Meeting

by Nina Hoffman

  “That’s not going to make me drink any faster,” Dad said, and focused on the newspaper he was reading.

  Maya ate quietly and got up. She put her lunch in her backpack and went to the door. No rush rush, Rimi. I might be able to get used to this. Thanks again.

  Time is easy to watch, but not always interesting, Rimi thought.

  “See you later, everybody,” Maya said, and left.

  Aunt Sarutha sat on the Janus House porch again, weaving something about six inches wide, and this time Maya walked over to her. “Morning, Namdi. Did the others leave already?”

  “No,” Sarutha said. She smiled. “Maya, would you skip singing class this afternoon and stop at Columba’s apartment instead? I’ll be by to pick you up. I shouldn’t be too late, if all goes according to plan.”

  “Sure,” Maya said.

  Sarutha rummaged in a bag beside her, then held up a square of material. It looked thick and stiff and dark, and it had a picture picked out in colored thread. A quick look showed Maya three figures that looked humanoid but not human. “Here’s some homework for you and Rimi. See what you can learn from studying it. I’ll leave it with Columba for you.”

  Rimi stretched out a limb and touched the material. Something thrummed through her, reaching Maya less than a second later. Maya’s teeth felt jiggly. “What—Namdi—”

  “No peeking!” Sarutha said. She tucked the square of cloth back into her bag and shook her index finger at Maya.

  Then Benjamin, Gwenda, Rowan, Kallie, and Twyla burst out of the front doors and swept Maya up with them in the rush to get to school on time.

  In social studies class, Rimi poked Maya. That Sibyl is looking at you again.

  Maya glanced up from her textbook. Sibyl was two rows in front of Maya and Travis. They had settled in the back row in this class without the excuse of Janus House kids, and sometimes Maya was sorry they’d picked these seats. She liked Mr. Harrison as a teacher. He made American history interesting, and he was funny. Occasionally he was mean when somebody wasn’t paying attention, and once in a while, that was Maya. But for the most part, she had a good time in his class.

  She hadn’t noticed Sibyl particularly until this week, and this week she was only noticing Sibyl because Sibyl seemed to be noticing Maya first.

  Mr. Harrison had his back to them. He was writing on the board about the causes of revolution. With his attention distracted, Sibyl had turned most of the way around in her seat to stare through her glasses at Maya. She was wearing a dark red dress today, but she had the same golden scarf around her neck. It was the prettiest thing about her.

  Gwenda thinks there’s something off about her, Maya thought. Can you sense it?

  Rimi stretched along the floor, edging closer to Sibyl. She paused before she reached the girl. The air is pattishaw, she thought.

  What does that mean?

  Something is wrinkly in it. Rimi retreated, tightened around Maya. It makes me burizz.

  Weird.

  Travis tapped her arm. She glanced toward him. He’d written a note in the margin of his notebook. What’s up?

  Maya wrote a note on the edge of her notebook. Don’t know.

  They both shrugged, and then Mr. Harrison turned around and stared right at them, as though he knew they hadn’t been paying attention.

  Rimi focused on Sibyl the rest of class, but nothing else happened.

  She smells wrong, Rimi thought after the bell rang and everyone rose to go to their next class. She smells—she sistis strange. Or maybe something else is familiar in a strange way.

  You watch her while I’m watching the school stuff? Maya thought.

  Yes.

  SEVENTEEN

  As Maya followed Travis and the Janus House kids home from school following last period, Rimi nudged her. Still watching, she said. Maya glanced back and saw Sibyl leaning against the wall of the school, her head turned away as though nothing could be more fascinating than the trees across the road, with their few rags of colored leaves still dangling.

  I’ll have to talk to her sometime, I guess, Maya thought. Let me know if she follows us.

  All right. Rimi got distracted just then, though, by something in a trash can they were passing. She had to taste it, and Maya got a fragment of the taste.

  Eww. What is that?

  I don’t know. It’s purple and squishy.

  Overshare! Maya swallowed a few times, then broke out a piece of mint gum. She chomped furiously.

