The Suburban Strange (5 page)

“What school did you go to last year? Suburban’s pretty cool. I went to Mount Rose for middle school, but not a lot of kids from there come here. The teacher looks so young! He probably just got out of college. He’s supposed to be really tough, though. Is he serious with those crocodile loafers?” The teacher’s shiny, wavy hair lay close to his head, reminding Celia of tortoiseshell. He had written
Mr. Sumeletso
on the board, and she wondered what country the name came from. His chinos were a little too big, and his knit tie looked like he had been wearing it since his own high school days. He smiled a little timidly as he mingled with the students.

Celia tried her hand at making conversation. “Some girl got stung by a bee in the parking lot before school and had an allergic reaction. Someone had an EpiPen for her, though. Mr. Sumeletso was there, and he helped her into the building when it was over.” That sparked Mariette’s interest, and they studied the teacher for another moment.

“I guess he looks nice enough.” Then Mariette moved on. “Have you ever gone rock climbing? I want to learn. Look—there’s a hummingbird!” Celia followed Mariette’s finger and saw the blur of a bird just outside the nearest window. They watched it for a few seconds before Mariette’s attention flitted away again. “What bus do you take?”

“I get a ride with a friend,” Celia said, but she realized that much of what Mariette said didn’t require a response, largely because she didn’t pause long enough to receive one.
At least there won’t be any awkward silences,
Celia thought. Nor did the commentary stop when Mr. Sumeletso began talking. Mariette scribbled things in the margin of her notebook for Celia to see.
He can’t be more than 24—he looks like he’s 17!
Celia tried to concentrate. Toward the end of the class Mr. Sumeletso announced he would be coaching the new swim teams, now that Suburban had a swimming pool, and he hoped they would consider trying out. Mariette scribbled
I can’t swim!
with a scaredy face, and Celia wrote
Me neither
next to it. They grinned at each other. Celia wondered if Regine would have wanted her to remain aloof, but she didn’t dwell on it.

AT THE END OF THE
day, trying to put her locker in some kind of order before she left, Celia thought she had done pretty well. The only life-threatening thing that had happened had been to someone else. She had made it through unscathed, and a few moments even had been pleasant. She wasn't completely sure how she would fit into the Suburban cosmos, but she had an idea. It came largely under the auspices of the Rosary, who had cornered the market on mysterious and sophisticated at Suburban. Throughout the day Celia had watched the first year students, as new to Suburban as she was. They faltered and shrank back, still looking for their allies. Surely she would have resembled them if it weren't for Regine and the Rosary.

Mariette was the only one so far who challenged Celia’s belief that everyone needed allies. This girl clearly navigated her day with a force of will that required no assistance. Mariette didn’t seem to need a team, and she didn’t care to wear the uniform of one, either. That made her fascinating to Celia. She remembered her panic in homeroom that morning, and knew she possessed nowhere near Mariette’s level of confidence. Celia wondered if she might learn things from Mariette, different things than she expected to learn from the Rosary.

Burdened with her bag of books, Celia went down to the lobby to meet Regine, but when she got there she saw only Liz by herself on the far wall. From across the lobby, Celia followed Liz’s gaze to an athletic guy in an orange T-shirt, and Celia recognized him as the jock who had flustered Liz in the parking lot that morning. He had no idea he was being watched. Then Regine arrived and Celia walked with her to meet Liz and wait for the others.

“I feel like I’ve been here a week already,” Liz said wearily.

“I’m freaking out—I got Mr. Sumeletso for Chem Two.” Regine turned to Celia to explain. “He just got here last year, and I had Mrs. Merino for Chem One, but everyone who had Mr. Sumeletso last year practically failed his class. I aced Chem One last year, but in Mr. Sumeletso’s first class today I felt like I had forgotten
all
of it.”

“I have him, too, for chemistry,” Celia said, watching Regine’s concern expand to include her. “He seemed nice.”

“Get ready. It’s going to be hard,” Regine warned.

“I’m glad I got through chemistry before he showed up,” Liz said. “How was the rest of your day?” she asked Celia.

