“You’re kind of invading my personal bubble,” Brian said.
“What?” I looked over, realizing I was only an inch or two from Brian’s face. “Oh, sorry. Just saw somebody out the door.”
“Who?”
“Nobody.”
“Very mysterious.” Brian devoured an imitation Jell-O cup in two gulps. He ate fast and a lot, but at least it stayed in his mouth.
More laughter erupted from the other table, along with more food.
I frowned out the door. I felt for sure I was either sleep deprived or going crazy. After the dream last night and after my mom’s outburst, the latter seemed more and more like a viable option.
***
Yeah, I’ll admit it. I thought I had seen the girl with purple-tinted blond hair from my dream. I spent the rest of the day looking but didn’t see her again. I started to wonder if I had really seen her at all. I had never seen her before the dream, so I figured she was just a figment of my imagination. Maybe it was just my subconscious projecting the girl from my dream onto another girl who looked vaguely like her. As the rest of the day crawled by, I convinced myself that was the case and tried to push her out of my mind. Just my imagination. That was it. I’d almost convinced myself until last period rolled around like a lethargic sloth.
I sat in literature class, Brian behind me and Aoife to the left. There were still a few minutes before class started and they were arguing about something. I tried to ignore it. That’s what those two did—ignore each other or argue. I’d learned to stay out of it a long time ago. Bad things went down when I tried to express my opinion on whatever topic they were arguing about. Those topics were usually small and stupid. Their current argument was on pizza toppings. I sighed. I didn’t even want to know how that one got started. I stared at a banner above the whiteboard that read Once more unto the breach. Maybe if I ignored them, they’d keep me out of it.
“Meat,” Brian said as if that one word was the final, end-all word. “The more the better, actually.”
Aoife looked at him with disgust. “We’re not carnivores.”
“We’re not herbivores, either,” he countered.
“I can hear your arteries clogging.”
“It’s not my fault my ancestors weren’t rabbits. Gaige, tell her.”
I turned around to cast a glare at Brian. “I like both. Pepperoni and green peppers.” I hoped that was enough to keep me out of it. Apparently not.
“That’s total bull!” Brian nearly shouted. A few heads turned his way. No matter how long people knew Brian, they never got over how loud and obnoxious he could get. “I saw you take down four slices of Meaty Madness at Alice’s end-of-summer pool party even though there were other choices there.”
Thanks a lot, Brian. Way to set me up and gleefully throw me under the bus. I glanced at Aoife who simply looked at me, waiting. Her eyes had the strange gold tint, like amber. I had thought I’d just imagined it in the darkness of early morning, but it was hard to mistake them under the glare of a dozen or so florescent lights. I wondered for a moment if she had colored contacts in or something. It seemed like something she would do.
“I—” For the second time that day, I had no clue what was coming out of my mouth next, but I was saved by the bell.
Mr. Huxley stood from his chair at the front of the room. “Let’s get started.” He began calling roll.
I turned straight in my seat and let my brain go into roll-call mode— the state of mind when I barely paid attention to what was going on around me. Just enough to hear my name called and let out a mechanical “here” before letting it wander off again.
I felt Aoife’s strange golden eyes still on me and let my own travel around the room, anywhere but to my left. I pushed my mind to think of something else, and Mom’s outburst wiggled its way in. “They’re after you now.” My heartbeat quickened and I forced the image of her wild eyes out of my head.
Mr. Huxley finished the roll and I expected him to start class with the usual fruitless question, “Who read last night’s assigned pages?” Instead, he said, “And we have a new student. Seanna Bryant. Welcome. I’m sure you’ve had to introduce yourself plenty today already, so I won’t make you.”
Like everybody else in class, I turned in my seat to see the new kid. The shock that hit me was like a kick in the chest from a horse when I saw the girl sitting at the desk closest to the door. It was none other than the girl from my dream. Minus the purple hair. Hers was a perfectly normal blond. Other than that, she was definitely that girl!
