Brittanee smiles, “No, and I don’t want any, thanks very much.”
“Oh,” says Bean, “I already tried that one on you, eh? I gotta find some fresh meat. . . . ” He turns on his heel and heads for the game room, leaving Brittanee laughing and shaking her head in his wake.
Outside on the deck, the wind is fitful. Far away, a single light, like an earthbound star, heralds the passing of a ship.
The break of the surf is incessant and, to Caleb, unnerving. When he first moved into this house with his mother and Bob six (or seven?) years ago, he had been sure he would love it. He did not. At first, he had figured he would get used to the rush of the ocean. But in fact, it seemed to grow more prominent over time. More insistent. The problem, he figured, was that it never stopped. When he was trying to sleep, it was there. When he was studying, it crept into his ears. Even over dinner, when his mother had one of those fancy dinner parties that she insisted he attend, and Yanni or Enya or some other aural barbiturate was playing in the background, he would sometimes get distracted from the conversation by the barely discernable (but there) roar of the surf. The sea. Always reaching for you, wave upon wave, like some liquid creature trying to clamber ashore. He takes the last sip of his punch as Amber comes to a stop and steers him, using his hand as her rudder, until he’s facing her.
“What’s different?” she asks. Caleb knows this is a test. She changes her appearance daily, and if he doesn’t get this question right . . . bad stuff happens.
Time to buy a little time. He leans against the cool steel of the rail. The house is on stilts, so standing out here on the deck one can look almost directly down at the water. There it is. The sea. Powerful. Scary powerful. . . .
“Well?”
Amber stands a good three inches taller than Caleb. She won the state debate title three years running, and was the number-one seed in the USTA women’s junior tennis championship for the last two years (though she was eliminated in the quarter finals both times). She expects things. To be engaged to Caleb by their junior year of college is one of them. To have one child is another. Only one, no more. She believes having more than one child is grossly irresponsible, and although she is a card-carrying member of the ACLU, she believes the government should limit the number of children people can have—to prevent overpopulation. She is also a staunch pro-life activist.
Despite her dizzying inconsistencies, she is Caleb’s girl. After all, she is devastatingly attractive. And she fits into his plan perfectly: Amber will be a senator and Caleb will be an editor at the New York Times. They’ll be in the middle of everything, able to really make a difference. And that’s all Caleb really wants; or thinks he wants. But lately . . .
“Well?” Amber’s demeanor is quickly deteriorating from “flirty” to “glowering.” Not a good sign. He has to act fast.
He rubs his nose, not because it itches, but because somewhere in his brain, it seems like a good ploy to buy an extra second. It doesn’t work.
“My hair is red, Caleb. Jesus.”
Since Amber lives up in Santa Barbara and Caleb lives down here in Malibu, that means he doesn’t get to see her much. And she changes her hair color just about every week, so how could he possibly know what color it was last time he saw her? Hell, she might have already cycled through every color of the rainbow since last time they hung out. For all he knows, her hair was red the last time he saw her, and she’s dyed it three times since then and landed back on red again. One thing’s for sure: he doesn’t remember.
“It looks great, babe,” he says.
“What else?” she asks, and his heart sinks. Now he’s really screwed.
He squeezes the plastic cup in his hand, making an annoying clicking noise. Dent in, dent out. Dent in, dent out.
“Well?” Amber asks, then before he can respond, she says, “Hair extensions and a French manicure. Not a very observant boyfriend, now are we?”
Caleb wonders, suddenly, when this became his life. It almost seems, in this strange moment, as if he’s been sleepwalking for years. As if he’s gone through these grueling years of study and romance and sports and life without even being truly aware, without being really present. It’s as if it were all hardly real at all. Now, on this deck overlooking the black, endless ocean, he’s suddenly, disconcertingly awake. And for some reason, he thinks of the dream again, of when he was a kid.
