Handcuffs

by Bethany Griffin

  “So would you like to fish here?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says.

  Then he moves in and tilts his head, and his whole face comes closer and closer. This is not possible. No way. He’s not trying to kiss me. Or at least he shouldn’t be, but, well, he is. I take a step back. I mean, really. I’m not saying I would have kissed him if he had paid for my movie ticket. It isn’t like the price of a movie ticket will guarantee you a few minutes of putting your tongue in my mouth. But he didn’t even pay for my ticket. I don’t like him. He’s weird and he’s boring and he stares. The not-paying thing was just like the ultimate in disdain, so even if I had liked him he would have ruined the date. Plus, since he and Josh are both from Mr. Tannahill’s neighborhood, the price of a movie ticket should be nothing to him. Disdain.

  I do let him press his mouth against mine, just to see how it feels. Just to test myself. Nothing.

  I pull away from him. I have proven that I’m impervious to the thrill of pressing up against random guys. This is good because I haven’t turned into a complete and total slut like my sister, but it’s bad because it proves that I’m still hung up on my ex. I’m not tempted to kiss some weird guy just because he’s leaning over and staring into my face. That’s kind of a relief. With the genes Paige and I share, who knows what could happen.

  “Raye tells me you just got out of a serious relationship,” I say in a tone that indicates I care.

  I would have sworn it was impossible, but he droops even more. Then he starts in on his life story, and after half an hour, which I deem plenty of time for Raye’s mouth to get to know Josh’s mouth, we head back to the SUV. I seriously hope they aren’t doing it or something.

  Oddly enough, Raye and I stopped talking so much about sex like three months ago, and even though I’ve told her a little bit, well, mostly I’ve been happy not to discuss certain things. I mean, she knows things and I know things, but we stopped sharing the really private things. There used to be all this endless speculation. You know, what do you think it will be like? And who do you think we’ll do it with? That kind of stuff. Raye was really into Ian, the cheating dumping ex. I’m pretty damn sure she was pretty damn intimate with him, and look how that turned out.

  Josh drops me off at my front door, and Raye says, “I’ll call you later,” in her breathy voice that means she really wants to talk.

  I go up to my bedroom and check my e-mail. Nothing. Since I don’t feel very sleepy I reach under my bed and pull out the big sketch pad I bought last year for geometry class. Mr. Lopez was desperate to help us understand why accurate measurement is so important. A squared plus B squared equals C squared and all that. So he made us design our dream houses. Mine was four thousand square feet and, get this, had an ice-skating rink in the basement. I don’t even like ice-skating that much, but the girl next to me was putting a bowling alley in hers, and bowling is just way too loud for me.

  I never could quite get the lines right, even though I used the ruler, and Mr. Lopez still thought it was outstanding. He hung it up on the wall of the classroom and wrote Outstanding! on it with his big red marker.

  I really liked the way the pencil felt in my hand, which was weird, ’cause I hadn’t used a pencil since fourth grade when they started letting us use ink pens. The softness of it felt right, especially when it had just been sharpened. I took that yellow pencil and the notepad home with me and stored them back under my bed.

  I even did a drawing of my real house, kind of for practice and kind of in case we have to move so that I can remember everything about it. Downstairs there’s the big eat-in kitchen, the dining room, the oversized family room, where my family gathers to watch TV. Upstairs there are four bedrooms, all with decent-sized closets—though none of them quite big enough to suit Paige—and my dad’s tiny little study that is right at the top of the steps, where he sits and works crossword puzzles when Mom says he should be updating his resume.

  I look at the huge expanse of empty white paper for a few minutes, and then I start sketching the façade for my dream house. Mr. Lopez still has the final copy, but I have the drafts. They’re floor plans, completely open so you can look inside. I figure the house could use a front. My house would definitely have a privacy fence, and maybe a stained-glass window.

