I stood outside with the mason jar in my hand and the lightning bugs flying around, uncaught. For a while I just watched them zing past me, their little bellies glowing as they gathered in the cluster of trees toward the back of Zell’s yard. From where I stood, I could see inside Zell’s house, right into her kitchen. Zell was talking to Christopher’s mom at the kitchen table. But they didn’t see me. They were drinking wine and looked really serious, nodding a lot, their mouths in straight lines across their faces. I knew better than to go back in and interrupt them.
I looked over at the house next door. Lilah and Alec weren’t home. Ever since their mom showed back up, they were always off doing stuff with her. Zell told me to give them time, but I didn’t have time. Everyone said I’d still be in the neighborhood and nothing had to change, but I knew that sometimes things just changed and there was nothing you could do to stop it from happening. That was what the whole summer had been about if you thought about it. All around us things had changed, and changed again.
Since there was nothing better to do, I walked toward the front yard just to see something other than lightning bugs. At least in the front yard I could sit in my favorite spot by the pond and watch cars going by, when a car did come by. In this neighborhood it wasn’t often that even happened. I put the empty mason jar on the grass and rested my chin on my knees, listening to the sounds of the nighttime all around. I tried to look up at the moon, but it was covered up by clouds.
Mr. Doyle’s house was right in front of me, but I couldn’t look at it. Since the kiss had happened, I’d thought of little else besides his tongue filling my mouth, about to choke me to death, his coffee breath nearly making me gag. He’d told me not to tell anyone what happened, and I didn’t intend to. It was too embarrassing, and there was no one to tell anyway. Zell would overreact, and my mom didn’t need anything else to deal with. Sometimes I thought of warning Lilah not to ever go to his house, but I had a feeling Mr. Doyle wouldn’t mess with her because he’d be afraid of her dad finding out and kicking his butt.
I watched his house and thought of his mother dead in the ground, and the pond he was building even though she’d never see it now. I thought of how we’d worked to finish his pond and the curtain I saw move, how that nagged at me almost as much as the kiss, though I couldn’t say why. No matter how much I told myself it was just my mind playing tricks on me, the heat getting to me, I kept seeing the curtain move and the lock on the basement door—one after the other, like a movie playing in my mind on repeat.
Sitting there thinking about it all, I got an idea. His car wasn’t in the driveway, and I knew he’d gone over to play poker at a friend’s house because I heard him talk to him on his cell phone when we were working on the pond. I’d seen him whistle his way to the car hours earlier, hating him with all the hate in me. The lights were out except for a faint blue glow coming from Jesse’s room. That meant he was playing one of his video games so he would be distracted. If I hurried, I could do some spying before he came back.
Before I knew it, I was up on my feet and heading toward the house, feeling a bravery I’d never felt in the light of day. I crept closer and closer, knowing no one could see me. I know a lot of folks are afraid of the dark, but I learned something important and true that night: sometimes darkness can work to your advantage.
I stood on his patio just looking at the locked sliding glass door I couldn’t possibly get into, wondering what had made that curtain move and whether I’d be brave enough to go in there if I could figure out a way to get in. I had no key and no idea how to pick the lock. There was a small rectangular window that led into the basement, but there was no way I was going to fit through it. I looked around for another way to get in, but saw nothing. My body felt cold and hot all at once, my heart had moved into my throat, and I thought about hightailing it back to Zell’s. I could run away and not look back. I could leave in the morning and pretend that I’d never gotten this close. I could let whatever was weird about Mr. Doyle’s house stay weird and spend the rest of my life trying to forget what he did.
I thought of the way he looked at me after he kissed me, how he gave me that smile at the same time his eyes went flat in his head, like his mouth and eyes weren’t connected to the same brain. And I got so angry I wanted to hit him, to pound my fists into him until it hurt. I spied my reflection in that glass door, saw my puny little self that couldn’t hurt a grown man no matter how much I wanted to. Then I remembered the river rocks we’d used to make the border of the pond. And I got an idea.
If I got in trouble, well, what did I have to lose? I would only have to deal with the fallout for so long before I went home. Zell didn’t like Mr. Doyle anyway. I smiled and walked over to pick up the biggest, heaviest rock I could find. I lugged it over to stand in front of the sliding glass door again, watching the reflection in the glass, someone I wasn’t sure I knew anymore. The rock was so heavy I had to hold it like when I used to take granny shots at the basketball goal in gym class. I kept my eye on the glass door and got ready to take a granny shot of a different sort. I was about to let the rock fly when I heard a car on the street. The engine sounded like it was slowing down, maybe even fixing to turn in to Mr. Doyle’s driveway.
I laid the rock down and rushed over to peer around the side of the house. I watched as a big SUV pulled up across the street in front of Alec and Lilah’s house. I could see that it was Jencey, idling there at the curb just staring at the house. The windows were rolled down, and I could hear her radio playing some sad love song. She kept on sitting there without noticing me at all, so I went back to what I was there to do, hefting the rock back into position, my eyes once again leveled at the intended target.
I imagined how loud the glass would sound as it shattered, the mess it would make. I feared Jesse running out and catching me, Mr. Doyle coming home to find me before I could get away. I tried not to think about what might be behind that curtain—maybe it would be something I didn’t want to let loose. But I couldn’t let any of that stop me. I was there to do something, and though I didn’t really understand it, I had to see it through.
As I went to raise my arms, it felt as if another set of arms came underneath mine, making me ten times stronger and ten times braver than I’d ever been. I looked at the glass, and with every ounce of strength I had, I hurled the rock into the window, these mysterious arms helping it go faster and harder than I ever could’ve on my own. I covered my ears as the sound of breaking glass drowned out the chorus of crickets, cicadas, and tree frogs I’d just been listening to over in Zell’s yard.
When the noise died out, I took in the scene I’d created, my heart going a mile a minute. The glass scattered across the patio looked for all the world like a million diamonds shining in the moonlight. It took my breath away. But not nearly as much as the face that appeared in the hole the rock had made. It was a face I’d seen about a hundred times, the face that had been on TV and posters and billboards nearly everywhere we’d gone that summer. “Have you seen me?” the posters asked.
And now I had.
JENCEY