Deception (2 page)

2

The next two weeks blew.

Every morning I woke in the empty house, pressed Sleep on the alarm, and phoned my parents’ cell. No mysterious backup employee showed up, so either they never got Susan’s voice mail or they decided I was fine on my own. They’d left me one message saying, “Not to worry, we’ve decided to visit Max. We’ll be in touch soon.” I hadn’t heard from them since.

I’d lie there listening to “The customer you are dialing is out of service area,” imagining all the horrors that could befall them. Snicker, because
befall
was a funny word. Then run through the litany of disasters: torture, sleep deprivation, and constant Celine Dion music piped into their cells. Though I guess it was pretty unlikely they’d ended up at Guantánamo.

They could’ve been kidnapped, except there’d been no ransom demand. Ritual sacrifice would serve them right for ignoring me
—
tossed into a volcano by some preindustrial Andean tribe, crying out my name as they fell to fiery deaths. Except they’d probably call out, “
Maaaaax!
”

Then I’d force myself out of bed and slip downstairs through the kitchen, taking the long way to the front door because some of the antiquities were freaking me out. I hadn’t been near my dad’s office since the day they left. In the hallway outside his door was a jumbled collection of funeral urns, and I knew it sounded crazy but it felt as though they were missing him. The area reeked of
longing
. Those urns had always given me the shivers, so I avoided that part of the house entirely.

I stopped at the Gothic Café next door for my morning red-eye. You know you’ve got a problem when baristas greet you by name. You know you’ve got another problem when it’s the warmest social interaction of your day. My parents would’ve been appalled at how much cash I was dropping on chais, but they weren’t here to stop me, were they?

I dragged myself to school and tried for As so I could get into Berkeley, though given my PSATs, that was looking like a long shot. And ever since the Incident
—
a little something I no longer discussed
—
my parents never let me leave home. Hence I never accompanied them on their travels, and I wasn’t even sure they’d let me cross the Bay to attend Berkeley if I got in
—
which was a big if.

Latin was the only class I enjoyed. I’d taken it since seventh grade. “Eheu fugaces labuntur anni.”
*
It was one of the few things I had in common with my parents: love for a dead language.

Lunchtime was misery.

Then I got home and opened the store from 3:00 to 9:00 p.m. On Saturday and Sunday I was there from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Sales were actually pretty good, but I couldn’t keep up the pace. I kept nodding off during class
—
I mean, even more than usual.

My nights were spent sending plaintive, unanswered e-mails to Max, wanting some word of our parents, and writing senryu for Abby that I did not send.

Two weeks. Two weeks since I’d heard from my parents. Freedom so didn’t rock like I thought it would. I hadn’t even had time to get that belly ring. Besides, it wasn’t the sort of thing you did alone.

Then everything changed.

I had chemistry right before lunch, which was a weight-loss triumph because ions and isotopes really curbed my appetite. As class ended one day, I gathered my stuff, thinking about grabbing a yogurt on my way to the library, when Natalie asked if I wanted to hit lunch.

Natalie was new but already had a social life I envied. I think she sat next to me her first day because she thought she could cheat off me
—
I looked smarter than I was. During the first test, she kept eyeing my paper and scribbling furiously, but when we got back the graded exams she got a B
+
and I got a C.

That rattled her, but apparently not enough to turn her against me.

“Want to go to smoke?” she asked.

“Instead of lunch?” Maybe that’s why she was so skinny. She was also dark haired with nice fingernails and a natural tan, and I doubted she’d turn pasty this winter as I inevitably would. “I was thinking more like yogurt.”

“Oh, you poor sheltered lamb.” She ushered me out the door. “You have no idea what you’ve been missing.”

We left campus and walked two blocks to a gray building between a dry cleaner and a butcher. There was no sign, just a clear plastic box over the door filled with
—
you got it
—
smoke. I’d walked by a thousand times and had always thought it was a bar.

Inside, the place was painted a light iridescent gray, with the tables and chairs a darker gray and the concrete floor decorated with gold flames. Not a bar, a restaurant called Smoke
—
full of hot young professionals and some kids from school. A guy laughing in a corner booth waved at Natalie.

She dragged me by the hand toward him.

Except he wasn’t just a guy. He was Jared, my fixation. The one I stalked on Facebook. Last night he’d posted a picture of himself surfing and I started to type in a comment: “Dude, gnarly Rip Curl,” then realized I had no idea what a Rip Curl was, so said nothing.

Four other people sat around the table. Daniel, a Latino guy I had Latin with (I know that sounds ridiculous); Primus, the completely unoriginal nonconformist; and two girls, Maisy and Caroline, who weren’t actually identical twins, despite the way they looked and acted and dressed.

Natalie scooted into a seat and said, “You know Jared, don’t you?”

I eyed him as though I wasn’t sure. “I think our lockers are close?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re
that
girl.”

