Secrets in the Shadows (Secrets 2)

"They'll know soon," he said. "Don't worry about it," he added, but I was sure I felt and heard some note of nervousness in his voice.

"Okay. I have to finish my homework. See you in the morning."

"Absolutely," he said. "Good night, Alice, and . . ."

"Yes?"

"I'm looking forward to another ride on the sofa in the attic." He laughed, but I felt a sharp, electric chill both of excitement and fear.

How did he see me? What did he really think of me? Was my inexperience showing, and did it put me at a big disadvantage? Should I have accepted the prom invitation so quickly, or should I have said, "Let me think about it"? Should I go slowly as my grandfather had advised? Only a short while after he had given me advice, I had ignored it. Some third eye, I thought. Eveirif I had that magical vision, I was asleep when I should have been the most awake.

I decided to take my time telling my

grandparents about Craig's invitation to the prom. After all, I wasn't sure I wasn't going to change my mind about it. As he had pointed out, it was nearly a month off. What if I decided I didn't like him after all? And yet I couldn't keep it secret too much longer. Craig was right about that as well. I needed to think about my dress, my hair, all of it.

I knew Aunt Zipporah would be excited for me. I wondered how Rachel and my father would react to the news. Would she think or say my new romantic success was all because of her contributions? Helping to decide my new wardrobe? Helping me put on makeup? Maybe that would be good; maybe she wouldn't want me out of their lives so much.

Craig was there right on time the next morning. Amazingly, his first question for me was, What did my grandparents think of his asking me to the prom? I countered with, What did his parents think of it?

"I didn't get a chance to talk to them about it all yet," he said diplomatically.

"Neither did I," I told him, and he looked at me, surprised, and then smiled.

"What do we care what adults think of it anyway? It's our decision, right?"

"Right."

However, in the small community in which we both lived, our seeing each other wasn't going to be unnoticed and unreported long. I was sure he knew that even better than I did. He was more in the thick of it all. We were spending every free moment we had in school together, whether it was moving from class to class or our lunch period. On Thursday, he had an important away game, and I went home on the bus. It was the first time all week we were separated. I could feel the eyes and the attention on me all the time.

Some of the other girls besides Charlene Lewis began to talk to me as well. It was mostly friendly banter about something I was wearing, some lipstick or some homework. Sprinkled in their conversation were comments about Craig. I could see the envy on the faces of some of the girls and how some still couldn't understand his attraction to me. In every way they could, they tried to learn how I could win the attention of one of the school's most popular boys. I know I frustrated them with my silence or cryptic short replies. However, for the most part, when I wasn't with Craig, I tried to stay to myself. I didn't trust them, didn't even trust Charlene enough to reveal any of my feelings or thoughts about Craig.

Word got out before the end of the week that he had asked me to be his prom date, and that started a whole new wave of conversations in the girls' room or physical education class. Suddenly, it was important for them to know what I planned on wearing, where we planned to go right afterward and whether or not we were going to go in the limousine. They all wanted very much to know if I would be permitted to be out all night and go to the picnic the next day. I didn't want to tell them that I was actually still thinking about going at all. I had yet to tell my grandmother and grandfather, so I didn't have any answers for them.

"I'm not sure yet," was my stock reply.

Craig asked me to go for pizza and a movie with him on Friday. It would be our first formal date. I decided that if all went well, I would tell my grandparents about the prom the following morning. The team had won its away game, which meant our school was in the play-offs for the league title. Everyone was in a mood to celebrate. I didn't know what we would really be doing Friday night until Craig picked me up and told me that our plans had changed.

"Mickey Lesman's having an open house to celebrate the play-offs," he told me as soon as I got into his car. "Most of the team's going. His parents are off on a holiday, and his little sister's sleeping over at a friend's house. You cool with it?"

I shrugged. How could I tell him I didn't know what to expect? This would be the first open house party I ever attended.

"We could still go for pizza and a movie, if you want," he said. "Or we go to the party and if we don't like it, we could always leave," he added.

I knew it was what he wanted to do, and my own curiosity about it was strong enough not to say no. "It's fine," I said.

Mickey Lesman's house was a sprawling, modern, ranch-style, rich-looking home outside of the hamlet of Hurleyville, which wasn't much bigger than Sandburg, where I lived. Like most country roads, Mickey's road had no streetlights, and the houses were well spaced apart, some home owners having ten or so acres. Mickey's father was the owner of a major department store. By the time we arrived, there were at least two dozen cars parked in front of the house. The moment we stepped out of Craig's car, we could hear the loud music. I felt the ground rumbling beneath my feet with the vibrations from his big outside speakers. It was lucky the neighbors were far away, I thought.

Whenever my grandfather and I rode these back roads and saw these homes at nighttime, I often thought about the similarities with the way we lived, especially how I lived. To me people wrapped their homes around themselves and, like the citizens of a fortress town in the Middle Ages, pulled up their drawbridges. Instead of looking out of the windows at the world and imagining all sorts of things going on outside in the darkness, they sat around television sets and looked at what someone else had imagined for them.

My grandfather told me that when he was young, a few years younger than I was, he and his family listened to the radio and had to create their own pictures in their own minds from the words and sounds they heard.

"People," he said, "used to sit around campfires before that and tell each other stories. Nothing's changed except the delivery system. What's important, what seems to matter the most, is not being alone in the dark."

I listened and looked at him and thought, But Grandpa, that's where I've been most of my life, alone in the dark.

I so wanted not to be alone anymore. Maybe I wanted it so much that finally I was willing to take risks, and maybe, just maybe that was what happened to my mother. She had been alone and she had put her trust in someone, and she had been betrayed. Why else would she have been so creative and dependent on that imagination of hers? It was all she had. It was her personal fortress, and when she pretended, imagined, created, she pulled up her drawbridge and felt safe.

"You look worried," Craig told me as we stepped into the glow of the house lights. "Don't be. They're just a bunch of stupid kids like us."