Absolute Brightness (10 page)

“Oh,” he said. “What're you doing here?”

“I guess I could ask you the same question.”

“I know, I know,” he said, scrunching up his shoulders and trying to make himself invisible by covering his face with his hands. “It's so totally embarrassing. You won't tell anyone, will you?”

Not a word about my fantasy life as his murderer. I felt instantly relieved and decided to go with what was happening right then and there.

“Tryouts for Drama Camp?”

“Yes.”

“Please, Leonard. You're bound to get in. And then your name'll be on a list for everyone to see. The whole world's gonna find out sooner or later.”

“I know, I know,” he said, peeking at me through his fanned-out fingers. “But nobody knows
now.
And I mean, what if I
don't
get picked? How humiliating would
that
be? What would I tell your mom? Or the ladies? They'd be so disappointed.”

I don't know which I found more pathetic: Leonard caring what the ladies of the salon knew or didn't know; or me agreeing to keep his secret. In any case, I was so thrilled to
not
be discussing my homicidal tendencies that I would have gone along with pretty much anything.

Just then a fat-faced theater geek poked his head through the crack between the auditorium doors.

“Pelkey. You're up.”

Again Leonard jumped, but this time he wasn't taken by surprise; he was ready. He instantly twirled around to face me, bobbed up and down on his toes, and exclaimed, “Ohmygod. Ohmygod. I'm so nervous. Quick. Tell me to break a leg.”

“Break a leg,” I said as if I really meant it.

He leaned in and gave me an unexpected kiss on the cheek. Before I could even react, he had scampered away and disappeared into the auditorium.

“Can I go in there?” I asked a pale, redheaded girl who was standing nearby. I was pointing toward the auditorium, and I think she had an idea that I wanted to audition, because right away she checked me out from head to foot.

“There's only one girl character in
The Tempest,
” she said, nervously chewing the ends of her hair, “so you'd probably only get to be a sailor or something. I mean, unless you're expecting to just walk away with the lead part. And no offense, but Miranda's supposed to be drop-dead gorgeous.”

“And besides,” added a lumpy boy with mean eyes and a noticeable lisp, “there's a sign-up sheet. Some of us have been waiting for like our whole lives.”

I rolled my eyes, grabbed the door handle, and let myself into the auditorium. The place was black except for a shaft of golden light that fell on the stage and cut a perfect circle on the blond wood floor. Leonard was standing in the center of that circle, clasping his book tightly to his chest and peering out toward the audience. With all that light in his face, I was sure he couldn't see me, so I decided to take a seat and watch.
This ought to be good
, I thought. And then I heard, but did not see, Ms. Deitmueller shouting.

“And what are you reading for us today, Leonard?”

“Ariel. Act one, scene two. The scene where Ariel tells Prospero how he did what he was told by totally freaking out everyone on board the ship and creating this huge thunder and lightning—”

“Okay, just … why don't you go ahead and do it for us. Mr. Buddy will read Prospero from here. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Leonard didn't need the words in front of him; he'd memorized his speech. And so he set the book facedown just outside the pool of light and then stepped back to take his place stage center. He planted his feet and steadied himself, but at the same time he seemed to be reaching down inside himself to find something. Slowly he made his body seem like it was half the size; he crabbed his arms and legs so that he looked like something not quite human; and finally he worked his face into a hobbity grimace, rendering him completely unrecognizable. When he opened his mouth to speak, I was so surprised, I gasped. It wasn't just that he'd been able to create the voice of some unknown species from a parallel dimension; it was that his sound matched exactly the condition of his body, and suddenly the Leonard I'd known was gone. In his place, standing in a spill of light up on the stage, was a wizened spirit creature. Then, as he spoke, he began to flit all over the place, jumping from one spot to the next like a mad grasshopper on crack. He rolled on the floor and hopped up onto a black box that was pushed back into the shadows, and then leaped forward and landed like something amphibious and crazed. And the whole time he just kept gabbling the memorized text in that voice:

“All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come

To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task

Ariel and all his quality.”

