He realized that his possessions now consisted of a towel, pajamas, underwear, and three identical sets of a T-s.h.i.+rt, b.u.t.ton-down, pants, and one jacket.

On Monday, with everyone still fumbling around in complete confusion, they were forced to go back to cla.s.s. It was a mercifully short half-day schedule, compressed to allow for familiarizing and starting late, with cla.s.ses coming in half-hour sessions.

At ten o'clock, Paul, Sid, and Alex wandered until they found the right cla.s.s. The room was crammed full with desks, and they saw Minhi in a row at the back. As they took their seats, Alex understood. Every last cla.s.s had been shuffled and merged.

Literature was taught together by Sangster and Ms. Daughtry, LaLaurie's a.s.sistant headmistress and a lit expert to match Sangster. They didn't alternate sentences or anything; rather Sangster was to lecture on one topic and Daughtry on the other.

"Did you know we'd be in cla.s.s together?" asked Minhi. Next to her was Vienna, who Alex recognized as much by her faraway look as by the scarf she still wore.

Paul shook his head. "We don't know a b.l.o.o.d.y thing."

"That is totally true," whispered Alex. "It's insane. We got a speech yesterday telling us not to, I don't know, run around naked or something."

"I would recommend against it." Minhi nodded solemnly.

"I'm thinking it's not something guests would do," said Alex. "But there actually wasn't a list."

Vienna looked up and leaned over. "I will bet you by the time the week is out? You will have a list."

She speaks, thought Alex, and he thought instantly of Steven Merrill, who was also always silent, and now was-jeez-still in the hospital, he could only a.s.sume. He looked around and did not see Bill. For a moment it all came flooding back. And then Ms. Daughtry began to teach.

This wasn't a perfect setup; in lit, Sangster had been teaching Idylls of the King and Daughtry had been teaching William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The guests toed the line: Blake it was. Alex marveled at the idea that while he had been settling into the Kingdom of Cots and Otranto had been calling the ends of the earth to summon hundreds of uniforms, the instructors had been laboring into the night merging their syllabi.

"Those of you from the Glenarvon contingent," said Ms. Daughtry, "may not be familiar with Blake, and I'll spare you the week we just spent on his biography. But the Songs has a lot to say about us, as human beings, as thinkers, as students together. Mister Sangster!"

Sangster was seated behind her to the left, thumbing through the book, and looked up as if startled. She didn't look back at him, but continued, "Would you care to share with the cla.s.s something appropriate from Blake?"

Sangster nodded and rose, thumbing through a copy of the book. "I would choose . . . I would choose . . ."

"You do know the book?" she asked, smiling.

"It's funny," Sangster replied. "I think the message of this morning is 'The Divine Image.'"

Someone cleared his throat. All eyes turned to see Bill Merrill standing in the doorway.

Bill looked haggard-he was still muscular from countless hours at soccer practice and beating smaller students senseless, but his cheeks were hollow and his eyes were lined with mottled blue. Bill handed Sangster an official-looking note, probably from the office, and Sangster nodded. Alex made out, Like to take a seat? and Bill slowly made his way to an empty desk.

Vienna sat up with interest and waved at Bill as he sat. She leaned over, whispering about Steven. Bill gestured back with open hands, I'll tell you later.

Sangster said, "For those of you who want to send a card to Steven, I think you can give them to Bill. I understand some of the students are organizing a visit if any of you want to go."

Several people patted Bill on the shoulder. Alex was thinking about Steven once coldc.o.c.king Paul on the side of the head to distract Alex so Bill could punch him in the nose, and of the Glimmerhook landing on Steven's back.

Ms. Daughtry spoke, bringing the cla.s.s back to form. They went over Blake, but Alex felt befuddled by the obscene and forced normality of trying to have a cla.s.s when students were homeless and Steven was in the hospital. He kept dropping into the lecture and then zoning out until finally she said, "Before we wrap I need to catch you all up on the Pumpkin Show."

The what? The boys in cla.s.s were obviously lost as to the meaning of this, but the girls chattered sotto voce to one another. Ms. Daughtry continued, "This is a LaLaurie tradition, so those of you who are new get a chance to join us at our best-well, our best next to Christmas."

Minhi whispered to Sid, "You're going to love this."

"Starting this week, with available slots after school, students will be presenting original works-generally written, but if you choose you can sign up to sing, dance, display a collage; it doesn't matter. The theme is the autumn season."

