The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (12 page)

“I wouldn’t mind doing things for myself,” she had told her mother. As soon as she said this, she felt her throat close around the words, but not in time to stop them from coming out. It was as if her body was trying to prevent her mouth from saying anything that might cause her more hardship. Wasn’t it enough that she would have to become accustomed to new servants? That she would have to tell new servants how she drank her tea and how warm she liked her bath?

“Well, we’ll have to see,” her mother had said. Faye could see her mother was distracted and worried. By her mother’s faraway look, Faye guessed that she didn’t know what to expect in America, either.

At the harbor, in the crowd of welcoming onlookers, Faye immediately recognized the man in the black hat and black suit with dark glasses. She waved, and then realized it was not the man she had mistaken for her tutor. That man had been very round, but not very tall. This man was both round and tall. In fact, the reason she noticed him among all these people was that he stood at least a head above everybody else. That, and his hat.

Instead of the black turban, he wore what appeared to be a
woman’s bonnet. The hat was lacy, and had a large, black, gemmed, rose-shaped brooch in the front. The hat was tied in a large bow beneath the man’s chin.

“Is that a style here in America?” asked Faye. From the look of the crowd, she thought not.

“In style? In America?” Her mother suddenly smiled. “I don’t let you out enough, do I?” The two of them shared a laugh, the first in a long, long time.

Faye looked at the funny-looking man again. This one didn’t have a monocle. Instead, he wore what looked to be the kind of protective eyewear one uses when welding metal with a torch, only the lenses were very dark.

The family climbed into the carriage driven by the floral hat-wearing man in black. “Our home will be at One Chestnut,” Faye’s father said to the driver. “Oh, but I suppose you know that.”

The driver seemed to make turns at every block. Faye could have sworn they were traveling in ever-widening circles. All of the streets seemed to be named after trees, which fit the many trees scattered everywhere.

“My Aunt Susan and Uncle Milton lived down that way!” exclaimed Faye’s mother as they drove through a pleasant neighborhood. “Uncle Milton still does. Right down there on Hawthorn Street.” She spoke of how much she loved summers with her cousin Katharine, an only girl with four older brothers. Faye imagined she must have really loved having Faye’s mother there, too. She certainly loved it when Katharine visited them in India.

“Can we stop for a visit?” Faye asked hopefully. Her mother gave her a weak smile, then looked back out the window.

They drove for well over an hour, and then stopped right behind another black carriage.

“The girl stays,” the driver said, adjusting the bow beneath his chin. “The doctors descend. The other carriage will take you to the laboratory.”

Faye’s father cleared his throat. “Oh, well, it is not as I had anticipated. I thought we’d be going to the house first. It’s so close—”

“The girl stays here.”

“But I don’t want to stay,” said Faye, clinging to her mother. “I want to go to our house. With you.”

“Rajesh,” Faye’s mother said, turning to her husband.

“The girl stays,” the driver said again. “The doctors go to the laboratory.”

“It will be fine, dear,” her mother said, peeling Faye’s fingers from her arm. “You go with the nice man—”

“What nice man?” Faye asked.

“You go with our driver, Faye,” her father said. “There is much preparation we need to do.”

Faye’s mother kissed Faye on the forehead, then looked down at the silver crest Faye had around her neck. “I’m going to take this, Faye—”

“But it’s mine! Father gave it to me!” she said. Her mother unhooked it from the chain.

“You keep the chain,” her mother said, “but I’ll need to take the amulet.”

Faye was miserable. “Am I going somewhere so unsafe you’re worried about family heirlooms?”

“You will go to the schoolhouse,” the driver said.

“Schoolhouse?” Faye repeated in disbelief. No one had said anything about school.

“Oh, yes, we thought you’d enjoy a bit of school,” her father said, cheerfully. “Perhaps you will find some friends.”

“Can’t I just get tutored at home?”

“The girl stays at school,” said the driver.

“Oh.” Faye’s mother appeared confused for a moment. “Well...” She looked at her daughter, offering nothing more than a limp impression of a smile. “That will be a nice experience for you, Faye dear.”

“Mother, I don’t want to stay at school. I don’t want to
go
to school. I want to—”

“Descend immediately, please,” the driver said. Faye’s parents looked at her apologetically, but, as far as Faye was concerned, clearly without any real remorse. Faye could not believe they were just leaving her, abandoning her to a fate unknown. She felt a bit ill and most definitely unhappy about the whole thing. More unhappy than she had ever been in her whole life.

“I’m not going!” shouted Faye.

“Young lady—” her father began, but Faye did not wait to hear the rest. She grabbed the handle to the car and threw it open. Her mother reached for Faye’s shoulder, but missed. Falling out of the carriage, Faye scrambled to her feet and began to run.

She ran faster than she ever had, tears streaming from her eyes and blinding her. They spilled into her ears like cold wet fingers, muffling the sound of her own breathing.

