The Season of Risks Read online

Chapter Six

 

  When I'd been packing my things for the new semester, envisioning myself back on campus, I'd anticipated some awkwardness from my classmates. After all, the murdered girl had come to campus specifically to visit me.

  But no one said a word about Autumn. Some might have forgotten her. Even if others remembered, they were wrapped up in themselves and living in the moment, constantly checking their cell phones for updates and text messages from Facebook, NetFriend, Twitter, or Trend. Most were so busy communicating with absent friends that they had little time to spend with anyone in person.

  I'd ignored a few invitations to become a "friend" or a "follower. " Jacey confided that she'd thought I didn't like her anymore when I didn't respond to her e-mail from NetFriend, asking if she could "friend" me. I'd had to reassure her that it had nothing to do with affection. I simply preferred face-to-face relationships.

  Jacey tried to explain its virtues over lunch in the dining hall. "It's an easy way to stay in touch with old friends," she said.

  We were eating lentil burgers with cheese. Jacey drank tea, and I had a glass of juice mixed with tonic. I carried the bottle with me everywhere. Jacey thought it was lupus medication.

  "And it's great for letting your family know what you're doing. "

  I didn't have any relatives on NetFriend or Facebook or Twitter. I imagined inviting my father to be my "friend. " The idea was ludicrous. "I'm not sure I'd want them to know," I said.

  She laughed. "You don't have to tell them the truth. "

  "Isn't it dangerous, letting the world know where you are and what you're doing?"

  Jacey looked thoughtful. "It can be, I guess. There are stories about lurkers who steal your identity, and stalkers who prey on girls. "

  Her eyes took on the fearful look that was all too familiar, so I changed the subject. "Dinner's not bad tonight. "

  She was easy to distract. "I love the food here. At home my parents eat meat, and the smell makes me sick. "

  The dining hall food, most of it organically grown on the campus farm, was very good, I agreed. But it wasn't anything like what Mae and Dashay cooked. I was about to tell Jacey about the way they worked together in the kitchen, but she was intent on her cell phone, thumbs tapping its keys, communicating with another friend.

  My two favorite classes that semester were Special Topics in Japanese Culture and Creative Writing. The other classes-Communications Studies and Web Design-were worthwhile but never so memorable. Hillhouse allowed students to design individual courses of study, and mine focused on communications.

  Special Topics began with a discussion of the concept of wabi-sabi. It's a central tenet of Zen Buddhism, difficult to define since essential Zen knowledge can't be communicated with words-instead, it's transferred from mind to mind. That's why so many vampires are Buddhists, I suspect; being able to hear thoughts gives them an advantage.

  Professor Itou was a new assistant professor, not yet comfortable as a teacher. He didn't hand out a syllabus, and he didn't spend the first class introducing himself or the course. Instead he paced the classroom, throwing out words in small bursts. Curiously, his unease probably kept the students more rapt than eloquence would have.

  "Wabi-sabi. To you. It may be an aesthetic," he said. He kept his eyes on the floor as he walked. "Easier to say. What it is not. " He stopped moving for a minute to gaze out the classroom window. "Not the Greek ideal. Not perfection. Not complete. Not eternal. Wabi-sabi is simple. Wabi-sabi is not pure. It won't stay the same. You may call it ugly. "

  All around me I heard confusion in the reactions of my fellow students. I don't get this, Jacey thought. Too weird, somebody in the front row was thinking. Then I heard one thought, clear and light as the sound of a bell: the broken bowl is glued together. Light passes through its cracks.

  Suddenly I understood. How beautiful, I told myself as I turned to see where the thought had come from.

  Sloan Flynn sat in the last row, in the chair nearest the door. His back was straight, and his hands lay palms-up on his knees. His eyes met mine. He answered, Yes, beautiful.

  As a reflexive instinct, I blocked my thoughts, but I knew he had already heard them.

  Professor Itou said the word wabi originally meant "sad" or "lonely" but also meant "balanced" or "peaceful. " Sabi meant "the bloom of time. "

  He presented a slide show next. An image of a tree with a broken branch came onto the projection screen. "How does it feel?" the professor asked.

