The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 17

"I feel the blue 4th aura of a goodly ghost here. It has touched you."

I gulped, and tried to hide the fact that my heart thundered like the hooves of a team of Clydesdales at a trot. I hadn't allowed myself to so much as think about my night yet.

"Have you read the story I gave you?" she asked.

"No, not yet. I'm sorry."

"Soon," she said, thoughtfully. "You should. Imperative."

Then, as quickly as she'd honed in on me, Yazzie moved on, handing out the final exams as though she were a flower girl at a wedding, laying rose petals upon the floor. I was grateful for the silence that fell over the room, because it meant I didn't have to notice my former friends gossiping about me. Unfortunately, the test was a Yazzie creation, and as such it was very easy, with no right or wrong answers. Too easy. We all finished in about fifteen minutes, leaving us with nearly two hours to kill. Yazzie informed us that we'd be spending cla.s.s in the Lucero Library on the other side of campus, researching photorealism.

"I want you to think about the controversy this style ignited. People began to paint from photographs, with technical prowess, and their paintings looked like photographs, but weren't photographs," she said, pacing back and forth at the front of the room. "Ask yourself, is this art? The people in the high art world in Europe and the States did not think so at the time. They felt that art had to be purely imaginational, spiritual, that it had to come from within and be expressed in a highly stylized and original way. The question is one of great significance to a world steeped in science and technology, though, isn't it? If a thing looks like a photograph, and serves the same purpose as a photograph, but came into being through the attention and love of an artist who saw something in it that might not have been seen before, is it a photograph? Is it a painting? What is it? And does it matter? And aren't both photographs and paintings both just approximations of life? Who is to say one is art and the other is not? Who is to say one is real and the other is not? Who, but the creator, can make such determinations?"

I thought about this, and was struck by the parallel with Demetrio. He looked like a human. He felt like a human. And yet he wasn't a human. Or was he? Was he a spiritual work of art, somehow, or something? Were things always a matter of perspective? As Yazzie spoke, she watched me, and only me. I knew she meant this lecture for me, for this reason. I didn't know how I knew this, but I knew it - just as I knew that she knew things the way I did now. With a start, I realized Yazzie wasn't actually as crazy as everyone thought.

We gathered our things, and began to walk across the cold campus toward the spectacular structure that was Coronado Prep's Lucero Library. It was better endowed, as libraries go, than many college facilities. Coronado Prep had ridiculous amounts of money floating around. I braced against the cold wind, and tried to get Kelsey onto a new topic.

"Have you picked a dress for the dance yet?" I asked her, ignoring the group of girls who laughed at me from across a courtyard, and the other group of girls who gave me a fist-pump and shouted "team Maria all the way!" Great. I was a team now, all on my own.

"Nah," she said. "I was hoping maybe we could hit the mall next weekend, or sometime over break. If you're still going."

Right. I'd forgotten that when I broke up with Logan I forfeited my rights to the dance.

"How about we go stag?" she asked. "We can go as a group, me, you, Victoria and Thomas."

"Sure. That's a good idea. I'm a.s.suming you'll go for black?" I tried to smile as though I hadn't a care in the world.

"Dunno."

"You should try blue," I told her, as a flock of crows alighted from a branch in a tree above us, one of them swooping so close we ducked. "Or turquoise. It would really set off your eyes."

Kelsey looked at me now, hard, at the door to the library. "What's wrong with you today?" she asked me. "I mean, besides all this c.r.a.p with Logan on the Internet."

"What? Nothing. Why?" I grabbed the handle to the door, and held it open for her to pa.s.s. She didn't budge.

"You don't seem like yourself. You are so not the girl who says 'wear blue to set off your azure eyes.'"

"That's not what I said, exactly."

"Close enough. Out with it. What's eating you?"

"C'mon. It's freezing out here. Continue your inquiry inside."

"Fine." Kelsey stomped past me, unsatisfied with my answer.

Members of the cla.s.s paired and grouped up, or went off alone, to find information. To my dismay, I saw Logan here, too, with his calculus cla.s.s. He sat with a group of kids and they all looked at me when I walked in, and burst out laughing.

"Morons," said Kelsey, putting a protective arm around me.

"What are they saying, you think?"

"It's all about Demetrio. Logan put up photos of prisoners and thugs and various other creepy men with metal teeth that he randomly found, and said you're dating them. His team is saying you're slumming it with a hoodlum and that you're under his spell because you like drugs."

"What?"

