Into the Darkness (14 page)

Ego, however, was what drove me back to the full-length body mirror on the door of my closet at least a half-dozen times because of what Ellie had said. Suddenly, everything I was going to wear did look like something from the wardrobe of Prudence Perfect. I changed five times before settling on a layered look with the tightest black pants I had. I had a dark blue blouse so they wouldn’t complain about my not wearing one of the colors, even though this whole thing about July Fourth was a farce. I rearranged my hair twice, deciding to pin it up and back, which made me concentrate more on my earrings. I put on one of the matching turquoise necklaces Daddy had made for me and then redid my makeup three
times, adding more than usual before I felt confident enough to step out of my room and head downstairs.

I’ll show them who is and who isn’t Prudence Perfect,
I vowed, gazing at myself in the full-length mirror in our foyer. I wasn’t obvious, but I was sexy, and I did feel a little more reckless, a little more excited. Had my dream at the creek woken something inside me, some sleeping feminine side of me that had welcomed being nudged, that had been waiting impatiently?

Once again, I gazed out of windows looking for any Brayden sightings, but he was nowhere to be seen, and the diminishing sunlight put that dismal gray darkness over his house again. From what I could tell, the crow was gone, and no other birds landed on the trees in the yard. Even the leaves looked limp and depressed. How could his father just plant his wife and son in this new home and not arrange for things to be done around the house?

Window curtains were tightly closed, shades drawn down, and the sun wasn’t even striking that side of the house anymore. Maybe I could find my way to understanding how or why his mother avoided lights, but what about him? How could he enjoy navigating his new home through shadows? And what about when they ate? Where did they eat? I was not familiar with the house, but I assumed from the size of the windows on the other side that the dining room was there. When I left my house to watch for Ellie’s car, I went out to the street and walked far enough to see that there was no light spilling from any windows on that side, either. Did they do everything up in the attic, even eat?

Perhaps he’d had to take his mother somewhere, I
thought. Maybe that was why he had rushed off. He’d remembered an appointment. Or maybe it was some sort of an emergency. He could be at the hospital with her. All sorts of possibilities rained down around me. Perhaps she had taken too much medicine. Was she suicidal? Was that it? That would certainly explain why he hovered around her so much. But why should his father leave her so quickly in a new place and put all of the worry and responsibility on Brayden? How did you do that to your teenage son?

I realized that I should temper my annoyance and anger until I learned his reason for leaving me alone in the woods. I waited out in the street for a few minutes to see if he might see me there and come out, but I heard nothing and saw no one, so I returned to my front porch and waited for Ellie. I saw her car approaching and stepped into the driveway.

“Hi,” she said as soon as she pulled up. “Wow, you look great.”

“Thanks.” I got in.

“Where did you get that top? I never saw you wear it before?”

“I got it months ago but forgot about it.”

“How can you forget about clothes? I love your hair like that.”

“Thanks.”

“Your father made that necklace, I bet. I keep asking my father to buy me one. I told him you’d probably get me a discount.”

“I can try,” I said. “Let me know.”

“Maybe my birthday.”

She hesitated, nodding at Brayden’s house.

“Did you ask him again?”

“No. I told you he couldn’t make it.”

“He must have gone somewhere, huh? Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

“Right, I don’t think so.”

She nodded. “Did you meet his parents?”

“No.”

“I’d like to see what he looks like,” she said, still gazing at the house. “Come on. What’s he like, Amber?” She finally started to back out of the driveway.

“I haven’t known him long enough to tell you anything more, Ellie.”

“You did say he was good-looking.”

“So? Rudi Travis is good-looking but has a brain cooked with drugs, and talking to him is like talking to a wind-up doll or something.”

She laughed. “He is good-looking. What a shame. What a waste, I should say. I wonder what it would be like to sleep with him anyway. I suppose I could pretend he was someone else.”

“Then why bother? Just go with the someone else.”

“Yeah, right, except we all can’t have what we want—who we want, I mean. You can.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“I bet this new boy is already bonkers over you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“He is, isn’t he? You can tell pretty fast when that happens, can’t you? I mean, I think I can.”

