The Black Coats

by Colleen Oakes

  Behind her, she heard Nixon snap at Kennedy, “Don’t speak to my girls unless I give permission. Is that clear?”

  Kennedy mumbled something in return that Thea couldn’t make out.

  Nixon clicked out of the bathroom. “Have a great day, Team Emperor.”

  Thea smiled to herself. Their team might not be excellent yet, but at least they had Nixon.

  She made her way down the hallways, winding deeper into the house. Room eleven was some sort of sitting parlor, and twelve held nothing other than two very deep claw-footed tubs filled with ice baths. Thea shuddered—she knew those all too well from her time in track. She let her fingers trail the walls until finally the plaque appeared: Room 13.

  It was at the end of the wing, in a dark corner with no other doors around it. Thea knocked. No one answered. She knocked again, harder this time, and there was only the sound of the wind behind it. The wind? Thea pushed open the door and gasped.

  In front of her stretched an open field. Her feet and body were in the house still, but if she stretched out her arm, dots of uninterrupted sunlight brushed her skin. Thea couldn’t help the stupid grin plastered across her face. Nothing in this house was what it seemed, and room thirteen was nothing more than a door that opened directly to the outside of the house. As she stood in the doorway, a blur of white flashed in her peripheral vision.

  Sahil appeared in front of her, pacing back and forth about fifty feet from where she stood. His white linen pants brushed a very expensive pair of neon track sneakers and he was wearing a backpack. Thea looked down and saw a pair of sneakers waiting at her feet—black, marked with gray lightning bolts, just the right size. A spark traveled up through her legs, shaking her whole body with excitement. Sahil’s eyes met hers, and the intention was communicated wordlessly. Unable to stop smiling, Thea slipped off her black ballet flats and pushed her feet into the sneakers, her heart pounding. She rolled up the leggings over her brown shins and smoothed the curls back from her forehead. Then she stepped off the hardwood floor and out onto the dirt. The woods were silent for a moment as they stared at each other.

  “Catch me,” yelled Sahil.

  Thea rested her hands on her hips. “Really?”

  Sahil beckoned to her and gave her a wicked smile. “If you can.” Then he darted out into the field.

  Thea flew after him like a bullet from a gun, her muscles hard at first but gathering warmth as they moved, heat expanding with each step. Then with an amazing surge, they shook off their sleepiness and propelled Thea forward, away from the house. The field blurred beneath her feet as her adrenaline released. Her steps fell into a pace, moving faster and faster, becoming automatic. With each breath, her brain disconnected from her body until she was one with her legs, with her speed and rhythm. Her vision tunneled until everything else was pushed away, and then it was only her and the hard ground and Sahil, tearing away from her through the trees.

  God, I love running. She had forgotten the thrill of the chase, the sense of competition that forced her body to rise out of herself and overcome physical pain as she came ever closer to her goal. It was as if she were watching herself from above.

  An old dead tree with branches crumbling like bone lay in her path. Thea vaulted over it, her sneakers sending whirls of dirt into the air. Sahil was now only maybe a hundred feet in front of her but moving fast. He was really fast. She closed her eyes for a brief second before they entered a swath of trees, loving the warm air rushing past her face. She forced her legs to keep their furious sprint as she shot into the forest, her anticipation at catching him growing. Closer now. Her feet thudded across the ground, her mind reaching for something she had intentionally pushed away, a memory that she had locked up inside.

  She is running. It is late October, and yellow leaves are filtering down to the ground in lazy circles. She is eight years old. Natalie, two years her elder, is ahead of her, always ahead of her, her hair bouncing behind her as she laughs gaily. “Chase me, Thea!” she screams. Like a ghost, she flies through the grass, almost floating in her pale pink party dress now splattered with mud. “Chase me!”

  Without warning, Natalie comes to a screeching halt and Thea runs square into her back, sending them both tumbling forward.

  “You okay?” Thea asks, giggling.

