Perception (5 page)

MY MOUTH OPENED
.

Way to go, Clare. Way to impress the mother of a prospective boyfriend.
Moms love their boys to date psycho overprotective girls.

“Gabriel doesn’t know I’m in town,” his mother said.

Now that I knew who she was, I was surprised I didn’t notice the resemblance earlier. She had Gabriel’s eyes.

Those eyes pleaded with me as she continued, “His father doesn’t, either. I have a room in a hotel. I only arrived today. When I saw my son in the restaurant, I hid because I didn’t want our first meeting in months to be in a place like that. I want to approach him at the right time, in the right place. We have a lot to talk about.”

I nodded slowly, words suddenly failing me.

She tilted her head to the side. “Are you my son’s … girlfriend?”

“No,” I said, wringing my hands. “We’re just friends.”

She smiled. “He’s lucky to have a friend like you looking out for him.”

I returned her smile nervously. “Thanks. I won’t tell him,
Mrs. Toscano. You have the right to approach him however you want.”

“Thank you … Miss …”

“Clare.”

“Thank you, Clare.”

She held her hand out and I shook it, despite the gnawing feeling that things were about to drastically change.

On Saturday, Mom — like a woman possessed — went shopping for even more decorations. Perry was bogarting the television. So I decided what better way to spend a Saturday than with homework.

Normal teens do their homework on Sunday nights. I realize this. I am not normal.

I hate procrastinating, so much so that I often do my homework on Friday so it won’t be hanging over my head all weekend long. The good thing is, my (nonexistent) social life doesn’t usually interfere with this quirk of mine.

Before I settled in to write my paper on the causes of World War II, I checked my email.

One new message.

From mybeautifulClare. Subject line: empty.

My heart sped up. Was my secret admirer going to reveal himself? The cursor hovered over the message. I wanted to know who it was, but felt conflicting feelings on who I
wanted
it to be. If it was Gabriel or Justin, then it was a nice effort but didn’t help the stalemate much. If it was someone new … then I suppose my reaction would depend on who it was.
But did I need any further complications in my romantic life? Especially with all the pressure surrounding that stupid dance?

I told myself to shut up and just open the email. I clicked.

Still anonymous.

I read it over three or four times. The note in my locker and the flowers had made my stomach do little flips over the unexpected flattery. But now I felt a bit nervous. The email was all complimentary. There was nothing threatening about it. But it didn’t seem right. I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes about whether or not to write back and finally decided to do it.

I hit
SEND
, and only a minute later, I got a mailbox error in return. The email address did not exist.

Someone had created the address at one of those free mail websites, used it once to email me, and then deleted the account.

Strange.

Wouldn’t he want to know my response to his email? Wouldn’t he want to know how I felt about his advances? Whether I was interested?

Obviously not.

But why?

Two scenarios formed in my mind.

Maybe he never planned on telling me who he was, never intended on going past the secret admirer thing. Either because he was a harmless guy who was afraid of rejection or there was no secret crush and it was someone playing a joke on me.

The other possible scenario was a bit darker. He
did
want to take this out of secrecy and to the next level. But he didn’t care about my response because it didn’t matter how I felt. It didn’t matter whether I wanted him or not. Because he was going to have me either way.

I shuddered, then tried to talk myself off the ceiling. I had no evidence for the creepy scenario. This secret admirer had been nothing but nice. I’d just learned to expect the worst in people. Or I’d been watching too many crime dramas with my mother.

The instant messenger window popped up with a loud
bing
.

I typed back:

The last time I’d seen her, she looked like she was going to blow chunks in the school hallway.

There was a long pause.

I was about to compose a response when she quickly typed:

And signed off.

I HEFTED THE LAST SHOPPING BAG FROM THE
trunk, carried it into the house, and dropped it on the floor.

“Careful, Clarity!” Mom said, rushing over to the bag. “This one has the crystal pumpkin in it.”

“It’s fine. They wrapped it in, like, ten thousand layers of tissue paper.” I collapsed onto the couch and scanned the chaos. Witches, pumpkins, and ghosts of the papier-mâché and ceramic variety littered the floor.

