Into the Darkness (20 page)

“Your mother always looks like she has just stepped off a magazine cover,” I said. “I don’t know how she does it.”

“She has an army, the beautician army. I have a suspicion there’s a hairdresser hanging in her closet,” he told me. I knew he meant it to be funny, but he sounded almost resentful, sarcastic. I was tempted to ask him again if he liked his mother. “C’mon, tell me. What did my sister say to you?”

“She asked me if we remade the bed in the guest room and if I was a virgin. She said you won another bet you had made with your buddies about what you could do to me.”

“That bitch,” he said. “I’ll handle her later.”

“Something tells me you’re better off ignoring her,” I said.

He looked surprised at my reaction. “Most of the girls she’s confronted at our house would like to feed the fire if she was burned at the stake.”

I said nothing, but I wondered how many other girls he meant. How many were at his house? Did he tell me the truth when he said he hadn’t taken any other girl out on the lake? I knew from the chatter in our cafeteria that he saw girls from other schools, girls he had met during away basketball and baseball games. Maybe there was some truth to what his sister claimed. What was I to believe?

As we turned onto my street, my eyes were drawn to Brayden’s house. There was a late-model Mercedes sedan in the driveway. It wasn’t the car I had seen that first day when his family had arrived and were being moved into the house. It had an Oregon license plate. Did they know some people here? Were friends or family finally visiting?

It occurred to me that Shayne had rarely, maybe never, been down my street. It wasn’t a through street, so anyone turning down it would be doing so to visit someone, and there wasn’t any other student from our school living here. I felt confident that his parents weren’t friends with any of our neighbors, either. Maybe he really didn’t know which house was the house of a new resident unless that information was something Ellie or Charlotte had given him. Just as when we had driven out earlier, he barely glanced at it as we turned into my driveway. He looked at his watch.

“How’s an hour and a half sound?”

“Fine. How fancy is the restaurant?”

“Oh, it’s not fancy. It’s what my mother calls casual fancy.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You’ll choose the right thing to wear, I’m sure.”

“Thanks. I love the pressure.”

He laughed. “I’m wearing a black shirt and white pants. No jacket. Take it from there.”

“Okay.”

I started to get out, and he reached for my arm to make me pause.

“Amber, I hope you had a good day so far despite the evil dwarf.”

“I did,” I said, but even I detected some unhappiness in my voice. Some things you just can’t disguise. “Does she know you refer to her like that?”

“I think she’s gotten the hint, yes.”

“My mom’s always saying you get more with honey than you do with vinegar.”

“She hasn’t met my sister yet. Give her a chance,” he muttered, and leaned over to give me a quick kiss. I said nothing, just got out. He backed up quickly, this time not looking back to wave. I had the feeling he was burning with rage inside and wanted to get home to go at his sister.

Even the richest, most successful families ruptured with jealousies and meanness, I thought. What was the secret of true happiness? In fact, why were my parents, who were far less well-off financially, far happier people?

When I got into the house, I called the jewelry store to tell my parents that I was going to dinner with Shayne. My mother demanded a detailed description of the afternoon on the boat. I knew she was listening keenly to my voice as I spoke, searching to discover whether I had really enjoyed myself. I told her what Shayne’s mother had said about Mrs. Brice’s necklace.

“Good,” she replied. “When the wealthier women come in because of something another has bought, they always want to outdo it.”

I laughed and then hurried up to shower and change for dinner. When I glanced out my window at the front of Brayden’s house, I saw that the car that had been there was gone. I looked across at his bedroom window, and as usual, I could see nothing because of the glare.

As I showered and dressed, I asked myself how serious I wanted things to get with Shayne Allan. One time, when my mother and I had talked about first romances, she had said, “Sometimes you get like a car that has lost its brakes. You have to steer more carefully and wait until the road flattens out and you can roll to a stop.”

How easily that could happen with Shayne, I thought. I had really enjoyed being with him the night before and certainly today. I felt myself forming an entirely different opinion of him, and yet I also sensed the hesitation, that foot on the brake that Mom mentioned. I didn’t want to be simply another one of his conquests, and his sister had planted the thought well in my mind. Although Wendi had always disgusted me and struck me as being someone who would enjoy someone else’s unhappiness, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe she
wasn’t exaggerating all that much. It wasn’t difficult to imagine Shayne sweeping away any other girl and taking advantage of opportunities in that house, especially when his parents weren’t there. I knew there were girls in my school who wouldn’t care, girls who might even see it as some sort of accomplishment. Ellie struck me as one of them, but that was not me and would never be.

When had what you thought of yourself become so unimportant? I often heard girls brag about how they had taken advantage of a boy they were with, but I always felt they were trying to convince themselves as much as they were convincing others, despite all the hoopla about liberated women. Maybe I was simply born too late. Maybe I belonged in a previous century. Maybe what Brayden said his mother believed about reincarnation wasn’t something to be so easily set aside.

Despite the fun Mom and I made of Dad’s love of old movies, I truly enjoyed watching them, especially the costume dramas about lords and ladies. Most of the other girls I knew found them boring and silly. Was that what I was, boring and silly? I was trying not to be. Was I trying too hard?

Because of what Shayne had said he was wearing, I chose a solid black light V-neck sweater and a pair of black jeans. Naturally, I put on one of the necklaces my father had created for me. It was a chakra he had designed. According to ancient Indian medicine, our bodies were composed of six chakras, or energy wheels. The chakras were associated with certain colors, body parts, and functions, and by wearing the six, you were supposedly helping your body to maintain balance. The
necklace had three strands with sterling silver and semiprecious stones.

