She put down the fruit basket on a glass table, picking a few grapes for herself. “My family has unique tastes.”
“As your butler found out.”
She frowned at me then. I didn’t expect that. I thought she liked throwing verbal darts at each other. I sure liked it.
“I don’t have a butler because my family doesn’t believe in hired help,” she told me. “We do everything ourselves.”
Somehow I had liked it better when she had suggested they had eaten him.
I sat in one of the soft chairs, and it all but swallowed me. “Are your parents around?” I asked. “Should I meet them?”
“They’re in Europe with my sisters,” she said. “Shopping.”
“Couldn’t they just go to the mall?”
She didn’t answer me, just stared down at me floating in the billows of the chair.
“So then who’s here with you? I mean, they didn’t leave you alone, right?”
She didn’t answer at first, then she said, “They trust me. I’m very self-sufficient.”
I have to say it surprised me—our parents got all worried when they had to leave us alone for a single evening. But then I thought, these people are super-rich. Old-money rich. People like that live by their own rules.
“Want the grand tour?” she asked.
“What’s it cost?”
She smiled. “A basket of fruit.”
“Whew—good thing I had one.” I struggled to get out of the deep, comfortable chair.
“This is the living room,” she said, and added, “but there’s nothing living in here except for me and you.”
She led me to a painting on the wall—a Greek temple or something beneath a blazing sky. “As you can see, we pride ourselves on art. Do you like it?”
I shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“I painted it.”
I wasn’t expecting to hear that. “You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been studying art all my life. This is a view of the Parthenon in Athens. I like to paint pictures of places I’ve been.”
I was still dumbfounded. “So you painted that?”
“Yeah. A few summers ago.”
“Wow ... You’re like... Mozart, or something!”
“Mozart wrote music.”
“I know that—I just mean you’re a child prodigy, like him. He wrote symphonies when he was a kid.”
She smirked. “So I guess my painting is better than just ‘okay.’”
I smiled back.
Tara went on to show me the rest of her house, from the ballroom to the huge pool—but it was the artwork that stuck in my mind. Some paintings were by masters: Monet, Renoir—but even more had been painted by her, and her sisters.
“The three of us are always in competition,” she told me. “Actually, I’m glad they’re away—it gives me some time to myself.”
The more I looked at the paintings, the more impressed I became—but also more troubled. I couldn’t say what was bothering me. There was something mildly unsettling about them. Like they were hung just slightly crooked or something. I kept wanting to stare at them to figure out what it was, but she kept me moving through the house.
And then there were the statues. There were dozens of them, and they were amazing.
“Don’t tell me you and your sisters did these, too!”
She shook her head. “They came from Europe,” she told me. “Most of them, anyway. Some people collect stamps, or coins. My family collects statues.”
She claimed that they were just your generic statues, and that none of them were sculpted by the masters, but you could have fooled me. I didn’t know much about art. I knew that Rodin was famous for The Thinker, and Michelangelo did that famous statue of David—but the marble and granite statues in Tara’s house, and around the edge of the pool, were every bit as good as those. The rippling muscles, the expressions on their faces.
When we were done touring the house, she made us banana splits in the kitchen, using fruit from my mom’s fruit basket and the richest, most flavorful vanilla ice cream I had ever tasted.
I watched her eat, staring at her like she was one of her own paintings. She caught me watching her, and I began to blush. To hide my embarrassment, I showed her how I could balance a spoon on the tip of my nose like a seal, and she laughed.
“You’re funny, Baby Baer.”
I tried to think of more ways to make her laugh, until I found myself burping the national anthem—a trick I had learned from Freddy Furbush. I knew I’d feel like an absolute idiot when I got home, but right then, I didn’t care.
When I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I finished my ice cream, which had long since melted in its little silver bowl. In the silence that followed I thought of something. Something that I had wanted to ask her but hadn’t had the nerve to before, because I was afraid it might make her mad. But once you’ve burped the national anthem, you have the right to ask just about anything.
“Hey, Tara ... remember that mirror you took from Julie Robinson?”
“What about it?”
“Well ... why did you do it?”
She shrugged. “It was pretty. I wanted to hold it.”
“But you could have asked....”
“Hey, I gave it back, didn’t I?”
“No—you put it in Kyle Firestone’s jacket pocket.”
“Did I? I hadn’t noticed.”
I knew she was telling the truth; it really made no difference to her where she had gotten it or where she had left it.
“It belonged to Julie, not Kyle. How could you not notice that?
She looked at me for a few seconds, like she was studying me.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she said. “Nothing ‘belongs’ to anyone.”
“I’ve got news for you,” I told her. “Communism went out with the Soviet Union.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not about communism; it’s just reality.”
“I don’t know what reality’s like where you come from, but in this country, you can’t just walk into people’s houses whenever you like. You can’t take people’s things without asking permission. That’s reality.”
She crossed her arms. “Okay—so you’re telling me that the shirt you’re wearing belongs to you?”
I looked down at it. Just a blue T-shirt. “Yes,” I said. “It’s mine.”
