The Shells Of Chanticleer (22 page)

“We know Bing is staff already. So, no. I don’t know why Sebastian is following you. I thought he liked you. He fooled me, too.”

“But you spend a lot of time with Bing. I mean, I have to tell you something and don’t get mad. Zooey is afraid that you are going to stay here longer than you should, and she insists that Bing is a bad influence on you. She made me spend so much time at the festival looking for you, as if she had to personally keep you and he apart.”

“I’m not mad,” Violet said. “And you know Zooey. She is so afraid of breaking rules. In fact, I felt the same way for a long time, and sometimes I still do. But other times, well, Bing makes sense.”

“In what way?”

“Well, he says that we all have a good thing here, and that we are all each other’s family now. We don’t know what it will be like for us when we tip back. What if you go back but have to be around people who might drag you down, who might erase all the work you’ve done here? What if the place and the people you came from are what make you afraid in the first place? What if going back is a disaster?”

I hadn’t thought of it like that.

“I don’t think that is true. It just doesn’t make sense that they would send us back if we were still prone to failure. Wouldn’t we come right back if we were still pinging away? I don’t see people coming back.”

“How can you be sure? It might be better to put off tipping for as long as you can.”

“How can you put off tipping? Paolo just went back. He didn’t know.”

“He knew he was close,” Violet said. “You can find out. After you prove yourself a few times, it gets a little more relaxed around here. You can stall on your coursework. Bing can tell you when you’ll tip, if you want to know. I bet you he told Paolo.”

“But he didn’t stop Paolo,” I protested.

“He didn’t like Paolo! Paolo drove him crazy. Bing was glad he tipped back home.”

Bing was so impatient with Paolo on the bridge; what she was saying made sense. I didn’t really know Paolo that well, but in the short time I spent with him, I thought him kind.

I took the conversation in another direction. “Sebastian is pretty mad at Bing right now.” I told Violet how Bing had shown me where the shells were stored and how that had made me ping like crazy, how they’d noticed my anxiety go off the charts and how they had sent Sebastian to find out why.

“Sebastian and Bing are weird around each other,” she agreed. “Sebastian used to be friends with Bing, really close. Then they had some big falling out. Bing won’t talk about it. What else did he say?”

“He told me that he was here for balance, to keep me from picking up other people’s bad habits. But then he got all romantic with me too, stealing me away at night, telling me I could trust him, and I fell for it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Violet said. “He looks hard to resist.”

“Now that I know the truth, I’m not sure how I feel. Is it really so bad that he got close to me to help me? I did stop pinging. But, on the other hand, what if he was playing me because he was the kind of guy who could get any girl? What if he only wanted to know what Bing was saying to me? Do you think this is a big competition between the two of them? They hate each other. Do you think I am just a pawn in the middle of their stupid feud?”

I hoped not, but the animosity between the two had to be considered.

“It’s hard to know who to believe,” Violet said.

“I know,” I sighed, confused. My heart wanted to believe that he cared for me, in spite of the job. My mind said that he kissed me because he was a jerk and an opportunist and it made his job easier.

“Then there is the whole idea of being staff. When I really think about that, I don’t get it. Where do they come from? Why don’t they leave? They seem exactly the same as us, so why do they differentiate so much between us?”

Violet said, “I have the same questions, but in the end, I don’t think any of it really matters. I stopped caring a while ago about who is tipping back and when. I don’t even care if they make me a shell. Bing said it doesn’t hurt. I wouldn’t be mad at Bing or Sebastian. They run this place the way they want and we just have to march along. Stay mad or forgive him, it’s up to you. Just do what makes you happy, Macy. That’s my plan.”

By that time, we should have been at the pond, but nothing looked familiar to me. I was always bad at directions. It was dinnertime and I was frustrated. Violet was a good sport, but even she was losing her patience. I could tell she was getting hungry and she was awful to be around when she didn’t eat. I knew I had followed the same path I’d trod earlier in the day, but the cut off to the pond should have showed up already. How had I missed it?

“Oh forget it,” I said, my mood shot. “I’ll look at a map next time. I’m hungry, let’s head back. Can this day get any worse?”

