Lark Read online

  “No,” I said. “You don’t have to. I’ll go with you.”

  Then I got sick, but since I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch there was nothing to throw up but water and bile. He picked up a rag from the floor and wiped my face.

  “See,” he said, “nothing bad is going to happen.”

  The man reached around to the backseat. I watched him lean over and twist. I heard him grunt with the effort because he was fat. I heard him push the rag under the rubber mat. I waited until he had turned around as far as he could, then I opened the door and ran.

  Chapter 7

  Nyetta

  My mother says I have to start going back to school, only I can’t because I’m too tired and I don’t really want to see anyone or leave the house.

  “It seems that both of you are interested in the dead,” says Dr. Huber when my mom tells him why I’m not sleeping. He’s always liked that she’s an archaeologist. Now that she’s divorced, I bet he asks her out.

  My mother answers a lot of questions. Pale sunlight drifts through the window. He’s talking loudly, like he wants me to join the conversation, but I don’t. Instead I study the dust motes floating in the air. I’m small for twelve, the smallest girl in the seventh grade. It occurs to me that I’m growing smaller. Soon, I may even disappear. This might be a good thing.

  Dr. Huber talks mostly to my mother. For a second, I feel like telling him that I am absolutely not interested in the dead, that I couldn’t care less about them, and that what interests me is trees and how girls turn into them if people forget or don’t know, or if no one finds the person who hurt them.

  The urge to speak passes. Dr. Huber doesn’t seem very interested anyway. He doesn’t want to know what Lark says, or how she is being very patient and very gentle, even though she is disappointed that I can’t look at her.

  He takes my temperature and pulse. Then he looks in my throat and takes blood.

  “I’ll call you with the results,” he tells my mother, “but most likely it’s anxiety, caused by the trauma of your neighbor’s death. Let’s give it some time and hold off on medication.”

  In the meantime, he tells her to give me chamomile tea and have me listen to a relaxation CD she can buy at the bookstore.

  “And she should probably see a therapist,” he says. “Someone Nyetta can talk to so she can get back to her life at school and being with friends.”

  Being with friends. I can almost remember it, the way I remember playing with dolls.

  Chapter 8

  Eve

  “Are you sure you want to go to school today?” asks my mom. She’s worried because I haven’t cried about Lark. I’m on autopilot. I’ve been like this for a long time, only she hasn’t noticed.

  I have lots of little secrets from my parents. They don’t know about the stacks of drawings under my bed or the Van Gogh pictures I’ve cut out from their art books and taped inside my closet door. They would complain I’ve ruined books, but they’ll never notice. They haven’t looked at an art book in years. They don’t know how much I know about pen and ink, how you build an image line by line without blending, only short lines or long, no room for error. If you hold the pen too firmly, the ink bleeds over the image. If you hold it too lightly, your line is insubstantial and weak. Which is one of the many reasons I love Vincent van Gogh. I’ve studied his sketchbooks and read all his letters to his brother Theo. He never missed a beat.

  My parents are both artists, or used to be. I don’t consider what they do now as art. They want me to be a lawyer.

  “But, honey,” says my mom. “You look so tired. Don’t you want a day off?”

  I tell her I have to go to school, that I can’t possibly miss World Civ because Mr. Haus is reviewing for the test and there’s an in-class essay in English. All this is true. She bites her lip and sends me on my way. Inside my binder I’ve taped a drawing of a man carrying a lantern. Van Gogh drew it in the margins of a letter to Theo. I can’t figure out how he made it light up the dark.

  The air is crystalline and brittle. I have a new superfine pen from Japan in my purse. The wind whips my coat around my legs. I wrap my scarf over my mouth and nose so I don’t breathe in the cold. I trudge through the slush to Thomas Jefferson High, home of the Rebels.

  I’d forgotten it’s the day of the big game against our archrival, Washington-Lee. A wave of team spirit pushes me through the front door. People rush to get a better view of the pep parade marching through the hall. Cheerleaders shake their pompoms and bounce. The marching band steps high, tilting their instruments and blaring the fight song. In between the band members, the basketball team cruises along. People jostle and push. My new pen falls out of my bag and rolls across the floor.

