Curtains (1/1)
I remind myself that my life is the life I chose, and in choosing it, I gave up the right to regret the comparatively unimportant things I didn't and wouldn't have in the first place, like a decent singing voice or a standing ovation under a spotlight.
First Posted: May 1999
Category: Oddness, V, minor A, quirky H, M/S UST
DISTRIBUTION: Wherever
SPOILERS: No Official ones, but see notes below
RATING: G, for Golly-gee, it's clean
DISCLAIMER: Do I own these characters? Outlook not so good. Do Chris Carter, 1013, Fox, News Corp, etc., etc., own these characters? It is decidedly so. Were any fictional characters harmed in the writing of this story? Better not to tell you now.
THANKS: To Jill, Shari, and Liza, for reading, writing, editing, and listening. A thousand blessings on your homes, gals.
FEEDBACK? Without a doubt. Please and thank you. eviljesemie@yahoo.com

This is a quasi-sequel to another story of mine, Going Once. Detailed knowledge of that story isn't really necessary; just know that Scully and Mulder are in Oakville, USA, on a tedious investigation, and that Scully is in Less-Than-Enthusiastic Mode.

~~~~
The mid-afternoon sky is torn, stacked with lint-gray thunderheads and spikes of sunlight. The bellies of the clouds are purple and swollen. There's dizziness and drizzle when I look at them. A small part of me decides, in an authoritative manner, that this is because my eyes haven't adjusted to the outdoor glare yet.

The rest of my brain stutters and shuts off completely while a raspberry-hued haze fizzles around me.

I've decided that I am either a very low-key manic-depressive or one of those people who live by the weather, like old farmers who rock on their rickety porches and chat about winds that picked the hen-house right up and deposited it in a thistle patch two counties away, because an hour ago I was doing all right. I was in the middle of an investigation, pointless though it may be, and I hadn't even thought about ditching Mulder and going home (in that order) for a day or so.

That was an hour ago. How things change.

Every time I take a step, I splash a little more muddy water on my dress pants. Spring casts a warped reproduction of me in an endless series of puddles today, and as I walk through the parking lot at Oakville High, I have an eerie mental image of myself tiptoeing through a field of discarded hand mirrors.

Were I superstitious, I'd believe this to signify that I'll be stuck in this town with Mulder for seven years. Seven days would be bad enough. If we're here much longer, I fear I may dance on the rooftop of the Little Oakville Motel during the next whimsical country storm that blows down from the north. I'll make Mulder dance too, and I'll force him to hold a weather vane, just for fun.

No, no. I have to play nice. Otherwise, I won't get to . . . to . . . um . . .

I have to play nice.

Clouds blunder above, muffling bowling alley thunder. I always forget how Spring tumbles in with a kind of recklessness; after Winter's faded landscapes, the prism range of color is like an explosion. But the trade off is that the shadows are darker, more threatening. It feels too much like my life. It's like existing inside a mood-swing.



The case preoccupies my thoughts, however reluctantly; rumors of theatre-brat teenagers torturing middle school cast mates with magical, perhaps Ouija Board-induced curses do not impress me, especially when such gossip is wholly unsubstantiated.

Wholly. Yeah.

I'm a better liar than you'd think.

I'm opening the car door when my cell phone squeals, still battered from an early morning wake-up-call catastrophe at the motel. Mulder is on the other end of the line, wearing his enthusiastic voice like a kamikaze necktie. It's disconcerting, especially since I thought he was walking right behind me.

"Where are you, Mulder?" I scan the parking lot but don't see him.

"The principal's office."

Terrific. "Have you been pulling pigtails on the playground again?"

"Only yours, Scully. Guess what?" I hate guessing games. He keeps talking. "Did you read the teacher's roster while we were in that last meeting? Four of the middle school students originally cast in the second-semester musical dropped out because they'd missed too many days due to sickness. The administration claims there was some kind of bad stomach virus going around."

"Four kids out of a cast of 150? Big deal. We talked to the teacher and hunted for your original source on this - who seems to have never existed, big surprise - and all we can claim to have found are a bunch of students that are alternately indifferent or petulant. Mrs. Hamstead seems a bit high-strung, but aside from that - no signs of mystical torture, no finger pointing. No Ouija Board guidance. We interviewed the high schoolers originally thought to be the perpetrators and found nothing suspicious. Right?" Whew. I've tired myself out with this diatribe. I plop into the driver's seat. A steady rainfall has begun; as the water runs down the windshield, I'm startled that at first it looks like diluted grape juice, turning clear an instant later.

"Is that what we found? Or didn't find, I guess I should say?"

"What are you implying?"

"Nothing," I hear him sigh. "You seemed awfully popular with a couple of the guys, that's all. You know, Paul Ivins and Gary Mattox? They have leads in the musical, I think. They seemed very interested in you."

