Мэгги Стифватер - Lament

Luke reached up a thumb and gently swiped away the single tear that had managed to escape.

"Don't cry, pretty girl. Who you really are is why you're so good at everything. You won't let yourself be otherwise. And that's what fascinates me."

Part of me wanted his hand to linger on my face, but pride and embarrassment made me knock it away. Fragile wasn't an image I liked to wear. "I don't normally cry.

I mean, unless I'm frustrated. I feel so--" I struggled for words and for dignity.

He said softly, "Your ice cream's melting."

Relieved, I turned back to my cone. We sat in silence for long moments, finishing our ice cream.

Then I said, without looking at him, "If I still fascinate you, you can study me for a while. But I won't be 'practice.'" "Thank you." He wrestled his keys from his back pocket and laid them on his leg, swallowing the last of his cone.

Without thinking first, I asked, "Is that a key for every secret?" Immediately I feared I'd violated our unspoken agreement, and that he would vanish in a poof of smoke.

But he didn't seem concerned by the question. Instead, he smiled vaguely and said, "Possibly.

How many keys do you have?" "Two".

"Is that how many secrets you have?"

I thought about it. One for the clover on the bedside stand. One for the way I felt about Luke.

"Yes."

His fingers toyed with his keys. "Would you like another?"

I didn't answer, but I watched him slide a key from his too-full ring. It was a small, heavy, oldfashioned key, with a spot of rust on one side. He glanced around as if someone might care what we were doing, and then pushed the iron key into my hand. Putting his lips right up against my ear, his breath hotter than the summer day, he whispered, "Here is another secret: I have no business being fascinated by you."

His lips almost formed into a kiss. Then he pulled away quickly and stood up. I was dizzy and had to close my eyes for a moment to reorient myself. I put the key in my pocket.

Holding out a hand, Luke pulled me to my feet and led me to the other side of the car, his eyes distant and his face preoccupied.

Before he shut the passenger door behind me, I briefly smelled a snatch of herbal fragrance in the summer air, quite apart from Luke's odor or the usual asphalt stench of Dave's parking lot. And then I realized I did have a third secret to go with my key: there was some sort of danger gathering around me. But I wasn't afraid.

"Oh, Granna's here." I peered over the dashboard as Luke pulled into the driveway. Her white Ford was so bright in the noon sun that I couldn't look directly at it. "Mom must've invited her over for my birthday."

"Birthday?" Luke switched off the car. "Today?"

"Actually yesterday, but I get cake today." I tried to keep the hopeful edge out of my voice.

"Want to stay for it?"

"Hmm." Luke got out of the car and came around to open my door. "I shouldn't. It does sound terribly interesting, though. Will your awful aunt be here?"

I frowned. "She's already here. She's doesn't go home until next week. When her concert tour starts."

"Very posh."

I grunted in agreement, and then turned as movement caught my eye: Granna getting out of her car. She immediately caught sight of me and smiled. Then she dove back into her car.

Luke looked puzzled. "Purse?"

"Granna doesn't carry a purse. She's not that sort of grandmother. Probably presents."

Sure enough, Granna emerged holding an impossibly small, wrapped package in one hand and a gigantic one in the other. "Could you take one of these, Deirdre?"

I jumped out of the car and hurried to take the larger one from her. Hanging back at my elbow, Luke moved restlessly, like a wolf.

"This is Luke, Granna." I stepped to the side. "He played in the competition yesterday."

Luke stilled and held out a hand, formally. "How do you do."

Granna let him take her right hand, and he kissed it--a gesture, oddly enough, that seemed both natural and appropriate.

"Do you see this, young man?" Granna held up her left hand, where a dull, silver-colored ring and a gold wedding band sat together on her still-strong ring finger.

Luke smiled wanly. "I do, ma'am."

I frowned at them.

Granna thrust the small package into Luke's face, her voice lowered as if I weren't standing right beside him. "What do you think she's getting from me for her birthday present, eh? And what are you doing here again?"

I looked to Luke for his answer, hoping for some clue as to what this conversation was about, but he stayed silent, just looking at Granna.

"Don't you even think of it." Granna took a step closer to him. I had the sense of a small dog barking at a sleeping lion.

"Hey," I started, not even sure what I ought to say to diffuse this weirdly combative situation.

Luke spoke as if I hadn't, sounding humble. "I'm just here for a little while, ma'am."

Granna's voice was sharp. "Good. Then go back where you belong."

"I'm not one of Them," he said plaintively.

"I can smell Them on you. You reek of it."

Luke turned from Granna to me, his expression flat. "I don't think I'll be staying for cake."

Furiously, I turned my shoulder toward Granna and crossed my arms. "You don't have to go."

Just because Granna had to stick her nose into it. Ruin everything. I was so angry with her I was afraid I would say something I'd regret. I could feel her eyes boring into my back.

Luke glanced at Granna again. "I think it's better this way. Thanks for the ice cream."

"Luke. " I couldn't even think of what to say. All that was in my head was damn it, why does everyone else control my life? "Don't go."

He looked at me with a weird expression I couldn't read, then retreated to his car. In a moment, all evidence that he existed was gone, and I didn't even have his phone number. I also didn't even have a clue why he was gone.

