Virtual Mode

CHAPTER 1—COLENE

COLENE had a study hall during the last period, and as an Honor student she had a regular hall pass. RHIP, she thought: Rank Hath Its Privileges. She smiled marginally, remembering a cartoon she had seen: two gravestones, one plain, one quite fancy. The plain one was lettered RIP, the fancy one RHIP. She liked the notion. No one challenged her as she got up and walked out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom.

She was in luck: it was empty at the moment. She went into the farthest stall, closed and latched the swinging door, lifted her skirt, took down her panties, and sat on the seat. But she did not actually use the toilet. Instead she held up her left arm, and used her right hand to unwrap the winding around her left wrist. It was a style only a few girls affected: bright red cloth on both wrists, complementing her blue skirt and yellow blouse. It was attractive, of course, and Colene preferred to be aesthetic, but it was more than that.

For as the band came loose, her wrist showed, horribly scarred. There were welts all across the inner side, some old and white, others fresh and raw. She gazed at it with mixed awe and loathing. She was artistic and creative as well as smart, but this was none of these things. This was closer to her real nature, ugly and dull and tragic, that had to be hidden from others.

Then she reached down to fetch her compass from her purse. A knife would have been better, but might also have brought suspicion on her. She lifted the point, set it against her wrist, and made a sudden, sharp slice across. “Oh!” she exclaimed as the pain came. She hated the pain, but it was the only way. Maybe she could get a small, sharp knife, seemingly decorative and harmless, that would cut almost painlessly, and deeper. If she had the nerve. The nerve was not in the cutting, but in the acquisition; if anyone saw her with the blade out, and asked…

The scratch was stinging, but only a bit of blood was showing. She clenched her teeth and made another pass, in the same track, harder. This time the surge of pain was rewarded by some real blood. It welled out and flowed slowly across her wrist. It was beautiful, like a rich red river wending across a desolate terrain.

She spread her legs and nudged back on the toilet, so that she had more space in front. She angled her wrist so that the blood could drip directly into the water below. The first drop gathered itself, bunched, and finally let go. It struck the water and spread out, losing its identity as the water diluted it. It was dying.

Dying. There was the thought that counted. Oh to fall like that drop into the water, and dissolve, and dissipate, and be no more. Just to fade away, forgotten.

Drop by drop, coloring the water, turning it slowly pinkish. Like menstrual flow, only more vital. Menstrual flow was associated with life, or potential life. This was associated with death, and that was infinitely more important.

Another drop fell to the water, but this one was not red. It was a tear. That seemed fitting: blood and tears. For a man it would be blood, sweat, and tears, but it wasn’t feminine to sweat, so just the blood and tears would do. Her life, gone into the water, flushed down the toilet, cleanly. Part of the problem with death was the sheer messiness of it. She didn’t like mess. She liked things neat and clean and in order. If only she could find a way—

The bathroom door opened. Instantly Colene snapped out of it. She put her wrist to her mouth, licking off the salty blood. She dropped the compass into her purse. She rebound her wrist with a practiced motion, and tucked in the end so it was tight. Then she slid forward on the toilet and used it as was its custom, taking care to make a splash so that the sound advertised the fact of her urination. There were levels and levels of concealment, and she had learned not to assume that others would get the message she intended. It had to be too obvious to miss. Nothing but pissing going on here, ma’am.

The other girl chose another stall and settled down. She was not suspicious. Still, it was nervous business. If anyone were to catch on, Colene would just die of embarrassment. That was not the way she wanted to die!

She stood, reassembled herself, and flushed the toilet. No blood showed; the drops had fallen cleanly into the water, leaving no giveaway stains. Yet somehow she feared that the traces were there, a guilty ambience, so that the next person who used this toilet would somehow know that a person had flirted with suicide here.

But maybe not. A girl could have changed her tampon, and that was where the blood had come from. Not a pad, because that couldn’t be flushed. A tampon would leave no evidence. Some girls used pads so as to maintain the pretense that they were virginal, but most preferred convenience, as did Colene herself. So she was covered.

She went to a sink and washed her hands carefully. No blood showed on her wrists, thanks in part to the wrapping: red covered red. The inner layer was absorbent, and would take up the blood and help it thicken and clot. She would have to wash out the cloth at home, but she was used to that.

