At Risk Part 7

"Get your dog off me," Charlie says.

Sevrin reaches and grabs the still-wagging Felix by his collar.

"Where've you been?" Charlie asks as he stands up. "Vacation?"

"I haven't been anywhere," Sevrin says. He's holding the dog by the collar and he looks weird. Now Charlie understands why his father complains when someone doesn't look him in the eye.

"I'm in a different school," Sevrin says.

"Oh, yeah?" Charlie says carefully.

"Actually, it's pretty neat," Sevrin says. "My cousins go there and my aunt is on the board, that's how they got me in."

"Prep school?" Charlie is becoming more and more uneasy.

"Private school," Sevrin clarifies. "My dad drops me off in Cambridge on his way downtown. After this week, I won't get home till after seven."

"You don't have to go on weekends, do you?" Charlie asks.

"It's not a prison, idiot," Sevrin says. "I might get to play on the junior soccer team."

"We can get together on Sat.u.r.days," Charlie says, relieved.

Sevrin still isn't looking at him. He lets go of the dog's collar and Felix trots off to a neighbor's yard.

"My mom doesn't want me to," Sevrin says unhappily.

"Doesn't want you to what?" Charlie says, confused.

"I can't be friends with you because of Amanda," Sevrin says.

"What did she do?" Charlie asks, more confused than ever.

"It's because she's sick," Sevrin says.

Charlie stares at his friend. "That's crazy," he says finally.

"My mother's afraid I'll get it," Sevrin says.

"That's scientifically ridiculous," Charlie says. "Where's her data that confirms that? Didn't you tell her you can't get it?"

Sevrin's still not looking at him.

"Some scientist," Charlie says, disgusted. He can feel his throat get tight, but he's not about to cry.

"My mom is really upset about this," Sevrin says. "She's not kidding on this one. She won't take no for an answer."

"Sure," Charlie says. He walks away and gets his bike.

"I'll give you half the newts if you want them," Sevrin says.

"No thanks," Charlie says.

He and Sevrin were born in the same month, February, and ever since they were three they've had their parties together. They've been planning a dinosaur party for this year; they've already ordered rubber claws and fangs from a mail-order catalogue.

"Good luck making the soccer team," Charlie says.

He knows that Sevrin's crying, but he doesn't care. He's thinking about the ride home if you time it just right and take the b.u.mp on Ash Street at full speed your bike will go right up in the air and fly over the curb. He's a little too old for birthday parties now anyway. They're stupid. They're for kids. They're something he's not even going to think about anymore.

Sometimes, in the evenings, Laurel Smith rides past their house. She doesn't want anyone in the neighborhood to hear her, so she takes her bike, an old green Ross that once belonged to her ex-husband. The bike doesn't have a headlight; she has to pedal through the blackness of the marsh road, carefully avoiding the pitch that leads down to the steep drainage ditches filled with rainwater. In the spring the ditches are a breeding ground for dragonflies; they hover above the still water, lining the road with a shimmering band of blue. The dragonflies are gone now, but there are other things still alive in the woods. Whenever a bike goes by there's a frantic beating of wings, branches break as deer run away.

Laurel does not know what all the children in town know; there is a shortcut, a dirt path through the pines, which allows them to ride their bikes from the marsh to the outskirts of town without having to pa.s.s the graveyard. The children have been taking this shortcut for so long most of them don't even remember why they avoid this stretch of road. Some of them still get the chills just before they make the turn off into the woods. There is a sharp curve just before the graveyard, a place where the pines are especially tall; in bad weather the place is like a wind tunnel. Laurel always races her bike at this turn in the road, especially when there's a moon and she can see the iron fence in the middle of the woods. She wonders about that fence, whether it's meant to keep people out, or in.

It is dusk when Laurel stops, suddenly, as though she'd been pushed off her bike. The fence around the cemetery has turned green, and even from a distance it gives out a peculiar mossy odor, a mixture of rust and tears. There are not more than thirty headstones, and several of them have been cracked. Angels have been split in half, rain has worn away the features of little stone lambs and made them blind. There is a new cemetery on the other side of Route 16, so no one has been buried here for two hundred years, no one is remembered. It's a place where gra.s.s can't grow, where mockingbirds and crows nest in the boughs of the trees; they have plucked out so many of their feathers that in one or two of the hollows the earth looks black.

