Sara (7 page)

Before I could say anything, she was gone.

“Wow,” Glenn said, looking out the window and watching her in the parking lot. “She's gorgeous!”

“Sure is.” I finished my shake. “Looks like she's got the hots for you, too, stud.”

“I know,” he said, wonderingly.

I finished my hamburger. “So, does this mean you're straight now?”

He gave me a funny look. “Why would you ask me that?” His eyes narrowed.

“You're going on a date with a really hot babe,” I replied, sucking on my milkshake straw until it gurgled. “I think it's a fair question.”

“Well…” He looked confused for a moment. “No, I mean, she's really pretty and sexy and all that, but no, I still like guys.”

I stood up. “Don't you think you should tell her?”

We walked out to the car. “Yeah, I'll tell her tomorrow night. I don't even know what movie's playing in town. Do you?”

“I think
Harry Potter
is playing.” It was; I'd checked when I was going to ask Candy out.

He brought that up on the drive back to his house. “Why didn't you ask Candy out? You had the perfect chance, you know.”

“Yeah. I don't know.”

“I think Laney was jealous.”

I nodded, but couldn't help but wonder what difference it made. He didn't like girls anymore, so what difference did it make who Laney went out with? Or if she was jealous?

I'd never talked to Laney about the Glenn thing, and as we pulled into the driveway of his house, I wondered about it.

I'd been caught pretty off guard, and it hadn't been easy for me to deal with.

What was it like for Laney to find out the guy she'd been seeing off and on for a whole year has come out of the closet?

As I got undressed in the guest room, I wondered if that was why Laney had started going out with Noah—to get even with Glenn.

It made sense in a warped kind of way.

And he'd been right—she hadn't been happy to see him flirting with Sara.

I turned off the light and got under the covers. I hadn't realized how tired I was until that moment. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

A sound woke me up, and I sat up in my bed.

I was in my own bed, in my own house, in the dark, and someone was at the window.

“Let me in, Tony, let me in.”

I got out of the bed, in my underwear, and walked over to the window, and standing in the grass outside was Sara. She was naked, the moon shining on her silky white body.

“Let me in, Tony, let me in.”

I opened the window, and she climbed in and kissed me. Her skin was cold as marble, her lips cold as ice.

“Take me to bed, Tony, I want you.”

I walked over to the bed and lay down, and she climbed on top of me.

“I need you, Tony, I need you.”

And her face was a skull.

I screamed, in my dream.

And I could hear her laugh.

I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

“You will not stand in my way, Tony. No one will, or can.”

And she laughed as I continued to scream.

I woke up. The digital clock on the nightstand said 3:30. The moon was shining through the curtains. I was back in the guest room at Glenn's house, drenched in sweat.

I shivered and realized I was terrified.

I didn't sleep well the rest of the night. It was like my mind was afraid the dream would come back if I went into a deep sleep. So I tossed and turned the rest of the night in a half sleep where I
was
asleep but was aware of everything. I finally managed to go into a deeper sleep as the room was starting to get light.

It seemed like five minutes later when Glenn shook me.

“Dude, you got to get up.” He grinned at me as I opened my eyes and blinked a few times. “I have to go meet my dad in town, so hurry up—I need to get rolling.”

I rubbed sleep out of the corner of my eyes. I was still sleepy, and my muscles ached from the game. “What time is it?”

“Almost ten.” Glenn paused at the door. “I made coffee.”

I sat up in the bed, yawning and stretching. I stood up and pulled on my jeans and T-shirt. I walked into the bathroom across the hall, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. As I stared in the mirror I could see bags under my bloodshot eyes. I couldn't remember everything about the dream, and what I could remember was fading as I woke up. I just knew it had been bad—and it had scared the crap out of me.

I drank two cups of coffee and ate two pieces of toast with strawberry jelly before Glenn rushed me out of the house. He was acting weird—well, weirder than usual. I didn't understand what the big deal was about him going into town to meet his dad—he wouldn't say what about—and it wasn't like him to be so noncommunicative. He pulled up in front of my house and I grabbed the duffel bag out of the backseat.

“Call you later,” he said as I shut the door.

I started to say something but he drove off, leaving me standing there feeling kind of stupid.

I yawned again and decided to go lie down and try to sleep some more. Mom's car was gone—I remembered she'd taken an extra shift—and I had chores to do, but I wasn't in the mood. There was a note on the kitchen table—she'd taken my little brother Tommy over to our grandmother's for the weekend.

I had the whole house to myself.

Before going back to bed, I put my football uniform in the washing machine and got it started.

I no sooner lay down in my bed than I heard a lawn mower start up. I moaned and opened my eyes, staring up at the ceiling. Our own lawn needed mowing—one of the chores I needed to do, and I might as well get it over with.

But the bed felt good, and even though I wouldn't be able to sleep with that lawn mower going, I decided to just lie there for a while.

Glenn had been acting strangely.

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that something was up he didn't want me to know about. Mr. Lockhart always got up early every Saturday and Sunday to play golf at the country club—as long as the weather was decent. He always had a tee time for seven and was usually home after eighteen holes no later than noon. He sometimes picked up a pizza on his way.

So why wasn't Mr. Lockhart playing golf this morning?

It's probably nothing
, I thought, putting my hands behind my head and closing my eyes.

But Glenn had rushed me out of there—which he
never
did.

Maybe he's meeting that Sara girl.

