The Light (Morpheus Road)

by D. J. MacHale

  "I guess she found out about the scalping thing," I said weakly.

  "Yeah. Dinner tonight's gonna be a real party," he lamented. "I'll get lectured by my parents about straightening up and being responsible while she stares through me with those undead vampire eyes. Yeesh."

  I didn't think Sydney's eyes looked undead at all, but I could see where getting stared at would be unnerving. But that's just a guess. Sydney barely knew I existed.

  Coop shrugged it off and broke out a big, winning smile.

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  "But it's cool. Tonight I pay the price and tomorrow . . . summer!"

  He gave me a double okay sign. That was his way of saying not to worry and that it's all good.

  "You know what?" he added. "I say we load up on frozen pizzas, head to your house, and build us some rockets."

  I had to smile. "You're a piece of work, you know that?"

  He gave me a friendly shove and said, "Absolutely. It's all part of the Foley mystique."

  Coop had done it again ... he made things right. As we strode into school, I had new hope that the vacation might turn out to be decent after all, especially if I got the old Coop back.

  The last day of school was pretty much a blow-off. You're supposed to go to classes, but exams are over and teachers don't care what you do. Most everybody hangs out and gets their yearbooks signed with "See you this summer!"-- which seems like a lame thing to write, but who am I to judge? I didn't buy a yearbook, so I headed right for the art department. That's where I hung out when I wasn't in class. The art rooms were a refuge for those who didn't fit into a particular clique . . . which I guess meant we were our own clique. But since we didn't run with each other outside of school, it was a limited social circle.

  The art department wasn't just a hideout. I liked to draw. I'm pretty good, too. Whatever talent I have I got from my mom. There were a bunch of sketches in my cubby that I'd been procrastinating about bringing home because my bedroom was already a mess of paper and half-finished drawings. Bringing home more would probably make Dad's head explode, but I couldn't leave anything at school over the summer, so it was time to clear out.

  I'd been working on an idea that was slow to form. I wanted to create my own superhero graphic novel. That

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  sounds fairly cool and a no-brainer except for one thing . . . it's a no-brainer. Meaning: Superheroes have been done to death. Pretty much every superpower has already been explored. Besides, I didn't like the whole tights-and-cape thing. For a while I monkeyed around with a character I considered to be the "true" Superman. My theory was that if Superman was powerful because he came from a planet with heavier gravity than Earth, then why the heck did he have huge muscles if he never had to strain to do anything? In reality he should look like a skinny wimp. But creating a superhero that looked like limp lettuce didn't seem promising, so I scrapped it.

  What popped out of my head instead was something I hadn't planned on or set out to do. I kept coming back to a character I called "Gravedigger." He wasn't a superhero at all. In fact, he looked more like a super villain. He was more or less a skeleton with a thin covering of powder white skin. His fingers were abnormally long and spider like. His eyes were hollow. He wore a dark cloak and a broad-brimmed black hat. Very creepy. I hadn't even come up with any stories about him. I simply sketched him in various settings ... skulking through an ancient graveyard, lurking through the ruins of an old church, cowering around dark alleys. (I'm good at depicting skulk, lurk, and cower.) His signature weapon was a sharp, lethal-looking, double-edged pick like you use to crack rocks in a mine. Or gouge out the earth to dig a grave.

  Whenever I tried to draw something else and use a bright color like blue or red, my hand automatically went back to the blacks and grays. I don't want to say that Gravedigger was drawing himself, but the ideas came easily and I sketched hundreds of incarnations of the guy. I didn't even know what the point was. Who was he? Was he evil? Was he the living dead? Did he need to eat a potato and get a little sun? I didn't

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  know. Gravedigger pretty much represented all the work I had done that year and it was time to move him home, so I began the long process of stacking the pages.

  "You are obsessed with death," came a soft, flat voice over my shoulder.

  I turned quickly to see Tyler Frano, a student teacher in the art department. The guy was shorter than me by at least a foot. . . not quite Munchkin-like but in that ballpark. He always dressed in black because he said it hid the streaks of sketching charcoal that got on his clothes. I think it was more because he was an art poser and wearing black made him look the part. He had no personality that I could sense and always spoke in a dull monotone. He was creepy but harmless. I think.

  "I'm not obsessed with death," I said defensively. "I'm developing a character."

  "It's all you ever draw," he countered. "That's bordering on obsession."

  "Well, maybe, yeah, but ... it has nothing to do with death."

  Frano gave me a skeptical look. "Or perhaps you have no significant life experiences to draw upon for inspiration."

  The guy was starting to piss me off. "No, I have choices," I said. "I just choose to develop this character."

  "Good luck with that," he said with a superior sneer and walked off to do whatever student teachers do on the last day of school.

  The guy was all wrong. I had plenty of inspiration. And I wasn't obsessed with death. I glanced through a few of the Gravedigger sketches, trying to imagine what Frano saw in them. Okay, my character looked skeletal. Okay, he hung around cemeteries. Okay, I called him Gravedigger. Okay, he was all that I drew. So what? Did that constitute an obsession with death?

