Odin's Murder (2 page)

“I’m doing dishes.” At his chuckle, I flash a wry grin and push through the heavy exterior doors. The grassy quad isn’t empty, but the students lurk in the shade, save for a brave few blinking against the glare from their campus maps. Most of us have a free period after lunch. Marcus stands under a tree, ice pack melting on some bruised knuckles. His left eye is purple and swollen. A few guys stand around him, and I can see their lips moving with the usual sidekick muttering. The tall girl isn’t around.

I find a corner of my own, a quiet perch on the edge of some steps, and slide the treasure from my pocket. The silver letter opener winks at me in the sunlight, the polished steel edge honed glittery sharp. I rub my thumb over the point, a smile pulling on my split lip. Not bad loot for such a small fight. To the victor goes the spoils.

2.

Memory

Julian, in his typical obsessive habit, is organizing the ridiculous number of books he’s brought with him.  Under his breath he mutters the author’s names. “Saki, Salinger, Steinbeck, Shelly....”

   “You really had to bring all of those?” I peer into the mirror on the back of the door, and apply another layer of kohl liner under my eyes.

“I may need them for reference,” he says, plucking Frankenstein out by its spine and shifting it before Grapes of Wrath. “Not all of us have a photographic memory.”

“You need fiction? For reference? Besides, we have laptops. JFGI, Julian.”

He ignores me, but he’s my twin, and I can read him like a Dr. Seuss book. He doesn’t know what it means, and it serves him right, since he hasn’t read anything published in this century. Right now, he’s so anxious to get his books organized before our first classes tomorrow, he’s twitching.

“So what happened in the cafeteria?” he asks.

“It’s your fault, you know,” I say to his back, just to bait him. “If you hadn’t been late none of it would have happened.”

He scratches his spine with his middle finger.

“Marcus was being a dick. I was about to go off on him, but that  kid with the shaved head, the big one, came out of nowhere and started beating the pulp out of him.” I’d stood there, watching them fight, fascinated by their raw, feral movements and the way the guy from the serving line’s back flexed as he pummeled my mistake from last year. His quick feet and powerful punches stirred something dangerous in the pit of my stomach even now, just thinking about it.

Satisfied with the mirror’s display, I flop down on my back on the other bed, but then frown at my hands, and pick at the chip in my nail polish. “I hope he doesn’t get kicked out. I’d like to thank him.”

“Well,” Julian gestures to the closet across the room. “His stuff is still here. Wait around and you can either thank him or say goodbye.”

“He’s your roommate?”

“Yeah, Ethan something,” he says. “I only met him for a minute though. Seems quiet enough. Didn’t bring much with him.”

“Not all of us pack our entire room for a month-long college seminar.”

“You know what I mean. Look, hardly any clothes, no books. I think I saw him unpack a camera and stick it in his desk drawer. Nothing else.”

“At least you only have one roommate to deal with. The girl we’re stuck with is freaky little. I mean tiny. And weird.”

“
She’s
a freak,” he says. “Pot meet kettle.” He glares at my hair, freshly dyed to blue-black, and my shoes, red platform mules that give me an inch on him. He may travel with an entire library, but I carry style like a high school girl collects emoticon apps.

I roll on my side. “She’s squirrely or something. Too much junk everywhere. Piles of crap. Rocks and shells.” I gesture to his bookshelves. “Kind of like you.”

“And are you sure rooming with Sonja is such a good idea? I heard she was in Burnett’s office so much last year they were going to let her bunk in the admin building. Where is she anyway?”

The door swings open and the boy from the cafeteria appears, without the counselor who had escorted him from the dining hall. His lip is swollen and fat. I want to press my finger against it, to see if it would hold the print, like an overripe plum.

“You,” he says.

“Me,” I say, artificial bright, because he’s staring at me with a look harder than ice, and I realize I’m on his bed. I sit up. “So they let you go, huh?”

The boy shrugs and tosses a jacket on the chair by the little desk. “For now. What are you doing here?”

I cross my legs, and my skirt rides up higher. His eyes are glued to them, and he doesn’t care that I know he’s looking, so I pretend not to notice.

“I’m Memory, Julian’s sister.” I hold out my hand. “Thanks for kicking Marcus’ ass.”