The two seniors *were* interested in me. I just can't figure out why, or, of more importance, how. What I know is that when they stared at me, the room shifted through a series of lilac-shaded silhouettes, obscuring my sight and causing a bad combination of headache and nausea. I woke up, so to speak, with my hands gripping my seat. My copy of the class roster had fallen on the floor and Mulder was looking at me like I'd fainted.

He hasn't said anything about it, though, and until he does, I'm keeping it to myself.

"Jealous?" I ask.

"Hmmm. Moving on, I don't think a stomach virus is our culprit. I do think I've figured out that my original source has a record at Oakville Middle School. A current record."

"Really."

"Yep. Actually, if I'm correct, all four of my original sources attend OMS. Fred Simm - that was the name on the email, right? Get this - Frank Reed, Eddie Davis, Sammy Ivins, and Mike Mattox are all eighth graders. Take their initials in that order - you get Fred Simm." I can tell Mulder's very intrigued about this new hunch he's having.

Ivins. Mattox. Well. "And I guess Sammy and Mike are the younger siblings of Paul and Gary?" I'm so intrigued I bang my head against the steering wheel twice.

"You got it, Scully. And Frank and Eddie are the little brothers of two other high school leads. Guess what the names of the drop-out kids are, Scully."

I draw the conclusion. "Have you talked to Mrs. Hamstead?"

"Not yet. I'm going to try and arrange a meeting with our four mysterious sources. And I want to talk to the other middle schoolers again. What was that noise?"

"I'm still not convinced this will yield much, Mulder." I use my nicest voice, the prim but pleasant phone operator one, the one that listens to reason and wears her hair in a bun.

"You're probably right," he says. When he says that, it's always sarcastic. "But these kids were the ones that had to drop out of the production. And according to the secretary here, they were each considered up-and-coming small-town stars in their own right."

"And what - you think this is sibling rivalry gone awry? It isn't like eighth graders are going to be cast for the same parts as high school students."

"Maybe the high schoolers are protecting something else. I don't know."

"Our plane leaves at 10 a.m. tomorrow."

"I know, but - "

"Mulder - "

"Just one more meeting, Scully. Oh, and the performance tonight, of course. Check your coat, by the way."

I start pulling frayed tissue out of my rain slicker's pockets. On a blue Post-It, Mulder has written 'Back wall - stage - 7:45'. I wad up the message. "Should I go to the middle school?"

"See you there in five. Choral room, A hall."



My motel room is cold. My head hurts. It's raining. I want to go home. I want to scream.

Interesting, or not, how life can be reduced to such mundane terms.

After our enlightening - in a muddy kind of way - interview with the eighth graders, Mulder is somewhere forming a theory, sorting through snippets of conversation and body language, gleaning from the smallest details and nuances some kind of larger picture about this case, divining, with the help of special child-attuned capabilities, the truth about brother and sisters, rivalry and mind-control, Rodgers and Hammerstein.

I am thinking about my family. In their elementary, middle, and high school years, Melissa, Bill, and Charlie combined played an astounding range of roles, from doomed Shakespearean villains to Sondheim singers. There were incredible differences the three kids' personalities, but they all enjoyed a stage.

Melissa once told me that it would be a shame if I wasted a lot of time worrying about classes as silly as theatre or chorus since I was so good at science and math. Bill had less tact, threatening rope burns if I didn't stop singing along to the score of "Oklahoma!" Charlie just snickered, although I think he felt a bit sorry for me. He gave me a copy of the original Broadway cast recording of "My Fair Lady" for my birthday after my first album disappeared.

I enjoyed the stage - from the audience.

Any major disappointment I may have felt at not being on a stage was always replaced the minute I saw one of my siblings up there. But I retained a small bit of remorse for not being able to string two notes together or slip a character on like a pair of comfortable shoes. People complimented my academic success, but it wasn't the same as cheers and acclaim and those triumphant bows Missy, Bill, and Charlie got to take. None of them became actors, but they fell in love with the art just the same.

Tonight, I repeat to myself, 'Many people, and at a minimum one well-known deity, love me. I am a basically happy person. I have a good job. I will not blame my partner for things beyond his control.' Which include creepy teenagers, purple fog, headaches, stomach aches, spring weather, and thirteen year old boys who sat across the plastic-top table from me and refused to raise their heads or meet my gaze. Which include memories of being the least talented child, creatively speaking, in a family of extroverts.

I remind myself that my life is the life I chose, and in choosing it, I gave up the right to regret the comparatively unimportant things I didn't and wouldn't have in the first place, like a decent singing voice or a standing ovation under a spotlight.

I try to focus, to prepare. In twenty minutes, I'm going to go stake-out some school kids. Until then, I will lay on my lumpy motel bed and make wishes to the ceiling. At least it isn't leaking.

And at least when you're alone in your Oakville motel bedroom at seven o'clock at night, no one can hear you sing "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens" off-key. It's thundering again, miles of farmland in the distance, and I shudder.



