The Color of Night, Page 2

  Patrick’s house was at the end of a short driveway just off Deer Creek. It was the biggest house he had seen in town so far (though that was largely owed to its unnecessarily high ceilings, which he found to be a silly waste of space). The roof was black and the wooden walls a dark brown, made darker by the constant shade that wrapped around the property like a blanket. Just behind the house were a few acres of woods that stretched out behind all the buildings on the surrounding streets—a lake of trees in the middle of the neighborhood. Patrick passed by the other end of it when he walked to and from school. He planned on exploring it eventually, but at present he just wanted to get home and do a little unpacking.

  *****

  Later that night he sat down to dinner with his family. Richard, his father, was telling a story about his hilarious friends at work. Patrick wished that he could make friends quite so quickly. His mother, Jodi, listened while occasionally laughing or taking a bite of her roast beef, the aroma of which temporarily dulled the unpleasant smell of new paint and an unfamiliar house. His eleven-year-old sister, Lizzy, was making a rather interesting tower out of her peas and mashed potatoes. His parents were too engrossed in his father’s story to notice.

  “So Jeff just kind of looks at him,” his father was saying between chuckles, “looks at him with this reeeaaal intense look, and he starts to say something back, but he tips over his coffee and it spills all over the desk. We all completely lost it.”

  His mother laughed before a forkful of potatoes could reach her mouth; it was sharp and loud, yet Patrick always found it endearing. His father took off his glasses and wiped a smudge off one of the lenses as his own laughter slowly died down. Lizzy’s tower had grown far too high for her to be listening. It was a little funny that someone spilled their coffee, but Patrick had been thinking about school during any explanation as to why this was a particularly hilarious thing to happen to this Jeff person, so he only smiled.

  His father noticed and turned to him.

  “What about you, Pat? How was school? You’re pretty quiet tonight.”

  Patrick pried his eyes from his sister’s art piece and picked up a dinner roll.

  “Oh, it was okay. It was good to see that I have a few nice teachers.”

  His father chuckled at that.

  “Only a few, huh? I’m pretty sure that other school we had you at was run by zombies. Those meetings were just agonizing!”

  “Remember Mr. Fitzpatrick?” Patrick asked, a grin creeping onto his lips.

  His father threw his head back and laughed loudly. His body type was very different from Patrick’s; he was much thicker in the arms and chest, and he had gained a little weight over his few decades of family life. He was much more suited for such laughter, Patrick thought.

  “He’ll certainly never forget me, you can be certain of that! Try to give my son an ‘F’ because we got stuck in traffic for five minutes too long… Gave him the ol’ academic one-two, I did! He may have had a PhD, but I’ve got my doctorate in yellin’!”

  His mother giggled, having had her share of unpleasant memories involving Mr. Fitzpatrick. She had a body type more like Patrick’s—lean and somewhat short—but she laughed and made friends like his father.

  Everyone looked simultaneously at Lizzy as she slowly lowered her fork, tine end up, into the pinnacle of her mashed potato tower. It was complete with pea battlements, roast beef drawbridge and a gravy moat.

  “What about you, Lizzy?” his mother asked. “Make any friends yet?

  “Yeah, one’s named Jodi, like you.” She began to lick the potato from her fingers.

  “Oh, that’s gross,” his mother objected. “Use a napkin.”

  “And these other two girls, Jessica and Aralaysia, sat with me at lunch,” she continued, picking up a napkin and wiping her hands.

  “Aralaysia?” his father chimed with a smirk. “Sounds like a farting disease.”

  Lizzy dropped her napkin and laughed loudly, and her father joined her. Patrick chuckled a little more quietly, and his mother only smiled, shook her head and said, “My goodness,” (though Patrick knew her well enough to know that she thought it was funny, too).

  “And there’s another girl in third grade named Citriana,” Lizzy continued after she caught her breath.

  “Citriana!” his father said with much excitement. “Better not invite her over for dinner or I might try to drink her after a spicy burrito, because she sounds extremely refreshing!”

  They all laughed again, his mother included.

  “I’m pretty sure they’re sisters, too,” Lizzy added.

  This fueled several more remarks from his father and the four of them laughed throughout dinner. Patrick tried to join in on the jokes where he could, but his mind always seemed to return to his day at school.

  *****

  Later that night as he sat at his desk and finished an English assignment, Patrick wondered if the next day would bring a little more comfort and stability or if his mind would be all the more clouded. He hoped dearly that he wouldn’t have any additional awkward encounters with his classmates, though he knew with a grave sort of resignation that such experiences were merely a part of his nature.

  When he finished his homework he clicked off his desk lamp and walked over to his bed. He crawled under the blankets and switched his alarm clock to on, but just before settling he looked out the large window beside him.

