Outside In (4 page)

SIX

Cottage Country

Choir block
, last block of the day. No choir. No choir teacher. Everyone was still being kind, and the vice-principal had suggested she just go home early. Once that would have been a treat. Back in ancient times, a month ago. Back when home was normal.

Now, not so much.

“I think I'll go to the resource center and catch up on some homework.”

The veep looked impressed.

The resource center was quiet and deserted. Lynn settled into one of the armchairs and took out her phone. She was on Clive's cellphone plan. How much longer would he keep paying for that? She didn't even know how much it cost. She was going to have to know how much things cost. She took that worry and shelved it.

There were texts, lots of texts, from Kas and Celia. They were being excellent friends, reporting regularly. The big news, overwhelming even the choir competition itself, was that big-hair, big-voice Alexis was discovered drunk in the room of some boy from McMinville and she was being sent home but first they had to wait for her mother to come and get her.

Would Celia be singing the solo? What was going to happen to Alexis? What was going to happen to the boy? Where the heck was McMinville? Lynn sent back appropriate replies full of punctuation, but even as she typed she found her mind wandering.

Actually, her mind had wandered for days, and always the wander ended with a girl in a kilt drinking rain. She had gone over every bit of their odd conversation.

Blossom. She idly typed it into the phone. An old TV series. What kind of series? When? She waited for a message from a cloud. Oh, this was way too slow. She pushed herself out of the armchair and sat down at a computer.

Blossom. A science definition, a singer named Blossom Dearie, something about start-ups. Peaseblossom, a fairy in Shakespeare. Fairies, hmm. Click, click, click.
A species completely independent of humans or angels.
She seemed independent, all right.
Noted for mischief and malice toward humankind.
Not noted for saving their lives, apparently.

On the basis of the evidence she was probably not a fairy.

The real question, and there was no link for that, was when and where was Blossom going to turn up again? What and where and if? Bus stop? Well, it would have to be. Unless she was going to be down by the lake. Should Lynn go there and have a look? Today? No, probably today was too soon. When Blossom said, “Next time,” she probably meant next week, or even a few weeks.

The buzzer ripped through Lynn's thoughts, and she went to her locker to pack up, to send a few more exclamation marks to the Diode and to delay what she was sure was going to be a disappointment at the bus stop.

Blossom wasn't at the bus stop. She was right outside the front door of the school, bouncing on the balls of her feet and smiling with her whole face. Students flowed around her like she was some rock in a river.

She handed Lynn an envelope. “He said you could visit. Open it.”

The envelope had a window, like a bill, and it was covered with intricate doodles. Through the plastic window Lynn could see the message:
you're invited
.

It was too pretty to rip, so Lynn eased open the flap. The card inside was a match of lacy doodles.

What: A Visit with Blossom and Larch

Where: The Cottage

When: Today

“This is beautiful.”

“Larch made it. He spent all morning. He's very excited. Me, too. Last night I talked to Fossick for a long time. I told him all about the bus stop and the concert and you and wanting a friend. He was worried because of you being a citizen but I told him you were trustworthy and he said he thought I had good judgment and of course things had to change as I got older because nothing gold can stay. He said I could invite you for a visit, but we shouldn't overwhelm you so it is just me and Larch. For a friendly visit. Can you come?”

A chance to untwist some of the pretzels? Of course she would go.

From the moment that they ducked into a driveway beside the dry cleaner, it was another zigzag route, as though there was a shadow grid underneath the official grid of the city.

Lynn picked questions at random.

“Where's this cottage?”

“In the Lingerlands. You'll see.” Blossom stopped so abruptly that Lynn ran into the back of her. “This is an important part of the friendly visit. You can never tell anyone the location of the cottage.”

“Got it. Solemn vow.” Lingerlands. This was moving quickly back into glurb territory.

“What's with the uniform?”

“It's a citizen disguise.”

“Why not just wear pants and a hoodie or something?”

