Under the Light

Chapter 18





Jenny


IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS?” asked Billy.

It was like we’d found an animal’s den but the imprints left there were in the shape of two humans.

“How did you know this loft was here?” I asked him.

“Last year in carpentry we built a set for one of the plays.”

Ever since Saturday night I had been almost remembering a dream I had about a boy who liked me—it was right on the edge of my brain. Every time I thought about it, I got that kind of joy rush like when I was little and woke up remembering we were leaving on vacation after breakfast. But it was also like the wave of nerves I got when I woke up remembering I had to give an oral report in history class that day. It wasn’t the first time I’d dreamed I fell in love, but this dream was different.

In church the day before I thought I might have dreamed of a real boy, but one from the past. He might have been the spirit trying to make contact with me. I didn’t want him to be dead or imaginary.

But now I was changing my idea about who had sent me messages in the pages of the Bible and about where that vision of a flood came from. Two spirits had been visiting my life, apparently, during my lost days, one in my body and one in Billy’s. She was called Helen and I was starting to believe she was the one who guided my finger over the verses of Scripture.

I lay down on the cloth—Billy did the same, lying with his arm pressed to mine. We stared up into the jungle of ropes, lights, and electrical cords that hung above us, shifting almost imperceptibly in the blackness.

“I think Helen was trying to talk to me,” I said. And I thought, When she lay here with Billy’s body, this is what she saw when she looked up.

“How do you know it wasn’t the male ghost?” Billy asked. “He was the one who fell in love with her in your body. Maybe he can’t let go of you.”

You would think this would be the answer—I dreamed of a ghost boy because Helen was in love with him and when he held her, the lips he kissed and the body he lay with was mine. You’d think I’d jump at the idea of my dream being a leftover memory of Helen’s. But it didn’t feel right at all.

The boy I dreamed about was on another planet, light-years away.

A voice from the stage below us made me jump. “Are these the only two things we have to paint?”

I grabbed Billy’s hand.

“I think there’s a table in the shop we’re supposed to do, too,” came another voice from twenty feet below us. “Or maybe a little desk.”

I could hear the clink of a bucket handle, the shuffle of feet; I could smell paint.

Billy squeezed my hand.

“This can is half empty,” said one boy.

“It’s water-based, I think,” said the other boy. “Maybe we could thin it out.”

“We should go,” I whispered to Billy, but he shushed me. A little too loudly.

“Shit!” said one of the boys below. “Did you hear that?”

I held my breath, frightened. Of what—being sent to the principal’s office? Billy stifled a laugh.

“Hear what?” whispered the other boy. Then they both listened for a few moments while Billy and I stayed pressed together, trying to be still.

“This place is haunted,” said the first boy.

“Really?”

“There’s supposed to be a cold spot on stage.”

“Weird.” The second boy sniffed. “Hey, ghosts, don’t bother us and we won’t bother you.”

Billy watched me, studying my face and throat, then held up a hand that said, Don’t worry, Miss, I’ll take care of this. He let out a long, low groan, just soft enough to be believable.

“Holy shit!”

Billy grinned as we heard paintbrushes clack to the floor and footsteps running away.

After a moment of silence, we climbed down. He took my hand as I stepped off the last rung—something about his treating me like a lady gave me a sudden jolt of pleasure. Here was a cute boy who liked me, and we had a secret story together—something no one else would ever guess at or understand. I knew my parents wouldn’t let me date him, but he was my boyfriend anyway, I thought. I’d never had a boyfriend. I stared at him, amazed.

Billy adjusted his sweatshirt jacket on me, zipped me in, flipped the hood over my hair. I thought he was taking more time than he needed to.

“Am I disguised?” I asked. “Do I look like someone else?”

“Not to me,” said Billy.





We waited until the bell rang for the next passing period and then slipped into the foot traffic, making our way back to the lockers. I saw Jill Sugden from church coming our way, so I ducked my head and pulled Billy in the other direction, toward the quad. Then out of the general crowd noise, someone behind us called out.

“Hey, Blake!”