“Cake time!” someone calls from inside. Caleb sees his mom bringing out a cake, lit with a bunch of candles as if it were somebody’s birthday. He stands there for a moment, wondering if there is any precedent for blowing out birthday candles at a graduation party, but Amber is already leading him back through the French doors with one of her newly manicured hands.
Everyone is gathered. Someone seems to have put the word out with the partygoers downstairs that the culmination of the festivities is approaching, because people are filing up the steps in droves. There’s Bean, hooting as if he were at a strip club. There are the guys from the track team, their girlfriends, his whole group of friends from school; even a few teachers. Caleb’s stepfather, Bob, and some of his stiff buddies from the glorious airline catering industry, of which he is a mogul, stand in the corner, and, of course, Mom, holding the cake, waits by the fireplace, still dressed in her suit from work, her hair a mess but her face beaming.
“Thanks,” he says as he approaches her.
“Happy graduation, hon,” she says. “Now blow out these candles. This thing weighs a ton.”
“Is it customary to have candles on a—?” Caleb begins, but he’s rejoined with a chorus of “blow out the candles!” so he says, “Okay, okay,” and blows them out. Everyone claps. As he looks around him, all the smiling faces seem at once familiar (because they are familiar, after all) and strangely, disturbingly foreign. It’s the dream. He knows it. The dream still hasn’t quite let go of him.
“Speech!” Mom cries, and everyone else joins in, “Speech, speech, speech.”
Caleb blushes in spite of himself (which, he thinks, is not like him at all) and waves them off with one hand.
“Later, guys. Cake first, speech later. I promise.”
Everyone accepts that, mostly because it’s a tasty-looking cake: chocolate marble layer cake with buttercream frosting, Caleb discovers as he takes the first bite.
“Mmm,” he says loudly. He feels like he’s in a TV commercial, but he can’t help it, it’s that good.
“I’m going to powder my nose,” says Amber.
“You don’t want cake?” Caleb asks.
“No,” she says, wrinkling her nose up as if he had just said, “Don’t you want Ebola?” She squeezes his hand once and lets go, heading off down the hall with her long-legged, strangely cocky but sexy gait. Caleb goes back to work eating. He has a method—cake first, then the frosting.
Bean saunters up, his mouth brimming with chocolate.
“Wats da eel, aam?” he asks.
“Did you come here on the short bus or what? Chew your food.” Caleb laughs. It’s good to have a friend you can say anything to.
“This cake is so rad,” says Bean.
“That’s not what you said, man.”
“No,” says Bean, a little reluctant, “I said: ‘What’s the deal?’ With Amber.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dude, she’s like the queen from Alice in Wonderland. Every time she comes around, my balls shrink up like they’re trying to hide. It’s uncomfortable.”
Caleb nods. “She can be a little . . . direct.”
“Yah. But, hey, dude. She’s your girlfriend; you guys have been together for a long time—God knows how—and I respect that. If you’re happy, more power to you.”
“Thanks, Bean.”
“Just between you and me, though, the Little Man’s making your decisions for you, isn’t he?”
“Oh,” says Caleb, “you must mean the Big Man. I don’t know, you’ll have to set up an appointment and ask him. He’s a busy guy, though.”
&
nbsp; “Yeah,” says Bean, “busy getting smaller. I’m going to go flirt with your mom and see if I can make Bob jealous. Wanna come?”
“Yeah,” Caleb says, “right after I get some more of this bomb-ass cake.”
Caleb fights off the pang of guilt he feels at the thought of having seconds. Why shouldn’t he have more? Track is over forever unless he decides to pursue it in college. Still, to have seconds seems foreign. He’s used to walking a very narrow path.
He looks around the room for a moment before spying the cake’s resting place. It sits at the end of the dining room table. The table is covered for the occasion with a fancy white tablecloth and also seems to be serving as the gift repository. He walks down its length, surveying his spoils. There are only a few gifts, actually. Mostly, the table is littered with cards. The cards are full of money, of course— and that’s a beautiful thing because there are a lot of them.
