Unhinged: 2

by A. G. Howard

  We still have to convince Dad to let me go. I refuse to voice my concern aloud. Jeb’s already feeling guilty about the tension between him and Dad. Sure, it was a mistake for Jeb to take me to get a tattoo behind my parents’ backs. But he didn’t do it to make them mad. He did it against his better judgment because I pressured him. Because I was trying to be rebellious and worldly, like the people he hangs out with now.

  Jeb got a tattoo at the same time, on his inner right wrist—his painting hand. It’s the Latin words Vivat Musa, which roughly translates to “Long live the muse.” Mine is a miniature set of wings on my inner left ankle, camouflaging my netherling birthmark. I had the artist ink in the words Alis Volat Propriis, Latin for “She flies with her own wings.” It’s a reminder I control my darker side and not the other way around.

  Jeb tucks the heiress’s number into his jeans pocket, seeming a thousand miles away.

  “I bet she’s hoping you’re Team Cougar,” I say, half joking in an effort to bring him back to the present.

  Making eye contact, Jeb works his arms into the sleeves of a flannel shirt he had flung across his Honda’s handlebars. “She’s only in her twenties. Not exactly cougar material.”

  “Oh, thanks. There’s a comfort.”

  His familiar teasing smile offers reassurance. “If it’ll make you feel better, you can go with me when I meet her.”

  “Deal,” I say.

  He climbs onto his motorcycle in front of me, and I no longer care if anyone sees us. I snuggle as close as possible, wrapping my arms and knees tightly around him, face nuzzled into the nape of his neck just beneath his helmet’s edge. His soft hair tickles my nose.

  I’ve missed that tickle.

  He slides on his shades and tilts his head so I can hear him as he starts the motor. “Let’s find somewhere to be alone for a while, before I take you home to get ready for our date.”

  My blood thrums in anticipation. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “A roll down memory lane,” he answers. And before I can even ask what that means, we’re on our way.

  I’m glad Gizmo’s tire is out of commission, because there’s nothing like riding with Jeb on his bike.

  Swaying back and forth, our movements synchronize with the curves of the streets. The slick gravel makes him cautious, and he weaves slowly around traffic so he can brake without skidding through intersections. But as soon as we reach the older side of town, where only one or two cars share the road and traffic lights are fewer and farther between, he gives the throttle some gas and we pick up speed.

  The rain picks up, too. Jeb’s jacket shields my shirt and corset. Stray droplets lick my face. Pressing my left cheek to his back and tightening my arms around him, I shut my eyes to indulge in pure sensation: the roll of his muscles as he eases into turns, the scent of the drenched asphalt, and the sound of the motorcycle muffled by my helmet.

  My hair whips around us as the wind presses in from every direction. It’s the closest I can come to flying in the human realm. The buds behind my shoulder blades itch as if wanting to sprout wings at the thought.

  “You awake back there?” Jeb asks, and I notice we’re slowing down.

  I open my eyes and prop my chin on his shoulder, letting his head and neck shield one side of me from the soft drizzle. His “roll down memory lane” comment makes sense as I recognize the movie theater, a frequent destination of ours during my sixth-grade year.

  I haven’t seen it since it was condemned three years ago. The windows are boarded up and trash nestles at the corners and foundation as if taking refuge from the weather. The Texas winds have knocked the oval orange and blue neon sign from off its perch above the entrance; it’s hunched on its side like a shattered Easter egg. The letters no longer say EAST END THEATER. The only word still legible is END, which feels both poetic and sad.

  This isn’t our destination. Jeb, Jenara, and I used to have our parents drop us at the movies, but the theater doubled as a decoy for kids who wanted to sneak a few hours free from adult supervision. We would gather at the giant storm drainage pipe on the other side of the lot, where a concrete incline dipped into a cement valley. Stretching some twenty yards, it formed an ideal bowl for skateboarding.

  No one ever worried about flooding. The pipe was made to drain the excess from the lake on the other side—a lake that had been gradually shrinking for decades.

