by Sang Pak
After some more frenzied flailing, the flame has only gotten larger. I quickly open up the washing machine, which is empty. Then the dryer. Inside is a fresh batch of underwear, T-shirts, and towels.
“Here! Smother it!” I say, and toss them some towels. They grab them and smother the flame until it’s completely extinguished. Jim and Dad are breathing real heavily.
“Jesus!” says Jim. “That was close.”
“Good work, son.”
“What? That was about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” says Jim.
“I was talking to Samuel.”
“Oh right. Yeah, quick thinking, bro.”
The laundry room lights are switched on by Melody. I’m looking at her, and she gets this look on her face and covers her mouth. And I turn to see Dad’s thinning gray hair standing straight up and Jim’s brown longish hair sticking out in every which way. What’s funny is they have no idea. They just have this panicked wide-eyed look about them.
“What is it?” asks Jim. He looks over himself and when he sees Dad, he gets it. “Do I look like that?” They both start laughing when they see each other. I can’t remember seeing either one of them laughing like this. It’s been a long time. It’s the best feeling in the world.
They both feel for their hair. “It must have been the electric charge,” says Dad as they get a hold of themselves. “Did you feel it?”
“Yeah, but it just felt like static electricity. Not enough to give me an Afro. I want to see how it looks in the mirror.” Dad and Jim squeeze out between the water heater and washing machine. “Why don’t you head on out and see the finished product.” Dad thumbs toward the backyard. As they leave the laundry room Dad turns off the light and it’s dark again in there. Then I see a glow coming from under the door.
“I guess this is it,” Melody says, and opens the door to the backyard. I’m struck with an intense brightness. It’s coming from those pipes Dad had been planting into the ground. All the plastic pipes put together form a thick white trunk that goes up about six feet high; at the top the ends curve out. I don’t think I could even get my arms around it it’s so thick. At the top of the curved ends of the pipes he’s placed high-powered lightbulbs, the kind used in searchlights, but because of the way the pipe ends were placed and how they are angled, it’s like a blossom forming a kind of orb of light that expands out to create a sphere of light covering the entire backyard and the edge of the woods behind it. I walk out into the grass and stroll about, looking up into the branches of the pecan trees in our yard, and I can see little parachutes from when Jim and I used to throw those up there and watch them float down. We had thrown footballs to get them, but three are still dangling from the branches up there. I look at Melody, who’s standing by the back porch. With all that pale light illuminating her, she looks like a ghost again, just like that time at the bridge. She smiles and says, “You did get in a fight, didn’t you?”
“I fell down some steps.”
She shakes her head. “Did you win?”
I answer with a smile. Dad and Jim step out from the sliding doors onto the back porch. Dad has a can of Budweiser in his hands, and Jim has put on a hat. They’re smiling, happy. Together. They walk down the steps of the back porch and stand beside Melody, the three of them there on the edge of the illumination.
“I’LL LEAVE THE LIGHT ON FOR YOU, SON,” my mom had said.
CHAPTER 21
SUMMER PASSES AS FAST AS A BOLT OF LIGHTNING, and the new school year begins in the fall. A couple of months into school I’m having to take a practice SAT test like everyone else in my grade. An even more rotund and sweaty Principal Reeves wants everyone to get high scores so the school looks good. It’s Monday, right after lunch, and I’m out behind the soccer field with David, smoking one of his cigarettes along with him.
“So what made you change your mind about going out for the varsity basketball team?” he asks.
“I’ll probably just end up sitting on the bench even if I make the team. But what the hell. I just feel like doing it.”
“Looks good on college applications, right?”
“Eh.”
“What does Brad always say? It pays to be a dumb jock, right?”
“Right.
We put out our smokes, and I head back into the building. David’s ditching the rest of the day to work at the garage. He’ll do fine on the SAT without the practice test anyway. So I jog back to the building and catch up to Will and Brad, who are walking down the hallway to the cafeteria talking about how hot Katy got over the summer.
“I bet you she got a boob job.”
“No way…”
And they go on like that. The hallway’s full of disgruntled and confused-looking sophomores carrying their lunch to their homerooms. Some of them complain openly about us juniors doing this to them. All the juniors are taking a practice SAT in the cafeteria, which means the sophomores have to take their lunches back to their homeroom.
“It’s not our fault,” I say to them as they walk by.
“Yeah, eating outside is good for your health!” adds Will, pounding his chest. “The bracing air, the open space! Breathe it in!” We have a good laugh at that. I don’t know why they’re complaining, though, I would have preferred eating in my homeroom.
Jacob, an extra-smart sophomore in my advanced algebra class comes walking by, and we all stop. “Take a look at this, Samuel,” he says. On his plate is a stack of blueberry pancakes with butter and syrup dripping down the side, along with a side of eggs and sausages. “They ran out of the regular food and only had this left. Does this look like lunch to you?”
“Looks good,” I say.
“If it looks so good, then have a bite.”
“No, man, with foods like that, it’s all or nothing for me. Anyway, I gotta go take that practice SAT.” I notice Will eyeing the plate, with some sort of deviousness in mind. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says Brad.
Will puts an arm around my shoulder and points at Jacob. “I was going to do it to him, not you, man.”
“Like I said, don’t even think about it.” I push Jacob along and start for my homeroom. “You guys go on ahead,” I tell Will and Brad. “I’ll meet you in the classroom.”
“You’re scary,” Will says to me with a smile. I shake my head and laugh.
I go to my homeroom and get my number-two pencils. Then I go back to the cafeteria to get back in line for the test. Katy and Debbie are having a last-second look at a preparation book.
“It’s too late for that,” I say. “You should have done that over the summer.”
“Look at you. You look like you want to take this thing,” says Debbie.
“I don’t want to take it,” I say. “I just wanna get it over with.” But I feel like hopping around, I’m so excited. The studying I’ve done over the summer seems like a dream I’m already close to forgetting. We all file into the cafeteria and we’re supposed to sit in the order in which we’re standing in line, but when the guys around me get to a table, instead of sitting in order, they separate. Will, Brad, Katy, Debbie, and all the rest of my friends sit on one side, and these other kids who are considered not so cool sit on the other end. If I’m to sit in order, I should sit by those other kids, but all my friends are sitting on the other side. I look around the cafeteria. At the far end I see Cornelius and Yoshi sitting with all the black kids. Opposite them is a group of nerdy kids, and at the corner are the artsy hipster types. There’re the real poor kids, the super Christians, the rednecks…it just keeps going. Shit, I think. It isn’t anything personal to any of them. I walk across the cafeteria to where Melody’s sitting and squeeze in beside her with a good feeling that I can’t understand at all.
Acknowledgments
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Kathleen, Guan Yin, Yfat, Omma, and Appa,
Jae and Barb, Angie, Bart, Everard, Wes,
Sloane, Karin, Kevin, Kwang Lim, Sarah, Tae
,
Mark, Jeanette, Mary Beth, and Hyang Soon.
About the Author
SANG PAK is a Georgia-raised writer with English and psychology degrees from the University of Georgia. He is currently on hiatus from New York University’s graduate program in psychology. He divides his time between Georgia, southern California, and Seoul. Wait Until Twilight is his first novel.
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Credits
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover photograph by David Sacks/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WAIT UNTIL TWILIGHT. Copyright © 2009 by Sang Pak. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-189875-4
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher