Bruiser (5 page)

In defiance of Tennyson's campaign to remove Brew from my life, I made every effort to see him as much as possible. All right, I'll admit my motives were mixed, but they didn't stay that way for long. Spite against my brother, compassion for a stray, and general curiosity quickly gave way to something deeper—something more real and maybe even more dangerous, because when you truly start to care about someone, you become vulnerable to all sorts of things. I think Brew knew that better than anyone.

Our first date at Wackworld was a disaster thanks to Tennyson's meddling, and I was determined that our second date would be a success. But what would that date be? During school that week we saw each other at lunch, and he offered to take me to the movies, as most guys do. The movie-date must have been invented by a guy: no possible way to have a
conversation, and a darkened room suitable for other activities. Right.

“We'll get to that,” I told him. “Maybe. But for now, how about doing something where I get to see your eyes?”

He started to look a little nervous, and his hands retreated into his pockets. I knew what he was thinking: He thought I wanted to be taken to a restaurant—and I knew enough about him to know that money was an issue.

“I was thinking maybe a picnic,” I told him.

He was visibly relieved. “Could be fun,” he said, then added, “as long as your brother doesn't come popping out of the picnic basket.”

I laughed—a little nervously, because I didn't put it past Tennyson to find some way to sabotage it if he knew. Keep in mind, this was right after the Wackworld incident, so I had every reason to fervently believe Tennyson was the enemy.

“My brother won't know about it,” I said.

And he didn't. No one did. That Saturday, as far as anyone in my family knew, I was off to meet some friends at the mall; and since I'm such a bad liar, I made sure it was the truth. I did exactly that; I stayed at the mall with friends for a whole twenty minutes and then took off for the head of Mulligan Falls trail. My backpack was full of sandwiches and condiments, and a blanket. Brew was bringing the beverages—“Considering that your name's Brew, I think it's appropriate,” I had told him, although I did have to clarify that I wasn't
suggesting he bring beer.

When I arrived at the trailhead he was already there, pacing back and forth, perhaps worrying that I wouldn't show. I said hello, giving him a hug. He smelled very Mennen; just the right amount of mildly scented antiperspirant, which, in my book is far more enticing than a boy who reeks of cologne. I find cologne suspicious. Like carpet deodorizer.

“I had to tell my uncle I'm at Saturday school,” he told me, “so that gives us a few hours.”

Hearing that surprised me. “Why can't you just tell him the truth?”

“Weekends are family time. He prefers me home.” And that's all he said on the subject of his uncle.

We took a look at the trail map. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “After all, I
was
voted Most Likely to Receive the Death Penalty.”

“Oh…you heard about that?” I felt a bit embarrassed to be part of a student body that would behave so hurtfully. It never made it into the yearbook, but everyone knew about it.

“Actually,” I told him, “I feel safer with you than with most other boys in school.”

“Thanks…I think.”

We took the trail up and out of our community. Housing developments disappeared behind towering trees, and in just a few minutes it felt like we were hours from civilization. It had been an exceptionally wet winter, and the falls were so
powerful with the spring thaw, we could already hear the roar even though we were still half a mile away.

“So, tell me something I don't know about you,” I asked as we walked. I tried to make eye contact with him, but the question made him self-conscious, and he looked away.

“What kind of thing?”

“Anything,” I said. “That you have webbed feet or a vestigial tail. That you're color blind, or a sleepwalker, or an alien lulling humanity into a false sense of security.”

I thought he'd laugh, but instead he just said, “I'm none of those things. Sorry.” He helped me over a jagged boulder, thought for a moment, then said, “I've got a photographic memory, though.”

“Really!” It was much more interesting than any of the things I had suggested, except maybe for the alien—but all things considered, I much preferred that he be terrestrial anyway. “So if you've got a photographic memory, by now you must know the poems in that Allen Ginsberg book by heart.” I was just kidding, but a moment later he launched into “Howl,” reciting it word for word. And this is no short piece—it's one of those poems that goes on forever. I was impressed, but also unsettled, because, like he said, he liked angry poetry, and “Howl” is a regular fury-fest. Rage against the establishment and all that. As he spat out the words, they became more and more caustic, like a volcanic blast. I imagined I could see superheated steam venting into the air around him as he spoke.