Back in the study hall she brought out her compass and wiped the point on a tissue, just to be sure. Then she brought out her geometry homework, so that no one would wonder about the compass. Geometry was a snap; in fact, it was boring, because it was two-dimensional. It would have been more of a challenge in three dimensions, or four. If only they had a class in cubic geometry, or multi-dimensional constructions. Or fractals: now, there would be one she could truly sink her teeth into. Class, today we shall take our little pencil and graph paper and define the complete Mandelbrot Set.

Colene stifled a smile. The Mandelbrot Set was said to be the most complicated object in mathematics. Even mainframe computers could not fathom the whole of it. Yet it was simply an exercise in algebra, plotted on paper. How she would love to explore that beautiful picture! To lose herself in its phenomenal and diminishing convolutions, forever and ever, Amen.

But this was mundane school, where brains were routinely pickled in trivia. No hope here.

As the final bell approached, Julie came to sit beside her. It was Friday, and the teacher in charge knew better than to try to keep things totally quiet in the closing minutes. As long as they didn’t make a scene, they were all right.

Julie had long yellow hair, which she liked to swirl about her face and shoulders. It was a nice complement to Colene’s similar brown tresses. But in other respects they differed more widely. Julie wore glasses and braces, which made her by definition unattractive; Colene, with neither, was far more popular. That was a barrier between them, and their friendship was only nominal, because it was mutually convenient to walk home from the bus stop together.

Actually Colene had no friends, by her definition, though many others called her friend. It was as if she had an invisible barrier around herself that kept all others at a certain distance. No one touched her heart, and her heart was lonely. She wished it could be otherwise, but the truth was that no one she knew at school was the type she cared to sincerely like and trust. Maybe she was just an intellectual snob, and she felt slightly guilty for that, but only slightly. If she ever encountered someone with really solid intelligence and integrity, someone she could truly admire for maintaining standards she herself could not, then maybe—

“Did you hear?” Julie inquired in a breathless whisper. “The principal canceled the rally tomorrow!”

Colene had planned on skipping the rally anyway, but she acted properly outraged. “The nerve of the nerd! Why?” “Too many Bumper Stinkers in the parking lot.” Colene remembered: there had been a rash of bad-taste stickers, using four-letter words and concepts. Principal Brown had laid down the law: no more of them on the school grounds. Evidently some of the stupid high school boys had tried it anyway. The principal wasn’t satisfied to punish the errant boys; he had to punish the whole school too. Actually there was reason for this: those stickers would keep reappearing until there was a climate of rejection among the students, and that would come only if all of them paid the penalty. Colene understood, but it would be traitorous to argue the case.

“What will we do with Brown?” Julie demanded rhetorically. It was a matter of definition: no matter what happened, the principal was always wrong. That was one of the unifying principles of the student body.

Colene glanced around, saw that the teacher in charge was not paying attention while nearby students were, and launched into one of her clever little stories. She was good at this sort of thing, and she enjoyed it in her fashion.

“Why, we should hold a benefit for him,” she said brightly.

“A benefit?” Julie asked blankly, playing the straight man to Colene’s act.

“Yes. When he drives up in his Datsun with the tags saying OBITCH—” She paused, giving them time to put that together: DATSUN OBITCH. An expanding circle of sniggers indicated that the joke had registered. “Then we should stage a gala fund-raising extravaganza, a dunk-the-idiot benefit, with Principal Brown as the main event. Three balls for a dollar, and whoever scores on the target makes Brown fall on the biggest, loudest, smelliest whoopee cushion ever put out by the Ack-Mee Novelty Company!” She put the back of a hand to her mouth and blew the whoopee noise.

It came out too loud. The teacher glanced quickly over at them, and they all had to stifle their laughter. Then the bell rang, saving them. That reminded Colene of a recording she had once heard at a party she wasn’t supposed to attend: a “crepitation” championship match, in which the contestants broke wind in novel ways, each effort appropriately named, such as the sonorous “Follow-up Blooper” and cute little “Freeps,” and the end of the round was signaled not by a bell but a flatulent horn. The school buzzer was actually more like that than a church bell.

JULIE and Colene got off the bus and walked home. It was a pleasant neighborhood, with neat lawns, trees, and even some overgrown lots that were almost like little jungles. Drainage ditches were forming into the beginning of a stream that wound on out of the city. Colene had explored the recesses of that nascent river many times, on the assumption that there had to be something interesting there, like buried treasure or a vampire’s coffin. Maybe even, O Rapturous Joy, a lost horse looking for someone to love it. But all she had ever found were weeds and mud.

