Into the Darkness (15 page)

Thinking about it so hard, I felt as if I had fallen into a trance, despite all of the noise going on. Occasionally, I would realize that someone was talking to me and try to get back into the conversation, but I could see by the way the other person looked at me that he or she thought I was either high on something or ignoring them.

More fireworks were set off. There were a few rockets, too. I thought about mentioning the danger of starting a fire, but I knew no one would be interested in anything that in any way smothered the excitement, and besides, that would be something Prudence Perfect would mention.

“I can see you’re having a good time,” Ellie said. From the look in her eyes and the way her lip seemed to dip when she spoke, I knew she had taken something. Bobby didn’t look much different. It was as if she had thrown a collar around his neck. He was following her that closely.

“Yes. Great party. You look like you’re doing just fine, too,” I said, nodding at Bobby, who still had his eyes focused on me.

“Trying,” she said. “I’m not so sure this was a good idea,” she added in a lower voice, nodding toward Bobby. “As you say, the jury is still out.”

Nevertheless, she pulled him back onto the dance floor, and I retreated again to get another soda. Twice I was offered something hard to drink. I avoided that and the offer of Ecstasy.

“Don’t need it,” I shouted. “I’m high already.”

Some of them weren’t too sure that I wasn’t. I could see that I had become the big subject of discussion.
Then, finally, as I had expected, Shayne Allan made his grand entrance with three of the other boys who were on the league-winning baseball team with him. As always, it was as if the king had arrived. I was probably the only one who deliberately headed in the opposite direction, deciding that it was a good time to get something more substantial to eat.

I filled a plate with some Chinese food and found a chaise longue as far away from it all as possible. I watched the others laughing, getting more and more into some hard liquor, passing around some X, and beginning to pair off and find privacy somewhere nearby. Charlotte had made a number of announcements forbidding anyone to go into any other place in her house but the bathrooms. There was the large cabana, however.

I looked for Ellie, but she had dragged Bobby off somewhere, too. Neither was in sight. I feared that I was going to have to find another way to get home, but I wasn’t thinking about it just yet. I certainly had tried to participate in everything I could. I was as friendly as I could be. No one could say I was antisocial tonight.

“Bored?” I heard, and looked up to see Shayne standing there, his arms folded across his chest. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “What?” he said.

“You remind me of the statue of the Indian outside of McKinley’s hardware store.”

He unfolded his arms quickly, but to my surprise, he laughed, too. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, pulling up another chaise.

“I didn’t expect to see you, either.”

“Is that right? Why not?”

“I thought you surely had something better to do.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Brush your hair, try on clothes, whiten your teeth.”

“Very funny. I like your hair up like that, and I like what you’re wearing.”

“Well, now that you approve, I might wear my hair this way again,” I said.

He stared at me a moment. “You’re different tonight,” he said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

“Since I don’t remember seeing you much at night, I don’t know how you could make that conclusion.”

“You want to dance?”

“I’ve been dancing all night while you were circling the wagons.”

“What? What’s that mean?”

“Deciding when to make your grand entrance.”

“Why don’t you like me?” he asked with an impish smile on his face. He was as good-looking as any movie star, I thought.

“I don’t want to waste my time and effort.”

“Why would that be?”

I knew he was just waiting to tell me that if I revealed that I liked him, he would tell me he liked me. “I figure that you like yourself so much you don’t need anyone else to.”

“Right. Prudence Perfect,” he said, his eyes revealing that I had gotten to him, pierced his confidence and his armor of egotism. “Like you don’t act as if you’re God’s perfect little female creation.”

“You mean I have to act like it? I can’t just be it?”

He started to turn away, but then looked back at me and laughed. “Okay, okay. Truce,” he said, holding up his hands. He looked out at the others. Some of the boys were acting imbecilic already, having had too much liquor or too much Ecstasy.

“I feel the end is near,” he said.

“There’ll be some regurgitation.”

He turned and stared a moment.

“What?” I said when I thought the silence had gone on long enough.

“You want to stay here to watch it?”

“Or?”

“Let’s get out and just have some coffee or something at the diner.”

“That’s it?”

“Maybe a piece of apple pie.”

“What about your devoted followers?”

“They’ll find their way. I’ve trained them well.” He waited.

Was this it, the inevitable rendezvous with destiny that Ellie said most of the girls expected for me?

Unlike what had been happening to me on the dance floor, I didn’t imagine Brayden’s face anymore. Shayne Allan was filling up my screen.

Go on,
I told myself,
get them all clacking. Go off with him.

“I like peach,” I said.

“What?”

“Peach pie.”

“Oh. You can have whatever you want,” he said, laughing.

I hesitated and then rose. When I looked past him, past the lights, past the others toward the last round of fireworks going off, I thought I saw Brayden for a moment when the illumination washed away a pocket of darkness. I had been imagining him all night, but this time, he wasn’t standing in anyone else’s place. It really looked as if he was there. I think I gasped.

“You all right?” Shayne asked, reaching for my arm. Had I been swaying?

“What? Yes.”

“You didn’t take any garbage, did you?”

“No, nothing.”

“Let’s go,” he said with a more commanding tone. Ordinarily, that might have turned me off, but right then, I welcomed someone else taking charge.

As we walked past everyone, I gazed back toward the place where I had seen Brayden. When it was illuminated again, he wasn’t there.

Shayne took my hand, and we hurried out as if we knew that in a few minutes, the place would be raided. Most of the other kids had literally frozen in place to watch us leave.

“You make a grand entrance, and you make a grand exit,” I said as we passed quickly through the courtyard.

