Servants of the Storm (7 page)

It only takes two minutes to drive home, and I spend it all wondering what he’s been through in the last year, dealing with his pain alone while I was lost in the fog. I’m not the only one who suffered.

I park in the street, as close to the curb as I can so my mom won’t make me come back out and move the car. After double-checking that I left nothing of value inside, I leave the car unlocked and get my backpack out of the trunk. There are so many desperate people after Hurricane Josephine that leaving anything, even a grocery bag, in a car parked on the street is a great way to get your windows smashed. Sometimes they don’t even check to see if the car is unlocked first.

I walk up the front steps, and even though I feel awake and confused and freaked out, I know I have to pretend that I’m still on my meds. Too bad I didn’t ask Baker what I was like before. I hunch my shoulders, make my face blank and dull, and open the door.

“It’s past seven,” my mom says before I’m even inside.

“Sorry. Rehearsal ran late.” I try to hide my irritation at her instant attack.

“That Rosewater lady needs to respect family time,” she says, and I hang my backpack on the hook and just nod dumbly. I look at her, curled up on the old plaid couch with a folder full of papers, and I can’t help giving her a halfhearted smile. Her face softens in response.

“I’m sorry, honey. I know it’s not your fault. I’m just feeling grouchy. Too many people out of work, too many people in trouble. How are you feeling today?”

“Fine.”

She nods and smiles. Apparently, I’m playing along well.

“Dinner’s in the microwave. Just leave some for your father.”

I nod and go into the kitchen, even though I’m not at all hungry. I can’t remember when I ate last, but I feel oddly full, like my stomach is stretched out. Maybe it’s a side effect of going off the meds? I guess my dad can have as much of Mom’s enchiladas as he wants.

On the way to my room, I walk past his study and inhale. Wood glue, pipe smoke, and dust. My dad has worked the second shift at the factory for so long that I can’t remember the last time we had a meal together at night. I’m guessing it was sometime after Josephine, when the mill flooded and they sent everyone home without pay. My mom is dark and serious with a permanent V on her forehead, but my dad has a gentle smile and crinkles at the corners of his blue eyes and is always rubbing what’s left of his light blond hair. They couldn’t look or act more different, but it works. When I was little, he was always with me in the mornings
while my mom was at the office, but we fell out of step when I started high school and didn’t need help to get on the bus. He’s another thing I’ve missed.

As soon as I see my bed, I’m overcome with exhaustion. My feet shuffle like a zombie’s, and everything is fuzzy and thick, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I don’t brush my teeth or wash my face or do homework. I don’t even stop to take off my bra and put on pajamas. I just fall into bed in my clothes, and I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.

I’M DREAMING. I DON’T KNOW
how I know, but I Know.

And I’m in Bonaventure Cemetery. I know this exact spot. Carly and I used to come here with her grandmother Gigi before Josephine came and overturned the trees and set all the gravestones crooked and sent the decomposing bodies floating out into the streets of Savannah.

I’m walking among the old oaks, their bare, black branches pointing at the starless sky above like accusing fingers. I part the Spanish moss like a veil and pass beyond, farther into the misty darkness. The air is a strange mixture of warm and cold, like the ocean tides tugging at my feet, threatening to pull me under.

Water sloshes against my hips, the metaphor made real, and I realize that the world has shifted. I’m still in Bonaventure, but now I’m wading through Hurricane Josephine’s wrath. I pull up my
arms, cross them over my chest to keep them away from the thick, silty water. Something slips under my foot, and I shy away. Could have been a branch. Or it could have been a bone. Or a snake.

There’s a certain scent on the air, besides the dead reek of the water. It’s salty. And earthy, too. So solid I can taste it on my tongue. So familiar.

“You remember my mama’s black-eyed peas? She always served ’em with collards. Lord, I hated her collards. Like eating slugs that fought you the whole way down.”