“Good. Definitely a lot of homework.”

“When you get home, force yourself to start right away. Don’t wait until after dinner. It’s the best habit you can form,” Regine advised her. Liz nodded absently, but her eyes were across the lobby again.

When the boys arrived, they all repeated their smooth, purposeful walk out to the cars, and the group chatted for a moment before splitting up into vehicles. Brenden and Marco asked Celia about her day, but Ivo looked around idly, and Celia thought again he didn’t seem very interested in knowing her. After only one day she desperately wanted approval from all of them, but she told herself not to ask for too much too soon.

“You know, we have to get you a job,” Regine said as she pulled slowly out of the parking lot, in line behind the other two cars.

“A job?”

“Sure. We all have jobs. I work at a frame store. Marco helps with his mom’s tailoring business. Brenden works at a music store. Liz works at the library, and Ivo works at an interior design firm. You need to start earning money for college. And to pay for clothes and music, and Diaboliques.”

“Diaboliques?”

“It’s the club we go to on Fridays. You’ll love it.”

“Are your parents going to help you pay for college?”

“Sure, but it’s going to be expensive,” Regine explained. “If you want something you have to do the work to get it, right? I’ve saved five thousand dollars over the last two years for school.”

“Wow.” Celia was impressed. “I wonder where I can find a job.”

“We can go look this weekend. No tacky clothing stores, and no food service,” Regine said firmly. “Maybe you could work at an art supply store?”

Celia arrived home feeling as if she were back from a long-distance trip. She wondered if the others truly were getting straight to work on their assignments before dinner, but she decided to follow Regine’s instructions, because it didn’t seem like a bad idea. As she dug into her pile of books, her thoughts were never far from the Rosary and how they had transformed her high school experience in a single day.

When she went downstairs for dinner, Celia again saw the look that had been in her mother’s eyes ever since she had started her transformation. It was a look that said,
I’m glad you’ve finally started to pay attention to your appearance, and maybe what you’ve chosen isn’t terrible, but it isn’t what I had in mind, either.
But it wasn’t lost on Celia that her mother never had asked her to justify her decisions.

“How was your first day?” her mother asked. “Tell me all about it.”

“I don’t even know where to begin.” Celia exhaled. “One thing I know for sure: I was a different person yesterday.”

2. SONGS TO LEARN AND SING

C
ELIA QUICKLY CAME TO
enjoy the morning and afternoon rituals of the Rosary’s funereal procession. “What’s this?” she asked each morning.
“Some Great Reward,”
Regine would answer, or “Clan of Xymox.” Celia’s love affair continued to grow with this new musical landscape that had been seemingly just beyond her awareness. Every song was another dot on the map. Sometimes during the first week she looked around at her classmates, thinking they didn’t know such darkly beautiful things, and they probably wouldn’t appreciate them if they did.

She got along well enough with her classmates, but for the most part they left her alone. At school personas and reputations solidified very quickly, and Celia was gratified to be identified as the newest member of the exotic upper-class clique. Her real joy came from the Rosary and from knowing that throughout the day she would come in contact with one or more of these people with whom she dared to hope she was becoming friends. They would wave to her when they crossed paths in the hall, which felt like a sunbeam to Celia. She would join them in the library to study, finally understanding what it was like to be on the inside of a circle. And she would sit among them at lunch, drinking in their conversations and laughing at their jokes. Half an hour later, in her next class, the buzz still would be there. Celia didn’t care if she didn’t make a single other friend at Suburban, and she didn’t try.

The only exception was Mariette, who was almost relentlessly friendly, and whom it was impossible for her to dislike. Celia marveled that Mariette didn’t get in trouble with Mr. Sumeletso, as often as she whispered and jotted random notes during class.
Have you ever had fondue?
And there were times Mariette just flat out ignored the lesson. On the second day Celia had noticed her drawing an elaborate diagram of the sophomore hallway and listing students’ names next to their lockers from memory. Celia was concerned Mariette was a little crazy, but over and above that, she was concerned Mariette wouldn’t be a good lab partner because she didn’t pay enough attention.

