Circle of Secrets (17 page)

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, but secretly I’m thinking about what it’d be like going back to our too-quiet house in New Iberia without Daddy. Grandmother Phoebe’s particular ways. The Schedule Is Everything. No cats. No sleeping in. Dressing up for meetings. Some things about home I’m not missin’ at all.

When I arrive at school, everything is almost back to normal. The kids bring packed lunches instead of money for the cafeteria, but other than that it’s almost like there wasn’t a fire at all. Except for that charred smoky smell
permeating the halls. The teachers have fans on to keep the air circulating and push the burned smell out the open windows.

I see Tara and Alyson talking with Jett and T-Beau and Ambrose on the other side of the playground and my stomach twists. I want to go home and crawl under the sheets again. I wonder if I can change my schedule, but I don’t have the guts to go to the office and ask.

I get through my classes, pretending those kids don’t exist. They pretend I don’t exist, either, and we’re just fine. At least I tell myself that.

I catch a glimpse of Larissa with her skinny legs and arms full of books turning a corner of the hallway during lunch, but I don’t see her eating nowhere. I wonder where she goes. I wonder if she has any friends.

Don’t have much time to think about her because I get real busy avoiding the Truth or Dare group, dodging them in hallways and around corners, or ducking into the bathroom. They seem to multiply like a math problem gone wrong. When I see them eating lunch in a big circle on the lawn across from the gym, I notice that a couple other girls have joined the group.

Soon as the last bell rings, I race out of class and dart down the road, hiding behind the huge oak tree trunks and then
bursting into sprints in between. After I pass the long pier walkway across the bayou, I’m at the cemetery again.

I wait a full thirty minutes, but there’s no sign of Gwen. The place is silent as a tomb. I try to laugh when I think about silent tombs since I’m sitting right smack-dab in a graveyard. But I’m terribly, horribly disappointed. I’ve been waiting to see Gwen all day, especially after spying her last night through the window. And those spooky, ghostly dreams.

I give up finally and slowly walk back through the graveyard, crossing the narrow dirt road and bounding down to the water’s edge. Her boat isn’t here, either. I stare out across the water at the little island. Can’t even catch a glimpse of Gwen’s house from here. Like it doesn’t even exist. I didn’t dream her up, did I? My stomach starts to hurt when I wonder if I’m going crazy. I saw her. I talked with her. We rowed across the water, spent the afternoon at her house. I’ve seen her twice through my bedroom window.
I know it.

I scratch my arm as a mosquito tries to drink my blood, and glance down the bayou. The pier is deserted, too, and I breathe a big sigh of relief. Guess there aren’t any other new kids to torment with Truth or Dare today.

Then I remember that Mirage is waiting for me back at the town docks and I run as fast as I can back the way I came.
Even if I’d seen Gwen, I would have only had the chance to say hello and good-bye. Can’t let Mirage see me come down this road neither.

Twisting the charm bracelet around my wrist, I touch the cute little gator, the pretty ruby birthstone, the mysterious carved spell box, the empty locket, and the blue bottle, which holds such meaning. I want to look at those notes again. I want to figure out the story.

I need a different plan.

The next day there’s a test in math I forgot to study for and a group project starting in social studies. I’m assigned with Tara and Alyson and some girl named Mabel.

I excuse myself to go to the restroom and try not to cry as I stare at my splotched face in the mirror. I blow my nose ten times, take a hundred deep breaths, get a drink of water, and finally go back. Tara and Alyson ignore me, talking only to Mabel about their plans and excluding me. I’m pretty sure they’ll help me flunk the project. And throw a party afterward.

Every day gets more miserable. I want to see Gwen, but I don’t know how to reach her. I don’t even know her telephone number.

Then I realize that she probably doesn’t have a phone no more out on that island.

I wonder what she’s doing. I wonder why she doesn’t come to school. Is she out looking for her parents every day? What would I do if my parents were missing? I sort of know what that feels like. Practically lost my mamma for a year.

A few days later after Mirage drops me off, I get as far as the school fences and stop. Gripping the chain-link fence, I stare through to where kids are kicking balls and playing tag or having races on the field.

My heart begins to thump.

I don’t want to go face those kids and the teachers and the schoolwork.

