Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (18 page)

“Oh God! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Ellery!
Ellery!”

Sam’s voice was fading in and out. She was
crying and pleading at the same time. I couldn’t see but my ears
were working.

“I’m sorry, man.”

Trevor’s voice was apologetic too. Then he
spoke soothingly to Sam.

“Just give her some space. She’s gonna to be
all right.”

Sam was still having frightened
hysterics.

“Honey, she’s gonna be fine. Look, she’s
sitting up. It’s fine. She’s fine.”

I was in a sitting position, but a very
loose interpretation of that pose, doubled over, my legs wide apart
and bent. It felt like I was having a dream about throwing up and
choking and being beaten all at the same time. It was painful and
awful and gross and embarrassing and the scopophobic sensation was
all over it.

Great.

I played high low in my mind with how many
people might be gathered around me, rubber-necking. I was not
fine—Trevor was delusional. I was the opposite of fine. I was still
coughing convulsively but the beating on my back had stopped. I
couldn’t bear to open my eyes. I took a chance and started to
slump, hoping somebody would catch me, but if I happened to knock
myself out, that would be good too, maybe better.

“Okay. Let’s get you to a chair,” Trevor
directed.

His voice sounded authoritative and calm. If
no one had been paying attention, as I suspected, he would get all
the credit for my rescue and none of the blame for being one of the
culprits in the first place.

I kept my eyes closed tight and purposely
made myself into dead weight, not helping a bit. I wanted them to
sweat. I would have loved to play dead, but I couldn’t control the
coughing—just one of the many facets of disappointment the evening
had produced.

I was placed in a chair. I could feel Sam’s
hands on me as she was putting towel after towel over and around
me. Then she was on her knees in front of me holding my hand.

“Ellery?” I had smoothed out some. The
coughing was toning down, starting to recede.

“Yes?”

My voice broke, even in a one-syllable
reply.

It hurt to talk. My nose and throat burned
terribly. I opened my eyes to her upset face, streaked with
tears.

“I’m so sorry.”

She was still crying.

Oh whatever.

“Sam?” It hurt but I had to say it anyway—I
sounded like the Albino dungeon guy from the movie Princess
Bride.

“Yes?”

Her red-rimmed wet eyes were wary.

“Are you sure you don’t hate me?”

I couldn’t stifle the sarcasm, but it made
me smile. She laughed and sniffed, shaking her head vigorously.

She rose and leaned into me, wrapping her
arms tightly around my middle. So tight, in fact that it was
difficult to breathe. My prideful side wanted to be angry and
indignant about the attempted involuntary manslaughter thing, but
the vulnerable, lonely, affection starved emotional refugee was,
ironically, the stronger side of me, and would take even more
oxygen deprivation, welcome it really, if that was the price for
feeling loved. I couldn’t imagine a better bargain.

Chapter 17
–
Game Night

It was definitely a cause for celebration. I
don’t know how he pulled it off, but Hoyt was able to get my mom to
agree to go on a cruise for their anniversary. I was glad for them
to have a vacation. They needed it badly after months on suicide
watch over me. I also took this to mean that they were over the
worst of worrying about me. I wasn’t the house party type, by any
means, but the prospect of having the place all to myself for nine
days was exciting. Their package was actually a five-day cruise out
of Cape Canaveral in Florida. But since my mom wouldn’t fly there,
they had to drive and so they were taking extra time on their way
down and back for the road trip.

I wouldn’t say this to her, but it seemed
like being on a cruise ship for a week would be much more risky
than flying in a jet for a few hours, back and forth to somewhere.
No matter how big the buffet or fabulous the shows promised to be,
rogue waves and dysentery were a turn off to me—but to each her
own.

I mentioned my parent’s last minute decision
vacation plans to Lidia, shortly after receiving the news myself,
and she seemed oddly concerned. She asked if I wanted her to come
and stay with me at night or if I might like to visit at her place
while they were away.

Wow.

