Yes, he had seen her. Better, she’d come and stood beside him before the start of seventh-period English. The flaming cascade of hair that, for so long, he could only watch from a distance, had been right there, at his shoulder. In that first moment, the classroom revolving around him, he’d had to summon almost all of his nerve to compose himself and then the rest to get her name past his stuttering lips. But he had gotten it out. He’d spoken to her, and that seemed a victory in itself — one more monumental than all of the printouts in his hidden box of hacks.
And she’d spoken his name, too.
Scott?
That one word, the texture of it, the breath behind it, were now the most precious things in the world to him. He’d been preparing to ask her how her day was going. It would’ve been a start, something to build on. Hard to screw up. But his throat succumbed to what felt like a seismic tremor, and the words became Larry, Moe, and Curly jammed inside a doorway. Then the teacher jumped out of the closet.
As students spun, Scott’s eyes remained fixed on Janis, the swirl of her hair, the excited shine of her eyes. When the teacher started in with her seating system, he had to bite back a grin. It was no alphabetical system, which would have doomed the names Graystone and Spruel to distant rows. No, it was something different. Something unique. Scott didn’t understand it entirely, but he stood a chance of sitting next to her — or close to her, anyway.
“Spruel,” Mrs. Fern said. “A derivative of Spurling, most likely. And not nearly as lowly as it sounds. The name means ‘little sparrow.’” And she proceeded to seat him as far as possible from another student whose name meant “great cat.” That received a healthy tide of laughter and a pretty smile from Janis — teeth and all. Scott returned the smile. It was crooked and brace-faced, he knew, but he didn’t care. Having her smile at him was right up there with hearing her speak his name. He would not be forgetting either for a long time.
But then something had happened.
Scott stopped pushing trash into the bag long enough to stand and gaze outside. The cul-de-sac in front of the Graystones’ house stood empty. The Prelude was still gone. He bounced the Glad Bag against his knee.
When the teacher had gotten to Janis, she talked about a Roman god and doorways — Scott remembered that. And then he watched Janis’s face change, going from open and bright one moment to tense and pale the next. It was as if she had aged — not outwardly but inwardly, as if she’d acquired all of the cares and concerns of an adult in a matter of seconds.
She ran from the classroom.
Whispers rose. Necks craned. Scott imagined himself going after her, seeing if she was all right. It’s what Scott Summers of the X-Men would have done. He would have pursued his red-haired love, his Jean Grey. But Scott Spruel was no Cyclops, he found out. That would have required something he didn’t have. Gallantry? Courage? A working spine?
He just sat there and craned his neck like the others.
Mrs. Fern appeared unperturbed. “Now, now, settle down,” she said, closing her eyes again. “Our goddess of doorways just needs a little fresh air. A moment to reorient. She’ll return shortly.”
Janis came back maybe ten minutes later. By then, the final student had been seated and the course syllabus distributed. Janis smiled tightly and said something about becoming lightheaded but that it had passed. She still looked pale to Scott, especially around her eyes. And when she took her seat (two rows from him, damn it all), her hair looked as though it had lost some of its luster as well. Amy, a student from their middle school, muttered something — “Faker,” Scott thought he heard. When he turned, she leveled a hard stare at him. The stare reminded him so much of his mother’s that he lowered his eyes and turned back around.
After class, Scott had been determined to ask Janis if she was okay. He followed her the entire length of A-wing before losing his nerve and veering off toward the bus circle. Tomorrow.
And that was the amazing thing, he thought. He had tomorrow, the next day — every day for the rest of the school year. He didn’t have a seat beside her, no, but he shared a class with her (one he wasn’t even supposed to have been in; he’d signed up for honors, not AP, English). A class with the same peculiar teacher, the same reading list — things to talk about. For the first time since they were kids, he would no longer have to resign himself to gazing helplessly on her from his bedroom window, a span which always felt farther than its actual distance.
Scott sighed and dropped the Glad Bag by the window. He pulled a comic book from one of the boxes beside his bookshelf and retired with it onto his bed, his pillows piled three deep under his head.
