A massive stone structure appeared in the distance, like a mirage of a castle. Expansive lawns spread out on either side of the road leading up to it. But the grass was dead: all brown and overgrown, like it hadn’t been tended to in months. There were definitely no automatic sprinklers here. It made me think of Nick’s comment in the desert about the “real California,” and how different it was from the vibrant lawns in Vista Valley that were so green they looked like Astroturf.
The road turned to gravel and ended in a circular driveway in front of the house. The looming manse was four stories tall and as wide as my school, with at least fifty small square windows evenly spaced across. The stones looked genuinely old (unlike the cheap imitation style, popular in new developments in Vista Valley), as if each one had been individually extracted from a castle in England.
“Here we are,” Nick said. “Home, sweet home.”
I couldn’t quite read his voice, whether he was happy or nervous to have me here.
We got out and started heading toward the entrance. Viny weeds sprouted from the empty flower boxes hanging from each window, spreading across the stone facade like tentacles. They were the kind of weeds my mom spent hours trying to eradicate from her garden. She’d probably have a heart attack if she saw these. A fountain sat in the center of the driveway, its water undisturbed except for a lazy fly suspended above, seemingly drunk off the stagnant water.
My phone started buzzing with an incoming text. Shit. It was from Annie.
Where are you?????
It was fifth period—my free period—and I was supposed to be in the gym helping her. I messed up. Again.
Please don’t hate me,
I quickly wrote back.
Not at school. Will explain.
“If you need to go back, I’ll take you,” Nick said, assessing my shift in mood.
My heart raced thinking about the repercussions, both if I stayed and if I left. It made me think about my father at my age and the story he told me. If he could disappear for all those months without telling a soul, surely I could do it for an afternoon. I slipped my phone back in my bag. “No, I’m right where I want to be.”
“Good, then let’s go in,” he said, opening the front door. It wasn’t locked, and for a second I thought maybe the entire house had been abandoned, too.
“Wow,” I gasped as we stepped into the giant foyer. It had enough art on display to fill an entire museum. They looked like the kind of paintings you’d find in a museum, too: portraits of serious aristocratic-looking people painted in dark, muted colors. As I took it all in, I found myself wishing we were back at the church, or driving down the dark freeway under a moonlit sky, or even back on Skid Row. Any place where I could pretend we were equals.
“Are you all right?” Nick gave me a look of deep understanding through his messy hair and I just about wilted.
“Are your parents home?” I whispered. With the high ceilings, I was afraid our voices might echo through the entire house.
“No.” There was that crooked smirk again. “I have no idea where they are.”
While I tried to decipher what that meant, if they were just running errands or would be gone for days, Nick started up the stairs.
I followed him up the wide, red-carpeted staircase, while his ancestors, or whoever they were, stared down at us from their gilded frames. We stopped off on the second floor, which opened onto a long hallway. The dark hardwood floors were covered with intricately woven Persian rugs. Wall sconces dimly lit the way.
Nick walked briskly down the hall. He clearly had no intention of giving me the grand tour. I tried to keep up while also sneaking glances into some of the open doorways we passed. I couldn’t imagine what use anyone could have for so many guest rooms and fireplaces, or for multiple libraries lined with leather-bound books. Everything seemed so old, including the furniture, like it was from another era. But aside from the gallery of dead people lining the walls, there was nothing personal in the house, no sign that a family lived here—that
anyone
did. It was as if the whole place had been frozen in time.
When we reached the end of the hall, Nick opened the last door and waved me in. Unlike the rest of the house, the room was small and simple. The bed was made, as if it hadn’t been slept in for a long time. The bookshelves were mostly empty, and the only thing on the desk was a black globe.
“Is this your room?” I asked.
He nodded. “If you can call it that. I don’t really spend much time in here.”
In a way it reminded me of my room, stripped bare of the person I used to be, of the person I used to be
with
. But who or what was Nick trying to forget? “I don’t either. Spend a lot of time in my room, I mean. Especially not at night. That’s when I’m most awake.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “Me too.”
