http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B0534UC
After relocating from the sticks to Manhattan, Kari discovers that the strangely serene members of the secretive religious organization that hired her mother are deeply intertwined with her life. Driven to unravel their mystery and what it means for her future, she finds herself ensnared in a web that reaches further than she could possibly have imagined.
Silent Symmetry is the exciting first novel in JB Dutton’s EMBODIED trilogy. The second installment, Starley’s Rust, will be published in late 2013.
After graduating from film school in London, England, John emigrated to Montreal in 1987, where he still lives with his two young children and their even younger goldfish. He spent over a decade as a music TV director before moving into the advertising industry as copywriter and translator. In parallel to his corporate work, John has written novels, short stories, blogs, screenplays and a stage play. John speaks four languages and has been married three times in three different countries in three different decades. He therefore likes the odd pint of Guinness. And he’s pretty keen on the even pints too…
Memory #1: There were three in the bed, and the little one said, “Move over! Move over!” So they all moved over and one fell out…
The second I walked through the door, I knew something was wrong. Not yet old enough to read, I could tell by the way Mom propped herself against the kitchen wall with the phone dangling loosely in her hand. My stomach turned inside-out.
“Mrs. Marriner?” said the tinny voice in the phone. “Are you still there?”
Mom put the receiver slowly back to her ear and groaned, “Uh-huh.” Her eyes were unfocused, her lips trembling.
“Is there someone who can look after your daughter? You need to come downtown and identify the body.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mom’s eyes came back to life and flitted down to look at me with a mixture of sadness, pity and fear. She clenched her lips together and hung up the phone. I walked toward her, wary, wondering. Mom crouched down and pulled me close. “I love you, pumpkin,” she whispered.
“I love you too, Mommy,” I answered, reassured by the familiar exchange.
“Listen, I have to go run an errand. I… I’ll drop you off at Maddie’s, okay?”
Normally the idea of a playdate would have made me jump for joy. But I knew something was wrong.
“Go pick out a sweater.”
“Okay.” And off I ran to my room, still shielded from the new reality.
* * * * *
That evening, Mom ordered pizza and we sat next to each other at the kitchen table as she explained to me that daddy wouldn’t be coming home any more. I can remember crying, but not really understanding. Mom cried too, even though she did her best to stay strong. She told me a little story about daddy driving to work and a big truck pushing his car off the bridge. Daddy flew and he was still flying. It was just an accident and daddy wishes he could come home, but he can’t, and he still loves me bigger than the universe and sends me kisses and hugs every morning and every night.
The Wisconsin winter rain pounded on the kitchen window. We finished the pizza in silence. Something was wrong and there was nothing either of us could do to put it right.
Dream #8: I’m floating in space. But space is white and all the stars are black.
Twelve years later and it was raining again. This time it was the New York variety, the kind that washes away bits of garbage and gum, the kind that forms rivers that swirl beside the busy sidewalks while pedestrians wait to cross.
I glanced at the dashboard clock inside the small Korean sedan. Horns blared. “Don’t worry, Mom – I’m super early,” I reassured her, sensing the tension behind her wire-rimmed glasses, a tightness in her forehead underneath the brown curls now flecked with a few stray, white hairs.
“I think this is it, pumpkin,” she announced, squinting through the wipers at a gray building just ahead.
“Maybe today’s the day we put pumpkin out to pasture, Mom,” I smiled. “New city. New beginning…”
Mom opened her mouth to speak, somehow surprised at the request, then nodded earnestly. “You’re right. Of course.”
“Thanks. How about just ‘Kari’? Or ‘honey’, in a pinch.”
“Sure thing, pum… honey.”
I shook my head and smiled wider. She was doing her best. She’d always done her best with me. For me. When the headhunter had called the lab two months before and told her about the job in Manhattan, she’d said no – it’s too far, it’s not what we know. But when he’d mentioned the salary and benefits, plus the paid tuition at one of the city’s best schools, she’d started to envision a future where I could run instead of walk. Maybe even soar if I put my mind to it. And now here we were – first day of school for me, and first day as ToT Chief Software Engineer for Mom.
She swerved over to the curb and pulled up abruptly. “I can’t park here, so just jump out.”
I undid my seatbelt, leaned across and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Later! Good luck!”
I heard a fading “Text me when you’re done… Kari,” as I opened the door to get out.
“Sure!” I yelled back above the din of the splashing traffic. I slammed the car door with one hand, the other holding my laptop backpack over my head as a makeshift umbrella, in a vain attempt to keep my long, unruly hair dry.
I hopped over puddles that lay between me and the school gate, then walked through it to the gothic-style entrance where the words carved into the stone above the doors – ChelseaPreparatory School – forced one corner of my mouth up into an ironic smirk. Preparatory? After losing my dad so young, you could say I’m prepared for anything.
Other bedraggled students bustled past me, hurrying to get under cover. I took my time, soaking up my new surroundings. Chelsea Prep had been around for seventy-five years and clearly liked to create the impression that it was a couple centuries older. Faux-gothic gargoyles on the gutters: check. Oak panels with gold script listing the team captains back to the 1930s: check. Echoey stone slabs as a floor: check. But I wasn’t buying into any of it.
Sure, an Ivy League scholarship would be great, but the reason I pushed Mom to accept the job in New York was her bed. Or, to put it bluntly, the lack of a man in it. I knew how hard she had worked to keep her career going and maintain a decent lifestyle after Dad died, but did she really have to sacrifice any prospect of romance? Maybe there were no eligible bachelors in the tri-state area that fit Mom’s idea of a life partner? She’d only gone on a handful of dates over the last decade. Over-fishing may be a global ecological disaster-waiting-to-happen, but I was positive that there were plenty more fish in the Sea of Manhattan. I mean, Mom’s Sex and the City DVD collection couldn’t have been all fiction, could it?
I strolled down the hallways, musing about maybe a divorced staff member who I could engineer to bump into Mom at a PTA meeting. No, wait – aim higher – a vice-principal who, like Mom, had concentrated on his career and now in his late-thirties was off the romance radar. He would be kind and educated, but not a snob and – oh! There it was: Room 8A, as per the email. My new homeroom.
I entered and time slowed to a crawl.
Then it jumped back twelve years to that fateful Saturday afternoon the cops phoned Mom with the news about Dad. Because I had the exact same feeling again. The second I walked through the door, I knew something was wrong.
There were only two people in the room: a tall, slim guy my own age, and an older gentleman wearing a black suit and black dress shirt. So far, nothing too weird: student and teacher, right? But they were shaking hands. Not in the typical way, but with both hands at once, staring straight into each other’s eyes as they stood in front of the teacher’s desk. They held eye-contact with each other for several seconds, then both turned their heads slowly toward me before letting go of their hands.
It was beyond creepy. It was other-worldly.
The man walked past me without making a sound, keeping the same blank expression, closing the door as he exited.
“This is the right classroom, isn’t it?” I asked the boy. Stupid question – how would he know?
“Yes,” he answered. The word was spoken ever so softly, but was as clear as a bell in a silent church, as though the sound was coming from inside my own head.
“I… I…” I was literally speechless. He was looking at me blankly, just like the man, but there was something fascinating about his face. Not classically handsome, with lips too full for a boy and a forehead too wide beneath straight dark hair, evenly trimmed just above his shoulders. What was it about him that made me feel so strange and yet so attracted? He was dressed simply enough in a black long-sleeved tee and black jeans, but there was something I couldn’t decipher. Was it the chocolate eyes? His relaxed hands by his slender hips? There was something about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I must have been frowning.
“Don’t frown,” he said, in the same soft tone.
“Sorry – I… I’m Kari,” I stammered. “And you are?”
“Noon.”
“Like, as in, midday?” I ventured, totally not expecting the answer to be yes.
“Yes,” he said, and I felt kinda silly.
“So you were born right on the stroke of 12 p.m. to parents with little imagination?”
I groaned inside. I was making a total ass of myself in the space of half a minute.
“Crap, that sounded bad.” I apologized.
He smiled for the first time. And I felt a wave of eff-knows-what sweep over me.
The door behind me opened and three girls pushed past me as though I wasn’t there, chatting and taking off their raincoats. Noon continued staring at me with his soft-yet-piercing gaze. I felt other people swarm past me but I was mesmerized. The spell was finally broken with a bang when the teacher slammed his briefcase down on the desk and started talking to me. Even then, it took him two attempts to break through my bubble.
“You must be Kari,” he said as he noisily unpacked his books. “Unless you aren’t Kari,” he continued, puzzled.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, snapping out of my reverie. “Sorry, I was – ”
“Don’t worry,” he interrupted, “I’m Mr. Jefferson. Welcome to Chelsea Prep. Take a seat at the back there, one desk in from the window.” He motioned with his head, and I finally felt like my legs were no longer rooted to the spot.
The classroom quickly filled with students. The usual mix of shy and outgoing, stupid and smart, cool and geeky. Nothing too foreign, nothing I couldn’t get used to fast. The only anomaly was Noon, who said very little and moved even less. The guy next to me was cute, although kind of flustered. I soon found out why: his homework assignment was missing and he didn’t want to say what had happened.
“You’ll need to come up with something more creative than ‘my dog ate my homework’,” announced Mr. Jefferson, condescendingly.
“You try living in a daycare,” was the boy’s sullen response.
“What happened, Cruz?” sighed the teacher.
“A little girl got a hold of it and flushed it down the toilet,” he muttered, staring down at his desk. The other kids burst out laughing.
“Yo, it ain’t funny!” shouted Cruz, turning red with embarrassment. Noon, who up until now had been an almost-invisible presence, suddenly spoke. The laughter died down abruptly.
“I admire Cruz for helping out at home with no father around.”
“Das it. Thanks, bro,” acknowledged Cruz with a sideways glance in Noon’s direction.
During the whole exchange, Noon had continued to stare straight ahead. There were whispers between the other students. Noon was obviously as disturbing a presence for the others as he was for me.
“Okay, okay, take out your algebra textbooks,” said Mr. Jefferson. The whispering subsided. “Cruz, can you re-do it tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Alright. And maybe keep your assignments out of the reach of toddlers in future.”
As Cruz nodded, he caught my eye. And there was something in his face that spoke of barely-suppressed anger mixed with incredible sadness. I wondered what his story was. Did he lose his father in an accident, like me? Why was he at this school? He didn’t seem to fit in any more than Noon did, but for different reasons. You could tell that most of the other kids in the classroom had parents with money. I mean, of course they did – there was no way Mom could have paid for tuition on her own salary – but Cruz appeared to be lacking the others’ air of entitlement. Okay, I’ll just say it: he looked and acted like a poor kid. Threadbare tee-shirt, jeans faded from overuse (rather than to look hip), crooked buzz cut, no-name sneakers.
