13
Landon
‘The frog is dead. It can’t hurt you.’
Melody batted her lashes from behind a huge pair of goggles. ‘That thing is disgusting. I’m not touching it.’ The one-size-fits-all lab apron fell to her knees and wrapped all the way round, and she held her forearms up, elbows bent, to keep the gloves from falling off her small hands. She looked like a child playing operating-room nurse.
Don’t think about her hands right now.
I crooked an eyebrow at her – the one with the barbell she was staring at last week when Pearl snapped her fingers in front of Melody’s face to get her attention. ‘Would you have said that to Pearl?’ I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder, her eyes on my eyebrow. Her dark green sweater looked as soft as her hair. The colour darkened the edge of her irises and contrasted starkly with the pale strands forked over that shoulder. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Don’t think about her eyes. Or her hair.
I sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll dissect. You pin and label.’
She thrust her plump lower lip out in a pout that should have looked ridiculous on a sixteen-year-old girl. God. Damn.
I was grateful for the heavy canvas apron I was wearing. And the high table between us. ‘Fine. I’ll dissect and pin … and you label?’
She picked up a pen and smiled – awarding me positive reinforcement for caving so easily. ‘What’s first?’
Like a lab rat, I itched to discover where she hid that lever. I’d push it over and over to have that smile directed at me.
‘Uh … well, let’s see …’ I checked the instruction page. ‘Um. First we’re supposed to determine the sex.’
Melody caught her glossy lower lip with her flawlessly white, straight teeth, and I felt that bite – as though I was made of a single nerve ending – in one concentrated place. My dick twitched like a flag caught in a sudden gust of wind. Jesus, what am I – eleven?
Damn Boyce and his stupid mononucleosis. Damn Pearl and hers, too. They’d both been out for a week. Without Pearl’s dampening presence or Boyce here to irritate Melody every five seconds, we’d begun to talk every day like we hadn’t done in over a year. Since the doomed geography project. Since her boyfriend paid Boyce to kick my ass.
Melody leaned over the dissection pan and stared at the poor dead frog, which looked like it had died dancing – nose in the air and jazz hands. ‘I don’t see a thingy. So it’s a girl?’
I laughed. ‘Frogs don’t have external thingys.’
She scowled, the back of her gloved hand covering her nose to block the embalming fluid’s eye-watering odour. ‘Then how the hell are we supposed to tell?’
I looked at the sheet again. ‘Says here the male has an enlarged thumb pad.’
Heads together, we both stared at the frog for one long moment.
‘C’mon now, he’s not doin’ it with his thumb!’ she said.
Oh. My. God. I stared at her. She blushed and giggled, and then we were both laughing and Mr Quinn was scowling in our direction. Apparently, dissection was not supposed to be fun.
‘Let’s skip that part for now,’ I said.
Don’t think about your own goddamned thumb, either, for f*ck’s sake.
Melody dutifully inscribed tiny labels and stuck the pins through them while I sliced the frog stem to stern and pointed out internal organs. We grew accustomed to the formaldehyde and she made fewer and fewer gross-out protests. She began sticking the pins through the parts I removed, though she refused to even pick up her scalpel or tongs unless Mr Quinn was making rounds to confirm that everyone was participating.
‘Aww, everything is so tiny,’ Melody said in complete seriousness. As though the parts inside a six-inch-long amphibian could be anything else. She looked at the diagram and back at the frog. ‘Ooh, are those his little nut things?’ She picked up the pin with the testes label.
I chuckled. ‘Yeah. That’s his nut things. Congratulations, we have a boy.’
She frowned. ‘So he doesn’t have a …’ She trailed off while my brain filled in the blank: dick, penis, cock, boner, phallus, beast. That last was Boyce’s designation.
‘Er. No.’ Caught between regret and intense relief that Boyce wasn’t here, I read the sheet, paraphrasing. ‘The male fertilizes the eggs by …’ Son of a bitch. ‘Uh … climbing on to the female, wrapping his front legs around her, and squirting sperm over the eggs, after the female lays them.’
We looked at each other from behind two sets of goggles. I was surprised mine hadn’t steamed up yet.
