Stark's Dell

by Robin Roseau

  I reached for the door handle, and this time I could open the door. I stumbled inside and fell down in the foyer.

  "Call your mom," Dee Dee said. "Scream for her, Emily."

  I curled into a ball again and tried to sleep. So cold.

  "No! Emily! Call your mom. She's napping. Call your mom!"

  "Go get her," I mumbled.

  "No! Call her. Scream, Emily."

  And then she did something, and I was filled with pain, more pain than I'd ever felt before, and I screamed.

  When Mom got there, Dee Dee was gone.

  * * * *

  Dee Dee didn't visit me in the hospital. And when I came home, she didn't visit me, either. I remember asking Mom about Dee Dee, but all she said was, "Who?"

  I didn't see Dee Dee again for nearly a week.

  I woke up late one night, and she was sitting on my bed. She looked weak and tired.

  "Dee Dee!" I said, reaching for her. But she jumped off the bed and backed away, holding a hand up to stop me.

  "Are you all right?" I asked her.

  She nodded, not speaking. She clasped her hands to her chest over her heart, smiled, and mouthed the words, "I love you."

  Then I must have fallen back asleep, because the next thing I knew, she was gone.

  I didn't see her for a month after that. I was frantic with worry. I even asked in town about her, but no one knew who Dee Dee was.

  And then, one day when I got home from school, over a month since the accident, Dee Dee was waiting in my room, fit as a fiddle.

  "Where were you?" I asked her sullenly. She'd left me. She had said she would always be there, but then she wasn't. "I needed you."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I was very sick, but I'm all better now."

  "You were sick?"

  She nodded. "I'm sorry." Then I flew to her, and she pulled me into her arms.

  We stayed in that day, playing some game. I don't remember what. We never talked about the accident again.

  * * * *

  Once I got to middle school, Dee Dee turned into a taskmaster. She refused to play with me until I did all my homework. At first, I balked. "I can do this tonight after you leave," I told her.

  "It won't take long if you do it all right now," she said. "We can play after."

  So every afternoon when I got home from school, Dee Dee asked me what homework I had, and she could always tell if I lied to her about it. I only tried that a few times, when I had too much to do before she had to leave. She didn't become angry, but she looked at me with the saddest expression, that I couldn't bring myself to lie anymore.

  I did my homework. Then Dee Dee would make me go over it with her. If there was spelling to study, she would grill me. If I had a paper to write, she would insist I write it correctly. She wouldn't tolerate bad grammar or punctuation, and made me fix any mistakes.

  Once my homework was done to her satisfaction, then we could play.

  I got straight A's in every class.

  When I started taking French, she studied it with me, and she learned it faster than I did. I pouted about it one day but she said, "Hey. I took Latin. This is easy compared to Latin."

  * * * *

  The summer I was thirteen, disaster struck our family again, and this time, Dee Dee couldn't help.

  Dad had to work late. I remember it was a Thursday night. It was summer, and I'd spent all day playing with Dee Dee.

  Dee Dee was fascinated by my computer. I'd been given one for my thirteenth birthday. She refused to touch it, but she loved to sit next to me while I used it. She would ask me to look up all sorts of stuff for it, then we would read them together.

  She really liked to learn about faraway places. We would talk for hours about visiting Paris or London or going hiking in the Swiss alps.

  That day that Dad worked late, it was a bad day. It had stormed on and off all day, and we'd stayed inside, learning about the Great Barrier Reef. Dee Dee told me she had never learned to swim, but that she really would have loved to visit Australia and gone swimming there.

  Then together we started cooking dinner. Dee Dee never stayed for dinner, but she was teaching me how to cook, simple things at first. That night, I made a homemade spaghetti sauce. Dee Dee told me how to make the sauce, then explained how much pasta to make and how long to boil it. When Mom came home, Dee Dee disappeared out the back of the house.

  I really wish I could have introduced her to Mom and Dad. She helped with so much, and she was my only friend, but she insisted that I could never tell them about her, so I didn't.

