Wait Until Twilight (5 page)

I must have dozed off because my head is in my lap and there’s some drool on my chin that I wipe away with my sleeve. My body feels so heavy leaning there against the post of the porch. Then I notice someone in front of me. I look up, but the sun’s at his back, so all I can see is a giant shadow standing over me with blinding light coming from behind them. I still feel half asleep, so I wipe my eyes. Then
without a word he slowly, almost leisurely, puts his hands around my neck. At first I think it’s a joke and I giggle because I’m ticklish around the neck, but the grip tightens and tightens until I can’t breathe. Panic starts to set in. I want to see who it is, but his face is just shadow and with the light from behind it, it’s like looking at an eclipse. My hands can do nothing to the iron grip. Its strength makes me wonder if it’s even human—maybe it’s a statue come to life or a robot. It doesn’t seem real.
So this is what it feels like to be choked to death
, I think momentarily, in the midst of my panic. Slowly the dark shape starts to blur, and I can feel I’m losing consciousness, as if I’m just falling back to sleep. It feels too easy. Too easy to die like this.
I’m going to die right now
. Shit.
God I hope this is a dream
. Then it all fades to a pitch-black silence.

“H
EY, WAKE UP
! W
AKE UP
!” Someone’s shaking me. It’s Mrs. Greenan standing over me. I can see her clear as day. I’m lying on my side with my textbook sprawled in front of me next to a grocery bag. I sit up and put my hands around my neck. The sun has already sunk below the treetops beyond the neighborhood. I was out for a good half hour by the looks of it. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asks.

“I thought someone was choking me.” I put my hand on my throat gently. Does it actually feel a little sore?

“Choking you? It was just a dream. You were asleep.”

“I could have sworn…”

“Did you see anything?” she asks nervously. She looks around. “What did you see?”

“Nothing. I was waiting for you, ma’am.” I keep rubbing my neck.

“What for? You want another peek at a horror movie? That’s what you called it, didn’t you?”

“I just wanted to say how sorry I was…”

“Well, you’ve said it, now you can go.”

“I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“I saw from the moment you saw them what was in your heart. I’ve seen it before. I don’t need that around here. They don’t need that, so take your apologies and be back home with you.”

“Is there any way you’d give me another chance? No camera or anything, just me. I just want to see them.”

“Get on out of here,” she says, and goes inside the house with groceries in hand. She slams the door.

I go back to my car and sit down. My neck feels funny. A little sore. The power of dreams. Amazing. Mrs. Greenan’s already gone in the house. I think I can see her behind the darkness of the screen door, but I’m not sure. I just want to see them. I don’t know why. I just do. Probably to make me feel better about myself. She sure as hell hates me, though. I guess I can’t blame her. I check my messages while massaging my neck with the other hand. There’s one from David.

“Hey, Samuel. I just got up. Had to work all night at the garage and blew off school today. Give me a call.”

I don’t feel like going home so I start the car and drive on over to David’s neighborhood. He’s sitting on his front stoop drinking a beer with Cornelius.

“You guys look like crap,” I say.

“Cornelius helped me at the garage last night,” says David.

“Worked on all the night through,” adds Cornelius. “Look at you, riding around like a free man.”

“I should get suspended more often,” I tell him, and sit down beside him. There’s a shovel leaning against the steps. “I guess Yoshi’s all alone in lockdown.”

“I don’t know. I’ll go to school tomorrow and see how he doin’,” says Cornelius.

“Are you digging a hole?” I ask.

“There’s some punks roaming around the neighborhood…you’re just in time. Look, there they are.” David picks up the shovel and stands. Three skinny young black boys wearing oversize hoodies are walking down the street. One screams, “Whoaaaa-hoo!” and then barks like a dog. They start sauntering up to us through David’s yard, which isn’t a good idea. David walks out to meet them, shovel in hand.

“Didn’t I tell you to get the hell outta here?” yells David.

“This ain’t yo neighbahood chump!”

