Miss you, Friend.
-Davin
PS: Also, there’s no one to patch me up when I do stupid things like trip into our bunk beds and give myself a black eye. Where’s Dr. Fisher when I need her??
Just kidding.”
I gave a trembly sigh as I finished reading. Then I read and reread, doing what girls do best. What was he saying? Why did he say that? Surely he wouldn’t have said that if— but—
I laid it on the bed in front of me and leaned my back against the wall. I chewed my lip, considering whether I should let Andy read it and tell me what he thought. Then I pulled out one of my many spiral bound notebooks and began scribbling a reply…but I couldn’t get past the beginning. I imagined a dozen different things to say and twice as many ways he’d interpret and respond to each one. I gave up. I lay back on my bed and re-read the letter again, written on plain, lined paper. He had written me! I chased thoughts around in my head, each one more confused than the one before. I didn’t know how I had become so crazy about that guy.
Later in the evening, I went to sit out on the back porch to clear my head. It was hot and still, the sun just starting to set. Hardly anything stirred, not even a breeze. Had it been a few hours earlier, I would have already been sweaty. I was annoyed when only moments later, Andy sat down beside me. “What are you doing out here?” I mumbled, trying to hide my irritation.
“Hey, Sis. Can I have a seat?” He sat without waiting for me to answer, and took a sip of the iced tea he’d brought out with him. He offered me some, and I declined with a wave of my hand. He didn’t say anything right away. Instead we just looked out at the neighborhood. “You’re not having a good summer, are you?”
I gave a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not having a great summer,” I admitted.
“On a scale of one to ten, ten being the vacation we took in Orlando, and one being the Summer of Emily,” he gave me a dark, knowing look and we both shuddered, “how would you rate this summer?”
“Hm.” I contemplated Andy’s question. While it was definitely no Orlando, it was nowhere near the Summer of Emily, which Andy and I also candidly called “The Summer of Hell.”
Emily Albright was our cousin, daughter of our dad’s sister, and a year younger than me. A few years previous, Andy and I had spent the summer with the Albrights in Southern California. I was going into my junior year, and Andy had just graduated. My aunt and uncle were having some trouble with Emily, and we were sort of supposed to be a good influence on her. It didn’t exactly go that way. Suffice to say that she probably impacted us more than we affected her.
As it turned out, Emily wasn’t just a spoiled kid acting bratty. No one knew at the time, but she had legitimate emotional problems. Her parents naïvely thought she was just being a moody teenage girl. It wasn’t entirely their fault; Emily knew the right (or wrong) thing to say to everyone. Before those terribly long three months were over, she had tried to turn my brother and I against each other, threatened to commit suicide numerous times, and had suffered so many panic attacks that we lost count. I had to share a room with her, and I lost more sleep that summer than my whole freshman year.
I tried so hard to help her, to be there for her, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. Years later, I still felt shaken by the memory. I could look back and see that it had changed the way I looked at people—especially people who needed some kind of mending: either I could help them, or I couldn’t. Most of the time I felt like there was nothing I could do for anyone, including myself. Davin, though hurting and grieving, did not give off that manipulative, emotionally needy vibe that I had become so intimately familiar with because of Emily. Even so, I hadn’t wanted to get involved with someone who was hurting for a long time after that.
So why did I suddenly want to be there for Davin? And if my instincts could be off about her, could they be wrong about Davin, too? I was circling back through the same questions that had plagued me all summer, when Andy gave me a nudge.
“Time’s up,” he said, smiling. “So what’s the score?”
I had practically forgotten his question in thinking of Emily. Another shudder. “Um…” I looked skyward. “A…five, I guess. Somewhere around there. Maybe a four or a six, depending on how it ends up.”
“I’m sorry it hasn’t been better.”
I shrugged again. “It’s not that it’s terrible. I’m just bored. I kind of miss campus life, you know?”
“And maybe a guy named Davin?”
I sighed. “Did I tell you he wrote me?”
He cleared his throat and gave me a look. “You read it to me.”
“Oh, yeah. You were supposed to help me interpret it.”
He rolled his eyes. “Anna, it’s not written in another language.”
“Oh yes it is,” I declared. “It’s written in boy language, and I don’t speak it.”
“Boys don’t have their own language,” Andy argued. “That’s girls.”
“Humph. Could have fooled me,” I retorted.
“Come on, Anna, what’s so hard to understand about it? He missed you. End of story.”
I considered that. “Yeah…but did he miss me miss me, or did he just kind of miss me a little?”
He stared at me. “And you say girls don’t have their own language.”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. “I can see you’re not going to be any help.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he grumbled. “I can’t read his mind any more than you can. I’m not even sure I want to.” Before I could protest, he changed the subject. “Can we talk about Dark Lightning instead?”
I grinned. “Yeah, I guess.” After all, Dark Lightning was probably my second favorite guy to talk about.
My first letter from Jill had been in a yellow envelope with pink flowers and had been rather silly, all about her boring summer. Her second mailing was not in a little yellow envelope but a big manila envelope containing other goodies.
