31 SCATTER THE CLOUDS
31
S CATTER THE C LOUDS
For the second time in less than six months we lined up outside of St. Roche’s office. Everything smelled of smoke—it clung to my hair, my clothes, under my nails. Amrita sat to my right and Saz to my left, with Finch closest to St. Roche’s door. Two tracks of pristine skin ran down Amrita’s cheeks where her tears had wiped away the ash. The rest of her was grimy with disaster.
Now there was an empty chair in our row. Saz hadn’t stopped crying for hours. She kept drawing in horrible, broken breaths. Finch was vigilant at the end of our row, one knee bouncing relentlessly. I wore a pair of slippers that St. Roche had pulled from beneath her desk and offered me. They were thin enough that I could feel the floor press back against me.
It had been six hours since the fire department finally got Grainer’s fire under control. The three floors at the top were gone. The entire body of thesis work was destroyed. There would be no Solo. There wouldn’t even be a group presentation. All we had to show for our time at Rotham was ash and blackened beams, and to everyone’s surprise, a faint slush of snow over everything. We were back where we started, frost coating the wet remnants of Grainer and turning the world into a tomb.
St. Roche emerged from her office, looking haggard. Her questions were surprisingly resigned, mostly asking us where we had been, what time we noticed that Caroline was gone, and what exactly we had seen. Amrita instructed us to keep our answers vague. She did the talking. The story she spun made me nauseous: Caroline had been pulling all-nighters and sleeping in short bursts in the studio, caught up in the stress of Solo. She liked to smoke when she worked. She must have drifted off with a cigarette in her mouth. There was never a chance of getting out alive with that much solvent surrounding her. It was a part of her, seeping out of her pores.
Amrita had been the one to wake and find Caroline’s bed empty. We’d gone looking for her in the only place we expected her to be, to bring her home and back to bed. We arrived to find Grainer’s alarms already blaring. The fire consuming everything in its wake.
“The police will want to talk with you all again,” St. Roche said finally. Amrita ran her hand up and down Saz’s back as she sniffled. “For now, you may return to the Manor. The Asters will likely stop by this evening to retrieve their daughter’s things. They’re with—” St. Roche paused. “They’re speaking with the coroner.”
“Oh fuck,” Saz wept.
Reality hadn’t quite landed yet—the insensible part of my brain kept thinking that we’d return to the Manor to find her waiting there. I kept trying to anticipate my devastation, but I was too numb.
St. Roche held the door for us. We walked the promenade to the Manor. There was a crowd gathered around Grainer. Someone had already laid candles and flowers beside photos of her pulled from Rotham’s website, sickly sweet promotional stuff where Caroline stood beside a canvas with a brilliant smile on her younger face. All I could think about was the snow snuffing it out, falling heavy over her monument.
“They’re still looking for pieces of her,” Finch sneered. “Who the fuck do these people think they’re grieving?”
“Finch, please,” Amrita whispered hoarsely. I shivered in my thin pajamas.
“I need a shower,” Saz said wetly.
When we finally reached the Manor, it was dark, daylight barely permeating the halls. I went in last, still afraid—I expected to find the bulbs shattered, every door hanging open on its hinges, the stairs creaking beneath invisible feet. But it was just as we’d left it before I went to sleep the night before. Caroline’s half-empty glass of water sat unfinished on the table.
The sight set Saz off into a wave of fresh tears. She pushed past the rest of us and up the stairs into the bathroom on the second floor. The door shut and the lock clicked.
“We need to talk before the police get here,” Finch said.
“Thirty minutes. Just give us thirty minutes, please. I need to change these awful clothes,” Amrita pleaded.
Finch relented and went to the living room. I heard her kick her shoes off and sit. The room was quiet as I hesitated by the dining table; if I really wanted to, I could have gone to her, pushed my way into her arms. But there was a barrier between us. She had seen the Boar King. She had pulled me away from Caroline and let her die.
I ascended to the third floor. In the bathroom, I stripped off my smoky clothes and stuffed them right into the trash can. I pressed my forehead to the shower and let the spray soak my scalp and my back, hot enough to sear. The arrival of grief was a sedative more powerful than Finch’s sleeping pills—it sent me down to the cave of myself where I resented being touched, where I could stew in my own hurt. Time passed, or it didn’t. When I slitted my eyes open, they landed on a swirl of Caroline’s hair still clinging to the wall. I reached for it immediately but stopped an inch away. My eyes stung with tears until I finally snared it with my fingers and pulled it free.
