Extraordinary October (8 page)

“Where is Trevor?” I asked.

“Moping about you,” she said. “He's been a drag all day.”

“Yeah, right.”

She shrugged. “Doesn't make any sense to me either.”

I couldn't believe this girl. Maybe she was disabled in some way. “Is your name really Enoki?”

“Is your name really October?”

That shut me up. We jogged around the corner to her bright red VW bug. She got in. I stood there. It was not very smart to get in a strange car with an even stranger girl who wasn't even wearing shoes. But then I did.

“We are going to drive carefully,” she said. I think it was as much for her as for me. “You've already had enough excitement today.”

“No, I haven't.”

“Oh, right. You haven't. Let's see. You haven't been attacked by crows and you haven't been chased by slobbers and you haven't run through a wall and ended up back in time, back at school.”

“I haven't? I mean, I have?”

“You have?”

“Of course not.”

“I didn't think so.” She turned on the radio and cranked it up. Heavy metal—not a surprise. She screamed along. I rolled down my window. Every stoplight seemed to be green and waiting for us. There was no traffic, no one on the road at all, as if it were the middle of the night instead of the end of rush hour. And it did seem late. It was dark, the sun had set and no moon or stars were visible.

“Where does Trevor think she is?” I shouted over the music.

“Who?”

“Luisa.”

“Who?”

“You're taking me to find Luisa.”

She turned off the radio and smiled. “No,” she said. “I'm not.”

9.

When I was nine-years-old, my mom and dad took me on a family vacation. Our only vacation—ever. We had no grandparents to visit, no aunts and uncles, no old college friends. My parents were complete loners who almost never left the house except to work or go to the grocery store. We kept our curtains drawn and didn't even know the neighbors' names. I never had a birthday party, my parents never suggested I have a play date or a sleepover, and consequently I was rarely invited anywhere else. I grew up pretty much solo. But my schoolmates went places like the beach or the mountains or to see the Golden Gate Bridge and I wanted to too. One day in fourth grade the science teacher talked about bird watching at the Morro Bay Bird Sanctuary, only a couple hours away. I whined, begged, and pestered my parents to take me there until they gave in. I convinced them it was educational, told them about the Black Oystercatcher and the Mountain Plover and my dad was psyched to see some different birds. I thought he could watch the birds and I could go to the beach like other kids.

The preparations were extensive. Mom packed the car with most of the house, anything we might possibly need for any scenario. A snakebite kit, a reading lamp in case the motel didn't have one, food, games, even our own silverware. It was as if she didn't believe anything existed outside of our neighborhood. Finally, we were ready to go. I was slathered with sunscreen even though we wouldn't get to the motel until six o'clock that night and who knows how long after that I would actually touch the sand. But I was excited. My mother was a nervous wreck. My dad, not yet truly fat, opened a bag of chips before we left the driveway. “Road food!” he laughed.

About half way there, we stopped at a highway rest stop to use the facilities and stretch our legs. I went to the restroom and my mom slipped off her sandals to walk barefoot in the little patch of grass. She hated shoes, took them off wherever and whenever she could. She had big feet for a woman her size. When I came out of the bathroom I saw three young people approaching my mom. The three, two guys and a girl, looked like siblings. They all had dark, messy hair and dark eyes and they weren't very tall. I didn't see a car in the parking lot other than ours; they seemed to have walked out of the woods bordering the back of the rest stop.

My mother saw them and gave a little scream. My father rushed out of the men's bathroom and stopped. I walked up beside him, but neither of us went any closer. Mom hugged the three people and they hugged her. She was taller and skinnier, but she looked related in some way. My dad grabbed my hand and squeezed so hard it hurt. I looked up at him and his face was sad.

“Ruth.” He called to her, but she didn't even turn around.

She began to change, to blend in with them. She seemed to shrink and fill out at the same time. Her mousy brown hair got darker and her legs, in her red plaid mom shorts, got thicker and stronger. My dad let go of my hand and hid his face. I had to do something. I ran to her and threw my little arms around her from behind. She looked down at me and her face was different, more angular, and then it wasn't. She was Mom again.

“This is my daughter,” she said quietly to the others. “Mine and Neal's.” She gestured back to dad. “Her name is October.”

They stepped away from me, and then closer. The girl looked me over very carefully. “Is she?” she asked.

“We don't know,” Mom replied.

“When she's eighteen?”

“We don't care.” My mom was adamant. “We don't.”

The older of the two guys looked at my father and his face was angry, mean. “Your husband is not himself.” He laughed.

