Making Faces(35)

His eyes darted to her face and away again, and he kept his face angled to the side, like he couldn't wait to be on his way.

“We went to school together, didn't we?” he asked quietly and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the way an athlete does when they are preparing for an event. He seemed nervous, jittery even.

Fern felt a stab of pain–the hurt that comes when a life-long crush acknowledges that you look vaguely familiar, but nothing more.

“Ambrose, it's me. Fern?” Fern said hesitantly. “Bailey's cousin, Couch Sheen's niece . . . Rita's friend?”

Ambrose Young's gaze shot to her face again and held. He was staring at her from the corner of his eye, keeping one side of his face in the shadows, and Fern wondered if his neck was hurt, making turning his head painful.

“Fern?” he repeated hesitantly.

“Uh, yeah.” Now it was Fern's turn to look away. She wondered if he too was remembering the love notes and the kiss at the lake.

“You don't look the same,” Ambrose said bluntly.

“Um, thank you. That's kind of a relief,” Fern said honestly. Ambrose looked surprised and his mouth quirked ever so slightly. Fern felt herself smiling along with him.

“The frame is a little bent. You should try it. See if you can make it home.” Ambrose pushed the bike toward her, and Fern grasped the handles, taking it from his hands. For a second, the light from the streetlight hit him squarely in the face. Fern felt her eyes widen, the breath catching in her throat. Ambrose must have heard the swift intake of breath, because his gaze locked on hers for a heartbeat before he pulled back. Then he turned and was running swiftly in smooth strides down the road, the black of his clothing melding with the darkness and obscuring him from view almost immediately. Fern watched him go, frozen in place. She wasn't the only one who didn't look the same.





August, 2004





“Why won't anyone let me see a mirror, Dad?”

“Because right now it looks worse than it really is.”

“Have you seen what I look like . . . underneath?”

“Yes.” Elliott whispered.

“Has Mom?”

“No.”

“She still doesn't like to look at me, even all bandaged up.”

“It hurts her.”

“No. It scares her.”

Elliott looked at his son, at the gauze-wrapped face. Ambrose had seen himself in the bandages and he tried to picture himself from his father's perspective. There wasn't much to see. Even Ambrose’s right eye was swathed. His left eye looked almost alien in the sea of white, like a Halloween mummy with removable parts. He sounded like one too–his mouth was wired shut, forcing him to mumble through his teeth, but Elliott understood him if he listened closely enough.

“She's not afraid of you, Ambrose,” Elliott said lightly, trying to smile.

“Yes she is. Being ugly scares her more than anything else.” Ambrose closed his eye, shutting out his father's haggard face and the room around him. When he wasn't in pain he was in a fog from the painkillers. The fog was a relief, but it frightened him too, because lurking in the fog was reality. And reality was a monster with gleaming red eyes and long arms that pulled him toward the yawning black hole that made up its body. His friends had been devoured by that hole. He thought he remembered their screams and the smell of flesh burning, but he wondered if it was just his mind filling in the blanks between then and now. So much had changed that his life was as unrecognizable as his face.

“What scares you the most, son?” his father asked quietly.

Ambrose wanted to laugh. He wasn't afraid of anything. Not anymore. “Not a damn thing, Dad. I used to be afraid of going to hell. But now that I'm here, hell doesn't seem so bad.” Ambrose's voice had become slurred and he felt himself slipping away. But he needed to ask one more question.

“My right eye . . . it's done . . . isn't it? I'm not going to see again.”

“No, son. The doc says no.”

“Huh. Well. That's good I guess.” Ambrose knew he wasn't making sense, but he was too far gone to explain himself. In the back of his mind, he thought it only fair that if his friends had lost their lives, he should lose something as well.

“My ear's gone, too.”

“Yeah. It is.” Elliott's voice sounded far off.

Ambrose slept for a while, and when he awoke his dad no longer sat in the chair beside his bed. He didn't leave often. He must be finding something to eat or getting some sleep. The little window in his hospital room looked out on a black night. It must be late. The hospital slumbered, though it was never completely quiet on his floor. Ambrose levered himself up, and before he could let himself reconsider, he started unraveling the long layers of gauze from his face. Round and round, one after the other, making a pile of medicine-stained bandages on his lap. When he pulled the last one free, he staggered from his bed, holding onto the rolling rack that held the bags of antibiotics, fluids and painkillers they were pumping into his body. He'd been up a few times and knew he could walk. His body was virtually unscathed. Just some shrapnel in his right shoulder and thigh. Not even a broken bone.

There wasn't a mirror in the room. There wasn't a mirror in the bathroom. But the window, with its thin blinds, would work almost as well. Ambrose reached for it, pushing the blinds upward with his left hand, clinging to the metal pole with his right, freeing the glass so he could stare at his face for the first time. At first he couldn't see anything but the dim streetlights far below. The room was too dark to reflect his image off the glass.