The Year of Disappearances (10 page)

“What is the football term for ‘shoving away’?” she asked me.

I shrugged and traced a spiral pattern with my finger on the tablecloth.

“I hate sports clues.” Mãe set down her pen. “How about some oatmeal?”

I made a face. The idea of thick, congealed food lacked appeal.

Neither did the bowl of fresh fruit and yogurt she set in front of me. “Ariella,” she said. “You are beginning to worry me.”

I thought,
I’m worrying me, too.

“I understand how you feel,” my mother said, her voice full of concern. “It’s hard when people are talking about you, thinking you’re part of whatever happened to Mysty.”

And Kathleen,
I thought.

“Why aren’t
you
talking?” she asked.

Speaking requires too much effort,
I thought.
Words have lost their meaning.

“Sounds like teenage angst.” Mãe went back to the crossword, trying to hide her worry.

Part of me, I have to admit, enjoyed the experience of teenage angst. I spent days lying around the house or going down to Dashay’s mourning garden. It had been wrecked by the hurricane and patiently restored by her; she’d replanted the flowers and foliage, all in shades of black, and replaced the obelisk fountain with a new one: a statue of a woman that wept black tears. I sat on a black iron bench and contemplated death, because that’s what one is supposed to do in a garden of gloom.

My mood lasted for nearly two weeks. Then, one afternoon in late September, when the humidity dropped and a sweet breeze blew in from the Gulf, I found a letter from my father to my mother lying unfolded on the kitchen table. I saw my name written in his handwriting. I didn’t even have to touch it to begin reading it.

My father wrote: “I’m sorry to hear that Ariella is feeling depressed, but not surprised, given all she’s had to endure this year. The disappearance of the local girl is regrettable, not only for her family but for ours.”

I liked the “ours.”

“Since the FBI is involved in the investigation, I won’t return as I’d planned,” he wrote. “But Ari’s lessons should not be suspended indefinitely. Her current mood no doubt reflects a degree of boredom as well as the shock of recent events. My suggestion is that we begin at once to look into options for continuing her education. She’s more than ready for college, and a change of place will do her good.”

At that point I stopped reading. I wasn’t at all sure I was ready for college. But I let myself imagine what it might be like to begin a new life in a new place. It might be exciting. It might even be fun.

That’s when I decided I’d had enough angst. It had succeeded only in worrying my parents and in boring me.

Mãe was in one of the new upstairs rooms, painting its walls a pale shade of turquoise that had a hint of silver in it. She said that yes, Raphael had planned to return the following month, and that she’d warned him about the FBI interest in me.

She handed me a paintbrush. “You can do the corners.”

“I like this color,” I said. “What’s it called?”

“Indian Ocean,” she said. “A glorified name for a simple blue.”

“But it’s appropriate,” I said. I dipped the brush into the can, then tapped off the excess paint. “It looks like the color of an ocean far away.”

She smiled. “It’s good to hear your voice again.”

“I read my father’s letter to you,” I said, fanning the brush up the inner corner of a wall.

“I know you did.” She poured more paint into her roller pan.

She’d left it there for me to read, I thought. Mothers can be devious creatures.

For a while we painted. The windows were open, and the salty breeze mixed with the smell of fresh paint seemed to signal new beginnings.

“Do you think I’m ready for college?” My voice sounded as uncertain as I felt.

“I’m not sure.” She’d finished two walls, and now began a third. “I think it might be worth a try.”

The next time Agent Burton called on us, Dashay was waiting for him. She met him at the gate, wearing a close-fitting dark red dress, her hair loose and wavy.

From the kitchen window, Mãe and I watched her talk to Burton as they came slowly toward the house. “She’s
flirting
with him,” I said.

“She wants him to help her find Bennett.” Mãe’s voice carried disapproval and understanding, both. “She says she has a plan. And when Dashay has a plan, things happen.”

“Good things?”

Mãe said, “Things happen fast. And some things get broken.”

We looked out at Dashay and Burton, and I had a sudden wild fantasy: Dashay would make Burton one of us, and then all our troubles would go away. But I knew better.

Root sent me an e-mail later that day. Normally I received nothing personal, only newsletters about music and books. When I saw her name on my laptop’s screen, I felt repulsed, as if she herself had appeared in my room, and for the first time I questioned my reaction. Why did she bother me so? Was she part of my Jungian shadow?

Root’s e-mail style was terse and to the point: “Vallanium capsule is a sugar pill.”

She signed the e-mail: “ROOT.”

I typed a thank-you, and added a question: “No eternal life?”

