“Celia was her best friend,” Regine said, and they all looked at Celia.
“Elsie must be devastated,” Celia said, changing the subject.
“She’s pissed! Scott even brought her flowers today, but I heard that she let him have it right in the middle of the hallway,” Regine said. “I think it’s safe to say that relationship is over.”
Celia said, “I wonder if it’s really Mariette.”
“Would you want to see her?” Marco asked her.
“I would.” Celia’s expression was open and a little wounded. She chose her words carefully and kept her eyes on the table. “The last time I saw her, she was soaking wet and blue in the face. It’s such a horrible way to remember her. If I accept that there is a ghost, and it’s the ghost of Mariette, she sounds quite beautiful. I’d love to see her that way.” Celia looked up and was a little taken aback that everyone was listening so intently to her. “I would tell her how much I miss her. And how chemistry is so much harder this year. But mostly that I miss her.”
BRUNO’S GYM CLASS SPLIT into teams for flag football—not a favorite of Bruno’s, but he was glad for the chance to stop thinking and blow off some steam. He was having a hard time ignoring the increasing number of mysterious things that had begun to happen since his family had arrived in Whiterose.
The gym teacher, a solid man just past his prime, had picked two seniors to quarterback. On the second play, a guy went down hard. Bruno didn’t see what happened, but three seniors trotted away, laughing under their breath. The younger guy got up slowly.
The next time, Bruno saw it. One of the seniors clipped another guy just hard enough for him to fall. “Settle down, Van!” the teacher called. “I want to see flags, not hockey checks!” The guy who had fallen tried to shake it off, but he looked a little dazed.
They kept playing, and Bruno’s quarterback connected with him. The second time Bruno caught the ball, he was running toward the goal when someone clipped him, and then the ground came up to batter his ribs on one side. Van turned away while one of Bruno’s teammates offered him a hand.
It was just the excuse Bruno needed to vent his frustration. He jumped up, ran toward Van, and dove at his legs, taking him down. The gym teacher stepped in to break them up.
“Hey! You better stop right there, Van! I think we’ve had enough of you taking cheap shots at the underclassmen, so cut it out already!”
“I didn’t hit anybody that hard!” Van protested.
“Cut it out! You got exactly what you deserved. Now”—the teacher looked around—“if I see any more contact from anybody, you will get detention, and those of you on the football team, you know there are repercussions for detention. Now play flag football!”
STUDENTS WERE DISAPPEARING into classrooms when Bruno noticed a girl from his computer class tucked in a corner at the end of the hall. She pressed into the two walls as though she was trying to disappear, tears drpping from her eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked as the bell rang.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly. He stepped closer to hear her better, but she didn’t say anything else.
“Did something happen?”
She made a halfhearted gesture. “Nothing happened.” She sounded more confused than upset, but the tears kept coming. “All day it’s just gotten worse, and I don’t know why. I just . . . I just want to go to sleep and forget about everything.”
“Are you sick?”
She shook her head. “I just don’t care about anything. I’ve never felt like this before. Not even when my parents split up.”
“Where are you supposed to be now?”
“English.”
“C’mon, I’ll walk you there.” When Bruno slipped his arm around her shoulder to try to get her to move, the girl’s slouched frame straightened up. She stared at him, relief in her eyes.
“I’m being foolish, aren’t I? Why am I moping around like this? You are such a sweetheart.” Before he knew it, she had hugged him.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He wouldn’t have guessed his first hug from a girl would happen quite like this.
“I feel so much better. Thank you!” she said into his shoulder.
“You do?”
“I do! You’re the nicest guy! I have to go to class, but thank you!” She gave him a peck on the cheek and took off down the hall, her bag swinging from her shoulder.
Bruno stared after her, wondering what had just happened.
4
anywhere out of the world
BRUNO WAS SITTING AT his desk in his room when Regine walked in with an imperious air. “My, you have a minimal style of decorating, don’t you?”
Sylvio was behind her. “He’s never had any stuff.”