We hurried back and went straight to the dining hall for dinner. I looked for Sebastian, but he wasn’t there. We were late, so maybe he was finished eating already. Or maybe he was just plain finished with me. I filled my plate with food. It smelled delicious, but my heart wasn’t into the effort required for chewing and swallowing. I ate a couple of forkfuls and then pushed my plate away.

Suddenly, over the loudspeakers, I heard my name being called along with Fiona, a girl I had met once before but hadn’t seen since. I made my way out into the hall where Headmaster Regan stood waiting for us.

“We have an important errand for you to do,” he said. “There is a new candidate to be escorted. Fiona, you know the drill, there and back as quickly as possible. Macy, follow along with Fiona and she will show you the way. It shouldn’t take more than an hour. We’ll be waiting for you.” He escorted us to the door and placed a tall silver thermos in Fiona’s hands. Then he shooed us out. “Go now!”

“Where are we going?” I asked. I thought I might have an idea.

“We are picking up a new girl!” Fiona exclaimed, her blue eyes wide with importance. “Follow me, we can’t be late. Tipping into Chanticleer can only happen at sunset, when a little bit of the pink sky leaks down to earth and our worlds intersect. They get really annoyed if we blow the timing.”

I followed her down the path to the main gates of Chanticleer. I hadn’t been back since that first day. The last time I had stood on the other side seemed a world of emotions away. My heart had been free and untouched then, and I envied that girl.

We followed the path down the hill and I could see the birch tree forest ahead of us. Memories of the day I blindly followed Violet and Zooey came flooding back as we wound our way between the tall white trunks. I could not tell where we were headed but I followed Fiona who was confident and knew the way. Before long I saw the low-slung hut and its moss covered roof, the same hut in which I had awoken.

A pang of homesickness cut through my soul, which surprised me. My old life lay on the other side of that hut, and I became suddenly terrified that if I touched its walls I would be sucked out of Chanticleer. Despite our fight, I wasn’t ready to be spirited away from Sebastian yet so I kept my distance and let Fiona knock at the door. Carefully, without touching it, I looked in the window. There was a girl asleep on the bed, just like I had been.

“She’s moving,” Fiona said, alternately peering through the window and knocking at the door. The girl stared at us, then opened the door.

The scene played out as I knew it would and soon we were traipsing back through the birch tree forest. Her name was Aria, and she was a different sort of girl. She talked a lot, providing a commentary as we walked through the woods.

“Did you know that in our country, six people per year are killed by falling tree branches?”

I looked at Fiona and frowned.

“No, I didn’t,” I said, unhappy to be discussing killer tree branches as we walked through the forest.

“It’s true. So we have to be careful,” she warned. “Also, did you know that this region is home to the silver spotted asp whose poisonous bite can kill you within a half an hour?”

I’d never thought about snakes or falling tree branches, but suddenly I was torn between glancing overhead and looking out below. I was so glad when we got out of the forest so that Aria would finally be quiet. When we got through the gates we turned to her and said, “Welcome to Chanticleer!”

Aria proved to be quite annoying. We invited her to sit with us at lunch because she was new and I thought it was important to be polite. Plus I wasn’t eating with Sebastian. I hadn’t spoken with him since our fight. I put off talking to him, afraid of what I would hear. I spent my days vacillating between hating him, hating myself, or just wanting to throw up because of it.

There were things in my heart that I wanted to say and it was painful to hold them in. However, if I didn’t talk to him, the possibility that he still cared for me stayed alive within me. I didn’t want to know if the opposite was true, and I felt that I would know instinctively if he had been playing me the next time we were alone. I wanted to avoid finding out if that was the case for as long as possible. I had thought I wasn’t afraid to hear the truth, but maybe I really was. Plus, if he wanted to, he could always come and talk to me. But he never did. We avoided each other. No. It wasn’t even that. I simply never saw him.

Meanwhile, I regretted every moment I was around Aria with her chipped black fingernail polish and nest of hair that looked like she consented to rake a comb through it once a year, if that.

“How can you eat eggs?” she would ask. “Doesn’t it make you cry that it might have been a cute baby chick one day?”

