PAY ATTENTION. WATCH CAREFULLY, NOW. LOOK AT the sidewalk, there. See that girl-the one with the bright red hair, overstuffed backpack, and aura of grumpiness? That's Charlotte Mielswetzski. (Say it with me: Meals-wet-ski. Got it? If not, say it again: Meals. Wet. Ski. There. You thought your name was bad?) And something extraordinary is about to happen to her.
No, the extraordinary event will not be related to that man watching her behind the oak tree… that oddly pale, strangely thin, freakishly tall, yellow-eyed, bald-headed man in the tuxedo. (And while we're at it, why on Earth would anyone be wearing a tuxedo at four o'clock on an unseasonably warm October afternoon? And if you are going to wear such an outfit at such a time on such a day, surely it is not because you are going to hide behind oak trees to spy on small, pale, freckled thirteen-year-old redheaded girls with bulging backpacks, is it? Because that would be really strange.) But regardless, it's not about him, not yet. He will come later. Forget him. Focus on Charlotte. Charlotte is walking home from school, and she is in a very bad mood.
Of course, this has all already happened, there is nothing we can do about any of it now, alas – so if we're to be accurate, we should say: Charlotte was walking home from school in a very bad mood while the four-o'clock sun cast long shadows over the sidewalk, entirely unaware of the white-skinned, yellow-eyed man in the tuxedo watching her from behind the oak tree.
And no, the bad mood was not, in itself, extraordinary. At the time you could often find Charlotte with a black cloud hanging over her head-though a purely metaphorical one-what with the new school year and the piles of homework and the creepy new English teacher and the tremendously banal classmates, and today her mood was even worse than usual, given that the cast list for the school play had been posted and her name was distinctly not on it and she hadn't been planning on trying out for the stupid thing because she knew she wouldn't get cast and then she did try out, and see? So if Charlotte seemed extremely grumpy-if she was, in fact, muttering to herself darkly-you would have to forgive her. As for the dark mutterings, they would have been hard to decipher if you had been, say, hiding behind a tree spying on her, but we know they went something like this:
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Charlotte who suffered from a terrible curse. She didn't know how or why she'd been cursed, but she did know that nothing good ever, ever, ever happened to her."
You get the point. So anyway, there she was, walking along in an ordinary way, muttering to herself about curses, with her bursting backpack and her metaphorical black cloud and her ordinary bad mood-when something extraordinary happened.
A kitten appeared in front of her.
Not poof!-not like that. Nothing magical at all. Quite ordinary, in fact. A normal chain of events, just what you would expect with a sudden appearance of a kitten. There was this high-pitched squeaking from the bushes and then this flurry of motion, and just as Charlotte was processing these events, suddenly there-directly in her path, right in her shadow, in fact- stood a blue-eyed gray and white kitten.
Charlotte stopped. The kitten stared at Charlotte.
Charlotte stared at the kitten. The kitten cocked its head. "Hi!" said Charlotte, her green eyes softening. "Meow," said the kitten.
And Charlotte, being of sound mind, reached down and petted the kitten. She scratched it under its chin, then behind the ears for good measure, and then she started on her way home.
"Bye, kitty" called Charlotte.
"Meow!" said the kitten. And the next thing Charlotte knew, the kitten was standing in front of her again, blocking her path and meowing rather insistently.
"Now, kitty" said Charlotte, "I have to go home. Do you have any idea how much homework I have? You should go home too."
The kitten looked at her blankly. Charlotte began to walk on, but once again the kitten ran up and stood in front of her. Charlotte tilted her head and considered. The kitten was awfully skinny.
"Do you have a home?" asked Charlotte uncertainly. "Meow," said the kitten.
That seemed like a no. Charlotte regarded the kitten frankly. The kitten, in turn, regarded her. There seemed to be only one thing to do.
"Would you like to come home with me?" asked Charlotte.
"Meow," said the kitten.
So that was that. Charlotte picked up the blue-eyed gray and white kitten, tucked it under her thin, pale, freckly arm, and headed home, suddenly feeling that the world was perhaps not so tiresome, if you only looked hard enough.
Now, stray kittens are not, in themselves, an extraordinary phenomenon. And given events that were to follow, finding one would seem positively mundane. But if you were Charlotte, and you had been feeling that life was some cosmic joke that had no punch line, and in the space of a moment you had gone from being Charlotte-without-a-kitten to being Charlotte-with-a-kitten, you too would have found it nothing short of remarkable. (Even if you did not notice that as soon as you picked up the kitten, the man in the inappropriate tuxedo shook his head slowly and skulked off into the shadows.)
When Charlotte arrived home, she found her parents seated in the kitchen, talking. This was not unusual; Charlotte's father taught at the high school and was often home when she got there, and her mother worked from an office on the second floor of the Mielswetzski house for half of the week. Charlotte's mother was a child psychologist who wrote books on adolescence and was very concerned with Charlotte's well-being. This was not always as advantageous as it sounds.
For instance, just last week Charlotte had come home from school to find her mother perched all too casually in the kitchen, pretending she was not, in fact, waiting for Charlotte. But she totally was. Charlotte knew the signs; her mother was not casual about anything.
That day the topic of conversation was, not surprisingly, Charlotte and her attitude. Said topic was a particular favorite of Charlotte's mom's; no one in the history of the world ever liked to talk about anything as much as Charlotte's mom liked to talk about Charlotte's attitude. Charlotte thought her mother should be given some kind of plaque or something, or maybe there should be a statue-except the statue would probably want to talk about Charlotte's attitude too.
So anyway, when Charlotte got home from school that day, her mother just happened to be sitting in the kitchen reading, and the kitchen was not really that comfortable a place to be reading, but that's beside the point. And when her mother offered to make her a snack, Charlotte thought for a moment about pretending she had somewhere else to be, but she knew the best thing to do would be to let her make the snack and get this over with.
"So, Char…," her mother said casually, unscrewing the peanut butter lid. "I hear the school play auditions are coming up…"
How did she possibly hear that? Charlotte wondered. One thing about her mother is she has way too many friends.
"Are you thinking of auditioning?" she asked, opening the box of crackers.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Hi, Mom, have we met?”
"Because I thought maybe you should," she said, spreading the peanut butter on the crackers. "You used to love acting when you were little." She smiled and brought Charlotte the plate.
Charlotte shrugged. "Aw, Mom, I'd never get in."
"Char, honey, how would you know unless you tried?" she said, sitting down opposite her daughter. "You should try!"
"I just know, Mom," she grumbled, tossing her long hair. It was true. In elementary school Charlotte had loved drama class, had loved being in the school plays, and had even gone to a summer day camp where they learned some of the songs from Annie. And then she got to middle school and auditioned for the play and the choir and tried out for the softball and gymnastics teams and didn't get in any of them. That was enough of that. Charlotte could see very quickly where the bread was buttered; she might be a loser, but she was no idiot. The world gave you enough disappointment without actually going out and asking for it.
"I know you're upset about not getting in before," her mom continued, "but you were a sixth grader then, and they rarely cast sixth graders. You're in eighth grade now. You should try. What's the harm in trying?"
Charlotte shrugged.
"Honey"-Mrs. Mielswetzski leaned in and grabbed Charlotte's hands-"if only you could see what I see! You're so bright and talented. You can do whatever you set your mind on doing. The whole world is your oyster."
Charlotte sighed inwardly. She knew her mother was serious when she started referring to shellfish. What did that mean, anyway? What's so great about the world being your oyster? Does that mean it's really hard to open, and when you do, you have something slimy and gross on the inside?
"Char, I just wish, sometimes… that you'd try a little harder. In everything. I feel like you're always running away from things. I wish you'd live your life, really go out there and live it. All your teachers say you have so much potential. If you'd just… use it."
Charlotte had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Teachers loved to say people had potential; that's what teachers did to keep themselves from getting canned. What were they supposed to say-I'm sorry, your kid has no promise whatsoever? She's utterly mediocre in every way?
"It would be fun to be in a play, wouldn't it?" Mrs. Mielswetzski continued. "You could meet some new people."
Charlotte grimaced. Meeting new people had been another one of her mother's favorite conversation topics ever since Charlotte's best friend, Caitlin, moved to Russia over the summer and left Charlotte and their friend Maddy behind. That's right, Russia. Caitlin's parents were English-as-a-second-language teachers, and they decided to take two-year jobs teaching English to Russian orphans, or some absurd thing like that. Who does that? And even if you do do that, can't you teach English to orphans in a place that has e-mail?
Well anyway, "meeting new people" was often a subset of "trying harder" and "getting involved" and "having a better attitude," and frankly Charlotte was tired of it all. She'd been hearing about this so much that she would do anything to stop it. Anything.
"Okay, Mom."
"What?" her mother started.
"Okay… I'll audition."
Mrs. Mielswetzski clasped her hands together. "Oh, Charlotte, that's wonderful! You'll have so much fun!"
She was actually beaming. Charlotte hadn't seen her look that happy in months. And something about the particular light emanating from her mother's face warmed Charlotte, and she felt suddenly different about the world. Yes, she would have fun! Yes, she could try! For the world was a place where you put yourself out there, where you tried things, and even if your best friend since you were four had just moved to the former Soviet Union, there were all kinds of people whose parents didn't want to teach orphans, and maybe they were worth meeting.
That mood lasted until Charlotte saw the cast list, on which her name was very distinctly absent and the names of some of her more banal classmates were very distinctly present, and Charlotte realized that she had been duped, and she was never ever going to put herself out there again, never going to "try harder," never going to "improve her attitude," and certainly never ever going to "meet new people." Why would she want to meet new people when the people she already knew were asking her to humiliate herself? So she had planned to tell her mother when she got home from school on this day- that, and that this was all her mother's fault and she was never listening to her ever, ever again.
But of course she forgot all of that as soon as she picked up the kitten, and when she saw her parents in the kitchen, instead of wanting to yell or flee, she was absolutely delighted-for she could tell them about the world and all its extraordinary kittenesque things. She did not know that they had been waiting for her for quite some time because they, too, had news-news that they promptly forgot when they saw the gray and white creature in their daughter's arms.
"Oh!" said her mother.
"Oh!" said her father.