  In the front hall of Janus House, everyone split up. Travis headed upstairs to study with his teachers. Gwenda, Benjamin, Kallie, Twyla, and Rowan also headed upstairs, for singing class. Maya knocked on Columba’s door.

  Columba’s door opened. So did the door to Benjamin’s apartment. Dr. Porta came out, a bulging tapestry bag over her shoulder. “Hi, Maya,” she said as she crossed the front hall toward them. “I heard you were at loose ends this afternoon. I want to try an experiment to find out more about your sissimi.”

  Maya stilled. Do we want her to find out more about you? she wondered.

  I’m always curious, Rimi thought.

  She might uncover our secrets.

  She might uncover secrets about us we don’t know yet. I love secrets, thought Rimi.

  “Namdi Sarutha left me some homework,” Maya said.

  “That’s okay. My experiment won’t take much of your attention. Hey, Columba. Okay if I come in, too?”

  “Okay,” said Columba. “I’m still not sure about this entertaining business. You know more about it than I do. But Maya, I actually got you some bread this time.”

  “Good thinking,” Dr. Porta said. “Is it some of mine?”

  “From the batch of banana bread you made this morning,” Columba said.

  “One of my better batches,” said Dr. Porta. She smiled. “They’re all good, though. Maya, you’ll eat, won’t you?”

  “Yes. Thanks!” Maya stared down at her stomach. It growled, on cue.

  “What would you like to drink, Maya? Sapphira? Tea?” asked Columba.

  “I guess, as long as it’s not chamomile,” Maya said.

  “Come on in.” Columba turned, and Maya followed her into the apartment, through the living room, and into the kitchen. Dr. Porta came, too.

  “What kind of tea would either of you like?” Columba filled an orange kettle with water and put it on the stove to boil.

  “Peppermint,” Maya said. “Do you have that?”

  “Mm.” Columba opened a cupboard. Maya saw a bunch of different types of teas there. Columba picked a pink box and closed the cupboard. “Sapphira, you okay with peppermint?”

  “Sure, sure.” Dr. Porta put her satchel on the floor and took out a blue crystal bowl, a clear glass rod, and some cloth zipper pouches. She set the bowl on one end of the kitchen table, produced a water bottle from the satchel, and mixed things in the bowl. She sang softly in Kerlinqua while she worked, timing the strokes of the glass rod with the beat of her song. Maya didn’t recognize any words except girana, which meant make or do, and three other verbs that just confused her.

  Columba ran water in the kitchen sink. When it was steaming, she filled a white and blue porcelain teapot and set it beside the sink to warm.

  “Maya, have a seat.” Columba gestured toward the kitchen table. “You can do your homework here.”

  “Thanks,” Maya said. She dropped into the chair farthest from Dr. Porta’s mixing station and settled her pack next to her, then got the sketchpad and pencils out. Maybe she should try drawing a picture of Sibyl. If she drew Sibyl, she might understand her better.

  But wait a minute, she could also draw what was right in front of her. She flipped the sketchpad open, grabbed a couple of pencils, and drew Dr. Porta mixing. Dr. Porta had wild, wavy black hair, and her black eyes looked slightly mad as she worked with the ingredients she took out of her bag. Maya emphasized the mad scientist look in the drawing.

  “Maya, Benjamin tells me there’s a mysterious store nearby,�
�� Columba said. “How long have you known about it?”

  “Since we moved here. I didn’t realize it was mysterious, though, except the owner kind of creeps me out. I haven’t gone inside since before Rimi.”

  “I’ve sent some of my minions to investigate. It seems to be warded against us, though. If you do go in, could you bring me back your impressions?”

  “Sure,” said Maya.

  “Excellent. Could you draw me a picture of the owner?”

  “I guess.” Maya turned to a fresh page. She had just seen him through the window the day before, but there was something about him that made her turn and look other directions. Frowning, she thought about that. That was when she should pay more attention, she decided, when things were pushing her eyes somewhere else. She drew the heavy dark brows overshadowing the deep-set eyes, the long hair pulled back into a braid, the stark bones of his cheeks and jawline, then tore the sketch from her pad and handed it to Columba. Dr. Porta finished stirring and looked over Columba’s shoulder.

