An excerpt from the new novel, Outsiders, by William Collier

Doran had offered to drive, which meant that he would be picking her up. They had been dating now for several months, and the thought of him still made a very girlish part of her go giggly. Waiting for him now only exacerbated it. That inner girly girl felt flush with excitement, wanted to simultaneously jump up and down and also curl up into a little ball of infatuation. The rest of Melody, the part that was twenty-five years old, rather than sixteen, and the part that was a little more reflective, kept telling the sixteen-year-old girly girl to chill out. It was hard to say what made a man “cute,” or “handsome,” or “sexy”—well, no, sexy was easy enough to define. Six percent body fat. Nearly six feet of height—towering above her five feet and five inches. A better-than-ten-second 100-meter dash. (She had seen him on the podium twice just in the time she had known him.) That athletic butt. And his brain was nothing to sneeze at. He was a good student, which she had decided early on would be a primary criterion for her. Truth be told, that was the starting criterion. She was a nerd, in a nerdy degree, surrounded by nerds. Why and how she had come to be dating an athletic star were questions that still boggled her mind. More than that, why was he dating her? Every sport had groupies. He might not have a gold medal—yet—but a silver medal was still silver; he could flash it and have more than a few co-eds draping themselves over him.

So why her? That was what made his sexiness a double-edged sword, a source of as much worry and doubt as excitement. Sexy she was not. Cute, maybe. She could look in a mirror and see cute, especially relative to most of her peers in the college of computer sciences, but… there were shortcomings.

His truck pulled up. He drove a pick-up truck. It was a bit old, a bit uncomfortable and noisy on the highway, a bit unnecessarily loud, and more than a bit unnecessarily high—It made her inner sixteen-year-old go giggly all over again, which it should not have done. A silly, oversized truck was supposed to be an eye-roller, a bit of that juvenile masculine posturing which women tolerated but could not take seriously. In any other context she would have scoffed at it, and had it been her first impression of him it probably also would have been her last. Yet, here she stood, watching it come to a stop and feeling like a blob of jelly. Perhaps it was because he had never drawn attention to it, never tried to show it off. He had this truck, with its high suspension and loud muffler, but he had never explained why, never made a thing of it. Or, perhaps, she responded to it solely because it was his, and she was in love with him. If that was the case, then to be woman was to be weak indeed, she thought. To be silly, as silly in their own way as boys and their trucks were silly.

She started toward the bed of the truck as he parked, towing her luggage. On the far side, the driver’s door opened and closed. As she was struggling to get her suitcase up to head height, he came around the tail, and then the suitcase became weightless and floated out of her grasp, and he set it down over the bulkhead, out of sight.

“Can I get your backpack, too?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll carry it up front. It’s got my computer in it and stuff.”

He had her gently by her elbow, now, and was smiling down at her. Teeth. Teeth were important. Isn’t that funny, that teeth would be important? His teeth were pretty nice, with just one that was a little out of place—They were kissing. She stood on the tips of her toes, feeling his lips, feeling his hand so gently cupping her cheek, his other hand sliding around her back to hold her up to him, and his body, hard and slender and much bigger than hers. He was a good kisser, nicely reserved. He did not try to devour her face, nor locate her pancreas with his tongue. Farthest from it: usually, it was as if his lips were just enjoying the moment, just lingering, enjoying the softness of her lips—and that made her feel like her lips were soft, and something to be enjoyed. It made her want to linger, too.

“God, I’m so easy,” she said in her mind as he let her go. When he kissed her like that, those sensations drove the rest of the world right out of existence. No one else had ever kissed her like that. She had had in the past one other boyfriend and a couple of unsuccessful dates over the years. Far less romantic experience than media and social media led her to believe everyone else was having, and she had only herself to blame, for being a shy, awkward girl, cute at best, and far too interested in computers, programming, higher mathematics, and the like to attract any but two types of guys: creeps who saw her as easy prey, and nerds of the opposite sex. The latter tended to be honest enough, but… there was no getting around it: they were just as insecure and dysfunctional as she was, and that was unattractive. It made her a horrible person, she knew, to hold a standard higher than she could meet, but she knew deep down that two needy, coping people together was not a recipe for a healthy relationship. Perhaps more than that, it was not a pathway to getting better, to becoming a better person.

Highschool thus had been miserable, and undergraduate school had been pretty much useless. The one boyfriend had forever soured her on dating other gamer/nerd types. He had proven her theory regarding dating within her own community, and kissing him had been an exercise in perfunctory performance of an obligation. The one-off dates had proven her theory about guys who thought her nerdiness would make her easy and were just looking for easy. What a mess.

She was still a virgin. The popular attitude amongst her peers—and of course on television and in movies—was that being a virgin at her age implied she couldn’t get laid; that there was something fundamentally wrong with her, something fundamentally outside the norm. That she was a virgin she kept a carefully guarded secret. But she was glad; she had held back, and all of those past experiences had borne out according to her worst expectations. She frankly thanked God she had not gone to bed with any of those guys, even the boyfriend, as earnest and well-meaning as he had been.

Two weeks ago, she had confided in Doran that she was still a virgin, and that she wanted to wait until marriage. It still blew her mind that she had done so, that she could trust him that deeply. Their relationship had been in a good place, comfortable, and he had been pressuring her—gently, she had admitted. Not begging, not whining, not too aggressive. In the heat of making out, his fingers would start to wander a little, in a way not at all unpleasant, and when she would tell him to stop, he would stop, but then he would say to her something like, “I do want you,” or “I think we’d be really good together,” or, perhaps the line that cut her closest to the quick: “I’m not going to force you, babe, but you don’t have anything to worry about. You’re safe with me.” It was one of the hardest things she had ever done, not giving in that night. That was when she had told him, had confided in him a synopsis of her dating history and her resolution to wait.

Since then he had stopped pressuring her, and, more miraculously, had continued to date her.