  Next, an empty wooden bucket lay on its side, splinters catching the light of a dying sun. "Freedom comes with sadness," he said. "The wisdom of rocks. "

  Some of the images weren't recognizable. Some were half hidden by fog. Others looked as if they'd been captured with a microscope, too small to be seen by the human eye.

  Absolute silence fell on the room.

  "Can you see the invisible?" Professor Itou asked.

  As it happened, I was wearing my metamaterials suit, and I had a sudden whim to turn invisible right there in the classroom. In the darkened room, the students were focused on the slide show. Would anyone notice?

  My neck began to tingle. Sloan was watching me-I knew it without turning around. Don't do it, my inner self counseled. Too risky. But the urge was irresistible-I had to make sure I could still do it. I took a deep breath and concentrated, willing myself to exist only in the present moment. Then I exhaled and let all sense of being pass through me and out of me, slowing every electron of my being to the point where they deflected light. A sensation of weightlessness spread through me.

  It lasted only a few seconds. Then I inhaled myself into visibility. Professor Itou stared at me, blinking rapidly. Suddenly he made a slight bow in my direction. I bowed back. The tingling sensation at the back of my neck continued through the rest of the class.

  Sloan also turned up in my Creative Writing class, taught by a visiting writer named June Warner. On our first day, I arrived early and took the seat nearest the door. I wasn't sure I'd like creative writing.

  Neither, apparently, was Sloan. He came in and looked longingly at my chair without making eye contact with me. Then he took a seat at the front.

  But when the professor came in-her short blond hair tousled and face red, as if she'd been running-she made us rearrange the seats in a circle. I kept my place near the door, and Sloan moved his chair next to mine.

  The professor was a tall, stout woman, wearing the kind of polyester clothes that supposedly never cling or wrinkle and invariably do both. She said that she was a poet and that the titles of her chapbooks were listed on the syllabus as recommended reading. Then she read aloud a list of topics we weren't allowed to write about: drugs, dead grandmothers, drinking, small animals, guns. The list went on and on. Religion, politics, sex, nuclear power, UFOs.

  Jacey scribbled a comment on her notebook and pushed it over to me. "This is creative?" it read.

  I didn't think Professor Warner would feel much at home at Hillhouse, where professors and students alike favored free expression and nonprescriptive instruction. The buzz of thoughts in the room was largely negative, with one exception: Richard Meek, a student who seemed as out of place at our school as Professor Warner. He was thinking, That's right! Make them follow the rules.

  Sloan's hands clenched the arms of his seat. Art has no rules, he thought.

  I turned to face him. Are you really other? I thought.

  He gave me a sidelong glance. Then his hands came together in the Mentori "open mouth" sign.

  "Excuse me. " Professor Warner's voice had no air of politeness. She was staring at Sloan. "Would you like to tell all of us what that gesture means?"

  Sloan's eyes slid away from mine to look straight at the professor.

  "We're waiting. " She folded her arms across her chest.

  His eyes were so dark they looked black. "It means," he said slowly, "that I'm a vampire. "


  Sloan, the professor, and I were the only ones in the room who didn't laugh.

  On the way out of class, I nearly collided with Sloan. Do you have a minute to talk? he thought.

  But Professor Warner said, "I want a word with you, young man. "

  So I went out into the fresh green air, still marveling at his audacity.

  I sat on a stone fence near the classroom building, waiting to talk to him, watching students stream out its doors and head up the hill or down toward the barn, most of them talking on their phones or listening to music through earbuds-so much more connected than I was. But I didn't feel sad about my solitude. Was that because I was under the influence of wabi-sabi? Or because now I knew I wasn't the only vampire on campus?

  Then my phone rang, connecting me to an unfamiliar number. The voice was pure Cameron.

  "How are you?" he asked, and before I could speak, he said, "How's school? What are you doing? I've missed you. "

  And as I answered his questions, from the corner of my eye I saw Sloan come out of the classroom building and begin walking in my direction. Then he must have seen the cell phone or heard my thoughts. He quickly turned away, but not before I saw the disappointment in his eyes. I felt disappointed, too, but only for a moment.

