Path of Smoke (17 page)

The shadow moved below them. Walking upright now, and in no hurry. All that separated them was a flight of stairs. Ingrid could see her eyes, the color of yellow traffic lights. They were looking directly at her.

She placed one hoof on the first step.
Click.
Ingrid swallowed.

Then she heard the roaring engine.

At first, she thought it was her car, about to explode. But it was much louder. The silenus turned, but there was no time to move. Even she wasn't fast enough. The truck slammed into her with a sound that was indescribable. The silenus flew. Ingrid watched her, a dark star falling. She landed ten feet away, in a bed of purple crocuses.

Sam stuck her head out the driver's-side window.

“What are you waiting for? Get in, before she wakes up!”

S
HELBY
WOKE
UP
AT
an angle. The arm of the couch was digging into her neck, and the living room swam before her, a goldfish bowl of unfamiliar shapes. When she squinted, she could make out shelves hanging from eyebolts screwed into the ceiling. They rocked slightly in the breeze coming through the open window. She tried to read the books' titles, but even when she could make them out, their meaning eluded her. They were all about vectors, shearing forces, and torsion. A shiny laptop sat beneath them, displaying a vintage screen saver. Toasters with wings. She hadn't seen that one in ages. It made her think of simpler times, before DVD-ROM drives and high-speed Internet, when you still had to sweat over an AUTOEXEC.BAT file to make your game work properly. It felt like you were searching for buried treasure, as you tried to anticipate the number of file pathways to open. Would twenty be enough? Fifty?

Waking up in a strange place reminded her of sleepovers. The disorientation that you felt in the middle of the night, trying to find your friend's bathroom. The fear of encountering her parents in the hallway, slightly disheveled and all too real in their bathrobes. All those dark kitchens and rumpus rooms that were not her own, suggesting alternate lives on familiar cul-de-sacs, yet somehow sinister as well. Because if their lives were simply mutations of her own, the difference of a few throw pillows and a larger television, what did that make her? How could she be special, when Donna Green's parents had the same carpeting, the same terminal microwave whose glass dish also chafed in secret? All those staircases that were mirror images, as if she'd fallen into a suburban Escher painting.

But the uncanny houses weren't the only thing that made her uneasy. There was also the long night, the hours spent with her eyes open, while Donna slept soundly next to her. Trying to be comforted by her friend's breathing, while the acid climbed up her throat. Now and again, their elbows would touch. Shelby knew that if she rolled over, Donna would embrace her, still dreaming of Toby Fleischman and his aviator sunglasses. She would not think of Donna's small breasts beneath her Our Lady Peace T-shirt, or the faint blond hairs on her arms. Or kissing the freckles on her back, which formed a constellation that Shelby had already named.

It must be strange, she remembered thinking, to be a boy in the same predicament. If you touched your best friend, he might kill you. The barest suggestion of intimacy was forbidden. Desire never went away, but fear held it in abeyance. Girls weren't as brutal in their retribution, but they had a way of closing ranks against you. She was already baffled by the politics of being a girl in a small town. The rules and signs were oddly foreign to her, as if she'd missed some crucial orientation about how to communicate. Most of the time, she was faking it. The last thing she needed was a murder of rumors flying around school, and all because, in the gauzy predawn light of Donna's bedroom, she'd forgotten her mask.

Carl wasn't in this memory. But he emerged from the hallway regardless, yawning and scratching his belly. He was wearing a pair of Sonic the Hedgehog boxers. Carl wasn't her type. Too much hair and bravura. Plus, he'd make an awful boyfriend. She couldn't imagine him pulling her hair back while she threw up, or answering the phone when she was avoiding her mother. He was more likely to forget to pick her up, losing track of time within a skunk cloud while he played games on his vintage Sega Genesis. In spite of all that, he had a certain dark charm, like a tom with fleas who eventually wore you down. She could almost see why Andrew had liked him, once. He did have nice legs.

Carl stretched and farted. Then he saw her on the couch and grinned.

“Sorry. Thought you were still asleep.”

“You're really the whole package, aren't you?”

“Come on. We nearly died last night. Car chases make me gassy.”

“Let me see your cut.”

“It's okay.”

