Into the Darkness (7 page)

“The judge’s decision about what?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant.

Both of them looked up from their books.

“What else? The boy next door. Wait a minute,” Dad said to Mom. “Wasn’t there a song called ‘The Boy Next Door’?”

“In a famous movie,
Meet Me in St. Louis
.”

“Right. Sung by . . .” Dad pretended to be struggling to remember. Mom looked at me and winked. “Oh, yeah, Judy Garland,” he said.

“Judy who?” Mom and I said simultaneously.

Dad shook his head. “So?”

“He’s interesting.”

“Noreen, please translate what she said into man talk,” Dad asked her.

“‘Interesting’ means she would like to get to know him more before she makes any decisions about him,” she said, and looked to me for confirmation. Dad did, too.

“That’s right,” I said. “There is some sad news, however,” I continued, and told them what Brayden had said about his mother, how poorly his father was handling it all, and how she spent her time. I told them about her paintings in museums and the name she used.

“So she’s an artist, too,” Mom said. “Well,” she added, looking at Dad, “artists can be moody. It’s not easy living with them.”

“I beg your pardon. When have I been moody?”

Mom smiled. “There’s not enough time left before I go to sleep to list the occasions,” she told him. She turned back to me. “However, it sounds like his mother has a far more serious condition. She’s under a doctor’s care?”

“That’s what he said.”

I could see the fear in their faces. One way or another, children inherit from or reflect mentally ill parents. I didn’t want to tell them about his mother’s belief in reincarnation or anything else that would make the Matthewses seem too strange to want to know.

“Brayden is one of the brightest, deepest-thinking boys I’ve ever met.”

Mom nodded. “Well, I’m sorry he has a burden like this at so young an age.”

“I’m going up,” I said. “Oh,” I added, “there’s a beautiful spot on the lake where birds, all kinds of birds, gather, a small lagoon. Did you know that?”

They looked at me as if I had begun to speak a
foreign language, and then Dad said, “I didn’t know there was any one particular place where they gathered.”

“Well, there is,” I said.

“And you found it?”

“No, not me. Brayden,” I said.

“Someone who has been here only a few days found something on our lake that we’ve never found in years?”

“We don’t exactly spend much time on the lake, Gregory,” Mom told him.

“Yeah, but still . . .”

“I told you he was interesting,” I said, and then left.

When I entered my room, I remembered that Brayden had told me his bedroom was directly across from mine. My curtains were open slightly. I peeked out and saw that the windows of what would be his bedroom were dark. Perhaps he was with his mother in the attic, I thought. He did seem anxious to get home. I had no idea how I would survive under such pressure. How lucky I was to have the parents I had. I didn’t open my curtains any farther, but I didn’t close them completely, either. I was curious about when the light from his bedroom would go on and spill into the darkness between us.

After I prepared for bed, I picked up my copy of
Brave New World
, a novel my class had been assigned to read over the summer and about which we were to write a book report. I often liked to read myself to sleep, deciding to close whatever I was reading and put out the lights as soon as I found myself rereading the same lines. Tonight I could barely get started. After every sentence I read, I found myself pausing to think about Brayden, about the way he had walked with me, sometimes seeming to be so
lost in his own thoughts that he had forgotten I was with him and then quickly returning to the moment, slowing down and turning to me after something I had said or asked had penetrated the wall that I couldn’t help thinking he had fashioned around himself. I thought I must feel the way a prizefighter felt when he couldn’t quite figure out his opponent. In this case, the opponent was bobbing and weaving with words, so I couldn’t land a blow and discover too much about him.

After all, I still didn’t know where he had come from, where he was born, how long his mother had been ill and why, what his likes and dislikes were, whether he would be in our school, or even what he really planned on doing with himself all day. He couldn’t just look after his mother.

