Abarat. Clive Barker
could take credit for—wanted to ask Norma the obvious question: how had the stains got up there? Had he shot himself, or used a razor? But there was another part that preferred not to know.
“Horrible,” she said.
“That’s what happens when people realize their lives aren’t what they dreamed they’d be,” Norma said. She glanced at her watch. “Oh Lord, look at the time. I’ve got to get going. That’s the story of Henry Murkitt.”
“What a sad man,” Candy said.
“Well, I guess all of us are waiting for our ships to come in, one way or another,” Norma said, going to the door and letting Candy out onto the gloomy landing. “Some of us still live in hope,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “But you have to, don’t you?”
And with that she closed the door on the room where Henry Murkitt had breathed his last.
MISS SCHWARTZ, CANDY’S HISTORY teacher, was not in a pleasant mood at the best of times, but today her mood was fouler than usual. As she went around the classroom, returning the project papers on Chickentown, only her few favorite students (who were usually boys) earned anything close to good marks. Everyone else was being criticized.
But nothing the rest of the class had faced compared with Miss Schwartz’s attack on Candy’s paper.
“Facts, Candy Quackenbush,” the woman said, tossing Candy’s paper about Henry Murkitt’s demise down on her desk. “I asked for facts. And what do you give me—?”
“Those are facts, Miss—”
“Don’t answer back,” Miss Schwartz snapped. “These are not facts. They are morbid pieces of gossip. Nothing more. This work—like most of your work— is worthless.”
“But I was in that room in the Comfort Tree Hotel,” she said. “I saw Henry Murkitt’s sextant.”
“Are you hopelessly gullible?” said Schwartz. “Or are you just plain stupid? Every hotel has some kind of ridiculous ghost story. Can’t you tell the difference between fact and fiction?”
“But, Miss Schwartz, I swear these are facts.”
“You get an ‘F,’ Candy.”
“That’s not fair,” Candy protested.
Miss Schwartz’s upper lip began to twitch, a sure sign that she was going to start yelling soon.
“Don’t talk back to me!” she said, her volume rising. “If you don’t stop indulging in these dim-witted fantasies of yours, and start doing some real work, you’re going to fail this class completely. And I’ll personally see you held back a year for your laziness and your insolence.”
There was a lot of tittering from the back of the class, where the coven of Candy’s enemies, led by Deborah Hackbarth, all sat. Miss Schwartz threw them a silencing look, which worked; but Candy knew they were smiling behind their hands, passing notes back and forth about Candy’s humiliation.
“Why can’t you be normal?” Miss Schwartz said. “Give me work like this from Ruth Ferris.” She leafed through the pages.
Miss Schwartz held up the paper, so that everybody could see what an exemplary piece of work Ruth had done. “You see these graphs?” Miss Schwartz was flicking through the pages of colored graphs Ruth had thoughtfully provided as appendices to her paper. “You know what they’re about? Well, do you, Candy?”
“Let me guess,” said Candy. “Chickens?”
“Yes. Chickens. Ruth wrote about the number one industry in our community: chickens.”
“Maybe that’s because her father is the factory manager,” Candy said, throwing the perfect Miss R. Ferris a sour look. She knew—everybody knew, including Miss Schwartz—that Ruth’s pretty little charts and flow diagrams (“From Egg to Chicken Nugget”) had been copied out of her father’s glossy brochures for Applebaum’s Farms.
“Who cares about chickens?” Candy said.
“Chickens are the lifeblood of this town, Candy Quackenbush. Without chickens, your father wouldn’t have a job.”
“He doesn’t have a job, Miss Schwartz,” said Deborah.
“Oh. Well—”
“He likes his beer too much.”
“All right, that’s enough Deborah,” said Miss Schwartz, sensing that things were getting out of hand. “You see how disruptive you are, Candy?”
“What did I do?” Candy protested.
“We waste far too much time on you in class. Far too much—”
She stopped speaking because her eyes had alighted on Candy’s workbook. She snatched it up off the desk. For some reason Candy had started drawing wavy patterns on the cover of her book a couple of days before, her hand simply making the marks without her mind consciously instructing it to do so.
“What is this?” Miss Schwartz demanded, flipping through the pages of the workbook.
The interior was decorated in the same way as the cover: tightly set lines, hundreds of them, waving up and down all over the page.
“It’s bad enough you bring these morbid stories of yours into school,” Miss Schwartz was saying. “Now you’re defacing school property?”
“It’s just a doodle,” Candy said.
“Good Lord, are you going crazy? There are pages and pages of this rubbish.” Miss Schwartz held the workbook at arm’s length as though it might infect her. “What do you think you’re doing? What are these?”
For some reason, as Miss Schwartz stared down at her, Candy thought of Henry Murkitt, sitting in Room Nineteen on that distant Christmas Eve, waiting for his ship to come in.
Thinking of him, she realized what she’d been drawing so obsessively in her workbook.
“It’s the sea,” she said quietly.
“It’s what?” said Miss Schwartz, her voice oozing contempt.
“It’s the sea. I was drawing the sea.”
“Were you indeed? Well, it may look like the sea to you, but it looks like two weeks in detention to me.”
There was a little eruption of laughter from the back of the class. This time Miss Schwartz didn’t hush it. She simply tossed the defaced workbook onto Candy’s desk. It was a bad throw. Instead of landing neatly in front of the disgraced Candy, it skimmed across the desk, taking the paper about Henry Murkitt, along with several pens, pencils and a blue plastic ruler, off the other side and onto the floor.
The laughter halted. There was a hush while one of the pens rolled to a halt. Then Miss Schwartz said: “I want you to pick all that trash up.”
Candy didn’t reply, at least not at first. She remained in her seat, not moving a muscle.
“Did you hear me, Candy Quackenbush?”
The Hackbarth clique was in hog heaven. They watched with smirks on their faces as Candy sat in her seat, still refusing to move.
“Candy?” Miss Schwartz.
“I heard you, Miss Schwartz.”
“Then pick them up.”