Christina could not even read the page numbers she was so nervous, but she flipped some pages and took the pencil Miss Schuyler handed her.
Mr. Shevvington and Miss Frisch left the room.
Christina said, “How did you know? Why did you save me?” Tears lay inside her eyes, and her chin and her knees were shivering, like separate leaves on a tree.
Miss Schuyler said, “You looked desperate, my dear. I thought I would give you a few moments to compose yourself. Now tell me what upset you, Christina.”
Christina told everything. Not because she was sure of Miss Schuyler, but because it was time to tell. Time to let go and bring in an ally.
Time to surrender? thought Christina, half aware that Miss Schuyler could be another one. One of THEM. Am I falling into their hands? she thought. Is it a trick, like multiple posters?
But it was too late. She had told all.
There was not much time. Another math class would soon fill the room. No doubt Mr. Shevvington or Miss Frisch would be there waiting in the hall to catch her.
Miss Schuyler frowned. “Christina, that is quite a tale.”
Christina felt herself turning to nothing, following in Val’s and Anya’s footsteps. It was a pitiful feeling. Not like a balloon being popped — sharply, with a pin, but oozing, air seeping out invisible leaks until there was nothing left of the balloon but an empty piece of color on the ground.
There would soon be nothing left of Anya. Anya would not even have color. She dressed in nothing but black and white now. Like a photograph of herself.
Miss Schuyler said, “I think I will get in touch with Blake first. A nice young boy. He’s at Dexter Academy, as I recall. Now do not be afraid of the principal or that counselor. They have no supernatural powers, Christina. Nobody does. They have managed to upset you so much that you are imagining things. The wet suit is simply some out-of-season kook in a wet suit and the poster is merely a poster.” Miss Schuyler frowned slightly, tapping her pretty cheek with her pencil. Christina had not previously thought Miss Schuyler a pretty woman. Perhaps the person who rescued you was always beautiful.
“However it is quite clear to a newcomer in the school, such as myself,” said Miss Schuyler, “that there is some association between the Shevvingtons and Miss Frisch.” Miss Schuyler pushed the pencil into the honey braids and left it there, like a miniature six-sided yellow sword. “Something unhealthy,” said Miss Schuyler. Her pretty frown grew heavier, until it took over her entire face, aging her first one decade, and then another. “Possibly even, something cruel. But why?” She took Christina’s face between her two hands, and held, it, as if Christina had more to tell.
“Val and Anya,” said Christina, “were sweet and innocent. And — and they’re doing one each year. Maybe they did girls in other towns. Maybe — Miss Schuyler, where did they come from, the Shevvingtons? What have they left behind? Are they teachers because — ” Christina could hardly say it, because Miss Schuyler was a teacher, a wonderful teacher. “Are they teachers because every year there are new ones? New innocent girls they can rob of their souls?”
Because what fun would it be to destroy somebody nasty and mean? Christina thought. You would not enjoy destroying Gretch or Vicki. You would have the most fun ruining the nicest people.
Miss Schuyler took the workbook out of Christina’s hands. Christina had not written a single number down, or even a single decimal.
“Christina,” said the teacher dryly, “I am convinced that our principal is not a nice man. But I find it hard to believe he has an actual program he executes in town after town, destroying the souls of innocent victims.”
I lost her, thought Christina. Grown-ups can only tolerate half the truth. I went too far, telling her all. Next time I tell anything, I must tell only little easy pieces of it. But then who will bother to help me?
Christina tried to stay granite. She tried to find the bright side. I have half an ally, she told herself. She half believes me.
Miss Schuyler seemed to look so far away she might have had a view all the way to Burning Fog Isle.
Christina thought, But Anya’s parents and mine are quite literally at sea. How safe, how delightful for the Shevvingtons! They will take each of us from Burning Fog. They will take away our souls. “What can you do, Miss Schuyler?” said Christina, her hands knotted like the nets of lobster traps.
