Cecily Von Ziegesar (5 page)

No one had followed her into the woods. Her stomach rumbled hungrily as she started back. She could eat a Dunkin' Donuts cruller. She could eat a dozen of them. She paused and glanced around, unsure of the way. The light between the trees appeared to be less dim in one direction. She headed that way, walking and walking for what felt like a long time. She wondered what Professor Rosen would do when she found out Shipley had disappeared in the night. Would they send out a search party? Dogs? Her mind was preoccupied with wondering what breed of dog was most commonly used to find missing persons and whether dogs liked to eat donuts, when she ran headlong into the maroon Dexter van, parked on the shoulder of the old logging road.

Professor Rosen had left the keys on the front tire, just like Shipley's dad did with their old station car, in case someone else needed the car while he was at work. Shipley climbed behind the wheel and started the engine, invigorated by her own daring. This certainly was a day of firsts. She turned on the radio. Guns N' Roses blared from the speakers.

 

“W
e abandoned the fire,” Nick complained as he followed Tom and Eliza into the woods to look for Shipley. She'd been gone for more than fifteen minutes—longer than she needed to do her business.

“Oh, Shipley, dear?” Eliza called in a hoity-toity voice. “It's time to get thine ass back to camp, darling.”

“Yoo-hoo,” Tom cupped his hands around his mouth. “Where are you?”

“We haven't even eaten dinner,” Nick complained. He always got a little whiny when he was high, especially after the munchies kicked in. His mom's vegetarian three-bean chili. He could eat three helpings of it right now. With cornbread.

Twilight was fading and the air was cool and still. The ground beneath their feet was damp and alive. Eliza wished she'd put on her sweater.

“Did I ever tell you guys about the time I actually saw a werewolf and almost died?” she asked. Of course they hadn't heard her story before. She'd never seen these people in her life before today.

“I was ice skating on this pond out behind our house and it got dark but I kept skating because I used to be really into it and yeah so fuck me I was the blind girl in
Ice Castles.
Anyway. All of a sudden the wind starts howling in the trees and there's
lightning and it's the whole Great Lakes effect storm system coming in and my mom is yelling for me like Aunty Em.”

She was talking extra-fast to make up for the fact that her tongue felt like a waterlogged hot dog. It was hard to tell if either of the boys was listening.

“So I realize I can't find my boots in the storm and I have to walk through the snow back to the house in my skates, which is pretty fucking impossible if you've ever tried it, and of course I fall down. What I don't realize is that I hit my head when I fall down and I get knocked unconscious. I wake up when something is licking my face, and okay that would be totally harmless if we had a dog, but we don't. So I sit up and there's this like dog-slash-man werewolf dude with yellow eyes in front of me. You know, complete with drooly fangs and raw meat stew bad breath? I scream and he scampers off, and then I crawl back to the house and my mom puts me to bed and feeds me bouillon with a teaspoon. I was thirteen. I got my period the next day.”

“Jesus.” Tom gagged at the mention of blood and kept walking. “Almost died,” he snorted disparagingly as he struggled to regain his composure. “You probably just got a concussion and dreamt the whole thing.”

Eliza glared at his back. Asshole.

“Maybe it was just hormones,” Nick inferred from behind her. “Because of—you know—what happened the next day?”

“Shush!” Tom stopped. “Do you hear that?”

The sound of Guns N' Roses' “Sweet Child O' Mine” echoed through the woods.

“Come on.” Tom broke into a run. The way he ran, dodging the trees, reminded Eliza of horror movies.
Freshman Orientation: The Haunting.

Up ahead, Tom could see the old logging road. Then he saw
where the music was coming from. Shipley was behind the wheel of the van, doing slow figure eights in the road. It looked like she was giving herself a driving lesson of sorts. The radio blared obnoxiously. She spotted them and pulled up. Her pale blue eyes glowed in the half-light.

“Anyone up for Dunkin' Donuts?”

T
he sheep were out grazing and the house was quiet. Ellen and Eli Gatz had gone out west to a crafts fair in Stanley, Idaho, and left Adam and Tragedy in charge. The sheep could take care of themselves. It was Tragedy who needed stewardship. If left to her own devices, she would have pawned every pawnable object in the house and hitchhiked to Rio by now. She would have drunk all the wine and burned the house down. Not that she was irresponsible. Quite the contrary—her teachers often said that she was fifteen going on fifty. But she was easily bored, and, as she liked to remind everyone in the family on a daily if not hourly basis, she couldn't wait to get the fuck out of Dodge. Her bedroom was filled with travel guides.