I startle to hear her voice, the tang of her complaint as familiar as the scent hanging heavily on the air. I get it now. I’m in Carly’s house, and that’s the welcoming smell of dinner on the stove. Black-eyed peas, creamed corn the color of butter, and collards boiled until they’ve given up. It’s Miz Ray’s kitchen, and my feet are dry on the cracked linoleum floors. Somehow I’ve gone from the crooked, flood-swollen oaks of the old cemetery right into Carly’s kitchen.

Only problem is, it’s not her kitchen anymore.

Besides the fact that she’s dead, her mama moved away after Hurricane Josephine claimed her kitchen and her only daughter. The new owners tore out everything and replaced it with granite countertops and fancy tile floors, or so my mom heard from the busybody old ladies down the street. The room I’m in now—it doesn’t exist anymore.

I slip into my usual seat, and my chair doesn’t squeak like it should. But I don’t mention it, because I can’t stop looking at
Carly. Her nose is scrunched up like it always was when faced with collards. And her hair is braided like it was when she died, the roots just a little grown out, each braid tipped with a pink plastic bead.

But her skin is the color of mushrooms, a grayish purple that reeks of poison. And there’s a gash on her head, the flaps of skin curled back over shining bone. And her eyes are dull and black as death.

“She made the best lemon chiffon pie in Savannah,” I say.

It’s the truth, but it comes out flat and careful, like I’m reading a line from a play.

“But she won’t give you any unless you finish your damn collards first,” she says.

But I can tell it’s not just a line for Carly. She’s angry.

I look down. Instead of finding Miz Ray’s good supper, I see a rough box of black wood with a strange symbol carved into it. Evil just rolls off that box, and I draw back like I found a baby gator on my plate. The black wood rattles at me like it would bite me if it could. Like its gator teeth haven’t grown in yet.

“What is it?” I say.

Carly shakes her head, and a few of the braids fall off and slither onto her mama’s second-best tablecloth.

“I told you, Dovey. You have to eat your collards if you want your pie. Nothing’s easy anymore, not after Josephine settled in to stay.”

“Settled in? But it was just a hurricane,” I say. “It’s gone.”

She snorts. “Josephine’s more than a storm. She came here and she dug herself a hole, and now she’s happy as a pig in shit, just festering away. Time’s almost up. For you, and for me.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Learn your lines, Dovey. It’s almost opening night.”

I look back down, and the black box is gone. In its place is one of Carly’s mama’s Goodwill plates, the one with the little chip on the edge. It’s heaped with collards, just collards, and they’re writhing around like cottonmouth snakes.

“I hear Café 616 has the best collards,” Carly says conversationally, but I see something stir in her ink-black eyes. “If you have to eat ’em, that’s the place to find ’em.”

“I hate collards,” I say, practically begging.

“Yeah, but you love your lemon chiffon pie,” she replies.

She points at my plate with a finger of naked bone, and I take a bite, and it’s bitter, bitter as sin.

I swallow, and it fights me, the whole way down.

WHEN I WAKE UP THE
next morning, the pink bead is in my hand and my mouth tastes like death. I leap out of bed to rinse with water in the bathroom across the hall, but the taste won’t go away. It takes three gulps of mouthwash before I can be sure I’m not going to puke. They say the average person eats bugs all the time while they sleep, and I must have gotten one of Savannah’s famous giant roaches. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, almost like a hangover. But I don’t remember dreaming.

I look up at my face in the mirror and draw back in surprise. From forehead to chin my coppery skin is smeared with white and lavender and tiny flakes of glitter. I was so exhausted last night that I went to bed in my fairy makeup. With my frizzy hair standing out like a dandelion and my face splashed in color, I look seriously
wild. No wonder Rudy and the lady in the hallway at Paper Moon looked at me like I was insane. I scrub with a washcloth until I can see my freckles again. My gold eyes are wide and bloodshot, and I feel a little like I’m falling apart. But at least I feel
something
.

My mom appears in the door in makeup and a bathrobe. “You okay, Dovey?”

“Must have swallowed a bug,” I say.

“That’s just an old wives’ tale,” she says, shaking her head.

I shrug and move to walk past her, and she steps back to let me pass without touching me. I can’t help wondering why she never hugs me, why she barely looks at me. Even before Josephine she was never one of those touchy-feely moms who want to have heartfelt discussions all the time. She’s all business. My dad’s the gentle, sensitive one, and Carly was my real confidant. I miss the days when I could wake up from a nightmare and call out, and someone would hold me close, make me feel warm and safe.

In the kitchen I pour myself a bowl of cereal and wait for my mom to turn around. It’s really boring, pretending to be dull. When she’s done with her shake, she watches me rattle out an aspirin from the brown bottle and smiles while I swallow it.

“Good girl,” she says. And I smile back.

I have to struggle to act brainless and uninvolved in school. Before Carly died, I was always raising my hand to answer the tough questions or read out loud. But now the teachers don’t even see me unless I make a big racket, so I use the time to do my homework
and doodle. Again and again, for no reason that I really understand, I keep drawing the number 616 and a circle covered with squiggles.

I don’t remember the dream until I see someone eating creamed spinach at lunch. It hits me with such force that I choke on my ham sandwich until Nikki smacks me on the back. Remembering the way the collards writhed and fought in my throat, I can’t eat another bite. The number and the squiggles suddenly make sense, and I know that after rehearsal I have to go to Café 616.

Carly and I used to eat there every year on her birthday, sitting at the table painted like a cow and toasting each other with chocolate milk shakes. The restaurant is kitschy and kind of famous and decorated for little kids, but it always made us giggle, and Carly loved their fries. I didn’t even know collard greens and lemon chiffon pie were on the menu. It’s more of a burger place. Not that it matters—I’m going. The dream felt so real, and I trust Carly, even in my nightmares, whatever that means.

In seventh period Baker leans over again, just like he did yesterday. But before he can ask for a ride, I whisper, “Do you really have to ask, fool?”

He grins, and even without his makeup he looks like he’s up to no good. So low I can barely hear it, he says, “I’m glad you’re back.”

We walk to the car after class, side by side but with space between, just like Carly is still there. As we drive out of the parking lot, I say, “So what did I miss yesterday after I ran out?”

“Oh, the usual,” he says, leaning back to stretch, one arm going slightly behind my seat. “Jasmine’s overacting, Nina’s constant primping, Devon bumping into things because his jester hat covers his eyes. And Rosewater yelled at Tamika about ruining her costume, and Tamika took off bawling for the dressing room. I haven’t seen her today at school, either. She must have been really upset.”

“She ruined her toga being nice to me,” I say. “That sucks. Was Rosewater mad at me?”

“Well . . .” He rubs his hair until it stands up all crazy as he stares fiercely out the window. “Pretty sure that her anger transferred to me after you left and I told her off.”

I look at him and smile, a little shy and a little sly.

“You didn’t mention that part yesterday,” I say.

“You seemed weird. Kind of scared. I didn’t want you to worry.” Angry pink splotches burn to life high on his cheeks. “I mean, where does she get off, talking to you that way? It’s none of her damn business. She just likes drama.”

“Actually a helpful trait in a drama teacher,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. I’m not sure what to do with this new, moody version of Baker. He was always a straight-up clown before.

“At least she can’t fire me,” he says with his old, playful grin. “You can’t ban Caliban.”

“True,” I say. “You always were a son of a witch.”

We both laugh, and I glance in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see Carly sitting there, in her favorite spot in the
middle of the bench. She always preferred riding bitch. She said it was because it was named after her, but I think she just liked being able to wrap her fingers around both headrests and crack jokes about my driving. Whenever she rode in the front seat, she slammed her foot down whenever I was supposed to brake, and I would snap at her about maybe getting her license one day and having a
NEW DRIVER
sticker on her own damn bumper. The longer I go without meds, the more my throat aches with missing her. Baker turns and glances at the empty seat and sighs.