A Fistful of Sky (6 page)

This time I cried.

She put her arm around me and just listened.

It turned out that it was noon on Sunday—I’d been sick all day and all night Saturday. No wonder July was exhausted. I told her to go home and get some rest and I’d come over and make her a big dinner.

“No lie? You’re feeling that much better?”

“Yeah. It’s over.”

“Call me if it’s not. I’ll hang out by the phone today.”

But the sickness had gone. I cleaned up all the evidence.

I made July the most fantastic dinner in my repertoire, then went home and waited for my family.

They were happy. They liked Gerry, who had adjusted well to an onslaught of LaZelles, and had even endured Uncle Tobias’s Polaroid habits with grace—I saw the pictures; the guy had actually done silly poses with various of us—true class. The family had had a great time in L.A. “How were you, Gyp?” Dad asked me.

“I was fine,” I lied.

monday I went back to work. It was finals week before Christmas Break, and the Learning Center was swamped with people who wanted help learning everything they should have studied all semester.

Tuesday I took finals of my own.

Wednesday night, after a shift that seemed twice as long as normal, I put down the headphones in the study carrel and glanced around the Learning Center.

When had the sun gone down? Why was the place empty and dark? Had everyone told me they were leaving?

Only two more days of finals week left, and not that many finals; most of the students who could had already left town for Christmas vacation, so the Center had been less busy than usual. Still, for it to be empty—

I remembered some signals from a couple of the other tutors. L.D. had tapped my shoulder and finger-waved when I looked up, and Esther had handed me a Twinkie, which she often did before she left for the night. She was the only person I knew who opened a package of Hostess and ate just one of the two treats inside. Jose had thumped the back of my head. He always did that, and I always hated it, which made him laugh.

I had been submerged in listening to a new learning tape, and I had lost track of everything else while I focused on how I was going to help two of my English-as-a-Second-Language students study.

Now I realized that half the lights were out, a signal to the students that it was time to leave the building before we closed for the night. Nobody else was around. Beyond the windows, the sky was dark.

I pushed my chair back. The scrape of chair feet on carpet sounded loud with all other sound gone except the hush of the air circulation system.

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. My stomach lurched. It had been doing that since the flu attack last weekend.

I stood up, stretched, and grabbed my backpack. I shoved my notebook inside.

Something skreeked against a windowpane.

A jacaranda tree leaned close to the windows outside the computer commons, but this noise came from the front window.

I turned and saw the flash of a pale face against the darkness beyond the window.

Tension clutched my chest. I couldn’t find my breath.

Why was someone staring in? What did they want?

The face vanished.

My heart stuttered into motion. I breathed again, but too fast.

I didn’t know if it was a man or a woman. Was it someone normal, or a

member of my family who could wish themselves here?

What if it was someone who wasn’t normal? Lately there were rumors about a campus rapist. I didn’t know anybody who had actually been attacked. But what if—?

I was alone in the center. The door probably wasn’t even locked. We closed at eight, and maybe that was when everybody else left, but I was still here, and whoever left last was supposed to lock up.

But usually we left together. When there were six of us walking down to the beach parking lot, which was pretty far away, I felt safe. Going down there alone after dark was not my idea of fun. Why hadn’t I been paying attention?

I raced to the door and flipped the lock. Then I cruised through the center, checking to make sure I was actually alone. Once in a while someone hid under a desk or behind a shelf, and spent the night with books, study aids, computers, testing materials, tape players, school supplies, a couple drinking fountains, his and her bathrooms, telephones, and all kinds of administrative filing nobody but staff was supposed to see. Sometimes things were missing in the morning. A favorite target was the receptionist’s cashbox. Last year someone had vandalized the center, trashed our tools and sprayed orange mottoes across some of the walls and cabinets. We couldn’t understand it. All we did here was try to help people.

I didn’t find anybody inside. I checked both rest rooms. Empty.

