Sydney was as good a guide to Marblehead High School as any I could've hoped for, equal parts knowledgeable and unobtrusive, capably shuttling me between classes while somehow making it seem like she wasn't babysitting me. Of course we both knew exactly what she was doing, but at least she was gracious enough not to let on about it.
The first two class periods were punctuated by the obligatory stares and introductions of being the new kid in a too-small school. I'd been through this whole ritual enough times that it should've been old hat, but a few of the eyes watching me seemed unduly hostile or inquisitive — maybe both. Study hall came as a mercy after the stuttering mess I made of myself in English Lit, which left me slinking back into my seat with burning cheeks after the demanded initiation. At least during that second period people only stole glances at me from my peripheral vision, and I buried my nose deeply enough in a borrowed copy of Cat's Cradle that I could pretend not to notice.
Sydney was waiting outside the study hall room — a borrowed mathematics class — like an auburn-haired psychopomp, and her hazel eyes sparkled behind her heavy glasses frames. "Ready for some lunch?"
I parted my lips, on the verge of asking Already? when my stomach audibly snarled. It didn't feel late enough in the day to warrant it, but I checked my phone, surprised to discover that more than three hours had passed since classes started.
My redheaded companion giggled kindly. "C'mon, let's get you fed before whatever you're smuggling in there busts out and kills us all!"
The cafeteria was as dingy as the rest of the building, lit by sallow fluorescent lights that seemed to be on the verge of giving up — and I was almost so put off by the way the place looked that I didn't notice the delicious smell wafting from the steamy kitchen. A daily blackboard declared in simple letters that the strange concoction filling the chrome bins was "Egg Roll in a Bowl," and both my self-appointed escort and the wonderful aroma assured me that the food was more than palatable.
"So what's with the sketchiness of this place?" I asked Sydney after we'd picked out a table near the windows. The day had turned cold and foggy, and the strange peaked roofs of the town shone sterling against the slate sea. The wan light made the stained, pockmarked ceiling tiles look positively sickly, as though the school had been left to rot from its guts outward. The juxtaposition with the delicious food was jarring.
"For such a small town, things here are...complex," Sydney said after a moment.
I wasn't sure if her slow, deliberate tone was due to reluctance or something more, but decided to probe a little anyway. "Oh?"
Sydney's hazel eyes narrowed at me. "How much do you know about Marblehead?"
"I know it's in Maine."
She giggled a little, probably assuming I was joking, and I shrugged, smiling awkwardly. It was basically true; beyond being able to find the town on a map, I hadn't picked up anything in the last eighteen or so hours that gave me any sense of the town's history.
"Fair enough," Sydney answered after another moment, as her laughter died. She pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose, and as she pursed her lips, her pale brow furrowed in thought. "So, there's basically two big groups of people in town: the people who're descended from the town's original settlers, and everyone else who came here later on."
"You mean, like, that whole thing about flatlanders?" I asked. Though we'd never lived closer to Maine than western New Hampshire, Mom had complained loudly and often enough about Mainers' insular nature that I wasn't surprised.
"Well...sort of," Sydney admitted. "See, Marblehead just kinda did its own thing for about two hundred years, and it wasn't until a hundred years after that that the Industrial Revolution brought the railroad through town."
It was enough to make me stop eating. "Wait...Marblehead's four hundred years old?"
Sydney's auburn hair gleamed under the foggy light as she nodded. "Settled in December of 1620."
"And no one went in or out for three centuries?" I could hear how much the note of anxiety in my voice sounded like I was accusing her of something, but it was instinctive self-interest and dread. Just how tightly woven was my family tree?
"No, nothing like that," Sydney laughed, shaking her head as she caught my drift. "Like, people weren't banging their cousins too often or anything — a lot of times people would move here from the outside if they married someone from her. I just meant there weren't huge hordes of people moving in and out."
"Oh, okay," I mumbled, scorchingly red-cheeked with embarrassment. 1620... Something about that year seemed impossible, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Sydney only smiled a little and shook her head, brushing off my weird behavior with hardly a thought. "Right now everyone's all pissed about these warehouses down by the waterfront — it's super confusing, but it's just the kind of thing that just happens around here. A lot of the descendants of the secondcomers — the people who arrived during the 1900s and later — always think they're being given a raw treatment, blah blah."
The nape of my neck prickled and my stomach clenched as it occurred to me that I had no idea what Sydney was getting at. "Your point being...?"
I was surprised as a blush filled her freckled porcelain cheeks. "Just wasn't sure if you knew what you were getting yourself into in moving here. Ethan said he didn't think your grandmother had told you anything."
I frowned. Why should it matter to me?
Then I realized: the house at the top of the cliffs, the strange, deferential way Ethan had spoken to Adaline. Mom had always made it sound like my grandmother was such a dominating figure; it made sense that the gruff, silver-haired woman was part of all this.
Sydney correctly interpreted my confused scowl. "She's been head of the selectboard on and off since the sixties, so some people think she runs the place."
My cantankerous grandmother, a local government leader? It seemed impossible — and yet, in other ways it made perfect sense. Small New England towns always seemed to have some kind of familial vine coiling through their generations; sometimes it was a good thing, and other times it wasn't. I had no idea which kind Adaline might be.
"And as far as the fleet goes — well, that's just a whole new set of problems," Sydney added. It took her a moment to remember that I had no clue what she was talking about, but then she blinked, and went on: "They're these sea gypsies, for lack of a better explanation. A whole crew of them came in a couple weeks ago, and your grandmother gave them permission to stay for a year, and some of the fishermen aren't happy about that."
"Because they're scared of the new people taking all the fish?"
Sydney shrugged lopsidedly. "That and the fact that she's the harbormaster, so they say she's abusing her power. That's kind of the bigger deal at the moment."
The cold lump in my gut coalesced all over again. That information, in itself, was probably the best indication of the kind of person my grandmother was. No wonder other kids were shooting me dirty looks. "Yikes."
"Yeah, it's not great." Sydney took another bite of her lunch and chewed pensively, staring out at the fog-shrouded village. "The fishermen say the fleet are running drugs or something, and using the warehouses to store 'em, because they're condemned, but the police have never found anything. So it's all problems, no solutions."
It had seemed so random, Sydney telling me all this, but now I was starting to put it all together. "Ethan put you up to telling me all this, didn't he?"
Sydney wrinkled her nose a little as she grinned. "He's such a weirdo sometimes, but he really does mean well. Besides, I guess there's no easy way of being like, 'Hey, our families used to run a company together for a couple hundred years.'"
My throat seized as I choked on my own breath. "Wh-What?"
"Oh." My new companion smiled again, sheepishly now. "Sorry, thought I'd mentioned that part already. Yeah, the Marblehead Trading Company — it was responsible for making most of this town what it is today."
I forced a weak smile to try to cover the thoughts that were flashing through my head like lightning. It was no mistake that Ethan's family and my grandmother lived next door, then — and for some strange reason, I fervently hoped that the partnership between our families hundreds of years ago was strictly business.
The school bell cut through my thoughts like iron, startling me so hard that I dropped my fork and nearly splattered myself with egg roll innards. Sydney was quick with the napkins; even from our few brief run-ins, she seemed to know me pretty well already.
The fiery-haired girl scowled down at my schedule through her heavy-rimmed glasses. "Social studies next, and that's in one of the upstairs wings. We'd better book it, or you're gonna be late!"
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NEXT TIME: Mel's first day at Marblehead High School passes in a blur, culminating with another encounter with the strange, silver-haired Keiko during Graphic Design class. What's the eerie connection between the foreign girl and the Maine harbor? Read on to find out!