But the funny thing is, Laura liked it.
We went behind the school and kissed like crazy. We sat on this jungle gym apparatus, and then when it got darker we kind of crawled under the apparatus, and we were really excited and sort of squirming all over the place, and god knows what would have happened, because usually after dark no one’s ever back there behind the school, except of course that night somebody came through the dark and actually climbed up the apparatus, some drunk or something, and we had to get out of there.
I know I said I used to talk to Suzie about everything, but that’s not really true.
It wasn’t like talking to Laura.
I told Suzie everything, sure, but it was all stuff I already knew. Obvious stuff, really. It was simple and easy with her, and we’d feel happy or frustrated, but never in pain. It was just the little facts of my life, parents and school and neighborhood stuff. I never discovered new things that were buried in me or in her, because I never wanted to look for them.
After we talked that day, I felt I understood something about Laura.
There was something deep in her.
And very dark.
She’d wanted to share it with me but didn’t know how.
That was big.
Really big.
I think that was love.
And it scared me.
I didn’t know if I could handle it.
Maybe we both couldn’t, because we broke up a few weeks later.
Anyways, that was the time we talked.
Chapter
Fifteen
I stayed outside Laura’s door a few more seconds, listening.
The maid was still down in the kitchen. I heard the ring of dog food cascading into a dish. Dobey barked, nicely. They seemed to get along really well. She talked to him cheerfully in Spanish. I couldn’t understand a word.
Then I stepped into Laura’s room slowly and shut the door behind me, quietly.
The room was dark. I couldn’t see much yet, only the shapes of the furniture. The curtains were drawn. Vague light bled through, showing the outlines of her bed, a couple bureaus, and a desk with computer stuff on it.
I’d known it was her room because I smelled perfume, faintly.
Flowers and spice.
I’d never asked her what perfume she wore. I wish I had. I loved it. I don’t know how to describe it except to say it made my heart race and my mind go blank.
I guess that’s a good perfume.
I stood there another minute, listening.
I heard the maid let Dobey outside.
I must have been above the backyard and deck. It was hard to tell, because there were so many rooms in the house. It was easy to get confused. But I heard the door open downstairs, and then I guess she led him out, because I heard her voice still talking to him outside, below the curtained windows. There must have been a chain on the deck to hold him, because I heard the maid drag it across the boards. Dobey thumped around for a minute, and then he must have sat, because I heard nothing more after she came back inside and shut the door.
I still waited, and when I heard her puttering around downstairs it seemed safe to move, so I stepped lightly across the floor and opened one of the curtains halfway, just enough to let in a little light to see by.
Her room was kind of hard to explain.
Laura’s room.
It was perfect.
I’d never seen so neat and clean a room in my whole life. I was amazed her mother ever got mad at her. If she’d been my mother, she’d have been on me all the time, because to tell you the truth, I usually made my bed after I got home from school, or even later at night, like right before I got into it.
But not Laura.
Her bed was perfect. It looked like a bed in a fancy hotel and even had one of those throws over it, the kind covered with white cotton pompoms.
I’d always wanted to see her bed. You probably think that’s pretty weird. I guess I’d sort of fantasized about it, like I fantasized about whatever else she might do when she was alone.
And here it all was.
But I can’t say I liked it.
Not really.
It was too perfect.
Everything was too perfect, too ordered, too organized. I saw that right off the bat. It was just like the rest of the house, like nobody really lived in it.
It made me feel sort of bad. I guess I’d hoped to see a mess.
But I thought, Hey, it’s probably just me. After all, I grew up in a pretty messy house. I suppose that’s what I thought was normal.
Most of everything was white: the curtains and the furniture and the bedding and these billowy things hanging by four corners from the ceiling that looked just like the throw on the bed. In one way the room was simply very pretty and perfect, a lot like Laura herself was always pretty and perfect.
But it didn’t say anything.
So I was disappointed.
I don’t mean in her.
Her room just didn’t explain anything.
It was like looking at a picture of a very nice girl’s bedroom in a furniture catalog, un-lived-in and waiting. I mean, it was full of stuff but seemed empty.
I felt sort of sick. I mean I felt strange just being there. For one thing, I never did really make up my mind about whether I should come in; I mean whether I actually had any right to come in, because I knew I really didn’t.
I mean, I knew how wrong it was, for one thing, what an invasion of privacy and everything. I really was worse than Paul Stewart. I mean, weirdo that he was, he had at least asked to come in.
But like I said, this was my one chance to find out who Laura really was.
I just couldn’t blow the chance.
It was like I had Tommy Werks standing next to me all over again,
