The Leading Edge of Now

by Marci Lyn Curtis

  He’s the one who took advantage of me.

  I march toward Rusty’s, back straight, chin in the air, not looking in Owen’s direction or altering my course or showing any sign that I’ve seen him.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I whirl around to face him. He’s walking toward me, smiling at me. Smiling.

  God.

  It’s just like him to disappear when he makes a horrific mistake, and then — poof — materialize after the smoke has cleared, acting like everything is perfectly normal.

  My voice low and guttural, I say, “Don’t you dare smile at me. Not anymore. Not after everything.”

  Owen’s brows furrow.

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, my God. Don’t give me that innocent look. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You took advantage of me, Owen.” Which is one way to put it.

  It’s my stomach that feels the accusation first. Like I just missed a step at the bottom of the stairs. Owen opens his mouth and then shuts it. Shoving both hands in his pockets, he stares at me carefully. Owen has never said anything unsubstantial in all his life, and clearly he isn’t going to start now.

  The most insane thing? I want to forgive him. He was my friend — no, my childhood crush — and he took something away from me that I’ll never get back. I was fifteen and my virginity was stolen and I can’t even remember it.

  I wait for Owen to acknowledge it out loud. But instead he closes his eyes for a tick and says, “What are you talking about, Grace?”

  So he’s going to deny it.

  “Really?” I basically yell. “You really want me to explain it to you?”

  He shakes his head no, but says, “Yes.”

  “Remember that Labor Day weekend a couple of years back, when I was loaded on Ambien?” He nods. He has this weird look on his face. I keep going. “Last thing I remember, we were in my bed, and I was telling you that things were getting out of control. That we needed to stop. When I woke up, hours later, my pajamas were — I was bleeding and —” I look down because my lower lip is starting to tremble. “You —”

  His eyes widen and he takes an unsteady step backward. “What are you saying, Grace?” he whispers. His hand drifts up and covers his mouth. He speaks through it as he says, “You think I …” He looks at me with unfocused eyes, shaking his head back and forth, like, no no no no no.

  God, he’s good.

  I wonder whether he’s spent the past couple of years practicing this.

  I throw my arms up in the air. “You’re denying it. Perfect.” My heart is pounding so fast that my toes are starting to prick. Taking a step toward him, I say in a low voice, “Look, you sonofabitch, if I was going to rat you out, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”

  “Grace, I don’t — that night —” He laces his fingers behind his neck and looks up at the sky for a second. “I mean, things got really out of hand, but I would never do that. We stopped,” he says, his voice pleading. “You told me we were getting carried away, and I agreed with you. We just — we talked until you went to sleep, and then I left.”

  “Come on, Owen. Don’t insult me. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Why would I do that?” he says, his expression earnest. “Why would I do that to you?”

  “That’s something I’ve been asking myself for nearly two years,” I fire back. I’m close to tears. “Maybe because you were a complete mess at the time? Totally not yourself? Absolutely unhinged?”

  He presses a closed fist against his forehead. His voice is muffled as he says, “I did not touch you without your consent.”

  “And why should I believe that?”

  His hand falls to his side. “How about because you’ve known me since you were four?” he says, and his eyes are the biggest, deepest pools of sadness.

  And for an instant, for a fraction of a second, I believe him. His sincere expression, the tears in his eyes, the long thread of history we’ve shared. And I’m filled with too many emotions at once — longing and hope and doubt and confusion and anger. But the negative emotions are the ones that elbow their way to the surface first. I wedge both hands on my hips and say, sort of sharply, “And afterward, you thought I wasn’t answering your phone calls and texts because …?”

  “I thought you were just blowing me off,” he says. “That you decided that we weren’t worth the hassle. I was a mess, like you just pointed out. You and Janna were all screwed up —”

  “Bullshit,” I say.

  “It’s true. And I knew that the only reason you were even kissing me that night was the Ambien. Otherwise you probably would’ve thrown me out of the room the second you saw me.”

