This I Know

by Holly Ryan

  I lean closer once again. I set my ice cream cone down, not caring if it gets ruined on this dirty table, and I put my own hand up. I place it against hers and as though on instinct, our fingers perfectly entwine together.

  I hope she doesn’t think I’m being too forward.

  I hope she feels the same way I’ve felt about her all this time, and that I’m feeling for her right now.

  I hope with all that’s left of my heart.

  And even though it must have taken her by surprise, she doesn’t pull away. She actually looks at our hands, then to my abandoned, unfinished cone dripping through the table, then looks at me, and she smiles sweetly.

  Then she looks back at our hands, which are still curled neatly into one, seeming to study them with all her might.

  She whispers, “There’s something about you that’s so familiar.”

  That pang of curiosity overcoming her, she removes her hand in order to more closely inspect mine. She does it quickly, as though she’s come to some realization quickly, and once that look of realization appears she drops me. The back of my hand lands against the table, empty.

  And in an instant, the adrenaline courses through me once again, and I pull my hand away and stuff it between my seat and under my leg.

  “What is it?” I ask cautiously.

  She resumes eating her ice cream. “Nothing.”

  I’d told Avery that I’d never been to a Dairy Queen, and that’s the truth. But the really sucky thing is that Avery’s assault isn’t the only reason my father’s been to prison.

  I spent some of my childhood frequenting a local ice cream shop, a tiny chain that didn’t venture outside our home state. And I didn’t bother to tell her because, quite frankly, no one wants to hear about the shit show that it was.

  It was a small square building. I still remember the name. The Frozen Spoon. I was seven years old, and to my relief, it’s the last time we’d ever visit.

  As we drive up, the neon, iridescent lettering of The Frozen Spoon is flickering, as usual, and the letter p has long since burned out. All that surrounds the business is a thick wooded area, and the darkness from these woods creeps into the outside seating area. I grew up in a decent, safe suburb, but we’re close to some outlaying areas that could verge on the shady sort, so even at my young age I always take note of my surroundings, especially after what happened with the Queen of the Sea.

  Whenever we come here we’re always the only patrons; once I’d seen one other family, a mother and daughter who collected their purchase and didn’t hang around to eat there. And I didn’t blame them; I’d always been kind of scared of the wood-enclosed, dark Frozen Spoon.

  But sometimes, like tonight, I’m dragged along with my father. I’ve come to accept it and I didn’t put up a fight.

  My father selects a picnic table.

  “Come here, Ethan,” he says. “And stay put. Actually, here – you want an ice cream?” He leafs through his wallet. He pulls out a twenty and hands it to me.

  Twenty, huh? That’s more than he usually gives me.

  “Get yourself something nice.” He urges me along with a nudge on the shoulder.

  I approach the counter and a high-school aged boy, tall and thin with long, girly hair, takes my money.

  “Vanilla cone, please.”

  “You got it, little man.” He leaves me, and I stand on the sticky, ice cream- and gum-laden cement floor, looking around at the woods encroaching on the property. It’s pitch black inside them, and I can’t see past the first layer of tree line. I cross my arms, trying to warm myself up. Behind me, I hear my father calling out to someone just pulling up.

  The boy returns to the window. “Here you go,” he says, and he hands me the cone and my change.

  I give it a lick and turn; and as soon as I do, my heart sinks. That man’s here again. The man who my dad always hopes to meet, but who sometimes stands us up. Today, apparently I’m not so lucky.

  He’s the largest man I’ve ever seen. When he crawls out of his small, parked sedan, the car moves. He stands and stretches. Each time he’s joined us he’s been dressed entirely in black, and tonight is no exception. And no matter how warm the weather has been, he’s always worn long sleeves and long pant legs; in fact, the only skin I’ve ever seen of him has been his hands, his neck (the folds of which protrude over the collar of his shirt), and his head. I’ve always thought he must be awfully hot.

  I grab a napkin and take a seat at our table.