“Groan, I have to go in for X-rays tomorrow,” Julie was saying. “Those damned hard ridges on the pictures always slice up my gums. I don’t know why they can’t make them softer.”

“Easy to fix,” Colene said brightly. “Just bring the president of Code-Ack in for X-rays, and have his gums and roof-of-mouth cut up by those corners. Make him really have to chew down on them for retakes, and tell him, ‘Don’t be a difficult child now; those things don’t hurt!’ I guarantee: next day those edges would be soft as sponges.”

“Yes!” Julie agreed, heartened. “If only we could!” But they both knew that nothing that sensible would ever be done, and that sharp edges would continue to find their helpless victims. That was just the way of it. The people who manufactured things never actually used them themselves.

As they approached Colene’s house, her wandering glance spied something in the ditch. It was probably just a pile of cloth, or garbage tossed from a car; there were creeps who routinely did such things. But she felt a chill, and surge of excitement. Suppose it was something else?

She said nothing to Julie. She wanted to check this by herself. Just in case.

They walked on. Julie’s house was beyond Colene’s house, so Colene turned off. Her parents weren’t home at this hour, of course; they both worked. Not that it mattered. She had ways in her imagination to glorify the empty home. She liked to pretend that the drainage ditch behind was a great river that wended its way past the most illustrious regions: the Charles. Her simple residence became a gloomy mansion on the bank of this river, where death was a familiar presence. Thus it was the Charles Mansion, a takeoff on a grim killer in a text on legal cases. Her folks wouldn’t have thought that funny, and her schoolmates wouldn’t have caught the allusion. That seemed to be typical of her life: she couldn’t relate well to either parents or peers. But she was the only one who realized this.

She unlocked the door and entered. She set her books on the table and walked straight on through to the back door. She unlocked that and went out, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure that there was no one to see her. It was fun being secretive, despite the fact that her whole life was pretty much an act, papering over her secret reality. She fancied that she was a princess going out to discover a fallen prince from a far land. What she would find would most likely be garbage, but for thirty seconds she could dream, and that was worth something. Even garbage might be better than tackling her stupid homework early.

She came to the cloth, and froze. It was a man! A grown man, lying face down on the weedy bank. His clothing was strange, but it was definitely a man. Was it a corpse, thrown here by some drug gang? Such things did happen, though not in this neighborhood. Of course the neighborhood wasn’t what it represented itself to be either; a lot was covered up for the sake of appearances.

Thrilling to this morbid adventure, she approached. Death fascinated her, though she hated it. This was as good as watching her blood flow. Would the body be riddled with bullet holes?

She remembered one of her favorite lines, from a song she could not otherwise remember. It was about some great Irish or Scottish battle, and a sore wounded soldier had staggered back from the front line. But he had not given up. “I’ll lay me down and bleed a while, then up to fight again!” he declared. She knew she would have liked him. Maybe this was such a man, who had laid him down to bleed and had forgotten to get up again before overdoing it.

Then it moved. Colene stifled her scream, for all that could do was alert the neighbors and bring a crowd, and her little adventure would be over. Cautiously she approached.

The man lifted his head, spying her. He moved his right arm, reaching toward her. He groaned. Then he sank back, evidently too weak to do more.

But if she stepped within reach, he might suddenly come to full life, and grab her ankle, pull her down, and rape her. It could be just a ruse to get her close. After he had his way with her, he might kill her and roll her body under the brush near the trickle of water that was the river. After several days she would be found, covered by flies, and he would be long gone.

It was as good a way to die as any. When it came right down to it, it hardly mattered whether death was pretty or ugly; what counted was that the escape had finally been made. A certain amount of messiness could be tolerated for the sake of the novelty. She stepped deliberately within reach.

But the man did not respond. He just lay there, breathing in shudders. Maybe he was sick with some deathly malady, and she would catch it, and die in horrible agony of a disease unknown to science.

She squatted. “Who are you?” she asked.

The man reacted to her voice. He lifted his head again, and uttered something alien, and sank down once more. He really did seem to be too tired to do more. He hadn’t even tried to grab her ankle or to look up her skirt. He didn’t look diseased, just worn out.