Tonight they watched reruns of
Scooby Doo
while Tragedy played “Global Fashion Charades,” a game she'd invented. She tried on every odd article of clothing in the house—flippers, long underwear, fishing waders, snowmobile suits, beekeeping hats, sunbonnets, snowshoes, hunting vests—and Adam had to guess what sort of international fashion disaster she was dressed as.

“What am I now?” she asked, jigging noisily across the living room in her mother's wooden clogs and a white bikini, a fringed green and yellow plaid blanket tied at her waist. Tragedy could tell Adam was nervous about starting at Dexter tomorrow. She was trying to make him laugh. So far it wasn't working. Adam was wound way too tight.

“Loud?” Adam replied. “Annoying?”

“I'm a Scottish hula dancer,” she declared, stomping her feet and undulating her arms like a deranged octopus. “I'd play the bagpipes, but we haven't got any.”

Adam picked up the discarded red flannel shirt from her Australian kanga hunter costume and tossed it at her. “Please put your clothes back on,” he begged.

His sister seemed to forget that she was no longer five. She seemed not to realize that clogging in a too-small bikini top in front of her brother was entirely inappropriate. If only she had friends who could tell her what was okay and what wasn't, but the girls from school all hated her. Her legs, eyelashes, and hair were all longer than theirs. She'd started wearing a bra in fifth grade. She was their nemesis.

“
Scooby dooby doo, where are you…?
” Tragedy kicked the clogs off her feet and removed the blanket from her waist as she sang.

Adam averted his eyes and sighed. His life thus far had been full of these bored, tiresome moments, but at least it was quiet at home with their parents away. The Gatzes never ceased shouting. Not because they were angry, they simply preferred to shout. And the more Tragedy riled them up, the louder they shouted. The house was almost peaceful with them gone, although still not peaceful enough for him to really
think
. Not with Tragedy around. She never shut up.

“…the way you shake and shiver…,”
Tragedy sang. She
dropped the plaid blanket on the floor and tied a white chef's apron over her bikini. She knew she should have put on a pair of shorts and maybe a shirt, but it wasn't like they were expecting the queen mother or anything.

Adam crossed and recrossed his legs. He kicked his sister's flip-flops across the room. He pulled a string out of the weary gray sofa. His mind paced restlessly. Tomorrow he would register for courses at Dexter, and the day after that classes would begin. Shouldn't I be doing something to prepare? I don't even know what college is
for,
he thought morosely. But at least it was something.

Tragedy ran up to her room and came back downstairs with a small blue teddy bear stuffed into the front pocket of the apron and a pair of sweatpants pulled on over her bikini bottom. She retrieved a Yankees cap from the hall closet and put it on. “What am I now?” she asked, standing in front of Adam with her hands on her hips.

Adam just scowled at her.

“I'm a baseball mom from Florida, although it really should be a Marlins cap. Or maybe I'm the head chef for the Yankees.” She stuffed her feet back into the clogs.

Adam didn't respond.

“I guess you're not playing anymore.” She bounced onto the sofa next to him and picked up her Rubik's cube. “Bet you I can do all the yellow and all the green before the next commercial.”

 

T
he country road was deserted. There weren't any streetlights. There weren't even any cows. The van plowed through a four-way stop and eased down a hill.

“How do you know where you're going?” Eliza demanded. She crouched between the two front seats, gazing anxiously out the windshield like the family dog. Tom sat in the passenger seat. He
kept turning up the volume on the radio and then turning it down again.

Nick knelt sideways in the backseat, clutching the door handle. “I knew this was a bad idea,” he complained.

“I'm sure if we keep driving we'll come upon a town eventually,” Shipley mused. She wasn't driving very fast. The van's steering column was out of alignment and she could barely reach the pedals. It felt scary topping twenty.