"She followed me home," said Charlotte.
"Well, she probably belongs to someone," said her mother.
"Almost certainly," said her father.
"Look at her fur! It's all dirty," said Charlotte.
"We'll put up signs," said her mother.
"And put a classified in the paper," said her father.
"Look how skinny she is," said Charlotte.
"She might have worms," said her mother.
"She might have rabies," said her father.
"Well, we should take her to the vet," said Charlotte.
"Yes, we should!" said her mother.
"Right away," said her father.
While Mr. Mielswetzski called the vet and then checked the newspaper classifieds, and Mrs. Mielswetzski called the lost and found at the Humane Society-for these are steps everyone should take when finding a kitten, because someone may be missing it very much-Charlotte opened a can of tuna for her new friend.
"What's your name?" asked Charlotte.
"Meow," said the kitten.
"Are you a girl kitten or a boy kitten?" asked Charlotte.
"Meow," said the kitten.
"Do you want to go to the vet?"
"Meow," said the kitten.
The vet could see them right away, so the Mielswetzskis piled into the car. It was not an hour later that Charlotte found that her kitten was a girl (Charlotte had thought so), did not have rabies (good), did have worms (nothing some pills wouldn't take care of), was certainly underfed (poor kitty), and was likely a stray. They should put up signs and put an ad in the newspaper, but if no one claimed the kitten for one month, she would be an official member of the family.
Charlotte was not worried. They could put up all the signs and take out all the ads they wanted. The kitten had chosen her-it was fate, and Charlotte knew it. Charlotte might not be good for choirs or plays or school or sports or good attitudes or new people, but she knew that she was good for kittens. And kittens were most certainly good for Charlotte.
Mr. and Mrs. Mielswetzski were good parents and good people, and while perhaps they would not have thought to go out and get themselves a cat- the time was never quite right, maybe next year, maybe for Christmas, it's important not to rush into anything-if one were to fall into their laps, they would certainly let it stay there.
"She is awfully cute," said Charlotte's father on the way home from the vet.
"We better not get too attached," said her mother.
"But it would sure be nice," said her father.
"Well, there's no doubt about that," said her mother. "We should pick up some supplies," said her father.
"Oh, yes," said her mother. "The cat will need supplies."
And pretty soon the Mielswetzskis had not only a cat, but two ceramic cat dishes, a bag of premium kitten food, one scratching post, some clumping litter, a litter box with a hood, assorted balls and accoutrements, three toy mice, two boxes of catnip, and one sorely needed soft-bristled brush.
"What are you going to call her?" asked her father, putting the bags in the car.
"At least until she's claimed," said her mother, getting into the front seat.
"Bartholomew," said Charlotte.
It just came out of her mouth -"Bartholomew" – but maybe that, too, was fate. Because Bartholomew is an excellent name for a cat, even if the cat is a girl cat and Bartholomew is a boy's name. Because cats need names, even if you are going to pretend the cat is temporary (when you know it is not). Because you can shorten it to Mew, which is really the most fabulous nickname for a cat ever. And because Bartholomew was currently curled up fast asleep on Charlotte's lap.
"Once upon a time there was a cat with no home," Charlotte whispered to Mew. "And there was a girl with a home but no cat. But then the cat found the girl, and the girl took the cat to her home, and then they moved to Prague together and opened a coffee shop and lived happily ever after."
But Bartholomew was not the only surprise in store for Charlotte that day. At dinner that night- take-out Chinese food from the restaurant next to the pet store-Mrs. Mielswetzski suddenly slapped her forehead.
"Oh!" she said, looking at her husband.
"Oh!" said Mr. Mielswetzski, looking at his wife. "We completely forgot."
"In all the excitement!"
"We have news."
"Good news!"
"At least we hope you think it's good news," said Mrs. Mielswetzski.
"I'm sure she will," said Mr. Mielswetzski.
"Well, you never know"
"Oh, she'll be thrilled!"
Charlotte waited. It often took her parents some time to get to the point. Sometimes she thought that they were actually one person who had been divided into male and female parts by a mad scientist. Anyway, she was in no hurry; her parents' idea of good news did not quite match her own-it tended to involve an outing to History Days or a bout of family therapy. Besides, no news could possibly be better than the news currently curled up on the bench right next to her. Charlotte let her hand rest on Mew's softly breathing belly.
"Well," said Mrs. Mielswetzski, "I've been talking to Uncle John…"
Charlotte perked up. Uncle John and Aunt Suzanne lived in London with their son, Zachary, who was Charlotte's age. The Millers had all come over one summer when Charlotte was six- Charlotte had vague memories of kicking around a soccer ball with her cousin, who kept insisting on calling it a football, and at the time she had thought he was very, very stupid. In the last couple of years Charlotte had repeatedly tried to convince her parents to go to London to visit them-not that she was desperate to visit family she barely remembered, but she was quite interested in going to England. The Mielswetzskis kept saying they might go sometime, when the time was right, maybe next year, maybe for Christmas. Charlotte almost had them convinced this summer, but then Aunt Suzanne's mother died, and Charlotte's mother and father said it wouldn't be right. Charlotte wanted to go to London so badly-life certainly couldn't be so banal in London. She had thought maybe she could even spend a year there sometime, and then she would "try harder" and "meet new people" and "have a better attitude." Someday she was going to live there and take photography lessons; her mother said she'd send her to photography lessons right where they were. That totally missed the point. London sounded like the coolest place in the world-though, let's face it, anything for Charlotte would have been better than where she was.
"Well," Charlotte's mother smiled, "Uncle John is going to be transferred back here in the winter! They're going to live right near us. The whole family."
Charlotte tried to mask her disappointment. So much for her glamorous new life abroad. She scratched Mew's ears comfortingly.
"But that's not all," her mother said. "Uncle John and Aunt Suzanne didn't want Zachary to have to start at a new school in the winter. So…" She held out her hands expansively "Your cousin is going to come live with us. Isn't that great?"
Charlotte blinked. Great wasn't quite the word. Bad wasn't the word either, by any means. It was neither great nor bad, it was entirely without greatness or badness. It was neutral. It simply was. Like school lunch or piano lessons, her cousin's impending arrival seemed to be just a fact of life, one more ordinary thing in what had been-until just that afternoon-an exasperatingly ordinary life.
But Charlotte tried to be enthusiastic for the sake of her mother, and her father smiled at her and said, "See? I knew she'd be delighted." And her mother beamed and said, "Oh, honey. It will be like you have a brother!" And Charlotte smiled and did not say a word, not a word; everything she had to say was expressed by her hand on her kitten's gently humming back.
So all was well in the Mielswetzski house. Charlotte was happy, for the first time in months, and her parents were happy too. They believed everything that they had said to their daughter about Uncle John's transfer and about the reasons for Zachary's sudden move. They had no reason not to; the story certainly made sense. But the fact is, Uncle John had not quite been honest with his sister. He was going to be transferred in the winter, yes, and the whole family would be moving, yes. But he did not mention that he had actually requested the transfer and that winter was the soonest he could get it. He did not mention that the whole reason for the transfer was to move his son away, as soon as possible, and the fact that he was being abruptly taken out of his school and shipped off to America had nothing to do with his education. So Mr. and Mrs. Mielswetzski could not be blamed at all-the liar here was Uncle John. But you must not be too hard on him. He was desperate.
CHARLOTTE WAS ONE MONTH INTO THE SCHOOL YEAR at Hartnett Preparatory School, and thus far the year had proved to be just like all the other years, except more so. Eight of the girls in her class, whose names all began with A, had left for the summer as brunettes and had come back as blondes. They paraded through the hallways like an eerie airhead cult, and just as their hair had lightened, they seemed to have faded a little – they had lost form, character, color, as if their very atoms had spread out and could barely be distinguished from the walls around them. Charlotte wondered if they had all fallen victim to some elaborate brainwashing scheme. She didn't know whether to feel proud that she had escaped that fate or insulted that the brainwasher didn't want her.
But the girls' transformation was far overshadowed by that of identical twins Lewis and Larry Larson, who had gone to fat camp and come back shadows of their former selves. The change had thrown all of the rest of the boys into a strange predicament- since Lewis and Larry had once been tremendously fat, the other boys had, in their banal way, believed the twins should be teased, but since Lewis and Larry were no longer fat, the boys could find nothing to tease them about. This quandary had thrown the eighth-grade males into a state of dull disquiet as they pondered the nebulous nature of the universe.
So the girls had faded and the boys were in a state of constant melancholic unease, and thus there spread a pall over the entire eighth grade.
All the teachers noticed it. Nobody shouted out the answers in class anymore, nobody even raised his hand. Attempts at discussion resulted in vast silences; lectures were greeted with glassy-eyed stares. The most vibrant and popular students seemed to be living inside a gigantic ball of existential goo.
One by one the teachers changed their approach. Even the most mild mannered of them became fierce and confrontational, sending an unrelenting barrage of questions into the classroom, picking out defenseless students and daring them not to answer.
Charlotte found it all extremely annoying. She had been able to get through her school years without attracting attention either way thus far. She, as a practice, raised her hand in class once a week- enough so the teachers didn't get suspicious that she wasn't doing the work, but not so much that they might actually expect anything of her. It was a delicate balance.
Charlotte did a good portion of her schoolwork usually, whatever was required to keep her out of trouble, which was all she really cared about. Last night, of course, Charlotte hadn't done a lick of work because of all the kitten-related excitement. There'd been so much to do! She'd had to call her friend Maddy and take pictures to send to Caitlin (which would probably arrive next summer), and then she'd had to watch the kitten as she played with some invisible something that went darting all around the living room, and then she'd had to provide a lap for Mew to snooze on once all that darting around was done. It was a lot of responsibility and did not leave time for doing algebra equations or reading about the causes of World War I. So Charlotte simply approached her teachers and told them the truth.
"Mr. Crapf," she told her math teacher, "I didn't do the homework last night. My mom sprained her ankle and we took her to the emergency room and it took forever, and by the time we got home, it was really late and I had to help Mom."
"Your poor mother!" said Mr. Crapf. "Is she all right?"
"Yeah. She's elevating it. It should be much better in a few days."
"Well, tell her to feel better. You can make up the assignment when you have time."
