The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three (93 page)

"My mother warned you off?" Clementine said.

"Yeah," Cabell said. "Not directly. She talked to Dancy and then Dancy sat down and had a talk with me. Like Dancy ought to be giving anyone advice. Not that I was planning to take advantage of what is obviously some unfortunate quirk of your otherwise undoubtedly mature and capable personality. Your mother says you have straight As and a chance at a four-year scholarship at Queens."

"Don't worry," Clementine said. "I'm not still hung up on you or anything. I just owe you. For, you know, saving my life. Twice. And I need a good excuse to break up with my boyfriend. Want to play Resident Evil on Uncle John's Wii? Or would you rather help me help Dancy figure out if Uncle John is cheating on her? There's this Web site she wants to check out."

"I hate zombies," Cabell said. "Hey, Lucinda Larkin, let's go spy on your daddy."

"Those pajamas belong to Momma," Lucinda Larkin said to Clementine as they went up the stairs. "He had to borrow them because he doesn't have any pajamas and all of Daddy's were dirty."

Clementine said, "I had a pair of pajamas like that once. I went swimming in them and your Uncle Cabell had to fish me out. Otherwise I would have drowned. That was when I was a little girl just like you."

"Cut it out, Clementine," Cabell said. "I mean it." But he sounded friendly. As if they were friends, teasing each other.

"You were just a kid, too," Clementine said. It was weird to think about. "I'm older now than you were then." They'd both been so young then. She went and got two of Dancy's wine coolers out of the fridge and a sippy cup with chocolate milk. Lucinda Larkin followed Cabell into her parents' bedroom, turned on the television, and popped
Beauty and the Beast
into the DVD player.

"Need a password," Cabell said. He had Uncle John's laptop out already.

"Dancy says it's zero-L-D-S-K-zero-zero-one underscore sixty-nine."

"Got it. What are we looking for?"

"I have this address she saved. It was in his history. She put it in Favorites. Okay. Here's the Web site. Sexy Russians. Sexy surfer girls. Sexy man-girls. That would be the best. You think he's into man-girls? Mail-order brides?"

"All of the above, no doubt," Cabell said. He took the laptop back. "Just a minute. Let me open up another window. Want to check my e-mail. Okay." He clicked back to the sexy Russian Web site. "If Dancy and your uncle get divorced, you think she'll get the house?"

"Cabell, she'll get everything she wants. Including the couch. You want to make her real happy? Let's go look on Craigslist to see if we can find her a new couch."

The next hour was the best hour of Clementine's life. Two months earlier she'd persuaded tenor David Ledbetter that it would be really, really special if they broke into the elementary school in the middle of the night. One thing had led to another and they'd lost their virginity together in the first-grade reading hut, and even though the whole thing had been kind of a catastrophe, ever since then David Ledbetter seemed to have this idea that in order to keep Clementine happy he had to come up with new and better locations. It was making Clementine crazy.

She and Cabell didn't even kiss. Nobody saved anybody's life, and Lucinda Larkin began to scream halfway through
Beauty and the Beast
because Clementine hadn't remembered to fast-forward through the scene where the singing candlestick did something scary that Lucinda Larkin had never been able to explain. They had to make her promise not to tell Dancy.

Clementine's choir group left for Hawaii a week later. Everyone said Cabell was going to get a job as a lifeguard and stick around at least through the end of the summer. Clementine sent a postcard to Lucinda Larkin. She sent one to Cabell, too. She went swimming. David Ledbetter gave her a lei. (No jokes, please.) When she came home a week later, Dancy had kicked Uncle John out of the house. Cabell had left the country. Her mother related all of this to her in the car on the way home from the airport.

Clementine said, "Cabell did what?"

"Nobody really knows," my mother said. "He's in Romania. Apparently he got offered some job with a conservation group tracking wolf populations."

"I thought he had a court date!" Clementine said. "Didn't he have to post bail or something? Can you just do that, just leave the country like that when you're wanted for stealing an octopus?"

"Why are you so all het up?" her mother said, cutting a look at her.

Clementine said nothing.

"Clementine," her mother said. "Someday you'll find someone who will make you happy. For a while. If you're lucky. But for the sake of my blood pressure, would you please stop mooning and making yourself miserable over a boy who can't even manage to take some dogs out for a walk without getting himself on Fox News!"

