Chapter Four
The Christophers
Armed with a black polo neck and a rainbow of pens, Jemma’s list of essay titles was removed and the lesser of sixteen evils was chosen. A homage to Donne waited on her desk, in the form of a feint-lined blank page, which sung out its emptiness every time she entered the room with lukewarm cups of tea. The dishes piled up on her window seat as the days passed, hands cracking tension from joints and pens used to scribble her name on the underside of her desk.
The page remained clean and tidy, a shining beacon when the sun caught it. The following Monday, she gave up, threw the page out.
She sought refuge in the lower story, firing on the T.V. and lodging herself on the sofa once again in a tired daze. Sleep came and went, but didn’t hover. The slightest thing lifted her from it. In her day dreams, she saw cookies and muffins.
For no apparent reason at all, she stood and walked to the kitchen, a foot inside the room when she realized she wanted to eat. Cookies and muffins. Didn’t have any. Usually did without. Appetite and hunger were two very different things, and she ate now to live. She stayed both off with coffee. She didn’t want coffee now; she’d forgotten to buy any, and she didn’t want to leave Beck’s house. The curtains in the rooms she would visit were closed again, and the doors locked. Knives and forks were placed in around the house. She was in, and staying for the time being.
Kere had a tepid relationship with cooking; she put on her chef’s hat only to keep her hands busy, but most of the time, she harmed herself. She’d been told once to only cook in an emergency, so that she could make whatever pale in comparison. She rarely followed the recipes, as she usually got excited with the deed of creation. Ironically, she was terrible with improvisation, so her exploits didn’t succeed. She’d made an assortment of snickerdoodle shortbread once by heart, and it was so far her best result, but only because no one had died yet. She decided to make something.
The weather had held up, and a week of beautiful heat was behind them. She’d darkened, even behind the curtains. The wind had picked up, but only to dry the sweat. The garden had flourished, vegetables and yellow roses rising to the clouds over rattan pergola to touch the sky. Kere had the windows open behind the blinds, with the showers set to cool.
Firing as much cocoa as she could it could hold into a small duty saucepan, she detonated the heat, began stirring. The smell arose, strong, and she worryingly added milk, which began to boil too quickly. Then sugar, which frizzled and spat. See? Next, she hammered together butter, brown sugar, eggs and a small nation of vanilla extract until they were screaming and the mixing bowl became chipped, then tipped a bag of chocolate chips. Then, the melted chocolate was added, and the mixture was done. Glaring, she enthusiastically added her love. Lethal and sloppy, she poured teaspoon-shaped globs without thinking to use a teaspoon onto a dry tray - grease was for yo momma! - and rammed it into the oven, sliding the dial to a random number.
She set the egg timer for ten minutes, then waited. The worst part about cooking. Or anything, in general. She began to clean.
When the cookies were done, she ate them with milk. They were disgusting. She tasted her love, and it was painful. Rinsed it out with salt and water.
She went back to the essay and drew out another blank page, picking up a purple fountain pen with the intention of creating a masterpiece. All she got was her name, and she misspelled it. She realized she’d forgotten the title of the paper.
Discouraged, she tried to dance it out, but no.
She stomped downstairs and threw herself on the sofa again, plumping the scatter cushions into a stage. A corner of a lime green bolster to chew on, she screamed when a Sex and the City just disappeared into a break, and she began to goad the T.V. through the channels. The pewter clock knocked on noon, and the sound of a vehicle outside drew her to the bright window. She recoiled. This was it; death. You just knew these things. Intruders. The mob in a silver Citroën. She could feel it. All she needed to do was wait for them to bear the door down. Continued recoiling. Got bored, back hurt, went to investigate. The car glared from the front street, the driver hidden behind a stiff map, the windows down. Kere didn’t bother getting up; she’d sat at the window for the past few days, waiting for them, her finger directed toward the fields beyond, an uncomfortable expression on her face. She braced her fingers on the wooden rim of the couch, but didn’t move. She gazed out the window, but it took the driver only a second to locate the Gap and be off again. Ah. Awkward. Her death arrived several times a day, and left shortly after.
Turning back to the T.V., she watched as the circles looked back at her.
Phone rang; she paused the segment, right on the cumshot of an aerial photograph. Reaching across the sofa for the cordless she’d found in the closet, she knew she’d avoided them for too long.
“Hello?”
“Don’t screw me, Jin!” Wrong number. “Kere?” No. Collect call. “Kere? Kere? My niece. Are the doors locked?” Her uncle. Worried. ‘Bout the doors. Saw the news. Knew what the town were thinking.
