Chapter Fourteen

 

When I join Vera in geometry, she’s working on a problem with Miss Goody Two-Shoes. I wish Betsy had stayed long enough to tell me what she’d seen. It must’ve been something amazing to have her rush off like that. More importantly, I want to know how she did it. Part of me wants to run over to Ms. Kitchin’s and find Warren so we can talk, but I’ve already left Vera alone for too long.

Lunch is relatively uneventful. I can’t figure out how to get Vera away from the loser table. The bulimic girl doesn’t pay attention when I blow Vera’s aluminum foil toward her. Vera just looks up at the ceiling like she’s looking for a vent that’s blowing on her before retrieving the foil herself. At the end of lunch, I grab hold of the bulimic girl’s shoelace, and she trips getting up from the table, spilling greasy napkins and the remains of some nachos all over the floor. Vera sweeps around to help, but the bulimic girl doesn’t even acknowledge her presence. I’ll say this for Vera, either she’s got a kind heart or she’s simply grown used to picking up after her father all the time.

Class after class, I watch Vera doodle and scrawl verses in her thorny heart notebook. Some of her lines are quite lyrical even if they are darker than an Emily Dickinson poem about Death with a capital D. When she isn’t writing, Vera has a novel or poetry book tucked inside her textbook. I suppose if I’d had no friends, I would’ve spent more time with my nose in a book, too. By the end of the day, I still have no idea how to help Vera make friends, but I feel hopeful. Goatee boy had said he’d been clean for over a month. Maybe that’s all it takes—a month or two of Guarding. I could do that.

After the final bell rings, Vera packs up her bag at her locker. She’s getting ready to leave when a familiar face breezes past. Cecille. Her face is red, and her eyes puffy. I expect her to stop at her locker, but she heads straight for the girls’ bathroom next door to Ms. Kitchin’s room. For a moment I forget I’m dead and call out, “Cecille, what’s wrong?” My baby sister was never a crier. She was Miss Mostly Sunny to my Miss Mostly Cloudy.

Without a thought for Vera, I follow Cecille into the girls’ room. She plops her pile of books onto the counter and heads into a stall. Another girl washes her hands at the sink and then leaves. As soon as the bathroom door squeaks shut, Cecille lets out a wail and sobs. I stand on the other side of the stall door, my angelic hands almost solid, pressing against the pink painted metal. “Cecille,” I whisper her name.

A strong wind roars through the building.

“What?” I cry in outrage. The shadows have scared me in the past, but this time I’m pissed. Why can’t they leave us alone for a minute? I just want a minute to be with my sister, even if I can’t do anything to comfort her. I rush out into the hallway.

The shadow swirls and roars its way toward Vera, who is pulling on her coat and lifting up her bag. I fly in front of her and cross my arms. Why is the shadow coming now? Vera’s afternoon was relatively fine. Sure some of her poetry was dark, but she got an A on that history test last period. I stand between her and the shadow, hoping pure anger will be enough to keep it away. It zooms toward us and then flies over my head.

Ha! I think. Take that, ya measly piece of evil. Only the measly piece of evil doesn’t seem to care. It heads straight for the girls’ bathroom.

“Cecille!”

When I enter, the shadow swirls outside the stall where my baby sister sobs hysterically. I throw myself between the darkness and the stall door, my arms spread wide in place of the wings I haven’t yet grown.

“Leave!” I yell at the darkness before me. “You can’t have her!”

Within the depths of the shadow, the outline of a face forms in the darkness. It is Tamesis.

“Cecille!” I yell even though I know she can’t hear me. I try to pound my fist on the stall to get her attention, but it slides right through. Warren’s words echo in my head: “Think about those happy memories.”

How am I supposed to think happy memories when there’s a death shadow coming after my sister? I tune out Cecille’s sobbing and the shadow’s howling winds, and try to think of a good memory.

When Cecille was eleven, she learned to knit. Her first project was the longest, craziest, most colorful scarf I’d ever seen. She gave it to me for my birthday. Wearing it was the last thing I wanted to do, but one cold winter morning, I was running late to school and couldn’t find my usual scarf, so I grabbed Cecille’s. You would have thought the girl had won the lottery the way she smiled when she saw it wrapped a hundred times around my neck to keep it from dragging on the ground. That girl who gave so freely and was pleased so easily does not deserve to die.

