Write Before Your Eyes (9 page)

Suddenly Dylan said, in a quiet voice, “All this holding your hand, Gracie, I don’t know, I think I’m…”

The top of Gracie’s hand, where Dylan’s touched hers, seared with heat. Her heart did a twitching thing and she caught her breath. At that moment a car door slammed in front of Dylan’s house. Gracie’s responses to touching Dylan’s hand had so confused her that she actually felt grateful for the interruption. “That’s probably him right now.”

“C’mon.” Dylan lifted Gracie’s hand and his fingers accidentally brushed the side of her breast. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Right,” said Gracie. Sensations flared all over her body.

“I didn’t!” Dylan squeezed her hand, just to emphasize the truth of his statement, and they both ran down the driveway. Gracie caught her breath as she watched Dylan’s dad heave his golf clubs out of the trunk of a black Lexus. He slammed the trunk shut, then waved to the driver of the car.

“Thanks, Bruce. Good round!” The car pulled away, but while Mr. McWilliams was still in the driveway, a battered gray Ford Taurus pulled up.

“Larry, hello.” Mr. McWilliams leaned down and spoke through the window. “We’re still planning to meet tonight at your house, correct?”

“Right. I’ve been trying to call your office all afternoon.”

“Sorry, I’m just back from golf.”

“Paul, I’m just terribly in need of some reassurance, that’s all.”

Gracie kneeled beside the golf bag and tried very quietly to unzip the pocket into which she’d seen Mr. McWilliams drop the journal. She’d half-unzipped the pocket when he hefted the bag over his shoulder.

The bag hit Gracie in the side of the head and knocked her sideways.

Muffling a groan, she scrambled to her feet, and at that same instant the man in the car—Larry—leaned across the passenger seat. “Hey, I’m safe, right? I can’t go to prison. My wife and kids…” Larry’s eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses were nearly invisible in the late-afternoon glare, but Gracie still recognized him. It was Dr. Larry Gaston, her own ex-principal!

“Stop worrying. That’s what you’re paying me for. I’ll stop by tonight and we’ll go over the arraignment. It’s very straightforward.”

Again Gracie poked her hand through the pocket’s opening. Holding her breath, she curled her fingers around the journal’s edge. She had it! Slowly she pulled it out of the bag.

“Thanks, Paul.”

At that moment Dylan’s dad turned abruptly, hitting Gracie’s elbow with the golf bag. The journal popped out of her hand, and flew through the open back window of the Taurus into the backseat.

And then, before Gracie could do anything else, the Taurus pulled away.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

“If I’d tried a hundred times, I bet you I couldn’t have
thrown
the journal through Dr. Gaston’s car window,” Gracie groaned as she and Dylan raced up the broad hardwood stairs of his house. She gripped the back of his T-shirt so she wouldn’t lose him.

“I know! Quick, I’m supposed to be grounded. He has to know I’m here, but we can’t let him see that we’re invisible.”

Gracie giggled. “He’s not going to
see
that we’re
invisible.
”

“Okay, okay, let him
know
that we’re invisible. I’ll go in the bathroom and turn on the shower so he has to talk to me through the door. Meanwhile, you get on my laptop and find Dr. Gaston’s address.”

Dylan slammed the door to the bathroom. A moment later Gracie heard the shower turn on, and Mr. McWilliams’s heavy feet on the stairs. She ducked into Dylan’s bedroom as Mr. McWilliams stopped in front of the bathroom door. “Son?”

“In the shower, Dad,” Dylan answered.

His dad yelled through the door. “I’m home. I’ll be down in my study. Remember, no phone calls.”

“Yessir.”

Mr. McWilliams looked into Dylan’s room, his face only inches from Gracie’s as she stood inside the doorway, her heart beating wildly. Then Mr. McWilliams headed back downstairs. Gracie heaved a sigh of relief and tiptoed over to Dylan’s desk. Dylan’s room was dominated by the fifteen-hundred-piece balsa-wood model of the Globe Theatre that Gracie had helped him assemble in sixth grade.

