I’d kill them before I’d talk to them.
That’s what I think, anyway. I wonder if Hop would say it was true.
So I walk in the nearest brick building, which looks like Independence Hall from my old history book. I guess I’m in some kind of dorm, which is not where I want to be, but I could be wrong. It’s hard to tell. It could be the head janitor’s office, for all I know. All the buildings here look equally strange to me.
I knock on the first door inside the hallway. No answer.
I push the handle, and it opens.
The Chinese Breather at the desk doesn’t look up from his computer.
“Excuse me, but I’m looking for the Admissions office.” No answer. I try again, holding up my campus map.
“Uh, hello? You know someone named . . .”
“No.”
I’m not surprised.
My stomach growls and I let the door close in my face.
IV.
“His name is Sherlock. Like the detective.”
It takes me a second but I put it together. She’s talking about the enormous dog curled on the soft carpet between us. It’s the first time the admissions officer has spoken to me, now that her office door has closed behind me. After all this time—the Common Slap and the Wiki transcripts and the Breathernet recommendations—I feel like I have stepped into a boxing ring and the match has begun. Then I try to remember if stepping into the boxing ring was on the list of bad college essay topics, the one Mr. Skrumbett gave us. Banned essay metaphors. Stepping into the ring. Running the race. Going the distance. Leaving the nest. I can’t remember.
I give up.
I can’t think of anything, not a single thing, to say.
The woman is speaking but I’m not listening. Her lipstick is so red it makes me uncomfortable. I pat the dog’s head. He growls. It’s not my fault, or his. Breather dogs like Breathers, and this is a Breather dog. Though when he growls, I can’t help but notice he’d make a great Drinker dog. His teeth are even bigger than mine.
“Ms. La-fay-ette?”
I look up. Seems like we’re not talking about the dog anymore.
“Ma’am?”
“I read your application. You’re the first applicant we’ve ever had from . . .” She squints, looks more closely at the screen in front of her. “Tresspassaunt.” She gives the word an extra little twirl, like it was French or something. Tress-pass-aunt. Har-vard Yard. Gyll-en-haal. Fer-arr-i.
“You’re a first generation college applicant?”
“Ma’am?” I’m still trying to figure out the right answer to that question when she says it again.
“You’re the first person in your family to attend a university?” She speaks more slowly, as if I am deaf, smoothing out the hard words so that I will understand. I understand even less than she realizes.
“Yes, ma’am. Well, my Grandma Hoban says my mom went to beauty school, but I didn’t put it down, I wasn’t sure that counted.” Her look tells me it didn’t. “My Bre—my parents left when I was . . . little.”
I can’t believe I almost said it. My Breather parents left me behind, a baby with a blood-bruise. One little purplish spot inside my elbow and they were good as gone.
“I see.” I guess it was the right answer, because now her red lips stretch across her yellow teeth. “What a wonderful opportunity you’re giving yourself.” She sighs, and I can’t help but flash on the face of Natalie Anne Rutledge. I grab the carved mahogany fists of my chair arms to keep from punching her. My hands are shaking, but I don’t know if it’s from hunger or fear.
What are you doing, Wren Lola Lafayette?
You have to be more careful.
Your whole future—four years of fat-faced undergraduates— depends on this Breather woman.
You could be one of them.
More meals than you can count. More anonymity. More opportunity.
They’ll never track you here, and if they do, they’ll never be able to do anything. Not at the oldest school in the country. You’re right in the heart of Breather territory now. Breathers take care of their own.
“You haven’t had any trouble in your area, have you? We’ve been hearing some of the schools around you have fallen on . . . harder times.” She sounded hesitant.
“No, ma’am. Just stories, I guess. I’ve heard them too.” I don’t look at her.
“Well. It’s the South, right? We’ll have to thank Anne Rice for that.” She laughs, and I laugh, but I have no idea what we’re laughing about or what she’s talking about.
I mean, not about the Anne person. The trouble, that I’m pretty clear on.
