The Altar Girl: A Prequel Read online

  Nadia tried to sniff in the tears before they rolled out. She bit down harder on her tongue. “Yes, father.”

  He smiled for a beat, and turned his face into granite. “We’ll see. You’re on your own for three days.” He handed Nadia a whistle attached to a long pink chain she could wear around her neck. “For emergency purposes. If all else fails, get to high ground, and blow.” He turned to Marko. “Let’s go, slacker.”

  Marko walked over to Nadia. She spied the concern and affection in his eyes that always perked her up. As soon as Marko caught her glance, though, he put on his easygoing smile, the one that wanted to make light of any situation.

  “It’s just three days, Nancy Drew,” he said. “Three days is nothing. You and me, we can take three days of anything, right?”

  Nadia stood up and looked her brother in the eyes. “Right.”

  She tried to muster her inner strength, but her lips trembled and her eyes watered. She was about to look like a pathetic little girl, the same weakling she’d been before Marko had made her strong. The thought of him seeing her cry was unbearable, so she jumped up, grabbed her knapsack, and ran farther into the forest. She knew how to appear cool even if she was nervous. It was part of daily living because her father made her nervous all the time.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said over her shoulder. “I can do this. If a boy can do it, I can do it.”

  “That’s right, Nancy Drew. If a boy can do it, you can do it.” A few seconds passed and then she heard Marko’s voice again. Louder now, to make sure she heard him. “Hey little sister. What’s your name?”

  “Nadia,” she said.

  “What does it mean?”

  This time she turned her face to the side so her voice would carry in his direction and shouted, “Hope.”

  She walked aimlessly for a minute, wishing she’d never agreed to take the stupid test. The merit badge wouldn’t make a difference. All the kids would still pick on her. Compete with men? What the heck was her father talking about? This whole thing was wacko. She didn’t want to compete with anybody. She wanted to be left alone.

  Eventually the walking calmed her down, and her training kicked in. Her PLAST troop master was Mrs. Chimchak, a woman who’d fought for a free Ukraine against the Nazis and the communists in World War II. She thought American kids were spoiled, so her purpose in life was to make her scouts miserable. She’d taught them survival skills, how to build a shelter and an eternal fire, even how to gather water from dew with nothing more than a bowl, a plastic bag, and a pebble.

  Nadia headed down the path in the opposite direction from where her father and brother had disappeared. The first thing she had to do was find the right place to build her camp. It had to be near water so she could boil it and drink it, but on higher ground so if it rained the water would flow away from her. As a plan for a campsite began to take shape, the tears stopped flowing and she started to believe she could do this. In fact, it might not be so bad. Maybe she’d want to stay a fourth and fifth day for fun.

  But as she descended toward the river, the sun vanished behind a patch of clouds and the darkness of the forest enveloped her. A light wind shook the pine trees to either side of her and they began to whisper and move as though they were human, capable of pulling her to their trunks with their branches and devouring her with hidden mouths, and deep down, Nadia knew she was mistaken.

  CHAPTER 3

  HE’D PICKED ME up in a black Camaro IROC with tinted windows and an exhaust note so loud my father started swearing as soon as he heard it. He thought it was the neighbor next door, a truck driver who liked to rev his motorcycle as loud as possible to piss off the low-rent boat people from Eastern Europe. At least that’s what he called us. But when my father saw it was Donnie he became all smiles. Sure the kid neglected his schoolwork and didn’t know Ukrainian from uranium, but this was America and he was only a freshman in high school. Our Uke parents were prepared to overlook all sorts of questionable character traits if it meant their sons and daughters might marry a purebred.

  I was thirteen at the time. Most parents wouldn’t have allowed their thirteen-year-old daughter to go out on a date with a sixteen-year-old boy, including mine. But in this case they were willing to make an exception because he was Ukrainian. My father had a private chat with Donnie before we went out. I’m sure Donnie fed him a well-rehearsed series of lies about his intentions, and my father happily digested them. My mother seemed less sanguine about the matter, but she told me that I was a lucky girl to be going out with such a handsome young man.