This time it was Billy who changed our direction—he tugged me to the right, onto the path that led to the school office. I didn’t want to be seen by anyone in attendance—they’d know I wasn’t supposed to be at school today—but Billy was right. Whoever called out for him didn’t follow us toward the principal’s office.

We headed for the corner of the building where the bike racks were, but a teacher came out of the attendance office and almost ran into us. Mr. Brown paused to read one of those little phone message notes, and Billy and I stopped just in time. I had taken composition with him freshman year, and he was nice and sometimes funny, but it wasn’t like I knew him very well. It took me a moment to remember that the ghost Helen said he had been her host. To my surprise, I was clutching his arm.

Mr. Brown looked down at me, expecting some student to ask for a makeup quiz or to explain how they’d lost their book report, I suppose. His expression was open and relaxed, but when he saw my face in the shadow of the hood, he froze. He actually dropped his briefcase at his feet and the little note he’d been reading blew out of his fingers.

I was in shock, speechless. I wanted to let go of him, but it was like my hand belonged to somebody else. My shoulder felt heavy and tingling all the way down to my fingertips.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.

Slowly he reached to put his hand over mine, but I was so embarrassed to be touching him that I tried to pull away. My hand wouldn’t cooperate. In my clumsy struggle to free him I kicked his briefcase and a cardboard box slid out of it. My hand opened suddenly, letting go of him just as a gust of wind swept through the corridor and lifted the lid of the box on the ground and papers started blowing out of it.

We watched the pages blow around like birds. Then I had the irresistible urge to catch them. I ran at the papers, snatching them out of the air as they traveled past the bike racks and toward the parking lot. I reached and grabbed with my right hand and kept the captured ones in my left. I could hear Mr. Brown and Billy helping in the paper chase. Some of the pages were handwritten and some were typed, but as I lifted one from the ground and peeled another from where it stuck to someone’s bicycle, I noticed that they weren’t student homework. The handwriting was all alike and the typed pages had high numbers: 107, 113. It was all one manuscript. His manuscript, maybe. He carried it around hidden in a plain brown box in his briefcase.

I paused and looked at him. With hair ruffled in the wind and a mess of papers under one arm, he jumped up and caught another page in midair—he seemed like a kid, not like a teacher at all. He had a secret, like my photographs.

I dove at another page as it cartwheeled by my feet. I guessed the handwritten ones were especially important because these probably weren’t entered into his computer yet.

Now Mr. Brown was ordering the papers in his hands and Billy was balancing on the bike rack to pull one from a tree branch. We gave our papers to Mr. Brown, who said, “Good work, team.” He turned pages front-wise, right-side up, and flipped through, and as he started to order them by number he stopped and scanned the top one in puzzlement.

“Did we lose some?” I asked him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered.

I felt guilty—I was the one who’d kicked his manuscript box open.

“I actually think this would make a better page one,” said Mr. Brown.

“Did you write all that?” asked Billy.

Mr. Brown smiled, held his fat, wrinkled collection of pages to his chest, and gave a small bow. “To you, the patron saints of unpublished novels, many thanks.”

If we’d had questions or apologies for each other, we didn’t seem to anymore. We didn’t even say goodbye. Billy took my hand, and as we walked away, Mr. Brown gave me a simple wave that lifted all the heaviness out of my arm.





We had to go back to the library because my mother would be wanting to pick me up. I hoped that if I called her before she got impatient and called me, she might let me study in the library again the next day. Billy and I got muffins at the coffee house across the street from the main branch and sat on the steps. I picked at mine, not feeling hungry anymore.

“I have an idea for our next field trip,” he said. “If I’m still around.”

“Are you going somewhere?” I asked. The idea that he might be moving or going on vacation shook me up.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Where?”

He looked into the distance and decided not to describe it. “Out of town.”

“For how long?” I asked.

This question seemed to pull all the energy out of him. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

A wave of fear swam up my spine as I saw something from the corner of my eye that had often given me a stomachache—rolling up to the curb, the white bulk of my father’s van.