“Thank you,” she said over a ragged school copy of The Catcher in the Rye, apparently trying to catch up on the two and half weeks of reading she had missed since school started. She had a slight accent I couldn’t quite place, a lilt that hinted at something exotic even in those two simple words.
She wore a long-sleeved shirt that hugged her slight form in spite of the warm classroom. A leather strap hung from her thin neck. A piece of wood hung at the end. It was carved in intricate circles and polished to a shine. She looked thin, almost to the point of being unhealthily so, and her skin was pale. She reminded me of a kid I knew who spent most of his time indoors, playing video games.
As I stared at her, I felt an overwhelming need for her to turn her blue eyes my way as I watched them dart across the pages. She reached up and pushed aside a strand of hair behind her ear. It was just a few shades away from light brown and flowed in waves down her back.
“Take a picture.”
I turned to Aoife. “Huh?”
“It’ll last longer and be slightly less creepy than staring,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t staring.”
Her thin eyebrows rose into a perfect arch on her forehead.
“I wasn’t.” I turned from those golden eyes and tried to pay attention to Mr. Huxley. No surprise I wasn’t too successful. My mind constantly wandered to the girl by the door. How weird was it to have a random girl just appear out of my dreams? I kept seeing her eyes stare at me from the stands. I remembered the compassion I saw in them, like she knew what I was going through. I wanted for her to look at me that way in real life. I glanced back, but she kept her head down, intent on the book.
In a flash, something pushed up inside me. I shook my head, disgusted at myself. I was being stupid. It was just a dumb dream. She was just some new girl I had obviously seen around before. She meant nothing. The dream meant nothing.
I stared at Mr. Huxley leaning against his desk, waving his copy of the book around as he spoke. After an hour of him trying to explain how Holden Caulfield wasn’t really the teen rebel people make him out to be, the final bell rang. He yelled the weekend reading assignment reminder over the burst of noise as the students quickly packed their bags and rushed for the door.
I stuffed my slightly less tattered copy of The Catcher in the Rye into my backpack and turned to Aoife. “Hey, when do you want…” I didn’t get to finish the question before Aoife was weaving around desks and out the door.
“What’s up with her?” Brian asked.
I shrugged. “Who knows? Probably your fault.” As I watched her leave, my eyes were drawn to the girl from my dream.
She sat at her desk, thumbing through the last few pages as Brian and I watched.
“Did she just finish that book in one class period?” Brian’s mouth hung open a little.
I shrugged again as we watched her pack the book away and stand to leave. Just before she walked out of the classroom, she glanced back at us and our eyes finally met for a fleeting moment. I felt a tingle slip up my back. The good kind of tingle that leaves a stomach twisting and a heart beating a bit faster. Then she was gone, and the feeling emptied out of me. I looked back to Brian, who had an odd look on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Huh? Oh, nothing. Just thought I recognized her for a second there.”
“From where?”
He shrugged. “She just looked like somebody from back home. I doubt it, though. Co
me on, let’s get out of here.”
5
The Gateway
I walked home alone, retracing the steps Aoife and I had made that morning. With nothing but my thoughts for company, I brought up mental images of the girl from my dream to compare to Seanna Bryant from literature class. I kept seeing her blue eyes locking with mine, if only for a moment, as she left class. It was just like when the girl from my dream stared at me from the stands. Both images danced around in my head and made my chest tighten.
I tried to concentrate on comparing the two. They were fleeting moments. Moments that made me feel something. Corny, I know, but true. I’d like to say I handled my “personal tragedy” with courage. No, that’s corny, too. With bravery? No. Whatever the word for it, I didn’t shut down. I could have. It would have been easy to just block everything out and not give a crap about anything after my parents’ accident. Trust me, I considered it. And my therapist figured I would at some point, but I didn’t. I pushed it all down. The pain. The hurt. The sadness. I pressed it all into a tiny box and buried it in the backyard, so to speak. Maybe, in a way, I did shut down. There was a by-product of expunging those negative feelings. Feeling much of anything became hard for me. I put on a good show in front of friends. A show so good sometimes I thought I actually believed I was normal.
