You'll Just Know

Chapter 12

            I had spent most of the next day trying to work up the courage to follow through with my idea, but when evening finally came around, I had decided it was too crazy and to just forget the whole thing. Just as it started to get really dark, though, I found myself sneaking out the back door anyway. Part of me was still saying “Are you insane?”, but another part of me was excited by the whole idea.

            Twenty minutes later, I found myself on the Cameron’s darkened front lawn. It was just past eleven and the only lights on in the huge house were a few upstairs. The thought came again “Are you insane?” and the answer came back this time “Yes! And I don’t care!”

            As I crept across the front lawn towards the house, I could feel the blood pounding in my ears. The buzz of locusts and crickets assaulted me from all sides, and the hypnotic sound served to heighten the sense of unreality that hung over the entire scene. Was I really going to do this?

            I ran through the darkness towards the far side of the house.

            There was the apple tree. Its low lattice of branches formed an almost perfect ladder. As I approached, though, I discovered a newfound uneasiness about climbing into a tree again. My arm was just now healing and my long fall through the branches of the oak was still very vivid in my mind.

            Something deeper eventually drove me on, though. As I inhaled a deep breath of the evening air, I realized that there would only be one summer night like this one. I was seventeen, and I would savor or regret the memories of this night for the rest of my life.

            Pushing away my doubts and fears, I grabbed hold of the lowest branches and began to climb…

            It was a long and terrifying climb to the roof of the Cameron’s huge house. I had to move slowly and cautiously in the pitch blackness to find my way from foothold to unsteady foothold among the lattice of branches. The ground disappeared in the darkness below, so there was really no way to judge how high I had come (and for that, I was thankful, but it also made it all the more terrifying). Near the top of my climb, particularly, the branches had begun to thin and had a really bad habit of swaying unsteadily beneath my feet.

            Still, though, I climbed upward and tried not to think about how I was going to get back down. Then, (and this was the tricky part, I knew), I shakily stepped onto the roof of the house (which, as it turned out, was closer to the tree than I had thought.)

            There, I knelt for a moment to gather my thoughts. Several cape-cod style windows jutted out on the roof, and I knew that one of them was Wendy’s. With the sketchy and incomplete layout of the house in my head, though, I couldn’t be completely sure which one was hers.

            Finally, I took a chance and made a best guess, stepping (oh-so-quietly) across the black rooftop towards one of the dimly lit windows in the back.

            The eave of the roof extended a few short feet past the outside sill of the window, so I could (carefully) crawl right up to it. As I approached, I had the sudden, terrifying vision of looking in and seeing Mr. Cameron’s huge and scowling face, pressed right up against the glass and snarling out at me. The thought gave me pause, and I stopped to say a quick prayer: Please let this be Wendy’s window, and if not, please let me die a quick and painless death…

            On my hands and knees, I crawled into a position beside the window so I could just peer around the edge of the glass. Warm lamplight spilled out of the room, and with relief I saw that I was looking into Wendy’s bedroom.