The Tenth Girl Read online

  Well, there’s another drawback, Tío Adolfo had clarified, clearing his throat, but you’ll think it silly. Vaccaro School was thought to be haunted.

  It was built on land seized from the territorial Zapuche tribe by De Vaccaro ancestors in the nineteenth century. He explained at length, with the wariness befitting an academic speaking about the unsubstantiated and vaguely paranormal, that the Zapuche enacted bloody rituals every time their land fell under threat. It was said that a Zapuche shaman cursed European farmers who had cleared a Zapuche forest to create farmland in the 1800s. Some of the farmers went mad shortly thereafter, shrieking that ravenous ghosts were sucking their skulls dry, before gruesome deaths. The farmland was abandoned. Even though few Zapuche remained in the area, none of the teachers Tío Adolfo knew would set foot on Zapuche land, much less Vaccaro School, because it was rumored that the last crop of Vaccaro teachers floated away in rough-hewn coffins some sixty years ago, the victims of what was likely another savage Zapuche curse. Were any of this true, he’d added, the curses shouldn’t touch you because of your Indigenous blood.

  I found this argument dubious, seeing as I had never learned specifics about my father’s tribal roots beyond how they shaded my skin. Regardless, the rumors of these supposed ghosts and their mystical mumbo jumbo didn’t matter to me. A haunted house sounded whimsical and sweet after witnessing the government’s loaded threats and the raw violence on both sides—the world wasn’t a child’s game. The stories were surely propaganda to subjugate the Zapuche, anyway, so they would not reclaim their land.

  My isolation in the Patagonian outback couldn’t come soon enough. In the last few weeks before going to Vaccaro School, I left my godmother’s apartment, claiming I had a safe place to stay. I meant to stay with Tío Adolfo, but when I visited the university to find him, they informed me he was no longer employed there. I sat on the school steps, considering my vanishing options, until a nervous clerk pulled me into a quiet office to whisper into my ear that after giving another impassioned speech condemning terrorism on the right and the left, my dear Tío Adolfo—the Angel of Peace—simply hadn’t returned to work.

  Wishing to protect my godmother, I slept in a Catholic homeless shelter run by angels (until I felt I was imposing, taking the bed of someone needier with older, weaker flesh and bone), and in an old gallery of shops, my head pressed up against glass separating me from luxury shoes and bags—glossy leather bits and bobs that cost as much as my godmother’s rent. In the mornings, I was woken up by a security guard who toed me with his orthopedic shoe before telling me to beat it.

  I convinced myself during those nights that Vaccaro School would be more than a place to hide—on the surface, it might be your typical finishing school for rich girls, teaching classes on crossing their legs the right way and understanding the rules of polo and the like. Bizarre classes for the bizarre rich, unlike anything I’d ever known. But I told myself it would be the first place in my life where I would excel. And I would earn the right to root myself someplace good and wholesome by following the rules, working hard, and possessing the very, very, very best of attitudes.

  * * *

  Dripping. Dripping on my cheek, coupled with the stench of tobacco and sweat. It’s arguably the least pleasant way to be thrown from a reverie excluding actual pain, in a moment of extreme thirst and dishevelment. I groan and clap a hand over the slime, my mouth dry as cotton. The dripping smells less of sweat and more of … I look skyward, expecting a bird, and see the face of a man—not much more than a boy—with his lips pursed. Dumbfounded, I stumble to my leaden feet. He peeks from a window above me, smirking, wiping his mouth, before dipping back into the building.

  I recognize the smell of the goop. The viscosity of it.

  He spat on me.

  He spat on me! A swell of anger rushes through my neck like a flurry of poisoned quills. I skid down the hill to peer into the upper windows. All but one remain shut.

  “I know you’re there!”

  Anger overpowers the nerves: its blessing. I wipe my cheek until there’s no trace of glop and rush the door, slamming my hands against the metal facade.

  “Forgot the password?” someone calls from above. Male. Smug. The same face peeks out: unfortunately a handsome face, well-chiseled like the gargoyles, though with infinitely more intimidating proportions. Too bad the devilish face houses a brain with a silly child’s sense of humor. He fingers the lit cigarette like it’s a missile to be launched.