‘Kinda sucks for him, huh?’ she said.
Don’t think about putting your arms round Melody Dover. From behind.
Jesus H. Christ.
With Boyce out sick, I was back to walking to and from school. His rebuilt Trans Am might have been a loud, ugly, potential deathtrap – but it was wheels. I was four months and a few driving hours away from my licence. Grandpa and I located empty dirt and minimally paved roads inland every Sunday afternoon or evening so I could practise, taking the ferry to get there. He was close to determining that I was ready to drive on an actual road.
I’d hidden my face to roll my eyes, and I definitely didn’t tell him Boyce had been letting me drive the Trans Am whenever he’d had one too many beers or taken too many hits of a pipe or joint and I was relatively sober. He’d have probably ripped up my permit right then and there, and I’d never get behind the wheel of that old Ford alone.
There was only one reason I wanted that truck.
As if Melody would want to ride in that rusted POS instead of Clark Richards’s snowy white Jeep – the one he got for his sixteenth birthday, a year ago. I’d heard him bragging about what Melody had done with him in the backseat of that Jeep, and his words made me furious and harder than hell. Furious because he shouldn’t share that shit with a bunch of dumbasses around a fire on the beach. Hard because I wanted her to do those things with me.
Kicking the arm off a cactus as I stepped from the road into the yard earned me a sharp spine right through the toe of my black Vans. ‘Ow! F*ck!’
That was when I noticed Grandpa’s truck parked next to the house. Along with Dad’s SUV.
The front door was unlocked, although that could just be Grandpa forgetting to lock it. Dad and he had gone round and round about security and leaving the house unlocked – Grandpa insisting that he’d never locked the damn house in all his damn years of living there, and Dad insisting that it was no longer 1950.
When some out-of-towners broke into Wynn’s Garage and stole an assload of tools, Grandpa conceded, sullenly. Sometimes he forgot to lock up, though.
‘Grandpa?’ I called, shutting the door behind me.
The interior of the house was dim after the bright, cloudless afternoon outside, even when I pulled off my sunglasses. At first, I didn’t register that Dad was sitting on the edge of the sofa, hands grasped between his knees. He was staring at the threadbare rug under his feet.
He was hardly ever home this early in the afternoon, and if he was, he was working at the table, not sitting on the sofa. I frowned. ‘Dad?’
He didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t look at me. ‘Come sit down, Landon.’
My heart thudded, the pace escalating slowly like an engine warming up. ‘Where’s Grandpa?’ I dropped my backpack to the floor, but didn’t sit. ‘Dad?’
He looked up at me, then. His eyes were dry, but red. ‘Your grandfather had a heart attack on the boat this morning –’
‘What? Where is he? Is he in the hospital? Is he okay?’
Dad shook his head. ‘No, son.’ His voice was gentle and quiet. I felt like he’d struck me with the unyielding words, sharp and irrevocable. ‘It was a massive attack. He went quickly –’
‘No.’ I backed away from him, swallowing thick tears. ‘Goddammit, NO.’ Retreating to my room, I slammed the door and didn’t come out until after Dad went to bed.
Barefoot, I padded into Grandpa’s room – lit with the moonlight streaming through the half-open curtains. My fingers trailed over the items resting on his night table: reading glasses folded on top of a leather-bound Bible and a copy of Leaves of Grass, a half-full glass of water, a Timex watch with a scratched face, laid flat. On his dresser was a stack of folded shirts and a faded photo of my grandmother, holding a baby – my dad. The frame was old, tarnished and bent on one corner.
In the kitchen, I took a lidded container of cold macaroni and cheese from the fridge and ate it without heating it first.
The funeral was short and sparsely attended – Dad, me, a group of old-timers and a few other fishermen Grandpa knew, who’d been friends and neighbours. Dad wore the one suit he’d kept – still sharp and perfectly tailored, though it hung a little looser on him than it had the last time he’d worn it, at Mom’s funeral. He’d lost weight. He was more muscular, but also gaunter. I didn’t have a suit and didn’t have time to get one, so I wore a black henley and black jeans for the service.
