Belle nodded, remembering how much she used to hate her face then, Bicé’s face. And now she’d give anything to have it back.
“I don’t remember who said this, but it was something I used to think about a lot. Maybe it was Vileroy. No, I don’t think it was. It couldn’t have been. But I remember thinking it a lot. It was something like, Do you know what makes someone beautiful?”
“I remember that,” said Belle, her throat hoarse.
“Confidence. You don’t have to have this shape eyes or that shape lips. No one seems to be able to decide which shape is best anyway. You can have every kind of blemish. It’s confidence that attracts people. That’s what everybody’s looking for. It’s what no potion can really give you. And believe me, Belle, you’ve got it. You’ve got it if you want it.”
Belle spoke up. “It’s believing that somebody loves you already, unconditionally.”
“Yeah, how’d you know what I was going to say?”
“Mom used to say that . . . whenever I felt ugly or you felt sad,” said Belle, sounding resigned, as if she no longer had reason to keep secrets.
Bicé’s eyes widened. Her mouth opened, but there was no sound.
The door slammed open. Bicé was trying to understand. Victoria came in. She was furious, like a thunderclap. She was always furious. “You idiot!”
Belle looked up. Bicé turned around. “You ruin everything, you stupid, stupid idiot.”
The two of them weren’t sure to whom she was talking.
“See what you’ve made me do? Do you have any idea how much work some of us did? We have to leave here now, you know that? We can’t just have one of us stop showing up and pretend you never existed. We can’t just erase you from the picture! Ughh!”
Bicé put her hands up to stop her ranting. “Calm down.”
“I don’t want to calm down. This was supposed to teach her a lesson. Now all my work is ruined, because we can’t stay anymore. And it’s all her fault!”
“You did a vicious, awful thing and just because you didn’t think of the consequences for yourself, now you’re trying to blame Belle?” said Bicé.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, Bicé.” Looking at Belle, Victoria went on: “But you know what you did. And now you look like a baboon and you deserve it. You weren’t even strong enough to take what was given to you.”
Belle couldn’t find her voice. Bicé raised hers. “Calm down, Victoria.”
“No! I hate all of you! I hate that I have to live with you! And you don’t even know what she’s done. You’re here playing the fairy godmother, and you have no idea what she’s done to you.”
Belle suddenly woke up. “Don’t, Victoria.”
“How’re you going to stop me? You don’t have her helping you anymore. You’re just another pilgrim.”
“It’ll hurt you too . . . if you tell,” said Belle.
“How? We’re leaving. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“What’re you two talking about?” said Bicé.
“You,” said Victoria. “We’re talking about you, and you don’t know it. Just like you don’t know how any of us got here. You don’t know how we all made the deal with Vileroy, how she came to our real homes at midnight and told us we could have what we wanted. You don’t know because you never had the heart. You would never have taken the deal. That’s why you don’t have the mark. You don’t even know that we weren’t adopted at birth. We did it when we were ten! Everything you remember before then is fake. Why do you think everything you remember doing is so unlike you? So uncreative? None of it happened. You were a happy little twin in Italy till your sister here sold you out.”
“Stop!” screamed Belle, but Victoria wasn’t about to stop now.
“She wanted to be pretty so bad, she had you kidnapped and brainwashed in your sleep. Go ahead, ask her. And she didn’t even have to. She just wanted to keep something from her past life. You were the teddy bear she dragged along. Face it, Belle, you’ve done some ugly things. You sold your own sister to the devil and then pretended all this time that you actually care about her. Just like you’ve pretended to be the pretty little queen. Well, you’ve done some ugly things. And now you have the face you deserve.”
Belle was standing still, slow, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. Bicé stood next to her. Victoria was still fuming, her chest expanding and contracting as if she’d just lost a race.
In the aftershock, from the doorway, Christian — who had been standing there a while — said, “I don’t get it,” and Valentin — who had been lurking behind him — laughed.
After Belle had fainted or pretended to faint (no one ever knew), and Valentin had disappeared to his room, Victoria stormed out toward the east wing of the house, where Madame Vileroy lived, because that was the only comfort she had. Christian and Bicé walked by themselves, and Bicé told him everything she’d heard. She told him about the letter she had seen — the desperate query of a boy with no options. It was all clear now. The four of them had made the deal when they were ten — even Christian. He must have changed his mind later on. Otherwise, why the fake memories?
“That’s why my mark was so light,” said Christian, rubbing his heart.
“That’s why I don’t have one and yours went away when you decided you didn’t want to steal anymore,” said Bicé. “And it explains why we remember you being so eager to steal when we were eight. The memories before we were ten are all fake. Oh, Christian. We had an entire life somewhere else.”
“We have to get out of here,” said Christian, stopping midstride. Bicé kept walking. “We have to leave,” he said again.
“Maybe,” said Bicé.
“That’s the only way to make this right,” he said. “We have to get out.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you’d want to leave tonight. You’ve been the biggest victim.”