“I’ll check,” faded in a tapping of the table beside her, opened, closed the cabinet door. “They are now. How is business?”
“Jin just screwed me. Are you eating at all?”
“Is there cookies in your room-?”
“No. I’ll want them when I come back. Okay, running into a meeting now, buh-bye, bye, bye, bye...” Click. Stretched as hard as she could without leaving the sofa, couldn’t reach the phone cradle. Tossed it as near she could.
She was tired of avoiding the news now, felt too heavy to change it, so let the broadcast continue. A week of reruns had been a lot harder than it seemed. The world could have broken in half and she wouldn’t have known. The headline made her roil. Very cliché, very bicycles and moons. Onscreen, familiar squiggles of landscape paled in. The camera sight itself was distorted, blocked by violent sunlight, but it focused when left for a second. A view from the helicopter rendered a whole cornfield visible, showing the four corners of a square three acres. In one corner, red cattle grazed on the fringes of a very golden region – the show crops - mingled with spotted sheep and a horse, all unused to the noise floating overhead. They bucked when spectators came near.
The Gap road was mobbed, no other way to put it, and not just by cars and people. Cars and people could be stopped. Terrain vehicles, caravans, tents, vans with quotes from Star Wars demanded room along the inch curb, stopping the traffic flow and rendering the road completely useless. Seven bypasses turned to ash. If she cared at all, she’d be furious at the intrusion, as some of the town people already were; televised interviews had taken place in the supermarket. Expletives from the elderly. Gnash was officially cut-off. The shadows of people who’d bypassed police tape moved through downed corn, tripping and lifting each other over the floored crop, carrying handy cams or professional shoulder lenses, being all excited. They expanded out to all four circles, sending triangles of darkness out from them. The sight made her legs hurt with pins and needles. She didn’t get déjà vu.
The camera changed and morphed into the face of a man, her closest neighbour. Tan, unique, tweed, Sean Walken was the kind of man who’d never looked his age, but always seemed twenty years older. A man of sixty-two, a benevolently gentle man, who stuck to himself and his ill wife. Mute was on, but subtitles told her everything; the north accent too strong. The channel was Atlantic; America would hear it when their sun rose. Walken looked extremely uncomfortable on camera, scratching, frowning, avoiding the eyes of the audience at home, but he would be paid well. He spoke with rigid practice, as if prompted from the corner, of his anxiety ov over losing his corn to the circles.
After an hour of that, she crawled upstairs and fell into the worst sleep she’d ever had.
The next morning bulged into the room in another haze of sluggish light, tired and full of nothing. Kere arose, refusing to lose more sun, and showered quickly, stuffing suds in her face to sneeze herself awake. She walked around the house for an hour in a fluffy flannel coat, while she had cold tea, setting the glass against the kitchen sill to see how pretty it looked. Watching the forest, she moved to an upstairs window. Changed into jeans and printed t-shirt, left hair damp down her back, allowing feet to air-dry in sandals. Body wanted to see its reflection, and she gave herself a tired once-over. She was dressed like a girl who loved the daytime, and she felt fraudulent.
Another night under the eye of the gun had left her refined and without jitter, so she avoided the call of another cup and went straight for the fruit, feeling slightly better holding an apple. Gulping it down with a corner of buttered croissant, she knew she needed to go to school. The thought made her angry that she’d even reflected on it, but she knew with a sinking heart that it was an inevitably. If only to make an appearance, and learn shit, and to avoid a call another of Beck’s calls.
She fired on a jacket, found a beanie, entirely irrelevant but her hair looked unholy, and double-checked that all doors were locked. Triple-checked.
She knew why the priest had called, why her name would be on the tip of everybody’s lips when they turned the T.V. on this morning. Elevated status among the teens would keep whispers to the jealous few. There would be no reaction, no lowering, no I-told-ya-so, now buy me some lunch. There would be circles on the news all week. She made it to the parking lot before the first bell, and trudged in without alerting the girls; they’d run into her at lunch. She only received a few glances when she fired her bag down – everyone was too tired to notice her seat occupied - but she didn’t even need to say “know your place” to send them away. Their silent, troubled auras made her mad and nervous at the same time, she worried her lip, stopping when it made her look weak. Classes from then crawled on like each hour was the Sir/Madame’s last, and the English Mrs. deliberately strayed from Donne to piss her off. She took notes with a pink pen, only realizing after a few hours that it was too bright to read, but continued, writing out the lyrics of songs when she got bored.
She met Agnes in the library at the first break, both seeking a corner end table to eat at, and the older girl gave her a wide girth as she piled the table with books. Agnes took English as a second language, so she was never burdened with helping Kere. She and her family were refugees from a native-speaking state. Both were revered as the only youngin’s in Gnash with a different accent. The girls learned more from Agnes than they did in the classroom, as the other girl’s temper made her languages cross all the time.