He was buried next to the wife who died thirty years before him. Ramona Delilah Maxfield – Beloved Wife and Mother, her headstone read. I wondered what Dad had ordered carved into my grandfather’s marker, but I didn’t ask.
The next day, Dad gave me two things from my grandfather: a heavy brass pendant with a Celtic symbol that supposedly represented the Maxfield name prior to the twelfth century, and the key to the old Ford truck.
I transferred the symbol, enlarged, to a sketch. I would have Arianna ink it on my side, at the edge of my rib cage. I slid the Ford key on to the ring holding my house key and a compass.
I had the truck I’d wanted, a thousand-year-old symbol of my heritage, a secret recipe for brownies, a pocketknife and memories of my grandfather I’d have never had without the loss of my mother.
I couldn’t make sense of these things or their value to me, when every one of them was linked to the loss of something I didn’t want to lose.
LUCAS
I arrived as Heller was collecting the quizzes. As I slid into my seat, he asked to see me after class.
‘Yes, sir,’ I answered, working to keep my gaze from sliding to Jacqueline, who was eavesdropping none too subtly, head angled, chin at her shoulder. My breath went shallow, knowing he could say one sentence – hell, one word – Landon – that would tell her who I was.
I wanted her to know.
And I didn’t.
She didn’t look my way again until the end of class, when I’d moved down front. As Heller answered a student’s question, I took the opportunity to find Jacqueline in the mass of exiting students, but she was still in her seat. Looking at me.
Her eyes were dark, due to the distance between us and shadows cast by overhead lights. I couldn’t make out the perfect blue I knew they were. I couldn’t smell her sweet scent. She wasn’t laughing or even smiling. She was just a pretty girl.
But I couldn’t see anyone else.
‘Ready?’ Heller asked, stuffing lecture notes into his portfolio.
I wrenched my attention from Jacqueline. ‘Yeah. Sure. Ready.’
He arched a brow at me, and I followed him from the room. ‘Sure you aren’t working too hard, son? You seem a little preoccupied lately.’
He didn’t know the half of it.
This was not my day.
First, Gwen arrived in the first bad mood I’d ever witnessed her have. She was like a completely different person. She was like Eve.
Who was also working the afternoon shift.
I had no idea when Jacqueline would show up, if she would show at all, but I knew – as Landon – that late Friday afternoons were when she scheduled her high-school music lessons. She’d either be here any minute or not at all. When Heller showed up, ordered a venti latte, and parked it in a chair in the corner, I selfishly prayed he would slam his drink and go home.
He pulled out the Wall Street Journal and started at page one.
Not five minutes later, I heard Eve’s familiar, barely civil greeting: ‘Can I help you?’ with a double shot of attitude. I glanced up to see Jacqueline, chewing her lip as though she was reconsidering her decision to stop by.
‘I’ve got it, Eve,’ I said, stepping up to the counter.
As I got her coffee and refused to let her pay, my coworkers continued to scowl at her, though I couldn’t imagine a single reason why. Choosing one of the bistro tables on the opposite side of the café from Heller, she pulled out her laptop.
‘What the hell?’ I finally asked Gwen, stepping into her viewing path. ‘Why are you staring at her like you’re trying to reduce her to ashes?’
She crossed her arms and stared up at me. ‘Please tell me you don’t actually like that girl, Lucas.’
I flicked a glance at Heller, who’d not moved except to turn the page of his paper. ‘What do you mean? Where’d you get that?’
She pinned her lips together, grimacing. ‘You’re more transparent than you think. And also, we think she’s playing you.’
‘What?’ Thank God no customers were at the register and Jacqueline was too far away to hear this cracked conversation.
‘It’s true,’ Eve hissed, appearing next to Gwen. ‘Her friends came in here again the other day – you know the two I mean? The sorority chicks?’ Her words said sorority chicks. Her tone said disease-infested hookers. Good God. I was giving her five seconds to get to an argument I could squash.
I nodded once.
‘Well, I couldn’t hear everything they said over the damned steamer, but I heard your name and her name and the fact that she’s using you to be her … ugh …’ She made air quotes. ‘Bad-boy phase. I’ve never heard anything so f*cking lame.’
