Odin's Murder (6 page)

“What?” Danielle pouts, so I snap that, too, and then turn on my heels back toward the building where I can click through the photos without glare. She comes close, leaning over my shoulder, and she smells like sunscreen and pineapple. “So how long have you been into photography?”

“Since I was fifteen.”  I squint at the screen, trying to figure out why there seems to be a flare hazing several of the photos. “You do archeology? Or Greek shi—stuff?”

“I’m here for creative writing. Poetry. But I have lots of talents.” Her voice goes low, whispery, and I look up and realize the only thing separating us is my camera and my lack of attention.

I glance over her shoulder. Constance is bossing around a clean-up crew. I figure I only have fifteen minutes before I’ve got to get to the kitchen, but Danielle is toying with the laces of her top, looking at my mouth, her own lips parted. I lower the lens and refocus.

6.

Midnight

I slide into my room at midnight on the dot. From her bed, Faye looks up behind square framed reading glasses. “Hi,” I say, locking the door behind me. I walk to the closet and reach for my plaid pajamas.

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?”

“Not when you’re with a student advisor—what’s he going to do? Report me?” I grin.

She puts down her book and leans forward. “You were with him the whole time?”

I take my earrings out, lay them on the shelf under the mirror, and pull my tank over my head. “Yeah, just talking... and stuff.” I give her a wink.

“What’s his name?”

“Jeremy. He’s doing graduate work at Wake Forest,” I say. I turn on my laptop, and swipe half-heartedly at my makeup while it’s booting up. “He’s cute, nothing to linger over, but better than listening to Julian freak out all evening. What are you reading?”

“Well, while you were out seducing handsome graduate advisors, I went back to the library and found some books for our project. This one is about local folklore. You were right, this campus does have an interesting history.”

“Anything we can use?”    

“Maybe. Julian was in the library when I got there. I told him I would let you guys know tomorrow if I found anything interesting.”

I check Facebook and Twitter, and Sonja’s blog that is difficult to access on my phone. No updates on what she’d doing instead of nerd camp. Faye peels off her clothes, layer by layer, skirt and shirt and more skirts and tights, though no bra, and climbs into a ruffled romper straight out of an Edwardian BBC show. I power my laptop down. “Was he pissed?” I ask.

“Who?”

“My brother.”

She shrugs and reopens the book. “Why would he be angry?”

“Because of Jeremy? I don’t know. He doesn’t like it when I socialize, or flirt or have any fun at all.”

“He wasn’t angry, but I do think he worries about you.” She scribbles on sticky note and presses it to the page. “That’s what brothers are for—or so I’ve read. I don’t have any siblings.”

“He’ll understand when he finally finds himself a girl he can talk to.”

“An ugly girl, right?” Faye looks up again, cocks her head funny on her neck. The glasses tilt sideways. “You said he’s intimidated by pretty girls.”

“She’ll have to have the patience of a saint, too.” I sigh, pulling the sheet back on my bed and kneading my pillow. “Poor thing.”

“Who’s the poor thing? Him, or her?”

“Both!” I laugh, and switch off my lamp.

The room, now dark but for the little desk light, is still clear behind my eyelids: Faye, toying with the ribbon at the neck of her little cotton night thing as she reads; the closed red book on her desk, with a stone sitting on the cover, a jagged
R
etched into the gray surface; my nail polish on my desk, the bottles in a neat row.

“Goodnight, Faye.”

“Goodnight.”

I hear the whisper of turning pages, and then night takes me, hard, fast, and vicious.

*

              Wings.

              Carrion bones picked clean, dropped from above to clatter on sheer rock. The incessant drip, drip, drip of water from a stalactite, bloody with minerals, iron and salt.

              A pterodactyl shadow closes out the world, swallowing hope, huge human claws, grasping, choking like smoke.

              Screams. A bird’s shriek of despair, but her nestlings are too far to hear her cry.

Tearing pain.

              Dark underworld, black iron bars, white salt tears.

*

“You look like warmed over crap.”

I push past my brother and grab the coffee I’ve ordered off the counter with a grateful nod to the campus barista. “Thanks. You look like an ass.” I walk away, but he’s hot on my shoes.

“We’re you able to get back to sleep?” he asks.

