Alyzon Whitestarr

  My ears rang with the enormity of what I was hearing. Because unless I was going insane, and in that second it seemed a distinct possibility, Mum was telling me that she was infected by the sickness just like Sarry That she had been infected before any of us were born. It sounded as if Da had helped her fight the sickness in almost the same way that Harrison and Raoul and Gilly had done with Sarry. Her love for him and his for her had given her something solid to hang on to. But unlike Sarry, Mum also had her painting. How ironic if creating art could be shaped to resist the sickness as well as to serve it. That was maybe why Mum did not have Sarry’s mental frailty.

  “How … how did you get infected?”

  She blinked at me. “Infected? That’s a good way to describe it. I … I don’t remember really. It happened when I was young. It was the seventies, and I was so full of anger and confusion. I had run away from home and was living in a squalid apartment with some people like me. A woman came there one night. She befriended me and invited me to stay with her. She was so attractive and compelling, and she seemed to represent something that I didn’t have. A purpose or a meaning for life. So I moved in with her. I discovered then that she used and dealt drugs. It didn’t make her less glamorous to me, but then one night …” She shook her head, almost shuddering. “Alyzon, I can’t think of it. I daren’t. It’s too dangerous for me. I need to paint.”

  She thrust Luke at me and began to take the painting of Serenity down. For a long moment she held it at arm’s length and looked at it. To my fascinated horror, tears spilled down her face. She looked at me with anguish in her drowning eyes. “I don’t want this to happen to her. That’s why I painted what I see. So that you could see what is happening. So that you will save her.”

  I stared at her. “Me? But Da …”

  She shook her head. “Macoll is strong, but he can’t save her.”

  “Mum, I …” I hardly knew what I wanted to say, but suddenly she turned aside and thrust the painting face-first against the wall.

  “I have to paint,” she muttered, and tore a sheet of paper from a rough block and began to sketch rapidly with a nub of charcoal. Even in the few seconds before I moved to leave the studio, I saw some of the rigid tension ease out of her back, but she did not turn around again.

  I left the studio carrying Luke, shaken to the core by what had just happened. I hardly believed it, and yet if it was true, so much of Mum’s eccentricity suddenly made perfect sense. I had always thought of her as inner-directed, but I had never, until now, known what held her inner eye. It was suddenly obvious to me that she had extended vision, despite her apparent blindness to ordinary things. How else would she have seen what she saw in Serenity and whatever it was that she saw in me? I felt an ache of pity for her, fighting a long, bitter, lonely battle against an enemy that only her death could finally vanquish.

  There were a thousand questions I wanted to go back and ask, but something in her face had told me that she would refuse to talk about what had happened to her. I went down to the kitchen holding Luke as if he was a spar of wood in a wild sea. Mum had risked something to paint Serenity, I thought. Had risked herself. I suddenly remembered how Da had looked that night when Mum had told him she was going to do the painting. Anxious, concerned, troubled. He knew Mum saw things other people didn’t see. That was what had always made him so tolerant of her eccentricities.

  Again I had the urge to turn back and demand that she tell me more, but Serenity was missing and there was no time to waste.

  * * *

  Jesse and Mirandah were in the kitchen looking worried.

  “We have to find Serenity,” I said. My mind was sharp now, and very clear. “Jesse, find out if there’s a documentary playing at the mall. Mirandah, can you think of any other places where they show documentaries?”

  “There’s the Historical Records Center above the library,” Mirandah said as I put Luke in his high chair and peeled a banana to give him a piece. “They have a small theater where they show archival films. I’ll get the number.”

  “Anywhere else you can think of,” I said. “Call all of them.”

  Jesse found the number to the mall theater and called as Mirandah flipped through the phone book. A moment later he hung up and said there were no documentaries scheduled for the day. “OK. Now what is going on?”

  “Serenity is in danger,” I said.

  “What kind of danger?” Mirandah asked, pulling the phone toward her.