  “Did you spit on me?” I ask. My blood sugar is far too low for this nonsense, shea butter be damned. “I’ve been left outside for hours and you spit on me?” The quake in my voice irritates me as much as the whininess, but I hold firm.

  He smirks again. He’s not remotely perturbed. In fact, he flicks his cigarette into the air, ashing on me fragrantly. I clench my teeth: They say teachers should be patient, but I haven’t truly begun to teach. And he’s not a student.

  “How’s this for a password, you bastard?” I say, and as my hands move into a once-obscene symbol that’s lost too much of its power lately, the doors before me groan open.

  I freeze. I squint at the threshold to make any sense of what’s beyond the door because it’s impossibly dark inside. The scent of must overpowers, too. Must and clove with a hint of spoiled legumes. There’s a shadow within the shadows—a woman the size of a skeletal giant. She strides out in a floor-length caftan of sorts, and she towers over me. I wonder if she’s hiding a smaller human being beneath the tent—it would be a grotesque but stupendous magic trick.

  Her face is bare and drawn but grand, despite the beadiest eyes I’ve ever seen; her hair is pulled back so tightly I fear a giant black plunger is sucking out the back of her scalp. She clears her throat, with a long look at my impolite gesture. My hands, with minds of their own, pull away to feel at my hairline, and her nostrils flare.

  “Miss Quercia, I presume? You are late.”

  I smile sheepishly, as one is wont to do. I can feel my armpits sweating again, as if they haven’t already done their fair share on the climb. She crooks a finger at me to scurry behind her. I’m not much of a scurrier, but I don’t think she’ll be satisfied by anything else.

  “There must have been a misunderstanding with timing,” I say, pitching myself into the darkness and slicking back my hair. I’m obsequious all of a sudden, nervous and squirrelly. I’ve made a fool of myself on my first day. I’ve lost my temper. I risk losing everyone’s good impression of my good attitude. And my hands are filthy and sticky, which means the rest of me must look it, too. “I’ve my lesson plan all written up for tomorrow’s classes, and I look forward to discussing it with Madame De Vaccaro—”

  “What possessed you to climb the property with your luggage?” she asks as we press on into the darkness, ignoring me and the fact that one understuffed bag doesn’t make for luggage. We’ve entered a cloud of fetid tobacco smoke. But for her huge form before me, I would be blind, unable to perceive the depths around me. I expected a grand entrance hall, and while the ceiling heights are magnificent, the narrow corridors bend and curve, it seems, or else I’m still woozy from my climb; I don’t see a single corner, and I’ve already lost sight of the entrance.

  I splutter. “Necessity?”

  “A member of the staff was waiting for you all afternoon by the gondola off the second dock. You look dreadful.” Less an insult than an observation. I bite my tongue until I taste metal and watch her bun bounce in the darkness.

  “There is no time for you to change out of your street clothes, so you shall have to go without supper,” she says, as if it’s obvious. I look down at my damp coat and once-crisp white shirt with a hint of sadness. “I am Ms. Morency to you. De facto head of administrative staff.”

  And in that elaborate title, I’ve learned half of what I need to know about her. “A pleasure.”

  She doesn’t reply. But I hear a rustling, a sighing, and I strain to listen, to see. Words, spoken in a foreign language? To my e
ars, the voices come from cracks in the ceiling. I rub at my eyes, as if that will help. It must be a draft.

  “It will also be too late to see the mistress tonight. You must remain in your room in the evenings. One is not safe alone in the house at night.”

  “Sorry?” I ask, clutching my bag closer. The air is rank now, the smell of spoiled food intensifying into a presence as physical as Morency herself. “Why not?”

  “But in the morning,” she continues, ignoring me, “in the morning, when you are permitted to move about the house freely, and you do see the mistress, you would be wise to hold your tongue around her.” I assume she means Carmela De Vaccaro. “And to keep your hands to yourself.”

  Clearly she witnessed my display outside. “Oh well. There was a boy, he—”

  “Oh, Miss Quercia,” she says, dripping disdain, “isn’t there always, with girls like you?”

  I stumble in the darkness behind her, grateful not to have her eyes on me. I slip off my coat, but it feels as stuffy as before.

