Avra's God (16 page)

Kallie’s eyes dampened. “I’m so sorry.” She
wrapped her arms around Avra.

One of Kallie’s tears splashed on Avra’s arm.
Kallie released her, dashing the tears from her mascara-smeared
eyes. She glanced at Avra. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be
crying.”

Avra sucked in her breath. “Not till I hear
it from Cisco. He won’t lie to me. At least I’m confident about
that
.”

Kallie snuffled loudly, pulling herself
together.

Why had she ever been jealous of Kallie?

“I broke up with Zack at the kegger.”

“I’m sorry—”

Kallie shook her head. “Don’t feel bad for
me. I don’t.” She pulled a well-creased piece of paper from her
pocket and handed it to Avra.

“Kallie in the Clouds,
” Avra read. She
skimmed the song and looked up at Kallie.

“Too bad I couldn’t give Zack his ring back,
huh?”

“What ring?” She frowned at Kallie’s ring
finger.

“The one in purple plastic I flushed down the
toilet.”

Kallie strode over the uneven sidewalk toward
the shed. The wind picked up, turning the leaves on the trees
right-side down. Inside, a metronome ticked between sorrow for Avra
and anticipation of finding out what Jesse meant by “
Kallie in
the Clouds.
”

She opened the shed door and oven-hot air
rushed at her. She jogged upstairs to open the window for the last
few minutes before the rain. Her eyes drank in the tin walls and
roof, the plank floor, the old spool, the stack of hymnals against
the wall. Two huge rolls of painted paper—probably discarded
scenery from a play—and a refrigerator box painted to look like a
door were the only additions.

She sat on the top step and leaned on her
elbows, humming “
Kallie in the Clouds
.” It was beautiful.
Even the melody caressed like a love song.

She looked out the window for Jesse. Rain
slapped her cheek and the sky opened up. She lowered the window to
a crack.

Jesse banged through the door. “Kallie?”

“I’m here.” She came halfway down the steps.
Her lips stretched into a smile as if she had no control over
them.

He slid his dripping rain poncho over his
head and tossed it onto the John Deere. He rubbed his face dry with
the front of his T-shirt.

Her gaze shot away from the dark hair curling
on Jesse’s flat white stomach.

He took the stairs in two steps, his grin as
wide as hers.

Lightening cracked. She sat down on the
landing with a thump.

“Looks like it might storm till dusk,” Jesse
said.

She couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.
“Shame ...”

Jesse crouched on the step beside her. “Are
you flirting with me, Kallie Logan?”

“You wish.”

“Maybe I do.” His tone was light, but his
eyes serious. “Are your feet back on the ground?” The skin on his
knuckles went white where he gripped the edge of the step between
them.

“I broke up with Zack last night.” She met
his eyes. “It was your fault. I thought I was in love with him till
I got the song.”

“You threw the guy over?” He stared at her,
disbelief and hope warring on his face as the rain blew in sheets
against the building.

Thunder clapped and she shoved up against
Jesse’s side.

“Remind me to invite you to the next storm.”
Jesse squeezed her to him, chuckling.

She felt the warmth of Jesse’s arm against
her back, his hand cupping her shoulder. She wanted this moment to
last forever. The rain gentled, then picked up new force. “Thank
you for ‘
Kallie
in the Clouds
.’ It’s my favorite song
you’ve ever written—maybe my favorite song, period.”

“Are you saying it’s artistically sound?”

“I can’t be objective about it.” She hugged
herself, rubbing the chill bumps from her arms. “You touched my
heart.”

The wind changed direction and whipped the
rain against the near wall, upping the volume.

“So, I finally melted the acid-tongued music
critic?” Jesse said over the rain.

“I am not—” She raised her voice. “Write all
your songs for me and I’ll go easy on you.”

Her eyes locked into his, muddy brown with
emotion.

“I already do.”

Her lips formed an O, but no sound came out.
She scraped her gaze to the coil of rope hanging on the wall, a
lifeline to keep her from falling headlong into the depths of his
eyes. A fall that surely would end in shattered bones and ground
flesh.

His hand tightened on her shoulder. “Go out
with me, Kal.”

