The Shells Of Chanticleer (17 page)

I dropped the subject of Crispin Sinclair. We went to the dining hall and Sebastian insisted I sit with him and Nic. I called Violet and Zooey over to join us.

“Nice find, Macy,” Violet approved, nodding at Sebastian. “But he’s very distracting, don’t you think?”

“I’m afraid so,” I admitted.

We ate brunch at my first meal with Sebastian, waffles with strawberry cream and syrup, buttered toast with black currant and pear jam, popovers and Danishes, thick slabs of crispy bacon. We made a fun little group at the table and I forgot to feel bad about Paolo and Poppy. With such new and shiny distractions to focus on it turned out that I didn’t miss either of them half as much as I thought I would.

Sebastian turned out to be a surprisingly faithful friend in those first days after our meeting at the festival. I would leave Summer Hall in the morning only to find him waiting for me at the bottom of the steps, ready to walk with me wherever I was headed. If I spent the day in the library he’d plop into a chair across from me with his own packet of readings to plow through. More often than not, he’d fall asleep with boredom half an hour later, and that made me laugh. Other times I would catch him staring at me when he didn’t think I was looking, and then he would wink and throw a wadded bit of paper torn from his packet at me.

“What are they making you work on here?” I asked, pulling his packet toward me on the table and reading its title. “What makes you nervous?”

“Not being your friend anymore,” he said, straight-faced.

“You better behave, then, and stop throwing things at me, or I’ll make you sit over there,” I whispered, pointing to a nearby table of younger-looking boys.

“I’m scared,” he replied, with a mock shiver.

“No, don’t be,” I said, my tone turning serious. “I felt pretty lonely here before we met. It’s ten times better having you around. I’m the one that doesn’t want to get dropped.”

He took a quick look over his shoulder and then held my hand between both of his. “You have nothing to worry about on my end,” he said, “But they’ll split us up if we’re not careful; you know that, don’t you?”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. The 700-page thesis on women’s issues was headed my way, I was sure. Still, I made no move to pull my hand away.

“We’re allowed to be friends,” he said, assuring me. “We can hold hands, and they can’t get upset about that if we’re just friends.”

That was better than nothing, I guess, but with each day we spent together I liked him more and more. Being just friends was a little disappointing to me.

If I had coursework, he cared about how it went. When we had free time we wasted it wandering around Chanticleer’s lush and wild landscape, past old abandoned mills, terraced gardens, sham castles built for no reason other than their beauty, rocky grottos wet with natural springs. We crossed over a stream on a crumbling medieval bridge. I got the distinct impression Sebastian was in love with Chanticleer. As for me, he seemed to enjoy keeping me at a certain distance; just friends, he insisted, despite acting otherwise. He would throw his arm around me as soon as we were far away from anyone.

“We’re just friends,” he would say with a wink, “And anyway, my arm feels much better when I put it around your shoulder than when I keep it by my side.”

Or, “It’s natural for friends to run their hands through each other’s hair if they feel like they have a legitimate reason for it, and I think I saw a katydid land on your head a second ago.” He ran his hands underneath my hair, failing to find anything. “Oh well. Friends do that kind of thing for each other.”

He insisted that we watch the sunset together. We would lie on our backs on a high Chanticleer hillside, looking over the treetops against the darkening pink sky, with the wind picking up, just the two of us.

“Isn’t it fun to sit and watch the clouds roll in?” he asked, as I laid my head down on the ground next to his.

I rolled my eyes, chuckling, and agreed. “Of course it is. No one would ever confuse an appreciation for nature with anything, uh, romantic.”

“No, it’s not romantic, at all,” Sebastian said, reaching for my hand and pressing the back of it to his lips.

When it rained, he made me volunteer to play mud soccer with him and then took every opportunity to tackle me so I ended up looking like a dirty little pig that had rubbed her back in the barnyard’s filth. He ended up muddier than I did because I pushed him back, hard.

If my blazer collar was the littlest bit askew, he was there right behind me straightening it. If we were anywhere crowded, he would grab my arm unnecessarily as if I needed protection. He did everything but throw his jacket over the puddles on the ground so I could step over them. He was very touchy-feely and I lapped it all up. Why wouldn’t I? He was gorgeous, but not like those vapid all-American models whose oversize torsos line the walls of preppy clothing stores. There was something going on behind his eyes: life, loss, experience; it was hard to define. All I knew was that there were a lot of girls in Chanticleer who would have died to be with him. But we were just friends, he kept reminding me. Just friends—until it all changed.

