Chapter 40
“Jack!” I gasped as I raced down the stairs into the kitchen. “Something’s going on downtown!”
Downtown Possibly had been a black void outside of my window that night.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed in my boxers at bedtime, I was staring out at town.
No one moved on the streets—though people rarely did at night—and not a single light shone from the windows of the buildings in town.
I had opened the window so I could at least feel the Possibilian breeze, but even it had tucked itself away for the evening.
After I had gotten home—and collapsed against Jack in a pitiful display of indecipherable emotion, the rain pelted the house for hours.
Buckets dumped from the sky and the wind howled, the lights flickered and the power threatened to go out numerous times.
I’d gotten a shower, regardless of the storm, and joined Jack back at the kitchen table.
A pot of steaming hot chicken noodle soup—heavy on the noodles and chicken, light on the veggies, just as I liked it—was waiting on the table.
It couldn’t have been from scratch since Jack hadn’t had enough time to whip something up while I was in the shower, but I didn’t care.
It tasted better than canned, so it didn’t matter either way.
The two of us ate our lunch in amiable silence with hunks of crusty bread that were slathered in butter, which melted into the bread and the soup as soon as the heat touched it.
Both of us devoured our soup in great spoonfuls, butter running down our fingers and making our lips glisten, as we savored the meal.
After dinner, Jack had asked—via his notepad—if I wanted to learn to play Cribbage.
I’d never even heard of the game, so the next three hours were spent learning and playing.
I’m a teenager. Playing an old people card game with my stepfather wasn’t supposed to be an exciting evening activity, but I actually had fun.
I never won a single game against Jack, but it was nice to spend time with him that was comfortable, even in its silence.
After cards, we watched some stupid sitcom on T.V.
before I decided bedtime had come. Jack indicated that he was going to stay up to watch a little more T.V. , so I’d left him to it.
I found myself sitting in my boxers on my bed, staring out at downtown Possibly and Auggie’s barn like I did almost every night.
Unlike every other night, there was nothing to be seen or heard.
No lasers or lights show from Auggie’s barn.
No music drifting on the breeze. No sounds of Susurrus Creek whispering across town.
For a while, I stared at that black void and thought about Amos’ predicament with Lilly.
A person had to be entirely heartless not to feel for the guy.
The public humiliation. Finding out the person you loved would never love you back in the same way had to be the worst. To have the whole town find out you had no idea that you were chasing after the wrong person—and in kind of an obsessive way—had to be devastating.
Then again, I felt for Lilly, too.
To have someone obsess over you—though, I had no idea of the history between Amos and Lilly, or how she even knew about his obsession—had to be annoying.
Day after day of dealing with unwanted advances—whether the person knew it or not—had to drive a person mad.
I desperately wanted to know how Lilly knew that Amos was playing his daily song for her.
Had he flirted with her or mentioned that he was interested? Had someone else tipped her off?
There was so much about Possibly and its citizens that I wanted to know.
But people in Possibly didn’t talk about each other or gossip.
Auggie probably would have told me about Lilly and Amos if I was in a position to ask him.
He’d told me the history of a lot of the Possibilians in town.
Then again, everyone, including Auggie, had seemed shocked by the interaction between Lilly and Amos on Liberty Lane.
Maybe nobody had known?
Which made Amos’ humiliation even more painful.
I couldn’t blame the guy for leaping off of Lovelorn Pass Bridge to get over Lilly so quickly. A wound like that couldn’t be fixed with a bandage.
Regardless, the town had shut down after Amos’ display.
The rain could have been blamed for sure.
A tempest such as the one the black clouds had brewed would shut down any town, no matter how big or small.
However, Amos’ heartbreak seemed to be more impactful on the town.
Wyatt’s gunshots couldn’t be heard for the rest of the day.
No one raced from building to building in the deluge, and the lights went out everywhere—except Jack’s place—before night even fell.
It was if Amos’ predicament had taken all of the air out of Possibly.
Just when I thought I’d fall asleep, and dream up theories about Possibilians and all of their secrets, I saw the lights.
