I turned the pages over and tried to read the lines of writing.
Tá mé mol seo draíocht
Na anam an corp cara ár comhoibrí
I had barely read the first two lines when I found that my lips moved with ease, that I was pronouncing the unfamiliar words as though I’d been speaking them all my life, line after line. It felt extraordinarily good, and right, and I didn’t stop. My eyes clouded over, but I kept chanting, my voice tapering off to a whisper. When the words ran out I blinked a few times to clear my vision and saw that I had recited the entire paragraph or poem or whatever it was that had been written with such care on these pages.
I could have stopped-it wasn’t like I’d been possessed or anything like that-but the words were there inside me, and reading just the first few brought the rest to my conscious mind. I found myself wanting-needing-to speak them aloud. I scanned the page a second time and marveled at the beauty of the words, and at the way I’d been able to make the strange sounds and the accent that went with them.
And then I realized I had heard the words once before.
When I had touched Milla in the gym.
When my vision had gone dark, when the sounds of the gym had faded away and left me completely focused on the rushing feeling and Milla’s wounded body under my fingertips, my mind hadn’t been completely silent. There had been a whisper of a voice saying these same words, or perhaps it had been my own voice, I couldn’t be sure, only knew that they had unfurled like a ribbon fluttering in a breeze, there and then gone.
I ran my fingertips over the words as though touching them would answer my questions, would somehow reveal what I was supposed to do. Because I felt certain that I had been chosen for something and that Milla was part of it, and all the Morries, and Gram and Rattler Sikes and Dun and even Chub. All of it fit together in some way that I didn’t yet understand, and the thought was frightening but compelling.
I picked up the necklace and held it in the lamplight. Deep red flashes danced into the corners of the room as though the stone had an energy that splintered into pieces when the light touched it.
Chub noticed the sparkling stone and dropped his book on the bed, clapping his hands.
“Preeee!” he said, laughing-it almost sounded like “pretty.”
I slipped the necklace on, fastening the silver clasp with care, and then I sat next to Chub on the bed and let him look at it. He touched the stone gently and murmured and crawled into my lap, and I held him tight and rocked him.
I loved to sing to Chub, everything from songs from cartoons to my favorites from the radio. Today, I just hummed, a sad, wandering melody that came into my head. Chub sighed and leaned into me, and the humming turned to words, the words from the verse. If Chub found them strange, he didn’t let on. I sang, and we rocked, and when the need to replay the verses over and over finally faded, he had fallen asleep in my arms.
I carried him to his crib and tucked him under his blanket. I slipped the pendant under my shirt so Gram wouldn’t see it, and rolled the scrap of lace carefully and put it in the back of my T-shirt drawer along with the frame and the pages. When I left the room, Chub had a fistful of soft cotton blanket pressed to his chin, smiling in his sleep.
CHAPTER 7
I WAS SLIDING into my usual seat at an empty lunch table the next day when I saw him. Sawyer was sitting with Milla and a few other Morries, poking at something in a Tupperware container with a plastic fork.
Only, there was something wrong. I could see it from twenty feet away. His eye was swollen and there was a purple bruise shading his cheek.
I suddenly wasn’t hungry. I threw my lunch-a sandwich and apple from home-into the trash and then walked, as casually as I could, past his table.
Up close it was worse. He had a black eye, and the other eye had an ugly red cut along the brow. In addition to the bruise on his cheek, there was something wrong with his nose; it was swollen and tilted to the right. As I passed, I couldn’t help gasping. Everyone looked up except Sawyer, who dropped his chin even lower and stared at the table.
“Whatcha lookin’ at him like that for, Hailey?” Gomez Jones demanded. “You’re whose fault that is. You done that to him.”
I couldn’t let him say that, not in front of Sawyer. “I-I-”
Milla slammed her hand down on the table angrily, making the trays and silverware jump. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”
“Yeah, bitch-stay away,” another girl muttered.
I was getting tired of the way they treated me, especially considering what I had done for Milla. “You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me. Maybe you should try being a little grateful.”
“Oh, right. ’Cause you saved me and all, right?” Milla’s face twisted up in fury. “So I’m supposed to kiss your ass?”
“I don’t-I never said-”
“I don’t need you, none of us need you. You think you’re above the rest of us, but you’re not. You’re not. You and your grandmother, you’re broken. You’re freaks.” To my horror, Milla’s eyes filled with furious tears and she bolted from the table. After a second of silence, Sawyer pushed back his chair and went after her, not looking at me.
“Happy now?” the girl said as Gomez and the others started gathering their things. “How many of us do you want to get hurt? None of this would happen if you would just stay away.”
I stood frozen to the spot after they’d all left. I didn’t understand. I had never-never-heard a Morrie girl stand up to anyone outside their group, not in my whole life. I backed slowly away from the table, her words ringing in my ears. When I bumped into a chair, I turned and walked out of the cafeteria as quickly as I could.
Stay away. I’d broken some rule when I talked to Sawyer yesterday, and he’d paid for it. I didn’t bother asking myself who had done that to him-it had to be Rattler, though I couldn’t imagine why. I didn’t blame the Morries for being afraid of him-I was plenty afraid of him myself.
When I got home, Chub was curled up on the couch, asleep.
“How long’s he been down?” I asked Gram.
“Not long,” she said, stabbing out a cigarette in the ashtray and reaching for her pack, then crumpling it when she saw that it was empty. “I think. Or maybe a while, I don’t know.”
She had no idea, I could tell. All she cared about, unless she had visitors, was her programs. I reached for the full ashtray, carried it to the trash and wiped it clean before setting it back on the arm of her chair. I went to her room to get a fresh pack of cigarettes from where she kept them on top of her dresser. But when I closed my hand on the pack, I noticed that it was sitting on a plain manila folder.
Curious, I picked the folder up. Something fell out-a white business envelope and, to my amazement, a stack of bills secured with a rubber band.
I flipped quickly through the bills. My heart raced as I realized they were all hundreds-there had to be thousands of dollars in my hand. I set the money on the dresser as though it was on fire, then picked up the white envelope and slid a piece of paper out. After scanning it I realized that it was a plane ticket. Dated two weeks from now, it was for a flight from STL to DUB. Saint Louis to… where?
Before I could examine the ticket more carefully, I heard Gram coughing my name from the living room. I jammed the ticket back in the envelope and slid it and the money into the manila folder.
In the living room I handed the cigarettes to Gram and tried to look like nothing was out of the ordinary. I smoothed an afghan over Chub and kissed his cheek. “I’m going for a walk. Be back in a bit.”