One night at dinner Violet was late meeting us at the table. She finally breezed in with Bing and sat down with us. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sebastian bristle at the unwelcome addition.
“Oh no, here we go,”
I thought to myself with a mixture of dread and amusement.

“Macy, my little chickie,” Bing greeted me. He appraised my meal. “As usual, your plate is full.”

I gave him a quick wave hello as I was busy chewing. Sebastian and Bing exchanged flat hellos. I hadn’t had coursework in a week; it was fun to see Bing outside of Miss Clarice’s oversight. He chatted and charmed the table, but when he got up for the buffet, Sebastian whispered to me.

“Are you almost done here? Can we leave?”

“Almost,” I replied.

Suddenly, Bing was next to me, proffering a gift, wrapped in a cloth napkin.

“What’s this?”

“For you,” he laughed. “Just to get you started.”

I took the napkin and lifted up the corner. A dozen of my favorite chocolate nutcrackers were jumbled in a pile.

“It’s an homage to our first meal here, remember?”

I did remember—it felt so long ago. “Oh my gosh. You are so thoughtful,” I said, and I gave him a brief hug.

Sebastian stood up. “I need to go,” he said. He motioned to the door.

“My, someone got grouchy all of a sudden,” I poked. “Alright, I’m finished anyway.”

I picked up the napkin, cradling my gift in my arms as we left. Sebastian really didn’t like Bing, but I had little curiosity as to their history. When we were almost back at Summer Hall Sebastian made an unusual request of me.

“Don’t go to sleep tonight. Stay awake, and keep your window open a little bit.”

I murmured my assent automatically.

“Don’t tell anyone, promise?

I promised. I kept my window open, the night breeze carrying the scent from the peony bushes below my window up into my room, perfuming it. It was too early for peonies back home. I inhaled deeply. I was sleepy, and the fresh air helped. It was after ten thirty and I was wondering if Sebastian had changed his mind when a thud at my window made me jump. I looked out and there was Sebastian sitting in the branches of a tree right outside my window. He had thrown his shoe at the window and it lay snagged below in the peonies.

He whispered, “Hey!”

“Hey, back.”

“Let’s go. Come on out here and join me.”

“What? In the tree?”

“Sure, come on,” he coaxed playfully. “You know you can’t get hurt here. Just jump. It’ll be easy. It’s not far.”

I lifted my window and stepped onto the ledge, crouching hesitantly on the sill, unsure. I felt uncomfortable. I looked at the tree but it was more than ten feet away. I didn’t think I could jump that far, and as it wasn’t an official challenge I wasn’t going to try. So I jumped down to the ground instead. I landed safely, the ground absorbing my weight easily, and I retrieved Sebastian’s shoe from the bushes. I threw it at him in the tree.

“You, come down here!”

“Chicken,” he squawked at me, and then he jumped down, landing gracefully next to me.

I teased, “Hey, is that a nice thing to call someone around here?”

“What, chicken? Don’t you know that Chanticleer is French for rooster, and a rooster is just a male chicken? It’s not a bad word; why it’s practically our mascot.”

“Ooo la la! Sebastian est un chanticleer,”
I said, hoping to foil him with my handy French.

“Vous l’etes aussi,”
he answered back with the perfect accent, meaning, ‘you are too.’

I saw a curtain rustle on the second floor and a face come to the window, investigating.

“Let’s go,” Sebastian said, and he picked his backpack up off the ground and darted off towards town. I ran and caught up with him. He grabbed my hand tight and we slowed down to a walk. The streets were empty. Of course, I had never broken curfew. I wondered if we would get in trouble if caught, but when I asked him, Sebastian’s reply was a flippant “Who cares? We’re just friends out walking.”

We landed on the circuit and walked the gravel path, the low hoot of the owl and the song of the crickets keeping time with our footsteps in the night.

“We’d blend into the background better if we had the staff sweaters on,” Sebastian noted. “These darn white sweaters practically glow in the dark.”