  “Hmm,” said Columba. “Thanks, Maya.” She filed the sketch in a drawer.

  Maya turned the page and did a sketch of Sibyl and her scarf, then flipped another page and drew a picture of Stephanie.

  Who am I going to be for Halloween this year, Steph? she thought. Who can I be?

  Last year Stephanie had been a Rapunzel princess out of her tower, and Maya had been her ghostly friend and companion. Maya had covered her face with white grease paint and used dark greasepaint to make circles around her eyes, add hollows to her cheeks, and blacken her lips. She had found several lengths of pale gauzy material to drape over black jeans and a black shirt, and she had practiced ghost noises. Her mother helped her safety-pin the gauze to her other clothes so it stayed in place. She draped a big piece over her head.

  Stephanie had had that crazy wig, curly blonde hair down to her ankles, and she wore a dress with lots of sequins that she and Maya had glued to it in a pattern Maya had designed. She put rhinestone star clips in her fake hair, and she carried a magic wand with a glowing crystal at the tip.

  Her cheeks had looked gaunt. Princess makeup couldn’t disguise her weight loss. Steph smiled so much, and seemed so cheerful, that Maya could almost pretend the chemo didn’t make her too nauseated to eat for three days after each treatment. Maya sat with Steph in her bedroom after school on days when Steph was too sick to come to school and talked about what they had learned that day, and played cards with her, and drew her pictures, and Steph just made up stories and smiled, so Maya thought maybe things weren’t that bad. Steph went through periods between treatments where she seemed like her old self.

  Last Halloween, they had started out strong, walking the same neighborhood they had toured every Halloween since they were three and clinging to their parents’ hands. They knew which houses were likely to give full-size candy bars, which ones gave you a toothbrush instead of a treat, which people were likely to dress up to answer the door for trick-or-treaters. Maya liked saving the best houses for last.

  But that night, she and Stephanie had only gone two blocks when Stephanie faltered. “I’m sorry, my shady friend,” Stephanie had said. She stopped, holding onto the hood of a parked car. “I’m tired already. I know that’s not very princess-y of me.”

  “We can’t stop now. The Halvorsons. The Flynns. The Harrises,” Maya said.

  Stephanie was breathing loudly. “I’m sorry,” she said again. She turned away and leaned against the car, hanging onto the roof as though it were the only thing keeping her on her feet. “I’m sorry, Maya. Just now the magic left me.”

  All that candy uncollected, Maya had thought, visions of Snickers and Milky Ways and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups dancing through her mind, and then she sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Can you make it home?”

  Stephanie didn’t speak for a little while. The cool night was quiet except for her heavy breathing. Candles flickered in pumpkins on a nearby porch, and distant trick-or-treaters were running silhouettes under an orange streetlight down at the corner. Woodsmoke flavored the air.

  “I think I better call Daddy,” Steph said, and got out her cell phone.

  After the call, Maya put her arm around Stephanie’s waist and helped her over to the lawn in front of the Collins’ house. There was a bench there. Steph sat down, hugging her loot bag, her head down and the Rapunzel hair shielding her. Maya sat beside her and stared toward the street. When Steph started to sniffle, Maya took her hand. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  For the first time, Maya had asked herself, What if she doesn’t get better?

  Stephanie had lived until spring.

  Rimi stroked Maya’s back as Maya sat with her pencil tip digging into the picture of Stephanie. Steph stared out of the page at Maya. She looked like she had before the cancer diagnosis, smiling and healthy, full of mischief. Find your secret self, she had said more than once, and Maya heard her saying it again.

  Am I your secret self? Rimi asked.

  I don’t know how secret you are when a house full of people know about you, plus Peter, thought Maya. And anyway, you’re your own self.

  Where is your secret self?

  My secret self keeps changing, Maya thought. Stephanie had lots of secret selves, and mine were always boring compared to hers. She thought up the best stories.

  Stories are everywhere, Rimi thought. What story do you like right now?