"Oh, of course! Thanks a lot!"
As for history, Ms. Bristol-Lee had taken to giving them pop quizzes, which seemed awfully un-American to Charlotte. So Charlotte turned the quiz over and wrote a long letter to Ms. Bristol-Lee about how her parents were fighting and it was a really hard time for her right now and she just wasn't able to focus on her reading, but she was trying, she was trying really hard, and she was seeing a counselor to help her through this difficult time, but reading about world war was more than she could take right now
Okay, so not the truth, exactly. To Charlotte, truth was a flexible instrument, one that could readily be shaped to fit her needs. Charlotte may not have been, in her own estimation, good for much else, but she could talk her way out of any situation. It was a useful skill in a world that was constantly expecting more out of you than you wanted to give. And usually a good story was so much more interesting than the truth.
As for her classmates, Charlotte had been cutting an even wider swath around them than usual this year. Charlotte did not think much of existential angst or artificial hair color. She would certainly never alter her own hair; Charlotte was not one of those redheaded heroines who bemoaned her fiery locks. She had no desire to fake blond highlights or, as her mother's stylist had suggested, tone down her color with some nutmeg shades. If you were to ask Charlotte for one adjective with which to describe herself, she would say, "Redhead." And that was that.
She was a redhead, and she did not truck with teasing boys or tinting girls. She and her friends could not be bothered with social structure; they had their own pursuits – Caitlin (when she was still there) had her music, Maddy had her straight A's, and Charlotte had her hair.
In a week Charlotte would also have a cousin from England, which would be interesting. Zachary was black, too, and that would confuse everyone for a while, as Charlotte was not. ("Is he adopted?" people would always ask when they saw pictures. No, silly. Her uncle had married a black woman, see?) And perhaps a new arrival with a British accent would give the blond girls something to focus their attention on, and maybe then their molecules would inch back together and they might be slightly less boring.
Or so Charlotte was thinking while sitting through English class at the end of the school day. English had once been Charlotte's favorite subject (back when she had such a thing); she read quickly, actually liked learning vocabulary words, and had a peculiar fondness for rules of grammar and usage. It made a good defense against teasing-when Chris Shapiro would tell her that when you had red hair, it meant you were part mutant, she would simply tell him his modifier was dangling and would stalk away, leaving him looking quite bewildered. Plus she just loved stories. They were always full of strange and interesting worlds, so far away from the one she lived in. Charlotte could not help but feel that the great tragedy of her life was that it would make an absolutely terrible story. What, then, was the point? Once upon a time there was a girl named Charlotte. The end. She had to make the rest of the stuff up to make the story any good.
Anyway, her English teacher, Mrs. Dinglish, had retired. Charlotte had raised her hand many times a week for Mrs. Dinglish. Her replacement was Mr. Metos, and Charlotte couldn't help but think there was something funny about him. He was the tallest man she'd ever seen; she came up to about his belly button (not that that said much- Charlotte was still waiting for her growth spurt, and she was beginning to think it would never come). And he was really pale and thin, paler than Charlotte even, with hair so black it was blue. He always had the shades drawn in class, and she never saw him eat anything in the cafeteria. Charlotte thought he was probably a vampire-while she'd never actually seen anyone who drank blood, she was sure if she had, that person would certainly have looked like Mr. Metos. Charlotte took to covering her neck with her hands so he wouldn't get any ideas.
Mr. Metos certainly took to the new teaching style with the glee of an unabashed bloodsucker, and most of the students found that during his classes their general torpor was mixed with an overriding feeling of terror.
But, for the time being, Charlotte could relax a little bit; they were doing a unit on Greek myths, and Charlotte was rather knowledgeable about that subject. She hadn't had to do the readings all week. She loved Greek myths; they were all such good stories. When she was young, she had had a big atlas-size book of them that she read again and again. She would lay the book flat on the ground and trace over the illustrations with her fingers. She could still see the pictures when she closed her eyes-of poor vain Arachne, who was turned into a spider by Athena, crawling across the tapestry that had offended the goddess; of foolish Pandora, who opened the box that let all the world's evils out; of Perseus flying away triumphantly with the Gorgon's head. The only ones she hadn't liked were the pictures from the stories about the underworld-grim Hades opening up the earth and dragging beautiful Persephone down to the shadows; the endless, dark landscape of the underworld, dotted with drooping trees; the dour king and reluctant queen standing like grieving stone in the cold, colorless cave of a lair, with their three-headed dog, Cerberus, grimacing awfully (with one of his heads, anyway).
The underworld, appropriately enough, was the topic of the day's class. Charlotte thought Mr. Metos looked like he would know a lot about it. Too bad there were no vampires in Greek mythology, at least as far as she knew.
"The underworld," he said, "is ruled by Zeus's brother Hades. When the Olympians began to reign, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon divided up the world. Zeus became the lord of the sky; Poseidon, the water; and Hades got the realm of the dead, which is sometimes called Hades as well. No one knows where the underworld is-some say it's over the edge of the world, others say it lies just beneath us and there are secret entrances everywhere.
Now, what do we know about the underworld?" Mr. Metos' eyes soared about the room for a moment, then quickly alighted on prey-in this case, the unfortunate Brad. Mr. Metos stared at him, waiting.
"Brad?" he prompted. "What do we know about Hades?"
"Um… it's hot," said Brad meekly.
Wrong, thought Charlotte.
"Wrong," said Mr. Metos. "Hades is nothing like the hell we know and love. So when someone says something is hotter than Hades, that's really not saying much. This gets to my next question. Who goes to Hades?… Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth- a natural blonde-was one of those students who had gotten by her entire school career without ever saying a word, so this year whenever she was called on, she turned a most curious shade of magenta. "Ummm," she whispered, "bad people?"
Wrong, thought Charlotte.
"Wrong," said Mr. Metos. "Everyone goes to the underworld after death. In Greek mythology there is no heaven or hell. Everyone goes to the same place. Once there, great heroes are led to the Elysian fields, great villains are doomed to various kinds of torment. But most of us just sort of hang out in the world of the shadows. What happens when you die, does anyone know? Enid?"
"You go to heaven!" squeaked Enid.
Charlotte rolled her eyes.
"I mean in Greek mythology Enid," said Mr. Metos drily. "Do you know?"
Enid knit her eyebrows together uncomprehendingly and shook her head.
"When you die, the messenger god Hermes leads your spirit into the underworld. There the ferryman, Charon, takes you across into the world of the dead-if you can pay. The Greeks always buried their dead with a coin under their tongue. If you don't have a coin, you have to find the paupers' entrance into Hades. Once you're taken across, you're never to return."
And so he went on, talking of King Hades himself and of the underworld, while Charlotte's mind drifted a little, floating around in space until it ended up somewhere very near her kitten, where it stayed for some time.
"Charlotte?" Mr. Metos's voice cut through her reverie. Charlotte jumped.
"Huh?"
"Ms. Mielswetzski," he said languidly, "do you know how Queen Persephone came to live in the underworld?"
Charlotte closed her eyes and opened them again. She took a deep breath. She did know, and she would be able to tell the whole class if only Mr. Metos would stop looking at her. "Hades, um, kidnapped Persephone from Earth," she said quietly. "He opened up the ground and just took her."
Mr. Metos smiled. It was a strange sort of smile, one that only his mouth participated in. His eyes still looked stern. "And then what happened?"
"Well"- Charlotte gulped-"her mom was a goddess. The goddess of the harvest."
"Demeter. Yes. Keep going, Charlotte."
“And, um, she was so sad about her daughter that she wouldn't let any grain grow, so the people starved. And so Zeus told Hades he'd have to let Persephone go. But Hades tricked Persephone into eating some pomegranate seeds, so she had to stay."
"That's right. Once you've eaten the food of the dead, you are bound to the underworld. But Zeus didn't want the people to starve. So he worked out a compromise. For six months Persephone would stay on Earth with her mother, and since her mother was happy, the earth would bloom. And for six months Persephone has to live in the underworld, and during that time nothing grows on Earth. That is why we have seasons." He rubbed his hands together, then nodded toward Charlotte. "Very good," he said. Then he turned away. "Now, there are several stories of mortals going into the underworld and coming out again. It's a bit of a rite of passage in epic tales. Can anyone name one? Eric?"
Charlotte exhaled deeply. She hadn't spoken so much in this class all year, and she hoped she would not have to again. All of the kids were looking at her like she was some kind of redheaded supergeek. It wasn't like that at all; she was just a redhead who'd had a book when she was a kid. Jeez.
That night Charlotte had the strangest dream. She was running through a field by herself, on the most beautiful day the world had ever made. And then suddenly she heard a loud cracking sound. It went on and on. And then the earth began to open. A man appeared in front of Charlotte- or something very like a man- a very tall, thin man in a tuxedo, with yellow eyes and white skin. And he lunged toward Charlotte and she started to run, but everywhere she went, the earth opened up in front of her. And then there was nowhere left to run. The man-like man grabbed her and jumped into the great, dank chasm. And then she was falling, and she heard a rumbling, and the earth closed up, and all was dark.
When she woke up, she said, "That was the strangest dream."
"Meow," said the kitten. For the next week the Mielswetzskis busied themselves with preparing for Zachary's arrival. Mrs. Mielswetzski spent several days de-girling the guest room-taking down the fluffy curtains, stripping the bed of the flowered sheets and comforter, and replacing it all with a nice masculine taupe. "We want your cousin to feel at home," she said firmly. Charlotte thought that with the huge grown-up bed and the big private bathroom, Zachary would probably do just fine.
Charlotte's mother seemed to be getting more and more nervous as the day approached, and she spent her time constantly questioning Charlotte about her behavioral plans.
"You'll be nice to your cousin?" asked Mrs. Mielswetzski.
"Of course, Mom," said Charlotte.
"You'll show him around school?"
"Of course, Mom," said Charlotte.
"You'll introduce him to your friends?"
"Of course, Mom," said Charlotte.
"You'll help him catch up in his classes?"
"Of course, Mom," said Charlotte.
"I mean, you'll be really nice, Charlotte. You'll really try hard?"
"Mom!" said Charlotte.
"Because sometimes you can be a little, well, prickly"
“Mom!” said Charlotte.
