Burning (25 page)

“My father? He will not yell at me.” I told my half-truth smoothly. Not everyone needs to know everything, and I saw no reason to show my hidden heart to Hog Boy.

“He sure looked pissed out at the mine.”

I did not answer.

“And those guys? What about them?”

“They will not bother me, either.”

“Huh.” He did not use his turn signal as he turned onto the highway in the direction of my family’s camp. “Pretty strange, if you ask me.”

“I did not.”

He chuckled. “True enough.”

The silence as we rode together was not uncomfortable, though perhaps it should have been. Other than the time I had spent alone with Ben Stanley at the mine, I had never before been alone with a
gazhò
, and I had only rarely found myself alone with any boy who was not my relative, and never more than for a few minutes.

But Hog Boy’s energy was so straightforward, so uncomplicated, that it seemed very easy to understand him. I was safe with him; he had determined that I was Ben Stanley’s girl, and so he would keep his distance.

This should not have riled me. But it did. Not that I would have welcomed an advance from Hog Boy; of course I would not. It was his understanding that I was in some way marked—that was what irritated me. All my life I had been marked. All my life I had been someone else’s girl—first my father’s, then Romeo’s. Now I had been free of my engagement to Romeo for less than four hours, and already I was labeled as another boy’s girl.

I thought again of the story of the mouse girl. I am not a mountain, I thought, I am not a mouse.

“Pull over here.”

“There’s still like a quarter of a mile before we get to your camp.”

“This will do.”

Hog Boy slowed the truck and pulled it to the side of the road. He looked doubtful. “Listen, I don’t know if Ben would like me to just dump you here.”

“You are not dumping me here. I am getting out here.”

“Let me drive you the rest of the way. I should make sure you get inside.”

I smiled at him. “You are kind,” I said. “I promise not to tell anyone.” I pushed open the door of the truck. “Thank you for the ride.”

He shrugged. “All right,” he said. “Whatever, I guess.”

I shut the door and watched as he turned the truck around, and I stared after it until the red taillights disappeared.

Never had I felt so utterly alone. It was an uncomfortable feeling. All around me the desert seemed completely barren, desolate. For the first night since we had been here, there were no stars out. Even the moon was obscured by the thick clouds that had gathered as day ended. The night was flat and black.

It had not taken us nearly long enough to drive out of town to this place. I had not yet had a chance to arrange my thoughts. I had wanted to come here, but now that I was close I was afraid. I felt my heart beating hard in my chest. My hands shook.

My father was not a violent man, by nature. He was a negotiator, and this is what made him such a strong
rom barò
. Men from our
kumpànya
came to him with their disputes and he considered all the sides of their argument. He rarely handed down a decision without inviting the men who had come to him into a discussion, attempting to find common ground, a place where each party could leave feeling as if he had won.

This situation was nothing like those. There was no middle ground here. There would be no forgiveness. Maybe if I had just ridden on Ben Stanley’s motorbike, if I had not gone swimming with him in the pond, if I had not waved my skirts at the men of my own
kumpànya
, perhaps some negotiations might have been possible—the end of my engagement to Romeo, certainly, but still a return to my family.

Was that why I had gone so far—stripping myself of my clothes and entering the water with Ben? In part, certainly it
was. It had been coming at me for a long time. Many years, I think. This desire to step away.

My father was not a violent man, but to him I was no longer one of his own. I was worse than an outsider. I was a traitor.

There would be no discussion with my father, no peaceful resolution. And though he was not the person I had come to see, if he were to find me entering his camp, I could not know for sure what he might do.

Perhaps it was this fear of his reaction that slowed me; I found that I was not going forward, toward the dim light of my family’s camp. Instead, walking slightly away from the road, I settled myself on the ground. The air was not hot, that was a blessing. I stretched my legs out in front of me and lay back on the hard dirt, crossing my hands behind my head. A car drove by. Its headlights blinded me and the sound it made was terrifying. In its wake I felt the earth beneath me shudder slightly. Whoever was riding in the car—wherever they were going, wherever they had been—I would never know their story. They would never know that I had lain by the side of the road on this night as they drove down this anonymous stretch of highway. For them, I was less than a ghost. I was a nonentity.

Little Stefan. That was how I would be to him. Less real than Ana was to Anelie. I experimented with lying as still as possible, breathing little shallow breaths, pretending that I was not there at all.

The temperature of the air was exactly that of my skin. If I was very careful not to move I could not tell where the
separation came between the outside of me and the beginning of the universe.

Is this what it meant to be
marimè
? To be unnoticeable, completely indistinguishable from the world around me? No
—marimè
is worse than that. It is not neutral; it is absolutely negative.

And the ground was there still beneath me; I felt the sharpness of little rocks and pebbles under my back, my hips. Above, though the sky was black and murky with clouds, there were occasional pinpricks of starlight that I could see if I looked carefully into the velvet depths.

I had often wondered what it would be like to be Ana, to be
marimè
. When she had left the circle of our family, had she truly continued to exist? It seemed difficult to imagine, her continuing to
be
without the rest of us. Like the old philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, will it make a sound? My visceral, immediate response would have been no. Without someone to hear, the sound of a tree’s fall is so meaningless that it need not even happen. Without a family to speak her name, to evoke her memory, Ana, like the fallen tree’s crash, lacked the context necessary for existence.

But though I was now
marimè
, I still somehow was myself. I breathed in and out; I enjoyed the slight breeze that cooled my skin; I even smiled, alone, into the night.