When the water went frigid, I dried off and shoved the towel against my mouth to release a horrible scream, until the sound left my throat raw. I panted. Listened for a sound in Caroline’s room that would never come. In my bedroom, I placed the lock of hair reverently atop my desk where it made a blond crescent moon.
Downstairs they gathered in the living room. It seemed impossible that it might be nearly noon—outside, the sky was the pale gray of a sunless day.
Finch bent near the fireplace. She started a fire in the hearth with newsprint and a box of matches, and Saz was crying all over again, saying, “Really? You’re really going to do that now?” as Finch snapped back, “It’s fucking cold.” She poked at forming embers and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“You have to tell me what happened before I got there,” I said from the doorway. Even with my arms wrapped around myself and my sweatshirt pulled over my hands, I still couldn’t regain sensation in my fingertips.
I stood in the far corner of the room. Saz sat on the couch with her knees pulled up to her chin. Finch squatted by the fire. Amrita’s feet were bare against the floor. I found myself wondering if she was cold too.
“Well? Is anyone going to speak up?” I tried.
You left me behind, I wanted to say. You left and I slept here and you let me think everything was going to be alright.
Past the Manor’s windows, the snow fell harder, flakes fattening and blanketing everything. Late March never looked so untouched by sun.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Amrita said, her voice hoarse. “It happened so quickly. She was making so much noise and saying all this stuff about new beginnings and destruction before she slammed the door and took off. And you—you were asleep for the first time in forever.” She spoke from behind her fingers, as if she might crumble if she pulled them away. It hurt me to look at her. I trained my eyes on Saz instead as anger began to boil its way back up my throat.
“You should have woken me up. Maybe I could have helped,” I snapped. I tugged my sweatshirt tighter around me. “I saw her last night, before we went to bed. She wasn’t okay.” The anger slipped, replacing itself with hot panic. “I should have—oh, fuck, oh my god—I should have called her parents, or St. Roche. I should have told someone she was going to do something reckless, or hurt herself, or hurt one of you. Caroline was in the woods last night and she—she was creating a new ritual. She had Finch’s hair. She was going to repeat the steps.”
“Fucking hell,” Finch said, paling. The fire poker clattered to the floor. Amrita slid her hands up her face until her eyes were hidden behind them too, and Saz let out a whimper.
“I stopped her,” I said immediately. “I didn’t let her finish it.”
“Jesus Christ,” Finch continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. One hand pressed down around her knee, her knuckles white with strain. “She was fucking crazy.”
“Don’t say that.”
Finch frowned against my defense. “It’s not your fault that she lost her mind, Jo.”
“You’re right,” I snapped. “We’re all at fault. We let her die.”
Amrita got to her feet and paced closer to the fire. “I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Saz whispered, watching the flames. “Please don’t fight anymore. Please, I can’t take it.”
“You should have thought of that before you—” I started, but I couldn’t finish. Saz looked so small, like she was folding in on herself. We hovered in the silence instead, until I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What do we do?” I asked. “When the police come knocking, we need a unified story, don’t we? An alibi?”
“You have one,” Amrita said. “You were here, asleep in your bed. Finch gave you a sleeping pill. We woke you when it was time to look for her.”
My stomach bottomed out. I sank down and sat on my heels, holding myself together with shaking limbs.
Some of Amrita’s fierceness melted away as she scooted closer to me. I flinched when she touched me, but I let her ease my head onto her shoulder, sank into the gentle combing of her fingers through my hair. I felt myself start to cry, just silent tears that slid from the corners of my eyes.
What was I supposed to do? In that moment, could I have done anything but let her hold me, let them watch me, listen to them instruct me on exactly how we were going to walk through this situation?
“It’s alright,” Amrita murmured.
But it wasn’t. Above the rough fabric of my sweatshirt, I slid my hand up and started to feel for the scabbed-over patch of my tattoo, those peeling petals poked in place by Finch’s hand. But my fingertips found flat, healthy skin.
“It’s my fault,” Saz said. “We could—we should just tell the police the truth.”
My eyes met Amrita’s. Her mouth quivered like she might cry too; in all the years I’d known her, I’d never seen her composure break.
“There’s nothing we could tell the police that they would believe,” Amrita said at last.