My brows rose. Bad-boy phase. Right. ‘You are both insane.’
Eve crossed her arms. ‘Um, no. We’re not. They’re plotting the whole thing out and she’s just following along. You’re supposed to be like – a rebound stud to help her get over some other guy. So – for a million dollars and a chance to advance to the next round: do you like her or do you just want to screw her?’
They stood there like shoulder-to-shoulder crazy.
Rebound.
‘This is not your business.’
‘The hell it’s not.’ Eve poked me in the chest with one black-lacquered fingernail. ‘You’re our friend, and we aren’t letting some stuck-up bitch play you.’
My jaw clenched. ‘Do. Not. Talk about her like that.’
They looked at each other.
‘Crap,’ Gwen said, as Eve said, ‘Well, f*ck.’
After an hour, Jacqueline and Heller left, minutes apart. Before leaving, he stopped at her table, telling her how pleased he was that she was catching up – which I only knew because that was the topic he’d wanted to discuss with me this morning after class.
Then he stepped to the counter to talk to me about her – while she watched – and I remembered an old saying my grandfather had been fond of quoting: Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. I was getting a taste of what tangled meant.
The rest of the afternoon was so dead that our manager asked if anyone wanted to go home, and I volunteered. Eve and Gwen shared yet another pointed look. I’d never requested to be cut before.
Gwen followed me to the back and stopped me as I shrugged into my jacket. ‘Lucas?’
Turning, I sighed. ‘Yeah?’
Lips pursed, she laid her hand on my arm. ‘I know Eve can be a little harsh …’
I smirked. ‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’
Her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, and the Gwen I knew reappeared. ‘But we both care about you. We don’t want to see you hurt.’
I zipped the jacket to mid-chest – a soft, dark chocolate leather that I wouldn’t have been able to afford on my own. Charles and Cindy gave it to me for my birthday my freshman year. It had been a little oversized then. It fitted perfectly now. ‘I’m a big boy, Gwen. I can take care of myself. I have for a long time.’
‘Yeah, I know. Just … be careful. Some things aren’t worth the pain, whether you can survive it or not.’
She never said much about her baby’s father, but I knew she was speaking from experience. I could hardly compare Jacqueline Wallace to a guy who was too much of a selfish prick to man up to being a father. But what I knew about Jacqueline wasn’t mine to tell.
‘Thanks, Gwen. I’ll be careful,’ I told her.
Total lie.
I made a sandwich when I got home, sharing turkey slices with Francis, as I had the day he’d first shown up three years ago. I’d only been in the apartment for a month when Francis moved in, uninvited. Even with the Hellers living on the other side of the yard, I’d had an unexpected sense of isolation. My father and I hadn’t spoken often when I lived with him, but he was there, in the house. It wasn’t talk I missed as much as the presence of someone else.
‘What do you think?’ I asked him now, tossing one last slice of turkey in his bowl. ‘Should I become her bad boy? I’m certainly qualified for the role.’ I picked up my phone and pulled up her contact info. ‘Speak now, or forever hold your peace.’
He finished his turkey and started on a bath.
‘That’s tacit agreement,’ I said, texting Jacqueline an apology for not saying goodbye this afternoon.
It was awkward with Dr Heller there I guess, she answered.
She had no idea what an understatement that was.
I told her I wanted to sketch her. Waiting for her answer, I watched the screen. You want a bad boy, Jacqueline? I thought. C’mon, then. Try me.
Okay, she said.
I told her I could be over in a couple of hours and got her room number.
She’d emailed Landon – ironically, during the hour she sat in Starbucks – thanking him for insisting she do the worksheet. Ninety-nine per cent sure she’d aced the quiz Heller gave this morning, I wanted to email her back, but I didn’t. She wouldn’t be hearing from Landon tonight.
Her building was all too easy to get into. A simple, ‘Hey, man, hold the door,’ to one of her fellow residents was all it involved. I took the back stairwell to her floor, my whole body burning.
I hadn’t lied. I wanted to sketch her. Possibly, that’s all I would do. Tonight.
