Swallowing Stones (6 page)

“The neighbors are complaining about the noise,” she said. “But if the police find out kids have been drinking …”

“Help me get him out of here,” Michael said.

“What?” Darcy looked down at Joe as if he were a pile of squirming snakes. Her upper lip curled in undisguised revulsion.

Michael knew that if the cops spotted them getting into his car, they’d probably ask to see his license. Especially if they thought he’d been drinking. And walking beside Joe was like holding up a neon sign that screamed
GO AHEAD, BUST ME
. But he didn’t dare leave his friend behind.

“We can’t leave him here for the cops to find,” Michael said, lifting one of Joe’s arms. “Take his other arm.”

Together he and Darcy got Joe to his unstable feet and began steering him across the yard, just as another police car rounded the corner.

j
oe was already gone when Michael checked the garage the next morning. A tangled sleeping bag lay in a heap where he’d spent the night.

Fortunately the police hadn’t noticed the three of them leaving the party the night before. He and Darcy had managed to get Joe to the car without further incident, except for a brief detour into the Delaneys’ front yard, where Joe vomited into the hydrangea bushes. For a moment Michael had thought Darcy was going to be sick, too. Her face had turned a waxy white in the moonlight. But when he drove her home after helping Joe settle in, all she said was, “Have you ever thought about getting yourself a new best friend?”

Michael neatly rolled up the sleeping bag, put it back on the shelf with the other camping equipment, and stepped outside. Dark clouds hinted at approaching thunderstorms. No one would be at the pool today, although Michael knew he would still be expected to be there. He would spend the day doing indoor jobs for Simon Goldfarb, probably painting over graffiti. Not that he minded this kind of weather. It had been an unusually dry summer so far, and they needed the rain.

A loud clap of thunder echoed in the distance. Michael
headed back to the house. But as he put his hand on the screen door he heard his parents’ voices coming from the kitchen. They were talking about the Ward case.

Michael’s hand rested for a moment on the doorknob; then he let it drop to his side. He would skip breakfast this morning. Instead he headed straight for the community pool.

h
e had been right about painting over graffiti. He and the two other male lifeguards spent the day rolling coats of thick white paint over the men’s locker room walls, while the three female lifeguards painted the women’s locker room.

All that morning he was haunted by the thought of trying to eat another meal with his family while they speculated about Charlie Ward’s killer. So during his lunch break Michael called home, knowing full well he’d get the answering machine, and told his mother not to expect him for dinner. Then, because he realized he needed a reason, he added that he was spending the night at Joe’s. But even as he said this, he knew that Joe Sadowski’s was the last place he would go. Because, like it or not, his best friend had become a part of what Michael so desperately wanted to forget.

i
t had stopped raining by the time he finished work, although a steamy mist hung over everything, blocking out the sun. Michael walked to the library, planning to read the most recent newspapers. He had forgotten it was Friday night. The library closed at five. For a long time he sat on the front steps, wondering where to go next.

Finally he bought a Coke and a salami-and-tomato on pumpernickel at the Corner Deli, and ate at one of the public
picnic tables near the community pool. When he looked at his watch again, it was only six.

For a while he walked around town. Then he wandered down two more blocks, until he came to the end of Main Street, and turned left. He headed up the hill, passing several old Victorian homes, then entered a side street. That was when he suddenly realized where he’d been going all along. For there, across the street from him, stood a large blue-gray house with elegant white scrollwork. Jenna Ward’s house. He realized then that it hadn’t been just idle curiosity that had prompted him to look up her address in the phone book three nights ago. He had needed to come here.

Michael sat down on the curb. Even through the heavy haze, he could see the neatly manicured lawn and the rows of thorny bushes drooping under the burden of fat wet roses. Everything looked still and misty, as if it had been stopped in time. There was something ghostlike about it.

He shivered, feeling the damp curb through his cutoffs. Part of his backside rested on wet grass. But he could not bring himself to leave, even though he had no idea why he had come.

