by S. L. Naeole
With a negligent wave of his hand, Graham climbed into his rusty green Buick and drove off, leaving a cloud of brown smoke trailing behind him.
I knew there was no point, but I couldn’t help but yell for him to wait. I looked at Robert and sighed. “You always have a way of making things instantly easier and more difficult without even saying anything. Is that another one of your charms?”
Robert’s face didn’t alter in its concern. He reached for me instead and pulled me into him, his chest my buffer. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here for you. There are a lot of reasons, but none of them are good enough. None of them will ever be good enough.”
I inhaled the scent of him, drugging myself, numbing myself to anything else. “There isn’t a way you can reverse time, is there?” I asked him.
He held me tighter and shook his head. “If I could, I’d have come back when you were born.”
Strangely, this comforted me. “What am I going to do, Robert? I might have ruined an innocent man’s life. Ugh—why can’t I just be normal and not such a colossal screw-up?”
Robert looked down at me and he frowned. “This isn’t your mistake, Grace. If I had been there, if had not been…elsewhere, I would have been able to tell you what you needed to know and then none of this would have happened. This is my fault.”
“Don’t try and take away my guilt, please. As much as I would like it, it’s not what I need. I just wish that this were easier. I messed up and now I have to fix it, but it’s Mr. Branke. How can I apologize to him?” I eased myself out of Robert’s arms and sighed. “Whatever the solution, we’ve got to get going or else we’re going to be late. I’m already in enough hot water. I don’t need to add tardiness on top of everything else.”
Robert flashed a grin in my direction as he climbed onto the bike. He held out his hand and helped me to seat myself behind him. “I’m glad you have your priorities in order.”
“Ha-ha.”
With a turn of the key, the bike started up and we were flying down the street. I had forgotten to put my hair up and it whipped around my face, lashing at my wind-bitten skin.
I felt Robert’s hand grab mine and pull it into the confines of his jacket. With movement that I could not see, he had somehow removed my glove and my bare hand pressed up against his abdomen. I could feel the warmth through his shirt and my fingers itched to be closer to the source of that heat.
Robert’s hold on my hand allowed him to push it inwards and I nearly fainted when I felt it slip between the edges of his shirt and touch the bare skin of his waist. The immediate jolt of electricity between the two of us caused Robert to swerve the bike and instinctually I held on tighter. This sent my hand deeper into the pocket he had created in his shirt and I felt the sinew of his belly clench as he moved to control the bike’s actions.
The contact, like any other flesh-to-flesh contact between us, sent an influx of thoughts and visions into my head, but I had learned to stave them off over time. This contact wasn’t meant to share his visions with me. It was meant to heal me, reverse the damage that might have been caused by my fall as well as from the short ride to school.
But I would have gladly gone to school looking like some royal brat’s whipping girl if it meant I could remain this close to Robert for a little while longer. I’d gladly endure it and I knew that despite my earlier revelation, this had nothing to do with Robert’s angelic charm.
As we pulled into the school, Robert took a detour that brought us into the faculty parking lot. I didn’t need to ask to know what his intent was. We hadn’t shared a single thought about what I would do once we got to school, and yet he knew what I had wanted. I have to know what you want, Grace. Your happiness and well-being are paramount. If you’re not safe and content, I can’t be.
With a defiant sigh, I pulled my hand out of his shirt and allowed him to put my glove back on, then climbed off the back of the bike. He’s in the alcove to the left smoking a cigarette. I’ll be waiting right here if you need me; I can hear everything that’s going on so if he tries to harm you in retaliation, I’ll be there in less than a nanosecond.
I nodded and looked towards the alcove that Robert pointed to. I could see a faint puff of smoke trailing out from behind the wall and started walking in that direction. I began to repeat a silent mantra, imagining myself as the little apologizer that could, focused on forgetting my own self-consciousness and instead remembering that I had hurt Mr. Branke and insulted him with my accusation. Whatever it was that I was feeling was nothing compared to what he must be going through.
As soon as I could make out his outline in the shadows of the alcove, I began to rehearse my opening lines. “Mr. Branke, I wanted to apologize for what happened yesterday. I was wrong and I will do my utmost best to ensure that everyone knows that you had nothing to do with what happened to me.”
It sounded good.
Too bad though, because it was looking like I wouldn’t get a chance to say anything. As soon as Mr. Branke saw me approaching, he flicked his cigarette onto the ground and gave it a quick stomp before rushing towards the side entrance, his hands rammed deeply into his pockets.
“Mr. Branke!” I called out, my pace picking up to try and get to him before he could escape me into the crowded halls of the school. “Mr. Branke, wait!”
The doors closed just as I reached them and I could make out Mr. Branke’s silhouette through the glass as he continued to walk very briskly down the hallway, finally disappearing around a corner.
“Damn,” I exclaimed.
I turned around and headed back towards Robert. I felt my shoulders hunching down in defeat and disappointment, and when Robert stood up to comfort me, I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I had lost a couple of inches in height.
“He doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” I mumbled into Robert’s jacket. “He ran away from me, Robert. You’d think I was infected with the plague or something, he was moving so fast.”