"Well, honey…"
Despite the fact that her own mother thought she was prickly, Charlotte felt that life was distinctly looking up, and perhaps she would not run away and catch a boat to Paris quite yet. Bartholomew had taken to sleeping on her bed, and that's all she really needed out of life. The kitten had charmed her mother and father, too-she spent her evenings sleeping in the lap of one or the other, when she wasn't doing a mad dash around the perimeter of the house. She had the strangest habit of running to the dining room, leaping on the table, skidding all the way across on the slick surface, and flying off, front arms spread out like a kitten superhero. She walked over tables, dressers, credenzas, bookshelves, weaving in and out of Mielswetzski vases, photos, and other decorative accessories, sometimes avoiding them, sometimes leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. At about four in the morning she would start pouncing on Charlotte's feet, meowing loudly and gnawing on her toes. Charlotte would get out of bed, pick the kitten up, put her in the hallway, and regretfully shut the door behind her.
The Mielswetzskis were of a mind to think all this sleeplessness and destruction was cute, as is constitutionally required of a kitten owner, and every night when the family sat down to dinner, Charlotte's mother would say, "Well, no one called about Bartholomew today"
And her father would say, "I didn't hear anything either."
"But it's early yet," her mother would add quickly.
"That's true. We mustn't get too attached," her father would agree.
And Charlotte would smile, listening to the sound of Mew's feet prancing through the living room.
At night she would get in bed next to her kitten and whisper, "Now, Mew, are you going to be nice to my cousin?"
"Meow," said Mew.
"Are you going to introduce him to your kitten friends?"
"Meow," said Mew.
"You'll help him catch up in his kitten classes?"
"Meow," said Mew.
“Are you sure? You can be a bit fuzzy sometimes."
"Meow," said Mew.
"Well, okay then. Good kitty" said Charlotte. And she would fall asleep happily with Mew next to her, unaware that in a few minutes she would be dreaming of falling through the earth again.
ZACHARY MILLER ARRIVED ON SATURDAY NIGHT, along with Charlotte's uncle, who had flown all the way over from London to drop off his son. Charlotte told her mother that she thought this was a bit excessive and thirteen-year-olds were perfectly capable of making the journey by themselves, and international travel had gotten rather sophisticated since the invention of the airplane, and the language difference between England and America was not so great that Zachary wouldn't be able to cope in the airport, but Charlotte's mother told her that if she were sending her child to Europe to live, she'd want to come drop her off too, missy.
The Mielswetzski household was in a flutter all day. Bartholomew was running up and down various walls. Mrs. Mielswetzski changed the curtains in the guest room ("Zachary's room") again to a nice masculine gray flannel, for fear the boy would find all the taupe overwhelming. Mr. Mielswetzski spent the day making his special chicken cacciatore. Mrs. Mielswetzski bought a cake, and Mr. Mielswetzski decorated it with WELCOME HOME, ZACHARY, which, if you asked Charlotte, was overdoing it-but once again, nobody had asked her. They took great pains to decorate the dining room-Mrs. Mielswetzski put up balloons, and Mr. Mielswetzski put up streamers. Bartholomew began to do furious laps around the entire room, buzzing over the table and under the chairs, trailing streamers and balloons behind her until an hour before the Millers' plane was to arrive, when Charlotte found her passed out on the floor, wrapped in paper streamers and Scotch tape.
"Well, I guess she didn't like the decorations," said Mr. Mielswetzski.
"Or maybe she liked them too much," said Mrs. Mielswetzski.
So Charlotte and her father spent the next hour removing streamers, tape, and kitten from the dining room, while Mrs. Mielswetzski drove to the airport.
Two hours later the cake was decorated, the dining room cleaned, the tablecloth laid, the table set, the chicken cacciatored, and the Mielswetzski family car was pulling into the garage. Charlotte was in her room putting on her green sweater, which looked excellent with her hair. Charlotte had a strange urge to impress her unknown cousin from London, even if she didn't know what to think about his arrival; no matter what, it never hurt to look your best, and maybe if Zachary liked her, he would take her back with him to London. She heard the garage door open and pursed her lips, wondering how her life was about to change.
"They're HERE!" shouted Mr. Mielswetzski.
"I SEE," shouted Charlotte.
"Well, come on DOWN!" shouted Mr. Mielswetzski.
On her way down the stairs Charlotte stopped at the landing to see if she could catch a glimpse of her cousin, but it was too dark outside-all she could make out were dim forms. She took a deep breath and headed to the kitchen.
"Are you excited?" asked Mr. Mielswetzski.
She shrugged.
"That sweater looks beautiful on you. I'm sure your cousin will like it."
Gross, thought Charlotte, wishing she had worn something else.
But before she could protest, the door opened. "Here we are!" sang her mother.
There was a flurry of motion then- Charlotte was given a large hug by someone who was probably Uncle John, while her parents bobbed around beside them. Charlotte felt herself being steered in the direction of the living room, and before she knew what had hit her, she was standing in the living room alone with her cousin, who was holding a glass of soda (with ice and a lemon wedge), while the door closed gently behind them.
Charlotte stared at Zachary, who was looking blankly at the icy, lemony, soda-y glass in his hand. He was tall, a whole head above Charlotte, and very thin, like a boy who could run very fast when called on. But he didn't look like he had done much running lately; his brown skin seemed very sallow, his eyes were sunken in, and his face was gaunt. He looked tired-as anyone might after an all-day flight, Charlotte reminded herself.
"Was your flight okay?" she asked. It seemed like the thing people said.
"Um, yeah," he said. "Bit long."
"I bet," Charlotte said. "I've never been on a flight so long. How long?"
"Uh… seven hours," he said.
Words sounded so much cooler out of Zachary's mouth. Charlotte wished she talked like that. Maybe when she went to England someday, she would pick up a nice accent, then even when she said stupid things, no one would notice because her voice was so cool. It's one thing to get together with all your friends and dye your hair blond, it's another thing to have a British accent.
"So," Charlotte said, "do people call you Zach or, uh-"
"Zee," he said. "I like Zee."
"Cool," said Charlotte. Well, Zee was certainly much cooler than she was. He would be a good person to have on her side, assuming he didn't completely disown her for being a baboon, which he probably would.
"Yeah," he said.
"So, um.."
"So."
"Well." Charlotte took a deep breath. "You're going to start school on Monday?"
Zachary-Zee-yawned, a full-face yawn that seemed to stretch to his hairline. His brown eyes watered. "Sorry," he said formally, "I'm really knackered."
"What?"
"I'm knackered," he repeated loudly.
"Oh," said Charlotte.
"So, yes," he said, wiping his eyes. "I'm going to your school. We'll be in the same year?"
"Yeah, I guess."
"You can give me a tour," said Zee.
Charlotte relaxed a little. Maybe he didn't think she was a super-loser-freak-even if she had been acting like one, he was too tired to notice. "'Course I will," she said. "No problem."
"Brilliant," he said softly, which Charlotte thought was a bit of an overstatement. "So, um, how is it? School?"
"Okay," Charlotte shrugged. "It's school."
"And… your, uh, classmates… what, uh…" He shifted a little. "What are they like?" He was looking at her strangely.
"Oh, you know…" Charlotte shrugged.
`Anything… odd?" he asked.
"Odd?" Charlotte stared at him.
"Oh, you know…" He bit his lip. "Is everyone… feeling… okay?"
"Feeling okay?" Charlotte blinked. "You mean… are the kids sick?"
"Yeah. You know"-he laughed a little-"does your school have a plague? Bubonic or, um…" He trailed off. He seemed to be trying to make a joke, but Charlotte could not for the life of her figure out what the joke was. It must be a British thing, she thought.
"Well, there's a plague of blondness," Charlotte said.
He blinked at her and opened his mouth, but just then a loud crash came from the dining room. Charlotte and Zee exchanged looks. Mr. and Mrs. Mielswetzski emerged from the kitchen. They all went into the dining room, to find the entire tablecloth scooted over to one side of the table, broken plates on the floor, and a very scared-looking Mew frozen under the table.
"Oh my goodness," said Mr. Mielswetzski.
"Oh my goodness," said Mrs. Mielswetzski and Uncle John.
"Poor kitty," said Charlotte.
The five of them stood staring at the mess for several moments. Mrs. Mielswetzski let out a heavy sigh, and Mr. Mielswetzski clapped his hands together.
"Well," he said. "Shall we eat in the kitchen, then?"
"May I help you, Uncle Mike?" said Zee with utmost politeness. Charlotte gaped at him. Oh, great. That's all she needed-a cousin with a good attitude. She could see he was going to make her look very, very bad.
At dinner the family made polite conversation across the small kitchen table, as polite as could be when you were constantly elbowing the person on your right. Charlotte was elbowing Uncle John and being elbowed by her mother. Charlotte excused herself the first couple of times, but soon she gave up. There were better ways for a growing girl to expend her energy.
Zee, though, issued a formal apology each time he elbowed Mr. Mielswetzski. The first few times Charlotte's father assured his nephew that it was no trouble, no trouble at all, it can hardly be helped, don't worry yourself over it, young man, I'm elbowing my wife right this minute. But as the elbowing and apologies accrued, and it became more and more apparent that all his jovial assurances were for naught, the vitality was slowly sapped from Mr. Mielswetzski, and by the end of dinner he was practically helpless.
It wasn't just the elbowing. Over the course of the dinner Charlotte watched, amazed, while her cousin comported himself as if he were eating with the Queen. Everything was "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me." His napkin rested cleanly in his lap, his posture was impeccable, and his knife stayed perched, blade in, on the rim of his plate. "My, so polite," her mother kept saying.
"Thank you, Aunt Tara," said Zee.
"Don't worry," whispered Uncle John to Charlotte. "Half the British kids act like this. It's in the water. Makes us all look like a bunch of drooling apes."
Charlotte glared at him. He didn't notice.
