by Raven, R. D.
He held his hand up to her. "Neither am I." And he smiled. It was like one of those relieved smiles and, for the smallest instant, she felt a little—well ….
Was she just not good enough for him? But then she realized that this is exactly what she'd wanted so why was she so upset about it? So she decided not to be upset, forced a smile, and said, "Great!" (Although, inside, something didn't feel great about it). She noticed that, all along, she'd held some small desire that this boy would've been something different; that he would've been—what was the word?—the one.
They walked out of the mall (which she came to know they called "Shopping Centers" down there) and into his car—a not-so-old-but-not-so-new navy blue Toyota something-or-other sedan. Miguel opened the door and let her in.
"So where are we going?" she asked.
"You'll see."
A nervous anticipation buzzed at her chest. Unable to control herself (much like her autonomous hand from earlier and from the day before) she blurted out a question which she instantly regretted: "So, do you have a girlfriend?"
Fuck! Why did I ask him that? Could I sound any more desperate?
"No—actually. I don't. I haven't even … been with a girl for two years, actually."
He hasn't "been" with a girl for two years, meaning he hasn't slept with one in two years, or what? What, has he "been" with—guys?!
"I see."
She prayed he wasn't gay. This would not be good! But he didn't seem gay. Yeah, yeah, as bad as it sounded, she believed the stereotype that gay people always acted a little, well, "gay"—and Miguel seemed about as macho as they came.
But, then again, wasn't that a prejudiced idea about gay people?
"And you?" he asked.
Her mind was racing. "I'm sorry?"
"Do you have … a boyfriend?"
"Oh"—nervous giggle, throat clearing—"no, I don't."
Miguel nodded.
They drove for three or four minutes (Jaz secretly freaking out every time she thought they were headed into oncoming traffic) when Miguel finally spoke again. "Sandile said you read a lot. Do you?"
Did she read a lot? What a question. "A little."
"There's a Kindle in there." He pointed to the glove compartment.
Now she knew he was gay—oh no, wait, maybe the Kindle was full of Sci Fi—then that would mean he wasn't gay!
She made a mental note to stop thinking about whether or not Miguel is gay!
She pulled out the Kindle. "What kinds of books are in here?"
"Oh, you know, whatever. Mostly adventures and thrillers."
Thank God!
Jaz pored through his library. There must've been hundreds of books in there. "You actually read all of these?"
"Definitely not," he said, a touch of embarrassment on his face. "I mean, I go on there often enough and pull down a bunch of freebies—sometimes even regardless of genre. Every now and then I'll buy one. The ones I buy I always read. The rest are just ... you know ... something I'll get to some day. That's what I say to myself at least."
Jaz looked for her favorite authors: J.A. Redmerski, J. Sterling, Jamie McGuire, Colleen Hoover ... heck, not even a Sandra Brown? She did find a Nicholas Sparks though. "You've read Safe Haven?" she asked, sounding more than a little shocked.
"Uh—yes." He cleared his throat. "There's a great action scene in the end. Very thrilling. I skipped most of the beginning though." That was acceptable, she figured.
Ahh, but if he didn't have any romances …. She looked for another one. Where was it? Where was it? Nothing. "No 'Fifty Shades of Grey'?" she asked suspiciously.
Miguel laughed through his nose. "Hell no! I mean, if I wanted that kind of stuff I'd just put on a movie or—" He stopped, wide eyed with embarrassment and staring at Jaz.
Now it was she who rolled her eyes. "Boys," she said, shaking her head and smiling.
"So, we're here," said Miguel. "Bring the Kindle."
Jaz looked up from the Kindle, and her breath stopped for a moment. Probably so did her heart.
The view … was breathtaking.
She'd been so engulfed in the books that she'd failed to see that they'd travelled all the way up some hill or mountain and, what she saw now, was a dizzying panoramic view of all of Johannesburg, sprawled out in all its glory ahead of them, as if they were lions atop a mountain, not a care in the world, not a problem in sight. The sky was bare of clouds; the only sound, a whooshing wind banging around outside the vehicle.
