The Stranger (8 page)

Behind Nicoletta the door was jerked open and she fell inside, her heart leaping with memories of caves and black lakes, of dancing in front of rock faces that opened like the jaws of mountain spirits.

“Ooooooh, that was so terrific!” squealed Jamie, flinging her arms around her sister. “He really kissed you! Wow, what a kiss! I was watching through the peephole. Oooooooh, I can’t wait to tell my friends.”

Nobody could ever accuse a little sister of good timing.

“Get lost, Jamie.”

“Forget it. We share a bedroom. I’ll never be lost. Tell me everything or I’ll never let you sleep. I’ll borrow all your clothes. I’ll get a parakeet and keep the cage over your bed. I’ll spill pancake syrup in your hair.”

“Go for it,” said Nicoletta. She walked past her pesky sister and into the only room in the teeny house where you were allowed to shut the door and be alone. In the bathroom mirror she stared at herself.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

There were answers behind the silvered glass. If she could only look in deeply enough, she would know.

I didn’t look deeply enough into the cave either, she thought.

I have to go back.

Further down.

Deeper in.

“D
ADDY AND I ARE
going to see the Burgesses today,” said Mother. “This is the first free Saturday we’ve had in so long!”

Mr. Burgess was Daddy’s old college roommate. It was a long drive and when Mother and Daddy went to see Sally and Ralph, they stayed all afternoon and sometimes long into the night.

Yes! thought Nicoletta. I’ll have the time to scout out the cave. Nicoletta tightened her bathrobe around her and thought of the long, unsupervised day ahead and what yummy food she would eat to sustain herself. Doughnuts, she thought, Gummi bears, ice cream, chocolate chips out of the bag, and barbecue potato chips. She would take some to Jethro. She would wear a backpack filled with junk food, and—

“Nicoletta,” said her mother, in her high, firm, order-giving voice, “you’ll stay home and baby-sit for Jamie.”

“Baby-sit for Jamie?” Nicoletta repeated incredulously. She needed to get out there in the snow and find Jethro! And they were making her stay home and baby-sit her stupid sister who was perfectly capable of taking care of herself?

Nicoletta tipped way backward in her wooden breakfast table chair, rolling her eyes even farther backward, to demonstrate her total disgust.

Luckily Jamie felt the same way. “Baby-sit?” she shrieked. “Mother! I am eleven years old. I do not need a sitter and I am not a baby. Furthermore, if I did need one, I would want one more capable, more interesting, and more worth your money than Nickie.”

It was agreed that the girls could take care of themselves separately, as long as they promised not to fight, not to argue, and not to do anything foolish.

“I promise,” said Nicoletta, who had never meant anything less.

“I promise,” said Jamie, who lived for fights and arguments and would certainly start both, the minute their parents were out of sight.

Their car backed out of the driveway, leaving deep lacelike treads in the snow. The sky was a thin, helpless blue, as if its own veins had chilled and even the sky could no longer get warm.

But Jamie did not start a fight.

“Make pancake men,” she said pleadingly to her sister. This was one of the few episodes out of the
Little House
series that Jamie considered worthy. Nicoletta was excellent at it, too. Nobody could pour pancake batter like Nicoletta.

So Nicoletta made pancake men and then struggled with pancake women, although skirts were harder to pour. They ate by cutting away limbs with the sides of their forks: having first the arms, then the legs.

Jamie drowned some of her men in syrup, pouring it on until their little pancake heads were under water, so to speak.

There was nothing quite so filling as pancakes. When you had had pancakes for breakfast, you were set for a hard day’s work. Nicoletta dressed, carefully hiding her excitement from Jamie. Jamie loved Saturday morning cartoons and with luck would not even hear the door close as Nicoletta slipped out. With extremely good luck, she would still be cartooning and junk-fooding when Nicoletta returned in the afternoon.

There had been enough money last year for Nicoletta to purchase a wonderful winter wardrobe. She wanted to be seen against the snow. A scarlet ski jacket with silver trim zipped tightly against the cold. Charcoal-gray pants tucked into white boots with furry linings. She wore no hat. The last thing she wanted to do was cover her hair.

