The Bright Effect

by Autumn Doughton

  I silently beg Daphne to look at me, but she doesn’t. Instead, she hides her red face, turns and runs, disappearing into the night.

  There’s not even a question—I follow and find her on the side of the barn boxed-in by two rusted out cisterns. Her head is bent and I can tell even from this angle that her face is wet and blotchy from crying.

  “What was all that about?” I ask, refilling my lungs with the humid air.

  “I don’t know…” She gulps and brushes at the tears clinging to her eyelids. I think I’d been expecting her to shake it off, put on her famous Daphne smile and give Spencer the bird, so I’m more than a little disappointed when she follows this with, “But I really screwed up.”

  “I was there, Daphne. You didn’t do anything.”

  She hiccups. “Spencer accused me of flirting, but I swear I wasn’t.”

  “I know you weren’t,” I console her.

  “It doesn’t matter because I’ve ruined everything.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s a jerk and if he—”

  “Stop it!” She pops onto both feet, her chin jutting out at me in that stubborn way of hers. “I’m sick of you saying things about my boyfriend and acting like you’re allowed to. Just because it never works out with you and guys, doesn’t mean that it has to be the same for me!”

  We have gained an audience. Audra is next to me, and a few paces away, I barely make out Sebastian hanging back in the shadows.

  “Daphne…” I reach for her hand.

  “Let me go,” she yells, pulling back hard and almost tripping.

  “You’re drunk and acting crazy,” I rationalize.

  “Like usual, you don’t understand anything,” she accuses. Then she swipes the back of her hand across her face and tears across the tall grass in the direction of Byron’s house.

  I start to chase her, but Audra stops me. “Just stay here. I’ll go.”

  “But I need to talk to her.”

  “I’ll take care of her and make sure that she gets home safe.”

  “But—”

  Audra doesn’t give me another chance to argue with her before she takes off into a sprint. Feeling lost, like I’ve forgotten the words to a favorite song, I stand there and watch them both go.

  Several hollow seconds later, Sebastian asks, “Are you okay?”

  I simply shake my head. No, I’m not okay. Not even a little bit.

  “Do you want a ride?”

  It occurs to me then that I probably do need a ride. I came with Daphne in Audra’s car, but after what happened I’m not sure...

  “I don’t know,” I say haltingly as I swallow back the hurt that’s bubbling up inside of me.

  “Where do you live?” he asks.

  “Out on Hickory Road. Down past where the railroad tracks cut south.”

  “Not the old Parker Plantation?”

  Yes, my house has a name, and, yes, it was once considered a plantation. Now the fields have given way to trees and wild grasses and the house is just a house. A big one at that, but still just a house.

  “That’s it. My father’s mother was a Parker.”

  He looks at me for a moment and whistles. “That’s quite a home.”

  Home. I definitely don’t want to be here anymore, but I don’t feel like being there either. Not with Daphne one room away and still fuming at me.

  Sebastian must read something into my silence because he says, “Look, I don’t have to take you home, Amelia. I’m sure I could find someone else to drive you if that’s better.”

  “It’s not that,” I reply, wrapping my arms securely over my chest. “I was just thinking about being home right now with Daphne still mad at me.”

  He considers this. “So if you could be anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

  I don’t even think about my answer. “The beach.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  “What?” I almost laugh at the absurdity.

  “Let’s go,” he repeats and this time it dawns on me that he’s being dead serious.

  “Right now?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” I trail off, unable to come up with a real answer. None of my normal excuses seem to apply here and the truth of the matter is that, in this whole mess of a night, the idea of getting in Sebastian Holbrook’s truck and going to the beach is the only thing that makes any kind of sense.

  So I end up shrugging helplessly and saying the only thing I can think of when faced with the prospect of a road trip at eleven o’clock at night with someone I barely know.

  “Your music or mine?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bash

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “What can’t you believe?” I ask, taking a step toward her. There are no lights out here, but I have no problem seeing her clearly. The moon and the stars are hanging low over the Atlantic, reflecting off the black water and lighting up the whole night with a phosphorescent glow.

  Amelia balances on one leg and twirls herself on the sand. “I can’t believe that we’re at the beach. That we actually left the party and drove out here.”

  I shake my head. “We live in the Lowlands. Haven’t you ever been to the beach before?”

  “Obviously I have. But never at night… and never ‘just because’ and with no real plan.”

  She slips off her loafers, deposits them in a pile just past the craggy shadows of the tall grasses that line the sand dunes and skips down to the shore. When she hits the spot where the beach goes smooth, she stops to roll the bottoms of her leggings up to her knees. Then she steps forward and when the salty water washes over her toes, she throws her head back and lets out a giddy laugh. Instantly, I love the sound of it and decide that seeing her like this—happy and unencumbered—was worth the price of the gas it took to get here. Especially after how upset she was at the party.

  “Are you coming?” she asks, looking back.

  Crouching low, I quickly untie my sneakers and get them off my feet. I leave them beside her shoes and crunch my way through the cool, damp sand to the edge of the water.