Mom stood with her arms crossed, tapping her foot. “I brought everything up from the basement, but we’re missing something.”

“How can you even tell?”

She ignored me and stared at the spooky mess. “I’ve got it!” She lifted her finger in the air. “The witch crash. Where’s the witch crash?”

I groaned. That particular decoration was one we’d bought many years ago. When hooked onto a tree, it looked like a witch on her broom had crashed in our front yard. We got a ton of laughs from it the first year, then everyone started copying us, and now I despised it.

“That thing is so cheesy. It would be a blessing if we lost it.”

Mom ignored my complaint. “I think it’s in the attic. Will you be a dear and go get it?”

“What about Perry? Make him do it.” I realized I was whining, but I hated the dusty, dark attic.

“Perry is uploading a new page to our website with our pricing changes. Unless you can do that, get your butt up there.” She shooed me off the couch with her hands and I dragged myself up the stairs.

The attic door is in the ceiling of our second-floor hallway. I yanked the rope and unfolded the stairs. I gave them a push or two to make sure they were still solid and climbed up.

I feebly reached out in the dark for the pull chain of our sole lightbulb and jerked back in surprise as it hit me on the forehead. I tugged it, and sighed in relief when the light went on. The thick dusty air tickled my throat. I tiptoed across the plywood and beams, and scanned the cardboard boxes labeled with black marker. Mom kept way too much of our school junk. When were we ever going to need something from the
Perry Third Grade
box? But, in a way, it was sweet.

I had no idea where the stupid witch could be. There were no more boxes marked
Halloween
. Maybe she’d been accidentally tossed into a Christmas one. I was about to give up when I noticed an unmarked box in the corner. The dust had been disturbed around it, as if someone had recently sat next to it. I shrugged and did the same.

The box was empty, except for one thing at the bottom. It looked like an old flannel shirt, red and black. Definitely not
Mom’s style. I picked it up and realized something was wrapped inside. I slowly unfolded the shirt, undoubtedly of the men’s variety, and found a framed photo of Perry and Mom. They were standing in front of the house, holding hands.

Wait.

Mom looked young in the picture. Too young to be standing with a full-grown Perry. I looked closer and realized it wasn’t Perry at all.

It was Dad.

I didn’t know from memory. I was only a year old when my father left us. But I knew in my gut this was him.

I’d heard a couple times from others that Perry looked a lot like our father. But only now did I realize how much. I wondered how it must feel for Mom, to see Perry every day and be constantly reminded of the man she loved and lost. No wonder she hadn’t moved on.

When we were younger, Perry and I would sometimes ask about our father. The only answer we got was that he left. We never knew why. But we saw how much it hurt Mom to talk about him, so we stopped asking, out of love for her.

All I knew about our dad was that he and Mom had grown up in the same town, a spiritualist community in western Massachusetts. Most of the inhabitants were paranormally gifted and they tended to marry each other to pass on the genes. Mom and Dad married, moved out to the Cape, bought this house, had Perry and me, and then … I don’t know. The rest is a blank.

I traced my finger down his face in the picture and wondered. Did he have another family now? Was he even alive?

I’d never felt my father’s absence. It was probably for the best that I was too young to remember him. How can you miss what you never had? Between Perry and Mom, I’d grown up with more than enough love. I didn’t need Dad.

But still, looking at his picture, I felt something stirring inside. A strange little ache.

Footsteps on the attic stairs alerted me that someone was coming up. I quickly rewrapped the photo and put it back in the box. I didn’t want Mom to see that I’d found it. If she did, it would probably disappear like all the other evidence that my father had ever existed. I struggled with the flaps on the box top. I almost had it closed.

“What are you doing?”

I whipped around and exhaled my relief as I saw the head poking up into the attic. “Oh, hey, Nate.”

Nate Garrick is my brother’s best friend and, to be honest, one of my best friends, too. He’d been as much a fixture in my life as if he’d been a second brother.

He climbed the last stair and walked toward me, slightly hunched so he wouldn’t bang his head on a beam. “Do you need help carrying anything down?”

