That left me and Silas to the papasan. It was big enough for us both, but just barely. He let his long legs stretch down to the floor, and I rested my head over his heart. “What’s the movie, Laur?” Silas asked, and I grinned because—with my ear to his chest—the words sounded like a sort of purr.
“Où Te Trouver,” she said. “Where to Find You.”
The two boys groaned.
“Settle down!” Laurel told them. “There are subtitles.”
Only there weren’t. Just a man with an exceptional beard speaking in rapid French to a beautiful woman. “Look at that thing,” marveled Silas at the facial hair. “I’ll bet that guy’s beard has a beard.”
“You’re jealous because you can’t grow any facial hair yourself,” his sister taunted from the couch.
“Of course I am!” he said, rubbing his jaw. Then he tilted my chin up to look at him. “Do you think I’m less of a man, West?”
“Yup.” I bit his finger.
“When God said, ‘Let there be light,’ that beard appeared,” said Laurel, muting the film with the remote.
“You guys are so weird,” Whit said, but he looked happy with Laurel leaning back into him and the glow of the TV reflecting in his eyes. One of Whit’s arms reached across Laurel from shoulder to shoulder, and she was holding on to that arm as if it were a buoy. It struck me for a moment just how much sadness was sitting on that couch—but how you’d never know it tonight.
Silas said, “That beard invented the wheel, jazz music, and emoticons.”
“It speaks fourteen languages well,” I said, laughing, “and one badly.” They all looked at me. “It keeps it humble,” I explained.
“That beard’s hobbies are kicking ass and taking names,” Whit tried.
“That beard is a vigilante,” said Silas, my human thesaurus.
“It owns property in Spain.”
“It will stop global warming.”
“It exists in another dimension.”
“It has honorary degrees from Princeton and Yale.”
“That beard breastfed the sun, moon, and stars.” This was from Laurel, after which there was a moment of silence before Silas chimed, “Awkward.”
We were really, really tired. But we couldn’t stop laughing.
The bearded Frenchman and the beautiful woman on the screen were sharing a kiss, and Laurel sat up and tugged at Whit, saying, “Come say good night.”
Whit, holding Laurel’s hand, followed her obligingly but not before Silas pointed at him sternly and said, “No funny business.” Whit rolled his eyes.
“Can we get up to funny business?” Silas said once the other two had left.
I turned my head to face him. “Hypocrite,” I whispered, smiling.
“She left kinda fast, huh?” he said. “Should I check on her?”
“No,” I insisted. “She’s fine—and probably making out with Whit right now.”
Silas pretended to gag.
“You’re too protective,” I said. “Take a break, Hart.”
He smiled. It was crowded in the papasan, but still we didn’t move to the couch. “You’re right,” he said, wriggling a little to get comfortable and resting his head against my shoulder. “Want to run away together?”
“Yes, please,” I said. “Where to?”
“Mexico is always good. And we have Papa Arty’s truck.”
“I doubt the pickup would make it that far.”
“It could get there. Probably not back.”
“Then again, we wouldn’t need to get back,” I said. He looked up at me and grinned.
Silas took my hand and said, “We’ll drive as far as we can and hitchhike the rest of the way. We won’t stop till we get to the beach. Somewhere near ruins. We’ll build a little hut roofed with thatch and get jobs at a local resort so that we can buy loads of books. And every night, we’ll watch the sunset turn everything to copper and then go to our little hut and make fun of that day’s tourists.”
I leaned my cheek against his hair, which was curling slightly from the humidity outside. He smelled like shampoo and dryer sheets.
“I’m game,” I murmured. “Or we could go north too, you know.”
He yawned a little. “Mmm, true. We could go to Alaska. You’d like it there. We’ll get a cabin and read aloud by the fireplace. I like that idea.” His voice was starting to thicken with fatigue, and I heard Whit’s car start out in the driveway. “We can pick blueberries.”
I craned my head back in order to look at Silas; his eyes were closed, and in that moment, he looked like a little boy.