She wrote back within an hour: “Not a chance.”

My father hated e-mail and telephones. He preferred letters and face-to-face conversations, modes of expression that allowed verbal sophistication and style.

I respected the reasons for his feelings. Nonetheless, sometimes I wished he would pick up the telephone or dash off an e-mail. He was another void in my life.

For many vampires, telepathy doesn’t work for long-distance communication—but like all traits, this one varies considerably. My mother had managed to send me messages that turned up in my dreams in Saratoga Springs. I don’t think this was possible because she had unusual telepathic powers, but because she was my mother, and the psychic relations between parents and children are known to be atypical.

After lunch that day Mãe asked if I’d take my bike into town and buy more masking tape. The cooler weather made the prospect of a long bike ride enticing.

I saw no one that I knew, until I was outside the pharmacy, unlocking my bike from the rack, and a woman’s voice said my name. I turned. A small woman, probably in her forties, with blond hair straggling past her shoulders, stood under a live oak tree, watching me. Mysty’s mother. I recognized her from the TV news we’d seen at Flo’s.

“Will you come here for a minute?” Her voice was soft, with a Southern accent more pronounced than Mysty’s. “I’d like to talk with you.”

I wheeled my bike over to her. She wore a faded denim shirtdress and sandals.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, but she interrupted.

“Tell me what you know. You’re that Ari girl, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“I heard the things people are saying about you,” she said. “Tell me what you know.” Her eyes were the color of spring grass.

“I didn’t see her the night she disappeared,” I said.

“Some say you killed her.” Her hand flew out and clutched my arm. She had sharp fingernails. The red polish was chipped.

I tried to pull my arm free. She was surprisingly strong. When I wrenched it away, her nails gouged my skin. I stared at the slashes, at my dark red blood.

“Tell me what you know.” Her voice reminded me of Mysty’s.

When she tried to grab my arm again, I swerved away. “I’ve told you,” I said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

I climbed onto my bike and rode away, but I felt her eyes following me. She’d been spending most days since Mysty disappeared walking around town, watching and waiting.

For a moment I thought about turning back, about telling her I’d been thinking hard, trying to hear Mysty’s thoughts—sending out what we call “locators,” thoughts that sometimes tell us where others are. I’d sent them to my father, too. But, like him, Mysty wasn’t sending anything back. She wasn’t anywhere within my range.

The sight of blood clotted along my arm kept me pedaling. I rode fast, out of town, past another group of searchers gathered around a sheriff ’s car, into the country again. I was thinking unpleasant thoughts.
What if I
did
have something to do with it? What if whoever followed us at the mall that day was really after me?

By the time I reached home, the gashes on my arm still hadn’t healed.

Later that night, someone spray-painted the word
KILLER
across our front gate.

A
ll my life, I’ve had the tendency to do things at the wrong time. The results have been mixed, but never boring.

Going to college at the age of fourteen would strike many people as a misguided idea. The contemporary general wisdom holds that the proper age for higher education is the late teens, after one has reached a degree of physical and mental maturity. Educational experts (mostly self-proclaimed) don’t agree on whether the “proper age” might be different for students labeled “gifted.”

Plato, whom I’d studied with my father, believed that higher education should begin in one’s twenties, with advanced study of mathematics, then philosophy. Only students capable of understanding reality and making rational judgments about it were suited for such study, he said, for later they would become the guardians of the state.

At fourteen, I didn’t know what I wanted to become, much less what was worth guarding. But I’d begun to wonder how I could contribute to society unless I actually lived in it.

My mother, Dashay, and I sat up late one night with our laptop computers, reviewing college sites. Since the spray-painting incident, they felt a certain urgency about moving me out of Sassa and into another part of the world.

“The timing is miserable,” Dashay said, looking at academic calendars online. “If she applies by mid-January, she can’t start till next August.”

“
She
is sitting right here,” I said, “and she appreciates your concern. But why the big rush?”

They looked at me. They were on either end of the sofa, Grace sleeping on a cushion between them. I sat in one of the velvet chairs we’d brought out of storage.

“Somebody got hold of a can of spray paint,” I said. “So what?”

But I knew what they were thinking: that the spray paint might be only the beginning.

“This isn’t the peaceful place it was,” Mãe said. “We hope that it will be again, when the rumors and speculation die down.”

It would die down faster with me somewhere else. I knew that. But I was too stubborn to admit it. “So the bullies win,” I said. “They make me run away.”

