The Wise and the Wicked

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The Wise and the Wicked Page 2

by Rebecca Podos


  Her sisters, with Polina’s guidance, did what their ancestors had always done. They helped people. They welcomed them into this unextraordinary little house, listened to them, counseled them with the gift that remained to the Chernyavskys: the empathetic, righteous rage of women who knew what it meant to have everything taken away from them.

  So it wasn’t like the stories their mother had told them, which she’d been told by Polina when she was a girl. They weren’t fortune-tellers or miracle workers any longer, if they ever were. Polina insisted it was so, but she was the family matriarch, the oldest daughter of the woman in the woods and the keeper of the family myths, so she had to say that. Yes, they were special. Strange. They had their Times, and she had never read anything that could explain them. But it wasn’t exactly the kind of magic that existed in fairy tales.

  Whatever the truth, it didn’t make much difference to Ruby now.

  And anyway, it was a legacy she was proud to be a part of . . . even if she wasn’t really a part of it. Someday, her sisters had promised, she’d join them in the family practice. When she was older. More mature. When she was ready.

  She wasn’t holding her breath.

  Out in the driveway, the client stopped to gather herself before hunching forward against the wind and making her way up the walk. She disappeared from Ruby’s sightline, and then the front door opened. The wind chimes jangled out of tune as Polina’s voice, unlovely but beloved, welcomed her inside.

  • Two •

  Though it was freezing cold and snowing on Monday morning, Ruby parked the dented gray Malibu she’d inherited from Ginger—who herself had inherited it from Dahlia—in the very back of the Saltville High student lot. She was claiming the spot closest to the loop of pavement where the buses dropped off. If she wanted any time with Cece before school, she’d have to catch her cousin as soon as she disembarked. In the same grade but six months younger than Ruby, Cece had just turned sixteen in October. And though she’d likely have a beautiful Prius topped with a bow waiting in her driveway the day she finished driver’s ed, Cece had yet to sign up for the class. Unlike Ruby, she was happier in the passenger seat.

  Ruby left the engine running and her phone plugged in so she could keep listening to Solving for X-traordinary over the speakers. It was her favorite podcast, a drama about the ongoing adventures of Kerrigan Black, college student, who’d been catapulted back through time after an unfortunate Bunsen burner explosion in her chemistry lab. By engineering explosions to blow herself up in each era, she hopped around throughout the centuries, using her present-day knowledge and the scientific method to solve mysteries and right wrongs, pausing occasionally to kiss sexy land barons and peasants alike. It was cheesy, and as Cece often reminded her, Ruby had little patience for fiction.

  But this, she loved.

  Maybe because she loved science, and had since she was a kid, and would’ve studied it in college if it were possible. She’d taken her first book by Carl Sagan out of the Saltville Public Library when she was just shy of eleven, and then another after that, reading them all again and again over the years with the goal of understanding each word; by now she had page-long passages memorized. In seventh grade, she’d researched a science camp in Boston and campaigned for months for Dahlia to send her, revisiting the website until the description—“campers use the scientific method to uncover the mysteries of the world around them”—was engraved in her hippocampus (which she knew about from her extracurricular research on the human brain.) And she’d been fascinated by their unit on genetics last year, particularly the section on genetic abnormalities, and done her final report on Barbara McClintock.

  Her science classes were the only ones she regularly did the homework for, much less showed up for. Dahlia would look at the Cs on each report card, earned with the barest of efforts, and proclaim Ruby to be “differently talented.”

  Ginger said she was just lazy.

  Either way, she was obsessed with Solving for X-traordinary, began every bimonthly episode the moment it was posted. Ruby cranked up the volume to better hear it above the heat roaring out of the vents:

  The last thing I see as the flame alights, licking down the hollow bamboo tube toward the huo yao—the mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal I’d heated and dried to black powder in the kitchens these past few nights—is the sturdy face of Xuan Bang through the smoke. I see his lips move, though he stands too far away for me to hear and answer. Instead, I press my fingers to my own lips just as a thunder-like rumble rents the air, and I’m lifted off my feet.

