After Zero Page 2

Eventually, the sounds stop for the night, and I know my mother has gone to bed.

  I brush my teeth, get under my covers, and turn off the light. Shadows quiver behind the window shade, marking the outlines of leaves and tree branches.

  And a perched figure.

  I squint. Stick legs, a shaggy throat, the curve of a beak. Its head shifts and turns, its beak now lost in the silhouette.

  I shiver and roll away onto my side. I close my eyes, but my lids sting. The unsleep is like that. It plays opposites. I try to be still, to relax my body, but then I feel an itch on my leg. I scratch it. Then my ear. I scratch it. Then my forehead. My chin, my elbow, my heel, places I didn’t know could itch. I notice the taunt of the clock. Ticka. Ticka. Ticka. I even think I hear noises outside, but it’s probably the pipes. I wonder how long I’ve been lying here. An hour? Three hours? More? I must doze off some nights. It would be impossible to exist if I didn’t sleep now and then. But I have no memory of sleeping or waking up—not since last summer.

  Prickles work up my spine. I can sense the figure still there behind the shade, but I don’t want to look. I stick my headphones in my ears. Music can at least block out the sounds of the house, the hum of stillness and waiting. But it can’t block out the odors, the stench of staleness and stagnancy. Mel used to ask me, in the early days of our friendship, why I never invited her over. “It’s not fair,” she’d whine. “We’re at my house all the time.”

  But I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t tell her what it was like to come from her pinewood-scented halls to the mustiness my own house stews in. To go from her backyard with its patio and mowed lawn to mine with its weeds and ruins: The greenhouse, cracking and growing things it shouldn’t be. The shed, rotting and rusting with junk left by previous residents. The fence, tilting and holding back the woods that lead to who knows where. I told Mel we were better off at her place, and she eventually stopped asking.

  Oh, Mel.

  Pretty Mel, patient Mel. Always waiting for me on her front steps, playing string games till I came.

  Me on my bike, smiling, freewheeling the quarter mile from my house to hers, away from the dead end and the mustiness and my mother, lessons done for the day…

  Mel! Mel!

  Mel?

  The day Mel wasn’t there—the day she wasn’t waiting for me…

  The day seven balloons, all different colors, clung to her front railing, bumping each other in the wind, and the door stood open a sliver…

  I nudged the door forward. Voices floated toward me from the kitchen, low and chanting. I followed them on tiptoe, halting at the kitchen doorway and peering into darkness. Orange dots flamed and floated at the center of the room. Cheekbones and nostrils flickered in patches of candlelight. Lips moved, intoning words I couldn’t make out. Pointy teeth gleamed, and eyes, dozens of them, reflected the flames.

  I screamed.

  The lights clicked on, forcing me to blink. A bunch of children blinked back. Mel sat at the head of the table in a cone-shaped paper hat and a dress with puffed sleeves.

  “Shh!” Mrs. Asimakos leered at me, her finger to her mouth. I backed away.

  Mr. Asimakos rushed to his daughter’s side. “It’s okay, cupcake. See? It’s just Elise. Blow out the candles. Go on. Make a wish.”

  Mel pouted and shook her head. “My song’s ruined.” Her lower lip trembled. She erupted with a wail.

  I looked around. The room wasn’t so scary with the lights on. The candles weren’t hovering like I’d thought, but nestled in a cake. And there were colors all around: Streamers and ribbons. Boxes wrapped in shiny paper. More balloons like the ones out front.

  “Didn’t your mother read the invitation?” Mrs. Asimakos ushered me to a chair and strapped a cone hat to my head. “The party started an hour ago.”

  Before I could ask what an invitation was, Mel’s wails rose to a painful pitch. Behind her on the wall, a banner glinted with big rainbow words: Happy 7th Birthday, Melanie! Mrs. Asimakos cursed and blew out the candles.

  When I got home later, I went to my room and took out my dictionary.

  birthday n. the annual anniversary of the day on which a person was born, typically treated as an occasion for celebration and present-giving.

