Sophomore Year

by Douglas Rees

  For Laurie McLean,

  who makes things happen

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  It was one of those hot, sticky Massachusetts August nights when it doesn’t cool off. The sky was full of thunder-heads, and the hills around New Sodom echoed the roaring, grumbling air. It was the kind of night when witches might be out, casting their shadows in the glare of lightning bolts.

  Which made it a perfect time for my cousin to show up.

  My mom and dad were asleep upstairs. I was sitting up watching an old horror movie called The Bride of Frankenstein. Maybe you’ve seen it. The monster’s back, and he wants good old Dr. Frankenstein to make him a girlfriend so he won’t be so lonely. So Doc F. gets back into his mysterious lab and splices together a lady monster out of whatever parts he’s got lying around. The movie had reached the scene where the new monster-lady has just opened her eyes and started to walk around. She’s staring, moving slowly, not certain of anything. Then she sees her fiancé and hisses. She raises a hand that you know has to have claws instead of nails, and you know the big guy’s plans for happiness in a little rose-covered dungeon somewhere are not going to happen.

  It’s a really tense scene, and when a crack of thunder went off in what sounded like our attic, I jumped a foot, even though I’d seen the movie before.

  Then, as the thunder died away, I heard the rain start to come down, hard.

  And then came the knock on the door.

  When you hear a knock on the door at one in the morning, you know it’s not good news, whatever it is. So I waited until it came a second time, figuring maybe it would go away. I mean, I didn’t really think there was a monster out there. I was almost sixteen. I knew there was no such thing. Vampires, sure. New Sodom is full of them. Like they say, some of my best friends are vampires. But even so, why would one of them be banging on our door in the middle of the night?

  The knock came again, hard and heavy, and I knew I’d have to answer it. I knew because my father called down, “For God’s sake, Cody, see who it is.”

  I paused the movie and went to the door.

  The thunder rolled again, farther away now. The storm was moving fast.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “Justin?” I whispered. “Ileana?” I figured it might be my best friend or my girl, though it wasn’t like them to come calling past midnight. Still, they were vampires—jenti, I mean. And while jenti don’t really burn up when the sun hits them, they do like nighttime.

  I heard the sound of something scratching on the door. Scratching slowly, as if whatever was doing it took pleasure in the sound. Scratching as if there might be some invisible crevice wide enough to force a set of claws through. And there was only one person I knew who would ever do that.

  “Raquel?” I said, and opened the door.

  She stood there in the harsh glow of the porch light, tall, thin, pale, dressed in black leather. Her dark hair was cropped short, the nails she’d scratched the door with were pointed and black, and she had a gold stud shaped like a skull in her left nostril.

  “Hi, Cuz,” she said. “Ya gonna let me in?”

  “What are you doing here?” I squeaked. “You’re not supposed to be here for another week.”

  “Okay. I’ll just camp out here until you’re ready for me,” she said. “You gonna let me use the bathroom, or would you rather I pee in the bushes? Either way’s good.”

  “Get in here,” I said.

  “Before the vampires get me?” she said. “Where are they, anyway?”

  “Just get in here,” I said between clenched teeth.

  She shouldered past me into the foyer and said, “Thanks. By the way, don’t call me Raquel again. I’m Turquoise now.”

  “Turquoise,” I said. “Turquoise Stone. I’ll be sure to remember.”

  “Turk for short.”

  “Whatever.”

  My mom and dad were coming down the stairs.

  “Rachel, darling,” Mom said, and practically flew across the room to hug and kiss my cousin. “How did you get here so soon?” she asked. “Is everything all right at home?”

  “No,” Turk said. “It never is.”

  “Hello, Rachel,” Dad said, standing on the stairs. “Or is it still Raquel?”

  “I haven’t been either one for a while,” Turk said.

  “It’s Turquoise,” I said. “Turk for short.”

  “Right,” Dad said.

  “I’m being forced to stay with you anyway,” Turk said. “So I thought, ‘Why let Mom stuff me in a plane at her convenience?’ And I drove.”

  “You have a car?” I said.

  “That’s what people usually drive,” Turk said.

  This interested me. I would be driving soon myself. I had been thinking a lot about cars.

  “What have you got?” I asked.

  “It’s at the curb,” Turk said. “The black thing.”

  Under the streetlight, I saw a shiny black Volkswagen Bug, the old kind.

  “You drove all the way from Seattle?” Mom said. “You must have seen some interesting sights.”

  “I drive at night,” Turk said. “I hate scenery. It’s distracting.”

  She unslung her coat. Her arms were bare under it, and I could see the reason that dear, sweet Turk had come to live with our happy family. Her tattoo. Turk had a pale blue two-headed snake that began at her wrists, wrapped around her arms, and (according to Mom’s sister, Aunt Imelda) ran across her back.

  “Spiffy,” Dad said. “Best illegal tattoo I’ve ever seen.”

  “It wasn’t illegal in Mexico.” Turk shrugged. “And it’s my body.”

