Burning (22 page)

And then I felt my heart cheering against my own people, hoping that Ben Stanley would be strong enough, quick enough to best them both, even as I knew this would not be the outcome.

And my father—he stood unmoving, refusing to make eye contact with me, staring past me as if I were a ghost.

Ben had managed to kick Romeo to the ground, but then Marko came after him. It was terrible, watching them fight, and more terrible still when Ben lost his footing and Marko began to pummel him in earnest.

“Please, Marko,” I begged him, “stop it, leave him alone!” But he too ignored me, not even flinching at the sound of my voice. Romeo got to his feet and now it was the two of them together against my Ben Stanley.

I was a ghost to them. Perhaps they had come here to give me a chance to explain myself, but when they found me in his embrace in the water, when they saw me half-clothed and dripping wet, I had died.

Among my people it is men who hold most of the power. Why not? They are larger, and stronger, and they head our households, our
familìyas
and our
vìtsas
and our
kumpànyas
. But ghosts have powers, too, and if they want to be heard, then they cannot be ignored.

Women can have power, as well, if they choose to take it. Most women do not, for the cost of taking this power is very high. Since I was a ghost already, and since I could not stand
to watch Ben Stanley, flat on the ground, his arms covering his face, take another kick as if he were a mangy dog, I seized the power that was rightfully mine.

A proper woman keeps her legs covered. She does not cross in front of a man, for to do so on purpose would make him
maximè
by association. She would never step over a man’s resting body, for doing this also transfers her shame to him. And for a woman to wave her skirt at a man—this is unforgivable as it cannot be excused as a mistake, it cannot be undone unless the woman herself publicly proclaims that it never happened.

I knew all this. I had known it as long as I could remember. Therefore, I could never claim that I did not understand what I was doing.

A ghost has skirts, too, of sorts—long wispy transparencies it trails behind itself. So it was not difficult to imagine that the fistfuls of fabric I took between my hands as I rushed between them, between Ben and Romeo, were further proof of what I had become.

I waved my skirt as I screamed at them, Romeo and Marko, I cursed them in all the ways I could imagine, and I felt the deep satisfaction of the dead that have managed to communicate at last as their faces registered their shock and then their fear.

They backed away, hands up in front of them. Another vehicle came racing down the hill and Ben’s friends slammed out of it and raced toward us—Pete dropping to his knees beside Ben, Hog Boy rushing to my side as if we had been lifelong friends.

“You have disgraced your family,” said Romeo to me. “We came here to find you because your mother and sisters were sick with worry, certain you would never have left on your own, sure that you had been taken against your will. But we find you here—with him, naked together like the whore you are—” Romeo spat in the dirt as if no words could describe his disgust.

“Our wedding is off,” he said. “We will tell your mother that you have made other plans.”

Marko said nothing, just stood next to Romeo, his gaze locked on Hog Boy, ready to attack if Hog Boy moved an inch toward them.

“What the fuck is up with you guys?” said Hog Boy, aggressively angry, chest puffed out. “Which of you fuckers laid out my boy Ben?”

They didn’t answer. Instead they turned and walked together to my father’s Jeep, not even reacting as Hog Boy followed them, shoving Marko’s back. I watched them go, my skirt still bunched in my hands, wrinkled and damp and dirty.

“Yeah, that’s right. Run, you little bastards, run like bitches!” Hog Boy called after them.

Even as he started his Jeep and drove it up out of the mine, my father did not look at me. This hurt the most, much more deeply than Romeo’s words. My own father would not gaze into my eyes. This was not a surprise. It was exactly as I had known it would be. But to imagine something this final, this terminal, and to actually
experience
it are two very different things.

And then they were gone, and I was alone with Ben Stanley, who bled now because of me, and his friends, who looked at me almost as if I had myself struck him.

“Jesus, chick, what the
fuck
?”

“Later, Hog Boy,” said Pete. “Right now let’s just get Ben home.”

Together they managed to carry him to the truck. I picked up his shoes and socks and my sandals as well and placed them in the bed of the truck.

“Help us get him in,” Pete said to me. Together the three of us maneuvered him into the truck’s cab. Hog Boy reached across him and fastened the seat belt, moving carefully so as to avoid jostling him. Then he gently closed the passenger-side door and Ben’s head lolled against it. He was half-conscious, incoherent, but all three of us heard him clearly as he said my name; then he slipped away again.