“I used to. That's what the boys wear. But Tron found this. All the parts — shirt, jacket, skirt, raincoat, even shoes. The whole thing was a throwaway and it's so beautiful. It all goes together properly so that I can be invisible.”

“But why do you need to be in disguise?”

“It's important that we're not noticed.”

“Why?”

“We're not official.”

Official? What did that mean? “Who's we?”

“Our family. We're Fossick, my father, and Tron and Larch, my brothers.”

Each answer opened out into more questions, like a flow chart.

“What's the deal about citizens? Are you, like, immigrants from some other country or something?”

The explanation that followed was as zigzag as the path they were following. But as Blossom described living “off the grid” and a complicated life of “finds” and the rules and work and the garden, the truth hit Lynn.

A secret location, gardening, making a living without a job?

Of course. It was a marijuana grow-op.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. This family with the weird names? They might be bad news. And weren't those places full of toxic chemicals and, like, guns? What was that news story? Some grow-op in the interior had been guarding their marijuana fields with a grizzly bear.

“… Fossick says we come from under the ground like the strong grass and the lovely trees. Here we are. The Lingerlands.”

It wasn't a glurb world after all, but the familiar reservoir park. People in bright clothes played pitch and putt. A Chinese senior walked backwards up a gentle hill. There were some warning signs about coyotes but no mention of grizzlies.

This would be the place to bail. This was so not making a good choice.

But it was only going to be a visit. Like a field trip. And besides, Blossom seemed the opposite of dangerous.

“How much farther?”

“We're close now. We came the long way round for security. We change our path often.”

They walked along the running path for a few minutes and then Blossom, with a glance forward and back, slipped into the tangle of untended shrubs and ground cover that ringed the path. Lynn followed, sharp twigs grabbing for her hair, and vines tangling themselves around her feet. Down a gentle dip there was another path, narrow and rough like the path of animals, another concrete wall, another ring of the reservoir. Along that wall were things you would never notice because they were boring — metal screens, pipes, ducts, squares of metal.

Blossom paused at one of the screens, pulled a key from her pocket and pulled it across the metal net, creating an eerie, shimmering sound.

“That lets Larch know we're here,” she said.

A few steps later, she pushed aside some hanging vines, revealing a square the size and shape of a door. She slid aside a thin metal strip at the top left of the door to reveal a keypad. She punched some keys and there was a soft but official click, and the door edged open.

“This is it?”

Blossom nodded. “Don't tarry. We like to get in and out neatly.”

Lynn hesitated. Tarry? Who said tarry? Blossom grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over the threshold. “Come
on
.”

The door clicked definitively shut behind them.

Inside there was no dragon lair, no tapping of elvish miners, no stalagmite-encrusted cave. Lynn's first impression was that it was like being inside a machine. It was warm and there was a low hum. Small lights glinted on the ceiling. Pipes snaked overhead. It was all hard-edged, metal, businesslike. It was very clean. It smelled like nothing.

Blossom led the way through a labyrinth of pillars and pipes.

“Watch your head.”

Then they came to a blank white wall. As Blossom pressed on it and it began to slide open, the story in Lynn's head changed again. How Nancy Drew was this?

As the wall opened, it was like the curtain parting on a set that was a combination of trailer, tent, kid's hidey-hole under the dining-room table, animal den, garage sale and attic junk room.

Everything was layered. Rug on rug. The walls were a collage of pictures, maps, charts and small shelves covered in little creatures made of nuts and bolts. There were five or six chairs that seemed to be made of slotted-together cardboard, piled with cushions. The walls were a patchwork of doors.

There were strings of Christmas lights looped around. A shaft of sunlight reflecting off a mirror set into a big pipe in the ceiling made a spotlight on the floor. A table, three doors long, was covered with tools and tin cans full of bits of things, and a big pile of empty toilet-paper rolls. Stalagmites of books grew up from the floor. Wire baskets hanging from the ceiling held fruits and vegetables, packets and packages. In one corner five bicycles were neatly parked.

