“It’s okay,” she purrs against my mouth. “We just have to respect it.”
For fuck’s sake! “I am.” Or at least I’m trying to. She’s not making it easy.
Her hands do retreat, leaving my zipper and closing the pearl snaps on my denim shirt instead. But her sentiment warns of a future recurrence: “Enisi says curiosity is a fire not easily put out.”
To which I deadpan, “Curiosity killed the cat.”
She laughs, while I coax her scrunched up sweatshirt back down around her waist. “I just don’t want you to get bored.”
“Are you…bored?”
“No! It’s just…I know, or I assume…you’ve done other things. More things. And after doing some things, I can see how it would be hard not to be able to do those things again.”
“So you figured you’d just unzip Pandora’s pants.” I laugh, but it’s the truth. Once we go there, there is no going back.
“I wasn’t going to do it. There’s other stuff between kissing and it, right?”
“Sure.” Other stuff that leads directly to it.
She sighs heavily, her fingers agitating her hair. “We’re a month away from winter break, our senior year half over. Before we know it, hopefully I’ll be at college and you’ll be wherever for music. And we’re still just kissing. I mean, I could kiss you forever.” Making certain I know that she is not all tell and no show, she kisses me before continuing. “It just feels like we’re running out of time.”
She feels pressured. Damn it.
“I mean, how does anybody ever really know when they’re ready?” She pushes off my lap and flops down in the seat beside me.
“Well…” I deliberate, hearing Mom’s advice spouting out of my mouth. “If you’re still asking yourself that question, chances are you’re not.” And there goes my chance. Fuck.
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t.” I just did it. “I never thought about it until you.” My hand caresses the side of her face—so beautiful, innocent, deserving of the wait.
Perplexity morphs into vulnerability, her cheek nestling against my hand. “You’re so good to me, the one consistent thing in my life. It only makes it harder. It makes me want even more to be ready.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, even though I, too, feel the pressure of time. Where will she go? Where will I go? What will it mean for this…us?
She lays her head on my shoulder and her hand over my heart. I pull her legs across mine, anything to feel her around me as much as I feel her within me. Is this how my parents felt? When they fell for each other. Before they fell apart.
The wren feather was right on. This is protection. Protection from the world around us, protection from the future, fleeting protection from how that future will change this present.
Thanksgiving Day I log miles with Miss Patterson, delivering meals to needy families in the hollow.
Often on the receiving end of such charity, it was satisfying to organize the food drive as part of my UCAN internship, as well as a much-needed diversion from disqualifying myself from the state meet.
Like Grayson said, being part of the giving is rewarding. But my expectations were too high. Or my organization was subpar. The drive failed to bring in enough to feed all the families on the list.
Miss Patterson, as she always does, personally made up the difference.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she consoled when I apologized for the tenth time. “We should’ve featured pills in the silent auction. Lord knows, they would’ve bid on them! I tell you, I’m tired of trying to establish a stronger sense of community in a community that has absolutely no sense of community to begin with.”
“I can donate more,” I said, shaken by her uncharacteristic perturbation. I should have donated more if I expect others to.
“You’ll do no such thing. I’ll get the money out of them one way or another,” she talks to herself while hastily prepping Hot Browns and giblet dressing and pumpkin pie in the soup kitchen.
All of which I boxed and packed into the trunk, back seat, and floorboards of her Caddy three times over.
On our third and final trip, heading to the last house on our list, the reward in giving has become outweighed by the relief of not having to give anymore. My olfactory is completely smelled-out with the smells of Thanksgiving—what with preparing and schlepping pounds of it—and I don’t care to get another whiff of it until next Thanksgiving.
Pulling into the drive, I’m thankful it’s our last stop.
Although I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been here before. With Ace? The night we dropped off Red?
No. She’s pretty and popular. And a brat, surely a spoiled one—she can’t be on the list.
“Shelby, dear, I can get that. Be careful of your shoulder,” Miss Patterson says, the same as she has said at every house.
It’s good for it, restoring strength and mobility, I do not say again. Rehabbing religiously, my mind is already set on state track, hopeful redemption for missing out on state cross country. Besides, the warmed bottom of the box against the fabric of my sweatshirt is a nice contrast to the brisk evening air.
I follow behind Miss Patterson who knocks gingerly on the door. After several frigid seconds, a timid woman pulls it open just a crack. Her eyes peek out to see who’s calling. The door—like one that has been slammed too many times—rests lopsided, its tired hinges about to give.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Miss Patterson says in a measured tone, not too joyful, unassuming but with a smile.
It has been a crapshoot as to how we are received. Most thankful, some praising, some self-conscious, a few refused the offering altogether.
The woman opens the door further, standing awkwardly, showing us only her profile. The porch light revealed the bruise on her eye and cheek opposite us as she first peeked. Not the first sign of abuse I have seen tonight, unfortunately. We delivered to the women’s shelter. One of the most rewarding yet depressing of our givings.
I hand her the box, a feast for a family of four. “Thank you,” she says, as fainthearted as she looks.
A little boy, sucking on a pacifier and clutching a one-eyed teddy bear, runs to her. His arms wrapping about her leg, he spits out the pacifier and celebrates the smell. “Pumpkin pie! Pumpkin pie!”
