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“Imagine a future civilization examining some of the artifacts you or I might leave behind,” Margaret continued. “What would the people think of us? How might our brightest innovations—our iPads, solar panels, or credit cards—appear to distant generations?”
“Solar panels are Stone Age compared to what’s been done before. ” The same voice from the back rang out again.
Madame Blavatsky had said something similar, minus the obnoxiousness. Eureka rolled her eyes and shifted her weight and didn’t turn around. AP Earth Science student from Ascension back there was clearly trying to impress a girl.
Margaret cleared her throat and pretended her rhetorical questions hadn’t been heckled. “What will our distant descendants make of our society? Will we appear advanced … or provincial? Some of you might be looking at these artifacts, finding them old or outdated. Even, dare I say, boring. ”
Kids nodded. More snickering. Eureka couldn’t help but like the old anchors and terra-cotta vases, but the scarecrows should be drowned.
The docent fumbled her hands into a pair of white gloves, the kind Diana had worn when handling artifacts. Then she reached into a box at her feet and produced an ivory carving. It was an actual-sized duck, very detailed. She tilted the duck toward her audience and used her fingers to part its wings, exposing a cleanly hollowed basin inside. “Ta-da—Bronze Age cosmetics case! Note the craftsmanship. Can anyone deny how finely made he is? This was thousands of years ago!”
“What about these Bronze Age shackles over here?” the same voice jeered from the back of the room. Students jostled to get a look at the persistent heckler. Eureka didn’t waste the energy.
“Looks like your fine craftsmen owned slaves,” he continued.
The docent stood on her toes and squinted at the dark back of the room. “This is a guided tour, young man. There’s an order to things. Does anyone have an actual question back there?”
“Modern tyrants are fine craftsmen, too,” the boy continued, amusing himself.
His voice was starting to sound familiar. Eureka turned around. She saw the top of a blond head facing forward while everyone else was looking back. She crept along the edge of the group to get a clearer look.
“That’s enough,” Ms. Kash scolded, eyeing the Ascension faculty disdainfully, as if amazed none of them had quieted the student.
“Yes, be silent, sir, or leave,” Margaret snapped.
Then Eureka saw him. The tall, pale boy in the corner at the edge of the spotlight’s beam, the tips of his wavy blond hair illuminated. His tone and smirk were casual, but his eyes flashed something darker.
Ander was wearing the same pressed white shirt and dark jeans. Everyone was looking at him. He was looking at Eureka.
“Silence is what causes most of humanity’s problems,” he said.
“It’s time for you to leave,” Margaret said.
“I’m done. ” Ander spoke so quietly, Eureka barely heard him.
“Good. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll explain the purpose of this early sea voyage,” Margaret said. “The ancient Egyptians established a trade route, perhaps the first one …”
Eureka didn’t hear the rest. She heard her heart, which thundered. She waited for the other students to give up hope of another outburst, to swivel their heads back to the docent; then she edged around the group toward Ander.
His lips were closed, and it was hard to imagine them uttering the obnoxious comments that had drawn her over here. He gave her a slight smile, the last thing she expected. Standing close to him again gave Eureka the feeling of being by the ocean—independent of the starfish border, the sailor-crows, and the Ocean Breeze CD sloshing from the speakers. The ocean was in Ander, his aura. She’d never thought to use a word like “aura” before. He made uncharacteristic impulses feel as natural to her as breathing.
She stood on his left side, both of them facing the docent, and whispered from the corner of her mouth. “You don’t go to Ascension. ”
“The docent thinks I go to Condescension. ” She heard the smile in his voice.
“You’re not on the Manor track team, either. ”
“Can’t get anything past you. ”
Eureka’s voice wanted to rise. His composure made her angry. Where they stood, a few steps back from the group and just past the edge of the spotlight, the light was dim, but anyone who turned around could see them. The teachers and kids would hear if she didn’t keep her whisper steady and low.
It seemed strange that more people weren’t staring at Ander. He was so different. He stood out. But they barely noticed him. Apparently everyone assumed Ander went to the school they didn’t, so his behavior wasn’t interesting. His heckling was a forgotten artifact Margaret was delighted to leave unrecovered.
“I know you don’t go to Evangeline,” Eureka said through her teeth.
“For neither education nor entertainment. ”
“So what are you doing here?”
Ander turned and faced her. “I’m looking for you. ”
Eureka blinked. “You have a very disruptive way of going about it. ”
Ander scratched his forehead. “I get carried away. ” He sounded regretful, but she couldn’t be sure. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Not exactly. ” She gestured toward the tour group. She and Ander were standing five feet behind the other students. They couldn’t leave.
What did he want from her? First the car wreck, then showing up at her house, then following her to the lawyer’s office, and now this? Every time she’d encountered him, it was an invasion of privacy, a crossing of some boundary.
