The Casquette Girls (6 page)

A bad feeling crept up as my school came into view; all the windows of the old factory-converted building had been blown out. I approached the nearest one and peered in. The ground level was still filled with stagnant water. My heart sank.

The warm familiar feeling I usually had on campus had been replaced with the strange sense that I was trespassing. I circled around to the front and found a piece of paper inside a plastic sheath nailed to the front door:

New Orleans School of Arts

Closed — Indefinitely

Contact the office of the

School Board Superintendent

for current status updates.

I snapped a photo and texted it to Brooke, adding only a sad-face.

Despite the official stamp on the paper, there was something so
unofficial
about the posting that it looked piteous: the handwriting, the nail. For the first time in my life, the lack of bureaucracy made me
un
comfortable. School and bureaucracy went hand in hand.

NOSA was an audition-only art high school where we were taught that creativity was in everything, even in trigonometry, which I struggled to believe. After my audition, my father had sat me down and very seriously explained that the greatest lesson an artist could learn was how to deal with rejection. I think the day I got my acceptance letter was the best day of both our lives.

Now I wondered if this would be it for NOSA.

As I approached the corner where I would normally see my father’s beautiful ballerina sculpture, I tried to brace myself for the possibility that she would be mangled, vandalized or missing altogether. He’d donated the sculpture for the school’s twenty-fifth anniversary. She was who I
’d hidden behind, crying, after Johnnie West robbed me of my
very first kiss
during a scene-study class freshman year, and she’d always been there to listen to my nervous banter before my juries. I’d grown attached to seeing her every morning.
Please be there. Please be—

“Thank God!”

I nearly skipped when I saw that she was still mid-pirouette. Her metal tutu, thin as paper, still created that amazing sense of movement, even the mask that covered the top half of her face was still intact – a metal version of the ones traditionally worn during Mardi Gras. She had always been one of my favorite pieces of his, and now she glimmered bronze against the sad spectrum of gray, almost begging me to not worry. I would have hugged her if she hadn’t been smeared in rotting foliage.

At least I’d have some good news for my father – his work withstood the strength of the Storm.

My father sometimes taught weekend metalsmithing workshops for adults at NOSA. I wished the school would allow him to teach us classes, but they weren’t too keen on allowing students to use blowtorches. Fair enough. Luckily, he’d been teaching me the art of harnessing fire since age six, after I snuck into his studio and burned off a pigtail (which gave me a very punk-rock haircut for a summer and nearly gave him a stroke). No matter what lengths he took to childproof his workspace, I had always managed to get in and meddle. Teaching me to correctly use the tools was his way of being better safe than sorry.

My eyes teared at the thought of not being able to spend my junior and senior years at NOSA. Most kids hated school, but I
’d always felt strong and confident here.

Adele, think about how much more other people lost.
I wiped my eyes and started the trek back.

Large orange X’s had been spray-painted directly onto the exteriors of the now-abandoned old homes. I
’d seen images of them on TV, but they were so much more upsetting in person. The numbers sprayed into each quadrant of the X indicated when the premise had been searched and how many dead bodies had been found. The dilapidated houses, formerly as vibrant as the Caribbean, encouraged me to flee, but I couldn’t help but pause outside one house: next to the X, a rescuer had taken the time to spray out the words
“1 dead in attic.”

The looming eeriness was suffocating.

Glass crunched under my feet as I walked away – it had come from the shattered window of a black town car parked next to me. There was a man in the driver’s seat.

I froze and stammered, “Hello?”

He didn’t stir.

I moved to see his face. His neatly groomed blond head was resting in the open window amongst a scattering of shiny glass fragments –
his empty blue eyes looked straight through me.

“Sir? Sir, are you okay?” Southern hospitality took over,
despite knowing there was only one explanation for the stillness of his body and for his head to be turned at that unnatural angle. I extended my hand towards his neck to check his pulse.

A bird squawked loudly, and I ripped my arm back in fright, barely aware of the broken glass grazing my hand as I spun around and broke into a full-on sprint. I ran through the remaining blocks of the Marigny, past Esplanade Avenue and back into the French Quarter. I kept running until sucking in the humid air became so difficult I had to stop and lean against a wooden fence.

Panting, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

The sound of the busy signal made me burst into tears.
How many other people were trying to call the police at this exact momen
t
?
I’d never seen a dead body before much less touched one. Now, all I could picture were those blue eyes. I felt his dead skin on my fingers. My chest tightened, and an asthmatic noise croaked from my throat.

Breathe, Adele.

Tears dripped.

I threw my arms over my head, determined to pull it together.

The imposing concrete wall surrounding the old Ursuline Convent was directly across the street, which meant I was on Chartres Street, only about six blocks from home. My hand throbbed, and I felt liquid dripping down my arm, but before I could inspect it, a rattling noise caught my attention. I held my breath to create perfect silence, and heard the noise again.

From my vantage, all I could see were the five attic windows protruding from the slope of the convent roof – two left of center and three on the right. (Blame my father for teaching me to always notice symmetry.) One shutter had become detached and was hanging loosely, rattling in the wind.

I watched the shutter methodically flap open and snap shut again, but the man’s dead blue eyes stained my mind.
What had happened to him? A car accident?
The rhythm of the knocking wood put me into a meditative state. My tears stopped, and my breathing evened. The claps gradually became louder and louder, drawing my focus back to the window.