“But you’re listening to My Bloody Valentine. Because Celia told you to?” She turned to Sylvio. “Did he ever listen to this music before?”
Sylvio was happy to join the attack. “Well, he hears a lot of stuff because I play it. But he never asked me for copies of anything before we moved here.”
Regine’s attention returned to Bruno. “I heard you have a thing for maps.”
“I like them,” Bruno said.
“I don’t know—finding shortcuts and back doors at school, and making a fool of Mr. Williams in geography class—that sounds like more than just liking them.”
“You heard about that?”
“Things like that get repeated,” Regine said knowingly.
“Are you two coordinating outfits?” Bruno asked. Regine wore a deep-purple pleated dress over black tights, and Sylvio had on a purple cardigan.
“Of course,” Regine said, as though it was the most obvious thing. “See you later.” She led Sylvio out of the room.
Bruno went out into the hall and crept up to his brother’s door to eavesdrop.
“Your room reminds me a little of Ivo’s,” Regine was saying. “Nothing is ever out of place. Look at all your CDs!”
“My most valuable possessions.”
“Wow, you have Specimen’s ‘Wet Warm Cling-Film Red Velvelt Crush’ on CD? That’s rare.”
“Cost me a fortune. But ‘Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’ is a classic. Do you like Kommunity FK?” She didn’t respond, and Sylvio said, “‘Something Inside Me Has Died’?” Another pause. “Oh my God, I’m going to play it for you right now.”
Bruno was returning to his room when his father came into view, midway up the stairs. “Is your brother’s door open?” Bruno nodded, and his father went back downstairs.
The bell rang as Bruno came out of the stairwell on his way to the home economics room to see Marco. Down at the far end of the emptying hall, the girl with curly red hair stood watching him. Her multicolored sweater practically glowed. She was, by all accounts, a ghost, and he shivered, wondering why this strange phenomenon didn’t freak him out more—or anyone else at Suburban, come to think of it. Everything about Mariette unsettled him—to have died what sounded like a terrible death, and now to be haunting the school, wreaking havoc with the living . . . But the girl at the end of the hall, somehow always in a sunbeam, looking so wholesome and even happy, felt like a kindred spirit to Bruno.
“There you are! What are you doing?” Marco poked his head out of the classroom, a measuring tape draped around his neck. Bruno looked back down the hall, but Mariette was gone. He followed Marco into the home ec room and looked in amazement at the clusters of chattering girls hunched tentatively over sewing machines. Off in a corner, Marco had a workstation to himself.
“I know, it’s a bit much. But it’s the happiest time I have at school most days.” He looked around at the girls. “They all want advice on their wrap skirts and aprons, and sometimes I give it to them, but they won’t bother me while you’re here.”
“Why not?” Bruno asked.
Marco scoffed, “They know better than to interrupt me when I’m in a fitting. First let me get your proper measurements so I don’t have to guess like I did on that shirt.”
> “You guessed perfectly.”
“I’m usually pretty close.” Marco wound the tape around Bruno’s neck, then his shoulders, chest, waist, and hips. He jotted the measurements on a pad. “So, what are we making for you?”
“I don’t know. It’s up to you.” Bruno wouldn’t have presumed to ask Marco for anything.
“You could use a coat,” Marco told him. “Something between a blazer and outerwear.” He picked up a pencil and started sketching. “I’m thinking double-breasted, with a collar like a pea coat, but stopping at the hip instead of the traditional length. Fitted, but with enough room for a ribbed turtleneck underneath. You can wear it with those great trousers you got—the slim straight ones with the back pocket details.”
Bruno studied the sketch. “You can make that?”
“Of course I can. I’ll probably make one for Brenden, too, if you don’t mind.”
“Why would I mind? You have his measurements?”
“Oh, I know his measurements.” Marco smiled mischievously. “Intimately. I can’t wait for you to meet him. I’ve already told him about you. He’s concerned I’ve found a new muse, which is why I have to make him one of these, too. I only have a week; I’m going to see him next weekend.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I think he’ll be a great music critic. He just lives and breathes it. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t make his own music. Over the past two years he did more for the Rosary than I think everyone realized. Ivo was kind of the leader, but Brenden shaped our taste in music, and that’s a huge part of what the Rosary is about. Plus, he’s the only one Ivo listens to, really. They’re roommates at Metropolitan.”
