I didn’t tell her I went by Lucas, not Landon. I didn’t tell her I’d been watching her, guardedly, for over two months. I didn’t tell her that I was the guy who’d witnessed the attack she’d just as soon forget, and also the one who’d stopped it. I didn’t tell her I was the guy whose touch made her flinch – even across a Starbucks counter, two days later.
We conversed via email over the next couple of days. I sent her the packet from Heller, clarifying a few things where he’d used a bit much econ jargon for a first-semester student. We joked about college bartering systems where beer is the currency for helping friends move. I began to look forward to her name in my inbox: JWallace – and then Wednesday morning came, and reality crashed down around me, firmly, and right on target.
9
Landon
I would be alone when Melody came over, because Dad and Grandpa had an appointment in town to see Grandpa’s accountant, who Dad referred to as a swindler and a con man. When he wasn’t calling him something way more insulting.
‘I’ve been seein’ Bob since you were in diapers!’ Grandpa growled this morning.
‘Then he’s had several decades to skim his share of your profits,’ Dad shot back. ‘It’s time to cut him off.’
‘I’ll do no such! Maybe if you’da stuck around, you’d know that most people aren’t criminals like the type you meet in Washington.’ As far as Grandpa was concerned, Washington was a ‘teeming cesspool of shady dealins’, and the fact that his son had chosen to live and work there had tainted him. I didn’t stay to hear Dad’s answer. I was pretty sure I’d already witnessed this argument. Multiple times.
I grabbed a protein bar after slugging some OJ from the carton while they were too busy one-upping each other to notice and headed out for school. Watching for Wynn or his thug friends as I got closer, I almost slowed to a stop as I crossed in front of the elementary school. A little kid was hopping out of his mom’s pick-up, but he misjudged the kerb and tripped forward, flat on to his face. His head bounced off the pavement as his mother screamed his name. I jogged straight over and went to one knee, lifting him while he sucked in air for the coming shitfit he was about to let loose. His nose was gushing blood and the tip of it was scuffed raw, but he looked pretty intact, considering. No forehead gash. No teeth on the ground.
‘Ohmygod, Tyler, ohmygod!’ his mother said, rushing up and yanking tissues from her purse, eyes wide. She slammed a tissue against his nose, which released the delayed wail I’d been bracing for. The kid’s lungs were certainly working okay.
‘So much blood! Oh, God – I should have pulled closer!’ she said, shaking and crying, tears streaming down her face.
‘Uh, I think his nose might be broken – you might not wanna press so hard on the bridge.’
She snatched the wad of tissues away, her hands trembling. ‘B-but the blood –’
I grabbed a couple of the tissues from her and pressed them under the kid’s nose. ‘Hold that right there, dude.’ He stared at me, but obeyed, sobs subsiding slowly. ‘You’re gonna be fine. I broke my nose a few years ago, playing hockey. That rink was a bloody mess and I nearly gave my mom a heart attack, but I was fine. No big deal.’
The kid reached for his mother, who gathered him close.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Your mother should be real proud of you. Not many boys your age woulda done that.’
I nodded and stood, mumbling, ‘No problem.’
The rest of the day felt fairly uneventful, consisting of me dodging Boyce Wynn and purposefully not staring at Melody Dover in class, though she whispered that she’d walk over after school. Hesitant about the whispering and the secrecy – we were project partners, after all – I slid a glance at her boyfriend. He glared from across the room, and Wynn grinned like he knew something I didn’t. Not an expression I wanted to see on him.
Just before four o’clock, Melody knocked on my front door.
I let her in, tense from the awareness of how she must view the place her boyfriend’s dad called a shack and an eyesore and worse. Her parents probably felt the same way. And her friends.
I’d spread my project materials out over the kitchen table in hopes she wouldn’t ask about my room – but that plan bombed. ‘So where’s your room?’ she asked, right after I offered her a soda and she followed me to the kitchen to get it. Fuck, I thought, opening the pantry door and bracing myself for ridicule.
‘Whoa!’ Her eyes went wide. ‘This is so small! And … cosy …’
She hopped on to the edge of my bed, and my heart thudded. Melody Dover is sitting on my bed. Her eyes roved over my textbooks and novels, stacked on the shelves. She turned round to study the opposite wall, half covered in drawings like the ones she’d flipped through a couple of nights before – but better.
‘This is the coolest thing ever. It’s like this … artist’s cave.’ She smiled. ‘Can we work in here?’ Without waiting for my answer, she slung her laptop bag over her head and crawled towards the head of the bed.
‘Uh, sure …’
When Dad and Grandpa came home, we were sitting side by side against a mound of pillows, working on the citations page. They were arguing, as though they’d picked up right where I left them this morning, like a paused movie. My face burned when they each stopped right outside my door and peered in with mirrored expressions of shock. For what felt like eternity, neither said a word.
‘Makin’ dinner,’ Grandpa said eventually, turning away. Dad grunted and turned in the opposite direction.
Melody’s pale gaze shifted from the empty doorway to me. ‘So your mom …?’
I shook my head. ‘She … she died.’
‘Oh. That’s terrible. Was it recent? Is that why you moved here?’
I nodded, unwilling to elaborate or make eye contact or speak at all. My hands were fists in my lap. Please don’t ask.
I almost jumped out of my skin when she laid her hand on my arm, right over the wristbands I was wearing today. Her fingers grazed the top of my hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
She was apologizing for the fact that I lost my mother, like everyone did. I couldn’t say, It’s okay. Because it wasn’t, and it never would be.
But I couldn’t dwell on the loss of my mother with Melody’s soft hand on mine, her fingernails painted an electric, metallic blue, like a sports car. I couldn’t think of anything but where her hand rested, and its proximity to other, wide-awake parts of me. Angling her fingers, she rasped her nails along the back of my hand and inches away, my body responded, hardening fiercely. I prayed she couldn’t see. I was afraid to move.
‘She stayin’ for dinner?’ Grandpa said from the door, and we both jumped, snatching our hands apart. The laptop bounced on her lap.
‘Oh, no, thank you. I have to get home soon.’ Her face was as red as mine.