There is a Light By belladonnacullen.pdf

There is a Light By belladonnacullen

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7015642/1/

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

"The story began a long time ago," I explain, pushing my daughter's long brown

hair out of her face and behind her ear.

"How long ago, Mommy?"

I quickly do the math. Then I gasp. "Twenty-four years ago."

"That's close to a hundred, right?"

"Closer to that than I'd like, Little One," I chuckle.

"And you were a girl then?"

"I was almost grown up, but not quite."

"Like a teenager?"

"Exactly. I was a teenager."

"And you lived with Grandpa and Grandma?"

I pause. It's hard to believe my parents ever lived under the same roof. I don't

like to remember that time in their history.

"Yes. They still lived together, then."

"But not anymore, right?"

"Right. This story began when they were just beginning divorce proceedings."

"Divorce is what big people do when they don't want to be married anymore. Like

Aunt Rose and Uncle Royce," she says with a confident nod of her head. I like

how it's so clean cut and black and white in her little mind.

"Exactly," I say. Perhaps it can be as cut and dry as that for Rosalie and Royce,

although I doubt it. Their story began almost twenty-four years ago as well.

"And that's when you heard them for the first time?" My daughter nods toward

the rotating vinyl disc on the turntable. Them. Him. Yes.

"Uh-huh," I murmur, trying to put together the person I was when I heard them

for the first time with the person I became after… everything.

My daughter turns up the volume. "You liked them the best of all, right?"

"More than that, I think. I felt like the lyrics spoke directly to me. Like they were

written for me." I smile. I still think that. Sometimes more than others.

"Lyrics?" my daughter asks, furrowing her little brow. "The words, you mean?"

"Yes, the words."

She cocks her head to the side and long strands of hair fall across her pale face.

"Is he crying?"

I smile as I listen to the lilting moan and intricate guitars.

"No, Little One, he's singing."

"Oh."

I can tell she's unsatisfied with that answer. She prefers Lady Gaga and Beyonce,

I'm sure. But she reaches over from the bed and turns up the volume a little

more anyway. The melody still makes chills run down my spine. I still know every

word. I hum along.

"I love it too, mommy. The most. Just like you do."

I hug my daughter. She holds her little arms around me as tightly as she can.

"Now it's time for bed."

She obediently presses the button that makes the needle rise from the spinning

vinyl. Then she pulls the covers up to her chin. Her polka dot nightgown is quickly

becoming too small and the sleeves no longer make it all the way to her wrists.

She's going to be tall, just like her father.

"Tell me more one day, Mommy?"

"How about a little every day until the story's told?"

"Okay, Mommy."

"Okay, Little One. Night, night."

"Night, Mommy."

I gently close her bedroom door. I tiptoe to my room and find the box at the back

of my closet. I haven't opened it since long before my daughter was born. I sift

through a dozen little notebooks filled with the twisted cursive handwriting I

carefully constructed as a teenager. The books are full of poems and quotes and

lyrics and drawings. A handmade card flutters to the floor and my breath catches

in my throat.

It was made for my seventeenth birthday. Thirteen watercolor irises float in a sea

of green. There are thirteen for the date we were going to see them together,

and also thirteen for the date I first met him. Lucky thirteen. Tears prick my

eyes.

I tend to think just of the good pieces of this story, but so many of those parts

only happened in my head. The reality of it all is stuck between pages of my

fantasy, thrown away with old memories, buried deep in the sandy soil of Long

Island, New York, and throw over bridges into the gray waters of the Hudson.

I know the story won't be the same without those bits.

I hope I tell it well.

I know one thing for sure: it all began with a question.

Do you know The Masens?

~*~

January 11th, 1987 ~ Met Seth Clearwater today. He asked me to hang out.

"Do you know The Masens?"

I didn't know The Masens.

"Um, yeah," I lied taking a step away from the boy that stopped at my locker to

ask me such a completely random question. He was tall even back then, maybe

close to six feet. When he grew up he'd top out at six five. He had big, brown

ochre eyes and thick brown hair that was shaved up the back and sides and fell

over his eyes in the front.

It was a skater cut. Seth Clearwater was a skater. I wasn't. He held the

skateboard at his side as evidence that he was different from most of the student

population, including me. He smiled and edged closer, like we already knew one

another.

We didn't. We would, though. We'd know each other well.

There wasn't much room in the hallway between classes. Over three thousand

students were crammed into a school built for half as many. As a result, we were

forced to share lockers. My locker partner, Jessica, gave me a dirty look as I kept

trying to edge backwards to create some space between Seth and me. She

elbowed me in my side and made an incoherent grunting noise.

"Ouch!" I squeaked.

Seth's eyes flicked over to her. "Watch it, Hair Helmet," he growled. He tapped

his board on the ground in warning.

