The Other Side of Dark (3 page)

“Oh,” she says, and looks relieved. I don’t know
what I expected. Sympathy? Maybe even curiosity. This Jan doesn’t want to know what I could tell her.

I have no idea what to say to her. I guess, from the way she starts squirming as though the chair had lumps in it, that she feels the same way. This is my best friend, Jan, to whom I told even my secret thoughts, and now I’m blank.

But I make a desperate stab. “What are things like at school?”

Jan sits upright, looking thankful, as though she’d just passed a math test she hadn’t studied for. “Oh, same old grind. Suzie—you remember Suzie Lindly—anyhow, poor Suzie got married last week to a guy who is really out of it. I mean totally out. Only everybody knows she had to.”

“Why did she have to?”

Jan blinks a couple of times, her mouth open. “Honestly, Stacy. You know. Because she’s pregnant.”

“Oh.” I feel myself blushing again, and I’m mad at myself for being so dumb, for being a little kid.

Jan takes a deep breath and picks up speed, like a train making up time after almost getting derailed. “And Bick is quarterback and is the big thing in the sports section of the newspaper each weekend and has a ton of colleges wanting him next year.”

“Bick—that skinny guy in ninth grade?”

Jan rolls her eyes. “He’s no longer skinny, needless to say, and he’s a senior and really something to look at. I dated him a couple of times.” She smiles, and I can see that she’s waiting for me to be impressed.

But I giggle. “I’m sorry, Jan. All I can see in my mind is gawky, skinny Bick who likes to make those
awful loud burps while we’re eating lunch. Remember, he sent you a note in study hall one day and got yelled at by Mr. Hadley, and you said you’d rather drop dead than have anything to do with Bick?”

There’s a long pause. Finally her voice comes out as tight as a stretched rubber band. “I’d forgotten. That was such a long time ago.”

We stare at each other for a few moments until I stammer, “I guess it was.” Desperately I blurt out, “Well, tell me about yourself.”

“Sure. B.J. talked me into joining the camera club. You remember B.J., don’t you?”

“The quiet girl with the blond braids.”

Jan laughs. “No more braids, and B.J. really blossomed. We’re all jealous. Anyhow, I went into photography in a big way and got some black-and-whites and one color shot accepted for the yearbook last year. So I’m on the staff this year, and B.J. and I are saving our money for a camera trip in Yellowstone Park in July. B.J. says—”

“Sounds like B.J.’s a good friend.”

“My best. She’s so much fun, and—” Jan stops. “Of course, you’ve always been my best friend, too, Stacy, and when you get back to school—”

We just look at each other. I don’t feel jealous because this Jan is another person in another world. This isn’t my comfortable, forever-and-ever best friend, Jan. Besides, the hollow place is still inside me. I can’t feel anything at all.

Jan jumps to her feet. “I’ve got to leave pretty soon. Let me get some makeup on you first.”

I’m still clutching the package. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to. Really. You can use the little hand mirror to watch.”

She has taken the package out of my hands and tears it open, so I don’t object. I just let her smear on creams and oils and all sorts of stuff, obeying directions as she tells me to close my eyes, open my eyes, and hold my mouth just right so she can add the lipstick. She gives me instructions as she goes, but it’s hard for me to pay attention. I keep thinking about the Friday nights when she’d stay over at my house or I would at hers, and we’d put on our pajamas and sit on the bed eating cookies and cheese puffs and all sorts of junk while we watched TV and rolled each other’s hair. I wish she’d go away.

Finally she steps back, stares at me and gasps, “Stacy, you’re really beautiful! Look in the mirror. Look at yourself.”

Dr. Peterson comes into the room, stands at the foot of the bed, and studies me so appreciatively that I don’t have to look into the mirror.

“Seventeen, going on twenty-six,” he says. He’s not talking to me. It’s to someone else who’s sitting here, someone I don’t even know.

I introduce him to Jan, who beams at him like a beauty contestant meeting the judge, grabs for her handbag, and says, “I know you’re busy, and I’ll get out of your way.”

“Stick around if you like,” he says.

But Jan squeezes my hand and rolls her eyes upward in a way I remember, meaning, “Isn’t he gorgeous?”
and backs through the door, saying to me, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I can’t help giggling, but it surprises me by sounding like a sob.

