Equilibrium

by Lorrie Thomson

  “Wait.” Nick pecked her cheek, a ploy for getting a good hold around her waist and sweeping her into his arms. Her stomach somersaulted with the sudden change of position, and the rain’s patter heightened into a downpour. She nuzzled into his neck, the only dry spot, and dared a tentative nibble at the tender underside of his chin.

  “You’re not making this any easier.” Nick stumbled across the rock-strewn yard, mud sucking at his sneakers, and then placed her lightly on her feet when they reached the front porch overhang. “Geez, you’re light.”

  Stacks of boxes were piled high along each side of the tiny porch, and she squeezed through the cardboard-scented passage, eyes on her prize.

  Nick fumbled through the keys on his keychain till he found the one for his house. “Ta-da. Beats the hell out of me why Grandma insists on locking the door. It’s not like we’re in the city. Not like anyone would want her stuff.” He released the dead bolt, and the flimsy-looking door flung wide and knocked into the wall. He laughed, shaking his head at yet another pile of junk. More boxes snaked through the living room. Darcy spied a pea soup–green and pumpkin-orange flowered sofa that she could’ve sworn she’d seen on the side of Underhill Road.

  Last week, she and Heather had watched a TV show about a woman who couldn’t throw anything away. The pack rat even kept used Band-Aids, in case she wanted to revisit an old scab for its sentimental value. Darcy and Heather had screeched with laughter, trying to gross each other out over made-up collections: bloody tampons, dingle berries, earwax. Now evidence of a hoarding addiction didn’t seem the least bit funny.

  Nick knelt by the doorway leading to the rest of the house. A skinny black-and-white cat padded down two steps, and then lay down at his feet. One look from Nick, and the cat started purring. Nick picked up the cat, held it to his cheek, and stroked it beneath the chin. The purring grew louder. In Darcy’s limited experience with cats, they ran the gamut between complete owner loyalty and utter disinterest. She’d never seen one purr so readily though.

  Nick let the cat down. “There you go, Sissy.”

  A girl. That explained the cat’s over the top enthusiasm for Nick.

  Nick leaned at the doorframe, picking long cat hairs off his T-shirt. “Want something to eat?”

  She shrugged. She didn’t want to seem rude, but Nick’s grandmother’s house didn’t exactly pique her appetite. The smell of cigarette smoke made her a little queasy. The surroundings dampened her more personal hunger, too. “Some water would be great.”

  Nick led her up two steps to the kitchen and tickled her palm with his fingertips, rushing her blood flow to lower ground. If only she could block out the pack rat–infested house.

  She looked past a sink full of soaking dishes, wilted nachos floating atop cheesy water. She chose not to notice maroon sauce splattering the stove top or the strands of burned spaghetti hanging from an open pot, like dried twigs ripe for snapping. But she couldn’t ignore when something squished underfoot. She bent to pull noodles from her sneaker treads and crumbs dug beneath her fingernails. Gross!

  Nick clattered through the sticky-looking cabinets, searching for two clean cups. “Ick, yuck. How embarrassing.” Well, at least he was with her on that one. He produced two cloudy glasses, scrubbed them at the sink, and then held his hand under the tap, waiting for the water to run cold.

  He handed her a slippery glass, and she dipped her tongue into the tepid water and pretended to sip. Nick chugalugged his water, gulping until he’d drained the disgusting liquid, and came up gasping for air. “Sorry, I get thirsty when I’m nervous.” He tried looking her in the eye, then broke off his gaze. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can do this. You’re, like, too pretty.”

  “Thanks.” Okay, he thought she was pretty and they were going to have sex, the real deal, going all the way. So what was the problem? Didn’t he like her?

  He set his glass on the countertop behind her. “I can barely even look at you at school. I get so worked up, I think maybe I’m gonna lose it right there in front of my locker.”

  The image in her mind’s eye of Nick standing in the middle of the high school hallway, scrambling to conceal a wet mess oozing down the leg of his jeans seemed as real as the solid boy in front of her. She couldn’t say a word. She just stood there blushing like the virgin that she was while Nick played with her hair. He kissed her, and an unmistakable bulge pressed through his pants. Nick might’ve thought he was shy, but his body had other ideas. “I have something to show you.”

