“Glad he finally did something.”
“She’ll get it back sooner rather than later,” Ellie assured me. “Her mother can’t stand her moping around the house.”
“I couldn’t care less. By the way, Shayne Allan called me. He was very upset. He heard I was spreading stories about him and me.”
“Did he? I heard his buddies were already teasing him and calling him Mr. Misfire.” She laughed. “Don’t be angry, Amber. It was too good to waste, and why shouldn’t he suffer a little, too?”
“I’m not angry,” I said. “You’re right. It was too good to waste. And I assure you, I’m not suffering because of Shayne Allan.”
“You sound much better,” she said. “I was telling everyone how you’ve changed, come alive. Everyone’s happy for you, too. I know I am.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you,” I said, and flipped the phone closed.
I have changed, I thought, and it wasn’t simply because I’d had sex with someone. Even before Brayden and I embraced in that sleeping bag, I had begun to feel different. Suddenly, I was able to see and hear things as if I were above it all. I wasn’t being condescending. I really felt older, wiser. Brayden had given me a sixth sense, an insight I had not possessed. After being with him, I couldn’t help but see how silly, insignificant, and juvenile most of the other girls in my class were. I’d always had trouble participating in inane and catty conversations, but now it was going to be impossible. If the others in my school thought I was acting like a snob before, they’d now surely believe I had become a full-fledged one. Life in my small community was not going to get very much better for me. He had better not leave, I thought. I’m going to need him beside me to get through it.
I turned onto the main street and headed for our store. The village was in that late-afternoon, early-evening mode. Twilight was starting because of the height of the mountains in the west, and the soft, cool shadows of early summer were creeping in like fog. Some stores and restaurants had already turned on their lights, and if you looked carefully, you could see the first stars beginning to appear, looking like brilliant tiny bubbles rising to the surface of the darker blue sky. Was it just my imagination, or were shadows different in the summer from how they were in the winter? In the winter, they seemed to come faster and be deeper, harsher, seizing everything they touched as the temperatures dropped.
Pedestrians walked differently in early summer evenings from how they walked in early winter evenings, for sure. They had to be moving briskly in winter. They tightened their buttons, zipped up their jackets, closed their collars, and always seemed to be a step behind their visible breath. Getting somewhere was always more important than going there. You felt as if you were running a gauntlet when you went to the grocery or drugstore. At least, I did. However, I knew there were many residents who preferred our winters to our summers. They enjoyed the brisk air, the sharper evening skies, and, above all, the diminished traffic and noise.
People were really different in so many ways, and yet there was this terrible need, this urgency, to avoid being too different. This was especially true for kids my age. We dressed alike. We liked the same music, celebrities, even food, and when someone stepped away, disagreed, changed style, and stopped being a follower, he or she became distrusted and, more often than not, disliked. I was confident that despite his good looks and his brilliance, Brayden would fall into this category eventually at our school, as he probably had at every school he had attended. But I was determined to stand by him. If necessary, we would keep completely to ourselves, and we would never be unhappy about it.
I knew his staying here was very far from certain. Right now, it even looked impossible, but that didn’t prevent me from fantasizing more and more about it. We’d go to school together. Most of the time, we’d come home together. We’d study together. Jealous classmates would come up with all sorts of ridicule, claiming that we were joined at the hip like conjoined twins or something. But ironically, they would want us at their parties, and girls who recognized that we had something very sophisticated going on would want to be friends with me, would hover about, listening keenly in hopes that they would pick up some clue, some advice, some wisdom that would make them seem just as sophisticated. Of course, they would never admit that. They would even attack one another for trying to play up to me too hard.
Imagining it all brought a smile to my face. I could live very well in this picture, I thought as I entered the store. Dad was just wrapping up his tools and materials in the rear. Mrs. Williams was helping Mom finish their review of the day’s receipts. There were no customers. Everyone looked up at me.
“Hey, Amber Light. We had a pretty good day,” Dad said. “Mrs. Russell was just in here buying a birthday present for her husband, a pretty expensive watch. And she preferred the watchband I had created for it.”
Mom looked at him and came around the corner of the counter. “That’s his way of telling you that her daughters claimed they saw you in the woods down at the lake today,” she told me in a voice just above a whisper. She brushed back some of my hair. “On private property. Is that where you went for your picnic with Brayden?”
“Yes.”
“Might be better if you avoided the lake properties. You know how uptight some of those people get.”
I didn’t say anything. The cabin, the area around it, had all become too magical for Brayden and me simply to give up so easily. I foresaw many more days and evenings there for us once his mother’s situation eased up.
Mrs. Williams picked up her purse.
“Thank you, Millie,” Mom told her as she started to leave.
“No, thank you,” Mrs. Williams said. “You look very nice, Amber,” she told me. “I like the way you’re wearing your hair these days.”
“Thank you,” I said. Mom looked at me as if Mrs. Williams’s compliment had pointed out some hidden changes. Her eyes twinkled with some delight but also with a woman’s intuition about her daughter. It made me blush.