“Enough!” I had never heard my mother sound so imperious.

He started to say something more, then he bowed his head. “We'll leave you, your lowness.”

They all kind of bowed and began to walk away. My mother said goodbye wistfully, with such sorrow in her voice that it hurt me to hear it.

“Wait!” I said.

All three stopped and turned to me. I wanted to say don't leave, or don't leave my mother, or don't leave her so unhappy, but none of that was exactly right. I wanted to ask them who they were and why I felt drawn to them. Instead I just shook my head. The girl bent over me and smiled.

“I see the resemblance,” she said. “When the time comes, ask Russula what you should do.” She looked up at my mom.

“Her name is Ruth,” I said firmly. “Ruth Fetterhoff.”

She backed away. My mother put her hand on my shoulder. She was smiling, but tears were spilling down her cheeks. When I looked back, the three visitors were gone. We got in the car and kept driving, my parents very subdued. During the trip, whenever I asked who those people were or why my mom had been crying, she and my dad both said I'd been sleeping and dreamed it. A couple years later, I was spending the day in my mom's lab and I learned Russula was the name of a rare and particularly beautiful family of mushroom. I asked my mother if that was really her name and she just laughed.

That encounter came back to me as I was speeding down Beverly Boulevard in a red VW with a girl named for a mushroom. Enoki looked a lot like those people at the rest stop so long ago. Trevor did too, come to think of it, and maybe that was why he gave me such an anxious feeling in my stomach. Except he wore shoes and went to school and there was no mushroom called a Trevor.

“Where are you taking me?” She didn't answer. “Let me out!”

“Can't,” she said. “I have my orders.”

The green lights continued. We were going faster and faster.

“My parents will call the police.”

She shrugged. I tried another tactic.

“Where's Trevor? I want to see him.”

“I know what's best for Trevor. Eenie meenie miney mo and you are not it.”

“Are you really his sister?”

She sneered. “A lot of people think you're hot stuff, but I don't.” She grunted a kind of laugh. “To me you're just a weirdo. A freak.”

“That's funny, coming from you, Stinky.”

“Do you have any powers at all?” she continued. “You're not beautiful. Or strong. Nothing special that I can see.”

I didn't know what she meant by powers and maybe I wasn't special, but I was not going to be killed or kidnapped or sold into white slavery—whatever this dirty, smelly girl had in mind. Breaking every bone in my body was preferable to that. She slowed a little to turn a corner and quickly I opened my door and jumped out of the car. I expected it to hurt worse than it did. Must have been the adrenalin because I was on my feet in a flash and running down the street away from her. I heard the screech of her brakes and the high whine of her little car going fast in reverse, but I was not worried. I was fast. Faster than I had ever been before. I ran five blocks and I wasn't even tired. Fear, I decided, was a wonderful thing. It made me faster, stronger, able to leap tall buildings in a single—BAM! I was tackled from the side. I hit the sidewalk hard, knocking all the wind from my lungs. Then I was dragged off the sidewalk and down an alley. The pond scum smell was stronger, mixed with dumpster garbage. I struggled, but the two people who had me were strong. I saw their bare feet and hairy toes, shaggy hair like Trevor and Enoki.

“Let her go.” It was Enoki's voice. They dropped me hard on the alley cement.

Enoki squatted beside me. “You didn't have to do that. We're here. We have arrived at our destination.”

She gestured at a small neon sign reading, “The Underground” over a gray door. She gave me a hand up and even brushed me off. Her two friends or whatever they were waited.

“We're going to a bar? I'm not old enough.” Plus it was mortifying to be in my pajama bottoms and a T-shirt.

“Trevor's waiting.”

She dragged me behind her through the gray door. Loud heavy metal music pulsated. I was in a club filled with people dancing. It smelled like a locker room crossed with that disgusting pond odor. It was dark with only a couple of red and blue lights moving around in time to the music. Everybody held drinks or bottles of beer. And quickly I realized everybody looked the same. Not like they were all indie or grunge or metal types who shopped at the same stores, but truly they all looked alike as if they were all related. Short, muscled, dark hair, eyes and skin in various shades of olive. Their faces were different and some were taller or thinner than others, but they were incredibly similar. They all looked like the people at the rest stop. And Enoki. And Trevor.

Where the hell was I? A family reunion?