“You love him?” Bruno asked.
“I do.”
“I didn’t mean it like I doubted whether you did. I just wondered . . . what it feels like.”
“How to describe it?” Marco pondered. “Everyone’s so self-centered, you know? We’re all so me, me, me, all the time. Even when you have a crush on someone else, it’s always about how they complete me, how they make up for what is lacking in me, what they can do to make me feel better about myself. When you love someone, though”—Marco laid down his pencil and surveyed the chattering girls around them—“you forget about yourself. It’s kind of a relief, really. You get to stop thinking about yourself all the time, and put someone else first. You get to delight in how good someone else is, how amazing it is that they are who they are. And if you’re really lucky, they’re doing the same thing about you. Then it turns out to be about you after all. Not because you wanted it to be about you—because someone else does. That’s love.” Marco smiled. “I’m just a hopeless romantic.”
“I wonder if I am,” Bruno said.
“A hopeless romantic? I don’t know. I like to think everyone is. But that’s what a hopeless romantic would say.” Marco laughed at himself.
ON THE WAY TO THE LIBRARY that afternoon, Bruno compared Marco’s description of love to the feelings for Celia that still churned in him. He couldn’t be sure they were the same. That morning, when he had been near her, he hadn’t thought of anything—not her, not himself. And when he had come away from her it was as though he was coming out of a trance, and then he spent the next half hour trying to remember everything she had said and done. He was just outside the library when Van suddenly stepped in front of him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“The library,” Bruno said.
“I haven’t forgotten about gym class,” Van said. “Do you think I’m just going to let that slide?”
“I don’t know.” Bruno almost smiled, realizing he had actually forgotten about the fight he had picked with a senior.
“When are we going to settle this?” Van loomed over him, an order of magnitude larger than Bruno.
“Bruno, there you are!” It was a woman’s voice, and Van stepped aside. Lois appeared in the doorway behind him. “I need your help.” She looked curiously at Van, who slinked away, and she smiled at Bruno when he joined her.
“Okay, I have your first test,” she said under her breath as they walked to the desk. “Mr. Dewey needs these books, and I’ve looked three times. I swear the shelves rearrange themselves back there.” Above the tall shelves of the main stacks, the ceiling grew darker and darker as it receded out of sight. Bruno couldn’t tell if the back wall wasn’t visible because it was too dark or too far away. “Will you take a look?”
“Sure.” Bruno took the card from her and headed off into the stacks. Arnold Hauser’s Social History of Art, volumes 1–4—he had seen the art history section in the very first aisle just the other day. The section was right where he expected, and after a moment’s scanning, he pulled the four slim volumes from the shelf. He turned to go back when his foot came in contact with a book on the floor. He stooped to pick it up.
“You Are Here? That’s an odd title for a book.” Bruno slipped the Hauser books under his arm. A torn strip of notebook paper marked a place in the middle of You Are Here, and when he opened it, Bruno found a map. He easily recognized North America, with a box drawn around the eastern half of the United States, and a note that read, Bruno, see the detail in You Are Here, volume 2, in aisle 2.
“Bruno?” He blinked, but there really was a message addressed to Bruno in this book. He wondered why the detail to the map would be in a different book, and why the second volume in a series wasn’t shelved with the first one. He saw an empty space on the shelf above the place on the floor where volume 1 had been, so he slipped it back in and headed back down the row. At the main aisle, Bruno turned down the next row, which was marked with a large number 2 on its end cap. He slowly walked along the shelves, scanning for the book. Ahead of him a volume projected a few inches out from the row with You Are Here, Volume 2 printed on its spine. Bruno pulled it out. Another bookmark, and when he opened the book, another map, this time of the northeastern United States. There was another detail box framing the state of Pennsylvania, and another note. Bruno, see the detail in You Are Here, volume 3, in aisle 4.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Bruno muttered, reshelving that book and returning to the main aisle. The library was eerily silent. He went two rows farther down. The sign with the number 4 on it was a little hard to see. “Why don’t they have lights back here?” He walked down the row, wondering if another book would be sticking out, and sure enough, one was.
