Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K

by Jennifer Sommersby

  Henry was conspicuously absent from math. When Mr. Poole handed back the pop quizzes, he gave me one, blank except for a handwritten note across the body of the page: “See me after class.” Given yesterday’s hasty departure in a flourish of misguided loyalty, I guessed Poole was going to give me an ass-chewing about my lack of judgment.

  I wasn’t far off. In al fairness, he wasn’t a total hard nose and offered an extra credit assignment to make up for the zero on the quiz.

  “Even in the short time you’ve been with us, I can see you are an excelent student, Gemma. I urge you to not throw away these years of hard work over foolish affairs of the heart.” I thanked him for his generosity but was put off by his advice.

  He sounded like he’d been talking to Ted. What the hel did Poole know about me, or my “affairs of the heart,” anyway?

  The curious glances from other students continued throughout the day, in the hal and in class. I think everyone assumed, like Ash had, that I knew the deal with Henry, that I had talked to him and therefore knew what had gone down. But I didn’t know any more than they did, as I stil hadn’t heard from him. This fact did little to improve my mood.

  No one talked to me, not even Summer during the lul in photo lab. Instead of working on the second project that was due by week’s end, she entertained a rapt group of brainless wonders at one of the high-top tables and made sure I heard her loud and clear when the subject of Henry Dmitri came up.

  “Do you guys remember when we were sophomores and Henry came to school with a broken arm? I’l bet it was his dad. Probably beating the crap out of him for not being perfect enough,” she said.

  If they talked about Henry, someone they’d gone to school with for twelve years, with such acidity, I didn’t dare imagine what they’d have to say about me.

  And as tempted as I was to go and throttle Summer, just to shut her up, I knew better. These people owed me no loyalty. I was nothing but a blip on their radar, a nobody passing through until June.

  I puled my cel phone from my pocket, mustering the courage to text Henry. I tried to think of something clever and breezy to say, something that might make him smile wherever the hel he was.

  Before I could punch in the first letter, though, the phone buzzed in my palm.

  The caler ID indicated I’d received a text. I flipped open the phone to read the display, careful to keep my hand under the table so as not to attract the attention of Summer and her merry band of fools.

  Hi, G. Was thinking of u 2. Hope ur day is going OK. Don’t eat lunch alone. Meet me on the NE side of the student prkg

  > photo. HD

  Henry!

  He was thinking of me, too? How did he know I’d been thinking about him? My heart fluttered into my throat. I wanted to bounce off my stool and do a happy dance right on the spot.

  Rather than subject myself to the Summer’s endless drivel, I grabbed my bag and went to Mr. Stephens to see if he’d alow me to spend the balance of class “in the field.” I wanted out, and taking pictures of fog and open lockers was the ideal cover.

  Mr. Stephens scribbled his signature on a hal pass. “I loved the series you did with your elephants. Go find me something beautiful, Gemma,” he said. I smiled, a real smile this time, and walked out of the classroom without giving Summer a second glance.

  It was al I could do to not sprint out of the building across the student parking lot, but doing so would’ve attracted unwanted attention. I controled my cadence, even stopped a few times to snap some shots of random crap, before walking out the side doors to the northeastern edge of the campus.

  Parked in the last row between two tricked-out riceburners sat Henry’s black BMW. My heart flipped over in my chest. As I approached the car, Henry stepped out and proceeded around to the passenger side to open the door for me. Seeing him again took my breath away, how tal he was, the way his pants fit his long legs, the cut of his heavy wool pea coat across his broad shoulders, the line of his clenched jaw, the slight hint of needing a shave, the not-quite-brushed hair… He was again wearing the sunglasses, despite the mist and obvious lack of sunshine.

  After I’d climbed into his car, he closed my door and reassumed his position behind the wheel. I didn’t know if I should speak first or wait for him to say something.

  “Hey…,” he said.

  “Hi.” I sighed with relief.

  “Thanks for coming out here so soon. Stephens gave you a pass?”

  “Yeah. He told me to go find something beautiful.” I certainly had done that.