“Dearest Friend,” Jill wrote,
“I apologize for being remiss in my attentions to you. I really have been missing you dreadfully. (As you can see, I’m still reading too much British literature.) “I’m sending you this article because, naturally, I thought it would interest you. I actually watched some of the coverage of it on the news, but don’t be jealous, I recorded some, too. We’ll watch it when you come back. Which reminds me: I’m so excited that you’re going to be my suitemate this year!!!
“I’m still having a rather dull summer, but I have to tell you this. I went by Dubsy last week to drop a few things off with my roomie. And guess who I ran into?? Yep, Davin! He recognized me (though he forgot my name) and asked if I’d heard from you lately. He also told me to tell you the next time I talked to you that he says hi and that he’s very sorry that he’s been too busy to write you back yet. So now you know. I thought that was rather inadequate, but well-meant, I suppose. I hate to say it but he wasn’t looking so great. Kind of zombie-like, if you ask me. (OR...vampire-like!! I told you!!!!!) I think he might even have had a black eye.…Anyway, we didn’t really talk but I told him I’d pass on his message. But I sincerely hope your summer is getting along just fine without him.”
I sighed and turned the page over.
“Well, I’m afraid I still don’t have much to say. My summer is as dull as it was last time I wrote. I spend a lot of time reading...too much, according to my old friends. I call them ‘old’ because they were friends to me in a different stage of life. I find that they are like pureed baby food that has lost its appeal as I have grown and my appetites have changed. I crave deeper friendships based on things below the surface. That’s why whatever I do with my old pals, I wish you were along. I’d shoot you a smile and you’d know exactly what I was thinking. I miss you, friend, but I hope you are having a wonderful, relaxing time with your family. Let me know when you’re coming back so I can know when to pick you up at the airport.” Then she signed with a little heart, her name and a s
miley face underneath. Then a few lines down, in different color ink, she’d added a postscript.
“PS: I decided to throw in these doubles of the pictures I took during finals week. Sorry they’re so late ! ” Another smiley.
I gave a dramatic little sigh and blinked away the beginnings of happy tears; I was so lucky to have her as a friend. I set aside her letter and turned to the other contents of the envelope. The article which she’d referred to was several pages of newspaper folded up. I unfolded it and gasped. On the front page, in big, black letters, the headline hollered: PITTSBURGH DECLARES DARK LIGHTNING A HERO! Underneath was a picture of an inferno, at the center of which appeared to be a tanker truck and a bus, both horribly mangled and intertwined, like a grotesque imitation of modern sculpture. I gave a little shiver as I devoured the article.
“Pittsburgh. In a press release earlier today, Mayor Smyth has declared the man known only by the name Dark Lightning to be a local hero. Yesterday, when an oil tanker collided with a greyhound bus, the mysterious do-gooder was the first on the scene to help people, and, witnesses say, the last to leave until the work was done. According to one account, he dug through the wreckage with ease, giving weight to the theories that Dark Lightning is endowed with a special, above-average strength.
“Sources at OilCo say they are unsure as to why one of their trucks or truckers would have crashed. However, crime scene investigators have already begun theorizing about the brakes. “We know that the drivers of both the tanker and the bus were not intoxicated or under the influence of any drugs,” states Herman Himmelstein, head of the CSU. “We are currently doing a thorough investigation of the vehicles.”
“While no one knows what exactly caused the incident, theories abound. Some citizens even hint that perhaps the newly named “hero” was involved in order to gain more publicity for himself. Whatever the case may be, there are plenty of Pittsburghers who are ready to defend the mysterious figure.
“Leave the guy alone already,” complained one woman when questioned. “Yinzhave done enough damage to that guy’s character.” See HERO, A-3.” (Yinz—another Pittsburgh word that was basically their version of y’all.)
I read the rest of the article, but it was mainly more of the same. I felt angry as I read some of the accusations and finally set the paper aside in disgust. Well, I thought, even comic book heroes had their critics. I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would distrust “DL,” as I’d begun calling him to myself. But I realized that the unknown would always bother some people.
On page two of the paper, something else caught my eye: HALLWAY STALKER CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM; STILL ELUDES POLICE. I shivered again—but for an entirely different reason—and scanned the short article. This time, the girl had been a student at Point Park. She’d simply been walking home from a party when a guy followed her into her dorm, forced his way into her room, and raped her. Her description of her attacker was as vague as the others—wearing dark clothes, with something covering his face. She did, however, add a new distinguishing factor: she said she was pretty sure he’d been wearing sunglasses. The rest of the article was full of the same tips for protecting yourself from such an attack—Check your surroundings. Keep your keys out. Carry pepper spray or another deterrent. Walk with friends. The article ended with the police promising they were still doing their best to find and stop the Hallway Stalker before he claimed any more victims. I folded the paper back up and put it back in the envelope, trying to also put it out of my mind.
That night at dinner, I passed around the photos Jill had sent me and talked more about school than I had in weeks. I’d thought that bottling it in would spare my family’s feelings, but they enjoyed hearing that I was doing well and finally making a few friends at school.