“Don't argue.”

He sighed and knelt by the couch. Shelby gently lifted the bandage on his forehead, which was spotted with blood. The edges of the wound had crusted over, but it looked clean.

“You probably needed a stitch.”

“Going to the hospital didn't seem like the best option.”

“I know. It should be fine. Just don't aggravate it.”

“What do you think I'm going to do—stick my head in a barrel of rats?”

“I've seen your apartment. I wouldn't trust any of those surfaces.”

“Don't worry about my surfaces. They're fine.”

“Just—”

He frowned. “What?”

Shelby looked at him again. He was so vulnerable, smiling uncertainly as he knelt before her, like a squire in his underwear. She was suddenly filled with love for this man, this little boy, who kept her secrets and walked with her every day to school. This endearing shipwreck who never knew what he wanted but always carried an extra granola bar, in case Andrew's blood sugar decided to bottom out. She hugged him. At first, he was surprised. But then he pulled her close and said nothing. Shelby realized that she was shaking.

“It's going to be okay,” he whispered.

“Really?”

“Trust me.”

She pulled away. “I'd trust you more if you cleaned your bathtub.”

“I told you, the sliding door makes it hard to really get in there.”

He knew what she was actually saying. They both understood each other, caught in the silence of that unfamiliar living room. There was no sense in asking the real questions.
Are you taking care of yourself? Flossing and eating oranges? Guarding against loneliness, the way that Foucault recommends?

Carl disappeared into the bathroom to get changed. Shelby pulled on her shirt and began hunting for a missing sock, which she found beneath the table. Carl returned, still sporting bed-head. He handed her some gum, which she took gratefully. Both of them chewed in silence. Then they heard footsteps, and Sam emerged from the hallway. For a moment, she looked terrified, as if she'd stumbled onto a pair of incompetent burglars.

“Shit. I forgot that you were here.”

“Thanks for letting us stay the night,” Shelby replied.

“At this point, it's probably best that we stick together. Like a team, or whatever.” Sam yawned. She was wearing a Wesley Crushers T-shirt and faded pajama pants. “I actually had a great sleep. Must have been the adrenaline. Does anyone want coffee?”

“That's not really a question,” Carl said.

“Good point. I'll go prime Majel.”

“Who?”

“Majel Barrett. She's my Keurig.”

“I can't tell if that's disrespectful or highly appropriate.”

“Well, I'm sketchy that way.” Sam disappeared into the kitchen. “Did either of you hear from Ingrid? I thought she was supposed to text in the morning.”

Shelby checked her phone. “I've got nothing. Maybe she's still asleep.”

“Doubtful,” Carl said. “Neil wakes her up at six thirty, like clockwork.”

“It must be difficult—lying to more than one person, I mean.”

“The other day, I told Neil that bales of hay wrapped in black plastic were burnt marshmallows. Lying to a four-year-old isn't tough.”

“But Paul must suspect something.”

“I'm sure he's got his own shit to distract him. People tend to believe that things are going fine, until entropy bites them in the ass.”

“Entropy is the heat death of the universe,” Sam called from the kitchen. “If anything, it would freeze your ass, rather than biting it.”

“Way to be comforting,” Carl replied.

As it turned out, Sam had only two mugs. Shelby drank her coffee out of a Moosehead tumbler without complaining. Carl nosed through her bookshelf.

“Hey.” He pulled out a slim volume with
Ediciones Catedra
stamped on it. “What are you doing with
La Celestina
?”

“It's one of my favorite plays.”

“Seriously?”

“What—science students can't enjoy Late Medieval theater?”

“It's just not really that common. In Regina, I mean.”

“I haven't always lived in Regina. Plus, I've got a weakness for sketchy midwives.”

“You speak Spanish?”

“Yo entiendo mas que yo puedo hablar.”

“How would you feel about talking to my mother on the phone? We'd have to change your name to Tammy, but it could still work.”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. It was just a thought.”

“Tammy is his imaginary girlfriend,” Shelby clarified. “He made her up, so that his mom wouldn't find out that he's a pansexual slut.”

“Oh, look who's talking. Last night, you were trying to convince a single mom to have drinks with you.”

“I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything.”

