The Deepest Secret Read online

  The only thing that can beat that is the garden hose, turned on full blast, and he’s aiming it across the lawn as his mom ducks behind the fort when the French door opens.

  “What are you two doing?” Melissa demands.

  He turns and the spray of water dashes across his sister. She squeals and jumps back. “Seriously?”

  “Oh, honey. We’re sorry.” But his mom’s laughing, and he can’t help it. He starts laughing, too.

  “I hate you both.” Melissa tosses her hair and goes inside.

  His mom puts her arm around him. They’re both wet, and the smell of grass is all around them. The small, tight things inside him loosen. “It’s late,” she says against his hair. “You go to bed. I’ll clean the rest of this up tomorrow.”

  He pauses in the doorway. “Thanks,” he says. “You know. For everything.”

  “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

  He taps his nose with his forefinger, then his cheeks—first the right one, then the left. His forehead, chin, and the nape of his neck. His hair gets in the way, so he starts over. Nose, cheeks, forehead, chin, neck. This time it feels right. He tugs his earlobes, right, then left. He takes a deep breath. Okay. He’s ready.

  He pulls on his gloves and takes a flashlight from the junk drawer. His mom keeps flashlights in every room. His dad jokes they’re the only family in the neighborhood prepared for the apocalypse.

  Unlocking the door’s the tricky part. His mom has superpowers when it comes to hearing the latch click. One, two, three. The snick of metal is a whisper, barely audible. Still, he waits to make sure his mom doesn’t appear behind him, yawning and tying her bathrobe around her. You okay, Ty? He doesn’t have to worry about Melissa. She always sleeps with her iPod playing.

  The backyard’s dark except for where the moon shines down and picks out the stones of the patio, the metal arms of the chairs. He inhales, filling his lungs. What is it about the air that’s so much cleaner when no one else is breathing it?

  He lets himself out the back gate and onto the dark street. There aren’t any streetlights. Back when he was little, his mom went to court and asked that the lights be turned off just on their cul-de-sac. There’s a newspaper article with a photograph of her, leaning against a streetlamp with her arms crossed. They’d wanted to take a photograph of him, too, but his mom had said no.

  It’s almost midnight—is he too late?

  Sophie’s porch light is on, lighting up an apron of front lawn. Her VW bug sits in her driveway. Melissa’s told him it’s pale blue, a pretty color, but beneath the white-yellow glow of the porch light, it just looks dirty. Sophie uses a regular light bulb, not halogen, so it’s safe. He could dance in front of her porch and it wouldn’t hurt him a bit. All her other windows are dark, which makes it seem like she’s upstairs asleep, but Tyler knows better.

  He hurries around the corner, but just as he reaches the edge of her deck, the downstairs light flares on. He fumbles with his camera, opening the lens, and glances up to see her coming forward to the glass and reaching up for the blinds pull. Tonight she’s in that black leather dress again, the one that bares her shoulders and laces tightly up the front. It’s nothing like what she’d worn to his party earlier, long pants and a loose top buttoned all the way to her chin. He presses the shutter just in time to capture her before the blinds tilt shut, the light shining behind her and showing every curve of her body. Then the bright light goes dim, and he knows she’s turned on her computer. He wonders what video game she’s playing, and whether he’s ever played against her online, but he doesn’t know her gamer tag.

  Narrow cypress trees stand all around Dr. Cipriano’s house. Tyler pushes his way through the stiff branches and crouches to peer through the ground-level windows that look down into the basement. He’s gotten some interesting shots of Dr. Cipriano working away at that thing he’s building, his shadow leaping against the far wall as he hammers. But tonight the windows are all dark.

  A yellow glow shines out Albert’s window, falling on the grass and lighting up the piles of oak leaves, making them look pointy and sharp. Soon all the leaves will be dropping. Deciduous trees produce an enzyme that cuts off food to the leaves, so they die. He’s never heard of one that didn’t, but maybe there’s a tree somewhere that doesn’t have that enzyme—a tree that stays green all year long. There are almost sixty thousand different enzymes in people, and he’s missing only one.