  Some of my certainty left me. “I don’t exactly know.” I felt my words were lame, but I wondered if maybe I had underestimated how deeply everyone else in the house had worried about Serenity’s slow transformation. Maybe no more needed to be said.

  “She acted kind of weird in the hallway,” Mirandah said. “She looked at me, but I felt like she was looking straight through me.”

  “There’s been something up with her for ages,” Jesse said decisively. “All right, let’s find her.” He called the numbers that Mirandah gave him, but within fifteen minutes we had not found a single documentary playing that day.

  “Where do you think she’s gone then?” Mirandah asked.

  I stared at her. “I don’t know. We should try to contact Da. Where is his rehearsal?”

  “It’s at those guys’ place. Neo Tokyo,” Jesse said.

  “All right. Call Neil and see if he has a number for them or knows the address.” Jesse picked up the receiver, and I turned to Mirandah. “You’re sure Serenity said nothing else? Did she say she was going with anyone? Or that she was being picked up?”

  “As far as I know, she doesn’t know anyone to be picked up by,” Mirandah said. “But if you really want to know …”

  Jesse hung up and said that Neil didn’t know where Da was rehearsing.

  I turned back to Mirandah. “What were you going to say a second ago? If I really wanted to know … what?”

  She shrugged. “I was just saying maybe you ought to look in Serenity’s diary if you want to know where she went.”

  “Serenity doesn’t keep …” I stopped, remembering her reaction when I had wondered at the fuss she was making over my touching the yellow book. It’s not as if it’s a diary, I had said, and she had blanched.

  Mirandah took my silence as disbelief. “She does. I came in to borrow something of yours when you were in the hospital, and Serenity was writing in a notebook. I would have thought it was homework, except when I turned away, I saw her in the mirror, shoving it between the bed and the mattress. What else could it be but a diary?”

  I thought of the notebook Serenity had been cradling in her arms before she went into the studio to Mum, and ran out of the kitchen and upstairs. Sure enough, the notebook I had seen was hidden beneath the mattress. One glance told me that Mirandah was right. It was a diary.

  I carried it to the kitchen and handed it to Jesse, asking him to use his speed-reading ability to see if there was any mention of where Serenity might have gone. He frowned, but then he opened it and began to read.

  I dialed Harrison’s number. It rang and rang, and I was just about to give up when a man answered the phone, his voice low but pleasant. Remembering the last time I had called, my voice was cool as I asked for Harrison.

  “He went out just after lunch,” the man said gently. “I’m his father, Jack. What was your name?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shamed by my rudeness—because alcoholism was a sickness, too, after all. “I … I’m Alyzon Whitestarr.”

  “Well, he didn’t leave you any message, Alyzon,” Harrison’s father said. “I’ll let him know you called, shall I? Does he have your number?”

  I said that he did, thanked his father politely, and hung up. Then I dialed the hotel where Gilly and her grandmother were staying. The concierge told me that they were out and he had no idea when they would return. I dialed Raoul’s number but got his voice mail. I left a message asking him to call and said, as I had not felt able to do in the other two messages, that Serenity had disappeared. I
was aware of Mirandah and Jesse exchanging glances of alarmed puzzlement, but there was no time to explain because the phone rang the minute I put the receiver down. It was Harrison. He said in a cheerful voice that he and Raoul were returning from errands and had dropped by his house. “My father said you just called.”

  “Serenity has disappeared, and I’m afraid she might have gone off in a van.”

  “Hold on.” There was a swift urgent exchange, then Harrison said they would be over shortly. After hanging up, I turned to find Jesse lifting his head from the diary. His eyes were appalled.

  “She hates us,” he said, sounding shattered. “Over and over again she says it. All of us, but especially Da. She says he is a filthy hypocrite because all he does is sing songs while the world falls into darkness. That’s how she puts it—falls into darkness! She says Da is a collaborator because he doesn’t fight anything.”

  “It’s because of Aya,” I said.

  Jesse nodded. “She calls ‘Song for Aya’ the anthem of a coward. But what else could Da have done that he didn’t do?”

