ANDREW FOCUSED ON THE LIGHT coming from John’s headlamp. David had recovered from the incident with his brother and kept swinging his flashlight so that it made swirls and jags on the path. As he did this, he babbled sound effects to accompany the light show. David also tried to get Becky to play with him.
“Hey, Becky! Becky! Becky, chase after the light. Why isn’t she chasing it?”
“I don’t know,” Andrew said.
“Oh, okay,” David said with such an immediate tone of apology that Andrew felt guilty. David’s gooey, damp hand still clung to him. It was gross, but also warm and oddly comforting. Andrew thought briefly of the night of Sara’s accident, when he and Marcia had spent hours sitting holding hands while Marcia wept. The moist warmth of their joined palms had become oppressive to him. For her, too, probably, he thought now.
The voices of the people ahead of them had grown fainter, as had the light from John’s headlamp.
“We’d better pick up the pace here, buddy,” Andrew said.
“Okay.”
They walked faster, and David tripped on something and fell down, nearly taking Andrew with him. Andrew reached under David’s armpits and pulled him to his feet. The flashlight rolled away. They were in total darkness. “You all right?” he asked.
“Sorry,” David said.
“Stop apologizing. Why did your flashlight go off?”
“You have to push the button constantly to make it work. There’s no switch or anything.”
“Shit.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“David, there’s nothing wrong with saying shit.” Andrew groped around in the dark, looking for the flashlight. Becky sniffed the ground and pawed at leaves.
“Hey, John!” Andrew said. No answer. Andrew shouted again.
“What’s up?” John’s voice seemed to come from a long way off.
“We lost our light.”
“What?”
“Turn toward us!”
John obliged, and Andrew and David were immediately bathed in light. They searched until they found the absurd toy flashlight. Andrew grabbed it and shouted his thanks to John. He heard John ask the group to slow down a bit so that Andrew and David could catch up. Then he heard a girl, probably Karen, whine about not wanting to miss the sunrise.
“Everything okay back there?” It was Seth. He sounded apologetic. Andrew took hold of one of David’s hands and put Becky’s leash in the other.
“Don’t let go,” Andrew said. Then, in the direction of Seth’s voice, Andrew yelled, “We’re okay! I’ve got him.”
• • •
They continued up the trail at a faster pace. Gradually, even though they couldn’t see the sun, the world seemed to brighten around them. It was so subtle that at first Andrew thought it was just his eyes adjusting to the dark or his proximity to the rest of the group and all their flashlights. But then he saw that the leaves of the trees were not just green but glowing green. Soft, golden green. Somewhere, somehow, the sun was taking hold of the mountain.
He thought of Laura. Of her little hand touching his face and grazing his waist. Her skin was unbelievably soft. Like the skin of a baby or a puppy’s belly. Andrew quickened his pace. He wanted to see her. He heard David panting. They were almost there. The trees got shorter and sturdier. They could see the horizon, an orange strip just barely visible beyond the mountaintop. Above the orange strip a pink glow softened the bluish blackness of the sky. The ground beneath them turned rocky and uneven. David stumbled a bit, but Andrew kept him from falling.
Andrew could now see Laura’s back. Laura was very curvy. He cast his eyes up and down her. He felt a terrible urgency to be near her. An urgency that was strangely subdued by the presence of David and David’s squishy hand gripping his.
She wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore. Probably John was carrying it. Or Matt, who had been curiously silent during the Seth-and-David debacle. Just then David gave his hand an encouraging squeeze. Weird, thought Andrew. He wondered if his body was communicating his dismay. Andrew could tell that David was a hypersensitive kid who was constantly being monitored by his parents and older siblings for any infraction. He must be able to sense even the slightest glimmer of disapproval or disappointment from those around him. Poor David, Andrew thought. But when they got to the top of the mountain, scrambling over some rocks to reach it, Andrew automatically let go of David’s hand.
He walked toward Laura. He could barely see her, and then suddenly he couldn’t see her at all. Everyone had turned their flashlights off. He released the button of David’s flashlight as well. Darkness. The orange strip on the horizon was just slightly bigger, the sky pinker and bluer and softer.
He stood perfectly still and silent, as did everyone else around him, even Becky. It was as though they were compelled to be motionless. He could barely make out the faint outlines of all the still bodies around him. Like Stonehenge, he thought. Soft mutterings echoed in his ears. Praying? Who was praying? Then someone started to sing. He couldn’t tell who was singing; he couldn’t even distinguish their gender. Other voices joined the first. He tuned out the singing as he looked for Laura.
Her head was bowed and her lips moved softly. He focused on her silhouette as the world slowly brightened. Laura was like a living work of art, the best movie you’d ever seen, the prettiest painting, the perfect poem. He imagined his arms around Laura, gripping her waist and pressing his lips to hers. Burying his face in her body, running his fingers through her hair. Soft wisps of that hair were now blowing around in the wind, around her bowed head.