Agnes’s phone kept buzzing, and she turned bright red and turned it off. Told her it was a persistent boy. It very well may have been. Kere knew personally that Agnes had the biggest telescope in town. Someone probably wanted it to hook up to a camera. The Gap circles were never mentioned during the fifteen minutes. Her friends would speak of it in her presence, but never to her. It was all they could think about.
However, snippets got to her every now and then as the day eroded on, mostly from people who didn’t know of her unspoken association with the field, or from people who didn’t look over their shoulders often enough. Through languages, she lay on her hand, feeling it slack and fall asleep, while her ears beckoned the talk from the conversations around her. Most were spoken with an amused edge; it was a practical joke, a hoax, retaliated for Walken’s refusal to allow planning permission in his lands. It was the largest field in the area, perfect for the sheer size of the project. The reason it was so close to her house was due to chance. She said nothing, felt hollow. Worried her lip.
In Math, both hands asleep, using Magdalene’s aviators to blind a pretty boy she’d kissed once, she heard the first UFO story; they lived in a small town, but in a practical community. Crop circles without aliens?! You’re drunk, get out. Religion and science were mandatory in Grammar, showing the scheme of things in the peninsula. No one won when no one was right. If you couldn’t see it, smell it, taste it, touch it or hear it, it wasn’t fucking there. Yet if you believed enough in it, who’s to say it wasn’t? A town of relentless contradiction. No one won. Yet, like good little practical people, the circles in the crops had already been accepted as a joke, the culprit already pinned on a kid from the outskirts of Agnes’s street. The town was too boring for this kind of shit. It was a conspiracy to get rid of Kere. She’d be killed if no one fessed up soon.
If they couldn’t believe her story, spoken in plain English, they couldn’t understand four perfect circles.
At lunch, she met Mary Kennedy by the back fountain and the two shared a watery salad. The need for another latté burned the back of her throat, and she suggested they attend to her at once. She threw herself into the girly conversations then, intent to be a part of the group, hoping they didn’t look at her when she turned away. Imaginations could be wicked. She’d prefer to talk about her future; they knew the score there. Before going home after the day was done, she grabbed Jemma and forced her notes out of her handbag, wincing when the other girl told her with satisfaction that she’d already completed her own paper. Two thousand words plus. The world was nefarious place; Jemma usually copied Kere’s work the day before the cut-off date, and took a thesaurus to the whole thing.
She had a week and two days, and the seconds fell around her fast.
On the way home, she met a car with an England registration. Followed her through the Grey. At the crossroads, they met one from France, and they both slid into the Gap. After dinner, the sweat caked between her fingers drove her upstairs to the shower again. Letting the water run to a soothing freeze, she stayed for a good hour, avoided the room and the empty notebook there. The glass barely fogged, and she shaved and lathered her tan lines, her hair reverted to its natural auburn, visible through her roots when she let them grow out. She thought about UFO’s, stopped. The water slowed, the tank near empty, and she knew it was time to get out. Reluctantly exiting the tepid air, she dried and wrapped herself in a towel, engaged in taking as long as possible to dry.
Lining bars of toner along the bedroom, she emptied one in her hand. Caught off guard when she saw the black form of another car in the drive. Realized how very naked she was. It had parked. Snuggled up with the fence, only the drift of a young moon gave it away. Licence plate proclaimed youth. She waited for the driver to notice his mistake on his map, reverse away from her. The lights were off and the car was empty. A yellow blazer thrown carefully over the steering wheel. A second later, the doorbell rang.
Peered over the bottom of window, but the door was hidden beneath the eaves of the porch. It had gotten dark earlier; she hadn’t realized until the porch lights snapped on. Someone beneath jumped, the click of a heel. She waited until the doorbell rang again before she dropped the bottle. Swore, pictured a mob at the door. She wasn’t excited this time. She groaned, wrapping a bluesy cardigan over the towel and reaching for the gun to stuff in her chest. She padded downstairs in elephant slippers, checking herself in the stairway mirror, whipped open the door, face lighting up when the person outside was not the murderers she’d been expecting.
However, her smile fell, crippled, when she recognized who it was.
