Neither one of them mentioned it.
As Mark took off down the driveway a little while later, edited paper in his bag, Jason felt the emptiness of the house again. The emptiness of everything around him. He reached for his phone and punched in Holly's number—then realized it was after eleven and hung up. She was probably asleep by now if she lived with a little kid and an old guy. He wondered what her life was really like over there—what Holly was really like when no one else was around. He wanted to know her. And he couldn't avoid the truth, that somehow she'd become more than someone to ask for forgiveness, more than someone who'd been on the receiving end of a wrong that needed to be righted.
He crushed the longing down and turned back to Hammurabi's Code. The battle of the weak versus the strong. He didn't know which he was anymore.
Chapter Seven
The old guy has a point. Where is the freaking light? You wander down the stairs of your house and move out into the cul-de-sac, concentrating hard on lightness, on tunnels of light, on strobe lights, on starlight, on the buzz of the pinkish streetlights above. You think of any light that comes to mind, hoping that this will somehow draw the tunnel closer.
Nothing happens. It's you and an endless maze of suburbia. How freaking clichéd. You should write a punk rock song or something. Actually, you never thought your family was that well off, but the niceness of the house you lived in, of the houses on your street, seems more apparent in the dark. Many of them have fancy lighting systems out front, the ubiquitous security system signs that are supposed to ward off crooks, the shiny new cars in the driveways, and in the backyards the pools and hot tubs surrounded by custom rockery and landscaping, or at the very least cedar decking. You walk by house after house, seeing now the things that make them alike. The sameness is stifling.
A fluffy white cat darts out from behind a green recycling bin, making you jump. If that's what it's called when your non-body reacts and your non-heart races in your non-chest. The bodiless thing—the body with no body thing, that is—has been weirding you out lately. How do you keep sensing and hearing and seeing everything? How are you there but not there? The quantum physics of being a ghost mystifies you for a second. Then you realize the cat is staring at you, her green eyes a flash of reflection.
"Of course, you can see me, right?" you say with a sour laugh.
The cat takes off across the street, ducking into the rhododendron bushes. The street is quiet again, the neighborhood probably absorbed in TV shows and answering e-mails. It's going to be another long night.
You think of Holly's place, and you are suddenly walking outside her stucco building, as far from the houses in Lake Heights as you can get. Aside from a few trees and a small planting bed out in front of it, there is nothing homey about it. This part of Seattle is a commerc Nt="0e roial zone—a neighborhood of apartment buildings that hug busy roads not far from the high school. A minimart's bright lights cut into the gloom at one end of the block, and at the other end, a small strip mall with a nail salon, a Thai restaurant that once gave you and Holly food poisoning, and a check-cashing place with a flashing neon green Open sign. If you could smell anything, you'd get hints of burnt garlic and fish sauce in the air from the Thai place, along with the cigarette smoke coming from the two greasy-looking white dudes hanging out on the bench in front of the minimart. Tweakers, probably. Holly has never liked the neighborhood, but she's good like that, putting up with stuff way more than you would.
Inside the minimart, the owner is watching an Ultimate Fighting match and scanning the classifieds for a used car for under $1, 000. At the back of the store there's a gray-haired white lady wearing a pink cardigan over a green house dress. She's reading the soup labels one by
As Mark took off down the driveway a little while later, edited paper in his bag, Jason felt the emptiness of the house again. The emptiness of everything around him. He reached for his phone and punched in Holly's number—then realized it was after eleven and hung up. She was probably asleep by now if she lived with a little kid and an old guy. He wondered what her life was really like over there—what Holly was really like when no one else was around. He wanted to know her. And he couldn't avoid the truth, that somehow she'd become more than someone to ask for forgiveness, more than someone who'd been on the receiving end of a wrong that needed to be righted.
He crushed the longing down and turned back to Hammurabi's Code. The battle of the weak versus the strong. He didn't know which he was anymore.
Chapter Seven
The old guy has a point. Where is the freaking light? You wander down the stairs of your house and move out into the cul-de-sac, concentrating hard on lightness, on tunnels of light, on strobe lights, on starlight, on the buzz of the pinkish streetlights above. You think of any light that comes to mind, hoping that this will somehow draw the tunnel closer.
Nothing happens. It's you and an endless maze of suburbia. How freaking clichéd. You should write a punk rock song or something. Actually, you never thought your family was that well off, but the niceness of the house you lived in, of the houses on your street, seems more apparent in the dark. Many of them have fancy lighting systems out front, the ubiquitous security system signs that are supposed to ward off crooks, the shiny new cars in the driveways, and in the backyards the pools and hot tubs surrounded by custom rockery and landscaping, or at the very least cedar decking. You walk by house after house, seeing now the things that make them alike. The sameness is stifling.
A fluffy white cat darts out from behind a green recycling bin, making you jump. If that's what it's called when your non-body reacts and your non-heart races in your non-chest. The bodiless thing—the body with no body thing, that is—has been weirding you out lately. How do you keep sensing and hearing and seeing everything? How are you there but not there? The quantum physics of being a ghost mystifies you for a second. Then you realize the cat is staring at you, her green eyes a flash of reflection.
"Of course, you can see me, right?" you say with a sour laugh.
The cat takes off across the street, ducking into the rhododendron bushes. The street is quiet again, the neighborhood probably absorbed in TV shows and answering e-mails. It's going to be another long night.
You think of Holly's place, and you are suddenly walking outside her stucco building, as far from the houses in Lake Heights as you can get. Aside from a few trees and a small planting bed out in front of it, there is nothing homey about it. This part of Seattle is a commerc Nt="0e roial zone—a neighborhood of apartment buildings that hug busy roads not far from the high school. A minimart's bright lights cut into the gloom at one end of the block, and at the other end, a small strip mall with a nail salon, a Thai restaurant that once gave you and Holly food poisoning, and a check-cashing place with a flashing neon green Open sign. If you could smell anything, you'd get hints of burnt garlic and fish sauce in the air from the Thai place, along with the cigarette smoke coming from the two greasy-looking white dudes hanging out on the bench in front of the minimart. Tweakers, probably. Holly has never liked the neighborhood, but she's good like that, putting up with stuff way more than you would.
Inside the minimart, the owner is watching an Ultimate Fighting match and scanning the classifieds for a used car for under $1, 000. At the back of the store there's a gray-haired white lady wearing a pink cardigan over a green house dress. She's reading the soup labels one by
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