  “Yeah.” Natalie sits up, a branch stuck in her frizzy curls. “Ew, Thea, look!” They carefully crawl over the leaves to where a dead bat stares at the sky. Its wide eyes are pulling back into its head, and its rubbery wings are outstretched, like some sort of macabre sacrifice. Tiny insects are buzzing around its feet. Natalie is fascinated and pokes it with a stick. Thea is scared.

  “Let’s go home, Natalie. Come on!” She yanks at her arm, but Natalie turns to her with wide eyes.

  “But, Thea, he needs to be buried!”

  Thea is scared, though, and she runs away from Natalie, leaving her alone in the woods as she runs for the house.

  Thea blinked. She was back in the woods now, the trees passing overhead, their spindly arms reaching for her. She ducked under a low-hanging branch, Sahil no more than fifty feet away from her. She pressed out from her core, pushing the memory far from her, pressing only her legs to move faster. Catch me, she heard Natalie whisper. A hill rose in front of her, and she crested it easily, soaring over the dry clumps of leaves that littered her path. Sahil was now at the bottom of the hill, so close to her. Thea plunged recklessly down it, her brain connecting a second too late: I’m going too fast. I’m going to crash! He was right there in front of her, and she reached out, brushing Sahil’s collar with her fingertips. He stepped quickly aside. Moving too fast to stop, Thea’s legs cycled and turned and suddenly she was flying through the air, her body gathering momentum as she rolled down the hill. Something violently slammed into her side as she rolled over a rocky outcrop, and her face punched into a thorny bush. Head over heels she rolled three times before her body came to a wheezing stop, her heart racing so loud inside her chest that they could probably hear it at Mademoiselle Corday. Thea rolled over and gave a painful groan. “Oh God. That hurt.”

  Thea brushed off her bloody hands, which were pricked with pieces of dirt and the occasional thorn, and pushed up to her knees. She felt a blush rise up her face and wasn’t sure what hurt more: her aching side or the embarrassment at going ass-over-teakettle in front of Sahil, who was now crouched above her. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Asshole.

  “Thea, are you all right?”

  With a shaking hand, she reached out and wearily patted his shoe. “Tag. You’re it.”

  He grinned. “Here, have a drink of water.” He handed her a water bottle, and Thea accepted it gratefully before taking a drink and climbing shakily to her feet. Both knees were dripping blood as she handed back the water bottle. Sahil reached into his pocket and pulled out a white cloth. Thea smiled. “It’s white. Of course.”

  He shrugged. “Of course. I must be set apart from the Black Coats in a visual way. I am a part of them, but not one of them. Here, sit down. Let me tend to those wounds.”

  “I don’t think you need white to set you apart, exactly. You’re the only male in the whole house.”

  “This is true.”

  Thea accepted his outstretched hand and let him lead her over to a narrow tree stump. Thea sat down with a sigh, flexing her long legs and rotating her ankle. “I think I’m okay.”

  “It is still important to treat wounds as they happen.” He crouched before her and traced his hand gently over her shin and under her knee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of Band-Aids. After putting two little ones over her bleeding wounds, his hands traced again down underneath her shin, squeezing her muscles, kneading them, checking her knees and ankles.

  “My legs feel fine.”

  “Well, take a rest, take another drink, and we will resume in a moment.”

  Thea groaned. He was obviously not interested, but a little crush was probably inevitable. She surely wasn’t the first one to not
ice him. “Really? Again?”

  “You did not complete your task. You were supposed to catch me, and you did not.”

  “I kind of did. I mean, I almost did,” Thea shamefully answered.

  “Almost does not mean anything in this world. You either deliver justice or you fail.”

  “That is very black-and-white.”

  “Justice must be; otherwise, it becomes impossible.”

  Thea raised her head to look skeptically at his face. “Sahil, seriously, who are you?”

  He shrugged. “I am no one important.”

  Thea narrowed her eyes. “That’s not true. Do you live at Mademoiselle Corday?”

  He nodded. “I do. I live in the south wing, just above the Haunt.”

  “Do you go to school?”

  Sahil smiled at her curiosity but didn’t say anything. Thea wiped the sweat off her brow. “I’m sorry. I’m just curious. What kind of person lets a bunch of girls beat on him just so that they can gain entry into a society that beats up other men?”

