“I guess so.” They sat in silence for a moment. “Celia knows about me, doesn’t she?” Lois finally asked.
“She guessed. I didn’t say anything. She’s very observant.”
“Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. I just . . . don’t know what to think. I wish there was some kind of user’s manual for being Kind,” Lois said in exasperation.
Bruno wasn’t up for another discussion of Celia. “I should go to class, too.”
Lois walked back to the counter where she had left her excuse pad. “Wait, the book—wasn’t it just here? Where did it go now?”
They looked around, but the book was gone. “Are you really surprised?”
Lois gave a soft laugh that trailed off in a sigh.
On his way to class, Bruno stopped by his locker and remembered he was wearing Mariette’s necklace. He wasn’t sure what to do with it. Because Celia had fastened it around his neck herself, he wanted to continue wearing it. But it had been Mariette’s, and he had no idea what power it possessed. He reached behind his neck, unclasped it, and set it carefully on the top shelf of his locker.
BRUNO RAN DOWNSTAIRS WHEN he heard his sister’s voice. He had missed Sophia more than he realized. “Oh, you look so good!” She squeezed him, her long hair cold and fragrant with the familiar floral smell of her perfume. “You’re all grown up!”
“I don’t know . . .” Bruno looked down at the changes he knew Sophia was seeing, then back up to see the changes in his sister’s face. Somewhere in Buenos Aires, she had crossed over from pretty to beautiful. She was admiring his clothes. Their parents had left them alone in the foyer
“Are you dressing like Sylvio now?” She took off her coat.
“Kind of. He told you about the kids we met at school?” She nodded. “I think he wishes he could have them to himself.”
“He is a little possessive,” she said. “Tell me everything. How is high school? Will you help me carry these up?”
Bruno hefted her larger suitcase. “It’s good. It’s harder. I like it.”
“Do you see Sylvio a lot?”
“Yeah. We drive to school together. And the group studies together in the library, when we’re free.”
“Okay. Are you dating anyone? Girls? Boys?”
“Girls! But not really. There’s someone I like, but she has a boyfriend.”
“That sucks. I’m kind of in that place right now,” Sophia said, looking around before she said in a stage whisper, “Except he’s married!” She laughed at Bruno’s shocked expression. “I haven’t done anything! It’s just a crush.” They set her things down in the guest room next to his room. “The house is really nice. Have you put anything in your room this time?”
“A couple things.” Bruno grinned.
“So, what else?” She sat on the bed, and they smiled at each other the way they used to when their parents were out and she would let him stay up an extra fifteen minutes.
He wanted to tell her. More than that, he wanted to show her. It had been easy enough to keep his secrets from the rest of his family. But it was such a temptation, the thought of showing Sophia something that was all his own.
“We go to this club called Diaboliques,” he said instead. “It’s kind of like the one Sylvio used to go to, only bigger. They play all the music Sylvio likes. I like a lot of it, too.”
“Nice! I haven’t gone dancing like that in forever. I thought I would learn to tango, but so far that hasn’t happened. I can’t get over how good you look! I really missed you.”
“Me too.” Bruno was bothered now, thinking of all the things he wanted to share with her but couldn’t. What was he supposed to say? I’m Kind. I fulfilled my admonition, and in ten days I should receive new powers.
“I should go be social. Mom and Dad asked a million questions in the car, and I’m sure they have a million more.” Sophia pulled Bruno into another hug, and he hugged her back. “Let’s go.”
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING BRUNO sat in church with his family in their usual pew. Up in front, their father guided the congregation through the service, his voice as comforting as if he were reading them a bedtime story.
As usual, Bruno’s thoughts slipped away. He fiddled with the program while the pianist played a quiet meditation whose chords veered into dissonance, only to resolve even more beautifully on the other side. Lux Aurumque, he read, wondering what the Latin meant.
