Into the Darkness (32 page)

“I can wait.”

“No,” he said sharply. Then he smiled when he saw the look on my face. “It’s better for now if no one sees us together coming out of the woods. You don’t need more gossip about you, and people wouldn’t understand about me, with my mother in a clinic seriously ill and all. Okay?”

“If you think that’s best,” I said.

“I do. For now,” he added. He kissed me quickly. I felt no warmth in his lips. It was more like a period to a sentence, small, quick, and final. I suddenly felt something ominous, like a dark cloud on the horizon threatening the sunshine.

“You won’t be long, will you?” I said.

“No, I won’t be long.”

I still hesitated. He smiled.

“I won’t be long,” he repeated.

“Okay.”

I turned and started away. After a few yards, I looked back. He was still looking after me, but there was something final in the way he stood and gazed at me. He lifted his hand. I waved back and then continued on. I walked with my head down, plodding slowly because I felt a trembling in my body. Something wasn’t right. All of a sudden, something wasn’t right, I thought.

When I reached the Littlefield and Knotts houses, I heard someone call my name and looked up to see Angie Littlefield with Myra Kent, another girl from her class.

“Oh, hi,” I said.

“Where are you coming from?” Angie asked.

“The lake,” I said.

“You can’t go to the lake through that property. It’s posted. That’s private property,” she said, probably because her parents had forbidden it.

“There were lots of rabbits and birds, deer and raccoons.”

“So?”

“They didn’t pay attention to the signs, either,” I said.

“Huh?” Angie said as if I were speaking in a foreign language.

“Why should they be able to do that and not me?” I added. It was definitely something Brayden would have said.

And, as he would have done, I left them standing there with their mouths wide open.

He didn’t come to my house.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised, even though I was very disappointed. Fifteen minutes after I had arrived at the house, I stepped out onto the front porch and looked down the road, anticipating that I would see him coming. Some of the neighbors drove in and out of the street, and I saw Angie and Myra start out for town, but other than that, the street was very quiet. Nervous now, I pulled a chair up closer to the railing and sat watching for any sign of him. When minutes became close to an hour, I decided to call his cell phone. As before, it rang and rang. After nearly two minutes, I hung up and returned to the porch. When I heard the phone ringing inside a half hour later, I practically flew off the chair and nearly pulled off the screen door to get into the house quickly.

“What are you doing?” I heard my mother ask, and felt my heart sink with disappointment. Just on my “hello,” she realized that I was out of breath and excited.

“Just sitting out front,” I told her, fighting to calm myself.

“So, what have you done with yourself all day?”

I thought a moment and decided I was through with half truths.

“I went on a picnic with Brayden.”

“Oh, how nice. Is he there now?”

“No. He was coming over, but he hasn’t appeared yet.”

“How is his mother?”

“There wasn’t any change as far as I knew earlier, but maybe something’s happened,” I added, now thinking myself that this could be the reason he had not arrived. Perhaps he had gone right from the lake and either met his father or taken a bus or a taxi. “He’s not here, and I can’t reach him on his cell phone.”

“Oh, well, then maybe something is going on. I’m sure he’ll call you when he is able to. Why don’t you come to the store around closing time? We’ll go to Von’s for some dinner tonight.”

“Okay,” I said. “Unless Brayden shows up,” I added quickly. “I sorta promised I would make him dinner here. I’ll call you.”

She was quiet a moment, but she didn’t hang up. I was about to say, “Mom?” to see if she was still there.

But then she said, “The other night, when you were out too long and said you fell asleep at the lake, Amber, were you with Brayden?”

For a moment, I couldn’t swallow. “Yes,” I said.

“You didn’t have to keep it a secret, honey,” she said. “You know that we trust you to do the right things.”

I could feel the tears welling in my eyes.

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said.

“We’ll talk about it some other time,” she promised in a softer voice. “For now, it’s just between us, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. That simply meant that Dad wasn’t going to be informed, but I certainly didn’t underestimate the significance.

My parents never lied to each other or kept secrets from each other. I knew that because too often either my mother or my father would tell about something that was guaranteed to upset the other, but hiding it was just not in their DNA, as they say.

“Women can have some secrets between them. It’s the nature of our species,” she told me, bringing a smile to my face. “Don’t worry.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“See you later, then,” she said.

I returned to the front porch and looked out at the street. There was still no sign of him. I tried calling him again, and again the phone rang and rang until I gave up. Finally, I accepted that he wasn’t going to appear for whatever reason, and I went up to change into something to wear to dinner with my parents. I was coming downstairs when the phone rang. I rushed to it.

“This story you’re spreading about me is so ridiculous that it makes you look like someone very desperate,” Shayne began after my hopeful “hello.”

“Excuse me? What story?”

“You know exactly what story I mean.”

“Most people know I don’t spread stories and that I hate gossip. Maybe it’s your sister’s doing. You surely know she was spreading a story about me.”

“She never would . . .”

“You mean the evil dwarf?” I interrupted. “Weren’t those your words?”

“It had better stop,” he said.

“I have no intention of talking about you anymore,” I said. “I hope you and your sister reciprocate. Maybe you can threaten to expose something else about her to your parents to get her to stop.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. I hope this new guy has better luck with you than I had.”

“In his case, it won’t be a matter of luck,” I said. “I imagine, though, with most girls you date, it is.”

“Right. Enjoy yourself,” he quipped. I could hear the frustration building. He hung up before I could reply.