"I've got to get out of here," Laurel says out loud. Her head chums like a caldron, but she stands where she is, beside her bike. She waits for the dead, but they don't come out to greet her. They don't even whisper. Two inky feathers fall from the sky. "Say something," Laurel Smith commands, but the silence goes on, broken only by twigs cracking and wind. Laurel touches the tip of one of the iron brackets of the gate; it is sharp, it could easily cut her finger.

Darkness has fallen by the time Laurel gets back on the road, and when she finally turns onto Chestnut Street, she's certain she won't be noticed. After the blackness of the road and the woods, she's always shocked to see the white houses on this street, the globes of light behind the windows, the tubs of chrysanthemums beside the front doors. Laurel rests her bike on the gra.s.s across the street; she can see into their kitchen window from here. Sometimes she sees them all at dinner, she can smell vegetable soup and broiled chops when the wind is right. She's checked some of the other houses on Chestnut, peered into other kitchens and living rooms. She feels giddy when she does this,-she balances on the edge of window wells like a cat on a ledge. Sometimes she thinks the Farrells are just like anybody else, and it makes her feel good. She believes she knows what's going on at their table, in their beds, just because she sees them through their window, but she has no way of knowing that Amanda can barely eat and that her lack of appet.i.te seems catching, for half of the food Polly cooks is sc.r.a.ped into the trash. She has never imagined that as soon as dinner is gotten through, Charlie escapes to the bas.e.m.e.nt like a turtle into his sh.e.l.l; that Polly and Ivan can no longer kiss, that their lips seem broken and their tongues don't work; that Amanda can no longer swallow the vitamins her father gives her. She saves them in her cheek and when no one's looking spits them out, her head leaning far into the toilet.

Dinner is over and there are plates of chocolate cake on the table. Tonight the scent of coffee wafts across the street. Charlie has taken his cake downstairs and is feeding crumbs to his hamsters. He can hear his sister in the kitchen as she stomps her feet on the floor, he can feel her fury through the floorboards, as it moves through the pipes and the heat registers in a hot, cloudy swirl. It's not fair. That's what everybody thinks. That's what everybody keeps saying. Tomorrow night there is a birthday party, a sleepover, and everybody is going, but Amanda is not allowed. She has already gone to the mall with Jessie and Mrs. Eagan and bought a birthday present, six colorful plastic headbands and six matching bangle bracelets.

"You hate me," Amanda says to her parents.

She has a terrible look on her face. She pushes the plate of cake away from her, hard. The plate skitters across the table and crashes on the floor.

"We love you," Polly says. She holds herself back from crouching down and cleaning up the cake. She holds herself back all the time.

"Oh, yeah," Amanda says. "Sure. That's what you say. You have to say that."

"This is not up for discussion," Ivan says. "You can go to the party, but you can't sleep over."

"Just embarra.s.s me in front of everybody," Amanda cries. "My life is ruined anyway."

Her words fall across the table like splinters of gla.s.s. They should be eating chocolate cake, instead they are bleeding from their souls. Ivan closes his eyes and immediately wishes he could talk to Brian,- the thought startles him and then he thinks, Of course. He wants to telephone a hotline and speak to a stranger because there is no one he can talk to in this house anymore, there aren't even words to use. Amanda glares at her parents, defying them to try to comfort her.

"Amanda,"Polly says. "Please."

"Please what?" Amanda fires back. "Please just die and get it over with?"

