Are You Mine

Chapter 7


Saige


“So I did a bunch of sketches for the objects I think our characters will need, but I don’t know what to call them. I don’t know much about steampunk, and I’m not great with words. At least not coming up with them or writing them.”

Fox grabs a large notebook off his bed, then flips it open when he comes back to me. I’m sitting on an uncomfortable wooden stool that feels like one leg is about three-quarters of an inch too short. He pulls up another stool, brushes off the seat, and sits down. “Like I figured they’d use some kind of power source other than just old school engines, so I drew this.”

He shows me a sketch of a battery with sensors and gadgets all over it. I pick up my pen and adjust my notebook. “We’ll call that an electro-chemical reaction energy storage device.”

“That’s awesome. What about this? It’s a cross between a sailboat and an airplane.”

I smile because I know Myka will love it. “Let’s call that a dihydrogen monoxide vapor clipper.”

He shakes his head and gives me a wide-eyed stare. “I have no clue what you just said, but it sounds totally cool.”

For what has to be the fiftieth time today, I can feel the heat rise up in my cheeks at his approval. “Myka’s going to freak.”

After we flip through a few more of his impressive sketches, he moves to the metal shelving system in the corner. “I’m going to play some music.”

“Let me guess. The—”

He cuts me off. “I can play something else. What kind of music do you like?”

Fox looks so damned sincere, like the only thing he wants is to give me the music I like. There’s just one problem with that. “I don’t have a preference. Whatever you want is fine.” I pause and he looks like he’s going to say something, so I head it off. “Just play The Avett Brothers. It’s cool.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You like them, and they’re growing on me, so put ‘em on.”

When he searches his playlist, I flip through yet another book. This one is nothing but sports. Soccer, specifically. A lot of players in red and some weird bird. One picture is of someone shooting a goal with the words: Liverpool, You’ll Never Walk Alone at the bottom in very careful print. I can see the smudges that suggest erasure and wonder how long it took him to get those words right.

“So is Liverpool a team?”

Fox makes a pained sound. “Oh, Saigalicious, you have so much to learn.”

Saigalicious? It’s as if I can’t control my own muscles; I feel my lips curve. All of the sudden, he’s next to me, like right next to me. The smell of him almost makes me dizzy, but not because of any overpowering cologne. He just smells good. Natural. Perfect.

Fox starts flipping through the pages and telling me all about them. “That’s Luis Suárez. He’s the el pistolero de Liverpool. And this is Daniel Agger and Martin Skrtel, two center backs.”

“Um, center back?”

“Defense. They keep the other team from scoring, and they’re badass.”

I can see that he could keep going for hours about Liverpool, so I start glancing at the first book I saw, the one with all the dark images. I chew on the inside of my cheek as I wonder what kind of mind could create something like what I saw in there.

I turn my attention back onto Fox, but he has stopped talking and is just watching me.

When I finally look him in the eyes, he says, “You can ask, you know.”

“Ask what?”

“About the drawings.”

I don’t want to upset him, but I just cannot fathom that darkness coming from him. “Are they your dreams?”

He shakes his head and for the first time, looks reluctant to talk, but he does. “No. They’re my mom’s.”

Of course, I have no idea what to say, so I stay quiet, and he continues. “She’s been in the hospital since I was six. The doctors keep saying that one day she’ll be able to come back and live with us, but I don’t believe it.”

“So she dreams that stuff? It looks awful.”

“It is, but she doesn’t so much dream them. I mean, I guess they’re dreams, but they happen when she’s awake.”

I can’t imagine. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“That she’s in the hospital? Yeah, but it was way worse when she was out. I was young, but I remember how scary it was, and sometimes she’d go off and we wouldn’t know where to find her. One time NYPD found her trying to climb some building in downtown Manhattan.”

“Damn.”

Fox nods like I’ve just contributed an amazing observation. “But there’s nothing I can do about it,” he says, his voice returning to its normal light tone. “So there’s nothing to be too upset about.”

I’m not even sure I know how to process what he’s said, let alone how I would handle it, but he seems so damn blasé about it all. I can understand detaching a little from the situation. It has to be pretty emotional to see your mom like that, but how does such a happy person like Fox just stay happy when his mom is full of darkness.

“What?”

I realize I’ve been staring at him, criticism probably obvious in my expression. “Nothing.”

“Saige, I may not know everything about you, but I can tell when you want to say something.”

I swallow hard against the panic trying to rise within me. He’s asking for my thoughts, so there’s a part of me that wants to give them, but then there’s another part that wants to remain silent just in case my thoughts are offensive. Instead of sharing any opinions, I ask, “Do you see her much?”

Fox takes a pencil and twirls it between his fingers. A second later, he turns and presses the tip lightly against the off-white paper in front of him, creating long lines and stretching arches. “The hospital’s about seventy miles away, so it’s not convenient most days, but Pop sees her at least once a week, sometimes more when he has the energy.”

He didn’t answer the question. “But what about you? Do you see her much?”