“Maybe that’s what happens when you cheat death,” I said. “Your reward is a life of endless waking hours.”
“Or your curse,” Nick said with a slight chuckle, only it didn’t really seem like he was joking. I wanted to press further, to find out what he meant, but I was afraid that would just send him to that far-off place again. I didn’t want to be left in this big house all alone. Even if it was figuratively speaking.
I walked over to the desk and examined the globe. I spotted England and tried to imagine how long it would take to get there. It seemed so much further away with a massive ocean staring back at me. I gave the globe a push. As I watched it twirl around on its stand, I tried to forget about next year, that Nick would be gone and that my future was a big question mark. Besides, the world didn’t seem quite as big spinning around like that, with all the oceans and countries blending together.
Suddenly, I saw a silver-framed photograph peeking out from behind the globe. It was of two young boys, dressed alike in matching shorts and collared polo shirts that had a crest sewn onto the breast pocket. Their hair was cut in the same short, close-cropped style, like it was part of their uniform. They were each holding some kind of bat. And they were beaming. The boy on the left was taller by at least a head. He seemed
older, too, from the way he confidently leaned his elbow on the smaller boy’s shoulder. Like he was in charge, maybe the captain of whatever sport they were playing. My eyes settled on the shorter boy, the one with darker hair. A faint birthmark the size of a postage stamp shaded his chin.
“That’s you,” I said, touching the boy’s face through the glass frame. I was certain of it. He had the same intense eyes, the same bump across the ridge of his nose. But he looked like a different person. And it wasn’t just that the photo was taken a long time ago, that the cut of his hair had changed or that he had filled out since then. I recognized the difference, because Nick had changed in the same way I had. In a profound way that had nothing to do with time passing.
“It’s from a long time ago.” Nick appeared beside me and took the picture in his hands. His face darkened as he examined it, like he had stepped into a shadow. “My first year at Eton.”
“What are those sticks for?”
“They’re bats. For a sport called cricket. Ever heard of it?” I shook my head. His face was lighter, like he was reliving a pleasant memory. “It’s basically an arcane English version of baseball.”
My mind flashed to Easter Sunday in the parking lot. It dawned on me that Nick must have been pretending to play cricket from the roof of his car that day, not baseball. “Do you still play?”
“Not for a long time.” His voice sounded nostalgic, like when he’d told me about his dad selling the horses. It was starting to feel like everything in Nick’s life had been left in the past.
He was still gripping the frame in his hands. The sunlight
streaming in through the window bounced off the cracked face of his watch. “What happened at nine forty-five?” I asked, gesturing to the gold band. Just then the frame slipped from his hand. The glass shattered all over the floor. It was the first time I’d seen him falter.
“I’m sorry.” I didn’t mean because of the frame. Now that I’d seen his house, the fact that his watch was also frozen in time was clearly deliberate. A choice. Or maybe even a punishment. Either way, it was clear he didn’t want to talk about that, either—and that I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“Don’t be, it was my fault,” Nick said, crouching down to collect the pieces. I could tell he also wasn’t talking about the frame.
“Ouch.” Without looking, I picked up a jagged piece, and the sharp edge sliced my finger.
“Let me have a look.” Nick came rushing over. He took my hand in his and inspected my finger. “Crikey, you’re bleeding.”
“It really doesn’t hurt,” I said. In fact, it felt really good now that he was touching me. It reminded me of the first time we met at the meeting, when I burned my hand, of how gentle he could be sometimes, how present. And real. “But can you please say
crikey
again anyway?” I teased. “It makes me feel like I’m in the presence of a true English gentleman.”
“And you only just realized that now?” He pulled on the end of his T-shirt and wrapped it around my finger. “There, that should stop the bleeding.”
“But it’ll stain,” I said as little dots of blood seeped through the white fabric.
