by Sara Faring
Silvina, a malnourished-looking girl who looks from face to face, swiveling the charm bracelet on her wrist.
Luciana, freckled, her jaw permanently fixed. Homesick, perhaps. She refuses to look up from her handout, which is not that riveting, I assure you. And there’s Isabella, with drooping eyes and a runny nose, who squeezes Luciana’s hand beneath the table.
One space at the table remains conspicuously empty.
“Where’s the tenth student, ladies?” I ask.
They glance at one another.
“I was told to expect ten students.” As I say the words, I slow, taking in the shrugs, the scratching of temples.
“Don’t be cross with the tenth girl, Miss,” says Mariella gravely. “She isn’t very sharp, so Ms. Morency insisted she massage her feet instead of tackling English. The future of those giant bunions takes priority.”
The other girls look at one another, smiles erupting across their lips.
“You’re wrong, Mariella. I heard the tenth girl’s in Domenico’s closet, sniffing his dirty laundry and imagining their first kiss,” adds Gisella, batting her lashes and cupping her hands together. “Prince Domenico. Kiss me, Prince. Kiss me!”
My mouth opens and closes. I wonder for the briefest of moments if they’ve seen me act a fool in front of him. They couldn’t have. Plus, he’s the troubled one.
“I heard the tenth girl is rehearsing,” ventures Silvina. “She’s a child prodigy acting in a new show called Vaccaro School of Pain. Elements of sadism.”
Scattered laughter—only a few know what sadism is, and Silvina shrinks back.
“I heard the tenth girl dropped out of school last-minute to live at a cattle ranch,” says Christina. “Little did she know, the ranchers had confused her with a cow because she’s gotten so…” She blimps up her cheeks with air.
Giggling fits; Christina’s palms are rosy from hitting the table, which shakes beneath my forearms.
“Pirates took her and tied her to a boat headed to South Africa,” adds Diana, whipping her hair back.
“She’ll be the slave to a tribal overlord by next week,” adds Mariella, resting her chin on her hands. “The poor thing.”
Even Luciana and Isabella, the sad little couple, rock with laughter. “They’re going to cook her into a soup,” says Isabella, nudging Luciana in the ribs. “With coconut milk and green chilies and oxtails.”
Michelle, little Michelle, whom I can hardly look at on account of the chilling resemblance, blushes and looks at her hands as if the most important message in the world is written into her knuckles.
Mariella holds out her hands to stop the chattering group.
“We’re all wrong, of course,” says Mariella, looking me in the eye. “We’re all joking with you.” The girls quiet down and look at Mariella with red faces.
I bite the inside of my cheek with what I hope is a reproachful look on my face and lift my notes—basic introductions. Glad that they’ve simmered down.
“She’s in the trunk of my stepfather’s car,” says Mariella, cheeks rising in a minxish grin. “I do hope she’s not getting hungry.”
They hoot with laughter. Clap hands across their mouths.
So they’re a spirited bunch. “That’s enough, ladies,” I interrupt. “Enough. Handouts.”
They quiet, pick up their papers—some eye-rolling and whispering.
An odd little voice pipes up. “The tenth girl isn’t a real girl.”
Sara, who has been silent since she spoke the two syllables of her name.
Before I can say a word, Mariella slaps a hand on the table. “Oh, shut up. Way to ruin everything, freak.”
Sara blinks at her with two dull brown eyes, unfazed.
“Enough!” It was all innocent enough, albeit macabre, this talk of little girls branded and kidnapped and packed into cars. I will talk to Carmela or Yesi or anyone else about the tenth as soon as possible. Perhaps I misunderstood or misheard. But the lone extra seat bothers me.
“We haven’t seen a tenth girl,” says Mariella.
My eyes flick over to her, trying to judge whether she’s pulling my leg. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
Gisella and Mariella smirk at each other.
“Can you introduce yourself in English?” I ask. “Gisella?”
She folds her hands on the table with exaggerated primness. “Dearest Miss Quercia,” she says, in unaccented English, “you should know that we’ve all been learning English since we began to walk. Your handout is … inadequate.”
The girls around her chuckle, as if they aren’t still children. Michelle blushes an angry pink, mirroring how I feel—though, of course, I’ll never show them. Carmela’s office told me they were beginners. Novices. I can’t decide if Carmela is disorganized, uninterested, or if there’s something else afoot, but I sense Carmela has never been unprepared in her life.
