Alyzon Whitestarr

  “You like her, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Very much,” he said.

  Making my way around to the kitchen door, I almost fell over Wombat, who materialized out of the shadows the way cats do. I stopped to pat him and make a fuss over him, because he had vanished after our “conversation.” I thought he might snub me, but he pushed his head against me, marking me affectionately with the scent glands under his chin.

  “Hello to you, too,” I said.

  I went to the back door with him weaving in and around my legs, almost tripping me up, and it occurred to me I might be the first person to learn why cats did that. I opened the door and was startled to find Aaron Rayc and Da seated at the kitchen table again, Da halfway through some story about a musician. Neither of them noticed my entrance, and I had the queer urge to back out, but Wombat pushed impatiently past my legs, insisting on being fed. I stepped inside and closed the door.

  Only then did I see Dita Rayc sitting a little apart from them. This time she wore a blue velvet dress and matching cape and her hair was drawn into a complex braid at the back of her head. She was fingering a huge sapphire hanging from one earlobe, and my heart gave a little start because she was watching me, her mouth shaped into a wide frosted pink bow.

  “Hello, Alyzon,” she greeted me in her husky, confiding voice. I disliked the way she said my name, but I disliked her cement-dust and overripe-banana smell more. I could have clamped my senses or moved out of range, but increasingly I felt that stopping myself from smelling bad things was like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. If I could smell something bad, then the badness was there, and I had better not ignore it.

  I got out a tin of cat food and dished it onto a saucer as Wombat wove around my legs, purring and offering his approval and encouragement in scents that communicated their meaning as clearly as words.

  “Hello, love,” Da said at last. “How was dinner with Gilly’s grandmother?”

  “I … It was great, but I don’t want to interrupt ….”

  Da shook his head. “You’re not interrupting. Aaron and Dita just dropped in on their way somewhere else.”

  “I am here so often lately you must feel I am wanting to be part of the family, Alyzon.” The white-haired entrepreneur laughed his beautiful laugh. “But actually, I came to persuade your father to do another gig for me.”

  “What kind of gig?” I bent down to pick up Wombat so I didn’t have to look at Rayc, because his lack of an essence smell made me feel uneasy.

  “Another charity benefit,” Da answered.

  Wombat struggled in my arms and gave off an annoyed smell. I want to eat more, his scent told me. I scratched under his chin, and after a brief grumble he succumbed to pleasure and began to purr. I looked back at Aaron Rayc and saw his eyes were on Da again, the pupils huge as if he were looking into darkness rather than light. A chill ran down my spine, and maybe I gave off a scent because Wombat stopped purring.

  “Are you all right?” Da asked me. “You look a bit pale.”

  “I … I’m just tired,” I said. “I’d better go to bed. Don’t sign any contract until you read the fine print,” I added lightly, as if it were a joke, but I willed a mountain of caution at Da.

  I let Wombat down and bade them all good night, interested to note that Wombat gave Dita a wide berth curving back to his food bowl. Later I would ask him why he had done that, although I suspected I already knew the answer. He could smell her, just as I could, and he didn’t like the smell.

  What had happened in the kitchen filled me with an aimless urgency, and suddenly I could not face having to see Harlen at school the next day. I had to know what made him tick. I decided I would go to Shaletown High the next day, and hope that the rumor that Harlen had gone to a private school was just that—a rumor.

  When I finally slept, I dreamed again that I was a wolf, sitting on a wide stone sill in a half-crumbled stone wall, looking over the ruined city. The air was thick with scents, but my wolf nose separated them easily; spoiled milk, rotten meat, and the smell of wet cement dust and banana.

  * * *

  The following morning, I called Gilly and told her that I had a routine doctor’s appointment in Remington. I didn’t want to tell her the truth, in case Harlen asked about me. Somehow, I didn’t think she would be a good liar.

  “So dinner at your place is off?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

  “No, it’s still on. I’ll get off the train at the stop near your place and get a lift home when Da picks you up. Why don’t you come straight from school and meet me at the station?”

  “Your da isn’t driving you to Remington?”

  “He has a rehearsal,” I invented quickly, then said goodbye because someone was knocking at the front door.

  It was Rhona Wojcek, and after letting her in, I escaped upstairs, ostensibly to get ready for school. I emptied my piggy bank for the train fare, tipped the schoolbooks from my backpack into the bottom of my closet, then packed a light coat and some other things. Then I did my hair and put on my uniform. By the time I got downstairs again, Da and a sleepy-looking Mum were up listening to Rhona talk about reorganizing the exhibition that had been put off. She had found a new gallery that would be perfect, and a new approach.

  Rhona gave me a wary look, as if she expected me to suddenly throw a fit and fall to the ground frothing at the mouth just to spoil another show opening. She always took things personally. If a bus was in her way, she felt like the bus driver had stopped there to spite her. She left as soon as she had secured Mum’s agreement, refusing coffee or tea.

  While I ate breakfast, Da started to tell Mum about Aaron Rayc’s offer the previous night. My ears pricked up.

  “Don’t you want to do it?” Mum asked, in that way she has of seeming to hear things that are left unsaid better than the things that are said aloud.

