A Certain Slant of Light (25 page)

  
But with James there was nothing careless, not a movement
wasted. His desire was shameless, because it was offered com
pletely. His passion was so guileless, I could not muster the least
bit of embarrassment about my lust for him.

  
We left the book bags under the tree, and James gave subtle
suggestions as we passed by the foods in the cafeteria line.

  
"Don't touch that," he said, as we approached three steamy
trays of brown gravy over something.

  
"What is it?" I asked.

"No one knows."

  
I chose a hardboiled egg, a roll, a large red apple, and a small
carton of milk. James chose a sandwich and an orange. We sat on
the grass, and he watched me eat with amusement. He let me
have a section of his orange, and I almost swooned. I peeled and
ate my
egg
slowly and then my bread, lingering on every bite. I
reached over and rubbed the plastic wrap from his sandwich be
tween my fingers, fascinated by the softness. Then I tasted the
milk. "It's different," I said.

  
"Modern cows," he explained.

  
A sudden, short sorrow kicked at my heart. I had been struck
by several of these flashes since I'd met James. This vision was of
a wooden milking stool, worn smooth with use. I was brought
back by James taking a drop of milk from the corner of my mouth with a kiss. I heard a few students behind me hoot and
laugh at this, but James ignored them, so I did as well.

  
"I should probably warn you that my family is very religious,"
I told him. "Don't be shocked."

  
"Are you implying that your family is more shocking than my
family?" he asked.

  
"In a different way," I told him.

  
Biting into the apple brought tears to my eyes. Again a
flash—maple leaves, large as your hand and deep orange, flour
on a wooden table, smoke from a gray stone chimney. I shud
dered. James stared at me, enthralled, it seemed.

  
"Did you love the taste of things this much when you first be
came Billy?" I asked.

  
He lay on his side, propped up on his elbow. "No," he said.
"But I should have."

  
After lunch James decided I couldn't drag my book bag into
every class.

  
"Where's your locker?" he asked.

  
"I don't know."

  
"Maybe it's written inside your wallet," said James. "That's
where I found the combination to Billy's locker and his bicycle
lock."

  
I looked at everything in Jenny's wallet. There was only a
school ID, a lunch pass, a license, a phone card, and a twenty-dollar bill folded into fourths.

  
"Oh dear." I suddenly stopped. "I don't even know whether
my mother drives me home from school. What if she doesn't? I
don't know how to walk home. I have no idea how to get there."

  
James smiled. "Maybe we'll have to spend the night in the au
ditorium."

  
He came with me and waited outside while I went back in the
office. Olivia, the receptionist, was drinking a cup of coffee.

  
"Hello again."

 
 
I smiled. "May I have my locker number and combination,
please?"

  
She stared at me. "For church?"

  
"Actually," I said quietly, leaning toward her, "I'm in love and
it makes me dreadfully absentminded."

  
She gave me an odd smile and then looked through a note
book, copying down the information on a slip of paper and hand
ing it to me. "You be careful with your heart now," she warned. By her tone I thought she was joking, but there was a worry be
hind her aging eyes.

  
James carried my books to locker number 113. Reading the numbers, he opened the locker and we found a pen, a can of
chocolate breakfast, and a straw wrapped in paper. I loaded the
small space with sixteen of my twenty books, keeping
Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre,
a book of poetry, and
Wuthering Heights.

  
"Why don't
you
bring home library books?" I asked James.

  
"Mitch would think I was crazy," he said. "Unless I put fake
covers on them."

  
"Do you think I need to hide these?" I asked him, concerned.

  
"Why should
you
have to hide literature?" James wanted to
know.

  
"You'd have to see my house."

  
The bell rang too soon. We agreed to meet at the parking lot
at the end of school.

  
I sat through the rest of my classes, paying no heed to the
math lessons or the film on World War II. I wanted to sit in Mr.
Brown's classroom with James, but I couldn't. After school I
waited for him at the edge of the parking lot, growing more and
more worried every second that he did not appear.

  
"Hey," a girl's voice called. I turned to find a strong-looking
young woman with beads in her hair glaring at me. "You going
with Billy Blake?"

  
I was too startled to answer.

  
"I don't know you from nobody," she said. "But you should
stay away from that one."

  
"Why?" was all I could think to say.

  
"He's a junkie and his friends are damn scary pricks, that's
why."

  
"Oh." I just watched her as she tossed her beaded braids over
her shoulder and turned to leave.

  
My heart was pounding. When I saw James approaching, it
took all my willpower to keep from running to him.

  
"English class is not the same without you," he told me. I
couldn't speak and my eyes teared. "If I asked you on a date,
would you go out with me?" he asked.

   
I laughed. "I've already been to the theater with you."

  
He almost kissed me, but two teachers walked past us.

  
"Who are Billy's friends?" I asked. "A girl warned me about
them."

  
"I suppose they've disowned me," said James. "They got angry when I wouldn't
..."
he chose the words carefully, "when I
wouldn't go on adventures with them anymore."

  
Suddenly I felt cold all through. There was a man across the
street. The sorrow roiled off him in a sickening wave, even at this
distance. He pushed a cart of grocery bags, his eyes fixed on noth
ing ahead, his mouth moving as if he were singing to himself. I watched him shuffle toward the corner although he had no feet.
His legs tapered at the knees to a wisp that trailed like pipe
smoke from his back. Looking at him made my chest ache. I felt
James's hand warm on my back.

  
"It's all right," he whispered. "That's one of them."

  
"Can he see us?" I asked, my skin prickling.

  
"No," he said. "He doesn't know he's dead." He slid his hand
my waist.

  
"Can we help him?"

  
"No."

  
Suddenly the man's ghost vanished as if a curtain had been
pulled between us. But this didn't scare me as much as the next
thing I saw. A serpentine dread moved through my stomach as a
maroon car rolled into view.

  
"There's her mother," I said. His hand dropped from my side.

  
"I don't want to go with her. I only want to be with you."

  
"Just think of all the amusing things that might happen
tonight that you can tell me about tomorrow," he said.

  
"What if I need to talk to you?" I whispered as the car neared our place on the sidewalk.

  
"Five five five, twelve twenty-five," James whispered. "It's
like Christmas. Twelve twenty-five."

  
I could see Cathy's face now. She was smiling until she saw me
glancing at James. She stopped the car, and the doors unlocked
with a mechanical sound. I turned my back on her as I put my
book bag over my shoulder. "I want to kiss you," I whispered.

  
"I want to do more than that," James whispered back.

  
Feeling like a prisoner, I faced the car and opened the door, managing to smile at the woman behind the wheel.

  
"Hello," I said, sitting down. I slammed the door and gave
James one last look. He gave a low wave of his hand. Cathy stiff
ened.

  
"Who was that?" she asked, the tension in her voice hardly
masked.

  
"Just a boy," I said. "He's nice."

  
"Remember what I told you about boys flirting with you," she
said.

  
"Don't worry," I told her. "He's a gentleman."

  
"Is he?" She locked the doors with a sinister snap.

Ten

When WE ARRIVED, I crept to Jenny's bathroom and bathed as
before but with a cup from the sink to pour over my head. I didn't
want to lose James's scent but was afraid that someone else would
notice it on my skin, deep in my hair. When I'd put on Jenny's
robe and was picking up the dirty clothes, I found a bloodstain on
the panties. I turned on the water in the sink and started scrubbing the cloth, using a bar of soap shaped like a rose from the
dish on the counter.