The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni Page B

you back home.”

9.
    The Greater Intellect Speaks!
    IT WAS DARK AND STARLESS BY THE TIME I GOT back to the dome that evening. The woods were profoundly still and the leaves on the ground were coated in a slick frost. There was only one light on in the dome, the hanging lamp in Nana’s bedroom. I couldn’t see the light itself, only its reflective glow on the tall trunks of the walnut trees. Nana was not waiting for me at the door. I had anticipated a serious face behind the glass. Possibly a vexed one. But she was not there. And she didn’t make a sound when I stepped into our house, holding a thick cylinder of spray paint in each hand.
    Moments ago, I had asked Janice Whitcomb to deposit me halfway up the hill with my bicycle so I could walk the rest of the way. She agreed, but when she pulled the van to a stop on the shoulder of the road, she hadn’t unlocked my door. I’d yanked on the handle, but the door wouldn’t slide. I had looked to Janice and found her just watching out her window, taking in the dark woods around her. I lifted the handle once more, and that’s when she looked over at me and began speaking.
    “He doesn’t really socialize very well,” she said. “I know that. How could I not know that? He’s my child.”
    I tried to maintain a neutral expression.
    “He has some challenges with maturity,” she said. “I guess that’s obvious. And then there’s his father . . .”
    She gripped the steering wheel hard and then opened her palms and rested them on top of it. “And we don’t get along,” she continued, quietly now. “So there’s that. I don’t know how to talk to him, Sebastian. I’ve read books. I’ve read a whole library of these silly books. But it doesn’t . . . it won’t take. He doesn’t have anything to say to me.”
    Her last sentence was nearly a whisper.
    “Mrs. Whitcomb?” I said.
    She looked at me like she’d forgotten I was in the van.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, and laughed a little to herself. “I just wanted to tell you one thing. I didn’t mean to go on.”
    “It’s okay,” I said.
    “What I want to say is . . .”
    She closed her eyes.
    “I just want to say, I hope you’ll come back.”
    “Come back?”
    The windshield in front of us was beginning to fog.
    “Come back to our house, sometime, to see him,” she said.
    After she said this, she reached her hand down and popped the latch to the back of the van. The cold evening air rushed through in an instant and cooled the interior. Janice got out of the car, but it took me a second or two to do the same. She helped me unload my Voyager, and set it gently against the back bumper. Then she wrapped me in another of her hugs. It took me by surprise, but it didn’t bother me once it was occurring. I had only met Janice Whitcomb twice, and both times she had embraced me. It made me wonder how often most families touched.
    “I really hope you’ll come to a Youth Group meeting, Sebastian,” she said. “I think you’d like it.”
    She released me, and I grabbed a hold of my handlebars. I steadied the bike against my side.
    “I’ll try,” I said.
    She nodded her head once and then got back into the van. She fastened her seat belt and pulled a great circling U-turn. She sped off, back the way she came, leaving me bewildered at the side of the empty road. I looked at the spot in the gravel where her tires had been. I could still feel the warmth of her coat. I turned and entered the woods.
    My heart was beating quickly as I jogged with my bike. Without a second thought, I stopped and removed the spray cans from the basket and tore off the caps. I pressed the triggers and activated them until they were both half empty. In the process, I purposefully let a mist of ivory paint land on my wrists and the tips of my hair to make it appear that I had spent the day working.
    And now, in the moonlit dome, the spray paint gleamed in my tiny blond arm hairs like ice crystals. I shook the cans again, knocking