On a Clear Day Page 3

  The boy in the wheelchair looked as if he had money. His clothes fit too well; his haircut was too perfect for him to be poor. He had something going on. I didn’t know what.

  But what if their stick wasn’t real? What if they had their own separate agendas and just wanted to use me? What would I do? Or say?

  “I do math,” I would say. “I don’t fuck.”

  Rafael was wiping his plate with a roll he had broken in half, sopping up the gravy. The girl was still scoping me out. I looked at her and smiled, but she didn’t smile back.

  How had the boys expected me to react when I read the literature they gave me? Hadn’t they noticed that anger wasn’t in anymore? That only the struggle to survive had real meaning?

  For a moment I was mad at the boys, but I couldn’t stop the feeling of excitement coming over me. I felt like a starving person waiting for a wonderful meal to be cooked. I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to start eating.

  Mrs. Rosario kept talking. I think she was afraid that when she stopped, I would leave. She needed to talk, and I understood that. She said we might have used too many tomatoes.

  “It’s just right!” Rafael protested.

  “Better than that!” the old man said.

  “What do you think, Lydia?” Mrs. Rosario asked the girl.

  “It’s nice” was her answer. A trace of a smile flickered across her face. She was wearing braces.

  There was still some yellow rice left, and a few plantains. It was so good. When everything was finished, when the old man and Rafael and little Lydia had left, I helped Mrs. Rosario clean up and she hugged me tightly.

  “You always have to be careful with boys,” she warned. “Whatever you do, keep your soul in your mind.”

  I walked slowly up to my room and looked at the handout again. I started to read it, but there was nothing new in it, so I put it down. Then I took out my article in the Math Journal and looked at my picture. Pushing my hair back as I looked in the mirror, I saw that I was the same. Almost pretty.

  I cloud-groped the Eton Group on the Internet and got nothing. Eton comes up in the UK, and I knew it from crossword puzzles. A school that had been for boys but that was now a big deal for the children of the British elite. A pop-up ad asked if I wanted to go there.

  I was completely conflicted. One part of me was cautious, scared. Another part felt that nothing they could do would work. It was all hopeless.

  I thought of Mrs. Rosario’s story. She was still longing for the adventure she’d never had. I thought of the girl. Lisette. A lovely name. A name Mrs. Rosario still remembered after so many years.

  Options. What were my options? Get a job and hope to improve my life. Be good at something and always have food to eat and a safe place to stay. Then how did I call that life? What would I do to pretend I was doing more than stringing along the moments of my existence? Maybe I could get ahead and do better than the people around me. I knew I was smart. What did my math professor say? Most people take ten to the third power and are glad to reach one thousand.

  “But the smartest people take ten to the power of pi, and they are always ahead, always moving faster than the rest.”

  It had pleased him to say that, but I hadn’t seen anything in it. Life was personal, not a friggin’ competition.

  Before my mother died, I sat with her in the hospital. She was crying because she had nothing to leave me. She said she could give me a small piece of advice if I wanted it. If I wanted it? I wanted anything from her at that sad moment, a touch, a kiss.

  “Know what’s in your heart,” she said. “Not just what’s in your head.”

  In my heart, I knew I was going with the boys.

  4

  The rail at the edge of the bed hurt my butt as I sat on it. I knew if María had still been alive, she would have warned me to be careful.

  “Make sure you got your big-girl panties on,” she would have said. But she wasn’t alive. She had given up, had let her song disappear somewhere between la mercado and her apartment.

  Punching in the number they had given me, 8-5-8-9-8-6-9-0-5-6, I recognized it as a perfect number and wondered if they had paid extra for it. There was a series of clicks and tones, and I could tell that the call was going through a series of towers. Maybe so it wouldn’t be traced.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Dahlia,” I said weakly.

  “This is Javier” came the too-quick reply. “We can send a car for you tomorrow at five in the morning. Is that too early?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t bring too much,” Javier said. “It’s better that way. We can get anything you need later. You take any meds?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Fine.”

  “And I would just tell people you absolutely trust,” he said.

  “I don’t have anything to tell, do I?”

  “I guess not.” His voice softened. “I’m glad you’re aboard.”

  “You thinking we’re going to make some kind of difference?” I asked.

  “Michael says it doesn’t matter,” Javier said. “It’s the attempt that counts.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  The phone was lying on the bed. I was telling myself that I didn’t care what happened and trying to keep my food down. I looked up Cataldi, the Italian mathematician who had worked with perfect numbers, and found that he lived from 1548 to 1626. He was seventy-eight when he died. I loved the idea of having all that time to do the work you cared about.

  I wanted to tell Mrs. Rosario that I was going. And Rafael. All of them. Maybe even find Ernesto and tell him. What difference did it make? We weren’t real Gaters, living behind electrified fences with guards ready to shoot people. We were pretenders, poor people banding together in the Bronx behind a fence that didn’t mean a thing, guarded by old men who hadn’t fired a shot since they had been through the country’s military machine.

  Thinking about taking a shower. Or wait until morning? Take one now in case I overslept in the morning.

