Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  I talk to Blue while we walk, pat his sweaty neck, give him an apple. I notice he isn’t stopping to nibble on bushes anymore and tell Jake.

  “He’s getting used to you,” he says. “He’s trying to make you happy.”

  “I love him,” I say.

  “Love?” His eyes open wide with curious amusement.

  “What? He’s a good peep.”

  Instead of making fun of me, he grins wide and real, and I do the same back before thinking I don’t really love that gelding. I love this feeling—the hot sun on my back melting into my dirty plaid shirt. It’s been so long since I’ve had a genuinely good day, and I never want it to end.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Then

  After that first time, Ty came into my room every night for a week. It got better each time, the sex part. He lasted longer, anyway, and didn’t always fall asleep right after. We had a consistent plan. We’d brush our teeth, and wash our faces, and get into our PJs. After his dad and my mom were fully quiet, after the tip tip tip of their laptops had come to a complete stop. We had a code. Two light knocks.

  He’d slip in, and he’d lock my door behind him.

  We always kept the lights off and had a plan in case one of the parents knocked. If God forbid the smoke alarm went off, if the phone rang with an emergency, and we were interrupted. He would dive onto the floor and roll under the bed.

  In the dark, no one would know.

  I wanted him, wanted him badly, and sometimes over and over again. In the dark, I could pretend he was real—that he was my boyfriend, not my stepbrother. That we went to a normal high school where the whole class graduated, where we attended dances instead of funerals. In the dark, I could pretend he was someone else, that I was someone else, or that we were someplace else, together.

  “I love you,” Ty said after, his nose in my hair, breathing heat onto the back of my neck.

  “You do?” I flinched away from him. I knew he liked me, but love. No. Ty couldn’t love me. Not like that. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He frowns. “I just do. You don’t have to be mean about it.”

  I rolled over. This was not good. This wasn’t what I wanted.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, propped up on an elbow.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie. What’s wrong?” His voice cracked. “Don’t you love me?”

  “Ty. Of course. I love…being with you like this, but it’s wrong—so, so wrong on so many levels. And there are other girls, Ty. Appropriate girls who aren’t your stepsister.”

  “You’re the one I want.”

  I stared at him over my shoulder.

  “What? Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one I want.”

  “Why? Because it’s wrong? Because you shouldn’t?”

  I swallowed. Why did Ty want me? Why would he love me?

  “Why would you think that? No. I want you because I want you. I love you because I love you.”

  I’d heard that before. Dad loved my mom once, too, and we all knew how that ended.

  “You don’t even know me,” I protested lamely.

  “That’s not true. Why would you say that, Paige?”

  Disgusted with myself, disgusted with Ty for being so emotional all of a sudden, I rolled off the bed and pulled on my panties. I told him I had to go to the bathroom. I locked the door and peed. Then, like I always did after, I used a half dozen Wet Ones and wiped the area where he had been even though we always used condoms, and then took a long, hot shower. He didn’t like me for me. He liked me because what we were doing was bad and he was hurting and he needed to feel again. That’s why I was doing it, and I wouldn’t accept anything different from him. As much as I liked Ty, things were getting too crazy. I needed to end it before someone else got hurt.

  Chapter Thirty

  Now

  That night we eat more beans.

  Anna boils some water, and we drink hot cocoa out of tin cups that I recognize from childhood. “I wish my dad were here,” I say.

  Anna and Jake nod. They get it. They do, too, and in a lot of ways they miss him more than I do because they knew him recently. They knew him strong and fit and able, and they know him now. They’re the ones watching him disappear before their eyes, helpless to stop it, like one of those nightmares where you try to run and your feet are glued to the ground. And I understand that helplessness, because it happened to me with Ty.

  When we finish sipping the cocoa, we lean back on our still-rolled bedrolls and look up at the stars poking through the night. We’re listening to the crackling of the fire, snuggling against its heat, when Anna starts humming an old ranch song. As if on cue, Jake pulls a harmonica out of his breast pocket and I sing along, too, this sad, mourning hymn that none of us planned.

  Jake abruptly pulls the harmonica from his lips and looks at me with soft, worried eyes. Anna is, too. “What?” I ask.

  “You’re crying,” Anna says.

  “What?”

  I touch my cheeks, and they’re all wet.

  I hear the crack in my voice and hiccup and realize she’s right. It’s too much rehashing all these memories about Ty and now being up here on this mountain where I used to come with Dad. It’s all too much. Before, I was able to bury it away, hide it under the numbness, conceal it with my hunger pains from not eating, but now I’m healthy and my mind is as clear as the lake at sunset and I can feel it all, feel everything, and it’s the freaking worst.

  Anna puts her arm around my trembling, no—convulsing—body and holds me in the crook of her arm. Her plaid shirt and suede jacket smell like my dad—smell just like my childhood. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” I say over and over and over, “I’m so sorry,” and she rocks me against her and says in a whisper, “It’s okay, everything’s going to be okay.”