That was when she began to wonder if he could be the one. Was it possible? Could a man be that good?

“It’s good to see you,” he said, still holding her with a hand around her back, still looking down at her from way up there. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“May I get your door for you?” he asked, releasing her and not waiting for her answer but stepping past her to open the passenger-side door.

“Yeah…” she replied belatedly.

“M’laaaaaady,” he said, grinning and offering her a hand.

“You’re really laying it on thick,” she observed.

“I’m going to meet your parents! That’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah…” She took his hand and used it to help push herself up into his pointlessly tall truck. It was all so silly, and she felt so silly, and she felt so good. That only left the question of whether she felt too good. Was feeling this good a sign of trouble? Was it all too good to be true? There was the sixteen-year-old giggler inside her, and then there was the much bigger inner monster that said, yes, it was too good to be true. Real life is never this good.

Doran made certain she was entirely in and then closed her door and headed around the front. She waited, so lost in her own thoughts that when he finally climbed in, she failed to notice.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Hmm?” She looked over at him, and then came to her senses. “Yeah! Yeah, I’m good. Just thinking about things.”

“That’s one of the things I like about you,” he said. “You think about things. Most people don’t do a lot of thinking about anything.”

She chuckled. His flattery was nice, but it pushed her further into her reverie.

“You want to talk about it?”

Melody closed her eyes, thinking about his question for a moment, and then she said, “Not yet.”

In TV shows, they always said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” or “it’s nothing,” or “I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” and it was always a cheap ploy by the writers to keep the drama going. Drama through protagonist stupidity. Melody had determined long ago that she would never utter those words. If she ever had a real relationship, she would talk about it, whatever “it” was. At most, she would allow herself some time to think about it first. She had delivered the same requirement to Doran when they had begun dating. Never, ever, ever say anything that a character in a direct-to-Internet-TV show would say. Not permitted. She looked over at him again. “You’re doing everything right,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Okay.”

“I’m just saying, you’re doing everything right. Don’t change. My parents are going to love you. I’m just… I’m thinking about myself, not you.”

“You know I love you just the way you are, right?”

“You know you sound like a bad TV character when you say that, right?”

He pursed his lips. “Yeah, but it’s true.”

“Is it?”

“Of course!” he said, and she could hear the pitch and timber of his voice winding up. She was upsetting him, on the cusp of what was surely already a somewhat stressful venture for him. A big deal, as he had said. She held up a hand.

“I’m saying, should you? Should you love me just the way I am?”

“Yes! Why not?”

“That’s what I’m thinking about.”

He sat back against his seat, looking out at the road ahead. “I don’t know what you want from me, right now.”

Another line from a TV show. She took a deep breath. In the show, the girl would respond, “I don’t want anything from you! Why can’t you just listen? You don’t understand me!” Melody could hear the whole exchange in her mind, because she’d heard it in every show she’d ever watched, or so it seemed to her.

“I want you to wait,” she said quietly. “Just… trust me that you’re doing good, and I want you to wait while I think about this. When I know what I think, I’ll talk to you about it, and you can tell me what you think. Okay? But I want to come to my own ideas first. Will you wait?”

Doran rapped on the steering wheel for a moment, and then he smiled. “You know I’ll wait for you.”

Right to the quick. She reached out and took his hand in hers, and then somewhat to her own surprise she kissed his fingers.

“Wow,” he said.

“Just drive, mister.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He put the truck in gear and pulled away. She held onto his hand, and he made no move to reclaim it.

After a few miles, he asked, “What’s the alternative?”

“What?” she said, again breaking out of her inner world.

“I mean, if you don’t love a person for who they are, then what do you love them for?”

 “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. If you come up with a good answer, I’d love to hear it.”

“Okay…” he said.

They drove on in peace. If he was not accustomed before the trip to her introversion, he had a good sense of it by the time they arrived. It was the better part of an eight-hour drive, and she took her share of it behind the wheel, and all the while she volunteered but a few sentences, most of them some variation on, “Do you want anything from the convenience store?” What he could hardly guess was that her inner voice, her mental monologue, was going all the while. They were just her thoughts, her private thoughts, and it never even occurred to her to share them. Sharing was not what they were for.

Well after sundown they arrived, and her parents’ home was a beacon of warm light in the dark. The sight of it shot pangs of nostalgia through her. She rarely felt as homesick as she did in the first moments of arriving here. This was not even the home in which she had grown up, for her parents had moved here since she had gone to college. Even so, this was a place of comfort, a place where schoolwork and her personal struggles could not seem quite to reach her. It was a place of safety.

Her father’s silhouette emerged from the front door even as they were taking their luggage out of the bed of Doran’s truck, and as they walked up he stood on the porch, waiting to hug her and to shake Doran’s hand.

“Dad, this is Doran. Doran, my father.”

“Mister Ritter,” said Doran, offering his hand.

“Good to meet you, Doran. Come on in—Can I help you carry anything?”

“If you’d like to get Melody’s bag—”

“I’m fine,” she interjected. “Am I upstairs?”

“Yup.”

“There’s my baby!” chirped her mother, just then arriving in the foyer.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Hiiiiiiiiii! Oooooh, it’s so good to see you! How are you?”

There was much hugging and smooching that needed reciprocation, and by the time that was done, Melody found that Doran and her father were already half-way up the stairs with all of the luggage, including hers.

“I’m coming.”

“We’re fine!” said her father. “I’ll show Doran where he’s sleeping.”

“I put you in your room—” said her mother. It was not really her room, but the spare room they always gave to her when she visited. It was decorated in a feminine fashion and with mementos of her childhood, like a tacit commandment: Thou shalt visit thy mother and thy father, regularly. “—and him across the hall. I have to admit,” she added more quietly as the men disappeared into the upper floor, “I was surprised when you said two rooms. I kind of assumed…”

Melody was staring at the upper landing, whither they had gone. She drew her gaze to her mother and found her mother gazing at her. “He’s a good guy. If I was any other girl, we’d be sleeping together. But he…” She shrugged. “So far he hasn’t given up on me.”

