The Different Girl (5 page)

I kept to the path until I reached the palms. The wind rustled the leaves and the treetops waved against the sky. I went to where the trees stood tight together, the ground between piled with branches and old husks. Birds lived in the tops of the palms, and other things lived in the dead branches and husks, rats and lizards and all kinds of bugs. If it was quiet you could hear them move.

I looked at the pile, trying to think of parrots and cages. There were parrots in the trees—probably right then, above me—but that wasn’t what Robbert meant. If I was looking at palm trees, I should be thinking something
else
. But I couldn’t think of anything. I turned around. On the far side of the meadow stood Robbert’s building.

Halfway back I left the path and entered the grass, bending until it rose above my head. Crickets launched themselves around me. At the edge of the grass, I squatted lower. Robbert’s building stood on cinder-block stilts. I crept behind a stilt so no one on the other side, if they looked underneath, could see me. Most of Robbert’s back windows weren’t windows anymore at all, but mesh-covered exhaust vents, for machines. The only window left was right where I stood. I looked in.

This was the back room, all cabinets and boxes, but the door was ajar, and beyond it lay the foot of Robbert’s bed. The white sheet had been kicked away—which I knew because I could see the foot that had kicked it, now strapped with white bandages. I heard different machines, and I wondered if any of them were helping the girl.

Irene came through the door and I ducked down. I heard her flipping switches and peeked up. She held a dark page up to the light, and the page became a picture of a gray arm with white bones. The girl’s arm, though it wasn’t really gray. We’d seen bird’s bones, and fish, even rats. But those bodies had feathers or scales or fur, a covering. Were the bones inside her really white? Were there the same dark pages of me? Irene snapped off the lamp and walked out. I retreated to the grass. It was almost time.

• • •

I reached the yard almost exactly when Eleanor and Isobel did. Robbert rose from where he’d been sitting on the kitchen steps, swatting dust off the seat of his pants. When he saw Caroline wasn’t there, he looked off toward the beach, then climbed onto the porch and looked again.

“Stay here.” Robbert jumped off the steps and broke into a jog.
“Stay!”
he called over his shoulder, and disappeared.

We stood in the yard, thinking about where he’d gone.

“If something was wrong he would have called for Irene,” said Eleanor. “But he didn’t. That’s because of Veronika not coming back before. Caroline might have decided something new was more important, too.”

“Except Robbert is also afraid of the water,” Isobel said. “He told me to stop at the end of the path, before I reached the dock.”

“Did you see a boat?” asked Eleanor. “Maybe the two men in the picture have come looking for her.”

Isobel shook her head. “I saw a storm petrel.”

“Maybe the two men drowned,” said Eleanor.

We turned at the wheeze of the classroom screen door. “Where is Caroline?” Irene called.

We pointed to the beach. Irene went to the edge of the porch and craned her head, but you couldn’t see the beach path from there, so she came to us—none of us saying anything, since she wasn’t saying anything—and went on her toes. Irene dropped to her flat feet and frowned.

“Go sit on the kitchen porch, all of you. Stay there.”

The kitchen steps meant we still weren’t using the classroom, where the girl was sleeping. We got halfway to it before we realized Irene was gone. We stopped to watch her disappear, as if Irene’s leaving had become another problem we’d been set to solve.

“Caroline is the parrot,” said Isobel. “And there’s something else on the beach.”

“Or the beach is the parrot,” said Eleanor. “And something happened to Caroline.”

We couldn’t know which until Robbert or Irene came back and told us.

“Did you go to the cliffs?” I asked Eleanor.

She told us what she’d seen: different colors of Styrofoam, plastic bottles, plastic bags, and one shoe, all floating near the rocks. Isobel asked about the shoe, but Eleanor said it was too far away to tell the size. She asked me about the trees, and I described going to the window instead, and the picture of bones.

“Why did you go there?” asked Isobel, but then she answered her own question, both eyes blinking. “You decided the parrot was the girl.”

When Robbert asked why I’d stayed at the dock instead of coming back on time, I’d known what I’d done, but not why. The why felt like a little hole somewhere inside, and now, even though I couldn’t name the feeling, it was happening again. The three of us ought to have been sitting on the steps, but we were all standing in the yard. Then, like three birds keen on the same crab, we turned to look at Robbert’s porch.