I went to the cloakroom and got my jacket, put it on. The center was heated, but I felt cold anyway. I used my password on the center computer to access the timeclock, and clocked out. It was late, almost nine. Later than I was supposed to be working; Phil Reece, the director, might cut my hours on the Friday shift to make up for it.

I wanted to get home, where I could cook something warm and fortifying.

I stopped at the door and leaned to peek out the side window.

Someone tall stood out there, across the quad, under one of the orange streetlights that lit the paths of the western campus. Light shone down on a dark head, black-clothed shoulders. The body looked broad, all the clothes dark in the Halloween light. The head tilted, and the face came out of shadows, a pale oval with two dark pits for eyes.

A chill zipped down my spine. I jerked back from the door.

What was he waiting for? Me? Why?

Nobody ever waited for me.

Maybe it was just an evening walker. The concrete campus paths were well lit, a destination for late night and early morning dog walkers and joggers who lived nearby and didn’t want to fight traffic.

I peeked through the window again.

The figure still stood under the light, its face turned toward the door.

There was no back way out of here, not with the keys I had; a door led deeper into the building, on into the library proper, but we didn’t have access to it. If I had had Beryl’s talents, I could have sweet-talked the library door lock into opening for me; with Flint’s gifts, I could have just slid sideways a little and come out somewhere else. If I were Opal, I could have made myself look seven feet tall and loaded with muscles; Jasper probably could have whistled something weird and made the lurker decide to leave, but I was me, Gypsum, the normal one, and I didn’t know what to do.

Maybe it was just someone thinking hard about something. Maybe I should just walk out and head for my car, in that beach lot, four staircases and a quarter mile away. There would be people down by the beach. Maybe. The fog was coming in the way it did most winter evenings, and casual strollers had probably gone home, out of the cold wet night. The Pelican Bar & Grill down there should still be open. I could find people to lose myself among. If I got that far.

I ventured a third look out the window.

The figure had moved closer, halfway across the pink concrete quad.

I checked the door to make sure it was locked and retreated behind the divider that separated secretarial/receptionist services from the rest of the center. I ducked down behind one of the secretary desks, then peered over the top.

Silhouetted against the orange light, the figure pressed close to the window by the door.

I reached up and grabbed the phone, crouched down with it in my lap. I sat cradling the phone for a couple minutes. I could just walk out of here. Probably nothing would happen. Maybe it was one of my students who wanted to talk to me about something. Maybe it was some guy I had met in one of my art or writing classes who wanted my phone number, or something.

But how likely was that? Everybody liked me and nobody asked me out; story of my life. Except for Ian, a guy I’d met at one of Claire’s parties—her

apartment was so small that her parties maxed out at eight or ten people, and I never knew who I’d meet over there, but I had met Ian, and he was the only guy I’d met who had called me later—and I wasn’t sure what Ian wanted. Somebody who could sing harmony was the closest I could figure.

Anyway, why couldn’t whoever was out there ask me for my phone number in class, or during working hours?

Maybe it was somebody else.

I lifted the phone’s handset and punched Line One. As soon as I heard the dial tone, I called home.

Beryl answered. “Hello?”

“Hi,” I whispered.

“Is this an obscene call?” She sounded more interested than threatened. She had been coming up with creative answers to the problem of obscene calls, and she was always anxious to try a new one.

“No. It’s Gyp.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“I’m alone in the Learning Center, and I’m scared. There’s someone outside.”

She hesitated for a second, then said, “You want Jasper?”

Suddenly I wanted Jasper more than anyone else on Earth. “Is he home?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” She thunked the phone down. I heard her footsteps recede, and the murmur of the TV in the great hall, and Mama and Daddy speaking quietly to each other somewhere nearby. A picture of our house bloomed in my mind, home, yellow light, warmth that breathed up through iron scrollwork screens in the hardwood floor, scattered rugs, furniture old and new, so many comfortable places to sit and talk and eat and listen.

“Gyp?” Jasper’s voice warmed me, too.

“I’m scared.”

“Do you need me there right now or can you wait till I drive there?”

