Paula Morris (14 page)

"Oh, you don't know Anton
at all,"
she said,
backing away, and she and Marianne rustled off, noses in the air. Rebecca
didn't know what Helena was talking about: She didn't want to know. Was she
implying that Rebecca was being duped somehow, that this was an elaborate trick
Anton was playing to humiliate her?

Rebecca stood with her back to the shelf of books, doubt about
Anton and his motives making her stomach churn. She usually had good instincts
about people. Aunt Claudia, for example -- she might be batty, but Rebecca had
felt right away that she was a warm, good-hearted person. Amy wasn't
malevolent: She was just a bottom-feeder in the shark tank that was Temple Mead
Academy, and this had been perfectly obvious to Rebecca her first day of
school. Jessica was nice enough, but immature and easily led -- that had been
clear as well.

But with Lisette and Anton, Rebecca wasn't so sure. Maybe they
were both playing her. Maybe Lisette wasn't really a ghost; maybe Anton didn't
really like her. They acted friendly enough, but it seemed as though the rules
of normal life --
real
life -- didn't apply to them.

Stop it.

She was going to drive herself crazy worrying about all this. If
Rebecca wanted to find out exactly who (and what) Lisette was, they needed to
spend more time together. And Helena was just trying to make mischief, she
decided. In Helena's mind, Anton was theirs -- hers and Marianne's,

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part of their exclusive group. They'd say anything to keep Rebecca
out. All she had to do was dust off her skirt, slot her book back into place on
the shelf, and get to her next class on time. At least they were a year ahead
of her, and she didn't have to look at their snooty faces during classes every
day. Nothing they said should matter -- not to Rebecca, anyway.

Walking to the café after school, Rebecca followed the line of the
cemetery wall, ducking around the corner to peer through the Washington Avenue
gate. Lisette was nowhere to be seen. Rebecca leaned against the locked gate,
dropping her bag onto the ground and pulling her phone out of her blazer pocket
to check on messages. No calls, no texts. She hadn't seen or heard from Anton
all weekend. That wasn't a big deal, she thought: Maybe he'd drop by the café
today. If he wanted to see her, he knew where to find her. She dropped her
phone back in her pocket and bent down to scoop up her bag.

A shoe smacked down on the bag handles, pinning them to the
ground. A thick-soled, heavy black shoe, at the end of a black-panted leg. Why
Anton was creeping up on her like this, and acting so aggressively, she didn't
know.

Rebecca squinted up at the boy. It wasn't Anton.

"Waiting for someone?" Toby Sutton's bright orange hair
looked like a brush fire in the late afternoon sun, the pale moon of his face
pocked with acne marks. He scowled down at her, still not lifting his foot from
the handles of her bag.

"Could you move?" Rebecca jiggled the trapped handles,
fuming. They'd be muddy now; she wouldn't be able to carry the bag without
getting her hands dirty. Toby was an oaf.

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He didn't move. Rebecca heaved an exasperated sigh and stood up
straight: She'd had enough today of cowering at the feet of Sutton family
members.

"I said,
move."
Rebecca had never fought a boy
before. She'd never fought anyone in her life. But if she had to shove Toby
Sutton to get his stupid foot off her personal property, she would.

"We've all been talking about you at school," he said,
ignoring her demand. He grinned, his eyes glimmering. "Everyone thinks
it's pretty funny, the way you're chasing after Anton."

"I'm not chasing after anyone," Rebecca spat back. This
was outrageous. Anton was the one who'd sought
her
out in the café; the
walk along St. Charles and the visit to Parasol's were
his
idea.

"That's not what I hear." Toby was a lot more aggressive
than Marianne, Rebecca thought: The blonde girl always seemed like a
watered-down version of Helena, someone who might be almost OK if she wasn't in
thrall to the Queen of Them. But Toby -- he was just nasty. He folded his arms
and sneered at her. "So maybe you should take my advice and stop
embarrassing yourself."