“Not running,” Dashay said. “You are going to school. Retreating, maybe. Nothing wrong with that.” She passed me a bowl of red popcorn, liberally sprinkled with Sangfroid.

I took the bowl. “What about the University of Virginia?” It was my father’s alma mater.

My mother said, “It’s too far away.”

Dashay said, “Sara, you are a fool.” But she said it with affection in her voice.

“Where did you go to college?” I asked my mother.

“I went to Hillhouse. It’s a liberal arts school in Georgia.”

“Were you happy there?”

She smiled. “Yes, I was. It’s only five hundred students or so. But it’s an alternative school. They don’t assign grades—they give written assessments instead. I don’t know if it’s rigorous enough for someone like you.”

“Do you mean I’m smarter than you?” The words came out before I’d considered saying them.

My mother laughed. Dashay said, “Ari, you watch out. That’s your mother you’re talking to.”

I began to apologize, but Mãe said, “It’s okay. It’s a legitimate question. Yes, I think you are much smarter than I was at your age.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to keep my voice modest.

She added, “And nearly half as smart as I am now.”

While my mother and Dashay surveyed university web pages, I decided to do something else: take an aptitude test online.

I scored high in the areas of science, art, and writing, and low in sales, clerical, and administration. My ratings for investigative and artistic thinking were much stronger than those for being attentive or conventional.

“You should major in liberal arts,” Dashay said. She said she’d done that at the University of the West Indies.

“I think that Raphael wants Ari to go into medicine one day, but liberal arts is a good foundation for anything,” Mãe said.

My father had never told me he wanted me to “go into” anything. “Ari is sitting right here,” I said. “Why do you keep talking about me in the third person?”

“This is a big moment,” Dashay said.

“Not
that
big.” Mãe knew I was apprehensive and didn’t want to make things worse. “You can choose one school now, have a trial year, then transfer later on. You have all the time in the world to figure things out.”

All the time in the world.
Even for vampires, it’s hard to think in those terms.

“Ari’s big problem is, she hasn’t learned how to tell time,” Dashay said.

That night didn’t want to end. Later I sat on a bench on our new deck, trying out the new mount for my telescope. I loved the idea that I was looking up at stars seen by Plato and Aristotle. Time seemed to dissolve when I stargazed.

Orion’s belt jumped out at me: three white-blue stars, each more than twenty times the size of our sun, formed more than ten million years ago. And along the sword that hangs from the belt was the reddish swirl called the Orion nebula, a cloud of dust, gas, and plasma. Nebulae are where stars are born.

I sensed someone behind me and my body tensed, then relaxed when I smelled rosemary. Dashay used rosemary oil as a hair conditioner.

“You having fun out here in the dark?” she said. She wore an embroidered caftan, and her head was wrapped in a towel.

I pulled away from the eyepiece. “Want to have a look?’

She shook her head. “What’s up there doesn’t interest me much. What’s going on down here is more than enough for me to think about.”

“But it’s so beautiful.” Even without the telescope, the night sky pulled my eyes to it. The patterns of stars, planets, and haze were embedded stories. “Do you know the story of Orion?”

“I’ve heard the Greek story.” Dashay tilted her head and stared up. “The hunter killed by his lover.”

“By accident,” I said. “Artemis was tricked by her brother into shooting Orion with an arrow.”

“Yes, yes.” Dashay looked at me. “What’s the point of that story, Ari?”

“The point?” I didn’t know the answer.

“What’s the moral of the story?”

I didn’t think constellation stories had morals. “The point is: love is misery,” Dashay said, and folded her arms.

My tour of colleges was short and to the point. Mãe and I decided to visit four: two large state universities and two smaller private ones, all within three hundred miles of home.

Hillhouse was one of the private schools. I’m not going to name the other places we went; I don’t want to influence anyone else’s opinions of them.

It’s enough to say that the large state schools did not appeal to me. Their campuses were overbuilt and ugly, despite elaborate landscaping that seemed entirely out of keeping with the utilitarian designs of the buildings. We’d been promised meetings with faculty members, but none was available. At each school we took a tour of the facilities, which included stops at dormitories that made me think of dog kennels. Our tour guides at both places were young women—pretty, blond, unflappable women whose cheerfulness knew no bounds.

“Here’s the quiet dorm,” Jessica said, leading us into a brick building at State U-A, down a corridor, and into the middle of a living room where seven people were smoking marijuana. “Oops,” Jessica said, and, still smiling, led us out again.