  Cameron said he was in Savannah to attend two fund-raising events: a private dinner with rich donors, followed by a somewhat less expensive reception.

  "Savannah?" So near, and yet so far.

  I sensed he was thinking the same thing. I remembered the last time we'd kissed, and the memory hurt.

  "It's not a good idea," he said slowly.

  I knew that. He'd made things pretty clear the last time we'd met.

  "It's an easy drive," I said. I waited, hoping.

  "Oh, what the hell. " His voice had a rough edge to it. "You could at least attend the reception. "

  "We can ignore each other. " I was already thinking about what I would wear: the new dress made in Peru.

  "We can try," he said. "At least we'll be in the same room, breathing the same air. "

  Back in my dorm room, I changed quickly into the new dress and put on my fanciest sandals. Luckily, Jacey wasn't there. I played with my hair, twisting it and pinning it high on my head, wondering if it made me look older. The mirror reflection stayed fuzzy; I was too excited to be able to concentrate.

  On the drive to Savannah, I wondered what we'd say to each other. Would we even have a chance to talk? I stopped at a drugstore near the exit ramp and bought makeup: lipstick, mascara, eye shadow, and blush. Squinting into the car mirror, I applied them as well as I could. If the dress looked as good as my mother said it did, it deserved a sophisticated face to go with it.

  I found the address in the Historic District, parked the car, and watched men in summer suits and women in cocktail dresses strolling along the street toward the house. It was a Queen Anne-style mansion, painted white, with a tower, pitched roof, gables, and a long porch. It reminded me of the Victorian houses in Saratoga Springs, painted as carefully as bakers' iced cakes.

  As I climbed the steps to the porch, I felt someone watching me and turned, hoping to see Cameron. Instead, I looked into the face of Malcolm Lynch.

  Malcolm's pale gray eyes moved from my head to my feet and back again. He smiled. "Little Ari is growing up," he said. "And maintaining her interest in politics. Well, well. "

  His smile had considerable charm, and I was determined to be civil. Other people were climbing the stairs, after all. But what I thought was, How can you be nice to me? How could you kill Marmalade? How could you kill Kathleen?

  His smile gone, he tilted his head toward the porch. "Do me the favor of a small conversation before we go in. "

  We walked around the corner, out of sight of the door. I didn't know why I followed him. The last time we'd met, he'd done the same thing: made me acquiescent.

  "Look," he said, "it's time to put an end to that kind of thinking. You are growing up, yes? Time to stop the childish patterns of blaming and hating, wouldn't you say?"

  "You think I should forgive you?"

  "I think you should listen to reason. " He clasped his hands behind the back of his raw-silk jacket, as if he were at a debate. "I think you should work with me. Are you acquainted with the concept of acceptable risks?"

  I shook my head.

  "Surely your father taught you about utilitarianism?"

  "The moral value of an action is determined by the extent to which it contributes to the greater good. " I'd learned that years ago.

  "Yes. And sometimes we take actions that may harm individual lives, in order to produce greater good in the end. " His eyes had a remote expression, as if he were reliving an old memory. "We call those risks acceptable. "

  His words spun in the air like fog.

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "To make you see the point. " His voice rose slightly. "Sometimes lives have to be put at risk, or even lost, in order to save a greater number of lives. Think of medical research, about clinical trials of new procedures and medications. Say a man has a blocked artery. If untreated, it will cause a heart attack that may kill him. A physician uses an experimental procedure to unclog the artery. Say the man dies on the operating table. But the physician uses the knowledge gained by the attempt to refine the procedure, which ultimately saves more lives. "

  He unclasped his hands and held them toward me, as if they were holding a present. "Would you rather the physician didn't try the experiment?"

  I stood under a hanging basket of drooping crimson flowers that I recognized from Dashay's garden, appropriately named bleeding hearts-though hers were black. "I wouldn't want to be the man on the table," I said. "Would you?"