Friday was their first experiment, and Celia was nervous as she walked through the science wing. She fully expected to have to keep Mariette focused and to ensure the accuracy of their experiment. Lost in her thoughts, Celia didn’t notice right away that a tiny girl had stopped by a window ahead of her. At first Celia thought the girl was looking outside, but her head was down and she supported herself with her hand on the sill.

On the other side of the hall a boy had noticed the girl, too, and changed course to approach her. “Hey, Lacie, are you okay?” Lacie shook her head and promptly fainted. Her books slid across the floor, and passing students started and yelped. The boy dropped to his knees and hunched over Lacie, taking her wrist.

Celia kept walking toward the scene. She guessed the Rosary would have stopped and waited as though the girl were another obstruction to be cleared, like Elsie in the parking lot on the first day of school. But Celia wanted to try to help. As she neared Lacie on the floor, Celia recognized the boy who knelt next to her. She should have sooner, since he was wearing an orange hoodie. It was the jock she had seen in the parking lot—the same jock who had helped Elsie and confounded Liz. His backpack lay on the floor next to him, with a row of patches with different symbols of swimmers sewn onto the canvas, and Celia guessed he was a lifeguard. He had bent his ear close to Lacie’s mouth, and now he pinched her nose carefully between his thumb and forefinger with one hand and pulled her mouth open with the other.

The commotion in the hall had brought Mr. Sumeletso out of his classroom. He saw Lacie in a heap and ran over. “What happened?”

“She just fainted.” The jock looked up at him. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Is she breathing?”

“I think so.”

“Then you don’t need to give her mouth-to-mouth.” Mr. Sumeletso stared at Lacie for a moment, then turned to the students who lingered around them. “Go to class!” He saw Celia and said, “Tell everyone I’ll be back in a few minutes. Set up for the experiment.”

Celia nodded and continued to the classroom door. Before she went in she looked back and saw that Lacie had regained consciousness. The jock helped her up, and Mr. Sumeletso gathered her books and accompanied them down the hall.

What is going on around here?
Celia thought. She went into the lab, but she didn’t have the nerve to raise her voice and give everyone Mr. Sumeletso’s instructions. Celia told Mariette, then stood back as her lab partner took charge and spread the information around the room.

“Where did Mr. S. go?” Mariette asked her.

“Some girl passed out, just down the hall,” Celia told her. “That’s the second time something completely random has happened, and we’ve only been here four days. Is this place cursed?”

Mariette had been grabbing graduated cylinders and clamps off shelves, but she turned sharply. “What did you say?”

“I mean, for two girls to get hurt—to be injured somehow—within four days, that’s strange, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is,” Mariette said slowly. It was the first time Celia had seen her come to a complete stop since they had met. But in a matter of seconds, the familiar, bubbly Mariette returned. “C’mon, we have to get started.” And just as Celia had feared, Mariette acted as though they were baking a cake, the way she casually rattled off the substances they would need and fired up a Bunsen burner. Celia watched her closely, but for all her apparent carelessness, Mariette wasn’t making any mistakes. In fact, it was Mariette who noticed the smaller details and even Celia’s minor errors. As Mariette was elaborating about her attempts to cultivate a bonsai tree, she broke off midsentence to ask, “Is that too full?” And when Celia double-checked, it was, if only slightly. “I don’t think that’s quite hot enough,” Mariette suggested another time, and the thermometer bore her out before she resumed a monologue about riding the bus.

By the time Mr. Sumeletso returned, they were well along. When it came time to measure the next substance, Mariette poured it quickly and judged the amount with a quick glance. “Just a little more,” she murmured, and tapped a small amount in. When Mariette went to put the jar away, Celia quickly checked the quantity in the vial but found it to be exactly right.

“Have you done chemistry before?” she asked when Mariette returned.

“Not like this,” Mariette said guilelessly. “I made a volcano out of vinegar and baking soda for a science fair once. Does that count?”

They finished their lab early and Mr. Sumeletso complimented them on the precision of their results. Celia was thrilled. Apparently her lab partner was a natural, and that was enough to remove any doubts she’d had before the experiment.