There was one thing, however, that wasn’t a show. My anger. I tried to stuff it in that little box, but it always broke free and raged like a lunatic inside me. I realized when it happened. I wasn’t so blind that I didn’t recognize my struggle to control it. When I couldn’t, it roared its ugly head like a manic beast. It was the only true emotion I felt. Everything else was peripheral feelings skittering along the outside, wanting to get inside and make me feel normal. I never let them.
But when the girl in my dreams looked at me, I felt something I couldn’t even name. Whatever it was, it shouldered past the jeering crowd and landed on me like a comfortable blanket from childhood. When the girl in class, Seanna, glanced at me, the same feeling rolled over me. But just like the dream, it was gone as soon as it had settled. That’s what I wanted to recapture and hold on to for dear life. I wanted to pull that blanket over me as I walked home, letting its soothing touch wash over me in waves.
But the thoughts of her mixed with the fight with Aunt Stacy, my mom’s strange episode, and the horrible game. Like a mosh pit inside my head, they buzzed and bumped around inside my skull. I needed something to drive them out, if only temporarily, before I went insane. I pulled a pair of tiny earphones out of my pocket and untangled them before sticking them in my ears. I dug an MP3 player out and turned it on. I searched for something loud and fast, hoping to drive all other thoughts from my head.
My slow steps took me past Mr. Minor’s house. The jittery little man paced around his yard, leaning over to run a hand along the concrete foundation his pale, yellow house stood on, inspecting it for possible damage the morning’s earthquake might have caused. I considered walking on by, but I liked the man. Mr. Minor used to be my dentist before he retired a few years back. Maybe a conversation would help clear my mind.
“Hey, Mr. M.” I winced, remembering too late to not speak as loud as my head thought I needed to with growling guitars pulsing in my ears.
Mr. Minor jumped and spun on his heel. A look of relief spread over his face when he saw me. He raised and dropped a hand in an imitation of a wave before turning back to his inspection.
I sighed. So much for conversation. I continued in the direction of my house.
Mr. Minor’s head popped out from some bushes to watch an UPX delivery van roll down the street. He disappeared back into the bushes once the van was out of sight.
Ten houses later I stood on the sidewalk in front of my yard. The grass was overgrown again. It stood taller than my ankles. I decided I would mow the lawn that weekend. I knew I shouldn’t let it get so high. Pushing the lawnmower through that mess would be like pushing a car through a lake but finding the motivation to do it usually proved impossible. The bushes that lined the front porch grew just as out of control, except the one that I had mangled while trying to trim it a few weeks back. It stood as a testament to how woeful I was at helping keep up the place.
I sighed again. I wasn’t ready to face my aunt and mother. The look of pity in Stacy’s face and the vacant look in my mom’s eyes would push me over the edge again. Of that I had no doubt. What was at the bottom of that drop off the ledge? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to find out. I pulled my dinosaur cellphone out of a pocket and flipped it open. I speed-dialed 3 and pulled the earphones out just as Stacy answered on the third ring.
“Hey, G.”
“Hey, you home yet?” I glanced at the powder blue ‘65 Mustang sitting in the driveway, her “baby” inherited from her brother when he was killed in action in Afghanistan a couple years ago, not long after my parents’ accident.
“Yeah. Took off early. Are you on the way home?”
I hesitated a moment. “No, I’m heading over to Brian’s. We’re going to study for a geometry test tomorrow,” I lied.
“Oh.” An even longer moment passed. “Will you be home for dinner?”
“Probably not. You and Mom go ahead and eat. I’ll grab something to shove in my feed hole at Brian’s.”
“All right. Don’t stay out too late.”
“Of course. See ya.”
