Immortal Light: Wide Awake (14 page)

“
And we have a winner!” Kat
cheered as all the other girls went back to their phones and
conversations.

“
Stop it, not so loud,” Lucy said
quietly as she smiled with glee that Mark, the star tight-end had
been first out the door.

It took him a minute to adjust to the low
light outside, but he spotted Lucy as she walked toward
him.

“
Here’s test number two,” Kat said
as Mark came running over. “See if he talks about you or the game
first.”

“
Shush,” Lucy said, waving her
hand playfully for Kat to stop talking.

Mark’s hair glistened in what light there
was—the sign of barely dried hair after a shower. He walked up to
Lucy without hesitation and wrapped her up in his arms.

“
Oh my gosh, you must be freezing
out here.” Mark stepped back and quickly removed his letterman
jacket. “There you go. Better?”

Lucy nodded.

“
Good,” Mark said, scooping her up
in his arms and kissing her softly on the lips. Lucy was in heaven
and didn’t even notice that Dave had shown up and he and Kat were
staring with apparent disgust at the public display before
them.

“
Oh, I think I just threw up a
little bit,” Kat said, making a gagging noise. She laughed and took
Dave by the arm.

“
You’re just jealous that you
haven’t been swept off like me.”

“
I can fix that,” Dave said as he
likewise pulled Kat off of her feet. She shrieked and the two
couples headed for the dance.

The lights were down in the
gymnasium. Purple and gold streamers and hand-painted spirit
banners covered every square inch of empty space on the walls.
Banks of strobe lights flashed from a DJ stand at the opposite end
of the basketball court from where the students entered and the
bass of the subwoofers could be felt in the floorboards. Lucy and
Kat held tight to their dates’ hands as they walked across the
room.

“
Hey, Big D, what’s up?” Mark
greeted Damien Avilla, the senior linebacker and captain of the
team. “Good game. You guys managed to hold them scoreless.” Mark
held out his balled up hand as they shared a fist bump.

“
We kind of had to since you boys
on the O-side of the ball only scored twice.”

“
You know, we like to keep it
close.” The two boys bumped fists again and Damien was dragged away
from the conversation by some of the other seniors on the
team.

Mark turned to Lucy. “You want to dance?” He
held out his arm.

“
Uh, I don’t know.” She looked to
Kat who grabbed Dave.

“
That sounds like fun,” said Kat.
With a jerk, she pulled Dave toward the dance floor.

Lucy shrugged. “Why
not?”

“
Excellent,” Mark exclaimed and he
escorted Lucy out.

As they approached their first
embrace on a dance floor, Lucy raised her right hand and waited for
Mark to respond. He took Lucy’s hand in his left and the two began
to sway back and forth. Lucy noticed that Mark was slouching a
little bit.

“
You okay?” she asked.

Mark looked confused. “Yeah, why?”

“
You just look a
little … tired.
”

“
No … well,
maybe a little. It
’
s not a big deal. I
’
d stay up all night with
you.
”

Lucy smiled at him as he pulled
her close to him and they continued to sway.

As they moved to the music, Lucy
felt something odd. It was like an electric current, weird and
subtle. She could quite literally feel the flow of it move between
their hands. The sensation was startling, yet somehow familiar, and
she looked to see if Mark could feel it, too. While he didn’t give
off any sign that something strange was happening, Lucy did notice
that his back had straightened and his expression was much more
alert. He was more awake and his movements became more pronounced
and lively. Looking back into her eyes, he smiled widely and
wrapped his arms tighter.

“
You feel so good to hold,” he
whispered in her ear and the current filled her whole body. It was
the strangest sensation, but she knew one thing was for sure: she
loved being held by Mark.

When the song ended, Mark let go of Lucy and
took her by the hand. They walked over and found seats at a table
where she sat on Mark’s lap and cuddled into his chest. The
electricity didn’t stop. She didn’t know what that sensation was,
but if it happened when she was with Mark, she liked it.

For more than an hour they danced, had punch
and cookies, and laughed about everything from school to movies to
music. Not once did he talk about football, and not once did she
think of Benjamin Raven.

It was nearly midnight before someone outside
of Lucy and Mark’s private bubble intruded and addressed the
entirety of their friends.

“
Okay, losers, what say we take
this party outdoors? Cape Arago, anyone?” Dave called out to
everyone. Mark jumped up with the rest of the pack and with the
speed of old-west gunslingers, they all tore their car keys from
their various pockets.

Ten miles away out past Charleston were a
bunch of secluded coves and beaches where people liked to go after
parties and dances to build campfires and extend the fun. Lucy had
never been, so when she looked at Kat, there was obvious excitement
in her face. Kat winked at Lucy and they all ran for their
cars.

Mark and Lucy raced to Mark’s car,
or rather his sister, Amanda’s car. It was a 2005 Toyota Celica
that she had purchased before joining the Navy and shipping off to
the Persian Gulf. The car was sleek and white and Lucy couldn’t
wait to sit in something so much cooler than her little Cavalier.
Mark opened the passenger side door and gracefully bowed her in.
With a couple of slams they were off to the coves.

As they headed down the coastal highway, Lucy
grabbed Mark’s hand. His fingers were warm in hers. She felt it
again, the electric-like charge that seemed to come from him. He
perked up in the driver’s seat and looked at her. It was strange
because it was nearly midnight and he should have been dead tired,
but then Lucy thought about how she was feeling: full of energy and
excitement and anticipation for the night. Perhaps he was feeling
the same.

Up ahead, Lucy could see the red-orange
taillights of Dave’s car, a decade-old Honda that was the envy of
the entire school with its added features: a spoiler, ground
effects, and paint job that cost him his entire summer’s wages
working for his uncle.

