This is really bad. Fear starts spreading through my veins. Oh, what did I start here? I should’ve kept my mouth shut and endured. It’s not like Felix ever hurt me before. Not really. So he said stupid things and my stupid feelings were bruised, but this is the first time he’s ever kicked me.
“Leka.” I tug on his arm. “Leka, please.” He finally looks down at me. I tip my forehead against his chest. “Please, don’t do anything. I already got him back.”
He rubs his hand up and down my arm. “How so?”
“I filled a baggie with fish and eggs and then dropped it into his backpack. I gave it a good slap before I let go.”
His hand stops. A finger bumps my chin up. I see a reluctant smile tip the corner of his lips. “Smell you later?”
I give a tiny shrug. “Seemed appropriate.”
He pulls my phone from my hand and does something to the screen before dropping it into my backpack. “Come on.”
“School’s the other way,” I tell him as he turns and leads me down the street.
“You’re sick today,” he announces.
“I am?” I raise my eyebrows.
“Yes. Sudden flu. High temperatures. I need to get some fluids in you.”
He turns down another street. My heart rate picks up. “Are we getting ice cream fluids?” I ask. This is the way toward my favorite diner where they make awesome chocolate chip pancakes and the best shakes ever.
“I hear that’s the best way to bring a fever down.”
* * *
He waits until I’ve stuffed myself full of pancakes and I’m working on sucking the very last of my shake out of my glass to pounce.
“How long has that been going on?” He jerks his head in the general direction of the street corner where Felix and I had it out.
“You’re ruining my breakfast.”
Leka gives me a dark look. With an exaggerated sigh, I push away my plate.
“Since September.”
“It’s October.”
I resist the urge to say something smart, like I know. I learned the months in kindergarten.
“He’s only there on Mondays and Thursdays. The rest of the time he gets a ride, I think.”
“So twice a week for the last six, this little punk has been assaulting you and you never said one word?”
It’s the hurt in his voice that finally penetrates and casts all my good intentions into the gutter.
“I thought I could handle it myself. I didn’t want to bug you. You’re always doing stuff for me, Leka. You pay my tuition. You buy my clothes. You put the roof over my head and food on the table and what do you get in return?” Heat pricks the back of my eyes. I blink furiously to keep the tears from falling.
“I get you, Bitsy. That’s what I get. Right?”
His hand reaches across the table. I stare at it.
No one wants you, I hear Felix saying.
“How can that be enough?” A couple tears slip out anyway. I swipe them away. “Mrs. M says that you need a wife. Am I holding you back? I mean, you never bring any women home. Are you afraid to? Am I doing something wrong?”
Had I been selfish like Mrs. M implied a few years ago? I can’t hold on to Leka forever, but the idea of sharing him with someone else makes my heart want to shrivel up into a lump of coal.
Leka gets up and slides into my side of the booth. He pulls me close, and at the first touch of his hand on my back, I start sobbing like a baby.
“I don’t need a wife. I don’t want a wife.” He rubs my back. “You’re enough for me, Bitsy.”
I snake my arms around his neck and cling like a monkey. “If you want a girlfriend, you should have one. I’m okay with that.” That’s another lie.
“I promise that if I find some girl that I like enough to call her my girlfriend, I won’t let anyone stand in my way, okay? Not even you.”
That’s exactly what I asked for him to say, but it doesn’t feel good to hear it. Still, this is about what Leka needs. I take a few breaths, rub my eyes against his jacket and then pull away.
“Okay,” I say, my eyes fixed on the sleeve of his dark jacket where my tears have left a shiny mark. I pick up a napkin and wipe the moisture away.
“Do you—do you need a mom, Bitsy?” he asks carefully.
I jerk my head up. “No. You’re all I need. I swear it.”
A smile appears at the corners again. His hand comes up to cup my skull. “I believe you. So, we are in agreement. It’s you and me, Bitsy.”
I turn my face into his hand and press a kiss there. “You and me, Leka. Always.”