  I can’t do this anymore. Can’t look at him. Can’t listen to his lies. I spin on one heel and walk away.

  Eighteen

  I didn’t plan on stealing the man’s wallet.

  My intention was to speed walk down the beach until my feet fell off, in order to get as far away from Owen McAllister as possible. Half of me wanted to keep walking for the rest of my life, and half of me wanted to go back and shake the truth out of him.

  It was the last one I was trying to avoid.

  I never thought he’d deny it. And every time I remembered that innocent look he’d had, confusion came crashing into my lungs, dark and unending.

  Because what if he’d been telling the truth?

  I knew Owen. I’d known him for almost as many years as I’d been alive, and he’d looked so genuine this afternoon.

  And so I walked. I walked until the air felt thin enough to breathe again, and until I had blisters on my feet, and until I finally broke down and hopped onto a bus that was headed toward Rusty’s. But then there was this guy standing right next to me in the aisle of the bus. He looked like a burnout twentysomething surfer or a long-lost member of the Beatles. Shaggy, mop-top hair. Slouchy posture. A gaze that landed on my boobs one too many times. Suddenly I felt like a desperate animal with its leg caught in the sharp teeth of a metal trap. Fury and vehemence and panic flashed in my chest, and I had a split second to make a choice: punch him in the face or steal his wallet.

  I chose to steal his wallet, obviously.

  And now I’m regretting it for several reasons, the most pressing being that after I relocated his wallet and made my exit off the bus, my dress got caught in the bus’s closing doors.

  The thing about running alongside a bus is that you can’t do it for very long. I mean, inside my own mind, I’m quite a runner. My brain understands perfectly how to canter along in quick, graceful strides until the bus gets to the next stop and the doors open. Problem is that my mind has to subcontract the job to my flabby and uncoordinated legs, which aren’t graceful at anything. So I stumble as the bus rounds the first corner, my dress rips and, as they say in NASA, I’m launched.

  I would’ve surely face-planted on the asphalt if it wasn’t for the rather tan hand that snatched my arm and reestablished my balance. I don’t know who I was expecting to have come to my rescue, but it sure as hell wasn’t the guy whose wallet is currently residing in my purse.

  Um.

  I blink at him. “Hiya. Hey,” I say finally. Hiya. Hey? What am I saying, even? Doesn’t matter, I suppose, because it’s already come out of my mouth. I glance at the bus as it rumbles away, wishing I could teleport myself back on it. Because what if he knows I have his wallet? What if he followed me off the bus? What if he calls the cops? What if his sleazy, creepy hand hasn’t been washed in months and he’s giving me a rare and incurable skin disease?

  I shut my eyes and pray to God.

  And then to Jehovah.

  To Jesus.

  To Allah.

  To Tom Cruise’s god.

  I can’t tell from the quick peek I had at him whether he’s concerned about my safety or concerned about how to kill me without witnesses, so I look down at the asphalt, and my words
just start tumbling out of my mouth: “Thanks for that. It would’ve hurt like hell to fall face-first on this road.” I pull down what’s left of my dress. “I mean, at best, I would’ve been banged up pretty badly, and at worst, I’d be suffering from a subdural hematoma. Also, I faint at the sight of blood. Not, like, the Victorian way — by just sort of sinking to the ground — but the hardcore way,” I say, illustrating a hard fall with my free hand, adding a sound effect for good measure. This is me when I’m nervous: an entire Game of Thrones novel out of my mouth in about two seconds flat. In my defense, his hand is still death-gripping my arm, and panic is starting to set in. “I mean, it’s not like I’m afraid of blood, per se,” I go on. “Not like I’m afraid of snakes or brain cancer. It’s just that blood kind of short-circuits my mind into self-preservation mode, and the fainting occurs.” I try to straighten up a little in an effort to dignify myself, but I find out quickly that I’ve tweaked my back somehow, because — holy crap — I get this tear-inducing jolt of pain in my lower back. I yelp and my knees start to buckle.

