by Callie Hart
“Oh?” I laugh. “And what makes you think I’ll be able to tolerate you for ten years?”
Callan shoves me off him playfully, propping himself up so that he’s leaning over me, a scandalized expression on his face. “Oh, I want more than ten years. I want plenty more. I’m gonna grow fat and old, and I’ll have a ridiculous comb over like Mr. Harrison from Biology, and I will still fully expect you to be taking photographs for me, you fiend.”
He tickles me, and I curl myself into a ball, trying to fend him off, not pee myself, and keep my shirt down at the same time. Miraculously, I manage all three. “I couldn’t ever be with a guy who has a comb over,” I gasp.
“Well, then, I guess I’ll just have to get a really bad wig instead.” Callan grins at me as he lowers himself down, his body hovering over mine. He kisses me, slow and deep, making my head spin. He always tastes like he’s just brushed his teeth. Between my legs where Callan has placed himself, I can feel how badly he wants me. The first time I felt him hard against my body, I freaked out a little. We’d only been dating for two weeks, and kissing alone was still new and mind blowing. I’d pulled away, and Callan had flushed so red it was almost comical. I’d thought he was paralyzed by embarrassment until he’d taken my hand and placed it on himself through his pants.
“This is what you do to me, bluebird,” he’d whispered into my ear. “You drive me fucking crazy.”
And he’s driven me crazy many times since. I stifle a groan as he grinds himself against me, breathing heavily into my mouth. “One of these days…” he tells me, his voice sounding strained. “One of these days…”But he doesn’t ask. He doesn’t demand to know which day it will actually be. There’s something inside of him that knows I’m not ready. His whole being is somehow attuned to mine in a way that scares me sometimes, because I feel the same way with him. I know him. It seems as though there’s a part of me that recognizes everything he’s ever felt and ever will feel. We are mirrors of one another. We are on a road, an unpaved, pot-holed road, and we keep hitting fork after fork where a decision needs to be made, and either by luck, fate, or sheer force of will we keep making the decisions that mean we get to stay together. The decisions that mean we get to remain each other’s mirror.
It’s scary to feel this way so young. At least that’s what Friday tells me I should be feeling, anyway. I can’t quite seem to muster up the appropriate levels of panic, though. I’m too relieved by the knowledge that Callan Cross is the other half of my soul, and I was lucky enough to have been born right next-door next to him.
He bites my lip gently, growling a little. “So what do you think?” he asks. “We keep taking our photos. Ten years from now, we develop them all at once?” He drags his teeth over my neck, chuckling when I gasp.
“But I kind of like being locked away with you in a dark room for hours at a time,” I say breathlessly.
“Don’t worry. We can still do that.”
“Then sure. I think it sounds fun.”
We kiss some more, but Callan finally pushes away from me, turning me around and pulling me to him so that he’s holding me from behind in his arms. “You realize I masturbate more than any other seventeen-year-old male on the face of this planet,” he says drowsily.
We fall asleep laughing.
******
I get busted on my way out of the house in the morning. It’s early, not even six yet. Jo’s normally fast asleep, exhausted from working such long shifts, but not this morning. She’s sitting at the breakfast table with her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee as I try and slip silently out of the front door.
“Coralie? Coralie, sweetheart, can you come in here a second please?”
I nearly jump out of my skin. “Holy crap. Jo, sorry, I—I didn’t see you there.”
“I know, baby girl. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I’m trying to figure out the expression she’s wearing as I cautiously enter the kitchen, trying not to freak out. I should never have mentioned Jo knowing about my nocturnal stay-cations last night. If I hadn’t, the universe undoubtedly wouldn’t be embarrassing me like this right now.
“I know you need to get ready for school,” Jo says, “but there’s something I wanted to talk to you about first.” There are dark circles under her eyes, and her hair is a little messy, falling down out of the loose bun she has tied at the back of her head. She’s looked more and more tired of late. I haven’t mentioned anything to Callan—I didn’t want to seem rude—but this morning she looks like she run a marathon, and then refused to sleep for a week.
