Into the Darkness (13 page)

“I never much thought about all this,” I admitted. “I mean, I’ve been here, but I don’t remember it affecting me as strongly.”

“Why did you ever come here, then?”

I described my father’s fishing experiences. “He wasn’t a big success at it, so he doesn’t do it that often anymore.”

“I think he was a success,” Brayden said.

“Oh? How’s that? He lost his pole because he was too relaxed reading and forgot where he was and what he was doing. His friends are always making fun of him.”

“They miss the point,” Brayden said.

“Okay, Professor, what’s the point?”

“Thoreau again. He said, ‘Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.’ Your father came out here to relax, get away from it all. The fish were just a minor annoyance.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said, smiling. “He’ll like that. I bet he uses it next time he’s teased about it. I guess I should go back and read more of Thoreau.”

“Maybe you should.”

“What brought you to reading so much more of him?”

“I told you. His writing is like a bible for loners,” he replied.

“You’ve always felt alone?”

“Not as much as now,” he admitted.

“Then, why not come with me tonight and meet more people? It won’t matter if you don’t continue living here. At least for now . . .”

“For now, you’re as much company as I need. I know I’m not and wouldn’t be enough for you, but until you tell me to stay away, I’ll keep peeping and appearing.”

“You’re not exactly a good influence on me. I haven’t been the social butterfly, and my parents are worried that I’m too picky about friends, especially boyfriends. How’s that for irony? Everyone else’s parents are just the opposite, worrying that their children are hanging out too much and with the wrong people.”

“When my mother was more stable, she used to say that if you found three good friends in your life, you were fine. The rest would be tolerable acquaintances.”

“I haven’t found the three yet.”

“You will.”

“You are so damn certain about everything you say,” I replied sharply. “Can you tell me how you know all this? And don’t give me that story about traveling so much and being on your own so much. Lots of people do that and know less than I do.”

“Well, for one thing, I listen well,” he said. He lay back on the rock and put his hands behind his head. I watched him a moment, watched the way his eyes seemed to drink in everything, as if he were going to be blind any moment and wanted to lock as much as possible into his visual memory. No one I knew seemed to seize on sights and sounds as intensely.

I took off my towel and spread it over the rock before lying back beside him.

“What does that mean, ‘listen well’?”

“I really listen. Most people look like they’re listening, but their minds are off and running down some other street, or they let boredom take over too soon. Maybe most of the world has ADD. I don’t know. There are so many reasons most people are deaf to what’s around them.”

“Okay, what am I missing now,” I asked, gazing up at the sky, “O great guru of nature?”

“Sometimes I like to watch clouds gradually change shape. I have a theory that if you could capture all the cloud shapes in the world, you would discover that they’re imitating things below.”

“Who’s imitating things below?”

“The clouds. Like that one off to the right, the one that seems to have broken loose from another bigger cloud. See it? It resembles a big cat; that puffiness is its head. Doesn’t it look like it? See what I mean?”

I centered on the cloud and laughed. “Yes, I think it does.”

“I knew that if anyone would see it, you would.”

“Why?”

He braced himself on his right elbow and sat up to look down at me. “I told you that, too. You have a vision, a kind of extrasensory ability that enables you to see beyond or through what’s right in front of you. That’s why you’re having trouble putting your affections solely in one guy. You see through them too easily. You’re waiting for someone more substantial. Don’t worry. He’ll come along.”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’ve never heard someone your age talk like you do.”

He shrugged. “I am what I am. Anyway, now you know what to listen for.”

He leaned back again and looked up at the sky. It was so comfortable, warm, and pleasant. I felt relaxed and closed my eyes. The sound of the stream curling around and over rocks worked like a lullaby. Neither of us spoke. The warm breeze felt like a light blanket. In seconds, it seemed, I fell asleep, or at least I think I did. It seemed as if I had fallen into a dream. In this dream, Brayden was hovering over me again. Then his smile faded as he stared down at me, and I stared up at him, falling into his eyes, already tasting his lips before he slowly brought them to mine.

I was in the ninth grade the first time I kissed a boy on the lips. It was at Ellie’s house party. There were three couples. I was the one with the least amount of time logged in as anyone’s supposed girlfriend. The boy’s name
was Reggie Seymour, and he had been in our school only four months. His parents were in a raging divorce, and his mother had taken him and his sister, Pat, away in what was almost a kidnapping. From what all of us eventually learned, she wasn’t supposed to leave Washington State with her children. Both Reggie and Pat looked habitually frightened, I thought, always looking toward classroom, cafeteria, and auditorium doorways whenever someone entered. I sensed that they were expecting either their father or a policeman to burst on the scene, someone who would haul them back to Washington.

Reggie was as shy as, if not shier than, I was at the time. We seemed naturally to navigate toward each other with short conversations and quick smiles, and eventually by holding hands. Maybe I liked him or risked liking him because I believed he wasn’t going to be with us long. He was cute, about average in class, and not terribly good at any sport. His timidity kept him from being aggressive. I think he was worried that if he got into any trouble, he would make more trouble for his mother and bring about some serious consequences for all of them.

Ellie’s party was the first time I had paired off with a specific boy. We all had our little space in the large living room, and when the lights were lowered, the necking began. I was sure that Reggie’s and my kissing was the least erotic of any of the kisses going on. Our kiss was more like the snap of a match. We spent most of the time talking, until Ellie finally shouted for us to shut up because we were ruining the mood. We kissed again, both of us trying harder to make it seem like something
special, but neither of us came away with any stronger feeling for the other. And then, two weeks later, he and his sister were pulled out of the school, and his mother did return to Washington State. It was one of the more bizarre student memories I had. We all talked about the Seymours for a while, and then they dropped out of conversations and our minds as quickly as a trivial news blurb on CNN.

