“Uh,” I said. “I could do that, you know.”
But he didn’t answer. His hands, a little clumsy through lack of practice, fumbled through my hair, lifting up the length of it and revealing the bare skin beneath. The room began spinning strangely. I felt the A/C blow across my exposed throat and the back of my neck. Sangris twisted my hair together into the band. He took an unnecessarily long time, letting the strands slide through his fingers.
I fidgeted. “Done yet?” I said.
“Almost.”
And then his mouth was on the place between my shoulder and the curve of my neck.
I died. My eyes blacked out. Jolting, I jumped away from him. My hands flew up to clutch that spot on the side of my neck. It felt as if he’d—no, there’s no other way to put it, because nothing could be worse than a kiss—so intimate, and stolen. “You . . . What was that for?” I yelped. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t help it. Are you okay?”
“No! No, I’m not!” My face stung as if I’d been slapped there. This, I could not close my eyes and allow. This was the line, this was the boundary of that other country, and I felt my father’s finger twanging taut behind my back, straining, and Sangris didn’t seem to realize that he was standing in a place where I could not go. “You’ve never done anything like that before,” I said, when I could speak again.
“But I’ve wanted to.”
Sangris looked at me. I couldn’t see shame, or contrition, or surprise in his face, though those were what I had expected. There wasn’t even that soppy, shadow-eyed expression I’d grown used to. Instead there was a look I couldn’t recognize. It frightened me more than anything else I could have seen there. His eyes were burning with something worse than madness; it was a bright, hot sanity, like the death of a thousand stars.
“I shouldn’t have done it from behind,” he said. “I startled you. I’m sorry about that. It just . . . came over me.”
“You shouldn’t have done it at all,” I said.
“I disagree,” he said.
I backed up against the wall.
“I’ve been a coward. It isn’t right to think about these things in secret and not let you know,” he said, burning in his private, flame-gold sky. “And I’ve been thinking about it for months . . . Actually, I’ve been thinking about it since I met you, but . . . the first time I tried to tell you was before Juren showed up, when we were on that island in the sky. But you got distracted—” He laughed half bitterly, half breathlessly. “And I’ve been putting it off since then. The last few weeks it’s become worse. Since you let me kiss your instep. Nenner, you have to listen now, even if you don’t want to.”
He went closer to me, with his hands held up in front of him, cautiously, like someone approaching a stray dog when they’re not sure if it will bite.
“I shouldn’t have let you,” I moaned.
“But I’m glad you did,” he said, more quickly now. His eyes were impossibly bright. “But it is hard, getting a taste and then having it taken away. It made things a million times worse. At least I could control myself before. Now I don’t know how to act, and half the time I don’t know what I’m saying. I know you noticed. Anyone would have noticed. I’ve been acting like a . . . a dopey little kid with a crush.”
“I was thinking more a dunce with a concussion,” I said. I was trying to make the conversation more normal, like the banter we used to have. But he came closer. Close enough to put his arms around me if he wanted to.
I couldn’t do this. I willed myself away. I saw purple-gray heather and a distant sky.
“I thought it was like being set on fire,” he said. “It burns all the time. And then you look at me, and you smile, or sigh, or look exasperated, or whatever, and suddenly I can’t talk.”
Hills, like waves that had tried to roll through the earth centuries ago but had fallen asleep in the middle of their journey.
“Can you imagine that kissing your instep could do that to me? Like flames going all the way through me.”
Some lakes. There had to be lakes. Sheets of silver.
“It’s like that now. Just from touching your neck with my mouth. I can still taste it.” He flushed. “I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen the back of your neck before, and it was like nothing in the world is more important than being that close to you. I want to be the one who’s allowed to . . .” He trailed off, going darker.
It would be late afternoon. The sky would be soft, the land sleepy. Not sleepy the way that Sangris had looked when— No, no, no, no. I rushed away from that thought. It would be a different kind of sleepy, I assured myself. A safe kind.