  When I land, I know at once I’m not in eleventh-century China anymore, nor am I safely back in the chemistry lab at Princeton. I’m standing in a flat expanse of pale orange desert, a herd of sturdy cows grazing on spiny tufts of gray grass all around me. In the near distance, a tiny village just darker than the sand.

  I’ll miss Bang and the sensual fit of his military tunic, but I have work to do. Once again, I must learn everything I can about this time and place if I’m ever to return to mine.

  The episode ended just as she saw her cousin. Or rather, just as she saw a sturdy pair of legs in bright pink tights shuffling through the slush, and knew immediately that it was Cece in the middle of her pack of friends. Ruby leaned across the seat and cranked open the passenger side window, letting winter in.

  “Cece!” she screamed. “Ceceeeee!”

  Her cousin’s friends stopped all at once, a school of fish scared by the cry of the common loon.

  Cece peered between them until she spotted Ruby, then waved them off and trudged toward the Malibu. She bent down to stare expectantly through the driver side window, her hair sequined with snowflakes. As usual, she wore her piles of ice-blond waves in a perfect sloppy bun, so that with her pale skin and the massive globe of her pale hair, her head was shaped like a luminous snowman.

  “Hey, Bebe.”

  “Hi. What, um, how was your weekend?”

  Cece’s nearly invisible eyelashes flickered twice against her pink cheeks, and the breath puffed from between her parted lips. “Fine,” she said. “Boring. You know.”

  Cece had never lied to Ruby, so she hadn’t been sure what her cousin’s lie face looked like. She guessed she was seeing it for the first time.

  The warning bell toned over the loudspeakers in the entranceway.

  Straightening quickly, Cece swiped melted snow from the tip of her nose. “I gotta get my books out of my locker. See you in the caf, okay?” She hurried for the propped-open school doors.

  A likely story, Ruby thought, watching her go.

  Cece wasn’t in any classes with Ruby, mostly because her cousin took all AP courses, while Ruby was lumped in with the rest of the “differently talented.” So Ruby had to sit through US history, hide out in the bathroom during wood shop, and make it through a gym period where they didn’t even change into their uniforms, only sat on the dull floorboards while Mr. Pfeffer explained the anatomy of a tennis racket and the artistry of the backhand grip. All the while, Ruby thought about nothing but the next chance to talk to her cousin.

  Finally lunch arrived, and she snaked through the food line in the cafeteria as quickly as possible, pausing only to palm a Nutty Bar from the rack and stuff it up her sleeve.

  Like everything in Saltville with the exception of the Chernyavskys and the pollution level of the tea-brown river that cut through downtown, their school cafeteria was impeccably average. There was a small stage for announcements, and below that, rows of tables crowding the white cinder-block walls. The third on the left was Cece’s, and so of course it was Ruby’s table, too.

  Ruby’s first real, true memory of her cousin—beyond blurry birthday parties and backyard swings—was a county fair in Bluebar. Uncle Neil took them one year, and a fortune-teller read their palms inside her tent. She wore glittery eye makeup and had big white arms that oozed out of her costume like batter from a waffle iron. She told the cousins they’d been a single soul in their past lives, only rec
ently split into two bodies in this life. They’d been born by the sea two centuries ago, and they’d painted the face of an Egyptian princess for a living. They’d once been a man with three wives in Utah (here, Cece’s dad had groaned from the door flap of the tent).

  At that, Cece turned to Ruby and smiled, a lollipop tucked in the pouch of her cheek, smudged with sunburn. Five-year-old Cece had looked like a baby Disney princess; Ruby, meanwhile, was pale and dark-haired, less Snow White than Samara from The Ring. Ginger once put it bluntly: “You looked like a creep when you were a kid. I’d get up to pee at night, and I’d check behind the shower curtain for you.” It was the shape of her mouth, Ruby thought, a permanent frown carved by nature; Cece’s pink lips were curved upward, always.

  But Ruby remembered smiling right back at Cece across that stuffy dim tent and thinking, of course they were the same. It seemed they had been born knowing each other.

  Cece, a rare and shining double rainbow of a human being, was the best luck that being a Chernyavsky had brought Ruby.