  I like the story of a girl meeting an alien and being best friends, Maya thought. She felt a pang. Best friends. She and Steph had sworn they were forever friends. Steph wouldn’t have wanted Maya not to have any other friends, though. Magic users and aliens. If only Steph could have been here—

  Maya straightened and laid her pencil on the table. Let’s go to a store later and see what kind of secret selves they’re selling this year. Usually Maya’s mother helped her assemble a costume, and she was sure they could do it again this year, but it was only four days until Halloween, and Mom hadn’t even mentioned it yet.

  Maybe she was remembering last year and waiting for Maya to say something.

  Columba sliced the loaf of banana bread onto a wooden board and set it on the table between Maya and where Dr. Porta was mixing up her concoction. “Sapphira, what on earth are you making?” she asked Dr. Porta.

  Maya helped herself to three slices of bread. It was so moist it didn’t even leave crumbs, really. Anything that fell off, Maya could pick up by pressing her finger to it. Sweet, soft, and delicious, banana and cinnamon and ginger. “Oh, this is so good,” Maya said.

  “Thanks, Maya. Columba, I’m working on a visibility potion,” said Dr. Porta. She took a pinch of something bright yellow-green from one of her pouches, rubbed it between finger and thumb, and dropped it into the mix. She stirred the mixture with the glass rod, then dug something that looked like clear jelly from a pocket of her satchel and droobled half a handful into the mix. Faint blue flames sprang up from the mixture, and a smell like lemons and burnt sugar came from it. Dr. Porta stirred harder. The flames winked out. “Okay,” she said.

  “Are you sure that’s what you made?” Columba said. “I don’t remember doing it like that in class.”

  “It’s my own recipe. Works better than the one we learned.” She dug a golden tablespoon from the satchel and dipped up a spoonful of the mixture. It looked like clear jelly with dark veins in it, and it smelled a little like lemon pie filling. “Here, Maya.”

  “You first.” Maya scooted her chair away from Dr. Porta.

  “Um?” Dr. Porta frowned at the wobbly jelly, then put it in her mouth. She pulled out the bare spoon and swallowed. A halo of gemlike golden lights flared around her. “Eh?” Dr. Porta reached for some of the blinking gleams. They darted away from her fingers while maintaining their connection with the other glittering beads of light that surrounded her like a vertical equator. “What on earth?”

  Columba laughed just as the teakettle whistled. She took the ke
ttle off the burner, emptied the teapot of the water that had warmed it, put several teabags with their strings twisted together into the pot, and poured hot water on them. Then she turned back to Dr. Porta, who was still chasing the lights. “Don’t you know your own signature?”

  “This is my signature?”

  “Or part of it, anyway.” Columba made a triangle with her fingers and thumbs and spoke a soft chant, then looked through her frame at Dr. Porta. “You’ve left out the other colors. Interesting.”

  “Nola Columba, what are you doing?” Maya asked.

  Columba turned toward Maya, still peering at the triangle she had made of index fingers and thumbs. “Whoa! Wow! That’s what Rimi looks like?”

  “Huh?” Maya asked.

  Columba dropped her hands. “It’s a viewing portal for seeing truths not apparent,” she said.

  “Could you teach me that?”

  Columba frowned. “It depends on what abilities you were born with,” she said. “Has Sarutha done a power inventory on you yet?”

  “I don’t know. She asked me questions and wrote things down, but I’m not sure it was a power inventory.”

  “Well, sooner or later, someone should do one. I’ll check with Sarutha. If she hasn’t done it, I will.”

  “Columba, you try this stuff. I can’t do a viewing portal. This is the only way I know how to see someone else’s powers.” Dr. Porta spooned up more of her mixture. She extended it to Columba.

  “What the heck.” Columba took the spoon and ate what was on it. “Wah! Nice flavor,” she said. Tiny angels of manycolored light flickered into sight around her. Or maybe they weren’t angels, but tiny glowing lilies, foxgloves, and upended irises, or just some other interesting shapes and colors. They spun and danced around Columba in all directions. Maya sketched as quickly as she could, challenging herself to draw what was in front of her instead of trying to make it conform to something she already knew. She didn’t understand what any of these things revealed about Columba, let alone what Dr. Porta’s surround of light beads meant, but someone might know. She wished she had brought her colored pencils. She was sure the colors carried information, too. She wrote in color names next to the shapes she sketched.