From out of the darkness, Mr. Buddy's voice boomed. I think even he would have admitted that his performance was less convincing and committed than Leonard's, but he carried out his duties well enough to keep the momentum of the scene going and allowed us all to see how perfectly Leonard could respond to another actor. “‘Hast thou, spirit, perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?'” he read. Which I think meant “Did Ariel make the storm happen as Prospero had commanded him?” Leonard responded as if Buddy Howard's voice were indeed Prospero's and the whole thing made perfect sense to him:

“To every article.

I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,

I flamed amazement: sometime I'd divide,

And burn in many places; on the topmast,

The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,

Then meet and join.”

When he was finished, the hall was silent. What was there to say? Even though I'd only understood every third word, I had to admit I was impressed. And so, it seemed, was everybody else. No one stirred. Despite the overt theatricality of his gestures and the almost ludicrous intonation of his spritelike self, Leonard had managed to convey the poetry and drama of the situation. In other words, the kid could act. But with no response coming back at him, he mistook the quiet for the opposite of encouragement, and I watched him visibly deflate. As he leaned over to retrieve his book from the floor, he shrugged it off and all traces of Ariel were extinguished. He was done for the day.

Mr. Buddy came galumphing excitedly down the aisle toward the stage. He parked himself at the apron and motioned to Leonard to come forward. Once Leonard stepped out of the light, I could only guess at what was being said; the two of them spoke softly to each other, and I could only make out the shadows of their heads nodding and nuzzling like horses in the dark. I suspected that Mr. Buddy was quietly praising the boy's talents, and then assuring him that no matter what happened between now and the summer, he would have a leading part in Ms. D's production of
The Tempest.
And I imagined that, for the first time in Leonard's life, he didn't say much, because he was as surprised as we all were that day to discover that he had a talent for much more than survival.

 

seven

SPRING HAPPENED IN
Neptune, and just like always the tang of ocean brine came drifting ashore to mix with the sweet scent of blossoming linden trees. It was a heady scent, nature's perfume designed to make everybody long for what they didn't have. It was a complicated thing that got into your nose, then traveled to your brain and ended up making you crazy. For Leonard, however, who had never even
seen
the ocean until he came to live in Neptune, spring in our town came as a first-time shock, and it stirred up in him a restlessness he never knew he had. About once a week, he would blow off his shift at the salon by telling Mom he had stuff to do and then disappear.

“Stuff?” she wanted to know. “What kind of stuff?”

“Nothing really,” he told her, as he breezed out the door of the salon. “Just stuff.”

Finally, my mother, who was never very good at allowing people in her charge to go wandering off on their own, wanted to know what was going on. She cornered Leonard one afternoon right outside his “boxed set.” I was folding laundry, and because the dryer was quietly tumbling delicates, I happened to overhear the whole thing.

“You have to tell me where you're going, Leonard, and what you're doing. And don't tell me
stuff.
You'll have to do better than that.”

“Okay,” he said, lowering his voice as though he was about to give away trade secrets. “It's the
weltschmerz.
”

“The what?”

“
Weltschmerz.
Translated from the German, it roughly means ‘world sadness.' Sometimes I get it kinda bad. What helps is to just sit on the beach and watch the ocean roll in. I don't know. It, like, sorta soothes me.”

Maybe because Leonard was an orphan, my mother didn't argue with him. She started letting him go off by himself without much of an explanation, and she gave up the need to keep tabs on him every minute of the day the way she did with Deirdre and me. I was pretty sure
weltschmerz
wouldn't have worked nearly so well as an excuse where I was concerned. Plus, if I had tried it, Mom would've accused me of being a smart aleck and then punished me for eavesdropping.

Whether Leonard actually went to sit by the ocean that spring and summer, and whether he observed the uninterrupted boredom of waves rolling in, I don't know. I never followed him to find out. But not long after his audition, the cast list for Ms. Deitmueller's summertime production of
The Tempest
was posted on the wall right outside the Drama Club, and Leonard's name appeared on that list, so naturally I figured that
weltschmerz
was just his cover-up for after-school Drama Camp business.