He wondered if the family belonged to the community pool, then decided they didn’t. If they did, he would have recognized Jenna; he was sure of it. Maybe they had their own pool. Judging from the house and the part of town they lived in, it seemed a reasonable assumption. Michael decided they probably spent at least part of their summers on Martha’s Vineyard, or Nantucket, or someplace like that.

When he stood up to keep his pants from getting any wetter, he noticed he was only a few yards from the front of a church. If he sat on the stairs, his presence would seem less obvious to anyone in the neighborhood who might notice. So he positioned himself on the top step, resting his back against the
heavy oak doors. And there he kept his vigil until the streetlights blinked on.

t
he moon was almost full that night, but Michael did not notice until he came to an unlit road. The blue-white glow spilled down through the leaves, and the trees cast their inky shadows across the road. It was a quiet street, one he had never been on before. He kept walking, because he had already been all over town, and because there was nothing else to do and nowhere to go.

When he reached the end of the road, he saw, in the moonlight, a Cape Cod house, small and neat and white. A name plaque dangled from a post by the split-rail fence. The letters burned into his tired eyes, forming the name
Ruggerio
. He wondered if this could possibly be Amy’s home.

Somehow he had never pictured Amy living in a house, although he didn’t know why that should be. But as it turned out, this
was
her house, because suddenly there was Amy, standing in front of him in her white shorts and pink tank top, as if she’d been expecting him all along. She smiled a shy hello; then, gently taking his arm, she led him inside. Michael couldn’t tell if she was surprised that he’d suddenly shown up at her house or not. He decided not to question any of what was happening. His instincts told him it was better that way.

Everything inside was neat and clean, but the furniture seemed too big for such a small house. Old and overstuffed, it seemed to push up against the walls, as if trying to burst through them. Amy pointed him in the direction of a large, bulky couch. As Michael sat down he noticed a pale brown stain on the front of his T-shirt. He realized he must have spilled some of his Coke earlier but hadn’t been aware of it. He
wished he could hide the stain somehow. He thought about turning his shirt around when she left the room. For some reason it seemed important not to let Amy think he’d shown up at her house looking like a slob.

“Want something to eat?” she said.

Michael nodded, although he really wasn’t hungry. He still could not understand how he had come to be at Amy’s. Had he seen her address somewhere? He’d heard about things like that. How the brain stored away little bits and pieces of seemingly useless information, which suddenly popped up at the most unexpected times.

Amy left the room. When she came back, she was carrying a tray with a pitcher of iced tea, two glasses filled with ice, and a half-empty box of Fig Newtons. She set the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch where Michael was already settling in, letting himself sink comfortably into the soft cushions. By then he had forgotten all about turning his shirt around.

“Are you here alone?” he asked, glad to discover that his voice sounded relatively normal.

Amy poured a glass of iced tea and handed it to him. “Pappy’s upstairs sleeping.”

“Your dad?” Michael took the glass from her. The icy wetness cooled his sweating palms.

“My grandfather.”

“He lives here with you?”

A soft smile curved the corners of her full mouth. “I live here with him,” she corrected. “Gram died a little over a year ago.”

Michael did not ask about her parents. It was enough for the moment to know she had a grandfather. Enough to know
that she wasn’t totally alone in the world, although he wasn’t sure why that should matter to him.

“We can watch a movie if you want,” she said, pointing to the VCR next to the TV.

He cleared his throat. “What kind of movies do you have?”

Amy seemed to hesitate. “Mostly romantic stuff,” she said, barely whispering. Her face flushed a delicate pink, which both surprised and touched him. He realized then, for the first time that evening, that she wasn’t wearing makeup. Her face looked scrubbed and polished. She bit into a Fig Newton, looking thoughtful. “Or we could play a game. I have Scrabble.”

Michael said Scrabble was fine, although he didn’t feel much like playing. But Amy seemed pleased. And it would keep his mind off other things.

They set up the board on the coffee table, pulling cushions from the couch onto the floor. Then they settled themselves on the cushions and, like an old married couple, played Scrabble and ate Fig Newtons until, exhausted, they fell asleep on the floor.

