The Light (Morpheus Road) (2 page)

8

Cooper barely reacted. No, I take that back. Each time I mentioned something I thought was cool, he winced like I was nailing him with poison darts.

"What?" I asked, confused. "Doesn't that sound great?"

"Uhh . . . yeah," he muttered awkwardly. "But I was kinda thinking more like we should hang out at the beach."

"No problem," I said. "We'll do that, too."

"A lot?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure, if you want. But there's so much more we can do."

Coop gave me a sly smile. "Not that involves girls in bikinis."

Couldn't argue with that.

He added, "I'm thinking the beach at the Point will be our base of operations. Or maybe our
entire
operation. Why not? We've only got a couple of months."

"But . . . really? That's all you want to do? Hang out at the beach?"

"No! I'm all for the rocket thing," he exclaimed. "Let's get that on the schedule for, oh ... sometime in late August."

"You're killing me," I said.

I was disappointed in Coop. He hated being bored and so did I. He was always looking for different things to do and coming up with new adventures that kept us moving. That was his job. Trolling for girls at the beach was okay by me, but I didn't want it to be our sole focus. Besides, the girls I liked had more interesting things to do than spend every waking moment sitting around at the beach comparing tans.

"Aw, c'mon, Ralph!" Coop said. "What's better than sitting on a blanket in the warm sand next to three or four or eight girls wearing little more than underwear?"

"And talking about. . . what? Reality TV? Perez Hilton?"

"Okay, now
you're
killing me!" he said. "Who
cares
what we talk about?"

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I guess I did. Unfortunately. Truth was, I needed help in the girl department. Whenever I was around somebody I liked, I got self-conscious. I'm not sure why, either. I think I'm okay-looking and wasn't hit too hard by the acne stick. I've got blond hair and brown eyes, which I've heard more than once is a pretty good combination. I think part of my trouble is that I get nervous and start talking too much about things I'm interested in, and most girls don't care about graphic novels or wartime history. At least not the ones I've met. Coop may have had high hopes for a stellar summer at the beach, but I couldn't see myself starting up a casual conversation about the Battle of Bull Run with a bunch of near-naked girls. They'd crucify me.

Besides, I liked building rockets.

"C'mon, Ralph!" Cooper said. "What's wrong with messing around a little? That's what summer's for. It's in the rule book."

"There's nothing wrong with it," I shot back. "But there's other stuff too. You always liked doing stupid stuff like building rockets."

"I liked Power Rangers too . . . when I was six." He put his arm around my shoulder and said, "We are looking at what could be the most awesome summer of our lives, and all we have to do is . . . uh-oh."

He spotted something over my shoulder.

"Trouble Town," he whispered.

The courtyard in front of school was packed, but the crowd parted magically to reveal a stunning girl walking toward us. She had long, shiny black hair that fell to her shoulders and dark skin that was the product of an early season tan. Judging from her short shorts, she didn't mind showing off her long legs. She was hot, and she knew it. Her dark eyes were focused on Coop. My mouth went dry. Something was about to happen. She walked right up to us, locked eyes

10

with Cooper, and snarled a simple, succinct, and venomous "Idiot," then blew past us without breaking stride.

"I love you too, Agnes," Coop called to her.

Whenever Cooper gave a girl a hard time, he called her Agnes. With guys it was Richard. In this case the Agnes was Sydney Foley. Cooper's older sister. She and Coop didn't like each other much, which was too bad because I wouldn't have minded hanging out with her. I didn't have the same trouble making conversation with her like I did with other girls. That's because when I was with her, I couldn't speak at all. Seriously. My tongue would swell up and my throat would close. I guess you would call her intimidating. She and Coop had the same dark hair and blue eyes, but that's where the similarity ended. The girl was cold. I mean icy. She was a year ahead of us in school and light-years ahead academically. I think she'll have a shot at class valedictorian. She always had a boyfriend but never anyone for long. I guess she got bored easily. Sydney Foley was definitely out of my league ... if I were to be in a league. Still, I would have welcomed the chance to hang out with her a little, and if it just so happened to be on one of those days that Coop made me go to the beach and she just so happened to be there in a bikini, maybe I'd have to think twice about being so critical of Coop's summer plans.