His favorite comic book artist was John Byrne, and Scott’s acquisitions for the last three years followed his career through Marvel Comics: old issues of The Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Iron Fist, The Amazing Spiderman. Byrne was currently illustrating the Fantastic Four, since issue #232, so that collection was ongoing. And last year, he had started this cool new series about a Canadian superhero team called Alpha Flight.
But Scott’s favorite John Byrne series by far — by light years — was The X-Men, issues #108 to #143. Those issues had everything, cool characters, awesome powers, riveting storylines, and all of them illustrated and co-plotted by John Byrne. The issues Scott liked the most, the ones he had absolutely fallen into (and whose condition he’d knocked down a peg or two through his constant handling) were the ones with Scott Summers and Jean Grey, also known as Cyclops and Phoenix. Scott would start the series at #108, read until Cyclops and Phoenix each presumed the other dead in issue #113, then skip to where they were reunited on Muir Island in issue #126.
He would read and reread the panels when it was just the two of them speaking intimately — before the mess with The Hellfire Club, before the power of the Dark Phoenix corrupted Jean. And maybe it was his knowing that their time together was short, that they only had those few precious panels, that made the panels seem to Scott sadder and more special than anything in his real life.
He opened issue #132 to one of those pages.
Byrne had stopped drawing The X-Men more than three years ago, so Scott had to track down old issues. Some he’d acquired at The Time Machine, others at comic book conventions. At the convention in Gainesville the year before, he’d had the good luck of scoring the two issues where the X-Men visited the Savage Lands. Still others he had bought at school.
Now he owned the entire series, save one: issue #137, the issue where the X-Men fight to save Jean’s life. And without it, he didn’t feel quite complete. It was less that there was a break in the collection and more that it left a hole in the complexity of feelings he had taken from the series and projected onto Janis and himself.
He squinted his glasses up and drew issue #132 closer to his face. He was at the page where Jean Grey interrupts Scott’s meeting with Angel. They’re on the top of a stone mesa in New Mexico. Angel leaves, and now it’s just Scott Summers and Jean. She spreads out a picnic blanket. They speak. They kiss. Four issues later, Scott proposes to her.
Jean Grey-Summers.
Scott rested the comic book on his chest and closed his eyes.
Janis Graystone-Spruel.
Someday, maybe. If he could transform himself. If he could leave Stiletto for Scott Summers. If he could become that person who would pursue Janis down a hallway and ask if she were all right.
Now tails, now heads.
Just maybe.
And that was the final, hopeful thought he carried headlong into sleep, a sleep so sudden and profound that he didn’t stir at the sound of Jesse Hoag’s Chevelle cruising past his house only minutes later.
9
“YOU KNOW, IT sort of defeats the purpose when you drown your yogurt in chocolate syrup and Gummi Bears.” Margaret aimed her plastic spoon toward Janis’s cup before dipping it back into her own — plain vanilla, no toppings. “We might as well have gone out for ice cream.”
Janis watched her sister’s lips ply a layer of
frozen yogurt from her spoon. Maybe it was this gesture, or maybe it was the angle of Margaret’s head, the small hunch of her shoulders, that made her seem young to Janis. Vulnerable, even.
“I have to tell you something,” Janis said.
“Oh, right.” Margaret sat up, appearing to remember why they had come to TCBY. She’d blabbed the whole car ride over. “What’s up?”
“It’s…” Janis took a deep breath, wondering where to begin. “Do you remember how you said you saw Mr. Leonard’s car at the beach yesterday? And then we saw him behind us on the way home?”
Margaret nodded, eyebrows raised in question.
“I think he was following us.”
Margaret laughed and brought the spoon back to her lips.
“I’m serious, Margaret.”
“On what basis?”
Janis couldn’t tell her about the experience last night. Just like at the beach yesterday, Margaret wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t believe her. And who could blame her? The whole thing sounded insane, but Janis still needed to warn her.