Perhaps I was
marimè
, but I was not dead.

I stood and wiped dust from my skirt. Blinking against the dark, I walked forward, up the road toward my family.

I crept toward my family’s encampment like an enemy spy, careful not to make a sound. It simplified matters greatly that even though the night air was temperate and the motor home must have been hot, none of my family was outside.

I felt terribly nervous and unsure, a sensation I was not accustomed to and one that I did not like. I could not stop seeing in my head Ben’s fallen body, his arms across his face, as Romeo and Marko kicked him again and again. There was a palpable weight in the air, a heaviness like death.

There was an electric lantern on the little picnic table just outside the entrance to the motor home. It threw shadows across the hard, flat ground. No lights were on inside. I stood near the cold fire ring, looking down at the circle of stones.

Had it been just a week ago that we’d foraged for stones together, laughing and comparing who had found the biggest? Anelie and I had found many rocks shot through with streaks of white. Together we had built the ring, layering our stones one atop another until we lost sight of who had found which. Our stones had each been pretty in their separateness, but together they were better than pretty—they were useful, a single unit with a purpose.

I, too, was many things, yet nothing—a ghost, a loose stone, a broken girl. A flood of shame washed through me and I felt it in my spirit—
maximè
, unclean, no good anymore at all. It was incredible, the fluctuation of my emotions. Lying on the desert floor, I had felt a flash of happiness, but
now that seemed impossible. Cut loose as I was from my family, it was as if my body no longer had a center, a force of gravity to comfortably weight it.

I did not wipe away the tears that slid down my face, though I choked back my sob so as to not be heard. There would be shame in that, as well—to be caught like this with tears on my face.

There was the tent where I had sat with Ben and looked at his cards. Could I blame him, claim it was his fault that I had been tempted away from my family? I could, I suppose, pin everything I had done on a female weakness, an attraction beyond my control.

But that would be a lie. Ben Stanley had not made me do anything; every choice I had made had been of my own volition. I turned away from the motor home and walked to the tent. Quietly, in case my sister was sleeping, I pulled back the flap and stepped inside. For a terrible instant I imagined that Romeo and Marko were just inside, waiting for me.

The tent was empty. Of course it was; my father would not allow Anelie to sleep out here alone. I must have known that she would not be here, but I had not allowed myself to think it, almost as if to think it would make it so.

There was the table where I read fortunes. My cards were still there, wrapped in their velvet bag as if I had just stepped out. Each of us—my mother, Violeta, and I—had our own set of cards. On the days when we were the busiest we would do simultaneous readings. These were my cards. They had been given to me by my mother.

It was dark in the tent. I found my little reading light
behind the screen and turned it on its lowest setting. Then I pulled back a chair and sat down. The cards slid from their velvet into my hand. Face up, I flipped through them, sorting out the cards Ben had drawn and re-creating his reading. Since I had first thought of it—that he had not cut his cards, and that in a way that might mean that the drawing was mine as well as his, since I had shuffled them—I had wanted to see the reading laid out again.

First the Situation, represented by the Tower. This was topped by the Crossing Card, the Five of Cups. Above them was the Crowning Card, the Three of Cups. And beneath was the Root of the Matter, the Hanged Man. To the left lay the Recent Past, the Eight of Pentacles. Opposite, to the right, lay the Immediate Future, the Page of Cups. Next came the Questioner—the Fool. Above this lay the Views of Others, the Seven of Swords. Next came Hopes and Fears, and above them all was the Final Outcome.

I did truly believe that there was no magic in this world. So why, then, sitting alone in the tent with these cards laid before me, did I look to them for answers? Some part of me wanted desperately to find answers in the spread of cards on the table. I wanted things to
make sense
. Looking at these cards and imagining that they were mine, I wanted to believe—to hope, to wish, to pray that answers were there for me, and I yearned to doubt my own convictions, my own surety. Might I find my fortune there, if only I looked hard enough?

The Tower—my situation. I had read it to be Ben’s falling town. Surely it was. But might not this situation also be mine, though I had not seen it as such? The tower could
be my engagement to Romeo, something that had seemed secure but in reality was not. The lightning striking it, the figures plunging from it into the crashing sea—that was the reality. A crumbling edifice from which I might escape, but not unscathed. And like those figures, I had jumped—I had not been pushed.

The Crossing Card—the Five of Cups. Was that me, a hooded figure sneaking home to look at what I had spilled? Here I was, a trespasser, and the spilled cups could easily enough represent my lost family. I remembered how Ben had reacted to this card during his reading—yes, not all was lost, some cups retained their contents, but what comfort can that be in the face of what is irretrievably gone?

Looking at the Crowning Card, the Three of Cups, I could not help but draw a parallel to what might have been had I stayed the path and married Romeo. That was all I had thought I wanted, if I did not think about it too carefully—to follow Violeta into marriage and lead Anelie into womanhood. The three of us would dance, always together, forever linked, our cups overflowing with fortune. A child’s way to look at the world.

Then came the Root of the Matter—the Hanged Man. This could be me also—hanged, as it were, by actions of my own, a willing sacrifice. And the Eight of Pentacles, the Recent Past? Clearly all the work I’d done for my family, with my family.

And then the Immediate Future—the Page of Cups. An apprentice on the verge of self-discovery. I supposed this could be me; certainly I was discovering much about myself,
what I was capable of doing and what I was not. But this interpretation seemed too easy and not quite right; I set this card slightly to the side to think further on later.