The Stranger

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Never had dark lakes and bleak woods been so appealing, so friendly.

  She held up her hands to the real world, incredibly grateful to be back. The sight of her bare hands reminded her she no longer held her schoolbooks.

  The thing stood slightly behind the mouth of the cave, so that its shadow but not itself was visible. The books sat neatly in a pile by the opening. Had Nicoletta set them down like that?

  “Don’t come back,” the thing said again, with a sadness so terrible that Nicoletta dissolved from fear into pity. Nicoletta knew what loneliness was, and she heard it in that awful voice.

  It lives down there, she thought. It’s caught forever in that terrible dark.

  How ridiculously petty to be fretting for a larger house and a separate room. She could be sentenced to this, whatever this was! She would never have gotten out without this creature’s help. She would have died down there.

  She felt a strange bond between them, the bond of rescuer and rescued. Her need to run and scream had ended with the sunlight. “Are you alone?” she asked.

  “No,” it said sadly. “Alone would be better.”

  What terrible company it must have, to think alone was better.

  “Don’t come back,” it whispered. “Not ever. Don’t even think about it. Not ever. Promise. Promise me that you will never even think about coming back here.”

  Chapter 6

  A STRANGE AND DIFFICULT promise. Don’t even think about it.

  A promise not to go back would be easy to keep. Neither wild horses nor nuclear bombs could have made Nicoletta go back.

  But not even think about it?

  Not wonder who or what it was? What sort of life it led?

  Not wonder about its name, or gender, or species?

  It had saved her life. Who could forget such an event?

  A strange evening followed that weird and inexplicable afternoon.

  She walked through a house which only that morning she had hated. But how wonderful it was! For it had walls and warmth, lamps and pillows. It had love and parents and food and music.

  Her sister did not infuriate her. Jamie actually seemed beautiful and even worthy. She was alive and giggling and pesky, which was how little sisters are meant to be. What did Jamie have to do with caves and monsters?

  Nicoletta had always told her family everything. Other girls who said they could not communicate with their families confused Nicoletta. What could they mean? Nicoletta simply arrived home from school and started talking. So did Jamie. So did Mother and Dad. Not communicate?

  For the first time in her life, she did not communicate.

  She did not tell them about the quiet lane, the staring stone, the straight path, the descending cave. As for the creature who brought her up from the depths, by the time she had reached home, she could no longer believe in him herself. He could have been nothing but an hallucination. She had not known her imagination was so active; in fact, Nicoletta thought of herself as having little or no imagination.

  Such a thing could not have happened, and therefore it had not happened.

  And so she remained silent, and shared none of it, and it swelled in her mind, filling her with confusion and disbelief.

  Several times she drew a deep breath to begin the story somewhere. Each time she looked away and said nothing. She did not want a lecture on safety. Safety alone could consume weeks of scolding. Just the idea of Nicoletta walking alone into an unknown woods would outrage her parents. But when she told them she walked straight into an abandoned mine shaft—well, please.

  But what kind of mine could it have been? Who had mined it? Who had smoothed those lovely walls, and what mineral caused the elegant glow?

  A monster lives in it, she imagined herself saying to her father. The monster has cave skin, sand skin, rock skin. It has calcified leaves for hair and crumbling stones for fingers.

  It occurred to Nicoletta that her family might just laugh.

  She did not want anybody laughing at the creature. It had saved her. It had carried her out.

  And yet—she wanted to talk about it. She was a talker and a sharer by nature.

  And more than anything, she wanted to go back.

  On that very first evening, sitting quietly at the dining table—while Jamie did geography homework and Nicoletta pretended to do algebra—while her mother balanced the checkbook and her father finished the newspaper—Nicoletta thought—I want to go back.

  Jethro was familiar with the path. Surely he had followed it to its end at least once. Jethro would not have flinched from entering that shining cavern. He would have walked in as she had.

