Gravity

chapter 21

Ms. Vore lobbed my sketchbook on my desk when I arrived in Art. Her eyes met mine, a paler green than Theo's, but just as full of emotion.

"I want you to know that I vouched for you being in class when the fire alarm went off," she said. That surprised me.

"Thank you," I replied genuinely. "I'm really sorry if I caused you any trouble..."

"You should be," she continued. "The school could have brought disciplinary action against me if anything happened to you. It's very disappointing." She ran her hand through her hair. "It just proves to me that I shouldn't try to be your friend. I'm your teacher."

"Please don't think that way," I started, but she just shook her head, and resumed handing out sketchbooks.

"She'll move on," Theo said after Ms. Vore had walked back up to her desk. "Give her time."

I felt really horrible, and the twisted thing was, my thoughtless actions weren't even worth it. Nothing but bad had come from them.

Hugh was reading the paper at the dining room table when I arrived home.

"Why didn't you tell me about the fire at your school?" he asked the minute I walked in. Claire had driven me home since she had taken a vacation day, and dropped me off on her way to the store. I wasn't ready for another ambush.

"I thought I did," I said, shutting the sliding glass door. "It was on Friday, when I was sick. My head was a little wonky. But I need to talk to you about it now."

He folded the paper back up in a messy lump and tossed it on the table.

"I think there's a possibility I might get in trouble," I started. "But I didn't really do anything wrong."

He was starting to look angry, which was exceedingly rare for Hugh. I stood on the opposing side of the table, twisting the hem of my shirt in my hands. The familiar surroundings of our house suddenly felt like a courtroom, with me presenting my case.

"What happened?" he demanded.

I explained, but left out the part about Henry. Claire would ban him from the house if she thought he was getting me in trouble. Not that I thought he would be back any time soon.

"That was incredibly foolish of you," he said once I was done. "You get indignant that your mother and I are worried about you, and then you put yourself in danger."

I had no reply for that.

"Jenna's disappearance is affecting your judgment, whether you see it or not."

Yeah, and he didn't know the worst of it. Sneaking out and having possible seizures in abandoned buildings. Seeing dead little girls hanging out at school.

"There is still the matter of what happened with the Ford girl," he said, getting up and going for more coffee. "McPherson knows I will bring it up if he dares press anything with this. So don't worry."

"Are you sure?" I asked. Ever since he had caught up to us on Friday, I had been apprehensive McPherson would kick me out of school, but I had been trying not to think about it.

"I'm sure," he said. "But that doesn't by any stretch mean that you're off the hook. Now go downstairs and work on your homework."

Not only was I grounded, but I had to fork over my phone for the week. I begged him not to tell Claire, but he said he couldn't keep secrets from her, because they were in a relationship, and relationships meant honesty. If only I had the same courtesy with Henry.



Despite my hope that things would change, I soon discovered that Henry wouldn't talk to me in school. In fact, the person he had been disappeared, replaced by a specter that shuffled down the halls and never smiled. Every time I saw him I wanted to reach out, to talk to him, to shake him and ask him what was going on. But I didn't know how.

"What is up with your boy?" Theo asked one day as November chugged on. She had finally gotten around to putting together a set of sketches for my dad, and they were going up in the gallery in a few weeks. It had seemed to fill her with a sense of self-confidence I hadn't seen before.

"He's not my boy," I said emphatically. "And your guess is as good as mine."

Henry laid his head down on his desk. He was wearing the sweatshirt with the blackbirds inside the hood, pulled over his head. I clenched my fingers, ignoring the strong impulse to go over and stroke the back of his head.

"Maybe he got sick like us," Theo suggested, but I knew it was more than that.

For the next week, he acted distant. He brought his thick fantasy books to class, kept them open on his lap under his desk, reading. He sent me a text on Tuesday to let me know that he couldn't do tutoring anymore. It interfered with his schedule, he claimed. Although it shouldn't have been a surprise, it felt like the final blow.