She seems relieved, and gives the mouse on her computer a few extra clicks. “All right, then. I’ll be honest with you.” I wish she wouldn’t. In my experience, when folks are honest, it’s never a good thing. But I nod anyway.
“Like many of our first-generation applicants, your scores aren’t the strongest.” I hold my breath.
“Though your transcript is amazing.” I breathe.
“And your teachers truly seem to care about you, which is a good thing.”
“Yes they do, ma’am.” I think of Hop’s face as he signs the letters. “Thank you, ma’am.”
I start to feel better. I let my eyes drift over to the picture of the Charles River behind her desk. Mr. Skrumbett pointed it out when our bus drove over the bridge. I read the caption. I am wondering what a regatta is and what it has to do with all those little boats in the photograph when I hear the break in her voice.
“But . . .”
She pauses, like a cobra about to strike. My heart thumps and almost as if on cue, the boats and the river and her red smile fade away.
“But, I have to say, from your application, I didn’t get a good sense of who you are as a person. I felt like you were being less than forthcoming with me.”
Who I am is a Drinker. I want to bite your head off at your neck, right above the pearls. . . .
I force my eyes back up to her face. “I don’t understand.” My voice sounds strange in this dark little room, and I am startled to realize that I am actually here. I must be, because I’ve imagined this one room so many times, and this isn’t at all how I imagined it.
She is still talking, as if I haven’t said a word. “You know, who are you? What’s your hook?”
“My what?”
“Your hook. The one thing that sets you apart from the thirty thousand other applicants. Musical instrument? Scientific research? Internships? You’re not letting us see who you are. What have you been doing all this time, Ms. La-fay-ette, aside from studying? What can you bring to our school community?”
I close my eyes, but it’s too late. I know my hook. The memories come, a thousand flashing squares of Breather skin stretch in front of me, a checkerboard of pale, naked necks and wrists and ankles. It is as if I am looking down from the window of a plane, taking in a vast expanse of some kind of sea-to-shining-sea farmland. The sun reflects, glinting from rivers that turn to streams that turn to tiny creeks, though I know they aren’t rivers at all, but a web of spreading veins. . . .
“I keep busy.”
“Yes. I imagine you do.” She clears her throat. “Ms. La-fayette, let me be perfectly clear. On a scale from one to five, which is how we score these interviews, I would have to give you a one. And that would be generous.”
I’m not feeling her generosity. I’m too busy feeling like a one. I swallow. “So you’re saying . . . ?”
“I’m saying I think you should be prepared to look elsewhere.” She stands up, keeping the desk between us. “You, and your kind.” She lets her eyes rest on my mouth.
I freeze. My kind?
She knows.
Still, I say nothing, nothing I am thinking. I feel my hands curl up around nothing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we don’t want you here. That’s why we have these interviews. I can spot you a mile away. Spot you, screen you. Stop you. People like you.” Sh
e smiles but there’s nothing friendly about it. I don’t smile back.
“Like me?”
“ . . . It’s fallen to us to keep out the wrong sort for hundreds of years before you came along. We’ve got the general safety of the entire student body to consider. . . .”
That’s not the body I’m thinking of at the moment.
“. . . standards to ensure. A population to build. After all, this isn’t just the Ivy League. This is Harvard. We’re wealthier than a small country, smarter than a large one.”
She swallows a smile down her throat. I watch it go.
“I see.”
She holds out her hand. “Good-bye, Ms. La-fay-ette.”
“It’s La-fay-ette. Ma’am.”
“Is it?”
I tighten my grip on her hand, and feel my finger slide down to her wrist. Her pulse flutters like a bird, like a thousand throbbing little birds, flying away as fast as they can.
Turns out, the birds know best.
V.
In the darkness, we move between the trees, crisscrossing the pathways on Harvard Yard. The moon is bright and round, but there is little light, except for the pale glow of our skin, Hopper’s and mine.
“Slow down, Hop. I ate too much, too fast. Feels like I’m going to burst.”
