Pucker (18 page)

“Not really,” I confess.

Cook sighs heavily. “I'll build the shelves myself. Just what
have
you learned in America?”

Oh, there's a list a mile long: how to ride a motorcycle, the best way to eat a burrito,
E
is energy,
m
is mass, and
c
is the speed of light. But in the presence of my old nanny, my playmate, my storyteller, and my nurse, I am mute. I can remember nothing.

FORTY-THREE

C
HILDHOOD LIVES ON IN THE BODY, long after we have grown too old for sledding or pasting red hearts onto purple paper. But we can return if we want to. Trace the elephantine bark of a cedar with the tips of your fingers. Dip your face into a pot of marigolds. If you do this, you will resurrect your smallest self.

I'm sitting in Cook's sun-soaked kitchen. She's made me flan and I've eaten nearly half the dish. I'm voraciously hungry. I swirl my fingers into the burnt sugar syrup and lick them like a savage.

“I'm not here to stay,” I tell her. “My mother's dying. She's sent me to get her Seerskin and bring it back.”

There are violet smudges under Cook's eyes. She hasn't slept well the entire time I've been in Isaura. Ever since she saw me outside the Ministry eating my lunch twelve days ago.

“She can't control her visions. She sees the future all the time. Without even touching people,” I say.

“But she's got no Seerskin,” says Cook. “She
can't
see the future anymore.”

“Yes, she can,” I tell her. “The magic works differently on Earth than it does here. Her visions came back. She can't stop them.”

Cook shakes her head. “I told her,” she says.

“Told her what?”

She ignores my question. “Why does she want her skin back? What good will that do?”

“We think the magic works in reverse on Earth. So if without her skin she can see the future . . .” I begin.

“Then with her skin, she won't see it anymore,” finishes Cook.

“Yes,” I say. “It'll stop the visions from coming.”

Cook's mouth is pulled into a thin line. “You're going to give up that face?” she asks softly.

Cook always knew what I was feeling, even before I did.

“Do I look like him?” I ask.

“Who?” she says gently.

“My father,” I say, exhaling quickly. To talk about him, to bring him into a conversation is to unwind the days. To make it as if he died yesterday.

Cook leans forward, astonished. “You can't tell?”

I shake my head. “It's hard for me to remember him. All I can think of is coming out into the kitchen, seeing him on the floor—” I break off.

Cook's face hardens. “No child should have to go through that,” she says.

“My parents shouldn't have had to go through that,” I remind her.

Cook's jaw saws back and forth. “No, you don't look like him.”

I nod, oddly relieved.

“So Serena sent you back to get her Seerskin?” Cook asks a moment later. It's clear what she thinks of this.

“She had no choice: she's gone nearly crazy with the visions. She foresaw her own death,” I say.

I defend my mother, but in this bright kitchen my voice sounds pathetic, as if it couldn't make a dent in the room's gleaming surface. Suddenly I feel ashamed for my mother and I'm not sure why. I stare down into the dish of custard.

Cook gets up abruptly and goes to the kitchen cupboard. The shelves are lined with canisters of herbs. “I'm going to make you a tea. You'll need to drink this every day. At least once. Twice is better,” she says.

“Why?” I hate tea. Cook knows this.

“It'll stop the Change,” she says.

“But I don't want to stop the Change,” I say.

Cook looks at me steely eyed. “I'm not talking about your face. The
other
Change. The Change to your personality. Maybe it hasn't affected you yet. Maybe you haven't been here long enough,” she says.

Oh,
that
Change. The confirmation feels almost anti-climactic. “Doesn't seem all that bad to me,” I say. “Besides, I'm leaving in a few days.” I fight to keep the misery from my voice.

“Just in case,” Cook says, digging through the cupboard.

Just in case you stay
is what she means. There has never been one moment in my entire life that Cook has not been on my side.

Cook sprinkles a mixture of herbs into a mug filled with boiling water and brings it to the table. I take a cautious sip and groan; it tastes horrible.

