Harrison Squared (20 page)

“Confidentiality,” she said skeptically.

“Maybe if we keep watch on the
Albatross
we can see who gets on,” I said. “I can hang out by Ruck's garage and see who goes in. Of course, the last time I went in…”

“Harrison, listen to me. We weren't kidding about the Scrimshander. He can do terrible things. Anybody who crosses the Congregation, crosses the Scrimshander.”

“Okay, okay.” We resumed walking downhill. Fewer houses had lit windows, and the shadows between the pines seemed deeper. Not quite deep enough, though. Which gave me an idea. “I was thinking, if something happened to the—”

“Oh no,” Lydia said quietly.

The door to her uncle and aunt's house was wide open. The silhouette of a large man filled the doorway, his hands on his hips. “Lydia!” he barked. “Where have you been?”

“Later,” she said to me under her breath, and hurried toward the house. I turned away, and the man—Uncle Micah, I presumed—yelled, “You! Who's that? Come into the light.”

Lydia looked back at me, but the shadows hid her expression.

I hesitated, then walked forward. “I'm Harrison Harrison.”

“Harry—?” Then: “What are
you
doing with my niece?”

“We had a study group,” Lydia said. “For school.”

“I wasn't talking to you, girl.”

I got close enough to see his face. His black hair was swept back, making a widow's peak, and his beard, while thick, was nothing like the wild shrubbery of Chilly Bob. Behind him was the brightly lit living room of the house. Two hospital beds were set up along the back wall. In them were a man and a woman with gray skin and lank, dark hair. Their jaws hung slack, and they seemed to be unconscious.

“Get in here,” Micah said to Lydia. “I think your dad filled his pants.”

“You let him
sit
in it?” Lydia said, angry.

“You weren't here to do your job! And you—” He pointed at me. “You stay away from my niece.”

Lydia hurried inside. Micah gave me one more dark look, then slammed the door.

Jerk.

I headed downhill, toward the rental. I'd gone a dozen feet when a voice said, “That your girlfriend?”

“I saw you there,” I said. “Going to the house and coming back.”

Lub stepped out from between the trees. “Because I wanted you to see me,” he said. “I guess even ugly girls deserve to be loved.”

“She's not ugly,” I said. “And she's not my girlfriend.”

“I'm not judging,” he said. “When are you going to introduce us?”

“You'd give her a heart attack,” I said.

“I know, too handsome for human girls. By the way,
Liquid Gunship Seven
? I need more. Now.”

“Maybe we can make a deal,” I said. “I need a favor.”

*   *   *

I was surprised to find Aunt Sel waiting up for me. She sat in the armchair, her legs stretched in front of her, holding a highball glass. “There's my little criminal,” she said.

I froze. “What are you talking about?”

“Your clothing, dear. Every day you wear the same thing—T-shirt, hooded sweatshirt, jeans. It's like a school uniform for the Academy of Future Muggers.”

“There's nothing wrong with my clothes.”

“How about a button-down shirt over a graphic Tee? Or chinos. I'll even allow corduroys, seeing how we're in L. L. Bean territory.”

“No,” I said. “No no no. I don't need anything. Besides, Mom wears the same thing every day.”

“Your mother is not a fashion role model. You dressing like Kurt Cobain is no way to go through life. No wonder your principal wants to suspend you.”

“Wait, what?”

“I just got off the phone with Mr. Mandrake.”

“Montooth.”

She waved a hand. “You've been a bad boy.”

“What did he say?”

“You've been using foul language,” she said. “I told him I was shocked. Shocked and appalled.” She took a sip from her drink. “I'm not sure he understands sarcasm. But as your guardian, I'm now required to attend a meeting at 8 a.m. to discuss our punishment.”

“
Our
punishment?”

“A meeting, first thing in the morning? The man's a sadist. But if you do get kicked out of that awful school, I thought we'd have Saleem drive us to Uxton. I understand they have this thing called a
mall
. It's very exciting.”

“I told you, I don't need—”

“What if we bought you a different
color
hoodie?”