She loosened it from its elastics and let it flow free, the only gold in a day of silver and white.

“Where are you going?” yelled Jamie, hearing the door open after all.

“Out.” Nicoletta liked the single syllable. The strength of it pleased her. The total lack of information that it gave, increased the sense of secrecy and plotting. She stood for a moment in the doorway, planning her strategy. She’d be warm inside her puffy jacket, but the pants were not enough and the boots were more for show than snow. She needed earmuffs in the fierce wind, but would die before wearing them.

“Nicoletta!” screamed her sister, who never called her that. The scream soared upward with rising fear. “Nicoletta!” Loud. Louder than it should be for anything less than blood. “Nicoletta, come here!”

She flew through the house, remembering emergency numbers, fighting for self-control, reminding herself to stay calm. Was Jamie bleeding? Was Jamie—

Jamie was fine. Curled in a ball on the easy chair, with Mother’s immense purple velour bathrobe draped around her like Cinderella’s gown.

“This better be good,” said Nicoletta. “Talk fast before I kill you.”

“Kill me for what?” said Jamie.

“Frightening me.”

Jamie was gratified to have frightened Nicoletta. Nicoletta could think only of time lost, time she needed to find and talk to Jethro. Time in the winter woods, time behind the swollen boulder. Get to the point! she thought, furious in the wake of her unreasoning fear.

Jamie pointed to the local news channel.

“You called me in here to look at something on TV?” shouted Nicoletta.

“Shut up and listen.”

A distraught woman was sobbing. “My husband! My husband Rob!” she said. “We don’t know what happened to him! He never came home last night. Or Al either. They must be hurt.” The woman’s shoulders heaved with weeping. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “They’re lying out there in the snow. I know they are. Too weak to call for help. Or maybe they fell through unsafe ice. I don’t know. But Rob didn’t come home.”

As if she, too, had fallen through unsafe ice, Nicoletta grew colder and colder, sinking to the depths of her soul.

“See,” said Jamie, “what happened is, these two hunters went out yesterday morning and they never came home. Isn’t that creepy? They took a day off from work to go hunting
and they never came home.”

I forgot them, she thought. I forgot them right away. I yelled at the monster once and then I forgot again. But those were people. Real people.

“What if she never finds out?” said Jamie in a low, melodramatic voice. “You missed it, Nick, but they showed her little kids. The kids are too little to know what’s going on. They just held hands and stared at the camera. You know, that goopy, gaping look little kids have.”

Children, thought Nicoletta. I went back and danced on the snow while little children waited for a daddy who is not coming home. And I knew, I knew all along.

Something in her congealed. She felt more solid, but not flesh and blood solid. Metallic. As if she were no longer human, but more of a robot, built of wires and connections in a factory.

Because I didn’t react like a human, she thought. A human would have gone to the police, called an ambulance, taken rescue teams to the cave to bring the hunters up. And what did I do? I obeyed a voice telling me to keep its secrets.

The reporter’s face became long and serious. “In this temperature,” she said grimly, “in this weather, considering tonight’s forecast, there is little hope that the men will survive, if indeed they are alive at this moment. They must be found today.”

Nicoletta’s stomach tried to throw up the pancake men.

She forced herself to be calm. She supervised every inside and outside muscle of herself. It seemed even more robotic. And it worked. She knew from Jamie’s glance that her body and face revealed nothing.

“Search teams are combing the areas where the men are thought to have been,” said the reporter. “We will return with updates.” The long, grim face vanished into a perky smile, as if the reporter, too, were a robot programmed for certain expressions. “Now,” she said cheerily,” back to your regular programming!”

Jamie, who always preferred regular programming, and never wanted interruptions, sighed happily and tucked herself more deeply into her mother’s robe.

Nicoletta backed out of the room. She stared down at the bright, sparkling outfit she had chosen to shine in the snowy woods, so Jethro would see her.

I know where they are … but if I tell… his secret … my promise …

Anyway, they’re dead. It isn’t as if anybody could rescue them now. They have a grave, too—farther underground than an undertaker would put them.

It was not funny. Not funny at all. And yet a snickery laugh came out of her mouth and hung in the air like frost. She had to pull her mouth back into shape with both hands.