“Never mind the taste—just drink it,” says Cook.

I take a gulp and I'm overcome with guilt, as if by just taking one sip of the tea, I'm betraying my mother.

“I'm going to find her Seerskin and bring it back home,” I pronounce.

Cook nods. “And where do you intend to find it?”

“It's somewhere in the Ministry.”

“Perhaps,” Cook says.

“No, it's got to be in the Ministry. I've been here fifteen days. I only have nine days left,” I say.

Cook sighs. “How many days you have left doesn't matter.”

 

We build the shelves for her pantry together. I hand her the nails, she pounds them in, and when we are done, I take a nap. I sleep in the same bed I slept in in the days following the fire. The sheets smell of lemon and I bury my nose in them, trying to remain a boy, but when I wake, it's dusk and I'm seventeen. I get up and stare at myself in the mirror. How is it that nothing of my father remains in my face?

FORTY-FOUR

I
LEAVE COOK'S HOUSE AND my thoughts are pulled back to Phaidra. How did she spend the day? Did she eat ham for breakfast? Did she finish
Anna Karenina
yet? It's intolerable to think twelve hours have passed without my seeing her.

I think now of Phaidra's entire life. I imagine it spread out before me, the wide span of years that claim her as their own. She learned the alphabet, swam in rivers, and grew her hair long and I never knew she existed. What I don't let myself think about is her suffering. I only want to think of her as perfect and whole.

Nine days left with her, in this face. Do I tell her why I'm really here, who I really am? Or do I just live those days right to the end?

I've missed dinner. I hurry back to the house, hoping there will be some opportunity, some excuse to slip out tonight and meet Phaidra before I go to the Ministry to search for my mother's skin. Dash is sitting on the steps of the porch, waiting for me. I see the cherry red tip of his cigarette before I see him. He's taken a shower; his blond hair is damp. There are still lines left in it from the comb.

“How's it going?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say perfunctorily, hoping to cut off the conversation.

“Phaidra's taught you to use something besides a broom?”

I ignore him. “Is there anything to eat?”

“Some bread. Cold chicken.” He flicks his ashes on the ground. “Girls should be here soon. Who's coming tonight?”

Mee-Yon and Veronica. I forgot they were coming. “I'm exhausted,” I say. “I'm going to bed. Can you tell them I'm sick?”

“I can, but I won't. Getting tired of all the attention?”

“Come on,” I plead.

Dash stands and leans lazily against a pillar. He moves his body in a feral, predatory way.

“If you're real nice, I might fill in for you tonight,” he says.

I let out a little snort of skepticism before I can stop it. Dash's face darkens, but the lazy smile remains.

“Have you ever been to Spain?” he asks.

He inhales, his eyes squinting, with pain or pleasure, I can't tell. Perhaps both—they aren't so different after all.

“The Mediterranean? The water has a funny taste. Metallic.” He picks a speck of tobacco off his tongue delicately and wipes his finger on his pants. “I fell in love with a girl named Graciela.”

Oh God. I'm famished. He's reaching out to me and I find myself annoyed. I've got neither the time nor the patience to develop a relationship with him. I think of the bread. I will eat the loaf whole.

“Are you in love, T?” he asks.

I shake my head.

He laughs. “Come on, you can tell me the truth.”

“I'm telling you the truth,” I say.

“Well, that's funny, because you're exhibiting all the signs of somebody who's in love. Which girl is it?”

“I'm hungry,” I say.

Dash tosses his cigarette butt to the ground and stamps it out with the heel of his boot. “I know you're hungry, T,” he says, in a voice just short of a snarl. “But you're going to have to learn to put your hunger aside.”

Now I get it. He's talking about Phaidra.

“So, the book,” he says, crossing his arms.

