The Shadow Society (7 page)

Conn had been waiting for me outside the school entrance. He had waved, beckoning for me to leave my friends and join him. His chameleon eyes had been green with sunlight and excitement.

“It was about our class assignment,” I told Raphael. “No, really,” I spoke over his sputter of disbelief. “We’re building a sculpture about the meaning of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’ Conn had an idea. In the poem, J. Alfred repeats ‘there will be time.’ So, this morning, Conn suggested that we build a sculpture that’s also a working clock. Because of phrases like ‘time for you and time for me.’”

“He does take up a lot of your time,” Raphael muttered. “He’s always hanging around you. We miss you, Darcy. We were your friends first.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“Do you remember this summer, when we went to the Water Tower?”

Usually when people talk about the Water Tower, they mean Water Tower Place, the mall that’s right down the street from one of the oldest monuments in Chicago. But Raphael was referring to the nineteenth-century pumping station, which looks like a miniature cathedral surrounded by concrete pavement. In the summer, the pavement is covered with tables and chairs where sharply dressed business people take their lunch breaks. Musicians play and kids in sweatpants break-dance on cardboard.

“Your chalk art was beautiful,” Raphael continued, “swirling over that plain concrete. You signed your name and made me sign mine, too, even though I hadn’t done anything but keep you company. Darcy Jones and Raphael Amador.”

“I remember.”

“Hey!” Taylor called. “Where’s my mocha latte? How long does it take to foam milk?”

Raphael shrugged helplessly and reached for the drinks.

I raised one brow. “Do you really want to have a chat about keeping bad company?”

“Maybe not.” He smiled. “See you later, Darcy.” He headed back to Taylor, who snatched her mug from him. Brown froth sloshed onto her skirt.

I tuned out her outraged cry and Raphael’s protest of innocence. My attention was drawn to something else: the rack of tiny demitasse spoons to be served alongside espressos. J. Alfred says, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” and it struck me that they would make perfect hour and minute hands for the clock sculpture. I stuffed two of them in my pocket.

Riding around on a motorbike. Cutting class. Petty thievery. I was well on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent.

Though that wasn’t what got me arrested the weekend before the English project was due.

13

Conn stopped me in the halls. It was Friday, and our project was due on Monday.

Rushing students flowed around him like he was a sharp rock and they were water. He started to say something, then peered at me. “Have you been sleeping all right?”

No. Pretty much as soon as I admitted to Raphael that I wanted to know more about who I was before becoming a constant headache for the DCFS, I began to have nightmares. They weren’t about anything specific, but I woke up choking back screams of terror, my heart leaping like a wild beast. I could only remember fire and a horrible smell I couldn’t quite identify.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve been sleeping fine.” But I knew there were violet smudges under my eyes.

Conn’s expression turned skeptical. Then he shook his head slightly, as if trying to clear his vision. “When can I see you in private? Later this afternoon?”

“I can’t,” I said reluctantly. “I work.”

“Tonight, then?”

“The same.”

He said nothing, but bit his lip.

“Conn, everything will be okay. I promise.”

“How can you say that?” he whispered.

“Because it’s just one grade. It’s not the end of the world, whatever happens. You’ve done your part for the English project, right?”

He gave a short nod.

“I’ve done mine. We’ll put them together this weekend. Marsha works on Saturdays. Come by tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll have the house to ourselves to finish the sculpture. How does that sound?”

“Ideal, actually.” Yet he didn’t smile. “Your hair is damp,” he said abruptly. He raised a hand and I stood perfectly still, holding my breath as he touched the air an inch from my face. He let his hand fall, but my skin tingled all the same.

I forced myself to breathe. “Well, that’s what happens when you take a shower after gym class.”

“Hmm.” He gave me a long look. “I imagine so.”

Wait. Had I brought up the subject of nudity? With Conn? Was I
insane
?

I couldn’t take any more of this conversation. It was tugging my emotions in too many different directions. “I’m going to be late for my next class.”

“One more minute. Darcy, I have to tell you something. I mean, I have to ask you something. I … I don’t really care about the project.”

“You don’t?”