“See you next weekend,” Mrs. Williams said. Dad called his good-bye to her, and we watched her leave.
“Let’s get going, Gregory. We’re hungry.”
“Yes, boss,” Dad said, and closed up his safe.
“I have to make a quick call,” I said, and stepped out to do it.
I knew that if my mother heard that some of the girls wanted me to go out with them, she’d push me to do it, but I was determined now not to.
“I can’t get out of dinner with my parents,” I told Ellie. “We’ve got some family matters to discuss.” It wasn’t a total lie. Anything we discussed would in some way involve us as a family.
“Oh, too bad. Maybe tomorrow night.”
“Maybe. If I’m free,” I added.
“You promised we would double-date,” she retorted quickly.
“We will,” I said, sounding as casual as I could, even though I didn’t know when, if ever, I would go out on a regular date with Brayden. “Later,” I added, and hung up just as Mom and Dad came out of the store.
“Anything new?” Mom asked. It was clear that she thought I had gone out to speak privately to Brayden.
“I wasn’t talking to him,” I said. “I was talking to Ellie.”
“Oh. You want to do something else?”
“No, this is perfect,” I said.
Minutes later, we were walking through the village together. I could see that there were questions my mother wanted to ask me about Brayden Matthews and myself now, but she wanted to talk privately. If Dad noticed, he didn’t let on. Just as whenever we ate dinner at his friend Von Richards’s restaurant, we were inundated with greetings and small talk from local residents. Before the dinner ended, when Mom and Dad had coffee and I had a piece of peach pie, Von came over to sit with us.
Most of their conversation was about the economy and the improved summer business we were all experiencing. Von was sort of the informal mayor of Echo Lake because so many other businesspeople and residents were in his rest
aurant at one time or another during the week or the month. Complaints and general political debate filled the air. Because of whom he spoke to, Von usually had some insight others didn’t and commanded more respect and attention. When Dad asked him if he knew anything about our new neighbors, I listened keenly. Mom looked at me to see how I would react.
Von sat back, folding his arms across his chest. He was a stout man, with thinning gray hair, who was aging faster than my father, who happened to be about the same age.
“That was the Sloans’ property. They came close to being foreclosed on. Did you know that?”
“No,” Dad said, looking at Mom. She shook her head.
“Yeah, well, that was one of those inside deals, in my opinion,” Von continued. “Someone in the bank alerted this real estate hog in Portland, and he scooped it up. I didn’t hear that he had sold or rented it,” Von added, his eyes having widened with surprise.
“Well, they haven’t been there that long, and apparently, the wife is not a well woman. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of the couple,” Dad continued. “Amber, however, has spent some time with the teenage son.”
Von nodded, looking at me and smiling. “If I moved next door to her, I’d be spending some time with her, too. What are they like?” he asked me.
“Mr. Matthews works for a brain trust about economics,” I said. “And Mrs. Matthews is a fairly well-known artist.” I didn’t want to say much more about them to him, certainly not about Brayden’s mother’s condition.
“I can’t think of a brain I’d trust,” Von joked. Dad laughed. Mom reached under the table and squeezed my hand. “Got to get back to the mine,” Von added, rising. “Thanks for coming.”
We watched him walk away, and Dad signaled for the check. The walk home was casual and delightful. Dad talked about the changes he had lived through growing up in Echo Lake, the things he had done with his father and his grandfather, and how important he thought it was to have a sense of place, somewhere you could always call home even if you left and never returned. As always when he reminisced, he became a little philosophical.
“Where you’re brought up has something to do with shaping who you are,” he said. “Even if you don’t realize it, it does.”
Mom agreed, and then Dad began to tease her about her Southern background. They went at each other playfully for a while. I watched and listened to them and smiled. But of course, my thoughts went to Brayden, someone who, from what he had told me about himself, had never had a sense of home, a sense of belonging anywhere. I thought he knew that and missed it. It was why I believed he really wanted to stay here, especially now.
But this dreamworld I was creating for myself exploded the moment we turned the corner to start down our street. I stopped walking at the sight of the truck pulling away from Brayden’s house, followed by Brayden’s father in his car. He was alone. For a moment, none of us spoke.
“Did they just move out?” Dad asked Mom.
“It looks like it. Amber? Did you know this was happening?”
I shook my head, my eyes tearing over mostly from shock. “No,” I managed. I watched the vehicles turn and disappear.
“That was the shortest rental in Echo Lake history,” Dad said. “We didn’t even get to meet them. Was it something I said?” he joked.
Mom just looked at him. She reached out for my hand, and we continued to our house. We paused at Brayden’s.
“To tell you the truth,” Dad said, “it doesn’t look any different from when they were here, if they were here. Maybe we all imagined it.”
“Mrs. Matthews was apparently very ill, Gregory. Perhaps something serious happened to her and they never got a chance to really settle in.”
“Oh,” Dad said, sorry he had made light of it.
“Why wouldn’t he call me?” I asked my mother.
“If something happened to his mother, honey, he might not yet be in the state of mind to think of calling you, or anything else, for that matter.”