"It's ... beautiful," she said, her mouth agape.
"It's Northcliff Ridge. It's about the only time I do get any reading done, is when Sandile has one of his get-togethers with Elize—and this is where I come."
Jaz was still motionless—as if someone had zapped her with a taser gun—trying to take in all of the view, afraid to move her eyes from it as if it would take all day for her to assimilate each part of it, not wanting to miss any of it.
"Come on," said Miguel, stepping out the car.
Miguel pulled out a blue, woolen blanket from the trunk and laid it on the ground, placing four rocks on it—one on each corner—so it wouldn't fly away. When those four rocks had proven to not be enough, he went scavenging for more, telling Jaz to stay on the blanket lest it flew away. Jaz was happy to, her attention being more on her dress which was blowing up now like Marilyn Monroe. Her hair was already a mess, and she wondered what Sandile and Elize would think they'd been doing when they saw them again tonight.
Elize, no doubt, had brought a brush. But Jaz had not planned on anything happening, so she was without a plan.
They stayed up there on the blanket for hours, Jaz having settled on a romantic suspense that she knew had been up for free recently (so that didn't mean Miguel was gay—he'd admitted that he blindly downloaded anything and everything free on Amazon), and Miguel simply looked out at the city below, every now and then flicking a small pebble off the edge. The wind had settled slightly, but not much. She'd offered him the Kindle a few times but he refused, and she could see that he was not bored, as if he were painting an exact duplicate of the sky on a canvas in his mind, never once wanting to take his eyes off his model.
She enjoyed the silence. And Miguel seemed to be at peace up here.
She'd read that somewhere (or seen it in a movie): that you know if two people really love each other when they can spend countless hours of silence together without a moment of awkwardness between them.
Or had a friend told her that?
Eventually, Jaz put the Kindle down (the book having been a novella and not a novel after all—and with a cliffhanger ending—which pissed her off no end) and she, too, lay back on her elbows and looked out into nothing, the air being the only whisper of communication that she could now hear.
Miguel's black hair (which reached to about his eyebrows and just below the tops of his ears) was flying all over the place and his eyes were partly closed because of the sun's glare as he lay back, saying nothing, occasionally opening his eyes despite that glare and looking, looking, looking.
Looking. Out into infinity.
The wind turned suddenly and gushed up her dress, sending goose pimples all over her skin. She shivered. Miguel got up without a word and brought her a second blanket—warm and fleecy.
Then he lay back again, and looked out some more. How easy it would be, she thought, to simply turn on her side now, as if moved by the wind itself, and rest her head on his chest, the whip of the winds embracing them like leaves to a bird's nest.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Miguel said, his voice fitting in perfectly with the humming breaths of the earth, as if the two were one, and the sound of his statement was merely a complementing instrument in this natural orchestra.
She looked at him, a smile breaking on her face as she saw that glint of Africa in his eyes. "Yes," she croaked, "it is."
Now would be the perfect time to kiss him, to just let her body drop slightly forward while they sat there looking at each other, and then let the
ir lips meet, not a single question to it, not a thought of doubt having passed between them.
But she didn't.
And neither did he.
Watching Jaz's jaw drop as she saw the massive hall which was the inside of the Barnyard Theater was like watching a seven-year-old at Christmas, faced with a package the size of the bicycle she'd always wanted sitting there underneath the Christmas tree. She had said something earlier about Dinner Theater, but the only "Dinner Theater" Miguel had ever heard of was in a movie called Connie and Carla with that babe who did My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the Barnyard was certainly not anything like that.
Looking at the wooden tables around her which seated twenty or more, in a theater that could only be described as the best that even London itself had to offer, Miguel was sure that she had a different idea of it now, too.
"This is awesome!" she said.
Ahwsumm. My, that accent.
"Yeah, it's pretty cool," said Miguel casually. By now, he'd begun to feel a little uneasy at not even having worn a jacket or maybe even just a button-up shirt. It turns out he was really starting to like this Jaz, and all he could think of was how much of a slob he looked like.
