Teardrop

18 PALE DARKNESS

“I feel like a narc,” Eureka told Cat in the waiting room at the Lafayette police station that evening.

“It’s a precaution.” Cat held out a short tube of Pringles from the vending machine, but Eureka wasn’t hungry. “We’ll throw out a description of Ander, see if it sticks. Wouldn’t you want to know if they already had a file for him?” She rattled the can to slide out more chips and chewed contemplatively. “He did make a death threat.”

“He did not make a death threat.”

“ ‘If I leave you alone, you’ll die’? He’s not here now and you’re alive, right?”

Both girls looked at the opposite window as if it occurred to them simultaneously that Ander might be watching them. It was Thursday, dinnertime. It had taken less than five minutes after leaving Ander under the oak tree for Eureka to breathlessly share the details of their encounter with Cat over the phone. Now she regretted opening her mouth.

The station was cold and smelled like stale coffee and Styrofoam. Aside from the heavyset black woman staring flatly at them from across a table strewn with Entertainment Weeklys from three Brad Pitts ago, Eureka and Cat were the only two civilians there. Beyond the small square lobby, keyboards clicked from within cubicles. There were water stains on the drop panel ceiling; Eureka found dinosaurs and Olympic track stars in their cloudlike shapes.

The sky outside was navy blue with mottled gray clouds. If Eureka stayed out much later, Rhoda would grill her along with the flank steaks she prepared the one night a week Dad worked the dinner shift at Prejean’s. Eureka hated these dinners, when Rhoda probed into everything Eureka did not want to talk about—which was everything.

Cat licked her fingers, tossed the Pringles can in the trash. “Bottom line, you have a crush on a psycho.”

“That’s why you brought me to the police?”

Cat held up a finger like a lawyer. “Let the record reflect that the defendant does not contest the psycho allegation.”

“If being weird is a crime, we should both turn ourselves in while we’re here.”

She didn’t know why she was defending Ander. He’d lied about Brooks, admitted to spying on her, made vague threats about her being in danger. It might be enough to press charges, but it seemed wrong. What Ander had said wasn’t what was dangerous about him. What was dangerous about him was the way he made her feel … emotionally out of control.

“Please don’t chicken out now,” Cat said. “I told my new friend Bill we’d make a statement. We met at my pottery workshop last night. He already thinks I’m too artsy—I don’t want to flake and prove him right. Then he’ll never ask me out.”

“I should have known this was a ploy for sex. What happened to Rodney?”

Cat shrugged. “Eh.”

“Cat—”

“Look, you just give a basic description, they’ll run a search. If nothing turns up, we’ll scoot.”

“I’m not sure the Lafayette Police possess the most reliable criminal database.”

“Don’t say that in front of Bill.” Cat’s eyes grew earnest. “He’s new on the force and very idealistic. He wants to make the world a better place.”

“By hitting on a seventeen-year-old girl?”

“We’re friends.” Cat grinned. “Besides, you know my birthday’s next month. Oh, look—there he is.” She jumped to her feet and started waving, laying on the flirt like mayonnaise on a po’boy.

Bill was a tall, lanky young black man with a shaved head, a thin goatee, and a baby face. He was cute, minus the pistol strapped to his waist. He winked at Cat and beckoned the girls to his desk in a front corner of the room. He didn’t have his own cubicle yet. Eureka sighed and followed Cat.

“So what’s the story, ladies?” He sat down in a dark green swivel chair. There was an empty Cup Noodles container on his desk; three more were in the trash can behind him. “Somebody botherin’ you?”

“Not really.” Eureka shifted her weight, avoiding the commitment of sitting down on one of the two folding chairs. She didn’t like being here. She was getting nauseated from the stench of stale coffee. The cops who’d been around in the days after Diana’s accident had worn uniforms that smelled like this. She wanted to leave.

Bill’s name tag said MONTROSE. Eureka knew Montroses from New Iberia, but Bill’s accent was more Baton Rouge than bayou. Eureka also knew without a doubt that Cat was mentally practicing her Catherine L. Montrose signature, like she did with all of them. Eureka didn’t even know Ander’s last name.

Cat scooted one of the chairs close to Bill’s desk and sat down, planting an elbow near his electric pencil sharpener, sliding a pencil seductively in and out. Bill cleared his throat.

