The Shells Of Chanticleer (9 page)

I didn’t, but nodded along anyway.

“I didn’t know that they were picking up my reactions to him, here, somehow, but pretty soon afterwards I get this huge packet in my mailbox, a thesis on why young woman need to pursue education before romance. I can still remember the title:
“Socioeconomic, Marital, and Reproductive Stages of a Woman’s Life, and their Effect on Feminine Academic Advancement.”
Seven hundred pages. It took me forever to read it. Forever. And they did not schedule me for any coursework until I finished it.”

“That’s hard core,” I exclaimed.

“And here’s the worst part. This Jackson guy tips back home the day after I got the packet. Gone! I’ll never see him again! So it’s not as if he was going to be around to make me nervous anymore. I still had to read all those theories about what keeps women back. That’s why I’m so behind now,” Violet whined.

“Did you learn anything?”

“Yes, I learned that when I get home I’m qualified to be a professor of women’s studies,” she smirked.

“The point is,” Zooey interjected, “Our work here is temporary. They don’t want us to be distracted from our coursework. Jackson was distracting you.”

“I can’t help it! I just can’t stay focused when I spot a distraction,” Violet cried, and then she put her head down on the table again, laughing. After a minute she quieted and picked her head back up.

“I don’t really care about reading; it’s no big deal. It’s a pleasure compared to the other thing they do to you here when you don’t progress.” She shuddered and then whispered to me behind her hand, “The shells. Just disgusting.”

I was confused. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not going to be the one to tell you,” Violet responded.

“Well, you’d better not,” Zooey warned. “You know she’s too new here.”

I giggled nervously. “Come on, stop, you’re scaring me. Tell me. What are the shells? Macaroni? I mean, bad macaroni? Like food poisoning?”

“No,” Zooey shook her head at me and then shut Violet down. “Change the subject, V.”

“Don’t worry,” Violet consoled me. “It’s fine, it’s no big deal. You’ll find out soon enough. Can’t throw everything at you all at once when you are new.”

But I was already bothered. I hated secrets that I wasn’t part of.

“But wait, Zooey, remember Katelyn’s hair? Oh wait, you were crying so much that day.…”

“Violet!” Zooey’s gaze bore into her friend with intensity. “STOP. IT.”

Violet sneered at Zooey but zipped her lips. The silence that followed was awkward. I felt it was my fault that Zooey was angry, but Violet was nonplussed.

“Anyway, back to boys,” said Violet. “After you have been here a while you will find it’s useless to get attached to anyone as people come and go quickly around here – leaving with no warning. It’s hopeless.”

“What about the staff? Who are they, and how do they know so much about us?” There was so much to figure out.

“Well,” said Zooey, “First thing is that they don’t come and go. This is their world and I’ve heard more than one say – when they didn’t know I was listening – that they don’t envy us at all, having to tip back to our universe and everything.”

I wondered why.

Violet said, “I heard that they can’t breathe back in our world. At least that’s the gossip.”

“Why not?”

“The atmosphere is too different,” she said, pointing out the window at the pink sky. “Their lungs can’t process carbon dioxide. Or nitrogen. One of those. I am terrible at science.”

“But they do seem to know an awful lot about us,” she agreed. “I mean, how did they know about Jackson? I never said anything; I only thought it. They must be mind readers.”

“You were pinging; your nerves were too active. They just picked that up,” said Zooey.

“I can’t figure it out. I spent most of my first days here convinced that I was D.E.D.,” Violet whispered.

“D.E.D.?”

“Dead. You know, not living.”

“I thought so too,” I said. “I was in the hospital back home, with a bad infection. The last thing I remember is being sedated and then I was here. But I am still scared I won’t live through it.”

“I know,” said Violet. “There was a funny smelling leak in my grandma’s basement. That’s my last memory before I ended up in that little hut with the indoor tree bed. How can we be two places at once? I find it mysterious.”

“Don’t be morbid,” Zooey scolded. “It’s an interesting theory, about being dead and all, but it doesn’t hold water. We eat, sleep, breathe, run, and get scared here in Chanticleer. So yes, we are still alive. And the staff doesn’t look, act, or talk like angels and I mean, come on. Bing is staff. We know he is no angel.”

