“Zef, nobody’s listening to us. It’s okay.”
“Sorry.”
“Honestly, you’re acting like the secret police are after you. If you want to talk in the car…”
“No. This is fine. Thanks for—”
Jennifer appeared, delivering two orders of pumpkin cheesecake. Zef slunk down in his seat. “You want whipped cream, lovebirds?” she said. Kate and Zef were a well-known couple.
“We’re fine,” said Kate.
Jennifer set down a hot chocolate and refilled Zef’s coffee.
“You okay, honey?” She inspected Zef. “You look queasy. Was it the crab meat? I say we should take those mushrooms off the menu before they kill somebody. But our grand and glorious chef insists that—”
“No. I’m good,” said Zef.
“Well, if you need anything send up a flag.” She tottered away, running fingers through a wavy blue streak in her hair, like the Bride of Frankenstein gone punk.
Kate and Zef stared at their desserts. They had barely spoken during the meal, unable to find a thread to lead them through this new labyrinth. He’d told her about the magazine, with much embarrassment, and had become quiet as a sphinx. Seeing his pain, Kate had set aside her anger for now.
She broke the silence. “There’s no reason to be scared. You have friends.” She reached across the table and put a hand on his arm. It was the first time they’d touched since New Year’s. She took her hand back, trying not to look at Zef’s fingers, those fingers so often intertwined with her own. “He did that for you?”
“Jason? Yeah.”
“Told your dad the magazine was his?”
“He’s a good guy. He…” Zef hesitated. “He says he loves you, you know. Maybe you two could…”
“No. Zef, don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t try to pass me off on someone else.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I’m not that girl.”
“What girl?”
She held up a hand. “I can live without a boyfriend. Believe me.”
“I know. I’m just saying he’s decent.”
“And I’m not disagreeing. But don’t you dare play matchmaker. My love life is no longer your concern.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fine. Apology accepted. And apologize to Jason. People shouldn’t have to lie for you.”
“I know. But I couldn’t tell my dad. I was too scared.”
“Scared? Physically?”
He nodded.
She gasped. “Does your dad… hit you?”
Zef shrugged. “He has.”
A knot of anger twisted in her, not at Zef now but for him. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”
“It’s no one’s business.”
“It’s not right. Zef, if there’s abuse we need to go talk to—”
“No,” he said. “He doesn’t hit me. Not like that. Just, you know, roughhousing.”
She sighed. “Whatever it is. You can tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She stared at him, sensing the lie there but he met her gaze, steadily, as if his face had become mask. She wanted to press him, but what could she do if he wouldn’t confide in her? She shook her head. Poor Zef. And she’d had no idea. No idea what was going on behind the closed doors of the Van Brunt household. She stared at her cheesecake. “I haven’t been a good friend to you.”
“That’s not true. You’re a great friend.”
“No. I’m a great girlfriend. That’s different. And I am a great girlfriend, by the way.”
“You are.”
“I’m smoking hot. And funny.”
“And a good dancer.”
“And a good kisser.” She regretted saying that, instantly.
“First rate,” Zef said, with a note of sadness.
“I’m—well…”
“Everything a boy could want.”
“You’re damn straight.”
The air went still. She bit her tongue.
His eyes dropped, to gaze into the black mirror of his coffee. “No. But I wish I were. I wanted to be. So much. But I can’t help it. I’m… not normal.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re fine. You’re great. Just be yourself and to hell with the world. To hell with me even. It’s not your fault. And it’s not a crime.”
“I should have just… stayed single. Being alone is better than being a liar.”
“Maybe. But think of all the fun we would have missed.” She blinked. She’d told herself she would get through this without being a weepy girl. She raised her cocoa and inhaled, drawing serenity from the steam and the aroma of milk and chocolate. “How much was real?” she whispered. “And how much did you—”
“Fake?”
“Approximate.”
He stirred his coffee. “Almost everything was real.”
“What’s the almost?” She didn’t want to know the answer but had to ask.
Zef stared out the window, looking puzzled. A few cars tarried at a traffic light, waiting to press on.
“You deserve to be loved,” Zef whispered.
Now a tear came. But only one. She wiped it away, hoping he hadn’t seen. He turned to her. “And I do love you, Kate. I do.”
“Just not like that.”
“Just not like that.”
He patted her hand and she saw a note of pity in his eyes. Pity for her. She pulled the hand away, annoyed. Good. Annoyance would drive the tears away, make all the damn tears wait until she got home. She stoked her annoyance deliberately. “I can’t believe we almost got engaged.”
“Me neither.”
“That would have been awful.”
“For you.”
“For both of us. How did I not see it? For that long? When did you know, anyway?”
“Since I was eleven.”
“Eleven? And you never told me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not? You were my best friend. We talked about everything. Our moms, how much it hurt to lose them. On my roof? Middle of the night? You’d be a family therapist and I’d cure cancer, remember?”
“It was complicated.”
“You could have just said it.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well for one thing… Okay, remember guitar boy?”
She tilted her head and her eyes narrowed. “You will not say his name.”
