Silent symmetry the embo.., p.1
Silent Symmetry (The Embodied trilogy), page 1
Silent Symmetry
a fantasy-mystery love story by
JB Dutton
Book 1 of the EMBODIED trilogy
Contents
Chapter 0
Memory #1: There were three in the bed...
Chapter 1
Dream #8: I’m floating in space.
Chapter 2
Dream #2: I’m being watched...
Chapter 3
Dream #10: I discover a sparkling river...
Chapter 4
Dream #23: I’m in a crowd of people....
Chapter 5
Dream #16: I’m super happy...
Chapter 6
Dream #19: I’m in homeroom. It’s morning.
Chapter 7
Dream #20: (while in Cilic’s limo)
Chapter 8
Dream #42: I’m at a circus show.
Chapter 9
Memory #7: I’m on Dad’s shoulders.
Chapter 10
Dream #51:The kitchen cupboard is wide open.
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Chapter 0
Memory #1: There were three in the bed, and the little one said, “Move over! Move over!” So they all moved over and one fell out...
The second I walked through the door, I knew something was wrong. Not yet old enough to read, I could tell by the way Mom propped herself against the kitchen wall with the phone dangling loosely in her hand. My stomach turned inside-out.
“Mrs. Marriner?” said the tinny voice in the phone. “Are you still there?”
Mom put the receiver slowly back to her ear and groaned, “Uh-huh.” Her eyes were unfocused, her lips trembling.
“Is there someone who can look after your daughter? You need to come downtown and identify the body.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mom’s eyes came back to life and flitted down to look at me with a mixture of sadness, pity and fear. She clenched her lips together and hung up the phone. I walked toward her, wary, wondering. Mom crouched down and pulled me close. “I love you, pumpkin,” she whispered.
“I love you too, Mommy,” I answered, reassured by the familiar exchange.
“Listen, I have to go run an errand. I... I’ll drop you off at Maddie’s, okay?”
Normally the idea of a playdate would have made me jump for joy. But I knew something was wrong.
“Go pick out a sweater.”
“Okay.” And off I ran to my room, still shielded from the new reality.
* * * * *
That evening, Mom ordered pizza and we sat next to each other at the kitchen table as she explained to me that daddy wouldn’t be coming home any more. I can remember crying, but not really understanding. Mom cried too, even though she did her best to stay strong. She told me a little story about daddy driving to work and a big truck pushing his car off the bridge. Daddy flew and he was still flying. It was just an accident and daddy wishes he could come home, but he can’t, and he still loves me bigger than the universe and sends me kisses and hugs every morning and every night.
The Wisconsin winter rain pounded on the kitchen window. We finished the pizza in silence. Something was wrong and there was nothing either of us could do to put it right.
Chapter 1
Dream #8: I’m floating in space. But space is white and all the stars are black.
Twelve years later and it was raining again. This time it was the New York variety, the kind that washes away bits of garbage and gum, the kind that forms rivers that swirl beside the busy sidewalks while pedestrians wait to cross.
I glanced at the dashboard clock inside the small Korean sedan. Horns blared. “Don’t worry, Mom – I’m super early,” I reassured her, sensing the tension behind her wire-rimmed glasses, a tightness in her forehead underneath the brown curls now flecked with a few stray, white hairs.
“I think this is it, pumpkin,” she announced, squinting through the wipers at a gray building just ahead.
“Maybe today’s the day we put pumpkin out to pasture, Mom,” I smiled. “New city. New beginning...”
Mom opened her mouth to speak, somehow surprised at the request, then nodded earnestly. “You’re right. Of course.”
“Thanks. How about just ‘Kari’? Or ‘honey’, in a pinch.”
“Sure thing, pum... honey.”
I shook my head and smiled wider. She was doing her best. She’d always done her best with me. For me. When the headhunter had called the lab two months before and told her about the job in Manhattan, she’d said no – it’s too far, it’s not what we know. But when he’d mentioned the salary and benefits, plus the paid tuition at one of the city’s best schools, she’d started to envision a future where I could run instead of walk. Maybe even soar if I put my mind to it. And now here we were – first day of school for me, and first day as ToT Chief Software Engineer for Mom.
She swerved over to the curb and pulled up abruptly. “I can’t park here, so just jump out.”
I undid my seatbelt, leaned across and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Later! Good luck!”
I heard a fading “Text me when you’re done... Kari,” as I opened the door to get out.
“Sure!” I yelled back above the din of the splashing traffic. I slammed the car door with one hand, the other holding my laptop backpack over my head as a makeshift umbrella, in a vain attempt to keep my long, unruly hair dry.
I hopped over puddles that lay between me and the school gate, then walked through it to the gothic-style entrance where the words carved into the stone above the doors – Chelsea Preparatory School – forced one corner of my mouth up into an ironic smirk. Preparatory? After losing my dad so young, you could say I’m prepared for anything.
Other bedraggled students bustled past me, hurrying to get under cover. I took my time, soaking up my new surroundings. Chelsea Prep had been around for seventy-five years and clearly liked to create the impression that it was a couple centuries older. Faux-gothic gargoyles on the gutters: check. Oak panels with gold script listing the team captains back to the 1930s: check. Echoey stone slabs as a floor: check. But I wasn’t buying into any of it.
