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Authors: V.C. Andrews

Into the Darkness (10 page)

BOOK: Into the Darkness
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I sat there for nearly a half hour, wondering and worrying about myself, about the way even my mother
was starting to see me. I’d heard the fear in her voice at the diner, and I had certainly heard it when we came home. Had I permitted myself to become dull and indifferent? Was it all really my fault? Why wasn’t I as enthusiastic about most of the things girls my age were? Why was I so damn serious about everything and so critical about everything my friends did or said? What other girl my age in this town would just shrug if her parents told her they wanted her to have more freedom, even if it meant just wasting time hanging around and gossiping about silly things with friends? I was aware that my lack of excitement about boys and dates and even sex was creating a wall of distrust between me and the other girls and most of the boys at my school. No one, even Ellie, bothered anymore to tell me about her experiences. It was as if most of the time they believed they would bore me or it was simply a waste of their time.

“Feeling sorry for yourself?” I heard, and nearly leaped out of the front-porch chair. How had he come around to this side of the house and sat himself on the railing without my hearing or sensing him so close?

“You frightened me,” I said, holding my right hand over my heart. It felt as if it was rattling more than thumping.

“Sorry, but seeing how deep in thought you were, I didn’t think it possible not to.”

“You could have just walked up the street and through our front gate instead of sneaking around. I would have had some warning then. What did you do, slip through the hedges again?”

“Something like that.” He tsk-tsked his lips like a chastising old biddy. “So touchy tonight? Fight with a boyfriend or something?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said.

“That could be your problem.”

“What are you, some sort of teenage therapist or something?”

“Something,” he said. He smiled that smile that could infuriate and charm me simultaneously. Then he leaned back against the wall and wrapped his arms around his raised knees. For a few long moments, neither of us spoke.

I stared ahead but kept an eye on him, watching the way he seemed to draw in everything around him, looking around as if he could see through darkness. A softer smile lit on his face. He took a deep breath, reminding me of someone who had come up out of a smoggy city to the clear, fresh mountain air. I realized that he was wearing that same military-style shirt he had worn when I first saw him between the hedges. I didn’t want to seem as if I was criticizing him about it, so I didn’t mention it.

“The nights here are quite spectacular,” he finally said. “You rarely get so full a view of the stars, the constellations.”

“Better view than the nights in Italy, France, China, India, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland?” I rattled off, exaggerating.

He laughed. “You forgot Japan.” He thought a moment and then added, “I have seen many beautiful things, spectacular things. Most of the time, I was alone
or with a maid or a guardian while my parents were off, my father at a meeting and my mother shopping or doing things she thought would bore me. She never missed a single art museum, no matter how unknown the artist.

“Besides,” he continued, turning to me, “it’s true that seeing beautiful things alone isn’t even half as satisfying and wonderful as seeing them with someone you know shares the same appreciation and respect for these things.”

“You mean, like a girlfriend?”

“Well, when I was older, a girlfriend. Just a friend would have been nice when I was younger.”

“You didn’t have any close friends?”

“You can imagine how hard it was to make friends, good friends, for someone whose family was always moving on. I was like what they used to call an army brat, going from one base to another. A good friend is like anything else of value. It takes time. You have to build trust, eventually care about each other.”

“What about a girlfriend? You never had one who was something like that?”

“Not like that. I was always on the search for her, of course.”

“Was?”

“Well . . . as I said, we moved around too much for me to form any significant relationships. I’m easy to figure out.”

“Oh, yeah, easy.”

“Now, you, on the other hand, anchored here since birth, should have many close relationships.”

He held his gaze on me, and I looked away.

“You don’t, do you?” he asked. “Have you ever . . . had anyone like that?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

“But isn’t that what you’re sitting here wondering about, why that is?”

“I said, none of your beeswax.”

He laughed. “Touchy, touchy.”