“Jill seems like a nice girl,” my mother said, flipping through the stack. “This Davin boy on the other hand….” She held up a picture Jill had taken of Davin and me together. He was actually smiling in it, his arm lightly around my shoulder. But he was still dressed in black, scruffy, and sporting a few abrasions on his face. We both looked exhausted—but that’s what finals will do to you.
I just looked at my mom. “Don’t say it,” I sighed. “I know. He’s a mess. But he’s a good guy underneath that.”
“Are you sure you’re not just blinded by your— inexplicable—attraction to him?” She pursed her lips. My mom knew me too well; she’d been privy to all my fleeting high school crushes. She was the one who told me to be myself and not change for any guy, no matter how good looking or charming he seemed. Perhaps that was partly why I was drawn to Davin: He allowed me to be myself and was asking nothing from me, nor was he trying to charm me with his dazzling looks or stellar personality.
“No,” I said honestly. I’d given it quite a bit of thought over my weeks away. “I know it sounds weird and it’s hard to explain but…we’ve just sort of bonded.” I blushed then, thinking suddenly of our sort-of kiss. I decided not to mention that.
“Didn’t you say he took you on a date or something?” my dad said, as my mother passed the pictures to him. I felt like I blushed even more deeply and squirmed. “Not exactly…we were just hanging out.”
“But he paid for your dinner and movie ticket, right?” Andy confirmed.
“Yeah…but only because I didn’t have any money….” “Sounds like a date to me,” my dad said, peering through his glasses at the photo of Davin. I didn’t quite like the scrutinizing expression on his face, but there was no reason for me to expect anything less from my family. They would always be a bit protective of me, the youngest, no matter how old I got. Traveling between countries had made us a fairly tight group; I was learning to be independent at Dubsy, but I was still very connected to them. And as I looked around at my family, chatting and nagging and laughing over our meal, I realized that my angst and school sickness was not so bad. It was actually quite normal. This was part of life, this growing up and feeling that tension between closeness with my family and learning to be my own person. Whatever Davin was to me, it was a blip compared to what I had with my family. It was time for me to put things back into perspective.
In that moment of clarity, I realized that as much as I cared about Davin, I didn’t have to be a slave to my feelings. I’d allowed myself to mope and pine for most of the summer, but school was approaching and it was time for me to get a grip. It was time to seize the day, as Davin would have said, but also to know when to let go.
Chapter Thirteen
“A woman uses her intelligence
to find reasons to support her intuition.”
—G. K. Chesterton
I didn’t hear the news until the day I got back. Almost the minute I got off the plane Jill was flagging me down. As I waited for my luggage at the baggage claim, she told me she had Big News. “Do you want me to just spill it, here and now,” she asked, “or get you home and let you experience it unfolding properly like the rest of us did?”
I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, so as my olive green cargo bag emerged, I heaved it onto my shoulder with a grunt and said, “Just tell me!”
“Okay, but let’s at least get to the car,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. After what seemed like an endless flight, with no less than three wailing children (translation: no sleep for Anna), two connections, and six bathroom trips, I was ready to collapse. I was pretty sure whatever her big news was, it probably didn’t concern me much and could even keep until after I’d gotten a decent night’s sleep.
But after she deposited my bag in the trunk and saw us both buckled into her car, she drew a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Two weeks ago, it was all over the news.”
“What was?” I yawned.
“They revealed Dark Lightning’s identity.”
There were several seconds of silence as my friend’s announcement slowly penetrated my fuzzy, sleep-deprived brain. Still, even as it sunk in, all I could manage in response was, “What?”
“I’
ll show you the press conference,” she told me as we made our way back to campus. “I recorded it for you. The police department was there and everything. It was very official.”
“So…” I seemed to be having trouble processing the concept. “He just…told everyone who he was? He gave up his secret identity?”
“Yep.”
I felt my heart begin to pound. “And…who was it?” I asked carefully, already picturing the black ski mask being pulled off to reveal Davin’s face.
But to my surprise, Jill shrugged. “I don’t know. Some guy, I forget his name. He’s cute, though. Well, you’ll see.”
I rode silently the rest of the way back to Dubsy, while Jill prattled and filled me in on all the latest tidbits. I was in a stupor; my brain was buzzing with questions and possibilities about Dark Lightning and Davin, but at the same time I was so weary that I had to fight to keep my eyes open.
Jill took pity on me and told me we’d watch the promised press conference the next morning. “You get some rest,” she said, handing me my bag as she dropped me off at my room. I didn’t need her advice to comply; I was asleep as soon as I crawled into bed, and I slept soundly for nine hours. If my dreams were troubled with Dark Lightning or Davin, I didn’t remember it in the morning.
When I awoke, however, the first thing that occurred to me was that I’d learned something important. My slowly waking brain searched itself to recall what it was. When I heard a soft knock and Jill’s voice call, “Anna? You up yet?” through the door, it all came back to me.
I leapt out of bed and threw open the door to my friend. “Morning.”
She grinned at me. “Someone slept well, I see.”
“Yes. And I have just remembered the incredible news you gave me last night, and now I am sufficiently awake to give it proper consideration.”
Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning (The Dark Lightning Trilogy) Page 14