“Oh, baby!” Melody’s mother embraced her again, squeezing her hard. “You’re a good girl, and don’t ever let anyone tell you different. You’re making a good choice, and if he’s okay with it, then he’s probably the good man you think he is.”

“Thanks, Mom. I think so too.”

“Oh, sweetie, you’re crying!” she said, wiping a tear away from Melody’s cheek of which Melody had only just that moment become aware. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah,” said Melody quietly, nodding her head and wiping her face with both hands. “Super good. School is good, and Doran is great, and I’m just… really happy to be here.”

“Oh!” Another hug. It was good to have a Mom. “Well! You go get settled in, and freshen up. There’s cookies. Or wine. Or both.”

“Both!”

“Okay! It’ll be here when you’re ready.”

“Okay.”

Melody let her mother go and proceeded up the stairs, musing on the origin of her tears. They surprised her. Her emotion surprised her. What was its source? Was she really just overwhelmed by the good things in her life? Was it the inner sixteen-year-old, crying tears of girlish joy? Or was it more likely that she was troubled by those good things? Was it that pessimistic, cynical inner monster, fatted on eight hours of critical introspection, and now as ever waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Doran went over with her parents swimmingly. That had never been in doubt. He was by all accounts the catch of a lifetime. If he had any serious faults, she had not yet identified them, so it was hardly likely that her parents would ferret them out in a few days.

“So, Doran, I understand you’re pursuing your undergraduate degree.” The test.

“Yes, sir. I took a few years off after high school to work. I knew I wasn’t ready for college. Wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, you know?”

“What’d you do? After high school, I mean?”

“Odd jobs, actually. Believe it or not, I mowed lawns for a while. Worked a package distribution center.”

“What made you decide to go back to school?”

“Working in a package distribution center, honestly.” Laughter. “Seriously, I’d rather mow lawns than do that again. But lawn-care doesn’t really pay the bills, unless you own the company, and it’s successful.”

“Is that what pushed you to major in business?”

“She mentioned that, did she? Yeah, I guess. That and… I guess I’m still not sure what kind of business I want to do. I just know I don’t want to be at the bottom of it, whatever it is. If an MBA gets me a shot at, y’know, being in charge some day, then I figure that’s the way to go.”

“That’s a good start, for sure. So how are you paying for your education? Student loans?”

“Dad!” interjected Melody, but Doran laughed it off. This was all part of the ritual.

“Some loans, some scholarship. Turns out, I’m still eligible to run for the school track team.”

“No kidding! Mel said you were a runner.”

“Runner, long jump, high jump, and pole vault. I’m scrawny and quick.” More laughter.

“That’s great. How did you get picked up for the team?”

“Walked on, believe it or not. I ran all these events in high school, and was pretty good. I tried out, got accepted, and won a scholarship the next year.”

“That’s incredible fortune.”

“Believe me, sir, I know it. Second only to meeting your daughter.” Bam. Melody felt herself turning red. “But seriously, I probably would not have passed Calculus without her. That’s how we met, you know.”

“She mentioned you asked her to tutor you, but we didn’t really get the details.”

“Oh, yeah. So, I was doing okay in business math, and was kind of enjoying it, right? And my advisor says, ‘Hey, if you really like this, higher math will look good on your resume. You could go into Calc I next semester.’ And I’m like, that sounds hard, but if you say so. It turned out to be a terrible decision.”

“You just had a terrible professor,” said Melody. And it was true. That professor had been truly awful. Anyone would hate math after taking a class with him.

“Yeah, you’re right about that. But still, I had no idea what was going on. No idea what anybody was talking about. So there I am, the one struggling adult in this class full of math wiz-kids, going to the library after class and literally, like, trying to sweat my way through the course. I realized I was not going to make it out alive, right? And I was going to have to get some tutoring. And wouldn’t you know it, that same night, there’s this really cute girl working at another table, and she’s got all kinds of math books around her, and she’s just tapping away at her computer like it’s no big deal. So I asked her if she knew anything about calculus. She gave me a pretty funny look when I did, but she said yes.”

“I did?”

“Oh yeah. You looked at me like I was from another planet. Like I was something you found in a test tube in somebody’s laboratory.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Dead serious.”

“But she agreed to help you,” prompted Melody’s mother.

“She did. And the rest is history. I barely passed Calculus I, and I met your genius daughter.”

“So,” interjected her father, raising a hand, “you just walked up to a girl you thought was cute and asked her to tutor you in math, out of the blue?”

Doran shrugged. “Look, Mister Ritter, I’m not going to tell you I’ve got no experience with girls. I did a lot of dating in high school, and after. I’ve always been a lot better with girls than, y’know, math and science. But… Mel is different.”

“How so?”

“I’m right here!” Melody wanted to shout, but, again, this was the ritual. Plus, she wanted to hear his answer.

“Melody—Your daughter… Well, she’s different from the girls I always dated before. She’s serious. She studies. She’s kind of a nerd, but in a good way. And, well, she makes me want to be a better man.”

Melody shot him a sharp look.

“Mm, sorry,” he said.

“What?” asked her father, glancing from the one to the other.

“She has this rule, I’m not allowed to say anything that a TV character would say.”

“Neither of us, is, because TV characters are stupid.”

“Yeah. So… let me rephrase. Melody has high standards. She’s the first girl I ever dated who had really, like, genuinely high standards. I’m sure she gets that from you. You’re still together. My parents didn’t have high standards, and they’re divorced.” He shrugged a little. “I don’t want to end up that way. So I guess I figure a woman with high standards is a good place to start.”

“Well said.”