"Take your advice? I don't even know who you are!" This
wasn't true, exactly, but Toby didn't know that. He didn't know about Rebecca's
nighttime visits to the cemetery, unless Anton had said something. And Rebecca
couldn't believe Anton would have told the others about her getting locked in,
not when he promised to keep it to himself.

"You know who I am all right," Toby sneered, and
Rebecca's stomach shimmied with unease. Maybe she'd been

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wrong to trust Anton. "Don't play dumb. Just do yourself a
favor and keep away from Anton. Keep away from all of our friends, OK?"

"I think that's for Anton to decide, not you." Rebecca
tried to sound braver than she felt. There was something intimidating about
Toby's broad, looming presence. She couldn't stand the fact that he was scaring
her.

Toby shook his head, a cold smile stretching across his face.

"We move as a group," he said, his voice quiet.
"That's the way it is. And we don't let in outsiders -- especially
nobodies like you."

"You're the nobody," she said with contempt. She slammed
a foot onto the bag handles, right next to his, staking her claim. "Look
at you -- standing around here trying to bully a girl!"

Toby started to laugh. He staggered back a few steps, releasing
Rebecca's bag, swinging his own bag high on his shoulder.

"If you think
this
is bullying," he called, still
walking backward, "you really
don't
know what you're messing with.
Think of this as friendly advice."

'Yeah,
real
friendly." Rebecca's face sizzled with
rage. Tears prickled her eyes, though she was determined not to give him the
satisfaction of seeing her cry. She grabbed her bag, trying to ignore the grit
scouring the palm of her hand.

"You've been warned," he said, turning away. He stuck
his hands in his pockets and walked down the street, gazing up at the striped
awning of Commander's Palace and whistling. Rebecca felt an intense loathing --
for him, his sister, and everyone they knew. Even Anton. How could he be
friends

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with people like this? Why did he possibly want to "move as a
group" with them?

She rubbed away hot tears with the back of her free hand, and
stalked off in the opposite direction. She couldn't go to the café looking --
or feeling -- like this. There was nobody she wanted to see this afternoon, not
even Lisette. And especially not Anton.

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***

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

***

Rebecca! aurelia! dinner's almost ready!" Rebecca emerged
from her room reluctantly: She'd shut herself away in there ever since arriving
home from school. The horrible incident with Toby Sutton had shaken her, and
she'd tried to distract herself with texting her friends in New York. But
everyone had been too busy to talk: Ling was taking the kids she babysat to the
zoo in the park; Jenny was tutoring at the after-school homework center;
Miranda was at a French lesson. And then, because of the one hour time
difference, everyone was at dinner. Even the time zones were conspiring against
her, Rebecca thought, trying not to feel sorry for herself-- not least because
if she was in New York right now,
she'd
be busy, too, not hiding out in
some dark bedroom.

In the kitchen, its wood-framed windows misted up with steam, Aunt
Claudia was wildly stirring something at the stove. She looked frazzled, as
ever, by the demands of cooking.

"Table, please!" she said as Rebecca skulked in. Rebecca
pulled a handful of cutlery from the drawer that always stuck

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and then went about her other tasks in silence: pouring water into
mismatched tumblers and plopping down a cloth napkin at each place.

"Is everything all right?" her aunt asked, giving
Rebecca an appraising look.

Rebecca shrugged. She knew it was rude, but she was tired of
everything today.

"Aurelia!" Aunt Claudia called. "Where is that
child?"

Aurelia wandered in clutching a squirming Marilyn, showering
kisses over the cat's small, pointed face.

"Please put that animal down and wash your hands," Aunt
Claudia scolded. She dolloped spoonfuls of white rice onto plates, apparently
not noticing when sticky clumps dropped onto the table. The sight of more rice
didn't fill Rebecca with much enthusiasm: She'd never eaten so much of it in
her life. She might as well have gone with her father to China.

