The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel (15 page)

Wonders.

R
achel could feel the eyes of Roam on her as she walked, alone, toward the woods. The first person she met was the Widow Harrington.
Rachel heard her old lady footsteps—the heel of her shoe dragging against the sidewalk.

“Rachel McCallister?” the widow said. “What in the world?!”

Rachel knew what that meant:
Where is Helen?
But Rachel didn’t have the time to stop and talk to her. She kept walking. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it, Mrs. Harrington?” she said, as she passed.

843 steps to the Forest. 842, 841 . . .

J
uliana Scopes was the second person she met on the way to the Forest. Juliana was Rachel’s very first, and very last, friend. Mr. and Mrs. McCallister had struggled with what to do with Rachel after she went blind—how to present her to the world and how to present the world to her. After much discussion they decided to pretend she
wasn’t
blind, or at least to do the same things they would have done had she not been. So they had Juliana over for a playdate. Juliana lived one street over and had been born the same week as Rachel; when they were babies Mrs. McCallister imagined a future in which they grew up to become the best of friends. Then Rachel went blind.

Regardless, Mrs. McCallister insisted that Rachel be treated no differently than any other child, and on the first day of summer she had Juliana over. They spread out a blanket in the backyard beneath the apple tree, and Mrs. McCallister took an apple and cleaned it and cored it and gave half to each girl. Juliana knew there was something wrong with Rachel from the moment she got there, the way her eyes couldn’t focus on anything, how her hands were always reaching for something that wasn’t quite there. Juliana was scared at first, and held tight to her mother’s legs. But as soon as Rachel tripped over the roots of the apple tree and fell, and then fell again as she was trying to get up, Juliana laughed and saw how much fun this could be. “Let’s play hide-and-go-seek,” she said.

“I don’t know that’s such a good idea, Juliana,” Mrs. Scopes said.

“Let them play,” said Mrs. McCallister. “Rachel wants to, I can tell.”

Rachel did want to. She counted to ten while Juliana hid. Through force of habit, Rachel even covered her eyes with her hands, and this, to her mother, was the most heartbreaking thing. It was a long ten seconds, long enough for Mrs. McCallister to begin to regret her decision.

“Ready or not, here I come!” Rachel called, and her pointless seeking began. She took one halting step after another, walking in small awkward circles. She did this for a couple of minutes, flattening the grass around her in a strange meandering pattern. Mrs. McCallister watched with a smile frozen on her face, as if perchance were she to maintain her composure, were she able to believe that something good would come from all of this, something actually would. After a few minutes Juliana quietly approached Rachel until she was just behind her. Rachel heard her—turned, lunged—but Juliana just got out of her way. This happened again, but the third time Rachel somehow tagged her.

“You peeked!” Juliana screeched, until she realized that cheating, for Rachel, was impossible.

Mrs. McCallister thought it best to continue the playdate some other time. After that Helen was the only friend Rachel had.

Now here Juliana was again. Even before Rachel heard her she could smell her: a cloud of sugary perfume filled the air, so thick as to be dizzying. She was with someone.

“Oh, my,” Juliana whispered, but not nearly so softly that Rachel couldn’t hear. “It’s Rachel McCallister.”

“The blind girl?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes, the blind girl!” Juliana whispered quite loudly. “Now lower your voice!” she said even louder.

Rachel tried to keep walking—732, 731, 730—but at the last moment Juliana spoke to her, and Rachel felt she had to stop.

“Rachel,” she said. “This is—I am—Juliana Scopes. You probably don’t remember me.”

“Of course I remember you,” Rachel said. She needed to keep going; the longer she was on the streets the greater the chance she’d be discovered by her sister or be taken home by some do-gooder. But she had to act as though everything were fine. “I do hope you’re well.”

“I am,” Juliana said, but Rachel could hear in her voice that she was staring at her the way people felt so free to do, knowing Rachel couldn’t see them back. “Father, you know Rachel.”

“Of course. Hello, Rachel.”

“Mr. Scopes.”

“Your sister isn’t here,” Mr. Scopes said. “She’s with you, usually, isn’t that so?”

“Usually,” Rachel said.

