by Lee Wardlaw
Incoming e-mail! Who would be writing to me at this hour?
Maybe it was just one of those automatic messages reminding me about Joonbi’s birthday party on Saturday afternoon. The e-mail certainly couldn’t be from Hiccup. I’d heard he still had shingles. Besides, he hadn’t bothered to forward me so much as an influenza vaccine schedule since he ceased being my bud.
So who . . .?
I clicked on the light. Clicked open the mail program . . .
. . . and felt a jumper-cable shock to my heart.
To:[email protected]
From:[email protected]
Subject:Math Homework: Please forward to CFH—ASAP!
Why was Hayley writing to Cullen? Especially since she promised (she had promised, hadn’t she?) that she wouldn’t?
Curious fingers crept to the keyboard.
What do you think you’re doing, Stephen? You promised you wouldn’t read any of “their” letters!
Huh. Hayley just broke her promise, so she owes me one, right? Besides, I have to read it. She’ll expect an answer from Cullen about the “math homework,” won’t she? How will I know how to have him respond if I don’t read this letter?
I had a point.
I gulped. Opened the message. Shut one eye and read with the other:Dear Cullen: You made me promise not to write to you. I’m sorry, but I can’t keep that promise any longer. Your letters mean so much to me!
You deserve an answer—in person. Meet me tomorrow, Friday, 11:30 p.m. at Gadabout Golf.
I’ll leave the gates unlocked. Directions on how to find me are below. I hope you’ll meet me!
We have so much to talk about.
—Aloha, Hayley
My heart went into cardiac arrest.
The directions at the bottom of Hayley’s e-mail led Cullen directly inside the Great Pyramid.
Chapter Twenty-two
I wrenched out of my chair and began to pace, eyes burning, fists and teeth clenched.
How could she do it? How could Hayley tell Cullen—Cullen!—about her secret hiding place? Our secret hiding place?
A strange, hot anger engulfed me. My hands grabbed the first thing they could find and, grunting like a troll, I hurled it across the room.
Lazy Lick, the electronic ice-cream-cone holder I’d invented, smashed into a jillion pieces against the wall.
That felt good.
I grabbed Cut ’n’ Putt and flung it at the wall too.
Grunt. CRASH.
Really good.
I grabbed another invention. (Grunt. CRASH.) And another . (Grunt. SMASH.)
I was just reaching to hurl See to Pee, the glow-in-thedark toilet seat, when Dad stumbled into the room.
“What in blazes is going on in here?”
He stared at me, wild-eyed, befuddled.
I stared at the toilet seat in my hand, then whisked it behind me, dropping it on the floor. “Nothing, Dad.”
“Nothing?” He surveyed the damage and scratched his Einstein-like hair. “Do you consider an earthquake ‘nothing’?”
“What was that crash?” Mom called sleepily from the master bedroom. “David, is Steve all right?”
“Steve’s fine, Barbara,” Dad answered. “I think.”
I snorted and flumped onto my bed.
“Are you boys fixing a snack? If so, I’ll have whatever you’re having!”
A ridiculous laugh bubbled inside me.
“We’re not snacking, Barbara!”
“But I smell ice cream!”
Another bubble laugh. I was getting hysterical. “How do you smell ice cream?” I asked Dad.
“She’s six months pregnant,” he replied. “She can smell a double-dip of chocolate on the moon.” To Mom, he yelled: “A couple of Steve’s inventions broke. I’ll help him sweep up. Go back to sleep, honey.”
“Are you sure he’s okay?”
“Sure I’m sure!” He shot me a wary glance, then shuffled out of the room. Minutes later he shuffled back carrying a broom and dustpan.
With a sigh, I moved to help.
Dad waved me away. “Are you okay, Steve?” he asked, sweeping. “With your crazy schedule, we haven’t had a chance to talk the last couple of weeks. Are you managing to juggle school and hapkido and Gadabout—?”
