Sophomore Year

by Douglas Rees

  “I thought it was pretty clear,” Turk said. “Ingratitude means—”

  “I know what it means,” Gregor said. “What I am really asking is, how dare you say such a thing, when you know nothing of us?”

  “Do you remember who talked before I did?” Turk asked.

  “Yes. It was I,” Gregor said.

  “Mm-hm. You went on for five minutes about how the vampires have always been persecuted, and everybody was nodding along with you. And it just sounded like you didn’t have a clue in your head about where you are.”

  “What do you mean?” Gregor said.

  “I mean, look around you,” Turk said. “For God’s sake, man, half the world goes to bed hungry at night. And what’s your biggest problem? Yours, personally.”

  “You have no right to say anything about us,” Gregor said.

  “What is your problem, man? Your biggest problem?” Turk went on.

  “Do not try to reduce this to a question of myself,” Gregor said. “That is not the point.”

  “It’s my point,” Turk said. “You’ve got everything, for God’s sake. You wouldn’t know real trouble if it pantsed you, tied you up, and left you in a tree house.”

  For a second, Gregor looked puzzled. As insults went, that was a left-fielder. And the image was so ridiculous that I think he might have laughed.

  Except I beat him to it. I couldn’t help it.

  And that made Gregor turn on me.

  “Sorry, man,” I said, trying to apologize. “She did that to me once. Except for the pants part.”

  Justin put his hand over his eyes.

  Ileana dropped hers.

  Because one thing you did not ever want to do with Gregor was to attack his dignity, and he clearly had decided that we had just done that.

  And there was one other thing that everybody at the table knew but Turk. It was the answer to her question to Gregor. Gregor didn’t have Ileana. I did. And he still hadn’t gotten over that.

  Gregor stood there twitching, with his pale skin turning dark red. No one had ever actually seen Gregor lose it. There was always this iciness about his anger, even when he was beating you up. But now he looked like his head might pop off the top of his neck.

  “You are ignorant. Useless. Arrogant. Even your stupid cousin is better than you,” he finally said to Turk. He stumbled over the words, which was not like Gregor. He usually said something fang-sharp and sarcastic when he was mad.

  “But not wrong,” Turk said slowly.

  Ileana reached over and put her hand on Gregor’s arm. She flicked her eyes.

  Gregor looked around and saw that everyone in the dining hall was watching our table.

  “You will never know how wrong you are,” Gregor said.

  “Ooh. Slash,” Turk said, drawing one of her long black nails along her throat.

  Gregor shook his arm free, snarled in a way that made me think what a great wolf he probably made, and turned away.

  “Oh, boy,” I thought. “Welcome to tenth grade. Thank you, Turk.”

  Turk turned back to her food.

  “You know,” she said, “this salmon mousse is really good.”

  But Ileana wasn’t going to let her change the subject that easily.

  “You have a point, Turquoise,” she said. “But not as strong a point as you think. You have judged him too quickly. And Gregor has a point, too, don’t you think?”

  “What I think is that he’s a spoiled, whiney brat,” Turk said.

  “Gregor would not tell you this, but his mother is dead,” Ileana said. “Is that, perhaps, a large enough personal problem for you to respect?”

  “Let me tell you something, Ileana,” Turk said. “About why I don’t worry whether I’m rude or not. It’s because people are always rude to me. And why? Because I don’t look like them. Don’t think like them. Don’t want to be like them. I don’t insult them just because they’re all about rock stars, or jock stars, or video games. I don’t care about that stuff, but I don’t dump on the people who do. But if you look like me, if you act a little different from what they’re used to, they’ll circle around you and try to peck out your eyes. And I’ll tell you something else. These vampire friends of yours don’t know how lucky they are. A whole school of people exactly like themselves to hang out with. A whole school. And I can’t even find one person.”

  She got up from the table and left.

  It was going to be a long year.

