The Shells Of Chanticleer (24 page)

“Yeah, we’re okay.”

A broad grin of relief sprawled across his face and he peeled off his knit cap. As he shook out his blond hair I felt my old friend return to me.

“You said some pretty brutal things to me in the pond,” he went on, “but I don’t blame you. I crossed a line with you that as a staff person I never had before. We don’t mix for a reason; someday I’ll tell you why. Just know that I felt drawn to you and I went with it. But I told you that was how I rolled. I’m not afraid to go after what I want and let the chips fall where they may.

“And for the record,” he continued, “I never talked about us to anybody. I truly don’t want anyone to split us up.”

Of course he wouldn’t have. I hadn’t mistaken the goodness in him all along. I cherished it, and knowing that I could never love anyone who wasn’t truly good, it made me love him even more.

“Okay,” I nodded. “I was mad, and then confused and angry, but my stomach has been hurting and I miss you. I don’t want to be mad anymore. I stink at it. But what is going to happen with us? I’m going to have to leave Chanticleer one day soon and then what?”

“It can only end one way, with you leaving me here by myself. With goodbye,” he said softly. “Maybe it’s better for both of us, in the end, for us to stay away from each other.”

I closed my eyes to block out what he was saying, thoroughly disappointed. I wanted him to find a way to jump over the obstacles that would kept us apart and not give in to them.

“But why?” I pressured him. “Isn’t there anything we can do to stay together?”

“No. I am staff and you are so young...,” he shook his head, defeated. It wasn’t like him to be discouraging. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to drown him out but then I would have had to let go of his hand. All I knew is that I felt alone before I met him and then the opposite ever since and I was not going backwards. I was not going to stay away from him.

There was a voice inside of me telling me not to give up on him. I decided to pretend that what he said didn’t register with me. I was going to beat him at his own game, the Chanticleer game of not letting fearful thoughts get in the way of what I wanted. I was going to act as if we did have a future together, as if I was never going to tip back home.

“No, I think we can decide how it will end,” I said, not meaning anything specific.

“Why? Did Bing tell you that?” He was suddenly alert and cautious.

“No, I don’t talk to Bing about you. Specifically. On purpose. Never.”

I felt I had to pound that into him.
Leave me out of your feud,
was my message.

“Sorry,” he backed off.

“No, what I was going to say is: shouldn’t we put it out of our minds, and live as if the end were different, as if our future was going to be exactly whatever we dream it will be?”

He considered my suggestion for a brief moment.

“I will if you will.”

“Deal” I said, congratulating myself. The future felt far away right then anyway. For the moment we were back together, my cosmic fantasy rolling in my mind again. Sebastian was just as glad.

“You know something, Macy? I think you are the perfect Chanticleer student.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Maybe I am,” I agreed.

“So then,” he said, taking his hand out of mine and putting it on the back of my head, pulling my face up close to his in the warm, dark car.

“I want to make up,” he said.

I agreed.

I heard later that they marched Aria through town the next morning, like Poppy, but I didn’t see it. I slept through everything.

When I woke past noon, after that odd night at the museum, I didn’t think of Aria’s dipping right away. I thought only of how good it felt to be back with Sebastian, even if the night’s circumstances were bizarre. The days after our argument in the pond had been the worst I had ever felt in Chanticleer. I clearly wasn’t made to stay mad for so long. Spending the night at the museum with Sebastian had been just what I needed.

I regretted the days we had lost together and vowed not to do that to myself again. A new scheme began to tempt me. I was obsessed with the idea of my time with Sebastian being limited, and of him forgetting me when I inevitably tipped back home. There were too many girls that drooled over him. When he and I had been estranged, that busty blonde Elise had been watching me. She even stopped me once in the lobby of Summer Hall.

“Where’s your cute friend been?”

“Not here,” I had replied, walking away. For some reason she got under my skin. I didn’t feel that I needed to be jealous with Sebastian. I trusted him, but I needed not to tip back home. Not yet. I decided I had to stall. It was dangerous, yes, but everyone said it could be done. From all that I had heard, Bing was the one who could help me.