With my hair up and the color I had gotten from being in the boat on the lake that day, I thought I looked very attractive. As usual, I then felt guilty for having those feelings. Why couldn’t I be more like some of the girls in my school who believed that if you had it, you should flaunt it—otherwise, why have it?

While I was gazing at myself in the full-length mirror, I thought I saw someone move past my opened bedroom door. I turned quickly, my heart thumping. For a few moments, I just stared, holding my breath and trying to remember if I had closed the front door completely behind me when I had entered the house. I was thinking too hard about Shayne, the afternoon, and his bratty sister.

Crime, as other people knew it in other communities, was practically nonexistent in Echo Lake. Despite having all of the seasonal homes that were empty most of the year, we had very few instances of break-ins. Someone would probably have to go back as far as the nineteenth or early twentieth century to read about an armed robbery or a murder here. Nevertheless, the usual paranoia about crime existed here. People still locked their cars and their homes and used alarms and security cameras.

I approached the doorway slowly and peered out. I saw no one, but I went down the hallway to look in at my parents’ room. I even checked their closets and bathroom before returning to my own room. I gazed again at myself in the mirror, but I couldn’t help but glance at my doorway, too, every other moment. Finally, I just had
to go downstairs to be sure I had closed the front door. I even examined the rear door. They were both closed and locked.
Whatever it was,
I thought,
it was in my imagination.

I returned to my room to get a jacket. I chose my light pink leather one. Before I could go downstairs, my phone rang.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Ellie asked. “I’ve been sitting by my phone.”

“How did you know I was home?” I countered.

She laughed. “A little bird told another bird who told me. So?”

“What does that mean? It didn’t have anything to do with Shayne’s sister, did it?”

“No. Why do you ask? Tell me,” she pleaded.

“There’s nothing to tell except that she’s as ugly on the inside as she is on the outside.”

Ellie laughed. “So? What about the time you spent with Shayne? Don’t tell me it ended like last night?”

“I had a great time, and it hasn’t ended yet. We’re going out to dinner. He’ll be here any moment, so I gotta go.”

“Oh. Well, I guess you won’t call me tonight, but call me tomorrow.”

I realized something. “Why didn’t you tell me about all that happened after Charlotte’s party?” I asked before I hung up.

“Oh, that stuff. Forget it. It won’t matter. They’ll all get away with warnings, maybe some probation.”

“It would matter if someone had been seriously hurt,” I said.

“Right, Prudence,” she said, then laughed and hung up.

I went downstairs again and out onto the front porch, fuming from talking to her. The descending sun blocked by the trees layered the usual shadows over Brayden’s house and grounds. I stood staring at the dark house, wondering when I would see Brayden again. When I stared at his house, it seemed to me that the shadows actually moved in a circle.

“I’m right here,” I heard, and spun around. “I told you you would see me again.”

“I didn’t think I wouldn’t see you again,” I said. “But why do you have to sneak up on me like this all the time?”

“Sorry,” he said, dropping into the rocker. “You look a little upset. Wasn’t it a good day on the lake?”

“You were there. You should know,” I said, folding my arms across my breasts and stepping up to him. “I saw you, so don’t deny it.”

He smiled. “I’m not denying it. I guess you were showing him the lagoon.”

I felt myself calming. “Yes, but you were right. It didn’t look the same in the daytime.”

“Did you tell him who had brought you there?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“That’s none of his business,” I said, and he smiled.

“I thought you would feel that way. I’m not sure he would have appreciated it, anyway.”

I pulled my head back. “How do you know what he would appreciate and what he wouldn’t?”

“I listen to the birds,” he said, gazing at the street.

“What?”

“Birds gossip. Didn’t you know that?”

“Yes, I just heard about that.” I saw no point in telling him about Ellie, since he hadn’t ever set eyes on her.

“So why are you upset?”

“How do you know I am?”

“Do you know that we all have auras around us, a sort of luminous radiation?”

“You mean chakras,” I said, fingering my necklace.

“Yes, something like that. Well, I can see your aura’s kind of dark right now.”

“Oh, you can see it? What else can you do? You read thoughts, read auras, find things here that others take a long time to find, have super hearing . . .”

He started laughing. I stopped and suddenly felt the anger receding in me.

“I’m just annoyed with a so-called good friend.”

“Why?”

“She’s just a busybody sticking her nose into other people’s affairs.”

“Yours?”

“Forget it. Is your father back?”

“No.”

“I saw a car there when I returned before.”

“It was the landlord,” he said. “Checking up,” he added, pursing his lips and looking annoyed.

“Oh. Was there something wrong?”

He looked at me as if I had asked the dumbest question of all.

“I mean, with the house or anything?”

“No.”

“Who is the landlord? I mean, is he someone who lives here?”

“No. He lives in Portland.” He stood up. “Your date is almost here,” he said. “Watch yourself.” He stared away, this time walking off the porch and toward the front of his house.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He paused and shrugged. “It means don’t do anything he would do.”

“What?”

He pointed to a pair of robins dropping from a tree limb to the lawn to hunt for worms. “The birds, remember? They gossip.”

He kept walking.

“You don’t make any sense, Brayden,” I called after him. “You’re infuriating!” I cried. He lifted his hand but kept walking.

A moment later, I saw Shayne’s car approaching. When I looked back, Brayden was gone. It was as if he fled or disappeared before Shayne could see him. But I had to add another thing to my list. He seemed to be able to sense the future. I wondered if he could sense his own.

I wondered if that was what really made him so sad and bitter.