As the day had gone by, he'd struggled to prevent himself from holding her hand or even, gently, just moving in and kissing her. It would've been so easy. He knew he liked her. He more than liked her.
But then what? She was leaving in December. Did he really want to put himself through the torture of letting her go if it did turn out to be something serious in the end? Could he face that loss? On the other hand, he also had to make sure he liked her (it had been two years after all—and a man could like anything after that amount of time). No. Even if it turned out he did like her, he'd already decided that he would have to let this one slip by. It just wouldn't be worth it in the end.
Jaz got into the African Footprint play the moment it began, shimmying her shoulders to the rhythm of the African drums and clapping along with the beats of the Zulu Dancers, all her senses engaged in the show.
Miguel, however, was torn between the curvilinear dancers on stage, and Jaz's own vibrating body, his mind lingering more and more on the idea of her dress caressing her skin underneath it every time she moved.
The thought was intoxicating.
Jaz smiled and danced (and even sang), lifted up on the euphoric waves of the African music undulating through the elated air. But didn't African music do that to everyone?
A penny-whistle began, the distinct sounds of South Africa's Sophiatown—what had once been the Jazz and Blues capital of the African continent. And with the penny-whistle came the rich mellow tones of a baritone sax.
And there he saw it: Jaz's head leaning back, her eyelashes fluttering as her eyes closed, and the sensuous sway of her head—left and right—in sync to the swinging music.
So Jaz likes jazz, it seems.
Had it been a sign?
EIGHT
Caustic exhaust fumes abraded Jaz's olfactory nerves at five a.m. on Monday morning as they approached the bus that would take them to Rustenburg. Thandie (looking about as sleepy as Jaz felt) was bumping into her as they walked.
Inside the bus, Jaz's senses were further accosted by the soup of perfumes, early-morning shampoos, and an unmistakable odor of what could only be described as plastic (maybe from the seats themselves?) She and Thandie lugged over to the back as if they'd just drunk two bottles of Jack, falling into the nearest available seat that wasn't too close to the front. Jaz's head dropped on Thandie's shoulder; Thandie's fell onto the window.
The sun had not yet risen and Jaz's skin broke out in goose bumps from the chill, yet, somehow, a large chorus of students—both local and foreign—had already taken it upon themselves to start singing joyously at the prospect of their upcoming trip to the middle of nowhere.
Did these people not require sleep?
In her daze, she thought she saw Candy, maybe Stefan. Then she saw Sandile.
And Sandile was with—
What the—?!
Was that Miguel? Jaz's curiosity forced her eyes open despite the anvils of her eyelids pushing down on them. She rubbed them and looked outside.
Yes, it was … Miguel. She frowned in confusion and elbowed Thandie, rousing her from her attempted sleep.
"Hey!"
"What the hell is Miguel doing here?" Jaz whispered, looking out the window where he was sauntering over to the bus with his bag.
"What do you mean? He's coming on the trip like the rest of us."
The faint recognition of truth alighted upon Jaz's tired mind: Miguel is in the IHRE program. Shit! I mean, sweet! What do I mean, actually?
Somehow, all the conspirators of the badly concocted plan (so far) to bring Jaz and Miguel together had conveniently forgotten to mention to her that he had also enrolled in the program—which meant he'd be accompanying them on their trip to Rustenburg of course.
Would that not have been the simplest way to have brought them together?
Jaz didn't bother trying to answer the question. So far, anything about Miguel had been all but simple.
Miguel dawdled into the bus and flicked an oh-so-smooth "Hey" in her direction with a raise of the chin and eyebrows. He was half-walking, half-sleeping toward her when Sandile's hand came out from behind the seat he'd fallen into in the front and yanked Miguel down by his arm to sit next to him.
There was indeed one thing this guy was going to have to get straight: if he was interested in her (which she assumed he was), then he was going to have to try a lot fucking harder than a "hey" and an eyebrow-raise to impress her!