“She’s being modest,” Cat said over the pulse of the machine. “She has a stalker.”

Bill shot cop eyes at Eureka. “Cat says a friend of yours has admitted to following you.”

Eureka looked at Cat. She didn’t want to do this. Cat was nodding encouragement. What if she was right? What if Eureka described him and something terrible flashed on a screen? But if nothing showed up, would she feel any better?

“His name is Ander.”

Bill pulled a spiral notepad from a drawer. She watched him scrawl the name in thin blue ink. “Last name?”

“I don’t know.”

“This a boy from school?”

Eureka blushed despite herself.

The bell attached to the door of the police station chimed. An older couple entered the lobby. They sat down in the seats Eureka and Cat had just been sitting in. The man wore gray slacks and a gray sweater; the woman wore a long gray slip dress with a heavy silver chain. They resembled each other, both slender and pale; they could have been siblings, possibly twins. They folded their hands on their laps in unison and looked straight ahead. Eureka got the sense they could hear her, which made her more self-conscious.

“We don’t know his last name.” Cat cozied closer to Bill, her bare arms splayed across the desk. “But he’s blond, kinda wavy.” She mimed Ander’s mop of hair with her hand. “Right, Reka?”

Bill said “kinda wavy” and wrote it down, which embarrassed Eureka further. She’d never been more conscious of wasting time.

“He drives an old white pickup truck,” Cat added.

Half the parish drove old white pickup trucks.

“Ford or Chevy?” Bill asked.

Eureka remembered the first thing Ander had ever said to her, which she’d relayed to Cat.

“It’s a Chevy,” Cat said. “And there’s one of those air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. Silver. Right, Reka?”

Eureka glanced at the people waiting in the lobby. The black woman had her eyes closed, her swollen, sandaled feet up on the coffee table, a can of Fanta in her hand. The woman in gray glanced Eureka’s way. Her eyes were pale blue, the rare extreme eye color you could see from a distance. They reminded Eureka of Ander’s eyes.

“A white Chevy is a start.” Bill smiled fondly at Cat. “Any other details you can remember?”

“He’s a genius at skipping stones,” Cat said. “Maybe he lives down by the bayou, where he can practice all the time?”

Bill laughed under his breath. “I’m getting jealous of this guy. I kind of hope I never find him.”

That makes three of us, Eureka thought.

When Cat said “He has pale skin, blue eyes,” Eureka had had enough.

“We’re done,” she said to Cat. “Let’s go.”

Bill closed his notepad. “I doubt there’s enough information here for me to run a search. Next time you see this kid, give me a call. Take a picture of him on your phone, ask him for his last name.”

“Did we waste your time?” Cat folded down her lip in a mini pout.

“Never. I’m here to serve and protect,” Bill said, as if he’d just collared the entire Taliban.

“We’re going to get banana freezes.” Cat stood up, stretching so that her shirt drifted above her skirt, showing off a band of smooth dark skin. “Want to come?”

“Thanks, but I’m on duty. I’m on duty for a good while longer.” Bill smiled and Eureka took the hint that was meant for Cat.

They waved goodbye and headed for the door, for Eureka’s car, for home, where there waited something known as Rhoda. As they passed, the elderly couple rose from their seats. Eureka suppressed her instinct to jump backward. Relax. They were just moving toward Bill’s desk.

“Can I help you two?” Eureka heard Bill ask behind her. She stole one last glance at the couple, but saw only the gray backs of their heads.

Cat reached for Eureka’s arm. “Bill …,” she sang out wistfully as she pressed the metal bar on the front door.

The air was cold and smelled like a trash can fire. Eureka wished she were curled up in her bed with the door closed.

“Bill’s nice,” Cat said as they crossed the parking lot. “Isn’t he nice?”

Eureka unlocked Magda. “He’s nice.”

Nice enough to humor them—and why should he have taken them seriously? They shouldn’t have gone to the police. Ander wasn’t an open-and-shut stalking case. She didn’t know what he was.

He was standing across the street, watching her.

Eureka froze mid-slide onto the driver’s seat and watched him through the window. He leaned against the trunk of a chinaberry tree, arms crossed over his chest. Cat didn’t notice. She was teasing her bangs in the sun visor mirror.

