Eleanor (22 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T
he plate of stuffed mushrooms was nearly gone. Stephanie Pearce had eaten most of them and started on the mozzarella sticks. She chewed them slowly after dipping them in the heated marinara sauce. The social worker had been there for fifteen minutes and hadn't opened her dossier yet. The food had been meant to placate her, and it appeared to work.

Eleanor sat on the armrest of her mother's chair, and they held hands in a tableau of contented domesticity.

“These are really good,” said Stephanie. “Are they homemade?”

“The mushrooms are,” said Tabitha. “The mozzarella sticks are from the store.”

“Aren't you eating?” she asked.

Eleanor took a mushroom and nibbled it.

“The house looks good,” she said. “I like all the light.”

“Springtime,” said Tabitha. “We're going to put tomatoes in.”

“You always have tomatoes.”

“This year we think we can put a row or to in the ground. We've been doing pots up until now.”

The small talk went on too long. Either the civil servant was stretching the visit to eat more food, or she was gathering the courage to do something unpleasant.

She sipped her pink lemonade and wiped her mouth on a paper napkin.

“How are you feeling, Tabitha?” she asked finally. She clutched her papers and pushed herself back on the sofa. The springs moaned.

“I'm fine,” she said.

“You don't look fine,” she said without looking up.

It was true. She didn't. After the renaissance, Tabitha had declined swiftly and surely. Since Eleanor had found her on the bathroom floor ten days before, she'd hardly eaten a thing. Her already-thin features had turned skeletal and no amount of makeup could conceal her sunken set eyes, hollow cheeks, or pale gums. Though cheerful, she looked ghastly.

“I've had a cold,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” Pearce said again to her papers.

“I had it, too,” said Eleanor.

“I got a report from Riverton,” she said to a faxed document. “You've gone hospice?”

“No,” said Tabitha. “I've been taken off the poisons they were giving me, but not hospice.”

“The doctors say you won't recover,” she said, finally meeting Tabitha's eyes. The social worker's eyes were dark, cold, and certain. They frightened Eleanor.

“No one ever recovers,” Tabitha said. “The angel of death hovers over us all, Miss Pearce.”

Stephanie glanced at Eleanor. “Maybe we should discuss this alone,” she said.

“This concerns my daughter, Miss Pearce. I'll have her here.”

“Okay,” she said. “The report predicts you don't have much time. Maybe this summer. Probably not.”

Eleanor tried to hide the surprise, but the bluntness had caught her off guard. She didn't know this. Summer? It was already April.

“And that's optimistic,” she went on. “June probably. He prescribed hospice care and, according to his report, you agreed to it.”

“I agreed to consider it,” Tabitha said. “I never said I'd leave my house.”

“Can you stand?” Pearce asked. “Can I see you walk around the room?”

“This is outrageous,” shouted Eleanor. “Who do you think you are?”

“I can,” said Tabitha and stood up. She moved slowly and cautiously but got to her feet unaided. She pulled herself erect and pranced around the room, imitating a runway model. Eleanor could sense the pain each step caused her, smell the cancer on her breath, hear it in her bones. Tabitha sat back down and glared at their guest.

“Satisfied?” she asked. Eleanor saw the beads of sweat form under her mother's wig and looked away.

“I'm not the bad guy here,” Pearce said. “I'm trying to help.”

“I'm fine. Eleanor's fine. Thanks for the visit. See you next month.”

The big woman sighed.

“Tabitha, you've lost so much weight,” she said.

“You could stand to lose some yourself,” Eleanor said, unable to help herself.

“This must be some of that disrespect your English teacher told me about.”

“I think you'll find things are fine with Mrs. Hart now,” said Tabitha.

Pearce sighed. “It's time to face this,” she said. “I'm going to recommend that you be admitted into a top-rate hospice facility. There's a very nice one in Riverton, Willow Canyon Care. It's very nice. Top rate.”

Stunned and speechless, they stared at the woman on their sofa. Eleanor felt sick.

“Eleanor would naturally have to be moved to a foster family. Luckily, we have some in Riverton. There are people there who'd love to have her.”