There was a beat of silence – that got lonely so was followed by several more beats of silence – where all there was was eye contact. The night was surprisingly pleasant, full of a strange chill. The other girl looked happy to see a warm house. Kere didn’t let her in, didn’t know why she was here, took stock of how she had changed. She’d heard rumours. Not much, a little thinner, better car. No tear stains, no ugliness. The driver opened her mouth to speak, presumably to greet- Kere quickly interrupted, held up a stiff finger, and the driver went silent immediately. Breathed as if laboured and mouthed a “one minute,” before slamming the door and stomping back upstairs. Fucked. Her day was well and truly fucked. To accentuate this, she balled the waiting empty sheet of paper and kicked it up, up, then out the window. Plopped on the porch for some bird to choke on.
She waited by the staircase for one minute, listening, before she attacked the closet, lingering, willing the driver to find her manner unruly and leave. Spread the word. The car didn’t budge.
She found a doily skirt and stamped her feet into Docs, towelling her hair and arms, and taking her time. She gave herself a wicked pat on the back, and let the gun sit in its usual spot, unneeded. She disliked the person downstairs immensely, but they’d give her no trouble fists and furniture couldn’t fend against. She’d leave fingerprints. Lasting ones. Wishing she had time for make-up, she gave up.
She moved downstairs slowly, saw the silhouette had persisted, opened the door, standing behind it as invitation. The woman entered with a cautious air to her, knowing she was far from welcome, and she waited in the foyer until Kere had the door closed and locked again. She checked the peephole for any more unwanted guests, and flipped the porch lights off. The moon showed a glorious car and an empty street. With a wave of her hand, she invited the girl to follow her to the lounge. The guest lagged behind slightly, probably wondering where Beck was, pointed ears cocked to his haunt in the kitchen, but she sat down easily once she knew the two were alone. Kere layered herself on the adjoining settee, not wanting to be too close.
“Tea?” She spoke through her incisors, which had come bared, and she prayed the girl accepted, and she was able to leave for a bit.
“No, sorry. I’m fine.” Kere. She didn’t say her name.
They sat, practically an ocean between them for almost two whole minutes in the clearest, most absolute silence known to man, brought by the T.V. staying off and the hate that had just entered the room. Kere tapered her eyes, set them to sit on glare, waiting on a girl she’d disliked for too long to wrestle with the silence, and fail. The other girl didn’t know what to say.
Rachel Christopher was keenly beautiful, and she knew it. Nobody who wore a chain of engagement rings could ignore one’s own potential. She sat with bare legs strewn to the side at a perfect angle to her upper body, hands clasped daintily on curved thighs. Both sets of nails were done a bone grey, and reflected the chandelier. She was hardly done up, and she’d left a purple ribbon tied around her brow to flutter in the fan. She had the wide shoulders and blue eyes of her family, but the brown hair of her father. Every time Kere looked at her, she saw her ex boyfriend looking back.
All too aware of her own harmful appearance, she subtly plumped her cheeks and stroked threads of towel off her knees, esteem taking a knock as Rachel mercilessly pouted, awkwardly. It was the reaction that all the teenagers of the town received when in the vicinity with a Christopher; instant parent-hatred.
Kere folded her arms and stared out the window, wishing she’d stayed in the shower longer.
“So,” Rachel finally dared, trying to smile but just looking horrendously surprised. “Bet you weren’t expecting me.” Her voice was deep, surprising for such a dainty poise, and showed how much the older girl liked to sing.
Kere waited, silently voicing her distress, and nodded, digging under her own black fingernails. “It’s been too long, Rachel. How’ve you been?” Lies. She didn’t want to know.
“I should’ve called, before. Made sure you were here-”
“No need.” Kere indicated the occupied house.
“But no one I knew had your number.”
Yikes and ouch.
Kere frowned. “I’m sure you had it on a memory card, at some point...”
Rachel looked perturbed, interpreting the sentiment, and slid a “The two of you both lived,” almost under her breath.
Kere nodded, but suddenly started shaking her head quickly. She was mad that Rachel was whispering in her house. “I don’t want to talk about it. Why are you here?” She was being rude, had the right to.
The other girl glanced at her shoes, a pair of beautiful leopard heels, which Rachel moved to sit on. Kere watched them disappear with a green tinge to her vision.
“We haven’t found Nicole. You know about Nicole, right?”
“Yeah.” She’d seen her a week ago, in J’Adore. The angry edge left her voice, but she refused to let it slip all together. She raised her eyebrows to let her continue.
“Well...” Rachel slid off, and started fiddling with her exposed toes, massaging herself as her shoulders began to shake. She was going to cry. Good God, she was going to cry. The girl shut herself down like a light.
“How’s your mother doing?”
Sayer’s sister tried to smile to herself, and managed to pull it off this time. Her teeth were clean and bright, a little clear around the tips. “She can’t take it anymore, Kere. Fuck, she can’t... We’re all a bit fucked anyway. She’s pulled up the funeral and all to tomorrow. That’s why I’m here.” This – this moment - was the most they’d ever talked.
