-4-
Less than two months after they’d buried my best friend, I found myself at another funeral. It wasn’t as bad. I guess the second time through anything is never as bad as the first. And, to be honest, Nick wasn’t a close friend. He was just a guy I knew. He was just a guy who used to make us all laugh.
Different church, same rituals. I sat near the back, knowing I would duck out this time and not even pretend to go to the cemetery.
“It’s so very sad.”
Jennie slipped into the seat next to me. The room grew warmer. She was wearing the same black dress she’d worn at Don’s funeral. For a moment—longer, I’m sure, than was proper—I admired her from up close. She didn’t seem to mind.
“He...” I tried to get my thoughts together. “He had everything to live for.”
“Yes,” she said. She put her hand on my leg.
A shock ran from my knee to my groin. Part of me wanted to hold her and bury my face in her hair. Part of me would have been happy to die in her arms.
“Were you two close?” she asked.
I shook my head. “We were in a lot of the same classes. I guess I knew him since sixth grade, but we weren’t best friends or anything.”
She looked right into my eyes. I had a strange feeling that I was taking a test. Her own eyes, her lovely eyes, seemed to reach into my heart.
“I need to walk,” she said. “Will you walk with me when the service is over?”
“Sure.”
So we strolled from the church and talked and agreed to meet the next day. I’m not sure how it happened, or who asked the other out. But it seemed that I was going to have a date with Jennie.
“Do you like movies?” she asked as we were discussing what to do.
“Yeah, usually,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t want to go to a horror film. Two of the five movies showing at the mall were horror. “What would you like to see?”
She smiled. “You choose.”
I chose a comedy. It probably wouldn’t have mattered what we saw. I really didn’t pay much attention to the movie, not with Jennie sitting next to me. As we left the theater, I asked her, “Want to grab a burger or something?”
She shook her head. “I’d better get home. But let’s do something tomorrow. Okay?”
“I’d like that.”
“Me, too. I had a really nice time with you.” She smiled and touched my cheek for a moment with her warm, soft fingers. She seemed happy to be with me.
On our second date, half afraid I’d destroy the magic by dissecting it, I asked her, “Why me?”
“Most boys are so dull,” she’d answered. “You have something special inside. I can tell.”
That didn’t make much sense. I didn’t feel special. But I didn’t press her for an explanation. I wasn’t going to reveal that all I had inside of me was a lifetime of irrational fears. I wasn’t going to lose her by exposing my flaws. I dropped the subject.
And just like that, we became the couple who turned heads. I guess people wondered what a stunning girl like Jennie was doing with someone like me. Not that I was a loser or a nerd or anything, but I certainly wasn’t going to be voted “most popular,” or any of the other desirable mosts. Maybe “most likely to pass unnoticed,” or “most average.”
Average guys didn’t date girls like Jennie. But there I was. And I wasn’t going to question my luck. As much as I liked to know answers, as much as I always tried to find the reason behind things, I didn’t risk asking her again.
And there were other things to wonder about.
It was weird. We spent a lot of time sitting in my car, just parked and talking. At first, I was so distracted by dark thoughts that I’m sure I rambled and babbled like an idiot. I especially remember one evening when I looked out the side window past Jennie’s head, suddenly thinking of that ridiculous story children tell—the one about the guy with the razor-sharp hook in place of a hand.
“What’s the matter?” Jennie asked. “You seem distracted.”
“Nothing.” How could I tell her?
“I like it here,” she said. “It’s so dark and quiet.”
“Yeah. Sure. But sometimes...” I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t. I waited for her to question me, to ask again. But she said nothing more about it.
A week later, at the same spot, I found myself caught again in thought. But this time, I paused in surprise when I realized that no dark images had spoiled our evening. For an hour or more, as we sat and talked and kissed, I’d not been visited by thoughts of razor sharp hooks or walking corpses.
Maybe I was getting used to being out in the night with her. Maybe Jennie was giving me new confidence. The perfect example is almost too embarrassing to explain. We’d decided to rent a movie and watch it at my house. Jennie was kind of funny about that. I think she didn’t want me to meet her parents. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of me or because of them.
There were two video stores in town. I don’t like the one near my house. They have an old cardboard figure of Freddie Krueger in the front aisle. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I always got a little shiver when I walked past it, as if I felt it would spring to life and slash me. I guess I was sort of like Don that way, except he was always trying to avoid real dangers while I was trying to avoid the demons that sprang from my mind. Don would avoid walking across a storm grating because it might break while he was on it. I’d avoid the grating because something might reach through from below and drag me into the moist depths of the sewers. So, because of that stupid cardboard figure, I usually went to the other store to rent videos.
Then, one day, on the way home from school, I found myself driving past the video store with Jennie.
“Let’s get a movie,” she said.
“There’s another place down the road,” I told her. It was almost a reflex. I was used to coming up with quick excuses to mask my fears.
She put her hand on my arm. “That place never has the new movies. They have a better selection here.”
“I guess they do.” I circled the block and parked in front. As we walked into the shop and up the aisle, I noticed that the tremor, the subtle undercurrent of fright, was missing. I stopped to look at the cardboard figure. I didn’t see something that was going to leap to life and shred me—I saw nothing more than a slightly blurred, life-size photograph of an actor with a nice makeup job.
I took Jennie’s hand as we strolled through the store. “I like being with you,” I told her.
“I get so much from being with you, too,” she said.
Over the next month, the little rituals, the small acts that paid tribute to my fears, began to vanish. I didn’t have to make sure my feet were under the blanket. Half asleep, I didn’t worry about what might lurk beneath the bed. I know—that’s stuff for five-year-old boys. Guys my age are over their fear of monsters. But I couldn’t help what I was.
Until now. Now, since I’d met Jennie, those things had started to fade. I’d found something else to fill my mind. Now that the fears were visiting my thoughts less frequently, I was very glad I’d never told her my secret. I doubt she would have thought much of me if she had known. She would never have wanted to be with someone who saw creatures in every shadow.
I didn’t realize how much the fears had faded until the night we went to the cemetery.
“Let’s go see Don’s grave,” Jennie said as we drove from the parking lot at the mall.
“What?” I felt my hands grip the wheel.
“He was your friend. Let’s go pay our respects.”
“But...”
She put her hand on top of mine. “Come on, he needs to be remembered.”
I took a deep breath. Then I thought, sure, why not? We parked outside. The gate was locked at night. I helped Jennie over the fence, lingering to enjoy the feel of my hands on her hips. She hopped down, gracefully, then waited until I joined her.
Jennie took my hand and led me through the maze of marble headstones. I kept glancing at the graves, waiting for the images to take over my mind, waiting for my brain to fill with scenes of rotting hands exploding through the soil to clutch at our legs and pull us down to join them. My mind seemed dead to such fears.
We reached Don’s grave. There was no headstone yet—I guess they take a while to make—but there was a marker on the ground with his name.
When we knelt on the ground, I braced myself, but there was no rush of dreadful images. There were no visions of corpses rising from below. All I felt was distant sadness.
When Jennie lay down and pulled me to her, all I felt was lust and hunger. All else vanished.
My fears were gone.
“What do you feel?” she whispered.
I told her.
– End Chapter Four –
