Under Rose-Tainted Skies(14)
It starts to get dark sometime around seven and I switch all the lights on in the house. From the outside, I imagine it looks like I’m storing the sun in here. The Trips, a New Age kind of couple who live across the street, will be shoving more of their ‘Save the Environment’ leaflets through our door tomorrow morning. Don’t get me wrong, I’m deeply concerned about my carbon footprint, but I’ve watched enough horror movies to know that when I’m home alone, I’m ninety-eight per cent less likely to die if the lights are on.
Mom calls just before eight, and we stay on the phone for over an hour. She keeps asking me if I’ve eaten properly, then starts encouraging me to try the anti-anxiety meds I’ve had in a drawer for six months.
‘This is the perfect opportunity,’ she says. ‘You’d only have to take one, then lie back on the couch and let yourself drift off to sleep.’
I have this thing about swallowing mind-altering medication.
It makes me gag the second it touches my tongue. Like it’s coated in superglue, it physically won’t slide down. I don’t think doctors are trying to take over my brain or anything. And I’m not one of those people who think medicine poisons your body and you should try natural remedies first. I can’t take the herbal tabs either. It’s the idea of relinquishing control that makes them too sticky to swallow. I’m too wrapped up in worrying about everything that could go wrong while these tablets have me half drunk. You know which guy is dying first if the zombie apocalypse happens? The one lying on his couch too spaced out on meds to run.
I say goodnight to Mom when she starts yawning, then grab a blanket and collapse on the couch. My eyes stalk a pair of sewing scissors on top of a box at the side of the patchwork armchair. These will be my weapon of choice should a home invasion occur. I’m so set on this idea that I push the coffee table back two inches so it’s not in my way. My mom would ask why I don’t just move the scissors closer if it makes me feel safer. And I would tell her that I can’t do that because being too prepared is like tempting fate.
I need to go to sleep. I need to stop thinking. Just for a second.
Iwake with a start, cold and drenched in blue light from the standby screen on the television. At first I think that’s what woke me – it’s blaring and I am the kind of girl who stirs at the beat of a butterfly’s wing – but then I hear a voice.
Some guy shouts, ‘That’s not good enough!’
My eyes pop, homing in on the sewing scissors, despite the fact that the voice is muffled enough for me to know it’s coming from outside. From Sleeping Beauty to ninja in less than five seconds, I sit up, leap over the back of the couch, and make like a bullet to the front door.
I know it’s locked. I checked it four times before it got dark. But my fingers find the bolt anyway and push on it. It can’t slip any further into the latch without breaking free of its metal bonds and slamming straight into the wall, but I don’t stop pushing.
‘Three years. It’s been three years,’ the voice keeps repeating. He says it in bursts of two. Quieter the first time, louder the second. ‘Three years. It’s been three years.’
Hush. Yell. Pause.
The voice belongs to Luke. I can’t hear anyone else talking, responding. Curiosity pulls me to the porch window on tiptoes, and with bated movements I peek around the edge of the curtain.
A security light shines on Luke pacing up and down his driveway, talking on his cell. I duck back the second I see him because he’s shirtless, a bare torso covered in mounds of taut muscle. A pair of plaid pyjama pants hang off his hips. He looks like he paced right out of the pages of a magazine. My face heats up. I feel like I just tripped in front of a roomful of people. The thing is, despite the overwhelming embarrassment making my cheeks blister, I want to look again. So I do.
This time, his back is to me. He’s walking down the driveway. Stealth becomes secondary to getting my face closer to the glass.
Hush. Yell. Pause.
His perfectly square shoulder blades jump when he raises his voice. A fist snatches hold of my stomach and squeezes.
Hush. Yell. Pause.
He exhales a sigh strong enough to make the trees bend backwards. Something is tearing him to pieces. He shakes his head, grabs a clump of his hair, and clenches his jaw.
‘I can’t do this right now.’ He ends the call, jabbing his thumb into the keypad.
I think maybe he turns to stone then, because he doesn’t move for the longest time. Just stands at the end of his drive, stock-still, arms hanging heavy at his sides, staring at the ground.
My fingers itch. I wish I could reach out, put a hand on his shoulder, and ask him if he is all right. A side effect of worrying about everything and everyone; I cry at least once a week over things that shouldn’t concern me.
Minute after minute crawls by. My legs get tired. I stop caring about staying hidden and take a seat on the sill. Of course, when he finally does turn around to head back to his house, the first thing he sees is me doing my best puppy-in-a-pet-shop-window impression. He looks straight at me, and I’m forced to reanimate my ninja fu. I throw myself on to the floor, my body crashing against the wood laminate. I’ll have bruises tomorrow.
I stay crouched and as close to the wall as I can. I hope he doesn’t think I was spying. I mean, I know that’s what it must look like. And, okay, perhaps I was a little. But beyond the minuscule amount of curiosity, it was all concern. Oh God. I hope he doesn’t think I just sat there staring because he isn’t wearing a shirt.