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  I quickly jammed the sketches into a portfolio, zipped it up, and got out of there. I was sick of hanging around the art department. Vacation couldn't come fast enough.

  At 2:05 it did. Summer. I love the feeling of stepping out of school on the last day of the year, because the next day of school was as far away as it could get. I think I was especially psyched about this summer because it held so much possibility. I even had some money to spend. I had been lucky enough to land a part-time job with a small

  company that made trophies and awards. In a town like Stony Brook, where so many kids went to sports camp, there was a huge need for all sorts of trophies. It wasn't exactly exciting work, but building and engraving the awards made me feel like I was using my artistic talent in some small way. Better still, I could work as much as I wanted because the regular engraver had quit. He was a kid a few years older than me named Mark Dimond. Since Mark left, there was plenty of work for me. I planned on putting in at least a few hours a day to keep the cash flowing. Thank you, Mark.

  So the summer was shaping up nicely. I had money coming in from a job that didn't suck, lots of projects to work on, and truth be told, I wasn't going to mind putting in a little time at the beach. I figured that as long as Cooper kept his promise and didn't do anything else that was dumb or criminal, the two of us were set for a summer to remember.

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  Chapter 2

  Later that same day I rode my bike over to Cooper's house to begin the festivities. As I approached, I saw that Sydney's boyfriend, Mikey Russo, was sitting on the porch steps. Mikey was an idiot. There's no better word to describe him. He was a big guy who the girls loved because of his looks, but as soon as he opened his mouth, it was clear that he cowered at the sight of fire. He was going to be a senior, but I had no idea how he kept passing. My guess was that he threatened to injure any teacher who didn't give him at least a D. What made even less sense was that Sydney, who was a brain, hung out with him. It had to have been a physical thing because I doubted they had much to talk about. It was a doomed relationship, just like all of Sydney's relationships.

  Mikey sat on the top stair, looking at the ground, probably thinking deep thoughts . . . like planning the number

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  of squats he'd be doing later
at the gym. I dropped my bike and started up the stairs while doing my best to look invisible. I didn't get far. Mikey held his hand out to stop me.

  "No," he commanded.

  "No what?"

  "Nobody goes inside until Sydney's done."

  "Done doing what?"

  "Done telling your weasel pal how it's gonna be," he growled.

  This was the most Mikey and I had spoken in, well, ever. I was one of those wallpaper guys who never entered his sphere of consciousness, which was fine by me. The most interaction we ever had was when I had to leap out of his way or get bulldozed. I was less than nothing to him, and I was stuck.

  "Marsh!" came the voice of my savior, Mrs. Foley. She pushed open the screen door and leaned out. "Would you please talk to Cooper?"

  Mikey quickly jumped to his feet and faced her. With an impossibly polite voice he said, "You're right, Mrs. Foley. I was just saying the same thing. Cooper needs a good

  talking-to."

  Weasel. Mikey turned his back to Mrs. Foley and gave me a look that was so intense, it made my forehead burn. "Tell Cooper to be smart and do what he's told." His voice was polite, but his glare was scary.

  Mrs. Foley held the screen door open for me. "Thank you, Mikey, we'll handle this," she said as if he were two years old, which he was. At least mentally. It must have made her sick to think Sydney was hanging around with that goon.

  When I passed Mikey, he whispered something quietly so that Mrs. Foley couldn't hear.

  "Tell him I'll hurt him," he snarled.

  The madness in his eyes told me it wasn't an idle threat. I leaped up the stairs, two at a time, because I didn't like

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  having my back turned on the guy. Mrs. Foley was waiting for me inside.

  "What's going on, Mrs. F.?" I asked.

  "Cooper is being Cooper," she said, exasperated. "Would you please get him to see reason?"

  It wasn't an unusual request. I'd heard it a lot lately.

  "What's he being unreasonable about?" I asked.

  She took a tired breath and said, "I'm sure you know about the tickets."

  I nodded.

  "Such a mess. We decided to take Cooper out of the situation for a while and get him away from, you know, influences." She whispered the word "influences" like it was a four-letter word that should never be spoken aloud.

  "How are you going to do that?" I asked.

  "We want to take him up to the cottage for the summer."

  The Foleys had a great house on Thistledown Lake, a few hours north of Stony Brook. It was the kind of place where you could swim and canoe and hike and water-ski and just hang out. I had visited the Foleys up there a couple of times and had a blast.

  "Are you talking about the whole summer?" I asked.

  "Absolutely. He needs to clear his head and that won't happen down here. Not with all that's going on."

  It was a good idea . . . that I totally hated. If Coop took off, the stellar summer I was planning would turn into a two-month bore. I wanted things to cool off for him but not at the expense of summer. Before I could try and talk her out of the idea, I heard an angry shout come from upstairs.

  "Why?" came the anguished cry. "Why is it always about you?"