It didn’t matter. She had no idea where she was, where she was going, or what she would do when she got anywhere. She just ran, as if her life depended on it, which, as far as she knew, it did.
She ran and ran and ran.

She ran for perhaps all of twenty seconds before she was lifted bodily from the ground.

“Let me go, you big, stupid, ugly lunatic!” she screamed, knocking the floral hat askew and kicking the coachman in the shins. He simply threw her over his shoulder and, without a word, carried her back to the coach.

Her parents were no longer in the first carriage, and now sat in the other one. Hidden somewhat by the high-backed driver’s seat, the other driver seemed to be wearing, from her upside-down, wholly undignified position, something remarkably like bunny ears. This did not amuse.
These idiotic maniacs,
she thought.
I hate them all.
Slung like a potato sack over the man’s shoulder, she felt as if she was choking on a stone that had grown in her gut, and now rolled down into her throat.

As the second carriage drove off, Faye watched her parents as they waved. She flapped her hand limply back at them, clutching at the crest that was no longer there. She tugged at the chain. School? She could not imagine.

Still, she certainly spent the carriage ride doing so. The images she conjured up were nothing less than horrible. By the time they arrived at the schoolhouse, Faye was full of dread. She looked around. The big ugly carriage, driven by Mr. Crazy Lady’s Hat, was clearly in the middle of nowhere. Dayton had not been much to look at, but at least there were people. With the exception of the occasional tractor being pulled by a team of
horses, there was nothing anywhere around here. And now Faye was being guided to some old farm. They stopped in front of what seemed to Faye like a storage hut or a servant’s house. She looked around and did not see a proper house, or what she imagined to be a proper school.

“This is it,” said the driver, pulling on the reins as the carriage came to a stop. He got down from his seat and removed Faye’s trunk.

Faye did not climb down. She remained in her seat, hoping to be taken back to her parents, back to the ship, and back to her home. Instead, the driver opened her door and stood aside. When she didn’t move, he picked her up as easily as before and placed her on the ground. He closed the door, got back in, and drove off, leaving Faye sitting on the ground in a cloud of dust from the dirty road.

“Are you all right, dear?” asked a very lovely woman who seemed to appear out of nowhere, kneeling down so she was on face level with Faye.

Faye opened her mouth to complain, but the anger, the fear, and the humiliation finally merged, and the stone in her stomach dropped and hit bottom. She burst into tears. The woman held Faye in her arms until the sobbing eased. Then she helped Faye to stand, and the two of them dragged Faye’s trunk into the little barn which, Faye quickly realized, was her new school.

“I’m Miss Brett,” said the woman, “and you must be Faye. Come, help me take the biscuits out of the oven.”

Faye’s eyes lit up. She followed Miss Brett into the house. For the first time in her life, Faye was going to see the inside of a kitchen oven.

The kitchen, as a whole, proved to be a laboratory of discovery for Faye.

“Goodness,” Faye had commented as Miss Brett broke the eggs into the bowl, “your American eggs are quite different from ours back home. Are you sure these eggs are all right?”

Miss Brett sniffed the eggs before she began to whisk them.

“Yes, dear, they’re fine,” she said. “I collected them this morning.”

“Only ours in India, the albumin, the whites, see, they really are white and quite a bit firmer than the ones you have here.”

Miss Brett stopped whisking and looked at Faye. Gently, she said, “These will be, too, sweet angel—they just haven’t yet been cooked. The whites of the eggs are clear when the eggs are raw.”

Faye was stunned. “All eggs?”

“Yes, all eggs.”

Miss Brett caressed Faye’s head before handing her the bowl to pour into the batter. The girl had never seen a raw egg before. How remarkable.

And so the afternoon began. Faye and Miss Brett made a batch of butter biscuits, and it was Faye’s job to add the slabs of butter to the top of each one. At first, Faye had feared that, in America, biscuits would be globs of wet goo, until she learned that the globs of disgusting pastry batter would be baked into delicious biscuits.

“Just by heating them in the oven,” Faye said, amazed. She
had been familiar with heat being the catalyst of change in the laboratory, but nothing she had ever created there would have found its way into her mouth. Faye smiled as she placed remarkably even dollops of butter on the top of each glob.

“Now,” Miss Brett said, turning to Faye as she wiped her hands on her apron, “let’s take a look at the rest of the house.” She reached for Faye’s hand and Faye gladly took it. Right then and there, Faye decided that if being kidnapped meant she would stay with Miss Brett, then the whole thing would not be as terrible as it might have been. Miss Brett, Faye decided, was a lovely person, and Faye felt safe and cared for. Certainly, she would be well fed.

“This will be your room, I believe,” said Miss Brett. With the sun nearly at high noon, the white bedroom was bathed in light. There was a bouquet of fresh flowers in a vase on the dressing table. Faye smiled. What a lovely room. She’d enjoy making it her own.