Off in the distance a blue light glowed on the tip of a tall church spire. All of a sudden the road wasn't deserted anymore. A white shingled farmhouse loomed up ahead, its windows blazing with cheery light. Puffs of gray smoke rose from the chimney, and a yellow rocking chair stood on the porch. Behind the house was a red barn, and behind that a white-painted fence surrounded a hilly pasture dotted with fluffy white sheep. It looked like Santa and Mrs. Claus's summer home.

“Let's stop there,” Tom suggested. “I'll ask someone for directions.”

“Just be careful,” Eliza warned. The countryside was beginning to creep her out. Axe murderers and serial killers lurked behind every tree.

“Watch out!” Nick cried as Shipley steered the van toward the house. She ignored the driveway entirely, veering off the road and into the yard.

 

A
yellow light flashed through the window. The twin beams of a car's headlights bounced across the yard toward the front porch.

“Hello, psycho drivers?” Tragedy rushed into the kitchen and threw open the screen door. “Hey, slow down!” she shouted,
waving her arms. “There are kittens around here! Kittens and lambs!”

Adam followed his sister, throat dry and knees stiff. Nothing truly exciting ever happened in Home, but he was pretty sure something was about to.

A maroon van pulled up directly in front of the steps leading up to the porch. Adam could just make out the Dexter College pine tree logo printed on the side. A blond girl in white shorts got out from behind the wheel. Her pale blue eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

“Yowza!” Tragedy exclaimed. “Holy guacamole!”

Adam gripped the screen door's dinky metal handle. The passenger door opened and a huge, muscular guy emerged. He wore preppy Bermuda shorts and a bright yellow belt. Behind him tumbled a tough-looking girl with black bangs. The back door slid open and a guy wearing a wool earflap hat poked his head out, like a groundhog checking to see if spring had sprung. All they were missing was a big, slobbery Great Dane.

“Hey.” The guy in the hat jumped down from the van. He wore a gray Patagonia fleece vest and looked exactly like everyone else at Dexter except for the Band-Aid in the middle of his face. “Sorry about the lawn. She…We…got lost?”

The blond girl's lips parted. Her blue eyes shone up at Adam with luminous intensity. “We're not lost,” she insisted.

“
Hello, Dolly! Well, hello, Dolly…!
” Tragedy belted out ridiculously. Any excuse to make as much noise as possible. Adam wanted to smack her.

“Can we help you?” he greeted the visitors.

“We were looking for Dunkin' Donuts,” the girl with the bangs explained. “You're probably going to tell us they don't even have Dunkin' Donuts in Maine.”

Adam was disappointed. He was hoping their van had broken down or their orientation leader had had a heart attack. Something dire. “The nearest one is in Augusta, I think.”

The big guy chuckled. “That may mean something to you, but not to us. Can you draw us a map?”

“Hold on.”

Adam was about to go inside and get a piece of paper and a pencil when Tragedy shoved him aside. No way was she going to pass this up.

“Hey, why don't you guys come in? Our parents are away and we're so friggin' bored. We have beer and wine and fresh sheep's milk. It tastes like ass, unless you add a whole shitload of Quik. Then it's not bad.”

Pot did wonders for Shipley's shyness. She took a step forward, placing her right flip-flopped foot on the porch step. The wood creaked. “I'm sorry. I'm a terrible driver. You're lucky I didn't run over your dogs or whatever.” She glanced around, looking for signs of animals. She thought she'd seen a cat scamper beneath the porch.

“I'm Adam,” the lanky redheaded boy introduced himself with a freckle-faced smile.

“And I'm his little sister, Tragedy,” the tall, olive-skinned girl standing beside him explained, hands on the hips of her white chef's apron. She wasn't wearing a shirt, just a white bikini top and a Yankees cap. A blue teddy bear peeked out of her apron pocket. She was obviously a sports fan. “Let's hope you didn't fuck up our lawn or my dad will nail your ass to a tree. He's completely anal about his grass.”

“Do you have any food?” Tom asked, barging up the steps. “We're starving, so if you have anything to eat at all, we'd really appreciate it.” He knew he ought to have been more polite,
but all that vomiting had left him feeling pretty hollow inside. If he didn't get a ham sandwich, quick, he was going to pass out.

“Of course. Definitely.” Tragedy held the screen door open wide. “Please, come on in.”