Hopper slows, and I fall into step next to him. “You know what they call that?” He looks at me in the moonlight. “The Freshman Fifteen.” He smiles and I smile back, unbuttoning the top button on my jeans.
“Hope it’s a lot more than fifteen.”
“Hope so, Wrennie.”
I take Hopper’s hand and I hear the gravel beneath our feet, beneath the cold bite of the November night. I pull on the strap of my backpack, which holds a full thermos for the road. I’m going to give it to Hopper. Even now I can hear his stomach grumbling, louder than mine ever did. Anyway, we have a long drive ahead of us tonight. South, as far as we can get before the light. Tomorrow I will be happy our town has no name. Sort of slows down any hope of Breather law enforcement, not that I’m worried.
Hopper squeezes my hand. I might let him make out with me on the bus.
My pack feels light. It’s nearly empty, I had forgotten. I left behind a trash can full of college brochures and course catalogues back beneath the desk in the Admissions office.
Just after the body hit the carpet.
Just before I’d clicked “ACCEPT.”
Twice.
Once for Maynard Hopper Wilson, the smartist kid in the hole school, and once for me.
I almost wished, just this once, the Admissions Breather would know what had happened back there. Almost. As it was, she was going to wake up with a killer hangover, but that was about it. A hangover, and what looked like a nasty purple blood-bruise inside her left arm. It almost didn’t seem like enough.
I smile, my teeth sliding into place at the thought of my dinner. I tell myself, for the first time, I am going to fit in here just fine.
“Come on, Sherlock.” The dog barks, looking up at me. His teeth appear at the sight of mine. “I think our luck is changing.”
John Harvard’s toe gleams in the moonlight. It still smells like pee.
I rub it.
Gargouille
by Mary E. Pearson
lood still seeped from the wound in her thigh. The stub of the arrow protruded, catching on the bars every time the cart hit a rut, tearing her flesh a bit more. She tried not to call out because that only made Frans cackle at his fine catch, smug at the riches he surely thought awaited him at the end of the road. A lifetime of wages for his ilk. But the folly was his. Though her thigh would bear the scars of his arrow for the rest of her life, her back was already healing. She could feel the flesh beneath her cape knitting itself back together, erasing the evidence.
She held her face close to the bars, looking to the horizon, knowing they wouldn’t come, knowing they shouldn’t, but still she searched and hoped for a black cloud in the distance. For two days they had been on the road traveling north, past hillock and cottage, past thicket, field, and forest. The duke’s château couldn’t be much farther. She had never traveled this far by cart before, and now it was sinking in: by foot or by cart was the only way she would ever travel again—that is, if she lived.
I love you, Giselle. I love you. . . . I choose you.
It was those words that had caused her to be so careless. For that moment she was stronger than the world. Stronger than knife and net. Stronger than fear. After he left, she couldn’t contain her joy. She danced for the flowers in the meadow. She sang. She spread her wings without an eye to the world.
“Gargouille! Gargouille!” A dozen children rushed across the square, forgetting their game of stones at the sight of the approaching cart and the enormous wings strapped to the top, unmistakable even from a distance.
“Back!” Frans shouted, pulling on the reins. “She bites!”
“I don’t bite!” Giselle called out, reaching through the bars. “But come closer and I will ring your tender little necks like capons—and then stew you for supper!”
The children ran away squealing, and Giselle heaved a momentary sigh of relief. The villages were the worst. Frans used their fear to keep them at a distance, but their intense curiosity still prodded them to poke long sticks through the bars and throw rotten food and dung to watch her flinch. Frans didn’t mind these antics, but when curious hands drew too close to the precious cargo strapped to the top of the cart, he shouted warnings about her special powers to kill and maim. For this much she was grateful, that their fears and imaginations gave her some distance from their cruelty.
A cautious crowd milled forward. He let them have a good look while he took a long swig of ale and recounted the tale of her capture. The story had changed with each village as Frans learned what held their attention. He also learned when to cough from his dry, dusty throat so that story-hungry villagers would refill his flask, eager to hear of his bravery and his long, harrowing journey.