Then when he got to the part about drinking turpentine in Paradise Alley, he forced himself to stop. He was out of breath, like he had just run a sprint. I could tell he was still marginally volcanic inside, but he quelled it quickly.

At that point any other girl would have said, “Thank you, it's been interesting,” then shot up a rescue flare. But I'm not any other girl. “Very impressive,” I said, then added, “
Howlingly
so.”

“Sorry I got a little carried away.” He took a deep breath and released it. “Sometimes I feel things very deeply, y'know?”

“How deeply?” I asked.

“Bottomless, kinda.”

And I believed it, too. There was something about his sheer intensity, and the way he could harness it, that captivated me. Controlled danger. A safely chained extreme. Was anger the only emotion he experienced so powerfully, or was it that way with everything?

I found myself leaning forward to kiss him. Why, you may ask? Well, don't ask, because I don't have an answer—I just couldn't stop myself. It was just a peck, really, and I moved so quickly that our teeth bumped. Not exactly romantic in the traditional sense of the word, but I don't think traditional was in either of our vocabularies.

He was stunned for a moment, then said something he probably hadn't meant to say out loud. “You're a very strange girl.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I try.”

I turned to continue down the path, but I'll admit I was partially stunned myself, because I didn't look where I was going. My foot slipped on a boulder, got wedged in a crevice, and I went down. I felt a sharp, searing pain in my ankle even before I hit the ground, and I yelped. My blanket-stuffed backpack kept the rest of me from getting hurt, but the rest of me didn't matter if my ankle was out of commission.

“Are you okay?” Brew hurried over to me as I freed my foot with a pained yowl that made a flock of birds take flight.

“No!” I shouted, my frustration overtaking the pain. “I'm not okay!” It wasn't just that the day would be ruined; there was a huge swimming tournament coming up, and ankle troubles are just as bad for a swimmer as they are for any other athlete. “This can't happen now! I can't have a sprained ankle!”

“Let me see.” Brew knelt down. By now the sharpness of the pain had subsided—it didn't hurt when I didn't move—but I could feel heat and pressure around my ankle. It was already beginning to swell, and Brew said, “I'll bet it's not sprained; you probably just twisted it.”

“Don't touch it!”

“I'll be careful.” He gingerly took off my shoe and then my sock. I held on to the hope he was right and that it wasn't as bad as it felt. He held my foot and rotated it to the left.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry.”

Then he rotated it more gently to the right. “Better?”

“A little.”

“I know some acupressure points,” he said as he massaged my foot and ankle. “How does that feel?”

“I don't know,” I said. But that was a lie. It felt good. Better than good. I watched as his fingers moved confidently across the bruising skin, caressing the bone beneath and stroking the tendons. A strange and powerful feeling of well-being radiated from my foot out to the rest of me.

“It's called reflexology,” he said. “Some people believe the feet are the mirrors of the soul.”

I nodded. At that moment he could have said the earth was made of chocolate pudding and I would have believed it. I could swear I felt his heartbeat in the tips of his fingers, but maybe it was mine—and I realized that this was well beyond anything that should be attempted on a second date.

Brew rotated my ankle again.

“How's that?”

“Better.” It tingled, it felt a little bit numb, but it didn't hurt. It was more like the feeling you get when you hit your funny bone. In a moment the sensation began to go away.

Then he let go. “Like I said, you just twisted it. You'll be fine.”

I stood up and put some weight on it. He was right. I'd been lucky.

“But just in case,” he said as he stood up, “maybe we should
have our picnic here instead of hiking anymore.”

“But…but what about the falls? And we haven't even gotten up to the good views.”

“It's okay,” he said, and offered a little grimace. “To be honest, I've outgrown these shoes—and they're not exactly hiking shoes anyway. They really hurt.”