  "Hello, honey," Mom said, coming into the kitchen. "Smells good. You know, at thirteen you don't need to do the cooking yet."

  "I don't mind," I told her, accepting a kiss on the cheek from Mom. "It's fun."

  "Your father called me at work," she said. "He has to work late. He told us to eat without him. He's not sure what time he'll be home."

  I finished making the spaghetti, and Mom and I ate it while watching television, a romantic comedy that Dad would have hated. It was cute, I guess, but I decided the actress was a lot cuter than the actor. I didn't say anything to Mom about that.

  By the time the movie was over, Dad still wasn't home. I went up to my room to "read a while before bed," but in reality I was hoping Dee Dee would come over again. She didn't come over every night, but we had started having an occasional sleepover.

  I got to my room, but Dee Dee wasn't waiting for me. I got into my pajamas and climbed into bed with a book.

  I think I must have dozed off, but I woke later to the doorbell. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand, and it was 10:30. Who rings a doorbell at 10:30 at night?

  I stumbled out of my room, wondering what was going on. I got to the top of the stairs, and I saw Mom at the doorway, wearing a bathrobe. There were two police officers there.

  Suddenly I heard Mom say, "No. No." And then she threw herself at one of the policemen, banging her fist on his chest on his chest and screaming, "No! No!"

  "Momma?" I asked from the stairs.

  * * * *

  The roads were wet. And the other driver was drunk.

  * * * *

  I stayed with Mom half the night. Eventually she fell asleep, clutching at me. But I couldn't sleep. Then I saw Dee Dee creep into the room. She looked so sad.

  I started crying again. She held her hands out to me. I unwrapped myself from my mother and let Dee Dee draw me to my own room. We closed the door and I collapsed in her arms, crying quietly.

  "My daddy is dead, Dee Dee," I said between my sobs.

  "I know, honey," she said. "I'm so sorry. I tried to help, but I couldn't. It was too far away. I'm so sorry."

  I didn't understand, but I let my friend hold me, making soothing noises to me. We climbed into bed and I cried myself to sleep in her arms. When I woke that morning, she was gone.

  * * * *

  We buried Daddy in the cemetery next to Grandma. Dee Dee couldn't come over during the day for a while, because Mom stayed home from work, and friends of my parents stopped by all the time. My Aunt Joan came to stay with us for a while, too, so that was even one more adult that couldn't see Dee Dee.

  But she came to me nearly every night, and we talked quietly. After she made sure I had finished my homework.

  Eventually the house returned to normal. The new normal. Aunt Joan went home. Mom went back to work. And Dee Dee could come over during the day again.

  But the spark had gone out of my mother, and she wasn't the same after that.

  * * * *

  I turned fourteen. Mom cried at my birthday party. And she cried at Christmas. And one year to the day after Daddy died, she sat down with me and said, "Honey, what would you say if we moved?"

  "No!" I said. I couldn't move away from Dee Dee.

  "But you don't have any friends here," she said. "And this house is filled with bad memories."

  I immediately broke into violent sobbing. She couldn't take me away from Dee Dee. She couldn't.

>   I was only fourteen, but I was deeply in love with my only friend.

  I lied. I told her I had friends at school. I told her I got good grades here, and that I loved my teachers. I told her I liked knowing I could go right next door to the cemetery to talk to Grandma Stark or Daddy. I begged her not to take me away.

  I saw the pain in her eyes, but she relented, and we never talked about leaving Stark’s Dell again.

  * * * *

  Dee Dee didn't come that night and the next day was Saturday. But she came to my room Saturday night, and I told her about my conversation with Mother. She looked at me in horror, then smiled when I told her Mom had relented. But then she said, "You'll go to college in a few years. I wonder if you'll remember me."

  "You could come with me," I told her. Then I cocked my head. "Why didn't you go to college?"

