Rising Tide: Dark Innocence (The Maura DeLuca Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

I rose up on one elbow to look at
the clock.  Whew….only 10:23 a.m.  We still had loads of time before
I had to be home.  Some thought was nagging at me though.  That awful
feeling you get when you’ve forgotten something was pervading my gut. 
What day was it again?  Wednesday.  Wednesday!  I was surprised
Caelyn hadn’t reminded me about my dentist appointment after school
today.  Very unlike my mother…..  The school bus usually dropped me
off there on my way home for past appointments.  I hoped Ron wouldn’t mind
taking me today.  It was too late to call and cancel.  Besides, this
was probably another thing Caelyn would want taken care of before all the
upheaval moving would cause.  I was in no mood for the lecture she’d give
me for “forgetting.”

I looked around the room while Ron
slept on, trying to unravel the mystery he still was to me.  I only wished
I could have more time to get to know him. 

On the walls were two silkscreened
banners.  Nailed to the far wall, straight across from the bed, a skeletal
figure with crazy hair brandished an axe under the full moon.  “Killers”
in bloody red script, stood out against the background of angry looking
clouds.  To the left hung another with a simpler design.  It merely
read “Black Sabbath,” with no other embellishment. 

*Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, cool,*
I thought to myself, *Ron is a classic rock fan.*

A little to the left of the second
banner stood a battered dresser with a small, round mirror.  There were
pictures taped around its edges.  I eased slowly, carefully, off the bed
to go examine them.  Maybe I’d find the mystery, birthday girl
there.  At the top right was one of his mother, only she looked much
younger.  I guess the baby in her arms had to be Ron?  He had a head
full of dark hair even as a small baby.  There were a couple of other
pictures of him with her in various stages of his childhood.  He must have
been very close to her to allow those out for any passing eye to gaze
upon. 

On the opposite side were three
photos of him with Shane.  One had a couple of other guys in it. 
Shane was on drums, and there was a bass player and lead singer.

So, Ron was in a band?  I felt
funny he’d never mentioned it.  Well, never in the two weeks I’d been
getting to know him.  Drumming, Shane looked very serious, a sharp
contrast to the other two photos.  In those he wore his usual
comically-manic expression, always trying to get a laugh from those around
him.  An admirable trait, in my opinion.  It never felt bad to laugh.

I jumped when I turned back to face
the bed, because Ron was propped up on one elbow looking at me. 
“Oh!  You’re awake,” I fairly gasped in surprise.

He just grinned at me.  I
really loved that grin.

“I was just….your pictures…” I
wondered if my expression looked as lame as my voice sounded, like a thief
caught red-handed. 

“Now, no teasing me about my baby
fat or bowl haircut,” he was mockingly stern.

“Oh! I wouldn’t,” I was sure my
eyes were as huge as they felt.  They ached slightly with strain.

“Relax, Maura.  It’s ok. 
I don’t mind at all.  I mean we’re running out of chances to get to know
each other.”  He regretted reminding us, by the look on his face.

I quickly changed the topic. 
“Hey, I just remembered a minute ago I have a dentist appointment this
afternoon.  Would you mind taking me?”  I realized that would be
totally boring and quickly added, “Sorry, I know it’s not really exciting,
but…”

“I’d love to!”  My most
favorite smile on Earth was still in place.  “See, you can even make the
dentist’s office sound exciting.”  We both laughed at that.

“Well….I doubt that, but
thanks!”  I thought back to the pictures.  “So, you’re in a band?”

I thought he may have been
blushing...just a little . “Yea, we’re just getting started, but it’s a lot of
fun.  We haven’t had any gigs yet, though.”

“I’m sure you will!”  I
imagined myself with groupie status for a moment. “Shane plays the drums?”

“Yep!  He’s got GREAT
rhythm.  Hey! You should come to a practice sometime and hear us play.”

“I would love that!”  I
thought about it for a second and realized, “But it’s probably after school
hours or on the weekend.  Maybe we could convince Mom…”

He rolled his eyes, “Awww
c’mon…believe me it’s not that hard to convince any of those guys to lay out of
school.”

“Geez, I feel like such a horrible
influence.”  I put my head down a bit because I really did.  “And we
really do have to go back to school tomorrow.  We don’t want to fail our
finals.”

