Holding Wonder

"My, you're sharp, Cleo," said Allison, coffee slopping soundlessly back and forth in her cup. "It follows as night the day. If she was murdered, someone killed her."
"It's not necessarily murder." Dorothea put her cup down slowly and clasped her hands around her knees. "It could have been an accident. The wrong pill-"
"Maybe Our Pharmacist made a mistake," suggested Allison.
"He wouldn't– " Kit thumped her cup down on the floor and reddened. "Well, he is accurate, whatever his other faults are-and they are many."
"You loved him!" Cleo took her cup up again. "Honest, you did, Kit. I could tell by your eyes
"I suppose my ears wiggled, too!" snapped Kit sullenly "Drop it, Cleo, drop it. I'm in no mood for True Love that lasts just until the wind changes."
"The wind changed Tuesday the 12th."
"Tuesday the 12th!" Cleo's voice repeated the words, her shrill voice slitting the silence that had closed in palpably.
"That must have been the day we all bumped another at the pharmacy." Allison ran her hands through her hair. "We all made the pilgrimage there."
"Yes, we were all there." Dorothea rubbed one hand painfully against the other. "That's probably why the wind changed."
"What's that got to do with Greta?" asked Allison. "We were talking about Greta and the sheriff."
"It was an accident." Kit's cheek bones sharpened. "He'll find she died of her own foolishness."
"I can't bear to talk about it," said Cleo, standing up, almost in tears. "I'm going back to my room." She paused, looking back over her shoulder. "Whoever killed her, whatever killed her, we'll know tomorrow. I've heard about this sheriff. He would pry the marrow out of your bones if he thought it necessary."
"That's an exit line if I ever heard one," said Dorothea. "Well, we can all employ the next few hours contemplating the blood on our several hands." She held her hands out, but snatched them back as they –began to shake uncontrollably.
I heard three latches snap shut down the hall. We never lock our doors, but tonight we are, for whatever reason. Maybe to lock Death out, since now we know he has our address. Maybe for the necessary privacy for facing a guilty soul and trying to rub the damned spot out. Maybe because fear has become a tangible thing that could even creep under the door like a rolling fog. Maybe because– But I haven't locked my door. If I am guilty, everything has happened to me that can. You can't lock time out, and time will publish my guilt, locked door or no locked door. If I'm not guilty, my door will open sometime in the night and-
Now that my light is turned out, I have noticed something. There's no bright rim around my door which is usually haloed all night long. The hall light has either gone out or been turned out. My palms are wet. Has my lost self prepared the way? Am I to walk the dark hall tonight, trying the locked doors gently? No one seems to have remembered that my key is a master key. We found it out last winter when we had a rash of locking ourselves out. Mine worked in all the locks except Greta's. Except Greta's! If Greta got the poison in her room, I couldn't have got in-silly straw! No one else could have either, but we're in and out of each other's rooms all the time. The poison could have been left there in one of those innumerable bottles or boxes any time since the 12th.
The 12th, the 12th, the 12th, like a chant, like a rhythm, like footsteps, like a door swinging open . . .
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! It's death again! Death is all around! Raise your hands. Everyone raise your hands. Whose palm is scarlet? Whose is black? Who gives? Who takes?
Listen! Oh, so slowly, oh, so softly. Coming in through the door. Am I? Am I creeping toward a bed? Or is it my bed that is shaking as I shake. Wake up, me! Wake up! I can't see! I can't tell! I don't want to kill! ! don't want to die! Find me now? Find me now before it's too late!
I thought I was dying. No one could possibly live through such an explosively swelling joy, such a fireworks eruption of relief. Even as I clawed at the choking bands of fingers that closed inexpertly around my throat, even as I fumbled for and found a finger, pried it loose and bent it back farther and farther, even as deeper darkness danced in the darkness before my eyes, I savored the joy!
I'm not guilty! I didn't do it! I was the listener, not the speaker! I was the waiter, not the creeper! My prayers of thanksgiving rose like a hurried flock of doves as I got my other hand untangled from the bedclothes, found another finger and bent it sharply backwards. There was a muffled scream and someone collapsed across my bed, moaning softly.
I sat up in the darkness and gulped the air, feeling nausea burning up in my throat. I swallowed, painfully, and swallowed again. The moans became sobs and the sobs, muffled little screams.
I started to scramble out of bed to run from this thing that lay so limply heavy across my legs. And then I paused. In the darkness, I could so easily have been the weeper. In the darkness, only part of me was swallowing nausea with an aching throat. Part of me was sobbing across my knees. Part of me was sleeping all down the hall. Part of me was awaiting a grave somewhere out in a larger darkness.
I leaned over and gathered up the convulsed shoulders. Awkwardly I held the unseen sobbing face against my shoulder.
"There, Kit," I murmured. "There, there-" I felt her tears hot against my bare shoulder and my tears started, too. The two of us huddled there in the darkness tasting the bitterness of what had been done and what had yet to be done.
"She told him! Oh, Cleo, she told him!" Kit's voice was broken and muffled as she spoke for the last time before she stopped being a private self and became a thing of the State. "And I loved him. He was the end of all my running and looking. And he loved me truly, or he wouldn't have been so mad. I know. He would have laughed with her and kidded back if he hadn't cared, but he hadn't known Cleo, did you ever watch love die?" I shook my head in the darkness as she cried for a memory. "His face was changed. He was someone else. She killed the one real love I ever had and she killed me, so I killed her-"She caught her breath. "And now they'll kill me again, won't they!" Her arms closed around me so convulsively that I gasped involuntarily.
"I don't know," I said, "Oh, Kit, I don't know!"
"It doesn't matter," she said dully. "It really doesn't matter any more, Cleo, except I hate fusses and being hurt." Her sudden storm of crying shook us both and then she was half laughing. "I killed her!" Kit sobbed and then laughed. "And I'm afraid I might get hurt!"
I soothed her the best I could-poor hungry Kit, who had seen her feast snatched away-until quite suddenly, she fell asleep, half kneeling by the bed. I waited a while and then slid cautiously out, letting her head down softly to the pillow, lifting her slender legs up onto the bed and covering her over with the extra blanket. The covers were too tangled under her to free them. I
shivered into my robe and curled up in the one arm chair in the room. I sat there wide-eyed and watched the wall slowly pale and turn into a window.
I'll never get lost again, I promised myself. It's hard enough to manage one self without struggling with two or four-or five. I can firmly be myself and still share life with others. I'm going to be too busy with building a life-sized solid me ever to have time to get lost again, or to hoard fears to fill my emotional emptiness.
Light flowed suddenly through the window. I blinked sleepily at the Day.
There are three of us left in the Dorm, three of us trying to realign ourselves with one another and the world around us.
There are three of us-and I, Cleo am one of them.
SHARING TIME
"NEN MY GRANDMA SAID, `Isn't she the sweetest thing-the darling-' " I let Cookie's adenoidal voice fade out with the rest of Sharing Time. I suppose I could have warped Cookie's ego and blasted her personality forever