Chatper 2

 

            Water pellets stung my face as I ran from alley to alley. Street lamps lit up the rain drops so it looked like small lights were whizzing past me. I couldn’t go home. If Dad wasn’t at the dock, then he’d be there, and I couldn’t stay in the rain because my feet were already damp from unfriendly encounters with puddles. Then, I thought of Suzie. She would let me in, if only for a while.

            I made my way up to Addison Street. By now, the side walk tiles were slippery and I had to be careful to keep my footing. Her house was the third on the left. I pushed my hair back and squinted across the street. A solitary candle shone in the window. Its pinpoint ember glowed fiercely, casting eerie shadows onto the sidewalk. Each time the flame wiggled, the shadows mashed together to create darkness. When the flame burned high, the shadows stretched onto the street like a long hand, pulling the pavement into darkness. That light was enough for me. I waited for a stage coach to pass and then hurried across the street.    

I pressed my forehead against the window glass and stared. Inside was heaven. The old, antique furniture was bathed in warm, yellow light. Countless books were crammed into shelves. Long shadows hid most of the floor. The stilled books and constant stream of light gave the room a timeless quality. It seemed removed from the havoc raging outside; a secret cove in which to hide.

Shadows moved across the floor. I could see Mr. and Mrs. Spencer down the hall serving guests in the dinning room. It was most likely the Mason family. They both were wealthy aristocratic families who held dinner discussions over stocks and revenue.

I ran different entry possibilities through my head. Clearly, the front door was not an option, but maybe there was another entrance around the back.

            There was no one else on the streets, so I casually made my way to the alley behind the house. The only windows were high up. However, there was a pipe leading up to a window on the second floor. I would have taken any way out of the rain.

I started my laborious climb. The metal was cold and bit at my fingers as I made my way up the pipe. It was hard to remain silent, but I took my time and made sure not to make a sound. I was nearly at the top when a clanking broke the silence. The noise ricocheted off the walls of the ally, amplifying it even more. I stopped. The part of the pipe connecting it to the house came loose. I felt like glass about to be shattered. I reached up and got a grip on the window ledge. It wasn’t hard to hold on. After running the mop for over four years on the deck, you get some strength. I sighed and pulled myself up onto the window ledge. It was a clean entry, no broken glass, no sounds made, and…

            Suddenly, I realized that there WERE no sounds. The noises downstairs had ceased. Loud, hollow footsteps boomed up the stairs. My heart was racing.

A voice came from behind me in the alley, “Ey! You! Boy! I saw you climb that thing! Ey! Come back!” I slipped into the room, looking around desperately for a place to hide. The first door I saw was to my left. I took it without hesitation, slamming it shut right as the room door opened.

A thin ray of light entered at the bottom of my door. Even though the man outside was still shouting, I could hear my breathing over him. Jesus, it was so loud. Each breath I took thundered in my ears. I was sure the person would be able to hear it too.

I couldn’t see anything, but I knew not to move. Any sound I made filled my ears and made my heart cringe.    

The footsteps moved to the window. A woman’s voice called out, “Edmund Harvell, don’t be yelling near my house!”

            “Oh! Miss Spencer, I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t know—”

            “I don’t care what you did or didn’t know, now get away from my house,” the woman said.

            “Miss Spencer, please let me explain.”

            “Get away now or—” there was a pause.

            I heard the pipe rattle and my insides froze.

            “Did you do this? Were you trying to get into the house!”

            “What? N-n-no Miss—”

            I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing.

            “Filthy cur. If you ever—”

            “Miss Spencer, I didn’t do nothin!” Edmund yelled.

            There was a silence

            “I believe you,” Miss Spencer said. The footsteps away moved from the window to the center of the room.

            “Oh Miss Spencer I knew you would. Good old Edmund would never try a thing like that, never.”

            I heard clanking and then the feet moved back to the window. “Yes well, every person deserves a reward for being honest.” There was sloshing and then Edmund’s howl was cut short by the window being slammed down. The footsteps moved to the door

“Bloody pervert,” the woman muttered, and then slammed the door.

I stumbled out of the room. The footsteps were going back downstairs. Before looking around, I waited until I heard the guests begin talking again. I looked backward. The room was a closet. “Some how, I always seemed to end up in a cleaning closet,” I thought. There was a s**t bucket at the window sill. Suddenly, it hit me. I broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Miss Spencer sure can be nasty when she wants her way. When I had finally stopped writhing on the floor, clutching my sides in laughter, I gathered myself and crept out to find Suzie.

It nearly took an hour to find my way to Suzie’s room. The Spencer’s have a love for antiques which includes their house. A creak awaits a victim in every inch of the floor and all door hinges wail in alarm. I was careful though and made sure to take my time.