  Donnie said he was going to take me to the McDonald’s on the Silas Deane Highway in Newington—I liked it because it was the only one around with the old-fashioned arches. But instead of pulling in, he drove straight past it to the parking lot of the Grantmoor, a motel known for hourly room rates used by married couples, the kind who weren’t wed to each other. Donnie said we were going to work up an appetite first. Who was I to say no? I was a mere mortal. The thought of being kissed by an angel terrified and enthralled me at the same time.

  In fact, I’d never been kissed before he leaned over and pressed his lips to mine. Soon he was working his fingers expertly and turning me into his personal puddle of mush. The sensations racked me with such fury I was prepared to marry him on the spot. Then he pulled away and said, “Do you fuck?” I shrank back in the seat with horror and embarrassment and shook my head no.

  He tried to force himself on me but I had to give him credit. As soon as he felt my flesh turn cold and heard the word “No,” he stopped. I didn’t get a burger, fries, or a milkshake, and within a week the story went around that he’d gone out with me because he’d never fucked a fat girl, and he wanted to see if they were really as grateful as all the guys said they were.

  Now, here he was, pouring me a flute of Champagne.

  “C’mon,” he said. “It wasn’t that bad. I never forget it when a girl’s hips buckle, especially for the first time. We had a moment. You felt it. Big time. I know you did.”

  I suppressed my revulsion. “Yeah, but you never bought me that cheeseburger.”

  He chuckled in a patronizing way. “That’s why I’m giving you the bubbly now.”

  He offered me a flute.

  I shook my head. “I can’t, Donnie.”

  His face dropped. Something between disappointment and anger. “Are you saying no to my generosity?”

  If corporate America had taught me one thing, it was that strength respects strength. My goal was to be agreeable but not arrogant, and to use my intelligence to weaken his resolve. That’s the only weapon I had with which to defend myself. My brain.

  “No, Donnie. I’m not saying no to you. I’m saying yes to my policy.”

  “Policy? What policy?”

  “Never drink with your kidnappers.”

  He lifted his eyebrows, tilted his head, thought about it for a few seconds, and nodded. “Can’t say that I blame you.” He drained one of the flutes. “You want something else? I got birch beer. It’s white on account of the particular birch sap they used. You know what they call chocolate ice cream with birch beer in Pennsylvania?”

  “Birch beer float?”

  “No. A black cow. Love me a black cow now and then. What do you know about your godfather’s business?”

  Donnie asked the question as though it were a natural extension of the black cow discussion.

  “He sold antiques,” I said. “He loved old things. Loved their smell, the stories behind them. Almost as much as he loved Ukraine. He liked you, too, Donnie.”

  Donnie blinked three times quickly, as though I’d interrupted his train of thought. His lips parted in surprise. “He did?”

  “Absolutely. You had a Tryzub sticker in the rear windshield of your Camaro.” The Tryzub was the national symbol of Ukraine, a yellow trident atop a blue shield. “I remember my godfather saying, ‘He’s
a good boy.’”

  “He said that?”

  “He did.”

  “About me?”

  “He said you have a Ukrainian soul.”

  A faint smile spread across Donnie’s lips.

  “And that meant you’d be strong and compassionate. You’d be a survivor. We Ukes, we’re survivors above all else. The Turks, the Austrians and Hungarians, the Poles, the Russians, the Nazis and the communists. They all ruled Ukraine at one time or another. Stalin tried to starve the country. Millions upon millions dead in 1933. But still, our ancestors survived, didn’t they?”

  A mist covered Donnie’s eyes. He was looking in my direction but appeared lost in reflection.

  “Your godfather always nodded at me when he saw me,” he said. “From a distance, I thought it was a nasty look. A ‘you’re a piece of shit and we both know it’ kind of look. Like all the old-timers gave me.”

