Chapter #31Looking Into the Dark by: Seuzz   "Let me think about it," you mutter.
Then, because you don't really want to think about it, you add, "Have you been down to get the mail?"
Caleb answers with a lifted eyebrow. You make a face, and go for the front door.
The Welches live in one of those neighborhoods where the mailboxes are all down at the end of the street: one giant metal box with a separate slot for each house. On the way down you run through the possibilities in your head.
Safest thing is to do something with someone we've already got hidden away, you think. Pull a mask off Shannon or Stephan, or Barbara Meek, and stick the stupid thing on them while they're unconscious. You might even sneak back home, as yourself or under your dad's mask, and put it on Robert or your own mother.
You shiver a little at that.
But then, you reflect with a sigh, the absolute easiest thing would be to try it on yourself or on Caleb.
As you are nearing the end of the street you glance up to see the Welchs's next-door neighbor, Tracy Falgout, coming toward you. She must be coming from the mailboxes, for she is sorting through a stack of envelopes.
"Hello, Tracy," you call out, just to be neighborly (and in character).
She looks up quickly, then laughs.
"Oh, hey, Shannon," she says, and stops to wait for you.
Tracy is a middle-aged woman in her late forties: pear-shaped, with fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and deeper ones at the corners of her mouth. Her reddish-brown hair is cut in a simple, shoulder-length bob, and though she's got a full head of it, it has no life or lift. In her sleeveless blouse, knee-length shorts, and sandals, she looks like what you understand her to be: a stay-at-home mom who is content to stay at home and probably relieved she no longer has to put on a "face" when going out into the world.
She also looks like the kind of woman who has just lived through the adolescence of one boy, is dreading the adolescence of another, and is trying to retain her sanity while living currently through the adolescence of a girl.
You start by asking about the latter.
"Oh!" She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Well, we managed to get through homecoming. Did I tell you that Keira broke up with her boyfriend?"
"No! You told me you didn't know if it was going to last until homecoming— Oh, and is she still 'Keira'?"
Tracy gives you the kind of look a dog might give when it sees the rolled-up newspaper used to paddle its butt. Keira—Kimberley—Trina—Arwen—Felicity ... The girl has had a number of them over the years.
"Yes, still 'Keira'," Tracy mutters, "though how long that'll last— Anyway, we got through homecoming at least before she and Miguel broke up."
For ten minutes you get to listen to the soap opera that is life at the Falgouts'. Keira's break-up and rebound and some quarrels with her friends. Michael's disastrous first semester at Keyserling, where he is flunking freshman English and having a hard time getting through his remedial math classes. (Also, there was a fraternity he was trying to get into, but failed.) And Thomas, the middle-schooler, got suspended for three days for fighting. But at least she and her husband, Jonathan, have their health. The kids all have their health too. (A little too much of it in the case of the dad and the two girls, maybe; they're all going to have to diet if they're not going to have to buy a larger size of wardrobe.)
Talk is not all about the Falgouts, though, at least not completely. Tracy asks if you and Stephan are happy with the lawn care service you hired over the summer.
"You know," she says, "we told Michael he didn't have to 'retire' from mowing your lawn just because he was going to college. But next year, if your service isn't worth the expense," she adds, coming to what was obviously the point, "you can ask Thomas. Kid needs some more structure in his life, or something." She stares off phlegmatically toward her house, as though anticipating the chaos her thirteen-year-old will have unleashed during her fifteen-minute walk to get the mail.
You tell her you'll talk to Stephan about it, then you part after smiles, squeals of mutual esteem, and the affectionate squeezing of arms.
It's only on your way back from the mailbox that you realize that you could add the Falgouts—one of them, at least—to your list of possible guinea pigs.
* * * * *
Caleb is very cool and business-like when you are finally ready to talk the subject over while eating a frozen dinner. It gives you a bit of a chill.
"I'm sure it's totally safe to use on ourselves," he starts by saying as he cuts his lasagna up into bite-sized pieces. "And if we don't want to, we should just get Stephan or Shannon back out here and try it on them." It gives you the usual queer turn—that little spark of excitement and lust—to hear the man who looks exactly like Stephan Welch referring so casually to the man he is imitating and replacing. "Anything else would be a risk."
"It wouldn't be much of a risk," you point out, "to use Barbara Meek. Get someone into the conference room inside the office at the school."
"Someone random or someone we know?"
"That we know?" you query.
"Like Keith or Carson or James?"
"Well—"
"Or do you mean one of your tutorial cases? What about someone on staff? We could invite someone over for dinner. Or the Meerkat could. One of the Meerkat's friends?"
You finally end—about the time you're finishing up dinner—by adding two other locations you could search for a test subject. Caleb, with a studied casualness, mentions that Stephan has a steady stream of students coming into his office with questions about the lectures and homework, and that any of them would be quick and easy to snatch. And he also points out that you could resume life as your own father long enough to pull an employee at Salopek into his office for a "conference" that would get the new doohickey onto their forehead.
"I still think we should try it on ourselves, Will," he says. "Or Stephan or Shannon or the Meerkat. There's no risk with the last three, and the only risk to us is that the thing doesn't work right."
It's that risk it might not work right that restrains you. You don't want to use it on yourselves on account of the risk. And you don't want to risk damaging the Welches (or Barbara Meek) because you'd kind of like to let them loose again, sooner rather than later.
So it should be somebody else. And it should be somebody whose life you wouldn't so much mind stepping in for, at least for a little while, if the worst comes to worst.
Caleb understands when you lay this out for him, and in Stephan's very logical way he lays out that you've got five broad possibilities to choose from:   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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