Pull Down the Night (The Suburban Strange)

by Nathan Kotecki

  “What does Orland want?”

  She sighed. “Not us, and that’s all I can think about tonight.”

  “Go quickly, so the fire trucks don’t see you when they get here.”

  He went back up to the main hall and pulled the alarm before he ducked into the janitor’s closet and returned home. He was standing in his bedroom, redrawing the line to close the link between his closet and Suburban, when there was a soft rap on his bedroom door. His father looked in, eyes sleepy and hair askew.

  “Did you hear a fire alarm?” he asked, and Bruno did his best to look confused by the question. “I must have been dreaming. Why are you up and dressed, anyway?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of going for a walk,” Bruno said.

  “Don’t go far. It makes me nervous to think of you out there alone in the dark. Anything could happen.”

  “I won’t go far.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Bruno went downstairs to the front door and pressed his hand against the frame until it pulsed from his Kind charge. He went to the back door and did the same. Back upstairs, he sat on his bed in his clothes. His body was exhausted, but his mind wasn’t ready to let go of everything that had happened. He had made peace with the truth that being Kind made some things easier and other things harder. And he had made his choice—to take his place in the world of the Kind, and not back away from it.

  17

  heartbreak beat

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” CELIA whispered to Bruno in the hall the next morning. “What happened? Do you know why there’s an assembly?”

  Bruno thought it might be easier to tell her what hadn’t happened. “Ms. Moreletii’s dead.”

  “What? She’s dead?”

  Bruno nodded. “Last night. Or this morning. I don’t know; it’s all kind of a blur. She came back to school because Mariette gave her a fake kiss note, and Lois and I trapped her in the Ebentwine in the library to weaken her. Lois cleared the malaise out of the halls, and then we let Tina—Ms. Moreletii—out. She wasn’t as bad off as I was, but she could barely stand up. We took her out in the parking lot, and that floating figure struck her with lightning, right in front of us.”

  “Wait—the floating figure wasn’t Ms. Moreletii?”

  “No—I thought that, too!”

  “You could have been killed! What did you do?”

  “Nothing. It wasn’t interested in us. It zapped her, and then it flew off. But there’s more. She knew its name: Orland.”

  “Orland? Did you see . . . him?”

  “Not really. Orland stayed up in the air, just like before.”

  “So the assembly must be about that. And then there’ll be grief counselors, just like last year with Mariette . . .” Celia sighed. “So they think she was struck by lightning?”

  “Probably. I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Even if everyone thinks it was a freak accident, that’s still two deaths in two years at the school. People are going to start wondering what’s going on here.”

  “What do the Unkind want? What does Orland want? It seems like they’re trying to take over Suburban, but why? But if Orland is Unkind, why kill another Unkind?”

  “If Orland is Kind, why stand by watching while an Unkind tried to kill me last year?”

  “So what does Orland want?”

  “All I know is, finding out might be the most important thing we ever do.”

  They went off to their homerooms and then down to the auditorium, where Mr. Spennicut broke the news.

  After school, Celia met Bruno at a table in the reading area of the library. “Do you think Lois will leave now?” she asked quietly while they waited for the others to arrive.

  “I don’t know. She can’t say she has nothing to offer anymore. She’s the reason Ms. Moreletii’s malaise is gone from the school.”

  “I wish I could have been there,” Celia said. “It must have been scary, but now that it’s over and you’re safe, it sounds exciting, too.”

  “It was plenty of both.”

  “And now we have a name. Orland.” Celia waved as Marco came into the library. “He’s still stressed about Mariette’s note.”

  “This fashion show is the perfect thing to distract him. Is that Gwendolyn?”

  “Sure is. What’s she doing here after school?” They watched her walk up to Marco to say hello. “Did he ask her to model, so he could have three girls? It sure looks like it.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me?” Bruno said.

  “Because you would have told him not to do it!” Celia laughed in spite of herself. “Don’t worry about it. She has a crush on you, and you’re not interested, and now you’re going to be in Marco’s fashion show together. That’s it.”

  “I just . . . I know how it feels,” Bruno said.

  “Oh,” Celia said. “I won’t give you advice, then. Just try not to make it tense, for Marco’s sake, okay?”

  “I won’t.” They went to join the others.

  Sylvio and Regine arrived and took their now customary seats on opposite sides of the reading area. Marco gave them a pained look and said, “I guess we’re just waiting for the St. Dymphna contingent, then.”

  As if on cue, the group of boys entered. Tomasi wore an annoyed expression, as though fully aware that he and the six sophomores looked like a tall black shepherd with six black sheep.

  There were introductions and compliments, and then Marco laid out his plans for the fashion show. Bruno was distracted by the St. Dymphna boys, who always seemed to be staring at Celia. When the planning session was over, the six of them fanned out to talk to everyone else, and Bruno wondered if they’d coordinated their targets in advance.

  “How’ve you been?” Turlington asked Bruno.

  “Good. Thanks for doing this. It means a lot to Marco.”