Bruno’s father was fond of saying that when it came to understanding the world, science answered more and more questions every day, and whenever science could explain the world, it should be allowed to. “But there are things science will never be able to explain. And those instances, those unanswerable questions, are when religion is vital. After science has done everything it can, religion is what takes us the rest of the way—into the unknown, into the mysterious, into the sublime.”
It made sense to Bruno, or at least it had, for a long time. Those questions that hung around the edge of his awareness and rattled him when he looked at them directly—Why am I here? What is my purpose? What happens when I die?—had always felt most manageable here, with a group of people around him also yearning for the answers.
And he supposed that still was true. But now there were new frightening questions, which seemed to have no place in this chapel. What are these powers, these magic places I’ve found? Will they change me in ways I’ll regret? Will the things I know about right and wrong, good and evil, that have gotten me this far, be enough to help me navigate this other world? I know what it means to believe in something I can’t see or touch; what does it mean to see and touch things that are unbelievable? If I have to keep these things secret, does that mean they’re bad, or wrong?
Bruno looked at his father, who was seated now with his head down, his palms cupped one in the other in his lap, like a nest for his faith. What if his father was powerful, too? What if he was keeping amazing secrets from Bruno, only because he didn’t realize Bruno knew them, also? Bruno glanced at his sister next to him, her head also down, one fist wrapped by her other hand. What if his sister was Kind? He had no reason to think she might be, other than that he loved her, and that made it easy to believe she was more spectacular than he ever could be.
THE FULL MOON ROSE. It’s not blue at all, Bruno thought, though he knew there was no reason for it to be. All day he had been nervous. Over the past week he had pored over his admonition. Had he missed anything? Was there any chance he had misinterpreted something? Bruno couldn’t remember anything in his life before this that felt so important, or that carried such a significant consequence. He didn’t want to fail. He fully believed something incredible was about to happen. Somewhere between the paper clips flying around Lois’s head and the way Cassandra had forecasted Gwendolyn with The Stranger, Bruno had let go of any doubt. But tonight was the ultimate proof. He had done everything he had been tasked to do, and tonight he would find out whether it had been worth it.
After ringing in the new year with his family, he stayed awake late into the night, scrutinizing every breath he inhaled and the smallest twinge or ache in his body. He studied his hands for any perceptible difference.
Nothing. Bruno wondered if he should go out into the Ebentwine clearing. Perhaps something was different there, and waiting for him to arrive. But the powers the others had seemed to be located in the people themselves, not in places outside them. Eventually he fell asleep, exhausted with disappointment.
THE NEXT NIGHT, BRUNO SAT on a sofa at the Fourads’ home, Ivo and Liz’s, after the First Night dinner. He watched Sylvio and Regine looking through another collage book she had made for him. On the other side of the room Marco and Brenden were trying not to kiss each other again in front of everyone; soon they sneaked out of the room. Celia was laughing with Liz. Ivo sat down next to Bruno on the couch.
“We barely got to talk at Halloween,” Ivo said. “How was your first semester?”
“It was all right,” Bruno said. “I don’t think I�
��m as smart as you guys.”
“Really? Celia says you’re brilliant.”
“She does?”
“She told us you’re a human atlas, and about how the librarian depends on you to find books for her in her own library. That’s pretty funny.”
“I guess it is.” Bruno grinned.
“Are you still in love with her?”
“I . . . I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry.” Ivo looked around the room. “I’m glad to see Regine has found someone. Last year was a little uncomfortable for me.”
Bruno played dumb. “She liked you?”
“She did. It was difficult near the end, but we finally made peace with it, I think. She seems to have moved on, at least. Silver seems like a great match for her.”
“I think so. How do you like college?”
“It’s good. I’m still not sure if I want to be an architect, but I have to say I love design. I love the ideas designers deal with. Every choice, the smallest detail, is important. Everything has meaning. Not just in a building—in every creative thing we do. In life.”
Then Liz called to Ivo, and Celia came to take his place.