That clothing was definitely strange. His language, too, was unlike anything she had heard before. Could he be a diplomat from some faraway little kingdom who somehow got off at the wrong stop and got hopelessly lost? Unable to speak the local language, perhaps with no local money, he might simply be starving.

Or he might be hideously dangerous in a way she couldn’t fathom. As an innocent fourteen-year-old girl, she definitely ought to get quickly away from him and phone the police. They could handle it, whether he was a diplomat or a criminal. That was the only proper course.

Colene felt the thrill of danger, and knew she was about to do something monumentally stupid.

She leaned close to his ear. “You must come with me. I will help you. I will help. Do you understand?”

His hand slid across the ground, toward the sound of her voice, the fingers twitching.

Maybe he was dehydrated. The day had been hot, though the night would be cold; that was the way fall was in Oklahoma.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

She straightened up, paused as dizziness took her because of the sudden change of position, then walked quickly back to her house. She went to the messy kitchen and fetched a plastic glass. She filled it water from the tap, and carried it out.

The man had not moved. She sat down beside his head, set the water down in a snug depression, and reached for him. “I’m back,” she said. “I brought you water. Can you drink it?”

He tried to raise his head again. She put her hands on it and lifted; then she scooted on her bottom so that she could set his head in her lap. She held it tilted up, then reached for the glass. It was a stretch, and she had to lean over his head. Her bosom actually touched his hair. He did not seem to notice, but the contact sent new waves of speculation through her. Wasn’t this the way the Little Mermaid had rescued the drowning prince? Holding him close, helping him survive—until he recovered and married somebody else, never realizing what he owed to the mermaid. The tragedy of not even knowing!

She got the glass and brought it to his face, which was now propped against her front. “Water,” she murmured. “Water. Drink. Water.” She touched his mouth and tilted the glass.

Suddenly he realized what it was. Eagerly he sipped. She tilted further, spilling some, but he managed to drink most of it. She had been right!

“More?” she asked, still holding his head and feeling very maternal. “More water?”

His hand came up, questing for something. He seemed to have more strength than before, but that wasn’t saying much.

She set aside the empty glass and caught his hand with her free one. His fingers were cold. She squeezed them with her warm ones. His squeezed back.

She was thrilled again. Communication!

Then she decided that she had better get away from him before he recovered too much. She had already taken a phenomenal chance; it was time to stop pushing her luck to the brink. “More water,” she said firmly, and pulled herself away. She set his head back on the ground, scrambled up, got the glass, and hurried back to the house.

When she returned with the next glassful of water, the man was struggling to his hands and knees. He was definitely gaining strength. It would be absolutely crazy to get near him again. Anything could happen.

She brought the glass to him. But he had now recovered to the point where he might walk, and he was trying to get to his feet. He was a good deal larger than she was, and surely stronger, which meant yet again that it was time for her to get away from him. So she dropped the glass and stepped in and helped him stand.

She put her arms around his body and heaved, and he lurched to his feet. They staggered toward her house.

At which point Colene thought things through just a bit further. It didn’t matter whether she was being sensible or foolish—as if there were any question!—because once the man got to her house, and her parents came home, the game would be over. They would call the police, and the police would take the man away, and both parents would bawl her out for her stupidity before settling into their usual pursuits for the evening. Her father would head off for his date with his current liaison, and her mother would settle down to serious drinking. Things would be back to normal.

“No!” she gasped. “Not there—there!” She shoved him away from the house and toward her shed. This was a solid structure, larger than a dollhouse but considerably smaller than a real house, perhaps originally intended for storage, but she had taken it over and made it her own private place. Her parents had learned not to bother her there. It was often enough her main link with sanity. Sometimes she spent the full night there, rather than watching her mother drink. She called it Dogwood Bumshed, because a small dogwood tree grew beside it. It wasn’t a great tree, and it wouldn’t survive at all if she didn’t water it, but it did flower nicely in the spring, its moment of glory.

The man moved in that direction, yielding to her shove.

She wrenched the door open and he stumbled in. He collapsed on her pile of cushions; his brief strength had been exhausted. Perhaps that was just as well. “More water,” she told him, and shut the door on him. Now he would not be discovered, by her parents or anyone else.

She fetched the glass, which had fallen and spilled when she helped the man walk. She took it to the house, filled it again, then checked the supplies of food. There was a loaf of bread; she took it whole. That would do for a start.