“We are a family of scientists,” I said with mock formality. “We care not for fashion.”

She sighed dramatically.

“I would, however, be willing to look at a winter coat.”

“You have been running around a lot outdoors,” she said. “Speaking of which, how was your ‘study group'? Get a lot of work done?”

“It was fine. We—oh.”

Her feet were resting on my backpack.

“She's pretty,” she said.

“Not everybody thinks so.”

Aunt Sel raised her glass. “Haters gotta hate.”

15

There was something wrong with her eyesight. Despite the darkness in the cave, she saw everything through a shimmer of white, as if she were encased in ice. She could not focus on anything close to her. Only the portraits—those mournful, pale faces—were sharp and vivid, more real than her own body.

So, she closed her eyes. She found the rope by feel, leaned back until the rope was tight across her back, and threw herself backward.

The anchor did not move. The rusting hulk, resting on its curved arms, had become a fuzzy, dark blob. Sometimes it resembled a squid. Sometimes an immensely tall woman in long skirts. Sometimes both at once.

It was so hard to concentrate.

She found the rope, leaned back, and pulled. And again. And again. The action had become automatic, and her body a machine. Sometimes she forgot why she was pulling at all, and then she would remember her captor. Was that his step coming down the tunnel? How long ago had he left? She couldn't even guess.

Find the rope, Rosa. Brace the legs. Pull.

Her legs slid out from under her and she went down. Her outflung arm struck something hard, but she stifled her cry. Silence was everything.

She lay on her side on the stone floor, cradling her arm. Listening. Her captor wasn't in the room. What was it she'd hit?

The bucket. Her captor had left the bucket behind. He never did that.

She rolled onto her belly and crawled until her fingers touched the rusting metal. She could no longer smell the contents of the bucket, and for that she was grateful. She got to her knees, then tossed the slop toward a far wall. Oh, he wouldn't like that. Didn't like his nest to be fouled.

She didn't care. She no longer thought it was possible to win him over. The only thing she was certain of was that if she stayed here, she was going to die.

She got to her feet, holding the bucket by its metal handle. She could barely see it in her hands, but she could feel its weight. For the first time, she had a tool. She turned toward the nearest wall and the crowd of faces that had watched her, helpless and mute, as she struggled.

She took a breath, swung the bucket backward like a bowling ball, then forward in a sweeping uppercut. The bucket smashed into the underside of a shelf, and scrimshaw exploded into the air. White on white, like ice shards thrown into a blizzard. She couldn't see where all the pieces went, but she heard some of them clatter to the ground nearby. She crouched and ran her bound hands along the rocky floor. One hand grazed the edge of a plate and she gasped, then jerked back.

Blood welled on two fingers. In this bleached haze, her fingers were pale as snow, and the blood as black as ink.

The pain seemed to slap her awake. She leaned over the plate, trying to get her eyes to focus, and then she laughed. It was her old friends, the dark-haired couple.

Rosa carefully tilted up the bone plate, then held it between her palms. Once more she pushed back to take up the slack between her waist and the anchor. Then she dragged the edge across the rope.

She felt rather than saw the lip of the plate do its work. The rope trembled, and she could almost feel the threads pop one by one. Her hands grew slick—from sweat, and from the blood weeping from her cuts. Twice she dropped the portrait, and was surprised each time that it did not shatter. The surface felt like porcelain, but was so much tougher.

Her captor could come back any moment, and now that she was so close she was frantic to be free. Still she forced herself to slow down, to concentrate on making each cut count. She began to hum to herself, and then the words swam up out of her throat, a melody from deep childhood.

“
Um dia a feiticeira má,
” she sang in her cracked voice. “
Muito má, muito má.
” It was not just the Portuguese that soothed her. Her voice had become that of her grandmother, rocking little Rosa to sleep. “
Adormeceu a Rosa assim, bem assim.
”

One day a bad witch, very bad, very bad, put the rose to sleep this way, this way.

She sawed at the rope for a long time, letting the song carry her—and then there were only a few strands left. She cut through them, and stumbled backward. She was free.