  6

  By the end of the day, the Rustle had gotten louder.

  The new one. The cousin. She and Gregor are fighting. She was rude to him. Rude to our princess.

  It was around me in gym, where we played half-court basketball, and I thought I heard it in the squeaks and whispers of the sneakers. It was in the scrape of Mr. Gibbon’s chalk on the blackboard during history. And by the time I walked into my last class, it was almost loud enough to actually hear. In fact, I did hear it. It was silence. Absolute and perfect silence.

  “Welcome, Master Cody,” said the teacher, Ms. Magyar. “Or should I say—” And she rattled off some syllables that sounded like water running over stones. A greeting in high jenti that meant “Come before me bringing the joy of your presence.” It was one of about six high jenti phrases I knew. High jenti was so elaborate and formal that almost nobody spoke it anymore. Jenti kids in New Sodom spoke a lingo of jenti, English, and a few other languages. There were no rules, and it was always changing. But I knew one jenti girl who did know the old language, because she had to. And I was going to learn it for her. It was a surprise. I hadn’t told Ileana or anyone I was taking this class. And no other gadje ever had.

  Anyway, I said the same thing back to Ms. Magyar, and the room cracked up. I mean, cracked up jenti style. All of the heads that had been turned my way looked down at their desks, and seven pairs of shoulders went up like they were trying to flap.

  “The proper response is—” Ms. Magyar said, and made some sounds like gears grinding. “The approximate translation in English would be ‘I fly toward the bright moon of your splendor.’”

  “Thank you,” I said in one of the other high jenti things I knew. It really meant, “Your gift is beyond the deserving, O radiant friend.”

  But Ms. Magyar giggled. “That was creditable, Master Cody. But as you spoke the words, they meant, ‘Your gift is beyond the nothing, O radiant horse.’”

  The shoulder blades were twitching like mad.

  By the time class was over, I knew that in high jenti there were twenty-seven words for groups of men, and twenty-nine for groups of women. Nouns inflected, whatever that was, to fourteen cases, whatever they were. There were three alternative conjugations for most verbs, and a thing could be male, female, or neuter depending on which of the conjugations you were using.

  It was going to be lots of fun.

  But not as much fun as my fourth-period class had been. English class. One thousand pages of outside reading per semester, and of course Some Further Glories of English Literature by Norman P. Shadwell. Apart from that, just the odd essay, sonnet cycle, or novella.

  The last gong chimed through the halls. Feeling slightly as though I’d been run over by a truck, I went down to Ileana’s chorus class.

  They must have been running late. The door was still closed. Through it came a sad old song sung in high jenti. Even though I didn’t understand a word, I felt the sorrow. And the singer, whoever he was, was fantastic. It was a powerful voice, kind of deep, and rich. Some of the singers in the old movies my parents liked to watch were like that. Not my kind of thing, but I knew it was good.

  The song stopped.

  The door opened.

  I looked in.

  Gregor was standing next to Mrs. Warrener’s piano, looking over her shoulder at some sheet music.

  “Thank you, Gregor,” she said. She said it in that old New England way that means a lot more than the words.

  Wow. Gregor. I’d have sooner expected him to have a hidden talent for b
eing nice.

  The jenti were impressed, too. You could tell. Their eyes were shining.

  He looked my way and I wanted to say something, and I wanted it to be special. So I said, “Your gift is beyond the deserving, O radiant friend.”

  The whole class turned their eyes on me.

  Rustle, Rustle. The gadje friend is learning high jenti. What a good friend he is. Rustle.

  So I had snitched Gregor’s moment of glory. Swell.

  He didn’t say anything, just got his stuff and went past me.

  “All I wanted to do was be nice,” I said to Ileana.

  “You were. You are. Some people are hard to be nice to,” Ileana said.

  And up came the other person I knew who fit that description, right on cue.