I knocked softly, ignoring the other students hanging out in the hallway. She didn’t answer, and I couldn’t hear any movement inside her room. But when I knocked again, she opened the door as if she’d been standing right on the other side of it, debating whether or not to let me in.
Her sweater was a lighter blue than her eyes, accentuating them further. Dipping to a cautious V in the centre and following her curves without adhering to them, the soft knit begged to be stroked. I vowed to answer that entreaty.
Entering her room – the door snapping shut behind me – was like closing a door on my conscience. That didn’t keep it from tapping from inside my skull, though – a muffled but unremitting reminder that this girl was a student in Heller’s class, off-limits. Further, she was getting over a breakup, which left her vulnerable in one way … and me in another.
Worse still, she had no idea of my conflict. I tossed my sketchpad on her bed.
Hands in my pockets, I feigned fascination with the room décor and felt her stare trace over me – from the worn shitkickers on my feet to the nondescript hoodie and the ring in my lip. Part beach bum, part redneck, part perfected don’t f*ck with me front – I was nothing like her preppy ex, for all that I could have been him, once upon forever ago. I thought nothing of what I wore then, or what it cost. The labels Kennedy Moore and his upper middle class bros sported wouldn’t have impressed my middle-school comrades, whose parents were influential lobbyists, senators and CEOs of multimillion-dollar associations.
I’d never be intimidated by a boy flaunting his parents’ money; I knew how fast it could all disappear, especially when it wasn’t yours to begin with. This was a truth I’d learned, and learned hard: if you wanted something out of life, you had to depend on yourself to get it. And to keep it.
As Jacqueline’s gaze ran over my face, I continued my sham inspection of her dorm room while in my head, I visualized the distracted expression she sometimes wore during Heller’s lectures: eyes unfocused and unmoving, fingers tapping against her leg or her desktop, plucking invisible strings.
I had been drawn to her for weeks but kept my distance until the night I became her protector. Like that Chinese proverb that says if you save a life, you’re responsible for that person forever – I couldn’t seem to let her dust herself off and go on. Not when I didn’t believe for one second she had the tools to protect herself. Maybe I hadn’t saved Jacqueline’s life that night – but I’d saved her from something that would have stolen a piece of her soul. I was consumed with watching over her, and to do that effectively, I needed to know her better.
At least that’s the trumped-up story I told myself.
I caught her eyes on mine as I turned, and let my gaze skip to the small speakers on her desk. She was listening to a band I’d seen last month. I asked her if she’d gone to the show, and surprisingly, she nodded. I hadn’t seen her there – but then, I hadn’t known to look for her. I gave her some excuse about alcohol and how dark it was. If I’d known she was there, no amount of beer or darkness would have kept me from finding her.
Best not to disclose that.
I pulled off my cap and hoodie, tossing them on her bed and attempting to compose my expression before turning back to her. She’d probably been there with her boyfriend, anyway, while I’d gone with Joseph.
‘Where do you want me?’ she asked, and my mind blanked momentarily and then filled with images I couldn’t say. She blushed as though she heard them anyway, her lips falling open, unable to take back the coquettish question she’d obviously not meant as a seduction tactic.
I cleared my throat and suggested the bed, matching her unintentional come-on with one of my own. Shoving my hoodie and cap off her comforter as she sat, I reminded my resurrected hormones that there were a million reasons Jacqueline Wallace was not for me, starting with the fact that I was basically lying to her about who I really was, and ending with the knowledge that girls like her didn’t fall for guys who looked like me.
But she didn’t have to fall, did she, for me to be the boy she slummed with? Her bad-boy phase. Her rebound. God help me, I was all too willing.
She stared at me with wide, apprehensive eyes, and I wanted to calm her, to gentle her with my hands. Instead, I found myself telling her we didn’t have to do this if she didn’t want to. I waited for her to release that pent-up breath she was holding and tell me this was a mistake. Part of me hoped for those words, because then I could backpedal before I made the monumental mistake of compromising my integrity in too many ways to count.
But I wouldn’t leave unless she told me to. Not while my head was full of nothing but wanting to move closer to her.