“Ethan,” he grunts. “No problem.” He ignores my hand.

I’m stung by his rudeness, as most guys are receptive to that smile, but I don’t show my irritation. I stand, smoothing my palms over my hips, straightening my skirt, and he follows the movement with his eyes. He steps away, letting me move past, and takes my place, lounging back. He’s too huge for the dormitory bed, shoes hanging off the end. His feet are big, too.

I raise an eyebrow, but Julian just shrugs. “Well, I’ve got a another roommate to wait for, and—”

“And clothes to shrink?”

I flip off my brother, ignoring the snort of laughter from the bed. “I was going to say, hide my belongings because the other one looks like she’ll start nesting in my sock drawer.”

“Be nice,” Julian says. I stall as he opens his laptop, hoping to see the look on his face when he actually Googles what “JFGI” means—because he will—but he’s waiting for me to leave, unmoving.

I blow him a kiss. “Always.”   

*

               I cross the grassy area between the two buildings, breathing the fresh air. The girls’ dormitory sits across the courtyard from the boys’, a mirror of architecture, though not smell. I punch in the security code. The door opens with a click and I enter the first floor hallway of the dorm. Cheap perfume, augmented by the heavy heat, takes the place of sweaty shoes and teenage boy. My room is halfway down the hall, the fashion gods on my side, not assigning me to an upper floor like last year. The building is too old for an elevator, and climbing stairs in heels isn’t fun.

The door to my room is ajar, some sort of Bollywood pop music oozing out the crack, and I groan under the sitar’s whine. I can deal with the clutter, I’ve lived with my brother for eighteen years, but the playlist is going to be an issue.

“Hi,” I say, layering a polite smile on top of my lipstick. I glance over the room, noticing the changes since lunch: three more piles of polished stones and one with sea glass, and another tweedy sweater slung over the back of the chair. “Is Sonja here yet?”

“I haven’t seen her.” Faye sits at her desk, sorting through some kind of crap littering the top. Feathers, maybe. “Have you?”

“No.” I slip my shoes off and sit on the edge of my bed. The mattress is new, good springs and cushy with my foam pad from home, Mom’s nice sheets and two extra pillows. I hope Julian will be comfortable in his, and that his roommate doesn’t snore. “She said she would text me,” I say, checking my phone again.

“You know her?”

“From last year. We weren’t roommates, but SHP is a small program. By the time it’s over you’ll know everyone. She and I were going to do the registration thing together. Have you already been through the line?”

Faye nods. “How many times have you been here?”

“Just last summer. I came with my brother, Julian. You’ll meet him later. He’ll be the one with his nose shoved in a book.”

She looks up and brushes her hair aside. She’s got pretty eyes, wide and dark. Her face is okay, too, for being so tiny and round. My fingers itch to get mascara on her.

“Sonja’s probably just saying hello to people.” I check my phone and send her another quick text.

“She’s friendly, then?”

I nod. “She’s really nice. She’s got a pretty incredible reputation, though.”

“How so?” Faye’s curiosity seems genuine.

“Well, she’s smart. Like really smart. Early admission to Vassar, entering as a sophomore even without SHP credits, all of that. I heard she’s had a gallery showing in New York City for her paintings. And don’t even get me started on how freaking beautiful she is.” I pluck the bottle of black nail polish off my dresser.
Licorice Lingerie
, it’s called. “But then there are these rumors about her...”

   Faye drops whatever she has in her hands (they clatter over the desk—not feathers then) and leans forward. “What kind of rumors?”

We’re going to get along fine.

“The typical ones.” I shake the nail polish bottle, the rattle ball inside matching the music’s beat. “Like she and Roger Baker were caught half-naked behind the Science lab, which I believe, and also that her hair is a weave—it’s not, that’s pure jealousy—but there is another one that maybe she isn’t really gifted, like not enough to be at this program. I heard from Tammy Lawrence, who said that Megan Chambers heard Roger say that her family gave some of their land rights to the school when it was built, and some founding by-law allows descendants to go to any program they want.”

“Really?”

“I know. It’s just stupid, for a ton of reasons. I mean, she’s black, or half, anyway. And this college is over two hundred years old. Even if her ancestors did own land here, which was kind of rare at the time, would their kids have been allowed to go to a white school?”