“They could some back,” said Eleanor. “I’ll see them sooner from the kitchen porch.”

As if this decided everything, Isobel and I crossed the yard. At the top of Robbert’s steps we looked to Eleanor, who stood on the kitchen porch, staring out. She shook her head—no one was coming.

Very carefully, quietly, we pressed our faces against the screen.

Right inside was the empty classroom. The room was dim, dotted with blinks and blips from different machines. The bed was against the wall, the shape upon it still. Isobel opened the door so slowly that the squeak turned to a long soft sigh.

Bottles and wadded towels cluttered the table by the bed. The girl’s clothes were heaped on a countertop, and Robbert’s desk had been cleared to make room for books, left open next to the keyboard and big screens. On top of the books lay a glossy stack of dark pages, more bone pictures.

We crept to the bed. The girl had rolled toward the wall, so we couldn’t see her face. Her breathing was a faint, clogged whistle. Her hair was damp on the nape of her neck. One arm lay flung out, wrapped round with white stripes of tape and gauze.

“Zebra,” whispered Isobel.

The girl’s breath caught, as if she’d heard. We didn’t move. The machines hummed quietly, hives of sleeping bees. We never woke up without Irene rousing us, and since this girl was so extra tired, we decided we were safe. But just then we heard Eleanor across the courtyard, high-pitched and shrill.

“They’re coming back! They’re coming back!”

The girl sat up at the noise. She looked right at us. We didn’t move, and for a moment neither did she. Then her eyes got wide. Her mouth shot open and she screamed.

We got out of Robbert’s building as fast as we could, banging open the screen and racing down the steps. I expected more screams behind us, but we only heard Eleanor.

“What happened? What happened?”

Before we could answer, she pointed past us to the beach, where Irene’s and Robbert’s heads bobbed above the curve of the path. Then Caroline’s head was visible, too, walking hand in hand with Irene. Robbert had something heavy in his arms.

I looked back to Robbert’s door, wondering if the girl had climbed out of the bed, if she was there looking out at us. “What happened?” whispered Eleanor, again.

“She woke up,” I said.

“Do you think they heard?” asked Isobel.

“It was loud,” said Eleanor.

Irene and Caroline waved and we all waved back. By now I could see that Robbert carried a big bundle of white cloth. He got to the middle of the yard and set it down and began to unwrap it, tugging and kicking at the roll. I didn’t see anything inside except sand.

Caroline came up the steps. Irene called for us to go inside and wait. Then she walked to the classroom. Robbert said something to her as she passed, but we couldn’t hear it.

“What are you looking at?” asked Caroline, who had opened the door and didn’t know why no one else was coming.

“The girl,” said Isobel.

“What about her?”

“We went inside.”

“Did they tell you not to?”

“Irene said stay on the porch,” said Eleanor.

Irene disappeared into the classroom. Robbert spread the last corner of cloth to dry. It covered half the yard. He saw us watching him.

“Didn’t Irene send you inside?”

We all went for the door, bunching up so no one could get through.

“Wait!”

We looked back at Robbert. He wiped his hands on his pants.

“Did Irene send you inside or not?”

“Yes, Robbert.” We all answered at once.

“Then why aren’t you?” His voice was tired, but serious. This time no one answered. “Go. Sit on your cots and wait.”

Isobel and I sat looking at Caroline, wondering what had happened on the beach. She was looking at us because Eleanor looked at us, too, which told Caroline something had happened that Eleanor hadn’t seen. Everyone wanted the others to talk, but we knew that when Irene got there she’d have us talk in just the way she wanted and we were supposed to wait. After not doing what she’d asked so many times, no one wanted to disappoint her. So no one said anything, except finally Isobel.

“What if she tells Irene?” A clump of her yellow hair was out of place, flipped up, from hurrying across the yard.

“What she?” asked Caroline.

Irene came up the steps and in. She went to her table and poured a cup of tea. She sipped, then smiled, as if she’d just realized that she hadn’t been smiling and hoped we hadn’t noticed. Then she asked Caroline to tell everyone what she’d found.

