The Light (Morpheus Road) (3 page)

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having my back turned on the guy. Mrs. Foley was waiting for me inside.

"What's going on, Mrs. F.?" I asked.

"Cooper is being Cooper," she said, exasperated. "Would you please get him to see reason?"

It wasn't an unusual request. I'd heard it a lot lately.

"What's he being unreasonable about?" I asked.

She took a tired breath and said, "I'm sure you know about the tickets."

I nodded.

"Such a mess. We decided to take Cooper out of the situation for a while and get him away from, you know,
influences."
She whispered the word "influences" like it was a four-letter word that should never be spoken aloud.

"How are you going to do that?" I asked.

"We want to take him up to the cottage for the summer."

The Foleys had a great house on Thistledown Lake, a few hours north of Stony Brook. It was the kind of place where you could swim and canoe and hike and water-ski and just hang out. I had visited the Foleys up there a couple of times and had a blast.

"Are you talking about the
whole
summer?" I asked.

"Absolutely. He needs to clear his head and that won't happen down here. Not with all that's going on."

It was a good idea . . . that I totally hated. If Coop took off, the stellar summer I was planning would turn into a two-month bore. I wanted things to cool off for him but not at the expense of summer. Before I could try and talk her out of the idea, I heard an angry shout come from upstairs.

"Why?" came the anguished cry. "Why is it always about you?"

Sydney. I looked to Mrs. Foley. She gave me an embarrassed shrug. From the bottom of the stairs I looked up to see Coop's sister on her way down.

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"Get over yourself for once and just go!" she barked over her shoulder.

The first thing I saw were her legs. They didn't stop moving. I pressed my back against the wall as she blew past me. I don't think she even knew I was there. Her eyes were straight ahead, her body language tense.

"What did he say?" Mrs. Foley asked sheepishly.

"Who cares?" Sydney spat back. She hit the bottom of the stairs and didn't break stride as she pushed open the screen door to make a dramatic exit.

Mrs. Foley gave me a helpless look.

"I'll talk to him," I said, and ran up the stairs.

I found Cooper lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom, tossing a football into the air.

"What the heck?" I asked.

"Can you believe it? They want me to get out of town like some mob guy who has to lay low until the heat dies down."

Coop was genuinely angry. That didn't happen very often.

"Maybe you could just go for a week or two," I offered.

"No. They're talking the whole summer."

My stomach sank.

"That lake is death, Ralph," he added. "What'll I do up there? Fish? That gets old after eight seconds. The place is great if you're six or sixty. For everybody else . . . torture."

I was in the weird position of trying to talk him into doing something I didn't want him to do. I chose to duck the issue.

"What's Sydney's problem?" I asked.

"Who knows? My parents aren't even making her go. She gets to be on her own for the whole summer while I'm sentenced to two months at Camp Kumbaya."

He sat up and threw the football into his chair angrily.

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I wasn't used to seeing Cooper like that. Even when things were going badly, he always laughed it off and figured a way to make the best of it. Not this time. He wasn't giving any double okay signs.

"Mikey the Mauler's downstairs," I said. "He threatened to hurt you. What's that all about?"

"Nothing," Coop said dismissively. "Forget it."

"Did he give you the fake tickets?"

"No!" Coop barked. "Let it go, all right? It's none of your business."

He jumped up and went for his window. His escape route. We used to climb out and crawl across the roof whenever we wanted to sneak out of the house.

"It
is
my business!" I shouted back. "You did something stupid, and now you're going to have to take off for a couple of months to get away from the mess, and
poof!
There goes summer."

Coop slammed the window shut so hard, it made me jump. "That makes it your business?" he asked. "Because I'm ruining your summer?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Yeah, you did. Gee, sorry, Marsh. I should have thought it through before doing anything that might spoil your fun. How inconsiderate of me."

Cooper never called me Marsh. He was ticked.

But so was I. "Don't go there," I shot back. "I know this isn't about me, but it's not just about you, either. The stuff you do has fallout."

"Fallout? I'll give you fallout. The cops threatened to throw me in juvie unless I told them where I got the fake tickets ... so I gave up a couple of guys. And you know what? I don't care because those dirtballs set me up. But now I'm looking over my shoulder in case they find out I ratted and come after me. That's fallout. So I'm sorry if I

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messed up your plans to pretend like we're still twelve, but you know, things happen."

"That's cold."

"Move on, Marsh. We're not kids anymore."

"I know that."

"But hey, who am I to judge? Do whatever you want. I'm sure there are plenty of guys who want to hang out with you and watch cartoons. I'm not your only friend."

He paused and then added, "Or am I?"

That was it. He was upset and scared and I felt bad for him, but he had pushed it too far.

"Have a good summer," I said, and walked out of the room.

I heard a crash as Cooper threw his football at the wall. I couldn't believe it. My best friend had turned on me. Sure, he was upset and scared, but it wasn't my fault he chose to walk on the dark side.

I stormed down the stairs, passing Mrs. Foley.

"Will he go?" she asked.

"Probably," I answered, trying not to show my anger. "He's just got to get his head around it."

Mrs. Foley looked relieved. That made exactly one of us.

"Thanks, Marsh. Maybe you can come up and visit?"

"Yeah, maybe," I answered, and walked out the door.

I had no intention of going up to that lake. Coop had made it pretty clear that we were headed in two different directions. He was on his own . . . and so was I. I pounded down the porch steps and was nearly at the bottom when Mikey appeared from nowhere and gave me a shove that literally launched me off my feet and sent me sprawling into a bush.

"What was that for?" I shouted as I scrambled to sit up. As angry as I was, there was no way I'd jump up and push the guy back. That would have been suicide.

