Pucker (15 page)

Jerome wipes my spit off his cheek. “No. I'm not angry. I'm grateful,” he says softly.

I don't show up for dinner that night. Or the next night either.

THIRTY-FIVE

P
HAIDRA TUCKS HER TAPE MEASURE back into her tool belt, hefts the plank over her shoulder, and carries it into the hallway. Her competence dizzies me. She's nothing like the girls who make up my fan club. I have begun thinking of them as a collective: “the Connecticuts,” I secretly call them.

The Connecticuts are pleasant and easy to please and they adore me. They are bejeweled rivers that may rise above their banks but will never flood. And they are interchangeable.

So if Lina, Tammi, Trixie, Veronica, Penelope, Mee-Yon, Alex, and Mildred-I'm-changing-my-name-to-Montana are the Connecticuts, then what does that make Phaidra? Phaidra, who would sooner saw off her arm than assimilate into the Changed community. I think I should file her under the oft-maligned New Jersey—a misunderstood and underappreciated state.

I like New Jersey and think of it fondly, in much the way someone would think of a crackpot uncle. I went with Patrick and his mother once to the Jersey Shore. I remember some rinky-dink boardwalk. Eating fried dough. The icy greenness of the aloe vera gel Clara spread on our sunburned backs at night.

For the first time since I've gotten here, I find myself alone in the half-finished Ministry library. Everyone else has gone out for lunch. Finally I've got an opportunity to search Otak's private quarters. The steel door has been haunting me. I've dreamed about it; the bronze curlicues strangling me in the night.

I see a flash of color and movement and Brian stands beside me. He has a habit of suddenly appearing out of nowhere, like a roadrunner. He takes a swig from his canteen and wipes his chin with the back of his hand.

“You coming?” he asks.

“In a minute.” I heft the broom, indicating I've got more sweeping to do.

“I'll save you a sandwich,” he says, and leaves.

I like Brian. He's serene. Occasionally a bit of his dry wit surfaces, but mostly he does his job and goes home. I try to stir him up now and then, hide his hammer, drop a wood shaving into his soup, but he is unruffleable.

It's the same with most of the Changed who have been here awhile. Dash said things would get easier after the first hundred days. And it really does seem to be the case. But there's something about Brian's tranquility that bothers me. He's nice but disturbingly remote. Same with the Connecticuts, who let me touch them wherever I want but whose personalities, it occurs to me now, are like distant islands glimpsed through the fog of a winter dawn.

But not Phaidra. She is still sharp, hard, blindingly bright. Why is she different?

A thought bubbles up: none of this will matter in a few days, once I find my mother's Seerskin. And suddenly I feel like I weigh a thousand pounds.

I wait a moment to be sure Brian is gone and then I open Otak's door.

THIRTY-SIX

H
ERE IT IS, THE OLD man's bed. I find it a grotesquely intimate sight, like seeing a pair of discarded underwear on a city street. It's a massive piece of furniture, a fortress, really; the headboard is one single length of wood. I want to dirty it somehow, penetrate its invincibility. I fight off the urge to lie down. Oh, what the hell.

I press my face into the pillows; they smell of bleach and lavender soap. I lean over and riffle through the top drawer of his bedside table. I do not find my mother's Seerskin; I find a candle stub and five cherry candies.

Suddenly there's a loud rattling. Startled, I hurl myself off the bed and onto my feet. A bird has flown into the window. It remains glued to the glass for a moment. Its obsidian eyes look at me with a disturbingly human gaze before it slides off. I swear I see its claws steepled together as if in prayer.

“Crashing into the window rarely kills them. It's the twenty-foot drop that does them in. Most of their bones are hollow, you know.” Otak stands in the doorway, a toothpick wedged between his teeth. “Have you lost your way?” he asks me pleasantly.

What I have lost is my ability to speak. In his private quarters Otak appears to have grown to twice his normal size. I understand why he needs such a large bed to accommodate him. His gnarled, yellowed hands are as big as lions' heads.