  Sahil’s smile disappeared. “The kind of person who was born to believe in the cause.”

  Thea rolled her shoulders, feeling the muscles cramping from her recent tumble. “You avoided my question. Do you go to school?”

  “I am homeschooled, here at the house. And before you make assumptions about that, you should know that I am probably smarter than you.”

  Thea shook her head. “Of that I have no doubt. I go to Roosevelt.”

  Sahil laughed, a careful sound, as if he didn’t laugh often. “Oh, that is not a great school.”

  Sahil shifted his weight back and forth, his body tightly wound. He reminded Thea of a panther. “How do they feel now? Your ankles?”

  Thea tested her ankles; there was no pain. She was stronger than she thought. “I think I’m okay,” she said, a little surprised.

  “Great! Now let’s talk about what to do when you do actually catch someone. You need to know some fast disarming techniques. You almost grabbed me by the collar, which was a horrible idea. If you would have done that, you would have attached yourself to me at my speed and when my feet get yanked out from under me . . .” Suddenly, he was behind her, pulling back on her collar.

  Thea couldn’t breathe, but he was prattling on like nothing had happened.

  “Now, instead of yanking on a coat or a collar, which he can easily slip out of and will also pull you off-balance, pretend you are a defensive lineman on a football team.”

  Thea grinned. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “Run from me,” he ordered.

  Thea had taken three quick steps before she felt his hands close around her waist. Then she was pushed violently forward into the ground. “Use your forward momentum,” he explained, “to subdue your subject quickly. You will have a few seconds to take advantage of his discombobulation. Then you begin processing him just as you would any other subject, applying the self-defense techniques you will be learning with Nixon.”

  Thea’s face was pushed up against the dirt, and she had a leaf in the corner of her mouth. She was embarrassed at how easy she had been to take down, and feeling feisty. “Discombobulation is a pretty big word for a homeschooled kid,” she spat.

  Sahil roughly set her back on her feet. “And you are pretty slow for a track star. You need to be training more at home.” Sahil crouched down. “Now I am going to run back to Mademoiselle Corday. It is getting late. You will chase me, and you will catch me this time, because you are going to run from here”—he reached down and patted her legs—“and not from here.” He tapped her head. “You cannot move forward when you are stuck somewhere else. Grief can hold you back from the places you are meant to go. It is something you will always carry with you, but something you must also leave behind.”

  Thea sighed. “Thanks, Yoda.”

  Sahil turned his back to her. “I am tasked with unleashing a fast-and-furious Thea, so you will listen to my words. Also, once again, make sure you look at your surroundings when you are running. That is how you fell, by not being aware of the changing landscape.”

  Thea barely heard him speaking as she focused on the strength pulsing in her legs and in her lungs. She would catch him. She had to. He left her side without another word, plunging away from her. With a deep breath, Thea Soloman let the memory of Natalie and the bat float away from her like a balloon into the sky.

  Then she flew.

  Eleven

  “Crap.” Thea’s eyeliner wasn’t going on straight. In fact, every time she tried to do a smoky eye she ended up looking like a sloppy version of Cleopatra. Her mom had bought her all new makeup for her date, unable to contain her embarrassing, over-the-top joy that Thea was going out with a boy—a soccer player! Instead of trying again, Thea hastily wiped her eyes with a cloth, dashed on her new mascara, and dotted her cheeks with a pale cherry blush before heading downstairs.

  Her parents were waiting in the foyer, trying to look busy—her dad tapping on his tablet, her mom pretending to rearrange some yellow roses in a mercury vase. Thea sighed as she straightened her navy dress and threw a pair of turquoise bangles in her ears. “You guys. Seriously. I’m not going to prom.” Thea raised her hands in surrender. “Everyone in this house needs to calm down and eat some protein.”

  Her dad looked dejected.

  “Will you at least go linger in the kitchen like normal parents? You can easily spy on us from there.”

  They smiled and dutifully retreated. “I’ll be watching,” her mom called out.

