A little girl with long black hair sat on the front porch of her house, lonely. The dog had died two weeks prior, and now she had no one to play with. What exactly had happened to the dog, anyway? Aunt Bernie wouldn't tell her, wouldn't even talk about it, and she'd made her tell Uncle Tony the dog had run away. They weren't even her aunt and uncle—Bernice and Tony. They were her foster parents, but they'd never wanted to be called "mom" or "dad," and she'd never really cared about that until the neighbor girls some way down had sneaked up to the backyard fence and asked her where her parents were, and she hadn't been able to answer them. She'd asked Aunt Bernie about it, and the woman had given her the explanation that her mother had died when she'd had her, and her father had returned to Malaysia. Uncle Tony had kindly checked out a few books from the library about the southeast Asian country, and suddenly the seven-year-old had realized why she didn't look like either her aunt or her uncle. She'd recognized her different features at quite a young age; she just hadn't thought to ask about them.
Well, the dog was gone, anyway, so when the boy spoke to her, she was lonely enough to respond.
"Vanessa," she told him, something close to first-time butterflies shifting within. His curly hair delighted her, thick and black like hers but so different in its shape, and he had freckles, too, all over.
"How old are you?" he asked from his hands-in-pockets position on the sidewalk.
"Fourteen," she told him.
He thought about that. "Liar."
Rather than persist, the girl leaned forward on the porch swing, crossed her legs at the ankles. She wasn't sure what to say to this interesting person.
"You live here?" he asked.
She nodded. Seemed like an obvious answer.
"How long?"
Vanessa didn't know, exactly. It'd seemed like years and years and years. Why, Aunt Bernie and Uncle Tony hadn't had their gray hairs and wrinkles at first. "My whole life," she answered, and that was true enough.
The boy approached the porch, came right up to it, and looked long at her. "I'm twelve. Beau. I live—"
"With those people on their farm. I heard my Aunt and Uncle talking about it. You just got found." She and the boy kept their eyes locked for a moment longer than average, before Vanessa said, "You want to be my friend? My dog just died, and—"
"Vanessa! Where are you?" her aunt's voice croaked from within the house. The girl leapt from the porch swing, sending it a bit haywire on its chains, as the screen door pushed outward with a squeal. Aunt Bernie darted her gaze about, then focused on the little girl, hesitating for a moment as if suspicious. "What are you doing out here?"
Vanessa wasn't supposed to talk to other children. She wasn't even supposed to be in the front. Always the back, her aunt and uncle insisted, where the yard had a high fence around it. "I was—he just came by—I didn't—" The girl spun toward her conversationalist in hope he'd pitch in, but to her surprise, the boy had vanished.
"Come into the house," Aunt Bernie insisted, and Vanessa, relieved, listened.
Her first encounter with Beau had certaintly not been her last. Over the next months, they'd found ways to discreetly meet or speak with one another. She'd often sit at the front windows, and if he walked by and they saw one another, she'd go into the backyard. Then he'd slip over the fence at a place hidden from the house windows and hide when Aunt Bernie or Uncle Tony made an appearance. They'd also leave notes for one another, beneath a large stone near the front porch; Vanessa would have to sneak out the front door and dash down the stairs in order to check the stone or leave one of her messages, and she loved the secretiveness of it all. She'd never been so thrilled to be alive. Every day brought potential intrigue, and though the two of them spoke of forgettable things like bugs and Greek mythology and what their respective caretakers made for dinner, each was happy to have found the other.
YOU ARE READING
Sublime Messages
HorrorA high school taken hostage, a man who claims to be a god, and a darkly obsessive teen . . . When Vanessa Tan is tasked with delving into the background of a likely maniac in order to stop him from mutilating teenagers, she's prepared for a hopeles...