What shall I do? Does a promise to a monster count when wives are sobbing and children have lost their father? Of course not.

But in her heart, she knew there had been no promise to a monster. The promise had been to …

But even now she could not finish the sentence. It was not possible and she was calm enough to know that much.

But it was true, and she had seen enough to know that as well.

First, I’ll find him, she told herself. We’ll talk. I’ll explain to him that I have to notify authorities. Then —

A small, bright yellow car whipped around the corner, slipping dangerously on the ice, and zooming forward to slip again as it rushed up her driveway. Rachel, who aimed for every ice patch and shrieked with laughter at every skid. Rachel, coming for a Saturday morning gossip.

Nicoletta could not believe this was happening to her. First she had to make breakfast with her sister. Now she had to waste time with her best friend.

Rachel leapt out of the driver’s side and Cathy from the passenger side. It wasn’t enough that she would be saddled with one friend; now there were two. They slammed their doors hard enough to rock the little car and purposely leapt onto untouched snow, rather than using the path, tagging each other and giggling.

She was framed in the doorway anyhow; there was no escape; so she flung it open and said hi.

“Nickie!” they cried. “You have to tell us everything. We’re dying to hear about it.”

Her heart tightened.
How could Rachel and Cath know?
She had said nothing! Only Christo had been there, and he’d had no sense of what was going on. He’d been too in love with Nicoletta to see anything.

And yet Rachel and Cathy knew.

Nicoletta struggled to remain composed. She could not talk to anybody until she had talked to Jethro. That was all, that was that.

Rachel flung her arms around Nicoletta. “It’s terrible not to see you all the time,” she said. “We’re so out of touch. Now get inside where it’s toasty-oasty warm and tell us all about it.” Rachel shoved Nicoletta into her own house.

Cathy tap-danced after them. “You’re so lucky, Nickie,” she said, admiring her own steps. “Did you dance all night?”

They even knew that she had danced under the moon and across the snow!

“Hi, Jamie,” said Rachel. “Are you still worthless or have you improved since we saw you last?”

“I’m flawless,” said Jamie. “Get out of my living room. I’m watching television. But if you pay me, I’ll describe Christo’s good-night kiss. It was very long and—“

Christo.

This was about Christo! The dance at Top o’ the Town. Not the dance to find Jethro.

Nicoletta surfaced. It was sticky coming up, as if, like the pancake men, she had drowned under syrup.

How quickly can I get rid of them? she wondered. She would have to give them every detail, assuming she could remember any details; and then what excuse could she use to make them leave her alone? She wondered if there was any way she could get Rachel to drive her to the dead-end road, save her that long hike. She could think of no way to explain being dropped off there.

“And then,” said Jamie, accepting a pack of Starburst candy in payment, “Christo staggered back to the car like a drunk. Except he was drunk with Nickie.” Jamie laughed insanely. “Men,” she said, shaking her head in dismay. Clearly she had expected men to have higher standards in love than her own sister.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” sighed Cathy. “Come on, Nickie, into your room for your version. We’ve already had Christo’s and now Jamie’s.”

“You’ve already had Christo’s?”

“Of course. We had an extra rehearsal this morning. At Anne-Louise’s. She has the most wonderful house, Nickie. It’s on Fairest Lane, as a matter-of-fact. Her family bought the house three down from your old one, and her living room is huge. The whole chorus can fit in easily. Plus she has a grand piano, not to mention a fabulous electric keyboard. There’s nothing that keyboard isn’t programmed to do.”

“Cathy,” muttered Rachel. “I don’t think Nickie is thrilled to hear that.”

Cathy apologized desperately.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Nicoletta. It didn’t. All that mattered was getting to the boulder, the path, the two lakes, the cave.

And Jethro.

Is he the monster? she thought. How can he be? How can anybody be?

“So,” said Rachel, hugging herself with eagerness. She lowered her voice. Excitedly she whispered, “Are you in love with him?”

Nicoletta stared into the faces of her former friends. Still friends, she supposed. Friends because they had not forgotten her … and yet, friends she’d forgotten.