J O R DA N DAV I D S O N Novel | Colorado Academy, Denver, CO
Skin, Bone, Hands, and Teeth Excerpt One:
Maine flares around us in an impressionist painting of fall forests, the reds, yellows, and oranges of aspen trees muted by the rain lashing our car window. Helené takes the weather in stride; I lean my head against the glass, trying to let the subtle knocking lure me to a semblance of sleep. It doesn’t work. A particularly fierce curve smashes the side of my forehead with enough force to begin the creation of what will be a particularly nasty colored bruise. Helené laughs. In both hands, she shuffles a deck of cards. “Love, I told you ignoring the universe’s order to rejoin the world of the living only leads to your pain and suffering. Do you want ice for your forehead before we start our tournament?” I agree to the ice and accept my hand. Even as the dealer, she goes first—she always does—laying down a run before I can sort through my cards. In the dour lighting in the back of her parents’ limousine, Helené still looks beautiful. If time had dragged us back to an era before science, I would have thought that Helené was a goddess in disguise; even though I know with a certainty that here magic isn’t real, I wonder what combination of circumstance and luck made Helené the way she is: topaz and obsidian, vibrant and blazing. I’d spent the summer traveling between Helené’s estates and my family in Costa Rica. When I tired of my brothers’ ceaseless tirades against common sense, I reunited with Helené in Paris, and we wandered together for a while, taking in the shores of Italy and Greece, drinking on river cruises in Budapest, relaxing over tapas and paella in Helené’s house in Tossa Del Mar after retreating back to Spain. The summer months have all been spent now; the frosts and withering of fall have dragged us back to school where we will join with the rest of our group—the rest of our family. Most of them chose to spend their summers with their own parents or at school. “Your turn, Valentina.” When Helené plays cards, she does it with second nature ease, often managing to beat me while badgering me with conversation. The two strategies most likely go hand in hand. She smiles through orange lipstick and blinding white teeth. “Though luck isn’t in your favor.” “Most likely.” My hand doesn’t allow me to do much more than a simple swap: drawing a card and discarding another a moment later. “Hmm,” Helené muses after setting down another hand of three. She’s only fingering two cards now—the next move has the possibility to rake me over the coals. The car takes another turn, sending Helené scrambling for the iced tea that begins to roll off the small table set up between our seats. She rolls down the window shade to give us a better look at the outside. A flurry of maple leaves sweeps by us down the banks of a shallow lake with its surface riddled with rings of rain. In front of us winds the long dirt road that every Redlake student takes to and from the campus, although no other cars line it now, meaning Helené and I are either early, late, or... students didn’t want to re-enroll. My hands hurt from clutching the cards too hard. “And the end of last year? What did you think of it?” Helené asks. “About the same as the end of every other year. Another conglomeration of useless testing, false smiles, and ongoing goodbyes.” “And where do you think people will have spent their summers?” “Summer houses. Other countries—traveling.” I know where Helené is leading the conversation, and I do my best to divert it—say anything else—but still answer her. 102
“Or graveyards.” Helené throws the last words out with an air of carelessness that a lengthy sip of her tea betrays. With a noncommittal sweep of my hand, I set down the only card I can play, a queen of hearts. For Helene’s deck, her grandmother painted portraits on each individual card. The Queen stares up at us with dark eyes ringed in red makeup. Like mascara burned into her skin. Helené draws and sets down her last card, leaving me to tally up my points, which end up in negative figures. While I record the year’s first points in the notebook Helené and I share to track our rummy scores, Helené finishes off her first iced tea and reaches into the fridge below her seat for another, to which she adds a spoonful of the honey she bought from a farm we visited in Kiev. Through the honey covered stir stick in her mouth she drawls, “Your score has to be bad luck. On a cosmic scale.” “Only to the superstitious.” The garnets woven into her braids tinkle merrily with Helené’s brief chortle. “I should count how many times you and William get into this argument. You’ve already done your job of establishing yourself as the skeptic and forcing me to be the peacemaker.” I allow myself a smile, although I know it fails to crinkle the lines around my eyes or make my face more welcoming. The car has just begun the final series of turns twisting around the bases of various lakes, the last stretch of road until we reach Redlake. Helené has already popped the tab on a can of ginger ale, pressing a sleeve of saltines with it into my clammy hand, before she speaks again. “Of course, if someone was even more superstitious than me, they’d have fled for the hills. But not those hills.” She refers to the set of low hills that are home to both Redlake and a few summer houses for Redlake’s board of trustees and their children. Helené tries to press me into commenting with pointed blinks of her gold liner covered lids. When I don’t she carries on, “Not when they found Eve’s corpse in her room in one of the vacation chalets.” Finally, we arrive at the topic that’s clearly been dancing on Helené’s tongue. The brutal murder of Eve Winters, a classmate of ours. Rumors say she was burned from the inside out. In her own room. With the door locked. I don’t know how much of it is true. I don’t think I want to know. “You look awful.” Helené rests her elbows on the folding table. I stare at her silhouette across from me, the glint in her eyes screaming a dare to whoever killed that poor girl: Come get me. You’ll see what you find. “I don’t like thinking about death.” The seatbelt chafes a line along my throat. Did the killer hold Eve by her throat? Did they break the skin? Was she tied up in ropes? Home remedies only wash away the superficial rolls of nausea. “Really? A writing major who doesn’t like thinking about death? Shocking.” Helené’s lips twitch for a moment, then her face stills. But her fingers drum against anything they can reach: the window, the barrier between us and the driver, the cards. The intensity in her eyes focuses for a moment as the car whips past a fork in the road where one dirt prong splits into another. A weather worn sign instructs us that if we want unparalleled luxury and privacy, all we have to do is call the number listed below, where we’ll be given a cheerful real estate agent trying to set us up with the most eligible properties stranded in Maine’s wilderness.