  “We were thrilled to be asked. So this is Suburban High. I’ve never been here before.” Turlington looked curiously at the stacks that receded into darkness. “If half the stories I’ve heard are true, this is a pretty crazy school.”

  “What stories have you heard?”

  “Didn’t a teacher just die here last night? And we heard about the curse on sophomore virgins last year, and the girl who died then. Does she really haunt the science wing?”

  “Some people say they’ve seen her,” Bruno said cagily.

  “Giving out kiss notes?”

  “You’ve heard about all this?”

  “If a story is juicy, it travels,” Turlington said. “So, have you received a kiss note?”

  “No. I’m not dating anyone, so . . .”

  Turlington’s eyebrow went up. “Oh? Would you like to change that?”

  “I’m good, thanks,” Bruno said.

  Turlington looked over at one of his friends monopolizing Celia, and Bruno tried to remember whether that was Schiffer or Crawford. “Celia is amazing. We’re all kind of in love with her.”

  “I’m sure she’d be flattered if you told her” was all Bruno could think to say.

  “Well, I guess I’ll see you at Diaboliques!” Turlington went to join the conversation with Celia.

  Bruno found Tomasi. “Are they Unkind?” he asked him.

  “What makes you think that?” Tomasi asked.

  “They’re all in love with her.” The two of them watched the boys collected around Celia, hanging on her words. “Is it the agon?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. They kind of act like that with everyone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  “MR. PERILUNAS HAS BEEN researching the cartographers of the fifteenth century,” Mr. Williams told the class. “Mr. Perilunas, would you care to explain to the class how early maps of the east coast of the Americas were distorted by the agendas of the explorers?”

  Bruno was no longer surprised by these requests from Mr. Williams. As he tried to make a quick, coherent summary so he could sit down again, Bruno remembered the times he
had wondered whether the warning in his admonition had been about Mr. Williams.

  Once again, he waited after class.

  “What is it, Mr. Perilunas?”

  “I just want to know why you’ve given me all this extra stuff to do. It’s more work for me, but it’s also been more work for you. You could have just done enough to keep me on my toes so I’d pay attention in class, but you’ve done a lot more than that.”

  Mr. Williams was silent for a moment. “When I was younger, it was plain to me I must make something of myself. I guess the short answer is that I see a lot of myself in you, Bruno.” It was the first time Mr. Williams had called him by his first name. “Sometimes we need someone to push us, to help us be as great as we can be. But being good at something doesn’t necessarily mean we have it easier than others. Sometimes it makes things harder.” He looked out the window.

  “I’m glad you did. Thank you. I’ve learned a lot.”

  “You have. And I’m glad. I hope you’ll stay in touch next year, even if we don’t have a class together.”

  Bruno never had thought about being friends with a teacher, but then he had to admit he thought of Lois as a friend, too. “I will,” he said, and was pleased to shake Mr. Williams’s hand.

  “Then again, the year is far from over. I have a feeling you have quite a bit left to learn. In this class and elsewhere. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  BRUNO WAS WALKING PAST the science wing on his way down the main hall when one of his books slipped from his arm and fell to the floor. The assignment he had tucked inside the front cover skittered through the doorway into the empty classroom. He picked up the book and then went after the paper. When he stood up, Mariette was there.

  “You are impossible,” she said, but her face was contagiously happy, and he found himself smiling like someone who’s just lost a game of assassin. She held a folded piece of paper in her hand. “I’ve been trying to give you this forever.”

  “I hoped the date would expire and then you wouldn’t have any reason to give it to me.”

  “That’s not how it works, and you know it,” she said. “I wanted to meet you for other reasons, though. We barely got to talk in the library.”

  “Why?” He thought a moment. “Celia?”

  “We have a lot in common. Pining away for that girl.”

  “Is that why you’re still here?”

  “In a way. Not exactly, but it has something to do with it.”

  “She said you didn’t talk. Why didn’t you talk to her?”

  Mariette shrugged. “There wasn’t any reason to speak. What would I have said?”

  “How did you make peace with it—knowing she wouldn’t love you back? Even now, when Tomasi understands the whole agon thing, he still acts like he thinks I’m going to try to steal her from him.”

  “He doesn’t hate you. He’s doing what anyone would do if he knew another guy was in love with his girlfriend. He could have beaten you to a pulp by now.”

  “I don’t want it to be that way. I really don’t want to break them up. It’s my problem. I get that completely.”

  “When you’re in high school and you fall in love, it’s so easy to believe it’s the most important thing in the world. But you know it’s not, so you enjoy the ache when you can, and remind yourself you aren’t completely in control when you can’t.”

  “That’s your advice?”

  “That, and I will give you this, finally.” Mariette put the paper in Bruno’s hand.

  “What’s it like, being a ghost?”

  “What’s it like, being alive?” she asked him. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” he said.

  They looked at each other, and she said, “Well, read it!”