“Blueberries?” I said—but very quietly.
He yawned again. “There are . . . there are blueberries . . . everywhere . . . in September.”
I didn’t know if it was true or not, but I felt his breathing get slow and heavy, and his arm was hot against mine. I tried to picture us alone in a cabin, a fire blazing in the corner, listening as Silas read his poems. We’re just kids, I reminded myself.
A few minutes later, as a reminder of that fact, Teresa appeared in the doorway of the den wearing a robe. “Hey, you guys? It’s getting late. West’s parents just called—” She smiled down at her sleeping son, and I was grateful that he was cuddled up next to me so innocently, though I was terribly embarrassed that my parents had called—and probably woken up—Mrs. Hart.
“Silas,” I whispered, nudging his head with my shoulder.
His eyes fluttered open.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Mexico?” he asked groggily.
“Not tonight,” I whispered.
In the final days of summer, Silas and I took Laurel to Legacy House to meet Gordon. “Delighted to meet you, Laurel. Come sit, come sit. What business are you in, young lady?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, honestly, sitting on the couch beside me and twisting her fingers nervously in her lap, all while glancing around in awe at Gordon’s many bookshelves. “I’m not usually sure of much,” she admitted.
Gordon smiled, lit his pipe, and I knew that he knew he was talking to the elusive “her.” “Occam’s razor,” he said, as if offering her a gift. That wonderful, homey smell of cherry pipe tobacco filled the room again.
“What’s that?” asked Silas, standing near the window.
“Essentially,” said Gordon, “it’s a principle that says the simpler explanation is better than the complex one.”
“Why’s it called a razor?” I asked, plucking a peppermint from a small bowl on the coffee table in front of us.
Gordon opened his mouth to answer me, but Laurel beat him to it: “It’s a philosophical term . . . a device that lets you ‘shave away’ unlikely explanations.”
Gordon smiled. “We have a young philosopher in the room today,” he said, pleased.
Laurel smiled too, but only a little. “Philosophy was my gateway drug,” she admitted. To what? we wondered, the question hanging in the air like Gordon’s pipe smoke.
“She’s also a dancer,” I said to Gordon, then unwrapped my peppermint and popped it into my mouth.
“A philosopher and a dancer!” he exclaimed. “Nietzsche said he could only believe in a God who dances!”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. “But I think he does dance though.” She waited another moment, staring off into the distance in thought, and then she said, “I’m sure he does.”
Afterward, Silas and I had Holy Communion with Laurel on the beach: grape Crush and Goldfish crackers and Silas’s reassurances that it was not irreverent. We spread a bedsheet over the sand. A cool breeze came over the water from the southwest so that Laurel’s hair blew out behind her like a bridal veil. Silas read a poem he’d written in his notebook:
“The low moon lags beside men out late,
whose shadows stretch like secrets
down this ordinary street.
“Did you know?
There is a blood that works like bleach.
“What words work
if God
cooks you breakfast,
burns his fingers on the fish?
“The collision of common and celestial
holds her like a jealous palm.”
“Silas, that’s really good,” Laurel said as she leaned back on her elbows, looking out at the waves on the water.
“It’s about you, Laur,” he said. He handed me the bottle of Crush and Laurel the bag of Goldfish. The bubbles of carbonation burned my throat as I swallowed.
“I know,” Laurel said, then tasted a cracker, God’s body. “I am held by that jealous palm. I believe that. Right now, I believe that.” She closed her eyes, perhaps in prayer, and breathed in the scent of the breeze: algae and white clover that carried over the water onto this holy space.
twenty-eight
Laurel and I crowded before the mirror in her room, assessing ourselves and each other as she did my eye makeup for the street dance, which was starting soon. “Your hair is perfect,” I whined. “Mine doesn’t do anything I want it to.” Her room smelled like hair spray, and she had music from Swan Lake playing on her iPod dock.