  Since it was as dry as a desert inside, the tunnel served as a hideaway for make-out and graffiti sessions. Jenara and I didn’t spend much time there. Jeb made sure of that. He said we were too innocent to witness what was going on in the depths.

  But that’s where he’s taking me today.

  Jeb cruises through the littered parking lot and across an empty field, then takes the incline on his bike. As we descend the concrete’s drop, I tighten my legs around him and let go of his waist, stretching my arms high in the air. My wing buds tickle, and I whoop and holler as if we were on a roller coaster. Jeb’s laughter joins my giddy outburst. Too soon we’re at the bottom, and I hold on to him again, the wheels skimming through puddles on our zigzag race toward the drainage pipe.

  We stop at the entrance. The tunnel is as abandoned as the movie theater. Teens quit coming here when Underland—Pleasance’s ultraviolet, underground skate park and activity center owned by Taelor Tremont’s family—became the popular hangout on the west side of town. The rain’s coming down harder now, and Jeb balances the bike so I can climb off. I slip on the wet cement.

  He catches me with one arm around my waist and, without a word between us, pulls me in for a kiss. I hold both sides of his jaw, relearning how his muscles work under my fingertips, reacquainting myself with how the rigid planes of his hard body fit so perfectly against my softer curves.

  Raindrops glide over our skin and seep into the seam between our lips. I forget we’re still wearing our helmets, and the cold wetness of my leggings, and even the heaviness of my soggy shoes. He’s finally here with me, his body pressed flush to mine, and those white-hot points of contact are the only things I know.

  When we finally break apart, we’re soaked, flushed, and out of breath.

  “I’ve been dying to do that,” he says, voice husky and green gaze penetrating. “Every time I heard your voice on the phone, all I could think about was touching you.”

  His heartbeat races against mine, and his words twine my stomach into a knot of pleasure. I lick my lips, unspoken assurance that I’ve been thinking of the same thing.

  Together we lead his Honda into the tunnel and prop it against a curved wall. Then we take off our helmets and shake out our hair. I peel off Jeb’s jacket and my backpack.

  I don’t remember the tunnel being this dark. The overcast sky doesn’t help. I take a cautious step farther in, only to be bombarded with the worrisome whispers of spiders, crickets, and whatever other insects congregate in the darkness.

  Wait … don’t step on us … tell your friend to put his big feet away.

  I pause, unnerved. “You brought a flashlight, right?” I ask.

  Jeb comes up from behind and wraps his arms around my waist. “I’ll do better than a flashlight,” he whispers against me, leaving a warm imprint just behind my ear.

  There’s a click, and a string of lights flickers to life on the tunnel’s wall, pinned in place somehow, like a vine. The lights don’t give off much of a glow, but I can see that none of the skateboards are still lying around. Skaters used to leave their old wheels so everyone would have something to use when they came from the theater. We lived by a code back then. It was rare for a board to get stolen, because we all wanted the freedom to last forever.

  We were so naïve to think anything in the human realm lasts forever.

  Fluorescent graffiti glows on the walls—some curse words but mostly poetic ones, like love, death, anarchy, peace, and pictures of broken hearts, stars, and faces.

  Black lights. I’m reminded of both Underland’s and Wonderland’s neon landscapes.
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  One mural stands out from the others—an ultraviolet outline of a fairy in oranges, pinks, blues, and whites. Her wings splay behind her, jeweled and bright. She looks like me. Even after all these months, I still do a double take when I see Jeb’s renditions: exactly as I looked in Wonderland, complete with butterfly wings and eye patches—black curvy markings imprinted on the skin like overblown eyelashes. He sees inside my soul without even knowing it.

  “What did you do?” I ask him, making my way toward the graffiti while trying to avoid squishing any bugs.

  He takes my arm to steady me. “A few cans of spray paint, a hammer, some nails, and a battery-operated strand of black lights.”

  He flicks on a camper’s lantern, which illuminates a thick quilt spread out under a picnic basket. The bugs’ whispers fade in response to the light.

