“What did you wager?” he asked, snatching a new mask. “Nothing of mine, I hope.”
Kaleb responded with a humorless laugh, leading Alex to believe that probably, yes, he’d risked something that belonged to his brother. “Doesn’t matter. Who cares about the Darwins now? This is a party! And now we really have something to celebrate!” Kaleb swung an arm around Alex and pulled her towards the commotion on Lazuli Street. His features were so similar to Chase’s that Alex could barely stand to look at him.
He led the group, with Gabe and Jonas flanking his sides, just as they’d done as children entering the playground. Alex and Chase had always hung back together, and she was painfully aware of his absence now. She wanted to know why they were avoiding the topic. “Kaleb?”
But her voice dissolved in the noisy ruckus. Kaleb took the hands of random girls, swinging them around, dipping them low, and kissing them on the cheeks. He traded masks and accepted a cup from a vendor, thrusting it at Alex.
“What is it?” she asked, scrunching her nose. Yet another question no one could hear. It drowned in the sea of faceless color.
Gabe mimicked drinking and urged her with a thumbs-up. Alex swirled the glass and a mist rose, carrying with it the scent of popsicles, chlorine, and sun-kissed skin. She sipped the weightless vapor, and it swaddled her in comfort. It was liquid summer.
Kaleb and Gabe joined in the merriment, singing loudly and climbing the podiums to high-five the party-goers. They lifted Alex on their shoulders and made the disarray fun because they took charge of the chaos and made it their own. Jonas lagged, grumbling about how embarrassing his brothers were. It didn’t take long for him to disappear, a typical move once the shadows of his brothers were cast over him, so Alex was surprised when Gabe felt bothered enough to stop the group.
While they waited for Gabe to locate Jonas, Alex tried to ask about Chase again. But Kaleb, who found it hard to remain sedentary for any long period of time, darted away and climbed a balcony to join a band singing “Only the Good Die Young.”
Alex took a seat on a table of gold masks and watched the show.
Two women approached. “They must be newburies,” one of them remarked with a grandmotherly tone of reprimand.
“Music isn’t what it used to be,” the other woman agreed, examining the masks. “And in my day, costumes were much more elaborate. Now it’s all just plastic and feathers.”
“Remember the year everyone impersonated the French royals?”
The other woman chuckled. “Josepha and Johanna didn’t like that too much, did they?”
“Not when the faux revolution began.”
Even behind their masks, misleadingly, these ladies didn’t seem to look a day over twenty, and yet they sounded like finicky old women.
“Why did you want to come over here with the newburies?” the first woman asked.
“I was curious.”
“Why?”
“Change is in the air. Don’t you feel it?”
“Not really.”
“Then you haven’t been paying much attention. The trees have been talking, warning us that change is coming. And Maori told me that all of his sunflowers have been following the sun east to west. It’s a sign to keep an eye on our youth.”
“You spend too much time gossiping.”
“It isn’t just gossip! What about the incidents?”
“Paranoia,” the woman scoffed. “We’ve been around long enough. We’ve seen it and heard it all before.”
“I tell you, something foul is brewing around here, and I’m not talking about the stench wafting from Duvall’s chimney.”
The other spirit sighed loudly in disapproval.
“I just want to catch a peek at some of the new ones. I hear there are siblings.”
“They’re masked, or haven’t you noticed the theme of the party?”
“You of all people know that it takes more than a mask to hide a face.”
“Hey!”
Alex jumped when Gabe appeared beside her. She glanced at the other side of the table, but the two women disappeared behind a curtain. “Did you find Jonas?”
“Yeah. In there.” Gabe twirled a scepter in his hand before using it to point to the store beneath the balcony, where Kaleb held court. Jonas appeared in the crowd and stood with his hands on his hips, staring coldly at the line of noisy celebrants. “Always a scowl on his face,” Gabe said.
“Actually, I thought he seemed different this afternoon.”
“Did he? Hmm. Maybe that’s the mask he was wearing today. Who really knows what’s going on underneath that façade?”
“He seems pretty happy to me.”
“Ha! Have you ever known Jonas to be happy?”
It was a legitimate argument. And now, no, Jonas didn’t seem happy at all. “You’re worried about him,” she noted.
“I always worry about him. He’s so quick tempered. So offended by us. I’m trying to fix that.”
What else was new? Jonas had always been the resentful one. He always tried to make the most noise while complaining that he was never heard. Maybe she’d imagined his cheerfulness earlier.
Kaleb, on the other hand, had confiscated a set of drum sticks and was putting on a show, grinning widely in Alex’s direction. The girls directly in front of Alex practically fell over themselves. They huddled together, whispering excitedly, until one of them peeked back over her shoulder. The girl must have said something to her friends, because one by one, they each turned to sneak a peek at Alex and Gabe.
“Some things don’t change,” Alex said. The Lasalles seemed to be just as regal here as they had been in Parrish. But one member of the royal court was still missing. She peeked sideways at Gabe. “Or maybe they do. What happened to Chase?”
“I know you’re probably anxious to know about him, but I don’t know much about the situation.” Gabe rubbed his forehead. “Kaleb was with Chase this morning, but he’s kept quiet about it all day. I don’t think he understood Chase’s actions until a few minutes ago. Our baby brother hasn’t been himself since we arrived here. He’s wanted nothing to do with us or this place. He’s done everything he can to get himself kicked out. Sweet charming little Chase, the juvenile delinquent. After the last time, I thought we’d gotten through to him. He promised he wouldn’t do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“Break the rules. Newburies can’t leave the campus unsupervised.”
“Why not?”
“This isn’t summer camp, Alex.”
“It isn’t prison, either.”
Gabe shook his head. “Newburies don’t know anything about the world out there anymore. It would be like sending a nine-year-old loose in the world. How long do you think he would last?”
“Okay. Then why would Chase want to leave?” she asked.
“Until today,” Gabe said with a sigh, “the only thing Chase has wanted since he died was not here.”
9
When Chase appeared to Liv Frank after his death, she felt relieved. She’d hoped he would show up on her doorstep sooner rather than later. But she’d been told that the young spirits, the ones who still stunk of fresh earth, rarely got out much. All spirits wanted something or they wouldn’t have stuck around. Many of the ones she spoke with didn’t have a clue what they were looking for, but Chase would surely be searching for Alex. She took one look at his heartbroken face, and she knew he’d already found what was left of her.
As a child, Liv Frank thought the people she saw were invisible friends. It was entertaining at first. She thought she was special, because the other kids with imaginary friends only had one, and she had dozens! The invisible people were nice to her. They didn’t call her fat like the kids at school. Sometimes they would even give her answers to a test or help her win a board game. But eventually, their presence became a nuisance. They never left her alone. They would show up in her bedroom or in the bathroom. They would scare her. Liv began to ignore the faces that others couldn’t see, the ones that belonged to the dead. After a while, the faces turned into mere shadows. They became irrelevant, and for the most part she led a normal life.