The Curiosities (Carolrhoda Ya) (4 page)

He traced the line of the sail and I winced, remembering the singe mark on the breakfast table. But the paper remained unmarked beneath his careful touch. “What are these things, Helen? Do you wish you could go to these places?”

“I thought you came to talk about you,” I said.

“I didn’t say that,” Grin said, putting his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants and still carefully studying the photos instead of me.

“Yes, you did,” I replied. “You said you had a problem.”

Grin didn’t say anything, and it struck me that the line of his shoulders looked some-how vulnerable, in comparison to his usual cocky stance. I let my voice soften, just a touch. “Grin, you risked a lot to come over here. Just tell me what I can do.”

He turned to look at me, still standing, the light from below throwing strange shadows across his face. “I’d like to know who my parents are.”

I didn’t say anything. Not because he had more to say, but because I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I think we should have at least that,” he said. “If we have to stay here and we can’t leave, even for a few hours, and this is our whole life, then we should at least have that. We should at least know where we came from, even if we’re never going anywhere.”

“What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“I want you to say what you always say. That it’s stupid and that I should forget about it because it would cause more problems than it would solve. I want you to be the voice of reason, Helen, like you always are.”

I was surprised that he thought of me that way. Not as a wet blanket. “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I really don’t see how that could cause us harm. I think that’s a fair question.”

He sat down in front of me again, blue eyes staring into mine so intensely that I was afraid he would see just how badly I, too, wanted to know who my parents were. Why I was here when I didn’t light fires with my hands or turn things to gold or turn into a goat.

“Okay then,” he said. “Okay, I’ll ask.”

He seemed about to say something else, but he just said, “Okay then,” again.

“Good luck,” I told him.

. . .

Because of our class schedule, I didn’t see Grin until dinnertime the next day. He sat at a table by himself, no food in front of him, elbows on the table, just staring down. One fist clenched and unclenched, over and over again. I didn’t have to know what had happened. He’d asked.

What did I think would happen? I felt bad for not advising against it.

I would’ve gone to him, but my table was swamped with juniors having hissy fits over the new sofa placement in our house common room. And by the time I had settled them and gotten up, Grin was gone. For some reason, all I could think about was the longing way he had drawn a finger across the sail in my favorite photograph.

. . .

I awoke to the sound of screaming and the ground surging beneath me. It turned out to be just my housemates leaping on my bed—but the screaming was real.

“Helen!” shouted Hera, one of the younger nymph daughters who always smelled of fish. “Locke House is burning!”

My gut dropped out from under me, and I scrambled around in my bed to look out the tiny window across the courtyard.

In the night sky, orange and red burned the darkness away, smoke scudding across the courtyard between the houses. I saw teachers knotted in the smoke, getting hoses organized, and Illia, who had a talent with vomiting water, making his long-legged way across the lawn. Evacuated students from Locke drifted back and forth like a school of fish, following each other’s lead. Leaping out of bed, I told the girls to pay attention to the teachers if they told us to evacuate, and then I bolted down the halls, intent on making my way to Locke House.

“Where are you going, Helen?” Professor Lansing asked me, standing in the middle of the hall that led to Locke.

“The fire,” I said. I didn’t know why I didn’t say anything more coherent.

“It’s under control,” he said. His voice was hard. “Go back to your house, please.”

I wanted really badly to say his name, but I bit it back with effort and just said, “Is anyone hurt?”

“It’s under control,” Professor Lansing said. Then he said, more kindly, “This business has nothing to do with you, Helen. You would do best to stay well out of it.”

But I knew better.

. . .

The next morning I went to Locke House. As I walked down the twisting, crooked hallways made of church lobbies and cloakrooms, I saw where the fire-making had begun. A black handprint on the right wall became two black handprints on the left became a long, dragged, seared stretch of plaster. The motivational posters in the common room had been burnt to a crisp, and the sofas were overturned, burned-out shells, like landlocked, ruined ships.

My heart thudded in my hollow chest as I ran my fingers along the burnt claw marks in the doors, the smell of smoke burning my nostrils. Windows were broken and paintings smashed over radiators; it wasn’t just a fire. In my head, I pictured the rage that had accompanied the flames.

I turned around and left.

Professor Lansing’s office had been rendered useless, and so he was doing his work from the empty guest room in Hallow House. He looked up, surprised, when I walked in.

“I’d like to see him,” I said. “Can I see him?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Lansing said.

I folded my hands in front of me, trying to convey my usual sea-of-sanity image. “Surely it can only help, me talking to him.”

Lansing considered for a moment and finally sighed. “I don’t think you’ll like it.”

But he took me to him, in the isolation room. I’d never been to the isolation rooms before, and I don’t know what I had expected. A tiny closet, I guess. But it was a huge, auditorium-like room, lined with tile like a bathtub or an ugly mosaic, with small windows situated high in the walls. In the middle of the room, Grin sat in the middle of the floor, back to me.

Lansing shrugged when he saw me looking and then shut the door behind me, leaving me alone with Grin. Grin didn’t move, though he must’ve heard the door and my footsteps as I walked across the floor and finally sat in front of him.

He looked up at me, and I jerked when I saw the brilliance of his eyes. There was fire in them, somehow, behind the blue, and he was so very fearfully alive that I crossed my arms over my chest in retreat.

“I knew you’d come,” he said.

“There are better ways to deal with your anger,” I said.

He smiled fiercely.

“Why do you think we’re here?” Grin asked me.

“To keep from slaughtering pedestrians with arcs of flame?” I suggested. “To keep us from killing normal people?”

“I don’t think it’s normal people they’re afraid we’ll kill,” Grin said. “I think Zeus and Odin and Venus and the rest are afraid of what we’d do to them. That is why we can’t know them. That’s why we can’t get out.”

I looked at him, because I knew he wasn’t done.

“Let’s break out,” he said. “Let’s go find that sailboat.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Tell me it’s a bad idea, Helen.”

I uncrossed my arms and let him take my hands. His fingers were tough, like they had been scarred again and again by the fire inside him.

“It’s a bad idea,” I said, because I knew it was true.

“Tell me not to do it,” Grin said.

“Did you find out who you were?” I asked him.

He leaned forward. “No. My file wasn’t in Lansing’s office. But yours was. I know who your mother was.”

“It’s a bad idea,” I said again. Outside, a flock of crows flew past the tiny windows, black wings sailing in an azure sky. No, not a flock. A murder. That’s what a bunch of crows were called.

Grin’s mouth was right on my ear, and his hands squeezed mine. “Athena. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a very bad idea,” I said, louder, but I stood up, his hand still in mine. And together, as we walked toward the door, I felt as alive as he was.