Arcane Wisdome Read online

  “And you’ve had to look after them, haven’t you? In the years since your mother died.”

  Lucy nodded, and to her astonishment, went on talking. “When mom died, it was hard for dad to do everything in the family, so he counted on me. The first month after the funeral, Aunt Caroline stayed with us, and that helped, but when school started, she had to go home and back to work.”

  “Aunt Caroline is your — ”

  “She’s dad’s older sister. She’s a school principal in Santa Barbara." Lucy shrugged and squirmed deeper into her chair.

  “Do you like her?”

  “Pretty much. She’s bossy, but she’s nice, at least most of the time." She thought about this for several seconds, then said, “I like my cousin Brandon — that’s her son. He’s twenty-three. I don’t really get along with Jennifer — her daughter. She’s twenty. She got upset that her mom stayed with us so long. You’d think she’d figure it out." Jennifer had been sixteen when Lucy’s mother died, Lucy realized, and clamped her mouth shut.

  “I guess you helped her out? Your Aunt Caroline.”

  Lucy looked back at Isadora. “Most of the time.”

  “And your brothers? What about them?”

  “They were just sprouts. Only eight. They didn’t do anything but creeb.”

  “But you didn’t creeb,” said Isadora.

  “I wanted to help. Creebing only made things worse. With mom gone ... ”

  This time when Lucy stopped talking, Isadora let the silence lengthen. Finally, she remarked, “Lucy’s an old-fashioned kind of name isn’t it?"

  “I hate it. I just hate it. It’s so ... so sticky, like too-sweet candy, or those lace-and-cherub valentines." The kind, she thought, that Aunt Caroline liked to send.

  “It means light.”

  Lucy had no rejoinder for that, so she changed the subject. “Do you think I’m going crazy?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it." She gave a little laugh.

  “Un-huh,” said Lucy, thinking that Isadora was a bit odd. But then most shrinks were supposed to be as nuts as the people who went to them; that’s what Nate Evers said. He was the uber-coolest dude in the sophomore class: tall, good-looking, the son of a judge for the Olympics committee captain of the swim team, and an uber-math whiz as well.

  “Something’s on your mind.”

  Before she could stop herself, Lucy said, “Nate Evers.”

  “Is he one of the group of your classmates your parents are concerned about?" She didn’t sound upset or worried, just curious.

  “No. Not Nate. The Geeks aren’t his kind at all,” said Lucy, wanting to fall through a hole in the ground. What was wrong with her? She should never have said Nate’s name aloud. Half the girls in Cosmo Bender were poppers for him. She only saw him in American History and English — she wasn’t sure he even knew who she was.

  “Tell me about the group — the ones who have — ”

  “The ones who have worried dad and Melissa." Lucy finished for her. “What do you want to know about them?" She decided she would answer some of Isadora’s questions, so long as they didn’t bother her too much.

  “Will you tell me a little about them?”Isadora held her pen poised. “What kind of people they are, what you like about them, that kind of thing.”

  “You mean so you can figure out if they’re good for me to know?" Lucy asked sharply. How could this woman be okay one minute and then a dazer the next?

  “I’d just like to know what it is you get out of hanging out with them. There must be something you find interesting about them. The only one who can decide if they’re good for you is you." She crossed her ankles, ready to wait for an answer if she had to.

  “I’m not a member,” said Lucy firmly.

  “A member of what?”

  “The Gothic Geeks,” said Lucy. “That’s what the group you’re talking about calls itself."

  “That’s quite an image: Gothic Geeks,” said Isadora. “What are they like?”

  “Most of them are into tech one way or another, and they’re into the Goth style — black clothes and eye-makeup, tattoos and body piercings and a real strong kind of above-it-all-ness — but their main interest is computers and the Internet." She smiled at her own minor pun. “They do their own programs and modify their machines. Spencer spends most of his time designing apps; he wants to launch his own and get rich — and he might do it. They’re in advanced classes in school. Tom and Curtis are looking for scholarships to Cal Tech or MIT.”

