"We Mow the flow," said Willem.
"The flow of what?"
The question hit a nerve, and they both became a bit uncomfortable.
"Just the flow."
I knew I had stumbled upon something important, but what it meant, I had no idea. "So how much longer will you be staying here?" I asked.
Willem rubbed his hand thoughtfully on the smooth wood of the tabletop. "Abuelo seems to think it won't be much longer. But I think he might be wrong." Then he looked out the window. "Just look at that grass. Look how rich it is, look how green."
Claude shook his head without looking up from his work. "He was right the last time."
"Yes. Well, we'll see." And then Willem changed the subject. "Have you considered what your place might be here? What you can add to our little community?" "That's easy," I told him. "Nothing."
"Pshaw," he said. "I'm sure you'll think of something." I never actually heard a person say "pshaw" before. I almost laughed. "You must have some skills."
I shrugged. "I can spell."
"Ooh," said Claude, "witchcraft! We have no witches here. That would be new."
"No." I sighed, thinking about poor Miss Leticia, who had made the same mistake. "Not that kind of spell. I spell words."
Willem rubbed his chin thoughtfully, getting sawdust all over it. "Hmm. Words, words, words . . . we already have a poet."
"And a scribe."
"Ah, well," said Willem, this time with less conviction. "I'm sure you'll find something."
Mystery number four was the weather, and mystery number five was everything that grew beneath the unseasonably warm sun. See, it was almost winter now. Back in Flock's Rest, sycamores would have lost all their leaves; the days would be cold and the nights colder. But in De León, it was always spring on the edge of summer.
I asked Petra, our resident piano virtuoso, about it, and she answered without missing a single note in her sonata. "It's the pattern of winds, and thermal vents in the mountainside," she said. "I think it's called a microclimate. I'm sure there are books about it in Abuelo's library."
I looked, but I couldn't find a single one.
The fishing pond was mystery number six. Soren was De León's designated fisherman―a big Scandinavian with a blond beard that hid most of his face. He would have looked natural in a Viking hat.
I stopped to watch him fish one day and asked how such a small pond―no bigger than thirty yards across―could support so many fish, and so many different varieties.
The utter panic in the big man's eyes at the question was almost comical. "I just catch them," he mumbled.
"Still, I'll bet you have a theory about it."
Again, panic. Then he was saved by a tug on his line. "Excuse me." He reeled in his catch. I don't know much about fish, but I do know that I'd never seen anything like this one before. It was least two feet long, with a blood-red head, fading to a neon- blue body, blending into a tail as green as the oak leaves shading the pond from the unseasonably warm sun. It made me think of the Galapagos Islands―a place off the coast of South America so isolated, it gave rise to creatures seen nowhere else in the world.
"So," I said, gaping at the unearthly fish, "is that what they mean by a 'rainbow trout'?"
He quickly strung up his fish with the other equally odd specimens he had caught, said "good day," and left like a man racing from a tornado.
And now I had mystery number seven: an order from Abuelo to leave a perfectly good drawing wall untouched, with no explanation. Perhaps it was less grand then the other mysteries, but it was just as frustrating. They all knew things I didn't―I was certain of it. It was all a reminder that I was the chimp at the table.
The day after Abuelo's surprise visit, Aaron came to take me out for a picnic. I knew right away that this was different from the other times we had done things together. I could tell because he was apprehensive, maybe a little bit excited. This is a date, I thought. The only other date I'd been on was that infamous and miserable night with Marshall Astor―but this was something else entirely. I didn't know whether I was more excited or terrified.
Aaron led me from my end of the valley to the other, where Abuelo's mansion stood, then he took me up the steep slope behind it, as if we were climbing out of the valley.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"You'll see."
The soft grass gave way to harsh nettles as we got higher, and soon the rough brush gave way to jagged rocks. The valley was not easy to get out of, or to get into, for that matter.
The shoes they had given me were not meant for climbing this kind of terrain. I wanted to ask Aaron where we were going, but he had this look on his face―a slight grin of anticipation, and I could tell that whatever he wanted to show me, it was a surprise.
Finally, Aaron stopped at a plateau, the mountainside still looming ahead of us.
"Have a look," he said, then gently grabbed my shoulders and turned me around.
I hadn't realized how high we had climbed until I looked out to see the valley spread before us.
On either side of the valley were dense clouds. I could hear distant thunder and see lightning flashes within the grayness. It was storming in the outside world, but the clouds never flowed over those hillsides into the valley of De León.
We sat down and ate sandwiches made from home-cured ham and fresh-baked bread. My clothes had gotten dirty from the climb, but I noticed that Aaron's didn't have a trace of dust. I reached over and touched his sleeve. I did it to feel the fabric, but then I realized I was gently rubbing his arm. I pulled my hand back, a bit embarrassed.
"No, it's okay," he said. "You like the way it feels, don't you? It's made of swan gossamer."
I looked at him like I hadn't heard him correctly. "Swan what?"
"Swan gossamer," he said. "Once a year the swans come in the spring to mate. Hundreds of them. We brush through their feathers to collect the soft down, and then spin it into thread."
"It's so beautiful."
"It never gets dirty. It never wears out."
"I wish I could wear it," I said.
He smiled at that, then reached up and touched my face, looking, as he always did, right into my eyes. It would have been a wonderfully romantic moment, but my face, which had always been my enemy, chose this moment to launch an offensive―and when I say offensive, I truly do mean offensive.
They say acne is caused by pores swelling up, becoming infected. When a pore is clogged with dirt, it becomes a blackhead. As the infection grows, it becomes a whitehead. And every once in a while, one of them turns into Mount St. Helens. If you have acne, you know exactly what I mean. And if you don't, just be thankful.
Aaron quickly pulled his hand away when he realized he had inadvertently popped a zit. For a brief, brief instant, he looked at me with the same nauseated disgust that I got from the rest of the world. Then he looked away from me for a moment, forcing that feeling away. He wiped his fingers on a rock. "Don't worry about it," he said. "It happens."
I couldn't look at him now. I was too humiliated. I pressed the back of my hand to my face, just in case I wasn't done erupting. I felt tears of embarrassment coming, so I let my hair dangle in front of my face so he couldn't see it.
"No," he said, sounding a little bit angry. "Don't you do that. Look at me."
I shook my head. What a fool I was to think that I could have anything resembling a normal relationship with someone who looked like Aaron. All my weeks here, pretending I could ever belong―but I was just deluding myself―and the people here weren't helping, they were just feeding that delusion―even Aaron. As he sat across from me, I realized he was just taking the mercy seat. The school cafeteria was gone, but the mercy seat would always be there no matter where I was.