It had been several days since the Deetzes' arrival in pastel hell and Lydia remained unsuccessful in her search for more information about Edward. She wouldn't have even bothered going from door to door, asking the same question only to have the door shut in her face if there were something better to do. She was ready to pen "Don't hate me because I'm goth" onto her forehead. She knew the townspeople didn't like her simply because of her strange appearance, and even if she did get past the pleasantries, which were not pleasant at all, as soon as they heard her mention Edward the door stepped in and intervened in the conversation.
She was nearly ready to give up, when as she walked down the sidewalk, heading toward home, a car pulled quietly up alongside her, almost appearing from nowhere.
"I hear you're looking for information about the man who lives up there," the woman in the driver's seat said, gesturing toward the house on the hill. Lydia nodded.
"Yeah...I'm not really getting anywhere with that," she said, obviously dismayed. The woman smiled.
"I think I could help you. Would it bother you if I offered you a ride to my place? We could talk there." Lydia knew she should have been hesitant about getting into a car with a complete stranger, in a completely strange place, but this woman seemed completely harmless. Motherly, even. And she was so elated that her luck was finally looking up after a long day of slamming doors and odd glances that she didn't even think twice about opening the passenger's door and hopping right in.
"Thanks," she said, fastening her seatbelt. "Uh, I'm Lydia."
"Oh, how rude of me not to introduce myself, that's the first thing I should have done." The woman turned to Lydia and pushed her glasses up off her nose. "Heather Boggs," she said, extending her hand.
Lydia's face lit up at the sound of the familiar last name. This was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. She was sure to get some information out of this woman.
"Pleased to meet you," she said, shaking Heather's hand and trying not to grin like an idiot.
Mrs. Boggs was much wordier than Edward, and for this Lydia was grateful. She learned all that she'd wanted to know and then some. She was however a bit saddened to learn that Heather's grandmother and Edward's long lost love, Kim had passed away several years ago. As she sipped her milk and munched absently on the homemade cookies she'd been offered she silently debated whether or not to break this unfortunate news to Edward. Mrs. Boggs noticed that Lydia seemed troubled and distant and decided to ask what was the matter. Lydia told her.
"Oh..." she trailed off, as if pondering what she would do were she in Lydia's shoes, "I don't think it's really necessary to tell him. You don't even have to tell him about me, about what you learned concerning him, today."
"But what if he asks?" Mrs. Boggs smiled warmly.
"A little white lie won't hurt him...but the truth might." Lydia nodded, comprehendingly.
"He's been hurt enough." She didn't want to contribute to the poor boy's pain.
"Well, thanks so much for your help, Mrs. Boggs," Lydia said, brushing cookie crumbs from her skirt and standing up. "And your hospitality. I was hoping for something, but I certainly wasn't expecting this. Not from these people," she said. But Mrs. Boggs was clearly very different from the rest of the neighbourhood, and Lydia was glad of it.
"They don't take too kindly to strangers, its true," Mrs. Boggs said as she walked Lydia to the door. "Do you want me to give you a lift home, dear? Its getting dark and you're new to the neighbourhood. I don't want you to get lost."
"Actually, I wasn't going to go home...not just yet." Mrs. Boggs smiled. She didn't have to ask where her young friend was going; she already knew.
"Alright, dear. I'll take you there."
"Thanks." And the pair went into the garage, into the car and down the road. All this talk about Edward had made her miss him and feel the overpowering need to see him, which she found odd. It wasn't like she was attached to him. She'd only known him a total of four days, yet it seemed like longer for some inexplicable reason. She blamed her warm feelings for him on sympathy, though she knew it was more than that. She would go up there to see if she couldn't find out what.
Lydia found Edward in the garden in front of the house. He was standing still, his back slightly arched, leaning against an invisible wall behind him, staring up at the calm night sky. For a few moments all she did was watch him, silently from the shadows. The moonlight made his face appear even paler than it was. It made it glow. His scissorhands glinted and gleamed as they snipped quietly, the only movement keeping him from being a statue. That and the occasional blink of a dark eye.
Eventually Lydia brought herself to tear her eyes away from his still and strangely beautiful figure long enough to begin moving toward him. She cleared her throat when she was a good four yards away from him so as not to cause him alarm. Scaring him was the last thing Lydia wanted to do. To throw a pebble into such a calm pond would be a sin.