“Yeah.” I stared at the ceiling. The dimpled pattern reminded me of golf balls. I turned to stare at the Nice Alarm.
“You’d let me know if you weren’t okay, though, right?”
“Right.”
“Don’t lie to me, Stephen. I’m holding a broom and I know how to use it.” He waved it with false menace, dust bunnies and metal motes snowing onto his wild hair. He looked so silly, I laughed. A normal, non-crazed laugh.
“I’m not lying, Dad,” I said. “I just don’t feel like talking now.”
“Fair enough.” He lowered the broom and swept the remains of my inventions into the dustpan. Then he dumped the lot into the trash. “But you’ll let me know when you are ready?”
I nodded.
“G’night, then.”
“G’night.”
He flipped off the light.
When my door was almost closed, I called softly, almost hoping he wouldn’t hear: “Hey, Dad?”
“Hm?”
“I have a—question.”
“If it’s about electronic ice-cream cones—”
“It’s not.”
“Then shoot.” He came back into the room.
“I was thinking about . . . lies. Have you ever told one?”
He cleared his throat. “What kind of lie are we talking here? I want to give you an honest answer, son. But as a Concerned and Responsible Dad, I have a duty to be a proper role model.”
“I don’t mean the ‘Officer-I-swear-I-didn’t-rob-that-bankdespite-the-one-hundred-thousand-dollars-poking-out-of- my-pocket’ kind.”
“I see,” he said, chuckling. “More like when your mother asks: ‘David, do these pregnancy pants make my butt look big?’ and I answer ‘No’?”
Mom hollered: “I can hear you!”
“The second kind,” I said, lowering my voice.
“Then the answer is yes,” Dad admitted.
“Did any of the lies . . . ever get out of hand? I mean, let’s say, for example, you lied to someone for a really, really good reason.”
“Define ‘good.’ ”
“To protect this someone, keep her from getting hurt.”
“Gotcha. Go on.”
I pulled my blanket around me. The frayed edge of satin tickled my chin. “And the lie I—you told,” I went on, “it not only kept her from getting hurt, but made her really, really happy. So happy that you told another lie and another and another. You didn’t mean for things to go that far, but they did. And now you’re not sure how to stop. Because if she finds out you lied, she just might hate me, I mean, you, I mean, whoever, for the rest of your life. Has that ever happened to you, Dad? And if it did, what should I—you do?”
Dad didn’t answer right away. Instead, he made his way across the darkened room and perched on my bed. The springs squeaked.
“That’s a prickly predicament, Stephen,” he said finally.
“But if it were me, I would take the risk and tell her the truth. Because if you don’t, you run the risk of hurting her even more. I wouldn’t want that to happen. Would you?”
I thought of Hayley: the scratchy snag of her callus . . . the defiant tilt of her chin . . . her funny jig after shooting a hole in one . . . the blue of her eyes and the way they smiled directly into mine . . .
I swallowed at thick guilt in my throat. “No.”
“Let’s go downstairs,” Dad said. “I’ll make us some hot chocolate and we can talk more about this. What do you say?”
“Not tonight, Dad. I just want to lie here and think about—stuff. But thanks.”
“Anytime, my son,” Dad answered, heading for the door. “Anytime . . .”
Friday night. 11:30 p.m. Gadabout Golf.
Hayley shared my secret with you, it seemed to say. Now she’s whispered my secret to someone else. It doesn’t matter he doesn’t actually know. What matters is this: You won’t always be the only one. Did you really believe you would be? Did you really believe you were special?
“Shut. Up.” I kicked a cement block. My toes yelped. I crunched a swear word and tasted blood.
I deserve this pain. It’s my fault Hayley shared our secret. If I hadn’t sent her those e-mails, hadn’t pretended to be Cullen . . .
I hobble-hunched along the wall, my fingers feeling for the small, smooth bump—
There.
Click.
The door sprung open.
From within the tunnel, Hayley’s voice floated out into the night: eager, echoy, tentative. “Cullen?”