So, even in this dream, I didn’t know what to expect from Brayden’s kiss. It was as if his lips settled on mine and formed themselves perfectly to fit my mouth comfortably. It was a kiss filled with expectations but so light and airy that it kept me held to expectations. I fought hard against waking up and losing the moment. It was the longest kiss I had ever experienced, even in a dream, a kiss that finally flowed into me, touching me so deeply that I felt my whole body soften and then become more demanding, trying to draw more and more from it.

When he lifted his lips from mine, they felt naked, aching with disappointment. I lifted my head gently to draw him back, but he moved his lips down over my chin, to my neck instead. I closed my eyes and felt myself grow limp, but willingly. I wanted his hands all over my body, gently caressing and molding it so he could fit his more comfortably against it, turning me toward him, stroking my hair, his lips on mine again, his hands softly moving over my breasts. It felt as though he had somehow gone under my bathing suit top, even though I knew he hadn’t.

“You make me feel alive,” he whispered, and kissed
my ear and my cheek and then found my lips turned and waiting for his. It was as if he had awakened another me, waiting to be awoken, happy to be awoken. I moaned and welcomed his touch everywhere, my heart beating like a racehorse finally permitted to gallop, to drive every part of itself to the place it was meant to be.

I moaned, raising my lower body so it would press against his. As my excitement grew, I heard him say, “Amber Taylor, meet Amber Taylor.”

I cried out at the peak of my passion, and then I felt him easing up, calming me, lowering me softly to my towel, kissing my eyes closed. I didn’t move. My breathing slowed. He stroked my hair again, quieting me, relaxing me. His final kiss was softer, a gentle closing of a door. Although he turned away, I still felt a blanket of his warmth over me.

Suddenly, I woke. The river was louder. The sun was lower in the sky and blocked out by trees and leaves. Long, thick shadows seemed to be crawling toward me. I felt no breeze. I heard nothing. The silence surprised me. I sat up, realizing that I was alone.

“Brayden?” I called, looking around. Had he gone for a short walk? Was he down by the water? I called for him again and again, but
he didn’t respond.

Surprised now, I stood up and wrapped my towel around my waist. I heard some movement in the bushes and turned quickly to my left to see two rabbits. They paused to look at me and then scurried under another bush to disappear.

Where was he? I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “Brayden!”

He didn’t reply. There was no sign of him anywhere. What had he done, left me there asleep and dreaming? How long had he been gone? I glanced at my watch. I had slept the better part of an hour. I waited and listened for a few more minutes, and then I hurried around the boulder and started back along the pathway he had shown me. A good ten minutes later, I stepped into my backyard. He was still nowhere in sight. I looked at his house. It was as quiet as before.

How could he just walk away like that? How could he leave me out there?

Fuming, I marched into my house and stomped up the stairs to my room. There I gazed out the window at his room and, as usual, saw nothing. For a few moments, I sat on my bed thinking, and then I shook my head and told myself to stop pouting and caring. Instead, I took a hot shower and, more determined than ever, began to think of what to wear to Charlotte Watts’s party.

It occurred to me that Brayden had never offered me his telephone number, and, unlike everyone else I knew, he didn’t carry a cell phone. I couldn’t even call him to complain about his leaving me in the forest, and I didn’t want to go banging on his door to see what had happened. I was afraid of disturbing his mother and really getting him angry at me and causing more trouble. As I dressed and prepared for Charlotte’s party, I paused occasionally to look out the window, hoping to see him outside his house. The windows of his room were more like mirrors at the moment, so I couldn’t see if he was in there.

In fact, everything around the house seemed frozen in time. It was as though any breeze, any wind, avoided it. Not a leaf on any of the trees on the property trembled. Even the clouds above seemed like sails in a dead calm sea, pasted against the blue. And then a crow landed on the roof and settled so completely and so still that it looked more like a decoration.

I decided to go on my computer and look up Brayden’s mother. She had her own Web site under her
artistic name. There was a list of awards and museums in which her paintings were hung. I thought most of them were very beautiful, interesting, some remarkable pictures of people in street scenes and country scenes. Her work was described as a unique cross between realism and impressionism. There was a biography, describing where she had attended school and such, but no mention of her husband and son.

I looked through the Web site until I heard the phone ringing and then practically lunged for the receiver, hoping, even though I couldn’t remember giving him my phone number, that it was Brayden.

It wasn’t.

Ellie was calling to remind me what time she would be picking me up, but I think also to confirm that I really was going to the party and hadn’t changed my mind. I began to grow a little suspicious about why it was suddenly so important that I go to this party. She had no trouble going anywhere without me. It was as if she had made a bet with Charlotte that she could get me there. Or maybe they had something else planned.

“What are you going to wear?” she asked.

“I’m working on it now.”

“Try not to look so . . .”

“What?”

“Safe,” she said, and laughed.

“I’m sorry I ever told you that.”

“You could try to be sexier, Amber. I know you have the clothes for it.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “But it’s not necessary to be so obvious.”

“Right, Prudence Perfect.” She laughed quickly. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

She could be so infuriating, I thought. Why was I doing this?

My mother called soon after to tell me that she and Dad were going right from the store to Von Richards’s restaurant for dinner since I was going out to the party. I had the same sense that she was confirming that I hadn’t changed my mind. Was I really this bad about it in their eyes? Did they think I was becoming some sort of a recluse? It was only through the eyes of other people that you saw yourself, I thought. Being oblivious or unconcerned about how other people saw you put you at a great disadvantage. You were blinded by how you wanted people to think of you rather than seeing how they really did. However, you could wrap that cocoon around yourself just so tightly before you were smothered in your own ego.