I heard “Love you, G,” before I flipped the phone closed. I winced. Great, hang up on your aunt while she’s saying I love you. Great job.
I sighed, a reoccurring and involuntary action lately. I followed the narrow path between the left side of the house and fence, ducking under the living room window. Toward the back was a lean-to in need of repair where I parked my scooter. I pushed it out and down the sidewalk a way before starting it. The electronic ignition was broken, so I had to kick it to life. I plugged the earphones back into my ears and gave the scooter gas. I didn’t have a destination in mind, just took off down the street.
***
Technically, I wasn’t old enough to ride the scooter on city streets, but I did it anyway. Often against my aunt’s wishes. She usually let me get away with it because the rundown thing had been my dad’s before he died. Chalk that one up to sentimentality. As for the law, the trick was to look like I belonged on it and not do anything stupid to attract attention. Something I had become adept at. Usually.
I ended up at Gate City Park, happy to find it mostly deserted. The only park-goers were a couple of mothers watching over their toddlers while they played on the small jungle gym on the other side of the park. I parked the scooter and headed for the swings. There was something about the back-and-forth motion that soothed me. Rocking my troubles away like Grandpa used to say.
My seclusion didn’t last long, however. When some older kids showed up to invade my personal swinging space, I hopped off and walked deeper into the park. On the far side, parallel to the road, the ground sloped up until a tree-covered rock face jutted from the earth. It ranged in height from fifteen feet to nearly thirty, and there were paths all along the face, winding in and out of the boulders on the way up to the upper park area.
I started up one of the paths until I found a smooth boulder hidden behind bushes. I pulled myself onto it, sat, and drew my knees up to my chest. Time melted away as music raged in my ears. Below, people came and went. Kids played until their bored parents called for them to leave. Young couples came to spend time together outside, being all cute, sneaking kisses and holding hands in the lush, well-watered, green grass. A couple even came to have their engagement pictures taken, giggling and trying to be serious the whole time. Other would-be climbers passed by, never noticing me just off the path, hidden on my boulder by a scraggly bush.
Many things went through my mind while I sat there. I watched the parents with their kids with a certain amount of bitterness. My parents used to bring me to this park when I was younger. I watched the couples, thinking back on my own brief ventures into couple
dom. Very brief, awkward affairs. Mostly, I let the drumbeats and the flickering guitars drive all thoughts from my mind. I tried, anyway. They didn’t find much success.
From my perch, I watched the sky turn different shades of purple, orange, and pink as the sun slowly lowered itself from the sky. I considered climbing from the boulder and heading home a couple times, but never got around to it until my MP3’s battery died. I pulled the earphones out and wound them up, shoving them in my pocket along with the little player. I stood on the rock, ready to hop down and head back to the scooter.
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
My foot slid off the rock, nearly dumping me face first to the ground. I managed to land on my feet, but it didn’t include any graceful moves. The visual of a blind dodo bird landing on a moving boat wouldn’t be too far off the mark. I turned in the direction of the voice coming from the other side of the boulder. A figure moved out from behind it, sticking to the shadows cast by trees blocking out the setting sun.
“Who…” I squinted and the person came into view. My heart skipped a beat or two when I saw Seanna standing a few feet away. I opened and closed my mouth a couple times, cleared my throat, and then did it again before I found my voice. “How did you get back there?”
“What happened wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing you could have done.” She stopped a couple feet in front of me. The sharp angles of her thin face softened close up, making her even more beautiful.
“I…What are you talking about?” The warm feelings I described before crashed over me like monster waves. They made my insides jelly and my brain mush.
“Your mother.”
“What about her?” I frowned. Just the mention of my mom cleared my head and set me on the defensive.
“And your dad, too, of course.”
“What about them? What are you talking about?”
“What happened to them wasn’t your fault.”
I took a step back. My heart roared back to life and beat hard against my ribs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What happened was an accident. I wasn’t even there. I have to go.” I turned to walk away but came up short at her next words.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 5