  We pass another bend, and pockets of dim light spill from old-fashioned gilded sconces lining the halls. The burgundy Persian carpet is rich, deep, bog-like; my feet sink in with each step. I must be trailing dust and dirt and God knows what. The walls are covered in a fabric I would imagine is called damask even though I’ve no idea what that is; its texture and pattern remind me of a turbulent sky before a downpour. Dark, grandiose paintings of overcast landscapes hang in burnished golden frames along the walls. Expensive, hand-carved furniture dots the hall, the miniature sort that creaks with disdain and threatens to break the second someone gets comfortable. I glimpse inside an open doorway on the left after Morency hurries past: The figure of a man stands by an unlit fireplace in a sitting room. He leans over the fire as if warming his hands on the dead coals.

  A flash of gray, a winged creature with bristly antennae, dances past my face. The moth brushes my cheek, giving me a sick chill. I rush after Morency, not so eager to be left behind in this lavish maze for neurotic moles.

  “This is nothing like the brochure,” I hear whispered. As I’m stifling a chuckle, I realize I must have said the words aloud.

  She makes the smallest of noises: perhaps a laugh. A cough. A groan. Perhaps her shoe squeaked. Doubtful. Whatever it is, it’s suppressed. We reach a cramped back staircase, and another man appears at the top of the flight. Try as I might, I can’t make out many of his features in the near darkness. He has a thick neck, broad as a tree trunk, and his skin is as dark as tobacco—smells of it, too. He nods and grunts at Morency, or so I think, and I expect her to introduce us. I nearly wave at him, but a shiver goes through me when I see no sheen to his eyes; they are, if anything, empty black holes reflecting the flattest of glimmers, like the bottom of a well. I look down, face hot, and as he passes, he contorts himself toward the wall to avoid skimming me, the rest of his face hidden in the shadows. His thickly veined hand trembles.

  Once free of him, I breathe in, out. More musk, plus that underlying fetidness. My throat itches, and I ascend, expecting a hallway as claustrophobic as the stairs.

  Yet the second floor is as richly adorned and magnificent in scale as the first, with many doorways marked by polished, antique golden numbers lining the hall. We arrive in front of room 7, its gilt numeral askew so that it resembles a drunken, upside-down V or a prostrate stick man. I can’t resist shifting it into the proper position. Ms. Morency’s right eyebrow darts upward, and I grin, though I shouldn’t. Of course, the 7 collapses when I release it, and so does my smile.

  “Your room, Miss Quercia. Please treat it as you would your own.” She appraises me, her eyes lingering on the sweat stains blooming from vulgar spots. “Better than your own.” I have a feeling she is thinking to herself: I can’t imagine what sort of hovel you came from.

  The floor of that sales gallery in Recoleta, I want to tell her, with a saucy wink. Like the other rats, and yet, I was hired by your mistress. We stand in front of the door with a good meter between us. She looks profoundly disappointed, while still carefully tending her haughty uninterest. A difficult expression to master, especially for another commoner—it must require prolonged exposure to the discontented rich, like the cad upstairs. She draws a key from a fold in her caftan with slender, bony fingers, knuckles double the size of mine.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask, squeaking. She glares at me with pencil points for pupils. She’s intimidating when she’s not reduced to a bun bobbing above my head in the darkness.

  “I already told you that we were at dinner.” She dangles the key. “We attend dinner together at the same time every night, and we return to our quarters together at the same time every night. There is a system here in the evenings, and you’ve interrupted us all. Do not expect to flourish here with that kind of behavior. You are a long way from the uncivilized streets of Buenos Aires. You are a long way from anyone who cares for you and tolerates your flaws. Do bear that in mind.”

  And with that, she drops the key into my hand, turns on her heel, and glides back the way she came, an apparition in all black.

  A long way from anyone who cares for me and tolerates my flaws. As if there’s a dossier of people meeting that description.

  “You would be well-advised to lock the door behind you, if you wish to survive this place,” she sends back, her morbid warning echoing down the hall.