  “Gemma, I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” He took the sunglasses off to reveal the rainbow of colors that had formed around his eye. It was just as shocking to see the second time as it had been the first, and my guts tightened, a reflex from seeing someone I cared about in pain.

  “I was just worried. That’s al.”

  “I know. Thank you.” A silence settled over the car’s interior. I didn’t know if it was my place to ask what had happened, if he felt comfortable enough to confide in me.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I said.

  “It’s not that big of a deal. I got into a fight with Lucian. He has quite a temper, and I pushed his buttons. I didn’t stop when I should have, so he stopped me instead.”

  “Your father did this to you? What could possibly be so important or terrible for him to hit you?” I was grateful that in al my years as child to a less-than-perfect mother, Delia had never raised a hand against me. My private gratitude was immediately folowed by a profound sadness for Henry. What could he have done to deserve such an explosive blow to the face?

  “We were fighting…about you.”

  I swalowed hard. “Me?”

  “He doesn’t want me hanging around with you. He thinks it’s a conflict of interest.”

  “What? We can’t be friends because he’s paying Ted’s rent?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Henry said. He paused and looked up at me. “He knows your secret, Gemma.” My secret? The secret? I stiffened in my seat.

  “You’ve seen her. The woman who folows me around the school.” How the hel did Henry know this? “Haven’t you…?” It was more a statement than a question.

  I was cornered. “Yes. I’ve seen her.”

  “You see them al over the place, don’t you…the dead, stil hanging around.” I began to shake, diverting my eyes out the car’s window, toward the old building. The three shade children weren’t there.

  “I’m not comfortable talking about this, Henry. No one knows.”

  “Listen to me.” Henry turned in his seat to face me. “Lucian knows, and I know, and he’s freaking out because he doesn’t want the two of us to get close. He’s worried.”

  “About what? This doesn’t make any sense. My crazy is none of his business. And it has nothing to do with you.”

  “But it is his business, and it does have something to do with me, because it’s not crazy. It’s real, and he knows it. I know it,” he said.

  “Who told you? Did Marlene or Irwin say something?” I whispered. “Was it Ted?” The white-hot heat of betrayal pricked at my consciousness. I could not imagine any of them teling my secret.

  “No, no, it’s not like that,” he sighed. His face looked stressed.

  “I feel so bad. There’s so much you don’t know, about al of this.

  Let me back up a sec.” Henry moved his left arm to the dashboard, his right arm hanging on to the back of the headrest of my seat.

  “You’ve probably figured out that my mother, like yours, is passed on, so it’s just me and Lucian. And like my mother, I’m not easy to manipulate. It infuriates Lucian. Sometimes he just reaches his limit with me and loses control.”

  “So he told you to stay away from me, you said no, and he hit you? Henry, that’s not right! There are people who can help you if you’re being abused,” I said, rushing to his defense.

  “Even if I needed help, no one would dare get invo
lved. They al need Dmitri money. Nobody is going to do anything noble that might jeopardize their precious subsidies.”

  “But what does this have to do with me? With the shades, uh, the ghosts? How does Lucian know?”

  He fidgeted with the sunglasses in his hands.

  “Henry, please…answer me. You’re freaking me out.”

  “You know that Ted and Lucian go way back, years before either of us were born. There’s stuff going on that we are a part of, even though we had nothing to do with it. You see the dead, but do you know why? Did you know that you can talk to them?” I was riveted to my seat, very frightened that perhaps Henry Dmitri didn’t have friends because he was as nuts as Delia.

  Sensing my growing discomfort, Henry dropped his sunglasses and reached over toward me. I flinched.

  “Please,” he whispered, “don’t be afraid. Give me your hands, and listen.” I’d been sitting on my hands to keep them warm, but the seriousness of his face provided ample reassurance that he wasn’t going to hurt me. Not here, not in the parking lot of the high school. There would be too many witnesses.

  I slowly retracted my fists from under the warmth of my thighs and held them in the air, hovering just above his open palms.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, the blue-green of his eyes radiating a strange warmth.