In an instant, I am ashamed of my olfactory. There is nothing like the smell—the spirit—of Thanksgiving.
“Shh, shh,” the woman soothes, her eyes darting in the direction of distant rooms inside the house.
“Come here, ankle biter,” a voice calls softly, on its way to the door.
I know that voice. Usually taunting and overconfident, it is careful and nurturing in talking to her younger brother.
Before I can fully duck behind Miss Patterson, Raelynn sees me. I recognize the look in her eyes, that of a hunted deer. Darting toward and leaping in front of her mother, she slams the door.
“Teens these days,” Miss Patterson exasperates, marching from the porch toward her Caddy.
Following after the cloud of her riled breath puffing into the glacial air, “That girl is in my class. It was me. I made her uncomfortable,” I try to make Miss Patterson feel better, as charitable as she is.
Her hands roughly tidying the scarf around her neck before getting in the passenger seat, “I hope they enjoy their dinner,” she says, her saintly impartiality returning.
From over the hood while in the process of getting in under the steering wheel, I glance back at the house. A silhouette peers through the curtain. Unmistakably Raelynn, she is as pretty in silhouette as she is in real life.
I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what she’s worried about. But I don’t know why I wouldn’t. If I were behind the curtain, she would tell everyone.
Three weeks later at Hot Brown, I have returned to full duty. If only we ever had a full house.
Breakfast and lunch complete, everything restocked, washed, and mopped—the last hour of my shift longer
than Rapunzel’s hair, I skip the fairy tales and finish a whodunit novel in my favorite corner booth.
The doting wife. I should’ve seen it coming. It’s always the one you least suspect.
“They got it all wrong,” my mother said about Grandpa shooting my father, the day Enisi chopped that tsitaga’s head off.
I wouldn’t call her “doting.” But would she? Could she? I can’t think of anyone else Grandpa would cover for.
“She wouldn’t, but the drugs would,” he said about her stealing my money. She would, and she could, and she did.
Murdering my father? No. Right?
“Now I’m late,” I overhear Tawny tell Destiny and Raelynn at the counter. She is far too happy about it if she’s talking about her period. She’s insensitive, too.
Destiny leaves the counter.
I grab my backpack and follow her into the bathroom. She’s already in a stall. And from the jingle of pills in plastic, she’s already coping.
I take the stall beside her, hang my backpack on the door hook, and change to run home. My first run in six weeks will prove to be both exciting and nerve-racking.
“Destiny…”
“Yeees, Shelby.”
“You are the strongest person I know.” If only she believed me.
She even cries strength, growling amid the sniffling.
“What can I do?”
Her head, her back, something, bangs off the wall separating our stalls. “I…wish…I…knew,” her words separate between sniffles and growls.
A syringe container—minus a syringe but full of pills, like the one I found in Grandpa’s sock drawer—plops to the floor beneath the dividing wall. That must have been the thing in her apron pocket I assumed was a large Sharpie. I could take that thing and run, for starters. I don’t. Just like my mother, she’d find another syringe if she were of a mind to.
She retrieves it with a quickness anyhow.
“Have you been…” to see Enisi. I catch myself before I break all confidentiality. Destiny doesn’t know what I heard. For all she knows, I think she lost the baby, just like everyone else. “…somewhere for help?”
“And where would that be,” she cries. Poke County is slim enough in basic resources, support in the recovery process of rape, teen pregnancy, abortion, loss must be even harder to come by. “You have no idea.”
“Tell me,” I plead, touching the dividing wall. Maybe that would help, having someone to tell it to. “I swear on my legs, I will not tell a soul.”
“On your legs, huh.” She attempts a laugh, knowing them to be my only hallmark. “I trust you, I really do. But…please…just go. That’s what you can do for me.”
On the way out I inhale like a whale coming to the surface and pass by the counter to where Tawny and Raelynn sit. From my backpack I pry a goody bag and a packet from the technical college and lay it in front of them. Suggested by Grayson, I toured there in the event I need a backup plan. The technical college is a quarter the cost of UK. Grants and financial aid may well cover it, with no upfront out-of-pocket costs.
Tawny doesn’t ask for whom it is meant as she helps herself to the goody bag. Lipstick, eyeliner, and a bunch of other doohickeys that are as foreign to me as popularity.
“Fake eyelashes!” she squeals, pulling the feathery-looking things from the bag. “I always wanted to try these.” She holds them up to her eyes, the blue-tinted tips matching and fluttering with each exaggerated blink. “How do I look?”
“Like a peacock,” Raelynn says what I am thinking.
“Where’d you get this swag?” Tawny finally addresses me, as if it’s impossible that I have access to it.
“The technical college in Lexington.” I push the packet—brochure, application, and financial aid forms inside—toward Raelynn. “Got this there, too. A beauty program. Hair, nails, makeup.” I shrug, wishing I didn’t feel like a whale out of water talking to her. Slow down and talk in complete sentences! “I thought it might interest you.”
Ever since the night Miss Patterson and I went to her house to deliver Thanksgiving dinner, I have agreed with Destiny: Raelynn and I have something in common. We both need a chance.