"I guess she found out about the scalping thing," I said weakly.

"Yeah. Dinner tonight's gonna be a real party," he lamented. "I'll get lectured by my parents about straightening up and being responsible while she stares through me with those undead vampire eyes. Yeesh."

I didn't think Sydney's eyes looked undead at all, but I could see where getting stared at would be unnerving. But that's just a guess. Sydney barely knew I existed.

Coop shrugged it off and broke out a big, winning smile.

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"But it's cool. Tonight I pay the price and tomorrow . . . summer!"

He gave me a double okay sign. That was his way of saying not to worry and that it's all good.

"You know what?" he added. "I say we load up on frozen pizzas, head to your house, and build us some rockets."

I had to smile. "You're a piece of work, you know that?"

He gave me a friendly shove and said, "Absolutely. It's all part of the Foley mystique."

Coop had done it again ... he made things right. As we strode into school, I had new hope that the vacation might turn out to be decent after all, especially if I got the old Coop back.

The last day of school was pretty much a blow-off. You're supposed to go to classes, but exams are over and teachers don't care what you do. Most everybody hangs out and gets their yearbooks signed with "See you this summer!"-- which seems like a lame thing to write, but who am I to judge? I didn't buy a yearbook, so I headed right for the art department. That's where I hung out when I wasn't in class. The art rooms were a refuge for those who didn't fit into a particular clique . . . which I guess meant we were our own clique. But since we didn't run with each other outside of school, it was a limited social circle.

The art department wasn't just a hideout. I liked to draw. I'm pretty good, too. Whatever talent I have I got from my mom. There were a bunch of sketches in my cubby that I'd been procrastinating about bringing home because my bedroom was already a mess of paper and half-finished drawings. Bringing home more would probably make Dad's head explode, but I couldn't leave anything at school over the summer, so it was time to clear out.

I'd been working on an idea that was slow to form. I wanted to create my own superhero graphic novel. That

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sounds fairly cool and a no-brainer except for one thing . . . it's a no-brainer. Meaning: Superheroes have been done to death. Pretty much every superpower has already been explored. Besides, I didn't like the whole tights-and-cape thing. For a while I monkeyed around with a character I considered to be the "true" Superman. My theory was that if Superman was powerful because he came from a planet with heavier gravity than Earth, then why the heck did he have huge muscles if he never had to strain to do anything? In reality he should look like a skinny wimp. But creating a superhero that looked like limp lettuce didn't seem promising, so I scrapped it.

What popped out of my head instead was something I hadn't planned on or set out to do. I kept coming back to a character I called "Gravedigger." He wasn't a superhero at all. In fact, he looked more like a
super villain.
He was more or less a skeleton with a thin covering of powder white skin. His fingers were abnormally long and spider like. His eyes were hollow. He wore a dark cloak and a broad-brimmed black hat. Very creepy. I hadn't even come up with any stories about him. I simply sketched him in various settings ... skulking through an ancient graveyard, lurking through the ruins of an old church, cowering around dark alleys. (I'm good at depicting skulk, lurk, and cower.) His signature weapon was a sharp, lethal-looking, double-edged pick like you use to crack rocks in a mine. Or gouge out the earth to dig a grave.

Whenever I tried to draw something else and use a bright color like blue or red, my hand automatically went back to the blacks and grays. I don't want to say that Gravedigger was drawing himself, but the ideas came easily and I sketched hundreds of incarnations of the guy. I didn't even know what the point was. Who was he? Was he evil? Was he the living dead? Did he need to eat a potato and get a little sun? I didn't

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know. Gravedigger pretty much represented all the work I had done that year and it was time to move him home, so I began the long process of stacking the pages.

"You are obsessed with death," came a soft, flat voice over my shoulder.

I turned quickly to see Tyler Frano, a student teacher in the art department. The guy was shorter than me by at least a foot. . . not quite Munchkin-like but in that ballpark. He always dressed in black because he said it hid the streaks of sketching charcoal that got on his clothes. I think it was more because he was an art poser and wearing black made him look the part. He had no personality that I could sense and always spoke in a dull monotone. He was creepy but harmless. I think.

"I'm not obsessed with death," I said defensively. "I'm developing a character."