  “That’s impressive,” said Isadora as Lucy fell silent again.

  “Yeah. Tom and Curtis are the most innovative of any of the Geeks. They’re both real techwhizards.”

  “Techwhizards?”

  “Part tech, part whiz, and part wizard." Saying it here, Lucy thought it sounded kind of bocked, but she didn’t mention it to Isadora.

  “Is it just you and Tom and Curtis?”

  “No. I’m not a Gothic Geek. I haven’t been inducted" — she made air-quotes with her fingers — “because you have to come up with something new for the computer, and I haven’t done that. They require something new, and I haven’t found anything." She didn’t add yet; she wanted to keep that to herself. “There’s Gweneth and Spencer and Niki and Aaron, besides Tom and Curtis. And Bruce." Lucy withheld their last names deliberately, just in case any of this should get back to any of the Geeks.

  “It sounds as if you’re comfortable with most of the Geeks. You have doubts about Bruce," Isadora observed as she stirred her tea with a long handled spoon.

  “Sometimes,” said Lucy, not wanting to talk about it.

  Isadora cocked her head. “Would you join if Bruce weren’t part of it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy, turning her attention to the window once again.

  “But he is a problem,” said Isadora, and made a mark in her notebook.

  “He’s ... creepy." Just admitting it made Lucy feel uncomfortable, like there was a bug inside her clothes.

  “What makes him creepy?" Isadora asked.

  “He looks weird. He’s got a white face, his head is round, he thinks he’s ... he’s some kind of brainiac star. He’s got something about him that’s ... that’s mean. He’s always sliding up next to me, and trying to whisper to me.”

  “And you don’t want him to.”

  “Of course not,” said Lucy as if that should be obvious.

  “So he’s one of the reasons you don’t want to be an official Gothic Geek. What other reason don’t you want to?”

  Lucy thought for a short while, wanting to figure this out for herself as much as to answer Isadora. “They all think that everything is a game, that it can all be explained by, you know, algorithms and fractals and game-theory and shi — stuff like that, that it’s all rational and neat." She hesitated, then plunged on. “But I don’t know if that’s true. Sometimes I think all that rationality is like the solid ground — just a thin crust floating around on all this magma, which isn’t rational at all, and which is full of forces that are the most powerful things on earth, and that when the magma blows up, it’s a reminder that the solid ground rationality is pretty ... flimsy when you really think about it. None of the Geeks see it that way.”

  “And what led you to this conclusion?" Isadora asked.

  Lucy stared into the mug. “I did a paper in my Environment Science class about super-volcanoes. It’s scary sh . . . stuff." The paper had helped her to understand what she had suspected for some time, but she didn’t mention that.

  “Did your mother’s death have anything to do with it?" Isadora asked gently.

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy, going quiet again.

  “Pretty big concepts for a fifteen-year-old,” Isadora observed.

  “I don’t think anyone knows as much as they think they do, not about the way the world really works. It’s like the magnetic field — they can describe it and measure it, but they can’t ... comprehend it, not the way they comprehend the multipl
ication table." She was astonished to hear herself. Why on earth was she telling Isadora such private stuff?

  “Learning what you don’t know can be the hardest part of growing up."

  Lucy shook her head, not know how to take Isadora’s observation. “Yeah.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?" Isadora asked.

  4

  “God, Mister Faccio is boring,” Alison Saunders exclaimed as she sat down next to Lucy in the cafeteria. “I mean, Frankenstein, of all things." She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  Lucy sighed. “It’s not like the movies. Not any of them.”

  “You mean you’ve read it?" Alison asked. Not waiting for an answer, she glanced over her shoulder at the lines up to the cash register. “Want to go first, or shall I?”

  “Why don’t you go? I’ll hold the table." Lucy put her book bag on the chair on her right and spread her coat on the chair next to it, claiming half the table. “There. Leave your backpack on your chair and your sweater on the next; that should do it. I’ll make sure anyone who wants to sit there has to wait for you." To emphasize her determination, she rested her folded arms on the table. “Go on.”