I wasn’t going to say no to that. But I
didn’t want her to think I was totally pathetic, either. I’d have
to think about the best way to proceed. I accepted her offers
without being specific as to which, or when.

As the date drew nearer, Lidia was trying to
nail down some timing, and I knew I was being rude by avoiding
giving her a straight answer. But I wanted to have Samantha and
Trevor over during that time as well and they hadn’t gotten back to
me yet. I decided to make plans with Lidia and just fit the other
two in where I could.

First, I invited Lidia and her husband to
join me for dinner at my place at the beginning of my solo time,
the day my parents were leaving. Then I agreed to stay with the
Laurences at their place for the weekend. This would leave plenty
of opportunity to make plans with my Goths during the week. I had
to laugh when I thought about the differences in my two sets of
friends. It was what they had in common that I longed for, though.
I imagined that it must be very nice to be part of a couple. But
for me, being odd also meant being the odd one out. Still, it was
better than being a party of one. Yes, I had my mom, and as much as
I loved her to pieces, sometimes she felt more like a landlord, or
a dietician, or a warden—my parent, in other words. Odd one out was
great. Really.

I enjoyed cooking very much, but I had sort
of given it up after my grandpa died. He was the only person I had
played chef for, and I just felt empty and sad when I thought about
cooking in my mom’s kitchen, especially with her hovering over me,
scoffing at the fat or cholesterol content of any given ingredient.
But this was different. I wanted to make something really nice for
Lidia and her husband, and prove that I wasn’t completely inept.
That last part was a stretch, I knew, but I would enjoy trying.

Thanks to my mom’s nearly psychotic fixation
with having a clean house, the only thing I needed to get ready for
company was the food. She had left me a credit card and the keys
were in the usual spot, so I hopped in my Jeep to make a trip into
Middletown to go Krogering.

I realized while I was there, that this was
the first time I’d ever actually been on a shopping trip (for more
than just some gum or school supplies) on my own. It felt really
adult. Of course, being as inexperienced as I was, I didn’t realize
that being a grown-up at the grocery store is over-rated.

I picked out the items that I needed—feeling
weird the whole time because I was usually with an adult when the
shopping cart was this full—and made my way to the register. I must
have looked weird too, because the cashier kept searching behind
me, like she was waiting for my mom to return with whatever item
she had forgotten to pick up in the first aisle. It seemed like she
was really dragging it out too, moving in super slow motion, trying
to give my parent a chance to make it back before it was time to
pay.

When the last item was finally scanned,
about ten minutes later (good thing I wasn’t in a hurry) and a
variety of hopeful customers had abandoned the line behind me for
more promising service in lanes on either side of me, I produced
the credit card and handed it wordlessly to the cashier. She seemed
a bit contrite, but didn’t apologize.

I laughed to myself thinking about how my
mother would have regarded all of my product choices. Using her
credit card, I purposely bought exactly what I wanted, price or
artificial ingredients be darned. I made a mental note to destroy
the receipt, though, just to cover my tracks. After loading up the
trunk and returning the cart to its corral, I headed for home.

I had decided to use a recipe from my Paula
Deen cookbook. It was easy and there was no way to mess it up,
unless I forgot to take it off the grill. After I put everything
away, I placed the things I needed out on the counter and started
to assemble our dinner.

The Torrences arrived just as I’d finished
putting the chicken on the grill. I placed the platter in the oven
to keep it warm, washed off my hands and went to answer the
door.

As I passed the front window on my way, I
noticed they had traveled in the Z. If it worked out, maybe we
could go for a drive in it later, I schemed to myself.

Standing inside the foyer, Lidia introduced
me to her husband, Ray. He looked so much like the actor Denzel
Washington that I had to struggle to control my impulse to gawk.
She was obviously a supermodel. Would it be such a stretch for her
to be married to a movie star? It was strange but I noticed that he
seemed to be as taken with me as I was with him—except whom did he
think I was?

Lidia was clearly enjoying our reactions to
each other. I swallowed down my shyness, giving myself an internal
pep talk about how much she must like me to waste a Friday night
like this.

