Everything was in its place and ready to go when my class arrived. Mrs. Veck tried to form us into a line, but Pauline Dugan made a fuss about standing in front of Sterling Johnston, shouting, “I’m not standing by any pervert!” and causing Kurt to momentarily turn off his camera. Mickie then took over, arranging us in a semicircle and cautioning Kurt to shoot Sterling’s top half only.
On Mickie’s signal, the Coventry Carol blared out of a speaker, the snowflakes started to flutter down, and one by one, we walked up to the Scotch pine and attached our Christmas cards with the colored clothespins. As this was going on, Mickie recorded a preliminary voice-over. She then walked in front of the big tree and recorded an intro and an outro. It was all over by 10:00 hours, which was lucky for Mickie because that’s when my father’s helicopter arrived.
I spotted it first, descending toward our helipad at the southwest corner of the development. It was easily recognizable by the orange-and-green Miami Hurricanes logos. Everything would have been fine if it had just kept going down for a landing. Unfortunately, though, my father must have spotted his 440 drone hovering above the Square and decided to investigate. The helicopter, a Robinson Beta Five, rose up again and tilted in our direction.
Mickie spotted the helicopter and called over to Albert, “What’s going on? What’s he doing here?”
Albert directed the drone away from us to a new spot above the security wall. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Ms. Meyers.”
“You didn’t expect him?”
“I didn’t. He hasn’t called me. He hasn’t even filed a flight plan for today.”
Mickie clenched her fists. “Terrific.”
Then Mickie, the crew, we students, and a few onlookers stood and watched as the big helicopter roared up over the Square and held its position. I could see my father’s face twenty meters above us. He had a goofy expression on, like he might have started drinking early, or like the previous night’s party hadn’t yet ended. He gave a thumbs-up sign to the crowd below and hovered there in the blue sky like Mrs. Veck’s inspirational eagle.
That’s when it happened.
The Edwardian Christmas cards, caught up in the wind from the rotors, began to snap off the big tree and swirl around the Square like so many colored and calligraphed pieces of litter. Then other items from other trees fell victim to the wind and let go—small plastic pears, partridges, French hens, turtledoves. They all ripped away from their hooks and got caught up in the vortex of swirling soap flakes, dirt, and paper. The Santa sleigh and reindeer fell over next. Finally, the twelve trees in the circle succumbed, bending like palms in a hurricane until they snapped off their bases and started flopping about crazily on the ground.
After a few more chaotic seconds, the helicopter roared away and returned to the helipad, leaving all that devastation in its wake. Only the Scotch pine remained in place, but it had been stripped of all its balls and stars and other ornaments. Hundreds of meters of Christmas tree lights now hung from the branches in twisted clumps, frayed and broken, spitting orange sparks of fire on the ground and into the air.
Mickie could no longer contain herself. She screamed, “That idiot!” She turned to Albert and ranted, “What is he doing here? Why isn’t he on some golf course? Or at some football game?”
Albert guided the drone downward to safety, landing it on a clear patch of pavement in front of the bank. He answered calmly, “I don’t know, Ms. Meyers.”
Mickie redirected the rant to her producer and her cameraman, making very unflattering comments about my father as they loaded their gear on a cart. Then they all drove quickly back toward the airstrip.
I looked around at the demolished Square. Everywhere was chaos, a condition rarely seen and never tolerated at The Highlands.
Taking advantage of the momentary breakdown in law and order and the lack of adult supervision, Maureen and Pauline Dugan suddenly ran toward Hopewell and jumped onto his back, knocking him down. They turned him over and pinned him to the ground behind one of the small trees. Maureen sat on Hopewell’s shoulders, immobilizing him, while Pauline reached over and pulled his clump of hair back, exposing his left ear.
Pauline shouted, “Oh, gross!” and pretended to gag.
Maureen made a horrible face, too, as Sierra and Whitney leaned in to see.
Patience yelled over to me, “Come on!” and we ran through the debris to help him.
I must admit I was shocked myself by the sight of Hopewell’s ear. I had never seen it before. I had never even thought about asking to see it. As far as I was concerned, it was a secret that should stay a secret.
But there it was.
It looked like a rotten apple, or a shriveled rose. It was bright red, like a wound, and it curled up at the edges like its skin was dying. It was like no ear I had ever seen before. (Patience told me that when Hopewell was returned by the kidnappers, he had nothing more than an open sore on the side of his head. Her parents were desperate for something, anything, to replace what had been there. Mr. Patterson found a donor to provide an ear right away, no questions asked, for a lot of currency.)
Patience stood over both Dugans and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Get off of him!”
I echoed her. “Yeah! Get off! Let him go!”
Maureen Dugan didn’t even look up. “Get lost, hors.”
Patience, without hesitation, threw herself on top of Pauline, so I did the same to Maureen. Neither of us could fight very well, but our momentum was strong enough to knock the Dugans back.
Hopewell rolled over and crawled away on his elbows.