She brought the things to the shed. The man lay where he had settled, but revived when she entered. Now he was able to drink by himself; he accepted the glass from her.

He did not seem to know what the bread was. She opened the package and took out a slice. He gazed at it blankly. She took a bite of it. Then his face lighted; he finally understood. He took a slice and bit into it with considerably less delicacy than she had. Oh, yes, he was hungry!

Standing there, watching him eat, Colene finally had time to reflect on what all this might be leading to. She had rescued a man; now what was she going to do with him? He did not seem to be aggressive, but of course he was weak from hunger and thirst. What would he be like when he had his strength back? She really should report him now; she had taken much more risk than she should have, and gotten away with it, but there were limits. She knew nothing about him except that he was a man, and that was warning enough.

She returned to the house and fetched two blankets from her closet. She knew already that she was not going to turn him in. He might turn on her and kill her, but that risk intrigued her more than it frightened her. She would see this through to wherever it led, no matter what. If she could only keep anybody else from finding out about him.

Did that mean she was going to try to keep him captive? After all, how could she stop him from simply walking out? She didn’t know, but until he did depart, she would take care of him.

The man finished the loaf of bread, and Colene returned to the house to get more food. She couldn’t take anything else that would be missed; it would be difficult enough explaining the bread. She found some old cookies, and some leftover casserole in the back of the refrigerator; she could say it was getting moldy so she threw it out. It was getting moldy, but she trimmed off the mold and took it anyway. She was an old hand at trimming mold, because her mother constantly forgot things; she knew it wasn’t anything to freak out about.

The man was glad to have the additional food. But he remained weak, and she knew she couldn’t send him back out into the world. He would just collapse again.

But there was something she had to make clear to him. How could she establish communication, so as to tell him what she needed to? For the fact was that her parents would be getting home soon, and if the man showed himself, the game would be up. He had to remain hidden.

Well, all she could do was try. First maybe they could exchange names. She tapped herself on the breastbone: “Colene. Colene.” Then she pointed to him.

He looked at her, then tapped himself similarly. “Colene.”

Oops. She cast about for something else. She picked up a notepad and pencil, and quickly drew two figures, one small and female, the other larger and male. She pointed to herself, then to the female. “Me. Colene.” Then to the male. “You.”

She paused expectantly.

He took the paper. “Me. Colene,” he said, pointing to the female. “You. Darius.”

Well, it was progress. “Me Colene, girl,” she said, tapping herself again. “You Darius, man.”

He nodded, pointing to her. “Me—”

“No, you.”

He looked perplexed, but managed to get it. “You Colene girl. Me Darius man.”

She smiled. “Yes.” It was a beginning. He did not know her language, but he could learn. She drilled him on Yes and No until she was sure he understood them, and tested him on the picture of the horse on the wall, titled “For Whom Was That Neigh?” “Man?” she asked, pointing to it. No. “Girl?” No. “Horse?” Yes. He had it straight. Then she gave her message. She opened the door and pointed to the house beyond. “House. Colene. Yes. House. Darius. No.”

After some back-and-forth, he seemed to understand. But he seemed uneasy, even uncomfortable.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

Finally he made what might have been taken as an obscene gesture, but he did it in such an apologetic manner that she knew he wasn’t trying to insult her. He touched and halfway squeezed his groin.

“The bathroom!” she exclaimed, catching on. “You have to use the—” But she couldn’t bring him to the house for that!

“Wait,” she told him, and dashed back to the house. She dug out a big old rusty pot and brought it to the shed. “This.” She pantomimed sitting on it. She even made the whoopee noise.

He looked extremely doubtful. “No, I won’t watch you!” she said, knowing he couldn’t understand the words, but hoping the sense of it came through. “I have to go to the house, there.” She pointed to it. “So my folks won’t know anything’s up. I’ll try to check back on you, when I can. You just stay here.” Then she stepped out, and closed the door on him.

She was just in time: her father’s car was pulling into the drive. She hurried to the back door and in. She checked the kitchen to make sure that nothing there would give her away, then went to the front room to pick up her school books. But no, this was Friday, and she never did homework on Friday. She didn’t want to arouse suspicion. She had to be perfectly normal. So she turned on the TV too loud and plumped down on the couch.

Her father came in. “Turn that thing down!” he snapped.

She grabbed the remote control and diminished the volume just enough to accede without quite ceasing to annoy him. He went on to his bedroom.

