Entry #516351, added on 06-20-07 @ 6:12 pm EDT
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| Chapter Seven | Entry #516351 |
"The Dallas/ Fort Worth area hasn't had weather like this in a long time. The high today was 85, the low 60, while just wednesday, three days ago, we had highs like 25. The past two weeks have been dark and chilly, but it seems the sun has decided to come out to go from the coldest temperatures to the warmest..."
I only vaguely hear the forecast on the TV over the laughter filling the living room. My mother and I sit on the floor, our feet tucked under our glass coffee table, with the Monopoly board in front of us.
"He said that?" my mother giggles.
I've just told her a story about Blake O'Reilly. I'm smiling at her laughter. It's so rare these days.
"And she was all 'Blake! Put the rubix cube away!' " I'm gesturing widly to illustrate my story and she's falling back on the floor, clutching her stomach.
Ding-Dong
I decide it's better to let my mom bask in her joy, so I stand to answer the door. Walking through the foyer, I secretly hope it's Wren, coming to see why the sun is shining so brightly today.
It isn't.
The men standing at the door both have their backs to me.
"Hello?" I say.
They both turn around and simultaneously look me up and down. One is tall with dark hair, wearing a maroon sweater vest and khakis. The other is a blond with a comb over and short legs. The taller one smiles brightly, flashing a set of pearly whites. "Ms. James?"
My eyes narrow. "Yes?"
He grins again. "I'm Dr. Reynolds." He motions to the short man. "This is Dr. Gray. We'd like to speak to you about your recent accident."
I look back and forth between them. "Are you serious?"
The tall man's smile vanishes. "Of course we are, Ms. James. We hear you hit a nerve in your brain that might have-"
"Heard from who?" I interrupt.
Behind their heads, the sky is turning gray and the wind begins to blow.
"That's not important," short man tells me.
"Look, I don't know why you're here, but..." I reach for the handle of the door to close it, but the tall man steps forward.
"We'd like to ask you some questions. You may be able to help us with some important research. If you'd just let us do some tests."
"I can't help you with any research, ok? I don't know where you heard this, but you got your facts wrong."
"We didn't get our facts wrong," short man tells me. "You may have something really rare here and if you're willing to take the risk-"
"Risk? I don't know what risk is involoved, but I'm not going to have any part of it."
The shorter man lets out something that resembles a sneer and I know that the risk is bodily harm in some fashion.
I begin to slam the door but the tall man slams him palm flat out to keep it open. My breathing is getting shallow and lightening is crashing fast.
"Ms. James, you're going to cooperate one way or another. You have no choice."
That's all he says before pulling back and letting the door fall closed.
It is then that my mother finds it worth her time to see if her daughter is alive.
"Beth?" she calls as she walks around the corner. "Who was at the door?"
I look up at her under my eyelashes, which are slightly damp with the remnants of my panic attack. "Nobody," I answer impulsively. "They were selling something."
She nods. "Ok." She tries to make her voice sound casual. "Are we done with the game?" She motions back to our living room where Monopoly awaits.
"Yeah," I say destracted by my thoughts. "I'm just gonna go upstairs." I climb the steps and fall on my bed the second I can get the door open. My lights are off and the sky outside my window is so dark that I can barely see the street when I look out.
What the hell was that all about? Scientists? Research? Did they honestly think I was going to let them do research on my head? How did they know about it anyway? How would two scientists know that I had been in a wreck? How-
Knock, knock, knock.
"Beth," my mother says through the door.
"Yeah?" I call out, not bothering to sit up in my bed.
She opens the door wide enough to stick her head in. "That boy's here to see you again."
That boy, I think. She's so discerning.
"Yeah. Ok," I say, still staring up at the ceiling. I drop my arm across my face and wait to hear the door creak open.
"What happened?"
I jump at the sound of Wren's voice. "You move too quietly," I tell him, forcing myself up into a sitting position.
He looks down at the floor. "Sorry." Looking back up, he stares for a minute before breaking eye contact. "So, what happened?"
"What do you mean?" I ask, locking my hands together and placing them in my lap, going for the innocent look.
Wren points to my window, where the blinds are pulled up. "It went from a sunny 80 degrees to black skies." He stands still, waiting for me to answer.
