Avra's God (17 page)

Kallie rolled onto her stomach and propped
herself up on her elbows to look at Him. The wind streamed her hair
off her face.

Moonlight glanced off her mussed hair. Her
face was so close to his, all he could think about was kissing
her.

“There’s got to be something about God we’re
missing. Something inside me wants more.” She touched her chest
with her fingertips. “What’s my purpose in life?” Tears sprung to
her eyes.

Whoa. Where did that come from?

She took a deep breath and blinked the tears
onto her lashes. “I’ll have a career—maybe a family—get old, die.
There’s got to be something more. It’s all wrapped up in God
somehow.” Her wet eyes begged for an answer.

“What do you want from me? I don’t have the
answers to the universe.”

Those intense evergreen eyes wouldn’t let go
of him.

Behind him, he heard the churn of the
water.

Finally, he blew out his breath. “Where have
you been looking for God?”

“Last week I went to mass four times—fat lot
of good it did me. I just got testy. When I walk, I say the prayers
I memorized as a kid over and over. I wrote letters to God. It felt
good, but I don’t know if He read them. This year I’m teaching
second grade catechism. Maybe I’ll learn something I missed the
first time around.” She gave a high-pitched, strained laugh.

“Man, Kal, you’re really serious about
this.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you tried reading the Bible?”

“Never thought about it. I think we have
one.” Kallie rolled over and sat up as though he’d passed her the
key to the Humanities final. She wrapped the extra blanket around
herself.

He reached a hand toward her and let it drop
on the blanket behind her. Whatever he wanted from Kallie,
friendship wasn’t it. Not by a long shot.

Cisco spied Kurt headed in his direction from
the snack bar line. He gave Avra’s brother his back, hoping he
hadn’t seen him yet.

No such luck.

Kurt slammed his food tray
d
own on the table. “What’s wrong with you, man,
jerking Avra around?”

Cisco clenched his jaw.

Kurt drilled him with his eyes. “Just lost my
appetite.” He shoved his tray at Cisco.

Cisco caught the tray before it flew into his
lap. Chicken noodle soup sloshed onto his jeans.

Kurt stormed out the door. The snack bar
quieted for a heartbeat and buzzed back to life.

Cisco spit out Spanish. He rammed Kurt’s
abandoned tray with his hip on his way out of his seat. He caught
Morgan’s speculative smile below his too-neat hair as he blew by
him.

Kurt’s disgust tasted like a mouthful of
dirt, and Cisco spat it into a planter on his way to the parking
lot. Who needed Kurt, or the entire Martin clan with their outdated
rules? He should have chosen an easy girl in the first place. Well,
he had one now. And he was going to have a good time, for a
change.

Cisco strode toward the jetty, pulling Isabel
along. A six-pack of Coors dangled from his hand. He shoved the
paper bag holding a quart of Jack Daniels back into place under his
arm without breaking stride.

Isabel stumbled in the sand. “Slow down.”

He dropped back beside her and settled his
gaze on the play of moonlight across the taut fabric of her blouse.
The smell of beer and weed blew toward them. He propelled Isabel
into the hand-slapping and greetings that whipped away in the humid
wind. Someone passed him a joint. It was going to be a good
night.

A tall girl with hair the length of Avra’s
climbed onto a rock to watch the waves crash against the jetty.

Was it her?

Adrenaline shot through his body, aching,
dread.

The girl ducked back toward him from the
spray of a wave.

Not Avra. The breath rushed out of his
lungs.

His fingers glowed pink where they cupped the
stubby cigarette. He raised it to his lips and sucked in the warmth
of the drug.

Avra trudged into the stream of students
filling the hallway and headed toward her Elements of Education
final. Her gaze swept from side to side—half afraid, half
hungry—for a glimpse of Cisco. She’d managed to avoid him for the
last three weeks since their breakup. Only finals week to go before
she could stop expecting Cisco to pop up like an undead in a horror
flick.

But she spied his familiar ringlets bobbing
with his steps several yards ahead—his muscular shoulders looking
particularly un-corpselike. Her eyes trailed his arm diagonally
across Isabel’s back, ending with his hand tucked into her jeans
pocket. Her gaze galvanized to the sway of Isabel’s hips and the
outline of Cisco’s fingers cupped to her form.