“Still no idea where Nicole is?”
She shook her head. “No offence, but if we had, I wouldn’t be near here.” She smiled, sadly, but the distaste was evident. Kere left a bad taste with her.
Kere didn’t smile, didn’t nod. Kere was the girl Sayer had asked Rachel to buy jewellery for, and Rachel was the older sister who’d anticipated the girls he’d meet in college. Don’t get comfortable. They’d never gotten along. Sayer’s mother had never settled in the country, still liked weed, an agoraphobic woman lacking enough hardship to call it experience, so Rachel had taken up the mothering of the younger kids. Their father was a contract angler, and spent weeks away from them all every season. He preferred the quiet of his boat. Nicole had undone his mind when she’d disappeared. He couldn’t eat solids anymore. Sayer had turned out the best out of the younger three, as he and Michaela were aged close enough to play together and be friends as kids, but Russell had turned rogue at fifteen. Rachel had left for school then. Sayer resented Russel. Sayer was still a bastard.
Younger than Russell, was little vivid Nicole. Nissy after her grandmother, she was their father’s favourite. Four foot and not even twelve, she’d been the hardest to warm to Kere, mainly because, without heels, Kere was just a thimble taller than her; she’d assumed Sayer had begun seeing a girl in the class up from her. People at school convinced her that her hair was too light, that she was slowly turning grey and would go bald, and only then did she welcome the brother’s girlfriend, who had been bright with hair dye that day. She had asked if her own hair would stay as Kere’s had done, and she’d assured her blindly. They’d begun an easy banter, and Rachel had watched with a brutish look in her eye.
Nicole had been missing for six weeks. Presumed dead. Guaranteed dead. The last time Kere had seen her in the flesh was the last time she’d seen Sayer, waiting outside the house to drive him to a beach party. The last time Kere had actually seen her had been the previous week, when she’d gone to the bathroom to cry over the girl’s big brother. Nicole Christopher inhabited every cranny in town now, along with other little girls, taped above numbers of people to call if someone saw them. There were rewards, big ones.
“They’re burying an empty casket?” She really didn’t want to start talking about Nicole; if Rachel started crying, she would happily kick her out.
The other girl nodded and set her face in a sharp angle, gnawing on her lip.
“Is everyone okay with that?”
Rachel guessed who she really was talking about. “Sayer isn’t happy at all, and Mum just keeps bringing up Maria and the baby to shush him. You heard about that, right?” Didn’t wait for Kere to speak. “The rest of us just want it to be over. More or less. It’s pretty unbearable right now. Dad is....” Undone. Unstable.
Neighbours had organized her father’s funeral. The Nations, the Smarts, the McCorrs from downstairs. “Get some sleep. We’ll take care of it.” She’d thought they couldn’t stomach the idea of a murderer pie-fingering the funeral. She’d slept sound that night, however. Though she hated Rachel for hating her, she had no choice but to identify. To remember. No more talk of this; Kere was glad she had no one left to lose.
“Sayer sent me to invite you to the service. Mum wants you there too.”
Kere listened, but she was gone. She was at her father’s funeral, wearing a black dress with her mother’s gloves, head high. She’d dared someone to know what she’d done. It had rained that day, the best of sign. Her father was at peace, happy to go, so they all said. Forced to go, she’d said, robbed. Rude, they’d said. How could you leave something on a boat-tailed bullet and be happy? It seemed so silly. She wondered if Nicole was dead, and hoped she’d been happy to go. She had been such a nice girl.
“Why didn’t he come ask me himself?”
“Because I’m lying. Mum is the only one who wants you there. But, it would be proper if you came, don’t you think. You did all that stuff with her. Then you should leave after the funeral.” She spoke the last sentence hurried, as if the idea of Kere returning to their house after for tea and cake was impossible.
Kere shrugged. “I’ll try to come.” She’d go, arrive late and leave early.
Rachel murmured something about thanks, then let herself out. Kere waited until her car was well away before she went for another shower, suddenly feeling rigid, toughened, and confused. Then, she went to sleep and had no dreams.
One circle, ninety feet in diameter. Three at each side, ranging from medium to tiny. One arced sloped up, one arced sloped down. Simple, supreme. Researchers looked at it in disappointment; they’d seen more exquisite, more complex, more complete circles before. Aeroplanes changed flight plans around, stopping people from looking at it. The crop was unbroken, that was the way. Bent, some just curved, none twisted, a survey revealed that no stalk was given a different treatment than the rest.