  Da ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “The trouble is that it’s just me he wants. He says the whole band is too big for the venue and the occasion, but I just feel it’s not fair to the others. I mean, the songs I play are Losing the Rope’s songs, even though I write most of them.”

  Mum spread her hands like two butterfly wings. “Ask Neil.”

  “Oh, Zambia. He’ll say I should do it. They all will,” Da said, but Mum was no longer listening. You could see it in the way she had turned her face from Da’s to the table, where an ant was excavating a pile of crumbs. It was running all around the edges and waving its feelers frantically as if it were sending out a semaphore signal to other ants.

  I looked up and saw that Da had stopped talking and was watching Mum with a combination of longing and, strangely, pity.

  Getting off the train in Shaletown, I felt that it must be obvious to anyone that I was skipping school, even though I was wearing my uniform and had a clipboard clutched to my chest.

  I didn’t know exactly where the station was in relation to anything else, because Da had always driven us there in the past. But I had picked up a map of Shaletown at the station, and once I’d found a quiet place away from the streams of people, I unfolded it and studied it. Shaletown High was about twelve blocks from the station. It looked simple, but I set off with trepidation, because I am a genuine map idiot and I couldn’t believe that my enhanced senses would have changed that.

  I was right. Somehow I got turned around twice, and both times it took me ages to find my way back to the right road. The day, which had started out gray and dreary, grew steadily brighter and warmer until I ended up having to carry my blazer. By the time I got to the school, I had my sweater off as well, but I smoothed my hair and put the blazer back on before I entered the yard. The neater I looked, the less likely that I would be stopped and questioned by a teacher. I wasn’t worried about having the wrong uniform, because there were often kids at our school in different uniforms, either new arrivals or visitors.

  Because of my woeful navigational skills, I had arrived later than I intended, and the recess bell was ringi
ng. I gave up my immediate plan of finding a toilet and headed for the door where kids were spilling out into the yard. I calculated that I probably had fifteen or twenty minutes of recess in which to find out if Harlen had attended the school, and why he had left.

  A group of girls looked to be my age, but I dismissed the idea of approaching them. They were a flock of golden-haired beauties with snooty expressions and, in my experience, exactly the kind to sneer at newcomers or outsiders and enjoy giving them misinformation. I wandered around the side of the building into a big courtyard in the middle of the school. Some of it was marked into a soccer field, and there were a few people watching a game.

  I studied the watchers and ended up settling on two plump girls sitting together on a bench. They both glanced at me as I approached, and I did a double take because they were identical twins.

  “Hi,” I said brightly. “I was just wondering if someone I know used to go here. His name is Harlen Sanderson.”

  They exchanged a look, as if deciding who would speak, then the one on the left said, “I don’t know any Harlen. What year was he in?” I told her, and she shrugged. “Maybe you should ask Glad.”

  “Glad?” I echoed.

  They both pointed to a tall, fit girl with spectacles who was dribbling the ball along the field. She moved beautifully as she went for a goal, and I drew in a breath of pleasure because it was such a long shot, and yet she managed it. I found myself exchanging a smile with the two girls, who suddenly looked more friendly. “She’s good, isn’t she?” said the one who had not yet spoken, sounding exactly like the one who had.

  I nodded. “That’s Glad?” I turned back to study the girl, marveling at the names some kids got.

  The bell for the end of recess rang, and the two girls dashed off. I waited until the older girl was leaving the field, then fell in beside her and asked my question again.

  She said at once and decisively that he had never attended the school. “I run the school magazine, see?” She shot me a bright glance and saw that I didn’t see. “Look, our mag comes out biweekly, and we always feature a few students each issue. We publish a photo of them and a mini interview—their thoughts, dreams, et cetera. A lot of rot, most of them talk, but still. If there had been a Harlen Sanderson here, I’d know because by the end of a year we’ve done everyone. But if you want to double-check, they have back copies in the library. The Roving Eye, it’s called.”

  I didn’t need my extended senses to know that Glad was not the type to have made a mistake. Having come so far, though, I was determined to be sure that Harlen had not gone to Shaletown High. It wasn’t hard to locate the library, but I was immediately stopped by a librarian demanding to know what I thought I was doing. She had restless eyes and smelled like burnt potatoes, so I obeyed my instincts and launched into a dull, slow explanation of a project I needed to research before she had the chance to ask who had sent me. It worked. She was one of those quick, impatient people who couldn’t bear to dally for more than a second on anything. Soon I was safely between the magazine racks.

  It was easy to find The Roving Eye. I checked the contents pages for the first half of the year in which Harlen would have been there. By the time I had reached March, I was beginning to accept that he had not been to the school, but I went right through to June. Then I went back and checked the whole of the previous year. No Harlen.

  I left the school feeling flat and disheartened. The whole trip had been a waste of time.

  I checked the map to be sure I was heading the right way back to the station, and my eye fell on the yellow square marked Detention Center. There was easily time enough to visit it and still get the train I needed. In fact, I had to kill some time. I checked the map again, worked out a route, and set off.