It was a Tuesday evening and Mom had just locked up the salon for the night. I was making vegetarian sloppy joe sandwiches in the kitchen. Deirdre was, as usual, up in her room, keeping to herself and out of the way. Mom sat hunched over the kitchen table, her glasses slipping down her nose, intent on putting a pile of receipts from the previous month in order. Suddenly Leonard came banging into the kitchen; he was seriously out of breath and he didn't have his backpack with him. He quickly shut the door behind him and then stood against it as if barricading it with his body. Mom and I stared at him.

“Hi,” he said. “Sorry I'm late. Um … I'll be in my room. Bye.”

As a performance it wasn't convincing.

“Leonard?” Mom said.

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. From the wide-eyed, who-me look on his face, we knew right away that something was up. Something not good.

“What's going on with you? Where's your bag?”

“Um … it's … I left it in … Wait. I have to pee so bad.”

He made a run for it, leaping across the kitchen, racing up the stairs and disappearing into the bathroom, before anyone could object. Mom and I looked at each other.

When he finally came back downstairs, Mom had already pushed aside her paperwork and we were seated at the table eating our sloppy joes. As usual, I had set the table for four. Even though Deirdre hardly ever joined us anymore for a sit-down meal, Mom felt that it was important to make a show of including her. Most of the time Deirdre came down late for dinner, made herself a plate, and then took it back upstairs to her room. She preferred to eat while i-chatting with people who had interesting profiles and made-up names. Oddly, Mom never made an issue over Deirdre's eating patterns. In fact, she only ever acknowledged the situation when Deirdre failed to return the used dinnerware too many nights in a row and we were forced to go hunting for spoons and cups.

Anyway, Leonard slipped into the room, took his seat at the table, and tried to pretend as if Mom and I had suffered short-term memory loss.

“Oooo,” he intoned, like a backup singer for an R&B recording artist. “Sloppy joes. My total fave.”

It would be too painful to fully recount the interrogation process that followed. I watched my mother inch Leonard slowly toward a full confession. Leonard never had a chance. He was no match for Mom. Eventually he put down his napkin and cried into his lap. Mom had broken him.

Leonard explained that he was coming home from yet another after-school session of Drama Camp, minding his own business.

“Phoebe?” Mom said to me. “Did
you
know about this? Were you aware that he was involved in Drama Camp?”

My silence was enough to damn me forever in her eyes.

“Go on,” she said to Leonard. He told us that he'd just made the turn onto our street when he realized that he was being followed. He turned around and saw a boy he didn't recognize. Leonard quickened his pace. But then so did the boy. He turned around again and saw that the boy was about a year older than him, maybe two. His hair was scruffy and his bangs hung down over his face. The boy tipped his chin up as a signal. “Wait up,” he said. Leonard froze. He knew he wouldn't be able to outrun the boy. Why? Because strapped to each of Leonard's ankles was a two-and-a-half-pound weight.

“Wait a minute. Hold on,” Mom said as she closed her eyes and pressed the tips of her fingernails to her temples. “Ankle weights? Why?”

He told us that he had not only been cast in Drama Camp's production of
The Tempest,
but he had actually been given the part of a fairy. I think my groan was audible when he announced it, because Mom shot me a glance that I recognized; it meant
shut it
. Right away, Mr. Buddy had taken an interest in Leonard, because after all, he was going to be one of the stars of the show and he had real talent. Leonard would need plenty of personal training such as movement, speech, and possibly jazz dance classes. Mr. Buddy's first suggestion, however, required no special training. Leonard was presented with the weights and told that a time-tested method of preparing for the part of a sprite involved keeping the weights attached to his ankles right up until the actual performance. He was to go about his daily routine with the added weight, and then, on opening night, when he removed them, voilà, he would be amazed to discover that all his movements were much easier, more fluid, more fairylike.