Cautiously, Andrew took a step forward. Brighter and brighter and brighter. And warmer, too. Then the brightness and warmth were coming from within him. The feeling of light, lush and warm, right from the center of his heart, or was it his stomach? Or was it his brain? Brighter and warmer, and he could feel himself somehow falling up.
One part of him wanted to surrender to this feeling of endless light, a feeling that came from within. Another part of him floated above and watched himself on the mountaintop. There’s Andrew, Andrew thought. That’s me down there.
With a gasp, Andrew sat down and clutched his heart, which was beating so hard, it felt like a piece of machinery in his chest. He struggled to catch his breath. The inevitable hand of John was on his back, his arm.
“You okay? Are you all right?”
“I’m—” Andrew tried to say he was fine but realized he was gasping too hard and couldn’t get the words out. Then Laura was at his side.
“Like in the field?” she said.
“Only worse,” Andrew muttered. “Or better. I don’t know.”
Laura stroked the small of his back. Andrew felt her little hands and John’s large ones all over his back, his neck, his head even. Laura and John’s hands seemed to be overlapping each other’s. As if they were petting him and each other, the three of them bound together in a strange moving embrace. And all around them the world glowed.
“It’s starting,” John said.
It was as though they were inside a ray of the sun. Everything was pale yellow. Everyone looked beautiful, desirable. Laura, especially. A pale golden Laura lit from within. She sat next to Andrew with her hands gently clasped around one of his wrists. Like a human handcuff, or as though she were offering his hand to the sun. John’s hand slid from Andrew’s back and drooped by his side, his palm open and turned upward, his eyes closed, his head bowed. The feeling of awful and absolute pity that John sometimes inspired in Andrew returned to him now with an exquisite stab.
His breath steady, his heart calm, Andrew reached out to John and touched his hand. John jumped a little, but otherwise remained perfectly still. A moment passed. Laura and John were like statues beside him. They were frozen in time.
Andrew did not want to stay inside this moment. He wanted to be an observer, an outsider looking in—not a participant. He was, he thought, the only person on the mountaintop with his eyes wide open. Everyone else’s lids were closed or half closed, which he found odd, because the sunrise was so beautiful. Wasn’t that why they were here? To see the sunrise?
Andrew glanced around and saw that David was lying on the ground with Becky flopped over his legs. They looked like they were both asleep, which perhaps they were. He smiled. That was nice. Everything was nice. He began to feel high again, floating upward inside the light. He drew his breath in sharply. He didn’t want that feeling to return.
He put one hand on top of Laura’s clasped hands on his arm. She immediately entwined his fingers with hers. The longed-for moment. She was inches from him, golden and praying. A gust of wind blew her hair back, revealing her face more clearly. Her ears were unpierced.
“I love having my earlobes kissed,” Sara had once said to him, when they were talking about sex. “Tip for the future, Andrew,” she’d said. “Really gently suck on a girl’s earlobe. Bite it, even.” And then she’d demonstrated what she’d meant.
So now he leaned over and gently kissed the tip of Laura’s earlobe. Startled, Laura turned her head toward him, her eyes wide and her expression enigmatic. She blinked at him, smiled, then lowered her head and began to pray once more.
He was light, floating again, but this time totally in control. He glanced at John, who still had his head bowed in prayer as well. The deep, sad, furrows around John’s eyes were more pronounced in the bright light of the sun.
Andrew felt warm and sleepy. He wished he were alone with Laura. That he could take her into his arms and lean back against the rocks. Anything seemed possible in this sunlight. The sun moved across the sky, and the intensity of the brightness dimmed by slow degrees, the warm, golden light replaced by regular yellow clarity. Marcia would have liked this. Sara, too.
The group began shifting around and stretching, as if they were all waking from the same dream. John rose abruptly and walked toward the edge of the mountain. He stood with his arms crossed and his legs apart, looking down. Laura got up and drifted toward Karen. The two girls whispered to each other. Were they talking about him? But then he thought that there was no way on earth that Laura would tell Karen that he’d just kissed her ear. Andrew moved closer to the girls and strained to hear them. Karen pulled from her pocket what looked like his Bible.
“I found it on the ground. He must have dropped it,” Karen said.
“So give it back to him,” Laura said.
And then for some reason they both giggled.
“Hey.”
Andrew looked up and saw Matt and Seth. Matt had Andrew’s jacket crumpled up under one of his arms. He handed him the jacket and sat down.
“Thanks,” Andrew said. “Sorry you had to carry that.”
“No problem,” Matt said.
