At sixteen, Melissa Meriweather was six months older than me. She was also the most popular girl in school, among both students and teachers. A star on the track team, she carried a straight-A average and volunteered at Rose Memorial Hospital two evenings a week.
Her well-proportioned body, toned rather than muscular, drew the eye of every straight male between the ages of thirteen and eighteen; when she hit the beach in her string bikini, you could up that number to include most of the adult men in town as well. And some of the women.
The only thing that kept people from staring lecherously at her chest when they talked to her was the fact that she had a face as perfect as her body. A tiny nose, the slightest scattering of freckles on her cheeks, and eyes as green as the shallow waters off the coast of our one-town island. Her smile, filled with white, perfectly straight teeth, could brighten even the most depressing day.
All the kids in our class were enamored of her, “crushed on her” as the current slang went.
I was no different. Hell, I’d been in love with Melissa since the day I’d met her eight years ago. Her family had moved to the neighborhood not long after we did. For most of those years, she’d been my only friend; until recently, she’d been my best friend. Even now, with her being Miss Popular while I slunk in the shadows with the science geeks and library trolls, we always managed to find time to spend with each other. Partly because we shared a common bond of friendship from when we were younger.
And partly because I knew her darkest secret.
“Hey, Sean,” she greeted me as she came up the steps, her smile as dazzling as the lightning overhead.
Once she stood in front of me, the sky could have split open and disgorged flying butt-monkeys and I wouldn’t have noticed.
“Hi, Melissa.” She hated to be called anything but her full name. “What’s up?”
Unlike a lot of my classmates, I was never tongue-tied around her. Probably because I’d been crazy about her long before she’d turned into the shining star of New Hope, brighter than Tall Pine Island’s lone lighthouse. At ten, she’d been a scrawny kid with too many freckles. By the time she reached thirteen, not much had changed; she’d been an ordinary-looking, flat-chested, skinny tomboy, still three long years away from being voted “Most Attractive” at our high school.
I hadn’t cared that she wasn’t cute and flirty and filling out her training bra like some of the other girls in our school, and she hadn’t cared that I was the dorky smart kid with the thick glasses who’d been bumped up a grade.
We’d done everything together—fishing, dropping crab pots from the pier, bicycling around the island. We’d even dared each other to skinny-dip a couple of times. Seeing her naked body had filled me with urges that I’d never had before. The first time I ever masturbated, it was Melissa’s face I saw in my imagination. Three years later, I still relived those afternoons in my dreams and fantasies, only instead of us being two scrawny, underdeveloped kids, Melissa’s early-teen breasts morphed into round, firm globes like fresh summer apples, and my penis wasn’t shrunken into a bitty mushroom from the cold waters of Miller’s Stream.
“Some freaky storm, huh? The thunder woke me up. Scared the crap outta me.” She gave me an embarrassed smile.
“Uh, yeah, me too.” I thought about telling her how my sleep had been ruined by my crazy dream, but something held my tongue, something more than just the gradual drifting apart we’d been experiencing ever since she’d begun dating Jim Thome, a senior on the football team.
I’ll admit to feeling more than a little jealousy when Melissa and Jim had taken up, but truth be told, she’d been changing even before that. First her body had developed, somewhere after her fifteenth birthday. At the same time, her freckles had faded away, leaving behind an acne-free complexion that always seemed to be tan.
As her looks and body blossomed, she’d become more interested in clothes and being popular than in catching frogs or reading comic books. Of course, I’d changed as well, delving more and more into the mysteries of biology and mathematics and spending less time riding my bike or tossing a Frisbee. Melissa continued to keep up her grades, but we no longer shared as many advanced classes in school. And after-school study sessions had gone from every day to only those times when she needed help for an upcoming test.
As children, we’d both had dreams of becoming famous explorers, trekking the globe in search of unknown civilizations. Now, I wanted to follow the footsteps of eminent scientists like E. O. Wilson and Stephen Jay Gould, while Melissa seemed more interested in being arm candy than pursuing a life of substance.
Nevertheless, she remained the only popular person in school who’d deign to talk to me. And I still embraced a secret fantasy that one day she’d see the light, realize it was better to be with an intellectual equal rather than a physical one.
I knew I suffered from a heavy case of teen angst, the unpopular kid forced to watch his onetime friend and unrequited love move on to a different social circle. I was the living embodiment of every teenage movie ever made—the ones where the dorky kid has to sit back while the girl he loves goes out with the star athlete, where the girl has to stick up for him when her popular friends make fun of him. Yet in spite of everything, I harbored hope. After all, we’d been each other’s first kiss, sitting on my porch one summer night.
Bonds like that don’t break easily.
Besides, in the movies the girl always comes around in the end. A slim prospect to pin my chances to, but it was all I had.
Yet, despite our shared history, despite the fact that I’d trust Melissa with my life, I found I couldn’t trust her with my nightmare. As I stood with her under the fearsome eye of that unnatural storm, something kept me silent on the subject of my dream, almost as if I had harbored a secret of great value, a secret that had to remain hidden or it would be taken from me.
“Sean? Is everything okay? You look weird.”
I realized I’d gotten too wrapped up in my thoughts. “Yeah. I’m just tired. I was up late studying for my SATs.”