And just like that all three jump on him and then on Cornelius. I run and tackle one of them at the waist, bringing him down. I try just to keep him down and out of the fight, but he keeps moving around. He pushes me off and runs. Then I go to tackle the one fighting with Cornelius, but the other two are already running off. Cornelius is sitting down in the yard touching his lip. David’s standing there holding the shovel.

“Did you get ’em with that?” I ask, pointing at the shovel.

“Yeah, but one of ’em got me.” His hand is covered with blood.

“What happened?” I ask.

“One of ’em had a shank. I got one good on the side of the head, but the other one came around.”

The wound looks like a little black slit about a quarter of an inch in his side, where thick blood is slowly leaking out.

“Oh shit! Let’s go to the emergency room,” I say.

“No, it didn’t go deep.”

“Man, you just got stabbed!” says Cornelius.

“I can’t afford any emergency room.” We follow him into the house and to the bathroom. With a bunch of cotton balls, rubbing alcohol, and Band-Aids we clean and dress the wound. I take a towel and wipe the blood away from his side. I peek under the Band-Aids
and cotton, and the blood flow has already stopped and is already starting to thicken. It was a shallow cut.

“At least call the police and report that guy,” I say.

“No, no cops.” He gets another beer and goes back out to his stoop. He seems okay, so I sit beside him.

“You remember those monster babies you were talking about?” asks Cornelius.

“Yeah.”

“I betcha they’s just deformed. I have a cousin who’s missin’ a hand. Got stuck in a drier.”

“These guys are all…They don’t hardly look human,” I say.

“Guess some ain’t so lucky,” says Cornelius.

“I heard that,” David answers.

I leave David and Cornelius on the stoop with their beer and go home to fix dinner for Dad and me.

T
HE NEXT DAY I TURN OFF MY CELL PHONE
and study all morning. I break only for a tuna sandwich at noon. I don’t get very far with studying after that sandwich because there’s a knock at the door. I look through the front drapes and don’t see any car. When I open the door, it’s Melody. She looks at me and smiles through her curly black hair that hangs around her face. When she’s this close to me and I can see the dark lashes and smooth skin, I’m reminded of how pretty she is. “How’s it feel to be exiled?”

“Good. Now I see why you enjoy being the lone wolf.”

“Shut the hell up,” she laughs.

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Playing hooky.”

“Just afternoon classes. I’m a good girl,” she says. “It’s been
cleared by the office. Just an early departure so I’ll still get my perfect attendance award, I’ll have you know.”

“A lone wolf and a Goody Two-shoes. That’s a contradictory state to be in.”

“This is coming from the same boy who has a car but rides his bike all over the place every chance he gets. Some people think that’s crazy.”

“That’s why Americans are so fat. We drive everywhere.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s what you always say. So I decided to take your advice and…” she grabs my arm and pulls me out into the driveway. “Take a look,” she says. “Ta da!”

I see that she’s ridden a bike. “When’d you get this?” It’s a refurbished red mountain bike. There’s some rust here and there but still lots of miles left on it.

“Somebody asked my daddy to fix it and never showed up.”

“Nice. No wonder I didn’t hear you pull up.”

“Let’s go for a ride,” she says.

“All right.”

I pull my Schwinn out of the garage and catch up to her as she’s already reached the blacktop. We ride down to the end of the subdivision out onto the country roads and past open fields intercut with woods and homes surrounded by large pastures. We just keep going and going. I take her through the swamp on over to Underwood. I want to tell her. I want to show her everything. But if she ever found out how I really think and feel about those things, she’d probably hate me as much as Mrs. Greenan does. Hell, David doesn’t even know the whole story. No one does. Just me. I take her past Mrs. Greenan’s house without saying a word. Out past Underwood, we ride slowly, taking time to talk but mainly just riding and enjoying the sun and wind in our faces. We ride farther out into the open country and eventually make it to the bridge that goes over the un
finished highway on the edge of town. Dad told me how that highway construction was pushed by state politicians so they could say they had used the taxpayer money, but it was just a waste. Locals call it the lost highway.