“You’d be content with just one girl?”

Jesse’s hand lifted from her shoulder and
grabbed his neck.

“That’s what I thought.”

Avra’s foot hit the pavement as she looked at
the empty spot where Cisco stood every morning waiting for her.
Palm fronds rustled overhead; the faint smell of salt and fish blew
in on the breeze that ruffled her hair like any other morning.
Inside her a hurricane waited, deep purple, the eerie stillness
before the blow.

Cisco cut across Echo Plaza between Jesse and
Billy. He looked up and saw her, his expression clouding. He said
something to the guys and they peeled off toward the Student
Center. She walked up to him and met his eyes.

He looked away.

The sun beat on her scalp and shoulders. “I
heard you were with Isabel at the kegger.” She stared at his eyes,
onyx chips glinting in the sun.

“Yeah. What about it?”

She laced her fingers together around her
backpack and watched him carefully. “Did you get what you
wanted?”

“So what if I did?”

The hurricane rolled through her, uprooting
and mangling everything in its path. “You’re happy now?” She
gripped her backpack like an anchor.

He jabbed his chin in the air like
you
wanna make something out of it?
“Yeah.” Sweat beaded on his
forehead.

A seagull squawked somewhere in the distance.
“Sorry you wasted eight months of your life. The misery is over.
See ya, Cisco.”
She spun
and walked away.

The scent of gardenias hung in the air. Cisco
swiped his arm across his face as Avra disappeared around the
education building. The outside corners of her eyes had crinkled so
slightly he would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching for her
reaction to the bomb he dropped.

Had he thought she’d beg him to come back,
promise him sex? He should have known better.

He’d wanted to hurt her. Why did he feel like
she was the one who macheted off a slab of his body? He let out a
string of Spanish that would have had Mamá muttering prayers for
days, fingers clenched around the crucifix on her rosary. A Goth
kid crossing Echo Plaza hiked a jet black eyebrow, his chains
clunking rhythmically.

Fine.
He pulled out his phone. His
thumb hovered above the 2, Avra’s number. He jammed the 4 down.
I
for Isabel
, she’d said when she programmed her
number into his phone.

Avra trudged home from the bus stop. She
stepped on the words
keep sweet
someone had stamped into the
cement on the buckling sidewalk. Yeah, she’d kept sweet all
right.

In her room, she collapsed into the chair,
sweat trickling down the side of her face. Her eyes trailed the oak
branches outside her window.

The door creaked and Kallie nudged her way
in, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her forehead furrowed.
“Bad news, huh?”

The numbness wore off in degrees—like an arm
or a leg that had fallen asleep—and anger prickled in. She grabbed
her pillow and shook it. “I want to shake him.” Dust danced in the
sunlight. “I want to scream at him and spit in his face.” She
hurled the pillow across the room.

“Need any help?”

“How can he call me
mí vainilla
, say,
‘I love you’ for eight months? How can he say I’m his best friend,
all but join my family—and do this?”

“My dad did it to my mom—after fifteen years
of marriage. Men rip your heart open and leave you drowning in a
pool of your own blood.”

“I should never have taken a chance on a
player. If I hadn’t dated a guy with no faith, I wouldn’t be here
now.” She raked her fingers through her hair. It fell in strings
across her eyes.

Kallie wrinkled her nose. “Cisco’s
Catholic.”

She glanced at the cross on her wall. “Not
everybody who goes to church knows God. Cisco doesn’t know God.
Trust me.”

Kallie looked at her blankly, but she was
done explaining. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with him. I thought I
knew Cisco, but obviously I didn’t.”

She stared out the window unseeing.

Sometime later Kallie hugged Avra’s stiff
shoulders and padded down the wood hall on the balls of her feet as
if someone had died and noise would make the grief worse.

Avra sifted through a sand dune of emotion,
one grain at a time. She knew from habit, from lesser hurts, that
she should pour out the emotions to God. Yet, she sat there,
paralyzed. She hurt too much to move or pray.

She wished she could quit thinking. But the
thoughts kept screaming through her. No more knowing what was going
on in Cisco’s head. No more laughing over a private joke. No more
feeling his touch, his kiss, his smile when she first walked into a
room.