  Alison considered, shrugged, took out her student ID card and a ten-dollar bill. “All right. Back in a twink.”

  Lucy laid her head on her arms. She was tired; she’d been up past midnight the last three nights and it left her wanting to rest during the day, which wasn’t a good thing. But she had a test in Geometry coming up, and she was trying to memorize as many theorems as possible. The proofs were becoming a blur in her mind. And she had to prepare a demonstration for Cyber Science before Easter break, a little less than two weeks away. And no one had invited her to Ditch Day — it was more than six weeks away, but still, the prospect of going alone made her cringe. On top of it all, thanks to Mister Faccio, she had to read Frankenstein. She found herself actually anticipating her next appointment with Isadora. At least Isadora wasn’t an ozwonked grown-up who didn’t get what was happening. In the last four weeks, she had started to think the therapist, despite all Lucy had expected, was doing her some good. At least she let Lucy say anything she wanted and didn’t tell her what she ought to say, or think.

  “Dreaming?"

  She looked up and saw Tom Foster standing over her, his long black jacket sagging from the various devices he carried in his pockets in open defiance of regulations. All that was lacking was a cell phone, which Cosmo Bender didn’t allow students below the junior class to have. “Wouldn’t I like that,” said Lucy, sitting up and meeting his inquisitive gaze.

  “You got space for me, or is this a girls’ table?”

  “Girls only. Sorry,” said Lucy, although she wasn’t.

  “You coming by this afternoon?" He looked around for an empty seat as he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s been something weird going on in the web. You might find it interesting — it doesn’t seem to react logically." He smiled sarcastically.

  “Which isn’t possible,” said Lucy for him, curious in spite of herself; she thought she might go have a look, after all. “I’ll try to get by today or tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” he said, and ambled off toward a table on the far side of the cafeteria where Curtis Ng and Aaron Jarvis were waiting for him.

  A few minutes later, Alison returned with her tray and Tricia Guzman, who took all the dishes, glasses, cups, and utensils off her tray and carried it to the bussing stand, before sitting down on the other side of Alison.

  Alison handed her tray to Lucy. “So long as you’re up,” she said impishly.

  “I’ll just recycle it,” said Lucy, claiming it as her own. She got into line, selecting a bowl of minestrone, a couple of slices of French bread with two packets of butter, a baked apple, and a plastic bottle of protein shake. She paid for her lunch, then brought it back to the table, and saw that Catherine Brown had joined Alison and Tricia. Lucy unloaded her tray and put it in the center of the table. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” was the shared response.

  “Shaniqua and Lorelei will be along in a minute,” Alison told Lucy, basking in the glow of popularity that had descended upon her since she had been voted into the Cheerleading Squad, half of which would be seated at this table. Catherine Brown was the most athletic of the cheerleaders, and she was the tallest. Shaniqua Miller was the slightest and the best tumbler. Tricia Guzman was considered the prettiest, with a spectacular cascade of chocolate-brown hair and a face that was perfection itself. Lorelei Stevenson was the president of the sophomore class with plans that reached all the way to the U.S. Senate. Alison was pretty enough, but her main talent lay in a capacity to organize and to keep peace while doing it.

  All of which left Lucy feeling on the outside again: she wasn’t all that pretty, she wasn’t part of the school government, she did okay at swimming and track but nothing out of the ordinary. She felt like an imposter, sitting at this table. She knew she was mostly bright, and in this company, she knew bright wasn’t enough.

