by Hannah Tinti
They hiked Babson’s boulders, from TRUTH to COURAGE to LOYALTY, all the way to Peter’s Pulpit, which was one of the biggest erratics—with a wide, flat top and sheer sides—a giant, imperfect, sloping piece of glacial rock. There was only one way to climb up, a thin crack along the side, and a tiny ledge they had to scramble and boost each other over. Once they reached the top they were hidden from the trail. An island of stone floating above the leaves. Loo spread out a blanket and they ate the lunch she had packed: cheese sandwiches, a bag of pretzels, some Cokes, a sleeve of Oreo cookies and an apple that she cleaned on her jeans and cut into sections with her knife.
After lunch they took out the map and the phone book and started adding to the petition. Marshall called out street names and Loo ran her fingers down the pages until she found a match.
“Thank you, Mrs. Paula Hayden, for your support.”
“The codfish thank you, too, John Pane.”
“Can you hear them, Robert L. Kendrick?”
“Blub, blub, Miss Beam. Blub, blub.”
Marshall wrote out the addresses in his slanted print, and then they took turns making signatures, first with their left hands, then with their right—loopy scrawls, single lines and careful curves—until their fingers began to cramp.
“Let’s take a break,” Marshall said. “Here. I brought you something.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a book, thick with photographs and charts of the solar system. A quote from Carl Sagan was on the back cover: Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
“Wow,” said Loo. “Thanks.”
“I thought it could go with your planisphere.” He leaned over and turned the pages until they reached Neptune, a blue swirl of hydrogen, helium and ice. “Look at this.” He traced his finger around the circle, showing the planet’s orbit. “One year on Neptune is a hundred and sixty-five years here.”
“It’s hard to think about,” said Loo. “Time moving so differently.”
Marshall flipped the page. “This is called the perihelion. It’s the point at which an orbiting body comes closest to the sun. For Neptune, it’s two point seven-six billion miles.”
Loo touched a point on the planet’s trajectory. “It looks like it crosses paths with Pluto.”
“Every two hundred and forty-eight years,” said Marshall. “Then Pluto is actually closer to the sun. But they’re on different orbital planes, so they’ll never actually meet.”
“How romantic.”
“Yeah,” said Marshall. “Anyway, I thought you might like it.”
“I do,” she said. And she did. There were chapters on black holes and the big bang and asteroids and comets and satellites and centaurs and moons. In the back there was a chart with each planet’s mass and gravitational constant, with an equation to determine your own weight across the universe. Loo borrowed a sheet of paper and did the math while Marshall took out his sketchbook.
On Jupiter, Loo would weigh 283.6 pounds, while on Pluto she would weigh only 8. On Mercury she’d pull a respectable 45.3 but if she ventured to a white dwarf star, her body would balloon to 156 million pounds. Changing where you were could change how much you mattered. Loo stretched out her legs. Her muscles ached from waiting tables. The stone was hard beneath her body but also warm from the sun. She leaned back. She closed her eyes. It could have been a minute. It could have been an hour.
When she woke up, her body was stiff, her cheek pressing into the spine of her book. She could hear the fluttering of pamphlets, the scratch of pen against paper. Marshall was still drawing, but one of his hands was resting on her lower back. She turned her head toward him and his palm slid away.
“I was afraid you might roll off,” he said.
“What are you drawing?”
He turned the notebook. Across the page was a spaceship. There were round hovercraft holes along the bottom releasing steam, two rusted-looking engines with flame propulsion attached to the side with metal bolts, a bubble windshield and a weathervane marking north, west, south and east.
“I wish I could draw like that,” said Loo.
“My mom thinks I’m wasting my time.” Marshall held the pen tightly between his thumb and forefinger, ink smudging his skin. Loo watched his hands connect straight line to straight line, a simple back-and-forth movement until the formula changed, his knuckles bending, fluid and sinuous.
“She’s been trying to get me a spot on Whale Heroes. They’re following the humpback migration now, and just filmed an episode out on Stellwagen Bank. It hasn’t aired yet, but they brought in a bunch of local environmentalists and did a phone interview with my mom about the petition. She thinks if my stepfather puts me on the program, she’ll get more publicity.”
“You want to be on TV?”
“Not really,” said Marshall. “My stepfather is kind of an asshole.”
“Why’d she marry him, then?”
“She said she didn’t want to be alone anymore.” Marshall wiped his nose. “Didn’t your dad ever have any girlfriends?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe he did and you just didn’t know about it.”
Loo thought back to all the women who’d approached her father over the years—waitresses and teachers and librarians and checkout girls—and how Hawley always seemed to be backing away. “I don’t think so.”
