Beyond the Distance

Chapter 16

The ceiling was a cool shade of gray without the morning sunlight shining upon it, and if Acton stared up at it long enough from where he lay in his bed, he could almost convince himself that it could've been no other color than medium gray. But it was white, and he knew this by yesterday's afternoon sun, and his memory of it was much too clear for this illusion to work with any permanence. He turned the lamp at his bedside on, and a little golden circle stained the gray hanging above him. He turned it off again and folded his hands behind his head. He couldn't bother to get out of bed yet.

Scott had already left for work, and Amy had left with him on his way to the station. She was going to the theater with friends from school, but Acton paid no attention to anything more she said. He was preoccupied with the awareness that he would be alone in this house with Keona until the afternoon, and it was his best chance to set everything right that the KUS had committed with his father's consent.

Mari... he thought distantly. She was still Mari to him, even ten years later, and he still thought of her as Mari, even after she insisted that he refer to her as Keona instead. It was his sweet bond with her. It carried memories that belonged to them alone.

The end of those seven years changed everything, and he couldn't recall any other day in his life that was as vivid and equally distant. It was the third of Tilo. The late summer sun was setting progressively earlier in the evening, and he and Mari were coming in from their day playing out in the meadow just beyond the family property, Mari with a halo of woven flowers on her head, Acton with his own reluctant crown of flowers that he refrained from taking off until they reached the house, when he dreaded his parents' reaction. They slipped in through the back door and passed his parents without them noticing, and for reasons he could no longer remember, they stood beneath the attic, staring up at the rope that hung from its closed door. Their curiosity was their first mistake.

The dark attic was lit by a single swinging light bulb in the middle of the room, and the floorboards moaned precariously under his feet. It was mostly barren, aside from sealed boxes and old furniture draped in sheets, but there was a wooden chest against the wall opposing them—its dark stain scratched and faded, its metal hinges tarnished almost black with age. Mari, as if enticed by a mysterious energy emitting from this chest, stared down at it with a queer smile. Her hands examined its surface, leaving tiny fingerprints smudged into the dust. She turned toward Acton and said, "Let's open it up. I want to see what's inside."

Acton looked down at it, equally enchanted, but the danger of wrongdoing that exhilarated him earlier had turned to fear, and he turned toward the open attic door, the light from the hallway illuminating the dusty haze the two of them had kicked up. His voice was thin. "I don't know, Mari. What if mom and dad come looking for us?"

She glanced at the door. "It'll be real quick. We're just going to peek inside, and then we can go. They'll never know we were up here."

His stomach churned, but he had already made it all the way up there, and he had already found the treasure to satiate the curiosity that led the two of them up those stairs. All he had to do was lift the lid and the answer would come. He unfastened the metal clamp and pushed the lid up as Mari reached into its dark interior and withdrew a notebook full of loose papers. A couple smaller scraps tumbled onto the floor at Acton's feet, so he bent down to pick them up...

Struggling through his memory, Acton scrubbed his face and turned over in bed. He could remember his father's terrifying mien as he scrambled forward with a hiccup in his step. Young Acton in his panic grabbed the notebook from Mari's hands to protect her from his father's fitful movements, and he watched him steadily despite the fear that shuddered through his body. His father nearly toppled over him as he tore the notebook from his hands and flung it into the dark corner of the attic, its papers crackling erratically in their flight and left abused and stained with sandy, black dust. Mari sobbed on the floor where her legs had given out, shielding her eyes from the violence that broke suddenly through the light of the attic's opening and ripped the wonder from their innocent curiosity.