Yes, well said, you devil. But then again, Melody could not honestly accuse him of dissembling. Every indication was that the things he said he genuinely believed. Every guy said he was trying to be a better man. Every guy said his girl made him want to be a better man. What was the difference? Why did it feel truthful with Doran? Why did he not feel like a rescue case, if his story and rhetoric were so stereotypical of a rescue case? Was she just blinded by girlish infatuation? Was that the other shoe? Was it just a matter of time before his professions of wanting to be a better man proved hollow, before she realized he had some deep fault that would never improve, and before it became clear that all he really wanted was to be loved by a surrogate mother, “just the way he is?”

Why did Melody keep coming back to the idea that seeking to be loved “just the way one is” was not the right answer? That was the crux of the matter.

Her lungs screamed at her, ached, sucked air desperately. Her feet pounded the pavement, but her thighs had no more strength to drive her any faster. She all but stumbled to a stop and doubled over, putting her hands on her knees, gasping.

“No no,” he said. “Stand up straight.”

She winced but obeyed, straightening up.

“Belly breathe. In deep, out slow. Here.” Doran took her hands and held them over her head. “Breathe. Nice run. You’re getting better. How does it feel?”

“Awful,” she said.

This was the crux of the matter. It was their third day here. Her parents occupied a nice two-story house along a sparsely-populated highway about thirty minutes outside of town, just far enough to be too far to be called suburban, but not quite so far as to be called the countryside. A home here usually came with five or six acres of lawn and woods. A few of the neighbors kept horses. The road was long, straight, moderately rolling in the vertical, and generally devoid of traffic. As far as Doran was concerned, it made for a great running road.

“It feels awful. I don’t feel like I’m getting better. I feel like every time I run, I just find out all over again how bad I am at it. I can’t breathe!” she snapped, not at him but at herself, or perhaps at the world. She took her hands back and put them on her hips, looking around. Her mind took her back to her bedroom, pulling on the track top and matching shorts she had bought because he had encouraged her to get some proper running gear. In the store, she had managed to convince herself to buy them, but as she had put them on today, she had hated herself in them. The stretchy, moisture-wicking material, so flattering as it hugged the form of a female athlete or a mannequin, only accentuated her excess flesh. The fat around her midriff bunched up over the waistband in what she could only describe as a muffin-top. “Fuck,” she had said quietly, aloud, to her mirror, and then she had put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts over the running garments.

“Nobody starts out good at something, Mel. You’ll get better.”

“Will I?”

“Of course. If you stick with it. If you keep running, and eat healthy, your body can’t help but get stronger.”

“And lose weight.”

“And lose weight.” Doran was being careful. He knew he was on dangerous ground, though he had a sneaking suspicion that the danger with Melody was not quite the same as the danger would be with any other girl.

Melody closed her eyes and took several more deep breaths. “And what if I don’t? What if I can’t?” She let her arms hang down and her hands ball into fists. “What if I just can’t do it? Will you still love me, just the way I am?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, in the manner of a man picking his way through a minefield. “Of course.”

“But you’d love me a little less than if I had been able to. If I’d stuck with it, and ate right, and lost the weight. You’d love me more if you could have me be me, but also that.”

“Melody, stop.”

“No, this is important. And you’re not wrong. It’s not wrong. That’s what I’m saying. It’s the same for me. What made me interested in you was because you were a jock, but you actually seemed to want to do good at math. You were actually trying in that calculus class.”

“Is that what you want? Would you like me to keep taking math classes?”

“Yes! Or, I mean, sure, math. Or computer stuff. Whatever. Stuff that’s not just jock stuff. I want you to be the jock that’s also got the brains and the good character. And you want me to be the cute nerdy girl who’s also a runner and has ten percent body fat or whatever, and you’re not wrong to want that!”

“Healthy body fat on a woman is more like fifteen to twenty-five percent.”

“Okay, whatever. The point is, you’re not wrong to want more of a person. Of me. And—” She hit each word as if with a sledgehammer, to drive it home as much to herself as to him. “—I want to be that.” Melody looked up at him. “I don’t want to be stuck just being the nerdy girl. Why can’t I be fit and skinny, too? People can be athletes and still play videogames.”

“Yes!” said Doran. “Absolutely. I am for this.”

“But it’s hard,” Melody concluded. “I mean, I seriously… You talk about feeling good after a run. Runner’s high? I don’t feel high when I run. I feel like I’m dying. And when I get done, I just feel weak. Weak and like I’m dying.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t know what to tell you except you just have to stick with it. It’s going to be hard, if you’ve never tried it before. It’s a lifestyle. You have to reshape your body and mind—but do you really think it’s any harder than me learning calculus?”

“You realize there’s a calculus-two, right? And three?”

“So we’re back to this. You want me to keep taking math classes.”

“I don’t know… kinda? I just… don’t want you to give up on it. If you don’t want me to give up on running, then I don’t want you to give up on technical things. Math, science, programming— something. If you love me the way I am, you should love me more if I keep trying to be an athlete, and if I love you, I should love you more if you try to be everything you are and also learn about intellectual subjects.”

“So you’re saying I’m not intellectual. I’m just a dumb jock.”

Melody’s head snapped around, and she stared at him wide-eyed. Was that what she had said? Was that what he had heard? Had she just—

He grinned. “I’m sorry, that was mean. Look, I know what you’re trying to say. You realize you’re a weird-ass girl, right?”

She opened her mouth, but she had no response to say with it quite yet.

“Is this what you were thinking about all the way down here in the truck?”

“Yeah, I guess. Some of it.”

He began to walk back toward the house, and she followed. “So, basically, what you’re saying is that love’s not blind, and also not unconditional. You’re saying you love me proportionately—that’s a math word—to how good I am at things, and what things I’m good at.”

“Well… what if I am?”

“I’m not gonna lie: it’s a bit…”

“Heretical.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, am I wrong? If you could have me, but also I had the body of a cheerleader, wouldn’t you want that?”