Bicé stopped.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring it up. Belle probably —”
“There’s still more to this than we know.” They were in front of a door that Christian hadn’t seen before. It was Victoria’s.
“What’re we doing?” asked Christian.
“Victoria has been spying on us.”
Christian looked on. He felt a hiccup in his breathing. It looked to him as though Bicé was disappearing and appearing again, like a cut in a film. Then the door was open.
“How’d you open it?” said Christian. The knobs only opened for their owners.
“I froze everything and dragged her over here,” Bicé said with a quick grin.
“You put her back so she wouldn’t know?”
“Yeah, but I spit in her ear.”
The image of the short Bicé dragging an inanimate Victoria like a mannequin to the door, using her hand to fool the doorknob, and dragging her back, probably by her ankles, made Christian smile.
The insects in the room were terrifying to Bicé, the ultimate invasion of privacy. Christian recognized them immediately. He had seen them all over the city, stealing information. He’d even caught a few as they floated through his window, around the tennis court, inside the locker room. He had wondered what their lives were like and let them go.
Now the two of them stared at the room, a plague of flies, moths, mosquitoes, beetles, and bees. They hovered and buzzed and droned around everything. Their wings clattered against one another. Larvae were falling from the undulating swarm onto the linoleum, dropping like candies onto a factory floor.
“This is grotesque,” whispered Bicé.
“What?” said Christian.
“This is how she’s been spying,” said Bicé.
“I heard her talking about her moths . . . but this . . .” Christian kept his lips tight.
“They’ve evolved. The moths must not have been enough. She’s so . . . so greedy.”
“How does it work? They spell it out in the air or something?”
�
��Maybe they sting it in her ear.”
The knowing cloud sparkled in Christian’s eyes as he stepped forward. Bicé didn’t stop him.
“How did you find out about this place?” asked Christian, walking curiously toward the swarm.
“When I stop things to study, I’ve started looking around. Vileroy doesn’t want me to, but I’ve been trying to figure out the secrets of this place. I caught Victoria in here. She uses it all the time.”
“Will they attack us?” asked Christian.
“They shouldn’t, I don’t think. They seem to be programmed. I think they’ll obey whoever’s got access to the room.”
Bicé fingered the can of insecticide in her pocket. She had picked it up when she stopped everything to open the door, just in case anything went wrong.
As Christian stepped closer and closer to the center of the swarm, he thought about everything that had happened, everything he could possibly ask. He wanted to know how they had each gotten here to this miserable place. Was it one big decision or a thousand small ones? He wondered who their parents had been. How could Belle betray her sister the way she had or Victoria continue worshipping Madame Vileroy even after knowing who she was? And he wondered why Bicé seemed so reluctant to leave.
Deep in thought, Christian barely noticed how muffled Bicé’s voice sounded as she gave out instructions. He looked over at her and saw her motioning to him. He tried to make out her words, but he couldn’t. Dozens of little antennae were prodding inside his eardrums. He tried to fight the impulse to struggle. They were touching every inch of him. If he brought up his hand to swat them away from his face, he would only bring more insects. It was like trying to dry your face in a swimming pool. But Christian was used to being submerged. Instead of the crystals of his blue lagoon or the refuse of his watery grave, now he had tiny legs probing at every pore in his skin. He didn’t know how to get the insects to speak to him.
Outside, Bicé yelled, “Tell them what to do!”
Christian shook his head but couldn’t get any space. He said, “Bicé, help.”
Suddenly Bicé’s voice became magnified in his ear midscream. “What to do! They’ll listen to what we say.”
Hearing her voice was like being thrown a life preserver. And at the same time, with the bugs acting as his ears, it was as if they suddenly became one body. Christian calmed down a little. “What should we ask them?”
“All I know is what I’ve guessed so far.”
“Show us the future,” said Christian.
Bicé started to say, “I don’t think they can do that,” when they both heard the buzzing grow louder. At first it was just static, but soon they both began to catch words, here and there in the garbled hissing. The feeling was uncomfortable at first, as though each little sting was a hardwired cable being jacked into their ears. They weren’t exactly hearing the words of the insects, more like their brains were having the information shoved into them. Soon, not only were they hearing, but they could also see visions forming behind their eyelids. The experience of every little bug, whatever it had seen and heard, was being forcefully uploaded into their heads. And soon, they didn’t even notice the discomfort.
They saw Valentin alone in his room. He was playing a first-person shooter on his computer.
“What is this?” said Christian.
“It’s happening right now, in the other room.”
“But that’s just Val, gaming. I asked for the future.”
“Oh my,” said Bicé, “look at his clock.”
Christian saw the clock at the upper right-hand corner of Valentin’s computer. It was six hours ahead.
“He’s going forward in time?”
“I didn’t think he could.”
“How are we seeing this?”
“Look.”