“I woke up last night from a bad dream. A dream where Tiger was hit by a car and… and then went to hide,” Janis lied. “It was just a dream, I know, but I went out to look for her anyway.”
Tiger was their gray tabby cat. When Margaret was ten, she had spotted her in the petting area of Fish and Critters at the mall and begged her father that she be able to take the kitten home. He relented on the condition that Margaret care for her and that Tiger remain an outdoor cat. The first chore had eventually fallen to their mother, but on the second point, their father remained resolute.
“What time?” Margaret asked, narrowing her eyes.
“I don’t know — twelve thirty, one? Anyway, when I got to the backyard, I could see Mr. Leonard out on his deck smoking a cigarette.”
“So?”
“He was staring at our house, Margaret. Over the tops of the bushes. I could see his glasses.”
“He probably heard you walking around.”
“I don’t think so.” I was incorporeal.
“Janis, his deck faces our backyard. So he comes out and smokes at night. His wife probably doesn’t want him doing it in bed, which is smart. Lots of house fires start that way. You remember David Cassidy of The Partridge Family? ‘Daydreamer’? That’s how his father died.” Margaret’s spoon scraped the bottom of her Styrofoam cup. “What is it with you and this obsession with being watched anyway?”
“It’s not an obsession. It’s a feeling. A…” Janis searched for a stronger word. “A strong feeling.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“So what you’re saying is that Mr. Leonard — our Mr. Leonard — is dangerous all of a sudden? Why now? He’s lived there since before we moved in. Plus, he’s around students all the time, and he hasn’t done anything to any of them.”
Not that we know of.
Janis rescued a drowning Gummi Bear from her melting yogurt and then ate it. She didn’t have a good answer for Margaret. She only knew what she couldn’t tell her, what she had seen the night before, what she had discovered when she’d gone through the bushes into his backyard.
“Seriously, Janis. Where is this coming from?”
When Janis looked up, her older sister had finished and set her cup aside. Margaret sat regarding her, hands folded on the table, no longer young, no longer vulnerable. And those eyes…
“Just promise me,” Janis repeated, straining to recall what they were even talking about. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Margaret sighed and lowered her gaze to Janis’s half finished cup. “All right, I promise I won’t let the big, bad Mr. Leonard get me. Now hurry it up. I have to stop by the store for some poster board before it closes.”
In the parking lot, Margaret spoke over the car’s roof as she fished for her keys. “Was Tiger okay?”
“Tiger?” Janis had to think for a moment. “Oh, yeah. She’s fine.”
~*~
Janis stood in her bedroom in a long cotton T-shirt. Next door, she could hear Margaret settling into bed. Her father was the only one still up. Janis pictured him in the study down the hallway, his reading glasses perched near the end of his nose, the visor he wore to keep the lamplight out of his eyes drawn low like a poker player.
Janis had finished what little homework she’d been assigned and already spoken to Samantha on the phone, each recapping her first day of school and making plans to meet for lunch. She had tied up the ends of her day — her normal life, as she’d come to think of it — and now stood contemplating this alternate life that claimed her when she fell to sleep each night.
There is also the doorway between here and there.
And that’s what it felt like to Janis. That she was looking down, not at a bed with soft printed sheets and a light summer comforter, but at a doorway, the one Mrs. Fern had spoken of.
The doorway between this world and another.
And looking down at it, Janis felt small and afraid. To draw back the covers and step inside was to go to a place she wasn’t sure she wanted to go to anymore. And could she even trust what she saw and experienced there?
Janis stepped around her bed to her dresser. Trophies lined its top — gold-painted statuettes of girls dribbling soccer balls, wielding bats, and fielding deep flies on marble pedestals. She parted the medals that hung like necklaces around the tallest trophies and pulled open her top-right drawer. From behind a container holding a medley of loose change, team patches, some old Charlie’s Angels trading cards, and movie-ticket stubs, she drew out the plastic Easter egg. Two quarters shifted inside.
