The Curiosities Page 14

  And the house does sell, despite the condition of our yard. I lie out in the weedy grass and watch the people come and go, first the movers and then the family. Their son looks my age, maybe a year or two older. He’s tall and dark-haired, with great shoulders and long, graceful hands. He’s always texting—never even looks up or turns around, but I don’t need to know the color of his eyes to tell that he’s delicious. I watch from over the fence, hopeful and terrified that at any moment he’ll turn and see me there.

  The girl is less oblivious. On the second day she comes wandering over with bare feet and a beat-to-hell [2]Polaroid camera.

  She’s younger, eleven or twelve, with a round, pale face and bangs cut short and straight across. Her hair is black and makes her look like a Gothic baby doll. She’s holding a handful of fresh photos and staring at me like I’m some kind of extraterrestrial. Her eyes are ice-blue with freakishly long lashes.

  I flick a hand at her and smile. She’s way too young to actually hang out with, but maybe she’ll invite me over anyway.

  “Hi,” she says in a flat voice.

  “What’s your name?” I ask brightly, but I already know. Behind her the guy—obviously her brother—is sitting on the steps, gazing intently at his phone. There’s a box next to him with photo albums and notebooks and a well-loved plush unicorn sticking out of the top. The name Abby is scrawled down the side in marker.

  At first she won’t answer or look at me, so I just keep talking, yammering about whatever, glancing past her every now and then to see if her brother is watching.

  Finally, she takes a step closer. “How long have you lived here?” she asks in a tiny voice.

  “Always—all my life.”

  She tips her face to the sky. “What’s it like? Is there anything to do?”

  “Well, what kinds of things do you want to do?”

  “I like to take pictures,” she says, offering the handful of photos, fanning them out like playing cards. The paper is slick and glossy. The pictures are of the house and the yard, her brother standing by their one skinny tree, a burly pair of movers wrestling a red couch up the front steps in a long awkward diagonal.

  “They’re nice,” I say. And they are. Surprisingly nice. The one of her brother makes me feel weirdly sad, like seeing a helium balloon tied to a railing somewhere and knowing that no one’s coming back for it.

  Abby smiles and looks away. “I have more. I keep them in an album.”

  “Will you take my picture?” I pose for her, leaning on the fence, propping my chin on one hand.

  She regards me doubtfully, then raises the camera anyway. When she presses the button, there’s a click and a flash and the camera spits out a pale square of paper. Abby catches it and stands, head bent, watching it develop. Her expression is so blank that it could mean a million things.

  “Well, can I see it?”

  “No,” she says, holding it against her chest.

  “O-kay, never mind then. So, does your brother have a girlfriend?”

  “Yes. But she doesn’t live here. She goes to his old school.”

  A tiny flare of hope—I mean, distance is a killer, and how long can you really stay together when texting is the primary basis for a relationship? If I can just get him to see that I exist, maybe I can cure him of the girlfriend. “Is he always on his phone like that?”

  Abby shrugs and shakes her head. “He’s been really into it lately. He didn’t want to move.”

  “Yeah, that sucks. Maybe I should go over and introduce myself. You know, show him around.”

  Abby follows my gaze, waving the Polaroid in one soft, little-girl hand, careful to keep it turned away from me. “Do you ever feel...forgotten?” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word. Behind her, her brother is still staring into the vortex of his phone, ignoring the way she slouches by the fence.

  The summer has been the longest, slowest, stupidest of my life. My dad sits in his study or in front of the TV, and talking about feeling forgotten just makes you feel more forgotten, so I smile like nothing is wrong. “Look, I’m sure he’ll get over it. Maybe I could come over and see your album sometime.”

  “No,” she says, the word coming out much too loud. Then she takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “I mean, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “So, are you going to show your brother my picture?”

  She gives me a sideways look and shakes her head again.

  “Can I at least see it then?”

  “Only if you really want to.” Her expression is so empty it’s unreadable.