  "That's an entirely different question. The point is, the risk was worth taking. "

  I looked into his eyes. Dashay had taught me how to spot internal demons that show up as a kind of flicker on the iris. But Malcolm's eyes were as sharp and cold and deep as a glacial lake. Whatever possessed him, it wasn't a demon.

  "But to answer your question"-he sounded as if he was straining to be patient-"I'd be willing to risk my life in order to save others. I already have. "

  It wasn't the answer I might have expected. Yet somehow I believed him.

  Malcolm clasped his hands again. "Imagine that your father's lungs failed him-don't look that way, Ari. Vampires aren't susceptible to lung failure. This is all hypothetical. But imagine that his best chance to stay alive required a living lung transplant. Would you be willing to donate one of your lungs?"

  "Of course. " I didn't even have to think about that decision.

  "But living lung donors face a range of possible complications. The surgery itself is risky. Afterward, they're susceptible to pulmonary artery thrombosis, empyema, bronchial stricture and fistula . . . I could go on. Would you still be willing?"

  "Of course. " Again, I didn't hesitate.

  "So would I. Those risks would be worth it, to keep him alive. Personal feelings aside, he has the intelligence and scientific talent to produce work that will save many other lives. So, you see, you and I are willing to take acceptable risks. "

  I thought, Maybe. But would my father want us to take them?

  Then I saw where this conversation had been leading all along. "You still want me to be part of some kind of clinical study. "

  "You have a unique chance to contribute to the greater good," Malcolm said. "We've already begun testing others like you, developing physiological profiles. Once our project is complete, the results will help us create risk assessment and prevention plans for everyone-vampires, mortals, and hybrids alike. Shouldn't you take part?" His gray eyes gazed into mine, as if he were willing me to respond. "Won't you?"

  I looked away, back at the bleeding hearts. The sounds of the reception drifted out to us: a pianist playing songs written by Johnny Mercer, Savannah's favorite lyricist and composer. Dashay and Bennett had oft
en danced to his music, moving gracefully through the moon garden back in Homosassa. I recognized the song: "Out of This World. " Then it hit me: Malcolm's research might help Bennett, in particular.

  An intense urge to see Cameron swept through me. I'd had more than enough of Malcolm and his ethical bargaining for one day. But as I turned my back on him, I heard myself say, "I'll think about it. "

  The woman at the desk inside the front door looked from my fake ID to my face and back again. "You look older than nineteen," she said.

  "Thank you. " I replaced the ID in my wallet. She didn't know what a compliment she'd paid me.

  The reception was under way in a large, softly lit room, probably once used as a ballroom. The glow of its apricot-colored walls made everyone look interesting: a mustached man wearing a pinstriped suit, a woman in a distinctive print dress by a designer whose clothes I'd seen only in magazines-they looked as if they led fascinating, complicated lives.

  What was one supposed to do at a reception? Mingle and talk, I supposed. But what could I say? What could I possibly have in common with any of them?

  So I stood near the door, feeling nervous. Then I saw Cameron, far across the room, surrounded by yet more beautiful people. Our eyes met only for a second, but in that second it was as if my blood caught fire-an intensity of feeling that shocked me.

  Around me people swirled, pressing ever closer to the circle around Cameron. Even those deep in conversation glanced at him every few minutes, as if his presence gave them definition.

  And Cameron basked in their adoration. He seemed to drink it in with each breath. His eyes moved from face to face, and I was impatient for them to reach mine again, to let me know that I was more special to him than anyone.

  Suddenly I realized that a man in a blue suit was talking to me, asking what I did. When I said I was a student, he moved away quickly. I guess he thought students were too young to talk with.

  Then I noticed Malcolm standing close by, watching. His face showed understanding, even sympathy.

  Next to Cameron stood his aide Tamryn, wearing a knee-length silver dress so simple, yet so perfectly cut, that she was easily the most striking woman in the room. Her hair fell in glossy waves that curved around her face, whose profile was as sharply etched as a cameo's. She was talking to an older, white-haired man: Joel Hartman, rumored to be Cameron's likely running mate. When she noticed me, she broke off her conversation with Hartman and strode across the room.

  "Malcolm," she said, extending her hand.