“You having a good time?” she asked him, and Bruno nodded. “I keep forgetting to ask you: Do you still have Mariette’s necklace? I’d love to get it back.”
“Oh! I left it at school!”
“That’s okay! You put it in a safe place?”
“It’s in my locker.” As the others’ conversations lulled, Bruno thought he heard a bell ring on the far side of the house. “What was that?”
“What?” she asked him.
“Did you hear a bell? It sounded like school.”
“I didn’t hear anything.” Celia looked at him curiously.
Bruno looked toward the front hall and thought he heard the bell again, faintly, as though it were wrapped in cotton. He got up, and Celia followed him out into the hall. Bruno stopped by a door. “Is this a closet?”
“I think so.” She pulled open the door. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Bruno looked at the row of coats inside, confused. He had the oddest feeling Suburban High School was behind this closet, but he had no idea why. He reached through the coats to feel the wall behind them.
“What are you doing?” Celia asked.
“I feel like I’m supposed to go into the closet,” he said.
“I thought you had to come out first,” she said, then added, “That was a really stupid joke.”
The feeling wouldn’t go away. Bruno imagined what the Fourads’ house would look like as an architectural drawing. A pair of parallel lines would represent this hall, with a break on one side where the closet door was. The closet would be a small box alongside the hall, and a line with a row of hangers would represent the rod for the coats inside it. In his mind’s eye Bruno saw another box, the same size as the closet, butting up against the back wall, with another door on the far side, and then another hallway that was larger and longer.
There was a pad of paper by the phone in the hallway. He took a mechanical pencil from the jar and drew what he had imagined. In a long rectangle he wrote Fourad Hall, and in the smaller adjacent box with a door he wrote Closet. On the back side of the box he drew another box with a door on the far side, and wrote Janitor’s Closet in it. Then he drew another rectangle onto which the second closet opened, and labeled it Suburban High School First Year Hall. Celia watched. Bruno turned the pencil over and erased the line that separated the back walls of the two closets. Then he turned back to the real closet in the Fourad hallway.
He opened the door and reached through the coats again. Instead of a wall, this time his hand found a wooden stick. Bruno pushed his body through the coats and kicked something on the floor. He felt around and grasped something that felt like a broom handle. No, it was a mop. The bucket in which it rested rolled back and bumped his foot. Bruno let go of the mop and stepped carefully around the bucket. He found another door handle and pushed open the door, which opened out into a dark hallway. At the far ends exit signs glowed. He was in the first year hall at Suburban.
He crossed the hall to his locker, opened it, and retrieved Mariette’s necklace from the shelf. Then he returned to the janitor’s closet, pulling the door closed behind him, stepping around the mop bucket, passing through the coats, and reemerging in the Fourads’ front hall. Celia was still there, her eyes wide. He handed her the necklace.
“Did you just . . .” she said, gaping.
Bruno nodded. “I just made my own liminal.” He said it as much to hear it himself.
“That’s amazing! Is that your new power?” Bruno shrugged, but he couldn’t help smiling. Celia kept looking at him while she put the necklace on. She squeezed his arm and whispered, “Congratulations!”
“We’d better go back,” Bruno said.
In the living room, Regine was saying, “I was hoping you guys would want to make Silver an official member of the Rosary.”
“If that’s the case, then I nominate Bruno, too,” Marco said. “He’s as much a part of our group as Silver is.” They all looked up at Bruno and Celia.
Regine exhaled. “Fine. I mean, you’ve had the chance to get to know them, and they do all the things with us that we used to do last year. We ride together in the mornings. We go to Diaboliques every week.”
There was a long silence, and finally Ivo said, “I don’t know.” He looked from Sylvio to Bruno. “I like you guys a lot, and I’m really glad you’ve become friends with Regine and Marco and Celia. It’s great that you’re all keeping up the things we did. But I’m just not sure what the point is. I mean, at the end of this year Regine and Marco will graduate, and then they’ll be at Metropolitan with us—all the founding members will be at Metropolitan. So do we say that the Rosary has moved to Metropolitan then, or do we leave it behind at Suburban, and count on the younger members to keep it alive?”
