Towering (21 page)

I tried to think how to explain school to someone who’d never been. It was strange. I wished we could watch a movie or something. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Start with the first thing you do in the morning. Do you walk there?”

Somehow, I knew she was picturing
Little Women
or
Little House on the Prairie
, one of those books girls liked. “No. I live too far. I drive now—I mean, when I went, but when I was younger, I took the bus.”

“And a bus is . . . ?”

I laughed. “It’s a vehicle. It picks you up near your house. It’s big and yellow . . . orange and ugly. A lot of people sit in it, fifty or sixty, two on each seat.”

“Sort of like a train?”

“Not as cool as a train.”

She got a faraway look in her eyes. “I remember a train once, before Mama brought me here. It was nighttime, and we had a private compartment, away from everyone else. Mama wouldn’t let me come out. She was too afraid. I felt sick, and she told me to look out the window, that moving while looking at the other stuff, not moving, was what made me sick. But if I saw movement, I’d feel better. She was right. I stared out, and most of the time, there was nothing outside—just like my window here. But, sometimes, there were towns and houses and stores lining the track. You could tell the name of each town by the signs on the businesses and the post office. Finally, I went to sleep, and when I woke, Mama was carrying me away.” She stared off, remembering. Finally, she said, “So you went on the big yellow-orange ugly bus. Were your friends on the bus too?”

“A lot of them.” I thought of Tyler and Nikki. We’d waited for the bus together, of course.

“It sounds wonderful.”

Sitting there, in the still room, I could almost smell the bus exhaust, hear the farting sound the vehicle made when it stopped, the screaming kids, and the bus driver, shouting at us to be quiet. “It was sort of loud. Every once in a while, the bus driver would flip out at us for being so loud.”

“Flip out?”

“It’s an expression. Get mad, upset.”

She nodded, like she was still picturing someone flipping over. “I don’t even know what loud would be like. My world is quiet, so quiet. Sometimes, I sing just to keep myself company.”

“I know. I’ve heard you.”

She looked at me, surprised. “You have?”

“When I was at my friend’s cabin one night, it was quiet outside. The sound carries here, I guess. I heard you sing. That’s how I knew you were here. I’d heard you before, but this was closer. But no one else heard you. They said it must be a bird, a loon. But I knew it wasn’t.”

“You were meant to hear me, and they were not. I had heard you too, for days before, or rather, sensed you. I knew you were coming.”

It was so weird when she said things like that. Yet, I believed her. I reached over and took her hand in mine. It was small, so small, and cold. I squeezed it.

“Tell me more about your school, when you arrive. What does it look like?”

I tried to picture the school, how it would look to someone who had never been there, who’d never been to a school at all. I closed my eyes, remembering me and Tyler walking up to it, any given day.

“The building is brick. The bus parks in the back by the basketball courts.” She wouldn’t know what that meant. “Basketball is a game we play. There are no trees or anything back there, but there are trees in the front, not as big as these trees. When we get there, there are already lots of people. Everyone finds their friends, their little group. At seven thirty, we go inside.”

“And inside?”

“There are hallways, white tile. Well, it used to be white, but now, it’s gray from all the people stepping on it for so many years. The walls are white too, but they’re covered with posters and signs, so you can’t really see the walls.”

She leaned forward. “What do the posters and signs say?”

“Um, different things. If there’s a student government election—where they choose the people who run things—they put up signs saying things like
Vote for Lisa Amore
or whatever. Or sometimes, they think of slogans. Like, once, this girl named Sara Mitts ran for president. Her signs had a picture of a shoe on them, and they said
If the shoe fits, vote Sara Mitts
. Or, sometimes, there was a pep rally.”

“What’s that?”

“Um, football, it’s a game, a contest. People get pretty excited about it.”

“Like the jousting contests in
The Once and Future King
?”

“Sort of like that. People at school sometimes acted like it was like that. Yeah, we’d challenge other schools to see who was the fastest and strongest, so yeah, just like that. Anyway, before the team competed, they’d have a pep rally, to sort of get people excited about it.” I pictured the school gym as one of those long jousting arenas like they had in movies, the cheerleaders like ladies of court, waving ribbons instead of pompoms. “The band would be there, playing the school fight song, and people cheer—they scream stuff like, ‘Let’s go, Spartans!’”

“And you were on the team.”

She seemed impressed. I nodded.

“That must have made you feel like a hero.”

“It did.” It almost was like being a knight, the deafening applause as I ran into the school gym, Tyler behind me. I remembered smiling so much my face hurt. Where had it gone? What had it come to, if you could just be there one day and gone the next. It all seemed like a wasted effort.

I changed the subject. “Sometimes, they have a school play or a dance. They put up posters for those too.”

“A dance! At your school? How fun that must be!”

“It wasn’t that big a deal. They were mostly . . .” I stopped. I’d been about to say the dances were lame. I’d never gone. I didn’t even know anyone who went, except to prom. But I realized that would sound ungrateful to say that to someone like her, like complaining about the food in front of a starving man. “I mean, they were fun. They’d usually have some kind of theme, like . . .” I reached back into my mind, trying to visualize the posters. “Under the Sea, or Western, or Winter Wonderland.”

“Winter Wonderland?”

“I think . . .” I pictured the posters. “They decorated everything blue and white, and the girls wore white dresses too.”

She gestured to her own dress, which was white and lacy. “Like this one?”

“Exactly. If I’d taken you to that dance, you could have worn that.”

