Forever and Ever. David ElliottЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Open Door

      To all that haunts us.

      one

      Jaimie disliked John and Muriel Malabrand almost as much as he disliked his own parents, if such a thing were possible. But that wasn’t why he balked when his mother said that John and Muriel wanted to talk to him. It was the mention of a surprise that had caused his stomach to turn. Jaimie was just sixteen, but he figured he’d had enough surprise to last the rest of his life.

      The Malabrands could go screw themselves.

      He tried to fake a headache, one of the migraines that after seventeen years of almost perfect health would flare up like a campfire left smoldering in the woods. The kind that left nothing behind but the charred ruins of a forest.

      He walked into the kitchen with his hand to his temple, doing what he could to reproduce the scrim that blurred his vision whenever one of these attacks hit him. In her desperation to return to the way things were, his mother didn’t notice.

      She had scrambled what looked like a dozen eggs. Why? Jaimie asked himself. Why does she do it? He had no appetite. She knew that. Knew he wouldn’t touch it. And yet every morning it was the same, enough protein on his plate to feed a village in India.

      He slumped at the table, staring out the back window. A robin—the first he had seen this spring—was tugging at a night crawler. How long, he wondered? How long would it take until the worm gave up its hold in the dark, wet earth? Or snapped in two?

      Behind him, his mother rinsed the breakfast dishes.

      “It might be nice for you to see what John and Muriel have in mind,” she said. “They have always liked you. Everybody has always liked you.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “And anyway, it’s not like you to be rude, Jaimie. You can’t just ignore them.”

      Oh, but that’s where she was wrong. He could ignore them. Shut them out the way he shut out everybody. His teachers. His friends. His mother. It was easy. All he had to do was close his eyes. Close his eyes and think of Jannie.

      “Try to eat something, Jaimie,” his mother said. “You’ll feel better. I know you will.”

      He shoved the plate aside. His mother had not approved of Jannie. Didn’t think she was the right kind of girl. She had never said so, of course. She never would. But Jaimie could sense it, just as he could sense her disapproval of the clothes Jannie picked out for him and the streak of blue she had dyed into his hair.

      He could refuse. Put his foot down. Tell his mother the Malabrands could take their surprise and shove it. Stop once and for all everybody trying to help him. He didn’t need help. He needed Jannie. He only needed Jannie. But that kind of resistance took energy. Energy he didn’t have. Not now. Maybe not ever again.

      That was why, two days later, on a wet Saturday afternoon, he found himself slumped at the door of the Malabrands’ grotesque McMansion. He raised a finger to the doorbell. John Malabrand loved that doorbell. Jaimie remembered his going on about it when they were building the house.

      “You can program it,” he had bragged to Jaimie’s father. “You can actually program the damn thing! Thirty different tunes!”

      Jaimie pressed the fake mother-­of-­pearl button. What would it be this time? “Home on the Range”? “La Cucaracha”? Or John’s favorite, “Camptown Races”? But no. Of course. It was “London Bridge.” John and Muriel had just come back from two weeks in England.

      He was turning to leave when the door swung open.

      “Jaimie boy!” John shouted. “You made it!”

      Even from the doorstep, Jaimie could smell the booze.

      But ten minutes later John and Muriel were offering him the use of their cottage on Lake Winnepocket, and he was glad he had come.

      “It’s nothin’ fancy,” John said.

      They were sitting in the oddly-­angled space that Muriel insisted on calling the great room. Its ceiling was cathedraled so high above them that, in spite of the windows, Jaimie felt as if he were trapped underground.

      John was perched on a gigantic sectional sofa. Jaimie supposed the horrible green fringe that trimmed the couch was meant to complement the sickly color of the walls. Instead, it served to highlight the rash of exploded blood vessels that stretched over John’s nose and oozed down his cheeks. The red blotch reminded Jaimie of maps of pandemics that were all over the Internet.

      “Nope. Nothin’ fancy,” John repeated. “Just two rooms and a loo.”

      Loo?

      Seriously?

      The man had spent two weeks in England and suddenly he was talking like one of the Beatles.

      “We bought the place furnished a couple of years ago,” John went on. “Built in 1922. Thought we’d fix it up, but one thing led to another. I don’t think we’ve gone up there but twice. Probably should sell it. Muriel never liked the place.”

      “It’s in New Hampshire, for Chris­­sake,” moaned Muriel, lighting another cigarette. “The mosquitoes! My god! The mosquitoes!”

      Between her chain-­smoking and her perfume, Jaimie didn’t believe a mosquito could get within ten feet of her.

      “And those ducks!” Muriel said.

      She took