‘I want to,’ she said softly, her body still rigid, like one of my wooden sketch models – bendable at the joints but otherwise inflexible. Her declaration didn’t correspond with her posture, but I didn’t know which was valid – her body or her words.
‘What position would be the most comfortable for you?’ I asked, and she blushed again, harder than she had a moment before.
I bit my lip and turned away, parking my ass on the floor several feet from her, my back against the only blank section of wall in her room. Opening the pad against my knees, I took a slow breath through my nose and cursed myself for sending that text. Even though my request to sketch her was no ploy, this private proximity was nothing short of hell. In one crashing moment, I realized that I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anyone before. This desire had been building for weeks, and I’d left it unchecked, because she had a boyfriend, because she was a student in a class I tutored, because she was impossible, unattainable, a fantasy and nothing more.
Then there was that night – a night that must terrify her, still – but I’d kept it from being so much worse. My hand gripped the pencil. I couldn’t credit myself for saving her and then take her as the prize, not under false pretences, not when she could never be mine.
But then, she had false pretences as well, didn’t she? I could give her what she wanted.
I told her to lie on her stomach and face me, and she obeyed.
‘Like this?’
I nodded, and my head swam. Goddamn – what had I done to myself? I had to touch her.
Unmoving, she watched as I tossed the pad and pencil to the side, coming up on my knees and closing the distance between us. She closed her eyes when I pulled my fingers through her hair, arranging it to reveal the curve of her jaw. A tiny, solitary freckle became visible just under her chin, and I forced my hand away to keep from stroking a finger over it. She opened her eyes, and I wondered if she could see the battle raging inside my skull and beneath the surface of my skin.
We were both silent while I sketched her. I knew she was watching me, though she couldn’t see what I was drawing. I felt her gaze but didn’t return it. Minutes later, her eyes drifted closed and she went very still. I finished the sketch and wasn’t sure what to do. On my knees again, I approached the bed, sat back on my heels, and watched her for several minutes. Her breathing was deep and even. I put the pad and pencil aside and struggled not to touch her.
‘Falling asleep?’ I whispered finally, and her eyes opened.
‘No,’ she said, though I knew she was mistaken.
I didn’t correct her. She asked if I was done and I heard myself tell her that I wanted to do another. When she agreed, I asked her to turn on to her back. She obeyed. I told her I wanted to arrange her, and she consented. My heart drove life through my veins as if I was waking up from a years-long coma. Everything was bright and detailed. Raw and sensitive. I wanted her so badly it hurt.
At first, I thought to arrange her as though she’d tumbled from the sky and landed on her back – an angel dragged to earth by her broken heart. But as I took her wrist and angled her arm over her head, I pictured her in my bed. Heart pounding, I moved her opposite arm – first to her stomach, and then above her head, with the other. I crossed her wrists and imagined her laughing and daring me to tie her up, clear as a memory. Goddammit.
I had to stop touching her or I was going to lose my mind, so I sketched her as she was, concentrating on lines and angles, shadows and reflections. My pulse subsided to a steady rhythm. My breathing returned to normal.
My gaze moved to her face. To her eyes. Which were wide open, watching me.
Her small hands, still obediently crossed at the wrists above her head, clenched into fists and then relaxed. The pulse at her throat thrummed. Her chest rose and fell faster. I was lost in the endless blue of her eyes. She seemed almost afraid, which made me angry – though not at her.
‘Jacqueline?’
‘Yes?’
‘The night we met –’ I’m not him. I’m not him. ‘I’m not like that guy.’
‘I know tha–’
I put my finger to her soft, full mouth, stilling her words. ‘I don’t want you to feel pressured. Or overpowered.’ Even in the midst of my duplicity, I meant the words, needing her to trust me. I also wanted to kiss her more than I wanted the next breath.
‘I do, absolutely, want to kiss you right now. Badly.’
I was the more fearful one, because I knew she’d say no. I would prove to her that I could be trusted by leaving. I trailed one finger from her lips to her throat, down the centre of her chest, and waited for her no.
But she didn’t say it.
Her voice was little more than a sigh. ‘Okay.’