The Stranger (3 page)

Nicoletta hated defending herself to a child of eleven. But it happened constantly. There was no decision Nicoletta made, including, of course, being born, which met with her sister’s approval. “I was scared.”

Jamie flung up her hands in exasperation. “If you had enough guts to follow him into the dark and dank and dreary woods …”

“They weren’t dark or dank or dreary. The sun was shining. There was still snow on the ground in the forest. It was more silver than dark.”

“My
point,”
said Jamie, with the immense disgust of younger sisters who were going to get things
right
when
they
started dating, “is that he started talking to you! Flirting with you. You even invited him to meet you for lunch. Running away from him was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Their father said, “Jamie. Please. You are entitled to your opinion, but saying it once is enough.”

The worst thing about this minihouse was the way they had to function in each other’s laps. There was no privacy. All conversations and confrontations became family property. Nicoletta thought of their lovely house on Fairest Hill, and how she should have had an entire suite in which to be alone and consider her—well, Jamie was right—her stupidity.

“Besides,” said their mother, “of course the boy’s hands were cold. You’d been in the woods for hours and he didn’t have any gloves on and it’s January.” Mother sniffed. She did not like fantasy, and when the girls were quite small, and liked to make things up, their mother put a stop to it in a hurry. “Not human,” repeated Mrs. Storms irritably. “Really, Nicoletta.”

Nicoletta had told them about Jethro because it was easier than telling them about Madrigals. She could not bring herself to say that part out loud.
I’m not in it anymore. You won’t go to concerts anymore. You won’t have to iron my beautiful medieval gown ever again. Somebody else—somebody named Anne-Louise—gets to dress up and sing like an angel and hear the applause from now on.

“Speaking as the only man in this family, …” said Nicoletta’s father. He looked long and carefully at his hands, as if reading the backs instead of the palms. “I want to say that if some girl followed me home, walked after me for miles through the woods, and told me she had a crush on me, and then I walked her all the way back to the main road, I would certainly have been hoping for a kiss. And if instead of throwing her arms around me, the girl
fled
… well, Nickie, I would feel I’d done something incredibly stupid or had turned out to be repulsive close up. I’d want to change schools in the morning. I’d never want to have to face that girl again.”

Wonderful, thought Nicoletta, wanting to weep. Now I’ll never see him again.

She struggled with tears. In the other house, she could have wept alone. In this one, she had witnesses. The small-minded part of her tried to hold her parents responsible, and hate them instead of herself, for being a complete dummy and running from Jethro.

She remembered the cold touch of his hands. I don’t care what Mother says, thought Nicoletta. Jethro’s hands were not normal. He scared me. There really was something strange about him. Something terribly wrong, something not quite of this world. I felt it through his skin. I can still feel it. Even though I have washed my hands, I can still feel it.

“So,” said her father, his voice changing texture, becoming rich and teasing, “what’ll we do tonight, Nickie? Want me to play my fiddle?”

Jamie got right into it. Nothing brought her more satisfaction than annoying her big sister. “Or we could slice up a turnip,” Jamie agreed. “That would be fun.”

Right up until high school, Nicoletta had loved the
Little House
books. How unfair that she had to live now where the family could go to McDonald’s if they got hungry, check out a video if they got bored, and turn the thermostat up if they got chilled. A younger Nicoletta had prayed every night to fall through a time warp and arrive on the banks of Plum Creek with Mary and Laura. She wanted a covered wagon and a sod house and, of course, she wanted to meet Almanzo and marry him. In middle school, Nicoletta had decided to learn everything Laura had to learn; quilting, pie making, knitting, stomping on hay. Nicoletta’s mother, who hated needlework and bought frozen pies, could not stand it. “You live in the twentieth century and that’s that. Ma Ingalls,” Nicoletta’s mother said, “would have been thrilled to live like you. Warm in winter, snow never coming through the cracks, fresh fruit out of season.”

When she was Jamie’s age, Nicoletta had made her fatal error. “Daddy never gets out his fiddle and sings songs for me when it’s snowing outside,” she’d said.

Her father laughed for years. He was always making fiddle jokes.