He was quiet for a few paces. “You know, one of the things that made me start to be really interested in you was when you agreed to go running with me. And when you kept going running with me. I would love for you to become an athlete. But I wouldn’t want that if it meant you stopped being you. The things I like about you.”

“But it doesn’t mean that! If I could be an athlete, it wouldn’t make me any less me, except maybe I’d be less of the bad parts of me. I’d have more discipline.”

“And more confidence.”

That caught her off guard, but it was true. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah. More confidence.”

 “You can do it.”

“That’s what you keep saying.”

“Because it’s true.”

“Well, you can learn math, or science, or computers, or whatever you put your mind to. I believe that. You’re a smart man.”

“Well, thank you. I’ll tell you what: let me give it some thought. ‘Kay? You asked me, in the truck, to let you give it some thought, so let me give it some thought, and I’ll get back to you.”

“That’s fair. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

He waved a hand. “You only hurt my feelings with your high standards. And I think you hurt your own feelings more than mine, so I figure I should probably man up about it.”

“Oh, God. I’m not sure that’s… I mean…”

He took hold of her hand, and hand-in-hand they walked, while she gave up trying to complete her thought.

“So,” he said after a minute or so of silence.

She looked up at him.

“You love me, eh?” Her mouth must have made a “What?” shape, even though no sound escaped her, because he followed with, “That’s what you said. You totally said you loved me.”

 “I’m not sure I did.”

“You did.”

“Okay, well, let me just say I’m happy you haven’t run away screaming, yet. That’s worth a lot.”

They made it back to her parents’ house and put their conversation, if her mad ravings and his desperate attempts to keep up could be called a conversation, on hold. That night (blessedly not until dessert was concluding) her father asked the big one:

“So, Doran. What are your intentions toward my daughter?”

“Okay!” said Melody. “I’ll be on the porch.”

“You go right ahead, Mel,” said her mother.

Melody retreated from the proving grounds. Poor Doran, she thought. He was such a goodhearted boy, and not only was he getting it from her father, as was to be expected, but he was bearing the full brunt of her crazies as well. What was it that she really wanted? Was she, in fact, crazy? And even if she was not, was she asking the impossible—of him, and of herself?

It was a dark night, cool and crisp with the lateness of the season. Melody sat on the back porch with the porch light off, so that only the glow from the windows behind her illuminated her surroundings, reaching not very far into the spacious, sparsely wooded back yard. She sipped her coffee, enjoying the contrast of hot and cold, light and dark. She had always liked the dark, since she was old enough to be Emo. Overt Gothicism had never been her style, but she certainly identified with that subculture. Perhaps that was her cynical inner monster, or maybe the intersection of her two inner creatures, the cynical monster and the innocent teenager. The overlap of the two circles in the diagram. “With your powers combined, I am Emo Goth Girl!” she thought. “I am very sad, and no one understands me!”

She sipped her coffee. “I’m not very sad, but I’m pretty sure no one understands me. I’m not even sure I understand me.” The trouble was—Well, really, there were two troubles. The immediate trouble was her discontent with herself, and her dissatisfaction with settling for who she was at this moment in her life. Why couldn’t she be everything she was, and also the things she wasn’t yet? A sexy, slender, cat-like athlete, and, hell, while she was at it, socially adept as well, and a leader among men (and women). They’re just skills, right? Sure, talent makes a prodigy, but anyone could at least get the basics. What obstacle was there?—except it’s Really Hard. That was it. The only thing between the her of the moment and the her she wished she was was that getting there was Really Hard.

The other, greater trouble was that it was very easy to identify what was wrong with other people’s ideas (Case in point, “love me just the way I am.” Obviously weak-sauce), but coming up with correct ideas to replace them was much harder. It was easy to prove someone else’s answer was wrong, but hard to come up with a right answer. And being someone who only pointed out the flaws in the ideas and arguments of others, who could only tear down idols but not build monuments, who only “asked hard questions” but could not provide any answers, was similarly weak-sauce. “Love me as I am” was wrong, or at least not as universal as people thought, but if so, what was the correct way to love? Where did unconditional love fit in? What sorts of love were supposed to be conditional, and if they were conditional, were they less of love? She let her eyes gaze into the flat black of the night while her mind wandered through these philosophical groves.

The door opened, and Doran put his head out. “May I join you?”

“Yeah,” she said. He stepped out and closed the door. “Did you survive the interrogation?”

“I think so,” he answered as he took a seat next to her. “I told your dad I intend to date you casually until you get bored with my dumb ass and throw me back.”

“You did not!”

“Okay, not really. I told him I planned to respect your choices and not pressure you to do anything you don’t want to do, but I think you’re really special and… well… we’re kind of waiting and seeing.”

She looked at him for a long moment, blinked a couple of times, and then turned to the night again. “Yeah,” she said.

After a pause, he added, “It kind of makes me think, though, that maybe we should figure out where this is going. Yes, I know that sounds dangerously close to TV talk, but after our talk today…”

“Yeah,” she said. She looked down at her coffee. “So what are your intentions toward me?”

“Well, I kinda think I should be asking you that,” said Doran. “What are your intentions toward me?”

“I guess that depends.”

“On?”

“Your answer to what we were talking about earlier. You said you wanted to give it some thought. Are you ready to tell me what you think?”

“Huh,” he replied. “Well, actually, I did have an idea about that.”

He had her attention.

“Well, I was thinking, maybe each of us trying to get the other into our thing is not really the right answer. So I was thinking, maybe, for fitness, we could both join one of those power-workout gyms. I’ve never done anything like that, or any lifting, so it would be new for me, too. We’d both be pretty much starting from scratch. And if there’s something you want to try on the technical side you haven’t done before, we could both get into that, too.”

“Robotics.”

“Robotics?”

“Drones. I always wanted to try flying a drone.”