I swear I feel him tremble.
18
Bitsy
One year later
“You looking at the clock isn’t going to make him come home any sooner,” Mrs. M says.
I set my phone down. “I was seeing if anyone from school texted me,” I lie.
“And did they?”
“No.” That much is true. I’ve only one good friend at St. Vincent’s and she has a no texting after nine p.m. rule.
Mrs. M clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, the sound blending in with the tapping of her knitting needles against each other. “You should make more friends. It’d be good for you to get out of this apartment.”
“Why?” I look around. “I like it here.” It’s my favorite place. It’s where Leka and I’ve made our marks for the last four years. There’s the gouge in the wood floor in the entryway where Leka had dropped the coat rack we’d bought down in the Village and the dent in the wall right outside my bedroom made from the big globe I insisted on buying. Under the sofa is the nail polish stain I’d made when I was ten. I’d thought Leka would be so mad, but he just smiled and rubbed his hand across the top of my head. The kitchen table has scrapes and paint stains and a burn mark from the glue gun that we’ve used on so many school projects.
“You should be in a building with more kids or maybe a house outside the city with a yard and a dog.” Clickety-clack go her needles.
“A yard and a dog sounds like a lot of work.” I pull up my knees and lay my head on them, wishing that Leka was back already.
“Out of the city, you’d get more sunshine,” she goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And there’d be more parks, more people, more fresh air.”
It sounded like Mrs. M wanted to get out of the city. I like the busyness and the fact I can get anywhere by myself just using the subway. I’m only a single stop from Marjory’s, although I never go there unless Leka is with me. But knowing I’m only a ten-minute train ride from him makes me feel better.
“I heard that Assumption is hosting the sweetheart dance this year. Have you figured out who you’re going to ask?”
“Nope.”
“There’s no one that you don’t have a crush on? I hear the boys at Assumption are very handsome. And from good families, too.”
The smell from the strawberry lotion on my legs mixes with the lemon polish of the floor wax I used earlier when I draw a breath. Underneath those tones, I swear I can smell Leka’s earthy, male scent. I inhale deeply, trying to concentrate on it instead of the stuff Mrs. M keeps nattering on about. Stuff I don’t care about. I close my eyes and I inhale again. There it is. I hold my breath and fill myself with him.
Why would I want a boy when I have Leka? No one compares to him. No one at Assumption is as tall or broad-shouldered. No one’s hair falls just the right way over his forehead. No one’s hands send shivers down my spine. No one’s deep voice soothes me when I’m anxious. No one but Leka. I think I’ve always known it was going to be him, even before I realized that the connection we had was more than just brother and sister. So no, there are no boys at Assumption that I have a crush on. There would be no boys for me, ever. Only Leka.
“Mrs. Michaelson asked you a question.”
I jerk upright. “Leka, you’re home,” I say. I pat my face, wondering if my feelings are written all over my face.
He cocks his head and looks at me cu
riously. “I am. What’s this about a dance?”
“Nothing.” Damn Mrs. M and her big mouth. I throw my babysitter a glare. She ignores me, much as I ignored her all night.
“Assumption is hosting a sweetheart dance for all the junior high kids. That’s the one where the girl asks the boy to dance.” She tucks her knitting gear away. “Elizabeth missed it last year because she forgot to sign the conduct agreement.”
I didn’t forget. I threw the piece of paper in the trash because I wasn’t interested in any school dance. I’m still not.
Leka draws a hand across his chin. There’s a rough stubble there. “I didn’t know about this. Aren’t you a little young for dancing with boys?”
I don’t pay attention to his question because I’m too caught up in the state of his hair. It’s wet and slicked against his perfect skull. My stomach tightens. That means whatever work he did was messy.
“Of course, she’s not. She’s a teenager. Many girls start dating at this age. It’s perfectly natural.” She clucks her tongue again. “Leka, don’t be so strict or she’ll rebel.” I shake my head at him, but Leka’s frowning now. Mrs. M is a damn busybody. “You’ll need to sign the conduct contract and get it in soon or you won’t be able to attend,” she continues.