Matt stretched his legs out in front of him and grabbed the toes of his sneakers, like an athlete preparing himself for a race. Seth did not sit. Andrew glanced away, looking for David and Becky. They were running around in a grassy part of the mountaintop, David’s hand still gripping the handle of the leash.
“We’re sorry about before,” Matt said.
“It’s fine,” Andrew said.
“It’s not fine. We’ve talked about this. You didn’t grow up in this—” Matt said as he gestured with his arms as if to encompass all the people around them in an aerial embrace. He cleared his throat and looked at Seth, who seemed like he was pretending to read his Bible. He closed it and spoke to Andrew.
“I’m sorry too,” he said.
“What’s wrong with ghost stories?” Andrew asked him. Seth rolled his eyes. “I’m honestly curious,” Andrew said. Seth didn’t respond.
“Well, it’s like—” Matt said. “Ghosts aren’t real. Your soul goes to Heaven or, you know, it doesn’t. The soul doesn’t hang out on Earth torturing people, haunting people, possessing people. That’s what we mean by blasphemy. We believe, I believe, that thinking about the soul in that way, like in a horror movie or something, is just harmful.”
“Harmful to who?” Andrew asked.
“Everyone,” Matt said. “The living and the dead.”
“Oh,” Andrew said. “What about—” He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to talk about anything real in front of douche-bag Goatee Seth. But Matt seemed to read his mind.
“Your friend’s soul is still here. Sara is still here,” Matt said.
Andrew stood up and immediately felt lightheaded. He swayed slightly.
“Are you okay? Did you eat this morning? I have some crackers . . . somewhere,” Matt said as he searched the pockets of his pants. Even Seth reached out as if to steady him. But Andrew regained control of himself and stepped away from them both.
“It’s not a ghost story anyway,” Andrew said.
“What?” Seth said.
“David’s story. There’s nothing supernatural about that one. It’s just a stupid scary story.”
“Oh,” Seth said.
“We didn’t know that,” Matt added.
Seth looked long and hard at David, who was at that moment literally frolicking on a sunny mountaintop. “It’s best not to stray into that territory,” he said.
“Whatever,” Andrew said. He turned toward Seth. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“For your thing. You know, the traveling portion of your faith.”
“Ghana,” Seth said.
“Oh, right,” Andrew said. “I knew that.” Then he turned away and walked toward David and Becky. He heard Matt say his name, barely audible, but he pretended not to hear.
Off to Africa to convert the unbelieving. Seth is pure ass hat, he thought, but Andrew was shaken. Shaken to hear Matt refer to Sara’s soul. How dare he? Laura had told all these jerks about Sara and her coma and her fucking ventilator. That was why Laura wanted to hang out with him in the first place. Because he was grieving, vulnerable, possibly convertible. Did she even really care about him? Then with a surge of shame he realized that for the past few days he hadn’t really thought about Sara at all because he was so consumed with trying to connect with Laura.
With a frown on his face he reached the joyful David and Becky. “Hey,” Andrew said.
“Oh, hi,” David said, standing up straight and gazing at Andrew with wide eyes. Andrew noted with irritation that David had picked up on his bad mood and responded to it immediately, like a cringing dog. We always hate the ones we hurt the most, Andrew thought. Where had he heard that before? He felt dizzy again and sat down.
“You okay?” David asked, sitting next to him and leaning against him slightly.
“Everyone keeps asking me that,” Andrew said more to himself than to David. “Maybe I’m not okay.”
“Maybe,” David said, shrugging. Then he looked at Andrew with an expression of such nonchalance that it made Andrew laugh. Becky flopped in between them and put her head on Andrew’s knee.
“We should start heading down,” John said. His voice sounded strangely harsh in the distance. John stood on the edge of a cliff with his back to the sun. His arms were crossed over his chest, and the wind blew his long hair out in front of him. He was lit from behind by golden-orange light. Andrew thought that John looked comically epic. A born-again surfer-dude warrior on the cover of a fantasy book. Andrew laughed some more. A note of hysteria tinged his voice. Becky took her head off his knee, and the ever-sensitive David squirmed around and looked confused.
“David!” Seth called.
“Better hop to,” Andrew said, reeling onto his back and laughing even harder.
David ran off in the direction of his brother. Andrew stared at the sky and took some deep breaths, trying to calm down. He closed his eyes and heard footsteps. An image of Sara floated before him. She was lying in her hospital bed, back to normal, wide-awake, fully dressed, with a suggestive smile on her lips. She sat up and said, Come on, Andrew, let’s go!
A shadow passed before his closed eyelids.
“We do a prayer circle before we go down,” John said.
“You can’t be too careful,” Andrew said, laughing.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Andrew said. He jumped up and grinned.
John was frowning and looking at Andrew with concern.