  When I reach Amelia’s side, her eyes flicker to mine and that little movement reverberates deep in my gut.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she muses. “But at the same time, doesn’t it seem almost dangerous? The way the water is so dark and you can’t see what’s moving under the surface of it.”

  I don’t respond. I know we’re supposed to be talking about the ocean, but my eyes are on her and I can’t seem to drag them away. And I wonder if she senses it—the way I’m looking like I’ve never dared to look before.

  Can she feel me tracing the outline of her lips? Memorizing the shape of her eyelids and the slope of her chin? Or noticing how sexy her shoulders look in that shirt and how it fits her tightly in all the right places?

  If I didn’t let myself really understand it before, I understand it now.

  Amelia is beautiful. And not in a way that’s fake or overly made-up like most of the girls I come across. She’s herself and, really, that’s enough.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” she says, gaze still on the water. “I wouldn’t have known.”

  Eventually, I make myself speak. “Wouldn’t have known what?”

  She wraps her arms over her body and shivers. “That it could be like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like magic.”

  I chuckle.

  “You’re making fun of me,” she says flatly.

  I shake my head. “I’m not.”

  “But you’re laughing,” she points out.

  “It’s not that I’m laughing at you. It’s that I’ve never known someone to get so poetic about the beach. I can’t imagine what your reaction would be if I had driven you all the way to Disney World.”

  “Disney World is overrated,” she says. “Well, except for the teacups. I love the teacups and anything that spins.”

  I snort. “Any kind of spinny ride makes m
e hurl.”

  Now it’s her turn to laugh.

  For a while after that, we leave our bare feet in the water, letting the salty ocean air whip into our faces and sting our eyeballs, and we talk. Well, mostly Amelia does the talking. She tells me about vacations she’s been on and explains that her family goes skiing someplace new every February. What eventually comes out is that she’s been on mountains all over the world—Switzerland, Japan, France. Impressed, I intentionally don’t admit that I’ve only been out of South Carolina twice in my life.

  And in those few sacred minutes, I discover Amelia and the stuff that you can’t tell when you see her in the hallways at school or look at her yearbook photo.

  I find out that she wishes she could play an instrument, and that she danced—as in ballet—for her whole life until sophomore year when she decided that it was taking up too much time after school. And she’s not as into tennis as she used to be, but she feels like she has to stay on the team because she already made a commitment and being team captain senior year looks good to colleges. And, most surprisingly, that she doesn’t see herself as popular.

  “Audra’s really my only friend,” she says, shrugging. “And, of course, Daphne when she’s not furious with me.”

  By this point, we’ve trudged back up the beach and are sitting on the sand next to our shoes.

  “Everyone in the entire senior class, if not the whole school, is your friend,” I contend. “And you can’t deny it because I’ve seen you in the hallways and in the cafeteria surrounded by your many admirers.”

  “Those people aren’t my friends,” she maintains. “They act like they care because their daddy knows my daddy. Or maybe they want me to do something for them like allocate more of the class budget for their club or be a go-between with one of the faculty advisors on vending machine issues.”

  “Vending machine issues?”

  “Like, what candy bars to stock and whether or not it’s necessary to have two flavors of Fanta.”

  “Which, obviously, it is.”

  She smiles but it doesn’t reach the rest of her face. “But, see… that’s not friendship. That’s nothing but a business transaction, which is how all my daddy’s so-called friendships are. It’s all, ‘you rub my back and I’ll rub yours.’ I might play along for now, but that’s not what I want for my own life. I want something different.”

  “Like what?”

  “Something real.”

  I wince at my own ignorance. My life is all about keeping up and juggling responsibilities, so how is it that I never once considered the possibility that Amelia’s life is like that too?

  “Up there!” Amelia’s body jerks into mine, breaking into my thoughts. “It’s a shooting star.”

  I look to where she’s pointing at an object blinking in the sky. “I think that’s a satellite.”

  “Hmmm… And I guess you can’t make a wish on a satellite?”

  “Only if you’re wishing for better cell phone reception.”

  This makes her crack up and it’s so big and loud and unexpected that I start laughing too.

  When our eyes are wet and our stomachs are sore, she clears her throat and asks me, “So, what does it say?”

  At first I think she’s talking about the satellite and I’m confused. Then I see that she’s holding up one of my sneakers and I realize she wants to know about the quote on the sole of my shoe.

  “All your tomorrows start here.”

  She rubs her thumb over the words. “It’s cool. Did you write it?”

  “No, it’s a Neil Gaiman quote.”

  As anticipated, she gives me a blank look. Unless Amelia is into fantasy or graphic novels, she has no idea who I’m talking about.

  “He’s my favorite writer,” I tell her. “When my mom was sick, I had to take a bunch of time off of school to help get her to and from her chemo appointments in Columbia.”

  “That’s why you were gone for so long last year?”

  I nod. “Yeah, it was a lot of hours waiting around the hospital and I was bored so I started to read a lot. She found me a signed copy of Fragile Things at a used bookstore.” I shrug and look to the dark water, which is just about to crash onto the sand. “Anyway, I guess I read it so often that this line stuck with me. And when she died, it became our motto—Carter’s and mine. We had no idea what was going to happen, but every minute was a chance to start over and have the rest of our lives in front of us. And, for me, it’s a double meaning.”

