Breakaway (21 page)

But I kept my hands to myself.

The smells coming from all the restaurants reminded me that I was starving, and I nodded in the direction of Pho 75. “Mind if we stop? I'm starving.”

“Not at all,” she said. “I love pho.”

“Me too. Though Jordie's mom makes the best.”

“She does?”

“Yeah, she's Vietnamese,” I said. “She makes it all the time.”

“Right,” Raine said with a nod, “I forgot.”

“I think he prefers it that way,” I said, not really thinking about it as I said it.

“What do you mean?” Raine asked with a puzzled frown.

“I just think he doesn't like feeling like he's different. Most of the people who live in your neighborhood are white. It's important to him to fit in with your crowd.”

“My crowd?” she asked, her tone shifting to disdain. “I don't have a crowd.”

“I just mean the folks who live in your neighborhood. Kids whose families have plenty of money. Stop getting pissed. I'm not making a thing out of it. I'm just saying is all.”

“I'm not pissed,” she said, not entirely the truth.

“Anyway,” I said with a shrug, “I always figured Jordie started hanging out with Mario and me because he felt like he fit in better with us than he did with the kids in his neighborhood. That's all.”

“We have time to stop,” she said. “The gallery will be open until nine.”

We ran across three lanes of traffic to get to the pho place. I put my hand at the small of her back as we approached the curb. It just felt natural to do it, but as soon as I realized what I had done I pulled my hand away and put it in my pocket.

We sat side by side at the counter in the window overlooking the street and ate spicy Vietnamese soup with thick noodles. I ate the noodles and meat with chopsticks and drank the broth from the bowl, the way Jordie and his mom ate it, while Raine daintily ate hers with a spoon. Or at least she tried to eat it without making a mess, which is almost impossible with the thick noodles in the bottom of the bowl.

 

 

After we ate we walked to the Metro station and caught the train headed downtown. Most of the seats were full since it was still close to rush hour, so we stood in the space just inside the sliding doors. I leaned back against the Plexiglas window that separated the seating area of the train car from the space where we were standing just inside the door. Raine was standing in the middle of the aisle, her arm hooked around the metal bar as the train car swayed and rocked through the tunnel. I looked through the window into the blackness of the tunnel. Most of the time there was nothing to see other than a reflection of the train car interior. I could see Raine's legs, clad in boots, and her short skirt, reflected in the glass. I didn't let my gaze linger there. I couldn't look at any part of her directly for too long without feeling like I might explode if I didn't touch her.

As the train slowed to a stop at the Rosslyn station platform I could see a group of guys waiting to get on our car. When the doors opened, the seven guys spilled inside, loud and smelling like Bad Habits on a busy night, their laughs booze soaked.

I didn't want to end up in a fight, didn't want to start any kind of trouble with Raine there, but I knew if one of the guys bumped her or even looked at her with interest I would lose it. Raine didn't like that I got into fights, would frown disapprovingly if the subject ever came up. She definitely would be pissed if I went looking for a fight now.

In the interest of keeping the peace, I took a handful of Raine's jacket and pulled her closer to me while I kept half an eye on the rowdy group of guys who were crowding the entire aisle of the train car. They were talking loudly, laughing hysterically at everything, had obviously been out drinking for happy hour and were now oblivious to the ruckus they were causing. I pulled her in close to make it clear to these guys that she and I were together.

As the train started up again, Raine took a stumbling step back and reached for my arm to stop her fall. I was holding the edge of the wall I was leaned against but put my free hand around her waist to steady her. She didn't lean into me, but as the train car slowed or sped up she relaxed into the movement and her body would bump mine. We had never been this physically close to each other before and I was constantly distracted by the smell of her hair, the weight of her hand on my forearm. And when the train did lurch and sway and her body bumped against mine, I wanted to tighten my arm around her waist and press her against the length of my body.

But I didn't.