It didn’t take long to find Dr. Gaston’s address. Just as she finished printing out the map, the shower stopped. The map presented something of a challenge, because every time Gracie tried to pick it up and read it, it disappeared. Finally she laid the map on the desk and memorized it.

“Gracie?” Dylan whispered from the doorway. “Where are you?”

“Over here by the desk, memorizing the map to Dr. Gaston’s house. We need to get over there.”

“Okay, what happens if my dad wonders where I am?”

“We could do the old pillows-under-the-covers trick.”

“That is
so
clichéd.”

“Or turn on the TV and shut your bedroom door so he thinks you’re watching.”

“I’m grounded from watching TV.”

“I think we have to go with pillows under the covers.”

“Okay.” Dylan sighed. It took longer than they expected to stuff pillows under the covers and make them look convincing, since the pillows disappeared every time they touched them. That inconvenient power also made writing the note saying
Dad, I’m really tired, I’m taking a nap
and taping it to Dylan’s bedroom door into a complex chore.

Finally, Gracie and Dylan tiptoed past his dad’s study, peering in. Mr. McWilliams sat hunched in a red leather chair, shuffling through legal files and sipping from a tumbler of amber liquid. Dusk had fallen, and an antique lamp cast a cone of golden light over the burnished mahogany bookcases and thick Turkish rug.

“He doesn’t seem to be wondering why you haven’t come downstairs,” Gracie whispered.

“He’s always been exceptionally focused,” Dylan said after a minute.

“Do you think Dr. Gaston is guilty?” Gracie watched as Dylan’s dad shuffled through the sheaf of documents.

“Dad’s clients are always guilty,” Dylan said gloomily. “But he’s brilliant and he always gets them off. Hence the demand for his services.”

“That’s so depressing. I always liked Dr. Gaston. You know, he looks kind of like an owl trying to wake up. And he sounded so worried about his wife and kids.”

Suddenly Dylan’s dad scanned the room. He went to the window, looked out, and closed the heavy drapes. As he was sitting down again, adjusting his cashmere sweater over his large stomach, his cell phone buzzed.

“Paul McWilliams.” His voice assumed a patient, long-suffering tone. “Hello, Louise.”

“It’s Mom,” Dylan whispered.

Mr. McWilliams listened. “Yeah, I wanted to ask you about Dylan’s friend. What’s-her-name…the nondescript one?” He listened. “That’s right. Gracie Rawley.”

Gracie felt her cheeks grow hot.

Dylan squeezed her hand. “Ignore him. He’s the world’s most insensitive person. You’re not nondescript in any way.” He pulled her toward the door. “C’mon, don’t even listen.”

Gracie squeezed Dylan’s hand back gratefully. “Okay.”

A minute or so later they were racing down the path between Dylan’s house and hers. Gracie gripped the folded map to Dr. Gaston’s house in one hand and Dylan’s hand in the other.

“Can you drive?” Gracie said.

“I have yet to pass driver’s ed or obtain a permit, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Well, it’s either you or me. I vote for you.”

Gracie and Dylan jogged past the oak tree at the back corner of her yard just in time to see Jen, dressed in low-rise jeans and a T-shirt that said
GO COMMANDO
, walk briskly across the back patio, swinging her car keys. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, and Gracie could see the icy blue of her eye shadow halfway across the yard.

“Hey, there’s our ride!” she whispered to Dylan. “C’mon!”

Gracie pulled Dylan through the yard, running as fast as she possibly could, weaving through trees and scratching her arms as they crashed through shrubbery. When Jen stopped to look at her reflection in the kitchen window and reapply makeup over the scratch on her cheek, Gracie quietly opened the back door of the Mustang, and she and Dylan jumped in next to one of Jen’s jackets, which was wadded in the corner of the backseat. Gracie pulled the door closed, making as little noise as possible.

“Aren’t you going to say something to her?” Dylan whispered as Jen trotted down the driveway.

“If we say something before she leaves, she’ll kick us out of the car. Wait until she gets going.”