Sometimes Wren will stop me in the hall or parking lot to tell me I'm doing a good job. Other than that we didn't talk much and I'm not positive that I trusted him yet.
"Bethany." The way he says my name gives me shivers. "I'm trying, ok?"
I meet his eyes. I don't need both eyes to know that he's sincere.
"A couple of men came to the door. They said they were scientists, that they wanted to..." I pause at Wren's body language.
His eyes refuse to meet mine and his body is stiff.
"Wren?"
"Don't let them in."
I jump at the urgency in his voice.
"Don't ever let them in. Don't let them near you. Who knows what they'll do to you. Some scientists won't even hesitate to kill for their research."
My blood runs cold and lightening flashes outside the window.
Wren's eyes come straight to mine. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."
I drop my eyes. "You didn't scare me." I try to sound confident, brave if you will, but I overdo it and Wren gives a low laugh that chimes in my ears. I had never associated Wren and laughter before.
"Why are you so certiain that they'll try to hurt me?"
Wren begins to drum his fingers. "I just don't trust anybdoy who says they want you to participate in tests. Do you know what they would have to do to run 'tests' on your head?"
"No," I answer hesitantly.
"They'd probably have to seal you in some sort of tube. They'd do something so that your brain was working but the rest of you wasn't, almost like being in a coma. You probably wouldn't come out alive."
"I'll admit," I tell him. "I was freaked out when they got a little agressive but it didn't seem like they would try to kill me. I mean, would they honestly just show up at my door, like they were requesting a survey, if they were planning on killing me?"
"Well, considering that this doesn't happen to many people, I'm sure that they wouldn't expect you to know what their offer consists of."
"Oh." That's just slightly creepy.
He gives me one of his signature closing nods. "Ok." He wrings his hands. "Don't answer the door for anyone. Be careful."
I smile at him. "You sound like my mother."
The side of his mouth quirks up and I feel my heart give a subtle thump.
"Thank you," I add, as an afterthought.
"Just trying to help," he says as he disappears out the door.
Suddenly I'm sad that we only talk a few times a week and that, during that time, we only talk about my problems. I immediatly try to counter my sadness so that Wren won't be able to feel it in the air as he walks home.
When I finally shake off the earlier events of the evening, my mother knocks on my door.
"Yeah?" I call out from my place on the bed.
She opens the door cautiously, almost as if she's afraid of what she's come here to say.
"What's up?" I ask, trying to get her to lighten up.
Her eyes shift back and forth nervously before she takes in a deep breath to begin. "You've been spending alot of time with Miss Caroline's nephew," she finally says.
I badly want to roll my eyes, but I refrain.
She sighs. "Beth, I want you to be careful."
Oh sure. Now she wants me to be careful. Now that the threat has come and gone.
"I've heard he's dangerous," she continues.
Anger flares inside me. "Heard from who?"
She seems startled by my tone, but quickly moves past it. "I just hear it from people."
"Yeah, people who don't know anything about him."
She looks at me in shock. I very rarely talk back to my mother, and after all the fights I've had with Eric that she has let go, I don't think this is a great time to start.
"You're going to tell me that you know that boy?"
I do it anyway. "I know him better than you! You're going off of stupid rumors that are passed around the neighborhood by housewives!" My breath catches in my throat as I notice the wind blowing furiously outside my window. Calm down. Calm down.
My mother takes my silence as an opportunity to begin yelling. "Ninety percent of the time, rumors are true, Bethany! You can't just trust anyone you feel like!"
I take a deep breath before starting more calmy than before. "What sort of things have you heard?"
My mother blinks and when she speaks, her tone matches mine. "Drugs. Murder. Arrest."
"Please ellaborate," I say, collapsing back onto my bed.
She heaves a sigh and rolls out my computer chair to sit across from me. "People say he does drugs. Sells them, too."
I roll my eyes at this because I know, just from spending time with him, that, despite his name, Wren Stoner does not do drugs.
"He was accused of murdering a man before he moved here," she continues. "I don't know the details, but he was never put on trial."
I stare at her, my eyebrows furrowed. She must be crazy, right? Wren would never kill anyone. But then I think harder. What do I know about Wren? All I know is that he is willing to help me control a problem that he is somehow acquainted with.
That's reason enough for suspision.