“After the shadowy thing touched me? No. That was too fucked up. Did you?”

“No.” We sit on a bench outside the dining hall. “What was that about anyway? It was different—was it a cave? And I’ve never heard them scream like that before.”

“I have no idea.” I sip the coffee, ignoring my shaky hands.

“Was it yours this time, or mine?” His voice is flat and weird, and he runs his hands through his hair, and it spreads between them, like feathers. I shudder.

“Mine,” I say. “No naked girls running around with birdseed in their hands.”

“Ha-freaking-ha,” but a smile flickers over his tired face. “Have you sketched it yet?

“Don’t I always?” I sigh, and wrap my fingers around the coffee to keep from fixing his hair, which is tugged in all the wrong directions. “Have you written it down already?”

He nods. “Trade you later.”

“Hey guys,” Faye walks up with a muffin and a bottle of juice. “Memory, I hope you got back to sleep last night. That was a pretty violent nightmare.”

“I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t freak you out too bad.” I glance at Julian. “Faye woke me up.”

“I was just worried about you. It took me a minute to shake you out of it.”

“At least I didn’t rip the curtains down and start chanting REDRUM, REDRUM!” I force a tired chuckle, but her eyes grow even wider, if that’s possible. “I’m just kidding!” Sort of. Well, at least about the Stephen King reference. I look around the quad, eager to change the subject, and spot Ethan walking toward the dining hall with Danielle. I gesture to the couple. “What’s that about?”

“Not sure, but he came back in just five minutes before curfew last night. I’m pretty sure he’s going to give me an ulcer before the summer is over,” Julian says, scowling at the pair. “I’m going to the study room.”

Faye steps in his direction. “I’ll go with you.”

“Be there in a minute.” I wave. I’m still watching Danielle and Ethan. They’re not touching, but there is a comfort level going on that indicates they have been. He leaves her on the front steps of the dining hall.

“Miss Erikssen! Exactly whom I was hoping to find.” Professor Anders’ shoelaces are untied and one side of his shirt is untucked, and his hair looks like it hasn’t seen a comb in months.

“Good morning, sir.” I stop, and he catches up to me, eyeing my coffee like I’m holding a lump of gold. “You were looking for me?”

“I’d like to start the individual student meetings for the cooperative project today. When would you be free to stop by my office?”

I swallow too big and gasp at the hot liquid burning my throat. “Ethan already made a complaint, didn’t he?”

“This has nothing to do with other members of the group,” he lies. “I want to touch base with
you
, to see how the project is resonating with
your
interests.”

“Well, we’re not very far along,” I hedge. “Kind of still looking at sources, seeing what is out there.”

“Your list of approaches to the topic does seem a bit weak. I might have research materials that you could use. Perhaps it would help strengthen your direction.”

“That might be great.” I grin at the thought of showing up my brother. Might shut him up about me spending the evening out with Jeremy rather than festering in library dust.

He smiles back. “Excellent. Come by my office during free period. You are in the pre-lunch group?”

I shake my head. “After.”

“Even better. See you then,” he says, with an abrupt turn to the coffee kiosk.

I toss my empty cup in the trash, and smooth my hair as I walk in Danielle’s direction. “Better hurry,” I tell her, swooping in by her side. “Cafeteria closes in a couple minutes.”

“Oh, hi, Memory. Yeah, Ethan went in to grab a couple things. I’m waiting for my group.” She looks well rested—certainly better than I do. Maybe Julian had the time wrong.

“Did you have fun last night?”

“I showed Ethan around campus. I saw you and Jeremy hanging out. He’s my group advisor.”

“Yeah, squeaked in under the curfew.” I give her a conspiratorial grin. “Did you guys make it back?”

“Yeah, it got too dark to take more pictures. He got me back just in time to get the last dessert.” Her smile is fat as she watches the tallest guy in the quad approach.

Interesting.

“Morning, Cherry,” Ethan says. He hands a paper sack to Danielle.

I give him as dirty a look as I can muster for the nickname. “Guess we’d better get to the study room before Julian sends out a search party.”

“Yeah,” he says. He takes a bite of his bagel and turns to Danielle. “See you later.”

