The Stranger
Authors: Caroline B. Cooney
Caroline B. Cooney
A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney
I
T WAS COLD IN
the music room. Somebody had cracked the windows to freshen the stale school air. But Nicoletta had not expected her entire life to be chilled by the drafts of January.
“Nickie,” said the music teacher, smiling a bright, false smile. Nicoletta hated nicknames but she smiled back anyway. “I called you in separately because this may be a blow. I want you to learn the news here, and not in the hallway in front of the others.”
Nicoletta could not imagine what Ms. Quincy was talking about. Yesterday, tryouts for Madrigal Singers had been completed. Ms. Quincy required the members to audition every September and January, even though there was no question as to which sixteen would be chosen. Nicoletta, of course, as she had been for two years, would be one of the four sopranos.
So her first thought was that somebody was hurt, and Ms. Quincy was breaking it to her. In a childlike gesture of which she was unaware, Nicoletta’s hand caught the left side of her hair and wound it around her throat. The thick, shining gold turned into a comforting rope.
“The new girl,” said Ms. Quincy. “Anne-Louise.” Ms. Quincy looked at the chalkboard on which a music staff had been drawn. “She’s wonderful,” said Ms. Quincy. “I’m putting her in Madrigals. You have a good voice, and you’re a solid singer, Nickie. Certainly a joy to have in any group. But … Anne-Louise has had voice lessons for years.”
Nicoletta came close to strangling herself with the rope of her own yellow hair. Madrigals? The chorus into which she had poured her life? The chorus that toured the state, whose concerts were standing room only? The sixteen who were best friends? Who partied and carpooled and studied together as well as sang?
“I’m sorry,” said Ms. Quincy. She looked sorry, too. She looked, to use an old and stupid phrase, as if this hurt her more than it hurt Nicoletta. “Since each part is limited to four singers, I cannot have both of you. Anne-Louise will take your place.”
The wind of January crept through the one-inch window opening and iced her life. How could she could go on with high school if she were dropped from Madrigals? She had no activity but singing. Her only friends were in Madrigals.
I’ll be alone, thought Nicoletta.
A flotilla of lonely places appeared in her mind: cafeteria, bus, hallway, student center.
Her body humiliated her. She became a prickly mass of perspiration: Sweaty hands, lumpy throat, tearful eyes. “Doesn’t it count,” she said desperately, trying to marshal intelligent arguments, “that I have never missed a rehearsal? I’ve never been late? I’ve been in charge of refreshments? I’m the one who finds ushers for the concerts and the one who checks the spelling in the programs?”
“And we’d love to have you keep doing that,” said Ms. Quincy. Her smile opened again like a zipper separating her face halves.
For two years Nicoletta had idolized Ms. Quincy. Now an ugly puff of hatred filled her heart instead. “I’m not good enough to sing with you,” she cried out, “but you’d love to have me do the secretarial work? I’m sure Anne-Louise has had lessons in that, too. Thanks for nothing, Ms. Quincy!”
Nicoletta ran out of the music room before she broke down into sobbing and had the ultimate humiliation of being comforted by the very woman who was kicking her out. There had been no witnesses yet, but in a few minutes everybody she cared about would know. She, Nicoletta, was not good enough anymore. The standards had been raised.
Nicoletta was just another ordinary soprano.
Nicoletta was out.
There was a narrow turn of hall between the music rooms and the lobby. Nicoletta stood in the dark silence of that space, trying to control her emotions. She could hear familiar laughter—Madrigal friends coming to read the list of the chosen. She thought suddenly of her costume: the lovely crimson gown with the tight waist and the white lace high at the throat, the tiny crown that sat in her yellow hair. People said that the medieval look suited her, that she was beautiful in red. And beautiful she always felt, spun gold, with an angel’s voice.
Ms. Quincy followed her into the safety zone of the dark little hall. “Go down to Guidance, now, Nickie,” she said in a teachery voice. “Sign up for something else in the Madrigal time slot.”
I’ll sign up for Bomb-Making, thought Nicoletta. Or Arson.
She did not look at Ms. Quincy again. She walked in the opposite direction from the known voices, taking the long way around the school to Guidance. In this immense high school, with its student body of over two thousand, she was among strangers. You had to find your place in such a vast school, and her place had been Madrigals. With whom would she stand now? With whom would she laugh and eat and gossip?
Of course in the Guidance office they pretended to be busy and Nicoletta had to sit forty minutes until they could fit her in. The chair was orange plastic, hideous and cold, the same color as the repulsive orange kitchen counters in Nicoletta’s repulsive new house.
Her parents had gotten in too deep financially. Last autumn, amid tears and recrimination, the Storms family had had to sell the wonderful huge house on Fairest Hill. Oh, how Nicoletta had loved that house! Immense rooms, expanses of windows, layers of decks, acres of closets! She and her mother had poured themselves into decorating it, occupying every shopping hour with the joys of wallpaper, curtains, and accessories.
Now they were in a tiny ranch with ugly, crowded rooms, and Nicoletta was sharing a bedroom with her eleven-year-old sister, Jamie.
In their old house, Jamie had had her own bedroom and bath; Jamie had had three closets just for herself; Jamie had had her own television and
two
extra beds, so she could have sleepovers every weekend.