“I can do nothing. They have convinced the entire school system of their kindness, their understanding, their perfection. But I will watch them, Christina, and I will be your protector. So do not worry.” Her eighth-grade class began coming in. Very gently Miss Schuyler added, “And don’t magnify it either, Christina. It’s not so dreadful as you’re making it out to be. It’s not nice. But it isn’t deathly, either.” She drew the pencil out of her hair, like a conductor closing off the chorus, and turned to her class.
Christina left numbly.
Out in the hall hundreds of teenagers knew exactly where they were going, and whether they had their homework done, and which book to carry. Christina knew nothing. Her head swirled. Her brain must look like her mother’s marble cake — chocolate and white spiraled together as the wooden spoon drew through the batter. She felt loose and unconnected.
Out of the chaos emerged Mr. Shevvington. He connected to her wrist again. Firmly. “Come into my office.”
“I don’t feel well,” she said. “I need to lie down.” Miss Schuyler is wrong, she thought. It goes way beyond what she saw. The Shevvingtons are evil. And nobody knows but me.
Mr. Shevvington smiled. “That’s fine,” he said. “The nurse’s office is just where we want to be.”
Vicki and Gretch, arm in arm, stopped in the hall to watch them. “Why, Mr. Shevvington,” they said, “is she still sick? Poor, poor Christina.”
Mr. Shevvington said, “I think perhaps you girls have been hard on little Christina.” He made her sound like a pitiful, stupid thing that people tried not to sit next to because of the smell. “Christina needs help, you know, and popular, pretty girls like you, Vicki, and you, Gretchen, could help her.”
Vicki and Gretch tossed their hair like synchronized swimmers and preened in the hallway.
Remarkable, thought Christina. He can sound like Mr. Understanding, Mr. Deep-concern-for-troubled-girls, and yet he’s made it infinitely worse. On purpose.
“A little bit of attention from girls who know how to behave properly,” Mr. Shevvington continued, “would be the making of Christina.”
Christina’s loose, cake-batter brain became a loose, cake-batter stomach. It roiled and turned inside her like Candle Cove with the coming tide.
“We’re pretty busy,” said Vicki.
Gretch nodded.
Mr. Shevvington was very sympathetic. “Of course you are,” he said. “You’re the kind of girls who will be class leaders and team captains. I’m not suggesting that you adopt her as a cause and give up homework for her!” He laughed warmly. “Just a few minutes here and there.”
Like taking a dog for a walk, thought Christina.
Vicki said, “Well, I suppose after school, maybe we — um — ” Vicki tried to think of something she could fit Christina into.
Christina threw up.
It was wonderful. Disgusting, hot slime came up out of her stomach, burning her throat and mouth, and hurling itself on Gretch’s designer jeans and Vicki’s beautiful university logo sweatshirt. It dripped crudely down their chests and onto their pretty shoes.
Gretch screamed. Vicki clawed at herself. Christina said, “I need help. Please? Since you’re so popular?”
Mr. Shevvington wrote out late passes for Vicki and Gretch. They went sobbing to the bathroom. Christina he hauled down to the nurse’s office. What a weapon, thought Christina. She said to him, “I feel very unsettled. I may throw up again.”
Miss Frisch was apparently not free this period. Mr. Shevvington told her to clean herself up and lie on the white cot in the corner behind the screen, and he would be b
ack shortly. Christina drank from the water fountain until the horrible taste was out of her mouth, but she didn’t have to clean her own clothing up; she had missed herself.
It’s all in the timing, she thought, proud of herself.
And then she thought, I’m in the nurse’s office. I am sure the fear files are here.
She looked around the room. White walls with posters on dental hygiene and sexually transmitted diseases. A large sink with jars of cotton wads, Q-tips, and tongue depressors. An arsenal of aspirin and some witch hazel.
Christina began flinging open doors. Behind the counter doors were rolls of paper towels, bandages, Kleenex. In the wall cabinets lay every size of Band-Aid known to man.
She whirled to go through the desks. Only one drawer was deep enough for file folders. It did not open immediately. Christina played with the pencil drawer until whatever catch attached to the file drawer loosened up, and she could ease it open.