I got the picture. It was a bleak one.

A loud banging noise woke me up. I began to panic before I even opened my eyes.

"Not again," I whispered, sitting up on my bed in the dark. My room had been peaceful for weeks, with no strange occurrences or vanishing lights. But the sound wasn't coming from my room, it was coming from out in the hall. Pulling my door open gently, I stepped out into the hallway. It was pitch black and chilly. The furnace groaned gently at my back.

The noise again came again. A fist on the glass door was my best guess. I crouched and grabbed a weight from Claire's still-untouched exercise room, sitting just inside the door. I made my way through boxes and around the pool table with its canvas cover, to where I could see outside.

The motion detector light was activated and someone lurked just outside the door. A dark figure like in an alarm company commercial. I stifled the urge to scream. As my eyes focused, I recognized Henry's face, peering in and using his hands as binoculars.

I sped over to the door, unlocked it, and pushed it open.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" I hissed, wrapping my arms around myself to keep out the frigid night air.

"Are you going to hit me with that?" Henry asked, gesturing to the hand weight and leaning back.

I tossed the weight on a nearby chair. "I needed to talk to you," he said urgently. His cheeks were flushed from the cold.

"And you couldn't find a better time than three in the morning?" I asked skeptically.

"Well, I knew you would be free," he said, in a shadow of his old good humor. He rubbed his arms through his sweatshirt and complained, "It's cold out here. Are you going to invite me in or am I walking the long walk home?"

I hesitated. This was so against the rules. But the pleading look in his eyes and the thrill of having him here for me won out.

I stepped aside and swept my arm out. I was suddenly acutely aware of my cupcake pajama pants and frizzy bed hair.

"Thanks," he breathed, the air expelled from his lungs like vaporous ghosts. He stepped in and I pulled the door shut as quietly as I could.

"You have to be really quiet," I whispered. "If my parents knew..."

"Understood," he whispered back, holding his hands up like stop signs.

I couldn't believe this was real. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just another dream. And that made me remember my long ago dream that wound up in my room, and I blushed in the shadows. We were right by the same couch.

"Follow me," I whispered, and led him down the hall. Being out in the main basement felt too open, like we were just waiting to get caught, but when I stepped into my room and turned on the lamp, it felt too intimate.

"Have a seat," I said.

Henry sat down in my desk chair. I sat on the bed, aware that the floor was my only other option, and that would put me in an even more awkward position.

"What was so important that you needed to walk to my house in the middle of the night?" I asked.

As he dropped his hood, I noticed that his hair was disheveled, like he had been lying down, tossing and turning while trying to sleep. He stared at the floor before speaking. "Do you trust me?"

That was out of left field. "Should I?" I was beginning to have reasons not to, but I didn't speak them aloud.

He worried his full bottom lip with his teeth.

"Do you trust me?" he repeated, more emphatic.

"I don't know," I said automatically. "I used to."

I remembered how soft his lips felt on mine when we kissed for the briefest moment at the dance, his hands on the small of my back. I looked away.

"I want to be able to prove to you that you can," he said.

"Why? To start with, you haven't spoken a word to me in weeks," I said, the hurt that I felt bubbling to the surface. "You were the one going on about how we were friends, and then you just ignored me like I was invisible."

"I know." He looked down again.

I quickly scanned my room to make sure I had no embarrassing personal effects sitting out. He was twisting his key ring around his thumb, the keys jingling softly. "I found out some things and...there's a lot going on in my life right now."

"Yeah, well, mine too." I was uncomfortable, thinking that it was a mistake to let him in. Not just into my room, but to let him in to my life at all. There was a moment of loaded silence.

"I pulled the fire alarm."

"What?" I asked, my eyes widening. But I had heard him fine.

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. "I pulled the fire alarm."

I opened my mouth to speak, and shut it again. In my shock I had no words, no clever response.