  Donnie was right, of course. My godfather hadn’t liked him. He’d told my father to make sure he kept me away from him. And once Donnie proved himself to be an unrepentant criminal, my godfather had hated him like everyone else. By choosing to ignore the law of the land, he’d abused the second greatest gift after life itself. His American citizenship. And for people who’d suffered through World War II, that was a hard sin to forgive.

  “You were so wrong,” I said. “It’s funny how we can think one thing for years, and then discover that the truth was the complete opposite.”

  “Ain’t that so.”

  The police thought my godfather had fallen down the cellar stairs and died from a blow to the head. But I knew better without knowing much more. He never went down those stairs at night. Never. In fact, he was mentally incapable of making the descent once the sun came down.

  I considered the possibility that Donnie had killed my godfather. But regret and self-loathing shone in his eyes, not guilt. I felt confident in my conclusion because I knew the look well. I’d seen it in the mirror many times. I reminded myself that didn’t mean Donnie hadn’t killed him anyways.

  “I never got a chance to say good-bye to him,” I said. “Not only that, I hadn’t spoken to him in three years. Did I talk to people about him at the panakhyda and the reception? Of course I did. Did I make chitchat about his business? Sure. That’s what people do. That’s why we have these ceremonies, to help us move on.”

  Donnie’s eyes scrunched together. He nodded solemnly. “That’s all it was?”

  “That’s all it was.”

  “Swear to God on the Holy Bible? Now you were an altar girl—you can’t lie to me.”

  “No, Donnie. I can’t lie to you. And even if I wanted to, I’m no good at it.”

  He stared at me for a moment. I was certain he could see straight into my Ukrainian-American soul. He could tell I was a liar, manipulator, and a fraud. But instead of protesting, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay, then. Let’s call the whole thing a mistake. The boys have been circling the Upper East Side. I’ll tell them to go back to your apartment. No harm, no foul. That’s what they say, isn’t it? We’ll pretend we were two friends getting caught up. How does that sound?”

  I tempered a sense of euphoria. I wasn’t quite home yet, though I could smell the pizza again and picture the cork coming out of the bottle.

  “Sounds like what it really was,” I said.

  He smiled the Donnie Angel smile. “Okay, babe. Give us a hug.”

  He opened his arms and beckoned me to come. I would have rather embraced some poison oak, but I had to continue my performance to the bitter end. I walked into his open arms. He smelled of nicotine and musk. When he stepped forward to pull me closer, the spike beneath his shoe slid atop mine. He pulled it away quickly before he could hurt me.

  “Oops. Sorry about my shoes. I was playing soccer when I got the call to follow you and pick you up. I had some clothes in the van but I have no idea what I did with my shoes, and I can’t walk around in socks. Only a heathen walks around in socks.”

  A few million Japanese might have disagreed. “Soccer. Of course. I figured it was something like that.”

  He leaned in and whispered in my ear. “You miss your father, Nadia?”

  It was a strange question to ask and it caught me off guard, but given the previous conversation it sounded heartfelt and genuine, so I responded in kind.

  “In some ways I do, but in other ways—much as I hate to say it—I don’t.”

  “You’re lucky then. I don’t miss my old man in any way at all. I’m glad the bastard’s dead.” Donnie pulled back and looked me in the eyes. “He only taught me one thing that ever made any sense. Know what that was?”

  I shook my head.

  He leaned in to my ear again.

  “My old man used to say, ‘If the devil’s powerless, send him a woman.’”

  He grabbed me by the neck and dragged me across the floor. Ripped the white sheet away to reveal the piece of furniture beneath it. I’d thought it was a side table. I was wrong. It didn’t look like any table I’d ever seen. A wooden arm connected two half-circle metal supports at each end of the contraption, the kind that would allow for the display of a cylindrical item, like an antique rifle or sword. But the unibody design included a stool at one end, too.

  Donnie pushed me down onto that stool.

  The entire exercise took three seconds. Three seconds ago I could taste the wine. Now I was gasping for breath, my neck fairly wrenched, staring at those metal supports.