“What I need to know is this: will you still want to see me after Monday?”

That was the moment I allowed myself to hope. The feeling was beautiful: a rainbow soap bubble expanding inside my chest. I thought about seeing Conn the next day, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. Not because of my nightmares, but because of my dreams.

“Yes,” I told him. “I will.”

14

That night there was a cold snap, and when the dawn came the dry grass glittered with frost.

I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself up from the waterbed, which gurgled as I stood and searched for my slippers. Finally, too tired to care if my feet were cold, I gave up the hunt and was walking through my bedroom door when I stumbled over one of those sneaky slippers and whacked my wrist against the doorframe. Not a great start to the day.

Marsha was in the living room, watching Saturday morning cartoons and dusting sugar over her cereal. “You’re up early,” she said.

“Coffee,” I mumbled.

“Big plans for the day?”

“Yes. Coffee.”

“If you want some, you’ll have to make it yourself. I’m leaving in five minutes. We ran out of that fancy stuff you brought back from work, but there’s some instant coffee.”

I tried to take this news bravely.

“You’re not going to the café today, are you?” Marsha said. “We agreed you would work only part-time once the semester started. You’ve got to keep your grades up.”

“That’s what I’m going to do.” I filled a mug with water and stuck it in the microwave. “Me plus free time equals homework.” It probably wasn’t wise to mention that Conn was part of this equation. Marsha hadn’t exactly forbidden me to have boys over, but probably only because the thought of it had never entered her head.

I glanced at her and fought a foolish urge to tell her everything. I remembered how it felt to
not
feel Conn’s fingertips touch my hair. And I knew the exact nature of my hope. I saw its shape. I saw its size.

The microwave chimed. Marsha slurped down the milk at the bottom of her bowl and switched off the television. “Oh!” She looked at the clock. “I’m running late. Bye, Darcy.”

I lifted a hand and made myself wave. “Bye,” I said as she hustled out the door.

Alone in the sudden quiet, I dumped the remaining contents of a jar of coffee crystals into my mug, stirred, and choked it down.

Then I waited.

Stage One of waiting for Conn was a hot shower, during which I was so sleep-deprived and nervous that I used Marsha’s purple shower gel and emerged from the bathroom smelling flowery and way too flirty.

Stage Two was selecting clothes that would make me seem unimpressed by Conn’s presence. Something simple, careless. Black cargo pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Done.

Stage Three was revising my strategy. Maybe I
should
look like I cared, a little? I tried to reproduce the elegant hairstyle Lily had concocted for me in the girls’ bathroom.

Stage Four: I failed. I looked ridiculous. I tore the pins from my hair and brushed it loose and smooth.

Stage Five: I curled up on the sofa with my sketchbook and cracked it open to a bare page. I drew a low stone house framed by a wrought-iron fence. The lines came heavy, hard, and fast, and I began to relax until I realized that this house, like everything else I’d been sketching lately, looked familiar yet impossible to recognize.

Stage Six: I threw the sketchbook onto the shag carpet.

Stage Seven: there was a knock at the door.

I stood slowly, moved toward the door slowly, and opened it slowly—not just because I didn’t want to seem eager, but also because I sensed that the moment Conn came inside, everything would change.

He held a cardboard box in his arms. Conn’s face was grim, and his breath fogged the air.

When he stepped into the living room, his gaze flickered, pausing on the three closed doors down the hallway: the bathroom, Marsha’s room, my bedroom. He raised the cardboard box, which ticked like a bomb. “Where should I put this?”

“The rest of the sculpture is in my bedroom.” I led the way. Determined to speak lightly, I added, “Marsha doesn’t like art to get all over the house, unless it comes in the form of an adorable portrait of a furry woodland creature.”

My room was small, but I kept it neat—except for the desk, which was strewn with pencils, a stylus, and an X-Acto knife, everything clustered around a tall, rectangular object I had sheathed in a pillowcase.

Conn set the box on the bed, and when the mattress sloshed he lifted his brows. “Is that … filled with water?”

“Very 1970s, isn’t it? Marsha was so proud when she first showed me this room. She thinks everybody wants a waterbed.”