"You mean like Halloween?" Sid asked, a little too excitedly. "Like, vampires and ghosts?"

Daughtry opened her hands. "Whatever suits. Vampires, ghosts, meandering stories about the decay of the fall; we get a fair amount of those. The theme is the season; the prize is the Plaque," she said almost wistfully. "Next to the library you'll find a case displaying the names of our winners going back to 1945. It's like a harbinger of success; every single winner has gone on to great things. Not that there's any pressure." Ms. Daughtry smiled. "Performances will be voted on by the attendees."

"Performances," Sid muttered, slumping a little. He clearly liked the idea of writing, but reading aloud sounded a bridge too far.

"Come on," said Alex. "You could do that." At least, Alex thought so. Sid seemed to spend every moment writing something or other, most of it descriptions of characters from his vampire games. Alex had never met anyone who carried around so much information on one subject-if it might be called a subject-in his head.

"We start reading on Tuesday, so get those stories written and those monologues practiced and get your names on the sign-up sheets," Daughtry concluded. And with that, cla.s.s was over.

As the cla.s.s filed out, Alex turned to Sid excitedly. "This is a great idea, man."

"I've never read a story aloud before," Sid said. "I've never even written that kind of story."

"You've written whole books on that vampire game," Paul said.

"Those are more like articles," Sid protested. "They're in a folder where you already know the game. This is . . . harder."

Alex watched Vienna go talk to Bill, who glared at Alex hatefully but then softened when he talked to her.

"Well, I do this every year," Minhi said. "I mean, I don't get anywhere, but you'll love it. Everyone reads from a big chair in the library, surrounded by candles. They move the chair for the singers and actors to perform."

"Oh my G.o.d, I don't have any of my articles and books," said Sid, thinking of the items Paul had mentioned. "All that stuff is gone." He looked ill suddenly, as though he'd forgotten.

"We'll go into town," Minhi said. "It'll be fun. We'll get some new stuff, maybe some books on how to write a story. Hey, I could use some actual instructions." She smiled encouragingly. "Huh?"

Sid nodded and Paul folded his arms. "That sounds perfect."

Minhi turned to Vienna, who was approaching as she moved away from Bill. "Vienna, you up for a trip to Secheron?"

"Anything to get out of here," she said.

They got up and neared the front of the cla.s.s, where Ms. Daughtry was erasing things on the chalkboard. A cloud of chalk dust rose and scattered, and Alex coughed. He felt a speck or two get into his eye. He squinted and rubbed at his eyelid.

"What is it?" Minhi asked.

"Ow-I got-" Alex doubled over, leaning on the desk. He could feel the specks swimming over his eyeball. His eye sang out with pain and he felt the plastic lens begin to wrinkle. "I got chalk in my contact."

"Does it hurt?" Paul asked. Alex held up a hand, both in agony and almost wanting to laugh.

"Jeez-" He reached his fingers toward his eye. He needed the contact out right away.

"Do you have any solution?" Vienna asked, already rooting through her bag.

"Do you?" Minhi asked her.

"Not here."

"I don't have any," Alex said. "I need to get some. Don't worry, gimme a second, I can use spit."

"Ew," Minhi said.

Alex winced as he started to pry open his eye, and then felt it shut in defiance. "Please, don't make me laugh."

"Good Lord," Vienna said, "come with me."

Still slightly hunched, Alex felt her take his sleeve and guide him out of the room. They walked down the hall and he heard the footsteps of the others behind him. It never ceased to amaze him how delicate the eye was, and how easily he could be rendered nearly powerless with a few specks of dust. It was the equivalent of bending someone's pinkie back-just a little bit of pressure and the subject is subdued. "Hang on, I can just take it out and hold it in my mouth."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I have solution in my room."

They reached a doorway on the floor level and Vienna stopped for a second, seeming to stare at the door as though she needed a key.

"He can't go up there," Minhi said behind them.

"Eh." Vienna scoffed. "You three wait here."

Up a short flight of stairs onto a second level, and suddenly Alex was in a different world, a hallway of wooden floors and throw rugs and warmly painted walls.

A girl in a robe was coming out of a bathroom and whispered, "Are you insane?" to Vienna, who rushed him to a door halfway down the hall.

Still blinking, Alex was barely able to take in the room. He made out two beds opposite each other. The two halves of the room were very different-one was done up in bright colors, and Alex made out blurred stacks of manga next to the bed. That must be Minhi's.