  “Yes,” I said, placing my hands in his. As I did so, his thumbs and pinky fingers wrapped around the sides of my hands. Henry closed his eyes.

  “Helo, Gemma.” A woman’s accented voice, young and soft and kind, danced into my brain, not through my ears but via some internal auditory channel, more like a song than actual spoken words. Melodic…beautiful. And terrifying.

  I tried to pul my hands away but Henry held fast, his breathing steady, his eyes reopened and looking into mine. A flicker in the rearview mirror puled my attention. The woman—the one I’d seen trailing Henry al over the place—she smiled at me. I whipped around in my seat, yanking my hands from Henry’s grasp. She had vanished.

  Without the warm influence of Henry’s touch, I was back in my own skin, the cold air of the car’s interior cruel. My teeth chattered and I shivered, prompting Henry to turn on the car and crank up the heat.

  “She’s the one who folows you around…” I felt dazed.

  “My mother.” Henry was silent, his face worried, but more prominent was the look of fear in his eyes. I realized he was just as freaked out as I was as he sat facing me in his seat, transfixed on my body and what language it relayed. “I guess you could say she’s like my guardian angel or something.” He tried to make it sound like everyone had a guardian angel. I knew for a fact that not everyone did. I certainly did not.

  I sat quiet for a moment, my head against the seat. I stared straight ahead, searching for clarity, some perspective. I wasn’t finding it on the dashboard or out the front window.

  “Can you see her, you know, around? Here in the car?” I said.

  “No. I just hear her. In my head.” Henry tapped his temple.

  I turned to Henry. “I’m so confused. What does al of this have to do with me?”

  “Gemma…” He reached out one hand toward me again, but I stuffed my fists back under my legs. I couldn’t focus on any one thing, and was afraid to look in the mirror again. The adrenaline in my bloodstream pushed my brain into fight-or-flight mode as my subconscious played and replayed the woman’s voice. Henry’s mother’s voice. The rims of my eyes began to burn.

  “Please, don’t be afraid,” he said, his eyes pleading with me to listen. He placed his right hand upon my cheek and with his thumb wiped away a tear I didn’t know had falen.

  “D-d-don’t be afraid?” I stumbled on my words. “You tel me you—and I, apparently—can communicate with your dead mother, that I’ve been seeing her on a regular basis, and your father not only knows my deepest, darkest secret but he hates me for some reason, and I’m not supposed to be afraid? Explain it to me like I’m stupid, Henry—how does Lucian know?” I sniffed and puled away. I never alowed anyone to see me cry, and although we had just shared a very strange, very intimate moment, I wasn’t prepared to let Henry see me melt into a puddle of tears.

  “I know this is a lot to take in—” he said. I didn’t let him finish.

  “Henry, I don’t know what you want from me!” I said, anger and fear punctuating every word. I clutched my backpack and camera, and made a frenzied reach for the door handle.

  The locks clicked down, fusing the door in place. My heart started to pound.

  “Please, I’m begging you. Listen to me. You need to hear this,” Henry said, eyes wide. He looked paler than he was a moment ago.

  “Unlock the doors, Henry.”

  “Gemma…”

  “UNLOCK THE DOORS!” I was teetering on hysteria, stuck somewhere between panic and fury.

  We shared a long, doleful stare. “I’m sorry. Pleeeeease, you must listen to me.” He grabbed my upper arm, his grip tight and cool even through the layers of clothing. “Lucian is a very powerful man. You need to talk to your uncle about why you’re realy here.

  It’s important. Life-and-death important.”

  “How does Lucian know about the shades?” His face was blurred through the buildup of tears in my eyes. I’d protected that secret for so long…what if it got out? I’d be pushed aside, locked up, just as Delia had been.

  “He sees them, too.”

  I pushed the unlock mechanism and puled the silver handle. The tears began to fal, one splashing on my pant leg. My foot out the opened door hovered above a puddle that had accumulated in a depression in the pavement.

