The Shells Of Chanticleer (8 page)

Slowly, she hung up the phone and took a minute to gather her composure before she looked at me again. When she did, whatever argument she had just lost didn’t show on her face. She was happy to see me.

“Well done, Macy. I am happy to tell you that you passed your test yesterday.”

“Oh, so did I alphabetize everything correctly?”

“Probably. We don’t really care about those books,” she laughed, leaning back in her chair, tilting it away from her desk.

Wait—I spent the day alone and had no dinner and no one bothered to check my work? My double-checked, perfectly in order work?

“Then why did I do it?” I whined. “I had no dinner. I had to walk home by myself in the dark.”

Miss Clarice leaned forward, comfortably resting her elbows on the desk. “It really wasn’t about the books, my dear. It was about conquering indecision. You made your own choices and carried them out to completion on your own. Well done.”

I asked, “Is that all?” I expected something else.

“It was an enormous job; it takes a long time. As you mature, it is good to know that some things in life take time, a long time. It’s important to keep going and not to give up. You kept going. Although you did show some evidence of helplessness, you eventually rallied and got yourself out of the library before midnight. I’ve seen some young people spend a couple of days in the library figuring out what they wanted to do.”

Okay, that was good advice but she could have told me that earlier in the day, or at least before dinner.

“But it was awful. No one came to give me any dinner or tell me it was okay to leave. I had to walk home all alone. I never even saw the Prime Minister.”

She was unfazed. “Well, people are busy. Your instructions were to alphabetize. No one told you not to leave before you were finished or to skip dinner, to not ask for food if you were hungry. No one told you not to leave the library if you were too tired or not to call Bing if you wanted company to walk home.”

“But I was afraid I’d get in trouble if I left.”

“Hmm,” Clarice nodded. “And did you?”

“I don’t know. Am I in trouble?”

Clarice tilted her head and looked at me. “No, Macy, you are not in trouble. But do you see the problem here?”

I didn’t. I shook my head. No.

“Your default assumption was to assume you were. It was your own idea to work so late, to skip dinner, to wait to be dismissed. Bing told you our hours were nine to five and that we did not approve of missing meals, didn’t he? He was supposed to.”

I considered blaming the way I acted last night on Bing, but even though I felt bad about it I wasn’t a liar. “Yes, he did,” I admitted. “But I didn’t feel free to leave.”

“Why?”

“I wanted someone to tell me it was okay,” I said.

Miss Clarice countered, “So you lack initiative to take care of your own needs, instead assuming we wanted you to work for ten hours without a break or nourishment?”

“So I shouldn’t have done that?”

“No.”

“But the Prime Minister scared me. He screamed at me. I wanted to please him.”

Clarice laughed him off. “Oh, him. He’s an old grouchy man who has been here a long time. He’s a good test. You are much stronger and nimbler than him. Why, he wishes he were your age again. He could never climb up and down that ladder today. Don’t get in the habit of waiting for permission. Don’t let your fears be in charge of you. Don’t let them hold you captive as they did in the library for all that time.”

The memory of timidly sitting there by myself in that quiet library for hours, waiting for someone to come get me but being too afraid to do anything about it upset me. Maybe what she said was true, but I didn’t like her pointing it out. What did it matter if I was hesitant and unsure? What exactly was so wrong with staying just the way I was? They were forcing me to criticize my ways. They didn’t really know me. I had only been there for two days. I felt trapped and hopeless. Remembering my promise to myself in the library, I exclaimed, “I want to go home. This place is weird. I miss my home and I’m missing my spring break. Can I please just forget all of this and go back home?”

Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t hold them back. They seemed to swell up from inside my chest and I couldn’t keep them in anymore. I was mostly still hungry and tired and not myself at all.

Miss Clarice just watched me. When I stopped sobbing she handed me a tissue from across the desk. I took it and wiped my nose. She handed me a second one. I needed it.

“No, you will not be going back home soon,” she said definitively. “Don’t worry about missing your vacation. Time here has absolutely no relation to time back in your world. But can’t you look at yesterday and see it for what it was? Can you see how you misinterpreted our instructions?”