And then there was the way he looked at me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that disturbed me. I didn’t see him gazing at me with that sly, licentious look that could make a girl feel naked, but I did have the feeling that he could see through not only my clothes but any attempt I made to hide something about myself. I concluded that it was the look of someone wise beyond his years, just as I did when I’d said he sounded as if he had lived for centuries. It was as if he knew things about me that I had yet to discover about myself and that would come only from wisdom. Wisdom was different from intelligence. Wisdom came from years of experience. How did someone my age have so much of it?

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I liked it. It filled me with a kaleidoscope of emotions. At times, it made me angry, as angry as I would be at anyone who was condescending
enough to make me feel dumb, naive, and innocent. Simultaneously, I felt titillated, as aroused as I might be had he run the palm of his hand softly over my breast and rested it on the flat of my stomach. And then again, I was feeling confused, even agitated, and afraid that I would say something silly, unimportant, or downright stupid. No boy I had ever been with had challenged me as much.

I guess that was why I was so undecided about him.

I wasn’t so unlike most girls, I thought, at least most girls about my age. Just like them, I was more comfortable with boys who were simpler, boys who were obvious. Most of the time, I could finish the sentences for many of them or think their next thoughts. I never felt threatened or inadequate when I was with them. The truth was, I felt superior. I knew it was arrogant to feel like this, the exact sort of priggishness they accused me of having, but I couldn’t help it. I would never tell anyone about these feelings. I hadn’t even told Mom. Brayden was so right when he said I was afraid of revealing things about myself, some things I wouldn’t even admit to myself.

At the top of that list was my deep and utter craving to be loved. I don’t mean loved the way parents love their children, but loved the way my mother loved my father and he loved her. I had always thought that my need for that would come much later in my life. It wasn’t just wanting to have sex, to make all the discoveries I read about or heard other girls talk about. I wanted something more. I wanted to love someone so intently that his every word, every gesture, smile, and kiss lingered long into the night and embraced all of my dreams, not the
way teenagers could have crushes on each other. No, I wanted something more substantial, something clearly mature, reserved for when you were older and settled. The truth was, I wanted it all now, and that did frighten me, because I realized that I should be more of a teenager than a woman. I didn’t know any other girl who was like me, and that wasn’t necessarily good.

These should be my carefree days, I thought. My heart and my mind should be full of insignificant little affections. I should be going to parties, dancing beneath crepe-paper ceilings and multicolored balloons, weaving smiles and laughter around lollipop kisses, and writing some boy’s name with invisible ink so it could be replaced quickly and easily with another boy’s name.

Mom was always telling me just to go and have fun. “Don’t take life so seriously. Every boy you date doesn’t have to be your soul mate, Amber. It’s not a waste of time just to have some innocent fun. Believe me.”

I knew what she meant. These would be those delightful little experiences that would fill up my personal yearbook, the one containing all of the ridiculous things that I had said or that were said to me, the pictures of the boys I had crushes on for ten minutes, and the wild predictions my friends and I had made for ourselves on a prophecy page.

But no matter how much or how hard I tried, I couldn’t begin to fill that yearbook. I was simply—like Brayden—beyond my years. What had happened to make him that way? I supposed I could blame it on his home life, especially his mother’s condition, but what had happened in me that made me the same? Was it just
the way we were constructed, something in our genes? Were we living tragic lives because we were losing or had lost our youth too soon? What would I be able to tell my daughter when she was my age if I had never had any of the experiences she was having, experiences that at times she would find a little confusing? Where would my motherly wisdom come from?

I hadn’t thought about all of this as intently as I was thinking about it tonight, and I knew it was because of Brayden, because of the thoughtful and serious things he had said. If he could cause this to happen, stir up all these deep thoughts and feelings after the short time we had spent together, what would happen if I did see him again and again?

Was it dangerous to be around someone like him, especially for someone like me who was already too serious?

Was I afraid?

Should I avoid him? Tell myself he was too depressing or weird? That would be easy. My parents would accept it, too, now that they knew something about his family, but would I?

