At first glance, the house looked as if it had been built of bones. Dry white stretches, long walls, sharp angles, stark light shining from jagged windows.
"It's completely earth-friendly," the woman said.
It might have been earth-friendly, but it didn't look people-friendly. The ride had been long, the driveway endless. As Blue stepped out of the car, she could see trees and stars emerging overhead. She could hear the sounds of distant roads. No other house lights shining through the woods. Just like a horror movie: no one around to hear her scream. She drew a quick breath as the hairs rose on the back of her neck.
The woman had introduced herself as Amy just before letting herself into the car. Blue had gotten as far as B in writing her own name before remembering the girl in the basement with the sparking wire. Bess Andrews, she'd written.
"Bess? That's very retro, isn't it? My mother had a friend named Bess, I think, or Betsy … maybe Betsy. You would never believe what she was like—" And Amy launched into another long string of words that didn't end until they stepped out onto the gravel drive in front of the unfriendly house.
"We thought about going a bit bigger," Amy said, switching tracks. "But we decided we could make do. Every little bit for the environment, right?"
From what Blue could see through the windows, Lynne's trailer would have fit inside, along with a host of others. Teena's family had a big house, but Teena's family had five kids, plus two uncles and one set of grandparents living in the additions tacked on later in bits and pieces.
Not this house. The entry led into an open empty space. A fan slowly rotated beneath the high ceiling, its long cord twirling slightly with the motion. The chrome-and-white furniture had been arranged to face a glass wall. The kitchen, tucked in one corner, was occupied by stainless-steel appliances. Nothing hung on the refrigerator door except a single white square with a quote centered on it about the beauty of each and every soul. It looked like the kind of place where you might find petri dishes and microscopes, not a family.
"My husband, Todd, won't be home until late. He's with clients. My younger son, Yoshi, is at a friend's house for the night. It's just us girls and Marcos."
Marcos? She'd tuned out during the ride, focused on her feet and her empty stomach. The names Yoshi and Marcos didn't fit with the smiling white woman in front of her.
"Marcos," Amy trilled. No response. She walked to the staircase at the far side of the room, the wide open steps leading to an equally open landing. "Come down, Marcos."
The sound of a door opening somewhere far away. Footsteps followed, a teenage boy appearing on the landing. He was tall, thin, the kind of boy that black trench coats were designed for, and cigarettes, and late-night coffees at diners. His dark hair shot in all directions, as if he'd come straight from bed.
"What?"
He even sounded the way Blue expected: a bit bored, a bit tired, a lot irritated.
"This is Betsy Andrews. She's traveling, and I found her on a street corner looking for help. Of course I told her to stay with us tonight."
If Blue had a voice of her own, she would have sounded just as irritated as Marcos looked. Not that the name "Betsy" really made a difference. One fake name was the same as another; but she still pulled out her notebook and underlined "Bess."
"Bess. That's what I said, sweetheart. You just didn't hear me right." Amy gave her a thin-lipped smile. "Bess can't speak. Can you imagine how lucky she is to have run into me tonight?"
The boy slunk down the stairs. He sized her up just as she had him, practiced and quick. "Bess, huh?" he said, with a touch of a smirk. Smarter than she'd thought, then.
"Marcos, did Paulina leave food? Paulina cooks for us," Amy added. "She's lovely, thoughtful, so willing to try things differently from what she's used to. We used to use a chef some friends recommended, but he, well, we prefer to help people, you know. Paulina needed the work more than he did. Things have been hard for her."
The boy gave a quick twitch of his head, rubbed his fingers together. Money. Paulina cost less.
"It may not be what you're used to, Betsy. We follow the Dalapur diet, and we only use fresh local ingredients. It's made such a difference for us. We're so much healthier now. I'm giving a talk on it on Friday in my women's group."
Betsy again. It felt like being poked by a blunt pencil point, over and over. Blue shrugged.
Amy pursed her lips. "Betsy, I'm putting you up in my home, and feeding you, and treating you like part of my family. The least you can do is show me respect."
Marcos smirked. Blue forced her mouth closed, held her notebook against her thigh to write.
Sorry, it sounds great!