  It was then I looked closely at my friend. I was fourteen, and I had first seen Dee Dee in the cemetery when I was five. Nine years ago. We'd started playing together when I was seven, the day she saved me from the bad fall in the hayloft. I had decided then she must be in high school, or maybe just a year or two out of it. But she still didn't look much older than that. She should look twenty-five, but she barely looked twenty.

  "Dee Dee?" I asked. And I could tell from the look in her eyes she knew exactly what I was suddenly thinking.

  She turned away, hiding her face. "I have to go."

  "No!" I said. I scrambled to get between her and the window. "Dee Dee, you've been my only friend for seven years. And Grandma said she knew you before I was born. Why do you only look like you're maybe twenty or so?"

  "Maybe I have good, youthful genes," she said.

  I put my hands on my fourteen-year-old hips. Dee Dee glanced over me and smiled for a moment, but then turned away again.

  "Dee Dee," I said. "Tell me."

  Suddenly she sprang up from the chair. "Maybe I am a vampire," she said dramatically. "And I vant to suck your blood!" She sprang after me. I screeched and ran away from her, but of course, there wasn't anywhere in the room to go. She chased me around the bed then finally corned me near the closet, saying, "I vant to suck your blood!"

  She sprang at me and grabbed me, throwing me onto the bed, then pounced on top of me. But instead of biting my neck, she tickled me. I squirmed and giggled.

  "Shhh!" she said. "Your mother will hear." But she kept tickling me, and I buried my face in my pillow to muffle my laughter.

  Eventually she relented, climbing off me and retreating to the window.

  "I'm sorry, Emily," she said. "I really do have to go. I haven't had a bite to eat all day, and I must go find someone's blood to bite."

  "Very funny!" I said. "You can't be a vampire. You go out in the sunlight."

  She smiled. "Only with you." Then she opened the window and ducked out, then poked her head in again. "I'll come tomorrow night if I can, but if not, I'll see you Monday after your mom goes to work."

  I never asked her about it again. But I struggled for an explanation, even if Dee Dee clearly wasn't going to offer one.

  * * * *

  I turned fifteen and began taking driving lessons. It cut into my time with Dee Dee, but she adjusted by spending more nights, leaving sometime in the middle of the night while I was asleep.

  At school, I ignored the boys. They ignored me. It was a good arrangement. Mom asked me about boys a few times, but she was careful about it. I think she was happy I wasn't dating. She worried I didn't have a social life, but I was happy, and I got good grades.

  Mom wasn't happy, but we were getting by.

  I ignored the boys. Ignoring the girls was a little harder.

  I avoided any teenage crushes on the unavailable girls at school. Dee Dee was my only crush, and I never said a word to her about it. But I found myself watching her sometimes. She caught me once, at least once, but she always pretended she hadn't.

  * * * *

  I turned sixteen my junior year in high school. I still got straight A's. Dee Dee saw to that. "Colleges care about your junior year grades, and you want to go to a good school, Emily," she said. "And then a good job."

  "I'm not going," I told her.

  "Yes, you are," she said.

  "Then you're coming with."

  She smiled. "We'll talk about it once we know where you're going," she told me.

  * * * *

  One day, Dee Dee walked to the cemetery with me. I went to talk to Daddy and Grandma Stark. We were holding hands, and as we stepped inside the cemetery gate, I felt a tingle from her hand. I pulled away, looking at her.

  "Static electricity," she said in explanation.

  I talked to Daddy for a while, then to Grandma. Dee Dee didn't say anything, but she was studying a different gravestone. I looked over and realized it was the one I'd seen her studying all those years ago.

  "Whose is that?" I asked quietly, coming up to stand next to her.

  The gravestone was old, much older than Dad's or Grandma's.

  "Just someone who died a long time ago," she said.

  I squatted down to look at it. The name was hard to read, but finally I made out the name, "Delores Dyson, 1871-1893."

  I looked up at Dee Dee, and she had a haunted expression. I realized it was worry. "An ancestor?"

  She smiled weakly. "We have the same name," she said. "But I like Dee Dee much better than Delores."

  I smiled. "Race you back to the house!"

  "Last one there is the lusty wench!" she said in challenge, taking off.

