The Different Girl (12 page)

“They don’t talk like anyone I’ve ever met,” she said.

“You don’t talk like anyone we’ve met either,” I told her.

“But I talk like more people than you,” May said.

“What people?” asked Isobel.

“Everyone.”

“But you don’t know everyone. You lived on a boat. You didn’t go to any school.”

Irene called for us to join them. We each took May’s hand on the way, careful not to pinch. “I didn’t is right,” she whispered. “And that’s why I
know
.”

• • •

Robbert would be waiting in the kitchen when we returned, and all during lunch he and Irene would ask us questions. At first May would answer with us, even though her answers were as if she had taken a different walk than the rest of us. Soon May stopped answering and just watched from the corner.

We were also back to taking naps. After lunch Irene would put the four of us down for a nap. There wasn’t a cot for May, so she went back to the classroom; we would wave good-bye as Robbert took her down the steps. When we woke up there would be more class and then another walk, depending on how long the nap had been. May wasn’t there when we woke up, but she would join us on the walk, except for the third day of our new routine.

We had gone to the dock with Robbert, but he hadn’t assigned any question in particular. Instead we all just stood at the end of the path, looking out. Then he asked, “Okay now, what do you see?”

Everyone saw lots of things. We all began to answer and he held up his hands. “No—
stop
—what do you see
now
? What do you see that you
didn’t
?”

This was more of a puzzle, and so we looked around very intently. Little by little our observations drew us onto the dock itself, though we kept to the middle. I remembered about light going through water. I crouched and pressed my face to a gap between two planks, lengthwise so both eyes could see. I could see the water moving, and not just the surface. I could sense the current beneath, just from looking. The real last time we had been at the dock it was to do with numbers—how hot it was and the wind and when the tide would turn. I rose from my hands and knees, with Eleanor coming over to help me.

“Do you see more?” she asked.

“The whole water.”

“And the birds.” She pointed to a pair of gulls gliding above the rocks. “I looked without getting caught. I looked as hard as I could.”

Robbert watched us with his hands in his pockets and a big smile on his face. Then May’s head came into view, bobbing above the crest of the path. Eleanor and I both waved to her, and Robbert spun around.

“What is it?” he shouted. “Where’s Irene?”

“She said I could come.”

Robbert saw us watching and waved us back to work. May caught up to where he stood and watched us, too. Her eyes were red. Even with the wind I could hear.

“Did you two have a talk?” Robbert asked.

May nodded. Her lip was shaking.

“We need your help, May. We need to know what happened.
Why
.”

“I don’t know why. I just woke up.”

Robbert sighed. “You don’t want anything bad to happen, do you?”

“Something bad already happened.”

“But this is to everyone, May. Even you.”

“I told her I don’t know.”

Robbert rubbed his mouth and stuck a finger in one ear, wiggling it. Then he clapped his hands and shouted to Isobel that she was too close to the edge.

That night I woke in the dark. At first I wasn’t sure where I was, but then I saw May, kneeling by my side. She put a finger in front of her mouth. I knew this meant not to talk, but I didn’t understand why. I spoke as softly as I could.

“May—”

Her hand covered my mouth and she looked over her shoulder, listening for a noise—for Irene. It was three a.m., so Irene was asleep, like she was always asleep, like everyone else. I had never been awake at three a.m. I remembered the footprint on the kitchen floor. Was being awake at night something May did all the time?

When did May learn how to wake me up?

Slowly she lifted her hand. I swung my legs over the edge of the cot, and May helped pull me to my feet. She looked into the dark of the stairs to Irene’s room as we slipped through the kitchen. She opened the screen door to just before the hinge began to squeak, then motioned me through. I didn’t have my smock on. What if it rained? I didn’t know what was wrong—though something had to be wrong—so I decided that the best thing was to find out. May eased the door shut and I felt her standing near me, warm.

There was no moon, but the stars were bright. May took my hand and we crept down the steps, keeping on the canvas runner to muffle sound. She pulled me to the beach.