Her parents don't answer and Amanda feels the flush of triumph. She has had the last word and she's not even being sent to her room. Amanda leans back in her chair and folds her arms across her thin chest. For no reason at all she thinks of a rabbit's foot her grandpa gave her once. The rabbit's foot was white and soft and you could keep it in your pocket like a secret. Amanda loved it and kept it in her coat or under her pillow until she realized that the only way to get a rabbit's foot from a rabbit is to cut it off. She feels the same way now as she did when she hid the rabbit's foot deep in the kitchen garbage can, underneath orange peels and wet tea bags. Her arms feel spongy and something as sharp as a pin seems to be lodged behind her eyes.

n.o.body tries to stop Amanda as she runs outside. The screen door slams behind her and her breathing is coming hard. It's black outside with just the first few stars high above the trees. Amanda runs into the driveway and then in a zigzag across the lawn, but when she gets to the sidewalk she stops and starts to cry. Stupid, but it was only at the dinner table that she realized in order to die of a disease you really have to die and not come back. She stands on the sidewalk with her sneakers straddling the cracks in the cement and covers her eyes with her hands.

Across the street, Laurel Smith grabs the sleeves of her cardigan and pulls the wool over her fingers. Amanda's pale hair hangs limply, like unwound silver thread in the dark. She doesn't make any noise when she cries, but her whole body shakes. After a while someone opens the back door.

"Amanda?" Polly calls in a high, frightened voice. "Honey?"

Laurel doesn't move until Amanda turns around and walks back to the house. The trees on Chestnut Street are heavy with leaves and they move with the wind and make a low, throaty noise. When the screen door slams behind Amanda, Laurel gets on her bike, pushes off hard with her feet, then swoops along the sidewalk and into the street. She pedals so hard the old bike vibrates,- the air is salty and cool, but she's sweating enough that by the time she reaches the marsh her hair is wet and flattened to her head. Her sweater is damp. She lets the bike fall to the ground and goes to her deck, tripping over a lawn chair in the dark. Her breath is all jumpy, filled with strange little sobs that don't quite come out and don't stay inside either. She thinks of herself watching, peeking into other people's lives through the dark, and she's disgusted.

When she goes inside she rifles through the kitchen cabinet, gets a can of tunafish and eats standing up, as though she'd been starved. Then she takes down a bag of flour and some brown sugar, and by midnight she has finished a perfect fluted crust for a pie. In the morning she gets into her car and goes back to Chestnut Street. The pie is wrapped in aluminum foil and Laurel has also brought a bunch of pink mallows, marsh flowers so huge they look as if they've been grown on another planet. The apple pie is still warm, the flowers only slightly wilted. As she waits for someone to answer the door, Laurel switches the strap of her canvas pocketbook from one shoulder to the other. Being here in the daylight, Laurel feels nervous, much the way her clients react to their first seance. As she walked up to the Farrells' back door, things looked unbalanced and out of focus. She has never been at ease with people,- when she was married she could never call her husband by his name, and he often complained that she never looked him full in the face but went out of her way to crouch down and greet stray cats.

It's a Sat.u.r.day, so when Polly hears someone at the door, she a.s.sumes it's her parents, earlier than expected. She gave them an inch and now they're up every weekend. She has the feeling they start to watch the clock on Friday nights, so they'll be ready to jump into Al's car at dawn on Sat.u.r.day. Polly takes her time, wiping down a counter before she gets the door. When she sees Laurel, Polly feels something sharp along her back, as if she were an animal with her hackles raised. Across the street, Fran Crowley balances her groceries on the fender of her hatchback so she can get a good look at Laurel; she puts one hand over her eyes to shade them, and her mouth drops into an O.

"I'm not working on the book anymore," Polly says quickly.

"Neither am I," Laurel says.

Polly hasn't opened the screen door; she's talking to Laurel through the mesh, as she would to a peddler.

"I heard that your daughter was sick, so I came to visit her," Laurel says. "I brought a pie."

"You should have waited," Polly says. "She's not dead yet."

Laurel steps backward, as if she'd been slapped. She catches the heel of her shoe on the step that needs fixing and winds up sprawled on her hands and knees. Polly quickly opens the screen door to help. She picks up the pie and lifts the foil,- only one side of the crust has been bashed in. She folds the foil back over the pie tin.

"You have to watch out for that step," Polly says. "We're all so used to it, we never trip."

"You don't have to invite me inside if you don't want to," Laurel Smith says.

"I don't know why you're here," Polly says. "Why are you here?"