She let the plate slip from her hands. Somewhere far away it struck rock and bounced away, into the white. She thought about finding it again and cutting her wrists free, but she couldn't stand to be here another second.

She could not see the exit through the glare of white, but she knew the tunnel out started somewhere past her captor's makeshift living area. She felt her way to the wooden chair, then leaned on it for a moment. A step more took her to the table, a few more to the wooden trunk.

Her captor had left his latest work sitting on the trunk's lid. The outlines of the figure seemed to shout at her through the haze.

The picture was not yet finished. In the portrait she was crouched, looking up into the eyes of the artist. He'd put much effort into fleshing out the background, making the details of the prison as solid as the cave walls. But her face was only half there: a chin, a partially sketched mouth, a left eye, the merest suggestion of a nose.

She wanted to smash the portrait. Leave no part of her behind for him to leer at. But she couldn't spare the time or strength for gestures. Harrison was waiting for her.

She dropped it to the ground, and walked toward the mouth of the tunnel, an oval of brighter white against the white of the cave, like a photographic negative. She stepped into it, and the glare blinded her, surrounded her. The light had a weight, like an alabaster waterfall.

Her legs were failing. With each step the air grew thicker before her, weighing her down. She dropped to her knees and elbows, her bound hands outstretched like a penitent pilgrim. She thought, What if I've hallucinated this entire escape? What if I am still in the cave, pulling vainly against that half-ton anchor?

Then: What if I'm not here at all?

She could not feel the rock beneath her knees. She could not even tell if she was moving. The weight bore down, until finally it flattened her against the floor.

16

The rock shown bright, the kirk no less,

That stands above the rock:

The moonlight steep'd in silentness

The steady weathercock.

“Perhaps we've gotten off on the wrong foot,” Principal Montooth said. Mr. Waughm, Aunt Sel, and I sat in his office, a woodsy affair decorated with brass plaques, framed certificates, and—shades of Chilly Bob's bait shack—a stuffed thresher shark. I wasn't sure how it was good for morale to keep the corpse of your mascot on display.

“Harrison's been here a little over a week,” Montooth said to Aunt Sel. “He's had to adjust to a new town, a new school, a new way of doing things—all while undergoing a major life event.”

“‘Major life event,'” Aunt Sel said, as if tasting each word. “I do love a—what's the polite word for it? Euphemism.”

Montooth smiled and glanced at the papers on the desktop in front of him. “Yes. Well. That is the reason we're here—use of language.”

I could barely look at him. I kept picturing him at the wheel of the
Albatross
, smashing into my mother's boat—and Mom plunging into the cold ocean. I had no proof that he was on the boat that night, but I had no proof that he wasn't. Still, I'd promised Aunt Sel that I'd watch my temper. She'd seen how angry I'd gotten with Chief Bode. I'd told her I could handle myself.

Mr. Waughm cleared his throat. He was standing next to Aunt Sel, hugging himself in his voluminous suit. “I'm sure you understand, Ms. Harrison, there's no call for off-color language, even during, well…”

“A major life event?” she said.

“Exactly,” Waughm said. “We do things differently in Dunnsmouth. We are a traditional community, with old-school values.
Very
old-school.”

“I think what Mr. Waughm is trying to say,” Montooth put in, “is that here in Dunnsmouth, we have very high expectations for student behavior. A breakdown in decorum leads to—”

“Chaos!” Waughm said.

“Oh my,” Aunt Sel said. “I didn't realize the administration's situation was so precarious.”

Montooth seemed annoyed with Waughm. “Perhaps ‘chaos' is too strong a word. But we've found that if you fight the small battles, you don't have to fight the big ones.”

“Mr. Waughm was trying to make exactly this point in class,” I said.

“Is that so?” Montooth said.

“He was explaining how totalitarianism depends on controlling all expression, private and public, to maintain control.”

“Yes!” Waughm said.

“So you can't fault Harrison for not paying attention,” Aunt Sel said. She gave me a warning look. She could tell I was heating up. “However, this seems to be a lot of fuss over one little word, which you can hear on cable television every day of the week—”