  He crunches across Albert’s yard and looks into the kitchen, which is exactly the way Rosemary kept it when she was alive—the framed pictures of cartoon chefs wearing funny hats hanging at a diagonal across one wall, the four blue-and-white canisters on the kitchen counter, the rooster-shaped salt and pepper shakers sitting beak to beak, like they’re talking to each other. What do you think they’re saying? he’d asked Rosemary, and she had looked thoughtful. Talk is cheep? Albert’s nowhere in sight, but a flame flickers beneath a pot on the stove.

  Albert used to be a pilot. His basement had maps taped to the wall, with long red lines showing the routes he flew. Bangkok, Paris, Sydney. Albert’s been everywhere. But I always came home, he used to say with a smile. After Rosemary died, Tyler had helped Albert take down the maps. Can I have them? he’d asked, and Albert had set one surprisingly light hand on his shoulder. Sure, he’d said. They’re all yours.

  Next door is the Farnhams’ brick house with its big patio and bay windows covered by drapes. It’s the one place he can’t go anywhere near. He holds up his middle finger as he turns onto the bike path.

  The playground’s empty, the swings hanging straight, the slide looming dark and silent. It was right there, by the basketball court, where he and Rosemary saw The Beast. Actually, Rosemary’s the one who saw it. He turned his head too late to see anything but a distant pale smudge disappearing into the woods. Rosemary told him it might have been a wolf or even a mountain lion. He’s been looking for The Beast ever since, but so far, he hasn’t even come across a paw print.

  He steps off the path and into the woods. He moves carefully, not wanting to startle anything. He stops to check the nest where baby bunnies had curled up, nose to tail, but it’s still empty. The babies must be big enough to be on their own now. Voices sound nearby and he freezes, craning his neck to see where they’re coming from. A few more yards and the trees part to reveal the small bridge that spans the creek. Two people are there, their heads and shoulders just visible in the dim moonlight.

  He sets his camera on a low-hanging branch and fits the remote to it. He bends to peer through the viewfinder. The rest of the world disappears and it’s just these two people looking at each other, a man and a woman. He can see the bumps on their noses, the curves of their chins. They’re holding hands, their fingers twined on the wooden railing. He presses the button and captures this moment, fixes it forever. These two people will never stand exactly this way again, with the exact same leaves hanging overhead, the exact same starlight gleaming all around.

  He’s tried to explain to Zach why this is so cool. It’s like running a touchdown, he’d said, and Zach had nodded. I get it, he’d said, though Tyler’s not sure he does.

  He takes another picture. At the soft click, the woman looks around. He holds his breath, heart pounding. But she doesn’t spot him standing there motionless in his dark clothes and she turns her attention back to the man, and after a few minutes, they walk away, still talking softly.

  He goes over to the bridge and shines his flashlight down into the water. Minnows dart in every direction, shivery brown shapes. Rosemary had once told him that fish stayed awake all night, just like him. That had comforted him, knowing that someone else was awake besides him and the crickets.

  Rosemary had liked crawling around in the mucky creek with him, never freaking if something crawly touched her or plopped into the water beside them. His mom worried because Rosemary was old, and might fall and hurt herself, but Rosemary had laughed and said she’d lose it if she didn’t use it. So his mom had stopped telli
ng him he couldn’t go and instead had gotten him his first cell phone. If anything happens, she told him, push this button and I’ll come right away. But Rosemary never did fall. She fell asleep one day and never woke up.

  He reaches the stand of red cedars, their long gnarled branches poking up and their wrinkly mess of leaves hanging low. Squeezing between them, he shrugs down his hood and yanks off his gloves. The air is cool against his palms and he flexes his fingers, scooping up the freshness. He sets his tripod on the dirt and screws on his camera. He plugs in the remote switch and checks the f-stop and shutter speed. Pulling out his cell phone, he sits down to wait.

  Facebook’s quiet. Everyone’s asleep, probably. They have to get up early for Orientation. It’s all Zach talked about at the party, him and the other guys. Everyone’s meeting at Timmy Ho’s beforehand for doughnuts. They’ve got one mom driving them to school, and another one picking them up. Then everyone’s going to the North Pool for one last swim before the season’s over. Tyler’s studied pictures online of the North Pool, the sparkling water and bright red tubes curving up to the sky. It seems like a pretty good place to have a party.