My anger and determination drained away. I deepened my voice, trying to sound like Cull, trying to sound Hawaiian and handsome and muscley. “Yeah, it’s . . . me.”
“Come on in!”
“No can.”
A snort. “Of course you can! Crawl. The Tomb Room isn’t far.”
“No.”
“What’s wrong? You sound . . . weird.”
I forced myself to speak from deeper within my chest. But the words lurched, scratching my throat. I coughed. “I too big for da tunnel.”
“I’ll come out!” I heard scuffling. Saw the faint glow of her lantern bobbing toward me.
“No!” I jerked away from the entrance.
The scuffling stopped. “Don’t you want to see me?”
My heart flip-flopped. I croaked: “More den I want to breathe.”
“Do you have a cold? Why can’t I come out?”
I crouched and spoke into the tunnel again. “If your dad see us, you get into much pilikia—trouble.”
“I just want to talk.”
“Hayley, dis not right. I too old for you. I not . . . who, or what, you think I am.”
“What does that mean?”
I sucked in a breath. Forced it out. Steam rose, mingling with the evening chill. “I was wrong to write you da e-mails, Hayley.”
“What?”
“I’m pau—done with dem now. I’m sorry I sent dem.”
I could almost hear arms crossing, her chin tilting. “Well, I’m not! They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. Nobody writes like that anymore. Nobody!”
Oh carotte, she’s going to cry. I’ve made Hayley cry . . .
“But I’m seventeen, almost eighteen. You’re only thirteen. If your dad read doz letters, he could make pilikia for you and me. Dat’s why no can e-mail you anymore. Why no can be friends. If we seen together, I might get kicked off da golf team. Or out of school.”
Hayley’s voice stretched thin and tight. “I wouldn’t want that . . .”
“Mahalo. Thanks for understanding.” I leaned closer toward the tunnel, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Hayley. I gotta go now. Aloha.”
“Cullen, don’t go yet! Cullen, are you still out there?”
I crouched again at the tunnel opening. “I’m . . . here.” I’ll always be here . . .
“Couldn’t we just keep talking like this—me inside, you outside—for a little longer?” she asked, voice desperate. “My dad’s asleep. No one can hear us. I won’t come out. I promise.”
I glanced around. The course was quiet and empty and the air smelled of all the things I loved: King Arthur’s murky moat . . . the lemony tang of golf-ball-washing solution . . . the oily metal of machinery . . . and the faint sweetness of late-summer peaches.
“Just a little longer?” Hayley asked.
I closed my eyes. Slid to the ground, my back resting against the pyramid’s slanted wall. The concrete blocks still held the day’s heat, her heat. It seeped deep into my shirt, into my skin, my heart . . .
Against my better judgment, I said in a hoarse whisper, “Okay, Hayley. Just a little longer.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Talk to me,” Hayley said. “Talk to me the way you did in your e-mails.”
I didn’t answer. I lifted my head to take in the enormous star-studded sky. No words could describe . . .
“Cullen? You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t sound very sure.”
“It’s the tunnel. My words have to grope their way through the twists and turns to find your ears.”
“Huh. My words don’t have that trouble!”
“That’s because they already know the way by heart—to my heart.”
“Your words could see better if I brought the lantern closer!”
I heard her scuffling, creeping toward the entrance.
“That’s far enough!” I said. “This is better. Me, a shadow. You—a glow.”
“Why is it better?”
“Because this way,” I whisper-rasped, “I can actually tell you how I feel. Not by writing the words, but by speaking them in my Very. Own. Voice.” Or a hoarse facsimile thereof.
“You sound so different now! Nothing like the day Marcos hit the golf ball through my window.”
“Because I’m not speaking Pidgin English?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“I think I do. It’s because tonight . . . for the first time . . . I’m not scared.”
“What were you scared of? Me?”
“You laughing at me.”
“I wouldn’t laugh.”
I thought of my chapped, runny nose . . . my shaggy hair and straggly sneakers . . . my broken inventions and broken friendships. “How could you not laugh at a big, hulky guy trying to act sensitive, romantic?”