  Then it hit me. I realized their function and why I was sitting on the stool in front of them. An overwhelming sense of terror gripped me, the kind I hadn’t felt since I was twelve years old, alone on the Appalachian Trail.

  “Tell me again,” Donnie said, without a trace of emotion, as he measured the length of my leg with his eyes. “What do you know about your godfather’s business?”

  CHAPTER 4

  AS SOON AS her father and brother disappeared, Nadia did what she’d been dying to do for the last hour. She ate.

  She needed to ration her food because there was no way she was going to hunt small game. No rabbits or snakes were going to find their way into her mess kit. She was fully prepared to boil water but that was it. A human being could survive for a long time without food as long as she had water. Three days wasn’t going to be a problem, especially if she worked her way through her rations slowly.

  Her knapsack contained a slice of buckwheat bread, a breakfast-sized jar of honey, and a bag with about twenty almonds and raisins. Nadia ate five almonds and raisins each and washed them down with some water. The water tasted like warm metal, but she savored the salt and sugar. They tasted so good together, like Doritos and M&M’s. Sometimes she ate a handful of each when she got home after school. There was nothing like it. The thought of chips and candy made her even hungrier, so she ate five more of each. Then she decided she needed her strength now because she would only be building her shelter once, so she ate the rest of the almonds and raisins. A pang of guilt gnawed at her when she was done, but she still had the bread and honey, and half the canteen of water. She vowed not to eat until tomorrow.

  Nadia used the map and her compass to find a stream three-quarters of a mile away. She’d studied cartography during summer camps and was an expert with a compass. Once she found the stream, she continued toward high ground to find a campsite.

  Finding a source of water quickly cheered her up. She was able to look around and enjoy the sights. She loved the Appalachian Trail and the surrounding forest. Loved everything about it. Plants and animals were nice. People weren’t. Out here, no one threw dodgeballs at her head at recess when she wasn’t looking.

  Danger also lurked on the AT, sometimes disguised as beauty. She picked her way through a giant ravine filled with storm-tossed birch trees: severed branches, strips of white bark, and tree rot scattered as if aliens had nuked the pla
ce. Amidst the rubble, moisture had given birth to a supersized colony of spectacular white mushrooms.

  Nadia sidestepped the fungi, miniature flying saucers docked on rippling stalks, a preview of life on Mars. To the inexperienced hiker, they might have looked like tasty appetizers for the grill. Nadia knew better. Mrs. Chimchak had taught that certain fungi were lethal. Best not to mess with Martian spaceships when you’re living off the AT.

  Nadia paused at the top of a hill and looked around. The terrain had flattened out. Water would flow down from here. A small gap amidst a grove of spruce trees would allow the flames of her fire to rise without burning down the entire East Coast. And a pair of young trees were set wide enough apart for her to build a lean-to.

  This was the spot.

  Nadia dropped her knapsack and turned around to memorize the path she’d taken.

  Mrs. Chimchak stood before her with a blank expression.

  Nadia jumped and shrieked. She covered her mouth with her hand. Cursed at herself for having shown weakness. But how could she not have been surprised?

  There’d been no noise. No sign of a human being approaching.

  Of course there hadn’t been. Kids called Mrs. Chimchak the Razor Blade for a reason. If she stood sideways, sometimes you couldn’t even see she was there. In the forest, she moved like a fern with invisible legs. She stood relaxed but poised, the way she always did, in a navy blue work shirt and pants. Never had such a tiny person looked so big and scary.

  “Hotujsh,” Mrs. Chimchak said in Ukrainian, the traditional greeting among young scouts.

  Nadia snapped her feet to attention, returned the greeting, and saluted her elder. The salute consisted of a V formed with the second and third fingers of her right hand. The odd thing was that in the English-speaking world it was the peace sign. But the greeting that went along with it in Ukrainian had more to do with war than peace.

  Hotujsh. Prepare yourself.

  “What are you doing here?” Nadia said.