From thirty feet away, Ander looked furious. His posture was rigid. His eyes were as cold as they’d been when he grabbed Brooks by the collar. Should she turn around and run back into the station to tell Bill? No, Ander would be gone by the time she stepped through the door. Besides, she was too afraid to move. He knew she’d gone to the cops. What would he do about it?

He stared at her for a moment, then flung his arms down at his sides. He stormed through the brush that edged the Roi de Donuts parking lot across the street.

“Feel like starting the car anytime this year?” Cat asked, smacking glossed lips together.

In the instant Eureka glanced at Cat, Ander vanished. When she looked back at the lot, it was empty except for two cops walking out of the donut shop with to-go bags. Eureka exhaled; started Magda; blasted the heat to fend off the cold, damp air that had settled like a cloud inside her car. She didn’t want a banana freeze anymore.

“I’ve got to get home,” she told Cat. “It’s Rhoda’s night to cook.”

“So you all have to suffer.” Cat understood, or she thought she did. Eureka didn’t want to discuss the fact that Ander knew they’d just tried to turn him in.

In the sun visor mirror, Cat practiced a human highlight reel of the doe-eyed expressions she had just used on Bill. “Don’t be discouraged,” she said as Eureka turned out of the parking lot and started winding back toward Evangeline, where she’d drop Cat at her car. “I just hope I’m with you the next time you see him. I’ll squeeze the truth from him. Milk it right on out.”

“Ander is good at changing the subject when the subject is himself,” Eureka said, thinking he was even better at disappearing.

“What teenage boy doesn’t want to talk about himself? He’ll be no match for the Cat.” Cat turned up the radio, then changed her mind and turned it all the way down. “I can’t believe he told you you were in danger. It’s like, ‘Hmm, should I go with the tried-and-true Does Heaven know it’s missing an angel? Nah, I’ll scare the crap out of her instead.’ ”

They passed a few blocks of dilapidated duplexes; drove by the drive-through daiquiri stand, where a girl stuck her big chest out the window and handed gallon-sized Styrofoam cups to boys in souped-up low-riders. That was flirting. What Ander did this morning, and just now across the street, that was different.

“He isn’t hitting on me, Cat.”

“Oh, come on,” Cat sputtered. “You have always, like since the age of twelve, put off this sexy-broken-girl air that guys find irresistible. You’re just the kind of crazy every boy wants to wreck his life.”

Now they were out of the city, turning onto the windy road that led to Evangeline. Eureka rolled down the windows. She liked the way this road smelled in the evenings, like rain falling on night-blooming jasmine. Locusts sang old songs in the darkness. She enjoyed the combination of cold air brushing her arms and heat blasting her feet.

“Speaking of which,” Cat said. “Brooks interrogated me about your ‘emotional state’ today.”

“Brooks is like my brother,” Eureka said. “He’s always been protective. Maybe it’s a little more intense since Diana and … everything else.”

Cat propped up her feet on the dashboard. “Yeah, he asked about Diana, only”—she paused—“it was weird.”

They passed dirt roads and old railroad tracks, log cabins chinked with mud and moss. White egrets moved through the black trees.

“What?” Eureka said.

“He called it—I remember because he said it twice—‘the killing of Diana.’ ”

“Are you sure?” Eureka and Brooks had talked a million times about what happened, and he’d never used that phrase.

“I reminded him of the rogue wave,” Cat said, and Eureka swallowed the bitter taste that came every time she heard those words. “Then he was all, ‘Well, that’s what it was: she was killed by a rogue wave.’ ” Cat shrugged as Eureka pulled into the school parking lot, stopped next to Cat’s car. “It creeped me out. Like when he dressed up as Freddy Krueger three years in a row for Halloween.”

Cat got out of the car, then glanced back at Eureka, expecting her to laugh. But things that used to be funny had darkened, and things that used to be sad now seemed absurd, so Eureka hardly ever knew how to react anymore.

Back on the main road, heading home, headlights lit Eureka’s rearview mirror. She heard Cat’s wimpy honk as her car swerved into the left lane to pass her. Cat would never criticize how cautiously Eureka drove these days—but she also wouldn’t get stuck behind her at the wheel. The engine gunned, and Cat’s taillights disappeared around a curve.