Pain shot to her core, a white-hot dagger.
She stumbled out of the traffic pattern and sunk onto a bench. Air
gasped in and out of her lungs as if she’d forgotten how to
breathe. She squinted against the sun’s glare and the picture
etched onto her soul.

God.

Kallie climbed the fold-down ladder into her
attic. She looked through the hatch at Jesse. This was the first
time Jesse had been inside her house. She felt exposed. Why had she
given in to his pestering? “Why do you want to see my dusty attic
anyway?”

Jesse poked his head and shoulders through
the opening. “Inspiration for songwriting.”

She bent at the waist to avoid the low
rafters, took a few steps, and sank onto the plywood. The house was
ghetto compared to the one she grew up in, and Jesse wanted to hang
out in the ugliest part of it. “Why don’t you go sit in your own
attic?”

“Don’t have one.” Jesse sat too close.
“Besides, you wouldn’t be there.”

His nearness unnerved her. “You’re in my
personal space.” She flicked her eyes back and forth across the
foot between them.

“You’re cold as ice, girl,” Jesse sang.

I’m terrified you’ll hurt me.
She
raised her brows at him. “Quoting yourself?”

“Give me a chance.” Jesse grabbed the back of
his neck. “Haven’t you felt this weird connection between us since
we met—musical—and something way deeper?”

“Yeah, like a train wreck—we’re all twisted
and melted together. I’m surrounded by carnage here, Jess. My dad
cut me and Aly off with a scythe and left us to die. Cisco’s done
the same to Avra, and now she’s sitting on the curb with us. Blood
runs in the gutter.”

“
I swear you’re Goth
inside.” He swept dust into a pile with the side of his hand.
“Okay, so Cisco’s being a jerk. It’s not like him. What’s that got
to do with you and me?”

“Guys in general are a bad risk.”
You in
particular
. “If I don’t protect myself, nobody will.”

“What? Like I’m psycho?”

“You’d rip my heart out of my chest.” Dust
filtered into her nose and she sneezed. “Oh, you’d feel badly about
it, but you’d still do it.”

“You always believe in me. But when it comes
to trusting me not to hurt you, you quit believing. Why?”

“Because I know you, Jesse Wayne Koomer.”

His face turned toward the shaft of light
burning through the dirty dormer window. “Everybody gets hurt
sometime. This is
life,
Kallie. You lick your wounds; you
get over it.”

“You haven’t got a clue what a broken heart
feels like. I don’t even think you’re capable of loving someone
that deeply. You’re still a little boy in here.” She touched her
chest. She knew she was talking crazy—anything to get him to back
off.

“You think you can get inside my head. Well,
you can’t. And you’re dead wrong. You’re the one who needs to grow
up and take risks.” He squatted in front of her. “You’re safe now.
I’m vacating your train wreck.”

The ladder groaned under his weight.

Avra pummeled the road with her feet. She’d
sprinted the length of Faulkner Street and run out of sidewalk.
Anger spit and hissed in her belly. She scrunched her eyes shut
trying to block out the picture of Cisco’s hand jammed into
Isabel’s pocket.

For weeks, fifty pounds of unexpressed grief
sat on her chest. She’d wake up at night and roll over, trying to
dislodge the weight, but it rolled with her. And now she couldn’t
shut off the grief.

She stumbled on the uneven asphalt and
sprawled, knocking loose emotions that had trash-compacted since
she broke up with him.

Strawberries on her knees oozed and her palms
had scraped white. She brushed off the pebbles and dirt, tears
cascading down her face. She wiped them on the shoulder of her
T-shirt, but they kept coming.

She picked herself up and took off again,
welcoming the sting of the wind on her knees distracting her from
the pain inside. Her chest heaved with sobs as she ran, and she
didn’t care who saw her. Inside, she ranted at God.

I wish I’d slept with Cisco.
At least,
then she’d still have him. Instead, she was more alone than she’d
ever been in her life.
Thanks to Your rules I feel empty and
unloved.

Had Cisco ever loved her? Or, had she forced
him to say the words by saying she loved him first? Regardless, he
had ripped himself from her future.