“Love to have the money for taking in a foster child, you mean,” said Eleanor.

Pearce ignored her. “She could visit all the time.”

“I don't want to live in Riverton,” Eleanor said. “I don't want to leave my mother. Mom, say something. Tell her this is crap.”

“We're doing fine, Miss Pearce. You've no cause to break up our family.”

“Tabitha, you're ill. Very ill. Your house looks nice, the snacks are nice, but we both know this is all a façade. You need more care than your daughter can give you. You need full-time care. Even in this little house, I can see that it's a trial for you to move around.”

“We're doing fine,” said Eleanor. “Didn't you hear her?”

“No, dear, you're not. Tabitha needs care.”

“I can give her that,” Eleanor cried.

“No, you can't. She needs medical help and she needs a full-time custodian, and you can't leave school to do that, even if you were qualified.”

Before Eleanor could protest again, her mother silenced her with a squeeze of her hand.

“It's going to get worse, much worse,” Pearce said. “You know this Tabitha. You'll be unable to feed yourself, or dress yourself. Or clean yourself. Do you want to put Eleanor through that?”

“I can help her,” Eleanor said softly. “I don't mind.”

“Eleanor, I think you can, but it's affecting you. Your grades have steadied, but your school life is tumultuous, to say the least. I have to think that your life in this house has contributed to it.”

“Mom, say something,” Eleanor pleaded.

“We're doing alright,” Tabitha said. “Don't break up our family.”

“Is it fair to Eleanor, Tabitha? For as long as you've been here, Eleanor has been caring for you. Don't you think it's time for her to get some of that herself? Don't you think she deserves a chance to be a kid and not a nurse? You can spare her the worst of it now and make things easier for yourself as well. Your insurance and pension will cover the costs. A new start in another town might be just what Eleanor needs. It's time, Tabitha.”

“No,” whimpered Eleanor. “No. No, no.”

After the last syllable trailed away, the three sat in silence a long time. Silent tears left thin trails of black mascara down Tabitha's cheeks.

“My report is due after Easter,” Pearce said. “Take the week and discuss it.”

“What can we do to change your mind?” Eleanor pleaded. “How can you make us do this?”

The woman sighed, lifted herself up, and collected her things. “Child endangerment,” she said. “If we think a household is unfit or damaging for a child, the state can step in and take action.”

“Police?”

“Police,” she said.

No one walked her to the door.

“Thanks for the snacks,” she said. “They were really good.”

The silence stretched out long after the little Volkswagen drove away. Tabitha and Eleanor sat together holding hands as if it were the only thing keeping them from dissolving. The sunny room grew bleak and unforgiving to Eleanor. The smell of spices and death mingled into a stench of despair, and when it weighed too heavy, she threw herself into her mother's lap and sobbed.

“You know, cupcake, when I met you, you never cried. You had to learn to do it, remember? You practiced in front of a mirror. It was cute and sad. The first time I saw you really cry was when David missed school that day. It broke my heart. Still does to see it. Please don't cry now, Eleanor. I don't think I can take it.”

“What are we going to do?” she said, wiping her face.

“If I were stronger, we'd move away. We'd find a new place with even fewer people to grow up with. But we can't do that. I've failed you, daughter. Stephanie's right. It's going to get bad now, and there's no need to make it worse than it has to be. I should have done more to prepare.”

“No, Momma.”

“It's happening just as the doctor said. I got better for a while, then I got worse. It's happening fast, faster than he said it would. In truth, darling, I can barely stand. I hurt all the time. The pills don't work like they used to. I'd get better drugs if I were in a hospital.”

“Is that what you want?”

“No. I don't mind the pain. I'd rather be with you. You're the only thing that's kept me alive for years. You save my life every morning. I could have died at the lake, but you saved me.”

“You saved me,” Eleanor howled.

“Okay, we saved each other, but I was always on borrowed time. I've lived six years longer than I was promised. You know the doctor in Riverton wrote an article about my miraculous longevity last year? He did. He called me a miracle survivor. But the miracle was you. You gave me the strength.”

“How can I give you more?”

“You can't. My body betrays me. We gotta face this, cupcake. It's coming.”