When she put it that way, I calmed down a little. Apart from the old man screaming at me in the beginning, no one bothered me, or asked me to do anything odd. No one hurt me; my body wasn’t bruised.

“He scared me when he yelled at me. I couldn’t get over it,” I pointed out. “If he had been nice from the beginning I wouldn’t have been afraid, or hungry, or whatever else I did wrong.”

“That’s true. Would you have learned anything about your reactions that way? Now you see how unpleasant people can get the upper hand. No one should have that power over you Macy, unless you allow it. You aren’t helpless.”

She was staring at me so earnestly that I gave in and agreed with her just to make her happy but once I had, I felt relieved. I realized she was right. I didn’t like admitting it – it was hard for me to think I was wrong – but I saw that just because he’d raised his voice, I had given my power away, when I hadn’t actually been in the wrong. I blew my nose again and added the balled-up tissue to a growing pile on the floor. I asked if she had a garbage can as I picked up the wads of tissues. She motioned to a can in the corner by the wall and I got up and walked over to toss the tissues out. I took a moment to run my hand up and down the wall. Yes, there actually was velvet on the walls. It was like being inside a jewel box. It was so pretty, I sighed.

“I guess I let that old guy scare me unnecessarily,” I admitted.

“When your next task comes, build on what you have learned about yourself. Be open to new experiences. Don’t try and predict the outcomes here, just go with it. Now, let’s move on. There’s a short video you will need to watch.”

We left her office and went down the hall to a small classroom. I was the only one there. “Pay close attention. Otherwise, you may be confused about life here. When it’s over, feel free to leave. You don’t have to check back in with me. You have some free time coming. Try and enjoy yourself, Macy. I know you will. So goodbye then,” Miss Clarice flicked off the light switch and left me alone in the dark room as the movie began.

The video was professionally done. It covered details of life that I hadn’t even begun to consider: when and where to eat my meals, dress code, what to do with laundry, maid service, curfew, free time, shopping; a brief overview of the streets of Chanticleer, girls’ and boys’ residences, staff residences, taking the circuit path around town, restricted areas; how to replace a lost mailbox key, or lost reading material; reporting for coursework, rescheduling, mandatory meetings, problems with your shadow, social occasions, festivals….the details whizzed by. When it ended I was slightly relieved. It was all pretty standard stuff and not so terrible after all. I was there for the immediate future; I’d better get used to it.

I wandered back to my room through the vacant first floor hallway and wondered:
What next? Another day alone?
As I scaled the staircase I heard laughter pealing down the hall from an open door. I headed that way, walking quickly as if I was in a hurry to get somewhere else, and glanced sidewise into the open door as I passed it. I remember being so happy to see that the sounds were coming from Violet, who was with Zooey, in her room. Both were lying on the bed laughing. They stopped when they saw me and rolled off the bed, tackling me with an energetic hug.

“Macy!” they screamed. “We were getting worried about you! We missed seeing you yesterday. We were wondering where you were. We thought maybe you had tipped back home already!”

“No, I’m still here doing a good job of making a complete fool of myself,” I muttered.

Violet’s expression fell and she gave me a sympathetic pout. Zooey squeezed me tight in another hug. “Don’t worry about looking stupid here. We all feel that way, some days, especially in the beginning. Did they send you to the Prime Minister’s? You weren’t at dinner; we were wondering about you.”

“Yes, it was awful. I was there really late.”

Violet suggested, “Come on, let’s get out of here. We can get an early lunch together. It’s nice that none of us are doing coursework today. We can go to the library straight afterwards.”

I agreed, but I needed to stop at my mailbox first. “I haven’t been there yet. Can you guys show me how to open it?” I was really feeling the need to have a friend show me the way right about then.

“It’s super easy,” Violet encouraged me. “Let’s find it. You’ll probably have readings in there you need to start.”