  That’s why Jethro didn’t want me to follow him any farther, she thought. He’s met the monster, too! The monster asked Jethro never to tell either!

  In school tomorrow she would ask him about it. She would see if his eyes flickered when she said “cave.” It would not be breaking a promise if you talked with a person who already knew.

  When the phone rang and it was Christo, Nicoletta could hardly remember who that was. She could barely remember Madrigals, her group of friends and her great loss. Christo wanted to know what color dress she would wear. Nicoletta actually said, “Wear to what?”

  Christo laughed uneasily. “The dance Friday, Nicoletta.”

  She detested rudeness in people. She was ashamed of herself for not having her thoughts where they belonged. Quickly she said, “I was kidding. I’m sorry. It was dumb. I have this lovely pale pink dress. Are you getting me flowers? I adore flowers.”

  Nobody had ever given her flowers. Why was she implying that she had had the honor often?

  Christo said his mother was recommending white. Roses or carnations.

  Nicoletta said she would love white roses.

  But before her eyes was the blackness of caves.

  And inside her mind was a slipperiness. She had a secret now, she who had never had a secret. The secret wanted to be in the front of her mind, consuming her thoughts. She had to push it to the rear, and behave like a normal human being, and flirt with Christo and miss Madrigals and study algebra.

  “Let’s have lunch again tomorrow,” Christo said.

  She hesitated. What about Jethro? Well, she would talk to Jethro in Art Appreciation. Or follow him again.

  “Yes,” she said. “Lunch was fun today.” She couldn’t even remember lunch today.

  And lunch the next day blurred as well. She had difficulty paying attention to Christo. Everything she did was a fake. She was sufficiently aware to know that, and be appalled at herself. She knew that Christo half-knew.

  She knew he was thinking that perhaps this was what girls were like: that easy friendship evaporated, to be replaced by hot and cold flirtation. And she knew that while he was hurt by her distance, he was also fascinated by it. He had never experienced that with a girl; all the girls adored him. Christo was thinking more about Nicoletta than he had ever thought about a girl.

  And am I flattered? thought Nicoletta. Am I falling in love with him? Am I even thinking about my first formal dance and my first bouquet?

  No.

  I am thinking about a boy in art whose last name I do not even know. I am thinking about a cave in which I thought I might die and a monster in whom I no longer believe because there is no such thing as a monster.

  Lunch ended and she rushed to Art Appreciation, barely taking time to wave good-bye to Christo.

  “He would have kissed you,” whispered Rachel as the girls rushed up the stairwell together. “He wanted to kiss you in front of everybody, I can tell. I know these things.”

  Two days ago, Nicoletta had thought that the loss of her girlfriends in Madrigals would kill her. Now she just wanted Rachel to vanish so that she could concentrate on Jethro.

  And because passing period was only three minutes, Rachel had no choice but to vanish, and Nicoletta entered Art Appreciation.

  Jethro was present.

  She was filled with exuberance. It was like turning into
a hot-air balloon. Flames of delight lifted her heart and soul.

  “Jethro,” she said.

  His body stiffened in his seat but he did not turn.

  She knelt beside his chair and looked up into his face.

  He remained frozen. How perfect he was. Like a statue—sculpture from some Dark Age. She wanted to stroke his face and hair, as if he were artwork himself, and she could study the curves and surfaces.

  He relented and looked down at her.

  “I’m sorry about lunch,” she said, keeping her voice so soft that nobody could share their words. “But I have to talk to you. Something happened yesterday, Jethro. I have to tell you about it.”

  She stared into his eyes, looking for a clue to his thoughts.

  Jethro wet his lips, as if she were frightening him.

  “After school?” she said. “Let’s walk down the lane together.”

  He was shocked.

  She might have suggested that they bomb a building.

  “Just a walk,” she whispered. “Just a talk. Please.”

  He shivered very slightly.

  She could not imagine what his thoughts were. His eyes gave her no more clues than a sculpture would give and he used no words.