Violet guffawed loudly.

“Plus, if this is death,” Violet continued, “it’s an awful lot like real life, and that’s a little disappointing to me.”

“Well,” said Zooey decisively, “We can talk about this all day and we won’t figure it out. In the end it doesn’t matter if we understand it or not. We have to march to their orders while we’re here and their orders are to do the coursework and get out. It’s a waste of time to wonder.”

“I wonder if I still ping when I think about Jackson,” Violet said, stretching her arms across the library table and laying the side of her head on them, gazing dreamily upward.

We were silent. After a while we picked up our reading materials. We settled in and sat there for the next three hours, reading. Despite the heavy-sounding titles, I enjoyed those hours in the library. For the first time since I arrived there, I started to relax.

My third morning in Chanticleer I opened my door right away, hoping for one thing only – well, besides my breakfast – and that was to be left alone. Thankfully, as she had hinted, there was no note from Miss Clarice requesting an appearance in her office. I had the day free. Yes! I rolled back into my bed, throwing the covers over my head, and went back to sleep for another hour. When I finally got myself thrown together I wandered over to see Violet, but she wasn’t in her room. Zooey was home, however, dressed in a sports shirt and shorts, tying on a pair of athletic shoes, and on her way out the door as well.

“I have to go. I need to be at the athletic fields by ten any morning after it rains,” she explained.

“Why?”

“Mandatory coursework for me. I’m afraid to get dirty and there’s a group of us that have to work on it. Hey, why don’t you come too? It’s a soccer game and anyone can play. You will just get really muddy, if that doesn’t bother you.”

“In these clothes?” I said, pointing to my expensive blazer and shorts.

“No you have athletic wear in your drawer too. Everyone does. Go fish it out. I’ll wait for you.”

I liked the idea and found the clothes folded neatly in my bureau. I had seen the shoes in my closet and was glad to lace them up and have a chance to run again.

Zooey wasn’t happy on our walk to the athletic fields. “I wish Violet could play with us today, but she got called in for coursework.”

“Is something wrong?”

“It’s hard for me on the days she is gone. I worry that she will tip back home and then I will miss her terribly. But I’m glad you are here now. The more the merrier.”

“But I thought you said you were further ahead than her. Won’t you go first?”

“Yes, probably. But you never really know. Some people just have less to work on and come and go faster. They don’t tell you what to expect because some people end up liking it here too much and want to stay as long as they can. It’s not healthy to stay here too long, that’s what Miss Clarice says, but some people purposely won’t move on.”

“I don’t understand. Who wouldn’t want to go back home?” I still woke up every morning wondering if I had been crazy to follow my new friends there, instead of staying in that tree bed and little hut.

“A lot of us. You’ll see. Anyway, it wasn’t always like this. I was told that not too long ago we used to know our stats. There used to be an outline showing what our issues were and what coursework we would be undertaking in order to correct it.”

“Do you mean that file Miss Clarice was talking to me about?” I remembered her odd expressions when reading off of it.

“Yes, what she told you on your first day. She used to say how many weeks or months you might be expected to stay here before you could tip back home. But then some people would purposely goof off toward the end to avoid leaving. And why not? Why go back to real school to figure out the properties of parallelograms or read old books about ships and whales? Here you don’t have to take out the garbage or sort your socks or share the bathroom. So some people wouldn’t pass their coursework or finish their readings, even after they had essentially completed what they came here for. They were not weak or afraid anymore, and they would get their friends to stay on too. Chanticleer got crowded. Some of the instigators were rowdy and there were a few incidents that got a little out of control, swinging from the rafters and all that. So they clamped down, made your stats secret, and came up with other, uh, deterrents to keep us all in line.” Zooey stared ahead, choosing her words carefully. “Now you don’t know how long you will be here. One day your friends can be here and the next day, poof! They are gone forever.”

I knew she was leaving something out and it was driving me crazy. “What is the deterrent you are you referring to?”

She didn’t answer me, and it seemed her way of avoiding the issue, so I didn’t ask again. I could tell that Zooey was not a rule-breaker.