“Not everyone is that simple to read, Ellie. And besides, those are usually the most uninteresting guys.”

“How come you know so much about men for a virgin?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t tell me you’re not a virgin, Amber. We talked about it a little more than a year ago, and unless you’re doing someone on the side, maybe some older man, I don’t think anything’s changed.”

“I’m not doing an older man. Don’t start spreading rumors,” I said angrily. Sometimes the girls in my school reminded me of vultures just waiting for some words, some action, some opportunity to pounce and feed other vultures. Maybe that was why I was so careful about what I said and what I did around any of them.

She laughed, but I knew she heard my warning loud and clear. “Well, I hope this new boy turns out to be nice as well as good-looking. This town could use some new blood. Most of the boys are too full of themselves.”

She waited for my response, but I was silent, still thinking about Brayden, the way he had kissed me in my dream, and my realization that he had left me lying on a rock in the woods. Her question had made me think harder about it. How could he take me out there, be so gentle and interesting, and then desert me like that? Maybe he was just playing with me. It was depressing to think that. I couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

“You think so, too, right?”

“What?”

“Think the boys in our school are too full of themselves. I just said that. What, are you spaced out already?”

“No. Sorry. Some of them are like that, I suppose.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, Ellie. I really don’t keep any list in my mind.”

“But surely Shayne Allan,” she said, nodding. “You still hold that opinion of him, right?”

When I didn’t respond, she smirked and was quiet for a while. I just wasn’t going to get into the same old argument about him. The truth was, Brayden had washed him right out of my head. Despite what I told Ellie, I used to think about Shayne often. It wasn’t something I would ever admit to her or anyone, but since I’d met Brayden, Shayne had rarely entered my mind.

From a half mile or so down the road, we could see that the whole house was lit up. Set on the crest of a hill, it stood out against the dark night sky. Even the stars looked intimidated.

By the time we arrived at Charlotte’s family home, there were at least two dozen kids there already. The music was pretty loud. We could hear it as we were approaching. One thing Charlotte didn’t have to worry about was neighbors complaining. The nearest ones, because of the amount of land her parents owned, were more than a mile away on either side. Charlotte’s father personally had designed their sprawling two-story house, built with natural stone. It had oversize rooms and slate marble floors, and black walnut floors. Mom and Dad had been to a New Year’s party there, and they talked about the beautiful mahogany and knotty alder cabinets, the four fireplaces, the very large kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances and slab granite countertops, and all the rich imported furnishings throughout the house. The Wattses had many paintings, both watercolors and oils, but Mom
said that Fern Watts chose her art not on the basis of artistic value but for how it fit in with her décor. I wondered if they would ever buy a painting by Brayden’s mother. “Can you imagine a Rembrandt reduced to wallpaper?” Mom had asked Dad the morning after that New Year’s party.

“Wow. I bet half the school is coming to this party,” Ellie said as we got out of the car.

The house had a faux front in the sense that when you came through the front door, you entered a courtyard that had a small pond, some decorative benches, rich-looking grass, and an assortment of flowers. The actual front door was wide open.

The rear wall of the living room consisted of three sliding glass panels that could be drawn apart to open the whole house, so that once we entered, we saw through to the rollicking group of partygoers dancing. All of the lights were on at the rear of the house.

After you crossed the sprawling slate patio that was nearly the width of the house, you came to the large, oval-shaped Pebble Tec pool. It had a diving board and enough chaise longues around it to make it look like the pool at a small hotel. There was a cabana and two fairly large whirlpools at one end of the pool. Charlotte’s father had put up lanterns that looked like torches everywhere. Who could not be impressed with it all? I wondered how Brayden would have reacted to all this, although with his worldly travels, he had probably seen far more impressive homes.