  In the shower. There was sand on the bottom of the tub. I didn’t like the feeling of grit under my bare feet and didn’t feel like washing the tub out. Make the shower quick, then out and drying off. I thought about telling Mrs. Rosario that I was going off with the boys and already felt her arms around me. In my mind it was a good feeling.

  Packing. Don’t take too much. I didn’t have too much. Three pairs of jeans, all I owned. Six tops, all I owned. Three bras, eight pairs of panties, six pairs of socks, one hat, and my jacket. Everything went into my red backpack. It was most of what I owned.

  So now I was lying on my bed and thinking about what Mrs. Rosario was going to say.

  “Are you going to be the only girl?”

  Shit, I should have asked that! Should I call back? And if they said I’d be the only girl, what would I do? Say that I was afraid?

  Maybe I should be afraid.

  I was going—fuck it.

  Sleep was not going to happen. I was staring off into the darkness and trying to remember to breathe from my lower belly. I checked the clock over and over and the hands moved slower and slower. I set the alarm for four-thirty, then switched it to four. I could just leave without saying anything to Mrs. Rosario. Yes, that was what I’d do. She’d see that I was gone and know that everything was cool with me.

  The conversations played like recorded messages. Michael was looking at me with his weird eyes, knowing who I was but trying to figure out who I really was beyond the one article he’d read.

  “Are you going to be the only girl? Are you going to be the only brown person?”

  Javier was white white, almost pale. Michael was white with darkness around his eyes and colors in his hair. When I asked Javier if he thought we were going to make a difference, he said—no, he mumbled—that Michael didn’t think it mattered. Were Michael and Javier going out? I didn’t want to be a part of that.

  What did I want to be a part of?<
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  I jerked awake. What time was it? In the darkness, the clock just touched my fingers before it clattered across the floor. Up, switch the light on, find the damned clock. Two thirty-six. Stay awake. No, I’ll be exhausted before the day even begins.

  Back to bed. Sleep for a minute. Check the time. Two fifty-five. Crap.

  Thinking about my mother. Always sad, like a flower badly in need of water but never getting it, always drooping, so after a while I felt that was the way she was supposed to look. Wistful eyes that never found mine until that last day, when she knew she was leaving forever.

  “Know what’s in your heart.…”

  There must have been a time when, somewhere deep inside of me, I knew that I didn’t want to be my mother. It must have shown up for an instant, must have sprung up between us like a sudden storm, catching us by surprise. Or was it just me? Did she see it in my eyes?

  Mama, I don’t ever want to be you!

  Think of something else. Think of all the online courses I was considering. A thousand Introductions to EveryFriggin’Thing and me trying to map out a Learning Intelligently Pattern. What I came up with was that school without the hustle and bustle of other kids didn’t make any sense. I didn’t want to be smart; I wanted to learn with somebody. But why, when that wasn’t really me? When I was best by myself, except for all the times when being by myself got me down. Why did I need other kids around?

  “It’s like jazz,” my teacher had said. “It’s good by yourself, but it’s a lot better with friends.”

  Jerk awake. Turn on the light. Check the time. Four-fifteen. A moment of panic. I’m up! I’m dressed. Check the time. Four eighteen. Oh, okay.

  My backpack was ready and by the door. I went to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth with salt water. Then downstairs to Mrs. Rosario. I knocked on the door and in seconds she was asking who it was.

  “Dahlia.”

  She opened the door and saw I was dressed.

  “I’m going with the boys this morning,” I said.

  She hugged me and pulled me into her apartment. “You’re going to be all right,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, not knowing. I was crying and she was crying and wiping away my tears with her stubby fingers.

  “I have something for you,” she said.

  She went to the ancient chest and opened the bottom drawer. For a moment she rummaged through it, and then she pulled out a piece of material and held it up to the yellow lamplight.

  It was a shawl, long and lacy, and white. I could see through it, but toward the center there were two perfect roses. When she placed it over my shoulders, there was a rose on each side of me.

  “You look beautiful,” she said. “Think of me when you wear it, Dahlia. Will you think of me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  5

  Five o’clock. The car arrived. Clunky. Square. There was armor on the sides. I was nervous as I approached it. The window went down and a young guy turned his round face toward me.

  “Good morning, Miss Grillo.”

  “Good morning.” The air was cold and damp. The young guy was out of the car, shorter than I imagined him to be. Asian, perhaps. He took my bag and flung it into the back.

  He looked at me and opened the rear door. I could feel my heart beating crazily as I climbed in. Turning, I saw Mrs. Rosario standing in the doorway. Beside her, a thin white arm around her waist, was the girl who had been at dinner. In the morning light, with her gown clinging to skinny legs, she looked like a pale angel. I waved to her. She didn’t move.

  “Your seat belt.”

  I fastened the seat belt, and we took off.

  I said, or thought I said, something about it being a cool morning. The driver didn’t answer. Maybe I didn’t say it. We drove quickly, almost furiously, across the Bronx and then south toward the George Washington Bridge. Every doubt that I had buried came to mind. But I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter what happened to me. What did Socrates say? Death happens.