“So are you saying that I won’t know when I will go back home? That it’s a surprise? How long have you been here yourself Zooey?”

“Right, you might suspect but no one knows the calendar date for sure.” Then she told me about the fears she had had to work on. Silly stuff, really, she insisted: how every time she felt an ache she was afraid she was going to die; how she was too afraid to eat any food that wasn’t a chicken finger, and her problem with dirt. She told me that she had learned that she was really afraid of not being in control, of taking chances, and of new sensations.

I told her about my first experience at the Prime Minister’s and how afraid of getting in trouble I was. She told me I was a classic case of always feeling I had to ask permission.

“Miss Clarice also said I was too preoccupied with being abducted, or with throwing myself off of heights, and I was too scared of these dead animals that my dad has around my house. I know she is just saying all that, but she never lived my life. They are always sending out alerts at school telling us to be careful, that someone is out there. She didn’t have a giraffe almost fall on her like I did. It’s not just my tendency to over-imagine. How else am I supposed to feel?”

Zooey explained, “Well, the point is that you are not at the mercy of your thoughts or fears. You don’t have to pay attention to every little thing that crosses your mind. It takes training, however, to get over that. It’s hard, but they do want to help, and the coursework actually does work. I mean, you have to want to work out your issues. Not everyone can do it.”

I was getting that impression. Not everyone who came here fared well.

“Are they mean here?”

Zooey pondered the question. ‘No, I wouldn’t call it mean. More like unyielding. They don’t give up on you until it’s obvious you are wasting the space you take up here, taking it from the next person who might benefit. That’s when they act. You’ll see.”

When they act.
I was curious about that, but I let it alone. “So even though I think it can be hard, it seems pretty much that everyone does get better? I probably won’t harden up and freeze this way like Miss Clarice said?”

“I hope not!” Zooey said. “But you are still new, I can’t say for sure.” Then she told me about some of her friends who had left, and how happy it had made her when she’d been asked to bring me to Chanticleer. She also talked about some other people I didn’t know, until she mentioned Bing.

“Bing? He’s been pretty nice to me.”

“Of course he is. But be careful of Bing. He’s a charmer. He doesn’t like people to leave either. We’re not friends with him anymore, ever since Violet and I decided that we’re not going to try and stay at Chanticleer longer than we are supposed to, just for the fun of it. Bing can be very persuasive. You’ll see.”

“Oh, I’m definitely not staying here longer than I have to,” I said. “I live in a very beautiful place and I will be so happy to go back.”

“You only just got here. You’ll get used to all the food and the friends. No grownups watching your every move. And you haven’t even been to a festival yet. There is so much that you do when you are here, things you can’t believe are happening. Sometimes you feel so happy you don’t want it to end. So I get it. I get Bing. But I know better. He does too. It’s just that …” and she let her sentence trail off. “Oh, here’s the game.”

A wide field bordered by grey stone buildings gave the feel of a college green. I could see the nets set up, and groups of players milling around and joking. The grass was damp with dew, unevenly sodded, patchy with wet mud.

“Headmaster Regan, this is Macy. She’s volunteering to play today. She’s new here.”

A burly man, who looked as if he was straight from the sidelines of a Friday night football game, nodded his assent and gave me a red vest to put on.

“Alright, Macy, you’ll be on the red team. Thanks for coming out today. We can’t do this without volunteers.”

Zooey took the green vest he handed her and put it on, running over to her teammates waiting at the end zone. I walked cautiously over to my teammates.

“Hi, I’m Macy,” I said. Six pairs of hands welcomed me: Jude, Bailey, Connor, Steven, Megan, and Rafe. I recognized Rafe the poetry reader from my first day, but the other faces were new. We weren’t afraid of the mud.

The game started and it felt good to run the length of the field, battle for the ball, guard my zone. The mud started to fly as our feet roughed up the field. Zooey’s team was cautious, backing off, avoiding the obvious slicks of mud. Connor rammed into an opposing team member, knocking him flat on his back in a mud puddle.

“Ugh,” the downed player said, storming off the field. “I’m done with this,” he said. Zooey was standing in the field as the ball went flying and hit her on the leg, a round grey splatter of mud hitting her clean skin.