One down. One to go.

An hour later her father, clean, shaved, and neatly dressed, went out again. Colene stared at the TV, pretending not to notice. She didn’t care about his date with his mistress, as long as he was discreet. Well, maybe deep down she did care, but that was worse than pointless: it only cut her up further. There was nothing she could do about it anyway. So it was safer not to care.

Fifteen minutes after that, her mother’s car arrived. Colene remained before the TV. Actually her mind was on the man in the shed; she wasn’t paying any attention to the program. But she had to play her role, more so today than usual.

Her mother went straight to the kitchen, and Colene heard the first drink being poured. Good; there would be no trouble from that quarter this evening.

She got up, leaving the TV on, and went to the kitchen. “I’ll just take a snack out to the shed, okay?” she said, picking up some candy bars and raisins. She put tap water into a plastic bottle. Her mother, intent on hiding what could not be hidden, offered no objection.

Colene carried her things out. It was strictly live and let live, in her family; none of them wanted the hassle that a challenge to any of them would have brought. If someone insisted on visiting, all three of them shaped up to put on a good act for the required time. What was to be gained by letting the truth be known? A philanderer, an alcoholic, a suicidal child. Family love? What a laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. Maybe there had once been love. Now it was merely strained tolerance. Typical American family, for sure!

She knocked on the shed door, just to warn Darius. Then she opened it.

He had used the pot. She could tell by the smell. She should have brought a cover for it. Without a word she walked across, set down the candy bars, picked up the pot, and carried it outside and around to the back of the shed. There was an old rusty spade there with a broken handle. She used that to dig a hole, and she dumped the pot and covered up the stuff. She had had some experience with this sort of thing, and knew that it wasn’t worth even wrinkling her nose. It wasn’t as bad as cleaning up her mother’s vomit, after all.

She found a battered piece of plywood, banged it against the ground to get the dirt and mold off, and set it on the pot. She brought the set back into the shed. She put them down in a corner.

Then at last she faced Darius. “I can’t stay long,” she said.

He nodded as if he understood. He smiled.

She smiled back. Then she picked up the candy and raisins. “More food for you.”

He insisted this time on sharing it with her, so she ate one bar while he ate the rest. He was much more alert than he had been, which was a relief. He was also halfway handsome under his dirt. There was nothing wrong with him that food and a washcloth wouldn’t cure.

Well, that she could handle. She found a tatter of colored cloth she had pretended was the flag of her imaginary kingdom in the Land of Horses and poured some of her cup of water on it. “Clean,” she told him, and proceeded to rub it across his face. He did not protest; in fact, he seemed used to having such a thing done for him. Finally she fetched her comb and combed his hair back. Oh, yes, he was handsome, when allowance was made for his stubble beard. But that kind of beard was considered macho, because of all the undercover criminal-playing cops on TV.

They drilled on vocabulary. Darius was a quick study—a very quick study—and so was she. Soon they had the words for the parts of the body and items of clothing, and were working on other parts of speech. For the first time Colene appreciated basic grammar, now that she was teaching it. It was convenient to say “noun” or “verb” in some cases when clarifying the use of a word. When Darius indicated the door and said “verb” she knew he was zeroing in on things like “open” and “close” and “walk through.”

One bit was fun in its own fashion. She had a little box of wooden matches in the shed, which she used for lighting her canned heat so she could do a tiny bit of cooking. An electric hotplate would have been better, but she didn’t have one. This was good enough.

Darius saw the box, and inquired. “Matches,” she explained. Then she demonstrated by striking one. He gaped as it burst into flame. Then he wanted to try it himself. She let him—and he burned his fingers on it. But he was really intrigued by the phenomenon, like a little child. “Keep them,” she told him generously. “I can get more.”

He put the box away in a pocket, smiling. It was as if he had found a charm.

She tried to learn his words for things, but they were melodious and extremely strange, with nuances she was sure she was missing. She was apt at language, but knew that there was nothing like this on this side of the world. So she concentrated for now on teaching him. When he could talk well enough to tell her where he was from, she would look it up and learn a whole lot more about him. Somewhere in the Orient, maybe, though he did not look Oriental.

She realized in the course of this session that she had lost her fear of Darius. He was unusual and mysterious, but not dangerous. He was also fascinating.

It grew dark in the shed, for though there was a line here, Colene had used it only to listen to tapes in the day, and had never brought out a light. Now a light would be disastrous, because it would show that Darius was there.