“Wonderful,” I reply, fetching a stack of lined paper to distribute. “Then you can each write a short composition describing yourselves and your homes in the next half hour. We can spend the rest of class getting to know one another better. Together.”
Gisella’s smile fades as she snatches the paper from me. Soon, the nine of them begin scribbling away, some with more vigor than others. My gaze falls to Michelle again, who hurries to fill the page before her with a loopy scrawl. I cross the room, trying to make sense of her resemblance. I think of what Yesi said, about how living in a haunted house helps you to explore all the dark nooks in yourself. To me, that still sounds more like a horror than a boon.
The half hour passes this way, and as I’m collecting their papers, Mariella and Gisella stand, gathering their bags.
“We have another fifteen minutes, ladies.”
Mariella looks at me with pity. “Early lunch, Miss Quercia. I suppose your schedule must have gotten lost with the imaginary tenth girl.”
Gisella bursts into giggles as they stroll from the room arm in arm. I know that losing my temper will lead nowhere. Most of the other girls trickle behind them. Michelle lingers, stacking and restacking her materials.
“You may go, Michelle.”
She nods and tries for a smile as she exits. I collect the assignments scattered across the table and drop back into my seat to read. My mouth goes dry: Their written English almost matches mine in skill level, and my mother taught me English daily growing up, convinced I would need it to be independent and escape—or help—our country one day. As cool as the teaching cottage is, I sweat bullets, wondering how I’ll rework my lesson plan to suit their higher level. I scold myself for not being prepared, for not loving the girls immediately, for letting them get to me with nothing more than sharp tongues. Before I lock up, I check my desk for dead frogs, my blouse for inky tears. No. Of course not. These aren’t city girls—they’re Vaccaro School girls. Lucky and confident beyond measure, rooted in themselves and vibrant memories of rich childhoods. Their mischief will be much more insidious.
* * *
The trek back up to the main house is arduous. It’s oddly quiet because the girls are long gone. Halfway up, I stop, catching my breath, and watch the rock face for a sign of movement, for a sign of life. As if on command, a starship of a butterfly, its wings copies of autumn leaves, launches off a tree trunk beside me, floating off and fading to match the ghostly pallor of the steps. Blending in perfectly. I squint at the maze of stones, wondering if other camouflaged creatures observe in silence as they do. Biding their time and playing by the rules, until they can follow through with the plan some god or devil wrote for them, too.
6
ANGEL: 2020–200
The first day of classes. I burst back into the closet ready for action, and a bit queasy-quivery, too, like a kid who’s inhaled a family-size pack of M&M’s in his mom’s van on the way to Disneyland only to realize sugar crashes are death. I press into room 7, look down, and see that I’m bisected by a chair—standing in it, not on it. Since I left, the nut-brown girl has wedged a chair in fro
nt of the closet door, below the knob, as if to lock someone in. Me? Has she seen us? Felt us?
I tsk her softly, thinking of what Rob would say about her amateur-hour ghost-prevention techniques, if that’s what that bit of redecoration was.
But when I see her and Yesi at breakfast with the rest of them, they’re no worse for wear. I circle Yesi, examining her guiltily as she cheerfully eats one blueberry at a time like some kind of baby deer. “Mavi!” she says, seizing the nut-brown girl’s arm like they’re the best friends in the world. Little does she know that she has about a few dozen other invisible best friends who can’t get enough of her.
The room is chock-full of teachers and students, many of them a bit shell-shocked over the ridiculous spread (crepes!), but empty of Others, as far as I can tell. Maybe most Others have better shit to do this early. Maybe mealtime is too boring since we can’t eat a damn thing. I feel a wobble of nostalgia for ramen noodles and chicken tikka masala and, oh my god, cheeseburgers. They’re all as edible and tasty to me now as crumbling plaster moldings.