  The hollow in my chest fills with a choking sort of glue. It’s not fear, exactly: It’s that I’ve never frustrated someone so much immediately—in fact, I’ve never been so despised by a stranger at all, outside of President Videla’s uniformed goons. I wonder if she dislikes everyone here or if my tardiness set her off. I can’t help but feel as if there’s a trait integral to me that disappointed her. As if she caught a whiff of my smell and determined I’m the most odious one here.

  You shouldn’t be here, I hear whispered again, by a draft, a vengeful ghost, or—the truest source—my traitorous brain. But where is someone like me meant to be?

  I drop my bag on the floor and rest my forehead against the door. Morency’s mention of dinner reminded me that I’m half-starved, and the lack of an invitation hangs heavy in the air, but I’m too tired to defy her and properly make an enemy. Perhaps if I go hungry, I’ll be forgiven. Morency. I find myself wishing I had raced up and undid her bun, because I’m certain she would unravel.

  I fiddle with the lock and open the door into the damp dark, hoping for the very best.

  “Let’s do this,” I whisper to myself, as if my mother or another guardian angel stands alongside me, watching with a gentle smile.

  2

  ANGEL: 2020–0

  The knife cut too-hot treads, and now I’m here.

  I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here …

  I feel the mantra like a heartbeat, its rhythm giving me new life.

  Here won’t be heaven, but it’ll be close enough. Because if here means anything, it’s not that fucking hell, and that’s all that matters now.

  I open my eyes.

  I’m somewhere pitch-black and splintery-looking. No land, no sky, no water to acquaint myself. I freeze, my imagination blooming with all the unholy mistakes this place could be, this cheap wood box, this airless cavity—

  Something glimmers in the darkness, and I freak, half expecting a sub-sandwich-size rat to nibble on my toes. Welcome to the brave new world, Angel. You’re what’s for dinner. But no, it’s not a radioactive pest that’s glowing: It’s me.

  I’m out-of-body. I’m floating. I can’t feel my fingers, my toes, but if I squint, I can see their outline, their crystalline shimmer piercing the muggy dark. It hits me at once, like a shiver up the spine: This is a ghostly reprieve. My old hands, with their chewed-up nails and wonky knuckles, my knobby knees that always cracked, my asthmatic lungs that couldn’t manage a half mile, my skin swollen with constellations of pus: They’re all long gone.

  The feeling spreads back into all parts of me gradually, like I’m
warming up beside an invisible fire after a spell in the cold. I push my starry arms into the wood guts of the closet walls, and there’s no resistance. I go on and on, the asbestos stuffing no more than a cloud. It’s magical. Frightening, for someone who should be immune to fear.

  I’m glittery Casper, my new flesh made of crystal webbing.

  I’m fairy floss, spirited far, far away from the ol’ USA’s unfortunate present.

  I’m fucking free.

  I churn myself through the walls and into a small, empty bedroom. Unremarkable, except it’s entirely painted in light apricot (one of Mama’s favorite colors). Aha, I think to myself. RGB color code 253, 213, 177. I got it, Mama. Gorgeous. I squeeze through a door marked 7 to find myself in … a hall.

  The house is unreal, as Charon said. Sconces made of real burnished gold, looking like specially wrapped expensive chocolates; the rugs look lush, mattress-deep; and the ceiling heights…! I sound like Mama when she’d peruse the real estate pages for houses we couldn’t afford. Angel, she’d say, look at this one with the marble kitchen island! And a flipping disposal!

  Mama. I feel that pang at the back of my throat, unavoidable even now, I guess.

  Am I still Mama’s Angel in this new world, or am I something else entirely?

  My first name, the monstrosity that is Angel, is more commonish than people think. Mama named me Angel because she said I was born blessed, with a lucky star over my head. I told her once that’s not how angels work, and she said, “Cállate.” I shortened Angel to El when I didn’t feel like the meaning behind it was true anymore—after I wrecked my life beyond repair, and—

  A man lopes past me in the hall, built like a pro tennis player, his hairy forearm brushing the air where my abs would be, if they had ever existed—yet I don’t feel a thing. He has superpale skin, so stark that his thick shoe-polish-colored hair stands out crisp like dog fur on a purebred husky. Ice-blue eyes, the disconcerting kind you find on one of those huskies, or, better yet, a whitewalker. Cheekbones the writer of a teen magazine listicle could cut herself on.