  Across the bridge, into north Jersey.

  I caught the driver looking at me. He quickly turned his eyes away from the rearview mirror, but it was too late. He was wondering about me as I wondered about him. Why was he driving so fast? Why was the car armored?

  We had been driving for nearly forty minutes when the car suddenly slowed. We were going through a small town at daybreak. We passed a park that must be the town’s center, and I peered out of the window.

  “Morristown,” the driver said. “We’re almost there.”

  Ten minutes later we stopped. There was a gate, a long driveway, a large house. The driver got out and took my bag toward the house. I followed.

  Javier met us at the door. He smiled what I thought had to be a practiced greeting.

  “I hope you’re not too tired,” he said. “We have our first session at nine. Someone will bring breakfast to your room in thirty minutes. Are you tea or coffee?”

  “Tea,” I lied. Why tea? I loved coffee in the mornings, but I wanted to fit in so bad, I was guessing what to say.

  The Asian driver took me to a room and put my bag in front of the door. He bowed slightly, then walked away.

  The room was set up for guests. There was a desk, a chest of drawers, a closet, a table, and a bed. Another door opened onto a bathroom. On the chest of drawers was a tablet.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat on the bed. I thought of calling Mrs. Rosario and telling her that I had arrived safely, but I didn’t know if I was safe or not. I looked at the time. Fourteen minutes past six.

  Then there was breakfast. A black woman brought in eggs, fruit, toast, potatoes, and little packets of cereal. There was also a container of milk and a pot of hot water with a small box of tea bags. The box smelled of cedar. Nice. The black woman smiled at me, and I was grateful for her smile.

  I turned on the tablet and watched the morning news. A man went berserk in Iowa. The New Jersey Devils won a hockey game in overtime. A starlet claimed to be pregnant by a man she had never met. Sweet.

  Ten minutes to nine. There was a knock on the door, and when I answered it, I saw Javier in his wheelchair. He was going to show me to the room.

  In the conference room. There were several young people sitting around a long table, some talking to each other, none of them looking my way for the moment. It was a micro version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Michael wasn’t there. I didn’t want to look at the others, and so I drew triangles on the blank yellow pad on the desk in front of me. The quietness of the group freaked me out. I wasn’t liking this.

  After a long while, maybe ten minutes in which nobody said a word to me, the door opened and Michael came in. He was dressed all in black. Tight pants, tight jacket, a pale-blue shirt that might have been silk, silver bangles. He was taller than I’d thought he was. Maybe six feet, maybe an inch or so more. Nice package.

  “Some of you have already met,” he said. “Others haven’t. Let’s go around the table and give our names. Then I’ll do a short talk and we can go from there. Nobody has to do anything, even give your name. Everything is voluntary here. I hope we can pull off something good. I’m Michael Gullickson.”

  “Javier Gregory.” Javier lifted a pale white hand in greeting.

  “Tristan Braun.” White; low guttural voice.

  “Anja Marlena!” Round face, friendly.

  “Drego Small.” Black. Street.

  “Mei-Mei. Mei-Mei Lum.” She looked like a porcelain doll.

  “Dahlia Grillo,” I said, surprised at how loud my voice came out.

  “As I’ve said before, we all know what is going on in the world.” Michael sat as he spoke. “The C-8 companies are capturing, or at least controlling, all the major resources of the world. In effect, they control everything we do, everything we eat, every place we go. Nobody thinks it’s good. Nobody thinks it’s fair, nobody thinks it’s going to get better.

  “There are small groups all over the world willing to try to bri
ng back a sense of normalcy to life. In Russia they call themselves the October Crew—something like that; in France they call themselves the Musketeers. In Britain it’s the Eton Group, and they’re the ones who are calling the conference in London to see what can be done to change things. I want to put together a group of people—you’re sitting around the table now—that I think about—vaguely—as the Resistance.

  “I don’t know if we’ll make a difference. But I know somebody has to try. So what I want to do is to go to London and listen in on the conference the Brits are having and see if we fit in to their plans to resist C-8, and if we can make a plan to help our own cause. I think we should go and listen to the Brits, and then determine what we want to do.”

  “Working with the British group?” the black guy asked.

  “Or without them,” Michael said.

  “We have our own problems to deal with.” The white guy with the deep voice. “Why are we checking out Europe?”

  “We’re dealing with a number of factions with their own interests and problems,” Michael said, “including C-8. The way I see it, they can all be against us or we can hook up with other groups when we think that’ll work. We gotta play it by ear until we figure out our best moves.”

  “So when are we going to England?” Tristan.

  “Tomorrow night,” Javier said. “And there’s another thing. The C-8 group thinks of itself as neutral, not hostile. But that doesn’t stop them from buying information, and it doesn’t stop anybody from trying to get information to sell them. So we can expect spies in London. We can expect to be watched.”

  “I can’t see any physical danger,” Michael said. “They’ll just be nosing around. Trying to figure out what we’re up to.”

  “They won’t get much if we don’t know what we’re up to,” the black guy said. “It seems to me that we’re flying blind.”