The warped wooden floor beneath my feet is sticky with residual traces of blue and white tape, reminding me of the thick chalky outlines of bodies at crime scenes. Here there are only former markings for placements and sets, and a thousand scratches from dozens of character shoes. I guess I should add mine to the count; I'm dragging one hard heel back and forth in a short arc, mesmerized by my own nervous movement.

I must have pre-show jitters. It's a little bit embarrassing.

I walk to a clear spot against the back wall and fold myself to the floor. I'm possibly too old to sit in this position, with my knees tucked at my chin. I notice that I occupy a terribly small space, as though I measure no more mass than a child. It's dim here, and my senses narrow with my breathing.

It's foolish, but I feel like a stowaway, trembling, dressed in rags. The stage is my seasoned ship, something sighing for the ocean, deepened with azure lights, the swaying curtains, a salt water smell of sweat and mold, and the rocking motion of footsteps while costumed students, muttering lines and singing snips of songs, traipse across the expanse. Out front, the flocked patrons are noisy with chatter, and in the acoustics of the auditorium they sound like seagulls swooping on the surf.

Ropy cables attached to the gilded cardboard turrets and columns stored in the fly space dangle like lines for sails, hidden, like me, behind the set drop. I find myself wanting to swing from them, pirate-style. Maybe try a little banshee yodeling.

I'm probably losing my mind. Go figure it would happen a hundred feet from a paying, if unwitting, audience.

This isn't me talking. I must be channeling Mulder again.

The senior playing Anna in Oakville School Corp's production of "The King and I" walks by, her huge hoop skirt lashing my shins. Carol Davis smirks down at me and removes a pair of white ladies' gloves from her dress pockets.

"Aren't you going to tell me to break a leg?" she asks.

The gloves look old; the fingertips are stained. The set drop ripples as though monsters lurk under it. The girl wades into the side curtains, leaving a mist of dust behind her.

My stomach clinches. Beneath blue haze, other young students seem to swim past, making aquatic squeals as they yank on their satin costumes. Their shoes shuffle with a rhythm that matches the flicker of the lights. Five minutes until curtain time.

Mulder wanders into peripheral vision, stalled at the door by a clot of parents cooing over their dramatic prodigies. He manages his way around them. He pretends to trip over me, stumbling slap-stick and long-limbed into a graceless slouch at my right.

"Hey, Scully. Didn't see you there."

I wonder if it's overreacting to think that this statement sums up our entire relationship. I don't answer him. He doesn't have time to respond to my lack of response before the stage lights black out. The overture to "The King and I" swells from the orchestra pit; the floor rumbles with deep, exotic tones.

As yellow lights slowly brighten the stage, Mulder hands me a microphone. "You're due out front in two movements, Scully. Better get going," he whispers.

"What?" I'm distracted by the sudden dampness in the air; it's like I'm standing on the side of a boat, getting drenched by sea-spray.

Mulder appears to be twirling a tiny anchor on a length of string. "Two movements. Don't forget your crown this time."

"What are you talking about?"

We both topple to the left, and the floor seems to undulate. "Your crown," Mulder replies, yanking a lock of my hair. "You forgot it during the last dress rehearsal. I know it pinches your head but the queen really should wear a crown."

"What are you talking about?" I hiss.

"Scully, you have two minutes to get in costume. Don't make me follow you into the dressing room." He leers, swanky and gleeful, shoving my shoulder.

"Why would I wear a costume?" I ask, feeling such an overwhelming sense of frustration that I'm tempted to whack him with the microphone.

"Because playing Lady Thiang in a pair of jeans is unprofessional?" Mulder asks, as though it's rhetorical. "Come on, Scully. Move. If you miss your very first opening-night cue, you'll never land another lead." He stands up and pulls me with him. We wobble and lurch, and on the other side of the curtains, I hear a distinct splash.

"Man overboard!" someone yells.

"*That's* not in the first act," Mulder says, shaking his head as if miffed. "No one walks the plank until after the King learns to dance."

"What?" I repeat, my voice weak and watery. I let Mulder push me through the stage doors, into a neon green room where four little boys are painting their hair purple with large brushes by a wall-sized mirror.

"I think these kids are supposed to be yours tonight," Mulder informs me. I nod at each of them. They wave, grin, and go back to their chore. Purple splotches cover their bare feet and costumes.

I stare at the spots, which are spreading, oozing. Underneath the purple is a deep dazzling red. I glance at Mulder and see that he's turned a literal gray. There is no color left in him. He slumps backwards and I swivel around to look at the boys. The red has rotted like coagulated blood, and there is nothing else in the room but its thick stench.

I'm sure there's a monologue I should recite at this moment, but I can't remember how it goes or who I say it to. The mirror cracks, a thousand shards of silver that melt, mixing with the red. The floor is flooded with glittery pink slush, and my ankles sting. What's my next line?