  Her mouth itched, like when she’d jam her pillow into her mouth to keep from crying. He’d better not pull it out right here, right in the middle of the filthy kitchen. She wanted to do it, sort of, but not like this, not like some kind of skuzzy whore.

  “Oh, my God, I scared you. You’re shaking.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Maybe she should leave, break up with him right now, and forget about the stupid prom. Who cared about limo rides and floor-length gowns with delicate spaghetti straps? Who cared about dance contests and prom queens? Happy endings belonged to other girls, those whose fathers didn’t shove gun barrels into their mouths and blast their heads into a million little pieces.

  A million little pieces. The bullet that killed her father must’ve scrambled her brains, too. Whatever she felt, whatever she thought she felt, kept changing like the weather.

  “Darce, I just wanted to show you my room.”

  Yeah, she bet he did.

  What the heck was wrong with her? Did she want to give it up or not? She’d better decide fast. Sometimes, she was certain equal and opposing forces lived in her, battling until she couldn’t feel anything at all, couldn’t be certain of her own name.

  Nick examined her face, as if trying to figure out what she was thinking. Good luck with that. “I would never do anything you didn’t want me to,” Nick said. “I’m not like that. I’m not my—I’d never hurt a girl.”

  She nodded, and Nick’s flash of annoyance vanished. “Follow me.”

  Imagination offered up way too many guesses as to what Nick had in mind, if not sex. Maybe he’d show her his latest marijuana seedlings angling toward a makeshift sunlamp. Maybe his claim that he wouldn’t hurt her was a joke, the standard lie of a serial rapist. Maybe he’d butchered the mail carrier, buried the bloody pieces beneath the floorboards, and slept to the rhythm of his victim’s telltale heartbeat, an Edgar Allan Poe copycat murderer.

  Her telltale heart pounded in her chest. Maybe Nick wanted to share some really strong weed he’d hidden under his pillowcase. That’d work.

  Nick opened the closed bedroom door and stepped back to let her enter first.

  “Wow.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but really, wow. Walking into Nick’s bedroom reminded her not of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic The TellTale Heart, but of C. S. Lewis’s mythic Narnia tales. She’d made her way through the jam-packed wardrobe of his grandmother’s house, and now found herself entering another world.

  Unlike her messy bedroom, no clutter obstructed Nick’s tiny room. She could see clear from the doorway to the windows outlining the opposing wall. A bed with a gleaming pine headboard and a clean—she couldn’t get over that one—shearling comforter nestled beneath two windows. A cable ran between and across the two windows’ frames, and faded denim curtains gave the illusion of a single jumbo window. Air billowed the curtain and helped dry the freshly painted robin’s-egg-blue walls. The wind’s direction was on their side, and not even a mist trickled through the screens.

  Nick shut the door, keeping the new-paint smell in and keeping out the less pleasant odors that stank up the rest of the house. Two bright-orange lockers functioned as Nick’s bureau, fitting neatly against the right-hand wall. He kicked off his high-tops and walked across the pasta-free vinyl flooring.

  Darcy unlaced her sneakers, following his lead. She had to sit down and touch the comforter’s nub and process this new information about Nick. She got it. Nick didn’t only want to show her his
bedroom. He wanted to show her who he was, separate and distinct from his less than stellar family unit. Nick made a selection from the iPod docked on his makeshift bureau, and the music played.

  “Oh, I have that album. I like it.” She adored the scary-cool Nickelback cover art, too. An aquamarine eye was crying, shedding molten metal tears. She knew the drill: boys cried bullets. She appreciated the music better after adding the lyrics to her MP3 library and studying every word. Songs about family dysfunction and desperation, losing hope and smoking dope.

  Nick crawled over the bed to open one of the windows the rest of the way. The rain upstaged the rock music—pelting the tin roof, rushing across the gutter, and surging into the rain barrel she’d noticed by the front porch.

  Nick nestled in beside her. “First song’s my favorite. Reminds me what I need to do if my dad ever breaks the restraining order Mom took out against him. Reminds me of when I saw my parents fighting for the first time.”