The second fatal error came shortly after, when Nicoletta tried eating raw sliced turnip because the Ingalls considered it a snack. Nicoletta’s mother had never in her life even bought a turnip because, she said, “Even the word gives me indigestion.”

Only last Christmas, Nicoletta’s stocking had included a raw turnip and a paring knife. “Instead of potato chips,” said the card. “Love from Santa on the Prairie.” It was Jamie’s handwriting.

Nicoletta’s
Little House
obsession ended with Madrigals: The singing, the companionship of a wonderful set of boys and girls from tenth to twelfth grade, the challenge of memorizing the difficult music filled Nicoletta the way her pioneer fantasies once had.

She thought of her life as divided by these two: the
Little House
daydream years and the Madrigal reality years.

And now Madrigals were over.

She was not a Madrigal singer. She was just another soprano, good enough only for the ordinary non-audition chorus.

Unwillingly, Nicoletta looked at the photograph of herself on the mantel. Every few years these photos were replaced, when the old one began to seem dated and ridiculous. Nicoletta’s portrait had been taken only last fall, and she stood slim and beautiful in her long satin skirt, crimson fabric cascading from her narrow waist, white lace like sea froth around her slender throat. Her yellow hair had just been permed, and twisted like ribbons down to her shoulders. In her hair glittered a thread of jewels. She seemed like a princess from another age, another continent, dressed as a Nicoletta should be dressed.

Now she hated the portrait. People would come to the house—Rachel, Cathy, Christo—and there it would sit, pretending nothing had changed.

I don’t want this life! thought Nicoletta, her throat filling with a detestable lump. Who needs high school? It hurts too much. I don’t measure up. I’m not musical and I’m a jerk who runs away from boys and makes them wish they attended school in another town. I don’t care what my mother says. Laura Ingalls had it good. Blizzards, starvation, three-hundred-mile hikes, scary badgers, and flooding creeks.

She thought of Jethro. His profile. His odd, silent darkness. His quiet listening while she poured out her pain.

“I got kicked out of Madrigals,” Nicoletta said abruptly. “Ms. Quincy tried everybody out again, and a new girl named Anne-Louise is better than I am, so I’m out and she’s in and I don’t want to talk about it.”

S
HE DID NOT DREAM
of Madrigals.

She dreamed of Jethro.

When she awoke much earlier than usual it was quickly and cleanly, with none of the usual muddleheaded confusion of morning. She arose swiftly and dressed without worry.

That in itself amazed Nicoletta. Choosing clothing normally took her half an hour the night before, and then in the morning half an hour to decide that last night’s choice would not do, and yet another half hour to find clothing that would fit the day after all. It was amazing how an outfit that had been absolutely the right choice for last Thursday was never the right choice for the following Thursday.

She did not brush her hair; Nicoletta’s permed curls were too tight for a brush to manage. She ran her fingers through it, fluffing and smoothing at the same time. She put on a simple black turtleneck, a plain silver necklace, and narrow dangling silver earrings. She wore a skirt she rarely touched: It had two layers, a tight black sheath covered by a swirl of filmy black gauze. The skirt was dressy, but the plain turtleneck brought it down to school level.

She did not look romantic. She looked as if she were in mourning. For Madrigals? Or for the boy she would not meet for lunch after all?

Jethro.

Her school bus did not pass the strange little country lane she had never before noticed. When she got off the bus, she looked for him, but she had never seen him wandering around the school before, and she did not see him now. In the halls, her eyes scanned the taller people, searching for him, both aching and scared that she would actually spot him.

First-period history, she covered a page in her notebook with the name Jethro. It looked historical. Where did it come from? It sounded Biblical. Who was Jethro and what had he done? She wrote it in script, in plain print, in decorated print, in open block letters. She wrote it backhand and she wrote it billboard style, enclosed in frames.

Second-period English, the other person in her life with an O name sat beside her. Christo.” Hi, Nick,” he said cheerfully.

She had always admired Christopher’s endless cheer. It seemed an admirable way to face life: ever up, ever smiling, ever optimistic and happy.

Now it seemed shallow. Annoying.