I walked with them back down the staircase to the lobby and down the opposite hallway from Miss Clarice’s to a small room lined with little locked windows. I found my box easily and figured out how to insert the key on my second try—not too bad. Violet was right. My box was already stuffed full with reading material. I read the titles out loud:
“On The Subject of Intimidation: Case Examples,” “Pathways to Calculated Risk Taking.” “Getting To Know Your Hidden Weak Spots, Part I and II.”

“Yikes,” I grimaced. “Are they serious?”

Zooey laughed. “Fun stuff. No, actually don’t let the titles scare you. Little joke there,” she added. She held the door to Summer Hall open for me as my hands were completely full. “It is all very helpful. You should get a backpack or messenger bag to hold those. Let’s go shopping!”

They took me back into the center of Chanticleer where we entered a shop stocked with messenger bags, backpacks, plastic carryall bags, wallets, duffel bags, and rolling luggage in every color of the rainbow and crazy pattern one could imagine. All stamped with the letter C.

“Oh, this one looks like you,” Violet said, handing me a light green backpack covered with lilac and pink circles. I squeezed my reading material into the bag; they fit perfectly. Despite the heavy load, it felt light on my back. Only then did I notice there was no shop clerk.

“There is usually someone, but if they are gone it doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t use money. Just take it,” said Violet. It didn’t seem right to just take something. I was sure I’d get in trouble for it, even though the training video had explained the system anyway. “Are you sure I shouldn’t just leave a note, so they know what I took?”

“No,” Zooey said. “If you want something, you are supposed to take it. There is no stealing here. You don’t have to ask permission. It’s not as if any of us can escape Chanticleer simply by wishing it. You only leave when you are ready to tip back, and that
especially
is not something you can control.”

“I think I’ll load up on a few extra bags as well,” Violet said. “Never can have too many.” She strolled past the shelves, having a hard time deciding which bag pleased her.

“You don’t need those, Violet,” Zooey said softly. “You have a pile of them in your closet already.”

“None of those are big enough,” she explained, tucking two new bags under her arm. Then she changed the subject. “Let’s go. I want to be one of the first in line for lunch. I’m hungry.”

I remember enjoying that lunch with Violet and Zooey, especially because I was not intimidated by the newness of everything as much as I had been the day before, and I felt that we were already friends. The three of us were a smaller group than yesterday’s mixed bag. Violet liked to eat a lot, I noticed. It made me glad. She was my favorite person there already. We both went back to the buffet twice and I made up for all the meals I’d missed because of the flu, the fever, and the Prime Minister’s.

Afterwards, we walked out the back door towards what they told me was the library. It didn’t look like the library I knew in the suburbs, which was a boxy glass and steel, municipal building. The Chanticleer library was a sprawling gothic building, but once through the doors and into the back reading room, I was startled to see a wall of windows that looked out onto a serene loch framed by purple mountains. It reminded me so much of home but better, because there was no Balthazar looming over me.

The reading hall was a sunny and cheerful, albeit quiet place to spend the afternoon. Dotting the tables were unknown, earnest-looking students. A few stared at me and I waved back politely. I didn’t want to act too shy. I spread my materials out on the table, unsure where to start first.

“I remember those,” said Violet. “It seems like ages ago.”

“Have you both been here long?” I asked.

“I was here first, before Zooey,” Violet said.

“Yes, but I’m farther along than you are,” Zooey pointed out.

“True,” she agreed. “I don’t read as fast. I get distracted easily in the library.” Violet pointed at two tall young men walking across the library toward the back of the room looking for a free table.

“Oh, please, sit here,” Violet whispered, patting the empty chair next to her, and then both her and Zooey collapsed into giggles. I sat there, wanting in on the joke, while the two girls kept laughing. Finally, they clued me in.

“Two of our best and brightest,” Violet laughed.

“Do they have names?” I whispered.

“Distractions,” Zooey said, primly. “Good looking guys only get in the way of your progress here. Do not fall for anyone in Chanticleer. It never ends well.”

Violet chimed in. “I agree. Just don’t. Listen to what happened to me. I noticed this guy reading here one day. His name was Jackson and he was gorgeous. I couldn’t help staring at him, but whenever he looked back at me I got so nervous that my heart went pitter pat, you know, all that.”