Could I be that dishonest with myself?

I closed my book.
I’m not going to read tonight,
I thought, and rose slowly after I put out the light. In the protection of the darkness, I went to the curtain and peered out at the windows of his bedroom again. It was still quite dark. When did he go to sleep? I looked up to see the attic windows lit, just as he had said they would be. Did he stay there with his mother while she worked? How long did it go on? All night? Nothing else, no
other room, looked lit in the entire house. What was her problem? Were her paintings the only window through which she would look at the world? I thought artists had to experience reality to capture something they could paint. Were her paintings all about the chaos within her? That would make it seem more like psychotherapy than art. I was anxious to see one and told myself that I would look her up on the Internet tomorrow.

I was about to close my curtain and go to sleep when I thought I saw a glow in one of Brayden’s windows. It was like the reflection of something bright on the glass, something from outside. And then, suddenly, that glow took the form of his face, but his face seemed to be floating, as if it were painted on a balloon. He was looking out at me, doing, I guessed, exactly what I was doing, keeping the lights off in his room so he could peer out at mine unseen. I thought he smiled as if he could see me peeping, so I backed up quickly, my heart tapping against my chest like a woodpecker on a tree. I took a deep breath and then closed my curtains.

I stood there thinking and worrying about it. How could he see me in this darkness, anyway? Was that really his face, or did I imagine it? Was it just the glow of someone’s light on the street, perhaps the headlights of a car?

I approached the window and peered out between the curtains again. This time, I saw nothing, not even a reflection from the street. I waited and watched and then felt silly about it and returned to bed. How strange it made me feel.
I’ll never get to sleep tonight,
I thought, and did toss and turn almost as badly as someone in a cabin
of a sailboat on a windy sea. I settled down some when I heard Mom and Dad come up to go to bed. They paused at my bedroom door and then continued to theirs, whispering, their words spoken too softly to be understood but sounding like air escaping from a tire.

I didn’t need to hear their words to understand that they were probably worried about me and about the cryptic things I had said about this new neighbor. I was sure my father wasn’t kidding all that much when he often turned to my mother for an interpretation of things I had said. At some age, daughters become a mystery for fathers to solve anyway. Understanding what our emotions say is like deciphering a foreign language for them. What I had said about Brayden Matthews and my short but intriguing contact with him was just another speed bump for my father to navigate in his journey to embrace fully this mysterious creature he called his daughter.

This whole situation was just too weird, I thought, and decided that it might be better if I didn’t get too involved with Brayden Matthews. After all, he had said himself that they might not be here that long. What did he call it, a test? Well, I didn’t want to be part of someone’s test, and it would be just my bad luck to grow to like him and find out that he was leaving in a few days to go somewhere else. I was sure that wherever it was, he wouldn’t tell me. He was too secretive. Talk about being guarded. Who was more guarded than he was, avoiding the answers to the most basic questions? What were they, a family of spies? It wouldn’t be any fun for me to pry the most inconsequential things out of him. Actually, it was already proving to be quite frustrating.

I wrapped my blanket tighter around myself and willed myself to sleep by pushing all of these questions back into some cabinet at the back of my mind, a place that was simply labeled
Later
. There was great logic to Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind
saying, “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

Tomorrow seemed to come more quickly than usual. It was as if I had only blinked. Dad was always the first one up in the morning. Mom prepared our breakfast, but he liked to find little ways to spoil her, and one of those ways was to turn on the coffee and bring a cup up to her while she was still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. No matter how many times he had done it, she always acted surprised. I had asked her about that once, and she had thought a moment and said, “When you expect something all the time, take it for granted, it loses its heart. It becomes just something else in your life. I’m almost happy when I do wake up ahead of your father and he can’t get me that cup of coffee. I see the disappointment with himself in his face, but I also know he’s going to be very pleased the next morning when he beats me to it, and yes, I’ll be just as surprised.”