Suddenly, I want to know everything about him.
"Did you kill someone?"
Wren freezes, his hand still on the knob of his front door. I expect a 'nice to see you too, Bethany' or 'what kind of a question is that?'. Instead, he simply says, "Yes."
The way he says it, as if I just asked him if he failed his science exam, sends chills up my spine. As usual, lightening crashes behind me.
Wren's eyes get frantic. "Don't be scared. Please. It's not what you think."
"Then tell me what it is," I say, my body stiff as a board.
He nods once and steps toward the stairs, leaving me to stand on his doorstep, deciding if I can trust a boy who just admitted to murder.
I must be crazy because I follow him to his room. For some reason, I can't help it.
"Why do you want to know?" He asks once I shut his door.
"My mother is worried. You must know the kind of stories that go around about you."
He takes a seat on his bed. Once again, the blinds of his window are open. The sky is getting dark and I can see by the expression on Wren's face that my mood is expressed blatently.
"I just want answers," I say quietly. "I want to trust you, but I'm afraid to." His eyes find mine and I fight the urge to brush his hair out of his eye.
"What do you want to know?" He finally asks, looking out the window.
I decide to start with the easiest first. "Drugs?"
"No," he answers, devoid of any clear emotion.
"Parents?"
"Both dead."
It hits me hard the way he says this, and I suck in my breath. I swallow down my fear, but it remains unhidden by the lightening storm outside. "Who did you kill?"
Wren turns from the window and fixes me with a dead honest stare. "His name was Jack Carter. My mother was with him for almost two years. One day, he hit her. I'd just walked through the door when he started beating up on her. I was only fifteen, I didn't know what else to do."
He stops and I realize I'm not breathing.
"What happened?" I ask after a moment of silence.
"I shot him."
Suddenly I realize that's all I want to know on that subject, so I move on. "Who did you know who had what I have?"
His cold stare doesn't leave my face as he says, "My mother. It was his fault."
My eyes instinctinely move to the picture of him and his mother. "How did she die?" I ask, afraid of the answer.
When I look back at him, his face is filled with an expression that I don't understand.
"She died of a brain aneurysm a year after he hit her."
And then I understand that the softness in his face is sympathy.
I sink down on the bed next to him, facing forward, not wanting to look at him and see that expression again. I feel a tear slip down my cheek and eagerly wipe it away as the droplets of water sprinkle the window. "Do you think that'll happen to me?" I whisper to him.
"Not if I can help it," he answers. For a second, I'm a fraid that he'll put his arm around me, to comfort me, but he doesn't.
"What are you going to do?" I ask him. "How are you going to help me make this go away?"
He shakes his head. "I don't know yet, but I swear that if I can help you in any way, I will."
I finally look up at him and immediately want to cry again at the painful dispair that is written on his face. But then something outside the window catches my eye. I stand quickly and go to the window in one stride. "That's them!" I shriek when I see the figures walking in the dark, toward my house.
Behind me, Wren flips off the light so that we can see better and joins me at the window.
"Those are the men?" he asks at my side. He's squinting at my house where the men knock on my front door.
We can see everything perfectly. It's almost pitch black outside and the gray clouds of my distress that hang in the sky don't make it any easier to see, but the light from the kitchen window, where my mother is washing the dishes, stand out against the sheet of black.
I watch as my mother's face makes it clear that she's heard the door bell. She dries her hands on a nearby towel and then she's gone from view. A second later, the front door opens and the light streams out behind her as she speaks to the men. I see her listen to what they have to say. And then she points out a hand for them to wait as she quickly disappears. She comes back a second later, looking slightly aggitated and shakes her head cluelessly. She's realized that I'm not in my room, where I crawled out my window minutes earlier.
Suddenly a thought runs through me. What if they won't leave her alone until she tells them where I am? What if they insist on waiting for me to come home? What if they hurt her because they can't find me?
"Don't worry," Wren whispers in my ear. "They won't hurt her. They want you."
I wonder to myself how he knows I'm so afriad, then feel stupid because of my obvious failure to notice the lightening outside and the way I'm shaking to my bones. I feel the sudden urge to make this easier.
"Why are you whiserpering?" I ask him, also whispering.
