The Tear Collector Read online

  “Why Alexei?” I ask. No one in the family seems to know where he is. I still don’t know if I should tell the family the things that he did to Scott and to those young boys. Everyone is looking for Alexei, but I hope they never find him. I must not have hit him hard enough with the car, or maybe he was too strong from soaking up so many of Scott’s tears, but I know from the news alert I printed this morning that he is still out there, hiding in the dark shadows.

  “Because that’s how it is. After, you’ll come back home just as your mother and I did,” she says. “You need to mate to create the next generation. Cassandra, it is your turn.”

  “Why does it have to be me?” I watch the limos in front snake down the streets of Lapeer.

  “For the same reason the sun rises in the morning: because it is how the world works,” Maggie says. “Our family is part of the natural order. These are the rules of our lives.”

  “I hate these rules!” I shout, like a child throwing a tantrum. “I hate Alexei. I love Scott!”

  “Cassandra, you don’t love Scott,” she says. Her lips move, but I try to block out her words. “You think you love him, but you don’t. In fact, you can’t. That is not who we are.”

  I say nothing because I cannot speak the truth. I want to tell her that I’ve proven my love for Scott, that I can cry and feel like a human. As soon as I learn Siobhan’s secret, I will leave Maggie, Veronica, and Mom behind. But I can’t say this yet. Not yet.

  “This is how we live,” she says. “The males stay separate and come to us only to prolong the species. It is not about love or any of those human emotions. It is about our survival.”

  “But Siobhan—,” I start.

  Maggie cuts me off with a glare. “Don’t speak her name. She is a traitor to her kind,” she says. “She betrayed her family. She betrayed her values. There is a natural order to things, and when she left this family, she selfishly disturbed that order.”

  “She was in love,” I counter with the most defiant tone I can muster.

  “It’s impossible for us to feel that way,” she continues. “Love is a human illusion.”

  I want to tell her how wrong she is. Love isn’t an illusion, but it might be magic.

  “Siobhan isn’t selfish,” I say, thinking of all the selfish people I know, like Brittney.

  “Cassandra, listen to me,” she says as she pulls the car over. “Everybody in the family has had these doubts. Do you think you’re the first? We live among humans; it is natural that we should want to be like them. Being like them not just in appearance but by feeling emotions—the very thing that makes them human. But we can’t feel emotions because they would drain us, and then we couldn’t fulfill our place in nature. The family would cease to exist. It’s science, not supernatural. Don’t blame me, your mom, or Veronica; blame evolution.”

  “But Siobhan—,” I try again, but once more, she cuts me off.

  “Siobhan has nothing. She is an orphan, an exile, an outsider. I don’t want that for you. Is that what you want?” she asks, and I respond with a strange look. Is this some odd bonding attempt or some trick? As obligation replaces emotion in my family, every motive is suspect.

  “I want Scott,” I answer.

  “How long have you known him?” she asks. “Something like two weeks?”

  “Almost two months,” I say. “He means everything to me.”

  “If you leave the family, then you can’t come back,” she says.

  She looks at me like no family member has ever looked at me before. Even if it is just an act, it still means something. I know she can’t feel it, but she can fake it; it is a loving look of worry and concern. “Cassandra, if you lose your family,” she says, “then, you lose everything.”

  …

  After the service and the funeral repast, Scott, Samantha, and I are sitting outside of the Family Center. He’s loosened his tie, while Samantha has removed the black headband wrapped around her head. She dabs her eyes with it, winks, then hands it to me like a secret handshake.

  “What are you doing?” Scott asks.

  Samantha pauses, then looks over at me. I owe her Scott’s life; she owes me her silence. I stare back at Scott, then say, “What do you think she’s doing?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, then shrugs. “I’m saying that a lot these days.”

  “You don’t remember any of it?” Samantha asks. This is the first time she’s seen Scott since everything happened. She doesn’t see my eyes, pleading with her to shut up.

  “I remember visiting my grandmother after you left on Saturday morning,” Scott says. Depending on what else he remembers, some details might be hard to explain away even to a person who says he believes in the supernatural. He told me once that he believes in angels and thus must believe in demons. I wonder if he can believe in creatures that are not evil but live off human suffering. “I remember getting your text, Cass, and then going to meet you.”

  “Then what?” I ask. Scott doesn’t need to know it was Alexei, not me, texting him.

  “I wanted to see you so badly,” he says. “So, I went to meet you at the little park near the nursing home. And then …”

  He falls silent again, and I wait. Details may return and one day he’ll know the truth, but maybe by then, he will be as in love with me as I am with him and none of this will matter.

  “Then I woke up in my own bed on Monday morning,” he says. “I woke up with my mouth in terrible pain and two back teeth missing. I woke up to the news that my grandmother had died. But in between, I don’t recall anything, other than your voice asking me if I was okay.”

  “That must have been just a dream,” I say. Better he think that than know the real nightmare.

  “No, it was more like I was in a coma,” he says. “I just don’t know what happened. My mom called the police, but they told her that there’s not much they can do.”