He cuts himself another piece of cake then balances it between his finger and the knife in an attempt to transport it to his plate without getting too much frosting on his fingers. The attempt proves futile. He drops cake and gets frosting all over his hand anyway.
“Aw, son of a . . . ”
Using the knife and slipping the paper plate underneath, he manages to get the piece of cake to safety. As for the tablecloth, it’s pretty screwed . . . But it’s his special night, Caleb figures, so if he tells her right away, his mom won’t be able to get mad at him . . . And it’s actually not as bad as he was thinking because the cake landed mostly on one of the cards. He picks up the frosting-laden envelope, licking the sugary goodness off his finger at the same time. The envelope doesn’t look like it would contain a greeting card—it’s plain white, and letter sized. He turns it over. No writing on the back, and no return address on the front. There is a stamp on it, though, so it apparently isn’t from anyone at the party. Heck, maybe it’s not even for him at all— but he can’t tell; the address is covered in frosting. He glances at his mom—thinking he could ask her about it, but she’s rapt in a conversation with Bob and his terminally boring friends.
There’s only one way to find out who this particular piece of mail is addressed to, and if it involves eating more frosting, then so be it. He licks where the address should be. Delicious. But the writing is still illegible, which calls for one more lick and . . . there—it’s the correct address, all right, but as for who the letter is addressed to . . . He licks once more. And the revelation is: the letter is addressed to—“Billy.”
Caleb stares at the envelope for a minute, perfectly still. Billy. His first thought is that this letter was simply sent there by mistake. No Billy lives here.
He studies the handwriting on the envelope. It’s cursive. Almost childlike. He doesn’t recognize it.
Billy.
Of course, Caleb’s full name is William Caleb Mason, but no one calls him “Billy.” Not since he was a kid. Not since he moved to California.
His brow is knotted up and his forehead begins to feel heavy. He sits down, staring at the envelope. He hesitates, that weird foreboding washing over him again, then tears it open.
“Speech, speech, speech!” everyone calls—but the laughter, the clink of glasses, the music are all muted. There’s Bean, winking at him. There’s Amber, expectant. Everyone is waiting for him, everyone is listening.
Now Mom speaks: “Thanks for coming, everybody! I just wanted to say how proud we all are of you, Caleb. Valedictorian is a great honor, and I know great things are ahead of you. But you’d better be careful in Africa. If you get eaten by lions, you’re totally grounded, young man.” She laughs. To Caleb’s mom, that constitutes a joke.
“. . . And here’s a little something to help you on your trip into the heart of darkness.” She hands him an envelope. Now, he clutches two, because he still has the one from the table clenched in his trembling fist. He looks at the new envelope, dumbly. Everyone falls silent now, watching him. It occurs to him that this is another part of the dream— he still hasn’t woken up yet. This is the part where everyone’s looking at him, and he looks down and finds himself naked . . . or covered in blood. Out the window, he hears the sound of the ocean, unending.
“Well, open it,” his mother urges.
Fumbling, he crams a thumb under the flap and tears. It’s a cheesy card and a check for two thousand dollars. Mom is smiling at him. He tries to smile back and can’t. Everyone waits for him. Suddenly, his head feels light, unright. He puts the check in his pocket and looks at the other envelope, the one addressed to “Billy.” Awareness washes over him. Everyone’s watching him, everyone’s waiting.
Someone—Bean, probably—yells, “Speech!”
Caleb clears his throat, still looking at the envelope.
Silence swirls around him maddeningly. Except it’s not really silence.
Finally, he speaks: “I’m not going to Africa anymore,” he hears himself say. He hardly knows why he said it, but it occurs to him in that instant that it’s already said. It’s already in the air, too late to take back.
Now everyone’s going to ask him why. That’s the question percolating upon all of their lips, even now. And as he looks at the envelope in his trembling hand, he knows he will never be able to tell them the truth.
Chapter Two
Dear Billy,
I have been erased. The world doesn’t spin right anymore. Colors run away from me. I know why the caged bird sings. His song means “help me.”