“It’s just a shirt.” He released his grip and took another look at my finger. “See? It already worked. No more blood.”
“Thanks,” I said, wishing that he had a reason to still hold on to me. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”
“Indeed I am. At least around you,” he said. “How about we go out and get some air?”
“What about the broken glass?” Most of it was still scattered across the floor.
“It’s okay, I’ll deal with it later. There’s no way I’m letting you near it again,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
It was in moments like this that I felt most comfortable with him. Both comfortable and protected.
On our way out, I saw something at the top of the bookshelf I hadn’t noticed until now. A white golf ball sitting in a glass box, preserved like a shrine. There was something engraved on the front of the box, but it was too far away to make out the letters. Most golf balls were identical, but I couldn’t help but feel that it was just like the one I had kept from that day at the club, that it was part of the growing mystery that Nick wanted to hide.
THE BLAZING SUN
hit us as soon as we stepped out onto the back patio. Fallen leaves crunched beneath our feet. It seemed like they might spontaneously ignite into flames from the friction. Rusty, wrought-iron furniture with bird-stained cushions haphazardly littered the red bricks. It was obvious no one had been out here in months.
“What is that?” I said when we came to the edge of the patio. An elaborate labyrinth at least six winding rows deep spread out on the grounds just beyond. It was composed of thick hedges, which, save for a few scattered green patches, were mostly brown and dried out.
“It’s a knockoff of the famous maze at Hampton Court Palace in London, former home of King Henry the Eighth. You know, the old bastard who beheaded all his wives.”
I shook my head, once again slightly embarrassed by my ignorance. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“The real one’s in better shape.”
I stared back down at the tangled labyrinth, wondering how it
had devolved into that state. It was so overgrown it seemed more like a trap than a maze. “Has anyone ever gotten lost inside?”
“Why don’t you see for yourself?”
I couldn’t tell if it was an invitation or a dare, but I followed him anyway, down the three steps onto a stone path, which was barely visible beneath the sea of uncut grass sprouting up on either side of it. The long, dried blades tickled my ankles and calves, some reaching as high as my knees. It felt like we had been transported to some cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Running my fingers along the tops of the blades, it was still hard to believe that I was here with Nick while my life was going on without me, somewhere else. But it wasn’t really my life anymore. It was just a shadow of who I used to be.
“That’s the entrance,” Nick said. Two wide columns of tangled branches rose from the ground.
“They’re so much taller up close.” The shape of the hedges that seemed so distinct from just a few hundred feet away were lost from this vantage point. We were now headed into what looked like a wild, overgrown tunnel.
“Don’t worry,” he said, sensing my fear. “I’ll be right here with you.”
That’s exactly what I was afraid of. We had been alone in secluded places many times by now. But this time felt different, like we were heading down a path of no return, a path I didn’t know my heart could handle.
But it was too late to turn back. And I didn’t want to.
Brittle, fallen twigs lined what seemed like a once pristine
path. Nick’s footsteps cracked in rhythm with mine, as if we were walking across a cemetery littered with bones. When we reached the end of the first row, I stopped to look back toward the entrance. It was no longer visible, having disappeared behind the path’s curve.
“Do you want to keep going?” Nick asked.
I could see the house through a pocket of gnarled, naked branches. It was like looking through a lens, revealing the layer of quiet death that had fallen over this place. It was even worse than being frozen in time, because it was like time was moving forward without it.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
The deeper into the maze we went, the more the rest of the world and everything else fell away. Even overgrown, there was still something majestic about the labyrinth, as if buried secrets existed within its twisted walls. We got to a curve in the path where the hedges grew so close together, the branches met and crisscrossed, launching us into a pocket of total darkness.
“This reminds me of the darkroom,” I said.
We were standing so close I could hear the air whistle as Nick inhaled. A gentle buzzing emerged just above the sound of his breath. A second, higher pitched tone joined in, and the two danced around each other, gradually merging into a synchronized duet. Was it the melody taking a new turn?