Oh my God. I've got a cue in thirty seconds and I can't remember a single line.

A girl floats into the room, her blue-gray eyes flashing like waves. She glares at me. "We have a leak," she sneers. "We're sinking. Everyone's going to drown."

As a wash of slimy seaweed snags me against a costume rack of feather boas and gingham gowns, one of Mulder's strangely disembodied hands grabs my right arm. His other hand pinches my wrist hard.



"Ow!"

"Sorry, but you weren't paying attention," Mulder says. I glance over at him, noting that we're still sitting against the stage's back wall. Lights are flickering again. "Two minutes until the show starts." He stops talking long enough to look at me with a sort of bemused sternness. "Are you okay? How can you sit like that anyway?"

I've wrapped my arms around my legs and I realize it's difficult to breathe in this position. I start to answer Mulder, but a girl in the wings distracts me. She is wearing a satin halter top and capri pants. She is barefoot and fake-tanned, maybe seventeen years old. I recognize her; she's Naomi Reed. She plays another lead character - Tuptim, I think. She smiles at me. It chills me to the core. Her eyes are wet green, and she slinks her gaze to Mulder, staring at him like she's considering devouring him whole.

Then Mulder snaps his fingers in front of my face, and I decide to let her. I blink; when I look for the girl again, she's gone.

"Please. Pay. Attention. To. Me."

I shrug off the chill and sigh. I do that a lot these days. "Why are we crammed back here? If we're supposed to be watching out for bizarre events during this performance, then I think we need to be in a better place to see anything at all," I say, trying to keep my voice very quiet but failing. "The students know who we are now. They're not going to pull anything with us sitting three feet away. This is not proper procedure."

"The kids barely acknowledged our existence. Why would they censor themselves around us? C'mon, Scully, you know you love it when I'm being rebellious."

I suck in a breath, putting on my best Official Business FBI-face. "Furthermore," I continue, "we have no proof whatsoever that anything has happened to any child in this school that warrants a serious federal investigation."

"Several of the children mentioned that they recalled classmates saying they felt disoriented during rehearsals and drama class, Scully. No one has fully explained that to my satisfaction. I think four of the kids, possibly more, may indeed be able to conjure up some sort of power."

"Disorientation? That's your big mystery, Mulder?" Even as I speak, a certain queasiness trickles into me. I've never been sea-sick before, but I bet this is what it feels like. It is not a wet green, but a deep purple, like a bruise. I want to dismiss it.

I almost gag, but choke out, the nausea subsiding, "We are observing tonight as a favor to the teacher, Mrs. Hamstead, who, I think you will concede, appeared decidedly stressed out earlier today due to the fact that 150 students are performing tonight, and she is responsible for making sure they don't make complete fools of themselves in front of their classmates.

"The eighth graders we spoke to did not seem even remotely traumatized by anything other than the cafeteria food, nor did they know of anyone else who is or was being seriously harmed. Our plane doesn't leave until 10 a.m. tomorrow and Mrs. Hamstead just wanted to be sure of things."

"Maybe, but I know what I saw this afternoon. Those kids were awfully squirrelly and sullen to have been, as you say, unharmed. They know something," Mulder says, jaw squared.

"Okay. But why are we sitting *here*?"

"I think we should treat this like any other stakeout, Scully."

"Behind the set drop?"

"For now." Ah, yes, proper procedure.

My head hurts. "We need to be able to get up and move around during the performance. Weren't you ever in a play in high school, Mulder? If anything weird happens, it's going to happen back stage, not on stage."

"Fine," Mulder replies. "This was just a place to meet, that's all." He rubs his eyes. I think I'm wearing him down. "So," he says after a moment, "you spent a lot of time back stage as a kid?"

He's the reason we took this stupid case, and since we arrived in town three days ago I seem to have spent a decent amount of time punishing him for it. I'm not really sure why. As the stage lights fade, I whisper, "No. But I did spend a lot of time getting tripped over."

His mouth quirks. He watches me with an unreadable expression until we're consumed by a darkness the color of crushed violets and the bottomless ocean at night.



As it turns out, it's busier than a bus station back stage during a performance. If I ever knew that, I'd forgotten it. I spent an unpleasant minute not long after the performance began attempting to keep a minor altercation over body mics and shared scripts from snowballing into a full-blown riot. I was recruited by a parent who obviously thought I was also a parent. I'm thinking I should have worn my clip-on ID badge. I wonder how much of a scene, no pun intended, I'd have made by waving my gun around a little.

No time to dwell on it, though. Watching our high school suspects means roaming the entire back stage area. By the fifth set change of the first act, I'm convinced that real paranormally-enhanced children would have figured out some way to enslave the younger cast members or anyone else cluttering up the place. At least if the younger students were under someone's all-powerful control, they wouldn't have a chance to get in the way. Except for the student crew and directors, all of whom pace the back stage area like hungry panthers, most of the kids seem exhausted and whiny, their costumes and make-up sagging as they attempt, with great dazed fury, to memorize whole scenes seconds before walking on stage.