What did that mean? I couldn’t judge from his expression.

“Emma got left behind. Her friends all graduated,” Natalie said.

I’d unburdened myself to her on the way over. Actually, she asked me why I didn’t have any friends and I’d explained.

“So she’s with us now,” Natalie said.

I glanced at Maisy and Caroline, expecting hostility. There were already three guys and three girls. Tossing me into the mix threw off the odds. But they smiled, and Caroline said, “I hope you like shopping.”

“Who doesn’t?” I said.

“Let’s so hit up Urban Outfitters after school,” Daniel said in a girly voice.

“No!” Primus squealed. “Abercrombie is
sooo
much better.”

“Shut up, losers,” said Maisy. “You know we only go to Saks.”

Natalie then asked me where I got my boots.

Jared eyed them under the table. “Yeah, they’re hot.”

This was the most conversation I’d had with kids my age since Abby left, and I begged myself not to commit social suicide by climbing across the table into Jared’s lap. I murmured something about my mother bringing them back from Europe, and took a sip of water from the glass in front of me to cool down.

“Help yourself,” said Daniel. Oops
—
it must’ve been his glass.

“Oh! Ego sum rumex.”
*

“Haud forsit,”
**
he said.

“Can the Latin geeks give it a rest?” Primus said. “Unless you want to talk about togas. We were discussing where we’re having our party.”

I asked what the party was for and Maisy told me her brother had promised to score them a keg. They didn’t really need more reason than that. Natalie suggested Primus’s house.

“Not after last time,” Caroline said.

“What happened last time?” I asked, as Primus turned pink.

“His parents and their friends crashed our party,” Daniel said.

“They drank all the beer,” Maisy said.

“And didn’t even put up bucks for cups,” Jared said.

Natalie and I started to laugh as three baskets of French fries and seven Cokes arrived at the table. And just like that, I had a new set of friends.

*
Alas, the fleeting years slip away.

*
I’m sorry.

**
No problem.

3

The next week didn’t suck.

I still spent my first rising moments calling my parents, hoping their phone would start working. I still e-mailed Max in the evenings and wrote unsent senryu for Abby. But now I actually left messages for Jared on his Facebook page. And he wrote back!

Most of the time, my fixations didn’t pan out. Once I got to know the guy, I’d find he had a Wii problem or said the word
pubic
or
—
worst of all
—
he’d simply disappear from my life altogether. But Jared had yet to break the deal. And even though we’d done nothing more romantic than sitting together in a movie theater, he’d become my friend.

The whole group had, really. Daniel and I wrote skits in Latin class. Who knew how funny Marcus Aurelius could be? Maisy and Caroline and I bonded over scarves, and Primus introduced me to the pleasures of a
mocha
red-eye chai.

So things were getting better … until I closed shop one night, went upstairs for my cup of chamomile, and realized there was someone in the house.

When I passed the hallway that I’d been avoiding
—
the one with my dad’s funeral urn collection
—
I heard a rustle of fabric.

I spun and saw a shadow of a man hovering among the urns.

I froze. You know you’re a city girl when you take a deep breath and flip on the light, instead of running away shrieking.

There was no one there. Had he slipped into Dad’s study? A breeze wafted toward me from the hall. Maybe I’d left a window open and that rustle of fabric I’d heard was the curtains
—
that could sound like a person lurking in the hallway.

Right?

I didn’t want to check, but it’s not like I could sleep upstairs wondering if someone was in the house. Maybe I should’ve dialed 911, but if this turned out to be nothing
—
all in my head
—
the cops would find out I was staying here by myself. I wasn’t sure what they’d do, but I knew it’d be nothing good.

Especially since the murder. Some poor girl, five or ten years older than me, had been slaughtered in her apartment a few months back. Nobody knew exactly what happened
—
the police weren’t saying
—
but gossip at school said the killer carved every inch of her dead body with strange designs.

They called him the Curlicue Killer. The whole thing sounded like an urban legend to me, like alligators breeding in the sewers or wild parrots living in Golden Gate Park
—
oh wait, that was true. Still, if there was a kernel of truth, the cops wouldn’t let me stay here alone, so I had to handle this on my own.

Besides, I was sure this was nothing. Definitely nothing. Completely and absolutely nothing.

A mantra ran through my head:
No one here. No one here. Ooohm. No one here.

As I stepped down the hall, voices whispered behind me, strange, wordless sounds. There was an almost familiar tingling in my body. I yelped and turned but saw nothing except a wisp of smoke wafting from one of the funeral urns like a cobra from a basket.

I blinked and breathed and closed my eyes
—
willing my imagination into submission
—
but when I opened them a dozen more spirals of smoke curled toward the ceiling from the other urns.