A rusty smell pinched my nostrils, and only then did I realize the cut in my palm was now bleeding profusely. I untied the sash from around my waist and wrapped it tightly around my hand.
Back less than a day and I already have two injuries. Dad is going to frea
k
.
I silently mourned the death of the Chanel as the blood soaked through it.

Sweat dripped down my bac
k.
Gross
.
I tugged at my now-damp dress and wiped the tears from my face with the back of my bandaged hand, all the while watching the attic window. The heat was incredible, rippling down my torso in waves, almost feverish.
Was it wrong to pray for a cool fron
t
,
I wondered, staring at the convent.
Maybe just a little breeze?

The shutter snapped back shut. Something bothered me about it… and then I realized what it was.

I stopped and stood perfectly still. There was no breeze; the air was dead. The shutter flapped back open and snapped shut again, as if demanding my attention.

My pulse picked up.

I squinted as the shutter flapped open – there was a flash of movement behind the panes before it swung shut again.
What the hel
l
?
I blinked the remaining water from my eyelids.

When I looked back up, the shutter swung open.

Faint clinking sounds came from the convent courtyard, like metal raindrops hitting the pavement. Curious, I crossed the street and approached the convent’s iron gate, trying to keep my eyes on the dark window behind the shutter.

Through the bars, the overgrown garden looked as if it had been abandoned years ago, but then again, that’s how most of the city looked presently. I reached for the ornate handle, but the fixture turned downwards before I touched it. The loud clank made me jump back, and the gate creaked open just enough to let me pass through.

A little voice inside pleaded with me to bail, but instinct led me through the maze of overgrown hedges as if I’d been there a hundred times before. My eyes went back to the window and refused to look away. As I drew closer, the wooden shutter continued to open and close – slowly and precisely. Once I was directly underneath, I could see the nails popping out of the joining shutter, which was still closed. I glanced at my feet. The ground was covered in long black carpenter nails – clearly the work of a blacksmith, not a modern machine.
Had it really been necessary to use so many nails to secure the shutters?
A tiny raindrop hit my face.

The shutter flapped twice more, faster and faster.

It was slowly pulling itself off the building. Only a single stake in the center hinge kept it from falling, but it, too, was protruding, as if being pulled by some invisible force. The cut on my hand throbbed; the blood had soaked completely through the sash.

A loud clap of thunder made my pulse race, but my feet still wouldn’t carry me away. I stood motionless, neck craned, watching the shutter wrench itself free until it was suspended by just the very tip of the stake.

For a brief moment, the world seemed to freeze.

Then gravity prevailed.

My arms flew over my head as the dangling shutter crashed three stories to the ground – just a few inches from my feet.

The speed with which the sky became dark felt wholly unnatural. Bigger droplets of rain began to fall. Too stunned to move, I tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Suddenly, the remaining wooden shutter slammed open, and the windowpane blew outward in an explosion of showering glass. I fell to the ground and curled into a tight ball, shielding my face. A whoosh of wind whipped around me, and there was a loud whistle that faded into what sounded like sardonic laughter.

This is not happening right now. This is a drea
m
.

The clank of metal nearby forced me to release my tense muscles and unwrap my arms from my head. I peeked out with one eye. The thick iron stake that had held the shutter was rolling along the cement towards my face, as if pulled by a magnetic force. It stopped right before it touched my nose.

I quickly sat up and grabbed it. The metal felt strangely powerful in my hand, a thick, giant nail, twice the width of my palm.

My eyes told me I was alone, but my gut told me I wasn’t. Every ounce of my being screamed,
Get out!
Now I really was trespassing, and on the private grounds of the archdiocese.

Another loud crack of thunder made me scramble to my feet.

The wrought-iron gate banged shut behind me, just as the chapel bells began to clang.

I sprinted the remaining six blocks home and slammed the front gate behind me, pausing on the stoop to catch my breath. I grasped the slick, wet bars and looked both ways down the street.

No one. Nothing.

Safe behind the
iron gate, my pulse mellowed, but then I remembered only a chair held the kitchen door closed and that there was a giant hole in the back of our house – not exactly high security.

Rain dripped from my dress and weighed down my Docs as I stormed to my room. I kicked off the boots and flopped onto my bed, not caring that my hair would soak the pillow. My head spun.

What the hell just happene
d
?

The stake was still clutched tightly across my chest. I loosened my grip, allowing blood to flow back to my white knuckles, and examined the piece of iron. I turned it over and over, but there was nothing to give me a clue.

Blue eyes. Dead, blue eye
s
.
I exhaled loudly, trying not to cry.
Why had that man’s eyes still been so blue? He had shown no signs of decay, but the Storm had hit over two months ag
o
.
My hands began to shake. I set the stake down on the bed as I tried to recall the scene in exact detail.

The black sedan seemed undamaged, except for the smashed driver’s side window. Gray suit, blond hair, blue eyes. My breathing picked up.
What if the man hadn’t actually been dead, and I had neglected to help him?

No, his neck had been contorted into a position allowed to no living person. He coul
d
no
t
have still been alive. And yet, he certainly couldn’t have died two months ago.
Had I discovered a recently deceased ma
n
?