For a moment, Eureka forgot where she was. She thought about Ander skipping stones, and she wished Diana were still alive so Eureka could tell her about him.

But she was gone. Brooks had put it plainly: a wave had killed her.

Eureka saw the blind curve ahead. She’d driven it a thousand times. But as her thoughts had wandered, her speed had increased, and she took the bend too fast. Her tires bumped over the grooves in the center divider for an instant before she straightened out. She blinked rapidly, as if startled from a sleep. The road was dark; there were no streetlights on the outskirts of Lafayette. But what was …?

She squinted ahead. Something was blocking the road. Was it Cat playing a joke? No, Eureka’s headlights revealed a gray Suzuki sedan parked across the middle of the road.

Eureka slammed on the brakes. It wasn’t going to be enough. She spun the wheel right, tires screeching. She swerved onto the shoulder, across a shallow ditch. Magda came to a halt with her hood five feet deep in sugarcane.

Eureka’s chest heaved. The smell of burnt rubber and gasoline fumes made her want to gag. There was something else in the air—the scent of citronella, strangely familiar. Eureka tried to breathe. She’d almost hit that car. She’d almost been in her third accident in six months. She’d slammed on the brakes ten feet short and probably destroyed her alignment. But she was okay. The other car was okay. She hadn’t hit anyone. She might still make it home in time for dinner.

Four people appeared in the shadows on the far side of the road. They passed the Suzuki. They were coming toward Magda. Slowly Eureka recognized the gray couple from the police station. There were two others with them, also dressed in gray, as if the first couple had been multiplied. She could see them so clearly in the darkness—the cut of the dress of the woman from the station; the hairline of the man who was new to the group; the pale, pale eyes of the woman Eureka hadn’t seen before.

Or had she? They looked somehow familiar, like family you met for the first time at a reunion. There was something about them, something tangible in the air around them.

Then she realized: They weren’t just pale. They were glowing. Light limned the edges of their bodies, blazed outward from their eyes. Their arms were locked like links in a chain. They walked closer, and as they did, it seemed like the whole world closed in on Eureka. The stars in the sky, the branches of the trees, her own trachea. She didn’t remember putting her car in park, but there it was. She couldn’t remember how to get it back in drive. Her hand shook on the gearshift. The least she could do was roll up the windows.

Then, in the darkness behind Eureka, a truck rumbled around the bend. Its headlights were off, but when the driver punched the gas, the lights came on. It was a white Chevy, driving straight toward them, but at the last moment it swerved to miss Magda—

And plowed into the Suzuki.

The gray car caved around the fender of the truck, then slid backward, as if on ice. It rolled once, nearing Magda, Eureka, and the quartet of glowing people.

Eureka ducked across the center console. Her body shook. She heard the thump of the car landing upside down, the smash of its windshield. She heard the screech of truck tires and then silence. The truck’s engine died. A door slammed. Footsteps crunched gravel on the shoulder of the road. Someone pounded on Eureka’s window.

It was Ander.

Her hand trembled as she rolled the window down.

He used his fingers to force it down more quickly. “Get out of here.”

“What are you doing here? You just hit those people’s car!”

“You need to get out of here. I wasn’t lying to you earlier.” He glanced over his shoulder at the darkened road. The gray people were arguing near the car. They looked up at Ander with glowing eyes.

“Leave us!” the woman from the station shouted.

“Leave her!” Ander shouted back coldly. And when the women cackled, Ander reached into the pocket of his jeans. Eureka saw a flash of silver at his hip. At first she thought it was a gun, but then Ander pulled out a silver case about the size of a jewelry box. He thrust it toward the people in gray. “Stay back.”

“What’s in his hand?” The elder of the two men asked, stepping closer to the car.

Behind him, the other said, “Surely it’s not the—”

“You will leave her alone,” Ander warned.

Eureka heard Ander’s breath coming quickly, the tension straining his voice. As he fumbled with the clasp on the box, a gasp came from the foursome on the road. Eureka realized they knew exactly what the box held—and it terrified them.

“Child,” one of the men warned venomously. “Do not abuse what you do not understand.”

“Perhaps I do understand.” Slowly Ander flipped open the lid. An acid-green glow emanated from within the case, brightening his face and the dark space around him. Eureka tried to discern the box’s contents, but the green light inside was nearly blinding. A sharp, untraceable odor stung her nostrils, dissuading her from peering any deeper.