He looks at me, our faces close, blinks a few times, then shrugs and looks back at my house. "It's a creepy atmosphere. We need to whisper."
I smile widly and focus back on my mother. I can tell that she's subtly trying to convince the men to leave. "I didn't know you could see my house from here," I whisper, to keep the mood.
He shifts uncomfortably. "Yeah. I just... you know, to keep an eye..." he trails off, and I barely detect it as he slowly slides a few inches away.
"It's ok," I say so that he won't slide any further. "I don't mind."
He looks at me questionably. "Ok," he mutters.
I don't hear the door open, I'm consentrating on my mother closing the door and the two men sauntering toward a tiny white car.
"Wren," I hear a stern voice say. I turn around to see a short, plump woman standing in the doorway, one hand on the knob, the other on her hip.
Wren doesn't introduce us. He doesn't say anything and it occurs to me that the scene before her, Wren and I standing rather close in his room with the light off, must look odd to Miss Jean Caroline.
"I think it's time for Bethany to go home."
Wren nods and Miss Caroline leaves.
"I'm sorry," he says, staring blankly at the closed door. "She's a litte..."
"Protective?" I venture.
He turns to me. "Sure."
My eyes narrow and I start toward the door.
"I'll walk you home," he mumbles behind me.
"I'll be ok," I answer, opening his door and flipping his light back on as I go.
"No, you won't," he protests, a little louder than he has been for most of the evening. "You think I'm going to let you walk home alone with those freaks on the watch for you? Forget it."
I don't turn around, just keep walking down the stairs and out the door, as relief floods through me at the the aspect of Wren watching over me. I have a feeling that he could hold his own in a fight against either one of those guys.
Wren doesn't speak during the short walk from his house to mine. I can feel his gaze shifting from the left to the right to my house to me and back again, but I don't try to start a conversation. The quiet is too comfortable.
Standing at the door, I'm not sure what to say. "Thanks," I decide on.
He smiles at the ground. "You need to stop thanking me. I haven't done anything yet."
Before I can answer, we're both squinting and Wren's face is distorted by a blinding light. It takes us both a few seconds of blinking at eachother to see that the porch light has just been turned on. And once we both realize this, the door is being ripped open and my mother is standing before us, face red with rage.
"Inside. Now," she says through gritted teeth.
It surprises me how unintimidated I feel. I look up at Wren, who looks slightly amused but yet pitious somehow.
"Bye," I tell him with a smile to let him know everything is alright.
"Bye," he breaths.
And then he's gone and I'm left with a fuming mother.
I don't even look at her as I walk into the house.
"Bethany," she says in a threatening tone. "No more. No more of that boy. I don't know what you're doing with him, but it's going to stop."
The first thing that goes through my head is that she sure is being demanding for a woman who, not two weeks ago, told her boyfriend that she had no control where I was concerned. "Science project," I say. "Remember?"
"Right," she bursts. "At ten thirty on a Saturday night, you're working on a science project with a criminal. You expect me to believe that? I'm here, minding my own business, when two men, wanting God knows what, come to the door asking for you, and when I go to look for you, you've disappeared to go see a boy."
I tune her out and glance behind her, out the nearest window. The night is so serene. There is no rain, no wind, nothing, just quiet. It makes me smile.
"You think this is funny?"
Actually, a little. "Mom, Wren's not a criminal. We were just talking. Can I go to bed?" I say in a flat tone without taking a breath.
I wait.
"Fine," she says grudgingly, and I move past her to get to my room, where I shut the door without turning on the light.
I creep to my window and peer into the night.
Wren is opening his front door.
I really hadn't ever noticed that we could see eachother's houses. I should have known. There is nothing but concrete between them. My street makes a T with his. His house being the second on his street and mine lying just one to the left of the house directly in front of the intersection, it should have been obvious.
But then, I'm Bethany, and I don't notice anything.
I watch as Wren pauses to talk to his aunt. It seems that they are arguing. He does alot of shruging and she does alot of yelling. It finally ends and he sulks to his room. He stands at his window, obviously staring in the direction of mine.
I reflexively crouch out of sight.
But it's too late. Quickly, Wren flashes a smile and shuts off his light. |
© Copyright 2007 GryffindorGurl (UN: magicfreak11 at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
GryffindorGurl has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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