At first Lydia thought perhaps he hadn't heard her, as his head remained tilted toward the sky, his eyes lost in the stars. Nothing about him changed. He was frozen in time. Then he spoke.
"Look," he said quietly. Lydia moved closer to him before obeying. She'd looked at the stars plenty of times before, but not in a long time, and never had they seemed so clear, so bright, and so close that she felt should she reach out a hand she could grab one. She could almost feel them floating in her eyes as she gazed. They were really beautiful. Neither of them said so aloud but both knew that the other was thinking it. It was just one of those things that could get away without being said and the point could still be gotten across. It was brilliant.
A speeding streak of white light shot across the sky and was swallowed by the yawning blackness that stretched out forever and ever; a silver-scaled fish leaping out of a wave and disappearing into it again.
Lydia looked at her companion's glowing face. It was almost as if something in him had changed. She could nearly hear the thoughts running through the mysterious, cavernous halls of his head. He was making a wish, just as he did every night. Turning her head up to the pool of glittering starlight above her, she closed her eyes and willed a silent wish of her own to swim into its waiting arms.
They awoke the next morning to a loud banging sound. Edward missed Lydia's face by half an inch, and was more frightened at the possibility of having cut her than at the noise itself.
"What the hell...?" Suddenly an enormous boom sounded from downstairs, much like the one that had jerked them from their slumber.
"They must be fixing the house," Edward said, once he'd recovered enough to speak.
"Fixing?" Lydia's voice went up an octave. "They're ripping it apart!" In the blink of an eye she was on her feet, pounding down the stairs, leaving Edward still seated with his back against the wall, blinking dazedly.
He found her downstairs in the storm of dust and loud crashes and bangs.
"Honey? Is that you?" Charles' voice came from somewhere to the left of the staircase.
"Dad? What are you doing! You can't do this! It's dangerous! Edward and I have been upstairs all night! What if something collapsed!" She seemed oblivious that she'd just admitted to spending the night with Edward, but then so did her father, whose figure was barely visible through the thick cloud of dust in the air.
"Sugar, we have to get this done. The sooner the better."
"But shouldn't you ask Edward before you blow his house to smithereens?" The wrecking ball swung in and knocked out another wall, as if for emphasis. "What if there's something important that he actually doesn't want ruined?"
As if queued by her very words, Edward bolted past Lydia, across the room and over to the door of his creator's study, nearly tripping over a large board as he did so, completely unaware that the wrecking ball was swinging dangerously above his head.
"Edward, no!" She cried. "Dad, can't you stop that thing? I don't want him to get hurt!" Charles, not enjoying seeing his daughter reduced to the hysterics usually adopted by his wife walked over to the machine and signaled for its operator to cease wrecking for the moment.
Lydia followed Edward into the room as soon as she was convinced that the god-awful machine had stopped running. She found him with his back turned to her, and he seemed to be holding something as best he could. Lydia moved closer to see what it was.
"I don't care what you do to the rest of the house," he said, looking down at the dusty leather book that he balanced awkwardly atop his scissorhands. "Just don't destroy this room. It's not mine. He needs it." Lydia didn't have to inquire as to whom Edward was referring, and she suddenly felt sorry for him, for the millionth time since she'd met him. Didn't he know the meaning of death? No, how could he? He barely knew the meaning of life.
"He needs this. He needs it to finish me." Lydia ran her fingers over the worn cover of the book.
"May I?" she asked, putting both hands on it, ready to lift as soon as permission was granted. Edward gave a slight nod and she took the book from him. Its pages were yellow and tattered, its text hand-written in a spidery black scrawl. It had illustrations throughout, complete with detailed instructions. Step-by-step directions...but for what? Lydia's eyes skimmed the pages, hungry for knowledge. As she turned them, it became more and more evident to her that the directions pertained to the assembly of Edward, himself. It was incredible. She could definitely see why Edward didn't want any harm to come to this book, and she would be certain that none did. In these pages lay the answers. In these pages lay the solution. In these pages...
"I'm going to help you," she said, looking into those fathomless black eyes. "I'm not sure how, and I can't do it alone...but I will." The eyes smiled, as did the reflection within them.