  By then, I knew what a lusty wench was. We hadn't played that game in a long time.

  * * * *

  I learned to drive, but when I asked Mom whether I should get a job, she told me, "No. There will be plenty of time for that. Your grandmother and your father left us well off, enough I wouldn't have to work if I didn't want to."

  "But you love your job," I said.

  "Exactly."

  * * * *

  Mom and I started discussing college. Then at night, Dee Dee and I discussed college as well. Mom and Dee Dee, without ever discussing it together, were of one mind. I would go to the best school I could, tempered with some reality.

  By the beginning of my senior year, we had prioritized my choices, and I applied for early admission to a small, private, liberal arts college several hours away.

  I didn't want to go unless Dee Dee went with me. She promised we'd discuss it once I was accepted.

  I was accepted. And I earned a variety of merit scholarships that took the strain off the expense.

  By Christmas of my senior year in high school, my next four years were determined.

  Loss

  The allure of boys completely bypassed me. I couldn't care less about them.

  Girls, on the other hand, were a different thing entirely. Girls I noticed.

  I had led a sheltered life. Dee Dee was still my only friend. The kids at school thought I was weird, and I probably was.

  But in science lab one day, Becky Chance leaned against me. It was accidental, or at least I thought it was, but suddenly a warm, curvy, attractive girl was leaning against me, and you can bet I noticed her.

  I hadn't been physically close to anyone but my mother and Dee Dee since Dad had died, and suddenly my temperature went up when Becky Chance leaned against me.

  She didn't notice my reaction. She apologized and moved away, returning to the science experiment.

  That afternoon in my room, Dee Dee wanted to know what I was thinking about.

  "Something happened at school," I told her.

  "What?" she asked.

  I didn't want to tell her.

  While I had been affected by Becky Chance, it was Dee Dee that I thought about holding. While I had stared at Becky Chance's mouth, it was Dee Dee's mouth I wanted to taste. It was Dee Dee's breasts I had wanted to touch.

  I think Dee Dee saw something in the look I gave her. She looked away, but when she looked back, she offered a look of hunger so intense, like right out o
f a movie, and suddenly I knew.

  Dee Dee wanted me as much as I wanted her.

  I just didn't know if she wanted me the same way I wanted her.

  "Are you thinking of sucking my blood?" I asked her.

  "What?" she asked, startled by my question. Then she laughed, remembering. "No, Emily, it's not your blood I want to suck."

  I colored immediately. I knew exactly what she wanted to suck. I wanted her to suck it, too.

  "But we can't," she said in a small voice filled with pain. "It's forbidden."

  "But-" I said. "I don't care about that. I didn't know you were religious."

  "That's not it," she said. "But it's forbidden. We can't do that, Emily. We can't."

  I looked away from her, staring at the wall. I turned back to her. I was sitting on my bed, and she was on my chair at my desk. She'd been reading something on my computer. I don't remember what.

  I got up and began walking towards her. It was a small room, and I didn't have to take many steps, but she judged my intent and got out of the chair, putting it between us.

  "No, Emily," she said. "We can't."

  I smiled, trying to be seductive. I'm sure it was comical. "I vant to suck your... um..." I looked down towards the cleft of her legs.

  "No!" Dee Dee said. "You can't."

  I lunged for her, intending to chase her around the room until I caught her.

  "Stop this!" she said, jumping over the bed.

  "Don't you want me, Dee Dee?" I made a playful lunge for her. She pulled away and moved over to the window, opening it.

  "Yes, Emily, but we can't! We can't!"

  "No one will know, Dee Dee," I said. I lunged for her again playfully, thinking she was just making a game of it. I could see the hunger in her eyes matching my own. But instead of catching her, she dived through the open window.

  "Dee Dee!" I screamed, thinking she couldn't possibly stop before she tumbled off the roof to the hard ground below. I shoved my head out the window, but I didn't see her.

  I didn't see her, so I ran downstairs and outside, running around the house. She was nowhere in sight.