“I’m fine,” Cooper answered. “Really. I said hi to the guys at the car wash and forgot to warn them to be gentle.”
“Really?” she asked, sounding both optimistic and suspicious. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? Cooper, do I know your friend?”
“This is Brent,” Cooper said. Normally he would have added something involving “I met him at …,” but his mind went blank when he tried. There wasn’t a good explanation for why he and Brent started talking that didn’t involve ghosts.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Brent said, shaking her hand, the picture of what Cooper’s mother would call “good breeding.”
“Well, come in and sit down, both of you,” she said, reaching to give Cooper a hand up the two steps into the front hall.
“I should probably get going, actually,” Brent said. “Do you need a ride tomorrow, Cooper?”
Ryan’s. Cooper knew he should probably accept a ride. Otherwise, he was likely to chicken out or come up with an excuse to stay away from Ryan le Coire, with his less than gentle teaching methods and distrust of Samantha. “If you don’t mind, yeah.”
“Are you two going to the game party?” Cooper’s mom asked. The opening-season party at John’s house had been a tradition for six years now.
Cooper debated the merits of lying, and was grateful when Brent got to the question first. “If we’re lucky,” he answered, with that same easy, good-boy smile. “The Museum of Science has a special exhibit this weekend that we can get extra credit in our physics class for going to. Since I suck at physics, it seemed worthwhile.”
Brent shot him a don’t-screw-this-up look, so Cooper added, “Five extra points at the start of the semester seemed like a stupid thing to throw away. Hopefully it won’t take too long, and we can get to the game party in time for kickoff.”
Cooper’s and John’s moms talked regularly enough that he was obligated to show up now.
“See you in the morning, Cooper,” Brent said, moving into the doorway. “We should try to get there when it opens. Figure I’ll pick you up around eight?”
Cooper nodded. Brent’s posture as he backed out the door almost looked like he was fleeing.
“Is he always that high strung?” Cooper’s mom asked after Brent was gone.
“I don’t know,” Cooper answered truthfully. “I just met him this year. Anyway, I should probably get some homework done, since I won’t have much time tomorrow.”
His mother glanced at the clock. “I need to take over at the shop. Your father isn’t feeling very well. It’s nothing serious,” she added swiftly before Cooper could reply with a deluge of alarmed questions. “He’s just a little under the weather and asked me to watch the place for a bit so he could get to the doctor’s. There are sandwich fixings in the fridge if you’re hungry for lunch.”
Cooper nodded. It was about all he could manage, as Ryan’s warnings about harming the people near him came to mind. Cooper had been dealing with the shadows all summer, which meant they had been thick inside this house. What kind of shape must his parents be in, living in such conditions?
His father came home an hour later with a prescription for antibiotics, and went straight to bed. Cooper and his mother had leftovers in silence. She looked tired.
Cooper didn’t sleep that night. He just simply didn’t. He told himself he was waiting up for Samantha, but what he was really waiting for was some kind of peace, which he knew he wouldn’t find. Instead, the light rain that had been falling much of the day increased until the pounding on the roof seemed to match the thrumming of Cooper’s worry.
Around ten-thirty he got up. He managed to catch up with his schoolwork and finish everything that was due on Monday by midnight. Then he booted up his computer and tried to search the Web for anything on Ryan le Coire or the crazy stuff he had talked about, but there was too much online for Cooper to have any idea what might be real or not.
He pulled up a couple of articles on the accident, but couldn’t stand to look much past the headlines. He was grateful when he saw lightning through his window, and had an excuse to shut down the computer.
Ryan had asked if the accident was his fault. The answer was yes and no. The weather had been blamed; no citations had been issued. On the other hand, his car had been the one in front.
And where was Samantha?
He looked up at the clock, and realized it was a little past one in the morning. He saw that hour too often.
He hoped Samantha was all right. After what she had said about getting lost last time … what if it hadn’t had anything to do with trying to talk to Brent in his dreams?
What if she was truly dying, losing her connection to this world until she was actually absolutely gone? What if the shadowy scavengers Ryan thought Samantha was leading devoured her before Cooper could convince Ryan to protect her?
Needing something to distract himself, he walked to the kitchen. He had just started rummaging for a snack when he saw a flare of light, too sudden and brief to be passing headlights, out of the corner of his eye. In the dark and rain, it was hard to make out the silhouette of a figure, but the glowing tip of a cigarette was unmistakable.
He put down the box of cereal he had found and opened the door, eliciting a startled cry from his mother, who was standing near enough to the door that the eaves were keeping her mostly dry.
“I thought you quit,” he said inanely.
She started to say something, stopped, started and stopped again.
“Picked it back up over the summer?” he guessed, trying to keep judgment out of his voice. And guilt. He had spent most of his elementary school years trying to get her to quit, after learning about the dangers of cigarettes in some class presentation. She had finally given it up when he was a freshman.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged. How could he blame her for coping in her own way? Maybe the smoke burned away the shadows.
“You’re up early,” she added. “Or late, I guess.”
“You too.”
“I don’t sleep well lately.”
“Me either.”
He leaned against the wall next to her. She tried to wave away secondhand smoke, but he just ignored it. The falling rain was heavy enough to leave a fine mist on his face.
“It’s good to hear you’re seeing friends again,” she said. “Have I met Brent before?”
“I don’t know,” Cooper said. “He was at a couple parties last year with Delilah. We got to chatting the other day. He had a tough summer, too.”
“I’m glad you have someone you can talk to,” she said, and it was obvious in her tone that she meant it. She put out the cigarette and they both moved back inside. She went to the junk drawer, and asked, “Want to play a round of Go Fish?”
“Sure.” Anything to kill time.
The conversation was stunted at first, but at least they were talking for the first time in a long time. They started on neutral topics like how his classes and her job at the bank were going, but as the night wore on they ended up speaking about the accident, and everything that had happened since.
They talked about the hours she had spent in the hospital, wondering if he would survive, and knowing from the doctors’ expressions that none of them thought he would. Without mentioning the way they had transitioned into real life, he told her in halted phrases about his nightmares. Almost more painfully, he finally described how mentally and physically exhausting the early sessions with his physical therapist had been, back in the days when it seemed like recovery might hurt more than it was worth.
He wished he could tell her about Samantha, too, who was always there, saying things like, “You’ve got a body. It hurts, but it’s yours. Trust me when I say you should be grateful. You might never be a football star again, but that’s not all there is to life.”
They both jumped when there was a tentative knock at the door at almost five in the morning. Cooper went to answer it, and frowned when he saw Brent.