But at the same time, there was something honest about Cruz, a vibe that I can’t say I felt from the other kids in the class. I guess I must have been staring at him. He was seated between me and Noon, who, once again, slowly turned his head to face me. I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks and quickly looked down at my textbook. Weird, weird, weird…
* * * * *
The rest of the day flew by, and as I walked out the gates and back into the Manhattan hubbub, my brain was buzzing with new surroundings, new information and new faces. I texted Mom that I was heading straight home. She said she felt like going out for supper, and I smiled at the thought of exploring the local eateries.
The walk back to my new home was a swift twenty minutes, made even swifter by Facebooking my Wisconsin friends. I sent a few LOLs, smileys, OMGs and WTFs back in their direction, then turned the corner onto West 23rd Street. The Warrington building loomed into view. An entire city block, thirty floors high, built almost a century ago and housing, according to my estimate, about 13,500 people. Okay, so I’m a bit of a geek – I blame Mom – but the first time I saw the building (which was the day we moved in, only a week beforehand) I couldn’t help performing the calculation in my head: thirty floors, approximately a hundred and fifty apartments per floor, an average of three people per apartment, for a total of 13,500.
We apparently had one of the smaller units, but it was bigger than either of the two houses I’d ever lived in – a mini-maze with storage closets and garbage chutes around every corner. I’d fallen in love with my room instantly. It had a view of the enormous, leafy inner courtyard, a walk-in closet, and a nook where I imagined myself curling up with a good book and my cell-phone on rainy afternoons like this one.
Mom had visited the apartment when she came for her job interview. It turned out she was a shoe-in. The headhunter eventually admitted that the human resources people at ToT hadn’t even bothered to call any of the other candidates. They were so sure that she would accept the position that they had even rented the apartment in advance. Thinking back, knowing what I know now, perhaps we should have wondered why it was all so easy.
As I crossed the street, a tiny voice in my head said, Look to the right! I must have seen them in my peripheral vision: two women standing under the awning outside one of The Warrington’s many entrances. They were facing each other, holding hands in the exact same way Noon and the man in the black suit were doing when I’d entered the classroom that morning. I squinted in their direction. Like Noon and the man, the women weren’t talking. They weren’t even moving. Just staring straight into each other’s eyes. I reached the sidewalk and hesitated. Should I get a closer look? Should I just go home? It was probably some kind of New York body language that I wasn’t used to, like air-kissing or hailing a cab. But deep down inside I knew that there was more to it. Half a minute had gone by and they still hadn’t moved a muscle. So I headed toward them. But I was disappointed when they broke the double-handshake only a couple of seconds later.
One of the women entered the building, the other started to walk in my direction. I could hardly stop and turn back now, so I continued, trying not to make it too obvious that I was checking her out. As she approached me, I realized that she was incredibly beautiful. Her short, neat black hair and astonishingly perfect features culminated in two dark eyes that shone like polished jet above her pristine white pants suit. She strode confidently forward, eyes fixed on some imaginary distant horizon like a runway model. I was transfixed. As I drew level with her, she seemed to suddenly become aware of my presence and, without breaking stride, turned her head slowly to face me. It was the same movement I had seen from Noon and the older man. A shudder rippled right down to my bones and I quickly lowered my eyes to the sidewalk.
I stopped under the awning and realized that I wasn’t even breathing any more. I turned around, half expecting the woman in white to still be looking at me, but she just kept walking. I exhaled and looked at the grand double doors that the other woman had entered. This entrance to the building was located at 222, 9th Avenue and there was a discreet brass plaque attached to one of the carved stone pillars that read: Temple of Truth – Head Office #2222.
I stopped breathing again.
This was the organization also known as the ToT, Mom’s new employers. I had seen their logo on an email she printed out – an unmistakable symbol consisting of the two T’s joined at the top with the small, perfectly circular ‘o’ housed in the space under them like a temple with columns protecting something precious. Or like two arms reaching out…
* * * * *
While I waited for Mom to get home, my mind raced. There had to be a logical, normal explanation, right? Something that didn’t rely on a huge coincidence or some kind of conspiracy theory. I sat in my nook with Flash purring on my lap. He was good for calming me down. He somehow helped me think more clearly. He was also the cutest cat ever. I scratched the white patch on his black belly that inspired his name. He stretched and purred even louder.
Okay, so the ToT had another office as well as the one in the skyscraper where Mom worked, nothing strange about that. And it was in the same building that Mom and I just moved into. Fine – it was a huge building and I had noticed the names of other non-residential tenants on the plaques at the various entrances. So I guess the people at ToT needed to find a place for me and Mom, and started looking right under their noses, in this building. Yes, it made sense. What didn’t make sense were the double-handshakes. And that’s what kept alive the nagging feeling in the back of my mind. The fact that we were living in the same building as the head office of Mom’s employer might not be a coincidence. But the fact that Noon was sitting two desks away from me and I saw him do the same double-handshake as the women outside The Warrington was just eerie. And there was something else about Noon, the older man and the woman in white. Something about their faces…
A key turned in the front door and Flash jumped down from my lap, catching a thread on my skirt in one of his claws. “You little…!” I exclaimed, distracted from my thoughts.
“Honey, I’m home!” called out Mom, and I had to smile.
“How did it go?” I asked, uncurling myself from the nook and following Flash into the hallway.
“Great! They’re such a nice bunch of people. Really made me feel welcome,” she continued. She hung her coat on a hook in the entrance and pulled off her boots. “The guys on my team are super smart. Oh – hey there, Flash!”
The cat rubbed his head against her bare feet and Mom gave a little squeal. “That tickles!” It was great to see her relaxed and happy after the stress of the move. “How about you, pum… honey?”
“Cool.”
“That’s it? Cool?”
“Yeah. It’s a good school.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was so preoccupied with the day’s non-academic events that it was hard for me to focus on what any parent would normally want to know about their child’s first day at a new school.
Mom washed her hands at the kitchen sink. “My goodness, it’s like when you were six years old! ‘What did you do at school today? Nothing! Nothing? Yeah, nothing!’” She laughed as she rushed past me. “I’m just gonna change quickly and then we’ll go eat. I’m starving. Can you feed Flash while you’re waiting?”
I opened about five cupboard doors before finding the cat food. Flash meowed as I filled his bowl with crunchy brown goodness. Mom came back into the kitchen wearing a pale yellow shirt with a sweetheart neckline and jeans. “Nice!” I encouraged her.
“Well,” she said coquettishly, “What if I meet the man of my dreams?”
“You go, girl!” I said with an approving nod, as I grabbed my jacket.
* * * * *
The small Italian eatery was really buzzing considering it was a Monday night. Chatter filled the air, the wine was flowing and the waiter was flirting shamelessly with Mom. I’d almost forgotten the day’s weirdness. But I had to find out more about the Temple of Truth.
I took a bite of my thin-crust pizza and tried to look nonchalant. “Did you know that the ToT has an office in our building?”
“Oh yes,” she replied. “I assumed that’s how they knew about the apartment being available.”
I nodded. So that was it. No mystery there. But something inside me wasn’t satisfied. “So they’re some kind of religious organization, right?”
“Kind of. They have Temples all over the world.”
“So why do they need a software engineer?”
She took a sip of wine. “Good question. It’s kind of interesting. They don’t believe in technology.”
“Oh, like the Amish? Do they have beards and black hats too?”
“I, um, I don’t know,” she shrugged.
“What do you mean?” I wondered.
“I haven’t seen them.”
“Seen who?”
“The members of the Temple,” she explained, matter-of-factly.
I stopped chewing. “I don’t get it. The people you work with…”
“They were hired by the Temple authorities, like me.”
“Okaaaay… so at the interview?”
“Nope.”
“Has anyone in the office seen them?”
“I guess. I never thought to ask.”
I studied her as she scooped up some lasagna with her fork. It wasn’t like her to be so uncurious. The waiter appeared and refilled our glasses.
“How is everything over here?” he asked, eyes twinkling at Mom. He was working hard for his tip.
“Oh, wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” she said, blushing a little.
She deserves this new shot at life. She’s worked so hard and now it’s paying off. And she deserves a new shot at love, too.
The waiter departed and I winked at Mom. “Wonderful, absolutely wonderful, isn’t he?”
She shook her head at me, grinning, as if to say, “I can’t believe you’re teasing me about a guy.”
I let the subject of the ToT drop for a few minutes and we chatted about a bunch of random stuff. It felt great, chilling with Mom in the big city. When our desserts arrived (tiramisu and tartufo – two words that have never passed the lips of a single inhabitant of Lancaster, Wisconsin) I felt like the time was right to probe a bit more without seeming too inquisitive.
“So what kind of software are you working on? Some kind of barn-raising algorithm?”
She winced as the cold ice cream hit her teeth. “You’re funny. It’s not as exciting as that. They have a database and need to coordinate the information from the Temples in other countries.”
“What kind of database?”
“It’s a genetics thing.”
This sounded interesting. “Oh? So they’re like Mormons crossed with Amish?”
“You’re confusing genealogy with genetics, honey,” she said as she signaled the waiter to bring her the check. “All I know is that they’re paying me a huge chunk of change to head up the project, so I’m not going to ruffle any feathers by prying.”
And that was it. She really didn’t know anything juicy about her new employers. In fact, she didn’t know anything about them at all. The waiter got his tip, Mom said that we’d be back soon and I was happy to see her in such good spirits.
As soon as we got home I grabbed my laptop and started to search. Nothing on Wikipedia. A few links on Google but nothing that sounded like the ToT Mom was working for. This was bizarre. A world-wide religious organization with zero online presence? Even for technophobes, this was hard to believe. How would they find new members? How would they spread the word? Maybe they used carrier pigeons and messages in bottles tossed into the ocean.
Dream #2: I’m being watched. My whole life. I can’t see them, but they’re watching me. And the feeling is getting stronger.
The next day I found it hard to concentrate in school. I’ve always been a pretty good student. I mean, I get by without having to try too hard. Okay, that sounds bad, but what I mean is that I guess I have some natural ability and intelligence, so with just a bit of effort I can get good grades. Anyway, the point is, I spent the day only half-listening to the parade of teachers who all earnestly shared their wisdom with the cream of the crop, smug in the knowledge that they were shielded from the horrors of the New York public school system.