  “Mark. It’s good to see you,” says my dad. He claps the man’s shoulder.

  Despite my father choosing this table for us, he and Mark take a seat two tables over from where I am. I watch them from over the rim of my ice cream cone. I keep my legs crossed and tucked under me to keep them from the bugs that are flying around in the dark.

  I only catch a few of my father and Mark’s words. And that’s good. I don’t really care what they’re saying. I hear, “Come through for me, okay?” and “We’re not going to do this again,” and “It’s good this time, I promise.”

  Some ice cream drips down my finger. I stick out my tongue to lick it.

  “Ethan,” booms my father, suddenly in front of me. “It’s time to go, son.” He’s stuffing something into his wallet. The wallet is now so fat that it’s difficult for him to close, but he squeezes it and somehow slides the bulging leather back into his pocket.

  My cone isn’t finished, but I throw it in the trash anyway.

  He holds his hand out to me. I take it, and together we walk back to the car. The man dressed in black is nowhere to be seen, and his car is gone, too. For such a big man, he sure is quick.

  Maybe because of the strange events of the night before at The Frozen Spoon, my father had forgotten that the following day was to be an event at my school, an important one that he’d signed up for.

  He’d promised me he’d show. But I guess his promises mean little by this point.

  It’s the second grade’s conclusion of the school year, and the teachers have organized a fun event for the students to complete with their parents. Since my dad had said he’d come, and he’d even written a reminder on his wall calendar (I saw him), my mom didn’t bother to offer.

  I’m waiting outside the school. Cars pull up and adults get out, walking up to the school and meeting their children running into their arms, the kids’ backpacks flailing from side to side with the excitement. When each student finds their parents, they stand together near the entrance of the playground, where we have stations of activities set up and ready to go.

  Everybody’s laughing. Before it’s even begun, everybody’s having a good time. Everyone except me.

  It’s almost time to start. My dad hadn’t shown and here I am facing the wrath of his decision – or rather, his indecision. Because that’s what my dad is: indecisive at best. As the kids around me get their hair affectionately ruffled and questioned by their parents, I keep my face down to hide my blushing cheeks.

  My teacher approaches the crowd with a paper in her hand. “Thanks for coming, everyone. Everyone? Quiet, please.”

  The crowd stops talking – even my classmates, who, normally restless, are so eager to get started that even they know they need to hear this.

  “Thank you for taking the time out of your schedules to come to this celebration of ours. It means a lot to us and your children, so I’m glad you could make it. It’s been a great year, and we’re going to have a lot of fun with this.”

  Kids start laughing again; swinging against their parents, holding their hands. At the instruction of the staff, they set their backpacks down in a row against the wall of the school, ready to collect again when the event is over and school is let out.

  “In the playground you’ll see instructions at each of the different modules,” my teacher continues. She’s barely to get her words in edgewise before everyone starts walking the path toward the gate of the playground.

  She sees me standing alone.

  She walks
over to me, then checks a piece of paper. “Ethan, is your father here?” She looks around, then back to me, suddenly aware that she’s hit a sensitive subject.

  “No.”

  She touches my shoulder. “Oh. Well, that’s alright. Why don’t you go see Ms. Ashe, right over there. She’ll help you.”

  I travel from station to station with Ms. Ashe. I don’t think it’s going unnoticed by my classmates, either. They notice. I avoid their sidling glances as I play the games of each station.

  Finally, I turn around and face her. “Can I do this by myself?” I ask plainly.

  Ms. Ashe doesn’t seem surprised, or offended, by my question. “I’m sorry, dear. Every student must be accompanied by a chaperone. It’s in the rules.” She scratches her arm. “Where is your father, anyway?”

  The next morning, I brave school with my head held high, as if I have much of a choice at seven years old. At that age, you take what you’re dealt with no questions asked – at least, I do – and what’s dealt to me today is to face my peers.

  It’s time for gym class, and we’re sitting together on the gymnasium floor. I pick at the linoleum tile of the gym floor. Kids around me are bundled into groups, talking among themselves.