  “But how did you have time?” I ask, sitting down to dig in the basket. There’s a bottle of expensive mineral water as well as cheese, crackers, and strawberries.

  “I had a lot of time to kill before school let out,” Jeb answers as he selects a playlist on his iPad and props it on the backpack. A gritty, soulful ballad resonates from a miniature speaker.

  I try to ignore that his answer makes me feel like an immature schoolgirl and pull some white roses out of the basket. These have been Jeb’s flower of choice for me ever since the day we came clean about our feelings, the morning after I returned from my trip through the rabbit hole. The morning after prom last year.

  I hold them to my nose, trying to blot out the memory of another set of white roses in Wonderland that ended up red with his blood.

  “I wanted to make this special for you.” He drags off his damp flannel shirt and sits down on the other side of the basket, an expectant look on his face.

  His words echo in my head: Make this special for you.

  The flowers slip from my fingers, scolding me for bruising their petals when they scatter on the ground.

  “Oh,” I murmur to Jeb, disregarding their whispers. “So … this is it.”

  He half grins, casting a shadow where his left incisor slants slightly across his front tooth. “It?”

  He takes a strawberry out of the basket. Lantern light reflects off the cigarette-size scars on his forearms. I mentally follow them to a path of matching scars under his T-shirt: reminders of a violent childhood.

  “Hmm. It.” Jeb tosses the berry, leans his head back, and catches the fruit in his mouth. Chewing, he studies me as if waiting for a punch line. The teasing tilt of his head makes the stubble on his chin look like velvet, though it’s not soft like velvet. It’s rough against bare skin.

  Heat pools low in my abdomen. I avert my gaze, trying not to notice all those sexy things I obsessed about while we were apart.

  We’ve discussed taking the next step in our relationship via texts and phone calls and on occasion in person. Since his schedule is so hectic, we’ve marked prom night on both our calendars.

  Maybe he’s decided he’d rather not wait. Which means I have to tell him I’m not ready today. Even worse, I have to tell him why.

  I’m totally unprepared, scared out of my head, and not for the usual reasons. My lungs shrink, aggravated by the dank air of the tunnel … the paint, stone, and dust. I cough.

  “Skater girl.” All the teasing is gone from his voice. He says my nickname so low and soft, it’s almost swallowed by the background music and the rain pattering outside.

  “Yeah?” My hands tremble. I curl my fingers into my palms, nails scraping my scars. Scars that Jeb still thinks were caused by a car accident when I was a kid, when a windshield supposedly shattered and gouged my hands. Just one of the many secrets I’m keeping.

  I can’t give him what he wants, not all of me. Not until I tell him who I really am. What I am. It was bad enough when I only had a week left till prom. I’m not prepared to pour out my soul today after being away from him for so long.

  “Hey, take it easy.” Jeb works my hands free from their prison of fingers and presses my palm to his collarbone. “I brought you here to give you this.” He drags my hand down to his chest, where a hard knot the size of a dime presses back from under his shirt. That’s when I notice the shimmer of a delicate chain around his neck.

  He lifts off the necklace and holds it over the lantern. It’s a heart-shaped locket with a keyhole embedded in its middle.

  “I found it in a little antique market in London. Your mom gave you that key you wear all the time, right?”

  I squirm, itching to correct the half-truth—that it’s not exactly the same key she had saved for me, although it opens the same weird and wild world.

  “Well …” He leans across the basket to place the necklace over my head. It falls in line atop my key. He drags my hair free, smoothing the strands to cover both chains. “I thought this could be symbolic. It’s made of the same kind of metal, looks vintage like the key. Together, they prove what I’ve always known. Even when we used to come here as kids.”

  “And what’s that?” I watch him, intrigued by how the tunnel’s opening tints one side of his smooth complexion with bluish light.

  “That only you have the key to open my heart.”

  The words startle me. I look down before he can see the emotion in my eyes.

  He huffs. “That was cheesy … maybe I sucked in too many paint fumes while I was working on the mural.”

