Paula Morris (10 page)

"How on earth am I going to get you out of there?"

"Maybe I could climb over the railings here," Rebecca
suggested. She clicked on her flashlight. "Or maybe one of the other gates
is open."

"Stay right where you are! This is a very dangerous
place," her aunt scolded. "I'll have to call the police or the fire
department. They won't be happy at all about this."

Rebecca wasn't too thrilled by that idea, either: The railings
looked too spiky to scale, but she was sure there had to be some other way out,
some tomb she could climb to get onto a lower section of wall. She'd rather
Aunt Claudia invoke a voodoo charm than call the police, but now -- her aunt
ranting on about gates that should be locked and places girls should never go
-- didn't seem to be the time.

A gaslight flickered in the gated, cobbled parking area in front
of the house near the corner. Only the gray slate roof of the house itself was
visible from the street, the rest of its two stories protected from view by
this front court -- home to an Audi and a BMW -- and, just beyond it, a high
hedge. The gate squeaked open and someone stepped through, headed in their
direction.

"The neighbors," Rebecca sighed under her breath. This
was just what she needed: some outraged stuffed shirt come to add his or her
voice to the chorus of disapproval. But as the figure got closer, she realized
it wasn't some captain of industry, annoyed about being woken up so late at
night. It was Anton Grey, loping toward them with his hands in his pockets.

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"I'm real sorry, Miss Claudia," he said, not looking at
Rebecca. He pulled out the key. "This is all my fault."

"Well, I'm sure it isn't, Anton." Aunt Claudia seemed
flustered. Rebecca hadn't realized they knew each other: It made sense, she
supposed, given the proximity of their houses. "And I'm sorry we've woken
you up."

"No, no -- I just got back. I was walking a friend home, and
I heard ... well, anyway. I can unlock the gate."

Anton's tone of voice was polite and apologetic, not cocky, but
this didn't make the situation any easier. Rebecca felt intensely embarrassed.
After spying on him earlier tonight, it felt strange to be this close to him,
her eyes fixed on his long fingers sliding the key into place.

"We hang out here sometimes -- a whole group of us," he
was saying, still talking to Aunt Claudia. "I didn't know ..."

"My niece." Aunt Claudia shot Rebecca a hard look, and
Rebecca felt her cheeks burning. Anton's hair curled a little; she could see
that now they were standing so close, separated only by the solid black bars of
the gate.

"Your niece, right. Sorry, ma'am. If I'd known she was in the
cemetery, I wouldn't have locked up." Anton caught Rebecca's gaze. He
raised an eyebrow, the slightest glimmer of a smile in his dark eyes, and
Rebecca glanced away, waiting for the gate to click open. This was totally
mortifying: He must think she was spying on him and his friends! Why else would
Rebecca be wandering around the cemetery so late?

"I didn't know she was in the cemetery, either," Aunt
Claudia said. Anton jiggled the lock, and pushed; finally the

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gate creaked toward Rebecca. She wriggled through the slight gap,
brushing against Anton on her way out.

"Thanks," she murmured, staring somewhere in the region
of his collarbone while he relocked the gate. In New York, Rebecca hardly ever
got nervous around boys: They were just there, in all her classes, being all
smelly and sweaty and ridiculous. Occasionally, one was better-looking than the
rest, but the only guys she'd ever had an actual crush on were movie stars. So
why did the sight of Anton up close make her feel so tongue-tied and
embarrassed?

It was this stupid situation, she told herself. He must be
thinking she was a sneak and an idiot -- stuck in the cemetery, getting berated
by her aunt.

"I'm Anton, by the way," he said, pocketing the key. He
stuck out a hand.

"Rebecca," she replied, but before she could shake his
hand, Aunt Claudia had grabbed her by the arm and was hustling her away.

"Thank you," her aunt called over her shoulder to Anton.
Rebecca was too ashamed to look back, to see if he was still standing at the
gate or was wandering back along the street to his own house.