The four people who had been advancing now took several quick steps away. They stared at the case and the shining green light with sick trepidation.

“You can’t have her if we’re dead,” a woman’s voice called. “You know that.”

“Who are these people?” Eureka said to Ander. “What is in that box?”

With his free hand, he grabbed Eureka’s arm. “I’m begging you. Get out of here. You have to survive.” He reached into the car, where her hand was stiff and cold on the gearshift. He pressed down on her fingers and slid the lever to reverse. “Hit the gas.”

She nodded, terrified, then reversed hard, wheeling back the way she’d come. She drove into the darkness and didn’t dare look back at the green light pulsing in her rearview mirror.

From:

savvyblavy@gmail.com

To:

reka96runs@gmail.com

Cc:

catatoniaestes@gmail.com

Date: Friday, October 11, 2013, 12:40 a.m.

Subject: second salvo

Dear Eureka,

Voilà! I am cooking with gas now and should have additional passages for you by tomorrow. I’m beginning to wonder if this is an ancient bodice-ripper. What do you think?

The prince became the king. Tearfully, he pushed his father’s blazing funeral pyre into the sea. Then his tears dried and he begged me to remain

.

With a bow, I shook my head. “I must return to my mountains, resume my place among my family. It is where I belong.”

“No,” Atlas said simply. “You belong here now. You will stay.”

Uneasy as I was, I could not refuse my king’s demand. As the smoke from the sacrificial mourning fires cleared, word spread throughout the kingdom: the young King Atlas would take a bride

.

So it was: I learned I would be queen via a rumor. It occurred to me that the gossipwitches might have spoken the truth

.

Had true love entered into the story, I would gladly have exchanged my mountain life for it. Or, had I ever dreamed of power, perhaps I could have overlooked the absence of love. I had lavish chambers in the palace, where my every wish was granted. King Atlas was handsome—distant but not unkind. But when he became king, he spoke to me less, and the possibility of ever loving him began to flicker like a mirage

.

The wedding date was set. Atlas still had not proposed to me. I was confined to my chambers, a splendid prison whose iron bars were velvet-covered. Alone in my dressing room one dusk, I put on my wedding gown and the lustrous orichalcum crown I would wear when I was presented to the kingdom. Twin tears welled in my eyes

.

“Tears suit you even less than a vulgar crown,” a voice said from behind me

.

I turned to find a figure sitting in shadows. “I thought no one could enter.”

“You’ll grow accustomed to being wrong,” the shadowed figure said. “Do you love him?”

“Who are you?” I demanded. “Step into the light, where I can see you.”

The figure rose from the chair. Candlelight caressed his features. He looked familiar, as if he were a fragment of a dream

.

“Do you love him?” he repeated

.

It was as if someone had stolen the breath from my lungs. The stranger’s eyes entranced me. They were the color of the cove where I swam in the morning as a girl. I could not help wanting to dive in

.

“Love?” I whispered

.

“Yes. Love. That which makes a life worth living. That which arrives to carry us where we need to go.”

I shook my head, though I knew it was treason to the king, punishable by death. I began to regret everything. The boy before me smiled

.

“Then there’s hope.”

Once I had crossed the blue boundary of his eyes, I never wanted to find my way back. But I soon realized I was trespassing in a dangerous realm

.

“You are Prince Leander,” I whispered, placing his fine features

.

He nodded stiffly. “Back from five years’ traveling in the name of the Crown—though my own brother would have had the kingdom think that I was lost at sea.” He smiled a smile I was sure I’d seen before. “Then you, Selene, had to go and discover me.”

“Welcome home.”

He stepped from the shadows, pulled me to him, and kissed me with matchless abandon. Until that moment, I had not known bliss. I would have stayed locked in his kiss forever, but a memory returned to me. I pulled away, remembering a piece of the gossipwitches’ timeworn chatter

.

“I thought you loved—”

“I never loved until I found you.” He spoke sincerely from a soul I knew I could never doubt. From that moment into infinity, nothing would matter to us but each other

.

Only one thing stood between us and a universe of love …

SWAK

Madame B, Gilda, and Brunhilda