And the boy was in his window, looking out at her. She froze, absolutely froze solid when she saw him.
“Did it work?” Kate asked. “Lindsay? Hey? Is he there?”
“Um…uhm-hmm.”
He was definitely there. The boy smiled back and lifted a hand in greeting.
Lindsay tried to return the wave, but her arm felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. He was just so good-looking. He looked like a movie star, only better because he was real and present and separated from her by nothing but a piece of dirty glass. Through the binoculars, she thought his eyes were the color of sky, but they were lighter than that, so light. So amazing.
“Lindsay? What is going on?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“What? Hold on—”
Lindsay killed the signal and put the phone in the pocket of her jeans. The boy next door lifted a finger in the air: one second. He disappeared for a minute, bending down like he was putting something away, then reappeared. He stood up. He was so tall. Lindsay noticed that like the men she saw in the yard that morning, he too wore a black T-shirt, but his was way too big on him. It hung like a tent from his shoulders. He was way too tight-bodied for such a mammoth shirt. Nervous, she looked up and down the band of sand, to the back of the houses and then to the front and the beach and ocean beyond. People were gathered on the sand in front of her uncle’s house. Towels and chairs sat beneath a dozen different people, but none of them mattered. Not now.
She looked back at him.
He was waving for her to come closer.
4
Todd Lombard was Lindsay’s first real boyfriend. He was a slender boy with short blond hair, green eyes, and too much brain for his own good. He was Einstein smart and would have been considered a total geek if he hadn’t been the star of her middle school’s soccer team. Todd was cute and fun, but he was also a little crazy, and not in the fun, let’s-raise-some-hell kind of way. Todd heard voices. They told him to do things. They told him jokes, causing Todd to burst out laughing in the middle of algebra or social sciences. Fortunately Lindsay broke it off six months before his parents sent him away to a school in the next county that was able to handle “special” kids like Todd.
Her second boyfriend was normal enough. Too normal. David Carter was also blond and also a soccer player, but he was as dull as a Josh Groban record. All he ever wanted to do was sit around playing video games. When they did go out, they went to movies, usually the ones inspired by video games.
And those two made up Lindsay’s romantic history. Neither were bad guys, but they weren’t exactly the stuff of great romances either. Still, she had felt an electric charge when they first asked her out. It started in her chest and spread out, shooting up to her scalp and down to her toes. She felt that kind of charge now, walking toward the boy’s window, but the voltage was cranked way up, and she didn’t know how she could stand this kind of feeling if it went on much longer.
The boy was still smiling at her. His eyes twinkled like he wanted to tell her a secret, but he did not move forward to open the window. She thought that was odd. He stood back from the wall, waving her closer but made no move to slide back the glass that separated them.
Maybe he’s sick, she thought. He could be contagious. He might even be dying. God, wouldn’t that suck? It would be kind of romantic, but in a completely awful way.
When she reached the closed window, she didn’t know what to do. She looked up at him, laughed a nervous laugh, and shrugged.
“Hello,” he called through the glass.
“Hey,” she said.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked.
“Lindsay.”
“Great name.”
“Thanks. What’s yours?”
“Mark,” he said.
“Hey, Mark.”
“Hey.”
She felt really stupid talking through the closed window and wondered why he didn’t open it.
As if reading her mind, he said, “Stupid window.”
“Is it broken?” she asked.
“No,” Mark said. “It’s hard to explain. You can open it if you want.”
Lindsay shrugged and reached out to grasp a thin strip of metal on the outer frame of the glass. As she pulled the window open, she noticed an odd metal bracket fixed in the corner of the window frame. It was made of iron and had a strange shape, swirls and lines in a circle with three points poking away from the center. They weren’t very pretty, but at least they were small, hardly bigger than a nickel. One point aimed up the wall, while the other was pointed across the sill. The third jutted toward the center of the window. She noticed another bracket affixed to the inside corner of the sill. In fact, all of the corners, inside and out, wore similar ornaments.
Lindsay stepped away from the open window. She looked inside and saw a small bed pushed against the far wall. A simple blanket lay over the top of it. To her left, on the same wall as the window, was a black upright piano with a narrow bench. (He’s a musician!) The walls were bare, but there was a desk in front of the window and a pile of clothes against the closet door.
Where is his PC?
“Thank you,” Mark said. “This is the first fresh air I’ve had in days.”
“Are you grounded or something?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“That blows.”
“Does it?” he asked. His face scrunched up like he was confused; then he smiled again and nodded his head. “Okay. I understand. Yeah. It definitely blows.”
“What did you do?”
“Things,” Mark said. “Little stuff mostly. A few plagues and a war or two. Nothing apocalyptic.”
Lindsay laughed. “So your parents totally over-react, too?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I saw a couple of guys outside this morning. Are they your dads?”
“They are…” Mark searched for the right word and decided on, “complicated. They’re my guardians, if that’s what you mean.”
“I guess. They look pretty harsh.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Doug—he’s the tall one—and Jack are seriously cold.” He chuckled a dry, humorless laugh and dropped his head. “So, how long have you lived next door? I haven’t noticed you before.”
“Well, maybe you haven’t been paying attention.”
“I think you’d get my attention pretty quick.”
Lindsay felt herself blush. She looked away from Mark, toward the beach where even more people had gathered in the few minutes since she last looked. When she returned her gaze to Mark, her heart was beating so fast she thought she might faint.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“We’re just visiting. It’s my uncle’s house. We got in yesterday.”
“Oh, okay. I’ve seen your uncle around, I think. Skinny guy? Always wearing a trucker cap?”
“That’s Uncle Lou.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Ten days.”
“That’s not very long,” Mark said. “I was kind of hoping you’d be here for the summer. Who knows, I might actually get out of here one of these days.”
“I wish we were staying longer, too,” Lindsay said.
Yesterday it would have been a lie, but right now she meant it.
“It gets a little lonely around here. I mean, Doug and Jack are less than entertaining.”
“I heard music last night,” Lindsay said, choosing her words carefully. “I haven’t heard anything like it before.”