Weird Girl by Mae McCall

then
hiding them on her person. Grinning with anticipation, she quickly got dressed,
brushed her teeth and hair, and then skipped down the stairs to see what on
Earth was bothering Helen.
     
    The sight of the group in the foyer as she rounded the curve
in the staircase caused her to draw up short. She took the last ten steps very
slowly. Standing on the mosaic floor, shoulder to shoulder, were Helen, Darwin,
Vera (quietly crying), and a solemn man in a dark suit, sunglasses, and a green
and black houndstooth hat. There was a single black suitcase on the floor
beside him, and Cleo wondered for a moment if this man was planning to stay
with them for a few days. (It wasn’t unusual, after all, for Helen or Darwin
to invite their scientist pals over for a weekend debate.)
     
    But, the suitcase wasn’t his. It was Cleo’s. And this is
when she learned her three lessons. Today was the day that she was to be sent
away. Her parents would not be going with her. Instead, the grim man would be
escorting her and handling paperwork at the school on her parents’ behalf.
(Helen insisted that they simply couldn’t spare the time away from their
research, but Darwin suspected that it really boiled down to a mother’s
inability to watch her daughter suffer.) Cleo tried to process what was going
on, but it was difficult to recalibrate the gears in her head, given that she
had been expecting to be home for another two days. And, to be honest, she had
been holding the secret hope that her parents were bluffing.
     
    She opened and closed her mouth three times before words
came out. “But I have plans today,” she said. “We’ll have to do this another
time.”  She started to edge around the group to gain access to the front door,
but the man’s arm shot out unbelievably fast, nearly clotheslining her in the
process.
     
    He looked down at her and cocked his head. “Now, you don’t
want to be doing that,” he said softly as he removed the dark glasses. The
combination of his accent (British) and the fact that he sounded like he gargled
gravel and glass every morning, sent chills down Cleo’s spine. And then he
smiled, and she instinctively held her breath at the implied menace in his ice
blue eyes.
     
    Taking two large steps back, Cleo looked to her family for
help. Darwin looked at the ceiling, Helen at the floor, and Vera just teared up
again and blew her nose on the lower hem of her apron, leaving a stringy snot
trail dangling down in the folds of her dress. “Where is all of my stuff?” Cleo
asked her.
     
    Vera just pointed at the tiny suitcase and wiped her nose on
her sleeve. Cleo looked at the suitcase, and then raised an eyebrow. “But where
is the rest of my stuff?” she asked. “I can’t go anywhere until I’m all packed,
and it looks like there are still miles to travel, and all that, so I’m just
gonna go pack some more. It’ll probably take a few days, so how about we
reconvene on Monday…say, at noon-ish?”  She began to edge back toward the
staircase.
     
    The scary man spoke again. “One suitcase maximum. It’s done.
Let’s go.”
     
    That stopped Cleo short. “What?” she exclaimed. “What do you
mean ‘one suitcase maximum’? I have way more stuff than that.”
     
    “The school will provide for all of your needs while you are
enrolled,” he said. “You need only bring underwear, sleepwear, footwear, and
any necessary hygiene tools or medications, which of course will be screened by
admissions when we arrive.”
     
    She gaped at him. “But…what about clothes? Books? Pencils?
Headphones? Candy?”
     
    “As I said, the school will provide for all of your needs
while you are enrolled. Now, shall we depart?” he said.
     
    A quick glance at her parents confirmed that they were
staying out of it. In fact, Darwin was a little farther away from the Hat Man
each time Cleo looked in his direction.
     
    She stepped forward and grabbed the extendable handle of her
suitcase. The man smiled