Clementine waited to see if she was finished. She wasn't. "Just look at your face! You look like someone ran over your daddy. You have been nothing but trouble since the day you were born. Don't give me that look! I swear if you decide to swallow a bottle of aspirin or run away to Atlanta or get knocked up by that peaky-faced tenor just to make some damn point, I
will
make your life a living hell."

"I can do what I want to!" Clementine said.

"Not in my house, you can't," her mother said. "And not in anybody else's house, either, not unless you want me to come after you with a two-by-four. You are going to finish your senior year, graduate with honors, and go off to Duke or Chapel Hill or Queens College or, God forbid, UNC-Wilmington, and have a good life. Are we clear on that?"

Clementine said nothing.

"I said, are we clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Clementine said.

Nobody heard anything from Cabell. Clementine broke up with David Ledbetter. She and Madeline and Grace, friends again, all went to prom stag. Everyone had boy trouble.

The Saturday before graduation, Clementine went over to help Dancy throw all of John Cleary's trash out. He was living down in Myrtle Beach with some girl who had three piercings in her lip and one bad-tempered pit bull. Dancy wouldn't let Lucinda Larkin sleep over there, which meant Clementine was babysitting almost every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night while Dancy waitressed at the Bad Oyster.

"I don't know what I'm going to do when you go off to Queens," Dancy said. "Lucinda Larkin is going to miss you so much! Aren't you, baby?"

"No," Lucinda Larkin said.

Clementine gave Lucinda Larkin a squeeze. "I'll come home every weekend," she said. "You know, to do laundry."

Dancy dumped out a box. "College essays," she said. "John used to brag about how he didn't write any of these. Just got his girlfriends to write them for him. It's like serial killers, how they keep souvenirs."

"At least you didn't meet him until later," Clementine said. "You didn't have to write about the theme of loneliness in the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Or compare and contrast Helen of Troy with Hester Prynne."

"Like giving birth to Lucinda Larkin was so much easier," Dancy said. She held up a photograph of John Cleary and some girl. Another photograph of John Cleary and another girl. "You know what I wish? I wish I'd never met him."

Clementine said, "Sorry about that."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry about my brother. That he ran off to Romania to count wolves. I kind of thought maybe one day you and he—"

Clementine waited. When Dancy didn't say anything else, she said, "You thought maybe one day what?"

Dancy said, "That he might ask you out. When you were out of high school. He said you were a funny kid. You made him laugh. That would have been nice, don't you think, if one day you and I had ended up being sisters-in-law?"

"That would have been weird," Clementine said. "At least it would have been weird if you were also still technically my aunt. We would have had a hard time explaining it all to Lucinda Larkin."

"You won't have a hard time meeting guys in college," Dancy said. "If I were a guy, I'd totally hook up with you."

"Thanks," Clementine said, not sure whether she ought to feel flattered or creeped out. "I feel the same way. Are you going to answer your phone?"

"It's either going to be the Bad Oyster or you-know-who. And if it's you-know-who calling to say he can't take you-know who for a couple of hours tomorrow, I'm going to you-know-what him with a set of nail clippers," Dancy said. "Hello?" Her voice changed immediately. "Cabell? Where are you?" Pause. "What time is it there? That late? Are you coming home? We miss you so much!" Her face changed. She looked over at Clementine, and Clementine made her face as blank as she possibly could.

Dancy said, "Married? For real? You're not pulling my leg?"

When she could speak, Clementine said, "Hey, Lucinda Larkin, you want an ice-cream sandwich? Let me go get you an ice-cream sandwich. You stay here with your momma."

She went into the bathroom first. Looked at herself in the mirror. She could still hear Dancy's voice, going on and on about something, and so she went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Stared into it, wondering why Dancy had so many grapefruits and hardly anything else. She bent over the kitchen sink and splashed water on the back of her neck. On her face. When she came back, Dancy was still talking and Lucinda Larkin said, "We don't have any more ice-cream sandwiches?"

Clementine said, "No. They're all gone. Sorry about that."

Lucinda Larkin said, "Can I sleep at your house tonight?"

"Not tonight," Clementine said. "Maybe tomorrow?"

