Strange is the Night Read Free Page B

Robert took his hand at last and let himself be pulled to his feet.
    The guy patted his shoulder and introduced himself as William Lanthorne. He told Robert not to sweat it; sometimes the trip became a fall, the dream a nightmare and it would all be over soon anyway. Robert started to tell him that he wasn’t high, but because he also wasn’t stupid, he opted not to. Instead, Robert thanked William and walked away before he could say anything else.
    The extra awkward part came when William knocked on Robert’s door a few minutes later with a bottle each of Gatorade and water and a half-eaten pack of cookies. He gave the items to Robert then asked if he could come in and Robert didn’t know what to do with any of it, least of all William who was smiling at him. He had one dimple and that was uneven as hell, but it looked good on him and it made Robert scowl even as he stepped back and let William in.
    A couple of weeks later, William kissed him in the library and his mouth tasted like chai tea and Robert didn’t tell him to fuck off. He kissed William back and it was strange because he had never kissed anyone before in his life other than to buss some relative on the cheek. When he drew back and looked into Willliam’s pale blue eyes and at the turrets and watchtowers of a great city wall running through the light reflected in those eyes, he thought that William was the beginning of the end and found himself feeling uncommonly cheerful about the revelation.
     
    College went faster after he met William and in his second year they left the dorms behind for a crappy apartment in a rundown part of town that had more ghosts than living inhabitants. Walking home at night after the last bus had run and the fog slithered down the narrow old town streets was an exercise in bravery, but Robert held William’s hand and swore to himself he’d always do what he could to protect him. It should have been a funny thought to have since William seemed to watch over Robert more than Robert watched over him, but William didn’t like the dark and he didn’t like walking home from the bus stop on foggy nights.
    William knew about the world by then. He had caught Robert staring into yet another puddle, this one on the sidewalk outside their dormitory. When he asked him what he was doing, Robert told him. It wasn’t easy to convince William that he was telling the truth about what he saw, but eventually William seemed to accept it. It was not a secret Robert could keep for very long from anyone because it went everywhere he did. With William, it wasn’t a secret that he wanted to keep and William didn’t let him down. He might not have totally believed him, but he didn’t leave Robert for it either.
    Sometimes he would ask what Robert saw in the windows of shops and tenement buildings that they walked by. Robert told him about the darkly glittering stars or how it was storming and that, in the world beyond the windows, the lightning was the color of sour citrus candy; bright orange, neon yellow and nuclear core red. He told William how it would burn your tongue if you stood too close to the glass when there was a storm. He described the screech of the wind and the far away sound of thunder.
    On one such night two months before they graduated, Robert stopped in front of a huge display window in an old department store that had been closed for years. No one in their tired little college town was destructive or mischievous enough to run around busting out heavy-duty windows like that. Aside from the student population and university staff, the town was pretty much a wasteland, the school the only thing keeping it alive.
    There was a wildfire raging in Robert’s world, the heat came through the glass and prickled against his skin. It was cold where he stood with William on the sidewalk, wind nipping at them and chapping their faces. Together, they looked into the mirror of the big window—William saw their silhouettes in the city-dark and