You Are Here, volume 3, was a little oversize. Back here the books all seemed to be a little larger than normal. Bruno couldn’t guess why it would make sense to organize books by size. He opened volume 3 at its marker and found a map of Pennsylvania. There was a detail box around the south-central portion of the state, and the note read, Bruno, see the detail in You Are Here, volume 4, in aisle 8. “Aisle eight? Farther away this time,” he mumbled, but he went off to find it.
In the eighth row of shelves the shadows were twice as deep. Once again, though, the volume he sought was protruding from a shelf just at eye level, and he pulled it out. It was the size of a phone book. “Show me the map of south-central Pennsylvania.” He sighed. There it was, with a box around Whiterose. “It really knows where I am.” Bruno marveled. “Aisle sixteen now? Seriously? It’s going to be pitch-black.”
He counted stacks as he went farther down the aisle in case he couldn’t see the markers on the end caps. When he thought he had arrived, Bruno ran his fingers along the grooves of the plaque to feel the shape of the 6 next to the 1. “Here goes,” he said at full volume, confident no one back in the reading area could hear him. He plunged into the darkness of the stacks. For a moment it felt as though he were passing through the darkness among the trees and hedges on his way to the Ebentwine clearing. Ahead Bruno saw a flickering light, which turned out to be a lantern resting on one of the shelves, a candle burning inside it. The aroma of cedar and olibanum greeted him as he approached. “Isn’t fire dangerous in a library?” he asked the lantern. “Is the book here?” He lifted it by its handle and held it up to the she
lves. You Are Here, Volume 5 looked back at him, golden letters glinting in the candlelight. It was even larger than volume 4. “I’m guessing the box will be around Suburban High School.”
He was correct. The scale of the map was large enough now for each house and building to have its own outline on the page. Inside this detail box Suburban looked less like a building than a maimed starfish, its bent limbs jutting out in all directions. Bruno, see the detail in You Are Here, volume 6, in aisle 32.
“Thirty-two? This is crazy,” Bruno said. But he’d come so far, it didn’t make sense to stop now. He picked up the Hauser books and the lantern and headed back to the aisle. Then he counted from seventeen up to thirty-two as he passed the dark stacks. Up ahead something moved in the darkness, and Bruno halted, suddenly afraid. He lifted the lantern and peered down the aisle, but no one was there. Behind him the reading area looked like a lonely rest stop on a nighttime highway. He shook off his fear and continued on his way to aisle 32.
The books were the size of fine art or photography monographs fit for coffee tables. Bruno had to find an empty space on the shelf to set down the lantern and the Hauser books before he could pull down You Are Here, volume 6. It opened to reveal a detailed plan of Suburban High School. Bruno was surprised the new wing was included in the drawing; the book looked far too old to document something so recent. On this page a box was drawn around the library, and he noticed immediately that on the plan, rather than four walls, the library had only three. The side of the room with these stacks, into which he had traveled so deeply, simply faded away. “Does it go on forever?” he asked the silent darkness around him. This time there was no detail box, but there was a note. Bruno, see You Are Here, volume 6, page 1.
The pattern was broken. Bruno turned back to the first page.
He found a heavily shaded drawing of two bookshelves viewed from the ceiling. The shelves extended all the way to either side of the page, so just a small stretch of the aisle was visible. In the middle were the head and shoulders of a boy viewed from above. The boy held a large book open in front of him. The only light in the picture came from a lantern on the shelf in front of the boy. The boy in the drawing was Bruno, as if someone on the ceiling had drawn a picture of him where he was, right there and then. Bruno looked up, but everything was black. For all he could tell, there might not have been a ceiling at all. He was so far from the reading area now; the library might as well have turned gradually into a cave.
Pull Down the Night (The Suburban Strange) Page 6