The spirals wove together in braids, forming a thick billowing rope. It twisted toward the end of the hall and wound itself into a figure, like a mummy formed from snakes of smoke, twisting and thickening. It drifted toward me with a slow, malicious purpose. I opened my mouth to scream and tasted ash; I couldn’t make a sound.

The whispering sounded like a thousand snakes hissing in my ears.

Eosssss
,
eosssss
…

I couldn’t move. My feet were buried in ash and I sank deeper, the ashes dragging me downward like quicksand as the figure crept closer.

Neosssss, neosssss …

Panic rose in my throat as I furiously tried to free my legs. The smell of the smoke mummy smothered me as it staggered toward me. I held my breath until my vision blurred.

Then I woke in bed. The clock said 7:03 a.m.

A dream?

Of course a dream. Here I was in my pajamas, staring at my empty teacup on the bedside table.

But in the bathroom as I brushed my teeth, the taste of ash was still in my mouth. I swirled water and spat into the sink.
Oh God. Oh God
. I stepped, trembling, into the shower and turned the heat to scalding, pretending the smoky figure in the hallway didn’t remind me of the terror of my childhood, the man from the Incident.

A man who wasn’t there when I was seven years old. Who couldn’t possibly be here now.

I pretended until I almost believed.

At lunchtime, I followed Natalie off campus, wishing she were Abby.

I really liked Natalie
—
she was funny and smart and freakishly self-confident
—
but I wasn’t comfortable telling her about my nightmare. About my problems and my fears. Not only because I’d seem like the head case I actually was, but because what could she say? That maybe I’d walked in my sleep and dug into the urns before returning to bed? And tasted the ashes of the dead?

Too gross to consider.

Maybe I didn’t know what was real anymore, but there was no way I would tell someone as together as Natalie about the Incident, or that I was thinking of calling my old doctor. That I’d actually gone through my mother’s papers, looking for his number, wondering if he’d remember me and help me, or just drug me.

She wasn’t Abby, so I didn’t tell her about that stuff. I told her about my parents and Abby’s mom leaving instead, and she gave me a comforting squeeze.

Inside the restaurant, I eyed the smoky motif nervously, my mind wandering until Natalie said, “So this is news. Emma’s living all alone.”

“For how long?” Daniel asked.

“Indefinitely,” Natalie told him.

“Party?” Primus asked.

“Private party?” Jared said with a half smile.

I melted inside but said, “No parties! My parents would kill me.”

There was a fair amount of cajoling and kvetching, but I didn’t give in. And then I thought … why not? Maybe this was exactly what I needed to forget about school, the store, and my nightmare.

So I said, “Okay, party on!” and immediately regretted it. I lived in a mausoleum, remember? If anything happened to one of my parents’ relics
—
well, we’d finally know for sure how little they cared for me.

Everyone else was beyond thrilled, so maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought. At least I could pretend I was a normal teenager, hosting a bash while her parents were away. Which is exactly what I’d wanted. Right?

On Saturday, I found myself alone in the shop, opening and cataloging the packages that arrived during the week. Not exactly a thrilling weekend, yet I eagerly checked each return address for some sign of my parents’ location.

No luck
—
they were all shipments from a previous trip. Well, except for a package from Periwinkle Antiques on Charles Street in Boston, which contained the paperwork for an internship Max had finished. And there was one box from a London dealer.

I opened it and found a mask concealed under layers of foam peanuts. It was stark white plaster, with no holes for the eyes or ears. The invoice read:
Death Mask, 1700s, Anonymous
. Apparently they used to make wax casts of corpses for keepsakes and, although this went out of vogue for some inexplicable reason, the masks were now prized by collectors. Well,
some
collectors.

I stared at the mask, wondering what the dead person would think about winding up as a sculpture in an antiquities store. Some macabre rich person would probably hang him over the toilet in their powder room.

The mask felt surprisingly heavy. I rubbed the outside with my fingertips, the cheeks and forehead, then the inside. The part that touched the person’s dead face. A shiver ran up my arm, a little thrill of horror as I felt the urge rising in me. Then I placed the death mask over my face.

The mask suctioned to my skin like plastic wrap. My body began to tingle and I felt light-headed. I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe and the world twirled away from me.

There was a great whooshing sound and I felt as though I were spinning. Around and around, until suddenly I stopped and could see again. I lay in an antique bed. My arms were withered like pitiful twigs and my skin had faded to cracked parchment. I was somewhere in the past. Someone else’s past.

I smelled rot and sweat and cloying perfume. I couldn’t speak or move, and this definitely wasn’t my body cloaked under the terrible weight of memory, of frailty and disease. I felt claustrophobic and suffocated. I clawed at my cheeks and yanked the mask from my face.

That huge whooshing noise again, then I was alone
—
still in the store, breathing heavily, the mask in my shaking hands. I plunged the eyeless plaster beneath the foam peanuts like I was trying to drown it. Then I dragged the box into the farthest corner of the storage room and slammed the door.