Finch’s eyes were dark, eyeliner shadowed and smudged across her lids like they’d been freshly bruised. She scrubbed the heel of her hand over one, smearing a black line down her cheek, a tear of her own. “What, you think they won’t go for the whole ‘shadow manifestation of the old man we cursed’ story? Or how about the haunted ritual book that spontaneously combusted in Jo’s hands? I think they’d love that story.”
I shifted uncomfortably, looking away from her. I hated how small she made it all appear.
“We tell them—” Amrita started. “We say exactly what we told St. Roche. Caroline had been sleeping in the studio. She was cracking under the pressure of Solo, smoking too much, getting lazy about disposing her old solvent. It’s not a lie.”
My stomach turned. I could see Caroline in that invented image, jacket pillowed beneath her head, golden hair falling across the dirty studio floor. I wanted to lie down beside her, pull her into my arms, breathe into the nape of her neck until the rise and fall of our chests fell into place.
“But that’s not what happened,” I said from underneath Amrita, whose fingers stilled against my head.
“No,” Amrita agreed finally. Her hand slowly picked up its pace again and scratched along my scalp. “That’s not what happened.”
We were all silent, as if afraid to be the first to acknowledge what we’d collectively seen. “Caroline and I,” I started, then faltered. I imagined telling them all of it—how that ritual had burrowed down to the core of me, all the ways it had ruined me in its wake—the boar in the road and the creature behind glass and my mother’s voice warping into something unfamiliar. Saz wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself. I could feel Amrita’s eyes on me, urging me on. But it all felt so worthless. Telling them wouldn’t bring her back. Instead, I said, “Do you think they’ll know that we hurt her? She was bleeding a lot.”
“She fell,” Amrita said at the same time as Finch said, “There’s nothing left.”
“I pushed her,” Saz wept, the words coming out like a moan.
“You didn’t mean to hurt her,” Amrita said, then continued, as if trying to convince the rest of us, “she was about to attack Jo.”
In my head Caroline rose, wheat pale and sickly, mouth painted like Saturn devouring his son, swallowing every last bite.
“I pushed her, I pushed her, I pushed her,” Saz wailed.
“She was going to kill you, because she was sick in the fucking head from all that ritual shit you started,” Finch snapped, jabbing a finger at Saz.
“Watch yourself,” Amrita said to Finch. “It was an accident. We all know that. Saz had to defend herself, and Caroline was egging everyone on.”
I whispered, “You didn’t let me help her.”
Silence answered. I wanted to push Amrita off me but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“You know we couldn’t have done that,” Amrita said at last, her voice soft as the fingertips grazing my scalp. “She was already so far gone.”
I pressed my mouth to my knee, trying to do anything but picture Caroline’s skin, cooked and seared. I could still feel her hands ghosting over me.
I slid out of Amrita’s grasp and pressed a palm to the Manor’s floor as if the house might swallow me whole, take me through the studs and the insulation and the fitted wooden slats down into the basement where I’d be safe from the truth I voiced. “The police will know we were involved. She was ours.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Finch said. “This is not on your hands, and we are not saying a goddamn word.”
“Of course it’s on my hands!” I cried. “If something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. They’ll never believe it if we deny being involved.” Above us, I thought I heard the creak of the floorboards and fought to keep myself from looking up. There was no one up there. Caroline was gone, always would be, burned up into nothing but ash and the melted remnants of her jewelry on the studio floor.
“I need a fucking smoke,” Finch said as she tore the front door open and slammed it behind her. Saz sniffled thickly, her eyes red.
“Jo,” Amrita said, crouching beside me again. She pushed her hair behind her ear and smiled sadly. “You know that there’s nothing to say, right? Caroline was sick and high, and she fell, and she shouldn’t have been smoking around her paints. And we love her, and it was an accident, and if there was any way that we could have stopped it, we would have.”
She cupped my face and leaned in until we were just a breath apart. I let myself feel it—the warmth of her hands, the comfort in her touch, the way each breath she exhaled operated in time with my inhales.
“Tell me you understand,” she said.
“I understand,” I answered through my tears.
“Good.” Her smile was the same loving one she’d shown me for years. “Help me make some tea, okay? Saz could use something warm, couldn’t you?”
Saz nodded. Her sweater bunched up around her face, obscuring one of her eyes. She looked like one of her own paintings, mottled and greening and frantic.