It wasn’t a total lie; I had been studying earlier in the night. I just hadn’t been up late.
“Still planning on starting college early?” She took my hand and drew me away from the adults. Owen started to follow us, a devilish grin on his face. I waved him away with a frantic hand. He flipped his middle finger at me but left us alone. Sometimes he did show a little common sense.
Melissa led me to the far end of the porch, out of the circle of light cast by the bulb over the door. Even after we stopped, she kept her hand lightly on my arm, unaware of how the soft, simple touch of her fingers affected me.
“Yep. I want to get out of high school as fast as possible, get started on college. That’s where the real fun is.” I tried to make it sound like a joke; however, she wasn’t buying it.
“Teenagers can be real assholes, Sean.” She had to raise her voice over the continuing thunder. “We both know that. But don’t kid yourself that college will be so different, especially as an under-age freshman.”
I wanted to shout at her, “What do you know?” but I kept my cool. I had no desire to alienate the one person still willing to spend time with me outside of a library. Besides, it wasn’t so long ago she’d been teased in school for being smart and dorky. Maybe she really did still remember the way it felt.
“I know. But at least in college there’ll be other people with the same interests as me, students and teachers. And I’ll be able to escape to the science labs when I want to.”
She shook her head, her soft, straight hair waving back and forth, pale white in the ongoing fireworks display illuminating the town.
“All work and no play. That’s not the way to do it.” Somehow she managed to make her statement sound more like an order than friendly advice.
“Fine. Find someone to play with me, then.” The bitter words escaped me before I could stop them.
“What?” Her eyes opened wide.
I pulled away from her hand and leaned against the railing, which vibrated under my palms with each new thunderclap. “Sorry. Just feeling sorry for myself.”
She nodded. I had to give her credit. She didn’t try to tell me I had no reason to be depressed. We both knew that aside from her, I got along better with my teachers than my peers. And sometimes even they didn’t understand me.
“Before we came over here, my dad heard on the radio that this storm has everyone confused.” Melissa had a knack for knowing when to change topics. She also knew my biggest weakness: curiosity.
“Why?” Despite my blue mood, I couldn’t help asking.
“The way it’s just sitting over us, not moving. And all this lightning with no rain. The storm’s been dumping rain the whole time it moved up the coast, but now, nothing? It’s almost…unnatural.”
Images of vacant plains under siege from red lightning attacks flashed through my head. I wanted to say I’d had my fill of unnatural for the night. Instead, I bit my lip and stayed quiet.
Melissa either didn’t notice my silence or chose to ignore it. Most likely the latter.
“And what’s with the sky? It’s like God puked up those clouds after a night of bad Mexican food.”
She chuckled at her own joke while an otherworldly voice whispered alien words in my head.
Avalla nophilm gjosar r’jim! Shub-Niggurath! R’lyeh!
Namarasi Annunaki io mlgo ramog!
Enki anu Nyarlathotep!
Melissa’s body jerked as if she’d touched a live wire. “What?”
“Huh?” I felt caught between worlds; an image of that other place lay superimposed over her, over the whole porch, and I had trouble focusing on her.
“You said something weird just now.” She gave a funny look. “What’s up with you tonight?”
Had I really spoken those words aloud? I rubbed my eyes and felt a measure of relief when I opened them again and everything had returned to normal. “Nothing. Like I said, just tired.”
“Tired? More like stoned. Have you—”
The pop-hiss of beer cans opening interrupted her. We glanced at our parents. Dad had finally recovered his usual good cheer and retrieved four Narragansetts from the fridge.
“Looks like everything’s returning to normal,” I said, grasping at the chance to change the subject.
“Yeah. That means they’ll be out here for a while.” Melissa’s mouth pulled to one side. “Which is my cue to go home. I, for one, need my beauty sleep.”
“I think you can afford to miss a few hours.” I raised one eyebrow in an exaggerated leer.
She laughed and punched my shoulder. “Save the lines for when you’ve got a hot chick you’re trying to impress.”
I looked away. “Maybe that’s what I’m doing.” I cringed even as I said it. It really was my night for blurting things out.
“You don’t need to impress me, Sean.”
I turned around, but she was already walking across the porch. With her back to me, I couldn’t see her expression, so I had no idea how to take her words.
“Going home, Melissa?” I heard Mr. Meriweather ask.
“Yeah, time for bed,” she said to her father. “’Night, Mom, ’night Dad. Goodnight, Mr. and Mrs. Black.”
“Goodnight, Melissa.”
“We’ll see you at home, dear.”
I watched her go down the steps and into the night. Lightning flashes alternately illuminated and hid her, turning her into a ghostly presence gliding away from me. For one brief moment, I thought she turned and raised a hand, but then it was dark again. When the next burst lit up the sky, she was gone.
“What’s the matter, Sean? No smoochy-smoochy tonight?” Owen made wet kissing noises at me.
I raised my hand, intending to scare the bratty smirk off his face. “I’ll grind the flesh from your bones, insolent one! Phallosium! Achi nir vermis!”
Owen’s face went slack and his eyes wide. He backed up three steps, then turned and ran into the house.
I stood there, my hand in the air, wondering if I was still dreaming. I should have been frightened for my sanity.
Instead, something inside me laughed, and I felt a dark pleasure at the reaction my words had produced.