“I told myself I’d tell you by Heritage. You and Anju were always complaining about it, saying that the date kept being pushed back. ‘It’s like chasing after a shadow. It’s always a little way ahead.’ That’s what you said. Do you remember? And that reminded me of how I kept trying to tell you this, but kept putting it off, and never managed to make myself do it. By the time Heritage comes, I’ll have done it, I decided. See, I was determined enough to set myself a time limit; but I was so pathetic I deliberately chose a date that was always being postponed. I hoped it would be canceled altogether. Stupid, huh? And I’ve waited until the last minute . . . Because I’m scared of you too, Nenner. I really don’t know what you’re going to say, and this is—you can’t imagine—”
Still I didn’t speak. I was off in this other land. There would be a breeze, I thought. Light. Hardly enough to make the seas of grass ripple. To make the surfaces of the lakes pucker.
He said, “I like knowing the houses where you grew up. I like that I’ve been to all the places you love; that I sat by the sunflowers with you and you let me hold your hands, and that I know things about you that no one else knows, and that you know everything about me. But I want—I want to be able to do things that no one else can do, like kiss that place at the corner of your mouth and stroke your hair and touch the base of your throat and to be able to tell you when I want to do things like that. Instead of dreaming about it like some sick, panting kid. And I want you to reciprocate instead of shrinking away from me all the time . . .”
Clouds at the eastern end of the sky.
“People in this country have different ideals of what’s beautiful and what’s not.” He forced himself to meet my eyes. “You’re different from what they’re used to. But that’s why it’s hard to look away from you. So different. You know I love the shape of your eyes? Long and slanted and huge. They remind me of a fox’s. But . . . more graceful, you know . . . and they tilt up at the corners.” He reached up and touched the side of my left eye, near the temple. His fingers were light and unsteady. “I love the way they tilt up at the corners.”
Rain. I liked rain. It would be raining in heavy rich droplets that sank into the dirt as soon as they landed. The plants would grow green in gratitude.
“Even when I’m not human, I think that. When I woke up after the Animal Souk, as a cat, and you were holding me, I had no idea what was going on because I’d never been held that way before.” One hand remained at my face, and the other, gingerly, reached my waist. “It’s part of being a Free person. If you’re everything, then really you’re nothing. You understand that. When you started petting me”—he tried to laugh—“I thought I had hit my head.”
The sun would blaze before the world turned dark, in one massive purple-gold blossom in the west, a light that would catch in the rain and sleet across the vast lakes and touch the sleeping heads of the hills. I saw it in my mind’s eye.
Sangris pulled me slowly away from the wall, toward him. “We do this every night,” he told me. “You don’t need to worry. I hold you all the time. The only difference is that now your feet are on the ground, and we’re facing each other . . .”
I felt the hills catch fire under the weight of the falling sun.
His arm went around my waist, a hand on the narrow part where it dipped inward. His oth
er hand supported the back of my head now, touching my neck, unraveling my hair. I felt his chest move. He was barely breathing, I noticed, but I wasn’t really paying attention. The door was open. Suppose my father walked through. Suppose someone walked past and saw me. There was a strict school rule against overt displays of affection. But then I didn’t care anymore. Sangris was doing an insane thing; we were so far away from normality that school rules couldn’t touch us.
Sangris hid his face in my hair. I was close enough against him that I could feel the strain it had taken to say those things to me. I could feel it in his shoulders, the thump of his heart, the shaking of his hands as they moved against me. When my hands had trembled amid the sunflowers of Spain he had held them for me. I wanted to give comfort back now. I pressed myself closer, tighter than he had dared to pull me. For a moment I imagined that I might be able to say yes.
I wasn’t Frenenqer now, and I wasn’t Nenner either. The two of them—everyone I’d ever been—had escaped far away. I was all that remained: a body, barely the ghost of a mind. I bit back the embarrassment and let Sangris put his arms around me the way that Nenner did when he carried her. He didn’t know that I wasn’t her. He’ll be disappointed if he finds out, I thought. I hope she’ll be the one to tell him, not me.