“I have to go,” she said abruptly. “Mom will wonder if I stay out here too long. But you stay here, and I’ll bring you more food in the morning.”

“Yes,” he said. She hoped that he really did understand. She slipped out the door, not opening it wide, just in case her mother was looking this way, and closed it quickly behind her. Actually there would be nothing visible inside except darkness now, but it made sense to practice safe management. She returned to the house.

Her mother was pretty much out of it by this time. Good. Colene scrounged in the refrigerator for more to eat, and gobbled it down without bothering to sit. Then she went to her room. There was her bed, neatly made, and her desk where she normally did her homework, and her dresser and mirror, and the guitar she hoped someday to learn to play decently. All very conventional. She kept it that way deliberately, so that no one could garner any secrets about her by analyzing her living space. There was even a set of standard dolls on the dresser. Ken and Barbie. What a visitor would not know was that she had renamed the male: he was really Klaus. Thus the pair was Klaus Barbie. There had been a notorious Nazi criminal by that name. She flossed her teeth, brushed her hair, changed into her pajamas, and lay down on her bed. She stared at the ceiling.

Sleep didn’t come. All she could do was think about Darius, out there in the Bumshed, and her heart was beating at a running pace. She had to slow it to a walking pace before she could nod off. She knew from experience with bad nights.

After a time she got up, went to the closet, and changed into her silky nightgown. She loved the feel of it against her skin. It was long enough so that she wore nothing under it, which gave her a deliciously wicked feeling. It was a good outfit in which to dream. Very good. In fact, too good.

Now her heart slowed, but her thoughts turned darker. She remembered the time a few months ago when her beloved grandmother, one of the mainstays of her young life after the default of her parents, had sickened with cancer and then died. It was as if the last leg had been knocked out from under Colene’s will to live. Without Grandma, what was the point? She had not exactly told Grandma about the horrors she had experienced, or how her life had been falling apart, but she suspected that Grandma knew. It was better to go where Grandma was, and have her reassurance again. Colene had taken her mother’s pills from the cabinet, one sniff of which, as an Arabian Nights tale put it with suitable hyperbole, could make an elephant sleep from night to night. She swallowed three, then another, pondered, and finally two more. Six was a good number. Six-six-six was the devil’s own number. Sick-sick-sick was what these pills would make her. Sick unto death. Then she lay down in her sexy nightie—the one she was wearing now. She wanted to expire in maidenly style.

The elephant pills did not exactly kill her. They put her into a trancelike state in which she had a vision. In the vision she was exactly as she was, in her naughty nightgown, and gloriously dying; the church bells were warming up for the somber death toll, and there would be mourning until the funeral. How sweet she would look in the casket, a red-red rose on her cold-cold bosom. Other girls would envy her the beauty of that nightgown, knowing that they would not have the nerve to be shown dead in such an outfit.

Three figures entered the room, coming through the wall, so it was obvious that they were of the spiritual persuasion. Two were her grandparents, now reunited in the afterlife. Grandma approached. “Dear, you may not yet die, because there is something you have yet to do with your life. We love you and will always be with you.”

Then the third figure, the stranger, approached. He was clothed in a dark robe and wore a cowl over his head, and his face was shaded by mist. Who he was she dared not guess, but there was an inherent glow about him that bespoke his authority. “Colene,” he said, his voice full of compassion and knowledge. “You have to go on. You will not be able to quit. Your life will get better.”

Buoyed by that message, she had roused herself from the vision, stumbled to the bathroom, poked her finger down her throat, and gagged out the remaining contents of her stomach. “Just call me bulimic,” she had gasped with gallant gallows humor as her heaves expired. She had changed her mind about dying. For a while.

No one had known. Her mother hadn’t even missed the six pills.

Had she done the right thing? Colene could not be sure. Yet now, with the appearance of Darius, it seemed that there was indeed something for her to do with her life. Maybe her vision was coming true.

After more time she got up again, slipped her feet into her slippers, turned out the light, and cracked open the door. She made her way through the house. If her mother asked, she was just going for another snack. But her mother didn’t notice her passage.

Colene got the spare house key, stepped quickly out the back door, and locked herself out. That way her mother would assume that she had locked them in for the night, and would not check her room. Colene would use the key to let herself in again later.