  I had to admit, I was impressed. Even if it was the thing that had made Aunt Imelda decide that she couldn’t even pretend to control Rachel/Raquel/Turquoise/Turk anymore, and send her to us. A couple of weeks before, when she and Turk had been on vacation in Acapulco, my cousin had gotten off her leash and headed straight for a tattoo parlor. When Aunt Imelda finally caught up with her, she was just getting the last snake head done, while a bunch of guys from the Mexican Navy stood around admiring her courage.

  She had been missing for a week. Tattoos like that take a lot of time.

  So now here she was, ready to envelop us all in her own special aura.

  “Did it hurt much?” Mom asked.

  “Sure,” Turk said. “That was the point.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that, so Mom changed the subject.

  “Jack, Cody. Bring in Rach—Turk’s things.”

  “I’ve got ’em,” Turk said. She picked up an old army duffel bag and a sleeping bag. That was about half of what she’d brought. The rest was some boxes of art supplies, some canvases, an easel, and an inflated doll. The doll’s mouth was open and its hands were raised to its face. I recognized it from a famous painting called The Scream.

  �
��You don’t have to help me,” Turk said. “Just show me where I sleep. I’ll come back for the other stuff.”

  “Come upstairs, dear. I’ll show you your room,” Mom said, and gestured for us to pick up the things on the porch.

  Mom and Turk went up the stairs.

  “What is that object?” Dad said, looking at the doll.

  “It’s called The Scream,” I said.

  “I know that, but what is it?” Dad said.

  “Maybe she sleeps with it,” I said to Dad as he tucked it under his arm.

  “Then no wonder it’s screaming,” he said.

  We went upstairs with our arms full of stuff.

  “I’m afraid it’s not really ready,” Mom was saying about the room. “I was planning to start work on it tomorrow.”

  It looked ready to me. There were white curtains and a double bed with a white bedspread, and an antique chest of drawers, a desk, and a chair. For a girl, it seemed great.

  “Don’t bother,” Turk said. “I can design my own space. You have an attic, right?”

  “Yes,” Mom said.

  “It’s huge,” I said.

  “How do I get up there?” Turk asked.

  “There’s a trapdoor with a ladder in the hall,” Dad said.

  “Cool,” Turk said.

  So we followed her into the hall.

  “There’s nothing up there, you know,” Mom told her. “Just some old boxes.”

  Turk jumped up and grabbed the cord that pulled down the ladder. The ladder swung down with a screech. Then she slithered up the steps.

  “Perfect,” she announced. “I’ll sleep here.”

  “But it’s awful up there,” Mom said.

  “I’m into that,” Turk said. “Just hand me up my stuff.”

  “It’s dusty. There are only two small windows. I don’t think it’s healthy,” Dad said. “I’m going to have to put my foot down, Turk.”

  “Put it anywhere you want, Uncle Jack,” Turk said. “But the CO2 level in the atmosphere is already higher than it’s been in a hundred thousand years. Every breath we take is choking us. So what’s a little dust?”

  “Is she staying with us forever?” Dad whispered to Mom.

  “It’s gonna seem like it,” I said.

  “Turk, sleep down here tonight, and I’ll help you sweep it out tomorrow,” Mom called up.

  “Give me a broom and I’ll sweep it out now,” Turk said. “It won’t take more than half an hour.”

  “It’s after one in the morning,” Dad said.

  “Go back to bed. I don’t need any help,” Turk said.

  “Why don’t we let her do it?” Mom said to Dad. “There’s no point in getting into a screaming fight right now.”

  I put down Turk’s stuff and went and got a broom and dustpan.

  “Thanks,” she said when I handed them up. “You can just drop my stuff. I’ll get it when I’m done. Good night, guys. Thanks for having me.”

  Dad dropped the duffel bag and the inflated doll. The Scream bounced across the floor and ended up in the corner, tilted back and looking up at the top of the steps, where Turk had started to sweep.

  “I know how you feel,” I said to the doll.

  We all went into the kitchen. Mom put on the teakettle.

  “St.-John’s-wort tea,” she said. “It’ll help us get back to sleep.”

  “Give me plenty,” Dad said. “I don’t want to wake up for the next few years.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re doing,” Mom said. “It’s a necessary thing. It’s an obligation. We’re family. She and Imelda are at daggers drawn, and they need a break from each other. And Rachel—Turk—needs a new start. Moving in with us is the best chance she has.”

  Dad looked up at the ceiling. Then he looked at me.

  “All very true, and I will do my best to be a good uncle,” Dad said. “But Cody, my son, when the time comes for you to marry, promise you’ll give serious consideration to the advantages of birth control.”

  2

  I finished my movie and went to bed.

  Lying there, I could hear Turk over my head, sweeping and moving things around. Since I couldn’t sleep, I remembered things about my cousin.

  When I was seven and she was eight, she turned an old water heater into a spaceship. She painted it silver and cut out cardboard fins and stuck them on with duct tape. I mean, it was amazing work for an eight-year-old. Anyway, it amazed me.

