Free The Suburban Strange by Nathan Kotecki Page A

mother helped her paint the walls a warm gray color, not too light and not too dark. They went out and found a set of charcoal bedding, and when she had remade the bed, Celia looked around, a little shocked. She was pleased because the room felt chic, in part just because it looked new and different. It also looked like a place in which the new person she thought she was becoming would feel at home. At the same time, the smell of paint lingered. Every sound seemed to echo now, and the empty walls stared back at her expectantly, as if to ask, Who are you? That night she sat looking around her Spartan new room, wondering what to put in it. She vowed she would choose carefully; anything that came in really had to deserve to be there. She compared her surroundings to the photograph of her room in its prior incarnation, tucked into the frame of the mirror over her dresser. Outside her window the moon was about half full. Celia thought that was appropriate.
     
     
    BY THE SECOND WEEK OF SCHOOL Celia had settled into the rhythms of Suburban. Her classes were challenging but manageable, and she went into each day anticipating the times she would spend with various members of the Rosary. Now and then something would pull her anxiety back up—being called on to speak in class, finding herself in the midst of a group of cheerleaders in the hall—but there was no doubt things were going much better than they had last year.
    At lunchtime that Wednesday, Celia rounded the corner into the short hallway that led past the teachers’ lounge and into one end of the cafeteria, on her way to meet the Rosary. Her path was blocked by a group of students in a huddle, studying something on the floor by the wall. A pair of legs extended into the middle of the hall, and as Celia drew near she glimpsed a girl lying there, her head and shoulders slumped against the base of the wall. She looked exhausted.
    Another girl stood up from where she had been squatting next to the victim. “She said it’s never happened before,” this girl told the others.
    “That doesn’t mean she’s not epileptic,” another girl chimed in. “My dad’s a doctor. Epilepsy can start at any time.”
    “It’s such a shame. Tomorrow’s her birthday.”
    Then the nurse arrived and shooed the onlookers away to get to the girl on the floor.
    Celia wondered again if Suburban was cursed. None of these things by themselves—the bee sting, the girl passing out, the epileptic seizure—would be more than a tragic interruption to a day. But when she considered them together, it was hard not to connect them, even if there was no way the health problems of three different girls could be related.
    Celia moved on. As she entered the cafeteria she crossed paths with Skip, the jock she seemed to see everywhere. Today he was wearing an orange and gray striped polo. Their eyes met for a moment, and Celia had to admit his face was kind. But she couldn’t ignore a pattern: Skip had been close by each time these bad things had happened.

5. STRANGEWAYS, HERE WE COME
    S UBURBAN HIGH SCHOOL WAS surrounded by a grove of maples, and gingko trees flanked its walls. Celia began to track the leaves’ progress from emerald to golden orange as the autumn unfolded. She had stopped at a favorite window in the front stairwell to look over a cluster of them on Friday morning when a bus pulled up on the other side of the golden trees. The kids streamed out, but several of them waited by the bus door. Then Mariette got off, and Celia was dismayed to witness the taunting the other kids heaped on her lab partner. Mariette hunched her shoulders over the books in her arms and hurried past them. In the slanted morning sun, her shadow lunged across the pavement, and it flickered like a weak candle flame, as though Mariette were turning invisible briefly. Celia blinked and Mariette passed into the building below her. When Celia looked up at the trees again, some of the lowest leaves had turned from gold to