I hunched tighter. If he used power to transport himself here, he would be tired; even for Jasper, powerful as he was, the transport spell wasted way too much energy for casual use. “I don’t know. I think I can wait. There’s just this guy right outside. Staring in.” I peeked over the top of the desk again. The window was empty now. “Wait,” I whispered. “Maybe he’s

gone.”

“Go check.”

“Don’t,” said Beryl’s voice from a little farther away. “Don’t you feel that?”

“What?” Jasper asked her.

“Atmospherics! Something watching and waiting. Gyp, stay hidden.”

I pulled back into the footwell of Linda’s desk.

“I’ll take the motorcycle,” Jasper said. “Beryl, you stay on the line with Gyp. If anything happens, snag Flint and send him to her.”

Flint’s gifts were different from anybody else’s. He could transport without taxing himself energetically, sometimes; he used some technique none of the rest of the family understood. Only he had real trouble with direction and accuracy. He often didn’t end up where he was trying to go. every once in a while, though, he got it right. Better than never.

“I’m on my way,” Jasper said. Phone-handing-over sounds came over the line.

“Gyp?” Beryl asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m right here. I mean, I’m on the phone in the kitchen.” I pictured it; a yellow wall phone with a long curly cord that always got twisted up, Beryl nearby with the handset against her ear, maybe perched on the square red metal stool that had steps under it which folded out so you could climb up and grab things from high places. “Where are you, exactly?” my little sister asked.

Maybe she needed to know so she could try to send Flint to me if something happened. “I’m under the receptionist’s desk in the Learning Center.” Beryl had visited me at work. She knew the layout.

“Under it?”

“Crammed into the footwell,” I said. “Me and the phone.”

She giggled.

“Sure, you can laugh,” I whispered.

“Sorry!”

This was ridiculous. Why was I hiding under a desk? Well, but there were occasional stories, never confirmed by real sources like the school newspaper, about women who got raped after dark on campus. Somehow

I had always figured this didn’t apply to me, and I had walked blithely after dark, secure in my obliviousness and size. Would a rapist pick a fat victim? You never read about that in the news. It was always cheerleaders or beautiful coeds. Girls with long hair. Not friendly fat women with short curly hair.

For the millionth time I wished I had some sort of personal power. Opal could make herself appear so stunningly ugly in an instant that you’d cross a street to avoid her. Or she could just go invisible. Or make you think your hand was burned or had sprouted warty green skin.

My stomach rolled. Yeah, just what I needed. A flu relapse! Maybe I could scare off potential attackers with projectile vomit. Only I didn’t have much in my stomach. I hadn’t been very hungry since my sickness; nothing tasted good.

At this time of night it shouldn’t take Jasper more than fifteen minutes to get from our house to campus. I checked my watch. About ten after nine. But I hadn’t looked at the time when I made the phone call, so I didn’t know what that meant. What if the guy outside had given up and gone home? Wouldn’t Jasper give me a hard time for panicking? I hated having to ask somebody to rescue me.

What would the stranger do if he saw me? Break in through a window? Come after me?

When you really thought about it, you had to wonder why people didn’t break more windows. What was a little pane of glass in the face of determination to get into or out of a building? There was some kind of cultural inhibition against busting glass—well, burglar alarms mitigated against it, too—but wasn’t that weird?

“Gyp?”

I jerked. I’d forgotten I was holding the phone.

“Gyp? You there? You okay?” Beryl asked.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Sorry.” Again I thought about Jasper getting here and finding me hiding under a desk because of nothing. “What you said before, about atmospherics? What did you mean?”

“There’s some kind of—I don’t know, it’s like a shadow coming out of the phone.”

That sounded strange. “Is it still coming?”

“Yeah.”

In a weird way, that was reassuring. At least Jasper wouldn’t get mad at

me because of a false alarm.

Neither of us spoke.

Wait a sec. Flint just came in for cookies. Hey, Flint?” Beryl said. She cupped a hand over the phone so her conversation was muffled.