Maureen Dugan grabbed my hair and snapped my head back so that I couldn’t move. I could see that Pauline Dugan had Patience in a headlock, too. Then Mrs. Veck ran up, shouting, “Girls! Girls! Things are bad enough without this horseplay going on. You stop right now!” After a few seconds the Dugans, each with a final twist, let our heads go, and peace was restored.
The guard patrol arrived just then in a machine-gun-mounted van. Two men in black uniforms jumped out and surveyed the situation. One pointed to some downed electrical wires. The other one shouted, “Everybody out of the Square! Right now!”
Mrs. Veck led us on a quick march back into our classroom, where we all sat in stony silence. Patience and I stared defiantly at the Dugans; Sierra and Whitney sneered; Hopewell hung his head miserably; and Sterling Johnston seemed lost in thought.
Mrs. Veck turned on the vidscreen. She managed a tight smile. “Well, that was interesting. Now it’s time for us all to join the Amsterdam Academy for the holiday celebration up in New York.”
The screen showed eight scenes of kids sitting at eight mahogany tables, scattered all over the U.S., staring at vidscreens of their own.
They all looked miserable.
The dark boy was back. I heard him muttering into his two-way. I could pick up very few distinct words; the rest was an audio blur. I believed he was speaking Haitian Creole. That would have made sense. He had the derma and the physical features common to Haitians. I listened hard, trying to sense his mood, trying to pick a time to engage him in conversation.
Finally, he picked the time himself. He folded up the two-way, turned, and looked right at me. We held this stare for perhaps ten seconds. I expected him to speak at any moment, but he did not.
I finally took it on myself to start. I asked, “Do you speak English, too?”
His lip curled into a sneer. Was he angry? Was he going to hurt me? He wouldn’t answer at first, but I steadfastly maintained eye contact, so he finally gave in. He replied, in clear, unaccented English, “Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”
“Well, I only heard you speaking, you know, Creole.”
“I see. So you figured I just fell off the banana boat.”
“No.”
“You figured I just floated here on a piece of wood, with my nineteen brothers and sisters, my frès and sès—”
“No. Not at—”
“To find a better life i
n America, cleaning your toilet bowl after you just used it.” His tone of voice was calm, but his words were angry, and they frightened me. I had definitely offended him. Deeply. Might he get up? Might he hit me, or worse? There was certainly no one around to stop him.
I quickly stammered, “I’m sorry. I heard you speaking one language. I should not have assumed that you did not speak another one. You speak it very well, I might add.”
His sneer returned. “Listen to you. You are still assuming.”
“What?”
“Now you assume that I am incapable of speaking any language other than English, the language of the slave master. Isn’t that right?”
I started to deny it, but I stopped myself. I had to win this boy’s confidence somehow. I decided to tell him the truth. “Yes. You’re right. I did assume that. And I apologize again.”
The truth had a definite positive effect on him. The sneer dropped. He asked me, “Parlez-vous français?”
“Uh, no, actually. I don’t speak French. I speak a little Spanish. I want to learn French. We can take it next year, in high school, and I do want to.”
“C’est ma première langue.”
“Uh, sorry, I didn’t get that.”
“It is my first language.”
“Oh. I see. And Creole is your second?”
The sneer returned, but at half strength. “No. English is my second. Creole is something I picked up recently. And it’s not a language, in my opinion. It’s a creole.”
My mind raced, trying to come up with a good reply. And failed. Instead, I heard myself repeating a line from Mrs. Veck: “You can’t define a word using the same word.”
His brown eyes looked right into mine. They were very intelligent eyes. I hadn’t noticed that before. He said, “They are different words if you see them on paper. One has a capital C, and one has a small c. Comprendez-vous?”
“No,” I admitted.
“The word Creole, with the capital C, describes Haitian Creole as a civilized language worthy of capitalization, just like French or English. But in fact it is not a civilized language. It is a creole, with a small c, which is defined as a civilized language mixed with the language of a savage tribe. In the case of Haitian Creole, you have the language of the civilized masters, the French, mixed with the languages of the many African tribes that they enslaved. No disrespect to my frès and sès, but their language is a textbook example of a creole with a small c.” He paused to let that sink in with me.
I said, “Well, thank you. I didn’t know that.”
He turned away, very satisfied with himself.
I had the impression he was about to resume ignoring me, so I decided to ask him something else. Anything else. “Uh, does that guy on the other end of the phone speak French, too?”
I waited quite a while for a reply, but he finally did say, “No. None of them speak French. They speak Creole and Spanish, mostly. And some English. Bad English.”
“Yeah? Yeah, I’ll bet. How about you, though? How come you speak English so well?”
I thought it was a harmless question, but his lip curled up again into a full sneer. “I see. Well, there is a simple explanation for that. I was plucked from the ocean by an eccentric white billionaire, who bet another eccentric white billionaire that he could teach me to speak better English than King William.”
I couldn’t tell if he was really angry or simply mocking me. I assumed he was angry. “I’m sorry again. I didn’t mean to offend you—”
“I am not at all offended. It is a typical rich-white-girl reaction. You look at me and figure I cannot do anything requiring a brain.”
“No. I don’t think that. I—”
“For your information, I speak English because I am a citizen of the United States, a primarily English-speaking nation.”