“Please,” he said. “I need to talk to you. ”
“Yeah, well, I needed to talk to you, too, back when my dad got the quote for my car repair. Remember that? Except when I called the number you gallantly gave me, someone who’d never heard of you picked up—”
“Let me explain. You’re going to want to know the things I have to tell you. ”
She tugged on her collar, which was too tight around her neck. Margaret was saying something about a drowned princess’s dowry. The mass of students began to shift toward some glass cases on the right side of the room.
Ander reached for her hand. His firm touch and soft skin made her shiver. “I’m serious. Your life is—”
She jerked her hand away. “I say one word to any teacher in here and you’re handcuffed like a stalker. ”
“Will they use the bronze handcuffs?” he joked.
She looked daggers at him. Ander sighed.
The rest of the tour moved toward a display case. Eureka had no urge to join them. She both yearned and was afraid to stay with Ander. He put both hands on her shoulders.
“Getting rid of me would be a huge mistake. ” He pointed over his head to a glowing exit sign half covered by blue gauze so that it read only IT. He held out his hand. “Let’s go. ”
17
SKIMMING A SURFACE
Through the door beneath the exit sign, down a short, dark hallway, Ander led Eureka toward another door. They didn’t speak. Their bodies were close together. It was easier than she’d expected to hold on to Ander’s hand—it fit hers. Some hands just fit other hands. It made her think of her mother.
When Ander reached for the handle of the second door, Eureka stopped him.
She pointed at a red band across the door. “You’ll set off the alarm. ”
“How do you think I got in?” Ander released the door. No alarm sounded. “No one’s going to catch us. ”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself. ”
Ander’s jaw tensed. “You don’t know me very well. ”
The door opened to a lawn Eureka had never seen before. It faced a circular pond. Across the pond sat the planetarium, a ring of tinted glass windows just below its dome. The air was gray, windless, a little cold. It smelled like firewood. Eureka stopped at the edge of a short concrete ledge just past the exit.
She dragged the toe of her oxford through the grass.
“You wanted to talk?” she said.
Ander glanced at the moss-slicked pond framed by live oaks. The branches curled down like gnarled witches’ fingers reaching for the ground. Orange moss hung like spiders dangling from green webs. Like most of the standing water in this part of Louisiana, you could barely see the pond for all the flottants of trembling marsh, the moss and lily pads and purple-blossomed water shield carpeting its surface. She knew precisely the way it would smell down there—rich, fetid, dying.
Ander walked toward the water. He didn’t motion for her to follow, but she did. When he reached the edge of the pond, he stopped.
“What are these doing here?” He crouched before a patch of creamy white jonquils at the edge of the water. The flowers made Eureka think of the pale gold variety that slipped up under the mailbox of her old house in New Iberia every year around her birthday.
“Jonquils are common here,” she said, though it was late in the year for their trumpetlike blossoms to look so sturdy and fresh.
“Not jonquils,” Ander said. “Narcissus. ”
He ran his fingers along one flower’s thin stem. He plucked it from the earth and rose to his feet so that the flower was at Eureka’s eye level. She noticed the butter-yellow trumpet at its center. The difference from the cream-colored outer petals was so slight you had to look closely to see it. Inside the trumpet, a black-tipped stamen shivered in a sudden breeze. Ander held the flower out, as if he were going to give it to Eureka. She lifted her hand to receive it, remembering another jonquil—another narcissus—she’d seen recently: in the woodcut image of the weeping woman from Diana’s book. She thought of a line in the passage Madame Blavatsky had translated, about Selene finding the prince kneeling near the river in a patch of narcissus flowers.
Instead of handing her the flower, Ander crushed the petals inside a tight, shaking fist. He yanked the stem free and flung it to the ground. “She did this. ”
Eureka took a step back. “Who?”
He looked at her, as if he’d forgotten she was there. The tension in his jaw relaxed. His shoulders rose and sank with resigned melancholy. “No one. Let’s sit down. ”
She pointed to a nearby bench between two oak trees, probably where the museum staff came for lunch on days when it wasn’t too humid. Brown nesting pelicans wandered the path leading to the pond. Their feathers were slick with mossy water. Their long necks curved like the handles of umbrellas. They scattered when Eureka and Ander approached.
Who was Ander talking about? What was wrong with flowers lining a pond?
As Ander walked past the bench, Eureka asked, “Didn’t you want to sit?”
“There’s a better spot. ”
He pointed at a tree she hadn’t noticed before. Live oak trees in Louisiana had famously twisted limbs. The tree in front of St. John’s was the most photographed tree in the South. This live oak tree in the deserted museum garden was exceptional. It was a massive knot with branches so warped they looked like the world’s most complicated jungle gym.