Do you remember my sister? She was a beautiful singer. Much better than me. She sang the same song. She still sings it, only very, very softly now. You must remember my sister. My greatest fear of all is that you don’t remember me anymore because there’s no one else who will. I have only been here six months, and already the world is washed clean of the faintest shadow of me.
I live in the House of White Walls now. You will be glad to know I am making excellent progress. They send my mother letters every day, detailing my fantastic advances. I am erased from the world. I exist only in a one-paragraph report, biweekly delivered.
Horrible things unravel me more and more. Every night, it steals my breath from me. My soul has grown dangerously thin.
I was just writing to let you know THE WORLD IS ENDING AND THE DROWNED CHILDREN WHISPER TO ME EVERY NIGHT, and it’s HORRIBLE. You Don’t Know. I hear them GASPING.
They are coming now. They come at night and steal pieces of me. Save me, Billy
Billy, I love you I love billy. Lovely billy. SAVE ME!!
Love, Christine
xoxox
BEAN FOLDS UP THE LETTER SLOWLY, carefully, and places it on the little foldout tray next to a half-spilled bag of airline peanuts. He picks up two peanuts delicately, tosses them into his mouth and starts chewing, staring all the while at the back of the seat in front of him. Caleb waits for the joke, for the wiseass comment—he longs for it, in fact, needs it to steady his nerves, to know that at least some things never change: no matter what, Bean takes nothing seriously. But Bean doesn’t say anything. He just takes a sip of his Coke and looks at the letter distrustfully, as if he expects it to sprout arms and slap him upside the head.
“So . . . ?” Caleb says, and even this prompts no response. “What do you think?”
“Dude, it got into my head,” Bean says, cracking an ice cube between his teeth and glancing sidelong at his friend.
“Yeah,” says Caleb. Out of all possible responses, this is perhaps the worst he could have received. “Dude, you’re stupid,” “Dude, you’re gay,” “Dude, this person is just some wacko; pull your head out of your ass”—these would have all been acceptable, if embarrassing, quips from his best friend. They would have been comforting. This is not comforting. This is bad.
Ever since he made an early exit from his graduation party, feigning stomach flu, he has been waiting for someone to tell him he’s crazy, waiting to come to that conclusion himself. He read the letter over and over, in a display that could only be considered obsessive in
the extreme, trying to find some flaw, some hint of a joke or a hoax, anything that might discredit the piece of dread correspondence. He found none. Worse, he found the letter to be spotted with dried tear marks. He observed how the handwriting became sloppier at the end, as the writer’s perceived threat drew near. It only proved what his heart had known all along—the letter was real.
“So,” Bean says, “who’s Christine?”
“This girl I knew,” says Caleb. His voice sounds hollow in his own ears. “She was my friend when I was a kid in Florida. That’s where the letter is postmarked from—Hudsonville.”
“Right,” says Bean, “where your dad lives.”
“Yep. She was poor. She had a twin sister who got kidnapped and they never found her. We were all best friends.”
Bean pauses, thinking. “So if you haven’t seen this Christine girl since you were a kid, why would she send you this?”
Caleb shrugs, not trusting his voice this time.
“And why all the secrecy?” Bean asks. “I’ve never seen you lie to your mom. I mean, you’re a total sissy momma’s boy. And you didn’t even tell Amber the real deal, and she’s like the puppet master holding your freakin’ strings.”
“Bite me,” says Caleb.
“I don’t mean it as a bad thing. I mean, damn. Most guys would be more than happy to be pussy-whipped by her. But it’s just weird that you told both of them we were just going on a little trip to visit your dad, when we’re actually—wait, what are we doing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know where Christine is. I don’t know if I’d recognize her if she were sitting right next to me.”
“I just can’t believe you actually lied to your mom.”
“I’m not that much of a momma’s boy. I had to lie to her because she hates my dad completely. If she knew we were staying with him, she’d crap herself.”
“You ever get a hold of him?”
The Sleepwalkers Page 2