Dancy was saying something. She said, "Hey, Cabell? Clementine's here. She's helping me pack up all John's crap. We were just talking about you." She put the phone down and said to Clementine, "He's married. He got married a week ago. He's going to live in a castle. It's like a Disney movie or something. Do you want to talk to him?"

Clementine said, "Tell him congratulations."

"Clementine says congratulations. He says thank you, Clementine. Here," Dancy said. "I'll put him on speakerphone."

Cabell was saying, " . . . because it's exactly like here. I mean, like home. Everybody knows everybody's business. There's the castle, where Lenuta and her sisters and her family live, and then there's the village, and then there's not much else. Hardly even a road. Lots of forest and mountain. So it's really hard for Lenuta and her sisters to meet guys, and all the locals are really superstitious, and it's not like Lenuta and her sisters can travel very far."

"Why not?" Dancy said.

"Two of her sisters are practically babies. Nine years old and eleven years old. They don't go to school. Lenuta home-schools them. Plus their family has got this whole deal going with the wolf population. They're really involved in habitat conservation."

"So will you come home for Christmas?" Dancy said.

"Can't," Cabell said. "You know. Lenuta's English isn't that great. She'd have a terrible time. You know how Mom gets. I'm going to give her some time to cool down. You know, about this marriage thing. Besides, I skipped out on bail. Not very cool, you know?"

"Hey, Cabell," Clementine said. She swallowed.

"Clementine! How's school?"

"I graduate next week," Clementine said. "Lucinda Larkin really misses you. She cries all the time."

"Tell Lucinda Larkin I'm not worth it," Cabell said. "Hey, Dancy? I'll call back later. I'm down at the townie bar and the last bus is about to head back up the mountain. There's no phone at the castle. Get this. I have to go all the way to Râmnicu Vâlcea if I want Internet access. It's like the Middle Ages here. I love it. I left a message on Mom's cell phone. Tell her I'll send an address where she can mail the rest of my clothes and things as soon as I can. Tell everyone not to worry about wedding gifts. Lenuta's got all this family silverware and monogrammed linen and stuff."

"Don't go yet!" Dancy said. "Cabell?"

"I think he hung up," Clementine said. She wanted to howl like a dog.

Dancy pushed a pile of her husband's clothes off the bed. She sat down and bounced. "This is so weird, all of this! I mean, here I am getting divorced and he goes and gets married? To some girl he just met? And he wants me to tell Mom and Dad? I can't stand it. Come here, baby," Dancy said. "Somebody give me a hug." She was laughing, but when Clementine looked she saw that Dancy was crying, too. "It's crazy, right?" Dancy said.

Clementine sat down beside Dancy and put her head in Dancy's lap. She couldn't help it. She sobbed. Dancy cried even harder.

Lucinda Larkin gave them a look like they were both crazy. She came over and hit Clementine on the nose with the remote. She wasn't at an age where she understood about sharing.

Twenty minutes, and Lee parks the van at the very top of Peaceable Mountain. There isn't much of a view. Just trees and more trees.

"Why are we stopping?" Czigany demands. "What's going on?"

Parci says, "Shut up, Czigany! You'll fail the Ordeal."

Bad gets out and slides open the passenger door and Nikki starts up the trailhead. During their planning sessions, Lee has described the place where she is to stop: the old stone wall, the historical marker, the tree struck by lightning where they will leave Czigany and Parci.

It takes Maureen and Bad and Lee a while longer to get there, guiding the blindfolded, handcuffed Khulhat sisters. "Watch out here," Lee says. "It goes down. Be careful where you put your foot. Okay, good job."

Parci keeps on laughing. Czigany is saying, "You have to call my mom. Come on, Lee. If we're not home by five she's going to go crazy. At least tell her where we are, okay?"

"Don't worry," Lee says. "It's going to be fine. We're almost there. You're almost done."

"It is not going to be okay," Czigany says. "Let me call my mother. So she can come get Parci? Bad, listen to me. If we're not home to take our pills, it's serious. Remember how Parci told you we both have a condition? It's like epilepsy. Take the blindfold off. I need to talk to you." Her hand clutches Lee's forearm with terrible strength, but Lee says nothing. She is sure she will find the marks of Czigany's fingers there later.