“This is a state-of-the-art classroom,” Tiffany announced at State U-B, opening the door of a room with beige cement-block walls and fluorescent lighting that hurt my eyes.
A prison cell might have more personality,
I thought.
Why would anyone design such antiseptic, uninspiring spaces as classrooms?

Mãe didn’t like either state U any more than I did. “We could try one more,” she said, her voice doubtful.

“If we do, I won’t get out of the truck.” I was having second thoughts about going to college at all.

The first private school we visited was a marked improvement—an older, well-designed campus, all red brick with doors and window frames painted white, shaded by sycamore trees. The classrooms had posters and framed art on their walls. The dormitory lacked the zoolike qualities of the others we’d seen; students huddled over laptops at their desks or talked in small groups. I could almost imagine myself living there. Almost.

“Everyone is white,” I whispered to Mãe.

When we talked with the admissions director, he said the school tried to recruit “a diverse population.” I guess that population didn’t want to come to a school where everyone else was white. The director seemed excited by my last name and appearance; I heard him think,
Our first Latina.

One aspect of being home-schooled, I realized, was that I’d never been labeled, by others or by myself.

“I don’t want to go to a school where I’m called the first Latina,” I said to Mãe.

We were back in the truck, headed south. “Okay,” she said. “It seemed a little prissy, anyway.”

We drove onto the Hillhouse campus on a sunny afternoon in October. Mãe had told me what to expect: the rural campus was built around a working farm, and all of the students had jobs either on the farm or elsewhere, helping to operate and maintain the campus.

The first thing we saw: a lawn with oak, sycamore, and maple trees, and students raking leaves. I hadn’t seen a rake since leaving Saratoga Springs. And the students were a diverse assortment, ethnically and otherwise. They had hair of all colors, dyed vivid green and blue and orange and red, and many dressed in clothes that looked like stage costumes: jesters, gypsies, pirates, and rock stars. While some worked, others were jumping and rolling in the piles of leaves. They reminded me of a pack of raccoon babies I’d seen back in Sassa, tumbling down a slope for the sheer pleasure of it.

As I watched, a boy sprang out of a mound of leaves as if he’d been launched; the leaves scattered everywhere, and some of the others picked up handfuls and tossed them at him. “Thanks a lot, Walker,” one said.

He had wavy hair the color of sand, blue eyes, flushed cheeks, full lips, white teeth. He smiled and took a running leap into another leaf pile. I wondered why I was noticing so much about him. I wondered why I hoped he’d notice me.

We parked the truck and made our way to the administration building. The buildings were made of dark-painted wood, with long narrow windows that looked out onto the lawns and fields. Most had porches, and every porch had a row of rocking chairs.

While Mãe and I waited for the admissions officer, I read a pamphlet entitled
A Brief History of Hillhouse.
The school’s philosophy was modeled on that of Summerhill, a progressive school in Britain. Hillhouse was run as a cooperative community, to which everyone contributed at least fifteen hours of work a week. Everyone was expected to attend weekly governance meetings. Class attendance was voluntary; students designed their own curricula, and they received written reports on their progress rather than grades. The coursework was designed around a series of projects planned jointly by the students and professors.

The policies sounded sensible to me. I didn’t realize how unusual they were until later, when I read the catalogs we’d collected at the other schools. The catalogs emphasized credit hours, exams, grade point averages: a system premised on penalties and rewards, with the underlying assumption that students were children who had to be pressured in order to learn.

Hillhouse didn’t require applicants to take entrance exams or submit grade transcripts. Application decisions were made on the basis of the interview and on three essays submitted with the application.

The admissions officer, Cecelia Martinez, was a young woman with wide eyes and an open face. Like everyone we’d met at the other schools, she seemed relentlessly cheerful.

“So,” she said, after we were introduced, “I understand that you’re a legacy.”

I’d never been called that before.

“Yes,” Mãe said. “I graduated from Hillhouse twenty years ago.”

Cecelia Martinez wondered what sort of plastic surgery my mother had had. “You two look like sisters,” she said.

My mother didn’t look more than thirty, I realized. And Cecelia Martinez wasn’t one of us. I wondered if anyone at Hillhouse was a vampire.

Mãe left the room when the “formal” interview began. (Nothing was truly formal at Hillhouse.) First, Ms. Martinez asked me about my education. She asked me to describe my favorite teacher.

“I was home-schooled,” I told her. “My father was my teacher.”
What should I say about him?
I described his biomedical research, his work into the development of artificial blood. I talked of our lessons in mathematics, science, philosophy, and literature. I didn’t say,
And he’s a vampire. He can read thoughts and turn invisible, but he prefers not to.