  Leaves rustle. He sucks in his breath, leans forward to peer through the branches.

  Something tall and ghostlike drifts into the clearing. It’s that doe. He’s glimpsed her before, nibbling on Charlotte’s tomato plants. Two smaller shapes meander after her. A one-year-old and the brand-new one, speckled and small. They float across the ground, pausing to eat the plants growing here and there. His blog followers will love this. They’re always complaining that his images are too far away. So he waits, finger hovering above the button, then presses down. The shutter clicks as loud as a firecracker. The three deer crash away through the trees, and a moment later, it’s as if they were never there. He feels bad that he interrupted their meal and hopes he got a picture to show for it. He stands, stretches. He’s got twenty more minutes until his sunscreen starts to wear off. He’s already had three lesions carved out of him. The scars form a triangle on his right calf. No recurrence yet, but he’s seen the tightness on his mom’s face when her gaze rests on it. She hasn’t noticed the burn on his arm. He wishes it would hurry up and go away before she does.

  Across the street, light flickers in the living room window at Amy’s house. Someone’s watching TV. Curious, he crosses the street and goes up to the window. An opened bag of chips sits on the coffee table, and a can of soda sits tilted on the arm of the couch. Charlotte would be really pissed if she saw that, but she’s not there. No one is.

  The stove light’s on, a comforting circle of light in the darkness. His mom leaves theirs on when he’s feverish and sleeping on the living room couch. He’ll lift his head from the cushions, see the glow tunneling out from the kitchen beyond, and know his mom’s nearby. He goes closer to the glass and there’s Amy, hauling a kitchen chair across the floor. She rocks it into place in front of the pantry and climbs up. Reaching high to the top shelf, she brings down a package of cookies. When she jumps to the floor, her short nightgown flies up.

  Amy had insisted he open her present first and she’d pushed in to stand beside him when he blew out the candles. When Charlotte told her it was time to go, Amy had climbed onto the trampoline instead. Everyone’s jumping had bounced her against him. I hate Robbie, she’d said, and when Tyler said Robbie wasn’t so bad, she’d narrowed her eyes and leaned closer with chocolate cake breath. He just pretends to be nice, she’d hissed. He calls me a little bitch and he calls you vampire boy.

  It’s time to go home. Dante may be online and wanting to game. Too bad Tyler caught Alex cheating. It used to be fun to play with him, too.

  The houses all around him are dark. There’s only the quiet tapping of his shoes on the sidewalk. The wind shivers through the cul-de-sac, loosing a blizzard of small leaves that rain down on him. He stops, delighted, and holds out his hands, lifts up his face to let the leaves gently pelt him. They swirl around him like he imagines butterflies might. They tickle his skin. They dance along the ground.

  This is me, he thinks. I am here, a part of all of this.

  EVE

  Where was he? Pressing her cell phone to her ear, Eve looks through the window as though she could conjure the sight of David, arriving home in a taxi or maybe in a rental car. Up the street, Charlotte’s porch light shines through the gloom. She wonders how Charlotte’s date with Robbie went. There’s an urgency to her friend’s relationship with her boyfriend that makes Eve uneasy. Robbie’s asked Charlotte to move in with him. You caught him reading your email, Eve had protested. Going through your texts. You can’t live with someone like that! And what about Amy, who’s already suffered through her parents’ divorce and clearly dislikes Robbie? But Charlotte won’t listen. I’ll make sure Amy’s okay with it. Children are more resilient than we give them credit for, she’d said, and Eve had thought sadly, Not all of them.

  Three rings, four. She hangs up before his voicemail picks up. The blinds rap against the glass; a cool breeze gusts in. A storm’s on its way.

  Tyler’s on the floor behind her, game controller in hand. This is their time together. This has always been the best time, her favorite part of the day, when it’s just the two of them. They can talk about anything and everything, and for these few minutes, life feels limitless with possibility. Her beautiful boy, with his creamy skin and piercing blue eyes. His eyelashes are long and dark, his hair black like hers but curly like David’s. It falls over his forehead and hides his eyes; it protects the nape of his neck. He’s been begging for a haircut, arguing that he’d put on extra sunscreen, wear a ball cap even indoors. How terrible to deny him such a small request.