  “Flip to the last entries,” I said impatiently.

  “I’m scared,” Mirandah said.

  “Listen,” Jesse said, and he read, “‘If I truly believe in my ideals, I must act upon them. I must show them all what is courage. It is strange and lovely how all confusion fades once you accept that you are ready to act. Let Da see what it is to have the courage of one’s convictions. Will he dare to sing of what I will do? I doubt it, and yet it would be a penance. People like him must be made to see that there are those who are prepared to do anything for their ideals. I am ready.’”

  “Jesus, what is she planning to do?” Mirandah cried, looking horrified.

  “I don’t know,” I said tersely. Because Mirandah’s question made me realize that it did sound as if she was preparing to do something. Had I been wrong? Was she actually joining the gang rather than becoming its victim? I said impatiently, “Read the rest of it.”

  Jesse bent over the pages once more, his body now tense as he scanned the lines of writing. Luke began to cry. Mirandah picked him up, grimaced, and went to change him. I hurried upstairs after her, to pull on boots and a sweater and jacket. When I brushed my hair and cleaned my teeth, my face looked grim and purposeful in the spotted mirror over the sink.

  “I’ve got something, but there are no more dates,” Jesse said as I reentered the kitchen. He read, “‘They say that I must not be afraid, but I am afraid. It is cowardice, of course. But I will not allow myself to bow to fear like Da and the others in my family of useless dreamers and idealists. What is the use of living a good life when there is so much evil? We have to show the politicians who make these laws that there are consequences to their actions. They think they can do anything, make any law, set any injustice in motion and no one can touch them. But soon they will not dare to be complacent. They will know that there are those prepared to dare anything for their ideals, no matter what the cost.’” He stopped reading and said, “It sounds like she’s going to make some sort of radical protest against the government.”

  “Soon,” Mirandah reminded us.

  I shivered. “I am ready,” Serenity had written. There was a finality to the words that fitted the possibility that she was on the verge of some extreme action. I thought of the sickness inside Aaron Rayc and knew that whatever Serenity meant to do, it would darken the world.

  “Let’s go through the obvious things she might do,” Jesse said. “She could shoot someone, only it wouldn’t help those refugees. It would just give the authorities another excuse to say refugees were trouble and the people supporting them were unstable lunatics.”

  I thought of the warehouses in Shaletown and wondered if there were guns there. Daisy had said Aaron Rayc supported the gun lobby, so maybe he had boxes and boxes of weapons. But the idea of Serenity shooting anyone seemed like something out of a bad action movie. “She would never hurt anyone,” I said.

  “Listen,” Jesse said, flicking back several pages in the diary. He read: “‘Sacrifice is necessary. It is most central to any ideal of honor.’”

  “She’s definitely going to do something illegal and get arrested,” Mirandah said. “Maybe she’s going to set off a bomb.”

  “Where the hell would she get a bomb?” Jesse asked, and I could smell a sharp peppery smell that I read as apprehension.

  “Same place she’d get a gun!” Mirandah snapped.

  “What about a fire?” Jesse said.

  “She might light a fire,” I said, thinking of the fires at the Shaletown Boys Academy, the bakery, and Gilly’s house. And then I thought of the fire inside Serenity’s head in Mum’s painting.

  “There’s a government office in Eastland Mall,” Mirandah said rather wildly.

  “It would be pointless to burn that,” I said. “There are sprinklers and smoke alarms. In the end there’d be no more than a bit of singed carpet, which would be paid for by the insurance company.”

  “Hang on,” Jesse broke in, and he bent over the diary. “Look here. I thought it was just a doodle, but it might be a map that’s been scribbled over.”

  Mirandah and I crowded close, but the map, if it was a map, had been pretty well obliterated by a grid of lines. The only thing I could see was a big black cross, but I couldn’t see what was under it.

