“You could say that.”
I sat back down. “What happened? I mean…if you want to talk about it.”
“Nothing that doesn’t happen every other day.” A thought occurred to him; darkening his face and erasing his smile. He ground his thumb into the cement on the edge of the pool. “But this time he went too far.”
“Who did?”
A beat of silence. “Have you ever lost something precious to you? I don’t mean a person or an emotional loss. I mean like an object.”
I thought of my stuffed blue whale. I’d carried it with me everywhere when I was a kid. I couldn’t even remember why it was so important. Just a comfort thing, I guess. Somewhere in the chaos of my mother dying and Jasper going to jail, I lost it.
“Yeah,” I answered. “But gone is gone, right? What can you do?”
Evan nodded. “I keep telling myself that. It’s not helping.”
“What did you lose?”
“You really want to know?”
I started to bite off a smart-alecky remark that I wouldn’t have asked otherwise, but Evan seemed like he was genuinely curious that I wanted to talk to him. And that sucked. Loneliness taken to a whole new level.
“Yeah,” I said. “I want to know.”
He looked ready to spill it, and then shook his head. “It’s my brothers. My adopted brothers, which they don’t let me fucking forget. They know how to dig in so deep and push the right buttons until I lose my shit.”
“They both need a good ass-kicking.” I said with a smirk. “Just my casual observation.”
Evan smiled wanly, and pushed off from the wall to tread water. “It’ll be better after graduation. When I get away from here.”
“You’re leaving?”
“The second the ceremony’s over.”
“Oh.” I brushed a dead leaf off the lounger. “Cool.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t know. I turn eighteen in a few weeks. I think Gerry is going to cut me loose “Gerry?”
“My mother’s cousin. My guardian.”
“He’d do that? Just kick you out?
“Yeah. He stepped up for six years but now he’s done.”
Evan’s brows furrowed. “What will you do?”
I shrugged. “I’ve saved up some money. I’ll be fine. Get a job. Get a place, I guess.” I coughed. “I’ll be fine.”
A short silence fell, waiting.
“What about you?” I asked. “Where will you go? You mentioned the Grand Canyon the other night.”
“The Grand Canyon, definitely,” Evan said. His arms moved to keep him afloat. “Lake Powell that’s near there. I want a cabin around lake. I figure I could work at some local mechanic shop. I don’t want to do that forever, but it’s a start until I get my EMT training done.”
“You want to be an EMT?”
“A firefighter. I want to be a firefighter. You have to have EMT training.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Dangerous work, isn’t it? Putting out raging infernos, hauling people out of burning buildings?” I quirked a smile. “Rescuing cats out of trees.”
Evan burst out with a short laugh, and I swear to God, I felt it in my chest.
In my heart.
“All that stuff,” he said. “I like to help people.”
“I could see you being a firefighter.”
“Yeah?”
God, could I. I pictured Evan’s tall frame garbed in the heavy bulk a firefighter’s uniform. You had to be strong just to wear it. The fantasy bloomed: Evan’s handsome face covered in soot and sweat as raging fire burned behind him. He carried a small child and placed her in the arms of her grateful mother…
What is wrong with me?
Evan Salinger had infiltrated my brain. I was trying to keep him out and he kept seeping in.
“What about you?” he asked. “You said you’d get a job but what about your poetry?”
My eyebrows shot up. “How did you know I wrote poetry?”
“I sacrificed a lamb on the altar of Ba’al and a vision came to me.” He laughed at my slack-jawed expression. “I read that ‘zine? Mo Vay Goo? The one with the grainy Xerox of Moby Dick on the cover?”
“Oh. Right.”
His laughter died. “I get it. I know what they say about me.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him about his stint at Woodside, his breakdown in class, about how he thought he knew things from dreaming them. And I could see he was bracing himself for it.
Don’t do that to him, I thought. Evan had been ground up in the rumor mill long enough. No more Freakshow talk. I decided to talk to him.
“You read Mo Vay Goo?” I asked. “I thought people filed it in the circular bin six nanoseconds after Marnie handed it out.”
Evan moved to the pool’s edge again. “I usually read it, though I haven’t been all that impressed until your introduction issue. Your poem was good.”
“Thanks.”
“Really good,” he said. “Is that what you want to do? Be a poet? I mean, as a career?”
“Not a lot of money in poetry. Any money, really.”