the choice, she would have been happy to stick with a legitimate strangeness that brought no admonitions, no special powers, no lonely roads beyond the ones every teenager has to travel.

  And yet she had seen what her drawing had done to Mr. Sumeletso. And hadn’t her sketch of Tomasi given him his new powers? If Mariette had lived, Celia’s drawing would have bestowed power upon her, too—how exactly did these things happen, then? Surely Regine couldn’t have accomplished the same things with her collages? And what about the things Tomasi had said about the trails she left in the air that he could see, and how he was convinced she wasn’t a citizen? Something didn’t make sense. “But before, you said I had power.”

  “Don’t worry!” Cassandra said lightly. “Just because you aren’t one of the Kind doesn’t mean you are a mere citizen. None of this would have happened if you were.”

  “What am I, then?”

  Cassandra smiled proudly. “You are an Ambassador, like I am. Only an Ambassador could have discerned your friend’s true nature when she was hiding it, and only an Ambassador could have bestowed the gifts you gave to her—and to that handsome thing I just met. And it was because you are an Ambassador that you were able to defend yourself against that crocodile. He didn’t know what you are, but it’s why he felt as threatened by you as he did. Mariette was too new to know what you are, either. But I knew the moment I first touched your palm. You are an Ambassador. I had to wait to tell you. You had to do all these things to earn your place.” Cassandra had tears in her eyes. “We are a rare breed, you and I, rarer even than Tomasi and his kind. I have only known one other Ambassador in my life. Sometime I will tell you about Caesar. He is long gone now. But we Ambassadors play a very important role. We connect the Kind to the rest of the world.”

  “We do?”

  “The Kind really are like rare and exotic mythical creatures. It’s easy to forget, because they are also high school girls. And young men about whom we have deliciously impure thoughts.” Cassandra smiled. “But underneath, they are foreigners who struggle to speak without an accent. I am not telling you this to make you fearful of them. Tomasi will never harm you. The Unkind crocodile teacher was another matter, but he is someone who had a choice, and who chose wrong. And now he is a quadriplegic who has been stripped of his powers, thanks to you. But forget the Unkind for now. The Kind will be some of the loveliest people you ever meet. And sometimes these lovely people need the help of someone who can guide them a little, get them through the rough spots, and preserve their secrets.”

  “I think I understand,” Celia said.

  “My dear, you don’t understand at all.” Cassandra looked pleasantly at her. “You’ve only had a taste. The time is coming soon when you will meet a brand-new member of the Kind—someone who is so new he hasn’t fully realized it yet. He will emerge from the Ebentwine and you will be his Ambassador as he grows into his new life. It will be very rewarding, but it will make a serious impression on you. The Kind always do.”

  “What did you say? Ebentwine?”

  “I still can’t tell you everything!” Cassandra laughed, and once again Celia was amused with her despite herself. “Don’t be frustrated with me. You still must learn much on your own. And there are plenty of things I don’t know. I can’t see that dark figure that flew up into the sky any more clearly than you.”

  “Mr. Sumeletso—the teacher—was terrified of it, whatever it was.”

  “And it remains to be seen whether we should be terrified, too. I am sure it is powerful, since I can sense almost nothing of it.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “I will do whatever I can. But you will find that just like a political ambassador to another country, you will do most of your work alone, a unique individual surrounded by powerful people. Your role is to make small but crucial contributions to other people’s lives, which will enable them to do far more incredible things. In a way, isn’t that what we all do for the people we love?” Cassandra smiled at Celia like her mother. “I’ve never spoken so directly to you before, but it was time for you to hear all this.”

  “Could I have saved Mariette?” Celia asked her.

  “That is a question for which there is no answer,” Cassandra said. “Yes, you could have saved her. But no, you couldn’t have saved her. You must know, nothing has changed: sometimes we suffer, and if we think back we see how we could have suffered less. There is nothing to be don
e about it now. If the crocodile or your friend had been stronger, they would have recognized the other instantly, on the first day, and everything would have been completely different.”