Vienna's half of the room reminded him in a blink of a madhouse for some reason, but he only had a moment to look before she led him to a vanity mirror and sink.

He washed his hands and pried his right eye open, pinching his thumb and forefinger against his eyeball. "Okay," he said. Next to him, Vienna was rooting through various bottles around the sink. "Argh!" Alex hissed as the contact swam away from his fingers and slipped clean under his eyelid.

He tried to pry his eye open once more. Through the pain he became aware that she was clearing her throat, leaning patiently against the sink. He pressed his face very close to the mirror, trying to see the thin edge of the contact against the red eyeball. "Here," Vienna said. She took him by the shoulders and turned him toward her. "Open your eye. Hold it open." He relented and did what she said.

"Turn your eye around," she said, and he was struck again by the cadence and throaty quality of her accent, Torn jor aiyy arond. "You know, all around. Now look down."

Her delicate thumb and forefinger, their colored nails somehow avoiding the tender flesh of his eyeball, came close and in one swift movement plucked the contact from his eye.

She smiled, holding out the contact, and placed it in the palm of his hand. Then she handed him the lens solution.

"Thank you," he said, holding the contact. His eye was red and he brought the contact up, his face very close to the mirror. He couldn't bear to put it back in. Not right away, anyway. "Gimme a second."

Vienna clicked her tongue. "How long have you been wearing contacts?"

"A couple of months," he said. "You?"

"About the same, but you seem to have a more complicated relations.h.i.+p with them."

Alex had to laugh, careful not to drop the contact, which was swimming in a small puddle of solution in the palm of his hand.

"They may not be correctly fitted," said Vienna.

"That or I'm just pathetic," he said ruefully. He looked at her, drawn once more to the scarf around her neck. The decor that had said "madhouse" to him caught his good eye in the mirror and he turned around, looking at the walls on her side.

What had looked at first like a padded wall was in fact a wall of white sheets of paper with pencil sketches on them. He couldn't make them out very well from across the room. "What is all that?"

"Those?" Vienna said, the way someone might say, this old thing? "Oh, they change out all the time. It's whatever I'm working on."

"For cla.s.s?" Alex asked. Now he took the contact in his fingers and leaned in close to the mirror. He placed the contact back in his eye. He braced for a little bit of pain, since the eye was still sore, but swirled his eye around and the contact stuck.

"Not all of them," she was saying.

After a moment Alex turned back and stepped closer to the wall over her bed. Indeed, they were pencil sketches, some of them clearly figure drawings for some art cla.s.s or another, a few still lifes. But an entire two columns of sheets were broken up into squares, panels, and he caught images of characters with big eyes and spiky hair. "This is manga," he said.

"They're Minhi's," Vienna said when he looked at her.

"She drew these?"

"No, she does the stories, the plots. I'm working on the art."

"You're doing a manga together?" He smiled, studying the characters. Now he could see the similarity-the pencil strokes in the subway stations and form of the hands of the characters did indeed look to be from the same creator as the more cla.s.sical images. "That's really seriously cool."

He blinked again and she came close, peering at his eye. "It's very red. Do you need to just take it out for the day?"

"I lost my gla.s.ses," Alex said. "And I really like to see." She was very close.

Someone cleared her throat and Alex looked at Minhi, who had come into the room. Minhi waved. "Get it all worked out?"

Alex nodded vigorously. "Oh, yeah, I'll live."

"Then you need to get out of here before we all get kicked out," Minhi said. "Come on, the coast is clear."

As they headed down the hall, Minhi and Vienna whispered inaudibly behind him. Alex couldn't make out any of it. As they emerged into the main hall, Paul accosted him.

"How was the forbidden zone?" Paul asked.

"Surprisingly manga-esque," Alex answered.

As Alex walked ahead he heard Paul say to Sid, "See, mate? I told you he wears them for the girls."

Chapter 6.

La Librairie Fahey lay on a side street of the village square in Secheron, and though it was not vast like the book superstores Alex knew in the States, it seemed bigger on the inside than from the outside. Alex and Sid meandered through its three narrow stories looking for reference material, up and down wooden stairs that were themselves lined with shelves. On the second floor the staircase opened out into a small cafe, where a number of visitors sipped espresso and pored over their books. As they moved up to the third floor, Alex paused, tilting a head for Sid's benefit. "Birks," he whispered.

"What?"