He took a couple of limping, grimacing steps, and I grinned. “You think I don't know what you're doing?” I said. “You're just trying to make me feel better about not making it to the falls.”

He shook his head. “No, I'm serious.”

He limped and grimaced a little bit more. I could see that he was sticking to his story, so I decided not to argue. I took the blanket and spread it out in a clearing, and we had our picnic.

We talked as we ate and drank, and had a truly wonderful time. It felt good, and I didn't want it to end. I'm not going to be so stupidly sentimental as to say we were suddenly in love or anything, but something did happen that day. Somehow we had become linked. Entwined. It was out of the ordinary, and out of my control.

That's when I realized that I had been wrong from the start: Brewster wasn't a stray at all. If anyone was lost, it was me; and I could feel nothing but gratitude at having been found.

It took a day for that strange feeling to fade, although it never wore off entirely. Eventually I was able to hurl enough reason at it to camouflage it against a background of protective logic. It was hormones. It was adrenaline. It was the endorphins released by the acupressure. There was nothing out of the ordinary going on at all, and I was entirely in control of the situation. Right.

The following Sunday I invited Brew to join me swimming, and things took a troubling turn.

On weekends our school opens the pool to the public. It's an outdoor pool, even though we live in a geographically iffy part of the country when it comes to weather. Why? Because some über-genius decided it was cheaper to heat an outdoor pool through the winter than to put a building around it. In early April few people come to the pool on Sundays, except the diehards. That was fine. I figured it would give Brew and
me some space. The rumor mill was cheerfully rolling out reams about us; and I, for one, didn't want to feed it more pulp by making a grand and glorious public showing among the masses. Knowing that Brew's dictatorial uncle worked a night-shift kind of life, I planned it for morning, when he'd be asleep.

“I watch my brother on Sundays,” Brew told me when I suggested it. I told him to bring his brother along.

“I don't have a bathing suit that fits,” he said. I told him shorts were fine.

“What if it rains?” he asked. I told him he didn't have to come if he didn't want to.

“No…no, I want to come.” And there was genuine enthusiasm in his voice when he said it. I was relieved, because the way he was trying to worm out of coming made me worried that he had changed his mind about going out with me. Maybe the ankle massage had been one step too close for him. Maybe he now saw me as the flytrap ready to spring closed around him. But he
did
want to come, and he meant it.

I had just finished swimming my laps when they arrived. Now, the only other person in the pool was one of the regulars—an old lady I call the Water Lily due to her flowery bathing suit and the way that when you look at her, she never seems to be moving forward, like she had somehow taken root in the pool tiles and all that dog paddling was for naught.

Brew was still favoring one foot as he walked, a whole week
after the hike, and I remember thinking how one day in bad shoes can ruin you for a week.

I swam to the edge of the pool to greet Brew and his brother and peeled off my swim cap, because it's not humanly possible to look good in a swim cap. Then I did a quick drop to the bottom and pushed off to the surface so that my hair became a shimmering waterfall instead of a tatty ball of nastiness.

“This is Cody,” Brew said. “Cody, this is Brontë.” I reached out of the pool to shake the boy's hand. He looked up at the snarling dinosaur painted on the wall behind the pool—our school mascot—and read the team name beneath it. “Are you a raptor?” he asked.

“No,” I told him. “I'm a Brontë-saurus.”

He laughed at that. Then he removed several layers of mismatched clothes until he was down to his bathing suit and leaped wildly into the pool without even checking the water—which was cold, even by competitive swimming standards.

Brew shivered with a sympathetic chill when his brother hit the water.

“Did you see me?” Cody asked excitedly when he resurfaced. “Was that a cannonball?” And although it was more like a mad leap from the
Titanic
, I said, “Wow, you made quite a splash,” which told him precisely what he needed to hear without lying to him. Then I turned to Brew, who still stood there with his hands in his pockets.

“Come on in; it's not that cold once you get used to it.”