  The band finishes to big applause and several rounds of “Go Rebels! Kill Generals!” Then the five-minute bell rings and everyone scatters. Cheerleaders stuff pom-poms in lockers. Skaters and stoners lift their fists in mock school spirit and slink off to class. Behind me, two boys are talking about Lark.

  “Pretty cold,” says one.

  “What do you mean?” asks the other.

  “Having a pep rally so soon after Lark Austin was found dead.”

  I turn around to see a junior named Ian. He writes music reviews for the paper. I recognize him from the photo by his column. He catches my glance, then drops his eyes to the floor. He seems embarrassed or shy. The crowd thins, and I spy my pen under the drinking fountain. I slip it into my bag and rush off to class.

  The day goes on, simultaneously numbing and exhausting. For the second year in a row I didn’t get Studio Art, my first choice for electives. Instead I have Debate with Ms. Curren. She assigns us to topics and teams. I’m placed on the side against stem cell research, with Darren and Scott, two boys who live for basketball, and Judith, an honors student with short hair and ennui. We push our desks together, then I pull out my binder and start drawing Van Gogh’s traveler carrying a lantern in the dark. All three of them, I am surprised to learn, are in the Animal Rights Club.

  “Why?” I ask, noticing Judith’s huge leather purse.

  “Because it’s an easy way to get your community service experience,” says Scott. He moves his hands when he talks, like he’s spinning a record. “You bake some brownies for a bake sale, go to the shelter, walk the dogs around the block, and bam! You’re looking good for college!”

  “Colleges love animal rights,” agrees Judith. “That’s how my sister got into Bard. She was president of the club in her senior year.”

  Darren is unhappy about our assignment. “Hey, Mizz Curren!” he yells. He lifts his elbows and taps his chest when he talks. He’s so animated, the chain on his wallet jingles. “We’re all for stem cell research, you know, to help the babies and all the folks with bad hearts and diabetes. We can’t debate against it!”

  Ms. Curran nods empathetically. “Yes, Darren, it can be a challenge to develop an argument for a position you deeply oppose. But in the long run, nothing will help you defend your ideas more effectively than learning how to compose an argument for the other side.”

  “See, bro,” says Scott, “that’s what I told you she’d say.”

  Darren takes off his cap and turns it around. Judith checks her nails. I’m filling in the man’s coat with crosshatching. Ink flows from my pen, drenching the paper, smearing the lines. I’m off. If Darren and Scott would shut up, I’d control the pen better.

  Hours tick by. Between classes I clutch my binder and edge through the crowd. In algebra, I will myself right back into the man’s walk in the night, rays of his lantern piercing the darkness.

  Finally the last bell rings. Everyone’s pumped up, making plans about who’s driving to the game, who’s having an after party, and which one is worth going to. The marching band assembles at the flagpole, playing “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” keeping spirits high until game time. The blare of the trombones and beat of the drums make me nauseated. Alyssa, Boston, and Beth are in attendance, yelling, “Kill Gene
rals! Kill Generals! Kill Generals!” at the top of their lungs. They imitate the cheerleaders and fall over themselves laughing, Alyssa because she’s too good of an athlete to take cheerleaders seriously, Boston and Beth because Alyssa’s their queen.

  I come home to NPR blasting through the speakers my dad installed last Christmas. I dump my books on the window seat and wander into the kitchen. My parents are busy in their studios. Mom, part owner of Hand-Made ceramics gallery, is busy at the wheel, throwing teapots. Dad’s color coordinating tiles and countertops for a huge house that’s trying to look like Mount Vernon. The developer cut down fourteen trees to build it. It has a great room, a spiral staircase, and a four-car garage. When Dad showed me the plans, I told him he had sold his soul.

  “And it’s ugly. With a huge carbon footprint,” I said. “No one will buy it in this economy.”

  “Let’s hope you’re wrong,” he said. “Your college tuition depends on it.”

  I’ve been overhearing my parents talk about money. They sit at the breakfast table with the laptop and stacks of bills. We’re overextended, they say. My mom’s store might close, and my dad has only one project going, not like the days when he and Mr. McCall built the town houses near the pool.