Monday nights they usually ate it with a thick, sloppy sauce --
Aunt Claudia called all sauces "gravy" -- of red beans, from which
chunks of spicy sausage poked like slime-covered rocks in some sea on Mars.
Other nights they ate it with shrimp, or with crawfish, or stuffed into charred
green peppers or something similar called a
mirliton.
Sometimes her aunt
served up spicy "dirty rice," flecked with scraps of meat, along with
fish of some kind or a roast chicken from the grocery store. There was even
rice in the gumbo -- a dark, stewy kind of soup that in the Vernier household
seemed to provide a watery grave for any number of unidentified leftovers.
There'd probably be rice with their Thanksgiving dinner next Thursday.

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Tonight Aunt Claudia had finished work in the Quarter early, so
she'd had time to "make groceries," she told Rebecca, at the big
supermarket down on Tchoupitoulas Street, by the river. From the number of pots
on the stove, Rebecca had guessed her aunt was cooking Shrimp Étouffée, one of
her more elaborate concoctions: This dish was actually one of Rebecca's
favorites. It really reminded her of something her father made sometimes,
though he called it Shrimp Surprise.

But dinner tonight turned out to be a mysterious medley of
catfish, green peppers, green onions, and a couple of cans of tomatoes,
simmered in a sauce so hot and gloopy that it stuck to the roof of Rebecca's
mouth.

Aurelia seemed intent on shoveling in dripping forkfuls of dinner.
Until she gave a start, as though she'd just woken up, or remembered something
important.

"Becca, are you really going to Helena Bowman's Christmas
party?" she asked, scooping up a puddle of pink sauce with a sawn-off
chunk of French bread.

"What?" Aunt Claudia's fork clattered onto the table.

"Everyone's talking about it." Aurelia grinned at
Rebecca. "Are you really going with Anton Grey?"

Rebecca shrugged, as though it was the last thing on her mind,
although Toby's nasty words were still rattling around in her head.
Nobodies
like you.
All she wanted to do was go back to New York, get away from these
people and never see them again.

"Rebecca?" Her aunt wasn't about to let the matter drop
-- that was clear.

"He might have asked me if I wanted to go," she said,

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aware she was using the "sulky" voice her father
occasionally complained about.

"And you said no, I hope."

Rebecca stared down at her plate, stabbing with her fork at a
bloated pink shrimp.

"Because," Aunt Claudia continued, "the less you
have to do with those families, the better. As we've discussed. Aurelia, you
have gravy all down your arm."

"I don't want to go, anyway." This wasn't really a lie.
The thought of being snubbed at the party by the daughter of the house and her
friends wasn't that appealing, and Toby had made all those threats, hinting
that something awful would happen if Rebecca showed up. And as for Anton: Maybe
his silence over the weekend meant something. Maybe he'd changed his mind and
realized he should take someone more socially acceptable.

"And when is this party, exactly?" Aunt Claudia was
speaking to Rebecca, but she was gazing into space or at some spot beyond
Rebecca's shoulder.

"In a couple of weeks," she said, trying to sound
casual.

"What day?" Rebecca realized what her aunt was doing --
she was scanning the blank, random calendar days hanging by the door, the
humidity half molting them off the wall.

"It's on December fifth, I think," Rebecca told her.

"That's all right then," Aunt Claudia mumbled, speaking
to herself, then she cleared her throat and dabbed at her plate with a sliver
of bread. "Anyway, good. I mean, you're not going. We're agreed."

"I'd go anywhere if Anton Grey asked me," sighed
Aurelia, looking at Rebecca as though she was crazy.

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"You would do no such thing." Aunt Claudia frowned.
"Rebecca, I hope you've made it very clear to Anton that you have other
plans that night."

"I thought you liked him," Rebecca couldn't help saying.
"You know, when ... when ... I mean, he was quite helpful. And
polite."

She didn't want to talk about the specifics of the cemetery
lock-in with Aurelia there.