She shoved the jagged edge of her life into
God’s stomach.
Here. Fix it. Or don’t. Do You even care?
What was the use? Even if God cared, she wasn’t fixable. All the
conversations she needed to have with Cisco to get over this—she
couldn’t have.

The last tears trailed down her face as she
rounded Riverside Drive onto Murray. She scrubbed her face dry with
her shirt in front of her house.

Pain still throbbed in her heart, hands, and
knees. God was silent. But He was
there—
bobbing in the waves
like a buoy she could cling to
.
She didn’t know how she
knew, but she did.

Her sweat-slicked body melted boneless onto
the porch step with the first peace she’d had in a month.

Jesse fumed around the corner into Kallie’s
living room and stopped. Aly stared at him from an antique chair,
her scruffy tennis-shoed feet hung over one arm.

After Kallie blew him off, he was in no mood
to make nice with her Mini-Me. “What are you doing?”

Dimples knifed her cheeks. “Listening.” She
shook her white-blonde pixie out of her eyes and swiveled forward
in the chair.

“Figures.”

Aly sprung up and followed him to the front
door. “Zack’s not scary.”

He stopped, his hand on the door knob. “The
guy Kallie went out with? Never mind, I don’t want to know.” He
opened the door and looked back at Aly. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why
not?”

“Because Kallie only liked him here.” She
pressed a finger to the corner of one light green eye. “Not here.”
She smacked her palm against her chest.

He cracked a smile in spite of himself.
“Thanks, kid.” At least somebody was on his side.

He hoped Aly was right. But it didn’t change
anything. Kallie still shut him down.

Cisco slung his backpack over his shoulder. A
door at the back of the auditorium
s
lammed, shutting out Billy and a triangle of
sunlight.

Exit signs cast a faint red glow over Jesse
where he squatted on the stage beside his guitar case. He held out
a Coke toward Cisco in the half light.

The metal chilled his hand, and he could
almost taste the Coke going down. “What’s this for?”

Jesse popped the tab on his Mountain Dew and
jerked his head for Cisco to sit on the edge of the stage beside
him. “We need to talk.”

He didn’t have a good feeling about this.
“Can’t this wait? I’ve got stuff to do.”

Jesse dangled his feet over the edge of the
stage. “Isabel’s been stuck to you like a barnacle. You’re alone
for once—”

“You dissin’ Isabel?”

Jesse grabbed the back of his neck. “No. But
if you ask me, you look like you’re just going through the motions
with Isabel.” Jesse held up a hand to stop his reaction. “But,
that’s your call.” He pinned Cisco with his eyes. “What’s going
on?”

“What do you mean?” His voice sounded
defensive even in his own ears.

“All summer you’ve looked like you washed in
with the seaweed. Your eyes are bloodshot, your pupils dilated.
You’re late for practice, hung-over.”

“You’re turning into your old man.”

Jesse winced.

That was a low blow, and Cisco knew it.

“What’s going on?”

“None of your business.”

Hurt flickered in Jesse’s eyes. Then came the
balled-up-fist look he wore when they fought as kids. “It
is
my business.”

“Fine. Kick me out of the band.”

“We’ve been like brothers—” Jesse looked him
in the eye. “What are you thinking?”

He stared Jesse down, watching his nostrils
flare as he breathed, wanting to punch him in the nose as he had
when they were eight. “I’m not.” He jammed the unopened Coke into
Jesse’s chest and stalked out the stage door.

Cisco wrenched the stubborn plug out of the
’97 Bronco. Oil splattered his cheek and the Quaker State cap that
he always wore backward to keep the bill out of his way. A muddy
brown stream ran out of the car while Enrique yammered about some
hottie in Lawn and Garden. The Cuban radio station sputtered news
from Havana.

Cisco scrubbed at his cheek with the sleeve
of his work shirt. “Shut up.”

Enrique peered down at him through the gap in
the grate.
“
Qué pasa
, man?”

“You’ve got a wife. When you going to act
like it?”

Enrique’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, like you’re
livin’ the life of a priest—” He reached for the oil hose.

Cisco gave him his back and palmed the
plug.

He wasn’t cheating on Avra. They were over.
Why did he feel like a worse swine than Enrique? Maybe it was the
run-in he’d had with Jesse yesterday. Where did Jesse get off
telling him how to run his life? He grunted at Enrique to start
filling the tank.