Well, I had some clue. I turned back to Granna, caught between anger and loss. "Granna. Why?"

She glared at the road as if Luke's presence lingered, and then she handed me the small present.

"You should open this one."

"I don't want to open any presents right now."

She smiled firmly--a humorless smile that was ironically like Luke's--and held the package out.

"Open it, please."

Sighing, I set down the large present and took the little one from her. Tearing off the patterned blue paper, I found a little jewelry box, but when I opened it, its white satin center was empty. I looked up at Granna, quizzical.

She slid the dull ring, the one she'd shown Luke, from her finger and laid it in the box. "It was my mother's, and her grandmother's before. And now it's yours. I suspected you were old enough to need it, and now I'm sure."

No, what I needed was Luke back in the driveway and Granna to be normal for once. I looked at the ring. I didn't like jewelry anyway, but even if I did, this ring was pretty darn ugly.

I said, my voice icy, "Uh, thanks."

"Put it on," Granna said. "You'll thank me later."

I put it on my right-hand ring finger, and Granna's smile became genuine. "Thank you. Now, I'm going to get out of the heat and go see my frantic daughter and my scheming daughter." She took the large package and headed indoors.

I stayed outside, staring down at the ring on my finger.

I was curiously close to tears, which is how James found me five minutes later when he pulled into the driveway. Where Luke's car had just been.

He came to me and took my arms. "What are you doing?"

"Being pushed around."

"Let's go inside and talk about it."

With Delia and Mom and Granna? "Let's not."

As if to illustrate my point, Delia's voice rose from the kitchen window. James glanced at the window and then back to me. "Okay. Into the shade, at least?"

I agreed and we walked into the back yard. Knees pulled up, I sat against one of the massive oaks, its broad trunk shielding me from the view of the house. James sat down in front of me, his knees nearly touching mine. For a long moment he just looked at me, serious. I was so taken aback by this side of him that I almost blurted out everything that had just happened.

But James spoke first. "I have a confession to make."

My heart lurched. I had a horrible idea of what he was going to say, and I wanted to cover my ears. Don't, James. You're my best friend.

He didn't say it. Instead, he said, "I'm a little psychic." He paused. "You may laugh now. But only a little bit. Fifteen seconds is probably appropriate, without being rudely disbelieving."

I didn't laugh. "I believe you."

"Oh. Well, that makes it easier, doesn't it?" James glanced toward the house and pushed his fingers through his auburn hair. "Mind you, I'm not a very good psychic.

But I get hunches, and they turn out right. And weird feelings when it's going to be a weird day.

Not very often. Peter says it happens to him too." Peter was James' older brother, on pilgrimage in California to find fame and fortune with his rock band. James idolized him, and I thought he was pretty cool, too--maybe the only other non-family member besides James that I could talk to.

James chewed his lip before continuing. "Yesterday was weird. And today was weird, too. I had a hunch I'd find you upset, so I left practice early. What's going on?"

All of a sudden, it seemed stupid not to have told him everything from the beginning. So I told him. I left out the bits where Luke had touched me, and the feeling of Luke's lips on my ear, but the rest I told him, as best as I could remember.

He took the key when I offered it, and the ring from my finger, and studied both. "They're both iron. Isn't that funny?"

"Funny 'haha' or funny 'strange'?"

James handed them back. "Funny 'occult.'" "Ah. Funny 'strange.'" James looked at me sternly. "Don't start that. I'm supposed to be the humorous one." He watched me put the ring back on and pocket the key again. "Iron's supposed to be a ward against evil supernatural creatures, if you're into that magic druid crap."

I couldn't help goading him. "If it's magic druid crap, why do you know about it?"

"A man should be well educated."

"Well, Granna is into that," I pointed out. "She's into all that holistic/natural/spiritual stuff.

Cosmic debris. She once told me the color of my aura."

"Mine's tartan," James said. He took my hand in his writ-ten-upon ones and turned the ring on my finger, absently. It reminded me of Luke's hand on mine, earlier. How can two hands feel so different? "And the clover? The one that you moved this morning? Do you still have it?"

"Thought I moved," I corrected, and shook my head. "Yeah." I shifted my weight so I could pull it from my pocket.

"So move it."

I looked hard at him.

"Well, if you can't move it, like you said, it won't move, and you won't have to worry about it anymore, will you? But if it does--well, then you're a freak." James grinned. He plucked the slightly crushed clover from my finger and set it in the sparse grass beneath the tree. "Go, go, magic clover."

"I feel foolish." I did. We were like two kids hunched over a Ouija board, part of us hoping for something strange to happen, proving the world a mysterious place, and the rest of us hoping desperately for nothing to happen, proving the world safe and free of monsters. I cupped my hand, like earlier that morning, making a little goal for the clover to shoot into. "Come on, clover."

A breeze kissed the sweat on my forehead. The clover tumbled end-over-end into my hand.

James closed his eyes. "It makes me frigid when you do that."

"It was the breeze." It was just the breeze.

He shook his head, and opened his eyes again. "I always get cold when I get one of my weird feelings, and that just about hit glacier-cold on the weirdness chart. Do it again. You'll see. Next to my leg, where there's no breeze."