  Making a drawing to scale is really hard. When I realize that the front door is two stories tall, and I totally didn’t mean for it to be that way, I shut the sketch pad and push it back under my bed.

  Raye never calls and it’s really quiet in my room. I know music would just accentuate the loneliness of everything, like trying to cover the quiet up, when it’s always, always still there.

  I pull the sketch pad back out and turn to the back part, the secret part, where sometimes I try to draw people. I close my eyes and imagine my ex-boyfriend, and when I’m done, it doesn’t look like a camel or a bear or George Washington, though it doesn’t look like him, either. I got the mouth right. I stare at the mouth for a long time before I put on my pajamas and get into bed.

  They say bad things come in threes. Like the Prescotts: Paige, Parker, and Preston. Except if I had been the boy they wanted, my parents wouldn’t have produced a third child. Anyway, here are Parker’s Very Bad Three:

  1. Broke up with the love of my life

  2. Made my mom cry on Christmas

  3. Went on pseudo-date with “I like fish” guy, aka Droopy

  You would think it might be time for something good to happen.

  But then I start to think. Stuff started going wrong around here a long time before this.

  Kyle Henessy started following Paige around and freaking everybody out.

  Paige talked Mom and Dad into getting a restraining order against Kyle, throwing his sister and staunch defender, Marion, into a murderous rage that has not cooled, even though it’s been nearly a year, and putting Kyle (this is unverified) into some kind of treatment for depression.

  Dad lost his job.

  Yeah, it’s really time for something good to happen.

  9

  “I’ve missed you, Parker Prescott,” he says into my hair. When he kisses me he bites my bottom lip, and my stomach clenches up so hard that I almost start to cry. Maybe it isn’t my stomach.

  I lean back into him, willing myself to relax. “Why are you here?” It’s only four days after Christmas, only three days since I saw him in the mall. He didn’t call, just showed up. It’s Saturday morning, and we are sitting in my father’s office. It’s this small room right at the top of the stairs that’s just big enough for the desk where my dad sits to fill out bills and, before he lost his job, to talk on the phone to his boss. Besides the desk and the office chair, there’s a love seat and a bookshelf, and that’s pretty much it.

  He is on the black leather minisofa (for some reason Dad won’t call it a love seat) and I am sitting in Dad’s high-backed leather office chair with the tiny little wheels.

  I was working on Dad’s computer when he knocked, and I went back to it after I let him in, to minimize everything I’d been working on. Raye laughs at me for being so secretive, but I just don’t like people reading over my shoulder.

  Before I could look up he grabbed the arms of the chair and pulled me forward, so that I am right in front of him, where he can kiss me, if that’s what he wants, and if I let him.

  “Where else would I be?” He grins. I bite back any and all comments about Kandace Freemont.

  “You never even came over here when we were together,” I say.

  “Your family was always here doing family stuff. You know how I feel about the whole family routine. Anyway, you always came over, then. If you don’t come to me, I have to come to you.” I kind of like the sound of that, like he needs me. It makes me feel, well, elated. I douse this crazy, out-of-control feeling by turning to him and saying,

  “You know, you don’t have to talk in really short simple sentences with me.” It’s a jab. A direct reference to Kandace and her stupidity. I need to talk
about her because I can’t stop thinking about what might’ve happened between them.

  But he laughs. I’ve turned my anguish into a joke and he thinks it’s funny.

  “Are you jealous, Parker?” His voice is so warm, his eyes intent. This is how it used to be before I freaked out and messed everything up. I would so love to go back in time and not let myself get scared. I would love for things to be like they were before.

  “Should I be?” Damn, how does he always get me to walk into his trap? The pain that shoots through me is real. He puts his hand behind my head and caresses me softly, like he’s massaging my neck, but so gently it’s really just a stroking motion.

  “There is nothing between me and Kandace Freemont.” He says this as he looks directly into my eyes. “There is something between you and me. There’s something about you, Prescott, that I can’t get enough of.” I hold my breath. Is he going to say it?