She looked out at the curious faces staring back at her, their eyes sweeping over her face and arms, scrutinizing her filth, the sweat and dirt streaks, her long black hair now matted with blood and tangles, the dark circles she must surely have under her own eyes by now. She probably did look like a wild beast.
She turned away, gazing to the south at the dim, smoky horizon, no sign of wing or rescue. Soon it wouldn’t matter, and that was why they didn’t come. Soon she would begin to forget. One day? Two? She wasn’t sure. It was so rare that gargouilles were captured. It hadn’t happened in years—at least to none of her clan. Now she had shamed them and put them all at risk. Anyone associated with her would have to make a hasty departure and begin a new life elsewhere. Giselle would cease to exist. But the worst part was Étienne. She would forget him, and he would be obliged to forget her too. This new reality made her suddenly roar with pain, an unearthly sound that chilled every darkening corner of the town. Shivers ran through teeth. Villagers screamed and crossed themselves. Frans hit the bars with his whip to quiet her. “Étienne!” she cried again, and slumped in a heap at the bottom of the cart. Étienne.
Frans bellowed warnings at her to show his bravery to the crowd, but Giselle only looked at the ground surrounding the cart and not at him. Feet edged closer.
“It looks almost human.”
“Can I touch it, Mama?”
“Are you daft? Those things are crawling with vermin!”
“And their bite is poisonous—especially the females.”
“Poke her with the stick and see what she does.”
Giselle felt another jab in her ribs and pulled away to the other side of the caged cart, still casting her face downward to avoid the stares of the crowd. That was when she saw him. Among the many feet crowding the ground around the cart, she saw his shoe. She would know it anywhere. She didn’t look up right away. Slowly she lifted her head and deliberately looked at Frans first, trying to brace herself before she turned to scan the crowd. The slighte
st slip or gasp could bring his doom. She had been careless with herself—she couldn’t be careless with his safety too. But then shame overtook her and she cast her eyes downward again. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. How could she have done this to him? To them? Tears formed in her eyes, and trickled down her cheeks. Villagers laughed and jeered at the crying animal who had frightened them just minutes earlier.
Go away, Étienne. Forget me. Soon I will forget you. Her throat squeezed back a sob and she looked up.
His eyes were locked on hers, bright against the darkening sky. His lips pulled tight and his jaw twitched. He was as still as stone except for the breeze lifting the black hair at his shoulders. Her eyes traveled down to his fists clenched at his sides. It took what was left of her strength not to reach out to him, not to reach through the bars and touch the cheek that had caressed her own just days ago. The ache of need ripped through her. If she could speak, she would. Instead she shook her head, trying to tell him to go. It would be more than she could bear if he were found out too. He eyed the padlock on the bars. No, Étienne, no. It will do no good.
He shook his head in return and then sneered, spitting on her. His action drew a smile from Frans, who allowed him to take a step closer, so close he could have reached out and wiped the spittle from her face. Giselle feared he would. “A miserable little wretch, isn’t she?” he called to Frans.
“She’s a gargouille, boy, what would you expect? But you should have seen her a few days ago. A beauty she was. Won’t be long before the duke has her cleaned up and shining again. She’ll be a prize, this one will.”
“How much for the wings?” Étienne asked.
“Are you mad? Gargouille wings will heal anything and bring a king’s ransom. Even the duke will have to scrape his coins together for this one. Too rich for paysan blood like you.”
“What about the girl?”
“You mean the gargouille? Worth just as much. They grow back their wings, you know?”
Étienne nodded understanding. “A never-ending supply. You’re a wise and lucky man, sir, to have made such a catch.” Her wings would not grow back, and Étienne knew it. Nor did they hold magical healing powers for the landwalkers. Their powers ebbed as soon as they were cut away. They were worthless decaying flesh now. She knew Étienne only played along, pretending to intently listen to Frans spout the myths that had followed them, and then Frans embellished even those as he went, soaking in the rapt attention of the crowd that closed in around him.