It's intermission, and I have no idea where Mulder is. I've reestablished myself behind the set drop in the hope that I won't ever have to stand up again. Shuffling through masses of kids is more tiring than I would have dreamed.

Mulder coughs loudly and gestures to me from the wings. "Over here."

I see he's stolen two chairs out of the orchestra pit and has set them up in the wing's downstage-right corner. He's holding a mangled Magic-8 Ball. "I was rummaging through the supply and prop closet with a couple of the King's children. We found this."

"And?"

"Well, we've determined that the high school students probably aren't using a Ouija Board. Maybe this is their oracle of choice."

"Maybe you should ask it if it is."

"Did that. 'Reply hazy. Try again.' So we did, and that's when it sort of broke. Of course, we were tossing it around. Dropping it probably didn't help."

I sit down. "There are probably some plastic swords in that prop closet too. Should that be considered evidence as well? Besides, Mulder, I thought we concurred that nothing of significance happened to any of the kids." A part of me recognizes the auto-response shrillness in my voice.

He shrugs, not mentioning that we don't exactly concur about much of anything. "That may be true, Scully, but the kids I was with mentioned something fascinating to me while we were hunting for goodies."

"What's that?"

Paul Ivins and Gary Mattox sidle past us, discussing spirit gum and skull caps and Nancy Somethingerother's new tattoo. When they reach the stage door, they glance back at me without expressions.

"They said that you know what purple feels like." Mulder looks at me intently, and I realize that I must have gone pale, because he plunks down next to me, his hand on my shoulder, and pushing the hair away from my face.

"Why did you believe them?" I ask, even as the floor seems to bubble and shift.

"I wouldn't have before tonight," he says. "But I think something is going on here, Scully, something that's affecting you.

"Nothing's wrong." My head hurts. My head hurts.

"I can't prove anything specific, of course, since we have, like you said, no other proof of wrong-doing. *None* of the eighth graders will admit to anything precise. But they do appear to know something."

I massage my temples and try to focus on Mulder's voice but do not respond.

"And I guess you don't care much regardless." He says it with almost offhanded casualness. This is his way of forcing a reaction.

I think about what I want to say. All I come up with is, "I care."

He gives me such an irritated look that I smile. "Really. We'll talk to the kids again tomorrow. Before the plane leaves." The headache dulls somewhat.

I smooth out my shirt and close my eyes, briefly, against the house lights. Mulder snags my right hand, running his thumb with a soft touch over the small bruise on my wrist. "Okay," he says, not letting go of my hand. "Sorry about this," he says, and I think it may be an apology for more than the bruise.

The curtains swash shut. Music rises up like laughter; a spotlight roams the length of the stage; children giggle in the opposite wing and tug at each other.

I make no move to stalk the back stage area and neither does Mulder. We last the rest of the show in our wing-seats. From there, I can see the front row of the audience. Frank Reed, Eddie Davis, Sammy Ivins, and Mike Mattox are all there, with their respective parents. The boys watch the musical and I watch them.

When their brothers or sisters are performing, the light seems an unsettling lavender, and my headache never leaves. But I imagine I can hear the boys' applause the loudest, and when their siblings bow at curtain call, their gazes are sad and awed, longing and proud.

Mulder has long since let go of my hand, and even with the blazing heat from the stage lights, I shiver and cannot seem to stop.



"Well, I'm depressed. I had no idea the King dies at the end," Mulder grumbles. The Little Oakville Motel parking lot is deserted. A curious moon polishes a cloudy spot of sky. "We're still going to try and talk to the kids again tomorrow? Mrs. Hamstead seemed game."

"Sure. Whatever." I'm not paying attention again, not really. The tune to "Getting to Know You" chirps in my head, sounding toneless and melancholy, unlike the perky version Carol Davis sang.

As I unlock my room, a question arises. "Are you ever going to admit anything, Scully?"

"Excuse me?" The door swings open, and I stand between a contrast of flat, humid warmness and cold recycled air.

"You experienced something today, several times, but you seem very willing to ignore it, even though it's obviously spooked you, even though it's made you slightly sick. Is it that hard to confront?"

I wonder how happy applause makes Carol Davis, how much it's worth to her. I think about my sister, who, when she bowed, gracious and deliberate, always smiled at me and my parents and clapped for us. I look into my hollow room, devoid of light or warmth, and think, I'm not afraid of the dark.

I'm not.

"No," I answer.

"No, it isn't too hard to confront, or no, you're not going to tell me?"

"Just - no." I step into my room and close the door, leaving Mulder standing at his motel door.



Twenty minutes later, there's a knock. It startles me out of the new rain's hypnosis, tracing water down my window.

I let Mulder inside. He's soaked, but carrying his barn jacket like a bundle.