  The teacher cleared his throat. “Uh—Nicoletta? Excuse me?”

  She got to her feet, and in the moment before she slid into her seat she stroked the back of Jethro’s hand.

  He spent the entire class period looking at his hand.

  As if nobody had ever touched him before.

  Chapter 7

  THEY STOOD WHERE THEY had stood before, beside the stone. With Jethro beside her, she was not afraid of the stone. It still seemed alive, as if left over from another world, it held a spirit. A woodland power. But it no longer threatened her.

  “And you promised?” said Jethro.

  How measured his speech was. How carefully he pondered each word before he actually put it in his mouth and used it. Nicoletta realized that everybody else she knew used speech cheaply: It meant little. To Jethro, every syllable was precious. He squandered nothing.

  “I didn’t actually make any promises,” said Nicoletta. How she wanted to touch him again. But he was more like the stone than like a boy. He was entirely within himself, and only the few spare syllables of speech escaped his control. “I left,” explained Nicoletta. “I was afraid.”

  Jethro nodded. “I can understand that you were afraid.” His eyes looked down into an emotional cave of their own.

  “I want to go back,” said Nicoletta. She felt light and bright, as if she were the flame of a candle.

  He was shaken. “Caves are dangerous, Nicoletta.” He had never used her name before. She took his hand as if it were her possession, as if they had both agreed that she might have his hand, and again he stared at the way her fingers wrapped around his. He seemed caught in emotion so deep that there were no words for it. Perhaps even a person used to speech, like Nicoletta, could not have explained his emotion.

  “Please don’t go back,” said Jethro. His voice was meant only for her. It was not a whisper, and yet it did not carry; it was intended to travel only as far as her ears and then stop. He sounded as if he had had a lifetime of practice at preventing his speech from being heard. It was the opposite of what anybody else did with speech. “It’s dangerous, Nicoletta.”

  “Then you do know!” she said. “You have been in there, Jethro. You know what I’m talking about.”

  He looked at the stone and drew himself together, becoming more remote, more taut. “I know what you’re talking about,” he admitted.

  “Let’s go together,” she said. She tried to pull him around the stone to the straight and silken path that lay beyond.

  But he did not cooperate. “You must go home,” he said. “You must not come this way again.”

  Nicoletta did not listen to him. She did not want warnings. She wanted Jethro. “Where do you live?” she said. “Tell me where you live!” She explored his fingers with hers, slipping between them, pressing down with her thumb, feeling his bones and sinews.

  This is what falling in love is, thought Nicoletta. It’s looking at a boy and wanting to know every single thing there is to know about him, and wanting to know every inch of him, and every emotion of him, and every word in him.

  Jethro’s eyelids trembled, closing down over his eyes as if he could shutter himself away, and then they opened wide, and he stared back into her eyes.

  He loves me, too, thought Nicoletta. Still holding his hand in one of hers, she lifted her other hand to his face. As if reading mirrors, he did exactly what she did. Fingertips approached cheeks. Nicoletta and Jethro shivered with the heat of first love’s first touch.

  His hand slid cupped over her chin and around her face. His fingers went into her hair. He drew the gleaming yellow locks through his fingers, and wound them gently over his palm. “You have beautiful hair,” he said in a husky voice. His lips pressed together, coming to a decision, while her lips opened, ready.

  Kiss me, thought Nicoletta. Please kiss me. If you kiss me, it will seal this. It will be love. I can tell by the way you’re standing here that you want to be in love with me. Kiss me, Jethro!

  But a car came slowly, noisily, down the road.

  They were jolted by the sudden sight and sound of the vehicle.

  This had been a place in which the twentieth century did not come, and now it was driving right up.

  She knew the car.

  It was Christo’s.

  Jethro’s breathing was ragged. “Do not tell him!” whispered Jethro with a ferocity that frightened her. “You must not tell him!” Nicoletta was stunned by the force of Jethro’s command. “You have promised to keep a secret! You must keep the promise, Nicoletta!”