  She slid onto the bench across from her cousin, who was in the process of twisting half of Talia Mahalel’s waist-length black hair into a pigtail braid. Talia was helping by hoisting Cece’s slice of pizza up for her, and Ruby studied her cousin as she bit down. Did she look different? Older? Sadder? Did they look more alike now than they had before Christmas? On the outside, Cece was the same. A baggy band T-shirt (today’s was Neutral Milk Hotel) over a long-sleeved waffle shirt, a not-too-mini yellow miniskirt and her neon pink tights. It was her customary ensemble, except that the colors of her tights rotated, and the band tee was occasionally switched out for a shirt advertising some indie movie theater in New York they’d definitely never been to.

  Ruby squinted across the table, searching for deeper marks that Cece’s Time might have left on her.

  That was when boy’s-name-that-started-with-a-D dropped his tray down beside Ruby, from a great enough height that it clattered against the table and then partway onto her tray. His pizza slice flopped over the side, dripping grease on her unwrapped Nutty Bar. As he slipped onto the bench, his elbow knocked the Nutty Bar to the floor. He didn’t seem to notice as he flashed a white, impersonal smile, then turned and said, “Hey, Cee.”

  Swiveling her head, Cece dropped Talia’s hair and yanked the pizza out from between her teeth, her pink cheeks glowing mauve.

  Ruby took note.

  Boy’s-name-that-started-with-a-D was Talia’s brother—the other half of the Mahalel twins, who’d moved to Saltville last summer from “The South.” “The South” could be any place below Bangor, but Ruby guessed they’d come farther than that. Their naturally olive skin was still beach-tanned despite the winter months, and sometimes, a long vowel would stretch taffy-like from their full lips. Talia was a regular at Cece’s table of popular AP kids (plus Ruby) while her brother was the smallest and darkest of the unironically flannel-wearing bros who normally sat a few tables back. Despite being a transplant, he’d slotted right in with the townies. They were boys who got stoned around bonfires and snowmobiled through the woods in winter; summers, they got stoned around bonfires and went mudding in their pickups, and maybe worked on their uncle’s fishing boats. If any of them had ambitions beyond that—if they dreamed of being professional basketball players, or doctors, or tech-startup starter-uppers, or whatever boys dreamed about—they certainly weren’t letting on.

  “Can I still get your trig notes?” he asked Cece, rhythmically zipping and unzipping his Creatures Such As We hoodie. CSAW were a big-deal indie band that played electric guitars and ukuleles in the same songs. Ruby despised them.

  Talia rolled her eyes. “I already said you could have mine.”

  “Your handwriting looks like you dipped a chicken in ink, set it on fire, and let it run across your notebook. Cece types.”

  His sister threw a greasy balled-up napkin at him, which he batted aside smoothly as he jerked his head to knock his black bangs out of his eyes. Under the harsh strip lighting of the cafeteria, his hair looked as soft as his brown skin. “This class . . . Cee, I’m doomed.”

  “At least it won’t be bubble letters hard,” she said, some inside joke that cracked him up, showed his pointed canines.

  Ruby glanced between them to keep from rolling her eyes. Not that she was jealous. Not of him, or Talia, or any of them. Just because Cece was Ruby’s only friend at school didn’t mean that Ruby had to be hers. Ruby knew that wasn’t how it worked. And Cece was always trying to rope her into group hangs, no matter how many times Ruby refused.

  Still, she took pleasure in interrupting them to ask, “Cece, can I sleep over tonight? Levi’s coming for dinner. I think he’s gonna stay.”

  “Yeah, obviously.” Her cousin smiled.

  Of course she’d say yes to Ruby. Cece was good to her because Cece was good, the way that summer rain and ripe fruit and kittens in wicker baskets were good. It was just that she was different around these people than she was with their people. It would be pointless to try and get anything out of her now, so Ruby would bide her time.

  Cece only said true things, important things—Chernyavsky things—when they were alone.