  Patrick’s room was on the second story, and he had a good view of the wide backyard. It was almost completely dark, but what little moonlight managed the journey to Earth brought the far end of the yard into view. He could see where the packed dirt stopped and the mossy soil began—the edge of the woods, as defined by the oddly deliberate-looking line of trees that stood between the two areas like a row of guards. He still wanted to get around to taking a look in there, and the crazy thought of going now and walking in the dark crossed his mind for a moment…

  But he immediately dismissed it. He was far beyond being scared of monsters, but the thought of walking through pitch black woods in the middle of a strange new town sounded entirely unpleasant. Maybe he would do it Saturday morning, or even Friday after school if he didn’t have too much homework.

  Patrick lay down and pulled his blankets up to his neck. It took him an uncomfortably long time to fully slip into unconsciousness, and even as he did, that big, sincere smile still haunted him.

  Chapter 2

  Mr. Vincent was no less quiet, slow, and deliberate on the second day, disproving the theory that he had simply been particularly underslept on the day previous. He was also no less fascinating, and this time Patrick found himself pondering about the man’s life rather than focusing on the lesson he was giving.

  He still hadn’t dared to look in the direction of the girl with the dress. He knew he was probably making more out of it than he should, but somehow that only increased the embarrassment he felt, making him feel kind of stupid and childish. He hadn’t made another attempt at contact with the tall guy either, though he didn’t really intend to after the strange encounters he had already had.

  Patrick was engulfed in his own thoughts for the majority of the day, and he almost missed a few homework instructions because of it. He managed to survive until three thirty however without any strange or uncomfortable happenings, though he figured he probably owed that to simply not talking to or making eye-contact with anyone.

  Despite the relatively low-stress day his walk home was once again a relief, and he reveled in the quiet of the street. It took him nearly a minute before he realized that he hadn’t seen the girl in the dress walking down the street ahead of him, and he was a tad startled when he turned to look back toward the school and found her walking parallel to him on the other side.

  He jerked his attention back to the road in front of him as a hundred butterfly cocoons hatched in his stomach. He tried his best to focus on the ground, but curiosity soon won out (as it almost alwa
ys did, he reflected) and he found himself sneaking another look. But somehow, Patrick tapping into that special and eternal well of bad luck that it seemed only he possessed, her head turned at the exact same moment as his and their eyes met again, as they had in English class. Even in his constant awareness of this bad luck he somehow never saw these things coming, but when he spotted her smile he seized the opportunity and gave her one back, albeit a slightly awkward and unnatural one. He had never been good at forcing smiles.

  Patrick was extremely relieved when the brief transaction of facial expressions was completed successfully and she disengaged their eye-contact.

  He had a moment of silent celebration, but it was cut short when he saw her turn her head once more out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t prepared for this, so he kept his gaze ahead. He was forced to turn to her again however when to his horror she started to cross the street.

  He was immediately faced with the question of whether to stop or keep walking. He apparently chose the latter, probably owing to his legs simply not being able to stop what they were doing. As she crossed the breadth of the street and fell in step with him, he noted that his eyeballs suddenly felt unusually full of blood.

  “Hi,” she said cheerily. “I’m Rachel.”

  Patrick was dumbfounded for a moment, but forced another smile and quickly gathered himself.

  “I’m Patrick,” he said carefully, so as to prevent his voice from cracking.

  “So you really moved here from Santa Casilda?” she asked, turning her head in front of her again. Patrick followed suit, now faced with the challenge of deciding when exactly to look at her. Does anyone else have these problems? he wondered to himself.

  “Yeah, my dad got offered a management position here, so he moved me and my mom and sister.”

  “Kind of an upgrade and a downgrade at the same time,” Rachel said, looking at him with a smile.

  He looked back at her for only a second, and struggled with finding a response.

  “It must be so different living here,” she continued, closely inspecting something on her book bag. “I bet you’re totally hating it, huh?”

  “Actually, it’s really nice. It was hard to move away from my friends and everything, but I’m kind of enjoying the quiet. The city is just so… loud.” He thought briefly of the construction that never stopped, all the machinery that never seemed to sleep. “Everything’s moving all the time, and there are barely any trees.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I could ever live like that. Still, it must stink not having all those awesome shops to go to, right?”

  Patrick was finding the conversation a little easier with each second, but still feared it could all come crashing down at any misstep.

  “They all get pretty boring after a while. Sometimes when one opens up with something new it’s fun for like a week, but window shopping only takes you so far when you don’t have any money.”

  Rachel laughed. Apparently what he had said was kind of funny, so he smiled.

  There was a brief silence, and they each stared intently in a random direction. Patrick scrambled to find something to say, and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind, not wanting her to feel compelled to leave.

  “I really like Mr. Vincent,” he said, glancing at her for a moment, extremely relieved that he found something coherent and relevant to talk about.

  “Oh, I do too,” she responded with a smile. (Patrick wondered if she was as relieved as he was.) “He’s definitely the most fun to listen to, though Mrs. Spotts is really nice, too.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick agreed, “she always gives me such a big smile every morning.”

  “I think she’s been teaching here for a really long time. She must really love kids.”

  “I don’t know how anyone could have enough patience.”