“But if two invisible people start talking to her while she’s driving, she might freak and drive off the road.”

“Believe me, with Jen driving, that could happen anyway,” said Gracie. “Let’s just give it some time. Maybe she’ll meet the Fridge somewhere and get in his car, and we can borrow this one.”

Jen got in the car, slammed the door, and tossed her hair over her shoulders. Gracie fought a sneeze as perfume billowed into the backseat. Gracie and Dylan held their breath as Jen shuffled through the CDs, stuck Jet into the player, and cranked up “Are You Gonna Be My Girl.”

“The music’s so loud we can probably talk in a normal tone of voice and she wouldn’t even hear us,” Gracie whispered.

Suddenly Mom shouted out her bedroom window, “Jen Rawley! If you take that car tonight, you’ll be grounded for the rest of your natural life!”

“Wow, I wouldn’t want to meet your mom in a dark alley,” Dylan whispered.

Jen ignored Mom and squealed in reverse out of the driveway. Goose bumps shot up the back of Gracie’s neck.

“Whiplash!” Dylan hissed as Jen put the car into first gear. “I’d like to lodge a complaint.”

Dylan gripped Gracie’s hand when Jen took the turn out of the development on two wheels and tailgated another car at fifty miles an hour. When it slowed down, she slammed on the brakes and Dylan gasped.

“It’s all I can do not to scream at the top of my lungs,” he said.

“She’s listening to Jet, it’ll fit right in. Anyway, once we get the journal back, I’m going to give it to the wisest person in the world.”

“Who’s that?” Dylan briefly wrapped his arms around Gracie’s neck when Jen ran a red light. “I can’t look!”

Gracie sighed. “That’s the thing. I don’t know. Who do you think it is?”

“Wow, what a question. Let’s see, the oracle at Delphi called Socrates the wisest man in the world. Then there was Solomon.” Jen swerved to avoid hitting a parked UPS truck. “Jesus.”

“That’s true. Jesus was incredibly wise.”

“And Buddha. Galileo. Muhammad. Mother Teresa. Mahatma Gandhi. Shakespeare. Jane Austen. Charles Darwin. Marie Curie. Some might disagree about John Lennon, but—there’s a small inconvenience—none of those people are still alive.”

“Obviously it would be preferable to have the person be alive.”

“Okay, okay, I’m thinking. What about my namesake, Bob Dylan? He’s been called the literary voice of an entire generation. Or…Jane Goodall. All that fabulous research on apes. Or…Shirley Ann Jackson, the physicist. Or…Bill Gates? I know—Nelson Mandela!”

“I like him,” Gracie agreed.

“Or those guys who started Google? Hey, maybe Google is your answer. It’s the gateway to all the information in the world. Give the journal to Google. It will never die, only grow more wise.”

“To a search engine?” Gracie made a face. “What about the Dalai Lama? He’s still alive, isn’t he? I looked through one of his books last year when Mom was reading it for her book club. I opened it up to this one page and I got goose bumps. I read something like,
All human beings are the same. We all want happiness and do not want suffering
. That seemed so wise to me.”

Jen was singing at the top of her lungs to Jet, belting out “Roll Over DJ.”

“You know where the Dalai Lama is from, don’t you, Gracie?” Dylan sounded patronizing.

“Well…no,” Gracie answered, pretending she hadn’t noticed Dylan’s tone.

“Try Tibet. Two or three days’ trip on a plane. Nestled conveniently between Nepal, India, and China,” Dylan said. “It’s called the rooftop of the world, because some of the world’s highest mountains are right around there, like Mount Everest and Annapurna. It’s so cold and the air is so thin that everybody has to wear those unattractive red puffy suits and oxygen tanks. People routinely die of hypothermia. Oh—and one shouldn’t attempt to go to Tibet in the summer because the rainy season brings mudslides.”

“Well, when should one travel to Tibet?”

“I would say September or October only.”

“We lucked out. It’s September. Since we’re invisible, we can fly for free.”