  “They search for missing persons, not missing days out of a person’s life,” Samantha says. She knows the truth, but she’s proving her trustworthiness with her silence.

  “If Mom could afford it, I bet she’d hire a private detective,” Scott says.

  “Maybe you were in a car accident or got mugged,” Samantha says, practicing her fiction-writing skills. “Maybe you were abducted by aliens who conducted all sorts of—”

  “In that case,” Scott says, trying to smile, “maybe it’s better I don’t remember!”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I say.

  “Once this all dies down, my mom wants me to see somebody,” he continues.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, trying to keep Scott talking and testing the limits of his memory. While we’re talking, Samantha is writing in her notebook. I shoot her a dirty look.

  “She wants me to see a therapist to help with all this trauma,” he says.

  Samantha chimes in. “I’ve got something else you might want to consider as well.”

  “What’s that?” Scott asks.

  “I’d also recommend the peer counseling program at Lapeer High School,” she says, and both of us laugh. Scott tries to, but ends up coughing instead. He takes a tissue from his coat pocket and puts it up to his mouth. When he removes it, it’s stained with blood.

  “Are you in pain?” Samantha asks. I guess Scott answers, but I’m not listening. Instead, I’m thinking about all the suffering and sorrow that Scott, Samantha, Becca, Becca’s parents, and every human experience, and how it benefits me. And how I want it still.

  I wish I could retrieve all the tissues from inside the church and harvest all the tears cried during the service. I took in a lot of emotion from strangers during the service, but I need more. When I get back to school, I’ll need to spread new rumors and stir up drama. When I get back to the hospital, I’ll need to comfort as many crying families as I can. When I get back to Becca, I’ll make her feel better for as long as she lives by letting her cry in front of me. And then, then I’ll take the tears home to Veronica who has grown weak; I’ll need
to be strong for her. I will need to thrive on people as I feed on their sadness. I will have to continue to collect tears until I’m able to reject this way of living. Until that day, which I sense is coming sooner than later, I’m still dwelling on the threshold.

  “I need to say good-bye to people,” I hear Scott say, then he kisses me very lightly on the cheek. This morning he said one of the hardest good-byes of his life; any other has to be easy.

  “I’ll see you later,” I say as I push his perfectly combed hair out of his face, kiss him on the forehead, and then watch him blush. It’s nice to see some color back in his face.

  Once Scott is out of sight, Samantha turns to me and says, “Thanks, Cass.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving Scott’s life,” she says.

  “That wasn’t me,” I counter. “That was Veronica, but mostly it was you.”

  “Me?”

  “You gave her the strength,” I whisper. “By showing your emotions you helped Scott. He’s still in pain, so he needs your support. You’re so mature, Samantha. Most girls—”

  “Most girls didn’t come from families as screwed up as mine,” she says, still holding back tears. “You get really mature, really fast, when you have to raise yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” I say. “I’m just glad we can all be friends.”

  “I need to know,” Samantha says after I pause. “I don’t understand so much of what—”

  But I cut her off, then take her hand and say, “You can never understand. You can never tell anyone, and I can’t tell you more than you’ve seen. You have to promise me this.”

  “I promise, Cass,” she says.

  “Listen, if you break the promise, then you’ll learn how far we’re willing to go to protect our secret.”

  She nods, accepting the threat, but says, “There’s so much I want to know. So much that—”

  “Trust me, it is better for you if you don’t know too much,” I say.

  “Can you just tell me what happened in the nursing home? How did Scott end up alive and his grandmother dead?” she asks, but I don’t answer. “Just explain that part to me.”

  “I can’t explain it,” I say. “Like most things in life, truth rests between faith and facts.”

  “Can I ask one last question?” she says. “You owe me that much. What are you really?”

  I pause, then say, “We call ourselves the Family. We’re like an emotional succubus or what you’d call an energy vampire,” I say, trying to explain the unexplainable. “But we’re not monsters. We don’t have superpowers all the time, but we can, when filled with tears, act with great strength and energy. Mostly, we’re like every other species on this planet that has adapted to survive. Despite what you saw from Alexei, most of us are not evil, and we do our best to live among humans without directly causing pain, both to avoid detection and because it is wrong.”

  “But for you to survive, humans must suffer,” she says.

  “Humans already suffer. We just soak up that energy. If we didn’t serve a purpose on this earth,” I remind her, “we wouldn’t survive.”

  “I wish I could write about all this. Don’t you think this could be a book?” She looks at her notebook, then back at me. “Cass, if I could write about all of this, then how do you think such a book should start?”

  I take a sip from my water bottle, smile at Samantha, and then say, “Are you crying?”

  NEWS REPORT #6

  Illinois State Police have issued an AMBER Alert for thirteen-year-old Barry Wilson. Wilson, a seventh-grade student at North Chicago Middle School, was last seen on April 17. Witnesses place him in the playground of the school where he was playing baseball with friends. After a disagreement during the game, Wilson left the playground alone. One witness said he was crying. Law enforcement officials are on the lookout for a black Ford van seen in the area earlier in the day.