  “I do.”

  She holds out the picture, offering it to me over the fence. I don’t take it from her, just look. The paper, shiny and old-fashioned, familiar band of white along the bottom. In the foreground, the pickets of the fence are jagged like teeth. Behind it, empty sky.

  Where there should be a girl with long brown hair and freckles, there’s nothing.

  Abby looks up at me, near tears. “I’m sorry,” she says in a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  I just shrug, smile weakly. I mean, what can you say?

  “How did you die?” Her voice is thin and shaking.

  And I want to tell her that I don’t know. I don’t have even the faintest idea. But I do. Sometimes you make yourself forget the things that make you stop breathing. You remember them, and you still forget anyway. I was riding my bike to the lake, out along the county road, and then it was over. Just like that.

  Abby backs away, clutching the photo. “Did you not know?”

  “I guess I knew,” I say. “Yeah, I did. But sometimes...well, it’s just nicer to think it never happened, you know?”

  She watches me with brimming eyes. “You’re not going to haunt me, are you?”

  “What? No, I’m not going to haunt you. Don’t be stupid.”

  “What do you want, then?” she says, looking miserable.

  The question is so honest it’s painful. I want to eat Sour Patch Kids and kiss boys and walk down to the Dairy Queen with my friends—all those friends I used to have. I want to spend my days with someone else, do what they do and not be shut up in my house all the time, alone with no one but my father.

  She looks so lonely standing there. So lost, and I want to hug her but the fence is in the way and what if my hands go right through?

  “Can I take your picture?” I ask, because it seems to be a language she understands.

  When she passes me the camera it feels angular and solid, like I am really holding it. Sometimes I remember the world so clearly it almost seems real, and even though I can’t shake the knowledge that I’m not there, I push the button, take the picture anyway.

  The camera whirs and grinds, spitting out the square of paper, and we stand with our heads together, with the fence between us, waiting for the image to show up.

  Shapes appear, ghostly at first, then showing up clearer and clearer. Her lawn, weed-free and carefully mowed, racing to the edges of the photo like a tiny green sea. There in the background, her brother is texting, sitting on the steps beside the abandoned box. The Abby box, overflowing with notebooks, stuffed animals, photo albums and an old Polaroid camera, and this whole time, they have not brought in one stick of furniture that looks like it belongs to a twelve-year-old girl.

  The photo is crisp, everything bright and in focus. There is no black-haired Gothic baby doll—no Abby, besides what’s in the box—and I knew that too. I knew it since she crossed the lawn to talk to me. Knew it even when I wanted, wanted, wanted to know something else.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because the look on her face is like looking at myself.

  COUNCIL OF YOUTH

  by Maggie Stiefvater

  Leadership is one of Maggie’s recurring themes, from the very beginning up through the novels she works on now. Leadership and the relationship between a leader and her followers, and what impact being a leader has emotionally and psychologically. What does it mean to be listened to? What does
it mean to be responsible? Some of her favorite questions. —Tessa

  [1] What Tessa said. Pretty much all of it. —Maggie

  It’s been about twenty-four hours since we took over the government of the United States of America. About six since I’ve seen Raphael.

  When he joins us, we can all see he’s nervous as hell. He’s pacing, shaking his hands back and forth at the wrists, like he’s going to loosen them up for some great physical task ahead of him.

  “You know what’s stupid?” he asks me, because I’m still his best friend, even though that means something different now. He smiles, foolish. “I couldn’t stop thinking last night about my Civic. About how I’m going to miss just getting in and driving it.”

  I smile encouragingly back at him while loading my pistol. “You’ve been pressed into greater things, Rafe.”

  “I’d rather be pressed into my Honda,” he says, and we all laugh, because we need it.

  Outside, the crowd is loud, screaming and shouting, waiting to see Raphael. They’re waiting for his State of the Union address, even though all of them know the State of the Union is Crap. Raphael watches me shove the magazine back into my pistol. He looks tired and way older than just a few weeks ago, back when we were just juniors at Boston College. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I say. “You’re worried about the audience? They’re just impatient.”