  I stared at the page until the letters blurred together. “Birthday,” I whispered. In the books my mother let me read, the word had never shown up. She’d mentioned my “date of birth” before—that number she writes on forms sometimes—but never “birthday.” Never this thing everyone else supposedly celebrated.

  I closed the dictionary that day and listened to my mother’s footsteps. The shriek of her bedroom door opening. Screee. Closing. Thunk. I must have done something bad—something unforgiveable—to make her think her only child didn’t deserve balloons or cake or presents. To make her hide Mel’s invitation. To make her keep me from knowing about birthdays, so she wouldn’t have to celebrate mine. I must have done something terrible.

  But I couldn’t recall what I’d done.

  • • •

  Tap-tap-tap.

  My eyes blink open. It’s dark. I’m twelve again, lying in bed. By some miracle, I must have nodded off long enough for the music in my headphones to end—and now there’s a tap-tap-tapping on glass behind me.

  I turn over. My eyes adjust to the dark until they can make out my window shade. No silhouette.

  I wait for more tapping.

  Of course, now that I’m wide awake again, the sound has stopped. I sit up and glare at the shade. Sleep is hard enough to come by. Just when it had finally paid me a visit…just when I had finally drifted off…

  A fuse blows inside me. I thrust off my covers and yank up the shade, searching for the mischief maker. The moon casts a glow on the tree by my window, but I see nothing perched there. Just spindly branches against the backyard shapes beyond—the fence, the greenhouse, the shed.

  A shadow moving by the shed door.

  I squint. It moves again: something taller than what I’m looking for. Someone taller? I strain my eyes, but the moonlight shifts, I blink, and then I can’t tell shadow from shadow.

  I step back from the window, shivering. If I had any hope of falling back asleep, it’s history now.

  Chapter 3

  There’s nothing green-pasturey about Green Pasture Middle School: no grass, no horses, no cows. Just pavement and a parking lot and a squat brick building.

  In a way it’s nice—the same every morning. The brown doors, the burnt-orange walls, the faces in the halls. No surprises. Once people form an impression of you, that’s who you are. Bernard Billows is always going to smell like spoiled milk, and his hair is always going to be long and greasy. The same goes for teachers. If Miss Looping ever stopped wearing those dark velvet dresses or straightened her quivering curls, the whole school would cry doomsday. That’s why it’s so easy to get by without talking here. At this point, people expect it of me.

  I pull my bangs over my penciled eyebrow and take my seat in English class. I glance at Miss Looping’s desk, steeling myself for Beady’s usual stare.

  He isn’t there.

  I scan the classroom to see if Miss Looping moved him somewhere else, but there’s no sign of him. I try not to think anything of it. Maybe she put him in a drawer or took him home. In fact, I hope she did. Good riddance.

  I open my notebook, greeted by the torn book page I pasted to the inside cover—the illustration of swans with arching necks and sweeping wings and black knobs on orange bills, and the words wisping across it all:

  “Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.” —Sakya Pandita

  I know nothing about Sakya Pandita, except that he was some ancient Buddhist scholar. I just like the quote. And the swans. I flip to a blank page and write:

  Things coul
d be worse. You could be…

  •Shut up in a cage

  •Cinderella (before the ball)

  •Stranded on a desert island

  I gnaw on my pencil and then cross out the last one. On second thought, I wouldn’t mind having an island to myself. There’d be no one expecting me to talk, and I could read all day. As long as I had my book of sonnets, that is. And basic survival skills. Later in the library, I’ll have to look up how to build a fire. I should be taking notes—Miss Looping is putting a lot of zest into her Dickens lecture, even drawing a plot diagram of Oliver Twist on the board—but I prefer poetry, and I’m on a roll with my list. I add:

  •Allergic to chocolate

  •On death row

  •A fruit fly

  “Any questions so far?” Miss Looping gestures at her diagram.

  Arty Pilger raises his hand in that way of his that looks like he’s screwing in a light bulb.

  “Yes, Arty?”

  “Your minion’s gone.” He also has a knack for asking questions that aren’t questions.