She studied her cousin through the dinner, through the chicken cacciatore and the cake and the clearing of the table (with which he insisted on helping). She studied him when the whole family adjourned to the dining room to clean up Mew's mess – despite Mrs. Mielswetzski's best efforts to send the weary travelers to bed. She kept replaying the conversation in the living room in her mind. Maybe he's really paranoid about getting sick, she thought. Maybe he's an athlete, or he had a friend who died of the black plague and for the rest of his life he's been afraid he'll get it too. It's not a rational fear-but then, fear is not rational, is it? Or maybe he was just craz -mentally ill. (Her mother did not like it when she referred to people as crazy) She'd read about people like that; they think germs are everywhere and are always washing their hands and stuff. Or maybe he thought that American schools were really, really dirty. Charlotte wanted to ask him, but if he really was nuts, it probably wouldn't be polite to mention it. Once upon a time there was a weird boy named Zee who suffered from a strange fear…
Or so Charlotte was thinking as they picked up the last shards of plate and pieces of silverware from the dining-room floor. Mr. Mielswetzski swept, Mrs. Mielswetzski went to shake out the tablecloth,
Charlotte put the silverware in the dishwasher, and Zee accidentally stepped on Mr. Mielswetzski's foot.
"Oh! Uncle Mike!" exclaimed Zee loudly. "Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"No," sighed Mr. Mielswetzski, "it's fine."
When Charlotte went to bed, Mew did not join her. Charlotte left her door open and waited. Mew did not come. Finally she got up and went to find her cat.
It did not take her long. When she passed by the guest room-no, Zachary's room-she saw a hint of fuzziness behind the half-open door. She stopped and peered in (which was almost certainly not polite) and there, snuggled up next to her cousin's head, was Bartholomew.
I didn't say be that nice to him, she thought.
Charlotte made her way down the stairs to the kitchen for a glass of water and perhaps -just perhaps a kitty treat to be placed conveniently in the doorway to her room, but she stopped just outside the kitchen door. Uncle John and her mother were talking in voices that suggested they did not want to be disturbed.
So Charlotte crouched behind the doorway to listen. "I really appreciate your taking him like this," said Uncle John.
"I keep telling you, it's our pleasure," said her mother. "I think it will be good for Charlotte, too."
Charlotte bristled. And why, exactly, is that? She would have liked to stomp in and ask, but that probably wouldn't have been a good idea, so instead she just waited.
Alas, Uncle John wasn't nearly as interested in Charlotte as Charlotte was. "Well, Suz and I are really grateful."
"Anyway, it's all for a good reason, right?" her mother said. "It's so exciting that you got transferred back here. You've been gone so long!"
"Right," said Uncle John quickly. "A stroke of luck."
Charlotte thought this was the most boring conversation she had ever eavesdropped on. If adults are going to talk in quiet voices, they have a duty at least to say something interesting.
But then Uncle John cleared his throat. "Listen, um, Tara… I…" Charlotte could not help but notice that he sounded extremely uncomfortable. She perked up.
"What?" Charlotte's mom asked.
His voice got very low then, and Charlotte had to keep her body very still to hear. "If Zee says or does anything… unusual…"
Unusual? thought Charlotte.
"Unusual?" said her mother.
"Just… anything."
"John… he's a teenage boy," Charlotte's mom said gently. "I think he may have a license to be unusual."
"Well…" Uncle John coughed a little. "True. But… anyway, if you notice anything… you'll let me know?"
Charlotte had already noticed several things, this conversation being high on her list. There was something weird about her cousin, that much was true. Uncle John knew it, but whatever it was, he certainly wasn't going to tell her mother. Charlotte waited for more explanation, but none came. Her mother and Uncle John soon started to be very boring again, and Charlotte, forgetting all about her kitten treat, went up to her room, where she could think in peace.
IN THE IMMENSE SPRAWL OF SUBURBS AROUND Charlotte's hometown, conveniently located off one of the vast freeways that encircled the area, just minutes from the international airport and accessible from several major bus lines, there stood an enormous mall. This mall, better known as the Mall, was the biggest mall in the United States (though not in North America. That distinction belongs to the Mall in Vancouver, British Columbia. If you want to be picky). Each floor of this mall was more than half a mile around. The Mall had 520 stores and sprawled over 4.2 million square feet. It had the largest indoor amusement park in the nation, with thirty rides, including a roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, and a water ride thingy. It had a fourteen-screen movie theater and more than fifty restaurants – including several that billed themselves as dine-u-tainment. It had a bowling alley, an aquarium that housed 4,500 creatures (including sharks), a theme park entirely devoted to cereal, and a blimp made with almost 140,000 LEGOs.
The Mall was Big. It was Huge. It was Mega. But despite its size, the Mall was generally very well laid out. All of the stores sat on the central avenues, so none could be missed. Egresses were well marked and easy to find. There were plenty of restrooms, and large kiosks stood at convenient locations, displaying large, easy-toread maps for the benefit of the bewildered Mallgoer.
There was, however, a small hallway that did not appear on any of the maps. Most people did not even know it was there. You could pass it right by, swinging your shopping bags and drinking your large soda or fruit smoothie, and not even notice the nondescript corridor that lurked somewhere between the store devoted to foot sculptures and the store that sold cheese.
If you did not notice the nondescript corridor, you certainly would not notice the nondescript door at the end of it, nor would you notice the nondescript sign with nondescript letters that read, nondescriptly, NO ADMITTANCE.
No one who worked at the Mall thought much about that door. Certainly no one used it. The security guards assumed it was for the maintenance people. The maintenance people assumed it was for the cleaning staff. The cleaning staff assumed it was for Mall officials, and Mall officials didn't really think about it at all.
If any of these guards, people, staff, or officials were to try to open that door, he or she would find it very much locked. But no one ever tried. Whenever anyone wandered down that corridor, he found himself possessed of a strange incuriousness and, for added measure, an overwhelming urge to go to the food court and buy a nice jumbo pretzel.
Now, let's leave the door for a moment. Let's leave the corridor and the jumbo pretzels, the cheese store and the dine-u-tainment. Let's leave the Mall altogether and travel about ten minutes away, over the interlocking freeways and the bright rows of suburban houses, to the home of a man we'll call Frank. This Frank was not a pleasant sort. He had a black heart, and black teeth to match. He scowled and grumbled at every man, woman, girl, boy, baby, dog, and kitten that he saw. All Frank loved on Earth were his tomato plants, to which he murmured and sang like he had just given birth to them.
Now, Frank had very nice tomato plants, and they made lovely tomatoes, juicy and plump, but really… isn't there more in life? Should one really devote every morsel of one's love, to the exclusion of the rest of the world, to something that can't even decide if it's a vegetable or a fruit?
No matter. Frank will not trouble us for long. One day-just two days after Zee arrived at the Mielswetzskis'- Frank went out in his yard as usual to sit among his babies and talk of their hopes and fears, only to find some bugs had eaten away at his plants overnight.
Frank let out a high-pitched shriek. Flocks of birds from several neighborhoods away flew from their perches. Shaking his hand at the sky, Frank swore vengeance then and there, not just against those bugs, but all bugs. He began to stomp wildly around the yard, looking for mosquitoes, flies, ants, and yes, even ladybugs, and he slapped at (flying bugs) or stepped on (crawling bugs) every single one. Frank saw a particularly large grasshopper and lifted his foot high in the air, ready for a particularly crushing stomp, when he felt a strange pain in his chest.
Ouch.
The pain grew and soon became unbearable. To Frank, it felt like his heart was getting ready to explode, and he had a pretty good idea that it actually might.
Frank knew. He knew what was about to happen, and he still used all his might to stomp his foot down on the grasshopper with a great thwap. If he hadn't, perhaps he could have been saved-but he did. So, then and there Frank died, killing himself through his own meanness.
No one, not even the tomatoes, would mourn.
A few moments after Frank's death the door in the Mall opened. A form slipped through, a messenger of sorts, with winged sandals and a winged hat, and he moved so quickly through the air that no one saw him at all. People in the Mall saw a flash, maybe, felt a small breeze, a mere tickle of the air, but as soon as it was there, it was gone again and thus forgotten. Oh, nothing, they say. Let's go to the food court. Those jumbo pretzels are so good, aren't they?
The Messenger whizzed through the Mall, out the doors, and up to the sky. He arrived at Frank's house in moments, where he found the dead man sprawled in his garden.
Nice plants, thought the Messenger.
He opened Frank's mouth to check for a coin and shook his head. He didn't know what was wrong with people these days. He buzzed right through the walls of the house, circled around, found an old, stained sofa in the living room, checked between the cushions, and pulled out a quarter. Then he flew back to Frank, stuck the coin under his tongue, and knocked on his forehead three times.
A few minutes later Frank and the Messenger were zipping toward the sliding glass doors of the Mall. When Frank saw where they were headed, he muttered, "I should have known." Frank had never much liked the Mall.
And in the blink of an eye Frank and the Messenger were standing in front of the nondescript door.
There are doors like this door all over the world. Their locations change as civilizations change, old ones simply fade away and new ones pop up all the time. They tend to be hidden in plain sight, where vast crowds of people congregate, where the air fills with the cacophony of life. There are doors like this door all over the world, but this particular door at this particular time was unique because there was a man waiting on the other side of it. Or something very like a man.
This man-like man was quite tall, perhaps seven feet tall, and extremely thin, with hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes. His face was white-not Caucasian white, but white white-his lips were gray and cracked, and his eyes were a sickly shade of yellow. He stood stiffly in the shadows with a strange kind of grace, and he wore an old-fashioned tuxedo with tails and a white tie.
He had followed the Messenger up through the long, winding caves when Frank's time had come; he had been too late to make it through then, so he waited in the shadows behind the door for it to open once more. He would not miss this chance-who knew when the call would come again?
And when the door did open, he pressed himself against the stone wall of the cave, as he did every time, while the Messenger and the dead man (that would be Frank) sped through. He waited while the large door slowly swung shut, then, at the last second, when the Messenger was well out of sight, the tuxedoed man caught the door and slipped through into the bright expanse of the day.
CHARLOTTE AND ZEE ARRIVED AT SCHOOL A HALF HOUR early on Monday so she could give him the grand tour. It had already been determined that Zee would share Charlotte's classes for the year, since she could help him catch up. Which sounded like a great deal of extra work to Charlotte, but nobody had asked her.