“Well, sure. Okay. So what about the French?”
He shook his head slowly. “Forget it. You don’t need to know anything about that.”
“But I want to.”
“Why? So you can tell the FBI about it? So you can have me caught, tried, and executed by lethal injection? I don’t think so.” He didn’t say anything else for a few seconds. Then he remembered something. “Oh yeah. I have a message from Dr. Reyes. He said you can sit up now, if you want. He said the sedative has passed through your system.”
“Oh, I see. Thank you. Does Dr. Reyes talk to you in English?”
He didn’t reply, but I thought I saw him smirk.
I pulled myself up into a sitting position. Then I reached around the stretcher and found a latch. I raised up the back piece of the stretcher and affixed it so that I was now seated at a ninety-degree angle. I felt so much better that I spoke to him again, conversationally, without even thinking about it. “Well, I want to be able to do what you do, to speak different languages. I want to learn French and Spanish. And Creole, too.”
“Pourquoi?”
“‘Why’? Does that mean ‘why’?”
“Oui.”
“Because Creole is spoken here in Florida. I want to know the languages that are spoken around me.”
He didn’t reply.
“Would you teach me a few words in Creole?”
After a pause he said, “Sure. Why not? Here’s all the Creole you’ll ever need to know: Vòlè means ‘thief.’”
I repeated it phonetically: “Vo-lay.”
“Mantlè means ‘liar.’”
“Mant-lay. Okay. Great. Now can you tell me some good-thing words?”
He snorted. “Good-thing words? Is that even English? Listen: the Haitians around here don’t use little-white-girl, ‘good-thing’ words. For example, they have no word for ‘helipad,’ or ‘yacht basin,’ or ‘satschool.’ Those are words in common use in The Highlands, correct?”
“You’re right,” I admitted.
“Probably the only Creole you have ever heard came from the lawn guy, or the garbage man. Both of them were, I am sure, complaining about you, the masters, as they muttered along in their slave language.”
“That’s not right. We don’t treat people like slaves.”
“If they work in The Highlands, they work under the constant watch of guards with machine guns; they must step carefully around electric fences; their every move is recorded on vidcams as they do your dirty work.”
“I do my own dirty work. I have my own set of chores, and then I help Victoria do hers when no one is around.”
“Victoria. Is she your family’s slave?”
“No!” This time, I was the one who didn’t speak for a while. I finally managed to say, “Victoria is my favorite person in the world. She is like my mother. She is nobody’s slave.”
He rolled his eyes. I ignored that and continued. “She works for RDS, and she makes a lot of money. She is saving it so she can go to college someday and become an attorney.”
When he replied, it was without sarcasm. “It sounds like you admire her.”
“I do.”
“And you trust her.”
“Completely. With my life.”
“Then why do you have a vidcam in her bedroom?”
I stopped to think. How did he know that? Then I protested, “That’s got nothing to do with us. That’s RDS policy. And she doesn’t mind it.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No.”
“Has she said that?”
“No. But I know she doesn’t. I know her.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“All right. What’s her real name?”
I froze. Flustered, I finally stammered, “I—I don’t know.”
“I see.”
“She doesn’t use her real name at work.”
“I see. And why should she, when she has a perfectly good slave name?” I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “The entire situation is ridiculous. You don’t know the first thing about her, which is her name. She pretends to be your little French maid, or English, or whatever. That’s all you know. Yo
u know a fictional character.” He turned back to the two-way with finality, signaling the end of our conversation.
That was fine with me. I didn’t want to hear him bad-mouthing Victoria anymore.
I sat back and looked at my vidscreen. The blue numerals read 13:13, and the red light was on. I stared into it, trying to imagine who was watching. I figured that the kidnappers were sending a vid image to my father, to scare him. They were showing him the pathetic, sniveling victim, in her little-girl footed pajamas, waiting desperately for the currency to be delivered. It was all standard operating procedure for kidnappers.
I knew their game, all right.
I just hoped my father did.
Rituals of Social Inversion
Haitian? Spanish? Was one of the kidnappers working inside The Highlands, pretending to be a lawn guy? Or a garbage man? I doubted it. All workers at The Highlands, according to the brochure, were “rigorously screened, using FBI databases.”
So where would a kidnapper have the chance to see me outside of The Highlands? How had I been targeted? Then I remembered. And I felt foolish, because it was so obvious! The kidnapper had seen me in Mangrove on Kid-to-Kid Day, an event co-sponsored by The Highlands and the town of Mangrove.
Kid-to-Kid Day actually began with Patience Patterson and me. Patience overheard her maid, Daphne, taking an emergency phone call. (RDS employees are forbidden to talk about their outside lives to clients.) Daphne’s family, who lived in Mangrove, had lost their house and all their belongings in a grease fire. Patience and I decided to help them, rules be damned.
We snooped around in Mr. Patterson’s vidfiles and learned where Daphne really lived. Then we accessed the Martin County Fire and Rescue database. We learned that Daphne’s younger siblings—twin girls in fifth grade, a boy in seventh grade, and a boy in ninth grade—had lost every stitch of clothing except what was on their backs when they ran from the house.