A minute ago, when he’d kissed my neck, I hadn’t known what to do. Impossible to lose him; impossible to let him get so close. But now I thought, maybe this is the solution. I could pretend to be okay with it. I was letting him hold me, wasn’t I? He seemed happy enough with my shell. Maybe I could do this for the rest of my life: switch myself off and just never turn back on. Stay with Sangris. His cheek was smooth against mine. But if he tried to kiss me again—I couldn’t—and I couldn’t think like this. Had to think. Anju. Her name came to me automatically. Yes. Anju would know. She would figure it out in her notebook, like a mathematical equation, and come up with an answer the way she always did. I started to head for the door, but when I turned, he tried to keep me there. “Nenner,” he said, in a voice that was hoarser than his own, “where’re you going?”
“Into the hall,” I said. “I’m going to find Anju.”
I walked out.
As soon as I saw the peeling green paint of the lockers and the plain white floor, I fell back into my body with a sickening thud. Ye gods, my back itched. My father’s finger, pointing at me. I rubbed at it and looked around. Where was everybody? No one was in the hallway. I could hear some racket outside; that was probably where they had all disappeared to. I set off. I’d have to hurry, and—
Sangris had followed me. He caught at my elbow, and when I turned, he pressed me up against the lockers. “Where are you going?” he repeated. His voice was ragged now.
“To find Anju,” I said feebly.
“Why?”
“I want to ask her something.”
He wouldn’t turn his eyes away. “Nenner, I just told you that I—that I want—and you’re trotting off to find Anju? Now?”
“I can’t unless you let go of me,” I said.
“That’s why I won’t let go! You need to say something.” His face twisted. “Something. You can’t just walk off and leave me alone after that!”
“Oh,” I said. I tried to push his hands off. I couldn’t think of anything. “I just . . . let me find Anju. She’ll help me to understand things.” That was what I did whenever I was lost in class, after all. Turn to Anju.
Sangris leaned closer.
“Nenner,” he said, “do you or do you not understand what I was trying to tell you?”
“Um. I think I might.”
“You think?”
I still didn’t know whether or not to lie. The pit of my stomach felt very cold. With an effort, I met his eyes. “You feel some physical attraction,” I said. “We’ll deal with it. You’ll just . . . have to learn how to suppress it.”
He stared at me. “You don’t get it,” he said in disbelief. “You don’t get it at all.” He continued to stare for a couple more minutes. Since I couldn’t wriggle away, I pushed myself back against the locker, as far as I could go. I was uncertain on my feet. I felt like a little seed with the hard outer covering peeled off. A gust of wind would have picked me up and carried me away.
Suddenly I wanted to be back in my boxes, safe. The world out here was too vivid, too raw. I’d been an idiot to hope that I would ever be able to handle it. There was no need to ask Anju about this. I couldn’t pretend to be more than I was.
The fragments of our friendship were bright, very bright, in my mind, like shards of an exploded sun, glowing. They were all I could see.
I said, “Sangris, don’t you think we can just go on the way we were before?”
He studied me for a long time.
Finally: “You just don’t get it,” he repeated. His voice was flat. “I’m going to spell it out for you. Nenner, this is for your own good. Try to pay attention this time, because I don’t know how I can make it any clearer.”
The windows inside the classrooms had been opened for once. The wind coming into the corridor felt warm. Around me little lights reflected off the surface of the walls. Patches of them waved over the white floor, and, on Sangris’s face, especially over the line of his left cheek, the broken-up sunlight billowed and swam. Blue sky outside. The slow light was tinted blue as well: a deep near-purple blue. Everything was clean, everything was shining. I had never felt so empty, or so sick of myself.