I paid attention to as many things as I could, even as May hurried me along, because this time on the island was so new. We stopped on the path and May tugged me down out of the wind, with our heads just at the level of the whistling grass. If anyone did look from the kitchen porch we wouldn’t be seen.

“She told you something, didn’t she?”

I didn’t know who May meant, or when. May shook her head with impatience. “The other one, the one they work on more—who has dreams—”

“That’s Caroline. You should know her name, May. Her hair is brown.”

“Caroline. Caroline knows something, doesn’t she?”

Caroline had nodded to the path, so I could tell Isobel and Eleanor, but did that include May? Would it make her mad again? I remembered Irene’s story of the girl who knew things. Each time you learned something it was like a forking path that made you think something else. Would you speak or be silent? Would you finish the equation or look away? Would you follow the rules or make new ones?

“How did you know how to wake me up?” I asked.

“Sssh!”
May hissed.

“Why don’t you want anyone to hear?”

“Because it’s a secret.”

“What’s a secret?”

“What they know. I heard them. They can’t decide what to do with me.”

“That’s because you haven’t been going to school. You have a lot of catching up to do, and you don’t always pay attention—”

May put her hand over my mouth.

“No one can hear, May,” I said through her hand.

“You don’t know that. You have to whisper.”

I didn’t want her to be upset, so I did my best. “How did you know how—”

“I watched them—when they—when you take naps. I saw what they do. You have a spot—do you know that?”

I nodded.

“When they—when they push down—do you feel it?”

“It’s the way we sleep, May. Just like you.”

“I don’t have a—a
button
.”

“Everyone’s different. But if you want to know what Caroline knows, why didn’t you wake her?”

“She doesn’t like me.”

“Of course she likes you, May.”

“I see her looking.”

I couldn’t say anything to that, because Caroline did look at May, but we looked at everything, which May didn’t seem to understand. May was wearing her black shirt with little sleeves and her bare arms were covered with tiny bumps, because of the wind. She tucked her hands between her knees.

“I like being your friend, May. But you should be friends with everyone.”

“This is stupid,” May said. “You didn’t tell on me, so that’s why. What did she say?”

That was when I had to decide. I pointed into the grass. “There’s something to look at.”

“What is it?”

May pushed past me on her hands and knees, quick as a rat through a heap of palm fronds. I came more carefully because the dunes were sloped and it was hard to see. I reached Caroline’s spot. May had gone past, rooting impatiently through the grass.

“Back here,” I called, trying to whisper.

“There’s isn’t anything.”

“Then it must be buried.”

“Bloody hell,” May muttered.

“What does that mean?”

May snorted. “It means bloody hell. It means we’re stupid.”

“But we aren’t stupid. We’re finding out.”

May didn’t answer. There was only one spot not covered by grass, so that’s where she started digging, scooping handfuls of sand between her legs. The hole got bigger and May spread her legs to straddle it. The deeper ground was moist and stiff. May’s fingers knocked against something hard. She pulled back a hand, wiped the dirt on her shorts, and stuck it in her mouth.

“Bloody hell,” she said again, like she was angry.

Something lay stretched across the bottom of the hole, disappearing into the dirt on either side. May scooped more sand until we could see it all.

It was a wooden plank, covered with slick white paint, hard and shiny like the lacquered box for Irene’s hairpins. Straight through its middle were three round holes—like a nail had been punched again and again. I’d never seen a nail that thick, and I didn’t know why anyone would put a nail through a plank like that after it had been painted.

May stared down.

“It’s a wooden plank,” I said. “Painted white.”

All at once May began to refill the hole, shoving dirt back with both arms, then scooping clean sand on top. She pushed past me back to the courtyard.

“Let’s go.”

“What was it, May? May!”

“Keep your voice down!”

“You have to tell me. I’m your friend.”

May spun round. “It was on purpose.” Her cheeks were wet and her voice was thick. “Someone
did
it. And I’ll do
them
.”