“Oh, whatever!” she said, her hand absently tousling the loose curls she’d put in. “You’re gorgeous, West. There. Done. Your eyes look like black holes I’m going to fall into.”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked.
She shoved me in the shoulder. “You dork. Take a look.”
I usually didn’t wear any makeup, but Laurel had put eyeliner and mascara on me, and now my lashes looked about eight miles long and perfect. Laurel had been conservative with me—her own eyes were covered in thick, gold-glitter eye shadow that perfectly matched the highlights in her hair.
“What are you going to wear?” she asked.
“This,” I said, extending my hands to show her my most basic of outfits—a pair of jeans that had been lying on my bedroom floor for the last month or so and a T-shirt.
Laurel frowned, then looked through her closet. “Here, try this instead.” She handed me a dusty pink button-up that was light and sweet and pin-tucked with lace. When I put it on, she nodded her approval.
For herself, she chose a pair of the palest blue jeans and a low-cut white cami, along with this sleeveless denim top that she wore open.
“You look incredible.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Shhh, don’t. Hey,” she said quietly, “so . . . when Trudy comes back, we’re still going to hang out, right?”
“Durr,” I said, rolling my eyes and grinning at our reflection in the mirror.
She smiled softly. “I owe you, West.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“For everything, but especially these last couple of weeks. I feel like myself—really like myself—and happy, like I’m walking on a rock instead of in a moon bounce. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t—not exactly.
“Anyway, I just wanted to thank you before . . . before the summer is over. And while I’m still me.” Suddenly her smile slackened, and she looked at me and said, “Who knows how long it will last?”
“Knock that off,” I said. “You’ve turned a corner, Laurel.”
“I hope so,” she said. Then her voice changed again. “West, you hottie! Silas isn’t going to be able to take his eyes off you tonight!”
There were police barricades on one end of Elm Street and, on the other, a stage set up with huge speakers hanging from the top of the framework. My family had been there before dark, but the carnival games and cakewalk were long over, and a different crowd was out. The Mean Green Pub had a station on the street full of kegs; you had to have a special stamp on your hand to show you were twenty-one, but it was ten p.m. and already dark out and no one was paying much attention to that: tons of kids were getting wasted under the trees that lined the street. I watched Laurel and Whit each pound a drink or maybe two and then stop to talk with Elliot, who sat as if enthroned on a nearby front porch with some of his football teammates, one whose house it was. I saw Elliot glance around—presumably for me—but I ducked into the crowd of people dancing on the street, pulling Silas along behind me.
A mediocre band played covers. Silas faced me in a T-shirt that (somewhat) appropriately said, “Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza,” dancing like a goof, awkward and clumsy—and somehow it was the most adorable thing ever. This tall, lanky boy, all arms and legs and eyes. His were electric.
Laurel and Whit had found us in the crowd and were dancing nearby, his hands resting low on her hips. Laurel looked so natural and so beautiful that I couldn’t help but laugh at the wide gap between her and her twin, the gangly but gorgeous boy whose fingers were intertwined with mine. When the song slowed, I put my arms comfortably around Silas’s neck and looked up at him. “Laurel seems good tonight,” I said.
He nodded toward his sister; she was playing with the long hair at the base of Whit’s neck and laughing at something he was saying. “She’s having a blast,” Silas said. “I haven’t heard her laugh like that since she was thirteen.”
Tiki torches lined the street, staked into people’s yards. The sun had set, and the street was packed. The air felt warm and thick with humidity, and I thought I might have heard some thunder far off. I worried it might rain but soon forgot about the weather when Silas settled his hands on my hips, his fingers resting on the skin where my shirt had ridden up.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I whispered, my head feeling cloudy.
“I’m thinking that it’s been an incredible summer,” he said softly, then he leaned down, kissed me on the forehead, and said, “Because of you.”
Then I was up on my tiptoes, pressing my lips against his, my hands on his chest, feeling the muscle beneath the thin cotton. It was so warm in the crowd. “Let’s get out of here.”
