Courtney Summers - Defy the Dark

“Ties? I thought we were going to dinner, not Buckingham Palace.”

“You can take the boy out of the country,” she muttered, giving him a pitying look. “I’ll get something of my dad’s.”

Cado changed clothes while she was gone, noting the real art on the walls, the violin from Austria gleaming in an open case on her desk, the blue silk covering her bed and pillows, and the fresh yellow daylilies ironically scenting the air. He tried his best not to smudge anything.

Patricia returned and gave him her dad’s jacket and tie, which he struggled into while she dumped the contents of a red purse into a metal one that reminded him of an anorexic version of his mom’s toaster.

Cado examined himself in Patricia’s full-length mirror. The jacket fit tightly on his arms; if he flexed, he would burst the seams like the Incredible Hulk.

“I look like a gorilla at the opera.”

“You do not! Don’t be so down on yourself. You’re handsome and smart”—Patricia jabbed him with the metal purse after each point—“and a soon-to-be world-famous flutist.”

“I guess. You smeared lipstick on your purse.”

“That’s not lipstick,” she said, and then applied some to her mouth, as if he had reminded her. “That’s blood. And what do you mean, ‘you guess’?”

“Are you bleeding?” He grabbed her hand and she wound up with lipstick on her chin.

“That’s not my blood, silly.” She swatted him away and fixed her face while he examined the purse. “It’s not even fresh; it just looks like it is.”

And it did, dripping across one side of the metal like an open wound but not staining his hands.

“A couple years ago, there was a plague of blood grackles,” Patricia explained through lips that matched the stain on her purse. “They looked just like regular grackles, except blood grackles liked to eat people instead of worms. Fortunately they couldn’t abide metal, so for a while, it was all the thing to wear metal accessories as protection. Mama bought me that purse for my birthday, and wouldn’t you know that very same night, I had to bash a couple of blood grackles out of the air when they dive-bombed me. On my birthday of all days!”

She finished doing her makeup and fluffed out the curly afro puff resting cloudlike atop her head, not even interested in his reaction to her story.

No one back home would have believed her, but Cado did. Patricia wasn’t the type to bullshit anyone or mince words. “Are they still around?” he asked. “Those blood grackles?”

“They got wiped out last year. All the metal was too much for them.” She nodded at the purse in his hands. “That stain is all that’s left, as far as I know.” Patricia unknotted the mess he’d made of her father’s tie and redid it. “Some of the faculty from the Shepherd School are gonna be at the retreat.”

Patricia’s ability to flit nimbly from the bizarre to the mundane floored him yet again. “The Shepherd School at Rice? Why do you care? I thought you wanted to go to Oberlin?”

“Rice is closer. And cheaper.” She smoothed her hand over his now-perfect tie. “Cheap enough even for gorillas who play the flute.”

“It’d be better for my family if I went to A&M and studied farming or—”

“The hell with your family! Just man up and make a decision, Cado, and don’t hide behind your family.”

Definitely didn’t mince words.

“That’s why I came early,” Cado told her. “To man up.”

The car horn startled them both. Patricia peeped through the window blinds; the dying sunlight clawed her face.

“It’s my folks.” She took her purse from him and tucked it under her arm. “This conversation isn’t over.”

Cado didn’t like when she got upset with him, but he didn’t mind it—Patricia was cute when she got her back up. He grabbed her hand and held it all the way down the stairs. “Do you have any other magic weapons like that purse?”

“There’s no such thing as magic. Otherwise I’d send a wise old elf to tell you to apply to Rice so that we can finally be together. Not a day here or two weeks there, but really together. For as long as we want.”

“I might not get in. It’s not a sure thing.”

“You were on From the Top , for God’s sake. You know how many classical musicians would kill to be on that show? Rice would slit its wrists to have you enroll.”

“But it’s so . . . high art. You know? Tuxedos and tea sandwiches.” His hand sweated all over hers just thinking about it. “That’s your world, not mine.”

She didn’t give Cado a pitying look this time; she looked into him, there on the bottom step, and she liked what she saw. “You’re awesome enough to make it in any world.”

And because it was Patricia who’d said it, he believed her.

Cado wanted to stick a fork in his eye, but there were four to choose from, and the Markhams would sneer if he chose wrong.

“A salad fork?” they’d say. “In the eye? Everyone knows salad forks go in the ear.”

At least Patricia’s folks were devoted. Not just proud of their daughter but pleased with her. Cado, on the other hand, they seemed to find thoroughly and mouth-twistingly unpleasant.

“So,” said Mr. Markham heavily, as Cado toyed with the overabundance of heirloom cutlery. “Why the flute? Were the ballet classes all filled that day?”

“Don’t be tiresome, Daddy.” Patricia rested her foot atop Cado’s and sipped from her wineglass. Red wine that looked like blood and tasted like Mardi Gras.

“I don’t mind,” Cado told her. “I get it worse at home. You’d be surprised at the numerous and creative ways my dad finds to impugn my manhood.”

His vocabulary impressed the Markhams against their will. Those soul-numbing SAT drills had been good for something at least.

“Have you been to Portero before?” Mrs. Markham asked, her polite tone at odds with her stony expression.

“No, ma’am.”

Mrs. Markham touched her daughter’s hand. “Be sure to show him the sights, darling: the Old Mission, Fountain Square. The historic district is always nice.” She gave Cado a tight smile. “You can look at the pretty houses.”

Cado sipped from his own wine, resisting the urge to stick his pinkie out. “That sounds like fun, ma’am.”

“Does it?” Mr. Markham said. “Would you also like to go antiquing with my grandmother this Saturday?”

“Maybe. Is your granny as cute as Patricia?”

Patricia laughed and clinked her glass against Cado’s. “Excellent riposte, sir. But no one is as cute as me.”

Cado was saved from Mr. Markham’s retort by the arrival of their waiter. While Mr. Markham ordered for everyone, Patricia and Cado began texting each other.

Patricia: You’re the cute one.

Cado: Not for much longer. Your dad hates my guts.

Patricia: Sure does.

Cado: Why? Cuz I haz white skin?

Patricia: No. Cuz you haz white penis.

“I wish the two of you would stop that,” Mrs. Markham said as the table shook with the force of their laughter. “That’s incredibly impolite.”

“It is not,” said Patricia, even as she put her phone away. “We’re multitasking.” She kissed Mrs. Markham’s cheek. “Don’t be so twentieth century, Mama.”

Cado considered taking some of the bread that had been left with them—and that had been architecturally arranged with more thought than the Sydney Opera House—but lost his nerve at the last minute.

“Which college are you going to?” Mr. Markham asked him.

“Um . . .”

Patricia said, “He’s trying to decide between Rice and A&M.”

“It just depends on how things work out,” Cado added when Mr. Markham kept staring at him.