Abandon (22 page)

I thought I was going to throw up my Coke float. I couldn’t stop thinking about all those people I’d seen in line for the other boat…the one John had told me I didn’t want to be on. Had they all turned into Furies?

Something told me they had.

“No,” I said. Outside, lightning flashed so abruptly, it made me jump. “I need to go. I’m on my bike, actually. I need to go before it starts raining. So —”

“Don’t worry. I’ll give you a lift.” Mr. Smith reached for a large book that was sitting on a shelf behind him. “Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Hades/Persephone myth. So much drama, with him kidnapping the poor girl in that distasteful manner and forcing her to live with him down in the Underworld against her will, and then Persephone’s mother having to intervene.…I never enjoy stories where the mother gets too involved. Let the kids work it out for themselves, I always say. But I digress. That’s
what they call this diamond, you know. The Persephone Diamond. Ah, here it is.”

He held up the illustration to show me. “Marie Antoinette, in all her glory, wearing your diamond. Her husband, King Louis the Sixteenth, gave it to her. I have no idea how he got his hands on it. Furies allegedly have the power to possess any human they wish to — that is, any human who has a weak enough character for the Furies to bend to their will — so perhaps a Fury possessed the king, or the queen, or whomever gave the necklace to them, hoping to cause mischief. Bad luck for them both, however it happened. This portrait was the only time Marie Antoinette had a chance to wear the stone before the peasants rose up against both her and her husband and had them executed for treason and crimes against the state. They
have
mentioned the French Revolution to you in school, haven’t they, Miss Oliviera?”

I stared at the picture, a reproduction of a portrait of Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen of France. Amazingly, she was wearing a gown that resembled the sort of toga in which Persephone, the reluctant bride of Hades, was always depicted on the sides of ancient vases. There were even grape leaves woven through the queen’s enormous powdered wig. Well, grape leaves made of gold, but whatever.

And at her neck — that slender neck that would soon be sliced in two by Madame Guillotine — hung my diamond, but on a dark green velvet choker instead of a gold chain.

John had told me men had died for the diamond he’d given me. Not just men, it turned out.

Had he known? Had he known its bloody “provenance,” as the jeweler had called it?

Of course he had. He
had
to have known.

And he’d given it to me anyway. He’d said it was supposed to
protect
me.…

A lot of good it had done Marie Antoinette.

I was shivering uncontrollably by now. I’d left my cardigan back at the house. I wished I’d thrown it in my bike basket.

But how was I to know? How was I to know I’d be hearing about…well,
this?

The cemetery sexton still didn’t appear to notice my discomfort, though. He was quite cheerfully telling his morbid story.

“The diamond disappeared,” he said, closing the book, “along with most of the rest of the queen’s jewelry, after her arrest. Until, quite randomly, it showed up again, a little more than fifty years later, on the cargo list of a merchant ship that was docked here in Isla Huesos, of all places, on October eleventh of 1846. And that’s the last time it — or anyone on that ship — was seen again. It, like every ship that was in port that day, was sunk by what was likely a Category Five hurricane that appeared from nowhere, drowning over a thousand people, destroying every boat and building on the island — including the hospital, so there was nowhere to treat the wounded, and the lighthouse, so there was no way to signal for help. It also,” he added, “washed every coffin that was buried here in this cemetery out to sea. So there was nowhere to bury the newly dead, either.” He shook his head. “Must have been quite a mess, what with the mosquitoes and the cholera.”

I think I made some kind of choking noise that Richard Smith mistook for disbelief, since he hastened to assure me, “Oh, yes. That’s why we keep the coffins in crypts now, you know. Of course, they ought to have known better, even then, considering what the Spaniards found three hundred years earlier when
they
got here, but…” He gave an elaborate shrug. “Some people choose to turn a blind eye to history.”

I didn’t feel like fainting anymore. Or cold. Now I just felt…nothing.

“Interesting fact about that hurricane,” the cemetery sexton went on. “It was the deadliest in recorded Isla Huesos history. A more superstitious man than I might say it was almost as if someone didn’t want this diamond — with its bad juju, as my partner would call it — making it off that ship. Because it never did, you know. It sank down to the bottom with the rest of the ship’s cargo, never to be seen again…though the company that owned the ship hired wreckers to salvage for it, and they looked for months, even years, in water that was only ten feet deep. Never found a trace of it. Is that where you got it?” His gaze, over the rims of his glasses, sharpened. “From a wrecker? Because it’s not called wrecking today, Miss Oliviera, or treasure hunting, or whatever the person who gave this to you might have told you. It’s called violation of submerged archaeological sites and destruction of underwater cultural heritage, and it, like desecrating someone’s tomb, is illegal.”

I shook my head, shocked. What was he even talking about?

“No,” I said, my heart beginning to thump more loudly than the thunder outside. “No, of course not. It was nothing like that —”

I thought of it the minute I saw you, John had said when he’d given the necklace to me. Only I never thought…well, I never thought you’d turn out to be you, or want to come here with me.

Is that how he’d gotten it? By causing that horrible hurricane that had killed so many people and sunk so many ships, then collecting their bounty from the bottom of the sea?

But that was impossible.

Then again…none of what I’d seen him do was possible.

“Whoever gave it to you,” Mr. Smith grumbled, picking up the necklace and examining it more closely in the light, “had it reset since Marie Antoinette’s time. And in a fashion I can only call — and that’s if I wanted to be charitable — whimsical.”

“I told you,” I said. “I don’t —”

“Oh, right,” he said, looking towards the ceiling. “You don’t know anything about it. Well, this setting is highly unique. Do you see how each prong forms a little curlicue design across the top of the diamond? Quite beautiful. And unusual. Do you know what these five prongs represent?” He didn’t even wait for my reply. “Rivers,” he said. “Five in all. Now, can you think of a place that has five rivers? Go on. Guess.”

“I don’t know. I’m terrible at geography.” And every subject, really, that didn’t have to do with avenging the death of Hannah Chang. “Look, I really have to —”

“It’s quite simple.” He picked up a pencil and pointed with it to the first prong. “Sorrow.” He pointed to the second. “Lamentation.” He pointed to the third. “Fire.” The fourth. “Oblivion.” The fifth. “And hate.”

Thunder cracked. Now the storm was so close, it seemed to be right above our heads.

“The five rivers of the Underworld,” Richard Smith said, sounding thrilled with himself. He ticked them off on his fingers. “Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, Lethe, the river Styx. Good Lord, girl.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. “Do they teach children
nothing
useful in school these days?
The Underworld.
”

I felt as if someone had run over me.

I shouldn’t have, of course. I should have known. It had been right there in front of me all along. Literally. It had been around my neck.

I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it. The psychiatrists had tried to tell me. My alleged dream had been full of things I’d seen on TV. Hadn’t I studied the Greek myths in school?

Of course I had.

But I had never paid attention to things that didn’t interest me, even before the accident. I had inherited that, too, from
both
my parents, though if I ever mentioned this, they would blame each other for it. Spoonbills, your fault. No, throwing stars, yours.

But who
did
pay attention to the myths, really? All those strange names and people being hit with arrows in the Achilles heel and girls being swept down into the Underworld. It was complicated and weird and had nothing to do with reality.

And yet at the same time…something didn’t make sense.

“But.” I blinked at him. “There weren’t any rivers when I was there. Just a lake.”

Now
he
was the one staring at
me.

And no wonder, really. “When you were there?” Mr. Smith took his glasses off. “What do you mean,
when you were there
?”

Sometimes I just got so tired of all the pretending. It was exhausting, really, trying to fit in, trying to be “normal.” Even if that word wasn’t therapeutically beneficial.

“This necklace,” I said, putting my hand over it. The stone felt warm and comforting under my palm, the way it always had.

But now that I knew a thousand people had been killed because of it — that a queen had, indirectly, lost her head because of it — I didn’t feel quite as friendly towards it as I once had.

“It’s supposed to protect its wearer from evil,” I said.

“Well,” Richard Smith said, blinking rapidly. For the first time, he didn’t appear to be quite so sure of himself. “Yes. That’s how the legend goes. That’s supposedly why Hades had it made. And if anyone
not
a chosen consort of the death deity attempts to possess it —” He shrugged, then rubbed his eyes, then put his glasses back on. “Well, nothing good will happen to her, obviously. But all of that is just a story. What did you mean when you said —”

“He didn’t tell me that part,” I murmured, looking over my shoulder, back at the window. “He didn’t tell me there would be evil spirits coming after me. He didn’t tell me that’s who he was. Or maybe he did. I was crying so much.…”

I got up out of my chair, feeling dazed, and moved towards the window. The view from the cemetery sexton’s office was of the street but also of the corner of the cemetery where the poinciana tree stood, its dark and twisted branches spreading out across the Hayden crypt.

I don’t know what I was hoping to see out there.
Him?
As if there was a chance he might be there, by the crypt where he’d thrown away the necklace he’d given me (because I’d given it back to him)? Or by the gate he’d kicked apart after telling me to go (because I’d called him a jerk)?

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see him, or feared seeing him.

I needn’t have worried. The cemetery, like the street, was deserted. Everyone was trying to avoid the coming storm.

Just like he was trying to avoid me. Or didn’t care.

“Miss Oliviera,” the cemetery sexton said from behind me. “I don’t understand any of this. Who is
he?
What did you mean when you said you were
there
?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I laughed. I couldn’t believe any of this. “I threw a cup of tea in his face.”

I heard the cemetery sexton’s chair creak, like he was getting up.

“Wait,” he said. “Are you telling me that you —”

“What do you want?” I swung around from the window. I don’t know why I was taking it out on him. It wasn’t
his
fault, poor man. I think it was going to the window and looking out and realizing he wasn’t there and that he’d never be there again, and that even after everything I’d been through, everything I’d just heard, when I should have been
relieved
to see he wasn’t there, what I felt was disappointment.

I didn’t belong in New Pathways. I belonged back in kindergarten.

“What do you
want
from me, giving me mysterious notes and trying to intimidate me like this?” I demanded. “Is it money to repair the stupid gate? Fine. I’ll get my dad to pay for it. Just
don’t tell anyone about it. My mom is trying to make a new start here.”

I walked over to the desk and snatched up the necklace. As soon as I did, I felt better. Comforted.

This might have been the most disturbing thing of all.

“And I lied to you,” I said. “This
is
mine. I’m taking it back. I don’t care about any stupid curse. So.” I looked him in the eye. “How much?”

He looked surprised. More than just surprised.

He looked horrified.

“Money?” he echoed. “I never wanted money from you, Miss Oliviera. Money never had anything to do with this.”

I looked at him in confusion.

“But if you don’t want money,” I said, “what
do
you want from me?”

“Well, to begin with, the truth.” He looked past me, towards the window I’d just been staring through. “How long have you known John?”

M
e?” I stared
at him. “You mean
you
know John?”

Then I realized what I’d done. I’d just admitted John’s existence to him.

Except…hadn’t
he
just admitted John’s existence to
me?

“Well, of course I do,” Richard Smith said, looking at me as if I were a little slow-witted. “Not as well as you do, evidently. But then, when I passed,
I
didn’t go to the Underworld.”

Suddenly, my knees felt weak. I fumbled for the chair, then sank down into it, clutching my necklace to my chest.

“You mean you —”

“Yes, yes,” he said, patting his chest impatiently. “Heart attack. Bypass surgery. But
I
just saw a light.” He sat back down in his chair and gazed at me with a completely different expression than
he’d worn before. Now he looked…well, a little impressed. As if I weren’t the “idiotic teenager” he’d originally thought me.

Which, I had to admit, I’d been acting like, sort of. But there’d been mitigating circumstances.