"I have a theory," he says. "Want to hear it?"

I nod. He hands me a pack of cheese-'n'-peanut butter crackers. "Have you eaten anything at all today?" Actually, I haven't; I didn't have time for breakfast and I refused the school food. Of course he knows this. "Maybe, your blood sugar's just too low and that's why you've been acting like you keep seeing ghosts."

I sit down at the foot of the bed, unwrapping the crackers. I look up at Mulder and realize that he's giving me an out.

God, I think. I'm pathetic.

For who-knows-what reason, this cheers me up. Pathetic is a normal, mundane, human state of being. Completely.

I'm about to grab a towel for Mulder when he unfolds his jacket to reveal a clear shopping bag, from which he unfurls a knit blanket. It's beautiful, periwinkle and silk-delicate, and he presents it to me like it was a royal sash. "Here," he says. "You've looked cold all day."

"Where did you get this?" I ask, wrapping up in the blanket and caressing it.

"Motel gift shop. They sell local crafts. This is handmade." He sits down next to me, fingering the blanket fringe.

"Towel," I say, remembering that I'd meant to get him one. I stand up and he follows.

"I'll go change," he says. "Feel like company with dinner?" He waves around his own pack of crackers.

"Sure," I say.

As he opens the door, I ask, "Did the King's kids tell you anything else?"

He's choosing his words, I can tell, settling on, "Only that the soundboard booth is *the* spot for make-out sessions."

"Too bad we were stuck backstage."

"Too bad, Scully?" He looks both pleased and like maybe he just swallowed a bug.

"Oh, you know us, Mulder. We're always in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Not always," he says, smiling, before closing the door.

I kick off my shoes and hang up my raincoat and grab two colas from the mini-fridge. I hum something off-key and catchy. I envelop myself in my new blanket to wait for Mulder and watch the moon, the way even behind clouds it can illuminate the sky like a spotlight, reflected in the parking lot puddles like a hundred fallen stars.



I awoke cocooned in warmth and thought for a moment that I'd never been more relaxed in my life. Then I attempted to figure out exactly where I was and what I'd been doing, aside from sleeping, and discovered that precision was not immediately forthcoming.

That's when I almost tipped out of my chair in a move I could clearly define as grace-free.

I'm sitting in one of the motel room's scratchy chairs, I think, and I rub my cheek where I'd had my face pressed onto the vinyl wood laminate tabletop. My left hand has poked through a slit in the curtains. I push them out of the way. The pane is cold against my palms. The moon has disappeared, leaving behind a darkness that breathes black. I can hear it raining. There is no light, none.

I am trying, air caught in my lungs, to figure out what the hell is going on, but my head feels like lead, and when I try to remember something about the night before I fell asleep, it's like attempting to pull the swirl out of the middle of a glass paperweight.

When Mulder opens the door, I jerk and bang my knee against the air conditioner beneath the window.

"Didn't mean to startle you," Mulder says, sounding a little shocked himself. "The manager says the electricity must be out for miles." He clicks off his flashlight, apparently opting for blindness.

"Was it storming?" I ask, rubbing my knee.

"No," Mulder says slowly, "it wasn't. Just rain, but according to the police scanner, a semi plowed into a generator off Route 31A on the county line." He kneels, replacing my hands with his on my knee. "You're going to be nothing but a bruise by the time we get home."

Our stay in Oakville comes back to me, and I almost groan. I don't respond as my eyes adjust to the dark. I can make out the faint outlines of the motel furniture. "Were we talking, before?" I think I remember purple.

"When?"

"I don't know, a few minutes ago?"

"Yes. I went to change clothes. How are you feeling?" None of his other features are visible, but I can make out Mulder's eyes; they pick up even the smallest charge of light.

"How long was I asleep?"

"I don't know. I was gone 20 minutes. Actually, I was still trying to find some dry socks when the electricity went out."

I smile, thinking of him walking around with only one sock on, like some errant little boy jumping around in the rain.

"You haven't answered my question," he says.

"I feel fine." The hand on my knee tightens. "I'm incredibly tired. You happy?"

He relaxes his grip. "What happened earlier today?" Ugh, back to this again. His voice is gentle, but I know his scrutiny of me is no less sharp than his eyesight.

I wriggle away from him.

"I don't know," I say eventually, in a tone I hope conveys my extreme reluctance to discuss the issue further. I continue, though. "There was purple, all different shades, when I was around the four high school students."

"How do you mean, purple?"

"My vision - everything would go purple-hazy and wiggy and it would scare - it was a little bit freaky."

"And that's when you started to get sick?"

"Yeah."

"Any theories?"

I chew on my bottom lip, but don't answer him.

I can practically hear Mulder thinking. It's like listening to a timer tick, never sure when the bell will go off. "The color purple has long been associated with people who can contact nature's powers-that-be. People able to channel energies, etc. People who have violet auras, for instance, are relatively rare, but many believe the color indicates a profound understanding of the spiritual and supernatural, while lavender could indicate dishonesty."