My eyes opened again.

I licked my lips.

I hadn't liked her.

You're just jealous because she's into him instead of you
, a voice jeered inside my head.

No question about it, she was a beautiful girl. She looked like she could be a model or a movie star rather than a senior in a rural Kansas high school. But that wasn't it. Something about her—

You had a nightmare about her. That's all.

—didn't seem right to me.

I tried to remember the dream without any luck. I closed my eyes and tried to take a nap but my mind was too wound up and the roar of the lawn mower from down the street was too much. Finally, I gave up and put on some shorts and a ripped-up old T-shirt. I got out our battered old lawn mower from the shed in the backyard and pulled the string, starting it up.

I hated mowing our lawn. We didn't have as much lawn as the Lockharts did, but the Lockharts had a riding mower. Ours wasn't even self-propelled, and our yard was full of ruts and holes that made pushing the damned thing around an ordeal. By the time I was finished with the backyard I was drenched in sweat and in a bad mood. I turned the mower off and went inside to get something to drink.

I heard my cell phone chirp when I went into the kitchen. It was still in my duffel bag, and I saw that I'd missed a call.

I grinned when I pressed the voice mail button and heard Candy's voice. “Hey, Tony, still sorry about the game last night. Can you give me a call when you get a chance?”

I poured myself a glass of iced tea and sat down at the kitchen table. My hands were covered with grass dust and dirt, and I pressed the cold glass against the side of my sweating face.

“Hey, Candy, sorry I missed your call,” I said when she answered. “I was out mowing the lawn.”

“In this heat? Are you crazy?”

I laughed. “Needs to be done. What are you up to today?”

“I meant to ask you last night, but didn't get a chance.” Her voice sounded nervous, tentative.

I leaned back in the chair, and the front two legs came up off the floor as I balanced on the back two. “So, ask.”

“You remember how Laney said Linda Avery was having a party tonight?”

“Yeah. I wasn't invited.” Linda Avery was the richest girl at school. Her parents owned a huge cattle ranch about five miles north of the school, and she was an only child. She was spoiled rotten—none of the stores in Kahola were good enough for her clothes. She shopped in Kansas City or Wichita. She'd gotten a BMW convertible for her sixteenth birthday, and she'd been queen of the county fair during the summer. Her parents went out of town a lot, and she always had parties at their big house whenever they were gone. They had a pool and a hot tub.

I'd never been invited to one of her parties, which supposedly were the height of high school decadence. She got some of the ranch workers to buy beer for her, and kids always got drunk at them. Some parents disapproved, but you didn't criticize Princess Linda to her parents.

“Well, I was, and I was wondering if you'd go with me?”

I couldn't help it. I grinned from ear to ear and felt like I was about to float up out of the chair. “Are you asking me out on a
date
?” I teased.

She was quiet so long I was just about to apologize when she said, “Don't be a douchebag, Tony. Of course I'm asking you out on a date! Because apparently I'll graduate from college before you ever get the nerve to ask me, and I'm tired of waiting.”

“Actually, I was going to ask you out at the dance last night, but we didn't have one.” My cheek muscles were starting to ache, but I couldn't stop grinning.

She laughed. “So I wouldn't have had to humiliate myself today if we'd won the game last night?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Well, that's just another reason to be mad about losing the damned game.” She whistled. “So, what do you say? You want to go to the party?”

“No.” As soon as it came out I started babbling. “I mean, I want to go out with you, yeah, any time, but I don't want to go to Linda Avery's stupid party.” Not even a date with Candy Dixon, in my opinion, was worth it. I didn't like any of those kids and none of them liked me.

I kind of hoped Candy would decide not to go, too, and then I could suggest a movie or something, but she didn't.

“Well, you want to go out next weekend, then?” she asked.

I was disappointed, but it was a date—even if it was a week away. “Yeah, that would be great.”

“Okay—we can talk about it at school Monday.” And she hung up.

I put my cell phone down and started whistling as I walked back outside to finish mowing the lawn. A date with the head cheerleader!

Not bad, right?

I finished mowing the front lawn and spent the rest of the afternoon doing the laundry and some cleaning around the house so Mom could just relax and enjoy having her day off on Sunday. I turned the television on and watched some football games on ESPN. Mom came home with a pizza and a trunk load of groceries from the Kahola Safeway, and I told her about my big date for the next weekend.

“I might be able to slip you a couple of twenties,” she said with a frown as she put the empty pizza box in the trash.

“It's okay, Mom, I can use some of my hay-baling money.”

She got a sad look on her face. “I feel terrible, Tony, that I can't—”

“It's okay, Mom.” I hated it when she looked like that, and it made me hate my asshole father all the more. The support check hadn't come again in the mail that day. And I changed the subject.

She went to bed early, leaving me in the living room watching football games. I ended up going to bed early myself—out of boredom more than anything else. I was still tired from not sleeping well the night before.

As I got into bed, I wished Zack Zimmer hadn't turned out to be such a jerk. Before the whole Glenn-is-gay thing I could have called Zack and we'd have bummed around, maybe got high, found something to do in this podunk town.

I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I woke up when my cell phone started ringing. The sun was already up, and as I looked at my alarm clock my first thought was
Who in the hell is calling me at nine in the morning on a Sunday?
I sat up and picked up my phone. I grinned when I saw the caller ID. “Morning, Candy.” I said.