  • Three •

  Levi Dorgan, Ginger’s boyfriend, did indeed come for dinner that night, and he brought their mail with him. Levi was the sorter at the Saltville Post Office. Ginger claimed she was dating him because it was helpful for a mostly fake psychic to know everyone’s secrets, and Levi usually did. Not only because of his job, but because he was also everybody’s friend’s cousin’s dealer, who grew his own plants in the root cellar of the house he’d inherited from his parents.

  He dropped onto the couch beside Ruby and propped his boots on their chipped coffee table, nearly taking out Dahlia’s salt lamp, softly glowing pink. While Ginger was fetching him a beer, gushing that he was the best even though he could’ve just let their mail carrier bring their mail five hours earlier, he tossed Dahlia a small twist-tied baggie of weed. She disappeared with it into her bedroom before Ginger could see.

  Levi was handsome, his biceps straining the sleeves of the T-shirts he wore all winter, his teeth impossibly straight, and his hair perfectly fluffed and sprayed, graceful in its architecture, like a beautifully constructed cake. But his usefulness as a busybody aside, Ruby wasn’t sure why Ginger genuinely seemed to like him, or any of the substandard boys she’d been bringing home since high school.

  Still, she wasn’t worried. The romance wouldn’t last, and soon enough it would be only the three of them around the dinner table again.

  Ginger was a Chernyavsky, after all.

  Though Ruby had been edging up the TV volume to block them both out, she suddenly wasn’t interested in the Real Housewives or their impressive lip augmentations. Their purses and personal chefs blurred into watercolor as she watched from the corner of her eye as Ginger climbed into Levi’s lap and kissed him gratefully. No longer caring which Housewife was mad at which for forgetting to chill the pinot grigio, Ruby levered herself off the couch, stepping through Levi’s legs as she went.

  In her bedroom, she grabbed her backpack from the closet floor, shoving her phone and wallet into its plastic front pouch. She stuffed in her pajamas and an outfit for tomorrow, a hand-me-down baseball tee from Ginger with an embroidered cheeseburger on the pocket. All the money her sisters made seemed to go toward their pitiful house or into Ruby’s pointless college fund, and so with a bit of hemming and tucking from Dahlia, Ruby could fit into her sisters’ old clothes.

  She passed Ginger and Levi in the kitchen, him clearly towing her toward her bedroom. When only Ginger could see, Ruby fake-vomited into the fruit bowl that contained a single twig of withered grapes. Her sister scowled back at her before she was whisked through the doorway.

  As Ruby grabbed her coat from the front closet, Dahlia poked her head into the living room. “Mac and cheese okay for dinner?”

  “I’m actually going to Cece’s.”

  “In this wea
ther? You’ll get soaked!”

  “It stopped snowing two hours ago,” Ruby informed her.

  With her back to Dahlia, she plunged a quick hand into the pocket of Levi’s jacket. Ginger must’ve hung it up, because her boyfriend wouldn’t have bothered. She surfaced with the two crumpled twenties Dahlia had just handed him and another small baggie, all of which she slipped into her own pocket.

  Fruit Street, where the Bakers lived, was a long row of well-kept colonials on the west side of Saltville only slightly smaller than the Colonials on Oak, the next neighborhood over, where the mayor of Saltville lived. Oak Lane had block parties in the summer, an Easter egg hunt in spring, a Halloween parade in the fall, and carolers in winter. Fruit Street made do with a Fourth of July cookout and an unofficial Christmas lights competition.

  Stone Road’s only community event was a twice-a-year spraying with repellent for its wasp problem.

  Ruby parked in Cece’s hedge-lined driveway—the Fruit Street Block Association didn’t like cars on the curb, especially not scabby lemons like the Malibu—behind Uncle Neil’s fog-colored Porsche Cayenne. A lighted stone walk led to the Bakers’ house, bright-looking even after the sun had set. There were blue cedar shingles, butter-yellow shutters with hearts carved out of the wood, and soft tulips in the flower patch. The doorbell played the first few notes of “Auld Lang Syne” when Ruby rang, because the Bakers changed their chime for the holidays.

  Aunt Annie answered with a curious, could-be-the-neighbors smile. It became stoic when she saw Ruby. “Oh. I forgot Cece mentioned you might drop in.”

 

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