“Sure. Of course. If it’s about me staying—”
“No, no, it’s not that.” She shakes her head, peering into the bottom of her coffee cup. The contents inside has gathered a milky film on top; I doubt very much that the liquid is still warm. She motions for me to sit down next to her, which I do, growing more and more anxious by the second. “It’s something else,” she says. “I definitely shouldn’t be talking to you about this before Callan, but I just—I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.” Tears well in her eyes, the same deep brown, soft, kind eyes she shares with her son, and a heavy, dark weight pulls at me from the inside. I know what she’s going to say. I have no idea how, but I suddenly know this isn’t good at all.
Jo takes a deep breath. “I’m sick,” she blurts out. “Really sick. I have been for a while now, but I…I wanted to wait. My doctor was hopeful that undergoing a chemotherapy treatment might fix things. Unfortunately…unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.”
I sit still, stunned, unable to say anything, to blink, to swallow, to even vaguely comprehend what she’s saying to me.
“I thought it would be better to wait until I knew exactly how long I had before I told you both. And now, well, now I know. My doctors think I have about eight months left. Maybe a year if I carry on with my treatment. I don’t know if I can—”
I burst into tears, unable to stop myself. No sound comes out of my mouth, but I’m overtaken by the powerful wave of sorrow that smashes into me. Jo’s face crumples into a mask of pain and hurt. She takes my hand in hers, rubbing her fingers up and down over mine. “Oh, sweet girl. Sweet girl, come here.” I collapse against her, crying into her shirt. She smells like disinfectant and laundry detergent. Slowly brushing my hair, she whispers soothing things to me as I lean against her, wondering how I never noticed how the skin of her hands is so pale, almost translucent, thin like a butterfly’s wing, and how she always seems like she’s about to pass out from exhaustion.
“I’m sorry, Coralie. I really can’t tell you how sorry I am. I really had hoped to be at your wedding. To watch you marry my son. I wanted to help you when you had your first baby with him. I wanted—” Her voice catches in her throat, and she can’t speak for a second. “I had wanted to see the…wonderful life you two build for yourselves. But I have this feeling that…I’ll get to see it somehow. Oh god, I’m sorry. Shh, come on, now.” She jostles me in her arms, and I’m awash with this terrible sense of injustice.
Never once since my mother died have I felt resentment toward her. Not in a real or meaningful way. I’ve been endlessly sad that she hasn’t been around, but I’ve never hated her for what she chose to do. She couldn’t take it anymore, and I’ve always understood that. Right now, I’m so furious with her, though.
She drove herself off a bridge, decided to opt out of her life and say goodbye to everyone. She gave back the gift of her life. And now Jo, the woman who has essentially treated me like her daughter since I met her, is telling me she’s dying and she’s hurting because she won’t get to be around for all of the monumental events in my life. It hurts. It hurts so fucking badly, I don’t know how I’ll ever survive it.
“Why?” I ask. “What is it? Why isn’t there anything they can do?” The fact that Jo is a doctor makes this ten million times worse. It seems as though there should be something the specialists at the hospital can do for one of their own. I know this is a r
idiculous thought, the medical practitioners hold off on the really good treatments for people that they like, but it still runs through my head.
“Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,” Jo says softly. It can be hard to detect in its initial stages. The cancer had spread all over the place before anyone knew. It’s no one’s fault, Coralie. No one is to blame. It’s just…life. Part of life is dying, right? I’m just going on that particular journey a little sooner than I’d planned.”
I feel a strangled sob trying to work it’s way up and out of my throat. I have to stop myself from breathing in order to prevent myself from howling and waking up Callan. “When are you going to tell him? When?”
“In a minute. After you leave,” Jo says. “I hope you’ll forgive me for laying this on your shoulders before his, but he’s going to need you now, Coralie. He’s strong and he’s brave, my beautiful, wonderful son, but he’s not going to handle this well. Do you…do you think you can be there for him when…he needs you?” She can hardly speak. I can barely see through my tears. Together, we’re a complete mess. I nod, trying to choke back the pain and the fear I’m feeling as Jo squeezes me to her.