  Miss Looping wipes chalk off her hands. “I meant about Dickens. But yes, Beady went missing yesterday, if that’s what you mean. And I was going to announce at the end of class that whoever stole him, and whoever broke my mug, has twenty-four hours to come forward. After that, I’m taking the case to the principal.”

  The other students look at one another and shrug.

  Beady’s missing? I slide down in my chair.

  “I may have bought him on a whim at a thrift shop,” Miss Looping says, “but he’s been more to me than a decoration. I expect to see him returned safely.”

  There’s no way this could get traced to me. No one else was in the room at the time. And I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t break the mug, and I didn’t steal Beady. I don’t know what happened to him. All I know is that I slammed my book shut, and he moved, and I ran, and…

  A breeze tickles my neck. I turn to the window Miss Looping always leaves open for “fresh air.” An object sits on the windowsill: a feather, jet-black, bluish at an angle.

  I jump when the room phone rings.

  “Who?” Miss Looping is saying into the phone. “Okay. Right now? Okay.” She hangs up. “Elise? You’re wanted in the guidance office.”

  Guidance? I can feel Beady’s eyes cackling silently at me, even in his absence. All my classmates’ eyes too. I gather my things and shuffle out of the room. I was worried about the principal’s office, but guidance sounds ten times worse. Did Mrs. Bebeau say something to the guidance counselor about me not talking? Or was it Ms. Dively? Miss Looping would never do that to me. I bet it was Mr. Gankle. Or maybe it wasn’t a teacher. Maybe it was Sylvia. Or Mel. No, Mel wouldn’t do something so mean.

  Did they call my mother? What will they make me do? Public-speaking classes? Social activities? But this is a free school—a free country, anyway—and they can’t make me do anything. No one calls Bernard Billows to the guidance office to make him take a shower. I won’t go. I’ll walk straight out the front doors.

  But that would be worse. They’ll notice I didn’t show up, and it will draw even more attention.

  They know how to put me in a lose-lose situation.

  The door to the office stands open, and the guidance counselor, Ms. Standish, sits at her desk talking. I crane my neck. She’s wearing a turtleneck and saying words like policies and assemblies. I can’t see who she’s talking to.

  She looks up. “Elise. Come on in.”

  I step in so I can get this over with. A boy and a girl with reddish-brown hair and identical noses sit across from Ms. Standish. Students I’ve never seen before—here at Green Pasture? Is it possible?

  “This is Elise Pileski.” Ms. Standish waves at me, and then at the boy and the girl. “Elise, meet Conn and Finola Karney.”

  “It’s Fin.” The girl nods at me. “Hey.”

  The boy nods too and puts his hands in his pockets. Binoculars hang from his neck. Maybe they’re a fashion accessory.

  I wait for someone to explain why I’m here.

  “I was just going to tell them about you,” Ms. Standish says. “Conn and Finola are new to Green Pasture. Finola will be joining the seventh grade—”

  “It’s Fin,” the girl repeats.

  “—and Conn the eighth grade, like you. They come from a homeschool background, and since you recently made the transition, I thought you could introduce yourself, give advice, answer any questions they might have.”

  This is the part where I should say something to get myself out of this. Instead I exhale. No one turned me in.

  Ms. Standish hands Fin a pamphlet. “That’s for you two to share.” I glance at the cover: Transitioning from Homeschool to Public School. She gave me the same one on my first day. I recognize the picture: kids clutching books and leaning against lockers, mouths open in mid-laugh. No one actually stands like that. It’s funny now to think of the images I saw in movies and magazines at Mel’s house. Lunch ladies in hairnets. Teachers with apples. White chalk against clean blackboards. Students in rows at graffiti-free desks, hands raised in eagerness.

  I should probably warn Fin and Conn so they won’t be disappointed. But that would require speaking, and they’ll see the reality soon enough.

  Ms. Standish glances at her watch. “I have to run to a meeting. Shall I leave you to it?” She stands and frowns. “May I ask why you’re wearing those?” She points at Conn’s binoculars.