I don’t even want to see Larissa, that scarred girl in my class. I feel guilty that I haven’t made any effort to get to know her. She doesn’t seem to have any friends and the other kids ignore her like she’s invisible. Almost how I’m starting to feel, except I have Gwen now.

I just know in my heart that Larissa went to the pier and played Truth or Dare. Did she fall? Did she get pushed into the bayou? Did a gator take a bite out of her face?

I shiver as a cloud crosses the sun.

Larissa tried to warn me. She knew what was going to happen.

But if I hadn’t come, I would never have met Gwen.

I worry something fierce that if I don’t get to the graveyard every day, Gwen will disappear on me. She might find her parents and not have a chance to tell me. She might take a bus into a different town to look for them. What if I never see her again?

Pretending I’m an invisible person myself, I start walking down the street again, turning left when I get to the dirt road and the oak trees. I don’t look back even when I’m sorely tempted and my neck is just plain itchin’ to turn around and see if someone’s following me.

But no footsteps, no voices calling after me, nothing.

When I get to the cemetery, I can hear a girl’s voice singing again, humming and la, la, la-ing like she’s trying out for the New Orleans Opera.

I start running, my heart leaping inside my chest. When I get to the bottom of the slope, Gwen and her flyaway hair and dark eyes peeks out from behind the angel.

“You’re here,” I breathe.

“You’re here,”
Gwen says, and then we both just stand there trying not to giggle with happiness.

Without saying a single word, we run to the banks and jump into her pirogue. Like we can read each other’s minds.

“I know a place where there are baby alligators,” Gwen says. “Other side of this here island.”

“Is it safe?” My brain keeps hearing Mirage’s warnings and threats about being out here on this side a town. Near the pier. Taking a boat out on the water without permission. She’d ground me but good if she knew I’d left school, but I had to come. Gwen is for sure the absolute best thing about Bayou Bridge.

We row around Deserted Island and come across a small inlet under a stand of cypress, dark and shadowy and secretive.

“This here is Alligator Cove,” Gwen tells me.

An egret swoops out of the branches of a stand of tupelos and Gwen points upward. “He’s got a nest up there. See it?”

I squint upward and sure enough, there’s a nest made of moss and twigs perched high on some interlocking branches.

“Now look over there on that patch of mud and twigs,” Gwen whispers. Her voice is muted by dead leaves and duckweed and the murky water that surrounds us. Here in the swamp it feels like I’m in another world altogether.

“Baby gators!” I hiss.

“Ssh! Don’t want to startle ’em.”

We paddle closer, then ease up on our oars and set them in the bottom of the boat.

Sure enough, baby alligators are crawling all over a half-submerged log, stumbling over branches and mounds of
leaves and elephant ears. Patches of sun filter through the leaves. The light falls on their backs, and the babies’ heads are up and alert lookin’ out on the big, wide world.

I count at least twelve gators, their skinny bodies and tails decorated with bands of dark black and blue and yellow. Eyes like spilled ink, and unblinking.

When they sense that we’re close, the baby gators freeze on the log, as though they think we won’t notice them if they stop moving.

“They got tiny teeth, don’t they?” I ask. “Will they bite?”

“Sure they’ll bite! Like the sharpest needles you ever felt in your life. My daddy used to get a net when they’re first born and scoop ’em up so’s I could pet ’em. These here are bigger than just hatched newborns, though.”

“Is the mamma gator close by?”

“Nah. These gators are old enough to be on their own now. Adults nest and then move on.” Gwen puts a hand flat on top of the water, skimming the surface. Before I can even blink, she scoops up one of the babies and cups her hands around it.

“You did it!” I cry real soft so I don’t startle the rest of the baby gators squirming around on the log.

Pulling the reptile close, Gwen clamps her fingers around his snout so he won’t snap at her while she strokes his head to keep him calm.

I’m holding my breath from pure astonishment. “Can I touch him?” I ask, and then wonder where those words came from. I’ve never been this close to a gator in all my life. Except in a zoo or a library book. Holding a gator seems crazy. And kinda wonderful.

If Grandmother Phoebe could see me now, she’d die of shock and never let me serve lemonade and cookies again.