  “My dad was there,” suddenly says the boldest boy of the class. “It’s Ethan who’s got no daddy.”

  Our gym teacher has slipped away to get more balls for our dodge ball game, but plenty of other students are watching, and this boy’s not ashamed to bully in their presence. I think it fuels him, actually.

  I look up. “I do too have a daddy.”

  The bold boy bends forward and slaps his knee in laughter. A few other kids laugh along with him. A group of three girls sitting nearby stop their talking to look at what’s going on.

  And a fire slowly builds inside me; not a rage, but a fire, a fueled embarrassment that’s impossible to ignore.

  Under the watchful eyes of my humiliator and those whose attention he’s now gained, I uncross my legs and stand. I walk over to the wall, where a row of red, inflated dodge balls is being kept; I calmly reach down, pick one up and carry it back to where I was. Then I walk over to the boy, and with all the might within me I hoist the ball above me.

  The ball comes down on his head with a resounding THUD. It bounces off of him and rolls away, toward where it came.

  Everyone goes silent. A girl gasps. The bold boy doesn’t move. And I sit back smugly, resting my elbows on my knees, not caring what happens next.

  The teacher walks back into the gym. He’s carrying a mesh bag bursting full of dodge balls, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them.

  “Mr. James,” cries the girl who gasped. “Ethan hit Jonathan with a ball.”

  Mr. James is dumping out the balls. They spread over the floor like a red and blue liquid. “Ethan, is that true?”

  “Yes,” I say. I’m not going to rat the kid out, though. I’m not going to give Mr. James an explanation of why I hit Jonathan with the ball.

  “Then you’ll have to sit out for five minutes. Ok, guys. Have at it.”

  He doesn’t care. Good.

  As I sit with by back against the cold gym wall, I feel better. Doing what I did made me laugh internally. It worked to push the sadness away, if only for a moment, and brought humor to the fact that I knew I wouldn’t hurt the boy with a dodge ball – I was merely advancing the start of the game, and giving him what he deserved.

  But later, at home, I sling my backpack on the couch and sat down next to it. I place my head on my hands and sulk as a fat tear flutters between my lashes. I never let that tear fall. I shove the feelings down. I wipe it away, lift my head, and go on living.

  Avery

  “Well. Here we are.” He pulls the keys out of the ignition and then grips the top of the steering wheel.

  He’s brought me home like a gentleman. The whole time he’s been a gentleman – the whole time, that is, except for our sudden escape from the Kramer house, which was pretty unexpected. And I still haven’t quite pinpointed what that was about. Our night was so perfect afterward that I didn’t want to ruin it with talk of something negative.

  He walks me to the house, stopping at my front door. The moon is full. I consider going inside right away, but even after he hands my keys over, I don’t. I let down my hair while we were in the car, and now I twist a strand hanging near my chest. He rocks back on his heels.

  We stand there like a couple of walking, talking clichés, each naïvely waiting for the other person to make the move we both want to happen. At least, I think he wants it to happen. He looks like he wants it to happen. He’s stayed close to me the whole night, and now he’s showing no sign of wanting to leave. His breath is heavy and slow, and the way he looks at me causes shivers of electricity to run through my body.

  Stay calm, Avery. It’s only Ethan Harrington. Sweet, non-player Ethan Harrington. Only the hottest guy in school, with the perfect body, and lips, and those eyes...

  I need to gauge his feelings, but this guy is keeping me on my toes. His hands are in his pockets, which makes his muscular arms stand out even more against the short sleeves of his navy blue T-shirt. And even when I lean in to hug him, he only takes out one hand, but he wraps it around me in a perfect embrace. I close my eyes, never wanting the night to end. Never wanting this to end.

  Mara is right – screw Cole. I’ve never felt anything like this with Cole in all the years we’d been together. Who knew so many feelings could be contained in one first date?