As her mother kept reminding her, Charlotte was supposed to introduce Zee to her friends. This would not take long. With Caitlin gone, that only left Maddy. The threesome had become a duo. It was okay. Maddy was cool, when she wasn't worrying about school.
Charlotte always said that Maddy cared so much about school that Charlotte didn't have to; Maddy worried enough for two people. But Charlotte liked her because she had no patience for twits or jerks either-though for Maddy it was probably because they interfered with her studies.
There were girls Charlotte was friendly with Elizabeth-who-never-talked, and Molly-the-ballerina, and Gretchen-the-goth-girl, who didn't like anyone. But as for tell-all-your-secrets-to, three-hour-long-phonecall, maid-of-honor-at-each-other's-wedding, bestfriends-forever friends, Charlotte was distinctly lacking. Someday, when she hopped on a bus for Brazil, that might change.
She didn't really explain any of this to Zee. In some seismic departure from her norm she introduced him to absolutely everyone, even people she didn't like (she wouldn't have been able to tell you why) and absolutely everyone seemed to size Zee up as someone they might like to have on their side. His accent, his clothes, his countenance, and some ineffable je ne sais quoi seemed to mark Zee as one of those cool but accessible kids that everyone likes. It was incredibly annoying; Zee was clearly drinking some sort of weird potion that made him perfect in every way. Even Gretchen-the-goth-girl seemed impressed with him and immediately started to ask Zee about bands Charlotte had never heard of. His Zee-like reticence was taken as an alluring mysteriousness, and he was immediately marked as a babe by Audrey, Angie, Andrea, and both Ashleys, who indeed had all gained more shape and definition at the sight of him. He ran circles around everyone during the soccer game in gym and was quickly deemed the man by Chris and Brad and their ilk. Even the teachers seemed charmed by his politeness and formality- qualities that, for any other new kid, would have earned him a serious wedgie, but not Zee. After an entire day of being asked which one of them was adopted, Charlotte began to wonder if the question had more to do with respective coolness than any confusion over ethnicity. It was all very typical of her life.
The last class of the day was English. Charlotte and Zee walked down the hallway together, and everyone had a smile for Zee. Charlotte was surprised he still bothered talking to her.
Zee leaned over to her and muttered, "People are very friendly in America."
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. "Sure," she said.
"It's nice. When you meet people here, they don't introduce themselves as, like, the eighth earl of Asherton."
"Sure," said Charlotte.
"And the teachers are so relaxed."
"Sure," said Charlotte.
"So… " Zee said, "next is literature, isn't it?"
"English. Yeah. At the end of the hall."
"Do you like it?"
Charlotte shrugged. "Well, we used to have a wonderful teacher, but Mr. Metos…"
Zee stopped suddenly. He stared at Charlotte. "Metos?"
"Yeah," said Charlotte, looking at him. "Why?"
Zee turned his head. "Oh, nothing," he said. "Unusual name, that's all."
But the way Zee said "Oh, nothing" was the way people talked when there was Definitely Something. Charlotte peered at her cousin and said slowly, "Well, he's an unusual guy."
Every time Charlotte walked into Mr. Metos' classroom, she felt as if she were walking into a crypt. The room had an air of dusty, dark things, things you would be advised not to touch. She kept one eye on Zee when they entered the room, but when he saw Mr. Metos, his face only looked puzzled.
Mr. Metos sat at his desk in the front of the room while the students filed in, writing in his attendance book. Probably deciding whose blood he wants to drink first, thought Charlotte. She took a deep breath.
"Mr. Metos?" she said quietly. "Um, this is my cousin Zee-Zachary Miller. He's new"
Slowly Mr. Metos lifted his head from his desk. His eyes went right to Zee's face. He looked at Zee for what seemed like ages, long enough to make Charlotte want to squirm. Bet Zee won't think everything's so relaxed here now, she thought. Indeed, he was eyeing Mr. Metos strangely, almost suspiciously.
"Well, Zachary," Mr. Metos said. "You're coming in at the end of our unit. How are you on your Greek mythology?"
"I have some schooling in that subject," Zee said.
"Good, good," said Mr. Metos, rubbing his hands together. "Why don't you see me after class and we can discuss how we can catch you up."
"Yes, sir," Zee said. Charlotte had not yet told him you weren't supposed to call teachers "sir." She would. Someday.
Today's class was on Prometheus. Again Charlotte knew the story well. Prometheus was a Titan who had fought for Zeus in his wars against Cronus. So Zeus gave him the task of repopulating Earth, and Prometheus made humans, molding them out of river clay in the shape of the gods. Prometheus loved his creations and wanted humans to be better than animals. But Zeus was content to let people stay primitive, another beast on the earth. And humans were not faring well in the world. So Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans so they could keep warm and cook food. The fire also taught them to look upward, to the heavens – to think and to dream.
Zeus was not happy. Gods never want people to have knowledge. So, as punishment for defying him, Zeus chained Prometheus to a mountain, and every day an eagle came to gnaw on his liver. Every night Prometheus's liver would regenerate so it could be gnawed on again the next day. This last part always seemed especially excessive to Charlotte.
Mr. Metos seemed to think it was excessive too. "Prometheus did not understand why Zeus would make man and then leave him in the dark. He wanted Zeus to bless man, and when he didn't, Prometheus took it upon himself to do so. Prometheus was known as the Friend of Man but was tormented for generations because of that friendship. But there was more to it than that. Prometheus was essentially telling Zeus that in his treatment of man Zeus was proving himself unworthy to be a god, and Prometheus decided he would have to nurture and protect man himself. So" -he turned to the class -"can anyone think of another situation where the gods abused mankind?"
Humankind, Charlotte thought, doodling. Charlotte spent the class making a picture in her notebook of a man chained to a cliff with a big eagle heading right toward him. She was not a very good drawer, and her eagle looked more like a weird-looking giant bat. She wondered if Mr. Metos turned into a bat at night or if that was just a myth.
Next to her Zee was paying careful attention to Mr. Metos like a good boy. He had probably never doodled in class in his life. British boys probably didn't do that; they were too busy making friends and being polite and stealing people's kittens.
After class Charlotte put her books together slowly and stood in the doorway. She was torn between wanting to run out of the classroom and wanting to see what Mr. Metos would say to Zee. Anyway, she was supposed to watch over her cousin, and Uncle John might not want him to get his blood drained on his first day.
Zee looked at her. "Um, I'll catch up with you," he said. "I've got to talk to Mr. Metos for a minute."
"I know," said Charlotte. "I can wait."
"No, no," said Zee. "Don't trouble yourself. I'll meet you on the steps." And then he closed the door.
Charlotte sat on the front steps of the school, watching as all of the kids filed out around her. It was still oddly warm; no one was wearing a coat. By Halloween everything might be covered in snow, and Zee would have to hurry up any mysterious postclass meetings if he didn't want Charlotte to freeze to death. Of course, she thought, looking at her watch, she might still be here then. Once upon a time there was a girl named Charlotte who sat in the same place for six years, and no one noticed her.
"Charlotte?"
Charlotte looked up. Her history teacher was standing above her, shielding her eyes from the sun and smiling kindly.
"Hi, Ms. Bristol-Lee," Charlotte said.
"Charlotte…"- she crouched down and put her hand on Charlotte's shoulder-"I wanted to talk to you for a second."
Uh-oh, Charlotte thought. She braced herself to hear more about her potential.
"Listen," the teacher leaned in. "I just want to say, what you're going through, with your family… I understand."
Not potential? It took Charlotte a couple seconds. Oh, yeah. Pop quiz in history. Didn't do reading. Parents fighting. World War I. Right.
"Thanks, Ms. Bristol-Lee," she said, nodding slowly. "That really means a lot."
"My parents were divorced when I was your age. I know it's hard. Now, I just want to let you know that I'm here for you." She patted Charlotte. "Sometimes parents forget that what they're doing affects their kids. If you want someone to talk to your family about what you're going through-"
"Oh!" Charlotte said. "Wow, that's really nice. But you know… it's gotten much better. They got a new counselor, and she's done wonders. I really think they're going to be able to work it out! Plus Mom's on a new medication and, uh… she's really much less moody." Charlotte grinned like the happy, well-adjusted thirteen-year-old she was, then added pointedly, "They're really trying to put all their troubles in the past."
Ms. Bristol-Lee broke out in a huge smile that almost made Charlotte feel guilty. Almost. "Oh, Charlotte, I'm so glad! Keep me posted, okay? And take care of yourself.."
"I will," Charlotte nodded, eyes big. "Thanks."
Ms. Bristol-Lee squeezed Charlotte's shoulder, then went on her way. Charlotte exhaled heavily.
She sighed and put her chin in her hands. The stream of students coming out of the doors was wearing thin now, and still no Zee. She stretched her legs out and thought of all the things her weird cousin and her creepy English teacher might be saying to each other.
"Hey!" Another voice interrupted Charlotte's reverie. She looked up to see the cat-eyed glasses of Maddy staring down at her.
"Hey," Charlotte grinned.
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting for Zee. He's talking to Mr. Metos. Probably getting his blood sucked."
"Char!" Maddy looked behind her. "I like Mr. Metos. He's… interesting."
"Interesting is right," Charlotte said. "Vampires are extremely interesting."
"I doubt he's a vampire."
"Well, maybe he's a werewolf."
"For a werewolf he sure gives a lot of homework," she said, patting her big purple assignment book. "And if he is, Zee better get out of there. Full moon tonight."
Charlotte looked at her watch again. "I'm really hoping he comes out before dark. If he doesn't, getting eaten will serve him right… Are you getting picked up today?"
"Nah. I'm gonna walk. Mom's got Pilates… Anyway, Zee's awfully cute."
"I know," Charlotte sighed long-sufferingly. "There's something weird about him, though."
Maddy grinned. "Is he a werewolf too?"
"I'm serious!" Charlotte said. "Something's up with him." She told Maddy about her first conversation with Zee and what she had overheard Uncle John say on Saturday night. "And, I don't know, I swear when I mentioned Mr. Metos, it was like he knew his name."
"Huh!" Maddy bit her lip and thought for a second. "That is weird."
"I know!" said Charlotte. "There's something going on with him, Maddy. Something strange. Zee has a secret, I know it."