  He supports me by the arm. “You okay?” he says, and he doesn’t seem enraged or spiteful or ready to pin a criminal record on me. But here’s the thing: he’s looking down the top of my dress.

  Like, at my boobs.

  Which — to repeat — is exactly why I took his wallet in the first place. I mean, I look maybe twelve in this sundress. What sort of disgusting perv is he, anyway?

  Rage boils under my skin.

  I open my mouth to ask him whether he’s on the child predator list and/or whether he’s ever been sucker punched in the junk, but then I stop because I remember that his wallet is still in my purse. Best not to press my luck. Wrenching my arm free from his grasp, I take a painful step backward and say, kind of forcefully, “I’m fine.”

  Keep in mind that I’m still stooped over like the guy who rings the bell in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  “Fact is, you look sorta pale,” he says, a toothpick bobbing around in the side of his mouth. His voice is too breathy, and he smells like sweat, and he puts his damp, disgusting palm on my arm again.

  I need to run.

  I think this so loudly that I wonder whether he hears it. Only he doesn’t. I can tell that he doesn’t. He’s still looking at me like he’s alphabetizing my body parts. And maybe I’m just paranoid, and maybe I’m deranged, but all I can feel is his clammy hand on my arm and the sun gluing my hair to my head, and it’s like this massive tidal wave has crashed into me and I’m getting sucked underwater, unable to breathe. I keep thinking It’s all right It’s all right It’s all right, but it isn’t.

  IT ISN’T.

  “Get the hell away from me,” I say through my teeth.

  A couple of tourists stop on the sidewalk, watching us.

  He looks at them and shrugs like I’m a lunatic, his hand springing free from my arm. Holding his palm up to face me, he smiles, that damn toothpick still bobbing in his damn mouth. “No need to be like that, miss,” he says. Then he turns and saunters away.

  Nineteen

  I get exactly three seconds of sleep that night.

  All right, so that’s probably an exaggeration. But the thing is, your back makes up a large percentage of your body, so when it hurts, your entire life sucks. I finally out-fatigue my pain around five in the morning, but then I awake what feels like seconds later to a tapping on my forehead. I wrench my eyes open, and my first coherent thought is, Has Eleanor always had such furry eyebrows? Which is stupid because I really couldn’t care less about Eleanor or her eyebrows. Probably I was dreaming about eyebrows. Or else, silver-colored fur coats. My eyes drift shut again. I’m exhausted, heavy-limbed —

  Another rapid-fire tapping on my forehead. What the …? I sit straight up, forcing Eleanor, who, yes, is the tapper, to jerk backward in alarm. But I’m even more alarmed because — holymotherofgod — my back is absolutely killing me. How has it gotten so much worse overnight? How? I lower down to the futon a centimeter at a time and then, slowly and carefully, turn toward my bedside clock, which is completely blank. Like, off. No numbers whatsoever. I blink a couple of times and then look at Eleanor. “What’s going on?” I say, my voice thick from sleep, kicking my feet out of the covers because it’s probably a thousand degrees in my room.

  Eleanor says, “Don’t you have an appointment with your shrink this morning?”

  I sink into my pillow. “My therapist,” I correct. “And the appointment isn’t till eleven.”

  “It’s five of.”

  “Five of eleven?” I say. Stupidly, I squint at my blank alarm clock again. It must have died at some point overnight.

  Shit.

  I fly out of bed. By fly I mean that, inch by inch, I gingerly roll out of bed and stand upright. Well, not exactly upright. I cannot straighten my back. Pretty sure that someone snuck into my room overnight, stole my spine, flung it into the road, rolled over it with a tractor and then backed up and rolled over it again for good measure. It’s bent to a permanent fifty degrees.

  Also: Why is it so hot in here?

  Eleanor rubs her chin and smiles. “Grace Cochran has overslept and will be late for an appointment for the first time in the history of the world.”

  I stop moving because I need my entire body to dislike her.

  “You,” I say, slowly, “are a child.” She shrugs in innocence.