I could hardly take my eyes off Noon’s hypnotic features and his bizarre body language. But I was forced to, because in every class except homeroom I was seated somewhere in front of him. And Cruz was always seated somewhere beside or in front of me. He just slacked off, drifting away for long periods, doodling in the margins and following the beat of a song playing in his head.
“Miss Marriner, do you know the answer?” asked Mrs. Poborsky, the Geography teacher.
My eyes flicked down to my textbook. The only problem was that I hadn’t heard the question. “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” I admitted.
She wasn’t so easily fooled and wasn’t about to let me get away with it. “Do you even know the question?” she continued, like a dog with a bone.
This was bad. Day two and I looked like a total flake. I shook my head, ashamed.
“Which two countries are in both Europe and Asia?” she repeated.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, relieved at the chance to redeem myself. I knew that I knew this. It was on the tip of my tongue. But it just wouldn’t pop into my brain! Even worse, there was a map on the page in front of me but my mind refused to focus. I shifted in my chair, as though sitting upright would give me clarity. “It’s… It’s… um…”
“Yes?”
“Gosh, ma’am…” A small wave of snickering spread around the classroom. Afterward I realized it was probably directed more at my choice of old-fashioned Midwestern vocabulary than my ignorance of geography. “I know, but I really can’t think of it right now.”
Mrs. Poborsky sighed. “Anyone else know?” Several hands shot up. A girl with a headband and braces was chosen and revealed with a self-satisfied half-grin that Russia and Turkey straddled both continents. “Well done,” said the teacher, then directed an admonishing glare at me: “And next time, Miss Marriner, please pay more attention.”
I nodded again and glanced over at Cruz, who was grinning at me conspiratorially. I couldn’t help flashing a smile back in his direction and felt a spark zap through my stomach, strong enough to be both uncomfortable and pleasurable.
When we left the classroom, Cruz caught up with me. “Wait up,” he said.
“Hey, Cruz,” I answered shyly. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” he continued, and I knew that he meant it. Awkward.
“So… where are you headed?” I asked, having nothing better to say.
“The lockers. To, you know, dump my books.”
“Me too,” I nodded earnestly. Could I have sounded any more retarded?
Our lockers were next to each other, which made for more awkwardness as we “after-you-no-after-you”-ed. We finally managed to get into position and the nervous laughter subsided. Then he opened his locker and my eyes opened wide in amazement. The inside was covered in doodles taped to the sides and door, some in pencil, some in pen, but all small and incredibly well drawn. In fact, they were more like miniature artworks than doodles. And each one was of an expressionless face.
“Wow. Cool!” I exclaimed, peering in at them.
He smiled at me and threw his books inside. “Thanks.”
“Who are they?” I wondered aloud, my eyes wandering from face to face. There were men, women, old, young, from different backgrounds but united by one common feature: they were all perfectly symmetrical.
“I don’t know,” answered Cruz, his face now only inches from mine. “I see them in my dreams. I always have.”
I looked away from the drawings, then locked eyes with his. Their warmth drew me in. An older guy jostled me, thrusting me forward. Cruz caught me by my shoulders and I noticed Noon about twenty yards away down the hallway. What immediately struck me was that he was standing perfectly still with his eyes closed, an island in a sea of students flowing around him. And he was holding both hands together, stretched unnaturally out in front of his chest. Suddenly his eyes snapped open and met mine. I looked away instinctively. When I looked back in his direction, he was gone.
“Are you alright?” asked Cruz with a concerned expression.
I regained my composure and nodded. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”
He closed his locker door. “I gotta get to work.”
“Sure, me too. I mean, I have to run, too.”
He slung his bag over his shoulder, grinning, and started backing away.
“Tomorrow…”
“Yeah,” I answered, my eyes wandering the hallway in search of Noon’s distinctive figure. But he was nowhere to be seen.
I drifted out the school gates, lost in thought. Something was off about this whole thing. About the last two days. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched, like in a recurring dream I’d had ever since I could remember. My thoughts were interrupted by the realization that someone was walking beside me. It was Noon.
“Oh, hi!” I said in surprise.
“Hi.”
That was it. Just “hi” for the next minute. Or was it five minutes? Or twenty? Or twenty seconds?
“So… you live this way too?” I probed, just so say something, more than really wanting to know.
“Yes,” he answered.
Kari Marriner: currently majoring in Awkward Conversations with a minor in Long Silences.
“I was thinking,” he said abruptly, and I jumped at the chance to find out something, anything, about him. “Maybe we could go to a café and study together.”
This made me happy.
“I’ve traveled a lot,” he continued, “and I could help you with the Geography mid-term.”
“I’m not as bad at it as I seemed in class,” I blurted out.
“No, of course you aren’t.”
“I mean, I’m sure you could help if you’ve traveled a lot. I only arrived from Wisconsin two weeks ago and I’ve never been anywhere,” I said breathlessly. “Well, we went to Niagara Falls once, which is in Canada, and I guess you must know that, or, at least one side of it is in Canada, because, you know, it’s a river and it flows into that lake there, which is called something like Lake Canada, but it isn’t that, but anyway, I’ve never… really… traveled. Much.”
I wanted a freak tornado to suck me up into the sky and dump me back in Lancaster.
“LakeOntario,” he stated matter-of-factly. “That’s what you’re trying to think of.”
“Yes. Oh-em-gee. Sorry – I’d love to study with you.”
“Good.”
More silence. At this point I was little more than a sheep following him wherever he wanted to take me. We walked for another five minutes, his eyes again fixed on some distant horizon that was definitely invisible from the skyscrapers of Chelsea… just like the immaculately beautiful woman I had passed outside The Warrington the day before.
We arrived at a small café called Orchard Grains. When I say “arrived” what actually happened was that Noon went straight inside in silence and I stood in the doorway as the door swung closed. It’s not like I need a guy to throw his jacket down on a puddle so I don’t get my feet wet, but this was just rude.
I followed him in. The place was filled with students and artsy types engrossed either in conversation, books or laptops. Except Noon. He was just sitting bolt upright at a table. Seriously bizarre behavior.
I made my way to him through the maze of tables and slung my bag over the back of the chair. “Nice place,” I said, unpacking my Macbook Air (courtesy of the ToT) and my lucky bunny rabbit (courtesy of Mom soon after Dad died). “Where’s your stuff?”
He frowned almost imperceptibly, as if trying to read my mind.
“Your Geography notes?” I queried.
“Why?” he answered blankly.
“Isn’t that what we’re here for?”
“Yes. Here they are.” He removed a notebook from his backpack and placed it on the table, pushing away the empty cups left by the previous customers.
I looked around. “I’ll get the busboy. What are you having?”
“Milk.”
Of course. Milk. Not a soda, not a coffee, like your average teen. Milk.
I ordered our drinks (I splurged on a cappuccino) and saw the busboy clearing off a table at the back. As I got nearer to him I noticed that it was Cruz, his face hidden by a sports team baseball cap. Another weird coincidence.
“Hey, Cruz,” I said, and he looked up, startled. Then his features softened when he realized who I was.
“Kari!” he beamed at me.
“You work here?”
“Since the last two weeks.”
“Cool! I was just… I came in with Noon to study for the Geography mid-term.”
He scanned the room quickly and stopped at Noon’s table. I followed his gaze. Noon was sitting with his eyes closed, hands resting on the table, fingers intertwined.
“Looks like he’s meditating on continental drift,” said Cruz, and I burst out laughing.
“He is a bit of a kook,” I confided to him, “but he seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he’s cool.”
“When you get a minute, would you mind clearing off our table?” I asked.
“Fo sho. I’ll be right over.”
I edged my way between the tables and Noon opened his eyes.
“Tired?” I queried.
“No. You?”
“No, I was just asking because you… you looked like you were asleep.”
“Right. No, I close my eyes to concentrate.”
I sat down as Cruz arrived with a tray and cloth. “Hey, bro,” he said to Noon.
“Hello, Cruz. I’m pleased to see you,” was the unenthusiastic response.
“Yeah… das it,” said Cruz as he piled up the empty mugs on his tray. He wiped off the table and went back to his station.
“So what were you concentrating on?” I asked Noon.
“Excuse me?”
“You said you had your eyes closed because you were concentrating.”
“Right. I was concentrating on geography. Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“Uh-huh.” Well, this study session was going to be interesting.
As it turned out, Noon loosened up and the next couple hours flew by. We got down to plate tectonics, a subject that he seemed to be super knowledgeable about. Despite – or maybe because of – his unusual body language, there was something almost hypnotic about him. Was it the evenness of his features or the calmness of his voice? Cruz hung around our table and flashed a smile my way once or twice, but my attention was riveted by Noon’s piercing eyes.
My phone buzzed. Mom checking in on me. She’d be home at 6.30 – still another hour. Before I could answer her text, I heard a crash at the back of the café followed by two voices yelling at each other.
Cruz stormed out from behind the counter, throwing his apron down on the floor and shoving empty chairs out the way.
The café manager appeared. “And don’t even think about coming back to collect your pay!” he fumed at the disappearing Cruz.
All heads in the café turned from the door being slammed by Cruz back to the manager. “Sorry, folks,” he apologized, picking up the discarded apron.
“Oh-em-gee! I wonder what happened there?” I said to Noon, who seemed very perturbed by the turn of events. “Poor Cruz! His boss looks like such a douche.”
Noon turned slowly to look at me. “We should leave,” he announced.
I was surprised to hear him say this. We had been getting on great, and I think I even learned something. “I don’t have to be home for a while,” I told him.
“There’s no point staying,” he said.
“What do you mean? We’re half-way through the chapter. I thought we were going to finish it.”
“No.”
“Okay… Because you have to get home for supper?”
“No. Yes.”
I was confused. Who wouldn’t be? “Which is it?” I asked.
“It’s yes. I need to get home.”
He put away his notebook and pushed back his chair without even looking at me. I shook my head and closed my laptop. I felt kinda hurt. But suddenly it seemed as though a fog had cleared inside my head. “No, hold on,” I said, and opened it again. “Leave if you like, but I’m staying.”
Noon calmly put his hands together and closed his eyes. He looked so weird and yet so peaceful. After a couple of seconds his eyes snapped open again and he frowned at me. I smiled and it was like he realized he was being an asshole. “I apologize,” he said, and sat back down.