"But I didn't start the fire," he said, and now he was looking at me, his eyes begging me to believe him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. I stood up, suddenly wide awake and alert. And very aware that I could be in the room with an arsonist.

"It's such a long story, it's hard to explain. I don't even know if I know enough to explain it." He was babbling, unlike most of the time when he always seemed to know the right words. "I was being blackmailed."

I stood silent, my look conveying that he should continue.

"When we moved here, I started getting emails from an address I didn't recognize. The person presented evidence that he had something bad on my father, something that would destroy him professionally and maybe even destroy his marriage to my mother."

I sat back on my bed, legs crossed as I held my ankles for support.

"The last email that I received told me to go up to the top floor of the school, and pull the fire alarm. It didn't say why, it just gave me a time and a location. I figured they needed to clear the school for some reason, but now I'm thinking I was being set up. And I think I know who's behind it. McPherson."

"I just felt like I had to talk to someone," he continued. "And you're the closest person to me right now. I avoided you before because I didn't want to pull you into this with me. When I'm stressed out, I'm a bastard. I can't deal with anything. I told you I care about you and I meant it. That's why I had to come here tonight."

That admission made my heart swoop, at the same time that my head was reeling.

"I wasn't supposed to ask questions," he said, rubbing his face with his hands and then looking up at me. "So I tried not to."

I could tell he was sure I didn't believe him. "I swear, I'm telling you the truth. I have no reason to lie."

"Do you have any idea what the blackmail itself is?" I asked, pushing my hair back.

"I'm guessing it has something to do with his work," he said thoughtfully. "In the profession he's in, there are all kinds of situations he could get himself into. Lying for a client, stealing..."

"Is your father capable of that?" It was a hard question, but I felt that I had to ask it.

"Yes," he said without hesitation.

"What do you suggest we do about it?" I asked, my shoulders slumping as I tried to process what he told me. The surrealism of the night, having my real life crush sitting in my bedroom, unloading all of his secrets to me. A month, even a few weeks, ago I would have welcomed it. Now it felt like I was being handed a slice of an incredible burden.

"I want to check out the security office," Henry said, his mind made up. "I figure we find some way to get everyone out of the office, and then go in there and look through the files.

"And you make fun of my strange trespassing ideas," I scoffed, trying to bring a little levity to the situation. He smiled weakly, a shadow of its former glory. Everything about him seemed paler and muted, like the colors were washing out and soon he would be completely gray.

"Will you help me?" he asked, his dark eyes pleading.

"Yes," I said.

After a moment, he put his hands on his knees, and boosted himself up. "Okay," he said, getting up to leave the room.

"Where are you going?" I asked, frantic.

He thought about it for a moment. "Home, I suppose."

"You can stay here," I offered, gesturing randomly to my room.

"I don't know if your dad would like that," he said, smiling wryly. He looked so tired, I couldn't possibly imagine him having to walk all the way back home in the cold.

"You can sleep in here. On the floor," I added, in case I was giving off any other vibes.

I took a pillow and an extra blanket off of the foot of my bed, and propped them up on the floor.

"I know it's not fancy," I said apologetically.

"It's fine. Thank you." He took off his sweatshirt and laid it on the back of the chair. The homey gesture reminded me of when Hugh would come home from work, and toss his jacket on my parents' bed. As he propped himself up, I sat down next to him on the floor. I couldn't help myself.

His eyes registered confusion now that I was so close. I stroked the side of his cheek with the back of my hand.

"Can we finish one thing?" I asked softly. And then I kissed him, gently at first. He responded immediately, moving his lips against mine, putting his arms around me and running his hands along my back. The kiss grew in intensity, all of my feelings rushing to my mouth, searching his with my tongue. When I finally pulled away, gasping for breath, we looked at each other.

"Goodnight," he said, pressing his forehead quickly against mine, and then lying down on the pillow.

I crawled into bed and shut off the light.