  And when she told me I could be an astronaut and go with her to the moon, I was ready. She even gave me her special Space Ranger Galaxy III helmet to wear.

  “I’ve already been a couple of times,” she said. “It’s really easy if you know what you’re doing.”

  So I climbed into the spaceship and lay there up by the nose, which was a cone of really heavy poster board, also painted silver.

  Nothing happened. I just lay there, feeling more and more cramped and sweaty, watching my Galaxy III helmet’s faceplate start steaming up, feeling the oxygen going bye-bye.

  I started to wonder: Had I already started? Was I in outer space? Why wasn’t there a window in this thing?

  Then the spaceship was rocked by a cosmic bang. Then a horrible smell filled the helmet. I was crashing, I was burning, I was going to die.

  I started to thrash around, rocking the ship, which just scared me more. And without thinking about it, just trying to get away from that horrible smell, I pushed myself forward and burst through the paper nose cone. When I got out, I took off running. I ran across the backyard, around the house, and up to the corner before I realized I was safe, and back on planet Earth.

  I took off the good old Galaxy III. I breathed in the best air I’d ever breathed. I turned my face to the sun, and without thinking about it, I said, “Hi!”

  Then I heard the sound of angry voices coming from Turk’s backyard. I walked back to find out what was going on.

  I still remember Dad saying, “Where is Cody? What have you done with my son?”

  It’s kind of a warm memory, actually. But not as warm as the memory of Number 3, Aunt Imelda’s husband of the year, turning Turk over his knee and paddling her.

  He stopped when I came closer and said, “Let me, Uncle Jeff, let me!”

  Then for two minutes it was all about Cody. Was I all right? What had happened? What had we been playing?

  “I went to outer space,” I said. “But I didn’t like it.”

  The spaceship looked like it had had a rough trip. The nose cone was ripped, of course. And the back end was blackened and smoking. A long electric cord ran from the house to a battery charger, the kind they have in repair garages, which Number 3 owned a couple of. The battery charger was hooked up to a battery surrounded by six other batteries, and those batteries were connected to each other by a few twists of copper wire. The spaceship’s engine, of course.

  What had happened was that Turk had tried to charge the batteries all at once, off the one charger. The one in the center had heated up enough to blow the caps off the cells. That was the sound I had heard, echoing in the spaceship. The bad smell had been the cloud of sulfuric acid that rolled out of the battery once the caps had blown.

  “How high did I get?” I wanted to know.

  Turk explained everything. Of course she hadn’t tried out her spaceship herself. How could she start the engine if she was inside? Why hadn’t she told me I was the test pilot? Because if she had, maybe I wouldn’t have done what she wanted. It all made perfect sense.

  We went home, and we didn’t get together with them again until Aunt Imelda was on husband Number 4.

  By that time, I was ten and Turk was eleven. This time, it was she and Aunt Imelda and Number 4 who came to visit us. I figured I was safe enough on my own turf. I mean, she couldn’t bring her latest spaceship, or whatever she was working on, with her. So I was kind of looking forward to the visit, the way kids do. You figure, you’ve got a cousin coming, someone new to play with. Right?

  Right. But the only game
she wanted to play was Kidnapper, where she tied me up and left me in my own tree house for about twelve hours, until Dad climbed up and got me down. Why hadn’t I at least called for help? I had. But no one had heard me. Probably because of the gag in my mouth.

  “Sorry, Cody,” she said the next morning. “I didn’t mean to leave you out there. I just sort of forgot.”

  Then, when she had turned thirteen and Aunt Imelda had moved to Seattle and was revving up husband Number 6, we heard that Turk had become an artist. She sketched. She painted. She hammered together weird things out of hunks of wood. She wore a black T-shirt that said DESPAIR IS GOOD FOR YOU, and it was the only shirt she would wear. Aunt Imelda had to get her a dozen or she wouldn’t change.

  Last year, when I’d been getting started here at Vlad Dracul Magnet School, she’d entered an art contest. Her art was a black urinal turned upside down. The title was Homage to Marcel Duchamp.

  Aunt Imelda sent us a copy of the program. Under “Homage to Marcel Duchamp, Raquel Stone, Age 16” was the explanation of why this was Art.

  “As Duchamp exhibited a urinal to express his rage and despair at the slaughter of World War I, and the inadequacy of language to describe it, this work expresses rage and despair at Duchamp’s inability to express his rage and despair adequately.”

  First prize. Five thousand dollars.

  “You could redo a whole bathroom for that,” Dad said when he read it. “With plenty left over for toilet paper.”

  Instead, Turk bought her car, and we heard it got to be pretty well known around Seattle. Partly this was because it was always shiny black no matter what the weather was like. Partly this was because she drove it on her learner’s permit and the cops kept stopping her.

  Meanwhile, she won another prize. This one for a piece called Daddy Six. It was photographs of all the guys Aunt Imelda had married, wrapped up in a net of rusty barbed wire.