Sure, an Ivy League scholarship would be great, but the reason I pushed Mom to accept the job in New York was her bed. Or, to put it bluntly, the lack of a man in it. I knew how hard she had worked to keep her career going and maintain a decent lifestyle after Dad died, but did she really have to sacrifice any prospect of romance? Maybe there were no eligible bachelors in the tri-state area that fit Mom’s idea of a life partner? She’d only gone on a handful of dates over the last decade. Over-fishing may be a global ecological disaster-waiting-to-happen, but I was positive that there were plenty more fish in the Sea of Manhattan. I mean, Mom’s Sex and the City DVD collection couldn’t have been all fiction, could it?
I strolled down the hallways, musing about maybe a divorced staff member who I could engineer to bump into Mom at a PTA meeting. No, wait – aim higher – a vice-principal who, like Mom, had concentrated on his career and now in his late-thirties was off the romance radar. He would be kind and educated, but not a snob and – oh! There it was: Room 8A, as per the email. My new homeroom.
I entered and time slowed to a crawl.
Then it jumped back twelve years to that fateful Saturday afternoon the cops phoned Mom with the news about Dad. Because I had the exact same feeling again. The second I walked through the door, I knew something was wrong.
There were only two people in the room: a tall, slim guy my own age, and an older gentleman wearing a black suit and black dress shirt. So far, nothing too weird: student and teacher, right? But they were shaking hands. Not in the typical way, but with both hands at once, staring straight into each other’s eyes as they stood in front of the teacher’s desk. They held eye-contact with each other for several seconds, then both turned their heads slowly toward me before letting go of their hands.
It was beyond creepy. It was other-worldly.
The man walked past me without making a sound, keeping the same blank expression, closing the door as he exited.
“This is the right classroom, isn’t it?” I asked the boy. Stupid question – how would he know?
“Yes,” he answered. The word was spoken ever so softly, but was as clear as a bell in a silent church, as though the sound was coming from inside my own head.
“I... I...” I was literally speechless. He was looking at me blankly, just like the man, but there was something fascinating about his face. Not classically handsome, with lips too full for a boy and a forehead too wide beneath straight dark hair, evenly trimmed just above his shoulders. What was it about him that made me feel so strange and yet so attracted? He was dressed simply enough in a black long-sleeved tee and black jeans, but there was something I couldn’t decipher. Was it the chocolate eyes? His relaxed hands by his slender hips? There was something about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I must have been frowning.
“Don’t frown,” he said, in the same soft tone.
“Sorry – I... I’m Kari,” I stammered. “And you are?”
“Noon.”
“Like, as in, midday?” I ventured, totally not expecting the answer to be yes.
“Yes,” he said, and I felt kinda silly.
“So you were born right on the stroke of 12 p.m. to parents with little imagination?”
I groaned inside. I was making
“Crap, that sounded bad.” I apologized.
He smiled for the first time. And I felt a wave of eff-knows-what sweep over me.
The door behind me opened and three girls pushed past me as though I wasn’t there, chatting and taking off their raincoats. Noon continued staring at me with his soft-yet-piercing gaze. I felt other people swarm past me but I was mesmerized. The spell was finally broken with a bang when the teacher slammed his briefcase down on the desk and started talking to me. Even then, it took him two attempts to break through my bubble.
“You must be Kari,” he said as he noisily unpacked his books. “Unless you aren’t Kari,” he continued, puzzled.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, snapping out of my reverie. “Sorry, I was – ”
“Don’t worry,” he interrupted, “I’m Mr. Jefferson. Welcome to Chelsea Prep. Take a seat at the back there, one desk in from the window.” He motioned with his head, and I finally felt like my legs were no longer rooted to the spot.
The classroom quickly filled with students. The usual mix of shy and outgoing, stupid and smart, cool and geeky. Nothing too foreign, nothing I couldn’t get used to fast. The only anomaly was Noon, who said very little and moved even less. The guy next to me was cute, although kind of flustered. I soon found out why: his homework assignment was missing and he didn’t want to say what had happened.
“You’ll need to come up with something more creative than ‘my dog ate my homework’,” announced Mr. Jefferson, condescendingly.
“You try living in a daycare,” was the boy’s sullen response.
“What happened, Cruz?” sighed the teacher.
“A little girl got a hold of it and flushed it down the toilet,” he muttered, staring down at his desk. The other kids burst out laughing.
“Yo, it ain’t funny!” shouted Cruz, turning red with embarrassment. Noon, who up until now had been an almost-invisible presence, suddenly spoke. The laughter died down abruptly.
“I admire Cruz for helping out at home with no father around.”
“Das it. Thanks, bro,” acknowledged Cruz with a sideways glance in Noon’s direction.
During the whole exchange, Noon had continued to stare straight ahead. There were whispers between the other students. Noon was obviously as disturbing a presence for the others as he was for me.
“Okay, okay, take out your algebra textbooks,” said Mr. Jefferson. The whispering subsided. “Cruz, can you re-do it tonight?”