“Tommy, is it?” He looks at me with interest, his head cocked. It seems all I've done since the moment I arrived is to draw attention to myself.

“Tom,” I say.

“Tom, yes. Are you in search of something, Tom?”

Yes, indeed, Otak. You son of a bitch.

“There you are!” Phaidra storms into the room. She seizes my wrist. “What's wrong with you? Can't you follow simple directions? I told you the supply room was down the hall and to the right.” She bobs to Otak. “I'm sorry. He's only just arrived.” She wrenches me across the parquet floor.

“Oh no, you must stay,” he says, picking up a little bell and ringing it. A maid appears. “Ah, Roberta. Tea. Fennel for me. And peppermint for my young friends. And bring me my pipe.” Roberta retrieves the pipe; Otak lights it and waves his hand at us. “Come, sit.”

Phaidra gives me a stunned look as we follow the High Seer of Isaura to his parlor. The couches are overstuffed and smell of eucalyptus. All the furniture is varying shades of blue.

“You are a carpenter?” he asks Phaidra.

“Yes.”

Otak eyes her tool belt. “You did not do this in your world.”

“Right.” Her voice surrenders nothing. I love this about her and think it's the most foolish damn thing, given our present circumstances.

“And you?”

I feel ashamed. I want to say I'm a carpenter too, but my broom is propped up against Otak's bedroom wall. “I'm her apprentice,” I say.

“He's only been here ten days,” says Phaidra.

I can't believe she's defending me. I don't dare look over at her.

“You're saying he'll better himself?”

“Yes. I think he's got potential.”

I feel like a three-year-old whose parents are talking about him as if he's not there while he's in the room.

“What's your name?” Otak asks.

“Phaidra,” she tells him.

The scent of Otak's tobacco is cloying, dark red and moist, like the inside of a cave or a Black Forest cake. I glance over at Phaidra. She has fallen down into the pillows of the couch. She tries to rearrange her limbs, but the cushions are too deep. She looks like she is drowning. I sit up erect in response to her slumping.

“Do you mind if I examine you?” Otak asks Phaidra.

“I'd prefer it if you didn't,” she says.

“It was not really a question,” he says.

Phaidra shakes her head vehemently and fear flashes across her face.

“Come here,” he says.

She doesn't move.

“Now,” he says firmly.

He is the High Seer of Isaura; she gets up and stands in front of him.

“You have been here how many days?” he inquires. “A hundred and ten, a hundred and twelve?” he guesses.

“One hundred and thirteen,” says Phaidra stonily.

Otak studies her face carefully. “One hundred and thirteen days; I see. Yet you seem dissatisfied somehow,” he says, almost gently. “Aren't you pleased with what we've done for you?”

Phaidra tugs on her shirtsleeves, nervously pulling down the cuffs. She doesn't want him to see that she's cutting into her flesh. That's when I realize: that's why she does it. Somehow it keeps her fierce. It keeps her from floating away internally, like one of the Connecticuts.

She shoots me a frantic look, like there's a fire on the prairie and the flames are licking her jackrabbity feet. Adrenaline races through me. If he hurts her, I will kill him. I will throw him out the window and then we'll see if his bones are as hollow as the bird's.

But he doesn't hurt her. Instead he asks, “What was wrong with you?”

Confusion closes Phaidra's face like a shutter. She looks at me sideways.

“Oh, of course,” says Otak. “Not in front of the boy. Well, whisper it to me, then.”

I feel a sudden wave of jealousy. Don't fall for it, I think, but it's too late: she's telling him her secrets and I understand why. He's making Phaidra feel like he's terribly interested in hearing her story.
He doesn't care,
I want to yell at her.
It's all an act.
Isn't it?

“That's horrible,” he says when she's done.

His voice is not riddled with compassion, but something simple and bright that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is—the truth. And I'm filled with longing. How I yearn for fact, how I crave accuracy and precision—it's the Isaurian in me.