  “No.” I balance on my knees and drape my arms over his shoulders. “It was sincere. And so swee—”

  He puts a finger on my lips. “It’s a promise. That I’m committed. To you alone. I want to make that clear, before prom, before London. Before anything else happens between us.”

  I know he means what he’s saying, but it’s not entirely true. He’s also committed to his career. He wants his mom and Jenara to have nice things; he wants to help with college expenses for his sister’s fashion career, and to take care of me in London.

  Then there’s the underlying reason that he’s so committed to his art. The one reason he never talks about.

  I have no right to be jealous of his determination to make something of himself—to prove himself a better man than the example he was given. I just wish he could find a balance and be satisfied. Instead, it feels like each sale and each new contact whets his appetite for more, almost like an addiction.

  “I’ve missed you,” I say, drawing him into a hug that crushes the basket between us.

  “I missed you, too,” he says against my ear before pushing us apart. A concerned frown meets my gaze. “Don’t you know that?”

  “I didn’t hear from you for almost a week.”

  He lifts his eyebrows, obviously chagrined. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get cell phone service.”

  “There’s landlines and e-mail,” I snap, sounding more irritable than I intend to.

  Jeb taps the basket between us with the toe of his boot. “You’re right. It just got crazy that last week. It’s when the final auction took place. And the schmoozing.”

  Schmoozing = partying with the elite. I stare at him, hard.

  He rubs his thumb along my lower lip, as if trying to reshape my scowl to a smile. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t drunk or drugged out or cheating. It’s all business.”

  My chest tightens. “I know. It’s just, sometimes I worry.”

  I worry that he’ll start to crave things I haven’t even experienced yet. When he was sixteen, he lost his virginity to a nineteen-year-old waitress at a restaurant where he bused tables.

  Last year, when he dated Taelor, they never hooked up; his evolving feelings for me kept him from crossing that line. But it’s bad enough knowing he was with an “older woman” before me, that she was just a sampling of the temptations that surround him on a daily basis now.

  “Worry about what?” Jeb prompts.

  I shake my head. “I’m just being stupid.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  Tension escapes my lungs on a gust. “Your life is so d
ifferent from mine now. I don’t want to get left behind. You felt so far away this time. Worlds away.”

  “I wasn’t,” he says. “You were in my dreams every night.”

  His sweet sentiment reminds me of my own dreams and the life I’m hiding from him. I am such a hypocrite.

  “Only one more week of school.” He plays with the tips of my hair. “Then we’ll be on our way to London, and you can go with me on all of my trips. It’s time to get your art out there, too.”

  “But my dad …”

  “I’ve figured out how to fix things.” Jeb shoves the basket from between us.

  “What? How?”

  “Seriously, Al.” Jeb grins. “You want to talk about your dad when we can be doing this?” He stands, dragging me up with him. His arms enfold me. I snuggle into him, and we dance to a ballad on the iPad, in sync at last. I forget everything but our bodies swaying. Our conversation settles into its own familiar rhythm. We laugh and tease, catching up on the little moments from the past few weeks.

  It starts to feel like it used to, the two of us melting into one another while outside distractions fade.

  When another song clicks on, a sultry and rhythmic number, my fingers slink along his spine in time with it, finding their way under his T-shirt’s hem. I drag my nails lightly over the toned ridges of his back and kiss his neck.

  He moans, and I smile in the dimness, sensing the change in him. A change I control. He eases us down to the quilt, guiding me to my back. A tiny part of me wants to finish talking about things that feel unfinished. But even more, I want him like this, intent on nothing but me, his weight closing in, comforting and demanding at once.

  Elbows propped next to my ears, he holds my head while kissing me, so gentle and thorough, I can taste the strawberry he ate a minute ago.

  I’m breathless, dizzy … floating so high I barely notice his phone buzzing with a text.

  He tenses and rolls off to slip the phone from his jeans pocket. “Sorry,” he mumbles and swipes to read the text.