"Violet auras?"

"Actually, that could be a place to start. Colors can have an enormous effect on mood, on emotions. What if these teenagers have figured out some way to, I dunno, brighten their auras, to use that electrical/chemical energy to affect those around them adversely?"

I try to rearrange his last sentence in a way that would sound sane on an official report to Skinner.

"Did you do some research while you were changing or did you just make this stuff up to impress me?"

"Purple," he says. "What does it feel like, Scully?"

Like cold sweat, I want to say. "So we're going to take this theory to the meeting tomorrow? Going to present this to the kids, see how they react?"

"There has to be a way to gather evidence, Scully. EEGs, other *scientific* devices can be used to measure the force field, so to speak, of an aura. Maybe we could schedule some tests --" He stops.

"My testimony won't be very convincing, Mulder. We don't have any evidence to support the need for tests in the first place," I fill in for him. "Those kids probably won't admit anything any differently than they did this afternoon."

I think about the eighth graders, their downcast eyes.

"Why do you think they sent you that email, Mulder? We can't help them, really. I mean, we could tell their siblings to knock it off or else, but that would just make us look loony. There isn't a crime here, per se, just an annoyance."

"There's always the chance that knowing what something is - giving name to it, if not an exact explanation - will make it go away. Or at least make it cease being quite as scary, especially if it can't really hurt you, or if the consciousness of it gives you a way to begin fighting it."

I shrug, doubtful.

Mulder expels a breath. "Maybe they just wanted someone to know, to see, that it was happening. Maybe it will stop after we leave."

I picture the smugness in Carol Davis' smile. "Maybe it won't."

The room is an overlay of shadows, like soot and black sand and smoke. My reflection in the bathroom mirror is slate, and it wavers a little. Mulder comes up and drapes my blanket around me, drawing me into a soft hug.

"Maybe it will," Mulder says, firmly, and I think he's showing me what to do tomorrow. I think maybe he doesn't see things so differently than I do. I consider what he's said; perhaps it's the telling of something that diffuses it. The acknowledgement. Not hiding, or letting it hide you.

Something shifts in me, like a tide capsizing. Across the room, the curtains are tangled in the chair I've vacated, and a piece of sky is uncovered. It is dark, deep purple, like majestic velvet.

I say into Mulder's shoulder, "I'm so tired."

"I know," he whispers. "We'll discuss it more in the morning."

I don't know whether he means the case or me, but I don't care right now.

Later, I remember being pulled onto the bed and I remember being warm, but I do not remember closing my eyes.

It is quiet, but then the sleep descending on me roars, breaking into silence. I shift, and catch the sound of rain dripping from the gutter outside my window, almost echoing Mulder's heartbeat beneath my ear.



We don't talk in the morning, of course. We oversleep. Mulder cracks his elbow on the doorframe while racing from my room to his. Attempting to get ready in record time, I poke my soapy finger in my eye when washing my face *and* slip outside the shower stall.

Needless to say, neither of us is really in the mood to chat about anything by the time we've packed the car. Auras, creepy children, shared beds - none of these are mentioned as we scarf biscuits from the Oakville Bakery drive-thru.

We've been awake thirty minutes when we pull into the Oakville High School parking lot. Blackberry jelly has left my hands sweet-smelling but sticky, and there are crumbs everywhere. We brush ourselves off, exiting the car. Mulder gives me a slightly crazed look over the top of the vehicle and I return it.

The rain is gone, replaced with fast-moving clouds that make me think of cattle stampedes. The humidity has dropped too. The combined middle and high school drama classes are enjoying the weather, practicing outside near the auditorium steps.

A small group of students rehearses stage combat on the lawn. Sammy Ivins, 13, is getting ready to faux-flip a kid over his shoulder. We walk past them, toward the building entrance. Sammy waves slightly at us. I wave back. He glances over at another group of children, where Eddie Davis is helping to build a white picket fence. Eddie glances back, and they each, without speaking, abandon their respective chores.

They follow Mulder and me into Mrs. Hamstead's office, right off the main drama classroom.

The office is cramped and crowded. A tower of top hats teeters by a file cabinet whose drawers are all labeled 'Scripts and Sheet Music - Property of Val Hamstead'. A large black desk is stacked with bolts of orange and fuchsia satin and silver ribbon. Against the wall opposite the door, Naomi and Frank Reed, Gary and Mike Mattox, Paul Ivins, and Carol Davis are sitting on wooden boxes that are painted like children's alphabet blocks. Eddie and Sammy sit next to the other two eighth graders.

The high schoolers look bored, contemptuous. Their eyes slide over me, and I feel a faint tinge of purple creep into the corners of my vision, but then it disappears.