  The song “Never Again” was about a guy who beat his wife. Until the day the wife decided she’d had enough. Then she shot him.

  Darcy’s throat went dry, like when she’d climbed a tree, looked down, and the earth tilted on its axis. “What do you need to do, Nick?”

  When she caught his gaze, he flashed his trademark dimpled grin, but his eyes darkened. “Kick his ass, of course. Thought you knew the song.” He laughed—a sharp burst that sounded forced—and then jumped up and turned up the volume.

  The kid in the song, the son of the wife beater, did want to kick his father’s ass. True.

  Daddy used to joke about killing himself, or at least claimed he was joking. Also true.

  Nick snuggled back next to her and curled an arm around her shoulder, so gentle. He swallowed, and sadness edged his eyes. Sad enough to kick some serious ass, but her Nick wasn’t a killer. “So what was I saying?”

  “About your parents fighting?” she said. “About your dad?”

  Her parents had never really argued. Not unless you counted the hushed discussions that trickled through closed doors. Always about the meds, always about why Daddy needed to go back on lithium. Mom could’ve played a recording of the same lecture every few months. Daddy never listened to her medically sound reasoning. Her father should’ve taken a restraining order out against himself.

  Thinking about her dad brought up a clear image, as if Daddy were in the room with her.

  Nick shook his head, stared at her lips. “Uh-uh. Before that.” He tickled her waist, coming at her with both hands until she’d scrambled backward against the pine headboard.

  Darcy swiped at her eyes, pretended the tears were from laughing instead of crying. “When I was little, I liked to play Doctor Darcy and bring my dad Band-Aids for his forehead. Sometimes, when he was having one of his moods, he’d bang his head against the wall until it bled. I was, like, four.” Nick stroked her hand, and the Daddy image faded, blissfully faded, then disappeared entirely. To her surprise, Nick looked her in the eye, his expression neutral. “How old were you when you first saw your parents fighting?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter, Darce. I don’t exactly feel like talking right now. Know what I mean?” He hugged her, kissing her neck. Nick’s ear peeked through strands of glossy blond hair—so cute—and she kissed the bare lobe, then whispered, “It matters.”

  He untangled himself from her, stood up, sat back down. When she rubbed his back, he gifted her with a Nick smile she’d never seen before, the corners of both his eyes and mouth turned down this time. He cocked his head and shrugged like a little boy, and she imagined him as a towhead in fire engine–red footed pajamas. She couldn’t see inside of him, but she sensed he was about to give her a box seat.

  “I was maybe five or six, when I first saw my parents going at it.” He paused and shook his head. “You don’t want to hear this.”

  “Yes. I do.” She stroked his hand, taking the lead, and he followed her to the headboard, as far back as they could go.

  Nick closed his eyes most of the way, either to make remembering easier or avoid embarrassment. “It was the middle of the night, and I was thirsty. I remember thinking I can hear my parents talking, so I’ll go ask for a glass of water. What’s the harm in that? I tiptoed up to my bedroom door, and by the time I got there, they were already going at it. Not really yelling but talking really loud. Well, at least he was. I couldn’t even hear her voice. She was doing her thing. You know, talking real soft, practically whispering, so she didn’t make him any angrier. Don’t want to make the big guy angry.” He stopped talking and took a labored breath.

  “It’s okay, Nick. Go on.”

  Another breath, and he squeezed her hand. “He was right in her face, and she couldn’t just walk away. She couldn’t get away ’cause that would’ve made him angry, too. Everything pissed him off. Mom always left my door open a bit so she could hear me if I needed her, you know, and I was peeking through the crack.” Nick sat up straighter, opening his eyes all the way. “I swear I don’t know what she said to him, probably didn’t even matter what it was. He was just aching for a fight. He … he got even closer, yelled point-blank, and this part I heard. She said two words: ‘Nicky’s sleeping.’ And just like that he threw her onto the floor, started whaling on her like she was a punching bag. Just whaling the shit out of her.” Nick stared straight ahead, no doubt revisiting the scene that often tormented him.