Picturing the smile on her face, I pound again. “Cecille!” This time the stall door jiggles on its hinges. I hear Cecille swallow a sob.

“Hello? Is someone out there?”

Cecille unlatches the door and peers out. Of course, she sees no one even though I am right in front of her and the shadow hovers behind me.

Tamesis backs up a bit. It’s as if the shadows feed off people’s despair. When they hate their very existence, the shadow comes running. When there’s a moment of hope, it backs off.

After looking to her right and left, Cecille eases out of her stall. “Great,” she says. “Now I’m hearing things.” She walks to a sink and, resting her palms on the cold ceramic edge, stares at her reflection in the mirror. I follow her; Tamesis remains where she is.

In the mirror, I see Cecille’s pale blue eyes are puffy and red. “What is wrong with me? Why am I such a moron?” She drops her head and the tears return. Tamesis creeps closer.

Turning away from the mirror, I face the shadow. Her breath is warm, but not nearly as fiery as Belphagor’s.

Tamesis opens her skeletal mouth. “Mine.”

“No!” I scream. “You can’t have her.” A shadow coming for me is one thing; coming for my baby sister is another. I have to get my sister away from Tamesis, but there is nothing in this bathroom for me to blow over or move to distract her. Besides, she already thinks she’s hearing things.

Tamesis moves closer. I back up against my sister, the shadow’s putrid breath washing over me. “No!” I scream.

The door creaks open. My sister straightens up immediately. At first I think my scream must have been heard, but Ms. Kitchin calmly walks in. She looks perturbed, but the annoyance changes to concern as soon as she catches my sister wiping away tears.

“Cecille,” Ms. Kitchin’s voice is soft. “What is it?”

My baby sister shakes her head. “Nothing, Ms. Kitchin.”

“Don’t tell me that. You’ve clearly been crying.”

For a moment, my sister looks like she’s about to confess something horrible. Tamesis hisses.

“Just a bad grade on a test,” says Cecille.

Ms. Kitchin tightens her lips like she’s considering whether or not to believe my sister. It’s obviously a lie. First of all, she doesn’t get bad grades. And if she did, she would’ve accused the teacher of some mistake and gone down fighting before sobbing in the girls’ room.

Ms. Kitchin reaches for some paper towels. “I have a feeling this is about more than grades.”

Cecille wipes away a final tear. “No, just a bad test. That’s all. I’m sure I’ll make up my grade with the next one.”

The face on the shadow has melted back into the darkness. Tamesis is only a swirling cloud of darkness now.

“You know, I think there’s still someone in the counseling office—”

Cecille forces a smile on her face. “I’ll be fine, Ms. Kitchin.” She picks up the books she’d thrown on the counter and heads out. Ms. Kitchin reaches for more paper towels as I follow Cecille out.

Warren is waiting in the hallway. “What happened?”

“Tamesis came for my sister. You might want to head into the girls’ room. Ms. Kitchin’s still in there with the shadow.” No sooner do I say this than Warren’s Charge walks out, a stack of paper towels in her hand. I wait for the shadow to follow, but it doesn’t come. By this time, Cecille is at her locker packing up her things.

“I think we’re safe for now,” Warren says.

“Thank God Ms. Kitchin walked in when she did.”

“You can thank me too.” Warren sounds slightly offended but he’s smiling.

“What do you mean?”

“Ms. Kitchin wouldn’t have gone to the bathroom in search of paper towels if I hadn’t knocked over her open water bottle.”

I peek into Ms. Kitchin’s room. She’s wiping the floor near her desk. “How’d you know I was in there?”

“I could hear your screams. The bathroom walls aren’t that thick, and you were screaming bloody murder.”

“You would too if your baby sister were being shadowed.”

“I wouldn’t know how that’d feel.”

“No siblings?”

Warren shakes his head. “None that I know of. I was abandoned at a church when I was six days old.”

A heavy metal door closes at the end of the hallway. Cecille has disappeared down the stairs.

“I’d better make sure she’s safe.”

“No.”

“Warren, she’s my sister.”

“She’s not your Charge, Nanette. That night on the rooftop we told you we thought the committee had made a mistake in placing you here. This is why. You’re supposed to be guarding Vera, not your sister. You can’t guard both of them at the same time.”

“But she needs me.”

“Vera needs you. Vera is the one who prayed for the protection of a Guardian.”

“But my sister’s attracting the same shadow now.”

“Then she’d better start praying for a Guardian of her own.”