  There was another silence, and Patrick was forced once again to think of something to say. There were pretty much only three things he had been thinking about for the last few days and he had brought up one and was talking to another, so he thought he would attempt to get some clarity on the third.

  “What’s with that really big guy in most of our classes?”

  “Oh, that would be Dean.” There was a definite drop in her voice, as if he might drive by as he did the day before and hear their conversation.

  “He looks like he shouldn’t even be in high school,” said Patrick.

  “I don’t think he is supposed to be. He got held back last year, and maybe the year before that, I’m not sure. So he should either be a senior or in college by now…”

  After a pause Patrick said, “He seems like an… able fellow.” He wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by that.

  “Well, he just doesn’t seem to care about school much,” Rachel continued. “He doesn’t cause too much trouble in class, though I think he’s done some pretty bad things over the years. I couldn’t tell you what they were, only rumors and whatnot. He doesn’t listen to the teachers when they tell him things… He doesn’t talk to anybody, really. But he shows up every day, and just sits in class. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just do a little work for a couple years and get through it, rather than just staying in the same place for so long and accomplish nothing.”

  Patrick looked at her for a moment, and she continued looking ahead. Judging by the attentiveness she seemed to exhibit in each of her classes, this concept obviously opposed her own philosophy of academia.

  “That is weird…” he said, and he looked back to the ground. He only now realized that they had been walking very slowly.

  “Well, my house is down that way,” Rachel said suddenly, turning to him with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She waved cheerily and walked quickly across the empty road and down her street, clutching her book bag to herself (perhaps a little too tightly, he thought).

  Patrick barely managed a “Yeah, see ya,” before she was gone. He would’ve liked nothing more than to stop walking and watch her go, or even to call her back and offer to hang out sometime, but he didn’t dare to attempt either and he soon lost sight of her behind a dirty fence.

  Patrick’s mind was a flurry of excited thoughts as he walked the last few blocks to his house. He went over the conversation again in his head, making sure that he hadn’t said anything horrible without realizing it.

  *****

  When he reached dinnertime without his mind leaving the subject for even a moment, he felt silly all over again. As his parents discussed the surprising deli selection at their local market he found himself thinking about her over a scarcely touched plate of spaghetti.

  He had never been affected by a person in such a way before. No matter how hard he tried to think of something else their conversation kept replaying itself in his mind. And the butterflies decided to take flight again every time he thought about how she crossed the street just to talk to him. He wasn’t used to people engaging him so forwardly, and he was so glad that she was the one to do it…

  She obviously held some important spot in his mind, but he wasn’t exactly sure what that meant yet.

  “Honey, I don’t think you’re going to get much more on there.”

  Patrick looked to his mother with a slight start and realized that he had been spinning noodles onto his fork for the last minute or so, accumulating more than a normal-sized mouth could comfortably hold.

  “Sorry,” he said. He shook most of the noodles off his fork and ate what remained.

  “How was today?” his father asked.

  “Uh, same as yesterday,” Patrick said, trying to pull his attention back from space.

  “Hm.” His father speared a meatball with his fork. “You’ll make friends soon enough. Then it’ll be a lot more fun.” He stuck the meatball in his mouth and chewed happily. It was no secret that Patrick wasn’t quite as good at making friends as the rest of the family, and he took no offence to it.

  The remark obviously did nothing t
o get his mind off of Rachel, and he only managed to give them a “Yeah,” before returning to spinning his fork. His parents continued talking and Lizzy was struck with sudden inspiration, deciding to see how large an accumulation of noodles she could amass on her own fork.

  *****

  Patrick’s mind finally began to settle (a little) as he did his homework. When he finished his algebra and switched off his desk lamp the image of Rachel’s face flashed across his mind, but he tried to push it out for fear of difficulty getting to sleep. He slipped his legs under his blankets and started to lie down, but once again found himself looking across the backyard to the edge of the woods.

  The trees were barely visible, standing ominously like the black wall of some mysterious and forbidden world. He hadn’t had any thoughts to spare for the woods throughout the day, but now in the still dark of his room the allure presented itself again. He wanted so badly to see what they looked like and how far they went. They were nothing more than a few acres across, but what was the terrain like? Was there anything interesting to see inside? Maybe a pond, or some cool trees or animals?

  He suspected that the exciting events of the day were increasing his sense of adventure; the thought of treading through those woods so late at night seemed just a little less insane now. Part of him wanted to put on his sweater and a pair of boots and just jump right in, throwing caution to the wind and solving the mystery there and then.

  But it was frightening. He couldn’t see anything beyond the dimly moonlit trees closest to the yard, and he knew that beyond them it was doubtful that there would be much direct moonlight at all. Would he even be able to see? He could fall somewhere and hurt himself. There could be dangerous animals. He tried to convince himself that he was more deterred by the realistic dangers than by the outright spookiness as he lay down and closed his eyes. Sleep came a little more quickly than it had the night before.

  Chapter 3