  He kisses the side of my face very softly. Then he kisses me again.

  “Are both of your parents gone?”

  “Yeah.” He kisses me again, more deeply. I relax into him just a little.

  “Little brother?”

  “He’s at a birthday party.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, Ernie Libman’s little brother. His dad works with my mom.”

  “Ernie Libman’s little brother’s having a birthday party. With cake and ice cream and all that?”

  “I guess.” I let him unbutton the top two buttons of my shirt, and then I shift so that my chair rolls to the side and his hand falls away. He overwhelms me, and I’m not sure what I want. I pull away from him, so that maybe I can focus.

  “You think they’ll have a pony or a clown or something?”

  I push my hair back. “I don’t really know.”

  “So what do we have, like half an hour, an hour?”

  “We have all day. My parents will just be here part of the day.”

  “Do you want to have some fun?” What kind of question is that to ask the girl who is panting with lust for you?

  He pulls a pair of handcuffs out of the pocket of the oversized black jacket that Raye believes I hate. The jacket I secretly think is sexy as hell, in some weird, perverse baggy-and-faded way. Real handcuffs, shiny metal cuffs linked with a chain. Something in me surges toward him, opens to the challenge in his eyes.

  “What did you have in mind?” My voice is steady. I don’t want him to think that I’m some silly Kandace-like girl giggling at his every word, but I do need to keep him interested. In me.

  He puts one cuff around my wrist, and it is so big that it makes me feel tiny and delicate, like I’m made of porcelain. It tightens to grip my wrist and even bites into it a little. He runs his hand up my arm and shivers run through me. Then he pulls my other arm back around the chair so that they nearly meet. I have to wiggle around to get comfortable, and while I’m doing that, he snaps the other cuff. It’s cold and harsh.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks.

  “No.” I want to. I’ve always wanted to trust him, more than anything. But I don’t.

  “Good.”

  He unbuttons my shirt the rest of the way. Making eye contact the entire time. It’s weirdly exciting, staring into his eyes and feeling his fingers carefully opening each button. I catch my breath, and in that second I hear the front door slam and the creech creech creech of athletic shoes on the stairs.

  My mom throws the door open. My heart totally stops and I’m sure I’ve stopped breathing. I watch her like a person in a coma, a person who is already halfway dead. Mom is wild and disheveled, and I will learn later that the stain on her shirt is my brother’s vomit. There’s a towel in her hand. I don’t notice the shirt because I’m looking at her face. I do notice the towel because it falls to the floor and just lies there. It’s been several minutes. My lungs are collapsing. Finally, I gasp and take a long slurping breath. I’m alive. The horror begins to take over as my body goes back to breathing on its own. The whole thing seems to be in some sort of crazy slow motion.

  “Jane, where’s that towel? The interior of the Jeep is going to be—Oh my God.” Dad is standing behind Mom in the doorway of the den.

  My shirt is still on, pushed back and then scrunched above the elbows. My bra is just loose enough that it has shifted forward. They can’t see anything, but they have to realize that he can.

  I can’t keep from looking over at him even though I’m about to faint. I would pretend to faint if I thought it would make them stop looking at me like this. He is balanced between the mahogany desk and the wall, where he stumbled when the door opened. He is very, very still, and his face is whiter than usual. He slides the tiny key to the handcuffs out of his pocket, moving delicately, holding it between his finger and his thumb.

  “Oh, Parker,” my mom breathes. Her eyes move past me to him. “You should leave,” she says.

  “Parker . . .” He reaches for me. But I’m in this weird position where the only place he could touch would be my face or, well . . .

  “No,” my mother says.

  “Get. Away. From. Her.” Dad’s voice is shaking. I can’t look at my dad. Mom is angry, and I can deal with that, but when I look really fast, I see that Dad’s face is totally ghostly pale, and I feel sick to my stomach.