She started off without another word, keeping quiet all the way to the steps. May brushed the sand off my legs and we crept inside. There wasn’t a sound from Irene, or anyone. I lay down and saw May’s face above me.

“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered.

May opened her mouth to say that she wasn’t afraid, but then just nodded. She groped behind my ear but couldn’t find the spot. I turned my head to make things easier, and she finally got it right.

When I woke it was Robbert’s face above me, with Irene past his shoulder.

“Thank goodness,” she said, and sighed.

Robbert leaned back and patted my leg. The other cots were empty. “Do you know what time it is, Veronika?”

I did know. “It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Can you tell us where you’ve been?”

I hesitated and Irene spoke more gently. “You wouldn’t wake up, Veronika. We’ve been working very hard all day to help you.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“That’s the question,” said Robbert. “Do you remember anything, from when you were asleep,”

“Like a dream?”

“Just like a dream,” said Irene. “Did you have one?”

The last thing I remembered was May’s fumbling hand. I wondered where the others were, and if May was with them, and if she had told them what we’d found.

But then I began to blink.

Irene gently turned my head so she could see my eyes. “Veronika?”

“I don’t know when it was,” I said, “or even if it happened, but I can think of it. Is that a dream?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” asked Robbert. His hand slipped under my hair, the fingers probing softly.

“It was one of May’s photographs.”

“Which one?” asked Irene.

“The seventh one, with May on her boat, on the
Mary
.”

“But why?” Irene shook her head and started again. “Not why did you dream—what part of the photograph feels important?”

“Zebra stripes.” They both stared like they hadn’t heard. “That’s what Isobel called the bandages against May’s skin. In the seventh photo she has a bandage on her finger, so that’s one stripe, and the line of freckles beneath her eyes is another darker stripe, and then on the boat, the wood edging the deck is white, but the side of the boat under it is black, so the white is a stripe, too. Then the dark water and the bright sky are stripes, too. And the teeth in May’s mouth and the white of her eyes. Except for May’s green shirt almost the entire photograph is light and dark stripes pointing different directions.”

“But why is that important? Why did you think about that when you should have been asleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think hard, Veronika.”

I was blinking, trying to know the right words. “It was May’s eyes. The pupils of May’s eyes. They’re like round holes. Black circles in the whites. I thought if I could look in them—all the way, if she would let me—it would explain where she had been, and it would say what had happened in the storm.”

“May’s eyes?” asked Irene.

“They were round hard holes.”

Irene nodded. But it was only because of the buried plank that the eyes seemed that way—that was the real source of my dream, yet I couldn’t ask why that would happen without telling them where I’d been. Did they know? They looked at me without speaking. I felt how hard it was to have a secret, how secrets made you feel apart and alone. Now May was on one side of a secret and Robbert and Irene were on the other.

Robbert patted my head and looked at Irene.

“Am I sick?” I asked. “Like May?”

“No, Veronika,” said Irene. “We think it was a bit of sand.”

“I’ve never had a problem with sand.”

“No,” said Robbert. “You haven’t. So from now on you have to be extra careful, don’t you?”

I nodded. Robbert and Irene led me into the kitchen. Everyone else was on the porch, waiting to come in, and when they did we all began to make an early dinner, since it didn’t seem like Robbert and Irene had ever eaten lunch.

Dinner was noodles, but with a new recipe that used half the sauce and half the vegetable protein. We went to bed earlier than normal and there was no time to talk to May or for any of the others to talk to me.

As I lay on my cot, waiting for Irene, I wondered again if I should say where we’d been. She knelt next to me, her hand brushed through my hair.

“Irene?” I whispered. “Were you scared for me?”

“The important thing is that we knew just what to do. Were you scared, Veronika? Are you scared now?”

I shook my head, because I didn’t know. Being scared of water made sense because it was dangerous. Could you be scared of something invisible, that you couldn’t name? Irene slipped her fingers to my spot.

“Good. Sleep well, Veronika.”

• • •