  Down the hall, Melissa’s alarm clocks blare like deranged donkeys. She has three of them set around her room. In order to silence them, she has to get up and turn each one off.

  “Breakfast is ready,” she says, and Tyler pushes himself up from the floor to follow her into the kitchen. He’s tall and gangly, awkward with his new growth and height. He’s lost his sweet baby profile—his jaw is firm now instead of curved; there’s a small bump on the bridge of his nose, the cartilage growing in. Just the other day, she spotted golden fuzz beneath his lower lip. It’s impossible to think he’d be shaving soon. The doctor predicts Tyler will be six feet tall when he’s done growing, maybe six feet two inches. The doctor gives this information to Eve as though this is a gift, and all Eve can think is how utterly normal her son is in every way, how utterly healthy in every way but one.

  She glances at the chart taped by the door, then at the clock. They’ve got forty-three minutes. Tyler’s classmates are probably just waking up, getting ready for Orientation. Tyler hasn’t said a word about starting high school. Eve had tried to arrange it so that he’d be in at least one class with his friends, but there’d been too many obstacles. David had told her that this wasn’t too surprising, given how many kids were in the freshman class, but Eve couldn’t help but wonder. Zach may have wanted separation, and his mother had put in a request.

  She forks a steaming waffle onto his plate. “Guess what? I got another client. You’ll never guess what she writes. Werewolf mysteries.”

  “Cool.” He sits with his arm curved around his plate as though afraid someone will snatch it from him. He eats in big bites, barely chewing, the way he always does. He’s impatient to get through life. She’s the one who wants to slow it down.

  “I was thinking you could animate the werewolf’s eyes and make them look as if they’re glowing.”

  He raises his head, and she feels hopeful. But all he says is, “Yeah, maybe.”

  As he reaches for the syrup, she sees it—the red mark on the inside of his elbow. “What’s that?” she says. She can barely hear her own voice.

  He shrugs, goes to pour the syrup, but she’s grabbed his wrist, taken the bottle from his hand. “Mom,” he protests, but she’s turning his arm over to peer at the skin. Maybe just an indentation from lying on something, maybe a simple s
cratch? She runs the side of her thumb gently across the area. It’s flat, warm to the touch. Please, God. Let this be a normal, ordinary adolescent pimple. But it’s not. She’d known it the moment she’d spotted it. It’s too big, maybe an inch long, and it has a definite boundary where a sleeve rode up, exposing the tender flesh. A sunburn. “When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. Come on.”

  But he does know. Of course he does. Why won’t he admit it? She scans the kitchen for her cell phone, spots it lying on the counter beside the waffle maker, and goes to fetch it. “Hold out your arm, honey.”

  Obediently, he stretches out his arm and she aims her phone, taps the button. The shutter clicks. She brings the phone closer and takes another picture, turns his wrist to let the light fall differently. A third picture, a fourth. She’ll send the images to the doctor’s office right away, then wait the interminable hours until the office opens and the dermatologist can review them and get back to her.

  “Can I eat now?” Tyler says and she nods, her mind elsewhere.

  When was the last time her son wore short sleeves outside? When was the last time he was even out of her sight? Then she knows: Saturday evening. She’d run to the store, a quick trip, and returned to find David and Tyler collapsed on the couch, panting. They’d just come in from playing basketball, and as she unloaded the groceries, she’d been happy to know they’d spent that time together. “Dad let you take off your hoodie, didn’t he?”

  “It was hot,” Tyler mumbles.

  And then a car must have driven past, flashing its headlights across her son, trapping him. Fear sweeps over her, anger, and at the heart of it all, helplessness. She can’t even leave her son alone with her husband for thirty minutes.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Tyler says. “Dad covered me.”

  But not quickly enough. Tyler’s watching her, his fork halfway to his mouth. He’s protecting his father, when it should be the other way around.