  “How so?”

  I pause to take a breath and reorder my thoughts. “When I agreed to be Carter’s guardian, I basically told my mom that all of my tomorrows were going to be about him.”

  “Did you ever consider not taking him?”

  I would be lying if I told her no, the thought never crossed my mind. “We have an aunt and uncle who live in Charleston and they wanted him,” I say. “For a while that was my mother’s plan. But after going through the treatments and all of that, things changed. We wanted to be together in our own small family and keep hold of something that we knew. It was hard at first and it can still get frustrating at times, but I have to remember that every moment from here on out starts and ends with him. I have to do right by the promise I made.”

  “All your tomorrows…” she murmurs, a small smile touching her lips. “I like it.”

  I decide that it’s only fair if I get to ask her a question. “My turn.”

  “Your turn?”

  “Mm-hmm.” I nod. “What’s with the leggings?”

  Her forehead rumples in confusion. “What about them?”

  “Well, let’s see,” I say, using the tip of my finger to brush the sand off of the leggings in question. “What’s on those?” I squint. “Are those supposed to be monkeys?”

  “Those are not monkeys! They’re sloths!”

  Her feisty outrage is adorable. “Sloths?”

  “Yes, though I do have a pair of monkey leggings,” she admits.

  I snicker. “C’mon. I know there has to be a story there. Half of you looks like every other wannabe sorority girl or doctor’s wife in Green Cove and the other half looks like you’ve got a different mind about things.”

  “It’s silly.”

  “It’s not silly,” I reassure her.

  “It is actually, but since you saved me from that party and my sister’s wrath and brought me out to the beach, I’ll tell you anyway.” She sweeps her glossy brown hair out of her eyes before continuing. “When Daphne and I turned fourteen, in addition to the usual bookstore gift certificate, our grandmother bought us each a subscription to a legging-of-the-month club.”

  “Legging-of-the-month? Be serious,” I chide just to piss her off. Because, if I’m honest, I’m starting to like it when she gets worked up. “That does not exist.”

  “Oh, it exists,” she scoffs. “I know this because I’m a member.”

  “Do you guys have membership cards and secret handshakes and stuff like that?”

  “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

  I laugh. “Okay, I’m hooked. Tell me more about the leggings.”

  “Well,” she says on a sigh, “predictably, Daphne hated them. And I don’t know… I guess I started wearing them around the house at first because they were comfortable, and then I did it as a joke to prove a point to my sister. But eventually I liked them just for me.”

  “What’s not to like? They’re soft. They’re stretchy. And they’re covered in sloths.”

  “Exactly,” she replies, a subversive grin stretching across her face. “And in a weird way, maybe wearing leggings is my idea of rebelling. Everyone thinks…” The smile fades and Amelia turns so that all I can see is her profile haloed by the silvery moonlight. Like this, you would almost think she was lit up from the inside. “They think that I’m a perfect southern belle or an uptight daddy’s girl or whatever, and the leggings are just the tiniest way that I can do the unexpected. Does that make any sense?”

  “It does,�
�� I say, my mind straying to what I said earlier. I called her perfect, didn’t I?

  “I know that it’s a lame rebellion, on par with refusing to eat my green vegetables, but it drives Nancy crazy so it must be working a little bit.”

  “Who’s Nancy?

  She’s quiet for a second and I notice how her fingertips burrow into the sand. “Nancy is my stepmom.”

  “Your parents are divorced?”

  Again, she doesn’t speak right away and I wonder if I’ve overstepped—gotten too personal for her. But then she says, “No, my mother died from complications when Daphne and I were born.”

  The revelation hits me with the force of a truck. “What?”

  Amelia concentrates on the water and pulls her legs into her chest and hugs her knees. “Yeah. I’m fuzzy on the details because my dad doesn’t talk about it much. Obviously I don’t remember her the way you remember your mom. I only know her through pictures, so it’s strange to miss someone I never met. Still… I do in my own way.”

  She pauses and I hear her breathing change, get less even. “Sometimes when I’m not sure how to feel about it, I think about my father and what it must have felt like for him. Can you imagine? When he left for the hospital with my mom, he must have had so much hope. Like, everything was on the horizon for both of them. And then suddenly he was alone, coming home with two daughters and no wife.”

  My throat has gone dry. Say something you prick, I tell myself and I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

  Amelia lowers her head and for a moment, I can’t see her face in the darkness. “Then he met Nancy when Daphne and I were two and… well, I don’t want you to get the idea that she’s awful. She’s not like a stepmother in a bad story or anything like that. She has high expectations and they can be hard to live up to, but she loves us. And, really, she’s the only mom we’ve ever known.”

  There’s so much to say but I have no idea how to begin. All this time I’ve assumed Amelia’s life was what it seemed like on the outside. Easy. Simple. Uncomplicated.

  But she’s turning out to be the same as one of those puzzles—those optical illusions—where the longer you stare, the more the lines slant and the picture changes. And I don’t know much, but I do know that I want to stick around and solve the puzzle.