“You’re a good girl, Coralie. You’re a sweet soul. I’m going to hate to have to say goodbye.”
I can’t take it anymore. I tear myself from her arms and run out of the house before I totally lose it. Outside, light rain has started to fall, speckling the sidewalk and the pathway up to my house. A strange, eerie light has settled over everything, purple and blue, angry, like the dawn is aching for Jo, and for me, and soon for Callan.
I climb the downpipe that brackets my bedroom, clamber through the open window and I throw myself into my bed, trying not to make a sound as I cry. Two hours later, I’m creeping out of the house, hoping not to wake my father as I leave for school.
Callan isn’t waiting two blocks away for me like he usually is.
He doesn’t come to school for three days.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CORALIE
Like You Love Me, Too
THEN
Every year, my father goes away to a reunion with his old military buddies. Two whole weeks where the house sits quietly and I don’t jump at every creak and strain the old place makes. Friday comes and brings me my dinner in the evening. I tell her she doesn’t need to—I cook every day normally anyway—but she says it makes her happy. She brings Algie, and he tears around the lower floor of the house, skidding all over the place, his nails making tap, tap, tapping sounds on the polished floorboards.
My father loves his trip away. The weeks leading up to him leaving were actually okay; he didn’t touch me once, and so for the first time in a very long time I don’t have a single mark on my body. Callan comes and gets me in the morning before school, letting himself into the house, and it feels liberating somehow, like for just a second I’m a normal teenaged girl and my boyfriend is allowed to hang out with me, unafraid of getting his balls hacked off with a rusty spoon.
We’re walking home from school three days after my father left, when Callan folds his arms around me and draws me up close against him, kissing me in the street. My breath feels like water, slowly filling me up, rising from my stomach all the way to the top of my head. My skin breaks out in goose bumps, and Callan must feel the change in me because he laughs, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “Feels strange, right? Not worrying about that old man of yours,” he says.
It’s weird that we don’t talk about it very often, but Dad casts a huge shadow over us at all times. Callan’s been accepting of my clipped, firm responses whenever he’s suggested that he come over and introduce himself to Malcolm. Perhaps I’m not as good at masking my abject terror whenever he brings this up, but Callan never pushes. He drops the subject right away, and two seconds later it’s like we were never even talking about my home life.
“This feels right, doesn’t it? Nice not having to hide,” Callan says into my hair. He nibbles at my ear lobe, gathering my hair in both his hands and sweeping it down my back, out of the way, so he has better access to my neck.
“We’re still out in public,” I say, panting a little. “We still have to observe the laws of common decency.” I don’t want him to stop what he’s doing, though. His mouth on my skin feels so good. I can barely think straight.
“Observe the laws of common decency? You sound like a fifty year old,” Callan says, laughing. Little does he know that the line comes straight from my father’s mouth, who is close enough to fifty. He says it all the time whenever he sees people holding hands in the street. “We’re young. We’re kids. We’re supposed to be making out on the streets, making the old folks feel awkward about themselves. They used to do it, too, though, bluebird. Guaranteed Mrs. Lowercroft used to get fingerbanged in her lowercroft when she was a teenager.”
Mrs. Lowercroft, the woman he’s referring to, is walking with her grocery bags looped over either arm on the other side of the road. She has to be in her early sixties now, hair done up majestically in true southern belle scrolls and swooshes of steel gray. She sends us a rather scathing sideways glance as she passes, high heels making loud rapping sounds against the sidewalk.
“There is no way she ever let a boy touch her vagina,” I say. “That woman is far too proper. Her husband’s probably still a virgin.”
Callan gives one hard laugh. “They had a son. He died, though, years ago.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. He had cancer. He was only twenty-three. Mom told me she used to have a huge crush on him. She cried herself to sleep for two months after he passed away.”