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"You hang with that weasel, you pay the price," he growled.

"Mikey!" Sydney called from the street, where she sat in her VW Beetle.

I didn't think she saw what happened, so I got up fast. I didn't want her to see me looking like some little kid who had just gotten shoved by the big bad bully . . . which is exactly what I was.

"Let's go," she commanded.

Mikey followed her instructions like an obedient dog. As he backed away he pointed a threatening finger at me as if to say, "Remember what I said."

My excellent summer had suddenly taken an incredibly rotten turn.

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Chapter 3

In only a few short hours I had gone from thinking there were too many exciting adventures to fit into a single vacation to wishing I could magically make school start again the next day.

I rode my bike home and did the one thing that always helped when things weren't going well. I read. Books were my refuge. Getting lost in a solid adventure story was the best way I knew of to turn off reality. There was nothing like a trip to Tralfamador or Middle Earth to help escape real life. I went to my bedroom and tried to get lost in the pages of one of my favorites:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It wasn't working. I was still too caught up with Cooper's drama. I tossed down the book and grabbed a sketch pad to do a little drawing and clear my head.

My hand instinctively started tracing the lines of Grave-digger's face. I got as far as the sunken eyes and had to force

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myself to stop. I needed to come up with something else to draw. Tyler Frano was wrong. I was an artist. I had all kinds of inspiration to call on. It was in my blood.

My mom was an artist. Actually, she was a photographer, but the images she created were works of art. She was a freelancer who traveled all over the world on assignment for magazines like
National Geographic
and
Smithsonian.
Mom loved to shoot ancient structures like churches and old villages. I'm no expert, but I think she was good. She could take something that looked like a crumbling pile of rocks and, by using light and the perfect angle, create a stunning picture that made you feel as if you were stepping back through time to see the building in its original glory. It was like she had a third eye that saw possibility where most people saw, well, a pile of old rocks.

I had prints of some of her photos hanging in my bedroom. One made the Great Wall of China look like a living serpent, snaking across misty green hills. Another was a black-and-white image of a doll's face taken through the window of a long-abandoned shop in a California ghost town. It was creepy and sad at the same time. I often wondered who the doll belonged to. Besides her photos, I had one whole shelf of stuff Mom had picked up on her travels and sent back to me. There wasn't anything cheesy like:
My parents went to Jamaica and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
There were hand-carved jade elephants from Indonesia; a marionette from Germany; a voodoo doll from New Orleans; a flute from Chile; and one item I had no clue about.

It was a golden ball about the size of a plum. I think it might have been made of glass, but it was hard to tell because the entire surface was painted with odd designs that could have been some strange alphabet or just random doodles. The thing had weight but wasn't heavy. It had absolutely

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no useful purpose as far as I could tell. I didn't even know where it came from or when I had gotten it.

As I did so many times, I sat and let my eyes wander over Mom's stuff until I came to one particular photo. It was a spectacular shot of an abandoned, centuries-old temple. The place looked like it had been built in the year one, but my mom captured the warm light of sunset on its surface in such a way that it looked timeless. It was a great picture.

I hated it.

"Dinner!" came a call from downstairs.

Seven o'clock. I could set my watch by when Dad had dinner on the table. I wasn't hungry but didn't feel like sitting in my room by myself, searching for inspiration. There would be plenty of time for that over the next two months.

Dad made spaghetti. His specialty. Pasta in boiling water and a jar of sauce. Real fancy stuff. I didn't eat much. I kept playing the events of the day over and over in my head.

"So?" Dad asked, pulling me into the moment. "Vegas?"

With all that had been going on, I'd totally forgotten. Dad was a marketing guy for a home electronics company. It's how we got the sweet plasma TV. He was headed to Las Vegas for a weeklong convention and wanted me to go with him. I hadn't thought much about it because I was expecting to be kicking off summer with Cooper.

"I don't know . . . ," I replied.

"C'mon! It'll be great. While I'm working, you can check out all the new tech stuff. Then we'll catch some shows at night. You know, Cirque du Ole."

"Cirque du Soleil."

"Yeah, that. We'll stay on a couple days and do some fishing. Maybe see Hoover Dam.

L-D-I!"

That meant "Let's do it." Dad was a goof. He often spoke in acronyms like "L-D-I" or "I am O-O-H" ("out of here").

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Maybe that came from working the Black Berry too much. Or maybe he was just a goof.

"They're kind of relying on me at work," I said. It was a lie. They weren't relying on me at all.

"Work? You sound like some old guy. C'mon! It's summer! L-I-U!"

That meant "lighten up." Or "live it up." I wasn't sure which.

As I think back, I wonder what would have happened if I had made a different decision. What if I had gone with him? Would things have played out differently? Or was everything that happened inevitable?

"I really don't want to go, Dad."

He was ready to jump in with another reason to tempt me to go, but turned serious instead. "I hate leaving you home alone."

"I know, but it's cool. Really. You know that."

Dad frowned. "I do. I'm just worried about you, Marsh."

"Dad! I'll be fine! Seriously. You know I won't throw parties or trash the house."

"I know. I almost wish you would."

"Uhh . . . what?"

He got up and started clearing the dinner plates. Something was bugging him.

He finally said, "We never talk about Mom anymore."

"Whoa. Change of subject."

"Not really. Mom was always the one who got us going. She came up with the ideas and the adventures. Right? You used to love going on trips. That's what we did. But we haven't gone anywhere since, well, since Mom planned the last one. With her gone, it's like we're not . . . we're not . . . things are just different."

"Well . . . yeah."

"But it's not right."