46. Downstream

Something changes when the Jeep winds its way around the mountain roads into Solitary. It’s not just something with Jocelyn. It’s something inside of me.

Things feel different.

The temperature feels cooler. The darkness outside looks thicker. Even the street seems more desolated.

Don’t take me home, not tonight. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to leave you.

And yet that’s exactly what I have to do.

Jocelyn puts the Jeep in park and faces me. “I can’t promise you anything,” she says. “How I’m going to be. What I’m going to be like over the next couple of months.”

“Why do you say that?”

She hesitates.

“What?” I ask. I’m wondering if we’re back to square one.

“You’re a good guy, Chris. I just don’t know what to say to you.”

Then I surprise myself by saying, “You don’t have to say anything, okay?”

She grabs my hand and leans over and kisses me on the cheek.

I tell her to call me if she can over the weekend. Something’s going on with her—inside of her—and I can’t know what.

At least not yet.

I step out of the car and watch her drive away.

As I head up the stairs to our deck and front door, I see the light to my mother’s room go on.

Then I realize I never called to let her know I was going out with Jocelyn.

The next morning I find myself grounded.

Not that I didn’t already feel grounded, stuck inside this cabin without Internet and without cable. A sixteen-year-old without a license or a cell phone, surrounded by trees and hills and the sounds of the creek flowing below us.

I’m grounded for the weekend.

Grounded from all the parties I’m not invited to, from the conversations I’m not going to have on the phone, from the Internet communication I lack.

Yeah, I’m grounded all right.

I was grounded the minute we moved here.

Mom didn’t say much to me when I got home last night. She was tired and cranky. But one thing she did tell me, several times.

“I need to know where you’re at, okay? You’ve got to let me know.”

Yeah, this is the sort of thing a mother tells her child.

But the way she said it. It made me a little worried. Like there was something out there I needed to be worried about. Like there was something she was keeping from me, maybe for my protection or safety.

It’s surprisingly warm today, maybe topping sixty or so—warm enough not to wear a jacket.

I wander around the house bored, listening to music and trying to find something on the three channels that come in on our television. Then I meander out on the deck and look out into the woods, listening to the stream below.

What I need is a dog.

That or a girlfriend. Or a life. One of the three would be cool.

After feeling the sun on my forehead and listening to the creek, I decide to get out and enjoy the surroundings.

I don’t go behind the cabin, up in the hills with the small creepy cabin and the wall with the dog behind it.

This time I go downhill, down to check out the stream that I’ve heard ever since coming here.

It’s only midday, so I don’t have to worry about dusk.

Not yet.

The creek slicing through the bottom of the woods is about six feet wide, with towering trees that shadow its surface and jutting rocks and boulders scattered throughout. I skip from one moss-covered boulder to another, moving downstream, walking alongside it in the woods, then once again on its edge. It’s serene down here, with slivers of sunlight piercing through the limbs above.

I walk for half an hour or more, occasionally getting my feet wet.

I forget where I’m going.

It’s easy to do that, especially being out of view from the street above me, from any noticeable sign of life.

It’s easy to just keep walking.

I reach a point where the water is louder. The creek bed narrows and juts to the right. As I hop from rock to rock, I see the hill dropping sharply where the creek turns.

It’s a small waterfall.

I move to the side and have to climb uphill to see it.

The drop is about fifteen feet.

But when I reach the crest of the hill to see the waterfall to my right, I completely miss what’s on my other side.

It’s only when I turn that I see it.

The hill I’m on slopes downward to a bench. Behind that, leading up to the road above, are wooden steps planted into the dirt.

It suddenly dawns on me where I am.

Is this part of Gus’s property? Part of the gated-off section of land that is right down the road from my house?

It has to be.

I make my way to the bench and can see that from there it’s a scenic view of the small waterfall made by the creek. I walk up the side of the hill along the steps, slowly and carefully, making sure I don’t hear anything coming my way.

Even before I reach the top of the steps, I can see it.

The immense lawn with grass as green as the kind the pros play golf on. The massive three-story house overlooking that lawn.

And the figure on the deck overlooking the grass.

I duck down and hide behind a tree. I’m not out of the woods yet, so they can’t see me.

You better hope they can’t see you.

I carefully move my head around the tree and look up to see who the figure is.

It’s Gus, and he’s going to come down here and find you.

I’m not worried about him. I can run faster than he can, that I know.

But it isn’t Gus.

He’s older, maybe Gus’s father. He’s balding with white hair at the sides, a serious face that stares up toward the skies. He’s wearing what looks like a black robe, a cup of coffee in his hands.

I watch him for a moment as he stands there staring out beyond the trees toward the heavens.

Then he seems to close his eyes.

Like he’s thinking.

Or praying.

Then he opens his eyes again, and this time it looks like they’re staring directly at me.

I bury my face in the bushes in front of me and wait for a few minutes.

When I peer back around the tree, the figure is gone.

I can picture it being gone long enough to suddenly pop up in front of this tree.

I decide my little adventure into the woods has taken me far enough.

I head back up the creek toward my house.

Every few seconds, I turn around.

I can’t help feeling that someone is watching me.