by Angel Lawson
“Well, while you were out seducing handsome graduate advisors, I went back to the library and found some books for our project. This one is about local folklore. You were right, this campus does have an interesting history.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Maybe. Julian was in the library when I got there. I told him I would let you guys know tomorrow if I found anything interesting.”
I check Facebook and Twitter, and Sonja’s blog that is difficult to access on my phone. No updates on what she’d doing instead of nerd camp. Faye peels off her clothes, layer by layer, skirt and shirt and more skirts and tights, though no bra, and climbs into a ruffled romper straight out of an Edwardian BBC show. I power my laptop down. “Was he pissed?” I ask.
“Who?”
“My brother.”
She shrugs and reopens the book. “Why would he be angry?”
“Because of Jeremy? I don’t know. He doesn’t like it when I socialize, or flirt or have any fun at all.”
“He wasn’t angry, but I do think he worries about you.” She scribbles on sticky note and presses it to the page. “That’s what brothers are for—or so I’ve read. I don’t have any siblings.”
“He’ll understand when he finally finds himself a girl he can talk to.”
“An ugly girl, right?” Faye looks up again, cocks her head funny on her neck. The glasses tilt sideways. “You said he’s intimidated by pretty girls.”
“She’ll have to have the patience of a saint, too.” I sigh, pulling the sheet back on my bed and kneading my pillow. “Poor thing.”
“Who’s the poor thing? Him, or her?”
“Both!” I laugh, and switch off my lamp.
The room, now dark but for the little desk light, is still clear behind my eyelids: Faye, toying with the ribbon at the neck of her little cotton night thing as she reads; the closed red book on her desk, with a stone sitting on the cover, a jagged R etched into the gray surface; my nail polish on my desk, the bottles in a neat row.
“Goodnight, Faye.”
“Goodnight.”
I hear the whisper of turning pages, and then night takes me, hard, fast, and vicious.
*
Wings.
Carrion bones picked clean, dropped from above to clatter on sheer rock. The incessant drip, drip, drip of water from a stalactite, bloody with minerals, iron and salt.
A pterodactyl shadow closes out the world, swallowing hope, huge human claws, grasping, choking like smoke.
Screams. A bird’s shriek of despair, but her nestlings are too far to hear her cry.
Tearing pain.
Dark underworld, black iron bars, white salt tears.
*
“You look like warmed over crap.”
I push past my brother and grab the coffee I’ve ordered off the counter with a grateful nod to the campus barista. “Thanks. You look like an ass.” I walk away, but he’s hot on my shoes.
“We’re you able to get back to sleep?” he asks.
“After the shadowy thing touched me? No. That was too fucked up. Did you?”
“No.” We sit on a bench outside the dining hall. “What was that about anyway? It was different—was it a cave? And I’ve never heard them scream like that before.”
“I have no idea.” I sip the coffee, ignoring my shaky hands.
“Was it yours this time, or mine?” His voice is flat and weird, and he runs his hands through his hair, and it spreads between them, like feathers. I shudder.
“Mine,” I say. “No naked girls running around with birdseed in their hands.”
“Ha-freaking-ha,” but a smile flickers over his tired face. “Have you sketched it yet?
“Don’t I always?” I sigh, and wrap my fingers around the coffee to keep from fixing his hair, which is tugged in all the wrong directions. “Have you written it down already?”
He nods. “Trade you later.”
“Hey guys,” Faye walks up with a muffin and a bottle of juice. “Memory, I hope you got back to sleep last night. That was a pretty violent nightmare.”
“I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t freak you out too bad.” I glance at Julian. “Faye woke me up.”
“I was just worried about you. It took me a minute to shake you out of it.”
“At least I didn’t rip the curtains down and start chanting REDRUM, REDRUM!” I force a tired chuckle, but her eyes grow even wider, if that’s possible. “I’m just kidding!” Sort of. Well, at least about the Stephen King reference. I look around the quad, eager to change the subject, and spot Ethan walking toward the dining hall with Danielle. I gesture to the couple. “What’s that about?”
“Not sure, but he came back in just five minutes before curfew last night. I’m pretty sure he’s going to give me an ulcer before the summer is over,” Julian says, scowling at the pair. “I’m going to the study room.”
Faye steps in his direction. “I’ll go with you.”
“Be there in a minute.” I wave. I’m still watching Danielle and Ethan. They’re not touching, but there is a comfort level going on that indicates they have been. He leaves her on the front steps of the dining hall.
“Miss Erikssen! Exactly whom I was hoping to find.” Professor Anders’ shoelaces are untied and one side of his shirt is untucked, and his hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb in months.
“Good morning, sir.” I stop, and he catches up to me, eyeing my coffee like I’m holding a lump of gold. “You were looking for me?”
“I’d like to start the individual student meetings for the cooperative project today. When would you be free to stop by my office?”
I swallow too big and gasp at the hot liquid burning my throat. “Ethan already made a complaint, didn’t he?”
“This has nothing to do with other members of the group,” he lies. “I want to touch base with you, to see how the project is resonating with your interests.”