Behind them, a row of headlights
painted the road in a ribbon of white. Dave was the leader of the
exodus, and Mark brought up the second spot. Everyone else followed
their lead. Feeling Mark’s fingers wrapped around her hand, she
squeezed them tighter and the electric sensation increased even
more.

“
I like that,” he said pressing on
the accelerator. “Maybe we can give ol’ Davie a run for his
money.”

Mark downshifted from fifth, came right up on
Dave’s tail, and started flashing his lights. He was laughing,
almost giggling like an excited little boy waiting to get into
Disneyland for the first time. He seemed so full of energy and life
and Lucy couldn’t help but giggle with him.

As Newmark Street became four lanes, Dave
swerved into the left westbound lane and the fire-red glow of his
lights lit up the inside of the Celica as he slowed down to pull
alongside Lucy and Mark. Kat’s window was down, and her teeth
gleamed in the night like a Cheshire cat as she waved at
Lucy.

Mark stayed right alongside Dave
and rolled his window down. Air rushed in like a windstorm, and
Lucy grabbed her hair to keep it from whipping her face. She closed
her eyes for just a moment before hearing Dave’s voice yelling over
the sound of the road.

“
Hey, Thompson! You think your
ride can keep up?”

Mark leaned his head out the window and smiled
back at Dave’s playful challenge. “Why don’t we find out?
Intersection at Norman, first white line we hit it!”

“
You’re on!”

That was all the two needed to
seal the deal. As the windows went up, Lucy made eye contact with
Kat and she waved enthusiastically. Kat waved back.

Mark looked over at his date. “You ready for
this?”

Lucy was full of nerves. “I guess
so.”

She checked her belt to make sure
it was secure and settled snugly into her seat. A few hundred yards
ahead, she could see the next intersection. It was lighted by the
orange glow of street lamps.

Mark looked over at Dave, then back at
Lucy.

“
So you’re going to race. What
does the winner get?” Lucy asked.

“
Yeah, it’s a little tradition we
have. It’s nothing big. We race a quarter mile to the next light
and the winner gets to be lead-car for the rest of the trip to the
coves. I just hope there aren’t any cops out tonight.”

“
Is it normal for there not to be
cops out here?”

“
Well, as long as we’re safe, they
sort of let us play, so I guess I just hope there aren’t any other
cars out here so it doesn’t look unsafe.”

“
Oh,” Lucy said as she lowered
herself further into her seat.

The white line was coming into view at Norman
Avenue and Lucy’s heart started racing. Anxious nerves were
shooting up and down her spine. She wanted to grab Mark’s hand, but
she thought that a foul since he would need it to shift when the
race started; so at about the one-hundred-yard point she leaned
over, grabbed him by the face and, without obstructing his view,
kissed him forcefully on the cheek and whispered “Good Luck” in his
ear. She repositioned herself firmly in the seat, her feet against
the firewall.

Mark’s eyes were wide for a moment as he
looked one last time at Lucy. A new wave of fresh emotion seemed to
fill his body as he focused on the road.

The lights were green up ahead and as the two
cars neared the starting line, their drivers evened up their
bumpers until they were as perfectly aligned as they could make
themselves while driving thirty-five miles per hour. Lucy grabbed
the door handle as she smiled through a tense jaw. When the white
line disappeared under the front of the car, she closed her eyes
and she was thrown back into her seat as the cars were propelled
into the darkness between stop lights.

The sensation was absolutely
thrilling and a little scary as Lucy felt the car’s acceleration
around her. She had never experienced anything like the sheer
unbridled speed that she was feeling at that moment. The car revved
higher than Lucy had ever heard an engine go before, and just when
she felt the car might take flight, her body lurched forward
momentarily as Mark shifted into his final gear.

Lucy opened her eyes again as she
was once again thrown back into her seat. The quarter-mile mark of
the next stop light was quickly approaching. Lucy was amazed at how
fast the distance had been covered. She relaxed her grip on the
door as the race neared an end.

Looking over, she saw that Dave’s
car was still nearly even with theirs. She didn’t know how fast
they were going, and all she could see was that the bright red
needle of the speedometer was pointing right in her direction. On
any speedometer that would be an indication of going quite
fast.

Lucy didn’t say anything when
suddenly she felt a strange horrifying sensation in her entire
body. It felt like someone had pulled the plug on the bathtub and
all the excitement had flowed from her, leaving nothing but a
strange emptiness. Lucy became uneasy as the green traffic signal
got closer. It should have been a comforting feeling, since it
meant the race would be over, but there was only a growing sense of
apprehension or fear that seemed to be taking over her
body.

They shot through the green light, which
should have been the end of the race, but the two boys didn’t seem
to be slowing down. Lucy looked over to see that they were still
dead even with Dave’s car.

“
What are you doing?” she asked,
her voice shaky and tense.

“
Just one more light; I think I
can beat him.”

“
But what about that curve? You
can’t see around it.” Lucy looked at the road, knowing that beyond
the light at Main Street there was a blind curve by the post
office. She tried not to think about the possible dangers of
sailing into it at such high speeds in the dark.

“
It should be clear. There’s no
one out here.”

Lucy’s eyes darted around, looking at all the
side streets and sidewalks. She looked for any sign of danger at
all.

Mark held tight to the steering wheel. “Is
this scaring you? I’ll stop if it is.” He glanced over at Lucy,
then reapplied his attention to the road.

Lucy didn’t want to be a wet blanket on
tradition, in spite of her indescribable uneasiness about the whole
thing. “No, it’s okay, but let’s just make this the last
one?”

Mark looked at her warmly. “You got it. If
it’s not decided by Main Street, I’ll hit the brakes and
forfeit.”