Juliana and her father exchanged a look: Rachel didn’t have to see to know that. A bird flew down and—briefly, just long enough to say it had—perched on Rachel’s shoulder. Then fluttered away.

“Well, would you look at that,” Mr. Scopes said.

“Animals have always liked Rachel,” said Juliana. “I guess it’s one of those things that comes with it.”

“It?” Rachel said.

“They see what we see,” Mr. Scopes said, the way a father says it, with that deep voice, as though he knew what he was talking about when he was talking about something he had no concept of at all. “Because blind or not, I have to admit: you’re the prettiest girl in Roam, Rachel. Present company excepted, of course,” he said to his daughter.

“Thank you, Father,” Juliana said, “but I have eyes.” An awkward silence. “I didn’t mean—I only meant that without a doubt there’s no more beautiful girl between here and Arcadia than you, Rachel.”

“Please,” Rachel said. “Please stop.”

“To wake up every morning and see your face on the pillow beside him,” Mr. Scopes said. “I don’t know a man who could easily say no to that.”

Rachel felt as though they were throwing rocks at her. “Helen told me that people could be cruel,” she said. “I just never imagined how cruel. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You should, but I know you won’t be. Anyone who could say such things doesn’t have the capacity for shame.”

She heard them reeling, felt the shock, the sudden surprise. “
Rachel,
” Juliana said, aghast, breathless. No one expects a blind girl to have the temerity to say what’s true.

“
Juliana,
” she said, mocking her. “If you are no prettier than I, you must have the face of a dog.”

And she walked away, just like that. Again she heard them not making a sound, and Rachel thought:
How the world seems to change after one decides to leave it.

729.

T
he third and last person Rachel met before she made it to the Forest was Mrs. Samuels. Mrs. Samuels was in fact the last person she wanted to meet, because other than her sister she seemed to be the only person in the entire world who truly cared for her, or who thought about her enough to care. Rachel wondered why—because Mrs. Samuels had never been particularly kind to Helen. Rachel sensed that cool distance between them when Mrs. Samuels came upon them selling their things on the corner. With Helen and Mrs. Samuels, it was as if much less were being said than thought, known, and felt. So maybe it was simply pity. Pity the poor ugly blind girl who has taken everything from everybody and given nothing in return.

Still, Mrs. Samuels seemed truly happy to see her.

“Rachel,” she said. And again: “Rachel. Look at you. You’re—”

“I know,” she said. “I’m wearing the brooch.”

Mrs. Samuels placed her hand on Rachel’s arm and lightly squeezed it: it was the way old people showed deep feeling. “So you are,” she said.

“I thanked you, didn’t I? For the brooch.”

“Thanked me? It was yours already. Your sister . . . ?” Neither of them spoke for a moment. “You’re looking particularly beautiful today, Rachel.”

“Beautiful?” Rachel was tired of defending her own hideousness. She merely sighed.

“I mean your hair especially. And that’s a Very. Attractive. Dress.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Samuels.”

Mrs. Samuels was one for the long, thoughtful pause. Sometimes. Even in the. Middle of. Sentences. Mrs. Samuels liked to say things that
mattered
. Being blind and in a conversation with her, it was like waiting for a train at an abandoned station in the middle of the night. Rachel spent the long moment remembering her number: 247.

“I think I know what you’re doing,” Mrs. Samuels said, finally.

“You do?”

A bird landed on a nearby branch and sang a little song. “And I think it’s wonderful.”

“You
do
?”

“This . . .
foray
,” she said. “Into the world. Without your sister. I’d been hoping. For something like this.”

“It
is
something, isn’t it?” Rachel said. “But—”

Rachel listened to the bird sing. A cardinal.

“Yes, Rachel?”

“I think I should continue. With my foray.”

If Helen returned and found her here she would take her by the wrist and drag her home and it would be terrible—Helen would be so
upset they would spend the rest of their lives getting over it and they never would, because Helen would hold it against her forever. She could hear her now:
You said you would never leave me. Never!
And she had said that. She had lied to her sister. But this was for the best.

Mrs. Samuels didn’t move.

“I think this must mean something,” she said. “Meeting you here.”

“You do?”