“Don’t cry,” Dr. Peterson says. “One thing I learned when I was married is that crying does ugly, smeary things to a woman’s mascara.”

“I don’t know anything about mascara.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty of it on.”

For the first time I look into the little mirror and feel even more alienated than before from the body I’m in.

“Want to wash your face? I can wait.”

“Yes.” I start to climb out of bed, then change my mind. I kind of like the way that girl in the mirror looks. Maybe I can save it for just a little while. Maybe I could get used to looking like that. “Never mind,” I murmur. I tuck the blanket around my hips and sneak another look in the mirror.

He sits on the side of the bed. “Do you want to talk to me?”

“About what?”

“About what you remember.”

I know I’m scowling, screwing up the muscles in my face until they hurt, trying, trying, trying so hard to think. “I don’t remember enough.”

“Don’t work at it so hard. It will all come back to you.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“I think it will. You said you saw him—the guy who shot you.”

“I didn’t think that you heard me.”

He doesn’t answer, just shifts his weight, making the bed wobble, and waits for me to go on.

I hug my knees against my chest. “I can’t see his face, but I know his name. It’s somewhere in my head!”

“Take it easy. One thing at a time.”

“If I could just remember, I could tell the police. I could identify him. What if he gets away?”

“It’s been four years already since the crime took place. A little more time won’t matter. Why don’t you talk to me about the way you feel? You’ve had to make a lot of mental adjustments in the past few hours.”

“I don’t want to talk about anything.”

“I’d like to talk about your mother.”

“No!” I sound so angry I’m surprised, because I don’t feel angry. I don’t feel anything. I’m a robot with nothing inside but gears that make me move and talk. I try to soften my voice and add, “I can’t. Not yet anyway.”

“Okay,” Dr. Peterson says. “I’ll be here when you want me.”

My breath comes out in a long shudder. “I want to go home.”

He smiles. He has a nice smile. It melts across his face, matching the deep syrup of his voice. “Pretty soon,” he says. “We just have to make sure you’re over the infection and the anesthetic and all that stuff.”

In spite of the way I feel, I can’t help reacting. “Doctors don’t say things like ‘all that stuff.’ ”

“Oh? What do doctors say?”

“You know. All sorts of professional things that nobody can understand.”

He stands up, pats my hand, and moves toward the
door. “Okay. There must be a medical book around here someplace. I’ll look through it and find something that sounds good.”

The door plops shut behind him, and the room settles into stillness. I remember in Grandma’s house how she’d go through the living room and dining room every evening, pulling down the window shades against the dusk, one by one shutting out the night, shielding the house, enclosing it in a white-fringed safety. My mind is doing the same thing. I know that thoughts should be racing through my mind, tumbling over each other. I should be rolling in memories, wading through pain to all the new things I’ve seen and heard. But bit by bit my mind is shutting itself in, shielding itself from everything but one thought:
Who was the person I saw on our back stairs?

It’s his turn to die.

A reporter comes to my room.

But Donna arrived first with a suitcase filled with blouses and jeans and underwear and a pair of brown sandals, so I’m sitting in a chair, dressed in jeans that are too loose and short and a T-shirt that’s definitely too snug and sandals that actually fit.

“I had to guess on sizes,” Donna said as she tugged at the belt that keeps the jeans from falling around my hips. “I didn’t realize that you’d grown so tall and that you’re so slender. I guess I keep thinking of you the way you were when you were thirteen.”

“That makes two of us,” I answered. I wish Donna hadn’t helped me get dressed. I felt the same way I did last year—no, the year I was twelve—and took swimming lessons and all the girls had to change clothes together in the dressing room. Some of them were starting to grow breasts, and I’d sneak little looks while I was trying to keep my own chest covered, feeling miserable, hoping no one was looking at me.

I know, Donna’s my sister. But in a way she isn’t my sister. She’s a grown woman, with a baby growing inside
her, and it makes her so different I really don’t know her at all.

There’s a quick knock at the door, and it opens before either Donna or I can answer. A woman steps in and takes in Donna and me and everything around us with a glance that sweeps the room like a vacuum cleaner.

Seemingly satisfied, she looks directly at me. “Hi!” she says, and her grin is broad and full of teeth. She’s skinny, with frizzy blond hair that sticks out in every direction. Loose strands straggle over her eyes and fly away from her forehead. Straps for her handbag and camera case are tangled on her left shoulder.