Cody, who had migrated down to the shallow end, called out to us. “Hey, watch me do a handstand!” He disappeared beneath the surface, produced some whitewater, then stood up again, arms spread in “ta-DA” position, seeking universal approval. “How was that?”

“Try it again,” I told him. “It's easier if you keep your feet together.”

While Cody occupied himself with underwater handstands, Brew strolled along the edge of the pool toward the shallow end, and I kept pace with him in the water.

“Are you coming in?” I asked.

“Maybe later,” he said. “I just ate.”

“Come on; it's not like you'll be swimming in a riptide,” I told him. “If you get a cramp, I promise I'll save you.”

Reluctantly he went to the steps, took off his shoes and socks, then waded gingerly into the shallowest part of the pool. The water didn't even come up to his waist. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, and it was already soaking up water at his waist and wrists.

“Aren't you going to take off your shirt?” I asked. Even before he responded, a spasmodic brain cell sparked out something Tennyson had said:
“Have you ever seen him with his shirt off?”
I mentally pinched the brain cell like a gnat and extinguished Tennyson's unwanted intrusion.

“Is it okay if I keep it on?” Brew said.

“Sure,” I told him. “Did you know that in the old days, men's bathing suits included shirts?”

“I've heard that.”

“And if a man took it off in a public place, he was thrown in jail.”

“Really?”

“No, but I wouldn't put it past people in those days. The Victorian era was very uptight.”

Apparently I didn't snuff out Tennyson's question fast enough, because it had acted like a pilot light, igniting my own curiosity. Why didn't Brew want to take off his shirt? It's not unusual for people to be shy about their bodies. They might feel their flesh tone is a little too pasty or their love handles are, shall we say, a little too “Michelin” in nature. I knew one boy who had a scar down the center of his chest from open-heart surgery as a baby. He hated taking off his shirt. Could it be something like that? Well, whatever Brewster's reason, I would deny my curiosity and respect his modesty. Truth be told, I found it charming.

“Did you see that handstand?” called Cody; and since I had actually seen feet flipping heavenward out of the corner of my eye, I said, “Much better. Keep practicing.”

The water lily lady climbed out of the pool and smiled at me as she left, probably thinking
Ah! Young love,
as old people do. Now it was just the three of us in the pool.

Brew was leaning back against the pool edge, content just to stand there. I reached toward him, and he reluctantly came away from the wall. “It's best if you dunk all at once,” I suggested. “Get the shock over with; otherwise you
never get used to the water.”

“I'm fine this way.”

Now that he stood in slightly deeper water, the edge of his shirt grazed the surface, becoming darker as it soaked in pool water. “I'll race you to the far end,” I suggested.

“No,” he said. “I'm not very fast.”

“So I'll just use my arms; I won't kick.”

“No,” he said, “I really don't want to.”

I pulled him toward deeper water. “C'mon, it's only twenty-five yards.”

“No!” he pulled his hand back from mine.

I looked at him, feeling like I had been slapped in the face, but then I realized I was the one who had pushed it. Then before either of us could say anything, Cody chimed in.

“Brew can't swim, but I can! One, two, three—GO!” And he took off toward the far end of the pool.

I looked at Brew, and he turned away. I could feel his humiliation like ripples in the water. “You really can't swim?”

He shook his head.

“Well, that's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Let's just drop it, okay?”

And suddenly I had an idea.

“I'll teach you to swim!” I said. Yes! It was absolutely perfect—and not just the answer to getting out of this awkward moment but also the ideal boy-girl bonding thing that becomes a musical montage in the movie version of our lives.

But before I could figure out where to start our first lesson, Brew said, “I'll be waiting in the stands.” Then he turned to wade out of the pool.

“But it will be fun! I promise!” He didn't stop, so I reached for him and grabbed him, maybe a little too forcefully, because his feet slipped out from under him and he went down to his knees.

