by Henry Turner
Something was happening in my mind. I didn’t know what it was. It felt warm, almost hot. I couldn’t really think straight. I was amazed. I mean, I was amazed I could say anything to her at all, but the truth is, I had no trouble, not at first. But even with this feeling I didn’t understand—this new feeling she was making me feel just by talking to me—I felt sort of weird, because I was learning something about myself.
She had looked like an alien too.
I’d thought that.
I admit it.
She really had.
I’d sort of made her that way in my mind along with all the other kids at the party, because I’d assumed she had nothing in common with me, like I said.
But as I looked at her face, she made these little expressions. Little winces, and she pursed her lips now and then, really listening to me and trying to follow what I said—I mean trying to get something out of it, despite the fact that what I was saying really wasn’t all that much, and there was that noise all around us I already told you about.
She was not an alien.
In her face I saw such warmth and beauty and sadness and humanity that I felt like a fool for having ever seen anything else there.
What I mean is that suddenly—or maybe it was more like gradually—all this humanity, this huge ocean of humanity, sort of flooded up in her face, and it was all directed at me.
I couldn’t believe it.
I was speechless.
I mean seriously, I began to find it really difficult to talk.
I can honestly say that when I saw that happen I fell madly in love with her.
We stood there a few more minutes. I can’t remember what we discussed. I did talk, but barely. I’d never been so distracted by anything in my life as I was by her face.
Then she said, looking between Carol and me, “Well, it’s late. Are you boys going to walk me home?”
Carol said we would.
If there’s one thing I’ll never forget as we walked through the dark to her house, it was that I could feel her walking beside me. I’d never felt that before with anybody. But I swear I always, always felt it with her. Carol was walking on my other side and I couldn’t feel him there at all, but with Laura it was like I could feel this incredible warmth just coursing through her, and I felt it in myself, too.
I’m not trying to say that we were somehow connected, but I couldn’t really put it any other way. I think even if I’d closed my eyes I would have felt her near me. I didn’t feel cold even though it was dark and this sort of chilly wind had started—which I guess explains everybody’s coats at the party. She wore one too, a blue one that looked truly great on her, and to tell you the truth, I could see now that it was a very nice coat, and I would have probably bought one for myself if I could have afforded it.
But I never felt cold, even though the air was getting there and was scented, I noticed, by all the trees that stood around us, throwing big shadows on the quiet houses.
We talked about her school play. She was a junior and her play was coming up on Saturday.
I hate to sound stupid, but I didn’t really know what to say.
Finally I said, after she’d waited about ten seconds, “Can I come? I really want to see it.”
And that’s when she smiled, her first smile. Never in my life did I feel I’d asked so brilliant a question.
She said I could. She said she would really like that.
Then she stopped.
She looked aside, and just like that she ran across a dark yard to a big dark house and went up some stairs and turned.
She looked back at me. “Well, good night.”
I just stood there.
She didn’t move.
Carol managed to prod my back.
“She wants you to kiss her!” he whispered impatiently. “Go over there! And get her phone number, you moron!”
It struck me he was right.
So I went across the yard.
It took courage.
She leaned down from the stairs and we kissed very lightly. I remember her face coming close to mine. I will never forget it. I asked for her number and she wrote it on my palm.
When we were walking again, Carol said, “Man, you almost blew it! Couldn’t you see she was really into you? Why can’t you talk to her? You always talked with Suzie! What’s up with this?”
I couldn’t answer at first. It all seemed too good to be true. I mean, the question was already occurring to me. Maybe not in words yet, but I had this crazy feeling.
What does she see in me?
But I couldn’t tell Carol that. He wouldn’t understand.
I looked at him. “I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know.”
He seemed very frustrated with me. I mean, for a second he looked as disgusted as Tommy Werks; his whole face sort of squeezed, and he shook his head.
Then his face sort of cleared. It emptied. Another look came into it, sort of curious and sympathetic—I mean as sympathetic as Carol could look, because sympathy wasn’t really his strong point.
He said, “Maybe you just don’t believe it.” He looked at me with narrowed eyes, squinting, of course, almost like he was studying me. “Well, come here. You’ve got to see something.”
We ran back to the party. It took about five minutes. I’d sweated a lot without even noticing and I thought I might catch a cold, but I didn’t care. I felt so weirdly awake. I felt like I’d woken up for the first time in my life, and that Laura had woken me. I don’t know how else to put it.
We passed the party. The house was still lit up. Carol kept running and I followed right on his heels.
He stopped next to this car parked about a block away. It was really nice, a new Tesla that was all black and gleamed under the streetlights.
He was out of breath and bent over for a second, totally winded. Then he stood straight and put his hand on the hood of the car. “See this? It’s her dad’s car,” Carol said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“She drove here! But she didn’t say she did, so you could walk her home, ’cause you don’t have a car! She didn’t want to embarrass you. Do you get me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”
He shook his head and grinned. “Man, I’ve heard of a daze, dude, but this is—”
“I love her,” I said.