“Actually,” Dylan added. “There’s another problem. I just remembered that the Dalai Lama has been exiled from Tibet against his will for many years. I think he lives in India.”

“Okay, so we’ll go to India.” Gracie could feel herself getting carried away. But once she got the journal back, she could write anything she wanted in it. The power of that made her feel light-headed. “Oh—maybe I can write something about the Lama being allowed back in his country. Or something about the Lama coming to Chesterville.”

“I’m sure the Lama would love Chesterville,” said Dylan without conviction.

“But first we have to get the journal back.”

“Piece of cake,” Dylan said.

Jen pulled into the Chesterville High parking lot, waving and yelling at the people leaving the football game. She screeched to a halt in front of the gym, throwing Gracie and Dylan up against each other, then jumped out of the car and headed toward the boys’ locker room entrance. Her hips, protruding from their low-slung jeans, swayed with determination.

“Your sister is attractive,” Dylan said. “Though I prefer girls who advertise their sexuality less. Like you. For me, your intellect is the initial attraction.” Dylan’s fingers were moving up Gracie’s arm, very softly. “You’re unique, Gracie. And I would say ‘incredibly’ unique or ‘amazingly’ unique, except, as you know,
unique
should never be modified.”

“Huh?”

“One shouldn’t imply there could ever be less than total uniqueness.”

“You too, Dylan,” Gracie said cautiously, curling her fingers around his, her heart in her throat. “Unique, I mean.” Dylan’s attention felt so wonderful, she wanted to let herself sink into it, live indefinitely suspended in the warmth of this moment. He thought she was unique! She wanted to melt. But a tiny sliver of doubt flickered. Was Dylan acting like this only because she was invisible, because he didn’t have her actual ordinary appearance to remind him of how nonunique she was? Or was he responding to what she’d written last night in the journal, when she was half asleep and under the influence of Ms. Campanella’s e-mailed pep talk about writing your deepest desires? Probably Dylan didn’t really like her. Probably this was just the journal working!

Pinpricks of apprehension edged down Gracie’s arms. If that was true, how would Dylan feel if he found out? If Gracie were on the other side of it, she’d feel used, manipulated. Plus, thinking that this was the journal working made it less flattering. Like Alex cheating on the test. Not much pride in the victory. When she got the journal back, she would fix this. She leaned against Dylan, feeling the warmth of his chest next to hers.

But not yet. She didn’t want to fix it yet. Anyway, maybe Dylan really had started liking her. It was possible, wasn’t it? “Listen,” she said. “We can’t tell Jen about the journal. She’ll want it. We have to get her to take us to Dr. Gaston’s house without telling her.”

“I just don’t see how that’s possible,” Dylan said. She felt his fingers lightly stroking her cheek and her stomach turned fluttery. The edge of Dylan’s lips brushed her cheek and she thought she’d slide onto the floor of the car.

Jen and the Fridge emerged from the gym. The Fridge was giving her noogies on the top of her head and she was tickling his rib cage.

“Dylan, stop, here they come.” As Jen and the Fridge headed toward the car, Gracie pushed Dylan’s hand away and safely entwined his fingers in hers.

“We’re invisible, remember?” He tried to pull his hand free.

“Dylan, we’re on a mission here.”

“Sorry, I will focus my mental faculties like a veritable laser beam on the problem at hand. Don’t be mad at me.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the top of it very softly.

Don’t be mad? Kissing my hand? Am I nuts?
Gracie thought.

Jen turned the key and music blared.

“Jet!” said the Fridge, raising his voice to be heard. The Fridge smelled of deodorant soap.

“Lava,” whispered Dylan, giving the air a sniff. “How apropos that he should use a manly soap evocative of a natural disaster.”

The Fridge removed his backward cap, smoothed his palm over his recently shampooed buzz cut, then replaced the cap. Could the Fridge be nervous?

“I have more CDs on the floor in the back if you want to look through them,” Jen said, clearing her throat as she pulled out of the lot. Could Jen be nervous?