“Oh, God.” The words echoed in the growing
dusk, the only prayer she could pray.

Jesse gripped the gearshift and flashed
Kallie a smile, willing the weirdness to go away. “Hi, kid.”

“Hey.” Kallie slid into the car and shut the
door. She ran a shaky hand through her hair.

He cleared his throat and turned the key in
the ignition. Like seventeen students packed into a VW bug, their
issues stuffed the car. He bared his soul in “
Kallie in the
Clouds.
” She broke up with jailbait. But now he stared at the
flip side of not going out with Kallie. The
friends
side—which was idiocy, because they’d
never
been just
friends. He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Thanks for giving me a ride to Symphony
Under the Stars tonight. I really need this last shot at extra
credit to pull an A in Humanities.”

“Sure.” He drove, rounding corners, stopping
smoothly at lights and stop signs as if his driving would smooth
out their awkwardness.

“Cisco and Avra broke up,” Kallie said into
the silence that hummed in the car.

They buzzed along US 1 toward Daytona.

“I heard,” he said. He wished he knew what
was going through Cisco’s head. He thought Cisco was really into
Avra, the only girl he’d ever known Cisco to be serious about.

Finally, he jerked into the parking spot six
blocks from the Daytona Band Shell.

They spread a blanket in the sand between the
ocean and the Band Shell as the musicians poured onto the
stage.

The air came alive with the cacophony of
their tuning.

Kallie lay back and sunset washed her with
oranges and reds.

The girl was so beautiful she made his gut
hurt. Why did she have to have so many issues? What did a guy have
to do—come with an engagement ring in a box to ask her out? She
glanced at him and he looked at the sky, watching it cool to pink,
purple; feeling
t
he steady wind against
his skin.

The jumble of sound faded to pregnant
silence.

The conductor crossed the stage, applause
rippling through the benches fanning back from the band shell, in
his wake. The man bowed to the audience and stepped onto the
podium. A smile tugged at Jesse’s mouth. Yeah, he was the guy to
watch, the one with the power. He glanced at Kallie and caught her
eyes on him. He’d give five bucks to know what she was
thinking.

The musicians coaxed Handel’s “Water Suite”
from their instruments. The music arced and twirled, the beauty
catching him by surprise like the Italian volleyed between two
exchange students on Echo Plaza. “Jesse.” Kallie raised her voice
to be heard over the crash of the waves and the music. She leaned
up on her elbow. “Doesn’t this,” she gestured toward the sky, “make
you think about God?”

He shrugged and lay back, cupping his head in
his hands. He didn’t want to talk about God.

Kallie plucked at the blanket between them
with her fingertips. “Your dad’s a minister; maybe you know where I
should look for God.” She eyed him hopefully.

“I don’t know, Kal. Don’t ask me such hard
questions. I’m trying to stay away from God.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want Him running me.” He’d
forgotten how talking to Kallie was like taking truth serum. He
stared hard at the sky. Stars debuted one by one.

“What do you think God is like?” Kallie lay
on her side, her head propped on her hand, waiting for his
answer.

He sighed. She wasn’t going to leave it
alone. “He’s the most powerful thing out there. He’s way harsh. No
basketball. No rock-n-roll. No fame.”

“But Avra says He cares about us.”

He could feel her eyes on him, but he focused
on the stars peppering the sky. What was it with Kallie? She wasn’t
happy until she had him thinking about stuff he didn’t want to
think about. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kallie lay back
on the blanket.

The music leapt and pirouetted in the night,
expressing the inexpressible, while dew settled on them.

He didn’t disagree with Avra, but what did
God’s caring look like? Ten to one, He sucked the sweetness right
out of life like his old man did. Father was one of God’s names for
a reason. “Avra told me I was looking for the smile of God.”

Kallie startled and turned her face toward
him. Her hair lay in silky puddle above her head.

He flattened his palms against the blanket,
fighting the urge to touch her hair. “I blew her off. Maybe she’s
right. But, if God’s anything like my old man, there’s no pleasing
him.”