She flipped through the tabs of the file folders. Statistics. Racial characteristics of the school system. Measles and inoculation data. No good.
She shut that drawer and went to the other desk. Reports on diseases, conditions, symptoms, and cures. Come on, come on, Christina thought, where are your student-by-student files?
She scanned the room.
There was a computer screen on the counter in the corner.
She turned it on, pawed through the little plastic box of diskettes, and read the labels. They were individual files, all right, but the master disk was not among them. Christina turned to the nearest desk and began rifling through the shallower drawers.
There was a sharp explosive flash behind her. Miss Frisch had photographed Christina going through the desk drawers.
Chapter 13
ALL IT TAKES IS one rainstorm, thought Christina Romney. The lovely scarlet-and-gold autumn leaves are torn from the trees and the foliage season is gone: Bare branches and a dark horizon are all that’s left.
She kicked her way through a pile of leaves, turning her socks gray with leaf dust, even though the leaves were gold. There was a chill in the air distinct from previous nights. It was winter-cold, not autumn-cold.
“Supposed to be a hurricane coming,” said Michael joyfully. Michael loved fierce weather. Benj told him not to talk about it, not even to think about it.
Benj thinks the weather can hear us talk, thought Christina.
It was island thinking. Island superstition. A year ago Anya had thought no differently; now she had moved beyond superstition; she thought the house and the sea could hear her, too.
“Hurricane’s down by Maryland and Delaware now,” said Michael, “but it might swing north.”
“No,” said Benj. “It’s going inland. Stop your noise, Michael.”
If I were home on the island, my mother would go on a winter hunt, thought Christina.
A winter hunt turns up matches for mittens, boots that fit, and the grocery bag that the long winter underwear was put in the year before.
Christina ached for her mother. She yearned for her father. But when they had come in on their own boat for an emergency meeting with the Shevvingtons — and with Miss Frisch — about Christina’s thievery, when they had seen the Polaroid shot of Christina with her hand literally in the drawer where the petty cash was kept … they collapsed weeping. This time Mr. Shevvington did not have to recommend anything at all; they begged him. They said, “Please control her for us, please teach her better than we were able to, please take her!”
Christina marveled that it was so easy for the Shevvingtons.
Michael and Benj were going back to the island for the weekend, and they were going to try to talk Anya into accompanying them. They walked toward the laundromat.
“Bet we’ll be stranded,” said Michael hopefully. “High winds, gale force, can’t come back to school for weeks.”
Benj laughed. “Bad weather is always over by Monday morning, Michael. Don’t worry, you won’t even miss first period.”
Michael was saddened. He said, “But maybe the Shevvingtons’ house will come down in the hurricane. I don’t know how it’s lasted so long on that cliff anyway. It’s in a very vulnerable position.”
“Don’t say that,” ordered Benj. “Christina has to stay there during the storm.” Benj made a face. “Not that there will be a storm,” he corrected himself.
She thought about Burning Fog Isle. She had experienced many severe storms, but none with a wind so strong that houses were thrown about like too small lobsters tossed overboard. Would her mother and father be all right?
She was finding it difficult to remember her parents’ faces, or Dolly’s laugh. She had made the mistake of saying that at breakfast and of course Mr. Shevvington heard and said, “Christina, this is serious personality disintegration. You have not cooperated with me on seeing a mental health counselor.”
Michael and Benj went on eating cornflakes.
Mr. Shevvington put an arm around Christina as if they liked each other.
But he does like me, thought Christina suddenly. He likes what he can do to me.
They were at very close range. She could see now that he wore contact lenses. He could change the color of his eyes! So that was how his eyes darkened and grew bluer. How could she have been afraid of his eyes? They weren’t even real.
“Boys,” said Mr. Shevvington, “take this letter to Anya’s poor parents. It isn’t much in the way of comfort but at least they’ll know we did our best by their poor daughter. We always thought she would become a wharf rat and now she has.”