He considered it. “Drones are pretty cool. So what do you think? We start new things, as a couple, that force us both out of our comfort zones.”

“I think it’s sweet,” she said. “I like it. Is this… are you willing to give this a try?”

“Of course. I’ve still got some elective credits to spend, too. I could do, like, an engineering course. I think it would be interesting. And I’ve always wanted to see if I could get bigger.”

“Not necessary, but I’m not opposed,” she said in her mind. Out loud: “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. You’re… you’re really good to me. I really do worry I don’t deserve it.”

“Well, that’s what you were talking about before, right? If we’re not going to just love each other as we are, then we should both work to be the kind of people who deserve each other.”

“I like that.”

“So now can you tell me what your intentions are toward me?” he asked.

She giggled. “Okay, well… I think let’s see how this plan goes, and if we both enjoy, uh, getting out of our comfort zones together, as a couple.”

“And if we do?”

“Then, you know, I could see us talking about… future plans….”

He exhaled. They were quiet for a while. “It is hard to put the name to it, isn’t it,” he said.

“What?”

“The ‘future plans.’”

“Yeah.”

“Well…” He hesitated for another long moment, and she could tell he was making sure of himself. “If we do, y’know—if this plan does work out, then I would also be okay with talking about ‘future plans.’”

Her heart made its way into her throat. “Really?” she all but choked.

“Yeah,” he said.

Melody stood up, her heart pounding. She stepped over to him, settled down into his lap, and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed her back, in a way that again made the whole chilly autumn night flutter away, so that she was very surprised when all of the porch lights suddenly came on.

“Oh, my God, I am so sorry!” said her mother from the door. “I didn’t—the lights were off, and I just—should I turn them back off? I could—”

Doran was chuckling through his nose, and Melody found herself laughing uncontrollably. “No, no, just leave it on. You can come out and sit with us if you want. We were about done making out.”

“We were?” asked Doran, sounding a little disappointed.

“We were,” she said, standing up again.

“Oh.”

“Oh, you!” said her mother. “No, I was actually getting ready to go to bed. I just wanted to say good night. Your father is still up, though.” She lowered her voice a little. “If you keep smooching, maybe he’ll come out and you can scandalize him, too.”

“Okay, Mom, we’ll keep that in mind.”

“Just an idea. Good night, sweetie. Doran.”

“Night, Mom.”

“Good night, Mrs. Ritter.”

As Mrs. Ritter closed the door and retired, Melody moved back to her chair and sat down, giving Doran a lingering smile which he reciprocated. Maybe the monster was wrong, or at least its perspective was wrong. Maybe an imperfect life could still go this well, if one simply tried. Melody took up her mug of coffee and sipped it as she resumed her contemplative gazing into the night.

Melody narrowed her eyes.

Melody shot to her feet so quickly that her chair fell against the window behind her and her coffee spilled over her hands, fortunately now only warm rather than hot. She did not notice.

“Are you all right?” exclaimed Doran, staring at her.

“Do you see that?” she whispered. Melody felt herself shaking. She had never experienced this kind of cold, clutching sensation inside her.

“What?” he asked, rising as well and looking where she was looking.

“Right there. That tree. Is that—Is that a person?” With the porch lights on, the overall glow of the porch reached further into the yard, illuminating a few of the nearer trees and just revealing a few more at the edge of vision. Melody had had the opportunity to spend holidays here several times over the past few years, and she knew the trees well enough—not with photographic recall, but well enough to know that none had a branch like that, hanging down like the arm of a man in silhouette, but a little too long, and too high, and shaped not quite right to be a human arm.

It was more than that, though, more than just an errant feature of a silhouette that might give the impression of a person. She could feel it. Every nerve in her body shivered in absolute conviction of a presence, like a man but—she knew in her heart—not a man. Right there, not twenty yards away.

“What is that?” asked Doran, now almost whispering as well. “Hey!” he shouted. “Who’s there?”

“Dad!” called Melody. “Dad, there’s someone in the yard!” It had to be a someone. The clutching feeling in the pit of her stomach could not be right.

“What?”

“Get a flashlight! I think there’s someone in the yard!”

A shifting of nearby shadows told of her father moving about inside the house, and then the door opened and a cold flashlight beam accentuated the warm glow of the porch and interior lights, a little brighter, but not as bright as Melody and Doran would have liked. The beam flicked about, playing over the tree trunks. “Where?” asked her father, taking a place next to Doran. The weak, white cone passed across the tree, and Melody’s heart skipped a beat. It came back instantly, even as Doran snapped, “There.”

Her father fixed the beam on the tree. He had seen it too, and now they all stared. The tree was as it was supposed to be, a pale trunk of bark texture, crisp and cold where the electric torch light fell upon it. But there was something else there, something suggested by the shape of the tree, or perhaps by some subliminally detected distortion of the dull glint of her father’s beam. They couldn’t see it, but they could all feel it.

“Who’s there?” her father demanded, as Doran had done. None of them dared heed the animal instincts which told them it could not be a “who.” “Hold this,” he ordered, handing Doran the flashlight. Its beam bounced.

“Oh my God,” squeaked Melody, covering her mouth with one hand. It was gone. By the time the beam returned to the tree, it was gone. And that proved to her senses beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had been real. Melody felt cold throughout her body. She felt herself shaking uncontrollably.

“Mel, get inside,” said her father. “Get inside and call the police. Who’s out there?” he shouted. “We’re calling the police!” To Doran, he said, “I’m going to get my shotgun. Keep that light on, see if you can find it. Him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Her father ushered her inside, almost shoving her through the door. “Go. Call ‘em.” He, meanwhile, hurried toward his study. Melody’s mother appeared from the first-floor master bedroom in her nightgown. “What’s going on?”

“There’s… someone in the back yard,” said Melody. “Dad’s going to get his shotgun just in case. It’s probably nothing, but we’re calling the police.” It’s probably nothing. Someone in the back yard. Getting the shotgun.