  Mom snatches the key out of his hand. For a second I imagine all the madness that would ensue if there were no key. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Yeah, it’s like I’ve gone crazy or I’m delirious or something, and this will never be over. This weird part of me that has given up hope for the future wants to ask him if we are back together now, but I am mute. I watch silently as he slinks past Dad. I see my father take off his glasses, which he never normally does. My mom wraps her arms around Dad and pulls him away into the hall.

  There is absolute silence, then a loud squeak as my ex hits the fourth step from the bottom. The dreadful squeak that is the reason all of us Prescotts hop over the fourth step. The reason I didn’t hear my mom coming until it was too late and her shoes were creeching right outside the door.

  The screen door bangs shut. Mom and Dad come back in and we all stare at each other for a minute. The door creaks open again. She leans forward and unlocks the handcuffs. Her hands are sweaty, and I pull away from her because I feel as gross as her gummy hands. I want her to stop looking at me with the horrified expression. I want them to leave me alone so I can start working on pretending this never happened.

  We hear two footsteps on the hardwood floor downstairs. Someone is in our house. The part of my brain that’s still working recognizes our neighbor Mr. Bronson’s quavery voice.

  “Jane? Chris? Your son is out on the front lawn throwing up.”

  10

  I’m in my room. It’s been nearly an hour. I can’t sit still. I walk over to my bed and pick up the little stuffed Siberian husky he gave me right after we started dating. I look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are flushed. He says my eyes are cold, but right now they are just freaky, pupils dilated, glimmery. The way he looks at me makes me see myself differently, like there might be something attractive about me. It’s a good feeling to have.

  I run a brush through my hair. Raye’s short hair has cool wild edges. Mine is wild in its own way; thick and just a little curly, it hangs past my shoulders. The combination of pale eyes and dark hair is striking. That’s what my parents always say, that I’m striking. When they say it, it doesn’t mean anything, except that I don’t look adorable like Paige. Sixteen long years of wishing for pretty, but what I see doesn’t bother me so much, not when I see myself through his eyes. If striking is what he likes, that’s good enough for me.

  In my mind, I keep replaying every second we were together. The desire in his eyes, the intensity, the chemistry that crackled between us.

  I go over to the window and run my hand over the cool pane. From across the room I hear the click of incoming e-mail and I dive across my desk to hit the mailbox icon, but it’s just my lab partner sending me notes about this proje
ct we’re supposed to do over the break.

  Back to my door. I ease it open just a little.

  My parents are fighting, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Dad’s voice makes me kind of shudder as I remember his face, the way he couldn’t quite look at me. I push that thought out of my mind and go back to my own audacity.

  Parker Prescott, the plain little good younger sister. Not so plain or good or boring anymore, huh? I would have let him do anything to me, I tell myself. I should be worried about this. I should try to keep my self-control. I shouldn’t let him take me over so completely, but he already has. Is it wrong to fight something that feels right and good? Should I just give up? I look at my bed with the fluffy pillows and imagine curling up and sleeping for a long time, like a fairytale princess or something. Snow White. I feel so tired and out of control and confused.

  The phone rings twice, and suddenly I’m not so sleepy. I hold my breath. It would be too much to hope for that I might retain phone privileges. Mom already took my cell when she escorted me to my room. Would he dare call my house line? Is he thinking about me?

  Mom shoves the door open.

  “Raye is on the phone. She’s been calling your cell. I think she’s worried about you. You can talk to her for long enough to tell her you’re grounded and to cancel whatever plans you might have,” she says coldly.

  “How long am I grounded?” I hold my breath and hope for a week. This is something I do when I know things are bad, I just hope for something—not that they won’t punish me, because I know they will, but for a punishment I can handle. Like in eighth grade when I got a B on my midterm in math, or last year when I forgot to tell them that I was going to Raye’s after school and they got all worried, but I only ended up grounded for like one day. I realize that my fingers are actually crossed, and it would be funny, acting like a four-year-old, if my situation weren’t so hideous.