“Oops…”

We were still in water that was shallow enough so that it wasn't a problem, and he stood back up right away. But now his shirt had ridden up to his chest; and as he pulled it down, I got a brief glimpse of his body beneath the shirt. There was no taking back that glimpse. We both knew it.

“Did I win?” Cody shouted from the deep end. This time I didn't even answer him. I gave all my attention to Brewster.

“This was a bad idea,” he said. “We should go.”

I reached for him again—this time more gently—and I took his hand, holding it in a way that I never had before. The same way he had held my ankle the other day. Gently. Like it was something precious and fragile, even though his hand was so large compared to mine. “Don't go.”

I could tell he just wanted to bolt. If he did, I wouldn't stop him. I had already pushed and pulled him in directions he didn't want to go. If he decided to leave, I resolved to let him. But he didn't.

I looked at his hand: His knuckles had scabs, but they were
softened by the water. I gently reached over and touched his shirt.

“Don't…”

“Please,” I said. “Let me see.”

“You don't want to see.”

“Do you trust me?” I asked.

In his eyes, I could see the battle going on inside him. The desire to hide a terrible secret fighting with the desire to set it free.

He turned his back to me, and I thought he would leave then. But instead he stood, feet firm on the bottom of the pool, and said over his shoulder, “Okay. You can look if you want.”

I began to lift up his shirt over his back, slowly, deliberately, like the rising of a curtain; and the scene it revealed was almost too much to bear.

His back was a battlefield.

Discolored flesh over old scars. I remembered stories about how they used to punish sailors by dragging them under a ship from one side to another across the rough, barnacle-encrusted hull. Keelhauling, they called it. Brewster looked like he had been keelhauled. Not once, but over and over. It wasn't just his back, either, because the marks extended around to his stomach and chest; and after I had pulled his shirt over his head and free from his arms, I could see a few marks on his arms as well. Although I couldn't see his legs underwater, I imagined they
hadn't escaped the devastation either. I hadn't noticed it when he'd stepped into the pool; but then, I hadn't been looking.

I rarely feel true hatred toward anyone, but right then I despised the author of those wounds, glaringly written across his body like blunt hieroglyphics.

“Who did this to you?”

“No one,” he said. Why did I know he would say that?

“You need to tell someone. The police, social services—anybody! Is it your uncle?”

“No! I told you it was nobody!”

“If you won't go to the police, I will!”

He turned to me, furious. “You said to trust you!”

“But you're lying to me! I have to trust you, too, and you're lying, because things like this just don't appear out of nowhere!”

“How do you know they don't?”

I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth. I didn't want any of the anger I was feeling to be directed at him. “If your uncle beats you, it will never stop if you don't do something about it.”

Rather than answer me, he turned to Cody, who was now standing just a few yards away, chest-deep in the water.

“Cody, does Uncle Hoyt beat me?”

Cody seemed scared. He looked to Brew, then to me, then back to Brew again.

“It's okay,” Brew said to him. “Tell her the truth.”

Cody turned to me and shook his head. “No, Uncle Hoyt's afraid of Brewster.”

“Has he ever hit me, even once?” Brew asked his brother.

Cody shook his head again. “No. Never.”

Brew turned to me. “There. You see?”

Although I still didn't entirely believe it, there was an honesty in Brew's eyes. So I had to look for another explanation. The only other logical explanation was something I didn't want to consider, but I had to. And I had to ask.

“Then…do you do it to yourself?”

“No,” he answered. “It's not that either.”

I was relieved, but I still knew no more than before. “What then?”

He glanced at his brother, then around the pool, as if there might be someone nearby who'd hear what he was about to say. But we were all alone.

Finally he took a long look at me and shrugged, like it was nothing.

“It's a condition,” he said. “That's all—just a condition. I bruise easily, and I've got thin skin. I always have. Sorry to disappoint you, but that's all it is. A condition.”

I waited for more, but that's all he offered. I do know that people with low levels of iron in their blood tend to bruise easily, but it just didn't ring true. “You mean…like anemia?”

He nodded. I could sense immense sorrow in that nod. “Something like that.”