Because it was an unusually warm night, the party was being conducted completely outside. That way, Charlotte could at least keep the kids from wandering
through the house, and maybe, with a little luck, nothing would be disturbed enough for her parents to get too upset. She and some of the others had set up a few tables for the food she ordered in. From the looks of it, she had gotten something from a few different restaurants. Off to the right, some of the boys were already setting off cherry bombs and firecrackers. Sparklers were everywhere. It did seem like a big July Fourth blowout. To keep up her pretense, she even had a large American flag pinned over the sliding doors leading out from her parents’ bedroom.

“Is that really you?” Charlotte asked me when we entered. She looked at Ellie and smiled. “What happened to Prudence Perfect?”

“She couldn’t make it,” I said. “She had homework left over from last year.”

Ellie laughed, but Charlotte just froze her smile and then let it sink into her chubby cheeks. She looked disappointed. I imagined she had invited me to ridicule me with some of her closer friends.

“Shayne Allan isn’t here yet,” she told me, regaining her impish amusement.

“How will we survive?” I asked, and Ellie laughed again.

“Well, just come in and have a good time,” she said. She made it sound like a military order. She stepped back, and Ellie and I continued to the rear of the house.

Maybe Shayne had told her he was coming, I thought, but wouldn’t show, or if he did show, it would be quite late. He and his entourage of lackey friends would generously grant their presence, holding back to make a grand entry. Why the other girls in my class weren’t put off by
his arrogant behavior puzzled me. Many were so obvious when they approached him it nauseated me.

Bobby Harris hurried over to us when we stepped out, yelling to Ellie, but as he approached, his eyes were glued to me. She realized it.

“I’m over here, Bobby,” she said when he continued to stand there staring at me and not even looking at her.

“Yeah, sure. Hi, Amber.”

“Hello, Bobby.” I looked past him. I could see that I was attracting a lot of attention. One boy I did like at school, Curtis Lambert, looked a little lost, so I went right over to him, said hello, and pulled him onto the dance floor. I was just as surprised as he was about how aggressive I was being, but I didn’t show it. He was slow to get into it, but I was dancing as if I had been locked up for years. Maybe I had been, but if so, I was my own jailer, I thought. Soon Curtis was moving with as much abandon as he could. Other boys howled, and some of the girls shouted their encouragement and surprise. I’d kill Prudence Perfect tonight or else, I thought.

Even Ellie was shocked at how I was carrying on.

“What’s come over you?” she asked with a wide smile. “Did you take something before I picked you up?”

“Yes, vitamin E.”

“Huh?”

“Get on the dance floor, and stop making a big deal of it,” I told her. Bobby stood next to her with a wide grin on his face. She took one look at him and pulled him away to dance.

It didn’t matter whom I was dancing with. I was like everyone else, lost in my own world. I laughed to myself,
thinking how Dad would react, claiming that I was in my own movie again or I was getting to be more and more like the girls with nose rings and multicolored hair. I didn’t avoid talking to anyone who wanted to talk to me. Whenever I took a break to get something to drink, I had a group of boys around me. I flirted with them all and watched them manipulate themselves to get a chance to dance with me. It really didn’t matter to me. I suddenly realized that in my mind, I was dancing with . . . with Brayden.

The face of every boy who stepped in front of me metamorphosed into Brayden’s face and wore Brayden’s smile. Whether they were as tall as he was or not, they suddenly resembled him. Was I losing my mind? I hadn’t drunk anything alcoholic, nor had I accepted any of the pills that were being passed around like candy. I closed and opened my eyes to see if his image would disappear, but it didn’t. In fact, he seemed to be everywhere I turned. The vision made me dizzy. I had to stop dancing to get a cold soft drink.

Charlotte and Ellie had spread the word about Brayden, and some of the other girls asked me about him after I came off the dance floor. No one was satisfied with my answers, so the topic died a quick death. I was glad of that. Despite all I was doing to try to distract myself from thinking about him, his kiss, his smile, the way he touched me, and the sound of his voice in my dream, everything about him hovered over me. Maybe I wanted to see his face in the faces of other boys looking at me with such interest. Maybe I wanted it to be his voice when I heard a boy call to me. I wanted it so much that I had made it happen. It was a wild idea.