Robert’s hand pressed against the back of my head, he pressed a kiss to my ear and laughed softly. “I cannot exactly feel too sorry for you. You always did want him to leave you alone. Now you’ve gotten your wish, albeit not exactly in the way you probably wanted.”
I said something that was so muffled by my close proximity to Robert’s chest, I was certain he didn’t hear it, but he did. Of course he did.
“That wasn’t very nice, Grace.”
“Sorry.”
He chuckled again and then gently pulled me away from him. I tried to hold on with all of my strength, but I might as well have not been trying, his motion so effortless. “You’re a brave girl, Grace. I don’t understand how you could possibly think that you’re susceptible to my, how did you put it, ‘angelic charms’, when you’re far more often trying to be as rude as possible to me.”
I watched as he pushed my hair back with his hand, his leather gloves so well made, they were like a second skin. “There. All fixed. Maybe you’ll be less frightening to Mr. Branke now that your hair looks less like a wild animal and more like something that belongs there.”
“Oh, you-”
This time I shouted the word that I had said into his jacket and laughed at his wide-eyed expression. I was definitely being as rude as possible, that was true. It might have been something that wasn’t entirely a normal, human thing to do, but my body was still human and I couldn’t outrun an angel no matter how hard I tried and as a result, Robert caught me around the middle as I tried to flee, the two of us laughing and appreciating the break in the residual tension.
“I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with being ‘normal’ when the version of ‘normal’ that you seem to be basing this whole artificial goal on happens to deem you anything but,” Robert said as he lifted me back onto the bike. He climbed on swiftly and started the bike with a purr. We traveled the incredibly short distance between parking lots at a leisurely pace, each passing stare causing me to grow redder and redder from the guilt that I had yet
to appease.
“Let’s take a look at some of these people whom you would describe as ‘normal’, shall we? Donovan Gleason over there is what you would deem ‘normal’, right?”
He directed my attention to a red-headed boy in our senior class who was on the basketball team and the swim team, not to mention one of Graham’s closest male friends. I nodded when I thought of how normal his life was. He and his girlfriend Kendra had a fairly solid relationship spanning our entire high school career, and he did fairly well in school, though not so well that he’d get singled out for it. He was always where the crowds were, always up for anything, and was never looked at as anything but normal here in Heath.
“Would you believe me if I told you he was gay?”
I felt my jaw drop. “What?”
He nodded his head. “How ‘normal’ do you think his friends would deem him if they ever found out about that? How ‘normal’ would he be if they learned that he listens to the same bands as they do because he’s attracted to the lead singers?”
I honestly did not know the answer to that. I had never thought of Donovan as anything but a guy. “I don’t think he’s any less of a great guy, though,” I said as I remembered that he had been the one who helped me bring Graham home one night during our junior year after Graham had snuck a bottle of his father’s whiskey to a study session at the library. He had put up with my panicking and even said that he thought it was ‘cool’ that Graham had a ‘chick’ for a best friend. “Donovan hasn’t changed in my opinion. He’s still a normal guy.”
“Yes, but would he be normal to someone like Kendra?”
I looked over to Donovan’s girlfriend and shook my head severely. “She’d call him all sorts of names do her best to ruin his reputation both at school and in town.”
Robert nodded, glad that I was now seeing his point. “Normal is a relative thing, Grace. What’s normal to you might not be normal to someone else, yet that very person is whom you’re basing your definition of normal on. I have to tell you, who you are ‘normally’ is exactly what I love. Why would you want to change that?”
I looked at Donovan and Kendra again. They were reading something that I hadn’t noticed until just then. It was the local paper and Mr. Branke’s face was plastered all over the front page.
“That’s why,” I said, pointing to the paper. “A normal person wouldn’t have done something like that.”
Robert pushed my hand down and sighed. “Grace, what you’re going to have to learn is that normal people play it safe in this world because they’re afraid of the risks involved with being different. It’s a gamble. You gambled when you agreed to get on my bike. You gambled again when you decided to keep my secrets. You kept on gambling even after I hurt you, and Graham hurt you, and life hurt you because you knew that the rewards outweighed the risks.
“Would you take any of that back?”
I looked at Mr. Branke’s school picture staring blankly back at me and knew that there was only one thing that I would if possible. However, angel at my side and all, that was impossible.
BLANK
For the next two days, I failed to get Mr. Branke to speak to me or acknowledge me at all. I even doubted that he checked my name for attendance when I showed up for class. He refrained from any contact with anyone during class, the lessons dull and flat, his monotone voice a complete shadow of his old one.
The negative reaction I had expected from the small faction of students who had never doubted Mr. Branke’s innocence never appeared. With his demeanor so withdrawn and sullen, his hands were kept to himself which pleased everyone. I had suddenly become a sort of hero to the girls of the school who had endured, some of us for years, the constant touching that went hand-in-hand with being a pupil at a school occupied by him.
Of course, any benefit I might have received from this was lost in the fact that for better or worse, I had been wrong about Mr. Branke. My mistake was now fodder for a new wave of gossip and bathroom conversation. I was now not only a freak, I was a liar as well. It didn’t matter that I didn’t lie, the end results were just the same.