When the first rays of light began to filter through the sheer white curtains, Amy rose and went about turning off the lights. Michael waited by the front door.

“I hope we didn’t disturb your grandfather.”

Amy grinned. “Couldn’t you hear him snoring?”

“Well, yeah, but …”

“He sleeps like a log.” She looked down at her bare feet. The sunlight caught the top of her head, turning her dark brown hair a rich auburn. Michael felt an overwhelming desire to touch that spot on her head. “I’m glad you came over,” she said simply.

Without looking, Michael reached for the doorknob. “I
didn’t mean to stay so long,” he told her. But they both knew he had.

“It’s okay. Nobody’ll find out.”

Something inside him cringed. In that single moment he realized that Amy was perfectly aware of what the other kids thought of her, although he was beginning to wonder just how true those stories were. And he also knew, beyond a doubt, that she would keep his visit a secret.

Michael turned and stepped outside into the damp morning air. He knew that if he stayed another minute, he would kiss her goodbye.

Amy waved to him, watching as he walked out to the road, then slowly closed the door. He was alone again, only this time the aloneness had a sharper edge to it.

He looked back at the small house he’d just come from. Sunlight poured down the front of it like fresh cream. Where was he to go from here? It seemed as though each new day became more complicated, more exhausting. He spent all his waking hours trying to get away from someone: from Darcy, from Joe, from his parents, and maybe even from Amy, because he realized he probably wouldn’t be coming to her house again.

The rest of the summer still loomed ahead of him like some vast desert he had to cross. Then would come September and school. He wondered how much longer he could keep avoiding people, lying to them. How much longer could he keep dodging the inevitable?

f
or two days after her father’s death, hundreds of enormous dragonflies blanketed Jenna’s front yard. No one knew where they came from or why they darted about haphazardly, barely two feet above the ground, with their iridescent wings, their blue-green bodies, shimmering in the sunlight. Like miniature aircraft with defective gyroscopes, they shot out in all directions, coming within a fraction of an inch of colliding with each other.

Neighbors who never went for walks and had little interest in physical fitness suddenly took leisurely strolls along the sidewalk, slowing their pace to a virtual standstill as they approached the Ward house. They did not know what to make of the strange sight. So they simply shook their heads and called it a sign—but of what, they had no idea.

All this time Jenna hardly noticed the dragonflies or the curious neighbors. At night she sometimes slept curled on the wicker chaise longue on the front porch because the air-conditioning in the house numbed the tips of her fingers and toes. On those nights cicadas hummed their own deep, mysterious song while a mournful owl in a nearby oak tree wailed the
chorus. And in the morning the pillow would be wet with tears Jenna had cried in her sleep.

Something else came with the night: a disturbing dream. A dream choked with thick, twisted tree trunks, big enough to hide a bear, and tangled vines that coiled around her body, pulling her deeper and deeper into a mist-clouded forest. Through the vapor Jenna could make out the bare bone-white branches of a giant tree. And as the vines pulled at her ankles she tugged against them with all her strength. She would not go to this place. Nothing, not all the vines on the face of the earth, could make her go there.

In daylight the dream made no sense. Whenever Jenna thought about the tree, it didn’t seem frightening at all. She knew this place, this old sycamore. Everybody called it the Ghost Tree. It was a place steeped in mystery and folklore. Jenna had spent happy hours there as a child. She would have laughed at her fears had the dream lasted only one night. But she had dreamt it three nights in a row. Each time she had to fight the vines even harder, and each morning she awoke exhausted.

i
n the days following her father’s death Jenna’s house was never empty. Family came, neighbors came, her mother’s coworkers, Jenna’s classmates, her father’s friends; they filled every room. They brought cakes and covered dishes. They shared their stories, their memories of Charlie Ward. And when Jenna could take no more, she locked herself in her room. No one thought it the least bit odd—although they might not have understood the pleasure she got each time she walked into her room.