“I don't want to go to Riverton,” she said. “David's here. Don't make me.”

“I don't want to go to Riverton either, but maybe it's what's best.”

“Do I have to lose both you and David?” she cried.

Tabitha sighed and stroked her daughter's head.

“Honey, I am a foster mother. We did alright.”

“Don't make me,” Eleanor whimpered. “Please don't make me.”

“Okay, sweetie. Nothing's decided yet.”

“Pearce said it was.”

“Since when do we live as others tell us?”

That made Eleanor feel better. “I could become Midge, maybe. Or Alexi. She's rich,” said Eleanor.

“They have people who love them,” Tabitha said warily.

“They'd love me,” Eleanor said softly.

“No. Please no. Promise me you won't do that,” said Tabitha. “Promise me. Promise me, girl.” She lifted Eleanor's face up to look in her eyes. “Promise me!”

“I won't,” Eleanor said. “I didn't mean it. I'm sorry.”

Tabitha pulled her close and hugged her. She rocked her back and forth like she used to when Eleanor was little.

“Okay, cupcake,” she said. “Okay.”

They rocked together a long while. It comforted both of them, but Eleanor had lied. She knew her promise was only as good as her ability to deny her nature. Survival would trump everything. It always had. She'd fall into the Old Ways. She was what she was, regardless of what Tabitha had taught her, wanted to be, or thought she was. It was simple instinct.

“Go see Celeste again,” Tabitha said. “She's far away. Give yourself some time.”

“Okay,” Eleanor said.

“And if it happens, cupcake, go to Riverton. Survive.”

“I will, Momma.”

Tabitha's arms released her only when she fell asleep. Eleanor stayed on her lap, still as a lizard watching a hawk. She knew she would not let herself be taken to Riverton. She wouldn't lose both her mother and her friend. She'd lied to her mother, but that was the least of her troubles.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“W
hy do you keep staring at me? Buzz off, twerp.”

Eleanor hadn't realized she was staring at Barbara Pennon, but wasn't surprised to see she was. She turned back to her locker and rearranged a box of tissue on the top shelf before scanning the hallway again.

Bryce was a little smaller than she. Eric was about her size. Becoming him would be quick and relatively painless. She dismissed the idea though. She liked being a girl.

She slammed her locker door and leaned her head against the cool steel. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Hadn't she been taught better than this? Didn't she promise?

She sized up everyone she met, compared their masses, calculated the calories she'd need, examined the details of their lives and situations, and then, horrifically, she'd catch herself planning their murder. She slapped herself hard across the face. Anyone else might have bruised, but Eleanor was left with only a red mark, and even that was gone in an hour. She stared at her face, her borrowed face, in her bathroom mirror and watched the finger lines disappear like high clouds in sunshine.

She couldn't concentrate. Sitting at her desk, she'd suddenly hear a bell, look up, and realize the class was done. She'd be unable to remember a single thing that had been done or said the entire hour. She'd gather her things, leave the room, and stop in the hall, not knowing where she had to go next.

At lunch she was such bad company that her friends took forkfuls of potatoes off her plate without her noticing.

“You going to eat all that?” asked David, giggling.

“What?” Eleanor said.

“Your potatoes. They're getting cold.”

She looked down, saw they were gone, and said, “I already did.”

The table broke into laughter that startled Eleanor. David finally had to let her in on the joke. He wasn't laughing.

Walking her home the day before Easter break, David finally said. “Eleanor, you don't have to tell me what's bugging you, but if you want to talk, I'll listen.”

“It's that obvious,” she said.

“Only to anyone with eyes,” he said.

“You wouldn't understand,” she said and regretted saying it immediately. “It's complicated.”

“Is it about your mother?” he asked.

“Yes, part of it.”

“I haven't seen her in weeks. Is she doing poorly?”

She nodded. They walked in silence for a while.

“The social worker told us that we should move to Riverton; Tabitha for hospice care and me to a foster family.” Her words hit him like a rock.

“Oh,” he said.

“I'm scared,” said Eleanor. “I'm scared of what will happen to me. I'm scared of what I will do.”