I waited until my next appearance for coursework when I could guarantee that he and I would have time alone together. After checking in with Miss Clarice, Bing escorted me to my next task. We ended up at the gates of Chanticleer but I didn’t want to cooperate once we got there.

I asked, “What would happen if I told you that I wasn’t in the mood to do my coursework today?”

“Then I would tell you that you are a naughty girl who deserves a slap on her hands with my big old ruler,” Bing said, imitating the voice of an old school marm.

“No really, Bing,” I said. “I’m not joking. I don’t want to.”

I looked at him, dead serious. “I know I don’t always have to.”

“You will like today’s coursework, Macy. It will help you get more comfortable with going places on your own without feeling you are going to be kidnapped. It’s really fun,” he insisted.

He wasn’t making this easy for me. “You do know what I am talking about, don’t you?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “This is surprising to hear from you, Macy. It doesn’t sound like you.”

“Why couldn’t I take a day off? Why not me?”

“Because you are one of the good ones,” he said. “You’ve always been on the right path.”

“Why can’t I slow it down?”

“It’s just a surprise to me. I never expected to hear this from you. I thought they had you covered, because of Sebastian, you know.”

I stayed very calm when Sebastian’s name came up. Of course Bing knew what they used Sebastian for.

“What does Sebastian have to do with it?” I asked. I pretended to be in the dark to see what Bing would spill, knowing full well he sometimes said too much.

“He is very good at keeping his charges on the right path. Let’s just say … he’s got the magic touch, the right combination of keeping you strong but pushing you towards your tipping point.”

“I like Sebastian,” I said, “and you are right, he’s very encouraging. I just don’t want to go home yet. I want to stay longer without becoming a shell, but I need you to help me.”

Finally Bing stopped resisting and spilled, as I knew he would. “I can tell you everything you want to know about their plan for you here, Macy. I have access to the calendar and the paperwork. I can absolutely make this work for you.”

“I wouldn’t want them to think I wasn’t advancing, and then get dipped and tip back home. But if I can stay as long as I can without it looking like I’m not advancing, I’d like that.”

“Macy, let me ask you this: is Violet in trouble?”

“Violet, no, why?”

“Because I am doing the same for her. She wants to stay longer too, so I am fixing it for her. Don’t tell her I told you and for goodness sake don’t tell Zooey. She’ll probably go right to Miss Clarice and ruin everything.”

“Why does Violet want to avoid tipping home?”

“You know her, Macy. She needs to be in a good place, with plenty of friends, plenty of food. Shops where she can get what she needs, whenever she needs it. Feeling you never have enough is a really hard nut to crack. I sympathize with her. As for you, I knew you would change your mind.”

Bing was so glad to be proved right.

“I didn’t think I would ever feel like this, not for a long time. But I gave in to Chanticleer, eventually.”
Pretty much when I met Sebastian,
I thought, but Bing didn’t need to know that. This was working out. So far, so good.

“I’m thrilled you want to stay longer. I will tell Miss Clarice that you developed allergies today, and that your watery eyes and sneezing made it too difficult for you. I’ll tell her you looked pathetic and that I sent you back to bed! She’ll just reschedule.”

It felt good to set my plan in motion. I had finally said out loud what I had been thinking for a while. I rarely thought of that girl in the hospital bed anymore. She had no attachment to Sebastian and I wanted to cry when I thought that I would have to go back home and be her again. I spent all my time hanging around Sebastian, sitting in the square or the dining hall, in thrall to his every utterance, his stories.

I was not going to tip back home and fade into just another memory, or leave him alone so that girls like Elise could dig their claws into him. I stopped going to the library.
Who cares if I wasn’t perfect anymore?
Sebastian had to know that I had become a slacker and I felt his silence on the matter was his implicit approval. He didn’t want me to leave Chanticleer, either.

I was surprised how easily Bing lied to Miss Clarice. There was always a reason to put off the coursework. One time he said that it wasn’t set up right when we got there, another that someone was there before us and took too long. He swiped my calendar and the paperwork from Miss Clarice’s desk, just once, to show me that he did have access. I stalled my coursework two, three times. I never suffered any consequences from skipping the work; Bing was a superb liar and I never felt happier or more in control.

