Dark Matter: The Secret Revealed

Chapter 1: Belinda

It was that kind of June night that hints at summer coming, but the combination of a wispy sleeveless shift and a light breeze across my arm was enough to raise goose bumps and remind me that summer remained elusive.

Damien and I were lying down in the long cool grass on the front lawn of my house staring at the night sky. The house was on a cul-de-sac right at the end of a tree-lined street that made it very quiet and uneventful. I could smell the sweet aroma of the peonies in the front garden mixed together with the minty scent coming from Damien's mint-tipped cigarillo.

A June Bug was pronouncing its arrival on the scene with an extended chirp. I was grateful for the distracting sound. I was trying to ignore the loud ruckus coming from my house. I was hosting my high school graduation party, and truth be told, I was more at ease on the lawn in the dark quiet that enveloped Damien and me on this early summer evening than in the loud knotted lines and circles of people mingling throughout my house.

"Did you ever read that eerie short story—I think it was called, The Crowd?" I asked Damien.

"Yeah," he said, blowing gourd-shaped smoke rings that reminded me of the shape of the screamer's head in the famous Munch painting. "Why do you ask?"

"It's just my party," I said. I pulled the thin cream cotton shift I was wearing over my legs for warmth. "I like our friends better when they're not in groups."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," he said singeing a blade of the Kentucky blue grass with his cigarillo. "They take on this crowd mentality and start acting like zombies."

I laughed and looked up at the night sky searching for a star to make a wish. I wanted to remember this moment with Damien Francis Garant forever. I felt a bond with him that I hadn't felt with anyone in my life. He seemed like someone who had a lot of life experience and yet, with only eighteen years under his belt, how could that be? And living in Coriander, New Hampshire, a typical middle-class New England bedroom community, with lots of churches and schools, more than enough shopping malls and no Starbucks, population, 23,472, how could someone be as worldly as he was?

I knew he read a lot, but I chalked his worldliness up to his soul and his lineage. I was betting on the fact that he was an old soul who had probably lived many lives and had had many experiences that were stored unconsciously in his psyche. Somehow, he was able to draw upon them when difficult situations arose.

As for his lineage, well, his father was a biomedical scientist and his grandfather had been an archaeologist who had travelled to every continent on the earth in his lifetime. Curiosity and knowledge had been passed down in the Garant family from one generation to the next, and Damien had clearly not been passed over.

But it wasn't Damien's mind that I adored most about him. It was things he did for other people, like what he had done for Beth Chapman at the high school Christmas party in December.

Damien had asked Beth to go with him to the party. She was confined to a wheelchair because she lost all feeling in the lower half of her body after a horrible car accident a year ago. Beth had been such a vibrant person before the accident, but had lost a lot of her will to live when she learned she was not going to walk again. Damien became her friend shortly after the accident and seemed to be the only one who could make her laugh.

For the school party, they had worked on a wheelchair dance routine that cleared the dance floor and had Damien in another wheel chair for part of the performance and on Beth's lap for the other portion. They spun and giggled and owned that dance floor while other students watched in amazement at their moves. At the end of the dance, Damien lifted Beth out of her wheelchair, held her in his arms and curtsied as they got a well-deserved ovation from the staff and the student body.