Dark Before Dawn

by Stacy Juba

  "No thanks. I buy my lunch."

  "Bringing a lunch would be a lot healthier than buying greasy pizza and Tater Tots every day," Jeff said. "Cheaper, too."

  Ken slammed down his glass of Pepsi. "I don’t like sandwiches. Can’t a guy eat what he wants?"

  "Apologize to Anne right now," Jeff said, glaring at his son.

  Dawn's mother sprinkled croutons over her salad, a plastic Barbie doll smile on her lips. Her eyes met her daughter’s, and Dawn tilted her head to show her sympathy. It must be hard being a stepmother and Ken was a bit of a pain. "It's all right, Jeff, really."

  "It's not all right. It's–"

  "Dawn, how was school?" her mother interrupted.

  "It was okay," Dawn said.

  "Just okay?"

  "There was a misunderstanding and some kids gave her a hard time," Ken said.

  Dawn’s mother froze with her fork in midair. "A hard time about what? What did you do?"

  Dawn pushed back her plate and stood, her annoyance from that morning gushing back. "Why do you automatically think I did something? Why is everything always my fault?"

  "I don’t think that, honey. It just slipped out." Her mother’s gaze swiveled from Jeff to Dawn. "Let’s talk about this later. You’re obviously upset."

  Oh please. That wasn’t the real reason her mother wanted to put off this conversation. She had just realized it might be too "woo woo" for her new family.

  "Never mind, it was nothing. Some girl thought I was hitting on her boyfriend. I wasn’t. End of story." Dawn started out of the room. At the beaded curtain, she turned back.

  "Hey Jeff, you might want to get the phone," she said loudly. "It’s your mom and dad."

  Dawn strode into the living room, and a second later, the phone rang. She smirked. She’d had a mental image of Jeff’s plump grey-haired mother dialing the cordless phone while watching the six o’clock news with Jeff’s father. Maybe it was immature, but Dawn wished she could hear her mother explain that. She stumbled over Ken's sneakers at the foot of the stairs, gave them a good kick into the wall and retreated to the comfort of her bedroom.

  Dawn picked up a gold-framed photograph from the nightstand, of her father wearing a baseball cap, and climbed into bed with Buddy. She lay back on her pillows and traced her father’s brown hair and green eyes in the photo, so like her own. She recognized glimmerings of his angular face in the mirror. He had been killed in a car accident when she was seven, before her premonitions began. He'd died instantly while the other driver walked away with a broken arm.

  Her mother told her Dad swerved to avoid a van, but when they were packing for Maine, Dawn found a newspaper article in a box of important papers. The story said her father was going 70 in a 40 mph zone and crossed the center line. She confronted her mom with the truth, but her mother blew it off by saying she hadn’t wanted to upset Dawn with the details. Dawn gritted her teeth. That was just like her mother, ignoring the truth.

  Dawn understood the decision to spare a 7-year-old, but she wasn’t a little kid anymore. The topic should have come up before this summer.

  She reached into her nightstand, dug the article out of an envelope and sprawled back on the bed. As she’d done a hundred times already, Dawn closed her eyes and focused on the accident. No visions appeared, just the same old prickly sensation of worry. She didn’t know whether it was her own worry, or if she was tuning into anxiety her father had felt right before death.

  Dawn set the picture and article on her nightstand. Her mind went back to that special day when her father kept her out of school and took her to the zoo. He bought her Buddy as she’d loved watching the monkeys scurry inside their cages. She wished they’d had a day like that again.

  Her father had been the one to name her Dawn. He told her how dawn would break every morning, the one constant in life, turning dark into light. She’d thought mommies and daddies were constants, too, and would always be there. Her father’s death proved she couldn’t take anything for granted.

  Dawn pressed Buddy close to her neck. If only her father were here to hug. Dawn didn’t remember the tone of his voice or how he smelled. She couldn’t recall his expressions or his touch. Her mother rarely brought up his name.

  Even though his voice and face were hazy, Dawn knew one thing with certainty. Her father had made her feel secure. He would have been open to her intuition. Not for the first time, Dawn wondered what life would have been like if her mother had been the one to die.