David forced a smile. He was about to say something, something comforting Eleanor was sure, when he suddenly stopped.

“What do you think you'll do?” he said.

“Does Odin love you?” she asked.

“Odin? My cat? Yeah, I think he loves me.”

“Why does he love you?”

“Because I'm so lovable,” he said with a grin.

“You take care of him, right? That's all. You give him something he needs and so he seems to love you. But do you know that if he were big enough, he'd eat you? That's what animals do.”

David didn't answer. Eleanor listened to the crunching gravel beneath their feet and the passing trucks behind them on the highway. She'd thought many times about stowing away on one of those trucks. She could do it, disappear and become someone else, somewhere else. Maybe she'd have the sense to be an adult next time, not a stupid, hormone-wracked, teenage girl in the middle of nowhere. An adult who'd stopped growing.

“You're not an animal,” David said.

“What do you think I am?”

The question hung in the air a long time. The gravel cracked, the trucks boomed, and Eleanor felt the weight of David's research weighing him down. Had he formulated a theory? Did he suspect? Did he know? Had he allowed himself to believe? Then why was he here with her?

“We're all animals,” he said. “Maybe all love is based on need fulfillment. I don't know. Odin loves me because I feed him. He loves me more than Wendy because I don't pull his tail. He loves me for my soft pillow, ear scratches, and a clean litter-box. I don't think he'd eat me.”

“You didn't answer my question,” Eleanor said.

“You're complicated,” he said after a pause. “You are many things. You're a girl, a friend, a daughter, a student, and a mystery. You can be many things, too. One day you're going to be a driver, a college graduate, wife, mother—whatever you want. Whatever you are right now, you won't be in a second. Everyone changes every second.”

“If you took Odin to Riverton, do you think he'd find his way home to you, or do you think he'd find someone else to love?”

“I see what you're doing,” he said. “We'd still be friends if you move. I never stopped being your friend when I was away. I hope you didn't.”

“They'll put me in a foster home with people who'll only put up with me because they get paid every month to do it. They won't love me. Not like Tabitha.”

“They'll learn to love you,” he said, but his voice was unhappy.

“Do you think we could still be friends if I looked different?” she said. The question caused him to shorten his pace.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “I like you. I'd like you with blue hair or in a wheelchair. What kind of friend would I be if I let that get in the way?”

They walked a while.

“You know what I think?” David said. “I think most problems are really not worth worrying about. It sucks the life out of you. It's been my experience that most things, the vast majority of them, no matter how big and scary they may look, work themselves out.”

“Good advice, but naïve.”

“No. It just takes trust.”

“I don't have a lot of that,” she admitted.

“I know you don't, but you have enough,” he said. “Once my dad told me that he never feels so alive as when he's in combat.” David's voice sounded far away and lonely. “He said that knowing he could be dead at any moment makes everything clear. Puts things in perspective. That's when he knows he worries too much.”

“That's survival instinct,” Eleanor said sadly. “It transcends morals. Kill or be killed.”

“I don't think that's what he meant,” David said.

“It was.”

Eleanor had hoped that talking to David would ease her mind, but it hadn't. She felt like an animal running up a blind canyon. She wasn't cornered yet, but she was about to be. What would she do then? What would she be then?

She felt like a fool letting herself be trapped. It was because she'd trusted Tabitha so long and so much. She saw a chain of events from the campground, and the moose, to Tabitha by the lake, Jamesford, and David. She asked herself why she'd done it.

Thanks to Tabitha, she'd learned math and Shakespeare, but what good were those things to her kind? Her mother, her real mother would have shown her how to survive. She'd have taught her how to hunt, how to mimic. How to kill. Kill or be killed, that was the rule. Her kind were parasites. She'd learned the word in science class and learned to despise it like any sensible human being. But she was not a human being. She was a monster parasite feeding off other people's lives.

Did David know the skinwalker legends? He must. He'd read Sirking's book. He knew the tales of the witch who took the shape of a dead human being. Had he figured out that the skinwalker was usually responsible for the death? Sikring hadn't said it outright in his book, but he had suggested it.