Aunt Claudia did not remove her vicelike grip on Rebecca's arm
until they were both in the kitchen, the door closed so Aurelia wouldn't be
disturbed. Rebecca sat in silence while her aunt boiled water for tea, setting
two mismatched mugs on the table and, as usual, concocting her own strange
blend from loose leaves stashed in a cluster of Oriental-looking tins in the cupboard
that never closed properly.

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Her aunt seemed preoccupied, as though she was thinking very
carefully about what to say, and there was nothing Rebecca could do but wait
for the inevitable lecture. It was sure to involve murderers, rapists, muggers,
and the cemetery after dark, sprinkled with statements like "I'm so
disappointed in you" and "Your father has entrusted you to my
care." It was a speech, Rebecca decided, she could probably write herself.

The battered tin kettle on the stove began to sing, and Aunt
Claudia snatched it off the heat at once, glugging boiling water into a teapot.
She had quite a collection of teapots, but most seemed to be damaged in some
way: This one was brown china, with a chipped spout. Rebecca had already
decided to get her aunt a new, flawless teapot for Christmas, but maybe she
should buy it sooner, as an offering of peace.

Her aunt set the teapot on the table, and rummaged in the dish
rack for the plastic-rimmed sieve -- used mainly to wash rice, which they ate
with practically every meal, but summoned into double duty whenever they
couldn't find the tea strainer.

"Now," she said, robe wafting as she settled into her
chair like some aging butterfly, "I'm going to say something, and it's
very important that you listen."

Rebecca nodded, trying to stifle a yawn: She wondered how late it
was now and how long the lecture would be. She already had way too much
information to try to process.

"You can't," Aunt Claudia began, one thin, blue-veined
hand resting on the teapot lid, and then she stopped. "What I mean to say
is ..."

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"Don't go to the cemetery, ever." Rebecca finished the
sentence for her, awkwardly shifting in her seat.

"Obviously." Her aunt nodded, pouring tea into the cups
-- it was chamomile, maybe, with something lemony, and the hot liquid was the
color of grass. "But more than that, Rebecca. You must stay away from the
Bowmans. The Bowmans, the Suttons, the Greys."

"What?" That wasn't quite what Rebecca was expecting.
"I'm not friends with any of them. I'm not part of that group that goes to
the cemetery, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm glad to hear it." Aunt Claudia took a tentative sip
of the steaming tea. "But you see the girls at school, I presume, and now
you've met Anton Grey. I know you're new here, and don't have many friends yet,
but it would be a mistake to become one of their -- what do you call it --
group?"

"Why?" Rebecca knew why
she
didn't like Helena
and Marianne, but she was curious to hear why her aunt objected to them. And to
Anton, who tonight -- all in all -- was pretty polite and helpful. He didn't
have to come out and open the gate. If it weren't for him, Rebecca would still
be a prisoner now, waiting for the police to come and break the lock.

"They're part of a different world," Aunt Claudia told
her. Without her usual dramatic makeup, she looked tired, careworn. "It's
hard to explain to someone not from here, but these are families who've been
here a long, long time, since this neighborhood was founded. Before it was even
part of New Orleans."

"I know all that," Rebecca argued. Something about what
her aunt was saying stuck in her craw, like an irritating throat tickle. Was
Aunt Claudia trying to say these people

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were somehow
better
than Rebecca? Better than Aunt Claudia
and Aurelia?

"But," Aunt Claudia said, laying one hand over
Rebecca's, "you don't really understand, do you?"

Rebecca resisted the temptation to make a snide comment about her
aunt's psychic powers.

"Their houses aren't any older
than your
house,"
Rebecca argued. "Just because their families have owned them for longer
..."

"This isn't just about houses," interrupted Aunt
Claudia. "It's about loyalties and allegiances. Who you're related to, and
where your history lies."

Rebecca pushed away her tea.