  I open my swollen eyes, and over her shoulder, I see Jake watching me. I don’t want to look away this time, I don’t want to hide from his concern, from his warmth—so I don’t.

  But I should.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Then

  “Come on, please,” he said.

  He was begging.

  “I don’t feel like it,” I said.

  “Why not? Did I do something wrong?”

  “Yes. You’re my stepbrother.” You are a possible date rapist. You don’t love me, not really. We’re just having guilt-sex because we’re still alive. But if I said all that he’d flip out, or he’d cry and tell me over and over that he was innocent and then start talking about Elliot, and not to be selfish. I didn’t want to be insensitive, but I just couldn’t do that whole ride tonight.

  “I was your stepbrother the other times, too.”

  “Ty. We can’t do this anymore.” I don’t want you. I don’t want this. It’s done.

  “Can I still stay in here?”

  My stomach flinched. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “You can stay, Ty, but I think this better be the last time.”

  If he heard me, he didn’t answer. If he heard me, he didn’t agree, because in the middle of the night I woke up with him on top of me. And even though I shoved him off once I realized what was happening, it was already too late.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Now

  I sit there after, legs dangling over the granite edge of the cliff, hovering over a deep, black valley—a wide expanse far below me.

  If I just moved a few inches forward, that’d be it for me.

  Going, going, gone.

  Paige, gone, like they are gone.

  Why did they do it? What made them stay on the tracks instead of jumping off at the last second? What made Elena slice into her skin, and dripping blood, walk to the tracks? She had to have reached for a towel to stop the bleeding. She must’ve tickled her phone screen, considering calling 911 and rescuing herself from this useless death. Why didn’t she?

  Why did I choose to stay on the mountain instead of slip
ping off into the abyss?

  What made the difference between choosing to die and deciding to live?

  Was it the weight of sadness that buckled them over and dragged them away from all sane, rational thoughts with an anchor of hopelessness so intense they just gave up fighting? Or was it one day? One night, a night like this one, where a shocking feeling of happiness washed over them, reminding them how sucky life usually is? How hard, how almost impossible it is to cling to the beautiful moments that keep us alive? Keep us fighting through those dark times when those moments are few and far between?

  I don’t have any answers.

  The more I think about it, the fewer answers I have.

  Seeing Dad in that chair, fighting so badly to live, to do anything to talk, to breathe on his own, to be able to squeeze the fingers of the woman he loves, to hug his only child, to pat Jake’s back when he wants to tell him how proud he is of something—it makes me think they just didn’t know better. That they’d lost sight of the wide expanse of life, how the fact that, no matter what their families and friends said, no matter how much pressure, getting into a certain college is only an inkling of a hint of their futures.

  If they could be under the stars…if they could realize how very small we are in the grand scheme of things, how we’re unlimited potential packed under a thin layer of skin and it’s up to us to fight for a piece in all of this wonder…

  I know depression is real. That mental illness exists, and some can only fight the darkness for so long until they succumb to it. I get that. But this—the “contagious,” copycat suicides—is not that. It’s not. It’s something else.

  It’s a ticket off the fast track.

  Jumping in front of a train is a ticket out.

  I scoot back, way back—a safe distance—suddenly shivering at the close proximity to the cliff and how stupid it is to be on that ledge. Especially in this current mindframe. Mom was right to send me here.

  But she was wrong to drag me away from the ranch to a place where people forget what’s important, what truly matters, or, more accurately, a place where I forgot what was important to me. Maybe all that stuff is important to Mom. She wasn’t happy here. Here was her misery. But it’s not mine. Home was suffocating. Here, I’m free.

  I’m listening to the cows graze and thinking all these jumbles of things and then he’s next to me, still hot from the close proximity to the campfire. Smelling of its oaky smoke. Like usual, he’s chewing on a piece of straw.

  “Just wanted to see if you were okay,” Jake says.

  “Thanks.”

  “There you go again. You don’t have to thank me for checking up on you.”

  “What should I say?” I swipe at my wet cheek, not wanting him to see anymore of my tears.

  “Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all.”

  I turn to him. “I’m not a cowgirl, Jake. I’m not like you guys.”

  “No one said you should be.” Pause. “What happened back there?”

  “It’s going to sound stupid to say it out loud.”

  “Doubt that,” he said, leaning into me.

  Tilting my chin toward the ground, I lean away. “I—I was happy.”

  Jake puts his arm around me, and with his other hand, gives me a handkerchief. I blow my nose in it and apologize all over again.

  “Now what are you so sorry about? Snuffing up the handkerchief I offered you? If I wanted it to stay clean, I’d stick it in a frame and hang it over my bed.”

  I can’t help but smile. “How high up are we?”

  He gives me another squeeze and I feel better. He lets me go and leans back into the dirt, on his hands. I can’t see the muscles in his arms but I know they’re there, holding him up. “Pretty high.”

  I blink, looking into the midnight abyss. “If I tell you what happened, you’ll hate me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  I swallow and scratch at the dirt.