  Somewhere behind the blueprints of all the McMansions and the subdivisions are my dad’s old canvases and paints. He used to paint landscapes. There’s a shelf of glass jars with perfect lids, the ones that you shake to blend tertiary paints. By now the pigments must be dried and cracked. One drop of water would turn them back into paint.

  My dad emerges from his studio, well meaning and quizzical. “How was school?” he asks.

  “We had a pep rally,” I say, putting the kettle on for tea.

  “No kidding,” he says, sounding shocked. “Well . . . I suppose it’s best to get things back to normal.”

  “Whatever normal is,” I say. It seems girls getting kidnapped and murdered is fairly normal. The window above the sink is edged in frost. I touch it with my fingertip, enjoying the slight burn.

  Chapter 9

  Lark

  The air was brittle and cold. My teeth chattered. I ran across the asphalt into the woods. The sky broke open and snowflakes fell around me like dying moths.

  I didn’t get far. Each step sent shockwaves of pain to my knee. I slipped and fell facedown in the snow. I got up, but I couldn’t get enough traction to get any speed. The man was right behind me. He grabbed me around the waist and flung me to the ground. He crawled over me and slugged the side of my face with his fist. He took something out of his pocket and flicked it open.

  “You made me do this,” he said, pushing a knife between my ribs. Its point cut through my jacket and touched my skin. He started to cry. “I didn’t want to do this, but you made me.”

  At first it felt like a pencil point. Then it stung. Then it felt like fire, and the pain stopped my breath. I was afraid to move because I thought the knife would go into my heart.

  Chapter 10

  Nyetta

  I’m sleeping when Lark rattles the window and lets herself in. Moonlight fills my room with silvery light. She wears the flowing white dress she was buried in. She could be a sylph in a ballet, except for the bloodstains.

  “So . . . , ” she says. “They think you’re crazy.”

  I rub my eyes and yawn. “Well, I am acting rather oddly.”

  “How?”

  “Talking to a dead girl. Not sleeping. Not going to school.”

  Lark rolls her eyes. “School!” she says with disgust. “I worried way too much about school.”

  She’s restless. She taps her foot angrily.

  “I won’t tell them how I have to see the cut,” I say.

  “If you do, they’ll try to talk you out of it.”

  “I know.”

  She flops in my armchair and props up her head with a fist.

  “I hate it out there,” she says.

  “I know,” I say.

  “No, you don’t. Believe me. You don’t.”

  Her eyes fill with tears, the kind of tears you get when you’re angry and sad. She rocks back and forth, softly crying. Then she shakes herself out of it and jumps up to move. She practices one of her floor routines, the one with the back flips that won her a medal. She’s got that twitchy energy back. She’s alive again, thinking with her body, the way dancers and athletes do. Even though her movements are small and contained, you can tell how good she was. She uses her hands for the big tricks, like the round off to a twisting back flip. She marks the big leaps, fitting them in between the furniture and the walls.

  I watch Lark remember how she used to cartwheel and flip. She tosses her head and laughs to herself. She arches her back and finishes, her hands high above her head. It’s scary to know a girl as fast and strong as Lark can get taken away and killed.

  Chapter 11

  Eve

  Days pass. Speculation about who killed Lark and why subsides, and the girls in World Civ are back to texting and playing Tetris. One morning out of the blue, our first-period teacher tells us we’re having a special assembly. The entire school piles into the gym to see Principal Akers at a podium, surrounded by a small army of strangers carrying clipboards and briefcases. He tells us the deans have set up special tables with art supplies in the library where we can make cards and drawings and write poems.

  “Honor roll student, dedicated athlete, Lark Austin was one of the students who make us proud to be a part of Thomas Jefferson High.”

  A freshman girl starts shaking and crying. The old government teacher who always wears a bow tie and has been around so long he’s taught some of our parents wipes his eyes. A row down from me, a couple leans together. The boy puts his arm around the girl, and I wonder why I can’t cry or feel something like sadness. After all, we grew up together. She used to be my best friend.