  “But shouldn’t we have known? Half the kids in his other classes were failing until the substitute teacher came. Was that because he was Unkind?” Cassandra nodded. “But why didn’t it happen to our class?”

  “Mariette’s Kind energy counteracted his Unkind energy. She balanced things out so his malaise couldn’t affect your class. She didn’t realize it was happening, and if he did, he thought it was coming from you,” Cassandra explained. “You’ll think back on all of it, and you’ll make sense of some of it. Other things always will be a mystery. Just don’t let it make you serious all the time. I can tell you have had enough of death for a while. It is time for you to live.”

  “That is the best thing you’ve ever told me,” Celia said. “I never even knew your name before,” she added, laughing in amazement.

  “Now you do. I’ve kept you long enough. Go dance with that handsome man-child.”

  They kissed cheeks and Celia stood up from the couch. She picked her way across the mezzanine to the stairs, smiling in the dark. At the foot of the stairs a tall man stepped out from the shadow, startling her.

  “I thought you went upstairs!”

  “I was waiting for you,” Tomasi said.

  “What did you think of Cassandra?”

  “She scares me a little,” he said sheepishly. “I felt like a young boy.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That I should be good to you,” he said. He kissed her there, and then he took her hand and they returned to Patrick’s room. She went ahead of him, but halfway there, his tug on her hand stopped her, and she turned back to look down at him from the next step up.

  “I just wanted to ask you . . .” He searched for words. “Are you happy? Being here, with me? I mean, is there anything I can do, I should be doing?” He looked up, his silver gray eyes sparkling.

  “I am happy,” she said. “I feel strange saying that, considering all that’s happened. But I am. I’m happier than I’ve ever been since my father died. It’s really up to us if we’re happy or unhappy, isn’t it? But you make me very happy.” She put her palm against his cheek. “You do.” He hugged her around her waist, and she put her arms around his neck when he laid his head against her chest. She ran her fingers over the soft short hairs on the back of his head, and then she took his hand again and they returned to Patrick’s room. When they took their place at the edge of the dance floor he kept his hand on the small of her back.

  In Regine’s car on the way home at the end of the night, Celia still was ruminating on the things Cassandra had told her, and Tomasi seemed equally distracted. She suspected Cassandra had charged him with something more significant than being good to her. But his hand held hers again, soft against the cashmere blanket between them, and she figured if she was supposed to know, it would be revealed to her in good time.

  When she stopped the car in front of Celia’s house, Regine turned to the two of them behind her. “All right, Tomasi, I can drop you off at your house if you want.”

  “Thank you, but I can walk from here,” he told her.

  “I get it—you want to say goodbye properly, without a chauffeur watching you in the rearview mirror. Well, have a good night!” She smiled, and they got out of the car.

  They lingered on Celia’s front walk, waiting for Regine to drive away. “Can you tell if she’s awake?” she asked him.

  “She’s awake.” He pointed to the front window, where the television glowed through the curtains.

  “Okay, I’ll go in and distract her, but wait for me, okay?” She kissed him and then opened the door. They slipped quietly inside, and Celia went into the living room and sat down on the couch by her mother, knowing Tomasi was creeping up the stairs and into her room. “I’m surprised you’re still up.”

  “I haven’t seen this movie in ages,” her mother said dreamily. “So romantic. They look so young.”

  “Is it over soon?” Celia watched her mother nod, and she kissed her cheek and said good night.

  Up in her room she found Tomasi looking out the window. “If my neighbors see you . . .” she teased, and he turned to her.

  “Would they say something?”

  “No one can see. I don’t think anyone could get through that thicket of trees and bushes behind our yard.” She smiled. “I’m glad you came.” They sat down on the bed and she leaned against him, enjoying the feel of his hand on her hair. The next minute of silence was the most exquisite minute she could remember. She felt her life coursing through her, telling her anything was possible. “I’m really glad you’re not completely trapped at the farm.”

  “As long as Grandpa lets me keep the Bible,” Tomasi said, “and he doesn’t work me so hard I’m too exhausted to travel through the book and visit you after he’s gone to bed. But it’s a really good thing, since I think I’m going to be stuck there for the summer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’ll be good exercise,” he said.