  I pull on a pair of shorts and a clean T-shirt. “I did not oversleep,” I say, digging a pair of socks out of my drawer. “Not technically. I mean, I set my alarm last night.” I make my way toward the light switch and flip it up. Nothing happens. No light. No nothing. I crank it up and down a couple more times, like maybe that will make a difference. “Is our electricity out?”

  “Appears that way.”

  I want to throw something at her. This is in no way a physical possibility, so I roll my eyes. I don’t have the mental capacity to come up with anything better. I can’t come up with anything at all, actually, so I just hobble out of the room. “Where’s Rusty?” I ask over my shoulder.

  “Not sure,” Eleanor says.

  Naturally, Rusty’s gone. There’s a crisis in my life right now, and Rusty’s gone. Again. Suddenly I feel rather old and weary.

  Eleanor, who’s following me down the hall, says, “What happened to you, anyway? Why are you stooped over?”

  I sigh and knuckle-rub my forehead.

  I need to go back to bed so I can sleep off her personality.

  “I hurt my back.”

  “You going to be able to drive?” she asks. “I could be your — what’s it called? Porter. No, chauffeur. I could be your chauffeur. Where’s the appointment?”

  “In the medical building by Sarasota Memorial,” I say with a sinking feeling. Even with Eleanor’s help, I’ll be late. “Mind if I borrow your cell?” Eleanor glances toward me, one of her eyebrows almost meeting her hairline. “What?” I say, sort of loudly. “The power is out, so the landline will be dead. And I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “You don’t have a cell phone?”

  I exhale in a loud gust. “I lived in foster care for the past two years,” I say, by way of explanation.

  She looks at me, struck dumb, and tips her head toward her purse. “Have at it.”

  I cancel my appointment first. Then I punch in Rusty’s number, not even giving him time to say hello. “The power is out in the house,” I tell him.

  Long pause, then: “Right.” Rusty’s voice is scratchy, like he’s recently woken up. I can hear Faith murmuring in the background. Evidently he slept at her house last night. I wait while he clears his throat. “Right,” he says again. “The electric company called about a half hour ago. Said they shut it off. Seems I forgot to pay the bill.”

  I blink. “You what?”

  His voice a little clearer now, Rusty says, “It’s all good. Just an oversight. T
hey were real nice about it. Said they reckon the power’ll be back on in about an hour or so.”

  I unload on the couch, not even trying to stop the colorful four-letter word that comes out of my mouth. Unlike Dad, Rusty has never cared if I curse. Back in middle school, I accidentally slipped and told Rusty he was “the biggest bullshitter I’ve ever known.” When I realized what I’d said, I clamped my lips together and took a step backward, preparing for trouble. But all he did was chuckle. This morning, though, he sounds more sleepy than amused as he says, “Sorry, G. If it gets too hot, just open a couple windows or turn on a fan till the power comes back on.”

  I hit the END button without another word. Placing Eleanor’s phone on the coffee table, I start peeling off my nail polish, just for something to do. Eleanor collapses down beside me and says, “So how’d you hurt your back?”

  The question is innocent enough. Some might even consider it polite. Still, though. I don’t have an innocent, polite answer, so I keep it simple. “I fell, trying to catch a bus.” Which isn’t a lie.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  Eleanor crams a cigarette into her mouth and lights it. “Why were you trying to catch the bus?”

  “I went for a really long walk, and then I was too tired to make it back home.” Again, not a lie. But I hear the slightest bit of defensiveness in my tone, and I’m sure Eleanor has as well.

  She knows she’s starting to get to the bottom of this.

  Taking a hit off her cigarette and pulling one of those rubber-faced maneuvers that smokers do, where they blow smoke off to the side so they don’t wallop you with it right in the face, she says, “Did you go for a walk because you had that fight with Owen? Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad. It wasn’t like I was spying. You were in the driveway, right in front of God and everyone.”

  “My panties are not in a wad,” I say, rubbing my temple. “My private life is none of your business.”