The strokes he creates on the page grow heavier; I can both hear the pencil scratching the paper and see the depression it’s making with the gray line. “Yeah. I mean, I used to go every week, too, but sometimes she thinks I’m a CIA assassin there to kill her, and other times she thinks I’m a demon, so it’s not one of my favorite things to do when I have free time.”

The slight panic I felt when asking the question pales to the wretched feeling I have now. There’s a depth of gloom to his voice that I never would have imagined he’d be capable of. I’m not sure how to break this tension, and out of nowhere I say, “I bet she’s lonely.” He lifts his head and retrains his eyes on me. “I bet you are, too.”

There’s a moment when he does absolutely nothing, but then his usual smile grows. “I have too many friends to be lonely.”

“Friends aren’t your mom.”

“So for the book I was thinking at the end, Myka should be on the airship fighting the government, while Valentine and his robotic mercenaries should have a ground battle. What do you think?”

I guess that’s my cue to switch topics, but my mind is still on his mother locked away in a hospital seventy miles from her family. “Yeah, okay.”

“But you’re the writer, so I’m not trying to tell you the story, but I think it’d be fun to draw both an air battle and a hand-to-hand combat scene.”

Even though his hand is partially covering the quick image he’s just drawn, I can see it’s of a woman. This picture is more realistic than the picture he drew of me on his wall. It’s not cartoony. It has to be his mother. They have the same lips. Even though she’s not smiling in the drawing, I know that if I saw her grin, it would be an exact replica of Fox’s.

It’s probably rude that I’m not speaking or even paying attention to anything, but I have to think about something else for a while. I try to think about the peaceful beaches of southern California with the rolling waves, the yellow sand, sea birds, and salt air, but my mind has now fixated on the song that’s playing.

I don’t know the name of it. I’m sure if I asked Fox, he’d tell me, then tell me when The Avett Brothers wrote it, what the best version of it is, and recite the lyrics, but I don’t want all that, so I just listen and lose track of everything else while I do.

The singer’s telling someone what to do if he gets killed. He sings to the audience that they shouldn’t avenge him, but to let the people in his life know how much he cared for them. I think of this letter he’s singing about; the letter to his family; the one that tells each of them how much they meant to him in life.

I wish my mother had left something like that for me. Murder is a horrible thing. People you love are snatched away in a second, and the only thing you have left of them is the stuff they owned and fading memories.

The memories of my mom are weak. When I try to drum up an image of her in my mind, her face is fuzzy, the edges blurred.

I think about this damned song long after it’s over and something more upbeat comes on. I think the singer is trying to tell me that whether my mom and dad are here with me, there’s real beauty in the fact that I even had a family once. There is significance in even carrying their name beyond their deaths.

“Are you okay?”

Fox’s voice breaks through the fog of my thoughts. “Yeah. That song was just kind of profound.”

He looks at me with a question in his expression, but I don’t give him any explanation. We’re silent again, him flipping through the pages of his “Myka’s Metal Valentine” sketchbook and me staring off into space like an idiot.

As much as I want to block out any more songs, the lyrics start weaseling their way in again. This time, the guy’s singing about never being able to say something to someone he loves except through his prayers. He sings about how he and this person who is dead fought, but he has a bunch of new things to say, but will never be able to share them except in a one-sided conversation.

Fox stares at me, and I have to look away. This isn’t what I thought the night would turn out to be. First, seeing some painting of me holding his hand on his wall was just. . . Well, I don’t even know what it is. Scary because that means he’s looking for something other than just working on a graphic novel with me, and that stuff doesn’t just happen to a person like me. And then with all the talk about his mom, and these damned songs singing my thoughts. It’s just too much.

I don’t like the burning heat of the tears in my eyes. It isn’t who I am to get all weepy and stupid because of music and a boy.

“We need to change this music.” I clear my throat. “I mean, I like it. It’s beautiful, but we need to—”

He’s up before I can finish. All of the sudden, Beyoncé is singing her song “Halo,” and I smile.

“Really? Never would have pegged you for a fan.”

With an exaggerated humiliated expression, he says, “Everyone likes Beyoncé, and it’s a good song, but now that you know my secret, I’ll have to keep you locked up so you don’t spill the beans.” He gets up and puts his hands in out in front of him, fingers crooked, but extended. “Or I could tickle you, which would probably be more fun than just locking you away.”

“Oh, my God, no!” I jump off the stool and dart away, but his basement isn’t big, so there’s no place for me to go. He grabs my wrist in a gentle hold, then twirls me toward him.

“You’ve just revealed how ticklish you are, Saigey-Paigey, and I didn’t even have to tickle you. But now that I know. . .” He lets the words hang there as he dramatically raises his free hand, fingers wiggling.

“No! Don’t!” My reaction is odd, even to me. There’s real fear mixed in with the giggles that have bubbled up.

His hand stops. “Why not?”

“Does anyone besides a kid ever want to be tickled?”

Fox locks his eyes with mine. “I think you just can’t handle thinking about where that much laughing would take you. I’d tickle you, and you’d laugh like crazy. Maybe you’d even snort from laughing so much.”