“Well, we’re not very far along,” I hedge. “Kind of still looking at sources, seeing what is out there.”
“Your list of approaches to the topic does seem a bit weak. I might have research materials that you could use. Perhaps it would help strengthen your direction.”
“That might be great.” I grin at the thought of showing up my brother. Might shut him up about me spending the evening out with Jeremy rather than festering in library dust.
He smiles back. “Excellent. Come by my office during free period. You are in the pre-lunch group?”
I shake my head. “After.”
“Even better. See you then,” he says, with an abrupt turn to the coffee kiosk.
I toss my empty cup in the trash, and smooth my hair as I walk in Danielle’s direction. “Better hurry,” I tell her, swooping in by her side. “Cafeteria closes in a couple minutes.”
“Oh, hi, Memory. Yeah, Ethan went in to grab a couple things. I’m waiting for my group.” She looks well rested—certainly better than I do. Maybe Julian had the time wrong.
“Did you have fun last night?”
“I showed Ethan around campus. I saw you and Jeremy hanging out. He’s my group advisor.”
“Yeah, squeaked in under the curfew.” I give her a conspiratorial grin. “Did you guys make it back?”
“Yeah, it got too dark to take more pictures. He got me back just in time to get the last dessert.” Her smile is fat as she watches the tallest guy in the quad approach.
Interesting.
“Morning, Cherry,” Ethan says. He hands a paper sack to Danielle.
I give him as dirty a look as I can muster for the nickname. “Guess we’d better get to the study room before Julian sends out a search party.”
“Yeah,” he says. He takes a bite of his bagel and turns to Danielle. “See you later.”
I’ve already turned to walk away, and Ethan is behind me, not making much of an effort to keep up. I try to guess when the sun sets at this time of year, and why he was out until midnight if Danielle was eating dessert at dusk.
I glance over my shoulder. He’s several yards behind me, but his face scrunches up, lip curled, mocking my shoes. “I’ve already seen the view from there,” I say, facing forward again.
“Always in search of something new to amuse you?” His tone is loaded; he’s not talking about the paths between buildings.
“Something like that.”
“So you’re even bored just walking down the sidewalk?”
“I didn’t say I was bored, I said I’d seen it before.” I sigh, and stop walking. “There’s a crack in the concrete about five feet up, and next to the cigarette butt wedged in it is some mossy stuff. Beyond that is the stain of some pink chalk with Greek sorority symbols. Two more steps, and there’s another crack, diagonal this time, but nothing is growing in it.”
He says nothing, so I turn around. I close my eyes a second, flipping through my mental sketchbook of images, stopping at a landscape of the campus the day before yesterday.
“You arrived here in a white Nissan, driven by an African-American woman with a silver charm bracelet. The license plate number ended in 6B—the first half was blocked by the beige sedan behind you. You had your camera satchel, and a green backpack with a blue logo. Packing light for a six week stay, don’t you think? And when she drove away, you reached down like you were tying your shoe, but you ran your palm over the grass, like you’d never felt it before.”
His eyes narrow, wary, then he smirks. “Nice of you to notice me, Cherry. I didn’t realize I’d made such an impression.”
“You didn’t. You were just part of the scenery, then.”
“And now?” he taunts.
“I’m not that impressed.” I shrug, baiting him back. “You’re rude, you’re not a team player, and you eat hunched over your food like you think people will steal it.”
Again, he hides an expression with a sneer. “So basically, you have a good memory and you’re a snob, like all the other stuck-up geeks here.”
“SHiP happens,” I say with a sarcastic smile, and turn my back again.
“Hey,” he says, still not bothering to keep pace with me. “Are you and I going to keep this up the whole time?”
I glare back. “Keep what up?”
“This little hostile act between the two of us.”
“I’m not hostile.” I stop and force him to catch up. “Seriously. I’m not, but whatever baggage you’re carrying around is a little hard to ignore. Maybe you should keep it in check during class hours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can handle your bullshit but Julian is one hundred percent serious about this scholarship. He lost by half a point last year, and it wasn’t his fault. The fact we’re already a team member down is stressing him out. You need to carry your load of the weight.”
“You think you can handle me?” His eyes are hard and his jaw is set, and he takes a step, towering over me, even though I’m in an extra four inches today. “I’ll do my share, Cherry, but otherwise our relationship ends there. I didn’t come here to get some kind of surrogate family, or make best friends forever.”
“No one said anything about relationships except you.”
“Good, because there won’t be any.”
“Fine.”
7.
Entrances
I watch as the girl walks away from me, so fast she almost falls over her stupid, glittery platform flip flops. Who wears those things? I run my hand over my head and start down the sidewalk to the building with our study room, refusing to look for cracks in the cement.
Maybe Memory will settle down before I get there.
Maybe I will, too.
I’m better at managing the rush of anger than I used to be, no longer a six-year-old throwing a temper tantrum because he feels choked by the tie he has to wear to meet the newest foster parents. My feet and fists got too big too fast, like the rest of me, and lashing out led to assault charges, so I’ve learned ways to cope with the rage that flows under my skin.