I welcomed them both as warmly as I could,
trying hard not to sound nervous, but without complete success. I
invited them to join me in the kitchen while I finished up staging
our dinner. I tried not to notice, but from the edges of my careful
concentration I could see that they were both watching my every
move with rapt attention. Was it really that novel to be
entertained by someone like me? Apparently so.

I forgot that wild rice takes about twice as
long as white rice to cook, so it wasn’t finished and it wasn’t
something I could rush. It would be at least another twenty
minutes.

To stall, I suggested that we have drinks
and I’d show them how to play corn-hole.

“Would you like to choose the wine?” I asked
to no one in particular with my back turned.

My parents were really into wine and kept a
very nice selection in a special wine valet next to the
refrigerator. I opened it up and Ray stepped forward to oblige.

“We’re having grilled chicken breast stuffed
with swiss and prosciutto, topped with a balsamic and cherry glaze.
I don’t drink wine, but I think that a dry white might go well, or
a Zinfandel. But, since you’ll be doing the drinking, just choose
whatever sounds good,” I said as I set out two wine glasses.

I couldn’t help but be slightly smug about
my wine pairing knowledge. They seemed sufficiently impressed. Ray
chuckled in pleasure and said, “If our hostess recommends a dry
white, then that’s what we’ll have.”

He selected a bottle, manipulated the
complicated bottle opener with the motions of an expert, and poured
a glass for his beautiful wife, and one for himself. It could have
been a commercial.

We stepped outside and into the back yard. I
already had the corn-hole game set out, but I had forgotten the
bags that were kept in a storage area under the deck. When I went
to retrieve them I realized, to my great dismay, that several of
the bags had been vandalized, probably by a gang of field mice. I
scrambled for a remedy and an idea came to mind. It was a long
shot, but I thought it was still worth a try.

I explained the situation to my confused
guests and excused myself, promising to return with usable game
pieces momentarily. Walking out my backyard in a diagonal
trajectory toward the corner of our property, I crossed part of one
neighbor’s yard and entered the next. Moving along the edge of this
yard, I made my way to the place where I knew corn-hole bags would
be available. But getting their present owner to hand them over
might be the hard part. I wasn’t certain whether he would even
answer the door.

This neighbor who had purchased my grandpa’s
home and nearly everything in it was an absorbing mystery. I’d
never gotten a good look at him. He kept odd hours. I’d seen him
coming and going in his car just a handful of times, but the
windows were heavily tinted and he always shut the garage before he
got in or out of his car. A lawn service cut the grass. The realtor
told my mom that he was a computer software engineer. He obviously
traveled quite a bit because at night his house was dark more often
than not.

I knew that he was in town today because I
had seen his SUV pull into the neighborhood as I was coming back
from the store. I rang the doorbell a total of four times, not in
rapid succession, but with appropriately polite spacing in between.
I think perhaps he meant not to answer, but when it became clear
that I had nothing better to do but to annoy him all night, he must
have changed his mind. I was about to go for five rings when he
suddenly materialized out of thin air. It startled me because I
hadn’t heard or seen him approach. The door went from being closed
tight to open with him standing there looking at me, as though I
had missed the part in the middle where you hear the footsteps
coming, the lock un-clicking, and the door swinging open.

Suddenly we were face to face. It was like
standing in the sun. I could feel the heat on my skin, and just
like staring at the sun, I knew it was a bad idea to keep looking,
but I didn’t stop.

It was HIM! The one called Ash! As Sam had
once put it, my ‘totally handsome stalker.’ The one who nearly
freaked out when I disappeared at the theater. The one whose face
starred in all my girlish fantasizing these days…

And now several pieces of the puzzle of my
watchers came together simultaneously. It explained why I couldn’t
go outside in my own yard without instant scopophobic sensations
cropping up. It also explained his reclusive, retiring habits. And
it made perfect sense that he, or someone like him, would now
occupy the house that backed up to my own. It was shocking to think
perhaps he’d been living there all along, but not unpleasant…no,
not unpleasant at all.