I saw an eyebrow rise over the rim of her shades. “You have it now—but someday it’ll tear, or you’ll outgrow it. Then it will either go to someone else or end up in the dump, buried beneath a ton of dirt.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe I’ll keep it my whole life.”
“And then what?”
“And then what, what?”
“And then you die, and even if you take that shirt with you, it still ends up buried beneath a ton of dirt.”
Suddenly I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t see her eyes. “I don’t think I like this conversation.”
“All I’m saying is that, unless you’re immortal, nothing can really belong to you. The best you can hope for is to hold something for a while, but in the end you’ve got to give it back.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Julie Robinson’s mirror.”
She waved her ice-cream spoon at me to make her point. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? It’s not Julie’s mirror. The idea of personal property is a myth!”
“Yeah?” I said, getting mad. “Well, sometimes myths are important. Sometimes myths are real.”
That gave her pause for thought. She put her ice-cream spoon down gently on the table.
“So they are, Baby Baer,” she said. “So they are.”
And then she said something that I won’t forget until there’s nothing left of me but a pile of dust.
“Did you ever have a premonition? A feeling that something terrible was going to happen?”
“S-sometimes,” I said. Actually, I always get the feeling that something terr
ible is going to happen, but usually it doesn’t.
Then she leaned in close to me. “I’ve got a secret for you,” she whispered with an unpleasant grin on her face. “Something terrible is going to happen. Something terrible... and something wonderful.”
6
INTERESTING TIMES
I left Tara’s place that day feeling weird and a little bit light-headed from being with her. She had that effect on you. Nothing terrible or wonderful happened over the next couple of days, so I figured Tara had just said it to be mysterious and interesting—although she didn’t need to say anything to seem mysterious and interesting to me.
During lunch on Wednesday, Tara sat by herself at a table across the cafeteria. Her eyes roved over the other kids eating lunch, and occasionally she stopped to stare through her sunglasses at a select few. I could tell that whoever she stared at suddenly got that creepy sensation they were being watched, then they’d look around to see who it was. When they realized it was Tara, they either got completely self-conscious, or they tried to act cool. But as soon as they responded in any way, Tara lost interest in them and zeroed in on her next target.
I couldn’t see her eyes behind her shades, but I got the feeling that she was doing some kind of mental calculation about the people she was studying. She was making connections, putting together the pieces.
Finally, she looked in the direction of Ernest, the captain of the football team. He sat with Melanie at the center table. Ernest and Melanie always sat together there, as if to advertise the fact that they were a couple.
This time Tara didn’t turn away when Ernest noticed her. I watched Ernest’s expression change. First he seemed nervous and unsure, then he looked flattered, then he boldly returned the look, with just the hint of a cocky smile on his face. It was clear that he had completely forgotten about Melanie’s existence for those moments.
This fact wasn’t lost on Melanie, who tracked Ernest’s gaze to Tara. Nothing was said, but I could tell in that single instant Melanie had lost her boyfriend.
I also knew—or at least I hoped—that Tara was just playing. I hoped she had no intention of really going out with Ernest. She just didn’t strike me as a football jock’s girlfriend.
The bell rang. Tara stood up and picked up her tray as she left the table. Most of the kids in the cafeteria didn’t know that anything had just happened, but Melanie looked like her universe had just imploded.
The following morning, before class started, I saw Tara talking to Celeste Kroeger.
Celeste was a member of the popular clique of squealing girls that everyone else referred to as the Banshees. The Banshees were as phony as they come. As for Celeste, she was one of the group’s underlings and so tried even harder to be phony, with hopes of rising in the ranks.
I had no idea what Tara wanted from her. I mean, sure, the Banshees were the most powerful force in school. They set the social agenda, picked who was “in” and who was “out.” They were constant boosters of school spirit and constantly mocked their enemies. Why would any of that possibly matter to Tara? Compared to how exciting Tara was, Celeste and the rest of her group might as well have been made out of Styrofoam.
I walked past the two of them. “Hi, Tara. Hi, Celeste,” I said. Celeste gave me an obligatory nod. The weird thing is that Tara did exactly the same. I kept on walking, but I heard a snatch of their conversation.
“I don’t know why you let her tell you what to do,” Tara was telling Celeste. “It seems to me that you’re a lot smarter than she is.”
“Did you know,” Celeste said, clearly flattered, “she nearly flunked math last year—she almost had to repeat it.”
“I’m not surprised.”
I knew they were talking about Melanie, who was Queen Screecher of the Banshees. Melanie gave the orders, and the others followed.
I was hoping to get a chance to talk to Tara at lunch and find out what she wanted from Celeste. I didn’t see her in the cafeteria, so I went to the outside lunch tables.
Tara was sitting at a table with Nils Lundgren, the smartest non-geek in the school, a tall, skinny guy with long red hair. They said he was taking college-level courses in physics and chemistry, but he had a life beyond cracking the books. Even though he bragged that he was one of the only people in the school who knew who to use a slide rule, whatever that is, he could also carry on a normal conversation.