  “Is it an audience, or is it a mob?” His runs his fingers through his brown mop of hair again and again, leaving tracks of anxiety behind. “This is crazy. I’m nineteen. My dog won’t even listen to me.”

  This is such a lie that we all jump in to correct him. Jules’s voice is fond: “Raphael, everyone loves you. Everyone listens to you. That’s why you’re here.” What she doesn’t say but means is, Raphael is the only thing that keeps us from being a bunch of armed teens. We need him. More than his Honda needs him.

  The door opens. It’s the oldest person I’ve seen in the past two days: some guy in his late thirties. The oldest person alive, anyway. He looks at Raphael and smiles a tight smile—he’s nervous too, but like everyone, he loves Raphael. He’s probably read his blog. The world has. “Mr. President?”

  Rafe closes his eyes at the title.

  “It’s time to roll,” says Cayden, who never could tell when someone needs a second to friggin’ catch their breath and get used to the idea of addressing a crowd of fifty thousand.

  Raphael looks at me, and his expression contains the pain of every single life that’s been lost over this. “Are we terrorists or revolutionaries, Matt?”

  I hold his gaze for a long moment. “Something had to be done. People were dying. Someone had to do something.” I holster my gun with a soft snick.

  Raphael bites his lip, and I wonder how I could’ve ever thought he looked old. But there’s no turning back. We lead Raphael to the balcony doors, and as we stand inside them, the sound of the crowd outside is deafening. Raphael shakes hands with me, really formally, because he knows just like me that he might be going out to his death. And he knows I’m going with him, either way.

  Thirtysomething guy pushes open the balcony door, and I walk out first, in front of Rafe, just in case someone’s got a gun out there. [2]The crowd goes quieter when they see me. I survey their faces. They’re young, young faces everywhere—teens like us. Maybe there aren’t any older people left.

  Raphael steps out from behind me and leans into the microphone set up for him. He smiles as if he’s not afraid. “Hi, America. Did you miss me?”

  The crowd goes absolutely wild. Old America is dead.

  THE SUMMER ENDS IN SLAUGHTER

  by Tessa Gratton

  I read a line in a guidebook when I was in Wales about an old ritual where somebody would knock on your door wearing a horsehead. I wrote it on my hand and [1]thought, horsehead! kissing! obviously! —Tessa

  On the first night we slaughter animals for the winter.

  I walk behind my father, carrying a shallow bowl of blood. Mother and I drained it from one of the chickens moments ago, and it’s still warm.

  We are a chain of people weaving through the field. Father first, then me, then my mother and sisters with black veils over their faces. The rest of the town comes behind, trailing back to the edge of the trees. We are a snake, a serpent of frost, of death, searching out the oldest of the cows, the ill hogs, the troublemaking goats. When Father chooses a beast for death, he turns to me and dips his fingers into the cooling blood. I murmur, “Blood to mark,” and he replies, “God protect us.” He smears a widdershins circle onto every forehead—enough to feed us throughout the long dark of the year.

  Oldest sons lead the animals away to the shambles, and there they wait for us.

  It is the first night of Samhain, and the grass is dead. Trees spit scarlet and orange leaves to the earth, turning the fields to fire. There will be no more free grazing, no more evenings lying out among the sheep, staring at the stars with my sisters and whispering predictions for each other’s husbands. Nights will be spent huddled by the hearth fire at home, wrapped in my sisters’ arms beneath blankets rubbed with evergreen needles and dried rosemary to keep bad dreams away.

  “Blood to mark,” I say again and again. We kill many this season, for the cunning man in Rose Spring says it will be a rough winter. My mother looked to the crows this morning and agreed.