It was faint at first, the glow that was coming from Liberty Lane, but in all of the darkness, it was if someone had lit a beacon.
Tiny, firefly-like lights were popping up and down the street, glowing in brilliance until I could almost make out Earl Dean’s rainbow bricks from my third-floor window.
Frozen in wonder for a moment, I simply stared at the lights and how they shone against the still damp pavement.
Once I was able to shake off my stupor, I’d leapt from bed and pulled on fresh jeans and a t-shirt, then slid my feet into my sneakers without bothering to put socks on first. My shoes were still a bit damp from getting caught in the storm earlier, but I paid the clammy feeling no mind.
Instead, I’d raced down the stairs and announced excitedly to Jack that something was going on downtown.
Jack crooked his head to look at me over his shoulder, his brows knitted together.
“I don’t know, man,” I said. “There are some kind of lights all over the place on Liberty Lane. Like, I don’t know, fireflies or something.”
He didn’t react at first, but I could see from the cycle of expressions on his face that he was contemplating what could have caused lights to appear on Liberty Lane.
“Let’s go check it out!” I bounced in place, suddenly imbued with curiosity. “I want to know what it is!”
Jack dramatically looked up at the clock on the wall hanging over the T.V.
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a laugh. “Who cares? What else do you have going on?”
That made Jack grin. His chest rose and fell, as though a giant sigh of acquiescence rolled through him, and he pried himself up out of his chair.
I bounced giddily like a kid whose parent had just promised to take them to get ice cream as Jack slipped on his work shoes by the door.
As soon as he was ready for the walk, I ripped the front door open and dashed down the front steps.
Glancing over my shoulder, I made sure that Jack was following.
Down in the yard, water squished under my sneakers, but the yard wasn’t as swamp-like as it had been earlier in the day.
The Possibilian breeze had picked up just enough to whisper through my hair as Jack met me on the lawn.
He grimaced at the sound of his feet meeting the soggy lawn, but didn’t hesitate in following me quickly to the road.
It took some urging and show of excitement, but I got Jack to pick up his pace as we walked towards downtown.
When he saw the lights glowing from Liberty Lane in the distance, it took less encouraging on my part to get him to hustle.
Without asking him, I knew he saw the same thing I did on Liberty Lane.
The lights couldn’t have been from one of the shop’s owners turning on their lights.
It couldn’t have been a flashlight or even a spotlight.
It was too soft, too warm, yet the light still illuminated the street well.
When we reached Bend of the Road Graveyard, the two of us took off in a jog simultaneously without consulting each other first. Jack had a grin of pure curiosity and wonder on his face, and I knew my expression matched his as the two of us raced to the street.
Jack and I slapped and pushed at each other, as though racing and trying to throw the other off their game.
I laughed and swatted at him and he grinned and made his version of a laugh as we approached the corner of Liberty Lane.
I don’t know what I had expected to find on Liberty Lane; I had no idea what Jack had thought about the lights. What we found was equally confusing and mundane.
Someone had taken fairy lights and strung them up and down along the buildings on the street.
Twinkling slowly, the golden-yellow light illuminated the road as though a street fair was about to be set up.
Lights were wrapped around Jasper’s tram car, parked at the west end of the tracks.
The trees that lined the south side of the street were covered in the lights as well.
Yet no one was in sight. It was just Jack and me.
The two of us exchanged cautious smiles as we turned around slowly, taking in what had to be thousands of twinkling lights all around the street.
A silence that only the calm after a storm can bring surrounded us, enveloped us, and if it wasn’t for us, and the breeze, everything on Liberty Lane would have been deathly still. Except for the twinkling lights.
I stared in wonder, curious as to what it meant. Obviously, someone had hung the lights…but why? What did it mean? Why would someone come out so late at night after the storm to do such a thing?
Is this art?
When every speaker in town suddenly crackled to life, Jack and I both jumped in surprise.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones started to pour from the AMOR speakers all over town as the lights twinkled like fireflies around us.
Jack and I turned to each other, grins on our faces.
What is going on? Jack signed.
“No idea,” I said. “I—”