There was an invisible line that Raine and I didn't cross with each other. She had made it clear from the beginning that she thought all guys were out for one thing. If I wanted to be around her, it was as a friend. That much I knew. And I liked hanging out with her. Once you got to know her she was a lot like Mario and she could give me shit as well as she could take it.

It was a few blocks to walk to the museum from the Farragut West station, the streets alive with people traveling home from work or heading to happy hour or dinner in the business district. A few guys noticed Raine as we walked, took the time to look at her, their eyes passing over her legs and chest. I tried to ignore it but would stare hard at anyone who looked at her with too much interest.

At the main entrance of the museum, Raine showed an invitation to get us into the gallery, the event not open to the general public.

“How did you get invited to this shindig?” I asked her as we walked through the lobby on our way toward a marble staircase.

“My parents are donors,” she said with a flutter of her hand, as if it were no big deal her parents having so much money. “They have some special membership that gets them into gallery openings like this.”

“Donors?” I asked. “Like they have so much money they just give it away?”

“Screw you, okay?” she answered hotly. “Don't make me sorry I invited you.”

“Why do you always act like it's an insult if someone points out that you're rich?” I asked.

“Because that's how you mean it, isn't it?” she said quickly. “How would you like it if I brought up the fact that you were poor all the time?”

“I
am
poor,” I said. “It doesn't bother me.”

“If it doesn't bother you, then why are we even having this conversation?” she asked angrily. “You know, I haven't forgotten how mean you were to me in the cafeteria that day. You can't just take out your bad moods on people and expect them to always forgive you.”

My face burned as she brought up the embarrassing episode when I lost my temper with the lunch lady. “Okay, yeah,” I said, relenting a little. “Sometimes maybe it bothers me. But it's not as if kids from my neighborhood grow up thinking they're going to be astronauts.”

“Why can't you be an astronaut?” she asked as she stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned around to face me. People behind us eyed her curiously or with some annoyance as they had to step around her. Her feet were planted defiantly as she stood on the step above me, waiting for my answer. “You're a good athlete and you're in Calculus—”

“Jesus, Raine, I don't really
want
to be an astronaut,” I said as I glanced nervously at the people walking up behind us, most of them trying to eavesdrop on our conversation as they moved around us. “I'm just using it as an example.”

“Why do you always try so hard to make me not like you?” she asked, her expression softening as she studied my face.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. With her on the step above me we were the exact same height, her face close to mine, and I thought again about what it would be like to take her lower lip into my mouth for a kiss. I tried to keep my eyes on hers instead of on her lips, figuring it would just piss her off if she could tell I was distracted.

“It's like you don't want me to like you,” she said. “You always say insulting things, try to hurt my feelings on purpose. Why do you do that?”

“I … I guess because I'm a dick,” I said with a smile but she didn't smile back—was giving me the silent treatment while she kept her gaze fixed exactly two inches to the side of my face, refusing to make direct eye contact.

She waited, not seeming to care that now we were causing a major traffic jam.

“Maybe I figure you'll hate me soon enough,” I said finally, with a shrug. “I might as well give you the reasons ahead of time.”

No answer, just an approving nod from her, as if to say, that's what I thought. Then she turned and resumed walking up the stairs and I followed, realizing, as I did, that if I wasn't careful, I'd end up following her all kinds of places just so I could get that look of approval again.

 

 

We spent an hour wandering through the galleries together, looking at the paintings and sculptures, each taking our own time to stop and study the works of art that interested us. Sometimes we would stop to look at the same work of art, but mostly we wandered on our own. Raine liked to look at the brightly colored landscapes and portraits of decorated women. She spent a lot of time in front of one painting that was a view of a crowd of people, but painted from the back so you couldn't see their faces.