"Logan's pretending he wants to help you, but it's all about how mentally unstable you are and how you're a danger to the school now that you're bringing gang members on campus."

I felt my eyes fill with tears. I tried to avoid everyone's gaze as Kelsey and I settled in at a table on the north side of the building, near the windows that faced out to the expansive playing fields. The fields were covered in snow at the moment, flanked by stark, hibernating deciduous trees, and their perkier - and to my eyes at this moment, arrogant - evergreen cousins.

"Me, I like photorealism," I said dismally as I plopped down in my chair across the table from her. My eyes strayed across the field, in hopes of enticing Kelsey to follow my gaze. It did not work. She continued to stare at me, interrogation-style.

"Did you kiss him?"

"No."

"Lame," she said.

"He never wants to."

"Gay?"

"Negative. I asked."

"Maria." Still staring.

"What are you hiding? You won't even look at me."

I finally met her eyes with mine, and sighed, hoping she'd notice how weary and unhappy she was making me.

"He told me a lot," I said, sincerely, in a half-whisper. "I'm dying to tell you. But he also told me he'd kill me if I told anybody."

She looked hurt and shrugged, and totally missed my subliminal messaging technique. "Okay. I'm used to it. He'll just be the new guy who comes between us, is that it?"

"It's not that I don't want to tell you, Kelsey. I do. I want to so badly it hurts. But I can't."

"I understand," she said, seeming to be hurt by my words.

"Don't take it the wrong way. Please?"

The good thing about Kelsey was that she had a singular ability to consider things before reacting to them. This was one of those times. "Can I think about this a while?" she asked me.

"Of course."

"Okay."

I turned my eyes to the playing fields once more, hoping to calm my brain down enough to slip into a cozy denial once more, but this was not to be, because tied to one of the aforementioned deciduous trees, a tree that moments ago had been reaching in solitary determination to the sky, was a small black dog.

Buddy.

The rope was long and red, and stood out crisply against the white snow, as did the dog. My dog.

"OmiG.o.d," I said, under my breath. My pulse did that thing it was getting so good at now, and began to hammer away inside of me.

I scanned the field with my eyes, looking for Demetrio. But I saw nothing. Just Buddy, the red rope, the trees, and the otherwise vacant snowy fields. Buddy, being his usual self and appearing unharmed, tugged at the rope and yapped at the crows flying overhead. They were bigger than he was, but being a Chihuahua he was certain that he was the biggest and most fearsome dog who ever lived. I watched, astonished and unsure about how to handle situation, as Buddy pulled and pulled at the tether.

Soon, the rope came loose from the tree, and Buddy got his wish of freedom. He promptly squandered it in running across the field, chasing crows straight toward Adelante Road. The good news was that Adelante Road was far enough away that it would take Buddy a minute or two to get there. The bad news was that Buddy was inexplicably drawn to busy streets, and seemed to think that it was a Chihuahua's macho duty in life to challenge moving cars to a duel, confident that he would always win. Given that he was roughly the same color as blacktop, I was forever rescuing him from this particular delusion.

"Oh, no," I said, in a panic.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was up out of my seat, shrugging back into my jacket and backpack, hightailing it toward the door, against every school rule, and with the eyes of a dozen newly minted enemies upon me.

"Maria!" cried Yazzie.

I ignored her, and sprinted out the door, down the steps, and around the building, toward the playing fields. I ran and ran, and soon saw Buddy tripping along happily toward the road.

"Buddy!" I screamed. "Stop! Stop!"

As usual, he turned to acknowledge my voice and command with a smile, and quickly returned to his task of suicide by car.

"No! Bad dog! Stay!"

He ignored me some more, stopping only to sniff a tumbleweed that had recently been showered, one a.s.sumed, by the steaming effluvium of some other canine.

"Stop right now!" I shrieked, sprinting faster now. The cold air made me cough, and fogged my gla.s.ses, but I kept running. When I got to within ten feet of him, Buddy seemed to realize that resistance was futile at last. He curled his body toward me, simpering, and dropped to his back, apologetic.

"Bad dog!" I said again, as I reached him.

Buddy wagged his tail and flattened his ears against his head to let me know he meant it.

I scooped him up into my arms, and kissed him. "You bad, stupid, crazy little dog!" I kissed him again. "What is wrong with you?"

Buddy licked my chin, as though "loving Maria" were the correct answer. Perhaps it was.

"Where have you been?"