I grab her knitting bag and carry it to the front door so she gets the hint. “I’m not going, so it doesn’t matter.”
“You can go if you want,” Leka says.
“I don’t want.” I know it’s not the time to tell Leka about how I feel. He’ll say I’m too young. Or worse, that my feelings aren’t real. No, the worse would be for him to pat my head and say that he’s my brother and that’s all he’ll ever be.
“She should go,” Mrs. M pipes up. “It’d be good for her. I’ll take her dress shopping this weekend if you’re not available.”
“I’m not going,” I insist.
“I’ll let you know, Mrs. Michaelson,” Leka says and holds the door open. He grabs the bag from my grasp and walks Mrs. M down the hall.
She keeps on chattering about the dance. “You do that, dear. It would be good for Elizabeth. She doesn’t have enough friends. It’s not healthy for her to be by herself.”
I can’t make out Leka’s words. He’s murmuring too low—intentionally, I think.
“Yes, fourteen’s a perfect age for this. It’s definitely not too young.”
I decide I don’t need to hear more of this and go inside. I make my way to the kitchen and pull out the makings for a sandwich. Leka’s often hungry when he gets home from work. He doesn’t eat at Marjory’s. I used to pretend it was because Mary turned his stomach, but now I think it’s more that he doesn’t much like the work he does there.
“So, you have a school dance,” Leka says as he enters the kitchen. “What else haven’t you shared with me?”
Oh, the usual. The fact that I have stirrings inside of me that’d make him cringe and blush and run away. “Nothing.” At his look of disbelief, I sigh. “Hold on.”
I fetch my backpack and pull out a sheaf of papers and toss them on the table. Leka takes a seat, and with a sandwich in one hand, he starts leafing through the pile of parental forms. One for a field trip to a gum factory. Another for a visit to the National Museum of History. There were a couple of school mixers: one for Assumption’s homecoming last fall and another for the end of the term.
He reads each one and then lays them down until there’s a stack of about ten of them. He looks at his sandwich and sets that down, too. “Take a seat, Bitsy.”
Heart heavy, I drop into the chair with a thud.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this stuff?”
“Because none of it matters.”
His fingers curl and his jaw tightens in a sure sign that he’s frustrated and trying to control it. “This is the fun school shit and you’re missing it. Why?”
“It’s not fun, Leka. That’s the thing. This stuff is either boring or terrifying.” I pull out the museum form. “I looked it up. This place is full of animals that are dead and stuffed, but they’re behind glass. You can get as good of a picture of them on the internet, and there’s more information there, too.” I grab the mixer for homecoming. “This one is for Assumption’s football game during which four students got caught smoking a joint in the bathroom and after the game, Misty Price was found on the bus giving consolation prizes with her mouth.”
Poor Leka’s mind is blown. The once tight jaw is slack. His eyes are slightly widened. “You go to a Catholic school,” he says, like the scripture verses from the nuns serve as some kind of holy chastity belt.
“Right, but as long as we go to confession, it’s all good.” Besides, some of those priests probably get off on the girls kneeling next to them whispering about all the dirty stuff they got up to during the week.
He sits silently as he processes the information. His hand comes up to stroke the bottom half of his face, probably to hide whatever strong emotion he’s feeling, but I can always tell what’s going on in his mind. Not precise, exact thoughts, but general emotions. Right now, he’s upset—likely over the fact that the safe place he stashed me at is a hotbed of vice—drugs and sex mostly.
“And, you, Bitsy? What are you confessing to?”
“I tripped Jillian Murkowski about three weeks ago,” I say candidly.
He tries to hide a grin behind that hand, but I can see his eyes light up. “What for?”