  Christo swung out of the van, leaving the motor idling.

  “Promise,” breathed Jethro, with a terrible force, as if his lungs were going to explode.

  But she did not answer him.

  “Hi, Christo,” she said. “Do you know Jethro?”

  Christo shook his head. She introduced them, using only first names, since she did not know Jethro’s last name. The young men stared at each other warily. Christo extended his right hand. They shook hands, also warily, as if they were about to be contestants in some duel.

  “I’m glad you came,” said Jethro. His voice calm now, even bland. “Would you mind giving Nicoletta a ride home? She shouldn’t be down here. We were arguing about it. The woods are dangerous. Nobody should be in these woods without a compass.”

  Christo was amazed. “You don’t seem like the outdoor type,” he said to Nicoletta. “Do you hike? Do you camp?”

  “No. Never.”

  “That’s why I told her to stay away,” said Jethro. “It’s dangerous for somebody who’s ignorant about it.”

  “I love the woods,” said Christo happily. “I’ll teach you, Nickie. That’s what we’ll do this weekend! We’ll go to the state forest and hike down to the waterfalls! They’re so beautiful in winter.” Christo led Nicoletta to his van as he gave her a long, lyrical description of frozen waterfalls and gleaming ice.

  How easily he used words! Not like Jethro, who could hardly bear to let a syllable out of his mouth. “Nice to have met you,” Christo called cheerfully back to Jethro.

  How strange romance is, thought Nicoletta. I was following Jethro and Christopher was following me. To Christo this is the beginning of a beautiful romance in which we share the great outdoors. I don’t care about the outdoors at all. I don’t care about Christo either. I care about Jethro.

  And I wonder about the cave.

  And the monster.

  And the promise that mattered so much.

  To whom was I making that promise? she thought suddenly, frowning. To the creature? Or Jethro?

  Christo, backing his van down the narrow rutted lane, suddenly lifted his right hand from the wheel and stared at it. He shook his hand slightly.

  “What?” said Nicolett
a. Her eyes were glued to the place where Jethro had stood. He stood there no longer. He had circled the stone, and must even now be tracing the straight path. Even now Jethro was going toward the cave, on a path that seemed to go nowhere else, a path he had wanted her to promise she would never follow again.

  But I will, thought Nicoletta. I will follow Jethro forever.

  “There’s sand on my hand,” said Christo. “That guy’s hand was all sandy.”

  Chapter 8

  NEVER BEFORE IN HER life had Nicoletta intentionally done something stupid and dangerous. Her parents were cautious in all things but money. They had taught Nicoletta and Jamie to steer clear of strangers, to look both ways before crossing streets, to be home before dark. They were full of warnings and guidance, and Nicoletta had spent a lifetime listening carefully and obeying completely.

  But not today.

  The snow was falling lightly when she left the school building. She had hidden in the library stacks until Christopher had definitely driven away. Hidden among the dusty pages and unread texts until there was not a single soul left in the school whom she knew.

  Little homework had been assigned for the night. Nicoletta was able to leave her bookbag in her locker. How strange to be unburdened, to have hands and arms free. She ran all the way, feet flying, hair streaming behind her, heart filled with excitement.

  How lovely the woods were, dusted with snow, crisp and clean and pure in the fading afternoon.

  The snow was dry and separate. Snowflakes touched her cheeks like kisses.

  The road narrowed and she had to slow down, unable to find easy footing on the snow-hidden ruts of the dirt lane. At first she did not even see the boulder; snow had draped it like a cloak. It did not look like a stone, but like an igloo, a place that would be cozy inside. She patted the stone as she rounded it and her glove left a perfect five-fingered print.

  On each side of the slim, straight path, the dry weeds stood up like snow bouquets. Ice flowers.

  The snow came down more heavily.

  There was no sky anymore; just a ceiling of white.