  He’s about to say something when the porch light turns on. We both jump; I gasp, and Ethan shifts his eyes from me to the door, looking for some kind of non-verbal cue about what to do.

  The light is motion-sensitive. It could have been set off by the movement of us loitering around out here like the goofy teenagers we are, but there’s a chance it could have been from my mom, flicking the switch on us from inside.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Stupid thing. It’s unpredictable.”

  I haven’t broken the news of Ethan to my mom yet, and that’s not something I want to explain on a whim, what with him just so happening to be standing on our front porch in the pitch darkness. I hurry my keys out of my bag and stick them in the door as quietly as I can.

  Just as I’m about to open the door, my body ready to heave it open, the way you have to do with this halfway-broken thing, he takes his other hand out of his pocket. He lightly touches my arm, pulling my attention back to him.

  “Goodnight, Avery,” he says. His voice is sultry and seductive, and he’s not even trying.

  I melt.

  I look at his hand again. I don’t know why he’s keeping those things stuffed away. I like them. They’re familiar, as I said while we were eating our ice cream, but they’re not familiar in a bad way. Just in a way that I can’t identify, and in a way that gives me goose bumps. They’re like the drawing up of an old memory, and all the stimulating curiosity that comes along with it. I love his hands. I want to look at them more. Especially, I want to feel them more.

  “Goodnight, Ethan. And thanks for everything. I had fun.” Yep. Walking, talking cliché. That’s totally me right now.

  Totally us, actually.

  But past the awkward formalities, we’re being so freaking cute right now that it’s making my heart flutter. I can feel it beating through my thin cotton top.

  I see him turn away out of the corner of my eye. I’ve already turned away, too, so that I’m facing the door and preparing myself for the potential onslaught of questioning and explanations, should my mother be there when I get inside.

  Then he grabs me. His hands are around my waist.

  Before I know it, our bodies are together, closer than we’ve ever been before in our short but intense relationship. I can feel the heat of his core from where I’m standing, his presence warming me up in the crisp night air. His hand moves up. It grips the thin back of my neck, holding that vulnerable area that has the ability to control my every movement like a puppet
master. His other hand moves up. He runs his soft fingers over my cheek and lips, and I bring my hand to his, cupping it near my face. I look into his eyes; he stares down into the depths of me.

  That better not have been my mom. Because I couldn’t pull away even if I’d wanted to.

  And I don’t want to. I’ll stay with him, this boy who has drawn me from day one of my new life, and who I barely know, but who I feel I know so well all the same.

  And right now, neither of us wants anything but this.

  Gently, he takes my chin and tilts my head up to his. He doesn’t need to use force, just a smooth guidance; I move it willingly in the upward direction he tells me.

  “Avery,” he says, so quietly that I almost can’t hear his deep, raspy voice through the spinning air around us.

  My face is close to his. Our mouths are even closer.

  He takes a breath. “I want to kiss you.”

  My eyes travel down to his mouth. His lips are perfectly masculine – even and plump with a strong cupid’s bow in the center. His warm breath hits my own lips, and it smells like sweetness and fresh mint.

  “You can,” I say.

  I can’t take my eyes off those lips. Of all the ways I’ve lusted over him, all the ways I thought I’d examined his every visible part, it amazes me that I missed such a pristine feature.

  He brings a second hand up my neck, his fingertips drawing along my skin as they go, and touches the side of my cheek.

  He lifts his chin, pulling himself out of his own trance. “No. I can’t.”

  Wait. What?

  I furrow my brows. That wasn’t the response I expected after telling a guy Yes, you can kiss me. Did he just insult me?

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  He drops his hands. He isn’t touching me anymore. Please, touch me again.

  “I can’t, Avery. I can’t kiss you.”

  I take a step back. And I just risked a disastrous fall to do it; my porch isn’t big enough to support those kind of moves, and it could have ended in a fall. But I don’t care, because all that matters is that I’m still here, standing on my one-and-a-half feet, feeling a stinging sensation in my eyes. “Why?” I ask.