Shadows

around to help him out.

And if she went to him now, given what had just happened, she was sure she knew what he’d say: “See? They’re laughing at me! I’m not going to stay here! I want to go home!”

Checking her urge to mother him, she forced herself to remain where she was.

A hundred yards down the beach, crouched by himself, Josh wondered why he’d ever let his mother bring him here in the first place. It was going to turn out just like the school at home, with everyone laughing at him. The humiliation of what had just happened wiped out the memory of the chess game with Jeff Aldrich, and the friendliness of Brad Hinshaw.

And now, after he’d acted like a jerk, even Amy probably wouldn’t like him anymore.

He sensed a presence behind him and stiffened. Oh, Jeez — his mother hadn’t come after him, had she? Now they’d all think he was a baby. But the voice that spoke to him wasn’t his mother’s at all.

It was Mr. Conners, and Josh was sure he knew why he was there: to give him a lecture on being a good sport. He hunched further into himself, wrapping his arms around his legs.

“Want to tell me what went wrong?” Steve Conners asked, hunkering down next to Josh.

Josh shook his head, not even looking up.

For a moment Conners didn’t say anything, but finally reached out and ran his hand through Josh’s hair. “Hey, come on, everybody misses serves. Happens all the time.”

“But it always happens to me, and everybody was laughing at me!” Josh’s voice trembled, and he tried to duck away from the teacher’s hand.

“Well, I’m not sure they were actually laughing at you,” Conners told him. “I think it was more what happened to you. You just looked funny when you missed the ball, that’s all. You should have seen the look on your face. You’d have been laughing, too. It was as if the last thing you expected to happen was that you’d miss it completely.”

“How come that guy told me to hit it overhand?” Josh demanded. “He knew what was gonna happen, and he just wanted to make me look like a jerk.”

“Now, how was Philip Meredith going to know that?” Conners asked. “He never saw you play volleyball before, did he? Maybe he was just trying to help.”

“No, he wasn’t. Everybody always laughs at me when I try to play some stupid game. And if they don’t laugh at me, they yell at me. Just because I’m no good at it.”

“Who said you were no good?” Corners countered.

“Besides, being good at things like volleyball doesn’t count for much around here. As you said, it’s only a game.”

Josh scowled deeply. “I said it was a stupid game, and it is!”

“Well, it is if you get upset about it,” Steve Conners agreed. “In fact, if you get upset about it, it sort of stops being a game at all, doesn’t it? I mean, games are supposed to be fun. It doesn’t really matter who wins.”

“But everybody cares who wins,” Josh replied.

“Do you?”

Josh cocked his head, looking up at the teacher. “I–I don’t know.”

Steve Conners’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “What? There’s something you don’t know? Maybe they made a mistake after all. You sure you’re in the right place? All you kids are supposed to know practically everything.” The bantering tone left Conners’s voice. “Look, Josh, I know things haven’t been going too well for you lately. And I’m really sorry everyone laughed at you. Maybe they shouldn’t have. But give them a chance, okay? Don’t forget, they’ve all had exactly the same kinds of problems you’ve had. And believe me, they don’t care any more about volleyball than you do.”

Josh stared up at the teacher. “But at home—” he began, doggedly refusing to understand Conners’s point.

“At home things are different. Which is why you’re here, not there. Now what do you say you just come and watch the game? If you want to play some more, fine. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

Without waiting for Josh to answer, Steve gently drew the boy to his feet and started back down the beach, his hand draped over Josh’s shoulder.

As they drew closer to the game, Josh saw that what Steve had told him was true — though the kids were playing hard, doing their best to get the ball over the net, only two or three of them were any good at it. Most of them, like him, missed at least half their shots entirely, and most of the shots that connected went wild.

Catching sight of him, Amy waved wildly. “You should have seen it, Josh!” she yelled. “I did it! I got the ball over the net! And it was only my third try!”

Before he realized what had happened, Josh found himself back in the game. The next time his turn to serve came up, he, too, managed to get the ball over the net.

Of course, it didn’t go over until the fourth try, which wasn’t as good as Amy had done, but on the third try, when he’d fallen over backward trying to hit the ball after a bad toss, he’d laughed as hard as everyone else.

Maybe, he decided, volleyball wasn’t such a bad game after all.

At least not the way they played it at the Academy.

By ten o’clock, when the picnic was breaking up, and Josh was helping the other kids throw sand on the dying fire, Brenda was sure he’d made up his mind. She watched him all evening, as he’d sat next to Amy, munching on hot dogs, then joined the circle of kids around the fire to listen to Jeff Aldrich tell the Academy’s favorite ghost story — a terrifying tale about old Mr. Barrington, whose specter still roamed the darkened house at night, seeking vengeance for the death of a child who may or may not have ever actually existed.

“No one knows how old Mr. Barrington’s son was when he died,” Jeff told the circle of entranced children. “But they say something was wrong with the boy, and Mr. Barrington kept him hidden somewhere in the house. But no one knows where, and no one knows what was wrong with the boy. But when Mr. Barrington got really old, he got really strange, too.” Jeff’s voice dropped slightly, taking on a mysterious tone as he retold the old legend of the Academy’s mansion …

Eustace Barrington stepped off the elevator, blinking in the bright sunlight that flooded through the large windows in the cupola. He closed the mahogany bookcase that concealed the elevator’s doors, then went to the window and gazed out.

He’d been right to build the house here, right to perch it high on the hillside, so that from this small apartment on the roof he could see not only the mountains behind the house, but the sea as well, sparkling in the distance.

See all the things his son could no longer see.

Or did not choose to see.

When he’d begun building the house, Eustace Barrington had already known there was something wrong with the boy, something that made him different from any other child Barrington had ever known.

His son didn’t talk like other children, didn’t act like them. Instead, he kept to himself, seeming more interested in what was going on within his own mind than in the outside world.

Finally, when the boy had stopped talking altogether, Eustace Barrington had taken his son to the family doctor, then to every other doctor he could find.

All of them had shaken their heads.

“Just slow,” one of them had said.

“He’ll grow out of it,” another had assured him.

“Perhaps you should put him somewhere,” someone else had suggested, and given him the name of a place on the other side of the country, where he’d never have to see his son again.

Instead, Eustace Barrington had built this house, and constructed a special place for his son deep beneath the basement, accessible only by the elevator from his private suite, a suite that jutted up above the roof line of the rest of the house, allowing all the light that could never reach the chambers below the basement to fill these rooms, as if by compensating for his son’s lack of sunlight, he could ease the pain he felt for all these years.