Amrita helped me to my feet and pulled me into the kitchen. Caroline’s dish still sat in the sink, crusted and sticky with the jam-covered toast she’d had for breakfast two days ago. The scene set itself like a memento mori version of Tracey Emin’s My Bed , soap scud clinging to white bowls, bite marks still in the crust.
I stood with my arms crossed over my chest. Amrita hummed as she filled the kettle and set up the mugs, dropping a tea bag in each one. I watched her hands shake as she tore open the last bag and I moved to take over.
“Let me,” I said, and Amrita turned back to the kettle, her face angled away from mine. Her shoulders were drawn up near her ears. She looked so tired—all this time, Amrita had felt solid and sure and radiant. Now she was diminished.
I couldn’t look at her. Instead, I spooned honey and sliced lemon. I filled each mug. Amrita wavered next to me and pressed her forehead to my shoulder. I closed my eyes and sucked a painful breath in through my nose until I was crying raggedly. I wanted Caroline. Where was I supposed to put all the love I had for her? Where could I lay its flowers down?
“Shh,” Amrita mumbled, turning until her cheek was against my shoulder. I kept my eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t cry, Jo. If you cry again, I will too.”
But I couldn’t stop. The Manor suddenly felt so big and empty. I wanted to go running to the charred remains of the studio. I wanted my paintings back, and I wanted to hear Caroline’s voice, even slurred, even aching. I hadn’t even had time to mourn all the things we had made. All the work we’d devoted ourselves to melted down to nothing.
And my mind began to betray me, already sketching the painting of this moment—a new Gathering, the hazy outline of Caroline standing on the shore of Lake Michigan, water so cold it could rip your breath right out of your mouth. The rest of us waiting in the distant horizon. The rocks by the water’s edge, breeze whipping reeds hard enough to leave stinging welts on our ankles. Dunes rising high. Caroline’s hair glowing beneath the sun. The gold shape of her, like a ghost, like a dream. If I’d had a brush in my hand, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. I would have recorded her on the first surface I could have made contact with.
I don’t know why I stood there so long, Amrita holding me together. There are times when I think that I should have walked away from the Manor in that moment, or from Rotham entirely. I have to believe that it would have been easier that way. But who would I have turned to? No one had ever known me so well.
It was awful, to be seen like that. There was nothing to hide. Every direction I turned, someone would have caught me in the act. But I knew then that I would let them get away with anything. I would always forgive them for hurting me.
“There’s someone at the door,” Amrita said. I opened my eyes. I watched steam sift through gray light, the tea in my hands scorching my palms pink.
On cue, a knock sounded. The door opened before any of us could reach for it, Finch stepping inside with her cigarette still hanging from her lips.
“Don’t bother, I have a key,” she said over her shoulder, and then the police stepped into our living room.
They were so out of place among our decor—posters and pride flags and string lights and nude paintings and torn-up bits of paper from a game we used to play, where we’d rank our favorite foods by rearranging the order. The two officers took it all in. I couldn’t move.
“How can we help you?” Amrita called, her hands slipping away from me.
“I’m Detective Adriana Piccioni, and this is Officer Steven Hirsch,” one of the officers stated, a short woman with her hair slicked back into a low bun, hands on her hips. “You all lived here together?” As Amrita and I joined the others in the living room again, passing out hot mugs, I watched Detective Piccioni’s eyes trace over our walls. They bounced from the collages to our horror movie list beside the TV. Her taller partner, a broad man with a buzzed head, remained silent at her left.
“It’s on-campus housing,” I said. “Finch lives in Tuck House, though. It’s another dorm building.”
“Finch?” The woman asked. Finch raised her hand, petulance written across her face.
“Jodie Finchard.”
The woman nodded. “Understood. So you’re Jodie. I assume the rest of you are Amrita Balakrishnan, Sarah Murphy-Choi, and Joanna Kozak?”
Her eyes flickered around the room, landing on each of us. We raised our hands in unison with her words until she seemed satisfied with who was who. Saz blew her nose noisily into a tissue Amrita produced for her.
“I’m very sorry for your loss. I regret that we have to be here under the circumstances, but with the unfortunate events of last night and the extensive damage to Rotham’s campus, I’m sure you understand why we need to speak to you. Your friend Caroline Aster lived here as well, correct?”
Finch scoffed at unfortunate while Saz nodded. “On the third floor, with Jo.”
This time, the man—Officer Hirsch—spoke up. His eyes were such a washed-out blue that they appeared nearly milky. I met them once and made it a point to never look in his direction again. “I’ve heard Rotham’s a tough institution,” he said. “Pretty competitive.”