Otak is seducing us with the truth. Adults rarely take this tack with teenagers. They don't know how they could reel us in, how they could make us do whatever they wanted if only they told us the truth. Otak's right. Whatever happened to Phaidra, whatever she was, whatever life she had to live in her old failing body was without a doubt horrible.

It's at this moment that I realize I am in trouble. I miss this life, my old life in Isaura. And what if, when the time I have left here is up, I can't find my mother's Seerskin? Then what? If I don't have my mother to worry about any longer, if there's nothing I can do to prevent her dying, if I have no pressing reason to go back to Earth, can I surrender to the Change?

And stay?

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Y
OU LITTLE SHIT,” SAYS PHAIDRA when we finally make it back to the library two hours later. It's nearly six. Everybody has already left. Because of me we have a long walk back to the Compound.

“That's Mr. Shit to you,” I say. Because of me our bellies are full of orange scones and peppermint tea, but I don't mention this.

She shakes her head. Once again I've managed to underwhelm her with my witty repartee. Phaidra scowls and begins to jog down the corridor.

“No running inside the Ministry,” I shout, picking up my pace to catch up with her.

“What are you, five? You think anybody cares?”

“I do. I think they care a great deal,” I say, huffing to keep up with her. She's in good shape. I might not beat her in a race. This pleases and annoys me. I keep thinking I've gotten myself free of wanting her; then she sucks me back in with her tractor beam of indifference.

It feels good to run. Good to sweat. We canter out of the city and into the woods. I feel so utterly strong and Paul Bunyan-ish, running with this spectacularly beautiful and rakishly intelligent girl by my side, that I can actually imagine wringing the trees with my bare hands and squeezing the sap into our mouths.

“Did you run track?” I pant at her.

“No. Christ.” She stops suddenly and looks at me. “I have absolutely no idea why I came after you, Quicksilver.”

She's wearing a ponytail. The strands closest to her neck are wet with sweat. I would like to place my lips at the place where her backbone begins. At the little knob that juts out like a drawer pull.

“What were you doing in his bedroom?” she fires at me.

“I just wanted to see what the passageway led to,” I say.

“No. You're after something.”

“Everybody's after something,” I say.

She shakes her head at me; she's not buying it.

“You do a great deal of head shaking,” I tell her. “Has anybody ever told you that?”

She gives me a withering look.

“Ow,” I say.

“You're a real piece of work,” she says.

“So why did you come after me?” I ask.

I have a theory. I think she likes me but doesn't want to admit it because she doesn't want to like anybody in Isaura because that would mean she wants to stay. And I don't think she wants to stay. She wants to stay in her new body, but she does
not
want to stay in Isaura.

“Because you're my apprentice, you ass,” she says. “I'm responsible for you. Whatever you do reflects badly on me. If you don't get trained,
I'm
in trouble.”

“It's more than that,” I say.

I want to wrest the truth from her. All this combustion between us. It has to mean something.

“I like you,” I say softly.

Her eyes narrow with suspicion.

“No, I mean I really
like
you, Phaidra.”

“I see,” she says. “Like you like Trixie?”

I blunder on, suddenly desperate to prove my worthiness to her despite having been with so many girls that I don't care about. That's not who I am. I need her to know that.

“You don't see things the way most people do,” I say. “You're so . . . fearless.”

Phaidra's face hardens. “I'm not fearless,” she says.

“Of course you're not. That's not what I meant. That you're a robot or something,” I say stupidly.

Phaidra glowers at me in silence.

“Your name,” I say quickly, trying to salvage the conversation. “Is it Greek?”

Phaidra shakes her head. “You don't need to know the derivation of my name. Stop acting like this is going somewhere. I don't feel the same way about you.”

“What way?” I ask.

Phaidra wheels around. “God, you're relentless,” she cries, her hands on her hips. “All right. Here it is. I have no feelings for you whatsoever. None. I don't care about you; I don't care what happens to you. Get it?”

“Oh,” I say in the smallest of voices, bile rushing up into my throat.