Damn, I knew his overlooking my Barker's was too good to be true. He's been waiting for just the right time to bring it up. Suddenly I remember that my name is written in the front of the primer. The scrawl of a five-year-old boy—and it says Thomas Gale, not Thomas Quicksilver. He must know Barker's is not some arbitrary book I swiped from the Ministry library.

“‘Barker's Juvenile Primer No. 3: Containing pertinent moral and historical lessons for the edification and improvement of all Isaurian children,'” he quotes. “Where'd you get it, Quicksilver?”

I stare at him, my mouth agape. Even though I knew this moment might come, I am remarkably unprepared for it.

He cocks his head. “I guess the better question is
why
,” he says. “Why do you have it?”

“I don't know,” I tell him. And this is the truth. I don't know why I brought it with me. Certainly not for the map of the Ministry, whose layout is etched in my mind. It was the stupidest thing I could have done.

“Who are you?”

“Please don't ask,” is all I can think to say.

“Who the hell are you?” Dash repeats, loudly.

“You know who I am,” I whisper, pleading with him not to take this any further.

His eyes narrow.

“Right. You're the asshole who thinks everybody's always looking at him,” he says. He grabs his sweater, which is draped over the porch railing. “You leave her alone, you hear me?” He stalks off in the direction of the Refectory. “Don't let me hear you've disappointed those girls,” he calls out.

“Where are you going?” I say, trying to gauge just exactly how much trouble I'm in.

“Java time,” he says.

Relief floods through me. He's not turning me in—not yet, anyway.

He turns around. “Want me to bring you back one?”

“Um, sure.”

“Um, keep dreaming,” he says.

FORTY-FIVE

S
CREW THE CONNECTICUTS. DASH KNOWS something's up and I've got an hour tops before he comes home. I find Phaidra in the common room of her dorm. It's a place where they store all the junk. There's a shabby, stained couch. Run-down upholstered chairs with the stuffing bursting out of the seams. Phaidra sits on the floor, her back to the wall. I stand in the doorway, panting.

“You weren't at supper,” she says.

“I've brought you something.” I hand her the little packet of herbs Cook gave me. “You can stop cutting yourself now. Crush these and make a tea out of it. You need to drink it every day.”

She opens the package and sniffs. She makes a face. “What is this stuff?”

“It'll slow down the process. The leaking,” I tell her.

She slides up the wall to her feet, alarmed. “Who gave you this?”

“There are things I have to tell you.”

“Clearly,” she says.

The room is empty except for us. There aren't any lamps, but there is a window, and the night streams in, bathing us in a violet light.

“My name is Thomas Gale,” I begin.

FORTY-SIX

W
E'RE SILENT, WALKING BACK ACROSS the green. She hasn't said a word to me since I've told her everything. Who I am. Why I'm here. What I must do.

“Say something. Say anything,” I plead.

“What's there to say? You're leaving in nine days.”

I grab her arm. “Come with me. You know you hate it here.”

She shakes me off angrily. “That's not possible.”

“Why not? I don't care what was wrong with you.”

“I do,” she says icily.

“Well, I don't.” But even as I say it, I'm not sure I believe it. The thought of going back home with my old burned face is unbearable, never mind having to deal with adjusting to Phaidra's affliction. But I want to try. I do. I want to believe this has made me stronger.

“Oh, Thomas.” She whirls around to face me. “You're a dreamer, aren't you?”

“No, I'm not,” I shout. “Goddamn it, Phaidra!”

“God's not here,” she says harshly. “God's never been anywhere near me.”

I grab her arm and pull her close.

“That isn't true,” I say. I cup her ears with my hands and shake her head gently. “God's here.” I touch my fingers to her lips. “And here.” I stroke her cheek.

She tosses her head miserably. “What if you stayed?” she asks.

“I can't.”

“But what if you did? We could drink Cook's tea. Maybe it would stop the leaking for good. We could . . . we could just live here.”

We could play house. She could fix holes in the roof with her hammer and I'd sweep up after.

“If I stay, my mother will die,” I say.