“No,” I said. “I never thought of that.”

She looked at Violet downing her warm caramel sugar. “You know that will make your teeth rot,” she warned.

“That’s what I am hoping for,” Violet replied, giving her the side eye.

“I saw that!” Aria snarled. She was mean, too.

After a few days we all started eating elsewhere to avoid her, or we remembered we had to be somewhere else when we saw her approach. As a result, Aria would drift from table to table, infecting anyone who sat near her with her peculiar fears and anxieties. The pattern was always the same. She would sit down with her food, and in a few minutes the table would start to clear out until only one hapless tablemate remained, and that was usually someone so new that they had no tools with which to deal with her. No one wanted to spend time with Aria. She lived in Summer Hall but no one would go near her room. It was especially bad at nighttime, when she would repeatedly wail and cry out for her mother.

“I’ve been kidnapped,” she screamed, over and over. “They are holding me against my will!”

“Bing, she is horrible to be around,” I told him one day. “Can’t anything be done to shut her up?”

Bing just shook his head. “She’s a head case, that’s for sure. I’ve never seen anyone like her. She’s mad.”

There was a long list of the foods Aria would and wouldn’t eat, and since there was only one thing to drink in Chanticleer and she refused to drink it, I wondered what would become of her. I found out a few days later when I unexpectedly got an unusual summons in my mailbox from Miss Clarice. It asked me to come down to her office at midnight and to tell no one.

It felt strange lying awake in my bed waiting until the hour approached when I was to leave my room. I had been having a miserable time since my fight with Sebastian. My days weren’t the same without him. He had been my best friend and then he was no where to be found. I yawned and tried hard to stay awake, fighting back a few tears. When the time finally came to leave, I tiptoed down dark empty hallways to Miss Clarice’s office. When I entered I was surprised to see a crowd.

“Come in, Macy,” she welcomed me.

I scanned the faces gathered there. They were all staff, dressed in navy blue vinyl jackets and leggings, with knit caps pulled over their heads. Their hands were gloved. I recognized only one face.

“Hey, Macy,” Sebastian greeted me. I couldn’t ignore him now.

“Hello,” I responded unenthusiastically, and looked away. I didn’t see him flinch as I kept my head down and tried not to look at him.

Then Miss Clarice spoke. “Thank you all for coming tonight on such short notice. We have unexpectedly decided to remove a disruptive influence from our environment. Regretfully, but with much consideration, we will be dipping Aria tonight in preparation for her immediate tipping back at sunrise.”

I gasped in surprise. Miss Clarice looked directly at me. I had never seen her that irritated.

“She is supremely uncooperative, wreaking havoc and creating more work every day she stays. Suddenly everyone is pinging about something called the silver spotted asp which is completely made-up nonsense. We do not have the resources to deal with this disruption. As per our rules of confidentiality, no one speaks a word about what happens this evening.”

I didn’t know what I was reacting to more: the surprise relief that Aria was going to be removed from Chanticleer and I would no longer have to listen to her prattling, or the fact that I was expected to participate in the process.

Miss Clarice continued: “Drivers, pull the van up, and Macy, you will need to dress for this before you leave the office. Let’s all gather in the lobby in five minutes. Again, per our usual protocol, complete quiet is absolutely necessary. Sebastian, stay with Macy until she is ready, but don’t dawdle. No more than five minutes, please.” With that she and the rest of the team disbursed through the door.

I stood there in stunned silence, but Sebastian sprang to business and shoved a navy coat and a pair of leggings into my hands.

“Put these on,” he ordered, and I did as he said pulling them over my own clothes. The pants and coat were a little baggy but I definitely looked like a staff person. He tossed me a knit cap and I pulled it down low and then pulled on the leather gloves. As soon as I was ready, Sebastian turned to head out the door, but I called to him.

“Sebastian, wait.”

He stopped and looked at me.

In fear, and a million other feelings I couldn’t name, I pleaded, “What am I doing here?”

“You are learning not to be afraid of the shells, Macy,” Sebastian explained “Don’t you remember me telling you that you were off the charts? You know we wouldn’t let a situation like that go on unchecked.”