The Deepest Secret (2 page)

He’s growing up
, David said when she worried Tyler might be depressed. It would be reassuring if that was true, but what if it wasn’t? Tyler hadn’t liked the therapist she’d found.
I’ll find someone else
, she’d offered, but Tyler had scowled.
Just
stop,
Mom
, he’d said, and so she has. But she and the other XP moms talk. Fourteen’s a dangerous age, old enough to understand, but too young to accept. Fourteen-year-olds chafe against restrictions, defy the rules that have kept them safe. She’s heard about the terrible battles the other mothers have waged.
Doesn’t he know that he has to wear his sunglasses? I caught her sneaking outside!
She’s listened and commiserated. Tyler’s already started to take risks. He won’t wear his mask when she takes him to his medical appointments. He hates it, keeps it on the shelf of his closet. It’s not like she can force him to put it on. The other mothers listen, murmur reassurances.
Even the best kids rebel
.

She brings out the cake, candles flickering in the darkness, and they sing happy birthday. She sees her husband’s features reflected in their candlelit son, the fullness of his lower lip, the roundness of his eyes. Tyler makes a wish and blows. Charlotte glances at her and immediately picks up the knife and begins serving cake, so that Eve can step back into the shadows and compose herself.

Fourteen birthdays so far. She remembers them all: His fourth, when all the kids ran around barking, wearing floppy Dalmatian ears she’d hot-glued out of black and white felt, and ate birthday cake baked in a big steel bowl like dog food. His fifth, where they
fished for prizes with magnets tied to strings. His seventh, when they wore cowboy hats and roasted hot dogs over a bonfire. His ninth, when she wrote
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
in phosphorescent chalk on the sidewalk all the way down to the park where his friends waited to jump out and surprise him. His eleventh, when she converted the backyard into a moonscape, and everyone ate astronaut ice cream and flung glow-in-the-dark Frisbees that trailed white blurs of false light.

They’d all been wonderful, in that imperfect way birthdays are, but the best had been his very first, before they knew. She’d set up a wading pool and Tyler had splashed in and out all afternoon, clapping his hands, his dimpled knees churning. Her parents and David’s father had been there, laden down with presents, so many that she had to set a few aside to open later. Three-year-old Melissa had run around singing her favorite Barney song and fallen asleep in David’s lap. It had been the happiest birthday by far. There would never be another like it.

TYLER IN THE NIGHT

T
he balloons tied to the trampoline hover above the grass like small animals on leashes, restless. Their smooth sides are shades of gray. The kitchen light behind him falls on the patio stones, bleaching them pale yellow. Everything else is shadowed. Tyler doesn’t remember what it’s like to see the world in full color.

It’s cooled off. Earlier, it had been steamy, but his mom wouldn’t even think about moving the party inside. The earth would have had to roll off its axis for her to do that. The radio’s playing and she’s humming along. It’s that stupid song about walking like Egyptians.
What does that even mean?
he’d asked her once, and she’d laughed.
Who knows? We were starved for music in the eighties
.

He shakes open the plastic trash bag and his mom drops in forks and crumpled napkins, paper plates smeared with frosting. “I think everyone had a nice time,” she says.

It had been weird when Dr. Cipriano showed up that evening, stepping through the gate holding a gift. How many kids had their dentist come to their birthday party? Zach hadn’t kidded Tyler about it, but he could’ve.

“I can’t believe how tall Mitch has gotten. I almost didn’t recognize him.” She crouches to retrieve a cup lying on its side beneath the table.

The sharp peak of the house next door cuts into the night sky. All day he’d heard the shouts of the men coming up through the air vents in the floor of his bedroom. His mom texted him to say she’d gone over to talk to them and the new neighbors had agreed to use regular light bulbs. She’d typed five smiley faces, one after another. The lights are on upstairs, and shadows move across the windows. A ceiling fan rotates in the blue-painted room. A tall bookcase stands against the wall, empty. “Where do you want this?” a man says, startling Tyler, he sounds so close.

A woman’s voice answers him.