Marshall looked at her, then back at his notebook. He took his eraser and rubbed at the page. “Maybe that’s why he has so many guns.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s making up for something.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My father did the same thing. Except it was fish instead of guns. He was always off on his boat. Then he drowned at the Banks, because he went out in a storm when he shouldn’t have. My mom says it was because of the fish. But the guy just did whatever the hell he wanted. We got evicted from our apartment, and my mom was on tranquilizers for over a year. He never thought about what it would do to us.”
The wind blew harder, and the pamphlets Marshall was supposed to be handing out began to fall over the edge. Loo and Marshall watched them go, the paper spiraling to the ground, then Marshall snatched the rest and stood. He wound up like he was throwing a baseball and pitched the whole bunch of them off the boulder. The pamphlets unfolded in the air, taking flight in the breeze. Some dropped onto the grass, some got caught in the branches of a maple tree and some blew across Dogtown and were eventually shredded by birds and chipmunks and squirrels and groundhogs and used to line burrows and nests.
Marshall was breathing hard, his body blocking the sun.
“Finish the picture,” Loo said.
“I’m out of paper.”
Loo put her head back down on her folded arms. She pulled her T-shirt up so that her lower back was uncovered. The space just above the belt of her jeans. The place Marshall had his hand before. “You can draw on me,” she said and then she closed her eyes. She did not want to see his face if it was saying no.
A flock of geese passed overhead. She could hear them honking.
“What should I draw?” he asked.
“How about Neptune,” she said. Every muscle in her body was now on alert. A chill spread across her skin. Loo realized this was what she had been thinking of since she woke up and felt his hand slip away. She’d been looking for a reason to make him touch her again.
The pen was like a needle being traced along her skin. Marshall started in the middle of her spine, hesitant but soon pressing harder, sliding carefully over each vertebra. The lines went up her back and then began to spread out, first in one direction and then in the other. He drew Neptune and Saturn and then the rest of the planets. He pushed up her sleeve for a cluster of stars, then pulled open the neck of her shirt to draw an asteroid. He crawled over, the weight of him brief against her legs, and then the pen began tracing the side of her ribs.
“Try not to breathe for a second,” he said.
And then even the pen was gone.
Marshall shifted back onto his knees. He put a hand on either side of her waist, his fingertips below her shirt, his palms along the edge of her jeans. He bent down and started blowing, drying the ink. His breath came out in a stream, cool and direct, following her spine and then circling her skin, until the lines were set. She felt his lips hovering, and then they came together and kissed the base of her spine.
“I’m finished,” Marshall said. Then he pulled her shirt down over the drawing.
—
BY THE TIME they left the woods the sky was turning dark. Loo eased the Firebird out of the parking lot and drove slowly past the edge of Dogtown. Her lips were swollen and her cheeks were scratched from the stubble on Marshall’s face. She’d thought she’d known everything about him, so it was surprising that he even had stubble, or that his body could find so many ways to cover hers. All she had done on the rock was turn over, his kiss still warm on her back, and everything else had followed. Now they sat beside each other in the car grinning, as if they’d been caught for something they were not sorry for and would gladly do again.
Marshall had not taken his hands off her. As they climbed down from the rock, as they made their way through the forest, he kept touching her arm, her wrist, her neck, her waist, and then apologizing, and then touching her again. His hand was tucked underneath her leg now, his thumb pressing the outer seam of her jeans.
“I don’t even know your name,” said Marshall. “I mean your real name.”
“It’s Louise.”
“Really?” he said.
“My dad was the one who started calling me Loo. I think he wanted me to be a boy.”
“Come on. Loo is nice.”
“You’re just saying that.”
Marshall rolled down the passenger side window, and in an instant he had pulled his body halfway through, his feet on the seat, his butt on the sill, his upper body wrapped around the metal frame of the car. He knocked on the windshield. The car sped along and he started screaming her name.
“Looooooooooooooooooo!”
He flattened his nose against the glass, his shirt flapping behind him like a flag. Then he crawled inside again, his hair wild, his face flushed red, and pressed the back of his cold fingers against her neck.
“You’re crazy.”
“You’re pretty.”
“I’m not,” said Loo, though it thrilled her to hear someone say so.
Marshall tucked his shirt back into his pants. He tied his tie and pulled the knot close to his throat. And then his hand was sneaking back across the seat, tapping her belt, slipping around her waist. Loo had never felt so happy. And then she looked in the rearview mirror and saw the lights.
The police car had been following them for a block, maybe two. The siren wasn’t on but the red-and-blues were flashing. Loo slowed and pulled to the right, hoping that the driver would go around, but instead the squad car stayed close, and when she came to a stop at the side of the road, it parked right behind the Firebird, high beams flooding the interior.
Loo rolled down the driver’s side window, then slid her hands to the top of the wheel to 10 and 2. In the side mirror, she watched the policeman get out and slowly move alongside the Firebird, checking the backseat with a flashlight, a hand on his gun holster. He was close to her father’s age, his hair cropped short and his uniform tight.