“Or do we think of it as something that lasted three years, and is just . . . finished?” Brenden said. “I’m not trying to be mean, either. I really like you guys, too. But I kind of feel like the Rosary was certain people in a certain place at a certain time. If you change any of those things, I’m not sure it’s the same.”
He looked at Liz. “Listen,” she said, exasperated. “The Rosary never felt like a club to me—something to which people applied for membership. It was just the name we gave ourselves because it amused us. When we met Celia, I don’t remember us talking about it—it just happened, and we were all there, so it didn’t feel like an event. This feels different. It feels forced. I kind of agree with Brenden that the Rosary is over. Maybe next year when Regine and Marco get to college, we’ll call ourselves that again. But my hunch is we won’t. Brenden’s right: It has to do with Suburban as much as the group of us.”
“Should we take a vote?” Regine asked.
“That definitely makes it sound like a club,” Ivo said. “Is there going to be a secret password next?”
“I don’t know if this makes a difference,” Celia said. “But I haven’t felt like the Rosary is at Suburban this year. I love what we’re doing now, but we’re doing it as a different group of people. It’s just different.”
“So should we have a different name, then?” Regine asked her.
“Why do we need a name? Isn’t it enough that we’re friends who like a lot of the same things, and do things together?”
Regine turned to Sylvio. “I’m sorry. This is definitely not how I thought this was going to go.”
“It’s okay. I understand,” Sylvio said. To Bruno it was obvious his brother did not understand at all.
“I BET YOU’RE THE ONLY one who spends any time back here,” Sophia said as they picked their way through the snowy alley and up the stone steps to the tennis court where drifts leaned into the sagging net and nearby the picnic table wore a white muff. They had gone out for a walk in the late afternoon, wanting just a little more time together before Sophia got back on a pla
ne to Argentina.
“There’s not enough grass to mow back here,” Bruno said. “But I like it.”
“You seem, I don’t know—you seem more alive. I don’t know how to describe it.” Sophia looked at him in the winter light.
“I feel it,” Bruno said, happy she’d noticed more changes in him than his clothes.
“What do you think it is?”
“I feel like I’ve learned a lot, these past months. I feel, I don’t know . . . bigger.”
“That’s true. Learning expands you. Well, whatever it is, it looks good on you!”
The cold drove them back toward the house, but in the snowy alley Bruno turned away from the garage, toward the copse of trees, beyond which lay Ebentwine. What if I don’t tell her? What if we just stumble across it, the way I did the first time? He supposed Gardner would be there, ready to take him to task for bringing a citizen to Ebentwine. But by then it would be too late—Sophia would have seen, and he would get to share it with her.
“Where are you going?” She had stopped behind him.
“I don’t know. I’ve always wondered what’s back there.”
“And you want to find out now, in a foot of snow?” She laughed. “You haven’t changed at all in some ways, have you?” But he heard her feet crunching the snow as she followed him.
He picked his way under the first trees, releasing small avalanches from the branches that clung to his hair and coat. It wasn’t far; only five or six more steps and they would emerge in the clearing, pristine in the snow, the fountain likely reduced to a trickle over an ice-filled basin. Bruno’s heart thumped. He was being reckless, and he didn’t care.
“There’s nothing back here, crazy!” Sophia called good-naturedly.
“I just want to look a little farther.” Bruno said it as much to himself. He knew he would have arrived at Ebentwine by now if he had been alone. It was gone and he knew why: There was no place for citizens in Ebentwine. But he stubbornly pushed on until he tripped on a border stone and toppled into the backyard of Alice and Gertrude.
Pull Down the Night (The Suburban Strange) Page 19