  CHAPTER 19

  MONDAY, APRIL 20

  How was my spring break?” I say, repeating Mr. Abraham’s question to me. We’re sitting near the edge of the pool. It’s after school, and I’m waiting for Scott to come pick me up. He missed school today, and I missed him. Like a detective piecing together the clues to a crime, this new feeling of missing Scott is another sign that Maggie is wrong: love isn’t just an illusion; it’s my new reality.

  “All right, I guess,” I say, my feet dangling in the water, just like my answer barely touches the truth. How was my spring break? Busy, I guess. In a few days, I helped save one life, but in doing so, took another. I saw a person I love tortured and I was almost raped. I learned secrets about my family, while revealing my deepest secret to a person that I don’t even know I can totally trust. It wasn’t a break; it was a rip in the fabric of my life. “What did you do, Mr. A?”

  “Nothing exciting,” he says, and I try not to laugh almost as hard as I try to listen, but my mind is drifting. He catches me and asks, “Are you listening?”

  “I always listen,” I mutter, mainly to myself.

  “That’s what makes you such a good peer counselor,” he says.

  I swallow the smile that comes with a compliment, then mumble, “I need to quit.”

  “What? Peer counseling?”

  “It’s too hard to listen to people’s problems,” I answer. In the past, I soaked up people’s pain and tears like a sponge, but I know, deep inside of me, that I can’t do it anymore. Like an alcoholic avoiding bars and parties, I need to avoid opportunities to get my grief fix. If the first step was realizing I have a choice, then the second, I assume, is deciding to live without tears. I need to wean myself off tears for when I convince Siobhan to reveal the third and final step into humanity.

  “You’re so good at it, and we need you. Many students are still in pain over Robyn,” he says. I think not about school, but Robyn’s family. I must see them all, not for me, but for them.

  “I know,” I say, then fall deep into thought. Mr. Abraham’s still talking, but I’ve diverted my attention and my eyes to the pool.

  “Maybe you need to talk to someone,” Mr. Abraham says with a nervous chuckle.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You seem distracted,” he says.

  “Can I ask you something?” I ask, as if each word weighs a hundred pounds.

  “Of course, Cassandra,” he answers.

  “How do you know what to do?” I’m back to staring at the pool.

  He laughs first, but then smiles. His expression is familiar to me not from life, but from TV and movies. It’s that concerned and caring look a daughter hopes to see in their father’s eyes.

  “Sorry, that was a stupid question,” I say.

  “There are no stupid questions,” he says. “Just questions that are badly phrased. What did you mean, Cassandra, when you asked that question? Do about what?”

  “I mean, how do you make an important decision?” But even as he looks within himself for an answer, I realize my question itself is the answer. All my life, my family has lived like animals: we survive as a pack. Like a wild creature cares only about finding prey and nourishment, so, too, does my family only act out of animal instinct. We don’t really decide anything, for making a decision is a human activity.

  When Mr. A can tell I’m paying attention again, he starts. “What I’m about to say isn’t very helpful, but you just know. For all we talk in science about evidence, trial and error, and all the rigors of the scientific method, sometimes you just know. You don’t listen to your head or your heart. There’s something in between that must hold the answer. Don’t listen to science; instead, listen to the silence. And in that silence, answers and inspiration always emerge.”

  “Like a message from God?”

  He shrugs, then says, “No, Cassandra, more like a message from your true self.”

  I get dressed and wait for Scott by the front door of the school. I don’t know about listening to the silence; instead, I decide to listen to Siobhan. She always says sh
e won’t talk to me, then she always does. When compassion isn’t just an act, it is much harder to turn off, I suppose. I reach out to her new humanity on my cell phone.

  “Hello, Siobhan, it’s Cassandra. How are you—?”

  “I heard.”

  “Heard?”

  “You’re not the only cousin I talk to,” she says, sounding a little impatient. “Like I’ve told you before, you need to leave me out of this. I’ve left the family. That’s all in the past.”

  “What did you hear?” I ask, pretending that I didn’t hear her little speech.

  “About you rejecting Alexei,” she says. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think is going to happen?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll tell you, cousin, so you do know,” she says. The impatient tone in her voice returns. “Simon won’t stand for this, nor will Veronica. Alexei will be back. You don’t have a choice.”

  “But I do,” I say. “You told me I had a choice. I believed you. I’ve made my choice.”

  She pauses, then sighs. “This is serious. You can’t undo it. This is forever.”

  “I know,” I say, thinking how Maggie said something similar. “But, do you regret it?”

  “To be honest, sometimes yes,” she says. “I know you don’t want to hear that, but, yes, I wonder sometimes if I did the right thing. Your family is forever, but human love doesn’t always work out that way. I want you to understand this choice is a matter of life and death.”

  “Life and death?”

  “If you leave, then who will collect tears for Veronica? You’ll be breaking the chain.”

  “They’ll survive somehow,” I say. “Your family managed, didn’t they?”

  She pauses. “Yes, everyone pulled together, but it is so much more than just that. You’re killing off your old self to gain a human life.”

  “But how?”