They could have come to his party, but they hadn’t. They
had
just moved in, his mom said. She’d invited them, along with almost everyone else on the street, as though they were One Big Happy, which was lame. The people he’d wished had come, hadn’t. His dad had gotten stuck in DC; Rosemary was gone, and of course Yoshi couldn’t make it all the way from Japan. Yoshi’s not his best friend, but she’s
something
. She told him she was planning a special surprise for his birthday, and he’d waited all day but he never heard from her.

“Zach says he’s playing football this year.” His mom plucks a long curl of ribbon tangled among the rosebushes.

Zach’s been freaking out about high school starting. He and Tyler had downloaded the school map from the website and plotted out Zach’s schedule, tracing the route he has to take from building to building. Turns out Zach only has five minutes to get from one end of the school to the other in order to make it to gym on time.
Don’t worry
, Tyler had said.
You can do it
. And Zach had answered,
Dude. It’s not like middle school
.

For Tyler, high school will be
exactly
like middle school. He’ll turn on his computer, click the mouse, and nod to the teacher standing in front of the classroom. His mom’s told him that there will be a lot more kids in his classes, which is supposed to be a good thing.
You’ll have the chance to make new friends
. But her voice had that forced cheer to it that tells him she’s worried, too. And all he can think about is that he won’t be in any of the same classes as his friends.

“What about you, sweetheart?” She picks up a ball of wrapping paper. He and the guys had taken turns kicking it across the grass. “Did you have fun?”

“Sure.” He knows how much she wants to hear it. She’d spent ages planning, making the food, decorating. But how could he have had fun? It’s not like when he was little and thought birthday parties were cool.
Yay
, birthday cake.
Yay
, presents. But now he gets it.
Yay
, fucking nothing. He twists the top of the bag closed, carries it over to the garbage can. He looks down into the deep darkness. He wishes he could crawl inside, too, and pull the lid on over him.

Something zaps him on his cheek. Surprised, he touches his face and finds it’s wet. Is it raining? Puzzled, he looks up to the sky, sees the stars there, twinkling. Another splash, this time on his hand, and he looks across the yard to where his mom stands, holding the Super Soaker Mitch had given him.

The only thing that can beat that is the garden hose, turned on full blast, and he’s aiming it across the lawn as his mom ducks behind the fort when the French door opens.

“What are you two doing?” Melissa demands.

He turns and the spray of water dashes across his sister. She squeals and jumps back. “Seriously?”

“Oh, honey. We’re sorry.” But his mom’s laughing, and he can’t help it. He starts laughing, too.

“I hate you both.” Melissa tosses her hair and goes inside.

His mom puts her arm around him. They’re both wet, and the smell of grass is all around them. The small, tight things inside him loosen. “It’s late,” she says against his hair. “You go to bed. I’ll clean the rest of this up tomorrow.”

He pauses in the doorway. “Thanks,” he says. “You know. For everything.”

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

He taps his nose with his forefinger, then his cheeks—first the right one, then the left. His forehead, chin, and the nape of his neck. His hair gets in the way, so he starts over. Nose, cheeks, forehead, chin, neck. This time it feels right. He tugs his earlobes, right, then left. He takes a deep breath. Okay. He’s ready.

He pulls on his gloves and takes a flashlight from the junk drawer. His mom keeps flashlights in every room. His dad jokes they’re the only family in the neighborhood prepared for the apocalypse.

Unlocking the door’s the tricky part. His mom has superpowers when it comes to hearing the latch click. One, two,
three
. The snick of metal is a whisper, barely audible. Still, he waits to make sure his mom doesn’t appear behind him, yawning and tying her bathrobe around her.
You okay, Ty?
He doesn’t have to worry about Melissa. She always sleeps with her iPod playing.

The backyard’s dark except for where the moon shines down and picks out the stones of the patio, the metal arms of the chairs. He inhales, filling his lungs. What is it about the air that’s so much cleaner when no one else is breathing it?

He lets himself out the back gate and onto the dark street. There aren’t any streetlights. Back when he was little, his mom went to court and asked that the lights be turned off just on their cul-de-sac. There’s a newspaper article with a photograph of her, leaning against
a streetlamp with her arms crossed. They’d wanted to take a photograph of him, too, but his mom had said no.

It’s almost midnight—is he too late?