  “Wait!” Henry tightened his grip, his voice sharp. “You deserve to know the truth. Ask Ted about the book. Ask him, Gemma,” he said. Without looking at him, I bailed from the car and bolted toward the school, racked with sobs. There was nothing I could do but run. Past the three soiled, sad-looking, dead children. They had reappeared, their heads folowing me as I ran by. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact, couldn’t risk them trying to talk to me as the voice in the car had. Did you know that you can talk to them?

  I detoured around the main entrance and ran to the footbal stadium. It was raining, a light drizzle that soaked my thin jacket and turned my hair into long, sopping strings. I fished my cel phone out of my jeans pocket and dialed Aunt Marlene’s number, praying al the while she wasn’t strapped to the godforsaken turntable, knives hurtling toward her meaty thighs.

  :16:

  All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

  —Galileo Galilei

  Twenty minutes later, I emerged from the dripping overhang of the stadium and climbed into Marlene’s car. Enough time had passed for me to colect myself, wipe the smeared mascara from my cheeks, and breathe in a rhythm closer to normal. As we drove out of the parking lot, I looked to the northeast corner. The black BMW was gone, leaving behind a sole patch of dry pavement where it had been sitting. He sees them, too… Ask Ted about the book…

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” My aunt looked sick with worry.

  “Marlene, did you tel anyone about the ghosts?”

  “Heavens, no!” She tapped the brakes a little too hard, jerking us both forward. “Why?”

  “Did Ted?”

  She was quiet. “He would never tel anyone. Never in a milion years.” I glared at her, and then out the window.

  “I need to talk to Ted,” I said, “about the book.” The color drained out of her face, as if someone had turned on a faucet and let the sum of her body’s blood supply spil out al over the car’s seats. “The book?” she said, her voice hardly louder than a whisper.

  “You know what I’m talking about then, don’t you?” Marlene nodded. “We’l find Uncle Ted the minute we get home.” She was quiet the rest of the way.

  The trailer was empty, though Irwin had neglected to turn off the stereo. A Beethoven compilation CD was playing Piano Sonata No. 14, Opus 2, “Moonlight,” the vol
ume low and sad, a fitting score for the damp, gray day, the weight of secrets hanging low like the clouds.

  Al this time I’d been led to believe that we’re here because Ted wanted to bring his circus into a new era, that Dmitri Holdings was an investor that would usher in a solid future for the Cinzio Traveling Players Company. Cut-and-dried business transaction. Right? Ask Ted about the book…

  After dumping my stuff, I folowed Marlene across the courtyard and into the stadium. A fine mist stuck to everything, and steam bilowed from the warm mound of horse and elephant dung on the far end of the menagerie. The air was musky, heavy, the pungent aroma of animal mingling with the damp sawdust covering the ground.

  Marlene held the tent flap aside for me and I moved through the backstage area, toward the central arena where the galop of horses and holers from riggers high above the ground flooded the space.

  The clowns busied themselves with a pyramid, poodles yapping and running around in choreographed circles. Ted and Irwin stood in the center ring, the turntable positioned in the heart of the stadium, the freshly painted flames and iconic skeletons a reminder of things to come. Dante’s Roulette.

  I walked around the westernmost ring, in front of the bleachers, to avoid getting in the way of the equestrian rehearsal. Thor, one of the Clydesdales, slowed when he saw me walk by. They were used to me having treats in my pocket. Ted did a double take when he saw me, concern splashing across his face as he looked behind me to Marlene.

  “Gemma, what are you doing home?” he said, checking his watch. “Everything okay at school?”

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  Marlene put her hand on my shoulder and spoke in a quieter tone. “We need to take this conversation elsewhere. Gemma has some, um, important questions, and you’re the only one who can give her the answers.”

  “Okay. Sure,” he said.

  “Everything alright, Gems?” Irwin asked.

  “It’s al good, Uncle Irwin,” I placed a reassuring hand on his arm. “Don’t worry.”

  “Irwin, I’l be back in a few. Go grab some coffee,” Ted said.