For a moment Donna and I just stare at her, so she quickly adds, “Didn’t they tell you I was coming? I’m Brandi Mayer, a reporter from the
Houston Evening News
.” She peers at me. “You’re Stacy McAdams?”

I watch a strand of hair flop across her glasses. They’re huge and round and too big for her. She pushes her glasses up on her nose but doesn’t seem to notice the hair in her eyes. “Yes. I’m Stacy,” I answer.

Donna steps slightly in front of me, taking charge. “I’m Stacy’s sister, Donna Kroskey. Maybe I’d better call the clinic’s supervisor. No one here told us a reporter was coming. I really don’t know if you should be here or not.”

Brandi pushes up her glasses again and perches on the edge of my bed, since I’m in the only chair. “Communication foul-ups,” she says. “Happens all the time. Drives me absolutely batty.” She pulls a tiny tape recorder out of her handbag. The strand of hair drifts
back over her forehead. “You mind if I tape this?” she asks.

“Tape what?”

Brandi says, “If you don’t know, I’d better fill you in. I’m doing a story for the
News
about Stacy. My editor is real soft on human-interest stuff, and he thinks that what happened to Stacy, coming out of a coma and all that, ought to make a good feature story.”

“But how did he know about Stacy?” Donna asks.

“Easy,” Brandi says. “Medical news is a regular beat. We check the hospitals and clinics all the time, and we have people who call us about things they think might make stories.” She smiles at me. “Okay. Now that you know what I’m doing here, do you want to talk?”

Donna answers. “Not yet. I’m going to call the supervisor’s office and make sure this is all right. But first, we’re going to ask Stacy if she wants this interview.”

I shrug. “I don’t care.” A puff of hair drifts over Brandi’s glasses again. She probably doesn’t know what a mess her hair is. It looks as if she were caught in the rain and then in the wind. So I say, “Look, before you ask me any questions, do you want to comb your hair? You can use my bathroom mirror.”

“Stacy,” Donna mumbles. She looks embarrassed.

Brandi just gets up, goes into the bathroom, and comes right back. “Looks the way it’s supposed to look,” she says. “I worked hard to get it like this.”

“I can’t get mine to do that,” Donna says. “I think it’s the wrong length.”

“You’re kidding,” I tell them. “You mean it’s supposed to look messy?”

“Stacy! You’re being rude.”

But Brandi grins. “It’s the latest thing, kid. But you wouldn’t know that. You’re still into what was going on four years ago. That’s great! Real reader-interest stuff. How do you feel about the new cars and new movies and—”

“Wait!” Donna says, so while Donna telephones we sit and stare at each other. Brandi impatiently fiddles with her tape recorder.

Donna hangs up the receiver and says, “The woman in the supervisor’s office says it’s all right, but maybe I should try to get in touch with Dad and see what he thinks.”

“Could I just take a couple of pictures and get some basic answers from Stacy while you’re doing that?” Brandi looks at her watch. “I’ve got another appointment in less than an hour, and it’s over near the Loop.”

“It’s all right with me,” I tell them, so while Donna makes the call Brandi quickly aims her camera at me and snaps a few pictures. Then she tucks away the camera, turns on her tape recorder, wiggles into a shoulders-back alertness, and says, “Stacy McAdams—and that’s spelled M-C and not M-A-C. Right?”

“Dad’s not in his office right now,” Donna says. She comes to stand beside me and rests a hand on my shoulder.

“If I ask anything you object to, just stop me,” Brandi says. And without waiting for Donna to answer, she asks me, “What did it feel like, Stacy, coming back to the real world after four years asleep?”

The question throws me. “I—I don’t exactly know yet. There’s a lot to get used to.”

“New songs, new fashions, new television shows,” Brandi says. “Sleeping Beauty, coming back to the world. Hmmm. That’s good.”

“No. That’s wrong. Sleeping Beauty slept for a hundred years, and everyone else slept with her. Everything would be the same when she woke up.”

“Details, details. Doesn’t matter,” Brandi says. “What did you remember when you woke up?”

I close my eyes for a moment, thinking, trying so hard to think. I can see our screen door flying open. I can see the guy with the gun running out and pausing as he sees me standing there. And I can see him raise the gun, pointing it at me. But I can’t see his face!