Jessica's eyes went wide and she high tailed it out of there.

I covered my mouth with my hand to hold in the laughter. Jessica's poof and

perm were as hard as plastic, styled to stand straight up and out in defiance of

gravity and fashion sense – a hair helmet, indeed.

Seth placed his hand against the locker above my head and leaned in towards

me, so that his chest was right in my face. I hadn't noticed until that moment

that he was wearing a Masens concert T.

I knew who The Masens were… somewhat. They were a band that the skaters and

the kids that wore black listened to. They were one of those bands that it was

impossible to know about. This was 1987; before the Internet, before Twitter,

before Facebook – this was back when it was still possible for people not to know

about things: big things - like bands, and little things - like G-spots. This was a

time when a girl that was too shy to ask questions walked around the hallways of

her high school in the dark, and sometimes a little embarrassed, just because of

all the things she didn't know.

"So, you know them?" Seth asked, smiling down at me.

"Yeah, I guess," I lied again, probably just because he was talking to me. He was

big, and cute, and he'd scared off Jessica. She'd been a bitch to me all year.

"Awesome, because a couple friends are coming over tonight to watch this

bootleg concert video I just got at Record Stop."

"Tonight?"

It was a school night. I didn't know that people got together on school nights. I

certainly never did.

"You wanna come?" he asked.

I did want to go. Seth's invitation was the most random and interesting thing that

had happened in my uneventful high school career. I'd never spoken to him

before and I didn't know a single one of his friends, but I'd watched them. I

watched everyone; it's what I did.

The kids that Seth hung out with wore torn, black T-shirts and baggy plaid pants,

their heads were all partly shaved, even the girls, and they had pierced ears,

noses and eyebrows. And they listened to music that wasn't played on WBLI or

WALK, and that wasn't sold at the mall. They smoked cigarettes and cut classes

and hung out under the bridge down at the beach.

"Yeah, um, I guess I'll go," I stammered, trying to play it cool. Looking back, I'm

not sure I even came close.

Seth's smile grew. "Where's your next class?" he asked.

"English, 216."

"I'll walk you," he offered, pushing himself off the locker. I noticed that he had

some decent biceps under his baggy shirtsleeves.

"Okay."

People stared as Seth walked with me to my class. You might be thinking that I

only imagined people were looking at me because I was a teenager, but, no, they

were really staring. The jocks and the guidos and the nerds might not have hung

out with Seth and his crew, but everyone knew who he was. No one knew me. It

was cause for major gossip, at least between fourth and fifth periods on that

particular day.

Seth was talkative as we navigated our way through the winding halls, but now I

can't remember a thing he said to me. I'm sure it just went in one ear and out

the other that afternoon as I watched people watching me and tried to smile and

nod appropriately. I remember my cheeks burning, though. And I remember that

he held onto his skateboard in one hand and kept his other hand deep in his

pocket. I remember his swagger as he walked really close to me, close enough

that I was scared I might have B.O.

He looked me over from head to toe when we stopped outside my Advanced

Placement English class. "You're just so preppy. It's awesome," he said, still

smiling.

I didn't know how to take that.

"I love that shirt," he went on, when I didn't answer.

I bought the blue mock turtleneck at The Gap. It matched my plaid blue skirt

perfectly… and my tights. I was into monochromatic outfits those days.

"And those Keds," he added and kicked at my sneakers. "Nice."

My heart fluttered for no reason that I could fathom. Maybe it was his big brown

eyes. Maybe it was because he seemed so eager. Maybe it was because a strange

boy was talking to me. "Oh, um, thanks."

Seth finally pulled his hand out of his pocket. He was holding a little worn piece of

white paper.

"Here's my address. And my number. But don't call. My sisters will answer and

they'll make our lives hell."

Seth handed me the little scrap, warm and damp from his palm. He'd planned

ahead. My mind reeled.

"Maybe eight?" he asked. Kids gave us wide berth and weird looks as they

streamed around us into the classroom. People like Seth didn't hang out in front

of Advanced Placement classes.

"Eight?" I glanced at the address. I'd need a ride. I'd need to talk to my father.

Eight o'clock was probably still safe; I wasn't sure how I'd get home, though.

"Okay, eight," I replied as the warning bell rang.

"Cool, Bella. See you then."

xXxXx

I'd worked at Newman's Sporting Goods in the mall since the end of my freshman

year. Every day after school I took a bus that dropped me off there, and I usually

had about twenty minutes to kill before my shift started. That day I put every

second of my free time to use.

I darted around the… helmet heads, giggling at the new moniker I associated

them with, and I was careful not to bump into the more criminally minded

dirtbags, and I was worried and excited that I might see some skaters, but I

didn't, as I bobbed and weaved my way to Record World.

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