“You did not think that!” cried Christina. “You thought she would have an honor roll year, and be the star of the senior class, and — ”
“Christina,” said Mr. Shevvington, “stop yarning. Michael, Benj, have a good visit on the island. Say hello to your parents for us.”
Miss Schuyler is on my side, Christina consoled herself. You can do anything if you have somebody on your side. She looked at her tormentors, who were both smiling, unpunctured by Christina’s or Miss Schuyler’s scorn.
Mrs. Shevvington’s yellow teeth lay in her mouth like seeds waiting for winter birds to eat them. The teeth smiled, as if they too were thinking of eating.
Christina shuddered.
She stuck to the boys. The boys thought nothing of it.
The laundromat was stupifyingly hot and humid.
It was another whole world in there: linty and gasping and wet. Anya was even thinner, which hardly seemed possible, and even more beautiful, which was surely not possible.
She was wearing, because of the heat, a thin white cotton gauze dress with white lace around the throat. She had caught her black hair in a thin white ribbon and the bow lay against her cheek like a white rose. Her hair in the humidity of the laundromat had puffed like cumulus clouds.
“Jeepers, Anya,” said Michael, “you look like a bride.”
“I am,” said Anya.
The boys stared at her.
At least this time they noticed something wrong, thought Christina grimly.
“Whose bride?” said Benj warily. “Blake’s not around any more, they got rid of him.”
“The sea,” said Anya. “Nuns marry God. I will wed the sea.” She folded a hot pink T-shirt, neatly turning the short sleeves in to the center and tucking the bottom up. She turned the shirt over, admired the flawless folding, and added it to a pile of somebody else’s clean clothes.
Anya, who had been first in her class, future doctor, Blake’s girl.
“Listen, Anya,” said Benj, “come home for the weekend with us. It’ll do you good to see your mom and dad. Frankie’s boat leaves in half an hour. Everybody on the island is worried, Anya. Come on. Please?”
Anya shook her head. “I have work to do.” She brought out a pen-and-ink drawing she was working on. At first it looked like waves from Japan or China, arching sea foam with hooks. But when you looked closely it was a hundred hands, a thousand fingers, all reaching for the same thing: A
nya.
“I’ll do the laundry for you,” Christina offered. “I can’t go home. My parents don’t want me.”
“They would if you’d behave,” Benj told her. “Michael and I have about had it, Christina. I suppose you didn’t really do anything wrong, but it looks wrong, and it makes the island look wrong, and it’s time you stop and think before you do stupid, dumb things that hurt everybody else.”
“What kind of friends are you?” she cried, stomping her foot. The sound was oddly drowned in the sogginess of the room. Anya added several more fingers to her curling waves. “Why don’t you believe me? Why would you believe the Shevvingtons?”
“Mr. Shevvington is the principal,” protested Benj. “He’s not going to lie. Anyway, they caught you. They have the photograph.”
“I wasn’t taking money. I was looking for the files with those papers we had to fill out.”
Benj shrugged.
Anya whistled mindlessly. Two notes, back and forth, back and forth. “Don’t,” said Benj. “You’re whistling up a wind, and a wind right now means weather and we don’t want weather. Hear?”
Anya gave no sign of hearing anything. She held up her own hands and studied them like a manicurist. “I can’t figure out whose hands they are,” she said.
Is there another town full of vacant, stunned girls, whose souls were sucked away? thought Christina. A town the Shevvingtons finished with and got tired of?
“Come with us, Anya. Okay?” Benj and Michael Jaye were uncomfortable. They didn’t want to be in this ugly, damp place, with its mildewed walls and the madness that wafted off Anya like a breeze.
Christina wondered if the Shevvingtons were tired of Anya. If they had finished with her yet. If they don’t have Anya to toy with, she thought, they’ll need another girl. And the only one around … is me.
“We had boiled dinner last night,” Anya said. She frowned. “Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and turnips. I hate boiled dinner. It makes me feel old and crippled and penniless.”