I had to admit it, I was crushing on him, and the strangeness was part of it. There was something about him that was incredibly attractive and yet incredibly foreign, almost alien. For the next 45 minutes we chatted and it was great. Okay, if I have to be honest, I chatted and he listened. He soaked up my life story with attentive ears, nodding and asking the odd question. Before I knew it, it really was time to leave. He offered to walk me home, and I agreed, my mental fog now completely replaced by a warm, fuzzy blanket of… what? I’d just met him. Snap out of it, Kari!
* * * * *
When I got in, the apartment was empty. I dumped my stuff and had a shower. I only realized as I was drying my hair that the apartment was really empty. Flash wasn’t there. The hairdryer was his nemesis, and the feud had being going on since he was traumatized by it as a kitten. But he couldn’t resist confronting it. Whenever I blow-dried my hair he would freak, hissing and arching his back, fur standing on end. But not this time.
I turned off the hairdryer and called his name. Nothing. I made little squeaking noises with my lips, walking from room to room. Okay, this was bizarre. Where the eff could he be? There was only one sure-fire way of making him come running. I went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard where the cat food was stored. I shook the bag loudly. Silence.
Wait, there wasn’t silence.
There was a muffled voice coming from… coming from? I bent down to follow the sound. It was coming from the cupboard.
The cupboard was a medium-sized space, maybe three feet high and 18 inches wide, and as I stuck my head inside to listen I felt like I was somehow entering another world. It was a gut feeling. You know, the kind you can’t explain but know you should trust. Some people call it instinct, but Mom explained to me once that the gut and the ancient lizard brain are linked. This is the “fight or flight” response that you feel when you’re threatened. It’s helped us survive over millions of years of evolution. And it’s rarely wrong.
So what was different in there? What was my subconscious reacting to? The smell. Yes, that was it – something smelled different in there, and it wasn’t cat food. Now the muffled voice was louder, more distinctive. And I could tell that there were actually two voices, a man’s and a woman’s.
I put my head in further and another part of my gut sent me a second message. The dimensions were wrong. The cupboard stretched back much further than it should have, back beyond the kitchen wall.
I withdrew and stood up. I opened the cupboard above it and moved the cereal boxes to one side. This one was only a couple of feet deep. Looking back into the cat food cupboard, it was obvious that it went back at least a foot more.
I stood with my hands on my hips for a moment, trying to process. And where on earth was Flash? I called his name again and listened. Suddenly the voices stopped. I bent down and put my head back in the cupboard. There was a stale smell, and… was that a draft? I reached inside and felt around. The cupboard was so deep it was hard to see the back clearly. I shuffled inside, resting on my forearms and prodding the back wall with my fingers. It moved slightly. I pushed harder, and with a groan it swung open at the bottom. It was hinged somehow at the top, like a large flap. I opened the flap wider and felt a distinct whoosh of cooler, damper air hit my face. I peered through the opening but it was pitch black inside. Then the voices started again, this time much clearer. I still couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it was definitely a man and a younger woman talking.
Pushing the flap open even wider I realized that I could fit through the opening. The other side of the flap felt like a tunnel or duct the same width and height as the cupboard. The trouble was, it was too dark in there to explore it. I needed a flashlight.
Mom is nothing if not resourceful. There were always spare batteries in the house when I was a kid. A first aid kit that nurse-Mom whipped out at the first sign of fever. And a well-stocked emergency box in an easy-to-reach location.
Five minutes later I was back in the cupboard, flashlight in hand.
I wriggled inside on my hands and knees, then pushed the flap open again. I crawled through it, testing the strength of the surface beneath me as I went. The tunnel creaked a bit – I guess it was made of wood – but it seemed pretty firm. I advanced, the tunnel’s blackness stretching out in front of me. The flap swung shut and the dank air enveloped me.
I stopped and listened, probing the tunnel with the flashlight. It seemed to go on forever. “Flash?” I whispered loudly. But all I could hear were the echoey voices. I carried on crawling forward. They seemed to be getting louder. The young woman’s higher-pitched voice was easier to make out than the man’s gravelly rumble.
I thought I heard her say, “…control of it…here, I can get…here…make it…” Just snatches of sentences. The man said something in reply. When I was crawling, the noise my jeans made on the wood made it impossible to distinguish individual words in what the woman was saying. I shone the flashlight ahead of me. Was that a turn in the tunnel? As I got nearer, I could tell that there was a junction to the left in the tunnel up ahead.
I reached the bend and looked around it, the flashlight beam sweeping the tunnel walls. There was another long stretch that ended in…? A bend or a drop? “Flash?” I whispered again and listened. Now both voices were more distinct. They were definitely coming from further along the tunnel.
“…can’t stop them,” said the man.
“That’s just it,” answered the woman. Then silence.
I crawled onward, accompanied only by the swoosh and scrape of my jeans and shoes. Half a minute later I reached the end of this stretch of tunnel. Now there was a turn to the right, and a section that went upward. I raised my head to look up this chute. For a second my brain made a connection. That was it – garbage chutes! These big old buildings were usually equipped with them. Maybe that was what this was. But why did the tunnels go sideways? No, it made no sense.
I knelt at the junction, searching for an explanation. Then, before I knew what was happening, I screamed. Something had dropped from the chute and landed in front of me. Something alive. I scrambled backward, heart in mouth, the flashlight making crazy-ass shadows on the tunnel walls.
In seconds I was back at the first turn, but as I tried to crawl around it, one of the belt loops on my jeans snagged on a nail. I tried to pull it off, frantic. I glanced back down the tunnel and saw a movement. It was coming toward me. It was… Flash.
My limbs sagged, I stopped struggling, and the loop unhooked from the nail. The cat meowed and trotted up to me. Laughing in relief, I petted him. “You… you… I love you!” I said, happy to have found him. And happy that he wasn’t a giant rat. Or something worse that the depths of my imagination had conjured up in my state of panic. He purred and snuggled against my nose.
“Kari.”
I froze.
It was the young woman’s voice. Distant, but distinct. I strained my ears to hear more but I was already far from the source of the sound, and Flash’s purring obscured the rest of the words. But I know I heard it. I know I heard my name.
“Kari.”
I shuddered. This was so effed-up. Then Flash jumped off me, speeding back to the flap, and I realized that the second voice was Mom’s. I didn’t want her to know about the tunnel, so I crawled back toward the cupboard as fast as I could.
Flash was blocking the way.
“Move!” I whispered, pushing him to one side.
I grasped the bottom of the flap with my fingernails and pulled it up. Flash sprang through it and into the kitchen. I followed, carefully replacing the flap and climbing out.
Mom appeared in the kitchen, still wearing her jacket. “What are you doing?” she asked as I stood up and brushed myself down guiltily. She hung her keys on a hook by the door.
“Um… feeding the cat,” I answered, pleased at my logical response.
“I mean, why are you holding a flashlight?”
I glanced down at my hand. Oh. Right. Think fast.
“There was…” I fumbled for a credible reason. “There was… I… I… lost an earring.” Wow. Terrible reason. Luckily Mom’s usually impressive brainpower had been sapped by a long day at the office.
“Oh,” she exhaled, looking absolutely exhausted. “I need a good soak, honey.” She turned and left the room, her weary voice receding. “Grab whatever you like from the freezer.”
“Okay,” I shouted after her. Suddenly I realized how hungry I was. I gave Flash his supper and then washed my hands at the sink, my thoughts still racing. As I soaped them, something occurred to me. They weren’t really dirty. In fact, for a tunnel in an old building, the passageway I’d discovered was remarkably free of dust and cobwebs. It had clearly been constructed very recently. I looked back at the cupboard while Flash munched away in front of it. I dried my hands and leaned back on the counter, wondering. And more than a little bit scared.
* * * * *
I had weird dreams that night. In the morning I could only remember vague flashes and feelings. I was with Cruz and we were lost somewhere strange. Somewhere totally strange.
“What’s the matter, honey?” enquired Mom as I prodded at my breakfast cereal.
“Nothing.”
I was a teenage girl. This was a normal response.
Mom busied herself with some ironing. She knew me well. She knew I would tell her if I had a real problem. But how could I tell her about what I’d seen since we arrived in New York? The strange women outside The Warrington… the tunnel behind the cupboard… hearing my name? I didn’t want to sound crazy and I didn’t want her to worry about me. She had her new job to concentrate on and didn’t need me to distract her.
I pushed back my chair and tipped the remains of my cereal into the under-sink garbage. Flash meowed and rubbed up against my legs.
“Could you feed him?” asked Mom, setting the iron on its stand and holding up her shirt to check for wrinkles.
“Sure,” I answered, but held back before opening the cat food cupboard. Part of me was intensely curious but part of me didn’t want to know where that tunnel led.
Mom looked at me, frowning. “Honey? We’ve got to go.”
“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” I said, shaking my head. I opened the cupboard and dragged out the oversized bag of cat food. Mom had left the room and I couldn’t resist. I stuck my head inside. Between two hungry meows I was sure I heard the same voices.
I shivered.
Flash meowed again. I withdrew my head from the cupboard, filled the cat bowl and put the bag back inside. Definitely voices.
I slammed the cupboard door.
* * * * *
The next day when I got to school I waited for Cruz at the lockers. But the bell rang and he still hadn’t shown up. The hallway emptied of students and I looked at my watch pointlessly. Then he appeared, running toward me, rushing but not flustered. He could see that I was waiting for him, so he had no choice but to slow down as he reached me.
“Hey,” I ventured with a sympathetic smile.
“Hi,” he panted, flinging open his locker door and grabbing some books.
“Listen, I feel bad for you about last night,” I said. He ignored me. “At the café.”
He slammed his locker shut. “No biggie,” he sighed. “That shit happens to me all the time.”
“What do you mean?” I queried.
“We’re late.” He hurried toward the classroom door.
I jogged after him. “It looked like kinda a big deal at the time.”
Just as he reached the door he stopped and turned to me with an intense look.
“Das it, Kari. I just… I had a bad few days and sometimes… sometimes I snap and that’s what went down at the café. It blows cuz, man, I needed the money.”
“No prob. Everything okay?”
He looked down. Clearly everything was far from okay. I put my hand on his arm and his eyes shot back up at me. There was pain behind them. Real suffering. He pulled away and opened the door.
There was a noticeable reaction as we walked in together. The other kids were already seated and Mr. Jefferson had just opened his mouth to speak. I hadn’t even thought about it, but Cruz and I looked like a couple. I must have blushed because there were snickers and some whispering. It was like a lame-ass sitcom. I couldn’t even look at Cruz as we took our seats next to each other. And I’m sure that he was feeling the same way.
Dream #10: I discover a sparkling river that empties through a lush forest into a glowing lake. It had been there all the time but I never knew it existed.
The Friday I met Aranara was a cold, cold day. My hometown of Lancaster, Wisconsin is in some kind of microclimate and we rarely got snow, even in the middle of winter, so I wasn’t expecting the betrayal that lurked in the air that early October in New York City. Monday was balmy, but by the end of the week a biting wind had blown in from Canada, leaving Manhattanites shivering in flimsy fall jackets.
Over the previous couple of weeks I had tried to forget the weirdness of the double handshakes, the Temple of Truth, and the tunnel behind the kitchen cupboard. It was all so effing insane, and when I ignored it, it seemed to go away. At school I crushed on Noon from afar, but that was all I could do – his distance was both fascinating and impenetrable. Cruz was another matter. He was down-to-earth and stereotypically handsome, but there was a tension, an inner struggle, that made me want to hold him by the hand and tell him that everything was going to be okay. It was an incredibly powerful feeling and the only thing that forced me to concentrate on schoolwork was the fact that Mom had such high expectations for me. And who was I to begrudge her that? She had worked like a dog ever since Dad died, never pressuring me, never making me feel like I owed her anything. The least I could do was to make a decent effort.
So I put my head down and studied. Literally. I didn’t even look at Noon or Cruz before the bell sounded at the end of each class. And I guess that’s why I didn’t notice Aranara. But once I did notice her, I would never forget her.
The weekend was beckoning as I rushed through the school gates that bone-chilling afternoon. All I could think about was Skyping my Wisconsin friends. I missed them but I could already sense that the big city was changing my friendships. They had no way to relate to my stories of Broadway musicals or Central Park strolls, and although I could laugh at their latest Glee Club goings-on, I felt as removed from the stories as from the TV show that inspired them.
I heard a shrill girl’s voice above the traffic hum: “Hey! Kari!” My shoulders were hunched up against the cold and I’d pulled my woolen hat down over my ears, so it was hard for me to tell where the shout was coming from. I scanned the cars lined up outside school: mostly rich-kid SUVs and smart sedans idling with the windows closed.
“Kari! Over here!”
One car caught my eye. Not just because the back window was down and a girl’s head was sticking out, but because it was long and black. I don’t know a thing about cars, but this one was… looming, somehow. It pulled away from the curb and crawled toward me, engine purring. As it stopped beside me, the front tire crushed an apple that some kid must have tossed from their lunchbox. The fruit was obliterated into a pulpy mess.
The girl raised the window and opened the back door for me. “It’s me, Aranara,” she smiled. “You’re not dressed for this – you’ll catch your death.”
I hesitated. She looked familiar. She even sounded familiar. But I had no idea who she was. And she sure had the kind of name you would remember, right? She rolled her eyes like I was being spectacularly dim.
“I’m in your History class. And your Spanish class. No mi recuerdos?”
Nope. I didn’t remember her. But I was drawn to her. She had a wide smile and shining hazel eyes. Her long, blonde hair fell evenly on her broad shoulders. Her fur-trimmed red designer jacket fitted perfectly around her overdeveloped torso. Swim team? Cheerleader? Incredibly fortunate genes? Whatever her secret, she was the kind of girl that boys dream about taking to the prom.
“Come on,” she said as she scooched over. “You’re on our way.”
I got in and closed the door. It was warm, leathery and comforting inside. In the driver’s seat was a salt-and-pepper-haired man in a dark overcoat with his hands clasped together on top of the steering wheel. I was brought up to be polite, so I said hi to him. He kept his hands together and looked at me with piercing blue eyes through the rear-view mirror. “Cilic,” he growled.
“Um… Kari,” I responded, put off by his gruffness.
“Don’t mind Dad, he’s foreign,” said Aranara, motioning with her head in his direction.
The car pulled away. I suddenly realized that it was beyond warm in there, it was stifling. As I took off my hat, I realized something else. “How do you know where I live?”
“Oh, we passed you one day as you were leaving your building with your mother,” she answered dismissively. “It’s The Warrington, right?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I lived there – it looks so cool,” she gushed.
I was somehow disturbed by her familiarity. “It’s… it’s… I guess it is.” Uncomfortable silence. “Where do you live?”
She seemed bored by my question. “New Jersey. Super glamorous.” I actually had no idea whether she was being ironic, so I just nodded.
She picked up my hat from the seat between us and twirled it around an extended index finger. “I love this!” She peered closely at the weave, picking at it with her perfectly manicured fingers. “Where did you get it? The EastVillage?”
I laughed inside. “Nowhere quite so hip. Thrift store, Nowheresville, Wisconsin.”
She laughed out loud. “You’re a-DOR-able!”
For all I knew she even had an exclamation point after her name. All the same, she was somehow irresistible. We chatted the rest of the way and soon arrived at The Warrington.
I opened the car door. “Thank you for the ride, sir.”
Her father re-clasped his hands on top of the wheel without acknowledging a word I’d said. A cold gust of wind billowed down the street and I clutched my hat, totally forgetting what I wanted to say to Aranara. I guess I also didn’t pay attention when she opened the locket around her neck and carefully put something inside.
* * * * *
The next day ended with Spanish class. Aranara wasn’t there. This was the one course that Cruz excelled in and he usually sat alone in a semi-walled-off section of the room with computer screens and headsets, enjoying Latino movies and TV shows while the rest of us struggled.
I was pretty good at Spanish but nevertheless had somehow gotten the idea in my head to ask Cruz if he would help me out with a conversation session a couple of evenings a week. I waited till everyone else had left the language lab and poked my head around the half-wall that separated the regular desks from the multimedia section.
Cruz was engrossed in a movie. No idea what it was. My brain was in some kind of cloud when I knocked on the back of his chair like it was a door. He snapped out of his tunnel vision and yanked off his headphones.
“Hey, Kari.”
“Hey. Cómo está?” I ventured, proud of my effort.
He smiled, waited a second, then corrected me. “You mean, ‘Cómo estás?’”
“Oh,” I responded, crestfallen.
“’Cause we’re close. I mean… you know me, so, like, you gotta use the familiar part of the verb,” he explained, pushing his chair back and turning off the movie.
“Right…” I nodded. I actually thought I was going to impress him. Fat chance. I rolled my eyes, annoyed with myself. I decided to focus on my shoes while I gathered the courage to ask him. “So… I’m, like, totally into Spanish and, you know, I thought it might be fun to, like, study together? I mean, just talk, chat or whatever. Hang out and, like, shoot the breeze…in… Spanish. One evening. Sometime.”
Oh. Em. Gee. I was barely able to string a couple of sentences together in English, let alone Spanish.
I looked up at him. Only then did I realize that even though he had seemed to be watching the movie, he had a pencil in his hand and a sketch pad on the desk.
He put the pencil down and responded, “Yeah, I’m down with that.”
“Awesome!” I beamed back at him.
“I gotta get some shit done at home tonight, but sure – maybe tomorrow?”
The pencil he’d been using was rolling slowly toward the edge of his desk. He didn’t notice its movement and it seemed like an eternity passed as it completed five or six revolutions before plummeting to the floor. Cruz saw the pencil out the corner of his eye as it fell. He made a lunge for it, but was just too late. As he jerked forward, the back of his chair pushed the sketch pad off the desk too. It fell open at a drawing, and he froze. Even upside-down I could tell that the image was a likeness of me. Not just me, but a ridiculously perfect version of my face. Like the doodles pinned up inside Cruz’s locker, the sketch was incredibly symmetrical. Disturbingly so.
He scrambled to pick up the pad, but he knew that I’d seen it. And I knew that he knew that I’d seen it. Regaining his cool, he bent down and closed the pad. He placed it back on the desk and leaned back in his chair, somehow expectant.
I remember feeling a wave of emotion wash over me. What was it? This was something I’d never felt before. Cruz’s eyes met mine for an instant and I held them. Heat coursed through my veins. Through my arteries. My stomach tightened but there was only one thought in my mind: kiss him. Kiss him like you’ve never kissed any guy before. Like the rest of the world doesn’t matter.
So I did, and sure enough the rest of the world melted away. The kiss was as electric as the shivers that ran down my spine. I closed my eyes as he closed his. His lips were warm and soft. Time stopped completely. I was lost in the moment and the moment was lost in our kiss. No idea whether it was seconds or minutes, but eventually our lips parted and our eyes opened. But we were still entranced by the rush of magic we’d felt. Our faces were inches apart, mine slightly above his as he leaned back in his chair. My hair fell around my face, the ends brushing against his chest.
A first kiss is always special, but this was beyond believable. It was as though my brain had been unanchored. I was floating. I looked down at my hand, still gripping Cruz’s forearm. Suddenly there was a noise – a chair scraping across the tiled floor – and I moved away, the current running between us interrupted.
“I have to go,” I said, flustered.
He nodded and looked down at his running shoes again. I didn’t have to go, but this was all I could think of to say. The moment had overwhelmed me and I needed to leave before it became too much for me.
I stumbled past a couple of chairs, back into the main part of the classroom. No one was there. I swear I’d heard something. Not only was there no one, but I now felt like a different person. The spell had been broken, dropped on the floor and stomped on. Reality hit me like a cold shower. I heard Cruz get up from his chair behind the half-wall and knew that I had to get out of there.
I ran out of the language lab and into the hallway. In fact, I think I probably sprinted all the way out of the building. I wasn’t sure what had come over me, but as the chill late-afternoon air hit me, I shook my head and blinked. I had exited through the side entrance into the almost-empty parking lot and looked around trying to get my bearings. A light caught my eye. Two, in fact – the brake lights of a sedan leaving the lot. My thoughts instantly jumped to Aranara. But as the car turned into the street I could see that it wasn’t her father’s prowling limo. In fact it was a silver SUV. And a streetlight caught the person in the passenger seat before it joined the traffic flow. It was Noon. How could I be so sure? Because he turned and looked at me, his gaze piercing through the night and burying itself in my consciousness, even from a hundred yards away.
I stopped in my tracks. Was this a coincidence? There was literally no one else around. My mind turned back to Cruz. Already the feeling that I’d had in the language lab felt like a foreign country. The boys back in Lancaster were drab at best. I’d kissed one or two in third grade but it was nothing like this. Nothing like the brain-numbing surge of hormones that I’d felt a few minutes ago. I guessed that that was the explanation – the out-of-body experience I’d had was all down to chemicals, right? I mean, I suppose love must be real, but Mom had brought me up to apply logic and scientific analysis to any unexpected situation. So that’s exactly what I did. I hardly even knew Cruz, but did that matter? Love is blind, and that’s how I felt when I was kissing him. I don’t even know what I was seeing while my eyes were closed and our lips were pressed together. Stars? Sparks? All the colors of the rainbow? It just sounded soooo cheesy, and as I pulled my fall jacket around me, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the whole thing was just a dream.