Melody found she could barely find the right buttons on the telephone’s keypad. Her hands were shaking violently. It had not been a person. It had not been physical. There were no such things as ghosts, but that was not a ghost. That was something more. A presence. This was what terror felt like.

“…your emergency?” the voice on the other end of the line was asking. At some point the call had connected. “Can you hear me?”

“There’s someone in our back yard!” Melody burst out. She had never experienced her own voice quivering like this.

“Okay, ma’am, I understand. Tell me your address.”

“Eleven twenty-one Pikeville Road.”

“That’s one one two one Pikeville Road?”

“Yes.”

“Is that Royston? Four-four-two-two-one?”

“Yes!”

“All right. Did you see the person in the yard?”

“Yes! Kind—” Kind of? What sense did that make? “—of. He was by a tree. Please hurry.”

Her father went past her, shoving shells into his shotgun while his wife looked on in shock. As he stepped outside, she turned her wide eyes on Melody.

“I understand,” the dispatcher was saying. “I’m sending a police unit now. Are you safe right now, ma’am?”

“Yes.” Quivering and quavering. “I’m inside. My dad and mom are here, and my boyfriend.”

“Okay, I want you to stay inside. Do not go outside or look for the person. Can you describe the person you saw?”

“No, we just…” What could she say? “It was too dark. We couldn’t see him very well, even with the flashlight.”

“But you’re sure it was a man?”

No. “Yes.”

“Race?”

“I’m not sure. He seemed really tall.”

“I understand. Just one individual?”

She froze and stared in abject horror at the back windows, and the backs of the two men on the porch, and the black night beyond. The idea that there might be more than one made her unable to breathe.

“Ma’am? Did you see just one, or more than one?”

“Just one,” she managed through a choking throat.

“Okay. It’s going to be okay, ma’am. Stay inside. The police will be there in just a few minutes.

Can you describe the house?”

It took Melody a moment to understand the question. “The house?”

“Yes, ma’am. Is it a two-story house, or one story? Is the yard large? Is there any gate or access code the officers will need?”

“There’s a gate.”

“At the entrance to the driveway?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see if the gate is open? Are you able to open it without going outside?”

“There’s a remote.”

Her mother grabbed the remote from the dish of odds and ends on the kitchen counter and ran to the front of the house.

“Okay, if you can open it without going outside, go ahead and open the gate.”

“Okay,” said Melody. “We’re opening it.”

“Good. Can you describe the house, and the back yard?”

“Um, two story? There’s a garage on the left—I guess that’s, I don’t know, the west side? I don’t know.”

“That’s okay. And the back yard? Small? Large? More than an acre?”

“I think it’s, like, four or five acres? There’s some trees, and then the way-back is more like woods—Oh my God—No! Dad!” She could no longer see their backs in the light of the porch. The flashlight beam was out in the yard, flicking this way and that. “Hold on!” she said to the phone, and then threw it down. “Dad! Doran! Don’t!”

She reached the back door. “Dad, the police are coming! We need to stay inside!” She could see the two of them, now. Doran had the light, still, and was sweeping it across the yard, while her father stood next to him with the shotgun held in both hands, not quite shouldered but ready.

“You stay there, Mel!” her father called back to her.

“Dad! Doran, please!”

She could not hear from the house what they were saying to one another, but she could see her father gesture, and Doran point the light at his direction.

“Just hold on, Mel.”

Even as he said it, the beam flicked, and they all glimpsed, as if in a snapshot, as if caught in the blink of a camera’s flash, a silhouette between two trees, distorted, too tall to be a man, too hulking, and with arms too long, with the impression of points like horns at its shoulders and upon its crown.

“Oh!” cried her father, and “Fuck!” shouted Doran, in unison. Once again, by the time the light came back to it, it was gone. “Where is it?” Her father had the shotgun up. Doran searched with his light—and found it—and lost it again, a streaking shadow in the perfect black of the night. They heard a crackle of leaves and twigs. His beam caught up to the sound, to find only a low tree limb swaying at the edge of the deeper woods beyond the back yard.

“God damn. Get back inside. Get back inside!” shouted her father, grabbing Doran by the shirt and shoving him back while he covered their retreat with his shotgun. They backed up together, Doran on the light and he on the gun, until they reached the porch and its blessed glow.

“Mel, I told you to get inside!” her father snapped. “Where’s your mother?”

“Mom!” she shouted, dashing toward the front—but met her mother coming the other way.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know! There’s—There’s something out there.”

“Something?” Her mother took hold of her as the men slipped inside, slammed the door shut, and threw the bolt.

“Everyone stay together,” said her father. “Where are the police?”

“Oh my God!” squeaked Melody, breaking free from her mother and running to the phone. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“I’m still here, ma’am. Is everyone all right? What happened?”

“We saw it! It ran into the woods!”

“You saw the person?”

“It’s not a person!” shouted Melody, and then realized what she had said. Everyone stared at her. If she could have, she would have been staring at herself. However, it was the fact that none of them disagreed which so shocked them all.

“What do you mean, ma’am? Is it an animal?”

“No—Oh, God, I don’t know. We don’t know what it is. It’s big. Taller than a person. All black, or—I don’t know. It’s hard to see.”

“And fucking fast,” said Doran.

“How far out are the cops?”

“My dad wants to know how far away the police are. When will they get here?”

“The patrol unit is about six minutes away, now, ma’am. Just hang tight, dear.”

“Six minutes, she says.”

“Ma’am, just stay indoors. Are you armed? Does anyone in the house have a weapon?”

“Yeah, my dad has a shotgun.”

“Okay, I recommend you go into one room together and close the door. Do you have a room you can all go to that has a phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I want you to go ahead and hang up this call, and barricade in that room. Is it the same number as this? Same phone number? One two one four?”

“We’ll take this phone.”