I was so happy to have him back, I almost couldn't stand it. I cried and laughed, and snuggled and cuddled him. I was so involved with this emotional reunion that I almost didn't notice Demetrio standing between a couple of evergreens, at the far end of the field, watching.

My face lit up at the sight of him in his baggy jeans and parka, and head bandana with sparkly studs in each ear. He looked as fresh and inappropriate as a gangsta rap video. He smiled back, though with trepidation. I ran to him, dog in my arms, and flopped against him. He smelled like ozone.

"I'm so happy to see you," I told him as I melted into his embrace. "You're real. How is it that I can feel you?"

"It just is. I can't stay," he said. "I'm happy to see you too, mamita, but I gotta jet."

"Just tell me how you're real, if you're not."

"I'm real. As real as you are. I just wanted to bring Buddy back, and ask you to meet me this afternoon," he said. "We'll talk then. I'll explain everything, if I can. There's a test you have to do."

"What kind of a test?"

"A ceremony. Sort of a blessing. I can't explain it now. They're coming."

I turned back toward the library, and saw what he saw: a line of people standing at the other end of the playing field, coming after me. Yazzie was among them, as was Kelsey. They watched me standing with my arms around Demetrio, a small black dog between us. Their faces betrayed grave concern. In the trees above them, crows cawed.

"Wait! I have something to ask you."

He waited, impatiently.

"Were you in my dream the other night? With the dark room, and the candles?"

"No," he said with a naughty grin. "You were in mine, though." He reached out and drew a triangle in the air with his finger. "Obtuse, equilateral, Pythagorean, scalene, isosceles."

"How?" I asked breathlessly, my heart racing. It was amazing. Exciting. There's no way he could have known about the triangle in the dream unless I'd told him, which I had not.

"You better get back to cla.s.s," he said. "You have an angry mob on your tail. Meet me at the church, after school. Skip dance. We have to do it early. I'm sorry. I'll never ask you to miss it again."

"Okay." I clung to him, but he was stronger than I was, and managed to peel my arms off of him. I waited for him to kiss me, but again he backed away, quickly now, avoiding my eyes. I tried to follow him, but he cut me off with a fierce look, and a stern shake of his head.

"Later," he said. "Like I told you, I want to, but I can't."

I faced the field, and began to walk toward the library, and the crowd of people. As I returned to them, carrying my tiny dog that had been whisked off in the jaws of a monster coyote the night before, fresh from what must have looked like me making out with one of the hoodlums Logan had apparently posted, I had to think of a lie to tell them, and quickly. I hated this.

"h.e.l.lo," I called as cheerfully as I could, when I got within earshot of my cla.s.s, all of whom apparently found my mental breakdown much more interesting than the controversy surrounding photorealism in art.

"A ghost," whispered Yazzie, her eyes filled with tears, as I pa.s.sed her. She stared at the figure of Demetrio as he stalked across the field toward Adelante. "He's got a golden 4th aura. A good revenant. I knew it."

"I'm sorry. I brought my dog to school," I mumbled, even as I stared at her in wide-eyed shock. "Silly me?"

Yazzie composed herself, wagged a finger at me sternly, looking around her at the other teachers and students.

"You are going to the office with me right now!" Yazzie practically shouted this information, clearly a performance for the benefit of the others. "Everyone else, back to the library. I'll be back as soon as I get this disobedient Maria to the headmaster's."

Kelsey looked back at me over her shoulder, with a worried look, as she walked with the rest of the cla.s.s back to the library. Yazzie clipped ahead, trying mightily to look like a normal, strict teacher type. In the end, she looked like a witch trying to belly dance.

"Maria," she said, loudly, "you of all kids should know better."

I came to walk next to her, Buddy happy in my arms, oblivious to everything but the crows in the trees.

"I can explain," I told Yazzie.

"Shh," she said, conspiratorially, looking about to make sure no one was within earshot. "I know. I get it." She spoke in a low voice. "I'm not taking you to the headmaster. We're going to my office."

"What? Why?"

The flock of the crows seemed to be following us, and Yazzie noticed as surely as I did. One in particular seemed bigger than the others, in charge. It had yellow eyes, and seemed to be smiling as it swooped down toward us and then soared back into the sky. I felt I'd seen it before somewhere. We walked clear across the campus, and the bird followed overhead, doing its dance, cawing a laughing sort of caw at us, enjoying itself.

"Morboso," Yazzie grumbled, sizing up the large bird, stopping in her tracks in the center of a school courtyard when she'd had enough of its teasing.