All the true geeks that Nils usually ate lunch with were mumbling to one another a table away, watching with envy as he talked to Tara.
I kept my distance, folded my arms, and watched.
Nils seemed to have lost some of his usual cool around Tara. Like a bad magician doing a stale trick, he kept pulling food out of his bag and offering it to her. First he offered her half of a sandwich, then the other half, then an apple, then a bag of chips, then the apple again. Tara was laughing. Then she asked him something I couldn’t hear, and Nils blushed and nodded.
Tara brought out one of her textbooks and opened it on the table in front of them. He looked over the page and then started explaining it to her.
Tara didn’t seem like the kind of person who would need anything in a textbook explained to her. I had to find out what was going on.
“Hi, guys,” I said, waving to them as I walked up. “What’s up?” I tried to sound like I didn’t really care as I sat down across from them.
“I’m helping Tara catch up to the rest of us in math.” Nils looked at Tara for approval and encouragement. “Her other school used a different textbook, and their curriculum left her about a month behind.”
I didn’t buy it. Besides, if she was really having trouble in math, she could have asked me. “Do you even remember how to do basic algebra?” I asked Nils. “Isn’t that a little beneath you?”
“Algebra is the foundation of all higher math,” he said, missing my sarcasm. “It’s not something you forget.”
“You can stay, Parker,” Tara said, “if you really want to.” “I’m sure you’ll do fine without me,” I answered, walking away from them. “Have fun.”
Was it jealousy I was feeling? If so, I didn’t know why. Tara wasn’t my girlfriend or anything. Not even close. She was just a friend, and barely that.
After lunch, Tara and I both had world history with Mr. Usher. Unlike our English class, though, Mr. Usher believed in assigned seats. I was across the room from Tara, so I couldn’t talk to her. As it happened, Ernest Benson was also in Mr. Usher’s class, and his seat was next to hers. It seemed to me they were way too friendly.
We were endlessly studying the ancient world, and now Mr. Usher was on ancient beliefs in folklore and superstition. “When things went wrong,” Mr. Usher said, “people blamed it on the gods, or fairy folk, or even on their neighbors’ placing curses on them.”
A few kids laughed, probably thinking, Those dumb ancient people.
“One of the simplest Greek curses,” Mr. Usher said, “is only one word, accompanied by this gesture.” He held up his hand, palm out, then said, “Na!”
Some of the kids twittered.
“Na! means there!” he explained. “That’s all there is to it, but according to Greek folklore, it’s very powerful and effective.”
I thought it was pretty lame myself, but my mind wasn’t fully engaged in the subject. Now Tara was slouching back in her seat, exactly the way Ernest was, as if they were soul mates. Ernest was very aware of what she was doing.
I forced my attention back to Mr. Usher. “Now, one of my personal favorite curses,” he said, “is the ancient Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times. Does anyone want to take a shot at explaining why that might be a curse?”
I raised my hand. I had no idea what I was going to say, but I had to vent some energy or I would scream.
“Parker?” Mr. Usher said, calling on me, sounding more than a little surprised at my sudden class participation.
“I think it’s a pretty good curse,” I began unsurely. “Interesting is a very, um, inter
esting word. Interesting times can set you up for anything—from something like a plague or an earthquake to smaller problems, like any kind of... personal disappointment.”
Mr. Usher nodded. “Very good.”
I finally had Tara’s attention. She glanced over at me with a different expression on her face—one I hadn’t seen there before. Could it be that I had impressed her?
The next week flew past. Tara spent more time with Celeste and Nils. She was still working on Ernest, too, although as far as I knew they hadn’t exchanged two words. Tara wasn’t exactly ignoring me, but she wasn’t exactly going out of her way to spend time with me, either. I thought about going over to her house, but that might make me look too needy or pathetic or something. If she wasn’t going to make any effort to see me, I wasn’t going out of my way to see her.
It was none of my business what she did, I told myself. And anyway, I got the distinct feeling that Tara really didn’t care one bit about Celeste or Nils or even Ernest. It seemed to me that she had some other goal in mind, and that she was taking the necessary steps to achieve it.
Something terrible is going to happen, she had said. Was she actually planning something terrible? And if so, why had she let me know? Because something wonderful was going to happen, too. Something wonderful to who? To her? To me?
On Thursday, during snack, I sat by myself in the courtyard, digging through my backpack for a packet of mini-doughnuts, when I felt someone sit down next to me. I figured it was one of my buddies, maybe Freddie or Dante, but it wasn’t. It was Tara.
“You haven’t spoken to me for days,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“It seemed like you’ve been pretty busy getting your social life in order,” I said. “I didn’t want to get in your way.”
She laughed lightly. “You’re never in my way, Baby Baer,” she said. With hardly any effort at all, she was making me feel like I was special.
Just like all the other people she toyed with.
I pulled away, not willing—not wanting—to be one among the others. “You can play that game with Nils and Celeste,” I told her, “but it won’t work on me.”