“I’m not laughing.”
“I know.”
“So what do you want to tell me?”
“Everything!” I stretched out my arms, my hands pressing flat against the pyramid to soak in her warmth. “How I dream about you every night . . . how you’re the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning. Who needs an alarm clock when your name is the sweet bell that rings within me all day: Hayley, Hayley, Hayley . . .”
“What else?” she whispered.
“I want to tell you how even the smallest things about you stick in my mind. Like the way your chin tips when you’re angry or defiant. How your Squint of Suspicion dares everyone to ’fess up—or move on. And your hair . . .”
“My hair?”
I laughed. “Last Memorial Day, May thirtieth, you got a new haircut, remember? You hated it. You swore you wouldn’t remove your Gadabout cap for a year. But when I saw you . . .” I closed my eyes, smiling at the memory. “It’s like after someone takes your picture using a camera flash. You know how everywhere you look you see only splashes of blinding white? Your hair was that flash. And for at least an hour I saw only splashes of blond . . .”
“Last May? But how did you—”
“And now, even in the dark, I see that splash again, Hayley. Hayley! You’re a brilliant sun in some rare, distant galaxy. And I’m a tiny planet orbiting you, gazing at you, glowing in your reflected brilliance for a million millennia. That’s all right for now. It’s all I need. There’s just one other thing I want—”
“A . . . kiss?”
“What?”
I jolted from my trance. The coarse concrete scraped my back. “No! I can’t. We can’t—”
“I just wondered what it’d be like. It would be . . . my first.”
Mine too.
I closed my eyes again and saw Hayley’s face and my head whirled in an orbit of words until—
And what is the first kiss
I’d give to you?
A secret blurted
without words—
The cautious dot
over the i of Risk—
A whispered “Yes!”
to a wished-for question—
An X to mark the treasure
on love’s unfolding map—
My autogr
aph on our story
yet unwritten.
When the last syllable had floated into the sky, I realized, to my shock, that the words, the poem, had come from me.
I heard a creaky sigh. Or maybe it was the creak of a windmill vane. Or the front gates . . .
“Hayley? Hayley! Are you out here?”
Hayley yelped in stark white panic, “It’s. My. Dad!”
“Eep!” I scrambled to my feet.
“Hide!” Hayley ordered.
In two leaps I launched myself across the path and through the tiny window of the Windmill, landing on my shoulder with a painful oooof.
Yuck. I’d hidden in the Windmill once before (that’s another story), but I’d forgotten its aroma of mummified hot dogs, stale cat pee, and dust.
I buried my nose in the collar of my shirt and tried not to sneeze.
“Hayley!” Mr. Barker called again. “Are you out here?”
I heard a scrabbling from the Pyramid . . . the crunch of gravel . . . the jingle of pocket coins.
“Yes, Daddy! Over here!”
Heart thudding, I peeked through the window.
A flashlight beam swept past my face.
I ducked.
“There you are, Peach! What are you doing out here this time of night? I went to fix a snack and—”
“I’m sorry I worried you, Daddy.” Hayley’s words trembled. “I woke up too, and realized I—I’d forgotten to lock Gadabout’s gates. Then I heard a noise. I thought raccoons were rummaging through the Snack Shack trash cans again.”
“It’s pitch-black out here! Why didn’t you turn on the lights?”
“I didn’t think—I mean, it’s such a beautiful evening . . .”
“Chilly, is what it is. You’re shivering! Let’s go inside. You should’ve put on that pretty new sweatshirt you bought with Goldie. It does wonders for your eyes—even in the dark.” I could hear the teasing smile in Mr. Barker’s voice.
“The sweatshirt! I got hot and took it off. I left it in the Snack Shack. I’ll get it. Meet you outside the gates, okay?”
“Here, take the flashlight.”
I heard the fading crunch of footsteps . . . the squeak of the Windmill . . . a moat frog gargling.