I marched swiftly into the street from the parking lot with my head down against the cold October wind and the brown leaves blowing around my ankles. Maybe I was over-thinking the whole thing? Maybe I should just go with it. What was the problem here anyway? Kissing a good-looking boy was what girls my age should be doing, right? But that wasn’t the issue. It was something else, and as I walked home an unpleasant sensation kept bugging me: I knew deep down inside that during those few minutes I was with Cruz in the language lab, I wasn’t myself. I literally wasn’t myself. Something, or someone, had been directing my thoughts and actions. And when I’d seen Noon in that SUV, there had a been a flash of insight. Somehow I knew that he was involved. My logical side kicked in. I decided then and there that I had to confront him and find out what was going on.
* * * * *
When I got back home, Mom was freaking out. Flash had vanished. Of course I knew where he’d gone, but for Mom it was completely inexplicable. One thing for sure – there was no way I was going to tell her about the secret tunnel.
“He must have scooted out when we left this morning,” I ventured, hoping she would buy it.
“But we would have seen him!”
“I dunno, we were in a bit of a rush,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, it’s impossible. He just wouldn’t do that.”
“It’s still a strange new place for him. Maybe he was confused?”
“Even if he raced out through a gap in the doorway while I was looking for my keys or something, he wouldn’t have run away any further. You know what he’s like – he never wants us to leave so he would have followed us, meowing.”
She had a point. “Yeah, I guess.” I was trying not to seem too bothered. This strategy backfired immediately.
“What’s the matter – why aren’t you freaking out?” she frowned at me.
“You’re right – we should look for him.”
“But I already have!”
Her voice was rising and I could understand why. If I’d actually believed Flash was lost, I’d be running around like crazy trying to find him.
“Did you try shaking the cat food bag?” I suggested as I walked into the kitchen.
Mom threw up her arms in exasperation as she followed me. “Of course I did.”
My eyes shot to the cupboard. The door was open. The cat food bag was sitting on the tiled floor in front of it. I didn’t want to shake it again because if Flash was in the tunnel and heard it, he would come running back and Mom would find out about the passageway. I needed to distract her so that I could go into the tunnel myself while she was asleep. I was cursing myself for not having thought about finding a way to stop Flash pushing open the flap at the back of the cupboard.
I grabbed the bag and walked out of the kitchen with Mom right behind me. “What are you doing, pumpkin?” she asked. I stopped in my tracks. She was stressed and reverting to her old habits.
“Mom…”
“What?”
“Pumpkin?”
She grinned sheepishly at me. “Oh yes – sorry!”
I opened the front door and went out into the hallway, shaking the cat food bag. “Flash!” I shouted, making squeaky noises with my lips. This went on for about half a minute until an old man in a robe opened the door across from the elevators.
“What in God’s name is going on?” he grumbled, peering through thick eyeglasses, his thinning gray hair mussed up as though he’d been napping.
“Aw shucks, we didn’t mean to disturb you, Sir,” apologized Mom, doing her best impression of a Midwestern farmer’s wife. The man grunted something and shuffled back inside his apartment. “See? He’s gone,” said Mom in desperation. She meant Flash, not the old man. “We’ll have to make a bunch of those sad Lost Cat posters and put them up around the neighborhood.”
“Good idea,” I answered, not really knowing what else to do. Then I thought of a way that Flash could reappear without it seeming like magic to Mom once I’d found him in the tunnel. “Hey – what if he’s just lost in the building somewhere – we should leave the door open so he can come back in.”
“Are you crazy?!” she exclaimed in a loud whisper, glancing over at the old man’s door. “This is New York! People have three locks on their doors. No one leaves them unlocked, let alone open.”
“But there’s a chain, so we could almost close it and it would look closed to anyone who happened to come by, and how many people are going to do that anyway between now and the morning? Then if Flash comes back he can nudge the door open a bit and come inside.”
She had that look on her face that always appeared when she was processing. She started to nod slowly, which was usually a good sign. “You’re right – statistically the odds of a thief getting in the building and then happening to pass by our door out of the hundreds of apartments are practically zero. And if Flash does come back, the chain will allow the door to open just enough for him to enter, but stop anyone else coming in.”
“That’s my whole point!” I smiled. “And when he does come in, he’ll meow hello to us and we’ll get up and close the front door.”
“Okay, okay… I guess it’s pretty low-risk.” She seemed to cheer up and went back inside the apartment. “I’ll get supper ready while you work on the posters in case we need them,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.
I was super proud of myself. This was the plan: I’d set my alarm for 3 am, crawl into the tunnel, track him down, bring him back, and pretend that he’d come through the chained front door and woke me up by jumping on my bed. Then I’d just have to find a way of stopping him going back through the flap tomorrow. What could go wrong? By morning, I had the answer.
* * * * *
The tunnel was colder at night. I’d thrown on some sweatpants but had totally not expected to be shivering in there. I crawled along the passageways, following the route I’d taken before. I quietly called out Flash’s name, shining the flashlight in front of me, then above me. I came to the vertical junction that he’d jumped down from the last time. But there was no sign of him.
I began to worry that he’d found a similar flap in another apartment and gotten stuck in there. What if the tenant hated cats and threw him out in the street? The posters suddenly didn’t seem like such a waste of time. Or what if he was trapped somehow in a narrow part of the tunnel? I knew that last idea was unlikely, seeing as how Flash was able to squish himself down to about two inches high. And if he did, surely he’d be squealing in pain or meowing in fear and I’d hear him…
Sure enough, just as that thought entered my head, I heard it. Faintly, but undoubtedly, it was a soft meow. Heartened, I crawled faster. The sound seemed to be getting louder – I must be headed in the right direction. I rounded a couple corners, no longer cold because of how fast I was crawling. Then I stopped as I realized that the tunnel sloped upward in front of me. I shone the flashlight up, but I couldn’t see how high the incline went. But now that I’d stopped it was obvious that the meowing was louder.
“Flash!” I called, this time in more of a hoarse shout than a whisper.
“Meow!” came the response from somewhere up the sloped tunnel. I started to crawl upward.
After a minute or so the incline leveled off. I thought I saw something glinting in the distance ahead.
“Flash?” I edged forward. Something told me that it wasn’t Flash. The meowing had stopped. But there was definitely something reflecting back the beam of the flashlight. I wondered whether I should continue. But curiosity got the better of me.
That old saying came to me: curiosity killed the cat.
The number of times Mom had said that after catching me sticking my finger in a hole as a little kid or poking my head through a railing to see what was below… But she never got super mad at me. How could she, with her scientific background and engineer’s training? She’d always encouraged me to explore, to ask questions. Although, come to think of it, she never specified whether crawling along a small dark tunnel in the middle of the night was allowed.
Now I could see what had been glinting in front of me. Not the eyes of a cat, but the brass of a metal grille. It was about two feet wide and ten inches high, with an ornate design of curly leaves and twisting stems. The kind of grille you found covering a heating duct in an old building like this.
I realized that if it opened somehow, a cat could get through the gap easily. I approached the grille and shone my flashlight through the opening. Before calling Flash’s name again I wanted to see if it was someone’s bedroom. The last thing I needed was to give some poor old lady a heart attack.
The room on the other side of the grille was in darkness. I could make out a patterned rug and the legs of various tables and chairs. Cool – it didn’t seem to be a bedroom, so I whispered “Flash?” and waved the flashlight around some more.
Then I sensed a movement and focused the beam in its direction. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out what it was in the gloom. Just as I was about to call the cat again, I felt a wave of shuddering overtake my whole body. The movement had come from a person’s legs. Maybe twenty feet away (the room was pretty big) the flashlight’s beam was wider, but fainter. And it wasn’t just one person’s legs. There were half a dozen people seated around an oval dining room table, eyes closed. In the pitch dark.
This was beyond freaky. It made my blood run cold. There were three men and three women, old and young, all holding hands like they were participating in the world’s spookiest séance.
None of them seemed to have noticed my presence behind the grille. This was a good thing. All thoughts of Flash had vanished as surely as he had vanished from our apartment. What on earth was going on here?
I swept the room with my flashlight, peering into the dimness. Something on the wall caught my attention. What was it? A symbol… something I’d seen before. WTF – it was the logo of the Temple of Truth! Is this what they did to get to the truth? Sit around in the dark holding hands?!
One of the men at the table suddenly turned toward me and opened his eyes. I hadn’t made a sound but he looked right at the grille. I turned the flashlight quickly away, then switched it off. The man broke the circle of hands and got up from his chair. He padded softly but deliberately toward me. I recoiled instinctively. Even though it was as dark as a coalmine in the room I could tell that he was getting closer. I shuffled backward as quietly as I could. But I hadn’t realized that I couldn’t turn around in the tunnel. When I’d crawled into it the first time I only changed direction when Flash jumped down on me at the intersection, and it must have been wider than the regular width of the passageway. Now I was stuck going backward and trying not to make any noise.
The man was at the grille. I held my breath. He was only about six feet away but for some reason hadn’t thought of turning on the light in the room. It was almost as though he was sniffing the air in the tunnel.
And then I heard it. A single word. Spoken by one of the women in the room.
“Noon?”
I knew it was him. I knew that the man at the grille was Noon.
He moved away and replied gravely to the woman: “We should have known.”
My brain was speeding at a thousand miles an hour. What did all this mean? Noon lived in my building? And he was somehow involved in the Temple of Truth that Mom worked for?
Then the light did go on in the room. It pierced the grille, casting a shadow of sinewy leaves and stalks on the walls of the tunnel. There was the sound of chairs being pushed back and people murmuring. They were going to find me.
I shuffled back as fast as I could, unconcerned by the swooshing of sweatpants and the click of the flashlight on the wooden tunnel floor. I caught a glimpse of a face pressing against the grille as I started to slide back down the incline. It was a woman. It might have been the woman I’d seen outside The Warrington holding hands with the other one in the doorway, but I lost sight of her as gravity took over.
I let myself go and in a few seconds was down at the bottom of the slope, heart pounding and sweat pouring from my forehead. I still couldn’t turn around, so I carried on edging backward as fast as I could. I don’t know why, but I felt like puking. This was too much to process. I was tired, scared and confused.