The ranch house had only two bedrooms, so now Jamie slept exactly six feet from Nicoletta. The seventy-two most annoying inches in the world. Nicoletta had actually liked her sister when they lived in the big house. Now the girls could do nothing except bicker, bait, and fight.
Fairest Hill.
Nicoletta always thought the name came from the fairy tale of Snow White:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
And in those pretty woods, on top of that gentle sloping hill in that lovely house, she, Nicoletta, had been the fairest of them all.
Now she could not even sing soprano.
It was difficult to know who made her maddest—her parents, for poor planning; the economy, for making it worse; Ms. Quincy, for being rotten, mean, and cruel; or Anne-Louise, for moving here.
Within a few minutes, however, it was the guidance counselor making her maddest. “Let’s see,” said Mr. Parsons. “The available half-year classes, Nicoletta, are Art Appreciation, Study Skills, Current Events, and Oceanography.” He skimmed through her academic files. “I certainly recommend Study Skills,” he said severely.
She hated him. I’m not taking Current Events, she thought, because I sit through television news every night from five to seven as it is. I’m not taking Oceanography because deep water is the scariest thing on earth. I’m not taking Study Skills just because he thinks I should. Which leaves Art Appreciation. Art for the nonartistic. Art for the pathetic and left-behind.
“I’m signing you up for Study Skills,” said Mr. Parsons.
“No. Art Appreciation.”
“If you insist,” said Mr. Parsons.
She insisted.
That night, as a break in the fighting with Jamie, Nicoletta received three phone calls from other Madrigal singers.
Rachel, her sidekick, the other first soprano next to whom she had stood for two lovely years was crying. “This is so awful!” she sobbed. “Doesn’t Ms. Quincy understand friendship? Or loyalty? Or anything?”
Cathy, an alto so low she sometimes sang tenor, was furious. “I’m in favor of boycotting Madrigals,” said Cathy. “That will teach Ms. Quincy a thing or two.”
Christo, the lowest bass, and handsomest boy, also phoned.
Everybody, at one time or another, had had a crush on Christopher Hannon. Christopher had grown earlier than most boys: At fifteen he had looked twenty, and now at seventeen he looked twenty-five. He was broad-shouldered and tall and could have grown a beard to his chest had he wanted to. Nicoletta was always surprised that she and Christo were the exact same age.
“Nickie,” said Christo, “this is terrible. We’ve all argued with Ms. Quincy. She’s sick, that’s what I say. Demented.”
Nicoletta felt marginally better. At least her friends had stood by her and perhaps would get Ms. Quincy to change her mind and dump this horrible Anne-Louise.
“I have to take Art Appreciation instead,” she said glumly.
Christo moaned. “Duds,” he told her.
“I know.”
“Be brave. We’ll rescue you. This Anne-Louise cannot possibly sing like you, Nickie.”
She entered the Art Appreciation room the following day feeling quite removed from the pathetic specimens supposed to be her classmates. Christo, Cathy, Rachel, and her other friends would turn this nightmare around. In a day or so she’d be back rehearsing like always, with a cowed and apologetic Ms. Quincy.
Without interest, Nicoletta took her new text and its companion workbook and sat where she was told, in the center of the room.
A quick survey of the other students told her she had laid eyes on none of these kids before. It was not a large class, perhaps twenty, half boys, which surprised her a little. Did they really want to appreciate art, or were they, too, refusing to take Study Skills?
The teacher, a Mr. Marisson, of whom she had never even heard let alone met, showed slides. Nicoletta prepared to go to sleep, which was her usual response to slides.
But as the room went dark, and the kids around her became shadows of themselves, her eye was caught not by the van Gogh or the Monet painting on the screen but by the profile of the boy in front of her, one row to her left.
He had the most mobile face she had ever seen. Even in the dusk of the quiet classroom, she could see him shift his jaw, lower and lift his eyes, tighten and relax his lips. Several times he lifted a hand to touch his cheek, and he touched it in a most peculiar fashion—as if he were exploring it. As if it belonged to somebody else, or as if he had not known, until this very second, that he even had a cheek.
She was so fascinated she could hardly wait for the slide show to end.
“Well, that’s the end of today’s lecture,” said Mr. Marisson, flipping the lights back on.
The boy remained strangely dark. It was as if he cast his own shadow in his own space. His eyelashes seemed to shade his cheeks, and his cheeks seemed full of hollows. His hair was thick and fell onto his face, sheltering him from stares.
Nicoletta, who had never had an art-type thought in her life, wanted to paint him.
How weird! she thought. Maybe Mr. Marisson put him in the class just to inspire us. Perhaps this is how van Gogh and Monet got started, emotionally moved by a stranger’s beautiful profile.
Never had the word
stranger
seemed so apt. There was something genuinely strange about the boy. Essentially different. But what was it?
Nicoletta could not see straight into his eyes. He kept them lowered. Not as if he were shy but as if he had other things to look at than his surroundings.
Class ended.
People stood.
Nicoletta watched the boy. He did not look her way nor anybody else’s. He did not seem aware of anyone. He left the room with a lightness of step that did not fit his body: His body was more like Christo’s, yet his walk might have been a dancer’s.