Enoki pulled me toward the bar. A tall, narrow cage, hung in the corner. Inside I saw a skinny, pale, very tall and angular blue-haired girl in a bikini—definitely not related to the people below her—inside the cage. She was in very skimpy clothing and her skin looked lavender, the color of a fading sunset. She would have been beautiful, but the bartender, a giant Enoki-type, offered her a beer and she shook the bars desperate for it. She wanted that beer, badly. I could see it. It was like a drug. She reached between the bars for the bottle. The bartender pulled on a rope, raising the cage higher above the crowd. She kept reaching for the beer.

“After you dance, sweetheart. Dance first. Then beer.”

Reluctantly, but obediently she began to dance and the crowd went wild. She was stunning to look at, but so different than the bar patrons and they jeered and insulted her with words like “waif” and “stick” and “fairy.” Fairy seemed to be the worst word of all. The girl danced with her eyes closed, opening them only occasionally to make sure the bartender still had her beer.

A cry went up across the room. I fought my way there. Another slim, tall person—a guy with curly green hair and blue skin—was in another cage. He was so drunk he couldn't stand up and everyone stood around laughing at him. They splashed him with beer. Someone stood on a table and poured a drink onto the floor of his cage and everybody cheered as he lapped it up. Like the girl in the cage, he would do anything for that drink.

“Hey,” I said. “Stop it.”

The group turned to me. They looked me up and down. They frowned. A girl said, “You smell funny.”

Me? The place smelled like a hill of fertilizer soaked in beer. “Leave him alone,” I said.

“He likes it,” the girl said. “We're just giving him what he wants.”

“And you wonder why your dad is fat?” A guy spoke in my ear.

I turned. It was Trevor.

“Wanna' dance?”

His face was hard and smooth and not like it was at school. I felt the usual weird pull toward him, but when he took my hand I felt something else—something a lot like fear.

“What did you mean about my dad?” He didn't seem to hear me. He pulled me into the center of the room. He was dancing, but I wasn't.

“Do you know where Luisa is?” I shouted. “Your sister said you know.”

“Dance with me.” He smiled and his face softened. “Then we'll go. I promise.”

He put both hands on my waist and drew me to him. The rhythm of the music was pounding, so loud and deep I could feel it in my feet and up into my stomach. I couldn't help but move to it. Trevor nodded, grinned. Some friend of his danced over and handed him one of the neon drinks. Trevor took a big sip and licked his lips. The drink made his tongue glow in the dark. Then he offered it to me.

“No thanks.” I wasn't interested in drinking. Especially after seeing those desperate models.

“Please?”

His friend stayed next to him, watching me.

“No, really. No thanks.”

“It's delicious,” Trevor said.

“Not tonight.”

“You'll like it.” He pushed the drink toward me. “I bet you'll love it.”

He held it under my nose and I have to admit it smelled fantastic. Like fruit and chocolate and whipped cream and butter cookies, the best dessert in the world, plus the faint scent of the forbidden. It was intoxicating. I looked down into the frothy, electric pink concoction. How could anything that smelled so good be bad for me?

Trevor called to everyone. “She's about to take her first drink ever!”

A girl stopped to watch. And a couple of guys. Pretty soon a whole crowd was gathered. I looked at their faces, all with pointy chins and big brown eyes, all wearing the same expression they had when they watched the girl in the cage. Enoki was there too. She and Trevor exchanged a smile.

“Who is she?” someone asked.

“My future,” Trevor answered.

“She's October,” Enoki said. “The one and only October.”

There were some exclamations, a couple of ahs and ohs. I'd never gotten that reaction before. They backed up, made a circle around us. Trevor held out the drink. I wanted to take it so badly my hands trembled. But I hesitated.

“C'mon,” Trevor said. “For me. I just want to see what will happen.”

I thought maybe a drink would help me. People said alcohol calmed the nerves. And I was more than nervous.

“Hand it to me,” I said to Trevor.

He smiled, the crowd leaned forward, and I brought the glass to my lips.

“Do this,” Trevor said, “and I'll be yours forever.”

He shook his shaggy hair back and his eyes glittered in the dim light. He put his warm hand on my hip and I got that funny, anxious feeling again. Nervous.

“Then we'll go?” I asked.

“Of course. If you want to.” He leaned in and whispered in my ear. “I want you. I want you so much.”

It felt good to be wanted. He was cute, strong, and had fallen in love with me the moment he saw me. I never thought anyone would feel that way about me. I lifted the glass. Enoki led the crowd in a chant, “Drink. Drink. Drink.” They were smiling, nodding, and clapping and as I looked around I thought they all looked lovely. It was good to have friends. I wanted them to like me. One drink and then I would go find Luisa. One drink just to help me relax. I smiled back.