There was a series of paintings that showed boxing matches between two guys wearing really tiny shorts, the strain of their muscles and expressions of pain on their faces told only in abstract. Raine said the artist was probably most famous for these boxer paintings. There were a couple of other paintings I was drawn to, though looking at them made me a little uncomfortable. They were paintings of scrawny young boys, one with his shirt pulled halfway off so it looked posed, like someone wanted to show off how pale and scrawny and sickly the kid was. That painting reminded me of Chick, and I experienced a momentary twinge of guilt about blowing him off after the soccer game. I would make it up to him by taking him to the movies one of my nights off work during the week.

After we left the museum we walked slowly toward the Metro station, like neither one of us really wanted to go home but weren't sure where else to go. It was full dark now and the white marble of the buildings in that part of town near the White House all glowed under the powerful security lights. I loved being in the city at night—knew that as soon as I finished school and found a job I would move into town to find an apartment instead of staying in the suburbs.

“Come on,” I said to Raine. “Let's walk down to the Lincoln Memorial before we head back.”

“Can we do that?” she asked uncertainly.

“Why not?”

“I mean, will we get in trouble? Walking through the park at night?”

“Like they say, it's a free country,” I said. “I do it all the time. Come on.”

From a distance the Mall seemed empty and quiet but once we crossed Constitution Avenue and entered the park area that housed the various war memorials, we saw several people, alone and in pairs, as they walked or jogged along the pebbled sidewalks. We ended up on the path that ran along the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a black granite wall etched with the names of the people who were killed or MIA during the war. The wall stretched for the length of a city block and Raine trailed her fingers along the polished face of the stone as we walked along.

“People leave stuff here,” I said. “Letters, photographs, flowers, teddy bears, trophies. All kinds of crazy shit. And someone comes out every night to collect the things people leave behind.”

“Where does it all go?” Raine asked, her voice hushed as if we were in a church.

“No clue,” I said. “They must have warehouses full of stuff. Or it gets put in the trash.”

“No way,” she said. “They wouldn't throw it away.”

She was lost in thought after that and didn't say anything for a while. Most girls felt the need to fill every silence with senseless babble, but Raine would go quiet sometimes, like she had retreated somewhere inside her own head and had plenty in there to keep her busy.

“Have you gone to visit Sylvia's grave?” she asked. “I mean, since the funeral.”

“I can't,” I said.

“Why can't you?”

“Because,” I said, taking a minute to find the words to explain. “At the funeral, I was supposed to be one of the pallbearers, you know, help to carry the casket.” Raine just nodded to encourage me to keep talking. “I couldn't do it. I couldn't pick up her casket. Mario had to do it for me. I couldn't stand the thought of Sylvia's body inside that casket. It creeped me out,” I finished lamely. I cast a sideways glance at Raine, wondering if she thought I was a complete tool for admitting something like that. She was looking at the ground, listening thoughtfully as we walked along.

Talking about Sylvia like that, it occurred to me that she had started to fade from my memory. I couldn't recall the sound of her voice, and even when I saw her face, in my nightmares and daydreams, it was just the suggestion of a face—dark hollows for eyes and the vague outlines of her features.

“Chick and I went to see this movie after Syl died,” I said. “It was a horror movie with all these zombies, you know, the bodies of these people half decomposed, falling apart. All I could think about, while I was sitting in the theater, was Syl, rotting in some grave. Do you think that's weird?” I asked, figuring she would say no, whether she found it weird or not, just to be polite.

But when she turned to look at me her expression was intense. “No,” she said. “I don't think that's weird at all.”

“I don't think I'll ever be able to watch a horror movie again,” I said. “And I can't go to her grave. Maybe never.”

We reached the Lincoln Memorial and walked halfway up the steps before sitting down to look out over the reflecting pool and at the Washington Monument, up-lighted by a dozen massive spotlights. The stairs we sat on were solid rock, but had been worn in places by the tread of millions of feet. Raine sat one step above me while I leaned back on my elbows on the step so that my arm was close to her leg. When I looked up at her, the side of her face was in shadow, only her chin and bottom lip illuminated by the streetlights around us. Her hair, parted on the side, obscured most of her face and I wanted to push her hair back so I could see her eyes, what her mood was.