  “I haven’t been this bored since the last time Mom got married,” Turk said. “I thought a school full of vampires would be exciting. This place is about as interesting as a cemetery.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just wished the French Foreign Legion took girls.

  “Shall we visit the student center?” Ileana smiled. “Perhaps you would like that.”

  “Whatever,” Turk said.

  The center was the way it always was after school: quiet and elegant and full of whispering jenti.

  Turk looked around at the oak-paneled walls and the oil paintings that hung on them and said, “You could get a really great headbanger concert going in here. Anybody ever done it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The same day we had the pig fights. It was real popular.”

  Turk just shook her head. “I can’t handle this place. I need some grunge.”

  And she left.

  “Perhaps we should go with her,” Ileana said. “She does not know New Sodom well. She might become lost.”

  “I was sort of hoping,” I said.

  “She is your family, Cody,” Ileana said. “You must help her. She is in great pain.”

  “She is a great pain,” I said.

  “Stop it,” Ileana said, and led me out of the center.

  We caught up to Turk in the parking lot.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she said, and drove off. Her little black car sounded like it was cursing us.

  “Do I still have to be nice to her?” I said.

  “Yes,” Ileana said. “And so do I. But we do not have to like it.”

  Getting home was no problem. There were stretch limos for anybody who wanted them, or Ileana could call for her own car and have it there in minutes.

  But she said, “Let us walk home today. To my house. You will get a ride from there.”

  The way to Ileana’s house led down quiet streets shaded by fine old trees whose leaves were just beginning to turn gold at their tips.

  I took Ileana’s hand.

  “It will all be well,” she said.

  “You really think so?” I said.

  “Yes,” Ileana said. “Turk is vain and silly, but she is not stupid. She will find something hard to do, and she will do it, and then she will think less about herself and more about whatever that thing is. She has a large soul, and she needs to feed it.”

  She looked up at me and smiled a wicked little smile.

  “She is rather a lot like you, you know.”

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not that bad.”

  “Not now,” she said. “But when you came, you were very full of the act you were putting on. But then you found your big thing. You decided to challenge us to admit that you could be as good as we thought we were. And you did, and you are.”

  I looked at Ileana and thought about how smart she was. No, not smart. Wise. Wise in a very special way that I would probably never really understand.

  Then I did something very brave. I said what I said next. Which was “I found something bigger than that. I found you.”

  And I kissed her under the trees.

  I don’t know how long we stood there. A week or two, maybe. But when we broke, she said, “This was why I wanted to walk home.”

  “We’ll never make it at this rate,” I said.

  And we kissed again.

  Eventually, we made it up the long hill to Ileana’s house. And Ileana had her limo take me home.

  “All will be well,” she said again, as the car pulled away from the curb.

  I wished right then that I were old enough to drive. It was a comedown to walk my girlfriend home kissing her and then be hauled away by somebody else, like a little kid. But overall, I thought, things were pretty good just then.

  7

  There was no little black car sitting in front of the house when I got home.

  “Where’s Turk?” Mom said as I came in the door.

  “She took off by herself after school,” I said. “For all I know, she’s on her way back to Mexico.”

  “Did she have a bad day at school?” Mom asked.

  “She gave about as good as she got,” I said.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Mom asked. She wasn’t happy.

  “It means she insulted everyone she could, sneered at everything except lunch, and felt sorry for herself all day,” I said. “You know. She was Turk.”

  “Cody, I really wish you’d be more supportive right now,” Mom snapped. “This is very difficult for all of us. I know Turk isn’t the easiest person in the world to be around, but she needs help.”

  “She doesn’t want help,” I said. “If she’d been on the Titanic, she’d have jumped into the water and bragged about how cool she was.”

  “That’s not helpful,” Mom said.

  “It’s not supposed to be,” I said. “Look, can we fight about how mean I am some other time? I have a lot of homework.”

  Mom waved me away.

  I went up the stairs, stomping on every one. Turk. Damn Turk. Even when she wasn’t around, she caused trouble. Mom and I never fought. That was a Dad and me thing.