I felt like pushing him off the railing. “How do you know what I’m thinking about, and how old did you say you were? You sound like someone’s wise old grandfather or something, sitting on a pedestal and looking down at me.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I really don’t mean to be condescending.”

“Well, you are,” I said sharply, so sharply that even my eyes burned.


Pardonnez-moi.

I fumed for another moment and then calmed. Now I was wondering more about myself. How could he tell that I was thinking and worrying about myself? Was I so obvious that even someone who really didn’t know me could sense my thoughts and feelings? If he could, couldn’t people who knew me for years do that? Or did he have something special, some older, more mature perception and sensitivity that he had developed because of his mother’s condition? Nothing could age and mature you faster than a parent being seriously ill, I thought. I was wrong to be so resentful.

Okay,
I told myself.
Behave
. He was the new kid on the block. He was the one who should be vulnerable and afraid, the one looking for a friendly face, listening for a
friendly voice. After all, for teenagers especially, moving into a new community and going to a new school were like being thrown into a lake and told to swim or drown. At least, that was the way it was always described in books and the way I viewed new students when they first entered school at Echo Lake.

“Were you in town today?” I asked.

“I passed through, yes.”

“Passed through? You could do that in all of five minutes. Why didn’t you stop in our store and say hello? I could have shown you around a bit.”

“I was on an errand and had to get back home,” he said.

“Oh. When’s your father returning?”

“That’s top secret.”

“Well, why would he leave you alone here after just moving into a new house?”

“Duty calls.”

“Doesn’t his first duty lie here?”

He was silent.

“Sorry. Now I’m putting my nose into your beeswax.”

He stared into the night. I thought to myself,
Go for it, Amber. Shake him out of his darkness.

“One of the girls in my class is having a July Fourth party Saturday night. Her family is one of the wealthy ones in town. They have a big place, almost what you would call an estate. There’s going to be fireworks and great food. She’ll spare no expense with her parents’ money.”

“It’s not July Fourth this weekend.”

“I know, but her parents are away this weekend.”

“Oh, I see. When the cat’s away . . .”

“So?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I want to wait a while before getting involved with the gang,” he said, making
gang
sound juvenile.

“They’re not the gang. They’re just who might be your classmates if you stay here. What are you, James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause
?”

He laughed. “Yes, I’m just like James Dean. Thanks for the invite, anyway.”

“Well, how about meeting my parents, then? They’re just reading and watching television. No big deal. They’d like to meet you and later your parents when they can. It’s not every day we get new neighbors.”

“No, I’d better get back,” he said, now sounding a little frightened and insecure for the first time. “It’s not a good time. Thanks.”

“Why isn’t it a good time?”

He didn’t reply. How frustrating he was.
Why am I bothering?
I thought. I looked at his house and then back at him. Was it his mother? Couldn’t he leave her longer than he had taken to walk with me?

Before I could ask anything more, he slipped off the railing and was almost absorbed by the darkness when he turned his face away.

“Is your mother doing any better?” I called to him anyway.

He turned back to me, his face glowing in the starlight almost the way I had imagined it in his bedroom window last night. “She’s the same,” he said.

“She doesn’t like it here? What about you?”

“You already know I do. I’d better go.” He started and stopped, turning back to me again. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll be fine,” he added, his voice drifting as he stepped away.

Instead of going to the front of the house and down the street, he was heading toward the back and around again.

I rose and went to the railing. “Wait.”

He didn’t reply as he moved through the light spilling from our windows, speeding up as if he thought the illumination might burn him.

I hurried down the steps of the front porch and around the house to catch up with him, but I didn’t see him in the darkness once he had passed through the last bit of light leaking out of our house. I didn’t see him behind the house or at the hedges, either, when I got there. I listened for the sound of his feet over the grass, the opening of his front or back door, anything, but I heard nothing.

“Brayden, where are you?” I whispered loudly. I waited but still heard nothing. “Why are you going home this way? Do you have to sneak back into your house? Brayden?”