“I guess so.”  He didn’t look
at all like he wanted to.  “It’s just so hard to think about any of that
with you leaving.  I know it sounds stupid, but you just seem like the
only really important thing going on right now.”  He lowered his eyes.

“I know what you mean,” I
agreed.  I couldn’t say that being at the forefront of his mind didn’t
make me feel really happy, though.  I snapped back into responsible
mode.  “But…if you failed your senior year, I could never forgive
myself.  If I fail junior year…well, I may not be breathing for much
longer…”

“Yes, and breathing is good.” 
He nodded his head knowingly and I laughed again, “Ok, well I guess two days is
doable this week?”

“Definitely!”  That nagging
worry that Caelyn was going to find out about my skipping school subsided a
bit.

We spent the rest of the day
playing games, besides the few songs I begged Ron into playing and the fabulous
lunch his mother made for us.  We stopped briefly back at my house so I
could scrub the garlic bread and spaghetti off my teeth before my dental
appointment, and then we were off.

“Oh….Maura….but…” The receptionist
scanned her computer screen for some detail she was missing, obviously confused
by my arrival.  “Yes!  Your mother
did
call to cancel your
hygiene appointment last week.”

I was utterly confused.  “She
did?” I asked, unconvinced. My mother was big on regular check-up appointments,
dentist included. 

“Sure did, see?”  The
receptionist turned the screen around so I could see her notation.

I turned to Ron, embarrassed. 
“She never said anything to me about cancelling.  This is so not like
her….”

The perky blonde behind the counter
scanned the monitor further, “Oh!  But we did have a cancellation. 
Would you like to take the spot?”

I couldn’t imagine Caelyn
cancelling my yearly cleaning.  There must be some mistake, so I said,
“Yes.  Definitely will take that.  We’re moving to a new city…well
country soon, and I’d much rather have Dr. Aurora.” 

“No problem!  I’ll just put
you right in.  That’ll be a just a few minutes.”

Ron and I went to sit in the small
waiting room, each pretending to read some lame magazine from the array spread
out across the glass-topped table in the middle of the floor. 

“I really hate the dentist,” he
confessed with a mischievous smile, “better you than me!”

I elbowed him playfully, “Well, you
know, I can see if they have a spot for you too.”

“No way, I hate the taste of that
stuff they polish your teeth with!”

“Ugghh, but the fluoride is waaaaay
worse!”  Suddenly I dreaded the appointment a bit more than I had before.

“Maura.”  A smiling dental
assistant was calling my name, her sneakered foot propping the door to the
operatory open.

“Too late to back out now,” Ron
gave me a wink.

“You wanna come back with
me?”   I was sorry as soon as the words were out of my mouth. 

But he rose, to my surprise. 
“Need me to hold your hand?”  This earned him a hard, pointy elbow to the
ribs.

The smiling brunette—no wonder she
was smiling, she was on the delivering end of those dental instruments—lead us
to the last room.  I settled as much as I could into the leather chair,
considering my heightened anxiety.  I wondered briefly if anyone liked
going to the dentist, then pondered over how strange it was to see my handsome
love interest seated in the spot my mother had so often occupied. 

“Ok then, Sweetie.  Let’s get
your bitewings done.”  I’ll bet the dental assistant wouldn’t have been as
cheerful if she were having hard, little x-ray films shoved down into her gums,
and in front of an infallibly cute boy.  I noticed her nametag read,
“Charlotte.”  She had a heavy southern accent.  A Confederate
transplant. 

Then there was more waiting before
Dr. Aurora finally came in and started poking around in my mouth with that
sharp little, hook-shaped instrument.  She stopped as she came around to
my right canine.  She poked around and tapped on that tooth, giving
it  considerably much more attention than she did the other teeth. 

“Charlotte!”  She called the
dental assistant back in.  “I want x-rays of the canines, 1-3 and 2-3
here,” she called out tooth numbers to the girl.  There was more jabbing
film and feeling self-conscious in front of Ron. 