  That this table would soon be occupied by five of the most popular girls in the Cosmo Bender sophomore class set up an appreciative giggle around the table, but Lucy only smiled a little. She looked over at Alison, whom she had known since second grade, and had been her best friend for six years. Now, in the last couple semesters, she had begun to feel that Alison was on a different planet. She started in on her bowl of soup and wondered what, if anything, she could do to change that, to reclaim the friendship that had been so important to her, or if she even wanted to try. She listened to the chatter around the table as she ate, and decided that most of it was nothing special. Catherine was expecting Nate Evers to ask her to Ditch Day, Tricia was worried about how she had done on her Government quiz but was happy to say that Larry Rifkin — a senior — had asked her out for Saturday night. Lorelei had been downloading a lot of tracks onto her ‘pod and was searching the Internet for more sweet music sites. Shaniqua had been given the okay from Ms Bremmer to do a project on the Spanish in early California. Alison was going to San Diego on Easter vacation and was trying to figure out what clothes to take with her. “San Diego can be pretty cool in the spring,” said Lorelei.

  “And remember: take plenty of sunscreen. You don’t want to get burned, not with the game against the Cougars coming up." Tricia reminded her.

  At least, thought Lucy, they weren’t discussing celebrity gossip, as she buttered one of the slices of French bread.

  “So what are you doing these days, Lucy?" Catherine asked.

  Lucy stared at her. “Just trying to keep up with my studies.”

  Alison laughed. “You? You’re too much of a brainiac to need to study much.”

  Catherine agreed. “You’re always at the head of the class.”

  “Only because I work hard at it,” said Lucy, feeling an unwelcome flush rising in her face.

  “Well,” said Shaniqua, “you make it look easy.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy muttered and finished her minestrone as quickly as she could, then started in on the baked apple, feeling now that she would have been better off if she had not bothered with dessert. She stuck the protein shake into her book-bag for later while she listened to the others talk about what they were planning to wear for Ditch Day, including what bathing suits they would bring. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  As soon as she was finished, Lucy got up, picked up her backpack, retrieved her tray, loaded it with the utensils, her soup bowl, and the two serving plates. “I’ve got to go to the library,” she announced, and noticed that only Alison waved to her; she went to bus her tray before leaving the cafeteria, all the while wanting to scream.

  By the end of lunch period, Lucy felt calmer. She had spent the last twenty minutes reading up on the Han Dynasty, and by the time the first bell rang for class, she felt she could face Environmental Science and Mister Laythrope without feeling depressed, no matter what bad news he had about the global climate, the hole in the ozone, th
e possible extinction of polar bears, mutant frogs in the Midwest, irradiated food in the grocery stores, or the spread of West Nile Virus and Bird Flu. After she slung her backpack over her shoulder, she smoothed her burgundy duster, tweaked her hair, and set out for room 209. Environmental Science at one-thirty, then American History at two-thirty, she reminded herself as she climbed the stairs to the second floor, and she was done for the day. She reached the top of the stairs and joined the flood of students surging down the hall.

  * * *

  The last two periods went by in a smudge of teachers’ voices and the jumble between classes. Lucy looked at the notes she had taken as she rode the bus home, trying to prod herself into being interested. By the time she got off the bus, she was feeling completely bored, which only served to remind her that she had to read that ancient Frankenstein. She was certain that Mister Faccio had required it because a teenage girl had written it, which Lucy decided was a really slimy reason to make other teenagers read the ozwonked thing. I mean, she thought, what does it matter if the writer was a girl? What matters is what the book says, or so Mister Faccio had been saying most of the semester. What a lot of science-paranoia! And Victor Frankenstein! What a ronk for a hero. As she let herself into the house, she headed for the living room.

  “Mom’s gonna be late,” Jason called out from the family room behind the living room; the sound of the television told her that her brothers were playing T-Rex Explorer. A shared whoop told Lucy they’d scored a hit.

  “Stepmom,” Lucy responded automatically. She dropped her backpack onto the sofa and flopped down next to it. For ten minutes she did nothing, then she sighed and opened her tote, pulled out Frankenstein and began to read.

  * * *

  About half an hour later the phone rang, and Lucy went to answer it. “Wisdome residence,” she said as she had been taught to, in case it was her father or Melinda calling.