“I don’t snort.”

“And I wouldn’t stop because the sound of your laugh would be like fuel for me, but then your muscles would start to hurt and those tears of laughter in your eyes would grow bigger, and then you’d realize that sometimes it’s okay to be free. That the freedom that comes from laughter is also the greatest release of negativity, and you’d feel like a million dollars.”

I’m not sure if it’s his words or the way he says them that makes me go still. I don’t try to pull away, but he’s not trying to tickle me either. “What does a million dollars feel like?”

“Like living someplace warm, in the sunshine, where darkness never falls, and you never have to worry about anything ever again because you just know it’s going to be okay.”

I try to step away, but Fox’s hand still encircles my wrist. “I have a million dollars, and it doesn’t feel like that. It feels cold and helpless.”

He is silent as he probably tries to work out what I’ve just told him and how he can flip it around into something happy and fun—just the way he likes things. I shouldn’t have said anything because now I’ve brought him down, and it’s not every day a guy like Fox wants to hang out with me. I must be the queen of self-sabotage.

Before I know it, he’s really close to me. Our bodies so close they are touching. He moves his hand from my wrist, so now our palms are together, fingers interlaced. Fox’s other hand is against the small of my back. My cheek rests against his chest. I hold my breath.

It’s awkward at first, but as I relax into his body and allow him to move us, I can see the private dance for what it is. An exchange. I breathe in and feel his chest rise against mine. He’s giving me a little bit of his calm. I don’t know if it’s on purpose or if I’m making it all up because I’ve spent too much time talking to Val about his new-aged hippie ideas on energy, but for some reason, it doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is that I’m pressed against him in this little basement where no one can see us, and he’s holding me like I’ve never let anyone do before.

My mood lightens a little and after a few more slow songs by various musicians, we stop dancing because something fast paced comes on. Fox brings his hands up to my shoulders, pushes my hair back, then slides his hands down my arms before asking, “What’s Beethoven doing in his grave?” He pauses, but I don’t say anything. “He’s decomposing.”

I press my lips together to smother the smile and shake my head.

“Why did Mozart sell all his chickens?”

“Why?”

“Because they kept saying Bach, Bach.”

His grin is contagious, and I can’t hold in the chuckle anymore. “You’re an idiot.”

After I say it, I start freaking out like it was the wrong thing to say. I don’t want to make him feel bad, and he probably has a complex around words like stupid and idiot because of his learning disability.

But Fox’s grin stays. “That’s okay. I’ll be an idiot if it makes you smile.”

I look away at the sincerity of his words until I hear a scrape of wood against linoleum. When I glance back up, he’s back at his desk, sketching something in a notebook. “So I think we should have dinner, and after it gets good and dark, you need to come out with me,” he says.

“Um, okay.”

“And by come out, I mean, come tag some bridges with me.”

“What? Graffiti?”

Fox laughs. “Yeah. It’ll be fun. I always have a blast, and I’d love to show you.”

***

I watch him as he tosses the contents of the saucepan and catches it over the gas flame stove. “That’s impressive.”

“Yes. I’m very domestic. You should see me fold laundry.”

“Maybe next time, right?”

Fox pumps his fist in the air. “Yes! That means you’ll come back. Totally down for that. Bring your dirty laundry, and we’ll make a day of it.”

“You’re a dork.”

“And you’re beautiful, but neither of us can help it, so let’s just go with it.”

The crease in my forehead forms, and I’m glad he’s not looking because if he sees it, I know he’ll call me out about it or make a joke to get it to go away. I don’t mean for it to be there, but sometimes my face expresses things without my conscious direction.

I feel like this isn’t my life. No one’s called me beautiful since my dad, and I’m sure he just said it because that’s what dads say to their daughters. But Fox is a boy who so many girls at my school drooled over. Even Myka went through a stage when she first got here where she talked all the time about his soulful brown eyes and the arm muscles that stretched his shirt sleeves.

Now I’m in his freaking house and he’s pulling me into soft embraces, dancing with me, and saying I’m beautiful. What the hell do I make of that?

When I realize the only noise I hear is from the television a few rooms away, I pull my focus back to the kitchen and find Fox watching me. I quickly look at the spot on the wall opposite of him. There’s a large scratch in the pale green paint.

I flick my eyes back up at him, and he’s still staring at me. “What?”

“You have so much going on inside your head. I bet you only express about five percent of it, don’t you?”

The insight he has is unnerving. He’s supposed to be this guy who didn’t graduate until he was twenty because he wasn’t bright, but Fox is incredibly intuitive, pretty damn intelligent, and seems to be able to figure people out quickly.

“Like right now? What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” he says, voice light. “One day, you’ll tell me all the stuff that goes on in your mind.” He grabs his phone from his pocket. “Damn, I forgot I was supposed to call Gage.”

I’m happy for his distraction, because I’m not sure which scares me more, his words or that I can actually see myself sharing my thoughts with him someday.