We retreated to the church bell tower and climbed the staircase holding hands, giggling and stopping every few stairs to kiss. Up at the top, I turned on the camping lantern while Silas leaned into the window ledge. When I joined him, I saw that Jody Perkins had ridden his mower out to Elm Street, the purr of the motor inaudible above the more distant music.
The feel of Silas’s bare arm against mine was electric, sharpening my senses into cold steel: I knew what I wanted to happen next.
Thoughts raced inside me: Will Silas want it too? Is it wrong? We’re in the frickin’ church bell tower! What would Dad say if he knew? Angrily, I shoved the last question off. Dad didn’t—wouldn’t—know. He never asked me about myself anymore, and he didn’t know me well enough to see it on my face. Right? I looked at Silas, still gazing out the window, the breeze lifting his hair off his face. He was so beautiful. My cold steel sharpened to a point: this was exactly what I wanted.
But I kept thinking how he had put the brakes on recently. What if he doesn’t want me—like that? What if I embarrass myself? Warm and a little dizzy, I took a deep breath, my back against the tower wall beside the window Silas leaned over. Awkwardly, I shoved my hands into my pockets—and there was Trudy’s gift. My insides churned, a slow, deep, yawning sensation. And Silas was completely unaware.
Or maybe he wasn’t. He stood up tall and looked down at me, and there was conflict in his eyes. And intensity. I wondered if my eyes had the same hungry look as his. The noise from the dance was drowned out by the sound of my pulse hammering in my neck behind my ears. My heart slammed against my chest. He was standing so close.
“West?” he asked softly, and his voice cracked.
Yes, now, I thought, then put my hands on his chest, stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, and felt his arms go around me. But his response was different than usual. This kiss was deeper, somehow more desperate—as if the end of summer was so much more than just that. Silas took the lead, pressing me against the wall with his body, his hands at my waist, fists curling in the hem of my shirt. In his shadow, I felt like a wire about to snap.
An alarm exploded inside me when his cold hands slipped under my shirt and touched my bare stomach: fear and guilt—but pleasure
too. I gasped a little against his mouth but then kissed him harder, encouraging him, and felt his hands move from my hips, up and over my rib cage, to my breasts. He looked at me, and I nodded, and he started to unbutton my shirt.
“Dammit,” he said when his fingers worked clumsily at a button without success. I reached for the buttons, trying to help him out. “No,” he whispered. “Let me.”
Silas had a look of fierce concentration on his face, and it was so adorable that I leaned forward and kissed his ear, letting my lips linger there, barely grazing his skin. “You’re not making this any easier,” he mumbled through a grin as he finally finished with the buttons. He peeled the shirt off my shoulders.
We kissed again, then Silas pulled his shirt up and over his head. I laid a hand on his bare chest—his heart was pounding just like mine. “Should we, like, lie down?” he asked.
It was a ridiculous question, but I was grateful to have direction. We climbed onto the mattress, and he leaned over me, breathing heavily. I slid out of my jeans as he watched; in only my underwear, my thoughts raced with insecurities. But Silas stared at my body, swallowed hard, and pressed his knee between my legs. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
Then he placed a gentle hand over my heart so that he could feel it race, just as I’d felt his; it rose and fell quickly with my chest, and Silas’s eyes moved to meet mine. They were serious, unblinking. After a few moments, he leaned in and kissed the hollow of my throat so gently that I got goose bumps. Then he locked eyes with me again and reached around and unclasped my bra, so easily that I whispered in panic, “Have you done this before?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head slightly; his voice was low, quiet, making his whole body hum like a cello string.
“With Beth?”
“No, shhh,” he said again, and relief rushed me, and as I lay before him, vulnerable and shaky, I noticed that he was still trembling too. Silas ran his fingers from my shoulder down to my hip, so lightly, barely touching me, as if he were afraid. I felt afraid, too: Silas, the boy who had chattered incessantly all summer long, was silent, and it felt so strange, so foreign.
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