I was still staring when his eyes shifted back to mine and he continued.
"It's the safest time of day for us," he said with a tone which, I'll bet, razzle-dazzled even himself. "The easiest time. But also the saddest, in a way... the end of another living-dead day, the return of the anonymous night. Darkness is so predictable, don't you think?" He smiled wistfully.
I shrugged.
"I think the night is the very essence of beauty, of artifice, a mask to all things mundane and some things hideous. In my eyes, the night is... " he continued.
"Actually, I like the night." I interrupted. "You know why?"
"Mm, why?" He asked, readjusting in the car.
"I used to go to Girl Scout camp all the time." I answered.
"Yeah?"
"Yes. Sometimes," I allowed my voice to get a little dreamy, "we would have campfires at night. It would be so cold—it is cold out there in the desert, you know—and I would have to put on two sweatshirts, or even three!"
"Mmhmm?" He asked. His face looked slightly pained. I assumed he was itching for more details about my childhood.
"Yeah," I chortled just thinking about it, "and we would sing all these really great songs and go on late-night canoe rides across the lake. Once, we played this prank on the cabin next to us where we silly-stringed their whole cabin. And then this other time, we played a prank on the cabin on the other side—wait, no, I think it was actually two cabins down. Anyway, we took one of the chickens from the farm area and put it in their cabin. It was flapping its wings everywhere and running around, and when they got home, everything in their cabin was covered with, well, you know."
"Feathers?" He asked lightly.
I smirked. "No, poop!"
Fredward smiled half-heartedly. I wondered if I had been talking too much, or too excitedly. I vaguely remembered what he had been saying before I offered all the details from my childhood. He had been saying some poetic things about night. What could I add?
I decided to say something poetic about the stars. "Without the dark, we'd never see the stars." I frowned, thinking of the thought of not seeing the stars. "Not that you see them here much anyways."
He laughed, but his eyes remained dark as the night sky— and like the big, bountiful night skies of Phoenix his eyes were full of tiny little stars, burning holes in my heart.
"Charlie will be here in a few minutes. So, unless you want to tell him you'll be with me on Saturday... " He raised one of his two eyebrows.
"Thanks, but no thanks." I said. "Charlie would probably want to chaperone us if he knew we were planning a day for just the two of us."
"Suit yourself!" Fredward said as I gathered my book-documents, stiff from sitting so long.
"So is it my turn tomorrow, then?"
"Certainly not!" His face was teasingly outraged. "I told you I wasn't done, didn't I?"
"What more is there?" I wondered. After all, I'd already talked about my favorite color, gemstone, and my days at Girl Scout camp.
"You'll find out tomorrow." Was he implying that I was going to learn things about myself? Perhaps things that he was implying he already knew? He reached across to open the door for me, and his sudden proximity sent my heart into frenzied palpitations.
But his hand froze on the handle.
"Not good," he muttered. I looked down at his arm brushing against my chest.
"I... I can get surgery... " I was surprised to see that his jaw was clenched, his eyes disturbed. I thought he knew...
He glanced at me for a brief second. "No, not that. Another complication."

234

Chapter 11

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