“I do.” A human gaze must exert some sort of special invisible force, because Rachel felt it, Mrs. Samuels’s eyes all over her face. Then Mrs. Samuels whispered a kind of secret: “
I’m just. Coming back. From your mother’s. Grave
.”

Rachel pointed.

“That’s right,” Mrs. Samuels said, sounding a bit stunned. How could a blind girl know? It was magic! “Just over there.”

Rachel had been there many times, of course. She and Helen went once a month. Helen always managed to bring up the circumstances, and how terrible it was that two people died simply because they were trying to do something good for someone—for her, for Rachel. To think they were struck down while they were only trying to help their sweet little blind daughter Rachel.
Think how much would be different now if you’d never been blind! Think about it. They would still be alive
.

Rachel didn’t want to think about it.

“It’s very nice, your mother’s grave. A very nice place to be.”

“My parents’ grave, you mean,” Rachel said. “My mother and father are buried side by side.”

Mrs. Samuels sniffed. “Well, I don’t talk to your father,” she said. “We never really . . . got along. A good man, I haven’t a bad word for him. But your mother was my friend. I really only talk to her.”

“Why do you keep saying
talk
?” Rachel asked.

“Because I do, dear,” she said. “She was never much of a talker when she was alive, you know. But now. Oh, my. She can’t stop.”

“No,” Rachel said. “That’s impossible. She’s dead.”

“Well,” Mrs. Samuels said. “I’m certainly not going to argue with you about that. But we
do
talk. I stand by her grave and talk to her the same way I’m talking to you right now. The only difference between the way it is now and the way it was then is a cup of black coffee and a slice of Bundt cake.”

Rachel laughed. “And why not bring that with you? No one would mind, I’m sure. Set up a little table beside the stone.” She didn’t regret saying it: why should she? Even to Mrs. Samuels, who had always been so kind. But she was thinking,
If my mother can talk, why hasn’t she been talking to me?

“She’s right,” Mrs. Samuels said, her friendly tone changing.

“Who?”

“Your mother. You are beginning to sound like your sister. That awful girl.”

That awful girl.
Rachel tried to slap Mrs. Samuels when she said this, but she wasn’t really sure where her face was and she missed, terribly. Rachel had never tried to hit anybody in her life, and there was so much more to it, she discovered, than the act itself. Her whole body began to tremble. Mrs. Samuels took her in her arms and held her.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Samuels said. She patted her on the back as though she were a little girl. “There now. I know, I know. But Rachel, dear, all your mother wants you to know is who your sister is. Helen is not the woman you think. You’re such a beautiful girl,” she said. “But you don’t know who you
are
. You’re a woman now, Rachel. You’re all grown up. More than anything this is what your mother wants you to know. You have to start over.”

“Start over?” Now she did push herself away from Mrs. Samuels, and wiped her face with her dress sleeve. “But that’s what I’m doing.”

“How? What do you mean, Rachel?”

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“Where to?”

“To a better place,” she said. “Helen told me there was a better place. Away from the Hanging Tree, the Boneyard, the House of Death. It’s on the other side of the ravine. A river, and a town.”

Mrs. Samuels took Rachel’s hands in her own. She was crying now; Rachel could hear it in her voice. “No.
No,
Rachel. None of that—it’s a story, a terrible story, and she’s a terrible, hideous person,” she said. “Hideous inside and out. She tells you lies and you believe her because you don’t know any better, because she’s never
let
you know any better. She’s never let another soul near you. You
couldn’t
know. But now you can, now you can. Rachel? Rachel, dear? Where are you going?
Rachel
: you have no idea what’s out there.”

“But I’m hopeful,” Rachel said. “That’s the important thing, right?”

Rachel kept walking until Mrs. Samuels’ voice faded in the distance, until even the wind was louder. She didn’t see anybody else on her way to the Forest, and no one saw her, or if someone did they didn’t stop her, watching from a distance through the small windows of the small houses where the mill workers once lived. She felt something warm rub against her leg and disappear, and she could smell it: a dog. She could hear it running, the soft crackling of brittle twigs beneath its paws. She walked faster now as she tried to get the sound of Mrs. Samuels’s voice out of her head, to forget what she’d heard. But the words felt like sand in Rachel’s blood, even as she entered the woods, even as she waited for the sound of a hundred silent wings . . .