Maddy nodded. "Look, I gotta get home, I've got piano. We'll talk more about it tomorrow, okay? Keep your eyes on him! We'll figure it out."
Charlotte smiled. They made their good-byes, and Charlotte watched as her friend headed off down the street.
Charlotte kept her ears open and her eyes peeled that night, but she didn't have any new information to give Maddy the next day. But Maddy wasn't in homeroom anyway. Charlotte thought she must have had an appointment or something, because Maddy had never missed a day of school before in her life. But she wasn't in science, either, and when Charlotte looked at the list of excused absences on the teachers' announcement board, she saw her friend's name: MADELINE RUBY- ILL.
Weird, Charlotte thought.
She didn't get a chance to call Maddy that night, though. Zee stayed after school to try out for the upper-school soccer team (every once in a while when a kid was super good at something, they let an eighth grader play on the upper-school teams), and she stayed with him on her mother's instructions. It was worth it to watch the coach's eyes bug out when Zee played. He might be weird and a cat thief, but Zee could sure play soccer. Charlotte didn't know whether to feel bad that she had no actual talents or to be proud that Zee was on her side, so she settled for both. Then they went out to dinner because Uncle John was going to leave the next morning. So by the time they got home, it was way too late to be calling sick friends, as much as you might want to. All you could do was start your math homework, know that your friend would probably be back in school the next day, and watch wistfully as your kitten snuggled up on your cousin's lap.
But Maddy wasn't in homeroom the next day either, and Charlotte could not help but feel uneasy. During her free period she found herself going from classroom to classroom, collecting homework assignments for her friend, even though she hadn't willingly spoken to so many teachers before in her life.
"That's good of you, Charlotte," each teacher said. "What's wrong with Madeline?"
"I don't know," Charlotte said quietly each time. And something in her voice seemed to make the teachers quiet too.
After school Zee went to soccer practice (for, naturally, he had made the team) and Charlotte walked the six blocks to Maddy's house, clutching a red folder of assignments that Charlotte had spent all of English decorating.
It had finally gotten cool enough to be October. Two days ago the trees lining the sidewalks had been green; now they were all bright red, and as Charlotte walked along, she felt a few brown leaves crunch against the sidewalk. The air smelled of burned things.
The wind had a faint chill in it, and perhaps that, combined with her apprehension over Maddy's two-day absence, was why she felt that something was not quite right in the world around her, almost as if she were being watched.
Charlotte pressed the little round iron doorbell at Maddy's front door and heard the familiar, cheerful chirping echo through the inside of the house. She'd done this thousands of times since the girls became friends in first grade, after a discovery of a great mutual affection for Play-Doh.
But this time the bell faded out and she heard nothing. No sound coming through the hallway or rushing down the stairs to greet her. Just silence. And Charlotte's heart flipped a little. But then, there, firm adult footsteps sounded in the house, and Charlotte exhaled.
Maddy's mom opened the door, looking weary. There was something different about her, and it took Charlotte a few moments to realize this was the first time she'd ever seen Mrs. Ruby without the light pink lipstick that Charlotte had come to think was her own natural (albeit waxy) coloring.
"Oh, Charlotte," said Mrs. Ruby. "Hi." She smiled faintly and leaned against the doorway. A moment passed.
"Um," Charlotte said. "I brought Maddy's homework." She held out the folder weakly. She had a strange urge to drop it and run in the other direction.
"Oh!" Mrs. Ruby exclaimed. "Of course. I'm sorry, Charlotte, I'm just… that's very nice of you. Come on in."
She held the door, and Charlotte walked in, clutching the folder tightly.
"Maddy will be glad to see you," Mrs. Ruby said quietly.
"Yeah, um… what's wrong?"
"I don't know. She's just- I don't know" She shook her head. "I came home on Monday to find her just collapsed on the couch. She could barely talk."
"On Monday? I saw her leaving school. She was fine."
"Well, she wasn't when I got home. And she got worse all evening. We went to the doctor yesterday, but…" She shook her head. "Well, let's go see her, huh?" Mrs. Ruby smiled tightly at Charlotte, and then held out her hand like she used to when Charlotte was six. Charlotte took it, and together they walked up the stairs.
The shades were drawn and the lights off in Maddy's room, and Charlotte could barely make out her friend in the mass of covers on the bed. Mrs. Ruby went over to her. "Honey? Are you awake? Charlotte's here to see you!" She sounded oddly cheerful, in that way grownups can. "Come on over, Charlotte."
Maddy was buried deep inside several layers of blankets. Her head was propped up on three large pillows, but under the covers the rest of her body seemed flat against the bed, useless, like an old rag doll. Her eyes looked shadowy, and when she smiled at Charlotte, the effort seemed to drain her more. Charlotte sat down on the edge of the bed and sucked on her lips.
"I'll leave you girls," said Mrs. Ruby. "But only a few minutes, okay, Charlotte?"
And then she was gone, and Charlotte sat on her friend's bed and thought about how she had absolutely nothing in the whole wide world to say
CHARLOTTE DID NOT SLEEP WELL THAT NIGHT. FOR A few days she had fancied herself on the periphery of some great mystery, one that had begun with the sudden arrival of her British cousin and then seemed to encompass her English teacher as well. But suddenly Charlotte wasn't living in a mystery anymore, in a fantasy world made of dark secrets and hidden tunnels and vampiric teachers and foggy London nights. Now Charlotte lived in this horrible world where her best friend could get so sick she couldn't lift her head.
And Maddy had been just fine at school that day, absolutely 100 percent fine. Better than that. She'd been Maddy, all cat-eyed glasses and mischievous smiles, with purple socks that matched her assignment book. The girl in the bed was just a shadow of her friend.
She hadn't told her family about Maddy, not yet. She didn't really know what to say, and somehow the words "Maddy's got something weird" or "Maddy's really sick" sounded useless to her, like a crumpled-up lunch bag. So at dinner, when her mother said, "You're awfully quiet, honey," and her father said, "Is there something bothering you, dear?" she just shrugged and said she was tired. The Mielswetzskis believed in giving children their own emotional space, so they did not prod, but merely turned back to Zee and listened to him talk about how much he was enjoying his new school.
Charlotte couldn't even toss and turn-she had taken Bartholomew to bed with her that night, for she had great need of Mew's kittenness, and the cat had dutifully passed out tucked right into Charlotte's stomach. This was a thing too wonderful to be disturbed, so Charlotte lay with her hand on Mew, staring at the wall and thinking of her shadow of a friend.
It was hard for Charlotte to get out of bed the next morning; all she wanted to do was stay in her bed with the covers pulled over her head and never ever, ever get out. Every piece of clothing Charlotte put on that morning was gray, from her hair elastic to her socks. It set the tenor for the day well. She'd never noticed before how colorless the school was – the walls and floors were all the same noncontroversial beige, and it fit Charlotte's mood perfectly. Every splash of color that she saw seemed to hurt her eyes.
Zee, on the other hand, was strangely exuberant-more so than was natural for a thirteen-year-old boy, if you asked Charlotte. Whatever trepidation he had had when he first arrived seemed to be gone, and he bounded through school like a prisoner on his first day out.
He went through the hallways saying hello to people Charlotte didn't even know. Of course, since their schedule was the same, Charlotte had to walk from class to class with him and his red sweater and his bright chatter, while everyone in the school greeted him as if now their lives were shiny and free too. Thanks to her cousin, the great malaise had gone away, and Charlotte very much missed it.
Nothing was right anymore. All the social structures were being thrown off. Zee was friendly with the mean boys, the smart boys, the cool boys, and the formerly fat boys. And those boys, as a result, were being-if not friendly-at least civil to one another. The girls, mean while, had all started to be nice to Charlotte, as if she could get to Zee for them. She'd liked it better when they were all angsty, she decided. At least then they'd stayed out of her way.
In the locker room after gym she was accosted by one of the Ashleys, who had never spoken to Charlotte before in her life.
"Char!" she said brightly. "How are you?"
"Fine," Charlotte said, letting her suspicion show. Ashley smiled toothfully. "You know, that's a nice sweater. It really tones down your hair!"
Charlotte sighed. "Thanks."
"Not that your hair's not pretty."
"Yeah," Charlotte turned back to her locker.
"Hey, I was wondering… you know your cousin?"
"Yes," Charlotte said. "I do."
"Well, um… does he have a girlfriend? Like, back in England?"
"Yes," Charlotte turned to face the girl. "He has six girlfriends, and they all have their natural hair color."
Ashley reddened and bit her lip. Charlotte felt a momentary pang of regret, which she quickly stifled. What would happen- the girls would never speak to her again? They didn't now, and she didn't think they had anything interesting to say anyway. Whatever. The world was too gray and heavy for regret. None of it mattered.
The rest of the day girls with dark roots in their hair were whispering and pointing at her. Charlotte walked along staring at the ground, trying to will the flushed color out of her cheeks. Even Zee stopped trying to communicate with her, and Charlotte found herself trailing along well behind her cousin and whatever bright bunch was traveling with him.
By the end of the day the entire school was cutting a wide swath around Charlotte, as if they had all gotten the memo. In English, Gretchen-the-goth-girl nodded approvingly. Charlotte spent the class running her pen back and forth across her notebook just to see how black she could get the paper, and darn the consequences.
But after class, as she was stalking through the door, Mr. Metos stopped her.
"Ms. Mielswetzski?"
Charlotte's neck prickled. Perhaps consequences should not be taken so lightly after all.
She turned slowly. "Yes, Mr. Metos?"
He stared down at her, his dark eyes precise and unwavering. "Ms. Mielswetzski, I am told that you are collecting assignments for Ms. Ruby. Is that correct?"
"Oh!" Charlotte exhaled. "Yeah, I am." This morning one of the counselors, Mrs. Spackelor, had asked her to keep collecting the homework until Maddy was back at school. She had not gotten anything from Mr. Metos, since she was in his class too and could just tell Maddy the assignments. Anyway, she was too terrified to talk to him. Like, say, now. With any other teacher she could spin a golden tapestry of lies, but Mr. Metos scared all the artistry out of her and she became a bumbling idiot. Talking was her only skill, and he took it away from her. "I told her about the reading and the test and stuff," she sputtered. "I didn't think-"
"No, no, Ms. Mielswetzski. It's perfectly fine," he coughed. "Would you tell her not to concern herself with the rest of this unit? Madeline seems to have things well in hand."