I’m not always successful. Deep breathing, counting backward, playing a game of tic-tac-toe in my head—all the various tricks I’ve been taught from each guidance counselor and “at risk” youth tutor I’ve been sent to, and a few of my own they wouldn’t appreciate—only go so far.
Memory skirts the edge of my anger, taunting me with her swinging hips and needling me with insults sharper than the heels she wears. Being near her is a lot like the knife blade in my pocket; one careless move and I’m sliced open in a very personal manner. Just looking at her brings up a dozen magnified feelings, the least of which is amusement. Much more dangerous is the curiosity of how much trouble she really is and how much damage we could do together. We could blow up the world with the nuclear energy between us, and I don’t like thinking about it, because it makes me want to try.
At the door, I pause, reach in my pocket and run a finger down the sharp blade of the letter opener, fingers flat along the surface, testing the danger of the edge. A slip and I would bleed, and my concentration cools the last of my ire.
*
“Before we start I thought maybe we should introduce ourselves a little better.” Memory stands at the end of the table, a tiny smile on her lips. I narrow my eyes enough for her to notice. She’s digging for information on me. Good luck with that. “I’ll go first. I’m eighteen. I still haven’t decided where I’m going in the fall, but I got accepted to SCAD and Parsons. We’re from Raleigh. Our parents both teach at Duke. I have three tattoos, four piercings and you all already know that I’m a visual eidetic.”
Faye mouths the odd word, and the tall girl taps her temple. I wonder if Memory is a nickname, but I don’t ask.
She points to her brother. “You’re next.”
“You told them everything. What else do I have to say?”
“You could tell them your favorite color or book or something.”
“Green. And I don’t have a favorite book.” He shakes his head. “That’s like asking what your favorite molecule is. I’ll be studying linguistics at Harvard.”
“I’ll go,” the small chick, Faye says. “I’m home schooled, except not really in my home. I take classes wherever my father is teaching at the moment. His work means we travel constantly, but right now we’re in Charlotte, working on an exhibit of the latest Tollund bog find, and his current wife decided I needed to spend time with people my own age, so they shipped me here for socialization purposes. Apparently, I lack the knowledge of ‘appropriate norms and behaviors’ of my peers.”
Julian coughs, his water bottle midway in the air.
Faye looks around the table. “I assume they mean people like you.” She smiles when I raise an eyebrow. No one at this table is exactly normal society. “What about you?”
“Nothing much to tell. Nineteen. Wilmington.” Just the basics.
“Oh, so you’re near the beach.”
Her grin is contagious, and she of all people might consider a detention center yard surrounded by a chain link fence and barbed-wire ‘ocean-side.’ “Yeah, we had some sand.”
“Anything else?” Memory prods. I rest my elbows on the table, and shake my head. “Well,” she says. “That was enlightening, or not, but I guess we should get started.”
Faye jumps in again. “Last night I did a little research. Not only can we use the standard crow-raven folklore, but there might be an interesting tie-in with the history of the school.”
“How does the school have anything to do with crows?” Julian asks. “That seems a little old world for a college with a conservative Christian background.”
“From what I’ve read this folklore precedes the Moravians. Before they settled here there was an established tribe of Native Americans in this area who had some crow legends in their mythos. And apparently, there was a sacred spring somewhere here on campus, where they held coming of age and transformation rituals. And
when the settlers came, the natives did not take kindly to the desecration of their holy ground, so a church was built to keep it as a sanctified location, to pacify them.”
“The well,” I blurt, forgetting my rule of non-contribution. Every eye in the room shifts toward me. “The well. Under the chapel. Danielle said it’s been there for ages and has some kind of historic value and crap.”
Memory rolls her eyes.
“She’s right,” Faye says, flipping through a thick library book on the table. “There is a bit about a well in here.”
“What about it?” Julian tries to take the book from her but she holds tight.
“Not a lot. It just mentions that mythology of the area includes stories about a well on campus grounds.”
“The chapel is really old.” I pull out my camera, thumb over the display to the images from last night. “It’s much older than anything else on campus.”
I show it to Faye, and Julian leans over the table to see.
“That arched door is pretty unusual in American architecture,” she says. “Can you email that to me?”
“Not from the camera,” I say.
“Show it to Mems, she can draw it,” Julian says, gesturing from the camera to his sister.
She glances at the picture of Danielle, framed by the low doorway, and her face settles into a hard smile. “Nice architecture.” Memory is snide, which makes me itchy, sitting three feet away, and I’m pissed, because it’s a good shot, the girl out of focus, almost blurred by the shadows, the old entrance behind her dark and ominous. “I thought so,” I say, keeping my voice mild, hardening my belly muscles as the rage flares up redder than her lipstick.
“Very revealing,” she says, but there’s very little of Danielle actually showing in this picture, and I think she’s trying to say something about me, and I grind my teeth. I shove my hand in my pocket, looking for something sharp to test my temper, but I’ve put the blade in my backpack, and I’m left empty-handed and edgy. “Any more?”
“Cut it out,” Julian elbows his sister away from the camera as I shake my head, because there are more, but they reveal more of Danielle, not the architecture.