  Sydney. I looked to Mrs. Foley. She gave me an embarrassed shrug. From the bottom of the stairs I looked up to see Coop's sister on her way down.

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  "Get over yourself for once and just go!" she barked over her shoulder.

  The first thing I saw were her legs. They didn't stop moving. I pressed my back against the wall as she blew past me. I don't think she even knew I was there. Her eyes were straight ahead, her body language tense.

  "What did he say?" Mrs. Foley asked sheepishly.

  "Who cares?" Sydney spat back. She hit the bottom of the stairs and didn't break stride as she pushed open the screen door to make a dramatic exit.

  Mrs. Foley gave me a helpless look.

  "I'll talk to him," I said, and ran up the stairs.

  I found Cooper lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom, tossing a football into the air.

  "What the heck?" I asked.

  "Can you believe it? They want me to get out of town like some mob guy who has to lay low until the heat dies down."

  Coop was genuinely angry. That didn't happen very often.

  "Maybe you could just go for a week or two," I offered.

  "No. They're talking the whole summer."

  My stomach sank.

  "That lake is death, Ralph," he added. "What'll I do up there? Fish? That gets old after eight seconds. The place is great if you're six or sixty. For everybody else . . . torture."

  I was in the weird position of trying to talk him into doing something I didn't want him to do. I chose to duck the issue.

  "What's Sydney's problem?" I asked.

  "Who knows? My parents aren't even making her go. She gets to be on her own for the whole summer while I'm sentenced to two months at Camp Kumbaya."

  He sat up and threw the football into his chair angrily.

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  I wasn't used to seeing Cooper like that. Even when things were going badly, he always laughed it off and figured a way to make the best of it. Not this time. He wasn't giving any double okay signs.

  "Mikey the Mauler's downstairs," I said. "He threatened to hurt you. What's that all about?"

  "Nothing," Coop said dismissively. "Forget it."

  "Did he give you the fake tickets?"

  "No!" Coop barked. "Let it go, all right? It's none of your business."

  He jumped up and went for his window. His escape route. We used to climb out and crawl across the roof whenever we wanted to sneak out of the house.

  "It is my business!" I shouted back. "You did something stupid, and now you're going to have to take off for a couple of months to get away from the mess, and poof! There goes summer."

  Coop slammed the window shut so hard, it made me jump. "That makes it your business?" he asked. "Because I'm ruining your summer?"

  "That's not what I meant."

  "Yeah, you did. Gee, sorry, Marsh. I should have thought it through before doing anything that might spoil your fun. How inconsiderate of me."

  Cooper never called me Marsh. He was ticked.

  But so was I. "Don't go there," I shot back. "I know this isn't about me, but it's not just about you, either. The stuff you do has fallout."

  "Fallout? I'll give you fallout. The cops threatened to throw me in juvie unless I told them where I got the fake tickets ... so I gave up a couple of guys. And you know what? I don't care because those dirtballs set me up. But now I'm looking over my shoulder in case they find out I ratted and come after me. That's fallout. So I'm sorry if I

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  messed up your plans to pretend like we're still twelve, but you know, things happen."

  "That's cold."

  "Move on, Marsh. We're not kids anymore."

  "I know that."

  "But hey, who am I to judge? Do whatever you want. I'm sure there are plenty of guys who want to hang out with you and watch cartoons. I'm not your only friend."

  He paused and then added, "Or am I?"

  That was it. He was upset and scared and I felt bad for him, but he had pushed it too far.

  "Have a good summer," I said, and walked out of the room.

  I heard a crash as Cooper threw his football at the wall. I couldn't believe it. My best friend had turned on me. Sure, he was upset and scared, but it wasn't my fault he chose to walk on the dark side.

  I stormed down the stairs, passing Mrs. Foley.

  "Will he go?" she asked.

  "Probably," I answered, trying not to show my anger. "He's just got to get his head around it."

  Mrs. Foley looked relieved. That made exactly one of us.

  "Thanks, Marsh. Maybe you can come up and visit?"

  "Yeah, maybe," I answered, and walked out the door.

  I had no intention of going up to that lake. Coop had made it
pretty clear that we were headed in two different directions. He was on his own . . . and so was I. I pounded down the porch steps and was nearly at the bottom when Mikey appeared from nowhere and gave me a shove that literally launched me off my feet and sent me sprawling into a bush.

  "What was that for?" I shouted as I scrambled to sit up. As angry as I was, there was no way I'd jump up and push the guy back. That would have been suicide.

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  "You hang with that weasel, you pay the price," he growled.

  "Mikey!" Sydney called from the street, where she sat in her VW Beetle.

  I didn't think she saw what happened, so I got up fast. I didn't want her to see me looking like some little kid who had just gotten shoved by the big bad bully . . . which is exactly what I was.

  "Let's go," she commanded.

  Mikey followed her instructions like an obedient dog. As he backed away he pointed a threatening finger at me as if to say, "Remember what I said."