There was a tiny moth, sitting quietly like a porcelain statuette on the back of Valentin’s chair. Val jumped up from his seat with his arms raised in victory. He strolled out of the room. The moth followed, apparently reporting back to the hive — now including Christian and Bicé — instantaneously. Bicé was about to say something, but neither she nor Christian could speak when they saw Valentin walk down the hall and into a room where another Christian and another Bicé were sitting. From the thick of the hive, Christian and Bicé watched as the moth hovered around Valentin. In the other room, Christian looked to Valentin and the scene played out like this:
Christian: “Val, guess what?”
Valentin: “What?”
Christian: “I just wrote my first poem — well, the first one I’m proud of.”
Valentin (with a sneer): “How cute.”
Bicé: “You should be proud, Christian. It’s good.”
Christian (to Valentin, embarrassed): “It’s not as good as yours. Would you mind looking at it? I could use the help.”
Valentin (as though he doesn’t care at all about keeping up appearances): “Oh, stop the humble routine. It’s nauseating.”
(Christian looks confused, but then Valentin smiles as if he’s joking and Christian laughs and moves on.)
Valentin: “Is that the final draft?”
Christian: “Yep. It’s as good as it’s gonna get.”
Valentin: “Confident, aren’t we?” (And then he leans against the wall, his arms crossed defensively, as he watches Christian like an experiment.) “Well, I know a Christian that’s scared all he’ll ever be is a thief and a leech. And I think somewhere deep inside, that Christian knows the truth, and he’s too much of a coward to call me on it.”
The Christian who was watching, the one in the storm of insects, was surprised that Valentin was talking about him like that.
(In the other room, Bicé looks worried.)
Bicé: “What are you talking about, Val?”
Valentin: “Anything I want. I can say whatever I want, see? And I can do whatever I want and no one will know but me. I’ve even shot everyone in the school for fun. Let me see that.”
(Christian hands Val the poem, staring blankly at him, wondering if this is all a joke.)
Bicé: “So then why are you confessing everything now?”
Valentin (palming the sheet of paper): “Confessing? I’m not confessing, because this” (waving the poem at them) “is just another lie, and you” (pointing at Christian) “aren’t the only thief.”
(The Christian in the other room leaps at Valentin to get back his poem, but he stops in midair. His desperation at losing his first great poem, the arrogant grin on Valentin — both freeze for an instant on their faces. Then Christian leaps backward. His conversation with Bicé unwinds. He walks out of the room, sits at his desk, deletes the poem, unthinks the title, then suddenly is inspired, and just as suddenly forgets his favorite poem.)
The Christian who was watching, the one in the hive, said, “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” said Bicé. She didn’t even understand how they could see what they were seeing, let alone explain Valentin’s strange behavior. Then she spotted the moth again and realized. The moth had gone with Valentin, like an appendage; it had traveled with him, carrying with it the hive’s eye. And she was here now, because she was part of the hive, able to observe the future without being a passenger on Valentin’s train. This was a room apart. A room unlike any other. The hive, with its one mind, was able to hold its connection through both space and time. It was able to travel with Valentin to the future and spy on a future Christian and a future Bicé. No wonder Victoria knew so much.
They watched Val, back in his room, back in the current time, in front of his computer with Gauss rifles blasting at him from the riverbank, his arms raised in ultimate victory. In his hand was the paper. Val unfolded it and immediately began copying it into his journal. Then he got up and walked out the door, taking his journal but leaving the paper behind. “Where’s he going?” said Christian. Then to the insects all around him, “Show me the paper.”
“He’s going to find you,” said Bicé, “so he can read
it to you.”
Christian still didn’t understand. He looked at the paper on the bed, the words in his own handwriting. As he read each sentence, it disappeared. At first the title, a phrase he had been thinking of lately. And then the lines, until he reached the end, and just before it disappeared, he saw the author’s initials, CF, fade and become the letters VF.
The poem (at least the version in his handwriting) was gone — just like all those times that Valentin had made him listen — because now he thought it was Valentin’s poem. He could never go on to write it in the future, because now Valentin had beaten him to it. And so no matter how much of a connection he felt to those words, however painful it was to wish he had written them, he would never actually come to write his poems now, because now they were Val’s.
Bicé watched as Christian realized that he had always been the writer he wished to be, that everything had been stolen from him. She yelled over the buzzing of the insects that they should leave. Suddenly, every inch of Christian shuddered with the hunger to steal. He fumed into the violent halo of insects, their creepy touch making him angrier, more ravenous by the second. Then, every moth and bee and bug fell to the ground like a tree struck by lightning, dropping every leaf at once, leaving only the trunk. Christian, fists clenched, felt a thousand droplets of stolen energy enter him at once, so for a moment his whole body tingled like a foot that had fallen asleep.
“He’s been stealing my stuff.”
“I know.”
“I’ll break his face.”
“Let’s just leave.”
“Now you want to leave?”
“No, I just mean here, this room.”
“Let’s run away.”
“I can’t. Not yet.”
Another Faust Page 28