Conn pressed his fingers against it, bewildered, as if he’d never seen a waterbed before. Then he shrugged and turned to shut the bedroom door. The sound thumped somewhere deep inside me.

He pushed up the sleeves of his gray sweater, revealing the tight muscles of his forearms, and slipped both hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “We should get started,” he said, his tone all business. He nodded at the pillowcased object on my desk. “Is that it?”

Grateful for something to do, I unveiled the sculpture.

It was a glass box encasing a human figure made from plaster, pinned by its feet to a wooden bottom. It was J. Alfred, and he could barely be seen through the ocean I had painted on the glass panes. Above the water, the glass walls were clear and speckled with tiny, gold-colored watch gears that I had wheedled out of the manager at the local jewelers. I had superglued the gears, one by one, into constellations above the ocean. The box had no lid.

Conn stepped closer and touched the painted mermaids swimming in the waves, their tails flowing like long dresses. “‘We have lingered in the chambers of the sea,’” he quoted the poem’s final lines. “‘By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown.’ Darcy.” He looked at me. “This is beautiful.” His gaze held mine so fully that I felt as if his hands had cupped my face.

I forced myself to speak. “The shadow box isn’t sturdy. I used a hot glue gun to fit the four panes of glass into a rectangle, so the box won’t last forever, but I reinforced the base with copper wire. We’ll do the same to the top once you’ve inserted the clock mechanism. I should have used a small propane torch to fuse the glass together, but I don’t have one, and anyway, open flames make me twitchy. I don’t like … that is, I’m…” I trailed off.

“You’re afraid of fire,” he said gently.

“Yes,” I muttered, embarrassed.

“Don’t worry. We all have our weaknesses. I think the sculpture is perfect.”

“No, it isn’t.” I opened Conn’s cardboard box and lifted out a small, narrow machine. “But it will be.”

Reluctantly, Conn removed his hands from his pockets and took the clock. Once he held it, though, his shoulders relaxed. Maybe, like me, he was grateful to have something to do. He sat at the desk, lowered the clock into the shadow box, and began to attach it by squeezing metal clamps onto the glass edges. His fingers were quick and sure. Gifted. I watched them dance, and it was easy, too easy, to fall under their spell.

A bad idea. I tore my gaze away. I looked at the clock instead. As I studied its intricacy, I realized that Conn was an artist, too.

Then he leaned back, and I could see what we had done together. There were the coffee spoons, one painted and one plain, measuring the hours and minutes. There was the clock’s pendulum: the rusted spring we’d salvaged from the train tracks, dangling over J. Alfred’s head in a spiral like a strange halo. There was everything we had planned for a month, everything except—

“The planet,” I said. “Where should we put it? Maybe we could fix it to the top of the box, tilted at an angle? Or—”

“You should keep it for yourself.”

“But you made it for the sculpture.”

The sharp angles of his face softened. “I made it for you.”

I became acutely aware of the ticking of the clock, and another sound: my heartbeat, skipping in a quick rhythm. I nodded, and knew that now I needed the spool of copper wire, and should get it, I really should, but it was in the desk drawer and Conn was sitting in front of it like a lion I’d have to creep past. I hesitated, then stretched out my arm and reached for the drawer.

His hand caught mine. “What’s this?” He eased back my sleeve, exposing the black and blue mark on my wrist.

“Just a bruise.”

“A bruise,” he repeated.

“Yeah. Really clumsy of me. I got it this morning.” Conn was examining my skin with wonder. His dark golden head bowed over my hand in his as I stood before him, begging my body not to tremble, begging my voice not to break. “What’s the big deal?” I tried to sound nonchalant. “Everybody gets bruises.”

“Not you. Never you. You shouldn’t allow it.”

Which was, obviously, a bizarre thing to say. But before I could make a comment to that effect, Conn grazed his thumb over the bruise and swept his fingers up the tender skin of my inner arm. I forgot to speak. I forgot to breathe.

Still seated, still caressing the pale hollow of my elbow with a palm as rough as a cat’s tongue, Conn looked up at me. His eyes were the color of storm clouds, and alive with a question.

My answer?

I kissed him.