Suzie was asleep, looking all angelic curled up in her blanket. I began tickling her toe until she woke up. She looked tired, but that didn’t dim the shine in her sea blue eyes. I guessed that she had been taking a nap.

“Who’s that? Scott?” she asked.

“Yea, it’s me” I whispered. I didn’t know what else to say after that. I looked out the window instead while she got out of bed. You couldn’t tell from looking outside when the sun shone last. All of the buildings molded to the grey sky, creating a creepy, monotonous world.

            “What on earth are you doing here?” she asked.       

The reason that I had didn’t seem right any more. I guessed the real reason was that I wanted to talk to her. “Well…I don’t know. We didn’t really talk on the dock and I just figured it would be polite and all.”

She eyed me, scrutinizing every part of me.

“Alright then, why don’t you grab a towel? Guess you didn’t realize it was raining,” she said.

I glared at her, but kept my tongue to the roof of my mouth. All the towels in the closet were white. They all looked the same: a medium sized towel, embroidered with flowers. I didn’t understand how Suzie could live like this; having her life all organized; a set pair of clothes for each day.

After drying up, I went back to her bed to find her reading. “What book’s that?” I asked.

“Hidden Sin,” she said.

Her eyes were fixed at a certain part on the page. It almost looked like she was looking at me out of the corner of her eye, but right when I was about to ask, her eyes continued running across the page. She’s like that, you know; hard to read. I used to think that about all girls. Then I realized that most weren’t worth reading. “Well, what’s it about anyway?” I asked.          

Her eyes flicked up to me. “A fisherman and his courage…how a man suffers with what he comes to love and how he finds a deeper meaning in the suffering.”

I nodded. “I don’t get the books where people go against something. It’s always some other person, or the land, or himself. It never changes and I get sick of it.”

She closed the book. “But, the setting’s always different. The road to the end is always different. And what about the rest of the story? There’s more than you realize Scott.”

“The roads different, but the end’s the same. Take a love story. You know in the end their gonna be together or not. Yea, they might go through different stuff, but you know the ending. Why read it? I like the ones that tell of distant lands, places you only hear about from old sailors down at the docks. The stories you can’t predict. The other stuff’s just burning material.”

Suzie slapped me across the face. I sat there, on the bed, stunned. For once, her pale, smooth forehead wrinkled. She pointed a threatening fip;nger at me. “Don’t say such things or I’m calling my mom.” I shut up. It wasn’t worth it to waste my thoughts on her anyway. She didn’t have to do anything but sit there and be rich. If your rich, then you don’t gotta think of anything or imagine.

She must have seen my teeth clenched because she put her small hand on my forearm.

“I’m worried about you Scott. Your uncle says that he’s going out on another trading trip, and you’re going too.” Suzie’s got this way of melting any anger in a man. I felt sorry that I’d even think of hating her.

It was true; I was going on a trading trip with Dad and Uncle Harvey. Harvey said that he needed an extra body and I didn’t take a moment to think if I wanted to stay on this crummy piece of land. “Living a life on the sea doesn’t seem too bad after you’ve seen the land here,” I replied. “Don’t worry. Those things you read about the sea are only told from the ones who’ve never been there and who probably never will.”

The rain had stopped. Streams of water dropped off the roof and crashed on the pavement below. Outside was a lot like inside the study window, stilled and timeless.

I looked into Suzie’s eyes. Walking down the street, everyone you see is just a face. Their eyes are another part of their body, but with Suzie, her eyes are the life and energy inside of her.

“Be careful Scott,” she said and suddenly threw her arms around my neck. I wasn’t sure where to put my arms, so I just rested them at my sides. We were like that for five minutes, her arms clinging to my neck, and when she finally pulled back, tears were in her eyes. This wasn’t the Suzie I had known. She always had on a stern, but playful mask. Now, it all came down with tears.

Right then, I kissed her. There wasn’t any thought, I just did it. She didn’t seem to mind. It was short anyway.

“You have to leave now,” Suzie said.

“What? We just kissed, why do I have to leave?”

“Just go. Now.” Her face was a mask again. I knew I’d better leave. I hung the towels on the side of her bed and walked to the door. Suzie stopped me before going out and pressed a book into my hands.

“Don’t look at it until you’re at sea.”

            I said I wouldn’t and then shut the door, without thinking of saying goodbye. I always thought that goodbye would mean that we wouldn’t see each other again.

It was harder going down the pipe than going up, and I ended up jumping once I’d gone half way. By the time I got home, it was dark. All the lights were out, so it was an easy entry. Once I’d gotten back into my room, I could hear my dad snoring down the hall. “He must have drunk himself to sleep,” I thought. I settled my aching bones into the bed, letting it mold to my form. The sheets were cold and the pillow was ice to my sweaty head. My mind slowed to the dripping of water from the rafters and I fell into a deep sleep.