“License and registration.” He was at the window now, peering in at them both. Loo leaned over and opened the glove compartment, hoping there would be something inside and there was, stained and torn and zipped inside a plastic baggie.
“I left my license at home,” she said and handed the papers over. The cop looked at them, then turned the flashlight into Loo’s eyes.
“You been drinking?”
“No, sir,” said Loo.
“We were just fooling around,” said Marshall.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” said the man.
Maybe I can cry, Loo thought. He might let us go if I cry.
The policeman told them to stay put and walked back to the squad car. Loo bit hard into the side of her cheek but instead of tears her mouth flooded with the taste of rust.
“Do you even have a license?” Marshall asked.
“No.”
“Maybe it won’t matter. Maybe he’ll just give us a warning.”
They sat together in silence, all the closeness that had wound between them seeping away. Marshall was no longer touching Loo. Instead he was pressed against the passenger side door, his fingers on the handle. Loo kept her eyes on the rearview mirror. After a few minutes she saw the cop come back along the car, stopping for a moment to double-check the license plate. He lifted his radio and said something into it. Then he took his gun out of the holster and pointed it at her.
“Step out of the vehicle.”
In all of her years—with all of the weapons Hawley carried and hid around the house, the derringers and .48’s and .35’s and rifles—Loo had never had a gun pointed at her before. Bile rose in her throat. It was as if she’d been locked down into place on an amusement park ride that wouldn’t stop spinning. The policeman’s Glock was loaded. She imagined the boom it would make when he squeezed the trigger. The velocity of the bullets. She opened the door and stepped out of the car.
“You,” the policeman said to Marshall. “Put your hands on the dashboard and keep them there. And you,” he said to Loo. “Put your hands on the hood.”
She turned her back and pressed her palms against the car. It was like watching a movie, like this was all happening to someone else, until the policeman put his gun back in its holster and began to run his hands along the length of her body, touching her back, the sides of her breasts, and each of her legs. Then he took hold of one of her arms and twisted it behind her and she felt the snap of the handcuff pulling tight around her wrist.
“I’m not drunk,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Maybe not,” the man said. “But this car is stolen.” He took hold of her other arm and there she was, a criminal, and he was leading her back to the squad car. He put Loo in the backseat and slammed the door. She watched through the metal grate as he took Marshall out of the Firebird and went through the same process, patting the boy down and handcuffing him. Marshall was pushed in the back beside her and the policeman got into the driver’s seat. He turned off the lights and then they were pulling away, leaving the Firebird behind on the side of the road.
“You’ve made a mistake,” said Loo. “That’s my grandmother’s car. She knows I’ve got it.”
“Then why’d she report it stolen?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s your grandmother’s name?”
“Mabel Ridge.”
“The registration says the car belongs to Lily Ridge.”
Loo swallowed hard. “That’s my mother.”
“Then she can sort it out.”
“My mother’s dead.”
“Sure she is.” The policeman got on the radio and gave his location. When the reply came through it was loud and garbled with static, like someone moaning into a fan.
“It�
��ll be all right,” said Marshall. “I’ve been arrested before.”
“You have?” Loo asked.
“For protesting. With my mom. We snuck on board a commercial trawler and slashed the nets.”
The policeman rolled his eyes.
“My mother is dead,” said Loo.
The policeman turned up the radio.
—
AT THE STATION the lieutenant on desk duty tried calling Mabel Ridge, but the phone just rang and rang. In the meantime the officers separated the teenagers, made Loo take a Breathalyzer, then put her in a small, tight room with no windows that smelled of greasy Italian sandwiches, with a bench and a chipped plastic folding table and wire mesh over a slot in the door. The walls were covered with water stains, and there was a metal air vent in the ceiling with a wad of old chewing gum pressed into the corner. Loo knew the police were trying to scare her. She knew that, and yet the room was so depressing, and no matter how hard she tried, she found that she was scared, just like they wanted her to be.
When Hawley arrived he was out of breath, as if he’d run all the way from their house. She expected him to yell but he wouldn’t even look at her. He sat down on the bench and put some papers on the table. He asked for a pen, and the desk clerk who had brought him in handed over a ballpoint and Hawley thanked him. Then the clerk stepped into the hall for a moment and they were alone.
“Dad,” Loo said.
“Don’t say anything,” said Hawley.
The policeman who had arrested her came into the room and propped the door open with a wedge. He sat on the table, the polished leather of his holster creaking, the Glock he had pointed at Loo snug beneath its strap.
“I’m Officer Temple.” He shook Hawley’s hand. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so,” said Hawley.
“Her boyfriend says he didn’t know the car was stolen.”
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” said Hawley.
“Whatever you say,” said the man. “The boy’s got a record. But your daughter was the one driving. It might be time for you to get a lawyer down here.”