“This is not my real body,” she remembered her mother telling her. The Navajo words were birdlike. “Yours too is not your own.”

“Sure it is,” she'd said.

“No, it's a copy. When you get older, you'll have to find another. This one came from me. Soon it will stop growing and you'll need to find another. I will show you how. You are skinwalker.”

She never got the chance.

Wounded and sore, her hair singed from the burning hut, she happened upon a dead coyote by the road. She ate from it and copied it. She stayed the coyote for years. She never aged. Never scarred. Bullets were expelled from her skin. Her tail grew back when a wolf ripped it off. Given time and food, she could heal from anything, becoming, in the end, exactly what she'd been before. She was a living reset button.

She'd been six-year-old Celeste for two years until people started commenting on her lack of physical development. Tabitha and Eleanor had searched for the little girl she'd met in Yellowstone, and thanks to Eleanor's memory, they tracked the family through their license plates to a small Nebraska town. That summer Tabitha took Eleanor on vacation. They stalked the family for a week until eight-year-old Celeste was allowed to go into a bathroom alone. Eleanor, hood pulled over her head, followed her inside. When she came out of the stall, Eleanor took off the hood and faced the girl.

Celeste was bemused and not scared. She looked at the image of herself two years younger. Cautiously, like a cat moving to pounce on a bird, Eleanor moved close to the wide-eyed girl. Still slowly, but ready to strike like an adder if need be, she leaned forward and kissed Celeste on the cheek.

She pulled back and saw the girl was smiling. It was a wonderful game to her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am you,” said Eleanor. Then she bolted from the bathroom before she could speak another word.

That night Tabitha stayed up with Eleanor in their motel room. She ordered a half-dozen pizzas and still had to go out for more food. Eleanor wept from the pain as her body bent and buckled and stretched and morphed into its new shape. It took hours. She wasn't very good at it. She knew it could be done faster, better, with less pain, but every part of her resisted it, and she felt like she had to convince each and every cell in her body to release its hold and be reworked. It was laborious.

By morning, Eleanor had finished. From her toes to her head, she was Celeste Batton at eight years old. She'd even managed to exactly replicate the hair style she'd seen her wear and the scar on her hand she didn't even remember seeing.

Tabitha had bought Eleanor all new clothes and they stayed away from Jamesford for another month to complete the illusion of a sudden and dramatic growth spurt.

Since then Eleanor had gone to Nebraska every summer to find Celeste, the last one on her own, stowed away on eastbound trucks.

It had become routine. Like a vampire, she'd approach Celeste's farmhouse at night and steal up to her window. She'd find it unlocked. She'd enter silently on bare feet and stand over the sleeping girl. She'd lean over to kiss Celeste, to taste her, to draw the pattern from the girl. Inevitably, Celeste would wake up like a Disney Princess and kiss her back.

“You've come back,” she'd say. “I knew you would.”

“I've got to be a secret,” Eleanor would say. “They wouldn't understand.”

Celeste would nod, staring into her own face for a long time without saying a word. She'd hold Eleanor's hand and feel it rumble and shake, Eleanor already beginning the change.

“I have to go,” she'd say. “Be well.”

“You too, other me.”

Regular visits to Celeste had allowed Eleanor to live in plain sight of people. Her kind usually lived on the outskirts of society, but Tabitha had planted her right in the middle of a town.

Eleanor Anders was an average girl in a high-risk family. Eleanor Anders would surely be moved to a foster home if her mother died, and probably even if she didn't. If Eleanor Anders were to vanish, there would be a search. She was known to everyone, liked by some, and loved by two. There would be a search, but it would not last long. After a month or so, she'd be forgotten like a passing cloud.

David would recover over time. He'd mourn unnecessarily for a monster. One day he'd meet her again, but she would look different. Maybe very different. She wondered if he could love her again if she did not look like the mirror of a Nebraska girl? Would he recognize her if she looked like Crystal, Aubrey, or Barbara? Would he understand? Could he forgive her? Would she want him to?

“I wish I didn't love you,” she said under her breath. It stopped David cold.

“I love you, too, Eleanor,” he said. “And I'm not sad about it at all.”

“You may be,” she said.