I walked slowly toward the hedges, listening as hard as I could, but I didn’t hear anything other than the distant hum of traffic in town and on the main highway that ran northwest to Portland. The rear of our house had a patio, a built-in barbecue grill, chairs, and tables. Dad was always talking about building a pool, but Mom, the accountant in our family, pointed out how little use we could make of it, especially given that only in the
summer could we use it at all, and therefore what an inefficient use of our money it would be. Consequently, we had a rather big undeveloped backyard.

Our land was almost an acre shaped in a rectangle, the rear border of which was deep, thick woods. There was a stream about a mile in, which was fed by the lake runoff. Freshwater streams flowing from the mountains and winter snow runoff kept the lake and the stream healthy. There hadn’t been a real drought in our area for more than fifty years.

I wasn’t one to go exploring in the forest. I only ventured in deeply when I went with Dad, who toyed with the idea of finding a great place to fish for kokanee salmon, the version of sockeye salmon that thrived in lakes. Mom teased him about it because he wasn’t that great a fisherman, often getting more involved in a history book he was reading. Once he had lost a pole because a rather big fish bit and dragged it off while he was absorbed in a detailed description of the battles on the Gallipoli front during World War I and had rested his pole on a large rock, thinking he would have time to seize it if he got a bite.

I smiled at the memory.

Then I looked up at the now lit attic in Brayden’s house. For a minute or so, I saw nothing, and then I was sure I saw him come to the window and look down in my direction. How did he get up there so quickly? He must have run the whole way. I waited to see if he saw me looking up at him, but he was gone, and soon after, the light went out, throwing the entire house into darkness. What was that about? Had his mother fallen asleep
up there? How could they navigate through their house in such utter darkness? I waited, but the house remained dark. Why didn’t the light go on in his room?

I stared at the attic window for a few moments and then lowered my head and walked back to the porch. I no longer felt like sitting outside and listening to my own thoughts. The truth was, I did so just so I would see or talk to him. Now that he was gone, I decided to go in and go to sleep. My conversation with him had done little more to enlighten me about him. He was still a first-class walking mystery.

“Everything all right?” Dad called when I entered the house.

“Yes.”

“Your mother decided to go up and read.”

“Okay,” I said. “Me, too. Night, Dad.”

“Night, Amber Light.”

I smiled and hurried up the stairs to look in on Mom. She was comfortably in bed, reading.

“Enjoy your time outside?”

“Yes.”

“Did you meet anyone?” she asked with a wry smile.

I thought a moment. “Felt like it, but I can’t be sure,” I said, and she widened her smile.

“Maybe you need more time to be sure. Do you want more time to be sure?”

We both knew what she meant. Did I?

I nodded. “I guess I will take tomorrow off,” I said.

“You have the weekend off, Amber, not just tomorrow, so feel free to make plans. If it should come up,” she added with a twinkle in her eyes.

“Okay, Mom. Thanks.”

“Great.”

I started away, then paused as if I had something more to add. I did, but not in words. I entered the bedroom and kissed her good night.

“Love you,” she said.

Do we ever stop kissing our mothers good night? I wondered. Maybe, when we were finally out of the house and in a home of our own, but if she were there for a visit, I was sure that even with children of my own, I would still think of my mother as Mom or Mommy and give her that good-night kiss.

I wondered if Brayden gave his mother a good-night kiss. Somehow, even without meeting her, I thought it might not happen. Someday I would know I had been right, but not for the reasons I thought or could even imagine.

Before I got into bed, my phone rang. It was Ellie, who said she had just gotten home herself. Apparently, meeting me and hearing me talk about a new boy in town had energized her own romantic interests.

“Charlotte and I went to the mall and hung out at the pizza place. Bobby Harris and Tommy Fletcher spent the whole time with us. I know Bobby has a thing for me. I’m just not sure about him. What do you think of him? Should I let him pursue me?”

BOOK: Into the Darkness
6.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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