"You know I don't care about any of that," she said.
"All that debutante, high-society stuff. I just don't buy that they're of
some higher social station, and that they're too good for us."

"I'm not saying that." Aunt Claudia sighed, and gestured
at Rebecca to drink her tea. "I'm just trying to tell you that their world
is a separate place, and if it seems as though they're welcoming you in,
they're not. Don't trust them. Don't even speak to them, if you can avoid
it."

Rebecca sighed with frustration. She didn't particularly want to
have anything to do with Helena and her set -- but that didn't mean she didn't
mind being told she shouldn't, or couldn't. The social intricacies of this
neighborhood made her sick. So the Bowmans and Suttons and Greys were rich; so
they had big, old houses, and the slaves they used to own had been replaced
with "staff." Their world wasn't that different from that of any
number of wealthy people in New

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York. They weren't special in some hereditary way: They could just
afford to buy more things.

"I just don't see what the big deal is," she said. Aunt
Claudia looked exhausted, pensively twisting her cup around and around on the
scratched tabletop.

"I wish your father had told you more," she said at
last: She sounded despairing, Rebecca thought, in an extremely over-dramatic
way. 'About the way things have to be, until ..."

"Until what?"

"It's getting late." Aunt Claudia stood up, clattering
her cup into the sink. "You can take your tea with you to your room, if
you like. Really, Rebecca -- try to get some sleep."

But it was hard to get to sleep that night. That evening two
strangers had come to her rescue -- one a black ghost who she shouldn't be able
to see, the other a Patrician white New Orleanian she'd been told to avoid.
Perhaps she'd never see either of them again. And if she did, Rebecca knew one
thing for certain: Aunt Claudia would not approve.

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***

CHAPTER TWELVE

***

Rebecca slid into a chair at the CafÉ Lafayette, dropped her bag
on the floor, and pulled a postcard out of her blazer pocket. It was from her
father, delivered to the house on Sixth Street the day before. She'd read it
more than a dozen times already, though it didn't say much-. He was working
hard; November in central China was really cold; he missed her.

She missed
him.
Just seeing his familiar spidery writing
made her feel depressed and homesick. This would be the first time in her life
they wouldn't be together for Thanksgiving. At least she had plenty of homework
to keep her busy: The Temple Mead teachers were piling on extra work, talking
about the time they'd all lose during Mardi Gras, when school was closed for a
week.

This week she'd started doing her homework in the café on
Prytania. Aurelia was busy with piano and singing lessons, getting ready for
her holiday recital, and being home alone in the little yellow house made
Rebecca feel even more depressed: The strange decorations loomed over her like

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dusty, arcane exhibits in a museum, and there was nowhere to study
apart from the kitchen table. The house was too gloomy, in a permanent shadow
cast by the cemetery walls, the oak trees, and the tightly packed row of
houses. All she ended up doing was thinking about Lisette.

By contrast, the Café Lafayette was bright and noisy, housed in a
small mall-like building that was also home to a cluttered bookstore, an
expensive hair salon, and a place rich people could take their dogs for
grooming. The café looked kind of like an elegant bar, its walls painted
blue-gray, with big windows on two sides and black-and-white artsy photographs
of Lafayette Cemetery hanging on the back wall.

That afternoon every table was taken by the Plebs and Debs of
Temple Mead, all drinking over-sweet tumblers of bubble tea and vying for spots
in the window, so they could squawk and gush whenever boys from St. Simeon's
walked by.

Rebecca and the rest of the serious homework crew were stationed
along the back wall, laptops plugged into electrical outlets or books spread
across the table. She tried to block out the café chatter, though she couldn't
help laughing when someone at Amy's table -- not Jessica, who'd inherited
Helena Bowman's flu -- gigged
^so
much she
choked on a tapioca pearl. One or two St. Simeon boys wandered in, but they
didn't stick around. To Rebecca's relief, none of "Them" dropped by.
It was too Plebby a hangout, she decided, for someone like Helena Bowman.