“Of course,” Amrita answered.
“We work hard,” I added.
“And your friend? Was there a lot of pressure on her?”
“There was tremendous pressure on all of us,” Finch said, her tone sharp. “Painting seniors at Rotham have to compete for a Solo Show, and only one student gets it.”
The woman whistled. “Sounds intense. Was she struggling with that pressure?”
Saz swallowed. “Everyone was. Doesn’t matter now, though. The work’s all gone.”
The man hummed thoughtfully. “Sorry to hear that. I’m sure that’s a huge loss for your class.”
“It’s everything we made in our time at Rotham,” Finch said. “Anything worthwhile, at least. There won’t be a thesis. We’re done.”
Amrita gave her a look that begged her to shut the fuck up. Detective Piccioni glanced between them, a frown on her face. “Can you tell me exactly what happened last night?”
Amrita walked through our agreed-upon details. I sank deeper into the couch as she spoke. I thought about Caroline crouching over that effigy of Finch with her hands splitting the chest, grassy innards bursting free. The vicious intent on her face. Commitment to an end. Her sure grasp on that bloody rag, on the yet unburned copy of ANTHROPOMANCY . How would she have finished the ritual if I hadn’t followed? And how would she have gotten away with it? Because the question wasn’t if —Caroline would always get away with everything. The fire was the first time she’d ever been snared in a mess of our making without a neat exit waiting on the other end. Even now, I had a close, sinking feeling, the kind of thought that suggested maybe she’d meant for it to happen this way. That if she couldn’t be free of the violent haunt at our backs, she’d find another way out.
“Ms. Kozak?”
The woman detective was crouching before me. I wondered how many times she had called my name, what had made her think she needed to get down on my level. She had her elbows resting against the navy slacks stretching across her knees, thick brows arching down toward the bridge of her nose. I blinked back at her. It took me too long to realize that Amrita was pinching my thigh where the others couldn’t see, trying to call me back to myself.
“Can you corroborate that account? Ms. Aster was sleeping in the studio, and you hadn’t seen her alive since early yesterday afternoon?”
I pushed into the feeling of Amrita’s nails digging into my skin. “Yes, after critique. That was the last time I saw her. She wanted to stay late and start a few pieces over. They choose a Soloist next week. She wanted it to be her.”
The look Detective Piccioni gave me was closed off. Finally, she cleared her throat and got to her feet again. She gave the other officer a little wave, and he angled toward the front door. “Right. Well, if you don’t want that position, I can’t imagine why you’d put yourself through a school like this. Seems like a tough gig.”
“Like Jo said, we work hard,” Amrita finished.
“Right, right. I have to ask you all not to leave the campus. There are tapes to review, and details to understand about the extent of damage. It’s a tragedy, truly. I’ve never heard of anything like it.” The detective turned to go, then hesitated by the door. “As I said, Ms. Aster’s parents will be by to pick up her things. They are ... distraught. I recommend giving them space.”
Saz thanked them, and Finch saw them out. When she closed the door, we listened to them descend the stairs, their shoes crunching over ice, car doors slamming.
“Fuck,” Finch said, “I’d bet anything that they think we had something to do with it.”
“You know as well as the rest of us do that the Grainer cameras are props,” Amrita argued. “And even if they could have recorded something, the cameras on the top three floors are melted by now. I think they seemed perfectly reasonable, and we gave them no reason to doubt us. Just ... be cool.”
“Easy for you to say,” Saz said. “I’m going to fucking prison for fucking murder.”
“Don’t,” Amrita hissed, rounding on Saz. We all froze. The wild terror in her eyes was all-consuming. “Do not say shit like that. None of us are going to prison, and none of us are murderers. She was just as complicit in this disaster. That’s all it is, okay? I’m sorry. It’s an awful, tragic, miserable disaster. But we will have to carry that and move forward. Do you understand?”
We sat in collective silence. “Tell me you understand!” Amrita snapped again.
We mumbled our affirmative responses. She straightened. Fidgeted with the hem of her sweater. Looked at the closed front door and said, “Alright. Good.”
I ran my thumb over the cut on my left hand. It was the smooth, puckered pink of a heal. That reassuring closed line. I shut my eyes and felt the raised ridge of skin and said, “I think we sacrificed something big enough to close the ritual. I think it’s finally done.”
Finch turned and left, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the Manor’s teeth.