  I slammed the door to my room, threw my backpack on the floor, and talked to the ceiling until it was time to eat.

  Turk didn’t come home for dinner. The long sunset left the sky, and a few stars came out. Still no Turk. Dad tried calling her cell phone, but no answer.

  Finally, long after midnight, her little car grumbled up in front of the house and she slammed through the front door and up the stairs to her attic.

  By the time the three of us got up and into the hall, the ladder was up.

  “Turk, come down now. We need to talk,” Dad shouted.

  Then we watched as the little rope that pulled down the ladder disappeared up through its hole.

  “Turk!” Dad said.

  Then Mom put her hand on his arm.

  “That’s just what she wants you to do,” she said. “Let’s go back to bed. We’ll deal with this tomorrow when we’re all rested. And when she can’t turn it into a drama.”

  “Good thinking,” Dad said. “Cody, back to bed.”

  “Right, Dad,” I said. “No drama.”

  Saying “No drama” and “Turk” in the same sentence was like saying “No homework” and “Vlad.” But I knew Dad would like the sound of it.

  I went to bed. Down the hall, I heard my mom and dad doing the same thing. A few low whispers. Lights out.

  Then I lay there wondering what Turk had been up to.

  For the first time, I wondered how someone who wanted to knock on Turk’s door would do it.

  And would Turk answer? She had to be enjoying a good mad right now. Ignoring me would give her extra pleasure.

  I stared up at the ceiling for a couple of minutes. Then I had an idea that I thought would work.

  I tiptoed into the hall carrying the chair from my desk like it would explode if I dropped it. I stood on it and scratched my nails slowly over the trapdoor. Slowly. Quietly. For a long time.

  Finally, the hatch cracked open.

  “You’re doing that wrong,” Turk said in a whisper.

  “Of course,” I agreed.

  “You’re only supposed to use your
little finger. Using your whole hand is rude,” Turk said.

  “I’ll never do it again,” I said.

  “Anyway, what do you want?” Turk said.

  “Just wanted to talk,” I said. “Let down the ladder.”

  “I can’t,” Turk said. “Your parents will wake up.”

  “It’s okay. They aren’t going to kill you tonight,” I said.

  Slowly, Turk pushed down the ladder. The springs skreaked, but the door to Mom and Dad’s room stayed closed.

  “Come on up,” Turk said.

  The attic looked like it was forty fathoms underwater. The only light came from the ten-gallon fish tank that Justin had given her. Two black angelfish darted back and forth in it, expecting to be fed. Pale green light and black shadows shimmered on the walls. The Snake of Life over our heads was like some half-seen monster, and The Scream standing in the corner looked like a drowning victim. Turk had really made the place her own.

  “What do you know about Crossfield?” she asked me.

  “Crossfield? What were you doing in Crossfield?” I asked.

  “Just looking around,” Turk said.

  “That’s not a good place for looking around,” I said. “Especially after dark.”

  I had been to Crossfield once. Dad had made a wrong turn shortly after we’d moved to New Sodom, and we’d ended up there. From what I had seen then, and from what I had learned about the place since, I hadn’t seen any reason to go back. Apart from the factories and a few other buildings that might have been houses once, the place was mostly empty lots full of concrete and rusted iron, strange-looking weeds, abandoned cars stripped of their wheels and engines. And under it all you could still see little cobble-stoned roads lacing back and forth, running at right angles.

  “It’s a great place for looking around,” Turk said. “So ugly it’s beautiful.”

  “So ugly it’s ugly,” I said.

  “The moon drowning in that dirty river,” Turk said. “Buildings like skulls everywhere, staring at you.”

  “By which I assume you mean the abandoned mills,” I said.

  “Is that what they are?” Turk said. “Really abandoned?”

  “Mills and factories,” I said.

  “I want one,” Turk said.