“What’s in your backpack?” I asked, jokingly. “Are we going camping?”

“Sort of.”

We were soon out of the deserted town center. Ahead of us lay the path to the Fir Forest. Immediately, I knew what we were doing. I looked at Sebastian and he grinned back at me in acknowledgement.

“Race you,” he said, and he shot off.
He has no idea who he is dealing with,
I thought. I let him get a lead on me, then I ran full steam ahead, catching up to him, and then at the last moment cutting him off, putting my hand on the rungs of the ladder before him.

I gloated, “Ha! Beat you.”

I placed my hand on the rung and scaled the tree like a monkey and stepped onto the platform high in the air, finally pausing to catch my breath. Sebastian alighted behind me, grumbling.

“What are you, some kind of freak? I had no idea you were so fast.”

“I told you at the festival that I was good at running.”

“Oh, yes you did. I should pay more attention to you, shouldn’t I?”

Nothing had changed on the platform high in the air, but that night was a far cry from the last time I’d been there. Then, I had been with Paolo who was shivering and crying in fright, and with Bing, who was annoyed and trying to stay patient. I had still been so nervous then, trying to figure out where I fit in, but alone in the night sky with Sebastian, darkness surrounding us, I had no fear.

He asked, “So you ready to do this?”

“I think so,” I replied.

“The trick is not to think, just blast through it. Whatever you do, don’t stop, just fly.”

“Yup,” I said, the sound of my heart pounding painfully in my eardrums.

“Here, we need a running start.” We backed to the edge of the platform furthest from the rungs of the bridge. “On go….”

We were quiet for a second. The wind rustled, and a cool puff of breeze moved the firs ever so softly.

“Go!” Sebastian shot forward and I followed him, running the length of the platform, and when my foot landed squarely on the first rung, my momentum propelled me forward, not downward, and my foot landed perfectly on the second, and then the third rung. Sebastian and I ran in perfect rhythm, our weight landing and lifting off the bridge simultaneously. He was right, you couldn’t stop or think, and that was the thrill in it. You had to just keep going. Our feet pounding on the wooden slats made a solid sound in the night and too soon we landed safely on the far platform, the endpoint Paolo and I had never arrived at.

“Oh my gosh,” I squeaked as my feet landed safely back on the stable surface.

Sebastian was standing there, triumphant.

“See,” he said, “Isn’t that the best?”

“Let’s do it again,” I said.

So we ran its length again, back to the starting point, always in perfect time, already old pros at it. Then again a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth, the rattling slats making a racket in the still night. Far from civilization, the noise dissipated without giving us away. Each time we reached the platform was as thrilling as the first time. Finally, we collapsed at the end platform, tuckered out, flat on our backs looking up through the pointed trees to the sleeping sky. We lay there, catching our breath amidst the quiet timber, not needing or wanting to move or to talk or to be anywhere else right then.

After a while, Sebastian sat up, walked over to his backpack, and rustled through it. He pulled out an old flannel blanket, tattered and frayed around the edges, and threw it around his shoulders as he sat back down. He patted the platform’s floor and motioned to me.

“Scoot over here.”

It was exactly what I had wanted him to say. I went and scrunched up close to him. He threw the blanket and his arm around me, folding me into the flannel cocoon. His arm was strong and solid; he had built it up somehow. He had the kind of arms you could hold onto for dear life. I settled in, our crossed legs resting on each other, our sides adjacent. I could feel his rib cage rise and fall with his every breath. We were high up and the forest was empty; no one could see us.

I rested the side of my head against his and it was so obvious to me that we were going to kiss that when we turned our faces toward each other and our eyes met, I couldn’t hold my feelings in anymore and broke out into the goofiest grin. Then we put our lips together, and it felt crazy good, and worth the wait, warm and soft and elemental — and in my heart I felt madly grateful for every twist and turn that had brought us together there, stuck somewhere between heaven and earth, in that overgrown, fir-tree dotted Garden of Eden.

Then, unexpectedly, that sensation that had swamped me the night we first met returned. I could see a country lane and a gate, clearly in my mind’s eye; I could feel the emotion of a sad good bye. I could not shake the impression that I had known him before and that night the sensation was especially strong. I still couldn’t figure it out.