“Wait.” Sam turned to Shelby. “You're into Ingrid?”

“Not
into
her. That suggests real focus. I'm just sort of passively—”

“Stalking her?” Carl suggested.

Sam ignored him. “I thought—I mean, when your shadows kissed, I assumed it was just supposed to be a distraction. I didn't realize that there was actual chemistry happening.”

“It's not that simple.” Shelby didn't believe her own words, but if she kept talking, they might start to make sense. “Our shadows do things that we can't control. Morgan has her own inner life that's separate from mine.”

“You're so into her.”

Shelby blushed. “I don't know. These things are always just in my head.”

“That kiss looked real enough.”

“Our shadows kissed. It's not the same thing.”

Sam shook her head. “I don't believe this bullshit ‘shadows' theory. Those people are a part of us. Julia talks to me in my dreams, all the time. I remember things about her life. About her mother, and the cramped insula where she grew up, and how she used to brush her hair with a cracked tortoiseshell comb. Whoever we are beyond the park—it's not as simple as putting on a costume. I can't tell where I end and the artifex begins.”

“They're like middle names,” Carl said.

Sam gave him an odd look. “Explain.”

“We've all got middle names. Mine's Lazarillo. I never think about it, unless I'm filling out a customs card or talking to my mom. It's this part of me that I didn't choose. But it's also a connection to my past.” He smiled. “And what if, one day, I just started going by Lazarillo, instead of Carl? I'd feel like a different person, even if nothing had really changed. Maybe Lazarillo prefers tea to coffee, or likes the crusts of his sandwich cut off. Maybe he's got it all figured out, or he's even more broken than I am. We all carry around these pieces from another life—names that our parents gave us. They're shadows too. Babieca may be some slanted version of me, but he's still in there, ready to be declared.”

“Psychiatrists would make a fortune if they knew about the park,” Shelby said.

“I'm sure that some of them do. Oliver said that everyone was basically in on it—from the police department to the mayor's office.”

“Did you just quote Oliver?”

Carl shrugged. “What can I say? The guy gets my back up sometimes, but what's the world coming to if you can't trust a librarian?”

Sam was staring at her coffee. Finally, she looked up. “We should meet with Ingrid tonight. We have to figure out our next move.”

“Big cheese lady is obviously on to us,” Carl added. “It's not like that silenus was going for a brisk jog, and we happened to cross paths. Patty Lapona must have sent her.”

Sam laughed. “God, Shelby, that was the worst lie I've ever heard.”

“I was trying to be creative. I didn't exactly have a lot to work with.”

“What if Andrew starts asking questions around the ed department? It won't take him long to realize that they didn't just hire a famous Broadway luminary.”

“Ingrid will have to run some kind of interference.”

“I don't think he's going to investigate,” Carl said.

Shelby gave him a look. “Have you two met? The first time my mom invited him to dinner, he came over with a marked-up copy of her dissertation.”

“He's preoccupied.” Carl's voice was neutral, but his eyes told a different story.

“With what?”

“Nothing. Just weird dreams.”

“Carl.”

“What? I don't know much, okay? He barely said anything.”

“Define
weird
.”

“At this point, it would be easier to list the stuff in our lives that
wouldn't
qualify as the next Guillermo del Toro film.”

“I dream about park things all the time,” Sam said. “Even if he's technically cut off from that world, it stands to reason that he's still got memories. I mean, do they really just go
poof
? That doesn't even seem possible.”

“He told me that salamanders were following him. In his dreams.”

Shelby reached for her tumbler but found it already empty. “That can't be a sign for the good.”

“Why not?” Carl's look of hope was slightly devastating. “Wouldn't that mean some small part of Roldan had survived?”

“No. It means that the lares don't want to let go of him.”

“They could lead him back to the park.”

“Or drive him insane.”

“He saw an undina in Ingrid's bathroom,” Shelby said.

Sam blinked. “How is that possible?”

“We don't know, but there's some kind of deep shit happening. Latona said it herself. The walls between the worlds are thinning. Stuff is getting through.”

“Unless it was always here to begin with.”

Carl glanced at his phone. “I have to go to campus. I've got an appointment with one of the student counselors.”