  ***

  Ken drove out of the school parking lot and bore a sharp right into Phil's Fill-Up and Food Mart. Dawn eyed the dozen students congregating outside, downing sodas behind the gas pumps. You’d think in a beach town, they would find a better after-school hangout than the gas station.

  He shut off the ignition. "You coming or staying?"

  "Coming, I guess." On impulse, she added, "Thanks again for the ride."

  Ken jangled change in his pocket. "No problem. Let’s go."

  Dawn followed him into the brightly lit interior, half-convenience store and half-tourist trap. Racks up front boasted clearance tee-shirts silkscreened with the state’s pine tree emblem and map logo, the kind of cheap design that peeled after a few spins in the wash. Near the register, a revolving stand showcased Maine postcards, bumper stickers and road maps.

  Ken waved to a group of friends loitering near the magazines. Dawn stayed back, inspecting a display of moose beanbag animals, stuffed lobsters and shot glasses. Hurry up, Ken. She looked like a tourist.

  Yet Dawn wasn’t anxious to get home. Her mother had visited her room last night, frazzled. "I can’t believe you told Jeff his parents were on the phone," her mother said. "Couldn’t you have at least waited until after it rang?" "You mean, it didn’t ring?" Dawn asked, all innocence.

  Dawn glanced out the front picture window of the store and her face heated. Scott and Tim crossed the street in their letter jackets, heading to the gas station. Oh, God. Dawn hastened to the back of the shop and hid near the case of bottled drinks. She hadn’t had gym today, and had avoided Scott in English, but now he might walk right past her.

  A few seconds later, the glass door swung open and a bell chimed. Dawn peeked around the cookie shelf. Her stepbrother unwrapped a Snickers bar, bragging about how the Covington hockey team would "rock" this season. Scott caught her eye and started in her direction. Dawn examined the selection of drinks, a twitching in her stomach.

  Scott stopped a couple inches from her and drew a raspberry iced tea out of the glass case. "Hey, how ya doing? I didn’t know you were Ken’s stepsister. He’s a good guy."

  "Yeah." Dawn couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  "Good news. I haven't gotten run over yet."

  "I'm glad," Dawn said. I’m glad? What kind of dumb response was that?

  "Listen, sorry about my friends. They can be jerks."

  "It's not your fault. So ... have you been extra careful?" Dawn uneasily registered his jeans and battered Nikes. It hadn’t clicked at school, but these were the same jeans and sneakers from her vision. He probably wore those all the time; it didn’t mean anything would happen today. His wardrobe nagged at her anyway.

  Scott laughed. "Come on, I’m not in kindergarten. I know how to take care of myself."

  "It doesn’t hurt to watch your back."

  "What’s up with you, anyway? If you keep talking about this stuff, you’re gonna get ragged on even more. Where’d you get the thing about the black truck?"

  Dawn fumbled with a box of Oreos. If she shared too much, he might tell his friends and then they’d treat her even more like a freak. "I don’t know, it just came to me and it shook me up. I would’ve felt guilty if I didn’t tell you."

  He grabbed a mini package of Hostess cupcakes off the shelf. "Do me a favor, keep quiet about it. I don’t want to see you get ranked on. I’m not getting run over by a truck. Trust me."

  "Hey, whatcha doin’, getting your fortune told?" Tim called from the counter.r />
  "I'll get him to shut up," Scott said with a grimace. "Where you from, anyway?"

  "Boston," Dawn said.

  "My parents took me to the Freedom Trail when I was a kid. Maybe sometime you can tell me what it's like to live there."

  "Sure."

  "Cool. See you Monday."

  Scott loped toward the cash register. Dawn prayed he hadn't noticed her blushing. Was he serious about wanting to get to know her? If Scott liked her, (could he really like her?) she might have a genuine chance here.

  That is, if he didn’t die first.

  Dawn joined her stepbrother up front, wishing Scott had worn different clothes. Ken said goodbye to his friends and the group dispersed in the parking lot. Dawn recognized Candace Caldwell pumping gas into a rusty blue Chevy that must need a lot more than fuel to keep it running. Like Scotch Tape.

  Scott and Tim waited on the sidewalk for traffic to clear. Dawn slid into the front seat of Ken's car, heaviness pressing down on her chest. A black pick-up truck drove down the road at steady speed.