“Where are the plants?” said Lynn.

“What plants?”

Recalculating! Nothing to do with a grow-op. “Um, house plants?”

“Oh. There isn't really enough light for plants inside. We have a garden, though. Some day we'll take you there. Do you have plants at your house?”

Lynn did not get a chance to explain the skeleton fig tree in their living room, because one of the doors — the doors that seemed like a wall — opened. A boy and a dog stepped into the hodgepodge room. The dog looked like a map of an island world, white with precise black patches. He stood knee-high next to the boy and seemed to be smiling.

The boy had long, fine, curly, glass-colored hair and a pale face with a high forehead. There was something familiar about the face but Lynn couldn't place it. He was hard to read.

How old was he? Younger than her or older? He was taller, but plump like some of those short boys at school who hadn't stretched out yet. There was something about the way he stood that wasn't like a boy, yet not like a girl, either. He hunched his shoulders and stared at the floor like a shy kindergartener, but he was dressed like a man, in a suit, a rumpled shirt and a bright tie with slashes of color.

Blossom put her hand on his shoulder. “Larch, this is my friend Lynn.”

The boy nodded. “The visitor. Welcome. When we have a visitor we tidy up before she comes, we welcome her, we introduce Artdog, this is Artdog, who is named Artdog because he looks like a piece of op art, short for optical art, which is a style of art mostly in black and white, we offer her something to eat and then we talk.”

Artdog whapped his tail on the floor and Larch reached behind one of the many curtains and brought out a plate. He handed it to Lynn.

Neatly arranged were a package of raisins, a carrot, a piece of lettuce, a chocolate cream puff and a small lime yogurt.

“There is construction on the Mary Hill Bypass. What does the visitor think about that?”

All the time he looked away, into the distance or down to the floor.

Lynn bit into the carrot and glanced at Blossom, who gave her a small nod.

“Thank you, Larch. Um, about the Mary Hill Bypass. I don't know too much about it. What are they constructing?”

Larch stood considering. “The traffic report didn't say. The traffic report said that traffic is congested back to the Delta Works Yard and drivers are advised to use Highway 10 instead. What do you think? Is this a good conversation for a visitor?”

Lynn was stopped in her tracks before she realized that the question was directed at Blossom.

“Yes, it's up-to-date and you asked the visitor's opinion. Well done.” She turned to Lynn. “We don't have many visitors, so Larch and I practiced. How are we doing?”

At this point Larch turned his face to Lynn, not quite meeting her gaze. His eyes were blueberry blue. His face was scrubbed — not just clean but scrubbed of cool, scrubbed of any mask. He looked like an angel on a Christmas card. Not a cute angel but an art angel.

“You're doing great. I feel very welcomed. Here are two more things about visitors. Usually everybody sits down and shares the food.”

“Oh, good,” said Larch, reaching over to grab the cream puff and launching himself into a chair. Artdog jumped into his lap. The cardboard must have been stronger than it looked. He licked his fingers and declared, to some corner of the room, “Larch loves cream puffs.”

Blossom held up one finger. “Who loves cream puffs?”

Larch gave his head a shake. “I love cream puffs.”

“Good,” said Blossom. “Come on, Lynn, pick a chair.”

Lynn fell into a sea of cushions and plucked one question from the mystery that settled around her.

“Where are we? What is this place? I mean, what was it before it was your house?”

“It's one of the forgotten places. Fossick says it was some kind of construction storage area when they were building the reservoir. It got walled off.”

“How did you guys find it?”

“Fossick discovered it, before I was born. He likes to look around behind things. He says that even in a city there are many places unaccounted for. I've lived here my whole life.”

“So what about your other brother? Tron, was it? How old is he?”

“He's seventeen.”

Larch's face darkened. “He's seventeen and he's bad! He's not doing his work.” He started to flap his hands.

Blossom leaned over and put both hands on the top of Larch's head, making a cap with her fingers. “We can talk about that later.”