  “Look, I get that something bad went down at school, Paige. I get that your dad is dying. I get that the ranch is falling apart and we’re scrambling and you’re away from home. But I also know that part of you, the part of you that left this place behind, is beginning to find it again. This land”—he stabs at the dirt—“these animals—this is your blood. I remember that hotheaded girl down at the fishing hole and she’s still in there. Whatever happened in California is back in California. You have another chance here. Here with us.”

  It is more than he’s ever said at once. It’s smart and true and mirrors exactly what I was thinking before he walked up.

  I tip my head back, gaze into the endless sky, the countless stars—How can I begin to explain to Jake what I can’t understand myself?

  “Come here.” He lies back and pats the spot where his shoulder meets his chest. I curl into him, and he holds me close with a strong arm so warm, so alive, that I can’t help but close my eyes. I breathe in the campfire and his cowboy wisdom and let myself hope he’s right. He doesn’t try to kiss me. He doesn’t take my hand. He doesn’t ask for something I’m not ready to give.

  Instead he offers exactly what I need.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The next day I’m feeling better, and Jake and Anna teach me how to wrangle cows.

  It’s like that movie City Slickers. We even have a special “Yahoo” cattle call. Jake is awesome, of course. The cows respond to him so easily. Anna, too. I surprise myself by not being half bad, either, some of my earlier skills as a kid falling back into place. I lope after them, raise my arm in the air, give the rope a little spin, and toss it. Half the time it makes its mark, and I jump off my horse and secure the rope on the neck of a partially annoyed cow. All he wants to do is get back to eating. I’m in his way.

  “Told ya you were a natural, Cowgirl,” Jake says with a little wink from the top of his ride. I grin, and then dodge his eyes. We don’t mention last night, but then again why would we ruin it by discussing it? Discussing it would make it real, and real doesn’t work. Real doesn’t last.

  But he knows, and I know how I stayed in Jake’s arms for a long time by that ledge.

  After a while, with me still in the crook of his arm, he told me stories about the ranch and my dad. Funny stories, light stories, stories that made my heart hurt in the best way. I’d never heard him talk that much. I never had someone work so hard to make me feel better without wanting something back in return.

  He reached for my hand on our way back—“Can’t see all the rocks on the trail, wouldn’t want you to trip”—and I let him take it. I wound my fingers through his, and we didn’t talk anymore. We just walked. Walked and were. And when we got back to the campfire all that was left were embers flickering off a charbroiled log and a sleeping Anna. I looked down at our entwined fingers and said, “When we get back, if you still want to know, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “I’m afraid—you won’t think the same of me if you know, Jake. I don’t think I could handle that right now.”

  The last embers of the fire painted his skin with golden light. “Nah,” he says in a voice that made me believe him. “If you haven’t noticed, I have a weakness for cowgirls.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Then

  Dance with me.

  No. Ty—knock it off.

  Come on, Paige-y…

  No.

  He was drunk, of course. No wonder everyone believed the date rape rumor. His behavior did little to discount it, and after our last night together I had no doubt he was guilty.

  This whole event made me sick. It was prom…sort of. They were going to cancel it. But decided we should have it, just downplay it on account of all the tragedy. Instead of renting a glamorous ballroom, it was held in our gym. Instead of mandatory dates and gorgeous dresses and tuxes, we could wear what we wanted. It was like an anti-prom, and like most things last spring, it sucked. Yet I was there anyway, an active participant.

 
I was standing with a group of my friends on one side of the gym, leaning against the painted wall mural of our giant mascot who looked way more menacing than our sports teams, when he sauntered over in his baggy jeans, button up shirt, and dark glasses.

  Above us, paper vines dangled from the rafters. Stuffed giraffes and apes and panda bears lined the perimeters. A strobe light flashed in our eyes.

  “Why are you wearing those?” I asked, gesturing to his glasses. “How can you even see?”

  “I can see just fine.”

  Flicking his glasses on top of his head, he shot me a knowing look.

  “Ty, stop.” I squirmed away from his skimming eyes, which ran down my chest, landing smack in the middle of my cleavage.

  “If not now, later then,” he said, breathing boozy breath into my ear.

  I shook off hot chills, and hoped the cold shoulder would work.

  “See you later, ladies,” he oozed, before walking off in a smirk-faux huff.

  This acquaintance of mine, Sara, surprised me by saying, “Is it hard having such a hot stepbrother?”

  He left me clammy, spent, stressed. “I haven’t noticed.” I used to think he was attractive, but now he made me sick.

  She watched him walk away. “Then you need your eyes checked. Or your mojo.”

  “Gross.”

  “Well, it’s obvious he’s into you.”

  “Come on, no, he’s not.” Next subject please.

  “Paige, please. There’s something about him, creepy rumors aside. He’s sexy. What was he whispering to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you think those rumors are true? You know, about the date rape? You live with him. Has he ever, you know, tried anything?”

  “Oh my god, of course not. He’s my stepbrother.”

  “Flowers in the Attic did it, and they were legit siblings.”

  “Okay. Can we change the subject please?”