“Why would it interest me.” Raelynn shoves the packet away to the side of the counter. Once she’s done rolling her eyes, they trail after the packet.
I recognize the look in them—a mix of curiosity and aspiration muddled with self-doubt.
“Your hair and makeup always look really good,” I answer honestly. I assume if she can keep up her own appearance, she’s perfectly capable of keeping up the appearance of others. She might as well make some money doing it, make a career out of it. “They have financial aid and everything. Just like any other college.”
As soon as the financial aid part comes out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back.
Because she takes it the wrong way, like I’m insinuating she and her family could use the help.
“I gotta bounce,” she says to Tawny, running away from chance the same as I did at Grayson’s dorm party.
Necessity eclipsing nerves, I grab the packet and follow her to the door. Once we’re out of earshot, “I haven’t said anything to anyone…about that night. And I’m not going to,” I say.
“You and that do-gooder fairy godmother deliver one meal to my house and you think I’m a charity case? I don’t need your help, Shelby Lynn,” she hisses.
The disdainful way she says my name reminds me of why I never liked it in the first place. And it is embarrassingly clear that she feels the same way I did while talking to Grayson at the dorm party. Destiny nailed it. Raelynn and I have more in common than the need for a chance. We are our own obstacles.
“It’s just ‘Shelby.’ And this isn’t a handout. It’s an opportunity. What you do with it is your choice,” I say something Grayson might say before topping it off with something Ace definitely would say. “Just take the damn packet, already.”
She does, and then storms out the door.
Christmas Eve at our spot, we decorate a tree—her idea, not mine.
More like a skinny shrub, it could give Charlie Brown’s tree a run for its money.
Decorations as sparse as limbs, upon the tree Shelby hangs a snowman, a Santa head complete with beard and cap, and a bird. Maybe a partridge? They’re all whittled out of wood and painted.
“Where’d you get those?”
“I made them.”
“You whittle?”
“Grandpa says it settles the mind. He should be home for Christmas.”
“Are you allowed to visit him…over break?”
“It’s all set up. I’ll visit my mom in rehab New Year’s morning and then Grandpa in jail that afternoon.” She says it slowly, almost disbelieving, as if it’s a dream that both guardians are locked up. Or a nightmare. “Heck, maybe it’ll give me a little insight into your situation. Splitting the holidays between parents.” She makes a halfhearted attempt to laugh.
“It’s a real blast.” I join in her acerbic humor.
“You’re staying with your mom for a whole week?”
I nod. “I’ll spend tomorrow with Pop, then head her way, and come back on New Year’s.”
“Things must be going good, then, with you and Stef-hahn.” She smiles, proud of her annoyingly silent “n.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” I lean into her, her upturned mouth ripe for a kiss. “Gigs, that’s what’s good.” I’m the holiday fill-in. Gotta start somewhere.
“That’s right! Where and when are you playing? With the Shelby running, I could come.”
“By yourself. With a permit.” Saved by the DMV.
“Enisi helped me petition for a ‘hardship’—a ‘restricted license’—while I wait out the last month on my permit. I can drive myself to and from work and school and related activities. Apparently my family situation does have some perks.” She does that too well, hides disappointment with sarcasm. “And…they’d rather grant me one than deal with Enisi.”
A sma
rt move on their part. I wonder if she took her ax!
“I could meet up for UCAN business and then swing by your gig. Voilà, a ‘related activity.’”
“Look at you, rule bender.” She wouldn’t have done that four months ago. I’d like to think she’s picked up more than risk-taking from hanging out with me, but probably not. “Just let me get a couple under my belt.” My finger tugs on the belt loop of her jeans, pulling her in for another kiss. Let me see if I’m any good at it before I parade it in front of her.
“They’re going to love you. It’s impossible not to.” She looks at me the way no other girl ever has. With genuine affection and admiration, she isn’t focused on what she can get out of me but what she can put into me, what she can make me believe in myself.
Everything about her says she loves me. She just said it’s impossible not to. Why won’t she say it, the way she did that night in the hospital.
“How’d your dad take it?” she asks of my quitting the mine for music. As if his nonsupport has something to do with my self-doubt.
“I don’t wanna talk about him. Write a song with me.” I pull her by the hand and toward the Jeep, toward the Bootleg guitar in the back seat.
“A song?”
“Hell yeah, a song. I need some words. They’re your specialty, right.”
“Words are everyone’s specialty, considering the average person speaks 15,000 of them a day,” she clarifies.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” Intelligence was never on my radar, but damn it is sexy. Her back to the Jeep door, I pin her to it with a kiss that is more emotional than tangible. Like certain hits in a fight, the contact is there, but the body doesn’t even feel it because emotion overpowers.
The electric in me must enter her through my lips. She shivers and giggles and does it all again.
“That big…beautiful…brain of yours,” I draw it out, allowing my fingers time to remove the band from her braid, shaking loose her hair and hoping to feel it on my skin soon. “Share it with me. Write a song with me.”
On the comedown from emotion, I try again. Oh, yeah, I feel this kiss.
Just Shelby Page 21