  Now! It’s happening now! A voice exploded in her mind.

  Dawn jumped out of the car and ran toward the street. "No!"

  Scott darted into the roadway. He had to have seen the truck; he had to have heard the engine. It whipped through Dawn's mind that he was like a squirrel that didn't know better. She stared as if through a veil of Jell-O, everything happening in slow motion.

  Tim yelled from the sidewalk, and Scott stopped short in the middle of the road. He looked back at them, eyes glassy. Brakes screeched as tires skidded against the pavement.

  "No," Dawn whispered. "Don't let it come true."

  The truck hurled Scott fifteen feet into the air. His body smashed to the ground.

  Chapter Four

  Ken raced over to Dawn. "Somebody call an ambulance!"

  Scott lay contorted in the parking lot, his leg twisted into an impossible angle and gashes crisscrossing his face. Tim crouched beside him, groping for a pulse.

  "I can't tell if he's breathing!" Tim yelled. "Help!"

  Dawn's heart pumped spastically and nausea crawled the walls of her stomach as if she were being Tilt-a-Whirled. Five minutes ago, Scott had been talking to her. Now, he might never wake up.

  It was her fault. Dawn had recognized the clothes. She’d had an uneasy feeling. She should have prevented it.

  Ken pushed Tim aside, tilted Scott’s head back and breathed into his mouth.

  "Is he dead?" a girl asked as a crowd gathered from the high school.

  "Is he alive?"

  "How did it happen?"

  The questions blurred in Dawn's mind. Please, let him be okay. Please, please, please. She lurched over to the store, hung behind the other onlookers. The stench of burning rubber and stale cigarette smoke crept up her nostrils and she swallowed back the bitter taste of bile.

  Sirens howled in the distance. Someone seized Dawn’s hand, a young redhead in her mid-twenties who looked equally off-balance. Tears leaked out of the woman’s eyes and a red cut grazed her lip.

  The driver.

  "I … I can’t believe I hit him. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket. I was only going five miles over the speed limit. There was nothing I could do. Was there?"

  "He didn't give you time to react." Dawn's voice sounded shaky, even to her own ears.

  "Why did he run out like that? What if he's dead?" Sobbing, the woman released Dawn’s hand and covered her ashen face.

  Police cruisers and an ambulance shrieked into the parking lot. As paramedics rushed out with a stretcher, Dawn stumbled toward her stepbrother. Ken took a few uneasy steps backward, his cheeks chalky white and Scott’s blood splattering his Red Sox tee-shirt.

  "Is he ... is he …?" She couldn’t speak the word poised on her tongue.

  "I think he’s alive, but he doesn’t look good, Dawn." Ken wiped a reddened hand on his jeans.

  "Don't give up yet. Maybe he'll be okay." But Dawn knew, more than anyone else, that it wasn’t true.

  "I'm gonna puke." Ken bolted behind the gas station and threw up into the weeds clogging the edges of the building. Dawn wanted to fetch him some water, but she couldn’t move, her feet plastered to the ground as paramedics loaded Scott into the ambulance.

  A uniformed police woman in sunglasses approached Dawn and flipped open her notebook. "I’m Officer Weaver and we need to speak to all the witnesses. Can you tell me what you saw?"

  Sirens roaring, the ambulance fired out into the road and hooked a left. Dawn followed the spangling red lights with her gaze. "The driver was speeding a little, but it wasn’t her fault," she stammered. "Scott jumped in front of her."

  "Why did Scott run into the street? Was he fooling around?"

  "I don’t think so. He'd been standing at the curb, waiting to cross. Then suddenly he was in the street."

  "Was he using alcohol or drugs, to your knowledge?"

  Dawn shook her head.

  "Scott wouldn't do drugs," Ken said, joining them. "He isn't like that. Besides, he couldn’t have been drinking. We just got out of school."

  Officer Weaver lowered her glasses, revealing sympathetic brown eyes which had viewed too many accident scenes. "I’m not trying to imply anything about your friend, but I do have to ask these questions. Thanks for your help, and if you think of anything else, please let us know."

  "Scott wasn't on drugs," Ken said as the officer left to approach Tim.

  "I know," Dawn said.