I’ve already turned to walk away, and Ethan is behind me, not making much of an effort to keep up. I try to guess when the sun sets at this time of year, and why he was out until midnight if Danielle was eating dessert at dusk.

“Why don’t you walk on the sidewalk?” Ethan asks. “The grass has to be difficult in those things.”

I glance over my shoulder. He’s several yards behind me, but his face scrunches up, lip curled, mocking my shoes. “I’ve already seen the view from there,” I say, facing forward again.

“Always in search of something new to amuse you?” His tone is loaded; he’s not talking about the paths between buildings.

“Something like that.”

“So you’re even bored just walking down the sidewalk?”

“I didn’t say I was bored, I said I’d seen it before.” I sigh, and stop walking. “There’s a crack in the concrete about five feet up, and next to the cigarette butt wedged in it is some mossy stuff. Beyond that is the stain of some pink chalk with Greek sorority symbols. Two more steps, and there’s another crack, diagonal this time, but nothing is growing in it.”

He says nothing, so I turn around. I close my eyes a second, flipping through my mental sketchbook of images, stopping at a landscape of the campus the day before yesterday.

“You arrived here in a white Nissan, driven by an African-American woman with a silver charm bracelet. The license plate number ended in 6B—the first half was blocked by the beige sedan behind you. You had your camera satchel, and a green backpack with a blue logo. Packing light for a six week stay, don’t you think? And when she drove away, you reached down like you were tying your shoe, but you ran your palm over the grass, like you’d never felt it before.”

His eyes narrow, wary, then he smirks. “Nice of you to notice me, Cherry. I didn’t realize I’d made such an impression.”

“You didn’t. You were just part of the scenery, then.”

“And now?” he taunts.

“I’m not that impressed.” I shrug, baiting him back. “You’re rude, you’re not a team player, and you eat hunched over your food like you think people will steal it.”

Again, he hides an expression with a sneer. “So basically, you have a good memory and you’re a snob, like all the other stuck-up geeks here.”

“SHiP happens,” I say with a sarcastic smile, and turn my back again.

“Hey,” he says, still not bothering to keep pace with me. “Are you and I going to keep this up the whole time?”

I glare back. “Keep what up?”

“This little hostile act between the two of us.”

“I’m not hostile.” I stop and force him to catch up. “Seriously. I’m not, but whatever baggage you’re carrying around is a little hard to ignore. Maybe you should keep it in check during class hours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can handle your bullshit but Julian is one hundred percent serious about this scholarship. He lost by half a point last year, and it wasn’t his fault. The fact we’re already a team member down is stressing him out. You need to carry your load of the weight.”

“You think you can
handle
me?” His eyes are hard and his jaw is set, and he takes a step, towering over me, even though I’m in an extra four inches today. “I’ll do my share, Cherry, but otherwise our relationship ends there. I didn’t come here to get some kind of surrogate family, or make best friends forever.”

“No one said anything about relationships except you.”

“Good, because there won’t be any.”

“Fine.” 

7.

Entrances

I watch as the girl walks away from me, so fast she almost falls over her stupid, glittery platform flip flops. Who wears those things? I run my hand over my head and start down the sidewalk to the building with our study room, refusing to look for cracks in the cement.

Maybe Memory will settle down before I get there.

Maybe I will, too.

I’m better at managing the rush of anger than I used to be, no longer a six-year-old throwing a temper tantrum because he feels choked by the tie he has to wear to meet the newest foster parents. My feet and fists got too big too fast, like the rest of me, and lashing out led to assault charges, so I’ve learned ways to cope with the rage that flows under my skin.

I’m not always successful. Deep breathing, counting backward, playing a game of tic-tac-toe in my head—all the various tricks I’ve been taught from each guidance counselor and “at risk” youth tutor I’ve been sent to, and a few of my own they wouldn’t appreciate—only go so far.

Memory skirts the edge of my anger, taunting me with her swinging hips and needling me with insults sharper than the heels she wears. Being near her is a lot like the knife blade in my pocket; one careless move and I’m sliced open in a very personal manner. Just looking at her brings up a dozen magnified feelings, the least of which is amusement. Much more dangerous is the curiosity of how much trouble she really is and how much damage we could do together. We could blow up the world with the nuclear energy between us, and I don’t like thinking about it, because it makes me want to try.