“Just being a general bitch. She’s in tenth grade and has a boyfriend in high school. She seems to think that gives her an increased status at school and goes around telling the other girls what she doesn’t like about their looks. Leila is so tiny that her parents must be munchkins. Is she sure she’s an eighth grader? Camryn is heavy. Do you really think that you should have that dinner roll with your lunch?” I mimic Jillian’s nasally voice. “That sort of thing.”
“What does she say about you?”
“Nothing. This isn’t the first time I’ve tripped her.” Last year, I accidentally, on purpose, stepped on her hand during PE as she was leaning on a riser in the gym.
Leka snorts. “Fine. So your school’s a mess. Why haven’t you told me before? You could’ve gone somewhere else.”
“There are going to be jerks everywhere. What’s the point in starting over? At least here, I know who the jerks are and can stay out of the way of the really dangerous ones.”
“I don’t think that’s how school’s supposed to be,” he chides gently, but he’s done lecturing me. He’s also done being upset, because he’s picked up his sandwich again.
“If you say so.” But I think that’s how school is everywhere. You just endure it and once it’s over, then you start living. At least that’s my theory. Once school is over, once I’m eighteen, then Leka will see me as a woman and we’ll live happy ever after.
Not that we aren’t happy now, but I feel like we could be closer. Or maybe I fear that Mrs. M is right and that some woman is going to snatch him up before I’m ready to claim him. Or, rather, he’s ready for me to claim him, because I’d announce to the world right now that it’s going to be Leka and me forever and not in that brother/sister shit that everyone is trying to press on me.
“I still think you should go to this dance. These things are supposed to be fun.”
“I’d rather have every tooth pulled without Novocaine.”
“That’s real painful. I’d go for the dancing over the teeth pulling.”
“I have a better idea of what to do with my time,” I propose.
“What’s that?” he asks.
I wait until his mouth is full before springing my brilliance on him. “I should get a job.”
He starts shaking his head before I can even get my last word out. Since his mouth is full, though, I press my advantage. “Yeah. Remember how I told you how Mandy’s dad owns that frozen yoghurt joint over on Beecher and 2nd?”
“No.” But I can tell by the shift in his gaze that he does recall it. Leka’s not great with
reading, but his memory is near perfect.
“Mandy’s working there a few hours a day and said that I could help her out. He pays $7 an hour and I could work like ten hours a week. Maybe more on the weekend. That’d be like a $100 a week.”
“What do you need? I’ll buy it for you.”
I tip my head back in frustration. He can be so dense sometimes. “I know, but I want to earn my own money. Every gift I’ve gotten for you, you’ve paid for, so it’s like you buying yourself a present, which is dumb.” He opens his mouth to interrupt, but I barrel on. “And, if you really feel like I’m missing out on something, then this is the perfect way for me to fit in better. Lots of St. Vincent and Assumption kids come to the place and hang out.”
“Then you should go and hang out,” he says. Abruptly, he shoves away from the table and takes his plate to the dishwasher. For anyone else, I suppose his flat voice and closed face would put them off. Not me.
“How about this? I’ll go to the dance if you let me work at Froyo.”
“No.”
“How about Marjory’s?”
He shudders and slams the dishwasher shut. “No.”
Turning, he braces his arms behind him. The muscles in his biceps bulge slightly and the blue T-shirt with the faded Adidas logo pulls up slightly from his jeans. A tiny sliver of skin peeks through. I take a heavy breath, not fully understanding why my heart rate is speeding up or my hands feel slightly sweaty. I rub my palms against my own jeans and play my trump card. “I’ll enter a piece of my art in the Junior League Art show in the spring.”
Silence hangs between us. I know how much he wants this. He’s been hounding me to do it for a year now, ever since a visit to the Met when he discovered that it was a thing students could do.
I press. “Froyo, where I’m working with people you don’t know, hanging around that bad element of teens who smoke weed and have sex, or Marjory’s, where you can keep an eye on me.”
“One hour a week and only when I’m there.” I jump up in the air and let out a yelp of victory. “And I want to see the application to the art show filled out in the morning.”
Want You Page 11