Christopher's Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger

“Yes. I understand,” I said. I didn’t want to elaborate and reveal that I knew Mrs. Osterhouse was working so hard to become a member of our family, but it was one of those times when my father knew what I was thinking. He left it dangling in the air.

“Right.” He started to turn away and then stopped. “Oh. So how was your dinner?”

“Pretty tip-top,” I told him, which finally brought a smile to his face.

“I bet,” he said. “You’re a chip off the old block. Get to sleep.”

I watched him walk to his room, and I hated how old he suddenly looked, his shoulders slumped now with the fatigue of work, along with the weight of the deep and enduring sorrow he carried plus the weight of worrying that he was doing what he could and should do for me.

* * *

Seeing how upset my father was, I realized that I had another reason to get through Christopher’s diary: to solve the puzzles for him. Who wanted this large home on the Foxworth property, and why? I hoped that the clues were somewhere in the diary. Of course, I would say nothing of this to Kane. I had no idea what it all meant or even if it meant anything that concerned the Dollanganger children, and the one thing I didn’t want to do was start a conversation about it in school.

Talk among our group of friends was centered on Tina Kennedy’s upcoming party, anyway. Kane knew how I felt about going. Nevertheless, he enjoyed teasing her by saying we still weren’t sure of our schedule. “We hope to be there, but there are a few things in the works.”

“In the works? What does that mean?” she asked him, and he just looked at me and then gave her a smile and a slight shrug, leaving her gaping after us.

“Why do you tease her, Kane? Don’t you know that especially for a girl like Tina, any attention breeds hope?”

“I’m not teasing. It’s the truth, isn’t it? We have things in the works. Maybe we’ll go, or maybe we’ll be up in your attic.”

“Not when my father is home,” I said. “And if he sees us spending so much time in my room, especially on a weekend, he’s going to get suspicious.”

He gave me the oddest look, his head a little tilted to the right, his eyes smaller. “Sure you’re not exaggerating his attitude about the diary?” he asked.

“I’m sure. He’s made it crystal-clear a number of times.”

He still looked skeptical, which annoyed me. In fact, I was irritable for the rest of the day. I know I didn’t seem myself to my girlfriends. I had nothing funny or flattering to say about Suzette’s new shade of lipstick, which she was proudly demonstrating on her perky little sexy mouth. She had used that description of herself, the girl with the perky little sexy mouth, ever since her older brother’s college buddy described her that way and set her eyelids fluttering for a week.

But I wasn’t ignoring just Suzette. Kyra’s father had given her a black and gold pyramid stud wrap watch this morning, because her birthday was falling on Thanksgiving this year, and he wanted her to feel the impact of a special day. He and her mother would give her gifts every day until Thanksgiving and probably the day after, too. All of us had expressed interest in such a watch, so I knew I should have been happier for her when she showed it to us.

I was having moments like this ever since Kane first proposed reading the diary together. Without reason, I would find myself trembling and slinking away from contact with my girlfriends. The moments passed quickly enough. They were like tiny puffs of black smoke after a match was struck. Kane always seemed to be able to bring me back with his jokes and offbeat smile.

However, he knew he had annoyed me by doubting that my father was so against my reading the diary. He apologized at lunch and broke his rule that we shouldn’t talk about the diary outside of my attic, or at least outside of my house.

“It’s a very sad, even at times brutal story, but after some of the stories lately concerning people locked away for years, it’s not full of black magic or anything for me. That’s all I meant.”

“We haven’t reached the end, Kane. You might change your mind.”

He nodded. “I might,” he admitted. “But that’s more reason for us to do it like we’re doing it. We can comfort each other, right?”

“Comfort?”

“Just like Cathy and Christopher did,” he said. “Everything unpleasant is more unpleasant when you’re the only one feeling or experiencing it. That’s why as soon as something bad happens to us, we like to share it. We need the empathy and sympathy to help us get through it.”

“Apparently, they didn’t have anyone to do that for them, even their own mother,” I said bitterly.

“Looks like it,” he said.

“What is making you two look like you lost your best friends?” Serena Mota asked us as she was passing our table.

Kane looked at me and quickly said, “We’re upset because we might have to miss Tina Kennedy’s party this weekend.”

Serena looked at us, dumbfounded for a moment, and then shrugged. “I might miss it, too.”

As she walked off, we both laughed, but the lesson was learned. We looked at each other and repeated it word for word. “Don’t talk about the diary in school!”

I was afraid that Kane’s obvious anticipation of my meeting him at the end of the day and our usual rather quick departure from the building, both of us avoiding contact or conversation with any of our friends who might delay us even for a few minutes, would attract even more attention and interest in how we were spending our afternoons together. Of course, as with most things, he didn’t worry about it and just smiled and shrugged when I mentioned it on our way to my house.