  Children at the end of the line gather handfuls of dry grass and their favorite leaves to toss onto the fires tomorrow, and I hear their laughter and nervous giggling. Tonight it is safe, but soon the spirits will come, the devils and goblins hungry for our winter harvest.

  Last, we come to the horse pasture. Here we do not go to the dying or troubled. Father pushes through the herd for Fourth Wind, a stallion in his prime. Gray as a ghost and proud, Wind’s nostrils flare at the scent of the blood in my bowl. I hate this, the feeling of loss twisting my stomach. Wind has sired beautiful horses, and I’ve raced over the hills on his back, thrilled and terrified.

  Two men step forward to restrain him. One is Rhun, my neighbor’s oldest son. [2]He has dark eyes and a slow smile that makes me glance away. He holds one hand out to me, shaking his head to keep me back. Wind rears, and my father’s shoulder knocks me so that my blood bowl sloshes.

  Ropes wind around the horse’s neck, and Father quickly marks a dark red circle over the slash of white starring Wind’s brow.

  My face hurts from holding back the ache. But a horse must be slaughtered. The dead must eat this winter, too. Rhun leans forward and wipes his thumb down my cheek. “You have blood on your face,” he says with a frown.

  . . .

  The second night we burn their bones.

  The day’s been spent killing and butchering, salting some for the year and doling parts out to the families who share the herds. We’ve been baking, too, and stringing woven grass around the bonefire as Rhun and his brothers build up the tower of wood. Old Miss Marion’s cauldron waits like a chunk of nighttime, waits for Fourth Wind’s head.

  Icy wind blows through town, promising to keep cold our meat over the night. The smell of death wipes the last scent of flowers from the sky. I bundle dry lavender and the last of my dill together and pin them to my sisters’ collars. Between gusts of blood and cold, the relaxing perfume trickles up.

  I take a final bucket of water to Fourth Wind, where he’s tied at the edge of town. He does not drink, though I smooth his mane, feeling my fingers weave through his coarse hair. He rolls his eyes so I see the white all around and I want to free him, to untie the hobbles around his front legs and slap his flank until he runs faster than he ever has. But not even a horse can run from the dead.

  A hand touches my back and I shudder. I close my eyes, not knowing if a human being stands behind me until his warm breath skims my neck. “The wind is too cold for you to go without your hood, Riana.”

  “I wanted him to know me,” I whisper, watching Fourth Wind’s eyes.

&
nbsp; Turning me by my shoulders, Rhun makes me face him. “When he comes for you tomorrow, will you go with him?”

  “Everyone will.” My hands are shaking, and I tuck my arms over my chest, burying my cold fingers against my ribs.

  “But you...” Rhun tightens his grip on my shoulders. “If he comes for you first, will you dance at his side? Will you walk with him into the arms of the dead? Will you help him be strong to survive till morning?”

  I stand with my lips apart, barely breathing. “Yes.”

  When he kisses me there is no warmth. Our lips are as cold as the rest of us.

  We go separately back to the fires as the sun sets and the roar of flames draws us in. Barley ale is passed, and bones, too. We suck at marrow and throw the hollow bones onto the fires.

  The moon rises, and we feast on roasted pig. Aaron stands near the cauldron with his fiddle and plays hard and fast. Mother drags Father to dance, and my littlest sister shrieks with laughter, clapping in time with her friends. I toss rosemary and evergreen into the fires, changing the smoke, and for a while at least I forget the horse as I whirl and laugh with the rest of my town. Tonight is the second night, when we feast and celebrate and toss out the bones, just us and us and us; no dead, no haunting devils, no goblins pulling skirts and clawing ankles.

  . . .

  The sun rises for the third day, and we rise too, from shallow sleeping, from prophecy dreams and alesoaked nightmares. I whisper my dream to my closest sister: I am watching her wedding from above, as though I float in the wind. I feel free and happy, and she looks up at me from beneath her flower-crown. With a smile, she beckons me to join her. I fly down, and when I take her hand it bleeds.