“Thanks, but I can’t even find the damn thing.” I stood, wiping my dusty hands on my jeans.

“What are you looking for?”

“That witch crash decoration we put on the tree in the front yard every year.”

“You mean that?” Nate pointed at something up and over my shoulder.

I turned around and there it was, hanging from a rafter on a hook, the witch’s legs dangling. I shook my head. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it hanging up there. I’m a moron.”

He waved me off. “Ah, you were probably looking down at all the boxes, not up.”

“And you’re just being nice.”

He smiled brightly. “That, too.”

“So how’s college?” I asked, pulling the witch down.

“It’s good.” He shoved his hands in the front pocket of his Red Sox sweatshirt.

“Haven’t you come home, like, every weekend since you started last month?”

Nate shrugged. “It’s only Boston. It’s not that far away.”

“That’s not what I mean. Don’t you want to stay there and party? Meet girls? Go all Animal House?”

Nate smiled. “I do that every night during the week. Weekends are my time to come home and relax.”

That had as much chance of being true as Perry entering a seminary. Not that Nate was
too
serious. He had a great sense of humor and could have fun, but he was shy around people he didn’t know, especially girls. He’d been a gangly boy and a lanky tween, as if his height grew too fast for his frame. But now he was filling out, and I was sure his body, plus those dynamite green eyes, caught the attention of a few coeds. But Nate just wasn’t the girl-juggling type. He always claimed he was waiting for the right one. He was like the anti-Perry.

Still, I wondered if he was enjoying college as much as he let on. I worried about him.

“Seriously, Nate. What gives?”

His shoulders slumped forward a bit and he lowered his voice. “Perry’s my best friend, and I think he needs me right now. The keg parties can wait.”

That was just like Nate. It wasn’t his fault Perry chose to defer a semester and lock himself in his room. And Nate could forget about it, say it wasn’t his problem, and party it up at school. But instead, he was coming to visit here every weekend. Not because Perry asked him to come, but because he knew Perry needed a friend around.

“You’re one of the good ones, Nate,” I said.

He blushed and shuffled his feet. “You all set up here?”

I put the witch under my arm and nodded. “I’ll follow you back down.”

When we got downstairs, Nate left to have dinner with his family, but I was thankful for his brief visit. Even if he only stopped by for an hour, it always brightened Perry’s mood. Perry was happily helping out now, busy putting orange LED-lit faux votive candles in every window.

I headed outside to finish with the few outdoor decorations Mom hadn’t had a chance to take care of. It was surprisingly warm, but I still wasn’t used to how early darkness was falling this week. I turned on the outside porch light to help me see better. Dead leaves crunched under my feet as I crossed the yard.

I surveyed what I had left to do and chose a lawn sign. It was wooden, hand-painted, with a ghost that said,
BOO TO
YOU
. I picked up the mallet, ready to hammer the sign’s stake into the ground, when I first felt it. That prickly, creepy, familiar feeling.

I was being watched.

I scanned the windows, all lit but all empty. I faced our neighbor Milly’s house and saw nothing. Then I turned toward the small patch of trees on the other side of our property. I squinted at the shadows. The unmistakable feeling of unseen eyes weighed on me.

Someone was out there, in the darkness. I knew it. I strained my eyes, but couldn’t see anyone.

After a few moments of silence, I turned back to my work, aiming the mallet at the sign. Then came a sound. A scrape, like a shoe on the ground.

I spun around, eyes narrowed at the gloom. I waited, but heard no other sounds. Not even natural ones. Like the night was holding its breath. I still felt the presence, the tingling feeling on my skin. The mild fall evening suddenly felt very cold.

I was frozen in place with indecision. Running inside would feel cowardly, like I was letting whoever was watching me win. But every nerve in my body was telling me to go. I compromised by standing still for one more minute, then slowly backing toward the house. As my foot hit the bottom step of the front porch, I saw movement from behind a tree in the neighboring yard. A person was walking fast, headed my way. I balled one hand into a fist, tightened the other on the mallet, and readied a scream.