We pull our bikes off to the shoulder of the road and down the embankment where the foundations of the bridge and the upper half of the ridge meet. Hardly anyone comes around here. It’s so quiet standing on that bridge, it feels like the world has ended and we’re the last two people on earth. Melody would be a good Eve. Eve should be black, I think. I don’t know about me as Adam, though. I can’t imagine myself walking around naked. Melody climbs up onto the railing where a chain-link fence hangs.

“You think this is for suicides?” she asks.

“I don’t think the drop would kill you. Probably for keeping people from throwing things.”

“Look.” She takes a chunk of concrete and tosses it over the mesh. “It doesn’t work very well.”

“They say this highway cost over fifty million.”

“I think it is to stop suicides,” she says with confidence.

I feel something wrong with me, something heavy in my chest, something in there sinking and slowly pulling me down. It’s like one of these chunks of concrete. If I knew exactly what it was, I could give it to Melody and she’d dump it off the bridge and I’d be okay. Really okay, inside and out. Make it go away forever. But I don’t even know what the hell it is. I climb up on the railing and look down on Melody. Her coffee-colored skin looks pale in the afternoon sunlight. It makes her look kind of like a ghost. Then the thought comes to me. Maybe we
are
ghosts. We’ve somehow gotten killed and don’t realize it yet. But the thought isn’t scary or strange. It’s strangely comforting and leaves me feeling easy.

A
FTER HANGING OUT ON THE
bridge, we sit down on the edge of the grassy slope. Down below is the highway and above that the green slope that meets the bridge and above that a tree line below pure azure sky. The occasional car passes over the bridge with a
thump thump thump
.

“It’s been a year, hasn’t it?” asks Melody.

“You remembered.”

“Sure I did. Girls remember everything.” She smiles. “I remember seeing your mom pick you up at middle school. She was pretty.”

“Here, take a look at this,” I say, and take a picture of my wallet.

“Ah! See, she is pretty.”

“I took that picture.”

“Are you serious? It looks like a professional job. Wow.” Melody looks at it for a minute and gives it back. “You know if you ever wanted to talk about it…”

“I’m okay with it. I got over it months ago.” I look straight, but I know she’s looking at me from the side. “You wanna try riding on the lost highway?” I ask.

“Five more minutes,” she says, so we stay there a little longer, the earth below us and the sky above.

The bike ride is smooth on the fresh gray surface of the lost highway, and it goes on like that for a long time, several miles, in fact. Toward the end of it, though, the pavement ends abruptly and becomes gravel. I try to bike over it, but my Schwinn becomes embedded in the little rocks, making it almost impossible to pedal. I have to get off and push.

“Can’t you make it?” Melody asks.

“Hell no. Let’s trade bikes.”

“Ha!” She gets off and pushes, too. We walk until we reach an actual serviceable road running close to town. Melody has an errand
that she can take care of in that area, so I follow her over some railroad tracks into a part of town I rarely go through. There’re Laundromats, pawn shops, and cheap apartment complexes of brick and stone around here. As we pass a group of young black guys hanging out in front of an apartment building, one of them—a tall, muscular guy wearing an oversize basketball jersey—jogs up to us. “Who’s that?” he asks Melody. He’s young, our age, but I’ve never seen him at our school.

“A friend,” she says without looking at him. He looks me over. I stop and put my hand out.

“I’m Samuel,” I say.

He looks a little surprised and takes my hand. “Eric,” he says to me, then turns to Melody, who’s slowly riding up ahead of us, “Where you goin’?”

“The
Sugweepo Saver
office.”

“You better bring me along to protect you,” he says.

“I don’t need your protection,” she says. I’m biking slowly behind Melody, and Eric walks alongside me.

“Hey, Samuel, I’m just kidding.” He smiles. “It used to be there were tough guys all along these streets and you’d have to pay
them
to protect you from
them
. You know what I mean?” He stops and heads back to his buddies but turns around once to yell, “You better hurry. It’s almost three!”