I tried to speak to Lark about Graham and what he had told me, but she shut me down with each attempt. I tried to talk to Graham about anything but he avoided me with nearly as much determination as Mr. Branke, which was quite a feat considering that we lived together.
Sitting in fifth period English reminded me that today was the last Friday of the month. It didn’t look like there’d be a renewal of our RHPS tradition. How could there be when he wouldn’t even speak to me? The thought was enough to bring that annoying burn of tears to the edge of my lids, but I fought with them to stay inside. I had cried enough over Graham for one lifetime.
As soon as the bell rang, I was out of the door. I looked around for Robert but he wasn’t there and I knew the reason for it. At times I would wonder when it would be that the reality of what he did finally hit me, but today wasn’t one of them. I simply sighed and walked towards Mr. Danielson’s class.
“So now everyone knows you’re a liar. How well do you think that’s going to go over with Mr. Kenner and your little threat?”
I felt the burning of bile as it rose in my throat. I turned around to look at Erica, her face smug with satisfaction. “I’m sorry, who are you and why are you relevant again?”
She laughed, a throaty, deceptively beautiful laugh. “My my, you’ve developed quite the backbone haven’t you, freak?” Her eyes narrowed as she stepped in closer. “There’s something very off about you, and I’m going to find out what it is. And when I do, no one is going to want to even admit to knowing you. Not Graham, Robert, or that Glamazon he calls a sister.”
She shoved past me, her shoulder roughly pushing against mine as she walked through the classroom door. I stared at the wall directly across from me and tried to calm myself, tell myself that there was nothing that she could learn about me that would cause the people I loved the most to turn away from me.
I steeled myself against the growing fear inside of me and walked into the classroom, determined not to let her see any type of reaction at all. She had chosen to sit in the seat I normally occupied, the one immediately next to her reserved by her overly large and obnoxious purse. She smiled sweetly at me and I smiled back. If this was going to be a battle of wills and wits, I was determined to prove that she had come unarmed.
“Hey, Grace! Come and sit by us!” a voice called out from my left. Shawn, one of a group of three friends who referred to themselves as Chips, Dip and Salsa waved at me and pointed to a seat next to him that was vacant. I grinned and headed towards them.
As soon as I sat the door to the class opened and Robert entered, looking for all the world like he’d just stepped out of some black and white epic. His gaze never veered in the direction of our normal seats. Instead he made a beeline for me, a broad smile on his face.
“Hey guys, thanks for taking care of my girl for me,” he said as he greeted the three characters around me. They all started speaking at once and their words were lost in the confusion, though Robert heard every word, every sentence.
“So we’re taking a tour of the classroom I take it?” he said, his eyes flicking quickly to look at Erica who fumed in the corner next to an unoccupied seat.
I nodded. Robert reached for my hand and for reasons I wouldn’t understand until much later, I pulled my hand away. “Not now,” I whispered, hoping that those two words would be enough. His smile slowly disappeared and I saw his eyes turn to steel as he turned his head to look at Erica.
I don’t know where this desperation is coming from. I don’t see a source for such vindictive hatred.
The tone of Robert’s thoughts felt heavy in my head, like thick syrup, and it coated each word with confusion and irritation. I didn’t know what it was that he saw in her mind, and part of me didn’t want to know either, but the way he looked at her—with such unmitigated disgust—you would think that she’d stop trying to gain his affections.
&nb
sp; Instead, she moved her purse to the floor and patted the empty chair beside her. I looked at Robert and waited for his reaction. He looked at me and reached for my hand once more. This time I let him hold it. I’m going to find out what it is that she wants. I need to get to the bottom of this before she acts out again and I’m not here.
I felt him squeeze my hand gently before he stood up and walked over to her, much to the surprise of my companions.
“He isn’t really going over to her, is he?” Shawn asked in a low voice. “That’s like throwing a small child to a lion.”
“I was thinking shark. A rabid shark,” Chad, the “Chips” in the trio commented.
“Can sharks even get rabies?” Dwayne asked.
“Dog sharks, maybe,” Chad replied.
The four of us watched as Robert smiled at Erica and allowed her wandering hand to cover his. He didn’t move, didn’t even say anything. He just sat there, smiling at her while she spoke, her mouth moving a mile a minute, pausing only to see if his reaction would change with each one.
As Mr. Danielson went over a script that we were supposed to perform for our final exam, I continued to watch the one way exchange between Robert and Erica. I knew that there was nothing that she could say or think that could threaten my relationship with him but the insecure part of me that always felt intimidated by her couldn’t help but start to panic as time went on and he didn’t leave.
“Shouldn’t you go and, like, take him away from her or something?” Chad whispered to me and motioned towards the two with his head. “She’s probably already planning on what they’re going to name their grandkids. She’s psycho.” He circled his ear with his index finger to emphasize his point.
I smiled and shook my head. “I trust Robert. He’s not going to do anything to hurt me. He’s just trying to find out what makes her tick.”