“Maybe we can find out somehow.”
“You don’t know where she was taken, do you?” my mother asked. Dad was heading for the front door. I shook my head. “Then we’ll just have to wait for him to phone you, honey. There’s nothing else to do about it tonight, anyway.” She started for the house and paused to look back at me. “Coming in?” she asked.
“Not right now,” I said.
“There’s no point in agonizing over it, Amber. There’s nothing you can do right now.”
“I’ll be in soon,” I said sharply.
Dad was standing in the open doorway, watching and listening. She looked at him and continued to the house. They both went in while I stood there, hoping that Brayden would suddenly appear to explain it all. There was no light from his house, of course, and there were no sounds coming from inside.
Out of nowhere, it seemed, a crow sailed onto the roof. I was caught in a whirlpool of different emotions: disappointment and sadness, of course, but also anger and rage. Why did his father bring them to Echo Lake if his mother was so unstable? And why did he leave them alone like that? Poor Brayden, I thought, tossed about so much. How did his father hope or expect him to have any sort of normal life?
I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and tried to reach him again, but his phone just rang and rang and rang. I dropped mine back into my pocket and headed for the house. My father was upstairs, but my mother was in the kitchen, puttering around, I assumed, to wait for me.
“He still doesn’t answer his cell phone,” I told her.
“Obviously, it’s something very serious, Amber. You’ll have to be patient.”
“It doesn’t make sense, Mom.”
“These things seldom do,” she said.
“No, I mean, I thought we had become very close, and no matter what, he would want to talk to me, be with me.”
She nodded. “No matter how good the time you’ve spent with him has been, Amber, you can’t expect to know someone completely that quickly.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. He’s . . . special. We were able to really get to know each other quickly.”
She stared at me a moment. “How well?” she asked.
I knew what she was after. I shook my head. I wouldn’t talk about it now, maybe not ever if I never saw him again, I thought.
Without replying, I turned and rushed out and up the stairs to my room. I threw myself down on my bed and buried my face in my pillow. What was going on? How could all of this be happening? I thought I would cry but suddenly had the urge to sit up instead. I turned to look out my window and across the way to what had been Brayden’s bedroom. The window was dark, of course, but suddenly, I thought I saw his face in the glass, looking as it had that first time I saw him there, floating. I leaped up and went closer to my window. When I studied the dark bedroom window this time, I saw nothing.
Maybe he was there for just a few seconds, I thought. Maybe he had come back for something. Maybe he was still there. Without hesitation, I hurried out of my bedroom and down the stairs. My mother was just putting the lights out in the kitchen and going up herself when she heard me and saw me rush by.
“Amber! Where are you going?” she called.
I didn’t pause to answer.
17
Puzzle Pieces
I ran down my driveway and across to Brayden’s house. I knocked, waited, then tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. Every light was off downstairs, but I thought nothing of it. That was the way it was most of the time when his mother was there. I stepped in slowly and listened. I could hear something. It sounded like something or someone scratching on a wall or a floor. I thought it might be coming from the roof and realized that it might be a crow strutting over the shingles.
“Brayden?” I called. I waited, listened, and called once more. When there was no response, I felt my excitement begin to fade away. Perhaps I had wanted to see him so much that I had imagined it. I tried a light switch and was surprised to see the chandelier in the hallway
illuminate. The electricity was still on, but that could just mean that the electric company had not gotten around to shutting it off. I went forward and looked into the living room. The boxes I had seen still packed on the floor were gone. Otherwise, it didn’t look much different from before. There had been little done with it when they were living there. None of the downstairs area looked much different, in fact, except in the kitchen, because the boxes were gone, along with whatever dishes and plates and cups I had seen.
Of course, my thoughts went to Brayden’s room and the attic. I had little hope of finding him, but I would not leave without looking in both of those places. Slowly, I made my way back to the foot of the stairway. The chandelier threw enough light for me to walk up easily, but at the top, when I flipped the switch that should have turned on the hallway light, nothing happened. Probably a dead bulb, I thought, and wondered if Brayden or his parents had ever noticed, since I had never seen the light on there through any of the windows. Despite the darkness, I continued, and when I reached what I knew was his parents’ bedroom, I felt around the door frame and found a light switch.
A lamp on a side table went on. It was weak and cast a dim yellowish glow on the walls, unable to wash away the darkness and shadows totally. I looked for some sign to suggest that they weren’t completely gone. However, the bed was stripped, and there was nothing on the old dressers and side tables except for the single small lamp. Of course, there was nothing on the walls, either. The emptiness made it seem so desolate and deserted. The walls reeked of depression, but it was Brayden’s room I wanted to see most, so I moved quickly to it. My heart was thumping, because I was hoping to be shocked by the sight of him standing there.
He wasn’t. There was nothing left in his room, either, and the bed had also been stripped. Of all of the rooms I had seen before, this one had had the most in it, with his computer and pictures and clothes, but packing away what was there wouldn’t have taken much time.
Into the Darkness Page 25