She carried it to her desk, where her books and folders with her finished homework sat in a neat pile. Upon setting it down, she gave the egg a spin. Janis watched it rotate drunkenly, her chin on the back of her hands.
Yellow instead of purple.
Not the same color, no. Not in the exact same spot. But it had been there, her guarantor that the experiences were real.
Or were they?
Of all the Easter egg hunts they had done over the years, weren’t the chances good that at least one or two eggs had gone undiscovered? It wasn’t like her parents took an annual inventory. And where would the eggs be most likely to turn up? In the places hardest to see, of course. In areas of dense growth.
Inside the ferns.
Maybe somewhere in her subconscious mind, she’d already reasoned that out. And maybe that’s all these nocturnal experiences were: voyages into her subconscious mind. Vivid, perhaps, but not happening out there at all. Instead, it was taking place inside her head.
Janis gave the egg another spin.
~*~
Whoosh.
The force that pulled her through the bushes last night had stretched her, made her feel long and charged. The vibrations tightened, rattling like charged ball bearings inside her head, down her body. She feared for a moment that the energy was going to force her apart, cast her into pieces. Even her mind, in her panic, felt like it was about to be blown like shot pellets.
Then, in a gasp, she was through.
She found herself hovering over the cement culvert that ran from the large cylindrical opening beneath Twenty-first Avenue down to the woods where the cement fell to rubble and sand and became a rainwater tributary of Possum Creek.
Janis raised her face to the Leonards’ house, which seemed very close, looming above her. A chain-link fence separated her from the steep, unkempt yard. On the deck stood a slender shadow. The cigarette that had earlier illuminated his glasses was gone. Had he sensed something and ground it out? Could he sense her?
She sank to the slanted wall of the culvert and watched through the tall grass along the fence.
She felt his vigilance as he stood there. Yes, an energy surrounded him, raw, and perhaps a little conflicted. Was this his desire for her sister, for Margaret? The thought made Janis’s insides crawl.
She drifted dow
n the culvert to the lower boundary of his property, continuing to monitor him to make sure his gaze wasn’t following her. Then she went for it. The chain-link pattern of the fence offered brief resistance, and she was through. She was in his yard. Above her, Mr. Leonard yawned, his head tilting back. She crouched deeper into the grass. It seemed impossible that he couldn’t hear the energy that whooshed and crackled around her.
A flare made Janis jump. On the deck, Mr. Leonard’s brow shone pumpkin orange. Then he shook out the match, and only the ember and its reflection against his lenses remained.
Off to Janis’s right, a woodshed leaned with the slope of the lawn. A stack of rotten logs huddled against its far side where a shingled roof jutted out. Janis waited for the cigarette to float to Mr. Leonard’s face again, waited for the small ember to swell on his inhalation… She shot behind the shed and hovered, one hand resting against the shed’s back side.
When she peered around, she found Mr. Leonard in the same place but in profile. A cold tremor ran through her. What in the world was she doing here? What was she hoping to discover? That he was monitoring their house was clear. That he’d followed Margaret to the beach that day was also clear.
But is he dangerous?
Yes, that’s what she needed to know — whether he was dangerous, whether he was capable of hurting Margaret, whether he’d hurt someone before. Someone young and vulnerable. Another student, maybe.
The side of the shed facing the house consisted of two doors held closed by a locked bolt. A bolt? Surely he would keep his expensive tools in the garage, like her father did, not out in some decrepit woodshed. She concentrated in the same manner as when she wanted to float and pressed herself against the plywood siding. She encountered a layer of resistance, like the skin around a soap bubble, before popping inside the black confines of the shed.
When she concentrated again, the woodshed illuminated for her in little flickers and falters, like a failing bulb determined to hold on. Shelves lined opposite ends of the shed. A heap of kindling rose from the floor, over what looked like some old sacking. Cockroaches glistened chocolate-brown among the sticks and twigs. Janis recoiled. She could handle snakes, spiders, and other creepy crawlies, no problem — she’d even kept some in jars as a kid — but she detested cockroaches.
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