Mrs. Hamstead comes into the office muttering, her arms full of small golden plastic crowns. "Sorry for my delay, Agents, we've been terribly busy this morning. Business as usual at school, I suppose. Do you mind having this meeting in the auditorium? It's claustrophobic in here, honestly."

"Will you be able to keep an eye on the students outside from here?" Mulder asks.

"I've got student teachers in from the local community college. They'll keep an eye on things," she replies breezily.

An empty auditorium feels like a graveyard, full of hollow wind. Mrs. Hamstead leaves us on the lit stage, jangling her keys to the lightswitch box.

The kids stand around uncomfortably. Their glances flick back and forth between each other. "What do you want from us, sir?" Naomi Reed asks Mulder in a low tone of voice.

The color is flushing towards me, hurling itself like an uncontrollable rapid.

Mrs. Hamstead's footsteps click in an adjacent hallway. Purple plasma is oozing between the floorboards. The stage lights are swaying, throwing burgundy shadows through the curtains and set drop.

"The truth," Mulder says. I think he must say more, gesturing to the eighth graders. I can see him standing close to the edge of the stage, hands on hips, looking like some police detective in a pulp fiction play. I can't hear him; his words are washed away by a violet tide.

In a sudden moment of lucidity, I think of Samantha, standing in a purple dress with purple ribbons tied to the end of her braids, and I wonder what Mulder really feels about this case, what it's like to watch kids hurt their siblings, when all he wanted to do was protect his.

Soon, all I can hear is the incredibly soundless crunch of grit as my hands find the stage floor. I expected it to be slick. I turn my head and see the eighth grade boys watching me with gleaming eyes. I close my own tightly and try to curl up against a wave of nausea.

Light crests, crashes. It is like fear made tangible.

Some time later, I'm aware of Mulder's hand gripping my arm. "Scully," he says, running a finger softly down my jaw, "open your eyes."

I do, slowly, and gasp. The stage is filled with multi-colored lights - a ripe-strawberry red, sky blue and sea navy, butter yellow, neon orange, pure white, and pine green; they twinkle and pulse and swirl, blending finally to a jasmine purple before fading entirely.

It's beautiful, astounding.

The nausea subsides. I know I must look amazed. I stand up and Mulder quirks an eyebrow. He steps away to give me space. He is hiding his concern, but I can see it very plainly in his eyes.

The eighth graders are looking at the floor, where their siblings have sunk, pasty-faced and sickened. Paul Ivins is gagging a little.

Mulder starts to ask me a question, but Mrs. Hamstead is walking onto the stage. When she sees the teenagers, she panics.

"Oh, dear! Oh, oh my." She wrings her hands in a very theatrical way; this is full-body wringing. I half fear her hands will twist off. "What's happened?"

"Must be that nasty stomach virus we've heard about," Mulder says.

Frank Reed smiles at that, keeping his eyes focused on the floor. I find my voice. "Undoubtedly."

"I should page the school nurse," Mrs. Hamstead says.

Carol Davis moans, clutching her ribs. Her brother frowns at her with an expression of innocent sympathy.

"Want me to call mom and have her call the doctor?" Eddie asks Carol.

"Oh my," Mrs. Hamstead says again. "Were the kids able to answer your questions before they got sick?"

"Yes," I say before Mulder can speak, "I think we have all our answers, Mrs. Hamstead." A tingly feeling in my brain tells me we have none of the answers, and I look at Mulder. He doesn't dispute me, just nods.

"Well," Mrs. Hamstead says.

"If we need any further assistance, we'll let you know," Mulder says.

The children do not speak. I scan the ceiling, peering into the fly space. It's a normal ceiling.

Mulder pulls me gently toward the auditorium door. I'm pushing it open when one of the eighth graders - Mike, I think - calls out, "Bye, Agent Scully."

Someone off stage is pulling the curtains closed. I can think of nothing to say but "Bye."



The car is sun-warm, inviting sleepiness. "Maybe it was all a trick," I propose, yawning. "They could have somehow rigged the stage lights."

Mulder remains quiet for a very long time. We're almost to the airport before he speaks. "I think everyone on that stage saw what they needed to see."

"Including you?"

"I saw you almost faint. I saw enough." His gaze never moves from the road.

"Thank you," I reply quietly.

"For what?" He looks at me now, surprised.

For a lot of things. "I never thanked you for the blanket."

He smiles. "You're welcome."

Tonight I will write a painfully incomplete report on this case wrapped in that blanket on my own bed. Between paper cuts and mind-numbing rewrites, I will daydream of colors that glisten, stages with hot lights and children at curtain call, clasping hands and bowing proudly in unison.

Or maybe I'll take a long bath and force Mulder to fix us dinner.

Clouds have settled on the horizon, and for some reason they remind me of fields of lavender, of soothing seas and tranquil twillights, of home.

~~~~
The quasi-end.


(See also: Going Once)