I can imagine Jo doing that. She’s such an empathetic person. She feels everything for everyone. Her own pain must be breathtaking. “Poor Jo. Let’s get her some flowers on the way home.”
We cut behind the Smoke Shop and hop the fence into the fields beyond, giggling like idiots as Mrs. Lowercroft stands on the corner of 5th and Main, watching us like we’ve lost our minds. I’d be concerned that she might tell my father about my behavior, but she’s always hated him. No matter what I did, she’d rather gossip to her girlfriends than confront my father directly over the errant child he’s raised.
The tall grass whips at our legs as Callan and I run. The fields stretch on forever, down to the reservoir that my mother used to take me swimming in when I was tiny. The sun beats down, causing sweat to bead and run down my back as we collect stems of Yellow Cosmos, Indian Blanket, Lemon Mint and Black-Eyed Susan. I pull out the disposable camera Callan gave to me last week—this must be our seventh camera now—and I hang back, taking a picture of him walking ahead of me, flowers held by his side, his free hand out, skimming the tops of the wild wheat and grass. I’m sun drunk and so happy I could burst by the time we reach the water. Light glances off the flat surface of the reservoir, the wide, deep body of water so calm and still that it looks like a mirror.
Callan drops his book bag to the ground and places his carefully gathered bunch of flowers on top of it. When he stands, he looks at me mischievously. “So?” he says.
“So what?”
“Are we going in? It’s hotter than hades out here, and I know you’re just dying to get me out of my clothes.” He waggles his eyebrows.
“You should be so lucky, Callan Cross.” I swat at him, but my cheeks flare bright red. I’m embarrassed. I do want to get him out of his clothes, but I don’t know how to make it happen. I’m not experienced. I don’t have a clue how to seduce a guy. When we’ve made out and touched each other back at Callan’s place, it’s felt secret, like it’s not really happening because it’s in the dark. When Callan’s made me come with his fingers, we’ve been clinging onto each other like we’re drowning, trying to stay afloat, and the miracle that’s occurred between us is sacred, something that shouldn’t be talked about.
When I made Callan come for the first time, I’d been so surprised that I’d rolled over and pretended to be asleep. It had been ridiculous. Callan had laughed softly under his
breath and gotten up to fetch some toilet roll. He’d curled himself around me from behind and gently wiped his come from my stomach and my thighs, and then he’d kissed my shoulder and stroked my hair until I actually did fall asleep.
“Friday’ll be mad if I come home soaking wet, Callan.” I ditch my bag on the floor next to his, waiting to be talked into it, though. Callan sees right through me.
“You won’t be soaking wet. You’ll be dry by the time we get back. I promise.”
“I don’t think I should—”
Callan takes a step and covers my mouth with his, his hands laid heavily one on top of the other at the base of my spine. He kisses me deeply, more intense than when he was teasing me with his lips up on the street just now. If Mrs. Lowercroft had witnessed this, she probably would have called the police. His tongue darts into my mouth, stroking softly over my own tongue. Callan breathes out slowly, but it’s a shaky breath. He’s trying to take this easy, to be calm and collected, though his efforts don’t appear to be paying off.
His hands make their way underneath my shirt, fingers lightly skating over my back as they rise up, up, up between my shoulders. My stomach is bare. The warmed metal of Callan’s belt buckle presses up against my belly, and I have the strangest reaction to the contact. I shiver, the sensation beginning at my neck, traveling down my chest and rising up across my cheeks at the same time. Callan reaches up through the neck of my shirt and holds the base of my skull, his thumb rubbing lightly over my ear lobe again.
“You can stop me,” he says. “If you don’t want this, you can stop me. You know it’ll be okay, right?”
I look up at him and I know he’s speaking the truth. I hear kids talking at school; plenty of guys in our year are so determined to get laid that they bully their girlfriends into having sex. It’s never rape, but at the same time it’s hardly a mutual decision. I can’t imagine Callan trying to coerce me into anything. He’s strong, and he’s confident, and he has a smart mouth on him, but he’d never ask me to do anything I was uncomfortable with.