  “Oh.” Fin waves a hand. “He wears them everywhere.”

  Ms. Standish presses the tips of her fingers together. “Well, you’ll need to take them off while you’re in the building. Other students might find them distracting.”

  “Distracting?” Conn snorts. “Why would they be—”

  “Just do it.” Fin nudges him.

  He rolls his eyes and shoves the binoculars in his backpack. “How unnecessary,” he mutters, drawing out the how. Ms. Standish doesn’t seem to hear. Fin grins and presses her lips together. Conn shakes his head and looks at the ceiling. After a second, he grins too.

  I’ve always been curious about siblings. I used to study Mel and her sister, the way they fought over every little thing, but then her sister moved away to college. These two interest me even more. Not just their matching hair and noses, but the way they interact. The way they exchange glances and elbow each other and snicker at nothing, communicating in their brother-sister language. A language I’ll never speak.

  Conn notices me staring and coughs. “So, any advice?”

  I look around and realize Ms. Standish has left. Should I bolt now or try to stick it out for a minute? Bolting now would be wisest.

  But Fin and Conn are waiting for me to answer. And as I stand here, I see that I’m at an advantage. They don’t know about me yet. They have no expectations. To them, I could be anyone. I could be the most talkative person in the school, in the world. I could be—what’s the word?—outgoing, like Sylvia. I haven’t proven otherwise yet. I’m a blank slate.

  I don’t know if it’s this thought or the way they’re staring that makes my mouth open. “Are you twins?”

  I cringe at my words. They don’t even answer Conn’s question. And now today’s tally is shot. So much for zero.

  “Us?” Fin laughs. “Nah, we’re a year apart. I just turned twelve, and he’s thirteen. People always say we look alike, though.”

  “But I’m the better-looking one, right?” Conn peers sidelong at me.

  I feign interest in my shoelaces. He’s right, but I’m not about to tell him that.

  Fin waves a hand. “Ignore Mister Big Head over here. What about you? Any obnoxious siblings?”

  I shake my head.

  “You’re an only child?” Her eyes widen. “What’s it like? Do your parents buy you everything you want?” She leans forward, her freckle
s bold.

  Conn elbows her.

  “What?” She elbows him back. “I’ve always wanted to be an only child. Be spoiled, get all the attention. It must be nice.”

  I twist the strings on my sweatshirt. I decide not to tell Fin that I’m a stranger to being spoiled. That she just confirmed my mother’s indifference.

  “So, why’d you make the switch to public school?” Conn is looking at me again.

  Open-ended questions should be against the law.

  “Sorry.” Conn clears his throat. “I know it’s a personal question. You don’t have to—”

  “I wanted a change,” I blurt out, surprising myself again. Four more words. I’m getting farther from zero when I ought to be getting closer. I need to get out of here.

  “Sounds like us.” Fin pulls up her legs and sits cross-legged in her chair. “And your folks were okay with it?”

  At least this answer is yes or no. I nod, because nodding won’t add to my tally. And nodding is easier than forming words, easier than trying to explain what I still don’t understand myself. How I’d been asking for months if I could enroll in public school, how I’d reached a sort of boiling point, sick of longing to be part of Mel’s school stories, and even sicker of my mother’s halfhearted lessons. But each time I asked, my mother made some remark about how she didn’t approve of public schools.

  Then that day in July, when she said she was “disappointed” in my latest exam score—88 percent—my anger flared up. And I made that comment. You should have had more kids then. Maybe they wouldn’t have disappointed you. It wasn’t a fair comeback, I know—my father had obviously died before they could have more kids—but I was seething. She didn’t reply. There was that flash in her eyes, though. And the next morning, I found her waiting at the kitchen table. I called Green Pasture, she said, smoothing out the already-smooth tablecloth. You’ll start September 1st. And I’ll finally have more time for other things. I stood there in disbelief. I’d gotten what I wanted. But somehow it felt more like a punishment than a conquest.

  “You’re lucky.” Conn shakes his head. “Our folks weren’t so easily convinced.”