I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out.
For a second Carol just looked at me.
Then he smiled.
I swear, despite all that squeezie stuff, he could be all right.
“Well, call her. Let me know what happens.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You will call her, right?”
“Sure,” I said.
He grinned and ran away into the dark.
I stood there alone, watching him disappear up the street past the house where kids now were pouring out over the bright lawn, leaving, saying goodbye to Biff in the doorway.
I turned toward home, walking down the hill to my house, which I swear looked like a shack compared to the places up there.
My parents were asleep. I went up all the narrow stairs and got in bed. My room was on the third floor. Everything was quiet. I sat up in bed with a light on, staring at clothes I’d tossed on the floor of my room.
I was scared.
I was very happy, but very scared.
The question had already occurred to me, like I said.
I lay in bed for an hour thinking about it.
Repeating it.
What does she see in me?
I couldn’t tell; it seemed impossible.
I knew she saw something, but I didn’t know what it was.
She was so open, so bold, so free and beautiful.
I was all closed up and hidden.
But now I knew.
Sitting in her basement, I knew.
After what I’d heard in the kitchen, I knew.
What did she see in me?
She saw I was hidi
ng. And that means she saw me.
I’d crawled back onto the dog bed, to once again stare at my favorite boards. I smiled. My own analytic abilities impressed me a lot, sure. But what I really marveled at was how perceptive she was, because that night at the party, I seriously doubt that anyone else there had seen me at all, or would ever remember I’d even been there, Biff included.
So I felt pretty good for a while.
But I didn’t feel too good.
I would have, but the truth is, another question came up, which didn’t feel too good at all.
Had I ever seen her?
Chapter
Nine
I sat up on the dog bed and got my shoes. They were practically dry now.
The house was totally empty.
The only sound I heard was Dobey. He was up there for sure, sort of loping from room to room. I heard his paws thumping around, and a bit of his neck chain sort of dragging over the floor, because he wears this adjustable neck chain for a collar—I guess it’s called a choker—and when it isn’t adjusted properly it hangs really loose in this big loop, which of course tightens up in a second after you put a leash on it.
I put my shoes back on after making very sure they were totally clean, and I lay back on the bed. Believe it or not I hadn’t even peed yet. I felt I barely had to. All that needing to go so badly must have been nerves, because now I definitely felt okay and really had no urge to go anywhere near the sink.
I just lay there listening to Dobey and trying to get my thoughts straight about exactly what I had to do.
I knew Dobey pretty well. He was big.
I mean very big.
Some Dobermans are sleek like greyhounds and very shiny black and brown, but Dobey was that other kind of Doberman, the really humongous kind, with fur that’s still very short but sort of grayish black and not shiny at all, and with so much muscle bulging under his skin that his whole body sort of undulates when he walks because you know he weighs at least one hundred twenty pounds.
I mean he was huge.
But he was pretty nice. Laura had walked him plenty of times when we were together, and he’d certainly gotten used to seeing me.
So I won’t say I was afraid of him attacking me.
Or at least, not that afraid.
I mean, whenever I’d seen him, Laura was always there, and he was on a leash and got plenty of chances to sniff me out, which I must say is pretty embarrassing, especially when you’ve first met a girl and her dog starts gouging his snout really hard right between your legs. But Laura didn’t seem to even notice; I guess she was used to it. And he never bit me or growled at me. I guess he thought I was okay. He never even got bugged when I put my arm around Laura or held her hand, and some dogs, you know, will get pretty touchy about that sort of thing and go off half-cocked if you aren’t careful with their masters.
How he would react to just seeing me alone, though, I didn’t really know.
Of course, he probably knew I was already in the house.
I mean, with these dogs, and especially a dog like a Doberman that has such a long nose and can probably smell your sock when it’s five miles away, you can’t really hide much, unless you get into water, I guess.
Now you’re probably getting the idea here—by my talking so much about whether Dobey would be happy to see me—that I’d sort of formed a plan to go upstairs into the house.
Well, you’re right.
I won’t talk about the morals of it right now, because I figure that whatever assessment you’ve made about my character is probably sort of set in stone by now, and that this going-up-into-her-house idea that I had has sort of cemented your mental picture of me, which was probably never too terrific in the first place.
I’ll just focus on the technicalities.
First of all, I knew the alarm was turned back on. Like I said, I heard it beep right before they all left to get in the car out there, probably Laura’s dad’s nifty Tesla, which I must say is a pretty amazing car. So again I had thought about the hopper window, but come on, if I went out of that, you know the sort of trouble I’d be in.
Because think about it.