Shipley glanced behind her to see what Nick and Eliza were up to. Nick stood on one foot like a flamingo, looking hesitant and uncomfortable with that ridiculous Band-Aid pasted between his eyebrows. “And then we'd better get back,” he mumbled. “Otherwise they'll think we got eaten by bears or something.”

Eliza stuffed her hands in the pockets of her cutoffs and approached the porch. “As long as they've got food,” she agreed with stoned reluctance.

The four newcomers sat stiffly at the kitchen table while Adam and Tragedy dug around for food and drink. The house was topsy-turvy, with books and clothes and tools for gardening or welding or fixing cars scattered all over the place. A woodstove hunkered in the corner of the kitchen. It seemed to be the only available cooking device.

“Is this really where you live?” Shipley asked incredulously. She meant was this where they lived all the time; it wasn't just a country house where they pretended to be farmers while most of the time they lived someplace urban and modern like Los Angeles.

“I was even born here in the house,” Adam admitted.

“Mom doesn't believe in doctors,” Tragedy elaborated. “She and Dad are from a place called Park Slope, in Brooklyn. They met at Dexter, but they dropped out to start this farm. They grow vegetables and raise sheep for wool and milk. And they make these totally useless fireplace tools. That's where they are now—at a crafts fair, selling their stupid tools.”

Adam put four brown bottles on the table. “Dad makes his
own beer. It's kind of cloudy and it tastes a little funky at first, but once you get used to it it's pretty good.”

“I'll have wine,” Eliza said.

“Me too,” Shipley agreed.

“A wise choice.” Tragedy arranged this morning's batch of chocolate chip cookies on a plate and presented it to her guests. She liked to bake. It helped relieve the boredom. “Let me guess. You guys are freshmen and you bagged the overnight?”

“Kind of.” Hat Boy shoved a cookie into his mouth. “I'm Nick.” He pointed at the beefy guy seated across from him. “That's Tom.” Then he pointed at the blonde. “That's Shipley.” Finally he pointed at the girl with the bangs. “And that's Eliza.” He swallowed the cookie and reached for another one. “Sorry if we're acting wacko. We're pretty stoned.”

So that was their problem. Tragedy removed the blue teddy bear from her apron pocket—a weird accessory, even for her. Then she grabbed a tall Coca-Cola glass and filled it to the brim with red wine. “Adam's going to be in your class.” She handed the glass to Shipley and poured another one for Eliza. “He was too cheap to sign up for orientation though.”

Adam uncapped a beer and took a gingerly sip. “I would have had to pick $150 worth of blueberries to pay for it,” he told his sister. He noticed Shipley was staring at him and instantly regretted any mention of picking blueberries.

“That's a lot of blueberries,” Tom observed with his mouth full of cookies. He'd never eaten anything so good in his entire life. He could actually taste the cocoa beans in the chocolate chips. He could taste the sunshine that had shone down upon the heads of the chickens that had laid the eggs that were in the batter. The cookies were life-changing.

A large gray cat swaggered lazily through the kitchen, licking her chops. Yellow fly tape hung from the ceiling like an orna
ment, festooned with dead flies. The air smelled of blueberry jam and freshly baked cookies.

Shipley sat directly opposite Tom, sipping her wine with rhythmic precision. She was glad she'd already peed.

Eliza bit the rim of her glass. Any minute now she'd hear the roar of a chain saw and heads would begin to fly.

“Hey, we should play a drinking game or something,” Tragedy suggested.

“Please, no,” Adam groaned. Tragedy always had the worst ideas.

 

T
hey played Bullshit with two decks of cards. Tragedy called “bullshit” every hand, which was annoying, but meant that they all got very drunk. Six bottles of wine and a case of beer later, Shipley lay on the living room sofa with her head in Tom's lap and her feet in Adam's, watching Tragedy and Nick dance to the Gatzes' collection of Bee Gees albums. The operatic wails of the brothers Gibb sounded almost futuristic, even though the music had come out almost two decades ago. Eliza knelt on the floor next to the coffee table, staring at the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The
Scooby Doo
marathon continued to play on the muted TV. Scooby and Shaggy tiptoed around a deserted amusement park, their teeth chattering noiselessly. It was two o'clock in the morning. The sheep would be waiting for their grain at six.