I hover around the coffeepots, eavesdropping and learning names, because, you know, it’s my first day of school, too. The specter otherwise known as Morency (I think her first name is afraid of her) leans into Carmela De Vaccaro while I watch. “After her tardiness—missing dinner, Madame!—and wild roaming last night, she is proving to be a terrible disappointment,” says Morency under her breath, smoothing her black skirts. As if missing dinner is like taking a hatchet to your neighbor. In that sense, there’s only one person in this room worthy of capital punishment, of course—Mavi. “You should ask her to leave,” Morency adds. “You should ask all the young women to leave—”
“Ms. Morency, if we all made decisions based on transient, substanceless gut feelings, then we wouldn’t make much progress at all, would we?” Carmela banishes a speck of dust from her sleeve with a tapered fingernail. “Do leave the decision-making to me. The little girls are here now, prepared to learn and better themselves. Prepared to be a part of a greater cause.”
Morency’s jaw sets before she speaks. “A greater cause, Madame? I trust that—I trust that this has nothing to do with your…” She clears her throat. Waits a good three seconds—an eternity in Carmela’s bone-chilling presence. “Tenth girl.”
She speaks the words as if she’s crossing herself, and a quiver runs through me, jelly-thick as an electric eel. Who is the tenth girl?
I watch Carmela smooth her jacket with a cold smile. In silence, as if she’s teasing me and Morency by not answering. The edges of her lips look strained and vaguely wet, like she also just ripped the delicious head off a small and fluffy creature with her teeth and holds it back by the damp root of her tongue.
“The students should be at home with their families,” Morency ventures to say, breaking the silence, “where—”
Carmela extends a perfectly manicured hand. “I won’t tolerate a tantrum at this point in the game. We are committed.” She looks Morency up and down. “And why must you wear black all the time? Black is a color for the depressed, for those in mourning. I never wear black. Because I keep hope alive,” she says, chin high. “It is the most precious gift we have.”
So what is Cruella de Vil hoping for, exactly? And what does it have to do with a tenth girl? I circle around to face Morency and see that her authority and nerve have melted away after Carmela’s shutdown; she looks like a kid who’s learned bloodthirsty monsters really do squat among the dust bunnies under her bed, and yes, they’re interested in chewing off that foot you tuck out of the covers when you sleep. Carmela struts away from her, approaching Mavi and Whitewalker, and I get the wind knocked out of my crystal when Carmela refers to him as her son, Domenico.
Makes sense. Terrible, god-awful genes, or phenomenal ones, depending on how shallow you are. Whitewalker terrorizes Mavi, who’s red-faced ten seconds into the conversation—she struggles to balance her overloaded breakfast plate after being deprived of dinner last night. I find Yesi and tap her shoulder until, mosquito-style, I draw her attention to Mavi. I guess feeding did help me gain some substance, and she and Mavi might as well benefit from it. Ghost charity. Yesi rescues Mavi, and they scamper outside with their breakfasts, two little garden rabbits who will survive Carmela’s arctic wrath for one more day.
The teachers chatter about vacations, lesson plans, and other subjects about as interesting as bowel movements; the novelty of eavesdropping on conversations fades, and with it, the power of my invisibility.
* * *
I comb the cottages outside for the first time, getting the lay of the land.
It’s quiet, until mousy (moley?) Dr. Molina passes me on the steps, carrying a three-foot-tall stack of papers in her bony hands, slipping and sliding on the mossy stones. She’s seriously going to break a hip, and I’m going to be the only one to hear her wailing.
“Ooh!” she says cheerfully every time she skids on one and miraculously catches herself. It’s like watching a train wreck as she approaches another set of steps, each step more treacherous-looking than the last, culminating in a missing step that she clearly can’t see over her damn papers.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, rushing forward to nudge her upward, so she doesn’t plunge into the hole and roll all the way down the hill, shattering every single one of her fragile, rodent-thin bones.
She steadies herself with my help and notices the gaping hole while I groan with the expended effort. “Thank goodness,” she says to herself, laughing and restacking the packets in her arms. “Lucky, lucky girl, Doctor.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it, woman!” I snap at her. “Check yourself.”
She wanders off, oblivious. And I wonder if maybe we’re not entirely to blame for all the good and bad in life. If maybe luck is just another word for intervention by the unknown—someone or something we can’t quite understand helping all of us along, shaping the rules of our reality.