These people—Laura and her dad and her whole family—have wads of cash, and they undoubtedly got the whole shebang when they opted for home security, and that means video.
Inside and out.
I mean even out in the yard.
And that made me think how lucky I was, because probably it was infrared like in some spy movie, and even last night they could have seen me, if it had been turned on. If not Laura’s family in the house, then the guy paid to watch the video monitor in his office at whatever security outfit they bought the stuff from. This whole neighborhood security network would be alerted, and neighborhood patrols would come by the second I tripped the system.
They wouldn’t have motion sensors—I was sure of that. Dobey would set them off.
Still, I had to be careful.
So what I was thinking was, yes, I needed to go upstairs.
This was my plan A.
I needed to go up, make friends with Dobey if possible, avoid any and all video cameras, find the alarm control, locate the code that was undoubtedly written right near it—because nobody can ever remember those sorts of codes and they write them in the stupidest places—enter it, and leave.
Or plan B.
Go upstairs, make friends with Dobey, avoid the video, if unable to find said code, wait in a closet or something until somebody comes home, and try to sneak out when the house is again full of people.
I must admit I preferred plan A.
Except for one thing.
I thought maybe, just before leaving, I’d take a look around.
Now you think I’m a creep.
But I have to admit that I was thinking about exactly that—I mean looking around—and not feeling too good about it, because I really did know it was sort of a creepy idea, and an actually creepier thing to do—I mean, you know, sneaking around your ex-girlfriend’s house when she’s not even there.
Believe me, I really did think it was creepy.
But after hearing all that talk in the kitchen, something had sort of happened in my mind. I felt I had never seen Laura for who she really was; in fact, I was sure of it. So I felt pretty curious to get to know a little more of what she was all about, which I might learn if I managed to leave through the upstairs and got to actually see the inside of her house for a second.
I mean just a second.
Okay. I am a creep.
But you know how much in love I was with Laura and how beautiful and wonderful I thought she was and everything. And I must say that being in her house and hearing her upstairs talking had sort of reactivated my feelings for her—I mean these feelings that I’d worked really hard to sort of subdue ever since she’d broken up with me. I don’t want to sound pathetic, because I want you to know I really had made quite an effort to accept it when she broke up with me because I was “just a boy” and was not ever going to “accomplish anything important” in my life like her mom said, or at least was potentially not ever going to accomplish anything important in my life.
Now, I know there’s nothing worse than loving a girl who doesn’t want you anymore. We all know how gross that kind of love is, and degrading and disgusting and weird—I mean, especially a girl who has just grown up, I mean matured, because they can feel very sensitive and uncomfortable about things like that. My mom told me all about it, and I must say I sort of got her point completely.
I knew Laura didn’t love me anymore.
I accepted that.
I had to just get over it.
But all these experiences I’d had sort of concentrated my feelings; I mean sort of reactivated them, like I said.
The truth is, I had the sudden feeling I’d never even really known Laura.
I know that sounds crazy, because for a while we were together almost every day, and we kissed thousands of times, and she even let me get slightly intimate
with her when she baby-sat, and I told her I loved her at least a thousand times. And god only knows how many times I said she was wonderful and beautiful—hopefully fewer than I seem to remember.
But being in her house and hearing what I’d heard had really gotten me thinking. I’d figured out that answer, for one thing—she saw I was hiding, and she saw me. And the answer gave me that other question, about whether I’d ever seen her at all.
And that question really bugged me.
Because I hadn’t.
I knew I hadn’t.
She’d seen me, all right. The first night we met. She saw me when I was hiding in the middle of that room, and that really blew me away.
But I never knew why she saw me. I didn’t know what value it could possibly have for her.
At the time it just seemed like some freak accident or really just a mistake. But now I thought I knew, or at least had an inkling, you know, that I might know, because of all that nasty talk I heard coming from her mom, which had sort of given me certain ideas.
So, do you know why I thought she saw me?
You know why I thought she could?
Because she was good at hiding too.
I got up from the dog bed.
My shoes felt a little squashy, but not too bad, and they didn’t make any noise or leave any tracks. I went across the room and up the stairs again, and when I was at the top, I rapped on the door, very lightly.
“Dobey?”
For a second I didn’t hear anything. Then the chain shook a little.
“Dobey?”
I heard the chain drag. The floors were hardwood, I guessed, or tile, and that chain went from room to room in a big semicircle.
Yes. Laura was really good at hiding.
Too good, I thought.
Because I’d never even noticed.
I never noticed that there was a whole person she was hiding, and even though I consider myself to be such a hiding expert, she did it so well it was impossible for even me to detect.
So I wondered.
What does she have to hide?
I figured now was my chance to find out.
I raised my hand and put it to the knob. Once again I called Dobey’s name, and I don’t know how he did it, what with the chain and everything, but he’d sneaked up without making a sound and was right outside the door.