It was chill outside, and she shivered as she made her way across the dark back yard to the shed. Her heart was pounding, but not because of the temperature. She was embarking on another suicidally foolish risk.

She knocked on the door, then opened it. She couldn’t see anything inside, but knew he was there.

Indeed he was, hunched under the blankets. They really weren’t enough, considering his weakened state. He needed more warmth.

“I should have brought another blanket,” she murmured. “But I would have had to take it from my own bed, and that would be chancy. I’ll see what I can do.”

She sat down beside him, and pulled at the blankets, rearranging them. Then she lay down, full length beside him, and drew the blankets over them both. “It’s warmer this way,” she explained.

He rolled over to face her, and she stiffened with fear. “Please don’t rape me,” she whispered. “I really don’t like it.” Yet she had come out here in her provocative nightgown. He couldn’t see it, of course, but he could feel it. She had gotten under the blankets with him, in the dark. No jury would convict him.

“Rape?” he asked, not knowing the word.

Now she had to define it! How could she do that? If she managed to get the concept across, without the use of her pad and pencil, it would have to be by touch, and he might think she was asking for it. But she had used the word, and she had to explain it.

She pondered, her heart beating so wildly she almost thought her mother in the house could hear it, let alone Darius. Then she found his right hand under the blanket. She brought it across his body and up to touch her head. “Yes,” she said. Then she took it down to touch her right breast through the nightgown, as she lay on her back. “Maybe.” Finally she put it against her thigh. “No.”

He considered that, while she lay breathing rapidly, her body stiff. Then he reached across her, not to embrace her, but to find her left arm. He brought it across her body and up to his head. Her fingers touched his mouth. “Yes,” he said. Then he took it down to his clothed crotch. “No.”

He understood! “That’s right,” she said, squeezing his fingers with hers. “I’m here to warm you, and that’s about it.”

“Thank you.” He brought her hand to his lips again, and kissed it.

Colene experienced a wild thrill. She knew she should just lie where she was, having made her point. But it was her nature to risk disaster. Suicide was merely the most extreme extension of a syndrome that permeated her existence. Whatever she did, she had to push the limit, courting trouble. This was folly, but it was her way. Had she been a man, she would have been a daredevil cyclist, hurdling lines of cars soaked in gasoline, daring the flames to get her. But she was only a teenage girl, so had to settle for lesser dares.

She rolled over toward him, scooted up a bit, found his head, and lifted hers to kiss him on the mouth. Then she lay against him, her body touching his full length. Of course he was clothed, but she wasn’t; all she had was the flimsy nightgown. With her wickedly bare torso within it, her breasts nudging him with each breath she took.

He put his right arm around her and drew her close. His hand did not wander. She put her left arm around him. They were embraced.

She had intended only to remain for half an hour or so, but this was such dangerous delight that she couldn’t bring herself to break it off. Slowly her heart eased its horrendous pace, and she relaxed.

She woke, and realized that she had been asleep for some time, nestled against Darius. He was warm and she was warm. As far as she knew, he had not touched her even in the “maybe” region. She was almost disappointed. She fell back into sleep.

She became aware of the creeping light. “Ohmigod!” she squeaked. “Morning!”

She scrambled out from under the blanket, startling Darius awake. “My parents!” she said. “I have to get back to my room, so they don’t know where I was!”

He nodded, seeming to understand. She found her slippers, slipped out the door, and almost flew, wraithlike, across the yard to the door.

The door was locked. “The key!” she breathed in anguish. She turned about and flew back to the shed.

A hand reached out. It held her key.

“Thanks!” She snatched it and ran back. The door seemed to make a thunderous noise as it unlocked and opened. She went in, then turned to lock it again. She put the key away.

Then she forced herself to walk slowly through the house to her room. No one was up. She was unobserved.

She entered her room, went to the bed, and threw herself into it. She had made it!

Now she remembered how Darius had given her the key. He knew what it was for and where it was. He could have kept it from her. He could have raped her. He could had taken the contact of his hand on her breast last night as a pretext to go wild. It wasn’t the kind of breast found in macho male magazines, but it didn’t exactly require padding for a formal gown either. She had given him every opportunity.

He was either a decent man or he just wasn’t interested. She cursed herself for her total, absolute, unmitigated folly—and knew she would try to find out exactly which it was. Decency or disinterest. If it killed her. And it just might. Which was perhaps the point.