When the digital film was developed
and came up on the computer screen, Dr. Aurora looked at it for a long time,
without saying anything.  She looked more like a model, or possibly a
Barbie doll, than a dentist.  Her hands were just as delicate as her
facial features, and she had an innate gentleness, which made her very
desirable to a coward like me.  In 10 years as my dentist, she’d never
caused me pain.

“Where is your mother today?” She
asked in her still-heavy Romanian accent.

“I think she forgot about my
appointment,” I answered sheepishly.  “I just happened to remember.”

“There is something wrong
here.”  She indicated my canines on the screen.  “See these teeth?”

I nodded, my brain still hung up on
the phrase, “something wrong here.” 

She must have read something akin
to horror in my expression.  Dr. Aurora spoke more softly.  “Well I
don’t know what is going is going on here yet, but these two teeth look almost
hollow.  See?”  She indicated the dark spaces running through my
upper canines.  “And when we compare with past x-rays here…”  She
brought another set of x-rays up on the screen; my full-mouth survey from two
years ago.  “See…these teeth,” pointing again to my top canines, “they
have grown.  This is very unusual.  Look,” she used a probing
instrument to make her point, “they are at least a millimeter and a half longer
than when these older x-rays were taken.  It’s as if the roots are
extending upward…see…here and here,” she indicated with the point of a pen, on the
screen.

I looked at her blankly.

“That is
very
unusual. 
For the teeth to keep growing like this…and they look like they may be
deteriorating from the inside….I don’t know.”  Her brow furrowed in a way
that was scary to me.

“Deteriorating??” was all I seemed
able to parrot back.  I felt Ron take my hand.

She looked at me and her expression
told me she was at a loss.  “I’m sorry,” she shrugged then, “I’ve never
seen anything like this.  It’s like there’s tooth missing from the inside
outward.  Usually decay comes from the outer wall like here,” she pointed
at another intact, dense tooth, “into the middle.  It’s like bacteria
started eating from within the middle of the tooth.  But just for these
two….I can’t explain it.”  She shook her head and looked down at the
floor. 

I instinctively wiggled the pair in question with the tip of my
tongue.  Neither moved…they felt pretty solid to me.  I snuck a look
at Ron.  He appeared as steady and unmoving as usual, the look on his face
like this was any normal dental appointment.  If there was any doubt or
fear he was feeling, he was hiding it very well. 

I must have looked pretty scared, because she suddenly brushed the whole
thing off with a, “You know what, it could just be a shadow on the film. 
Why don’t we finish the exam and you have your mom call me, ok?  We’ll
bring you back in and redo them.  Don’t you worry about anything.”  I
could see she was sorry she’d even mentioned the possibility of something being
wrong.  Her attempt at making me feel better did nothing to take the fear
out of her eyes.

I lay there through the rest of the exam and polishing, trying to convince
myself nothing was wrong.  At one point I couldn’t help but picture myself
canineless, wondering if they would eventually fall out.  Did I have some
kind of weird disease?  And speaking of weird, I began to think about how
Caelyn
had
been avoiding me lately.  Did she know something she
wasn’t telling me??  I wanted very badly, in this moment of revelation, to
be able to get up out of this chair and go home.  I needed to confront my
mother and find out the truth.  My anxiety must have transferred to Ron,
who was still holding my hand.  He squeezed it harder, and my nerves
calmed in response, remembering he was here with me.

I still raced around the house, cleaning up as I would have if I’d come
home from school on time.  Well….after my dentist appointment.  
By the time I had dinner done, I was beyond agitated.  Distraught with
thoughts of my mother keeping something important from me, heavy in my
mind.  Ron was playing Final Fantasy in my room.  My insistence that
he be here was fueled by the imagining of a betrayal by my mother, prominent in
my mind.

I was glad I’d put a roast in the crockpot this morning, and set my mind
to the preparation of mashed potatoes, gravy and honey-glazed carrots. 
But I still felt the weight of my distractions.

When Caelyn came home, I was all over her.  I found myself yelling,
“Mom!” before she was even in the door from the garage.  “MOM!” I yelled
again, as she was walking into the kitchen. 

“I hear you, Maura.” She sounded agitated, too.  “What is the big
emergency?”

Her heels clicked across the kitchen floor, somehow reminding me of her
adult status….looming far above my teenage one.