After a couple of minutes I reached an intersection and found that I was able to turn around. The search for Flash had suddenly become secondary. I sped back to the flap and into the kitchen.
I stood there panting, looking down at the cupboard, thoughts careening through my brain. None of it made any sense. I turned on the faucet and took out a glass. The water gushed into the sink. Somehow it calmed me and I stayed there watching the stream and the splashes. It was as though all my confusion was being washed down the drain.
I must have been super tired or totally out of it because the next thing I remember is waking up to the sound of purring.
My first thought was happiness. Flash had found his way home! I turned around to face the warmth and reached out for his fur. But my fingers knew it before my eyes confirmed it: this was a different cat.
She – and I instantly knew that the cat was female – was a white Persian with stunning blue eyes. No collar, just the silkiest fur. I propped myself up in bed and looked at her as she pawed the duvet and rubbed her head against my arm. Then the night’s events flooded back. And to add to the confusion, here was a different cat! Crazy…
I heard Mom making breakfast in the kitchen and looked at the beautiful white feline as she stared back at me. She must have come in through the tunnel. No, wait – we left the front door open on the chain, so she could have come in that way too.
I swung my legs out of bed. Oh wow, my head felt like it was filled with cotton. I must have slept four or five hours, and even they can’t have been too restful. The cat looked at me as I stood up, swaying slightly.
“Guess I’d better feed you,” I said, and she meowed in reply.
Mom turned around as I staggered into the kitchen. “Hey honey.”
“Hey,” I groaned. That was all I could muster in the mental state I was in.
The white cat trotted in behind me. Mom’s eyes widened. “What the…” her voice trailed off as the cat circled my ankles.
“Yeah. Weird,” was my contribution to the discussion.
“I was just going to say that Flash didn’t show up. Where did she come from?”
“No clue. She was on my bed when I woke up. Must have come in the front door I guess.”
Mom crouched down and held out her hand. The cat sniffed her fingers and meowed.
“No collar,” she said, petting the cat’s neck. “I guess we should give you some breakfast before we take you back home.”
I dropped a pop tart into the toaster. “We have to put up those posters,” I reminded her.
“Sure thing, honey,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s really lost. Someone must know where he is.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We’d better hurry then.” She poured some cat food into Flash’s bowl and stood up. The white Persian ignored the food. Mom picked it up and put it back down with its head practically in the bowl. The cat just looked at her and walked back into the center of the room, staring at us.
“Guess you aren’t hungry,” said Mom, then turned to me as I poured myself some apple juice with an unsteady hand. “You okay, honey?”
“Uh-huh.”
“’Cause you look real tired.”
“Uh-huh.” I took a huge gulp of juice. Then the pop tarts did what they do best and popped up with a sickly sweet strawberry smell.
Mom didn’t seem to know what to do about any of this. She isn’t exactly a control freak, but let’s just say that it’s only because she avoids situations where she isn’t in control.
I munched my breakfast while the Persian watched me. If I could have seen through the fog that was clouding my mind I would have been worried, scared even. As it was, it was all I could do to focus on the task in hand: putting up the posters to find Flash.
We left our new furry guest in the apartment and hurried out clutching posters and Scotch tape. Twenty minutes later every lamppost and utility pole in a four-block radius was plastered with a sheet of pale blue paper showing the world’s cutest black kitty and these words:
LOST!
BLACK 4 YEAR-OLD MALE CAT
WITH WHITE PATCH ON BELLY.
He’s called Flash and we miss him.
REWARD!!! (212) 555-1981
As Mom drove me to Chelsea Prep we must have passed a dozen of our posters. Hopefully someone who knew where Flash was would see them too.
* * * * *
By the time I got to school I only had one goal – to confront Noon and find out what was behind the Temple of Truth. At lunchtime I grabbed a tray of food and scanned the crowded cafeteria but I couldn’t see him. Cruz was there though, alone at a table, looking straight at me. He gave me a half-smile and I found myself edging past the chairs toward him. All those feelings from the language lab flooded back.
“Hey,” he said, shifting over to make room for me. But as I got to the table, his smile faded. “You alright?”
Why was he asking that, I wondered? Was there something wrong with me?
“You look kinda tired,” he added.
Crap, I guess I must have looked like ass. “Yeah, had trouble sleeping last night.”
“Me too,” he said, nodding sympathetically.
I sat down and pulled the tab on my soda can. “Eff it!” The nail on my index finger had broken almost clean across.
“What’s up?” he enquired, genuinely concerned.
“Just a nail. I’ve got nine more,” I answered, shaking my hand in a futile attempt to get rid of the shooting pain. Why do people even do that anyway?
He laughed. “You’re being way too cool about it! If one of my sisters breaks a nail, das it! It’s a national freakin emergency. They’re kinda old-school.”
I took a big gulp of soda and noticed that we had both chosen the exact same thing for lunch – burrito and rice. Weird. I was feeling unusually shy but totally wanted to hang and chat.
“You’re Puerto Rican, right?”
“First generation. Luce and Terri – my sisters – act like they’re in West Side Story. If the dude doesn’t open the car door for them, there ain’t no second date.
I frowned at the reference. “What’s West Side Story?”
He stopped chewing and stared at me. “You’re freakin kidding.”
I shook my head.
“It’s a Broadway musical. They made it into a movie in the fifties. It’s kinda big in my family.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll check it out.”
“I guess when you’re the only guy growing up in an all-female house you see a lot of musicals.”
I laughed and took a bite of my own burrito. This explained something about why I found Cruz so attractive. It wasn’t just physical – he could have been a macho jerk and he would still have been incredibly handsome – there was something sensitive about him too, and I guess it was because he’d escaped the traditional Latino male role models.
“What happened to your dad?” I asked.
“Left when I was four.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “Never came back.”
“That blows. I was four when I lost my dad.”
Cruz seemed shocked to hear this. “Oh, dude, I’m so sorry.”
“Hey – I think I’m over it. My mom’s a superstar. I’m really lucky.”
“Mine’s awesome too. But I feel bad cuz she pays a fortune to send me here and I ain’t exactly a straight-A student.”
I wanted to encourage him. “I see you in class. You work hard and that counts for a lot.”
“Thanks. I’m bummed about getting fired from the café though. At least I was helping her out.”
I took a sip of soda, an idea taking shape. “What if I paid you for the Spanish conversation?”
He looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“My mom would be totally into it and she just got a new job so she’s flush with cash right now.”
“For real? No, no, I couldn’t do that. I mean, I’m totally into doing the Spanish thing with you, but there’s no way you’re gonna pay me.”
Okay, so maybe the Latino macho pride wasn’t totally absent.
“No prob,” I said and took another bite. I swallowed my mouthful and was about to speak when another tray appeared beside mine at the four-seat table. I looked up, surprised. It was Aranara.
“Hey guys!” she said, flashing a big, toothy smile at Cruz and taking the seat next to mine.
He smiled back at her. I felt a surge of jealousy. In fact, I felt sick to my stomach. She put her hand on his muscular forearm and squeezed it as she spoke to him.
“I was thinking about you the other day.”
His eyes widened. “For real?”
“Yeah – I was watching West Side Story and one of the actors totally reminded me of you.”
You’ve got to be kidding, I thought.
“For real?” he said again, suddenly absorbed by her. She still hadn’t let go of his arm.
“I was imagining you in one of those tight white t-shirts, singing in the streets with the Sharks. Or the Jets – I get confused.”
I had to do something.
“I prefer the Broadway musical,” I said nonchalantly. Why did I lie? Why???!
Cruz switched his attention to me. “I thought you…”
Luckily he was interrupted by Noon clattering a tray onto the table beside him. Aranara withdrew her hand, the shine gone from her smile.
“Hi,” said Noon.
“Hey!” I answered. “What are you up to?”
He sat down and looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “I’m having lunch.”
Right. Retard.
Aranara glanced sideways at me, then at Noon. Wheels were turning in her head.
“So, you were saying, Kari?”
She blinked at me innocently and I was caught like a deer in the headlights. No, like a deer that has just told a big fat lie to impress a boy and is sitting in an interrogation room under one of those blinding spotlights they use on prisoners to make them spill the beans.
“Um…” was all that came out until Noon mercifully intervened.
“Up late studying, Kari?” he said. “You look exhausted.”
I’d been so distracted by Cruz that I had totally forgotten about what I’d seen through the grille in the tunnel. Had Noon recognized me? I started to sweat. There was a silence that seemed to last forever.
“I, uh…”
Then I realized that it was easier to say something truthful than dig myself in deeper with another half-lie.
“I lost my cat yesterday.”
“And you went looking for it?” asked Noon.
Damn, this was getting worse, like a noose tightening around my neck. Cruz was only half-listening, and part of me felt disappointment that he wasn’t showing any sympathy toward me for losing Flash. I followed his eye-line without really meaning to, and realized that he was fixated on Aranara’s voluptuous chest. She leaned back in her chair and stretched, groaning. Cruz’s eyes widened again, even more this time.
“Aaaahhh,” she breathed out, shifting in her seat. “I had a late night too.”
I looked at Noon. He was frowning. No, wait – he was concentrating – with his hands together in front of him on the table, not eating or even acknowledging the food on his plate. He was staring at me with those piercing eyes, yet somehow focused beyond them, like he could see into the very core of my being.
A loaded silence had fallen over the four of us at the table. I was lost in Noon’s eyes, he was lost somewhere else. Aranara was like a cat basking in the glow from a fireplace, and Cruz was the fire. But while my stomach began to dissolve in its own acid, a voice in my head nagged at me:
“They… they know each other. Noon and Aranara know each other. They never even said hi when he arrived at the table, never even looked at one another. Something has gone on between them in the past.”
In my peripheral vision I noticed something else that disturbed me: after clasping her hands together over her head while she was stretching, Aranara had kept them locked together and was resting them on the table in front of her untouched tray while she made eyes at Cruz. She was like a mirror image of Noon.
Suddenly Noon broke off eye-contact with me and turned to Cruz. “Have you been to the football try-outs?” he asked, softly but somehow insistently.
Cruz snapped out of Aranara’s aura and shook his head slightly. “Yeah… no,” he stammered. “I’m going to this afternoon’s session.”
Then Noon switched his attention to me. “Would you like to come watch the try-out with me?”
At least, I think he said that. I couldn’t swear that his lips even moved, but I heard the question, and before I could think about my schedule after lunch I found myself nodding enthusiastically, “Oh yeah, I’d love to!” What had come over me? Football was practically the last thing I was interested in.