  Outside, a car door slammed, and Thea’s heart turned nervously. “Okay! Go!” she hissed at her parents, shooing them away.

  She opened the door. Drew gave her an easy smile, leaning against the side of her door. He looked her up and down approvingly. “A dress!” He whistled. “I’m speechless.”

  “I can’t believe that’s ever true,” retorted Thea. He didn’t look so bad himself: tight dark jeans showed off his long legs, and his white linen button-down was just snug enough to frame his chest. The white of the shirt set off his gorgeous olive eyes, though Thea thought there was something different about him. She couldn’t put her finger on it.

  He held a bouquet of tiny pink and black flowers in one hand. “The florist said these are called anemones. They seemed just right for a girl who probably doesn’t love daisies.”

  “Err, thank you.” She glanced up at him with a laugh, finally realizing what was different about him: “You’re wearing glasses!” Chunky brown frames sat on the edge of his nose. He rocked back on his feet.

  “Ah, yeah. I wear contacts at school, for soccer of course, but on the weekends, my eyes need a break. Are they, um, okay?”

  Thea nodded. She liked them. Like, she really liked them. He wiggled his eyebrows. “I think they make me look like the guy who never gets the girl in all those vampire books.”

  Thea took the flowers to the kitchen, where her parents were hiding, and then returned, sliding past Drew to pull the door shut behind them. The night was lovely. A golden sun shimmered against the horizon, throwing long trails of lavender across a dark blue sky. Thea took a breath, willing her nerves to be still. They climbed into Drew’s green truck. “So . . . where are you taking me?”

  Drew grinned, buckling his seat belt. “After this date, you are either going to be mad about me or never want to talk to me again.” Drew rubbed the stubble on his chin as Thea admired his strong profile.

  “I’m honestly up for anything,” Thea said quietly. Drew nodded once and shifted the truck into high gear as they turned off her street. A white pickup passed them, and Thea sucked in her breath until she saw that an older woman sat behind the wheel.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

  A change of subject was needed. After a fierce debate in her mind, Thea laid her hand carefully on Drew’s. His eyes lit up, but he remained steady, a confident smile lifting the corners of his mouth. Drew turned toward Thea. “So I have to
ask: Where do you rush off to after school? I saw you running like a lunatic after Mirabelle Watts the other day. Why would you do that to yourself?”

  “She’s not that . . .” Her words trailed off. “Okay, she’s kind of bad, but she grows on you.”

  Drew grinned again. “Not unlike a fungus.”

  Thea skillfully avoided his question and their conversation continued, light and easy, as Drew drove through the creeping twilight. He turned to her, his olive eyes kind. “So since we’re almost there, I feel like you need some history on where I am taking you. My dad knows this weird guy who lives outside Austin. He’s been arrested a bunch of times, but only recently for public drunkenness and nudity.”

  “This,” deadpanned Thea, “is already the most romantic date I’ve ever been on.”

  “I aim to please. Anyway, he owns a museum downtown. The shady end. It’s a museum of weird things.” Thea burst out laughing. “It’s called Harry’s Peculiarium.” Drew turned the truck down a dark alley. “I know this seems like I’m taking you somewhere to murder you—” He stopped his sentence as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “Oh, Thea, I’m so sorry. Oh God, I didn’t mean that. I don’t know why I said that.”

  I know why, thought Thea. Because you were making a normal joke like normal people do until you remembered that they found my cousin floating in a creek. Thea took a deep breath, choosing to smile through the sudden threat of tears. “It’s okay. I know what you meant. Go on; tell me more about this weird museum.”

  “No need to tell. It’s right there.” Drew parked the car and pointed through the windshield smeared with a fine layer of brown dust. Small puddles in the alleyway reflected a buzzing neon sign glowing a sickly green: Harry’s Peculiarium. Thea leaned forward and looked through the windshield. “I’m already intrigued.”

  “Oh, just you wait.” Drew hopped out of the car and came around to her side, helping her down from the massive truck. They ran through the puddles, splashing their way to the door. Drew knocked and then looked at her with a shrug. “I told you this was going to be a weird date.”