"I just thought most kids liked apple pie," Laurel says. "I always loved it."

The pie tin feels warm in Polly's hands.

"I'll get Amanda," Polly says.

Laurel Smith follows Polly inside,- she sets the flowers down on the table while Polly calls down to the bas.e.m.e.nt for Amanda.

"She's practicing gymnastics," Polly explains.

For some reason Polly feels incidental, much the way she does when Jessie comes over,- she's just someone to be dealt -with politely while waiting for Amanda. She has no idea where Ivan or Charlie are, only that they both left without having breakfast, each to his own private destination.

"Amanda," Polly calls again.

"I'm practicing," Amanda yells, and her voice breaks a little with the effort.

"Come on up anyway," Polly calls.

Amanda is lying about practicing; for the past two hours all she's been doing is sitting on a gray mat listening to her Madonna ca.s.sette. Today when she woke up she thought to herself, I'm not going to be in the finals, and as soon as she thought it she knew it was true. She doesn't have the strength or the stamina. Her legs have been aching, simple moves she knows by heart leave her dizzy and short of breath. Amanda pulls her knees up and hugs them to her chest. She bends her head down, and when she breathes out she can feel her warm breath on her skin. Where, she wonders, does the breath go when you die?

Laurel Smith is still standing when Amanda comes upstairs,- she has not been invited to sit down. Amanda's wearing a pink T-shirt and jeans,-she knows her mother has a guest, but she doesn't look at either woman. She leans up against the refrigerator and studies the-floor.

"This is Laurel," Polly says. "The woman I've been photographing. She brought a pie."

Amanda looks up. "I don't eat pie," she says. "It's fattening." .

Amanda is so thin Laurel can see her bones, fragile as a bird's.

"Maybe you'd like these," Laurel says. She holds out the flowers.

"Are they real?" Amanda asks. And, before she can stop herself, she adds, "They're beautiful."

"Pink is my favorite color," Laurel says.

"Mine, too," Amanda says carefully as she appraises Laurel, staring mostly at Laurel's hair, which hangs to her waist, except on each side where the hair is pulled back into an intricate French braid.

"I could teach you to do your hair like this," Laurel says.

Polly narrows her eyes; she realizes that she has read Amanda's mind just as easily as Laurel has.

"Yeah?" Amanda says.

"Would that be okay?" Laurel asks Polly.

"I'm sure you're busy," Polly says.

"No," Laurel says. "The most important thing I have to do today is buy cat food."

"You have a cat?" Amanda asks, as if this were the most fascinating piece of information she'd ever heard.

"Grandma and Grandpa are coming over," Polly says weakly, "Not for a while," Amanda says. She looks very small, and younger than her age. "Oh, please!"

Polly and Laurel Smith look at each other.

"All right," Polly says.

Amanda runs off to get a brush and some rubber bands.

"Why are you doing this?" Polly says, suspiciously. She figures she has a right to be suspicious when a woman who communes with spirits wants to brush her daughter's hair.

"She'll look pretty with her hair braided," Laurel Smith says. "Don't you think so?"

Amanda and Laurel go out onto the porch. Through the window, Polly can see Laurel, sitting behind Amanda, brushing her hair. Polly should tell Laurel Smith to leave; they don't need any help from strangers. If one of their friends or neighbors had offered them anything at all, Polly would have taken the pie from Laurel Smith, then shut the door and put the pie in the refrigerator, behind the cartons of orange juice and milk. Instead, she watches through the window and cries.

"How long did it take you to grow your hair that long?" Amanda asks Laurel.

"The last time I cut it I was fourteen," Laurel says. Then she adds, "I can tell you use conditioner. You don't have any knots."

Amanda smiles. She's usually shy around adults, but Laurel Smith doesn't seem very much older than she is. It's as if they were both teenagers, and Amanda's glad she's not wearing her stupid Smurf T-shirt.

"Have you ever been in love with anybody?" Amanda asks Laurel.

"Not yet," Laurel Smith admits.

"Me either," Amanda says.

"I've been in like," Laurel Smith adds.