I wondered if I should call Ellie and pretend to be angry that she had betrayed my confidence but decided against it. Why stop her now? I thought. Brayden’s plan was working. I smiled to myself and left the house. My parents and I would walk to the restaurant and walk home. I didn’t need our car. As I went past Brayden’s house, I wondered when he would get back to me. For whatever reason, he wasn’t going to answer his cell phone, and I had no other way to get to him. I had no choice. I’d have to wait.

When my cell phone rang before I turned the corner at the end of the street, I scooped it out of my pocket quickly, hoping again that it would be Brayden, but it was Ellie.

“What are you doing tonight? Are you with the new guy?”

“No. I was going to have dinner with my parents in town.”

“Boring,” she sang. “A few of us are getting together and going for burgers and fries at the Coral. You know, the place on the other side of the lake. I’ll come by and pick you up. Where are you going to be in, say, an hour? Home or at the store?” she followed, assuming that I would jump at the invitation.

I knew why these girls wanted me along. They all hoped to hear salacious details about my time with Shayne. I wasn’t afraid of that, but I didn’t want to do anything to prevent me from meeting Brayden if and when he should call. My parents would understand if I backed out at the last moment, especially my mother, but it would be more difficult to get away from the girls.

“I’ll call you back and let you know,” I said.

“Oh, c’mon. You haven’t been out with us for a long time, Amber.”

“I’ll call you back,” I insisted.

“Yeah, well, don’t keep me waiting too long. I have to pick up Charlotte first. Her father took away her car.”

“Glad he finally did something.”

“She’ll get it back sooner rather than later,” Ellie assured me. “Her mother can’t stand her moping around the house.”

“I couldn’t care less. By the way, Shayne Allan called me. He was very upset. He heard I was spreading stories about him and me.”

“Did he? I heard his buddies were already teasing him and calling him Mr. Misfire.” She laughed. “Don’t be angry, Amber. It was too good
to waste, and why shouldn’t he suffer a little, too?”

“I’m not angry,” I said. “You’re right. It was too good to waste. And I assure you, I’m not suffering because of Shayne Allan.”

“You sound much better,” she said. “I was telling everyone how you’ve changed, come alive. Everyone’s happy for you, too. I know I am.”

“Thanks. I’ll call you,” I said, and flipped the phone closed.

I have changed,
I thought, and it wasn’t simply because I’d had sex with someone. Even before Brayden and I embraced in that sleeping bag, I had begun to feel different. Suddenly, I was able to see and hear things as if I were above it all. I wasn’t being condescending. I really felt older, wiser. Brayden had given me a sixth sense, an insight I had not possessed. After being with him, I couldn’t help but see how silly, insignificant, and juvenile most of the other girls in my class were. I’d always had trouble participating in inane and catty conversations, but now it was going to be impossible. If the others in my school thought I was acting like a snob before, they’d now surely believe I had become a full-fledged one. Life in my small community was not going to get very much better for me.
He had better not leave,
I thought.
I’m going to need him beside me to get through it.

I turned onto the main street and headed for our store. The village was in that late-afternoon, early-evening mode. Twilight was starting because of the height of the mountains in the west, and the soft, cool shadows of early summer were creeping in like fog. Some stores and restaurants had already turned on their lights, and if you looked carefully, you could see the first stars beginning to appear, looking like brilliant tiny bubbles rising to the
surface of the darker blue sky. Was it just my imagination, or were shadows different in the summer from how they were in the winter? In the winter, they seemed to come faster and be deeper, harsher, seizing everything they touched as the temperatures dropped.

Pedestrians walked differently in early summer evenings from how they walked in early winter evenings, for sure. They had to be moving briskly in winter. They tightened their buttons, zipped up their jackets, closed their collars, and always seemed to be a step behind their visible breath. Getting somewhere was always more important than going there. You felt as if you were running a gauntlet when you went to the grocery or drugstore. At least, I did. However, I knew there were many residents who preferred our winters to our summers. They enjoyed the brisk air, the sharper evening skies, and, above all, the diminished traffic and noise.

People were really different in so many ways, and yet there was this terrible need, this urgency, to avoid being too different. This was especially true for kids my age. We dressed alike. We liked the same music, celebrities, even food, and when someone stepped away, disagreed, changed style, and stopped being a follower, he or she became distrusted and, more often than not, disliked. I was confident that despite his good looks and his brilliance, Brayden would fall into this category eventually at our school, as he probably had at every school he had attended. But I was determined to stand by him. If necessary, we would keep completely to ourselves, and we would never be unhappy about it.

I knew his staying here was very far from certain.
Right now, it even looked impossible, but that didn’t prevent me from fantasizing more and more about it. We’d go to school together. Most of the time, we’d come home together. We’d study together. Jealous classmates would come up with all sorts of ridicule, claiming that we were joined at the hip like conjoined twins or something. But ironically, they would want us at their parties, and girls who recognized that we had something very sophisticated going on would want to be friends with me, would hover about, listening keenly in hopes that they would pick up some clue, some advice, some wisdom that would make them seem just as sophisticated. Of course, they would never admit that. They would even attack one another for trying to play up to me too hard.

Imagining it all brought a smile to my face. I could live very well in this picture, I thought as I entered the store. Dad was just wrapping up his tools and materials in the rear. Mrs. Williams was helping Mom finish their review of the day’s receipts. There were no customers. Everyone looked up at me.

“Hey, Amber Light. We had a pretty good day,” Dad said. “Mrs. Russell was just in here buying a birthday present for her husband, a pretty expensive watch. And she preferred the watchband I had created for it.”