Am I comparing him to Jethro or am I angry with him for still being in Madrigals, for making peace in a single day with the fact that I have been replaced? “Hi, Christo,” she said. He had not even noticed how she skipped a beat before answering him.

The teacher had visited England last year and, sad to say, taken along his camera and several million rolls of film. Today he had yet more slides of where famous English authors had lived and gone to college and gardened. It was the gardening that most amazed Nicoletta. Who could possibly care what flowers bloomed in the gardens that no longer belonged to the famous—and now dead—authors? In fact, who could possibly have cared back when the famous authors were alive?

Nicoletta sat quietly while the teacher bustled—fixing his slides, flipping switches, lowering screens, focusing.

Christo murmured in her ear. “Nicoletta?”

His use of her whole name startled her. She turned to look at him, but his face was so close to her they touched cheeks instead.

“There’s a dance Friday,” whispered Christo. “I know it’s late to be asking, but would you go with me?”

Nicoletta was stunned. Christo? Who showed affection to everybody equally? Christo, who never appeared to notice whether he was patting the shoulder of Nicoletta or Rachel or Cathy, or—now—Anne-Louise? Christo, for whom girls seemed to be just one generic collection of the opposite sex?

Christo. Who was certainly the best-looking and most-yearned-for boy in school.

She absolutely knew for a fact that Christo had never had a date.

One of the things Madrigals spared you was dating. You had your crowd; you had your portable group. You had people with whom to laugh and share pizza. Rarely did any of them pair up, either within or without the group.

On the big white screen at the front of the class, appeared a dazzling slide from inside a cathedral. Great gray stones held up a gleaming and terrifying stained glass window. The glass people were in primary colors: scarlet arms, blue gowns, golden heads. If Jethro were hers, she, too, would be as vivid as that: Together they would blind the eye.

If I go to a dance with Christo, how can Jethro ask me out? Nicoletta thought. I want to be with Jethro.

Christo’s hand covered hers. She dropped her eyes, and then her whole head, staring down at his hand. His hand was afraid. She could feel uncertainty in the way he touched her. Christo, who touched everybody without ever thinking of it, or knowing he was doing it, was fearful of touch.

The slide changed and a gargoyle appeared on the screen. Carved stone. An unknowable man-creature stared out from oak leaves that were both his hair and his beard, which grew into him and, at the same time, grew out of him.
It’s Jethro,
thought Nicoletta.

“That sounds wonderful,” she murmured, mostly to Christo’s hand. “I’d love to go. What dance is it?”

“Fund-raiser,” said Christo. “It’ll be at Top o’ the Town.”

A famous restaurant where in years past her father had taken her mother for special occasions, like Valentine’s Day or their anniversary. Nicoletta had never been there. It was not a place that people wasted on children.

I’m not a child, thought Nicoletta. I’m a young woman, and Christo knows it. Christo wants me. He doesn’t want any of the others. Not Rachel or Cathy. And not this Anne-Louise. But me.

She looked nervously at Christo in the half-dark of the classroom. He was truly nervous. His easy smile puckered in and out. He had needed the dark to do this; he had chosen a place where they could not possibly continue the conversation or else people would hear, and because lights would come on in a moment, and the teacher would begin his lecture.

She was amazed at the discovery that Christo was afraid of anything at all, let alone her.

But when she looked at him, she still saw Jethro.

Who is Jethro? thought Nicoletta, that he has consumed me. Who am I, that I am letting it happen? Mother is right; daydreaming and fantasy are silly and only lead to silly choices. I’ll stop right now.

Then came chemistry.

Then came French.

Then came lunch.

And Jethro was there.

He had come. He was waiting. He did mean to meet her.

She saw him from far across the room. Her whole body shivered, and she did not understand him the way she had to her surprise understood Christo. She could not imagine who that person Jethro was. He was as hidden to her as the gargoyle in its mask and crown of oak leaves.

She could not smile. There was something frightening about this boy who also did not smile, but who stared at her in his dark and closed way. She walked toward him, and he moved toward her, exactly as they had in the lane, surrounded by thorns and vines and boulders that spoke.