Jaz shook her head, folded her arms and, eventually, as the rocking sway of the bus moved in sync with the endless chanting and singing of kids behind and around her, she fell asleep.
By the time she awoke, little had changed in the immediate atmosphere except that the rising sun was now hurting her eyes, and the singing had faded into talking and joking, many of the initial participants now sprawled across seats or sleeping with their heads against the windows. When she turned her head, she saw that Stefan was surrounded by a group of African girls, showing them photos on his phone. By the way some of them were acting around him (and unless Jaz was dreaming) she could swear they were flirting with him.
Thandie was awake. "Good morning, sweetie!" she said perkily. She must've been up for a while now.
Jaz glanced briefly forward, trying to make out if Miguel was also up, but saw nothing.
"Did you sleep well?" asked Thandie.
Jaz made some sort of grunt, not really understanding herself if that meant yes or no. She stretched her neck, trying to click it.
"So, I need details!"
"Details of what?" mumbled Jaz through a yawn.
"Of Saturday, of course!"
Shit. Saturday. What had she agreed with Sandile? Right—he was never there.
"Well, it was cool. I mean, we hung out at this mall and then went over to this cool place with an awesome view."
"Ach, girl, I don't want to know about any of that shit! Did you—you know?"
Jaz sat up, cleared her throat. "N—no, we didn't." Would Thandie stop there? Or would Jaz have to come clean on the fact that they hadn't so much as even held hands.
"So, what did you do?"
Jaz scratched her forehead. "Actually, nothing, really. I mean—I don't know why."
"So you only kissed then?"
Damn it, this is embarrassing. "Uh—no, not even that."
From the way Thandie shot back in her seat (as if she'd smelled nothing less than a week-old dead rat) Jaz could feel the lie being pulled from her like the Jaws of Life ripping away a car door and extracting its lifeless passenger out of it.
But then Thandie eased up, her shoulders relaxing, and she sighed. "Well, I can understand it," she said.
What did she mean by that? "You can? Well, that makes one of us at least."
"He's just not ready, I guess."
And that's when Than
die told her—everything.
It was hard for Jaz to swallow. So hard that she was glad she had skipped breakfast, an actual physical lump forming in her throat and a sour flavor making it into her mouth. And she wasn't sure if it had been the story's utter horridness, or Thandie's blithe comments about it that had done it, like such things were a part of life and just the way things are around here.
It was the boys who'd found them—both their mothers and sisters. Beyond "raped," "boiling water," and "a Doberman," Jaz had forgotten the rest of the details, or chosen not to hear any more of them, as if her mind could not bear to face the moral depravation to which some people—some animals—could sink to and still call themselves human. She simply switched off, Thandie's voice becoming nothing more than a hollow sound in a hidden chamber.
Freaking insane!
There'd been Sandile's story about Elize's neighborhood, and those riots before she'd left, and all that poverty in those townships. And who was that guy with the gun when Sandile had picked her up?
It was just too much. How could anyone live down here? She started to think about back home, about waking up early and standing in the dew-covered yard, able to look out onto the street and not at walls that were eight feet high with electric fencing around them. She thought of strolls on Alki Beach and Discovery Park and of casually buying a greeting card at Melrose Market after a great cup of coffee just down the road.
Had she ever been even slightly worried for her life while doing those things? Not really.
Now she understood Miguel's quietness, his silence, and why he'd enjoyed sitting up at the top of Northcliff Ridge, looking out into nothing where everything was peaceful and quiet. Who wouldn't need peace after having suffered something like that?
Her mental notebook was full, but this she would not forget: she would never bring this subject up with him. Ever. If he chose to bring it up with her, fine. If not, she'd leave it. It cannot be easy for someone to have another pry about something like that. People should be ready to face it themselves before they get forced to talk about it.
Thandie was still talking coolly about robberies, rapes, carjackings (which she termed hijackings), farmer-killings, xenophobic murders—