Up ahead Melody stops to look at her watch and says, “Come on, Samuel, we gotta hurry up!” I catch up with her and we ride fast until we come to a small run-down office building. There’s a sign up top that says
THE SUGWEEPO SAVER
in yellow. I use my lock to secure both our bikes against a railing alongside the street while Melody goes inside. I walk in, and there’s one man sitting behind a desk watching TV without the sound on. He barely turns his head to ask, “Who’s this?”

“A friend,” she says while writing something on a piece of paper at
his desk. He doesn’t even acknowledge me and goes back to watching television. It’s the ending credits of a soap opera, and then an animal documentary of some sort comes on after.

I stay quiet and watch the television, but I want to say something to show that I was with them, that I’m cool. I can’t think of anything, so I just watch the TV. The animal documentary is one of those violent ones that shows predators devouring their prey. But then a strange thing happens. The prey starts attacking the predator. A gazelle attacks an alligator. And then I know it’s some CGI crap. There’s no way a pack of bear cubs could attack and kill a gorilla. It looks kind of disturbing, though. Bear cubs attacking? Babies attacking. I don’t like it. It’s bad enough those things keep popping up in my head like brain farts, but it’s worse thinking about them coming after me. I feel stupid for even thinking it.

“Looks real, don’t it?” asks the man.

“I thought it was until that last one.”

“Yeah, they did a good job on this one. Maybe it’s French.”

“French, huh?” I say.
Maybe you’re crazy
, I think to myself. Melody finishes writing and reaches into her back pocket for some money. She hands both to the guy.

“Will it be in the next edition?” she asks.

“Yup,” he says. “Is this exactly the way your dad wants it?” He puts on some reading glasses. “Harvey’s used and repaired Emporium…” he trails off as he reads silently.

“Just like it reads,” she says. With that, we ride our bikes back onto the lost highway and all the way back to Melody’s neighborhood, a working-class subdivision kind of like the one I live in. She holds my hand and smiles before she goes in. On my ride home, I have a silly feeling of chivalrous pride for having escorted her all the way back home. In the midst of my gallant thoughts I realize how much Melody has biked that day. She must have some strong-ass legs.

Dad is already home, and he’s angry that I’m not. I tell him about studying all morning, but Dad’s the type of guy who has to see something before he can believe it. I stay in my room and hit the books until dinner. I even take my dinner into my room and study while I eat. The roast beef’s a little tough but good enough.

Afterward I want to get out of the house, so I take my bike out again at dusk and ride all the way back to Melody’s, not with the intent to see her but just to pass by her house a few times. It amazes me that she lives in there. It seems so quiet and she seems so distant, yet she’s so close, just yards away in that house. It’s almost the same feeling I have about my mom. She’s gone, but when I think about her, she somehow seems so close. I bike home as fast as I can before it gets completely dark on me. I’m pedaling through my neighborhood when the shaggy, white-and-gray dog from down the street starts following, something it always does when it sees me. It’s even followed me all the way back to the house a few times. I don’t like it around our cat, so I chase it off and even throw a couple rocks at it this time. “Get outta here!” I yell.

I
SPEND THE NEXT COUPLE
of days catching up on my school assignments. I’ve packed all my notebooks and textbooks and brought them home with me the day before. The goal is not only to catch up but get ahead. I keep my phone off and hole up in my room doing what I have to do. It’s not until Thursday night I feel satisfied with where I am and watch television with Dad.

“If you study too hard, your eyeballs are gonna pop out of your head,” says Dad. “That show you like is on, the one about those guys in the desert.”

The show’s called
Devil in the Desert,
about these college kids who get stuck in this deserted town in the middle of some wasteland.
Once they get there, the problem is they can’t get out because their car breaks down and it’s too hot to walk out during the day but at night these zombies come out. In order to get out safely they have to solve the mystery of the town while fighting off the zombies at night. I’m catching the reruns because the series had come on earlier during the year but I’d missed it.

“You haven’t seen that dog around again, have you?” Dad asks me.

“No. I think I scared him away for good.”

“Good.”