  Bruno braced himself for a date and time, but when he opened the paper he found an admonition instead:

  Gain your power; learn your purpose

  Find what lies beneath the surface

  Do all this before the last

  New moon before the summer solstice

  The one you think you’ve long opposed

  Will be the one who needs you close

  Find new spaces in between

  And kiss the one who means the most

  Beware the one with much to tend

  With more than one means to an end

  Who sometimes masquerades as foe

  But likes to masquerade as friend

  Bruno shook his head. Here we go again. He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. He was heading toward the classroom door when his books flew out of his arm and scattered on the floor. “Really, Mariette?” He laughed, turning around.

  But it wasn’t Mariette who stood behind him. Her skirt and jacket glowed as the sun shone faintly through her. Her wavy hair cascaded around her shoulders, and her eyes held the glint of a gentle crazy person who might shriek with sadness at any provocation. Tina Moreletii backed away from him, her fingers wiggling in his direction. Then she turned and walked out the door.

  “Oh, God. Now we have two ghosts?”

  BRUNO LOOKED AT THE CLOCK. It was nearly three in the morning, but he hadn’t slept yet. He must have listened to “Song to the Siren” on his headphones at least fifty times.

  Just as before, his new admonition was a tossed salad of words whose meaning eluded him no matter how many times he read it. But just as with the first admonition, one line stuck out: Kiss the one who means the most. Who wrote these admonitions? Was there any other possible way to interpret that line? With seven words Bruno’s oldest dilemma had changed yet again. The same unknown forces that dictated the bizarre laws of this alternate universe, in which he was uncontrollably in love with a girl he couldn’t have, had told him to kiss her anyway. Why had he spent the last six months wrestling with his will, putting honor above all, if in the end he was going to be ordered to throw it all to the wind?

  He got up and went to his desk. One click turned on the lamp. One piece of paper and one pencil. In less than a minute Bruno had drawn the liminal between his bedroom closet and hers.

  He opened the closet door and leaned in. There was no light, no sound on the other side. Carefully he picked his way through the hanging clothes on his bar, and then hers, until he put his hand on the back of Celia’s closet door.

  He opened the door and waited for his eyes to adjust. The window admitted enough moonlight so that eventually he could see. She lay asleep in her bed, her slender arm across her body on top of the duvet. In four soft steps he was standing over her bedside.

  You were creepy when you went to the bookstore to watch her through the window. You were even creepier when you stood in her backyard watching her through her window. What the hell are you doing now?

  Bruno tried to rationalize it. If you do it while she’s asleep and she doesn’t wake up, she’ll never know. You can fulfill that part of your admonition and still have a shred of integrity left. In sleep she was even more beautiful, pale skin washed by the moonlight, dark straight hair fanning out around her face.

  He stood there. Her breathing was light and slow, and her chest rose and fell gently.

  He crept back to her closet and silently closed the door behind him. Back in his room he tore the paper with the terrible shortcut into smaller and smaller bits. He got back into bed and put his headphones back on. “Song to the Siren” was still playing.

  “LIKE THIS?” BRUNO LOOKED around from the desk in Marco’s bedroom.

  Marco put down his pins and came over to see. Bruno couldn’t even guess what part of a garment Marco had him cutting. “Yes, perfect.” Marco went back to the tailoring dummy where he was fitting a jacket, but he didn’t seem to be getting much done.

  “You’re nervous,” Bruno said.

  “Hell yeah, I’m nervous! He’s going to be home in a few hours. I just won’t be sure everything’s okay until I see him. What if he’s waiting to break up with me in person?”

  “Do you really think that’s likely?”

 
; “I don’t know. Maybe?” Marco exhaled, looking around the room at the unfinished garments on every surface. “Probably not. But part of me keeps wondering.” He paced around the room. As Bruno turned back to his cutting, the doorbell rang. “Who’s that?” Marco left to go downstairs, and in a moment Bruno heard him shout in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t wait!”

  Bruno went out into the upstairs hall and looked down over the foyer, where Marco and Brenden were locked in an embrace. Then Brenden started crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Marco pulled back and held his shoulders.

  “I couldn’t tell you on the phone.” Brenden wiped his eyes and tried to pull himself together. “I’ve felt so guilty. This guy kissed me, and I made him stop—I don’t like him at all, I swear! I never meant, I never wanted—” He started crying again.

  “Hey, it’s okay. Tell me what happened.” Marco put his arms around Brenden.

  “This guy in my writing class, he’s really cool and we hit it off, and I kind of suspected he liked me. But I told him about you, and I made it clear I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t even tempted. He’s too tall.” They laughed. “But one night we were walking back to the dorms, and there’s this archway under a building on campus. There are all these stories about if you kiss someone under the arch, you’ll marry them. All the sorority girls take their dates there.

  “So, we’re walking under the arch and he stops, and tells me he likes me, and I’m trying to be kind, because I know it sucks to like someone and have them not like you back. And then he just kisses me! I stopped him, but I’ve felt so guilty ever since.” Brenden’s voice broke. “I almost felt like you knew, the way you sounded on the phone that night. Something in your voice—it was like you had guessed, somehow. But I wanted to tell you the whole thing in person, so I could swear to you that nothing else happened, and I’m completely in love with you, and I don’t talk to that guy anymore.”