As Caroline talked, Irene watched the rest of us. I didn’t know if this was because she already knew the story and didn’t care, or something else, so I did my best to listen.

Caroline hadn’t come back from the beach because she’d found too many new things washed up from the storm. The largest thing, now spread across the yard, was a sail, which Caroline knew could be useful in all kinds of ways and so she’d tried to drag it back. It had been heavier than she’d expected and her feet had become half buried in the sand from pulling. She’d been able to get free of the sand, but by that time she was late. When Robbert had found her she explained and pointed to all the other things still on the beach. Then Irene arrived, and she and Caroline looked at the beach while Robbert pulled the sail free of the sand and folded it up. What they’d found wasn’t so interesting after all—plastic bottles, plastic bags, coconuts, and more Styrofoam.

Then Irene asked Eleanor about the cliff, Isobel about the dock, and me about the woods. I told her about looking at the circle of palm trees—which I had—but as if I’d done that for the entire time. Was it because I wasn’t finished thinking about what I’d seen? Why did I care if those questions stayed mine?

“Did you hear anything?” she asked. “Any animals?”

I shook my head.

“Not at all?” she asked.

I shook my head again. “It was too windy in the leaves.”

“Well. Another busy afternoon. I think it’s time for naps.”

• • •

When Irene woke me the other three were still sleeping on their cots. Irene was behind me, doing up the top tie of my smock. She patted my back, which was a signal to sit straight. She gently wiped my hair with a cloth and then walked around to pour another cup of tea.

“How do you feel, Veronika?”

“Very well,” I said. “Did you have a nap, too?”

“No, I’ve been talking to the others.”

I nodded. We preferred to be talked to all together.

“And I’ve been talking to our guest.”

Irene waited. I was supposed to say something. “Will she die?”

“No. She should be fine.”

“What’s her name?”

Irene smiled. “I don’t know, yet.”

“Be sure to ask,” I said. “We’re very curious.”

“I will.” Irene went to pour more tea but the pot was almost empty. Usually one pot lasted to after dinner. “How would you feel, Veronika, if Caroline had found other things on the beach today, but hadn’t told you about them?”

“Why not?”

“Because I asked her not to.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Can you answer my question first? How would that make you feel?”

“It would depend on if it’s true.”

“It is.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“Are there things you haven’t told me?”

I didn’t know what to say, but finally got to “There are things you haven’t asked.”

“All right. What haven’t I asked?”

My eyes were blinking. I was used to guessing why Irene asked questions—because we were learning how to learn—but I didn’t know enough to guess about the girl. Would she go home? Would she join us in the schoolroom? Or, even though Irene told me no, was she going to die after all?

“About her,” I finally said.

“Did you go with Isobel into Robbert’s building?”

“Yes.”

“Did the girl see you? Think carefully. It’s very important.”

“She did. She screamed out loud. But when we ran away she didn’t do anything, so maybe she didn’t.”

Irene nodded, but I was blinking again and she waited for me to finish.

“Why would she scream?” I asked.

Irene took a moment to answer. “We don’t know what happened to her, or the people she was with.”

“The men on the dock?”

“Possibly. Or other people. Her family.”

“Why would they teach her to scream?”

“Not everyone is taught as carefully as you, Veronika.”

“Why not?”

“That’s a good question, but it’s for later. Now, if I ask you something, will you promise to do it?”

“Yes, Irene.”

“I want you to stay away from Robbert’s building—not even going on the porch.”

“What about the classroom?”

“We’ll use the kitchen. Until I say otherwise. This is very important. Do you promise?”

“Just me, or everyone?”

“Everyone.”

“I promise.”

“Good.” Irene put down her empty cup and picked up a clipboard. She gave it a scowl, because she didn’t want to put on her glasses, then set it back on the table. “Now, let’s talk about why we make decisions.”

• • •

Whenever they talked to us alone we tried to decide why. Irene asked me questions for an hour, about my visits to the dock and to the beach, and then about Isobel and me going in to see the girl, especially about whose idea it had been and how we had decided. She never asked more about that afternoon, so I didn’t tell about looking in the window, because since all our talking was questions there wasn’t room. Irene made sure we answered exactly, and she’d repeat a question until we got it right.