  ***

  Dawn spent the evening hanging out in the living room with her mother, Jeff and Ken. She didn’t want to be alone, wondering whether Scott would live or die.

  Ken glumly watched TV from the couch while Jeff hunched on a folding chair, working on his latest model ship. He had spread newspapers over a card table and covered it with little bottles of paint, turpentine and glue. Dawn’s mother proofed a brochure for a client in the seat beside Jeff. Since leaving her full-time job at a magazine, she’d started her own freelance graphic design business.

  Dawn laid her math book on the canoe-shaped coffee table and rested her head against the couch cushion. She had done several unassigned trig problems, but eyestrain prevented her from tackling anymore. Math brought her down to earth, pulling her away from the random thoughts that barraged her senses.

  As anxiety descended again, Dawn found herself riveted to Jeff’s actions. He brushed black paint over a section of the hull with slow careful strokes. He’d been working on that same model for weeks and it wasn’t any closer to a ship despite his constant attention.

  Jeff caught her observing. "This must seem pretty boring."

  Dawn shrugged. "No. It just looks like you need a lot of patience."

  "It helps my brain unwind after a long day. My head feels clearer when I’m done. Sometimes a solution to a problem will come to me when I’m painting or gluing pieces together."

  "Really?" Anything that might clear her head sounded good to Dawn. Now she understood why he enjoyed the logic, flow and repetitiveness, ultimately leading to creating something out of nothing. It was like math, except more artistic. More fun.

  "Sure. Tonight, it’s helped me to get my mind off Scott. I’ve seen that kid grow up. He used to come over the house and play with Ken." Jeff’s Adam’s Apple bobbed in his throat. "Do you want to finish painting this section for me while I start on something else?"

  Yes, yes, yes! Dawn itched to hold a paintbrush, but she knew nothing about models. All she’d do was screw it up. Then Jeff would think she was a klutz, although he’d be too nice to say so.

  "No thanks," she said. "I’m not really into that kind of thing."

  "Too bad. I can’t get Ken into models, either, and was hoping I could find a partner to help with the grunt work."

  Dawn glanced over at her stepfather. Was Jeff as disappointed as he sounded? He had lowered his head to paint and she couldn’t see his face.

  "I wish we could get another update on Scott," Ken said.


  Dawn clasped her wrist in a pincer grip. She wanted, yet didn’t want, the latest news. A few hours ago, they’d heard through the grapevine that Scott was critical in intensive care. By now, he could be dead.

  "I know. Me too. Scott's mother must be a wreck." Jeff turned to Dawn’s mother. "I dated Susan in high school, and we see each other around town. Her kids are her life."

  Dawn's mother planted her elbows on the card table and rubbed the sides of her neck. Her mouth drooped at the corners. "This is awful. I wish you kids didn’t have to see it happen. What was Scott thinking?"

  "I don’t get what he was doing," Jeff said. "I heard he was playing Chicken. I hope that wasn’t the case."

  "That's the weird thing, Dad," Ken said. "I don't think he was messing around. He seemed out of it."

  "Could he have gotten dizzy?" asked Dawn's mother.

  "I guess," Ken said. "I don't know. I just looked up and there he was."

  They’d analyzed the accident from every angle, and it still made no sense. This time nothing could distract Dawn from the truth, not mathematics or model ships.

  She had tried to warn Scott.

  She’d failed.

  ***

  Dawn sensed the gloom the moment she entered the high school. Small groups clustered in the corridors and two girls embraced by a locker.

  "I can't believe he's dead," one said in a wooden voice.

  Another girl wept in the arms of a female teacher. An invisible punch slammed into Dawn’s gut as she fumbled with her locker combination. Maybe they weren't talking about Scott. He was critical. He had to be critical.

  "You!" Renee strode toward her, mascara striping the bags under her dark snapping eyes.

  Tim Travers and four other guys closed in around Dawn. Vicky stooped behind them, clutching a damp tissue. Renee had dressed in a black blazer, skirt and nylons, her gold necklace and barrettes accenting the outfit. She would have looked sophisticated except her face had the ruddy puffiness associated with crying.

  "You told my boyfriend that he'd get hit by a car, and now he's..." Her high-pitched voice broke off.