It didn't make a difference to Amy. "It was rude of you to just stand there and shrug. Even if you can't speak, you're perfectly capable of responding."
Blue started to write more, but Amy held up her hand. "No, it's past. I'm very sensitive. It's who I am in this life—very sensitive so that I can feel the world's pain and teach others about it. I … I just need to go and sit and find my center. You two can wait for dinner." She left, exiting through a hallway beneath the stairs.
Blue gritted her teeth. At least back in the city she'd had the chance of finding food, even if it cost her money. Here …
She wrote quickly—Food?—and flashed the page at Marcos.
"She's being a bitch. It's not like she cooks, anyway. That takes too much time away from her full-time job of being that." He gestured in the direction Amy had gone. "Come on, I've got food in my room."
She followed him up the stairs, guitar in one hand, backpack in the other. Everything shone and smelled empty—not of polish, like Lynne's house; or of dogs, like Teena's; or even of people. The air smelled of nothing, just empty space—at least until Marcos opened the door to his room.
There it smelled of incense and pizza. The room was designed to be as sparse as the rest of the house, with a loft bed, white walls, and a huge bank of windows. The loft had blankets hanging off it, though, and grayish smudges marred the walls here and there. On one wall hung a poster of a burnt tree standing in the midst of a snowy field. An incense burner waited on the desk, dust streaks beneath it. A laptop sat beside it, the screen covered in bouncing polka dots.
And beside that was an open pizza box. Blue pounced. Cheese, pepperoni, sausage … more or less a whole pig on a greasy crust. At home, she would have picked the meat off. Here, she wolfed down two pieces while Marcos watched.
"Hungry much?" He sat in his desk chair swiveling back and forth. He had an odd energy, one she recognized reluctantly. Teena's cousin Rob had had the same as he clock-watched his way through a class. She'd seen it in other people, too, during the Dry Gully days—that glitter in the eyes, that restlessness, things she hadn't had the words for at four, six, eight.
She wasn't a little girl anymore. There was a word, and it was junkie.
"You play that thing?" He touched the guitar case with his toe.
She wiped her hands on her pants. The pizza settled into a heavy lump inside her.
Yeah, I play.
How was she supposed to answer? She'd watched real musicians all through her childhood. Their playing seemed effortless, as if the guitar strings had dreamed their fingers into being. She felt like a poseur by comparison.
If she was honest, though, she played better than almost everyone else she knew since moving to Eliotville. It was just … She wasn't sure what it was. She wasn't the one who stood up in front of people and played. She was the one who watched.
She picked one of Dry Gully's songs for Marcos, her inattentive audience of one. More than playing, she wanted to sing, even if she wasn't the best. When Mama sang, the words were rich as chocolate. Cass sang sultry, older than she was, like an invitation to a private party. Blue didn't sound like either of them. She had funny pauses and breathless bits.
She still loved it. It was something like flying—like birds, not planes, a sensation of soaring around the notes of the guitar. It was escape, reaching a place where what mattered was the song, nothing more.
"Nice," Marcos said when she finished, though she wasn't sure he meant it. His attention drifted—the clock, the drawer, the door.
Marcos? + Yoshi?
She held her notebook up.
"It's part of this 'we're one big happy world' shit. At least Marcos sounds cool. I'm luckier than Yosh."
Don't you like your mom?
He pulled at the drawer. Half inch open, then back to closed. "Would you? I mean, she has her moments, but … moments, you know? She doesn't get it."
Get what?
"Anything. That she's a fake. That people can't stand her. That my dad can't even stand her. That …" He tugged the drawer open far enough that she could see a plastic bag peeking out, then closed it partway.
He didn't want her there. Or maybe he did; maybe he was convincing himself he didn't need what was in the bag. It wouldn't work, though. It never had, not with Rob, who'd chosen the contents of the bag over school, home, everything.
"They get hooked," Mama'd said once on the phone, to someone else, not knowing Blue was there. "Then there's nothing you can do to pull them back. It's up to them to choose to do the work. All you can do is leave a bread-crumb trail of love and keep on with your life."
Bathroom?
He pointed her down the hall. She paused on the threshold. Would it make a difference if she stayed? Didn't matter. She was just passing through.