  Darcy could relate. “And he’s not even around to answer your questions,” she said. “That’s the worst part. Like, how could he do what he did? Why couldn’t he stop himself? He was supposed to be the grown-up, so why didn’t he act like one and get it together?” Their Daddy stories weren’t exactly alike but close enough for her to sympathize. Fathers were supposed to protect you, not kill themselves, not beat on your mother. Why did everything have to hurt when she just wanted to feel good?

  They turned toward each other, and Nick leaned in only partway for a kiss, making her come the rest of the way to him. She slid down onto the bed pillows, and he edged down beside her. The rain was pounding so hard, drowning out her thoughts.

  She just wanted to feel good.

  Under the covers, warmth and darkness. The delicious closeness of Nick’s body pressing against her and producing the kind of sparks she’d never before let a boy ignite. Periwinkle splotches beneath her closed lids mingled with orangey-red orbs of light.

  Nick unbuttoned her jeans and slipped his hand into her underwear. No way she could deny how close she was to going over the top. She took her mouth off his, and he started in on her neck. “Nick, stop.”

  He glanced up at her. “It’s okay, babe. I’ve got protection.” He removed his expert hand, kicked his pants and briefs off from around his ankles, and then lunged to extract a half-empty box of condoms from under-bed storage.

  Nick calling her babe should’ve cooled her down. The half-empty box of condoms should’ve sent up warning flares: call off the misguided mission. But amazingly, energy still sped through her body, seeking an exit route.

  She just wanted to feel good.

  He crawled back toward her, squashed red box in hand, massive smile on his face. She almost hated to tell him. “Nick, I’m a virgin.”

  Two-second delay before the big horny grin faded, then returned. “Never kid a kidder, Darce.” He knelt with one knee on the mattress and pulled his Tshirts up over his head, making sure she reviewed a whole lot more than just his unbelievable cut abs.

  “I’m completely serious. I’ve never even let a boy touch me until you.” She’d never seen a boy without his clothes on, either. Accidentally walking in on her brother didn’t count. She was still wearing her underwear and T-shirt, but she shivered. She pulled the covers over her legs and waited for Nick’s reaction.

  “The hottest girl in school is a virgin.” Nick wouldn’t stop smiling, as if he wasn’t going to dump her and tell all the boys at school what they’d done.

  This time would be the worst. This time the stor
y would be true. This time she’d hoped Nick was different and really liked her.

  She got up on shaky legs, looked away from him, and started pulling up her jeans bunched around one ankle like a little girl’s skip-along toy. She could walk part of the way home, and then hitch. Hitching wasn’t so bad; she and Heather had thumbed rides all over southern New Hampshire last summer.

  “Don’t go!” Nick grabbed her hand. “I’ll take care of you.”

  Her near-sleepless night must’ve turned her goofy. For a second there, she thought Nick was proposing marriage, of all ridiculous things, instead of sex. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t prevent the giggles from trickling from her belly and bursting through her mouth. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She let go of Nick’s hand and left the poor guy waiting for her fit of laughter to come to a close. The poor naked guy. She fell back onto the bed with her jeans still dangling.

  No use. Every time she looked at Nick, she cracked up again. “It’s not you, I swear!” Darcy turned toward the window. She tried listening to the swish of rain and the background rock music, tried focusing on the subtle shades of blue in the window’s denim curtains. She shoved her face into Nick’s pillow, but the sound of muffled laughter only made her hysterics grow.

  The mattress shifted, and Nick rubbed between her shoulder blades, trying to calm her down. “Heard somewhere that people laugh when they’re nervous. Guess it’s true ’cause the day my old principal found a dime bag of pot on me, I cracked up in the guy’s face. Told him, ‘No, really. I’ve got no clue where the crap came from, never seen it before.’ Even asked him what the stuff was in the bag. Was it, like, fertilizer or something?” Nick lay down behind her and whispered in her ear. “You don’t have to be scared, but it’s okay if you are. It’s okay.”

  Nick really got her. Darcy rolled back around, smiling. “You are so smart, maybe even a genius.” No, seriously, she wasn’t trying to be … what was that word? Facetious. Only her real friends had the guts to tell her the truth about herself. First Heather, then Cam, and now Nick.