“This building isn’t that old,” she protests.

“‘The dorms were built in 1928,’” I quote. “‘The institute was founded by Moravian settlers in 1766 when Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg expanded his parish from Pennsylvania.’” The rest of the memory fades out of focus.

“Are you into history, then?”

“Oh, no. It’s on the plaque. On the statue outside.” I wave my drying fingertips toward the window. “I have an eidetic memory.”

“You remember everything you read?”

“I can picture everything I’ve seen. Everyone calls it photographic recall, but that’s not really the right term.”

“Wow,” Faye says. “How far back can you remember?”

I smile. I get asked that a lot. “Most everything is a blur until I was a year old or so. I remember Mom’s face, my brother bawling, and a baby spoon with mushy goop.”

“That’s neat.”

“It’s as much a curse as a gift, trust me. You don’t want to remember every day of being thirteen.”

She shudders.

“So why are you here?” I ask. “What makes you an
exceptional
?” I roll my eyes at the word the camp emphasizes in their pamphlets and website pages.

She blushes and ducks her head. “I don’t know if it’s that special—”

“Of course it is, that’s why you were invited here,” I assure her.

“Well, I’m good with pictographs and symbols. I decipher cuneiform and do a lot of rune translation.”

“Wow. And you’re starting college next year? As a freshman?”

“Well, technically I’ll be starting as a second year at Gothenburg. I’ve done some early coursework. At least, for the classes that dad wrote the textbooks for.” She wrinkles her nose. “Usually toddlers have the alphabet on their daycare walls. I had hieroglyphics.”

I blink, remembering the name card taped to the door. Faye Jarvi.  “Your father is Jonathan Jarvi. The archaeologist.”

“
Y
arvi,” she corrects my pronunciation. “How did you—”

“I saw his article in National Geographic, about the paintings they found in Afghanistan. You’re the little girl. In that one picture where they’re rebuilding the giant statues.” Her mouth is still the same, a little cupid’s bow with quirked up corners.

“The Bamiyan caves,” she says, returning to her objects. “I was four.” She drops several stones into a tiny mesh bag, and knots the string around the top.

I do some quick math in my head. She has to be seventeen, though she looks thirteen at most. I stare at the awful sweater on her chair, wondering if it had sentimental value. “I guess I’ll go take a shower and change for dinner. Don’t forget the meeting at eight.”

“You’re changing? The student advisor said dinner was casual.”

She looks panicked. She’s wearing some mess of a skirt and slouchy tights and a baggy tunic, too hot for early June weather, this far south. Her closet holds the same, wool and heavy knits.

I stand, rummaging in my own closet for my robe and my basket of toiletries. “Nothing in life is ever casual.”

“No, I suppose not.” She murmurs something under her breath, not English. She’s poking at piles of little plant parts, dried heads of flowers, and seed pods. I wonder if any of them are poisonous, but I keep my mouth closed.

3.

Expectations

The student lounge of the English department smells like cheese puffs and fermented cola, with a layer of hair product on top. It’s a huge step up from the sweat and piss stench of the rec room at the state facility, so I’m not complaining. I look in the corners for the closed circuit cameras, feeling vulnerable when I don’t see them.

There are girls everywhere. Short hair, long hair, short shorts, long skirts, glasses, no glasses, thick girls, thin girls, maybe two to every single guy. Most are joking with each other, quick eye contact and slight smiles when I edge past, no fear. A few whispers, recognition of the fight this afternoon. I’m conscious of the bruise on my lip. The redheaded guy sits in the corner, cronies still at his side. I ignore him.

Zoe, our student advisor, stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by a circle of second-hand couches and chairs, telling us about herself and what to expect over the next month. She’s enthusiastic, a three year program student come back for more. She’s heavy, but in a nice curvy way, and has a little brown tribal tattoo behind her ear.

“Welcome to the Scholastic Honors Program! I can already tell that this is going to be a great group!” She smiles at a group of girls stuffed together on a couch.

They giggle in reply, as though they’ve shared some inside joke in the four hours that we’ve been here. Girls. They group up faster than neighborhood gangs in a cell block.