“Okay, it’s a cordless phone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I want you to go ahead and hang up, now, and barricade in there. Once the police are there and have made sure it’s safe, I’ll call you back, okay?”

“Okay.” Melody relayed to the rest: “She wants us to barricade, like in your room or your study or something.”

“That’s fine. Come on.”

“Okay, I’m hanging up now?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Stay safe and wait for my call. This will all be over in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Okay, thank you. Good bye. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome, ma’am.” Melody hung up the phone.

They proceeded to her parents’ bedroom and closed and locked the door. Doran checked each of the windows, first testing its security and then pressing the flashlight to the window-pane and cupping his hands around it so as to show its beam onto the grounds outside. He found nothing.

They all stood about. None of them wanted to sit. Her father held her mother, and Melody felt Doran take her in arm as well. She realized she was still shaking, hard.

It seemed that in no time, though, they heard the sound of a siren approaching, and heard it cut off as it reached their mailbox. They saw through the window red and white lights flashing as the patrol car proceeded up the driveway, and they saw the greater white glare of its searchlight probing about. It passed out of view as it drew near the house, for their view from this room was limited. They continued to wait in silence.

The phone rang. Melody nearly jumped out of her skin and grabbed hold of Doran’s shirt. He chuckled at her expense. It rang again. “You going to answer that?” he asked.

She pushed the button. “Hello?”

“Ma’am, this is the emergency dispatcher. The patrol unit is at your house now. They’ve searched around and found no one. You’re safe to come out of your room.”

“Okay.”

“Do you still have the shotgun?”

“Yeah.”

“Please unload the shotgun safely and leave it in the room, all right? For the safety of the officers, please leave the shotgun in the room.”

“Okay—Dad, she says to leave the shotgun here. The police are outside.”

“Okay,” he said, putting it on safe and leaning it in a corner.

“All right, ma’am, you can hang up, now. The officers should be knocking on your back door now.”

Sure enough, there came a rapping at the back door, and a call of, “Police!”

“Okay. We can hear them. Thank you. Thank you so much! Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure, ma’am.”

She hung up. When she went out to the great room, her father had already admitted the two patrolmen, and they were conversing.

“…sure it was a man,” her father was saying. “Maybe some kind of costume, or maybe the light just played funny with the shadows, but it was definitely a man. I can show you right where he went.”

 “All right, sir, if you can show us that, we’ll look around a bit more.”

“Yeah. Right this way.”

Melody felt much better, now. She felt much better about her father going out there with the two uniformed policemen at his side. Having the police here made things normal, which meant that what they had seen almost certainly was something normal. They were not dreaming; this was not a fantasy. The police were here, and this was reality, and what they had seen was some terrible illusion that had sparked deep, primordial fears inside the most animal parts of her. It had been the sort of illusion, the sort of circumstance, that inspired ghost stories and monster myths in ancient eons before humanity knew any better, but she could believe now that an illusion was all it was.

Her father returned. The police were out for a while, searching about. Occasionally she caught glimpses of their much more powerful flashlights glinting through the woods. Her mother made a pot of coffee, and no one turned down a cup. No one dared converse while they waited. None of them wanted to speak, because none of them wanted to describe what they had seen, as it surely could not have been. Instead they sat together as couples, sipping at their mugs in silence.

Eventually the two policemen returned. They had found nothing significant, they said. Whoever it was, he had almost certainly been frightened off at this point, but they would continue to send patrol cars through the area over the course of the night, just to make sure. “Try to get some rest,” one of the officers recommended.

They departed.

“Well! That was scary,” said Mrs. Ritter. “I’m just glad it turned out to be nothing.”

“Yeah, you and me both, hon’. I don’t know how I’m going to get back to sleep tonight,” said Mr. Ritter.

“I bet you’ll be asleep before your head hits the pillow,” said Mrs. Ritter.

“Well, I’m not shaking anymore,” said Doran, “so I’m going to lie down and hope for the best. You heading to bed?” he asked Melody. She nodded.

“All right, then. Mr. Ritter, Mrs. Ritter. Uh… Mr. Ritter, I’m sure whoever it was is long gone, but I’ll feel better knowing that shotgun is still loaded and you’ve got it close.”

“Oh, there’s no question. Don’t you worry.”

“All right. Sir, ma’am, good night. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Doran. And good night, sweetie. Try to sleep, okay?”

“And Doran,” added her father, “good work, tonight. You’ve got courage. That’s good.”

Doran laughed, a sound more of skepticism than of humor. “Thanks, Mr. Ritter. I’ll just be upstairs changing my shorts.”

Her father laughed as well. Doran held out a hand to Melody. She exhaled and took it, and he led her upstairs. They separated, he observing that the whole incident had left him with enough of a sweat that he needed a shower.

A strong part of Melody did not want to let him out of her sight, and for a fleeting instant she even considered following him into the shower, but no, that was silly. That was something a character in a TV show would do. She was not that needy.

When he came out, she was in her pajamas, holding her pillow and blanket, standing in his room.

“Can I sleep with you, tonight?” she asked.

His mouth fell ajar. “Uh, yeah. Absolutely! Of course.” There he stood in the door, in his boxers and a t-shirt, towel in hand, like a deer in the headlights.

“I don’t mean, like…”

“No no, I know. I know the drill. It’s okay. I want you to stay. It’s fine.”

“Okay.”

He turned out the light, and she settled in with him, keeping a blanket between them. She could only imagine what he thought of her, taking advantage of him like this.  Like some kind of religious puritan from the days of yore. It probably would be impossible for him to understand, and to understand what a concession this was.

She had never spent the night with a man before. He immediately put one arm under her, cradling her head on his shoulder, and the other over her, holding her close. His body was hard, and sort of angular and lumpy, but it was warm, and it smelled good, and she felt safe.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. If she was aware of what was going on in his nether regions, she never let on. They eventually fell asleep.