“Sure.”
“Alright. And maybe keep your assignments out of the reach of toddlers in future.”
As Cruz nodded, he caught my eye. And there was something in his face that spoke of barely-suppressed anger mixed with incredible sadness. I wondered what his story was. Did he lose his father in an accident, like me? Why was he at this school? He didn’t seem to fit in any more than Noon did, but for different reasons. You could tell that most of the other kids in the classroom had parents with money. I mean, of course they did – there was no way Mom could have paid for tuition on her own salary – but Cruz appeared to be lacking the others’ air of entitlement. Okay, I’ll just say it: he looked and acted like a poor kid. Threadbare tee-shirt, jeans faded from overuse (rather than to look hip), crooked buzz cut, no-name sneakers.
But at the same time, there was something honest about Cruz, a vibe that I can’t say I felt from the other kids in the class. I guess I must have been staring at him. He was seated between me and Noon, who, once again, slowly turned his head to face me. I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks and quickly looked down at my textbook. Weird, weird, weird...
* * * * *
The rest of the day flew by, and as I walked out the gates and back into the Manhattan hubbub, my brain was buzzing with new surroundings, new information and new faces. I texted Mom that I was heading straight home. She said she felt like going out for supper, and I smiled at the thought of exploring the local eateries.
The walk back to my new home was a swift twenty minutes, made even swifter by Facebooking my Wisconsin friends. I sent a few LOLs, smileys, OMGs and WTFs back in their direction, then turned the corner onto West 23rd Street. The Warrington building loomed into view. An entire city block, thirty floors high, built almost a century ago and housing, according to my estimate, about 13,500 people. Okay, so I’m a bit of a geek – I blame Mom – but the first time I saw the building (which was the day we moved in, only a week beforehand) I couldn’t help performing the calculation in my head: thirty floors, approximately a hundred and fifty apartments per floor, an average of three people per apartment, for a total of 13,500.
We apparently had one of the smaller units, but it was bigger than either of the two houses I’d ever lived in – a mini-maze with storage closets and garbage chutes around every corner. I’d fallen in love with my room instantly. It had a view of the enormous, leafy inner courtyard, a walk-in closet, and a nook where I imagined myself curling up with a good book and my cell-phone on rainy afternoons like this one.
Mom had visited the apartment when she came for her job interview. It turned out she was a shoe-in. The headhunter eventually admitted that the human resources people at ToT hadn’t even bothered to call any of the other candidates. They were so sure that she would accept the position that they had even rented the apartment in advance. Thinking back, knowing what I know now, perhaps we should have wondered why it was all so easy.
As I crossed the street, a tiny voice in my head said, Look to the right! I must have seen them in my peripheral vision: two women standing under the awning outside one of The Warrington’s many entrances. They were facing each other, holding hands in the exact same way Noon and the man in the black suit were doing when I’d entered the classroom that morning. I squinted in their direction. Like Noon and the man, the women weren’t talking. They weren’t even moving. Just staring straight into each other’s eyes. I reached the sidewalk and hesitated. Should I get a closer look? Should I just go home? It was probably some kind of New York body language that I wasn’t used to, like air-kissing or hailing a cab. But deep down inside I knew that there was more to it. Half a minute had gone by and they still hadn’t moved a muscle. So I headed toward them. But I was disappointed when they broke the double-handshake only a couple of seconds later.
One of the women entered the building, the other started to walk in my direction. I could hardly stop and turn back now, so I continued, trying not to make it too obvious that I was checking her out. As she approached me, I realized that she was incredibly beautiful. Her short, neat black hair and astonishingly perfect features culminated in two dark eyes that shone like polished jet above her pristine white pants suit. She strode confidently forward, eyes fixed on some imaginary distant horizon like a runway model. I was transfixed. As I drew level with her, she seemed to suddenly become aware of my presence and, without breaking stride, turned her head slowly to face me. It was the same movement I had seen from Noon and the older man. A shudder rippled right down to my bones and I quickly lowered my eyes to the sidewalk.
I stopped under the awning and realized that I wasn’t even breathing any more. I turned around, half expecting the woman in white to still be looking at me, but she just kept walking. I exhaled and looked at the grand double doors that the other woman had entered. This entrance to the building was located at 222, 9th Avenue and there was a discreet brass plaque attached to one of the carved stone pillars that read: Temple of Truth – Head Office #2222.
I stopped breathing again.
This was the organization also known as the ToT, Mom’s new employers. I had seen their logo on an email she printed out – an unmistakable symbol consisting of the two T’s joined at the top with the small, perfectly circular ‘o’ housed in the space under them like a temple with columns protecting something precious. Or like two arms reaching out...
* * * * *
While I waited for Mom to get home, my mind raced. There had to be a logical, normal explanation, right? Something that didn’t rely on a huge coincidence or some kind of conspiracy theory. I sat in my nook with Flash purring on my lap. He was good for calming me down. He somehow helped me think more clearly. He was also the cutest cat ever. I scratched the white patch on his black belly that inspired his name. He stretched and purred even louder.
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