However, one morning I woke to find a note under my door. It was from Violet and it said simply, “Zooey tipped.”

I hardly had time to digest the news when there was a thud at my window. It was Sebastian again, in the tree.

“Stop doing that with your dirty shoe,” I said. “You smudge my window.”

“I heard about Zooey,” he said. “Can you come down? I want to talk to you.”

I sighed and jumped out the window as ordered. Once on the ground he was quiet and serious, putting his arm around me tenderly.

“Are you okay?” His eyes searched my face to gauge my reaction.

“I’m fine. Yes.” I wasn’t sure what the emergency was.

“Let’s walk,” he said. “Let’s go to the bell tower, for the view.”

He was quiet on the way there and I wondered what was wrong. We got to the tower and entered a side door. Inside was a circular stone staircase. We started to climb and it seemed never-ending, nothing but yellow stone wall after yellow stone wall. When finally, huffing and puffing, we reached the top, the whole of Chanticleer lay before us.

“Wow,” I said, as we leaned on the ledge. “This is amazing.” It was a good place to talk; no one could hear us.

“I don’t want you to feel bad,” Sebastian said. “Zooey was ready to go. She was looking forward to it.”

So that was the big emergency. Sebastian kept trying to read my face. He was afraid I would react the way I had when Paolo left. However, the truth was that I had not felt close to Zooey for a while. Zooey was never confused; she never wavered. I couldn’t connect with her that way anymore.

He asked me, “Are you sure you are not sad about it?”

I shrugged. The emotions just weren’t there. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “I guess I was expecting to lose Zooey sooner rather than later. I do wonder what it’s like to be here one minute and gone from everyone the next.”

That was a neutral comment, enough to act like I was affected by her tipping back.

“It’s nothing,” he assured me. “It’s just a sleep and a forgetting. You wake up back in familiar surroundings. Your same self, only better. Zooey is fine, she’s happy.”

“How come I didn’t forget where I came from when I tipped here?” I asked. “Are you sure I will forget Chanticleer?” I should have just screamed, “I don’t want to go back home and forget you. It’s such a waste.” That’s what I was thinking.

We walked around the bell tower’s openings, glancing out from the cool stone room to the brightly lit landscape below us. I could see Summer Hall from that vantage point. It looked so tiny in the distance.

He said, “I’m as sure as I can be.”

The bell tower was high. Usually that would cause problems for me. This time I noticed that the urge to throw myself over the edge was gone. I had changed. I would take the conversation in a more dangerous direction.

“I hear about people knowing when they are going to tip home, and stalling their coursework to keep it from happening but I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they end up a shell by doing that?”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” he said.

I couldn’t tell if he was lying to me, or was forbidden to talk about it. So I brought up the name in the center of it all. The name I never brought up around Sebastian.

“People say that Bing can arrange for you to stay here a long time, maybe forever,” I said, hoping to get a reaction. Sebastian stayed calm.

“No,” Sebastian laughed. “That’s not true. Bing can’t do that.”

I didn’t expect to hear that. Zooey had told me that Bing manipulated things, and Violet had too. Bing was doing it for me. It had to be true.

“No, it is true, at least I think it is,” I continued haltingly, suddenly unsure.

“I know the type of things that you might have heard,” he said. “Everyone tips back home eventually. You can’t stop it. Could you stop yourself from coming here?”

I couldn’t. I felt as if I had little control over what happened to me, anywhere.

“But if you don’t do the coursework,” I explained, “you won’t tip back home. Some people don’t do the coursework.”

“Well of course you have to do it or else you will end up a shell. You can avoid it for a little while, but not forever. Not like Bing did.”

Bing avoided his coursework?

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Macy, Bing started out as a student here just like you did, with fears to conquer. But he never faced what he came for. He should be a shell. In fact, he would be in that museum right now if it weren’t for special circumstances. His friends are there, but I doubt he pointed them out to you during your infamous tour.”