“I wouldn’t put it past me.” I shrug.
“Oh, you kids! You’re all so maddeningly open about everything. It makes me long for the days when we were ashamed! Ashamed of our own shadows!”
And now she’s put on her expensive orange crumpled hat. “Well, I’m just down the road. Don’t hesitate to drop by if you get bored contemplating your future identity or whatever it is you plan on doing here on your own. My door is always open. Ta-ta!”
With that final gesture, she’s out the entryway and down the front stairs without even a look back.
She gets to the end of the gravel driveway before I decide.
I like her.
Chapter 5
I’ve never been very good at sleeping. Even in kindergarten. There were always too many things to be excited about. Or scared of. For instance, being left. What if you put your head down and went off to happy dreamy cloud land . . . woke up and, poof, everybody was gone? Just like that?
And what about tonight? I’m just supposed to lie here and easily fall asleep in my little converted attic?
Yes, I understand there are two perfectly wonderful and grand bedrooms downstairs. We’ve been through this. Not only is there nothing museum-like or breakable here, this attic fits my state of being.
But it isn’t easy to sleep. This is more of a toss and turn situation. I can’t seem to get comfortable and there is that one thought, that very specific one, that I have been avoiding all day.
Here, on my first night, that thought wants to drag itself out of my brain’s recesses and into the open. But there is no way I am letting that happen.
Nope. No, sir.
The problem is, it’s quiet as a tomb here. Silent enough to allow just about any thought to pop into your head. Like, if you went deep enough, you could solve the mysteries of quantum physics. You could invent a replacement for money. You could do just about anything.
But most especially, you could think that one thought. Until it killed you.
Maybe if I just get on my feet, walk around the room, stretch my legs. Or maybe even head outside.
Yes, what if I go for a little stroll. A moonlight stroll. Why not? This is a tiny little town, out in the middle of nowhere, far away from the hurly-burly of city life. It’s totally safe. I could just take a moonlit constitutional.
Have I ever taken a nighttime stroll before in my life? No, no, I have not. Does it seem imperative I do right this very moment? Yes, yes, it does.
Before I know it, the outside is pulling me like a magnet.
Come to me, come, and I will soothe you. Come to me, and there will be peace. It’s tugging me down the stairs and through the entry hall, out the front door. No need to get dressed, there’s no one out there. No need to lock the door, this is country life.
I saunter out around the house, to the back, where the grass grows across the vast expanse of lawn into a field of some kind of reeds, restless, waist high, blowing this way and that—a single organism, a sea of reeds.
It’s beautiful, really. This choreographed dance to the wind. This midnight show.
This must be what has drawn me out here in my pajamas. Out here, in the moonlight expanse, just a slight breeze. A summer breeze. The night air cooling the day.
But that’s when I see it.
“See” is the wrong word. Feel. That’s when I feel it. Whatever it is.
How to describe it. It’s like a sudden rush of feeling. A slam. And suddenly I am aware of being watched. And I know exactly where I’m being watched from.
I’m being watched from inside the house.
The completely empty house.
Chapter 6
Before we go any further, let’s get the facts straight. The underlying reality of the situation. The underlying reality of me. Because otherwise none of this is going to make sense.
Some people, like the professor and his absentee wife, for instance, come from a long line of money that’s presumably been there since the Mayflower and accumulated nicely over the centuries. And some people, their dads maybe invented Post-its, or fidget spinners, or what have you, and now they live in a giant mansion with a man cave and a pool in the back with a Ping-Pong table in the pool house.
I am not those people.
I, dearest reader, am from that class of people that has to track every dime, every cent, every new pack of underwear, every extravagant Frappuccino, every bank balance, every parking ticket. Payment in and out, every bill, etc. etc. etc. And, so, what that means is . . . let’s say someone like me gets into a really good college out on the East Coast somewhere. A college with people named Muffy or Binky or Blair. Unlike dear Muffy or Binky or Blair, I would have to figure out, to the letter, exactly how such a feat could be accomplished.
In this case, the feat being the tuition, room, and board. I would have to somehow patch together a quilt of scholarships, grants, and employment to succeed at such an attendance. Our friends Muffy, Binky, or Blair, you see, have advantages. I have no such thing. So I would have to cobble this whole thing together myself. Out of nothing. Out of magic. Out of dirt.
Look, I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me. I just hope you will see this for what it is. Which is threading the needle. A unicycle act on a tightrope. Underneath, no cushion. No kind words. No second chances.
And this, here, this employment. This summer caretaking job in a lonely house on a winding street outside mainline Pennsylvania, this is the opening act. The one upon which all other acts rest. And it happens to be a huge amount of money. To be here. That’s the lucky part. I got lucky when I knocked on this particular door. It’s more money than I had ever even dreamed of acquiring on my own, straight out of high school, summer before my freshman year. In fact, it’s almost a suspiciously high amount of money, for the task at hand, come to think of it.
But I need it.
Desperately.
So, mes amis, that is the context through which I would like you to view the forthcoming events.
Simply put, I’m in a tight spot.
Let’s say, for instance, I somehow magically decide not to throw myself in front of a vehicle during my first semester. In such a case, my only escape from the horrible past is Bryn Mawr. It is my ejection hatch. A new start. So, there can only be two possibilities: (1) shuffling off this mortal coil; (2) starting a new life in college. Suffice to say, I haven’t quite decided. I am keeping my options open. But there is one thing that is absolutely, positively not an option. And that is . . . going back to Nebraska.
But this job, here, at this strange place is an essential piece of the puzzle. I cannot quit. I cannot flake. I cannot leave.
Which is why I am trying extremely hard to explain to myself right now that what I am feeling, coming from over there, inside the house, is not actually real.
Chapter 7
If this were a real thing I was feeling, and not, as is logical, a figment of my imagination, it would be described first, even though I can’t actually see it, as a live thing. Some sort of entity. A being.
Whatever it is, this nonexistent thing, it is staring daggers at me from inside the house. It is saying to me in a voice that cannot be heard but only felt: Get out.
All five senses are engaged in an instant.
The information that I’m getting from it doesn’t allow me to think of it as anything nice.