Sophie’s porch light is on, lighting up an apron of front lawn. Her VW bug sits in her driveway. Melissa’s told him it’s pale blue, a pretty color, but beneath the white-yellow glow of the porch light, it just looks dirty. Sophie uses a regular light bulb, not halogen, so it’s safe. He could dance in front of her porch and it wouldn’t hurt him a bit. All her other windows are dark, which makes it seem like she’s upstairs asleep, but Tyler knows better.

He hurries around the corner, but just as he reaches the edge of her deck, the downstairs light flares on. He fumbles with his camera, opening the lens, and glances up to see her coming forward to the glass and reaching up for the blinds pull. Tonight she’s in that black leather dress again, the one that bares her shoulders and laces tightly up the front. It’s nothing like what she’d worn to his party earlier, long pants and a loose top buttoned all the way to her chin. He presses the shutter just in time to capture her before the blinds tilt shut, the light shining behind her and showing every curve of her body. Then the bright light goes dim, and he knows she’s turned on her computer. He wonders what video game she’s playing, and whether he’s ever played against her online, but he doesn’t know her gamer tag.

Narrow cypress trees stand all around Dr. Cipriano’s house. Tyler pushes his way through the stiff branches and crouches to peer through the ground-level windows that look down into the basement. He’s gotten some interesting shots of Dr. Cipriano working away at that thing he’s building, his shadow leaping against the far wall as he hammers. But tonight the windows are all dark.

A yellow glow shines out Albert’s window, falling on the grass and lighting up the piles of oak leaves, making them look pointy and sharp. Soon all the leaves will be dropping. Deciduous trees produce an enzyme that cuts off food to the leaves, so they die. He’s
never heard of one that didn’t, but maybe there’s a tree somewhere that doesn’t have that enzyme—a tree that stays green all year long. There are almost sixty thousand different enzymes in people, and he’s missing only one.

He crunches across Albert’s yard and looks into the kitchen, which is exactly the way Rosemary kept it when she was alive—the framed pictures of cartoon chefs wearing funny hats hanging at a diagonal across one wall, the four blue-and-white canisters on the kitchen counter, the rooster-shaped salt and pepper shakers sitting beak to beak, like they’re talking to each other.
What do you think they’re saying?
he’d asked Rosemary, and she had looked thoughtful.
Talk is cheep?
Albert’s nowhere in sight, but a flame flickers beneath a pot on the stove.

Albert used to be a pilot. His basement had maps taped to the wall, with long red lines showing the routes he flew. Bangkok, Paris, Sydney. Albert’s been everywhere.
But I always came home
, he used to say with a smile. After Rosemary died, Tyler had helped Albert take down the maps.
Can I have them?
he’d asked, and Albert had set one surprisingly light hand on his shoulder.
Sure
, he’d said.
They’re all yours
.

Next door is the Farnhams’ brick house with its big patio and bay windows covered by drapes. It’s the one place he can’t go anywhere near. He holds up his middle finger as he turns onto the bike path.

The playground’s empty, the swings hanging straight, the slide looming dark and silent. It was right there, by the basketball court, where he and Rosemary saw The Beast. Actually, Rosemary’s the one who saw it. He turned his head too late to see anything but a distant pale smudge disappearing into the woods. Rosemary told him it might have been a wolf or even a mountain lion. He’s been looking for The Beast ever since, but so far, he hasn’t even come across a paw print.

He steps off the path and into the woods. He moves carefully,
not wanting to startle anything. He stops to check the nest where baby bunnies had curled up, nose to tail, but it’s still empty. The babies must be big enough to be on their own now. Voices sound nearby and he freezes, craning his neck to see where they’re coming from. A few more yards and the trees part to reveal the small bridge that spans the creek. Two people are there, their heads and shoulders just visible in the dim moonlight.

He sets his camera on a low-hanging branch and fits the remote to it. He bends to peer through the viewfinder. The rest of the world disappears and it’s just these two people looking at each other, a man and a woman. He can see the bumps on their noses, the curves of their chins. They’re holding hands, their fingers twined on the wooden railing. He presses the button and captures this moment, fixes it forever. These two people will never stand exactly this way again, with the exact same leaves hanging overhead, the exact same starlight gleaming all around.