  * * *

  The high, dingy yellow wall that surrounded the block of buildings that were Shaletown Detention Center looked even more prison-like than it had when Aya and her family had been inside. I wondered how any government could justify locking little kids and even babies in such a place. Had any of those politicians who approved it ever come to look at it? Had they tried to imagine how it would be if they or their families had to stay indefinitely in such a place? Not so long ago I had heard a female politician arguing that the women and children ought to be let out to live with volunteers while the men remained in a detention center. Even that seemed horrible to me. How would that politician have felt if it was her husband locked up while she was free; how would her children feel to be without their father for so long?

  “You wonder how anyone could build something so ugly,” said an old woman who had come quietly to stand beside me. She wore a rosette that announced she was a protester.

  A fleeting but painfully vivid memory of Aya came to me; her satin brown hands clasped together in her lap in the brightly lit, white-painted visiting room; her huge dark eyes that had never stopped pleading. “Maybe it just reflects the ugliness of the minds of the people who dreamed it up,” I said savagely.

  “Do you know someone in there?” the old woman asked gently.

  “I used to know a girl. She and her family were refused asylum. They … they were sent back.” All of a sudden tears were spilling down my cheeks.

  “Oh my dear, come and sit down,” the old woman said. “I’ve got some tea in a thermos.”

  I went with her, unable to stop crying. Memories of Aya were all mixed up with my disappointment about the whole long trip to Shaletown being a total waste; I would have to go back to school and be pursued by Harlen again without any idea of why my senses regarded him as a danger. By the time I managed to get myself under control, my face felt swollen and my eyes were puffy and itchy.

  I felt vaguely embarrassed by my outburst, but aside from the old woman, who had introduced herself as Rose Cobb, the only other person at the protest tent was a huge, muscular young man with a strangely beautiful face and a halo-like mass of soft golden curls. He stared at me fixedly, and I might have felt uneasy except for his smell, which was a combination of baby shampoo and toffee and something that reminded me a lot of Luke’s smell.

  The old woman introduced him as Davey I was afraid he would want to shake my hand, but he just stared at me even harder, as if he were trying to look through my face and into my head. Then he gave a funny bending nod that seemed a bit like a bow and announced that someone called Simon had said he should go home. Watching him lumber away, I realized he was slow-witted. Rose Cobb said gently that he lived close by in a trailer on the industrial park. “He’s a lovely boy,” she added.

  I drank the tea she poured and told her my name as I sat down gingerly on one of the little fold-up stools. “It’s ages since I came here last. I didn’t realize I would feel so … angry.”

  Rose Cobb sighed. “Anger is a powerful force. I ought to know, because I spent most of my life being ruled by it. I was angry at my parents for bringing me to this country, angry at my friends for not loving me as I thought I should be loved. Angry at my husband for not being what I thought he should be and at my children for preferring their own lives to mine. The people here taught me about the futility of anger.”

  “The refugees?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “The protesters. I live across the road, you see. I’d see the protesters coming with their placards and petitions, and I would glare at them through my curtains—a bunch of scruffy, drug-taking hippies and welfare cheats, I used to think. Max would say they were just people protesting about something that troubled them. I daresay I had some smart, nasty answer for him. The truth was that I didn’t understand why they were there, because I didn’t think of refugees as people.”

  “So what happened?”

  She sighed. “Max died. I was angry at him over that, too. A month or so after his funeral, I was sitting here feeling angry about everything, as usual, and all that lifetime of rage seemed to boil up in me and turn me into a lightning bolt that needed earthing. So I went across the road to give those hippies the edge of my to
ngue.” She laughed. “Oh, how righteous I felt. But before I could say a word, some young mother pushed her baby into my hands and asked if I wouldn’t mind holding him because she had to pour the tea. She’d mistaken me for one of them, and I was so taken aback that I just … well, I held the baby.” She laughed. “It was winter and very cold. The baby was sneezing and sniffing, and I was struck by how insubstantial he was. It made me think of my own children. I felt such a tenderness for them in that moment that it was like a little earthquake inside me. It was as if I hadn’t understood how much I had loved them until that second.” She laughed again. “When the mother took her baby back, she handed me a mug of tea. Then one of the young men asked the woman with the baby about a letter she’d received from someone she visited in the center. She got it out and read from it. It was so … well, I am sure you had letters from your friend, so you know. I found myself for the first time imagining how it must feel to have traveled here fleeing famine or drought or political upheaval or persecution, and all at once I understood why a woman with a baby would stand out in the cold to protest. It was because she had the imagination to empathize with the refugees.

  “I have heard so many stories since then, many far worse than that of the person who wrote that letter, but it is that one I remember best because it broke down the wall of my ignorance and raked open my heart.” She shook her head with a prim little tightening of her mouth.

  “Doesn’t it make you angry, though?” I nodded toward the detention center. “Doesn’t that?”

  Rose Cobb studied the yellow wall for a moment. “A lot of volunteers do feel angry to start with. Being powerless to make the authorities see or care fills them with rage and frustration and makes them want to smash something just to get someone to listen. Maybe it is because of a lifetime of anger that I know there is no good in anger, least of all for the person who feels it. Anger is a sickness that afflicts anything and anyone it touches.”