Gwen moves the boat closer to shore with her paddle, and then transfers the gator to my lap. His skin is smooth and yet ridged, and he sits, head up, staring straight forward while I stroke my fingers along his back and tail. “I can’t
believe
I’m doin’ this! For real!”

“Doin’ good, Shelby. He’s real calm with you.”

I glance up at Gwen. “Or maybe he’s just waitin’ for his chance to escape over the edge and dive back in. Did you ever want a baby gator for a pet?”

“Yeah, I used to, but my daddy says that it don’t take long before they’re big and start snapping. I could lose a finger before I ever had a chance to get outta the way.”

“They are pretty cute, though.”

I hand the baby gator back over to Gwen as a breeze rustles the leaves, soft and gentle-like. Yet it’s so quiet, too. Quieter than I’ve ever heard the world in my whole life. Feels like Bayou Bridge don’t even exist no more. School seems like just a dream.

“You cutting school, too?” I ask Gwen, realizing that I’ve never skipped school before in my life. Can’t help wondering if Principal Trahan will call Mirage and tell her. She don’t get many phone calls. None really, except for Daddy’s and Grandmother Phoebe’s calls.

Gwen lies back in the boat, her hair floating like strands of gold ribbon over the bow. “School? Haven’t been in the longest time. S’pose you could say I’m homeschooled now. Need some books, I guess, and I keep meaning to go to the library but never seem to get my legs movin’ that direction.”

“Where do you think your folks have gone?”

“Not sure. Can’t even remember how long they’ve been gone. Then I remembered them talkin’ about moving away. To a different city.”

I’m shocked, pure and simple. “They forgot you!” I bite my lips and hope I haven’t hurt her feelings now.

She doesn’t look at me, just keeps stroking the baby gator. “Used to cry a lot. I remember that I had a lot of pain. My body hurt, but it finally stopped. Then my heart hurt like it was breaking into a million pieces, but that’s starting to go away, too. I’m not sure what that means. Do you think I’m heartless, Shelby?”

“’Course not. You can’t spend every moment crying, I guess, but — but — all your stuff is still in the house.”

“That’s the strangest part, isn’t it? But the house hasn’t
been cleaned in forever. It’s dusty and musty-smelling with crud everywhere. The yard’s got piles of moldy leaves and junk the storms bring in and dump all over the place.”

“That’s so peculiar, Gwen,” I tell her. I’m gonna say more, but I stop myself. Sure seems like something happened to her parents, all right. Like maybe they had an accident or something. But wouldn’t the police come and tell her?

She sits up. “Guess it’s time to join your brothers and sisters again.” As Gwen sets the gator down on the log, the other babies scatter, startled. Our baby gator opens his mouth big and wide, showing off his little razor teeth.

“Look, he’s smiling, Shelby.”

“Smiling real wicked, I’d say.” We paddle out of the cove and I call back, “Good-bye, babies, be good while we’re gone.”

As we keep going ’round the island, a field of purple water hyacinth spreads out like a meadow. I stop paddling to stare. “It’s like a fairytale woods.”

“Yeah, it’s the last before autumn sets in. Them yellow swamp flowers are budding now and the purple hyacinth will start dyin’ off soon as it starts coolin’.”

We finally pull up at the island dock and tie up the boat. As we hike up to the house, darting around patches of water and shrubs, all kinds a birds flit through the trees. Robins and doves and bobwhites talking up a storm, oak leaves chattering back, like I’ve just landed on a whole different world.

Guess I can see why Mirage likes it out here so much. I never knew the swamp could be beautiful.

Which makes it even stranger why she’d want to leave. She grew up here. Her animals are here and her
traiteur
life. Why’d she want to go back to New Iberia and stuff herself into an apartment or some rented room? That don’t make much sense. Why couldn’t Daddy come live with us in the swamp house?

He could when he gets back from that country by Russia.

I realize for the first time that he really could. What if all I had to do was just ask him?

My stomach makes a queer, jumpy feeling — and I know I’m not hungry.

While Grandmother Phoebe’s having rehabilitation therapy, our house is being taken care of by a once-a-week gardener and housekeeper. It don’t get dirty much when Mirage and Daddy are gone. But I know my grandmother’d be happier if nobody had shoes and homework and books and jackets lying around.