  The doorbell rang, and I went to let Harrison in. “Raoul said he’d wait in the car tae save time,” he said. I led Harrison to the kitchen and introduced him to Mirandah. She gave him a speculative look that, even in that anxious moment, annoyed me. She offered coffee, and Harrison said Raoul could probably use one as well. Mirandah looked intrigued when Harrison said Raoul was in a wheelchair, and offered to take the coffee out herself. She did not question why two strangers should be enlisted in the search for Serenity, but I saw Jesse eyeing Harrison curiously when I handed him the diary.

  Harrison read the page that was open, but before he could have read more than a line, he looked up. “You saw a van pull away, you said? Was it a green van?”

  I nodded. “Dark green. I don’t know why, but somehow that made my … made me certain that Serenity was in it. Then I went upstairs and she had gone.”

  “There was a dark green van parked outside the refugee center in Shaletown,” Harrison said. “The protesters got intae it and drove off when it started raining. The ones Rose Cobb said were ‘political.’”

  I gasped. He was right. “It must be the detention center that she’s going to target.” I looked at Jesse. “We have to go there right now. I’ll explain everything when we get back. When Da comes home, can you get him to call this number?” I had Harrison write Raoul’s cell number on the pad beside the phone.

  “OK,” Jesse said. “But this better be good when I finally hear it.”

  * * *

  As soon as we got into the car, I told Raoul what had happened. He drove toward the highway, but instead of saying anything about Serenity, he said, “I forgot to tell you both last night. On my way back from Bellavie, something went wrong with the car. It got worse and worse and in the end I called the roadside repair line. The guy rigged something up to get me home, but he said it would only last a day or so, then I would need to get the part replaced.”

  “I bet Davey will have the part,” Harrison said.

  “But we’re not going to the warehouses,” I protested. “It definitely sounds like she’s going to do something, and there would be no point in doing it there.”

  “We’ll go to the detention center first,” Raoul said.

  I told them then about Mum’s picture and the things she had told me. The car slowed momentarily as Raoul and Harrison stared at me in disbelief.

  “I wish you could see the picture,” I said slowly. “No normal person could have painted it. And when Mum talked about having a darkness inside her, I just couldn’t believe it.”

  “What seems unbelievable tae me is that this whole thing would revolve so strongly around one family,??
? Harrison said. “But maybe it’s because all of you have extended senses or at least the potential tae have your senses extended.” His eyes widened. “Jesus, maybe you are the way you are because your mum was infected and fighting it when each of you was born!”

  “A hereditary disposition for extended senses?” Raoul said.

  “Or something,” Harrison said. “I wish you had asked your mother how she was infected.”

  “I did. She said she couldn’t remember but that it had something to do with an older woman. But then she wouldn’t say any more. Talking about the infection seemed to make her especially afraid.”

  “It is the same with Sarry,” Raoul said. “Maybe talking about it activates the sickness. But listen, I’ve just had a thought. There’s no way your sister could set the detention center on fire. The outside wall is two stories high and made of stone, and so are most of the internal buildings, from what I’ve seen on TV.”

  “And the center has its own fire truck, so even if she did manage to set something alight it wouldn’t be long before it was out,” I said. “I remember seeing it there once when we were visiting Aya.”

  “Maybe this whole idea of some sort of political action is just a ruse tae get Serenity tae Shaletown,” Harrison suggested. “Maybe the real destination is the warehouses.”

  Twenty minutes later Raoul turned off the highway into Shaletown. “We’ll park in front of your friend’s house. You can go in and see if she’s seen anything more of these protesters in their green van, and that’ll also give us an excuse for being there if anyone is watching. If nothing is happening there, we’ll go to the industrial park.”

  But Rose was not home. From her porch I could see a little clutch of protesters with placards and lanterns sitting vigil, so I went over. They were not the protesters Harrison and I had seen; these were young women and elderly men and children, as well as young men with great shaggy manes of hair or dreadlocks. I asked a young woman in shabby overalls if she knew Rose. Her face was lit by a warm smile. “Of course I know the dear old thing,” she laughed. “I brought her some of my brownies. I had forgotten; she’s gone away to visit one of her children.”