“Caleb…”
“No.”
“…Anderson.”
“You went there. Oh, you are cruising for a skull fracture.”
“She remembers.”
“Of course I do. He was into me.”
“No. You were into him. ‘Oh, Zef, he has such dreamy eyes’ and that hair. He looked like he was being swallowed by Cousin It.”
“Okay. I had bad taste. So?” She looked at the ceiling. “Sue me. He was my first crush.”
“Yeah.” Zef leaned forward conspiratorially. “Mine too.”
“No way.”
He nodded. “And if you repeat that I will feed you to alligators.”
She sang under her breath, “Zef and Caleb sittin’ in a tree…”
Zef brandished a fork, adding, “Kate, you’re toast in one-two-three…”
They laughed, just as they used to laugh, and it felt good. Like a new start. A first shovelful of dirt—no, hurt—out of the way. They were two archaeologists, searching for the fabled Lost City of Friendship. And though it lay deep underground, long-buried beneath an avalanche of false kisses, maybe it was worth digging for.
Zef paid the check.
“Happy Valentine’s!” shouted Jennifer.
“Happy Valentine’s!” they replied, as one.
On the way out and by long habit, Kate slipped an arm around Zef’s waist. As they neared her Ferrari she realized what she’d done and pulled away again, a shade too quickly.
“I think I need a walk,” Zef said.
She nodded and they hugg
ed each other. “Bye.”
“Bi? Nope. Just gay. Sorry.”
“Har har.”
She tried to pull away but Zef prolonged the hug, swaying with her. “I am sorry, Kate.”
“Me too.”
They kissed—a brush of lips, tiny as the period at the end of a sentence.
“Later, you,” said Kate, releasing him.
Zef nodded. “Later.” He raised a palm, turned his hoodie up, and walked away, head down, hands in his pockets as usual.
She watched him go. He crossed Broadway at the light, turned onto steep Beekman Avenue, and dwindled down a long aisle of empty street towards the distant altar of the Hudson. If he turned to wave farewell, Kate couldn’t see it. Not through the glare of the sunset over his shoulder. Not through her veil of tears.
Zef was dark to her now. Everything was dark. Her whole world. For the first time since her Gift had come, she had no idea what the future would bring. She had to accept that her Gift had lied to her about Zef. What else had she been wrong about? She’d grown so accustomed to knowing what lay ahead. She’d forgotten how to be here, now, uncertain as everyone else. How could people stand it? How could they stand such doubt and confusion?
She sat on the hood of her car, rubbing her arms. She considered Jason’s vision—that he would marry her, not Zef. Had Jason lied as well? Had that been a fabrication, improvised on the spot to block her engagement? Even if Jason had meant it, hell, she barely knew him. And she had to stay away from him, regardless. Her father would be asking questions.
Earlier that afternoon, her father had pressed her saying, “That Crane boy lied. If you took him to Spook Rock like you said, to see if he felt its magic, he only pretended not to. He has a Gift. Mather says so. I want you to find out what his power is. Try to read him. Can you do that for me?”
She hadn’t wanted to lie. This had been her best opportunity to tell her father her Gift had gone. He was behind schedule, on his way out the door, flying back to Boston for the debates. If the situation angered him, at least he wouldn’t have time for a long rant.
“I can’t read Jason,” she had said. “My Gift is broken.”
He frowned. “Broken how?”
“Everything’s dark.”
“Since when?”
“Before Halloween. I wanted to tell you. I did.” She’d hoped that he would see the pain in her eyes, the self-doubt, that he would embrace her and comfort her and thank her for… well, coming out as a normal. But that didn’t happen. They ended up bickering at the doorstep for almost ten minutes, her father looking at his watch at intervals.
“I’m… I’m late for the plane. I don’t have time for this. We’ll figure it out after the primaries. So your Gift is just… gone?”
She nodded.
He pointed at her. “Then find it.” He snatched up his briefcase and left
Bells chimed. Kate glanced up. The troupe of giggling girls had poured from the restaurant and into the icy parking lot. Kate ignored them. She sat on the hood of her Ferrari, chin in hand, her shadow like the ghost of Rodin’s Thinker.
How? How do I get my Gift back? I can’t just wish on a star.
She raised her head.
Or can I?
Dunes of yellow had flooded the western sky but to the south hung an oasis of clear blue. The first few stars had appeared there, peeking through a scrum of purpling clouds. She recognized their familiar pattern. The Pleiades. The Seven Sisters. The Star Maidens.
A crazy idea fell into her lap. She knew what she had to do. She rushed back into the restaurant and rang the bell at the register, over and over until Jennifer appeared.
“Woah,” Jennifer said. “What can I get for you, Hon?”
Kate threw a credit card onto the counter.
“How much salt do you have?”
Kate parked in the cemetery and climbed the fence, easy despite the two-gallon jug of table salt she carried. She knew the way to Spook Rock, even in twilight. A crow croaked, somewhere above. She spotted seven of them perched on a barren tree, watching her, stamping their feet impatiently.
Kate… Kate… Kate… Kate, they sang.