In fact, that dance had been last winter, a few weeks after the New Year’s Eve when Nikki and I had kissed. I had thought about asking her, even though she’d said no to me before. But I’d chickened out. I couldn’t tell if it was better that I hadn’t asked her. Would it have changed anything if I had? Would it have been like one of those time-travel movies, where every different decision upset the space-time continuum, changed the future just a little bit? Would Nikki be alive today if I’d gone?

I couldn’t think about it. I said, “I’d pick you up at your door, and I’d want to say, ‘You look so beautiful,’ but I wouldn’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“I’d be scared silent, in awe of you, that you would even go out with me. It would make me shy.”

She nodded. “That answer is acceptable.”

“But I’d help you on with your coat. My mom would tell me to. We’d walk out to the car together.”

“Would you hold my hand?”

“Of course.” I took hers now. “I’d use the ice as an excuse, to keep you from slipping as I walked you to your car.”

“You wouldn’t need an excuse.” She squeezed mine.

“I know.” She was so sweet, and I wanted to make her happy. She’d had so little happiness. I realized now that my life—all of it, even the bad things—was a gift. It hadn’t been perfect, but it was my life. Mine, and I’d lived it.

Bolder now, I said, “We’d go inside, and everyone would stare at me, at us, wondering how I got you to agree to go with me when you’re so beautiful.”

She smiled. “How did you?”

“I asked. None of the other guys did. They were intimidated, afraid to. But me, I was just so stupid. I just asked you, and you figured it was better to go with me than to sit home and cry from loneliness.”

I gave her a goofy look, and she giggled. “Oh, I am sure I found you attractive—in a funny sort of way.”

“So before you could realize your mistake and dance with someone else, I’d lead you onto the dance floor. The band would be playing . . .” I realized I had my phone. I scrolled through the play-lists. The first slow one I saw was “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” which was a guy saying he’d go with his girlfriend if she died. Morbid, much? I wished I had some classic songs like “Unchained Melody” or “When a Man Loves a Woman,” but I didn’t have those. I’d never been the kind of guy to download songs girls liked. Finally, I found “The Only Exception” by Paramore. I’d liked them at one point. There was no speaker, of course, so I turned up the sound on my phone as loud as it would go. Rachel was right. It was quiet here, and she could hear it. The voice started coming out of that tiny speaker. I held it to Rachel’s ear. “They’d be playing this, and I’d lead you out onto the floor.”

I stood. Rachel did too, and I put one arm around her, swaying to the music. The song was a little depressing too, about someone who didn’t believe in love, but I liked the chorus, where it said:

Darling, you are the only exception

You are the only exception
.

Because that was how I felt about Rachel, exactly how I felt. The song was about me, keeping my distance, not taking chances with people because I was afraid. But Rachel was different. Rachel was worth the risk, any risk. The only exception.

I tightened my grip on her.

“This is so nice,” she said. “I’ve never danced with anyone before. Would you try to kiss me on the dance floor?”

“I would try. Would you let me?”

She leaned in toward me and whispered, “I might.”

You are the only exception
.

“I bet I would then,” I said.

And then, we were kissing, kissing and holding each other, the music in our ears, as we sank slowly to the stone floor.

I had expected Wyatt to try, again, to persuade me to go with him. I had thought of nothing else since he left. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps my destiny was not here, in the tower, waiting. Maybe I was meant to go with him. I had decided that, if he asked me again, I would hear him out.

Which was why I was quite surprised when he said, “I think you’re right that you should stay here at least a little longer.”

I reached to brush a lock of hair from over his eye. “Really? Why? This is quite a reversal from before.”

“I know.”

“What is the meaning of it?”

He gestured toward the picture he had given me.

“I don’t know. Just a feeling. But I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket. “Take this.”

He handed me an object, the same object he had used for the music. Now, I held it. It was rectangular, smooth and black with bits of color on it.

“What is it?”

“A phone. A telephone. You can use it to talk to other people. I noticed it worked up here, probably because you’re so high. It doesn’t work in the woods, mostly.”

I shook my head. He would think I was stupid. “I don’t know how to use it.”

“It’s easy. Everyone can use a phone. Here, do you have paper?”

I gave him some, and he began writing, first numbers, then a sort of diagram. “This is what you press to call me, and here’s the number. Or you can just go to ‘Contacts’ and look for ‘Greenwood.’” He pressed a button that looked like an arrow.

“My goodness! It looks like something from the works of H. G. Wells!”

He laughed. “I don’t think you’ll be able to time travel with it. But look.” He pointed to some numbers. “Here’s a clock.”

“Oh, I have a clock. I asked Mama for one last year.” I didn’t want him to think I was some idiot who didn’t know what a clock was, for heaven’s sake! But my clock was round and had hands. The one on his telephone only had numbers.

“Okay, well, I’ll call you at eight. Before I go to bed.”

This was unbelievable. “And I will be able to hear your voice, inside of this little thing?”

“Yeah. We can talk all the time.”

“I cannot wait. You must leave now, so we can try it.”

He laughed. “Okay. Maybe you could read the diary after I leave. It would tell you about your mother.”

“My mother.” I felt a weird empty sort of feeling in my stomach. I had just met my mother, and now, she was dead. Still, I knew I would look at the photograph, read the diary, until I saw him again.

“I love you, Rachel,” he said.

“I love you too. Now, go. Go, so I can talk to you.”