Cruz looked at me for the first time since Aranara’s arrival. “Cool!” he said, and I could feel her tense up next to me. Her frustration was palpable. Cruz turned back to her. “Can you make it too?”
“No. I… have something,” she answered through gritted teeth.
A flicker of a smile played over Noon’s lips. He had this incredible calmness that acted like a gravitational field on me. He was so different from Cruz, but just as hard to resist.
This entire lunch scene had been a crazy-ass roller-coaster of emotions for me. Maybe even for Cruz too, because he pushed back his chair and wiped what I think were sweaty palms on his jeans. “Alright, gotta run, do some stuff before Math,” he announced.
I had to get out of there too. “Yeah, it’s been a slice,” I said as I stood up with my tray.
Cruz hurried out of the fast-emptying cafeteria. I tipped my leftovers into the garbage and put the tray on top of the pile. Before heading out I turned back and saw Noon and Aranara at the table, looking down at their untouched food. Each still with clasped hands. It was freaky. Almost like they were praying. Then I remembered – I needed to confront Noon about the Temple of Truth. As that thought formulated he unclasped his hands and looked up, straight at me. The jolt I felt was like a mental taser. The blood rushed to my cheeks and I turned swiftly away.
I wandered out of the cafeteria in a bit of a daze. I should have been excited about the prospect of watching Cruz at the tryout, but suddenly all I could think about was Noon – his searching gaze, his intelligent mouth and his hypnotic presence. How did all this happen so quickly? In fact, what was really happening?
* * * * *
A soft rain started to fall over the football field as Noon and I sat down on the bleachers. No one else was watching the team hopefuls trudge through the mud below us. It was hard to tell which one was Cruz underneath the padding and helmets. The uniforms had no names or numbers on the back (Chelsea Prep had money for sure, but wasn’t exactly renowned for its sports teams) and the only way Cruz stood out was his body language. It was just like when he quit the café – there was an animal energy to his stride. A purposeful focus, like a thick, coiled spring being flexed.
I was edgy, nervous. I had to talk to Noon about the Temple of Truth and this was the perfect occasion, huddled together under his big, black umbrella with the random pitter-patter above our heads.
“I, um, I need to ask you something.” This was a pretty good intro. But Noon turned his head slowly to face me and suddenly I’d lost the urge to pursue the matter. I blinked hard and tried to focus. Why was it so difficult? Come on, Kari – you like him, but do you literally have to act like a retard every time you’re with him?! Focus, focus, focus.
I cleared my throat, then blurted out, “Are you a member of the Temple of Truth?” and felt a wave of relief that I’d managed to actually say it.
He looked at me. The same burning gaze as always. What was he thinking? Was he going to get angry? Whatever. I’d opened the door, so I felt like I might as well barrel through it, all guns blazing.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you live in my building?”
I held my breath, totally expecting him to be pissed, or at least to have some sort of reaction. But there wasn’t one. What the eff was up with him? Was he even human? I couldn’t let up now.
“You walked me home after our study session at the café, but you never said you lived in The Warrington too.”
Then, to my astonishment, he looked down almost sadly and said, “I apologize, Kari.”
Now I almost felt bad for prying. “Oh no – I didn’t mean to – ”
“No problem,” he cut me off. “We’re secretive.”
So he was a member!
“And you know my mom works for the Temple, right?”
He nodded, then looked back at me. “Of course. But don’t worry – we’re committed to working together using peaceful methods toward creating a safe future for all mankind.”
Did I seem worried? Was it a religion or some kind of cult?
“We’re not a cult,” he continued, as though reading my thoughts, and something about the expression on his face told me that he wasn’t lying. Or, at least, he believed what he was saying was true. But what if the name Temple of Truth was a lie in itself?
“Okay…” I continued, “But what do you actually do? I mean, the members? Do you guys pray together or do charity work or wear weird robes or have unusual eating habits or…” oh man, I was starting to dig myself into a hole. Luckily, my muddled thoughts were interrupted by a communal grunt from the tryout guys below us as they pounded into each other.
“Listen,” said Noon quietly, “it’s my life, and that’s all I can say. There are many of us all over the world and we’ve been around for a very long time. But we don’t like to talk about what we do or why we do it.”
As he said this, Noon’s expression changed subtly, as though a shadow – some kind of infinite despair or terrible pain – had engulfed his soul. I had no choice but to take his explanation at face value. It just seemed so private, so much a part of who he was. But I really wanted to know more. Because I really wanted to know him.
“HEY!” came a shout from the field. The players had taken a break and Cruz was waving up at us, beaming as though the rain was a sunburst. He seemed not to have a care in the world at that moment. His emotions were so real and so raw that they drew me in. But Noon was a mystery. An enigma that I needed to solve. A guy whose icily calm exterior seemed to house the answer to a question that stretched wider than the galaxy. We had a connection like nothing I’d ever felt before, and I was becoming addicted to his presence.
A whistle below. Cruz put his helmet back on and rejoined the action.
“I have to go,” announced Noon. “Do you want to keep the umbrella?”
“Oh. I… sure.” Wait – I had absolutely no inclination to sit on my own in the rain. I was getting colder and my lack of sleep was beginning to take its toll. “No, I’m coming with you,” I said, ignoring the umbrella in Noon’s outstretched hand.
He stood there looking at me as though calculating or strategizing something. “Could you just hold this for a second?” he said, motioning with the umbrella. I took it and he put his hands together and closed his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay and watch Cruz?” he queried, calmly but convincingly.
Suddenly I wasn’t sure of anything. I glanced back at the field, my eyes scanning automatically for Cruz’s distinctive figure and movements. Under the shelter of Noon’s umbrella I felt somehow cozy. My brain had done a one-eighty over the space of a few seconds. I noticed how warm the curved wooden handle was in my hand. It was Noon’s warmth. I snapped my attention back to the bleachers in time to see him stepping silently over them, up toward the steps at the back.
“Noon!” I shouted to him.
He stopped instantly but didn’t turn around.
“Wait up!”
I scrambled over the wet benches, trying not to slip. The rain dripped down from his black hair. When I reached him, he finally turned around and unclasped his hands. I felt a surge of emotion as he looked at me. Then he broke eye contact and made for the steps.
He stayed silent the whole way back to the main school building. I guess I was silent too, but it was like he wasn’t saying anything on purpose. Had I annoyed or offended him, and he was just being polite? Then I remembered the other thing I wanted to ask him about.
“How do you and Aranara know each other?”
He kept walking for several seconds. Was he really just going to ignore me?
“I mean, I guess you’ve been at school together for a few years, right?” I continued, “But I got the feeling you guys had some other connection, like you’re cousins maybe or something like that.”
He stopped abruptly and spun around. His mouth was tighter and his nostrils flared. This was as close to any kind of emotion as I’d ever seen from him.
“I really don’t want to talk about her,” he said with a wavering voice.
Man, I guess I’d hit a raw nerve.
“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked,” I said, genuinely taken aback by his response. “She must have… you guys have some kind of history together, don’t you? It’s fine. I understand.”
He opened his mouth to speak again, then the emotion seemed to drain from his features. His shoulders dropped slightly and he cracked a small smile.
“No, it’s not like that. Let’s just say she’s not my favorite person and drop it.”
He started walking again. I caught up and we reached the school’s rear entrance.
“Here you go – thanks,” I said, shaking the water off the umbrella and handing it back.
He opened the door and started going inside, then stopped and came back out.
“You said you lost your cat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anything else unusual happen?” he enquired.
“Well, there’s the other cat…” I shrugged.
He leapt on my remark. “What? What do you mean”
“Another cat came into the apartment last night,” I answered, surprised at his reaction. “We left the door open for Flash – he’s our cat – and when I woke up, a fluffy Persian was on my bed.”
“On your bed.”
“Yes, on my bed. Purring loudly,” I added, wondering what on earth he was so concerned about.
“You have to get rid of her, Kari.”
“What? Why? And how do you know it’s a she?”
He put his hands on my shoulders, staring hard into my eyes.
“Please. Trust me.”
“I…” In all honesty, my brain had switched off again. “I… okay then.”
He was insistent, but not imploring. “As soon as you get back – promise?”
I nodded. “Sure thing.”
He let out a sigh. “Thank you.”
I was still drowning in his eyes as he opened the door again.
“I need to go do something. I’ll see you Monday,” he said, then turned and walked away.
And that was the last time Noon set foot in Chelsea Prep.
* * * * *
When I got back home, the Persian followed me from room to room. I felt kinda bad about putting her outside, but I’d made a promise. I put it off for as long as possible, but realized that if Mom got home I’d have to explain the weird conversation with Noon.
I think the cat could sense something because she suddenly vanished. I had taken out Flash’s carrying cage and set it down on the kitchen floor. When I opened the cage door, threw a handful of food inside and made the squeaky noises that always made Flash come running, there was no sign of her. I checked under the beds but she wasn’t there. Okay, this was silly. I needed to get rid of her and now she’d disappeared anyway? Does that even count as a fail? So… case closed, right? If she miraculously rematerialized when Mom got home, I’d deal with it then.
But she didn’t reappear. And I don’t even know how she got out. Mom was tired from a long day at work so she didn’t want to spend any energy looking for yet another lost cat.
I could tell she was tired because she made mac and cheese for supper. Organic mac and cheese, but still… As she poured the pasta into the boiling water, her face livened up.
“How about we go sightseeing together this weekend, pumpkin?”
I had to laugh. “Great idea, Mommy-kins!”
“Arghhh,” she groaned.
She was totally exhausted – I could see it in her eyes. She must have been under a lot of pressure with the new job and new city. And in truth, I felt exhausted too that evening. Not just physically, either. I felt totally drained mentally.
“Seriously, I’d love to do that, Mom,” I added.
“You know what – I’ll even look into how much a helicopter tour costs.”
“You’re kidding! That would be freaking awesome!!!” I was jumping up and down in the kitchen like a little girl.
“None of that language when we’re in the air,” she mock-scolded, waving a wooden spoon at me.
I threw my arms around her. “You’re the best, Mom. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Likewise, honey,” she said gently, kissing my hair.
We both crashed pretty fast after supper and went to bed super early. I can’t say that I slept well though. I don’t even remember most of my dreams, but I know they were even weirder than usual.
Excerpt from Silent Symmetry
Copyright © 2013 John B. Dutton
If you would like to read more of this book go to: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B0534UC
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