"Oh!" Charlotte blinked. "I will!"
"Good, good." He leaned back on his desk. "Mrs. Spackelor said Madeline might be out for some time. Do you know… do they know what she has?"
"Um…" Charlotte bit her lip. "No. Not yet."
"I see." He nodded slowly, still looking at Charlotte. He opened his mouth but then shook his head slightly. "Well, you tell her to feel better," he said briskly.
Charlotte nodded, wide-eyed. Mr. Metos released her from his gaze, and she began to make for the door, when he added:
"Oh, and Ms. Mielswetzski? In the future, if you would like to practice your modern art, would you not do it during my class?"
"Yes, Mr. Metos," she squeaked, and scurried out the door.
Perhaps everything would have unfolded differently had Zee not gotten a concussion at a soccer game on Sunday morning. Perhaps the whole story would have come out earlier, and Charlotte could have taken precautions or warned everyone or something… Perhaps then the Footmen would have moved on to some other plan at some other school, and this would have been some other girl's story, and Charlotte could have gone on with her ordinary life, which really wasn't so bad once you looked at the issue carefully.
But it didn't.
Because Zee got a concussion at a soccer game on Sunday morning. It was just one of those things that shouldn't have happened, except that it did happen. It was late in the game, and the score was tied 3-3; Zee had two of the team's three goals, and the Mielswetszkis couldn't have been prouder. Until…
The goalie for the other team was an All-Metro senior and had a particularly high drop kick, which he aimed at a very burly midfielder, and Zee ran in to make the steal. The two jumped for the ball at the same time, and the midfielder threw his elbows out to push off Zee, headed the ball, then headed Zee. The heads knocked with a sickly thud that seemed to reverberate through the field, and both players were on the ground. The midfielder got up. Zee did not.
The referees appeared around him, then the coach, then the team, then the other team, then the ambulance. The Mielswetzskis had gone to the game, of course, and Charlotte's mother rode in the ambulance with Zee, while Charlotte and her father drove to the hospital.
They were back at home three hours later. He would be fine, he had a concussion, he needed to lie down for a few days, they should watch him carefully, they should wake him during the night, and absolutely no soccer or any other physical activity for two weeks. Any strange signs, any vomiting, any difficulty in speech or movement, any personality change, and they should take him straight back to the ER.
At home they propped Zee up in the den with blankets, lots of root beer, and just about every new release the movie rental place had. Once he was set, Charlotte watched as her mother sat next to him, held his hand, and began to apologize.
"Oh, Zachary, your father's going to kill me."
"It's not your fault, Aunt Tara," Zee said sleepily.
"He's absolutely going to kill me. You're here barely a week-"
"It's all right, Aunt Tara."
"It's not all right! You got a CAT scan!"
"Which was normal. Aunt Tara, I promise he won't kill you. I won't let him. He really hasn't killed anyone in a long time." Charlotte watched, wide-eyed. The attempt at humor would not work, she knew; Charlotte had seen her mother like this before. Her imagination was more out of control than Charlotte's. It was best just to agree with her before things got out of hand.
"I should never have let you play soccer with the upper-school boys."
Like that.
"Aunt Tara!" Zee's eyes widened. "It has nothing to do with that, this happens all the time!"
Charlotte winced.
"Oh, it does?" Mrs. Mielswetzski exclaimed.
Charlotte tried to signal to Zee to cut his losses. This was not the time to reason with Tara Christine Miller Mielswetzski, and if Zee kept talking, she might never let him leave the house again. But he was opening his mouth, even though his face was pale and his eyes were shadowy and his head looked so heavy against the pillow.
Charlotte coughed. "Hey, Mom?" she said. Her mother's head whirled to her. "Um, weren't you supposed to call the nurse when we got home?"
"Oh my goodness!" said Mrs. Mielswetzski. "Oh my goodness!" She sprang up and out the door.
Neither Charlotte nor Zee moved for a moment. They listened to Mrs. Mielswetzski's footsteps as they went through the hallway, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. A door closed. They both exhaled. Zee's head tilted slightly, and he whispered, "Thanks!"
"Yeah," Charlotte shrugged. "Let's watch a movie."
Zee's days of bed rest meant he was not in school on Monday, Tuesday, or-just to be safe-Wednesday. As a result he was not there to notice that the school seemed to be slowly emptying out. On Monday, Ashley, Angie, Lewis, and Elizabeth were absent. On Tuesday, Chris, Brad, Gretchen, Audrey, and Larry were gone too, along with half of Charlotte's homeroom. By Wednesday nearly one third of the students in the school were out. Every class had empty seats, and the traffic in the hallways between classes was noticeably lighter. This happens in schools, of course. One day somebody sneezes, and the next day half the school is out sick. It happens every year, twice a year; nothing to worry about, really, though it is perhaps- this time-a little early? Still, it happens. The students will stay home, one by one, and then they will come back, one by one, and there will be all sorts of missed tests to proctor and late assignments to grade and make-up work to, well, make up-or so discussed the teachers in the faculty room, as they do every time.
"It's like a germ incubator in here," said Ms. Dreeper, a science teacher.
"The student body is a fraction of its former self;" said Mr. Crapf, math.
"It's as if the black plague has swept through our school," said Ms. Bristol-Lee, history.
"It's the end of the world," said Mrs. Benihana, drama.
"I suppose we'll all get sick too," someone sighed. "Yeah, I'm beginning to feel it already," another lied. "You know how it is in schools. On Monday one student sneezes, and on Tuesday half the school is out." "What is this? Cold? Sore throat? Stomach?"
"I don't know.."
Everyone in the faculty room looked at one another. They shrugged. They shook their heads. No one spoke. Nobody knew. At least, no one who was saying. Physical examinations were normal, blood tests were normal, everything was normal. Nothing was wrong with the kids, except that they were clearly sick.
By Wednesday afternoon parents had called parents, doctors had called doctors, and all of them had called Mr. Principle, the principal. Whatever it was, it was becoming an epidemic, and parents of students who were not afflicted had no desire to send their children to ground zero. Twenty students gone on Monday became fifty on Tuesday became eighty-five on Wednesday, and that was just too many for Mr. Principle's own comfort. Stranger still, a few more phone calls showed whatever was afflicting the students seemed largely restricted to the middle school-and mostly his middle school. There were ten freshmen and five sophomores out in the upper school, and five fifth graders in the lower, but in the other grades attendance was completely normal.
With the help of the board and the headmaster and the lawyers, Mr. Principle came to the conclusion that there would be no school at Hartnett Prep Middle on Thursday or Friday. It was a long weekend anyway, and that would give everyone a chance to recover, he could get the building examined and cleaned just to make everyone happy, and really, no one needed to be calling in the Centers for Disease Control, that would be really extreme at this point. There was no need to panic. You know how it is at schools. On Monday one student sneezes, and on Tuesday half the students are out sick.
The principal called the parent council leader. The parent council leader called the homeroom parents.
The homeroom parents called all the families. And, from their perches in the sitting room, Mr. and Mrs. Mielswetzski called in Charlotte.
Charlotte found her parents poised in their usual chairs, with books in their laps that they were decidedly not reading. Both Mielswetzskis had a look of some combination of concern and suspicion that made Charlotte want to back away slowly
"Um, you wanted me?" Charlotte asked, biting her lip. She didn't know what she had done wrong, but there was obviously something.
"Charlotte," Mrs. Mielswetzski said, "what's this about a flu?"
"Oh!" Charlotte relaxed a little. "Yeah. A lot of kids are sick."
"Quite a lot, I gather," Mr. Mielswetzski said.
"I guess," Charlotte shrugged.
"You didn't say anything!" said Mrs. Mielswetzski.
"I guess not," Charlotte said. She hadn't. She still hadn't mentioned Maddy to them. There was nothing to say.
"Are you feeling all right?" asked Mr. Mielswetzski.
"Totally," said Charlotte.
"Are you sure? We could call the doctor."
"Nah, I'm totally fine!" said Charlotte.
"Well… they've called school-wide sick days for tomorrow and Friday. So many kids are sick they want to investigate," said Mrs. Mielswetzski.
"Or at least cover their butts," said Mr. Mielswetzski.
"Really, Michael," said Mrs. Mielswetzski.
"Well, it's true, dear," said Mr. Mielswetzski.
"Wait," said Charlotte. "What? A sick day?"
"Yes," her mom nodded. "There's no school Thursday or Friday"
"Really?" said Charlotte.
"Really," said her father.
"Sweet!"
And before her parents could say anything else, Charlotte ran up to the den to tell Zee. He was supposed to go back to school on Thursday-really he could have gone back on Wednesday, but Charlotte's mother liked to be extra careful, and so she had exaggerated the doctor's orders a wee bit.
"Hey, Zee! Guess what?" Charlotte burst in to find Zee sitting up, flipping through their history book with a dazed expression that she thought probably had nothing to do with the concussion. Bartholomew slept peacefully on his lap.
"What?"
"You don't have to go to school tomorrow," said Charlotte. "Not all week!"
Zee closed the book. "I'm much better, really. Please, tell your mum-"
"No, no," said Charlotte. "I mean there's no school the rest of the week."
Zee's eyebrows went up. "Why?"
"Oh, bunch of kids are sick. They want to cover their butts."
"Wha-?" Zee said.
"Lots of kids are sick. So I guess -"
"Wait," Zee leaned forward. "How many?"
"I dunno," Charlotte shrugged. "Maddy's got it. She's been gone for a week."
Zee leaned toward her and grabbed her arm. Bartholomew fell off his lap. "What is it? What does she have?"
Charlotte stared at him. "I don't know! Nobody knows. She can't get out of bed, it's really awful, she's just lying there -"
Zee fell back into the couch. "Oh no." His hands flew to his face. Charlotte and Bartholomew stared. "What?"
"It's my fault," he said slowly. "It's all my fault." Charlotte could not stand it anymore. "What's your fault? Zee, what's going on?"
Zee had lost all color in his face. He seemed to be shaking. "They followed me."