“Let’s go, man,” Andrew said as he swung his arm around John’s shoulders in a drunken fashion. With his other hand, Andrew patted John on the chest and said, “You okay, buddy?”
“I’m fine,” John said.
Together they walked toward the group of people forming a loose and uneven circle at the top of the mountain. John seemed startled by Andrew’s sudden physical aggression. The intimacy that John usually initiated seemed now to have been passed on to Andrew.
“This won’t do,” Andrew said as his arm slid from John’s shoulders and then grasped one of his hands. “C’mon, everybody, close ranks.” John’s hand, at first warm and dry, began to sweat profusely. The group glanced at one another and then formed a circle by holding hands.
“John?” Laura said.
John opened his mouth when Andrew said suddenly, “How about I give it a go?” He laughed by himself for a few moments. Andrew felt hysterical and almost out of control but also sort of pleased with himself and unconcerned about anyone else. An uncomfortable silence ensued while he recovered.
“I think that would be nice,” John said.
“Yes, it would be,” Matt said firmly.
“I think . . .” Karen began in a snotty tone of voice.
“Sweetheart, the men have spoken,” Andrew said. He walked over to Karen and gently cupped her angry face in the palm of his hand. She stared back.
“How dare you . . .” she began.
“I think you have my book,” Andrew said so softly that only he and Karen, and perhaps Laura who was standing next to them and looking at Andrew with her static unreadable expression, could hear.
“This is yours?” Karen said as she pulled the Bible from her pocket.
Andrew leaned in even closer to Karen so that he was whispering in her ear. “My boyfriend gave it to me,” he said.
Karen jumped and handed him the book.
“What is wrong with you?” Seth said as he grasped Andrew’s arm and yanked him away from his sister.
“The spirit’s got ahold of me,” Andrew said. “No hard feelings, right, Karen?”
“No,” Karen said. “No hard feelings at all. We’d better get started.” She glanced at her watch and Andrew noticed, without a shred of guilt, that her hands were clenched and her face was red.
“Okay, everyone, let’s just chill,” John said, although he spoke with less certainty in his voice than was usual for him.
Andrew opened the book and read Psalm 6 out loud, laughing occasionally throughout, while the group lowered their heads.
“‘I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears,’” Andrew read. Then he chuckled.
John said, “Amen,” and everyone else said “Amen,” including Andrew, whose giddiness was stoked rather than calmed by the solemn prayer circle.
“David?” Andrew said.
“Yeah?” David said, opening his eyes and looking excited.
“Race you down the mountain?” Andrew said.
“Okay!”
Then Andrew, David, and Becky took off down the trail amid unheeded cries urging them to slow down and be careful.
• • •
They reached the bottom of the mountain well before any of the others. Becky trotted behind them, panting and wagging her tail madly. There was a craggy old water fountain at the foot of the trail from which they drank. Andrew rummaged around in his trunk for a suitable container for Becky to drink out of. He found an old Styrofoam coffee cup that he rinsed and filled with water. Becky drank while the two boys lay on the ground and panted.
“That was a pretty good Psalm that you read back there,” David said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. My favorite.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
They heard the footsteps of the others approaching. Karen reached them first. Andrew noted that she was sweaty and breathing hard. Her cut-offs were now sitting very low on her hips and her hair was disheveled.
“Did you run after us?” Andrew asked innocently.
Karen did not respond. She drank from the fountain and handed David the keys to Matt’s car.
“Get in,” she said.
David leaped up, said a quick good-bye to Andrew and Becky, and then crawled into the backseat of Matt’s van. Andrew thought he could hear David singing to himself.
Andrew remained stretched out on the ground with his arms under his head. He smiled at Karen, who gazed down at him, her hands on her hips like a superhero.
“You need a cape,” Andrew said, and then he giggled and turned over on his side, rollicking and chuckling.
The others came out of the trail in quick succession. He could feel their eyes on him, but he didn’t care. He heard them confer about driving arrangements. Bits of their whispers reached his ears.
“Someone should go with him. He’s freaking out.”
“He’s Laura’s friend.”
“He’s all of our friend.” Definitely Matt’s voice.
Andrew stood up and put Becky in the backseat of the car. She stretched out her body and closed her eyes. As he walked over to the group, their whispers quieted. Laura smiled at him, but he shifted his eyes away from her and grabbed Karen’s wrist.
“Karen will go with me,” he said.
“I don’t think—” Seth began, but Karen interrupted.
“No, it’s fine. We have to talk anyway,” she said.
“You do?” John and Seth said together.
“Andrew—” Matt said.
“Chill out, bro,” Andrew said.
Andrew led her back to his car and opened the passenger side door for her. As she got in and buckled up, he winked at her. She frowned. He walked around the front of his car and glanced casually at Laura, who looked both hurt and confused. Now we’re getting somewhere, he thought.