“Only because of you,” he said. He pulled me closer, and I didn’t resist.

Poor Prudence Perfect.

I had left her behind, all alone.

“So what brought you over to speak to me?” I asked Shayne as we drove off to the Echo Lake diner.

“An irresistible force.”

“Yeah, right. What, did some of my friends whisper in your ear? Did they tell you I was dying for you to come to me or something?”

I now felt more certain that this was the major reason both Charlotte and Ellie were intent on my attending the party. They had decided to play Cupid, but in this version of the myth, I was going to get a mortal lover. If anything did happen between Shayne and me, they, especially Charlotte, would claim credit for engineering the whole thing. Why was it that girls who had trouble finding romance for themselves tried so hard to create romances for other girls? Was it their intention to live through them, have vicarious love affairs?

“What’s more complicated than the mind of a teenage girl?” Dad would often ask. He had become an experienced diamond cutter and compared trying to understand teenage girls to the geometric precision cutting
of a precious diamond. Do it well, and you’d catch more brilliance. “Understand a teenage girl, and you’ll save your sanity.”

Mom and I would laugh, but I wasn’t going to disagree with him. I knew what he was talking about. I was having trouble understanding myself.

“No. I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do,” Shayne said. “I’m not kidding. When I first saw you tonight, I was very attracted to you. At first, I didn’t know who you were. You looked that different, and I don’t mean just the way you’re wearing your hair and the way you’re dressed. I saw something different in your face. There was like a glow around you.”

“A glow?”

“Well, something,” he said, struggling to explain. “Something made you stand out in the crowd. How’s that old song go?” he asked, and then started to sing, “Some enchanted evening . . . .”

Laughing, I said, “Yes, well, all right, I guess we are like strangers. We can both probably count on our fingers how many words we have actually spoken to each other.”

“It’s not my fault,” he said quickly. I gave him a look that said,
Please, spare me.
“Well, maybe it is somewhat,” he quickly corrected. “But you scare me, Amber.”

“What?” I started to laugh. “I scare you?”

“No, I’m serious.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. How can I scare a big, strong boy like you?”

He looked forward.

“Well, how?” I followed up more firmly when he didn’t appear to want to answer.

“Give me a chance. I’m trying to figure out how to say this so I don’t sound too egotistical.”

“What a challenge for you.”

“There!” he said, pointing at me. “That’s exactly it.”

“What?”

“You’re the only girl in this school, the only girl I’ve met, who isn’t afraid of putting me down, of getting me to dislike her. That makes me feel a little insecure. I’m like a prizefighter whose manager has set him up with weak opponents, and finally, he has to fight someone who can fight back. Know what I mean?”

I remembered thinking I was like a prizefighter when it came to Brayden, a prizefighter who couldn’t land a blow.

“I don’t watch prizefights,” I said.

“You get the point. I know you do. You’re just making it harder for me.”

I smiled to myself. I was, and I was enjoying it, too. I was riding a wave of greater self-confidence that seemed to have begun when I decided to put my Prudence Perfect image in a drawer and lock it. It happened after I had been with Brayden in the woods. Everything right now seemed to stem from that. Strangely, even though we hadn’t gone all the way, as they say, I no longer felt so innocent. I never thought of myself as shy, but perhaps I was. At least, I was until tonight. Shayne wasn’t wrong. I was different and I liked the way I felt. I liked the sense of danger. Ellie would laugh, but right now, I liked being with a guy who wasn’t safe.

“I don’t enjoy putting you down,” I said. “You just make it impossible not to most of the time. If you went
to Hollywood, you wouldn’t need a publicist or even a manager. No one could sell you better than you sell yourself, Shayne.”

“So? Is that so terrible? My dad’s always telling me not to be ashamed of my abilities and accomplishments. I admit that my mom’s always telling me to be more humble, but they both brag me sick when I’m out with them. It’s not always my fault.”

“Poor, poor Shayne Allan,” I said. “The object of so many compliments he can’t get the real him out.”

He shook his head. “There’s no winning with you.”

He sounded as if he was already willing to give up, and I wasn’t sure that I would be happy about it. “I’ll tell you what to do.”

“What?”

“Try talking for a while without saying
I, me, my,
or
mine
.”

“How would I do that?”

“Talk about yourself in the third person.”

“Huh?”

“You know what the third-person point of view is, Shayne. Just try it. You’ll see. Remember your Shakespeare, o future valedictorian. ‘The eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things.’”

He smirked. Then he thought about it for a few moments and said, “Okay. I’ll try it. I’ll try anything to please you.”

“That’s your last
I
until I say otherwise. Otherwise it won’t work.”

“Okay, okay. Shayne hears you.”

We pulled into the diner parking lot, parked, and got
out. It was late. There weren’t many people there, but the manager, Mr. Freid, knew us both well, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him give Shayne a thumbs-up. I smiled to myself. We took a booth near the front, where we could look out at the parking lot and the highway. I just ordered coffee and a piece of peach pie, but Shayne ordered a cheeseburger, sweet potato fries, and coffee.

“I thought we were just having coffee and pie.”

“I didn’t have anything to eat at Charlotte’s.”

“Shayne didn’t,” I corrected.

“Right. Shayne didn’t. He was too busy trying to figure out who you were.”

“Yes, and his problem was how to do that while being surrounded by the members of his mutual admiration society.”

“Who says the admiration is mutual?”

“Spoken like the Shayne Allan I know.”

“How’d he get in here?” he asked, and pretended to look around for himself. I smiled. “So, how’s your summer been so far?” he asked.