She climbed an embankment and gained the trail, just a narrow rut in the snow, embroidered by rabbit tracks. The ground rose and the trees grew dense. She checked her watch. She had plenty of time before the woods grew truly dark, but she had to hurry. She slung the jug of salt over her shoulder, two fingers hooked through the handle.
The world in the winter is dead.
Where had that come from? What a ridiculous thought. Half the world was in summer. Down in Australia they’re building sandcastles. Still, never in all the winters she’d lived in the Hollow had she seen the Rockefeller Park Preserve so denuded and black. The snow itself looked deadly, as if she might see a hand protruding from it, the claw of some murdered hiker or of an avalanche victim trying to wriggle from beneath Death’s cloak. From beneath the cold cold cold cold white.
Kate… Kate… Kate… Kate, sang the crows.
What had brought on these morbid thoughts? She became conscious of the footprints she was leaving, as if something might follow her. Any moment now it would step from the bushes and fix its eyes on her back.
She spun.
Nothing.
She turned and pressed on. The sound of her feet in the snow was deafening and somehow lewd, like someone chewing with their mouth open. The snow was trying to chew her legs, swallow her shoes and eat her feet.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
She found the frozen scar of Gory Brook and pulled herself uphill by branch and stone, past the tree that bore her initials intertwined with Zef’s. She gained the top and stepped into the clearing of Spook Rock.
The scrum of clouds had blown eastward. The moon was out now, full and bright, a pale eye peeking over the treetops, watching her through the keyhole of the splintered woods. She held her palms to the stone of Spook Rock and felt nothing, no answering thrill, no campfire warmth. Just cold stone.
She scanned the stars and found the seven maidens dancing there. Her mother’s voice came to her: “And they say that if a young girl has lost her true love, she can go to Spook Rock and dance. And the Star Maidens will grant her a wish. Any wish but one: they can’t make her true love return.”
“What can it hurt?” Kate whispered.
She poured her circle of salt, all the way around the clearing. She finished with a quarter of the jug left to go. She fished in her pockets and withdrew handfuls of tea candles. She lit seven of them and set them on the rock. The flames began dancing before she did.
“I wish for my Gift back,” she said, her voice solemn. She closed her eyes, raised her mittens to the star field, and swayed her hips. A tune came unbidden into her mind, fiddle and pipe and a deep thrumming bass drum. Celtic, or Gaelic. Primal and pagan. The drum felt like the beating of a heart, as if she’d awakened the old rock after all, with her candles and dance and stomping feet, her shadow a wallflower mimicking her from the sidelines. She lost herself to the ecstatic drums in her mind.
This won’t do, though.
It won’t do.
She knew how the Star Maidens danced. She was embarrassed to try it. The night was cold as a witch’s tit, as the saying goes, and she didn’t want to freeze hers off. And what if someone found her here, dancing naked in the snow?
She shrugged. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.”
Kate undressed in a hurry, hanging her clothes in the trees to keep them dry. They hung perfectly still, despite the altitude.
The wind had died.
The candles were perfect will o’ the wisps.
She slipped her underthings onto a branch. She stood covering her body and shivering. She wore nothing but Jason’s pendant, the feather of silver and turquoise, “For the Star-Maiden of Spook Rock.” It seemed appropriate. She hesitated, hiding her nakedness from the woods. Her teeth chattered and her breath
fogged her cheeks.
“Please, M-Mama…” she whispered, feeling small and desperate. “I f-feel so empty. Bring my Gift back.”
She raised her arms and danced with abandon. On and on she went, turning and turning. She forgot the cold. She forgot her purpose. She forgot everything but the drumbeat, the incessant drumbeat. She skipped and twirled and made lovely shadows. She was a Star-Maiden and she was beautiful and…
…and something noticed.
No wind blew, but all the candles died at once. Kate stopped her dance. The drumbeat receded. So did the beating of her heart in her ears. Her sweat prickled and froze.
A star fell from the sky—a tiny light, green-yellow like a firefly.
Kate watched it approach, joy rising in her. She had summoned one of the sisters. A true Star-Maiden. They were real, just as her mother had said.
“Hello,” she whispered, and reached for the tiny light.
A figure resolved itself, the figure of a woman. The figure of—
“You’ll do nicely,” said Agathe.
“Kate?”
Even at the lighthouse, Zef felt her danger. Just as he’d felt his mother’s.
Help! Kate! Trouble! Now!
He’d been standing at the railing, thinking about his messed up life, as he usually did in this place. The lighthouse had always been his refuge, the farthest he could go without truly leaving town.
He turned and ran for the shore but… by the time he crossed the bridge.. the sense of danger had passed. It was as if Kate had faded… She was there and… not there. He shook his head, puzzled. Maybe he had imagined it.
He returned to the railing to stare at the wide Hudson and the graceful span of the Tappan Zee, to click his cigarette lighter in the wind, sparking futilely, over and over and over.
Help! Kate! Trouble! Now!
Jason shot upright, hitting his head on the top bunk of the RV. Kate was in danger, she—
Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones Page 41