"It's all you ever draw," he countered. "That's bordering on obsession."

"Well, maybe, yeah, but ... it has nothing to do with death."

Frano gave me a skeptical look. "Or perhaps you have no significant life experiences to draw upon for inspiration."

The guy was starting to piss me off. "No, I have choices," I said. "I just choose to develop
this
character."

"Good luck with that," he said with a superior sneer and walked off to do whatever student teachers do on the last day of school.

The guy was all wrong. I had plenty of inspiration. And I wasn't obsessed with death. I glanced through a few of the Gravedigger sketches, trying to imagine what Frano saw in them. Okay, my character looked skeletal. Okay, he hung around cemeteries. Okay, I called him Gravedigger. Okay, he was all that I drew. So what? Did that constitute an obsession with death?

14

I quickly jammed the sketches into a portfolio, zipped it up, and got out of there. I was sick of hanging around the art department. Vacation couldn't come fast enough.

At 2:05 it did. Summer. I love the feeling of stepping out of school on the last day of the year, because the next day of school was as far away as it could get. I think I was especially psyched about this summer because it held so much possibility. I even had some money to spend. I had been lucky enough to land a part-time job with a small

company that made trophies and awards. In a town like Stony Brook, where so many kids went to sports camp, there was a huge need for all sorts of trophies. It wasn't exactly exciting work, but building and engraving the awards made me feel like I was using my artistic talent in some small way. Better still, I could work as much as I wanted because the regular engraver had quit. He was a kid a few years older than me named Mark Dimond. Since Mark left, there was plenty of work for me. I planned on putting in at least a few hours a day to keep the cash flowing. Thank you, Mark.

So the summer was shaping up nicely. I had money coming in from a job that didn't suck, lots of projects to work on, and truth be told, I wasn't going to mind putting in a little time at the beach. I figured that as long as Cooper kept his promise and didn't do anything else that was dumb or criminal, the two of us were set for a summer to remember.

15

Chapter 2

Later that same day I rode my bike over to Cooper's house to begin the festivities. As I approached, I saw that Sydney's boyfriend, Mikey Russo, was sitting on the porch steps. Mikey was an idiot. There's no better word to describe him. He was a big guy who the girls loved because of his looks, but as soon as he opened his mouth, it was clear that he cowered at the sight of fire. He was going to be a senior, but I had no idea how he kept passing. My guess was that he threatened to injure any teacher who didn't give him at least a D. What made even less sense was that Sydney, who was a brain, hung out with him. It had to have been a physical thing because I doubted they had much to talk about. It was a doomed relationship, just like all of Sydney's relationships.

Mikey sat on the top stair, looking at the ground, probably thinking deep thoughts . . . like planning the number

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of squats he'd be doing later at the gym. I dropped my bike and started up the stairs while doing my best to look invisible. I didn't get far. Mikey held his hand out to stop me.

"No," he commanded.

"No what?"

"Nobody goes inside until Sydney's done."

"Done doing what?"

"Done telling your weasel pal how it's gonna be," he growled.

This was the most Mikey and I had spoken in, well, ever. I was one of those wallpaper guys who never entered his sphere of consciousness, which was fine by me. The most interaction we ever had was when I had to leap out of his way or get bulldozed. I was less than nothing to him, and I was stuck.

"Marsh!" came the voice of my savior, Mrs. Foley. She pushed open the screen door and leaned out. "Would you please talk to Cooper?"

Mikey quickly jumped to his feet and faced her. With an impossibly polite voice he said, "You're right, Mrs. Foley. I was just saying the same thing. Cooper needs a good

talking-to."

Weasel. Mikey turned his back to Mrs. Foley and gave me a look that was so intense, it made my forehead burn. "Tell Cooper to be smart and do what he's told." His voice was polite, but his glare was scary.

Mrs. Foley held the screen door open for me. "Thank you, Mikey, we'll handle this," she said as if he were two years old, which he was. At least mentally. It must have made her sick to think Sydney was hanging around with that goon.

When I passed Mikey, he whispered something quietly so that Mrs. Foley couldn't hear.

"Tell him I'll hurt him," he snarled.

The madness in his eyes told me it wasn't an idle threat. I leaped up the stairs, two at a time, because I didn't like