High-pitched chattering reverberates down an alleyway around the corner from the cottage. I slink across the roof tiles and find the girls sharing a cigarette (to be fair, only three of the seven present venture to smoke it, and they cough, tomato-red, like they’ve chugged pureed habaneros). Two more of the girls stand off to the side—one looks dead-eyed and pretty damn evil, in a bland way, and the other is quiet and shy, with a twinkle of deeper intelligence. She toes the ground and glances toward the cottage. So that’s nine girls. Only nine students. Who is Carmela’s tenth girl?
“Honestly, Luciana, stop crying. Everyone’s parents split up,” a lithe, dark-blond girl tells the crier, crossing her baby-colt legs and taking a mouthy drag like Katharine Hepburn. “It’s not a big deal. They’ll leave you alone more.”
Savage. She’s wrong, too. Sometimes single parents get more obsessed with you. Sometimes one parent kills the other parent, skipping the separation process entirely and adopting the telenovela Hail Mary.
Luciana bursts into another long, honking sob like a braying donkey.
“Gisella,” admonishes a gentle brunette, while another pats Luciana’s hand.
“Parents suck. But you know what else sucks? This stupid school,” says one black-haired girl authoritatively. The ringleader.
“This haunted school, Mariella,” whispers the girl patting the crying girl’s hand.
I snort.
Mariella shoots her a dirty look (Peasants) and continues: “And life. Life in general sucks.” I nod along, feeling her nihilistic vibe. It’s kind of wholesome and nice, to be honest, that they’re smoking cigarettes angstily, trashing modern existence in person, as opposed to the contemporary alternative of face-tuning social media posts alone in their rooms. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true.
Mariella seizes back the cigarette. “I say we blow off the rookie teacher. That would cheer you up, wouldn’t it, Lu?” The others glance at one another nervously, and it’s abundantly clear that cutting would cheer up only Mariella, but I applaud her noble effort.
“How long should we pretend we don’t know any English?” asks another, giggling.
“I’m sure she’s peeing her pants. It’s her first day ever, I heard. She’s barely older than we are.”
“God forbid I ever end up like her.” A shudder. “Teaching.”
“She looks like one of my old nannies,” says a fifth. “I wonder how she became a teacher so young. Shouldn’t that be illegal?”
“She won’t be our teacher for long.” Mariella takes another puff. “She’ll learn her place is back in the gutter soon enough.”
Learn her place.
“If not, I’m sure Domenico will show her,” says Gisella, belting out a gorgeous movie-star laugh.
“You guys are such clichés,” I grumble from over in the peanut gallery. Even without technology to help them along in finding vapid role models, they’re still on the fast track to becoming assholes. They’re like the landed version of Liese, who’s biologically compelled to shit on me and Rob. Granted, that’s because of how much she hates our communal asswipe of a dad for impregnating our (as in, Rob’s and my) mother, but join the club. Point is, these girls are one bad latte away from being the sort of person who marks all her food in the refrigerator with a sticky note reading Liese! DO NOT TOUCH! Even if it’s a disgusting lemon yogurt that’s going to expire while she’s away on her cosmetology retreat (Liese, circa last year).
One of my most vivid memories was when Rob went off on his own and set up this whole old-school lemonade stand on the corner of our street so that he could raise money for an animal charity, on account of his dream of being a vet. I was the one who suggested the idea: He was pretty obsessed with his tablet at that point, with feeding and caring for a horrible, octopus-like electronic pet called a scoogi (who names these abominations?), and I would have done just about anything short of using child harnesses to get him out into the real world. He took to the idea of the stand. The problem was that Rob took this disgusting, expensive container of pink swirly lemonade in the fridge that Liese had bought herself—she was dieting, and it contained mystery Fit Lemon-Aid!™ herbs meant to make her waste away—and he poured it out, drop by drop, into little polka-dotted paper cups to sell. He got one, maybe two hits from pitying neighbors, and when I escaped my part-time summer job and came to buy my own cup, he proudly displayed his meager and fragrant Halloween candy bucket of cash (one dude had emptied out a pocket full of ones and cigarette butts into the bin, if that gives you any indication of our kind of neighbors—alternately generous and gross). “At least, if I’m not a vet, we can be on-tah-pah-noors, Angel,” Rob said, and when I was about to laugh and ruffle his hair (God-given right of older siblings), we saw Liese marching toward us, gnarled blond hair flying behind her like Medusa’s snakes.