He tilted his head down and put his mouth to mine. I saw his eyes close. He . . . stayed there for a while. Something seemed to be happening to him. And what had started off as impatience became hunger and tenderness. He moved his body nearer to me too. I was calm. I counted to ten, and when his hands had relaxed their grip I tried to pull away; he mumbled something and went even closer.
I watched from somewhere around the ceiling. The girl against the lockers was holding very still. I could feel the heat from Sangris, but it didn’t touch me, and when her lips parted I was mildly disgusted—but only mildly, because I was far removed from the messy softness of whatever was happening down there. But then, too soon, I was her again with my shoulders against the locker doors. I pressed the palms of my hands back against the hard, peeling wood as if it could anchor me.
Then at last, after what seemed like a long time, Sangris sighed and I realized he was done. I drew away immediately. He looked sleepy again, flushed, and his eyes were still hungry, the irises colored like a flame at low heat. He didn’t, or couldn’t, speak for a moment, and then he said, in a much deeper voice than I had heard before, “You understand now?”
I didn’t respond. I was counting down the seconds, listening for the telltale whistle of a bomb. Three, I thought. Two. One.
Then the shame and the shock hit me.
I burst into tears.
“Nenner?” I heard Sangris say.
I turned away from him, horror shaking me, and put my arms over my head so that he couldn’t see my face. I didn’t want anyone to see me. I pushed myself against the locker as if I were hoping to disappear into it. The itch in my back was a searing pain.
“Nenner—” Sangris said. He sounded almost as bad as I felt. He touched my arm and I flinched.
Down in the lower level of the school building a flood of noise came as students entered. I didn’t know why they’d all been outside. I heard excited babbles about a camel that had peed on the head teacher’s car, or something. I didn’t care. Sangris picked me up, the way he did when we flew, and carried me through an undecorated door close by. He shut it behind us. Gloom. Only a sharp white light came from the cracks around the door. We were in a closet. The wave of people washed by on the other side of the door, chattering.
He held me uncertainly for a moment. I didn’t cling to him and I didn’t cringe away either. “Do you want me to put you down?” he said at last. “I can’t tell.”
“Yes,” I said. I found that I was able to speak without too much difficulty. As a matter of fact, my voice rev
olted me because it sounded so steady.
He put me down. At once I curled up against the wall, putting my arms back over my head to protect myself. I made myself speak again. “Did you,” I said, breathing quickly, shallowly, “did you just . . .”
I couldn’t even say the word.
“Kiss you?”
Sangris sat beside me and put his fingers on my shoulder timidly. I jumped at the touch. “On the mouth?” I said. I couldn’t look at him. I said it to my knees.
“That’s . . . where people kiss, Nenner.”
“Not me! Not me, not me!”
All at once the world was a horrible place. I wanted his hand off my shoulder.
“Why are you so upset? I told you how I felt. And it’s not like I haven’t tried to do it before,” he said, and a little more of the light seeped out of the room.
“Before?” I moaned.
He had the grace to sound embarrassed. “In the tree, before I attacked Juren. And in your room, before I kissed your foot. But I thought about it a lot before then . . . I told you . . .”
There was a chilled, sickly feeling collecting in the pit of my stomach, as if the dregs, dead leaves, and muck from the bottom of a pond were slopping together and congealing in my gut. It was all my fault. I’d hoped that the way I peppered every other sentence with an insult would be enough to discourage . . . this. But obviously not. For months I’d looked the other way, while hanging around a boy who . . . I screwed my eyes tightly shut. I’d been that word my friends hadn’t dared to call me. My father put it best. In Pfft. I had been walking with Sangris down the streets of Pfft.
“I’m sorry I did that. I don’t mean to force you,” he said in a low voice. His hand, a stranger’s now, stroked my shoulder and I flinched away. “It’s all right. You should know by now, I . . .” But evidently I didn’t know anything. I clenched tighter into my ball. “It’s fine. I understand. It’s a big step . . .”
The Girl With Borrowed Wings Page 18