  Principal Akers goes on.

  “The people you see with me are grief counselors, professionally trained therapists that our wonderful PTA has brought here to help us process our feelings about the terrible tragedy that befell Lark.”

  He says they’ll be visiting health classes, and that he and the deans are here for us at this difficult time.

  “Did you see the young one?” asks Boston, edging through the crowd to be near Alyssa. “I like his fauxhawk.”

  “Yeah,” answers Beth. “I hope he comes to our class.” But he doesn’t. Instead, Ms. Sims introduces Kate Battle, a licensed social worker who specializes in grief work with young people.

  “I’m a retired policewoman, too,” adds Kate, “and I’m here to help you to grieve and to give you some tips about how to keep safe. We’re going to be talking and sharing, so the first thing I want you to do is make yourselves comfortable.”

  Girls stretch out on the floor or prop up their heads on their desks. Boston takes her place in the front next to Beth and Alyssa. I sit down cross-legged in the corner of the room. I’m angry, but I don’t know why. I pull out my sketchbook and start drawing cypress trees and clouds.

  Kate Battle uses her hands when she talks. “The most important thing you can learn from me today,” she says, “is how to stay safe. So before we talk about the terrible thing that happened to your classmate, let’s go over a list of tips I’ve prepared for you.”

  She asks for a volunteer to distribute the handouts, and Boston jumps up. Kate Battle goes on. “Read silently, please, as I go over the list. . . .”

  I place the handout on my sketchbook and look it over.

  Avoid being alone.

  Men who are predators will first try to gain your trust.

  If they think you’re easily pushed around, they’ll move in.

  Never be afraid to be rude. Do not worry about hurting a stranger’s feelings if you are uncomfortable.

  If a man who is bothering you doesn’t go away, say “Get away from me NOW!” in a loud voice.

  Try not to smile or laugh out of nervousness. Try not to act “cute.”

  If you
must walk or wait alone, never wear headphones. Many victims are abducted or attacked because they don’t hear the man sneaking up on them.

  Carry your keys so they stick out between your knuckles and can be used as a weapon.

  Kate Battle demonstrates how to rake someone’s face with her own keys. But I only have one key since I don’t drive yet. Not much of a weapon. Besides, how can you really tell if a guy is all right or a sex offender? And aren’t girls supposed to be nice? Aren’t we supposed to let the guy make the first move?

  Ms. Sims asks if anyone would like to ask our guest speaker a question or share some feelings. One girl says how she didn’t know Lark personally, but she thinks that what happened to her is really, really sad. Another girl says something like it happened to her cousin’s best friend in Pennsylvania. Boston tells the story of a girl at her sister’s old high school who was killed by a drunk driver on her way home from the prom. But since it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to Lark, Alyssa and Beth burst out laughing.

  “You are so random!” laughs Alyssa.

  It takes a while before Ms. Sims can restore order. She tells them they either have to stop laughing or leave.

  “We’re okay, we’re okay . . . ,” Alyssa protests. “Please, don’t kick us out. This is a really good class. We don’t want to leave.”

  “Well, then act like it,” orders Ms. Sims.

  The girls calm down and pretend to be serious. I go back to my drawing, half listening to stories about girls who’ve been abducted or assaulted. Surprisingly, no one mentions Daphne, the girl who left school. Last winter she passed out drunk at a party. Her friends walked her into one of the bedrooms, and a little while later a couple of guys went in and raped her. Her parents pressed charges and sued the host’s parents for letting underage kids drink at their house. But most people blamed Daphne for what happened because she wore too much makeup and was always getting wasted. Apparently none of her friends stood up for her. She got depressed and her parents dropped the suit. So I guess Daphne broke the rules by being alone in the bedroom, but maybe her friends broke them by leaving her alone when she couldn’t take care of herself. Or maybe she acted cute when those guys came in, which is something Kate Battle says you should never, ever do if you have even the tiniest thought that a guy could be a predator. Maybe Daphne laughed or did something that made the guys think she wanted to have sex with them. In the end, she lost all her friends and dropped out to get homeschooled. The guys weren’t even suspended. They said it was consensual.