  He shook it once, languidly. "Hello, Tamryn. You're looking well. "

  "Ms. Montero. " Her voice sounded cold.

  "Ms. Gordon. " We shook hands. Hers felt frigid. I sensed her hostility, but the lingering power of having met Cameron's eyes kept me calm.

  "Could I have a word with you?" It wasn't a question. She put her hand on my arm and swiftly steered me out of the room, back onto the porch. Her fingernails, long and sharp, pressed into my skin.

  She didn't waste time. "Why are you here?"

  "I was invited," I said. "Cameron invited me. "

  She looked skeptical. Yet I could tell she wasn't sure I was lying, even though I couldn't read her thoughts. She must be a vampire.

  She was saying something in her raspy voice, and I tuned in to the middle of it: "-so if you really believe that you care about him, you'll leave him alone. "

  "I do care," I said. "But I'm not leaving him alone. " The confidence in my voice surprised me.

  I went on, making my words as cold and hard as her handshake. "You needn't worry. We won't do or say anything that might hurt his campaign. "

  Later I would remember those words and wonder how I could have been so naive.

  As I left the porch, I heard her think, Oh well, it won't last, anyway. He knows she's much too immature for a man of his stature. I realized that she'd sent me her thought deliberately, but that didn't lessen the sting of the words.

  The apricot-colored room didn't seem so charming now. I saw no sign of Cameron. The good-looking people's mouths looked smug or sinister, and the heat from the candles on the buffet table made the room uncomfortably warm. I told myself to calm down, but Tamryn's words kept echoing in my head. Too immature.

  "Here. " Malcolm handed me a glass of ice water.

  Wary, I handed it back. He shrugged and drank it himself. He thought, I could help you. I can make you older.

  When I left the house I almost ran until I saw the Jaguar parked up ahead, under a streetlight. Then I slowed my pace and made my breathing deeper, more regular.

  The ringing of my cell phone sounded much too loud in the quiet street. Another unfamiliar number calling.

  "Ari?" Cameron said as soon I as answered it. "Where are you?"

  "Outside," I said, keeping my voice low. "Heading home. "

  Background voices and static came through the receiver. Then he said, "I'm sorry. Your coming here. I guess it wasn't a good idea. "

  "I guess it wasn't. " I took another deep breath and kept walking. The street smelled of night-blooming jasmine. "I had an interesting chat with Tamryn Gordon. She let me know that you think I'm immature. "

  My words hadn't been planned, and they surprised me.

  "What did she say?" He sounded concerned.

  "She didn't say it, she thought it. She's a vampire, isn't she?"

  "I couldn't say. " His voice sounded guarded.

  "Did you tell her I'm immature?" I realized as I spoke that I simply wanted him to deny it.

  Instead, he said, "I may have told her you were young, that you have some growing up to do. " More background noise. "But I never said immature. "

  The car was in view now. But it wasn't empty. Two people sat in the front seat.

  "I have to go," I said, and disconnected the call.

  How did they get into my car?I must have forgotten to lock it.

  I couldn't see their faces. The light was too dim even to tell if they were men or women. All I saw were two grey shapes, torsos and heads roughly the same size as mine. One of them raised its arm, as if in greeting.

  Fear, alarm, panic, whatever name you give to the anxieties that seem to gather in your chest, encircle your heart-I felt them surge, grip me tight. More than anything I wanted to run away. I made my legs keep moving toward the car.

  But with each step I took, the filmy shapes grew less distinct. By the time I reached the car, they simply weren't there.

  Perhaps they were tricks of light, or the silhouettes of the headrests. I stood outside the car for a minute, looking through its windows. All I saw was the plastic drugstore bag that held the makeup I'd bought. It made me recall how much I'd looked forward to this evening, how excited I was.

  What a fool I'd been.

  Then I reached for the door. Yes, it was locked.

  Even so, I scanned the back seat and car floor, and got out again to check the trunk, before I started the engine and drove away. I kept glancing at the rearview mirror. No one followed me and no one sat behind me, but my neck never stopped tingling on the drive back to school.