  “That’s putting a positive spin on it,” she said sadly.

  “I’ve discovered other new powers,” he said, raising his head to look around the room. “The Awakening— it’s in that wooden box on your dresser, isn’t it? And The Portrait of a Lady, too?”

  “Yeah.” Celia nodded. “My keepsakes of you.”

  “And a letter . . . from Mariette?” He saw her nod again. “I wish I could have gotten to know her better. That night when she came to my house, it was a little tense at first. Once I convinced her I wasn’t the bad guy, all she wanted to talk about was you.”

  His attention shifted from the box on her dresser to the mirror, where the photograph of her old, pink room still hung. More recently Celia had added a photograph her mother had taken of the Rosary before they had gone to prom. The six of them were arranged in front of one of the sleek black cars. “You look like you’re in a movie, or a magazine.”

  “That’s the way the Rosary like it.”

  “The Rosary?”

  “How have I never told you our name? We’re a set of small, shiny black beads who string along together, finding beauty the rest of the world has overlooked.”

  “Is that your motto?”

  “I don’t know. Regine said it once, and it made sense.”

  “You guys always look so elegant.”

  “That was prom. They’re all amazing people, so intelligent, and talented, and cultured. I’ve learned so much from them.”

  Tomasi took her hand and studied it as if it were a piece of coral he had found on the beach. “I was scared you wouldn’t like me. I’m not very good at talking, and saying the right things, and being polite.”

  “I don’t know what the right things are anyway,” Celia said. “There might be right and wrong, but most of the time life is somewhere in between.”

  “That sounds true,” he said.

  They were quiet for a moment. “Do you think about having sex with me?” she asked him, and felt her cheeks flush. She had lost count of the number of times she had blushed in front of Tomasi, but this time she had the new sensation of enjoying her embarrassment.

  He stared at her. “Is that a trick question?”

  “I didn’t mean it to be. I’ve spent months thinking about having sex, talking about having sex, even turning down offers to have sex, because of that whole stupid curse thing. Right before my birthday, I wondered if I should do it. It didn’t seem unreasonable, considering everything that was happening. But you were the only person I would have asked, and I didn’t know where you were.”

  “How do you feel about it now?”

  Celia thought for a moment. “When I first saw you standing on the other side of the dance floor, you scared me a little. It was like an electric current running through me, just knowing you were looking. Even when we had cider, that night when your dad caught
us, I was still nervous around you. That’s why I didn’t want to go to the park.”

  “I figured that. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. I wouldn’t.” His gray eyes looked like watercolors.

  “I know. Now every time I see you, I still feel like there’s an electric current running through me, but it’s not fear. It’s strong, and maybe it’s a little dangerous, but I’m not afraid of it. Being close to you doesn’t feel like getting electrocuted. It’s more like being recharged.”

  As if to illustrate, Tomasi lightly touched his fingertip to the inside of her wrist and slid it lightly to the crook of her elbow. The tingle continued up her arm and shivered in her back. A spark returned to his eyes. “That sounds like a good feeling.”

  “So, do you?”

  “Of course I do.” He grinned, embarrassed, too. “I can’t believe you’re asking me this.”

  “Everything that’s happened—it’s made me realize things can change at any time. I don’t want to wait for my life to happen. I don’t have that kind of time.” Celia looked plainly at him.

  “I like that,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s wise for you to jump on me right now. Your mother is still awake.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She went up to her room, and she’s reading a book, something about Ophelia. I can feel the pages turning.”

  “Oh.”

  “Can I come back tomorrow night?” Tomasi raised her hand and pressed his lips to her palm and then the inside of her wrist.

  “Please do,” she said.

  “Okay.” He kissed her and started to get up.

  “Don’t you want to stay?”

  “Of course I want to stay!” he groaned. “But if Grandpa finds me missing from my room, or if your mom walks in on you again . . .”

  “You’re right,” Celia sighed.