“After all that, he’s still got the hots for her,” marveled Hog Boy.

Pete did not respond to this. “Listen,” he said, “I’d better drive the motorcycle back. Ben would be pissed as hell if I let you drive it, Hog Boy. You think you can manage to drive my truck back to town without crashing it?”

“Crashing it would probably improve its looks,” said Hog Boy, but his voice did not have its usual jocularity. He was worried about his friend.

“You wanna ride on the bike with me?” asked Pete.

“No,” I said. “I will stay with Ben.”

I slid into the cab of the truck; I had to position my legs around the stick shift and did not relish the thought of Hog
Boy maneuvering it while I sat in this way, but I had already crossed so many boundaries today, my way home disappearing behind me like rope bridges cut and fallen, that this seemed by comparison just a modest inconvenience. I would not leave Ben; the wound on his forehead was bleeding still. I found a napkin in the glove box and tried to staunch it.

Hog Boy crushed in to my left behind the steering wheel, and he slammed the door shut. We were pressed up together in a tight row with no room to spare.

“I’ll see you back at Ben’s place.” Pete fastened the helmet and rode up the dirt road.

Hog Boy shifted the truck into first gear, mercifully silent about the spread of my legs around the stick shift, and followed him.

“So,” he said, “you wanna tell me what happened?”

“I might ask the same question,” I said. “How did Romeo and Marko know where to look for us?”

Hog Boy’s face tinged red with shame. “Yeah,” he said. “That might have been my fault.”

I did not respond, but waited for him to continue.

“I’d never rat out Ben. I’m not that kind of a guy. But it was crazy—after you and Ben took off on his bike, not two minutes later the rest of your family came running out of the store—your mom and the little guy and that other girl. Your sister?”

I nodded.

He went on. “At first they just looked confused—you know, looking around for you. Honestly, I was kind
of shocked that you did that—gave them the slip. You all seemed pretty close.”

He had not asked a question, so I did not answer him.

“Anyway,” he said, “after a few minutes I guess they figured out you weren’t gonna just come back around the corner, because the lady—your mother?—she started kind of freaking out. And that got the little guy crying—boy, can he scream—and your little sister, she looked all upset, too.

“Probably I should have just left, but I was waiting for Petey to get through inside with Melissa, so I stuck around.”

More likely, I thought, Hog Boy enjoyed watching the dramatics.

“So then your mom pulls her cell phone out of her
bra
”—here Hog Boy stopped and shook his head. “Anyway, I guess she called your dad, because not too much later that Jeep pulled up again. There were three of them in it—your dad and the two pieces of shit that beat up Ben. I guess they’d dropped the pregnant chick and the other boy back off at your place—and all three of them looked meaner than cat shit. Your dad, he started asking your mom all these questions, like when she last saw you, if you’d been talking to anyone, stuff like that, and I tried to do my best to look like I didn’t know a damned thing. Which, you know, technically I didn’t. I didn’t really know where you and Ben had headed off to.”

Ben, as if he had heard his name, shifted his weight and his head fell over onto my shoulder. I found his hand, fingers splayed limply, and pulled it into my lap as he had done with mine back by the pond.

“Of course, that one dude, the short one—”

“Romeo,” I said.

Hog Boy snorted. “Is that his name? For real? Huh. Okay,
Romeo
, then, he’s not dumb, not by a long shot. He sort of started looking around and then he asked, ‘What happened to the boy with the motorbike? Ben Stanley?’

“And the way he said Ben’s name—like he’d heard it before, and didn’t like it—kind of made me prick my ears up. I guess he noticed that I was listening to him, and he marched up to me all hero-like and started pointing his finger into my chest.

“ ‘Where’d your friend go?’ he asked me, and I was like, ‘What friend?’ and he was like, ‘The one with the motorcycle,’ and I was like, ‘Hey, I barely know the guy.’

“I don’t think he totally bought it, but he couldn’t
prove
I knew Ben. I mean, the only person who’d ever seen us together except for you was that pregnant chick, and she wasn’t there. Your father decided to take your mom and the kids back to your camp and see if maybe you were there, and he told Romeo and the other guy that he’d be back to pick them up and that they should ask around, see if anyone had seen you or knew where you might have gone.”

We were nearing Ben’s town now, and Hog Boy slowed down. Next to me Ben groaned and lolled his head up to center. “My head hurts,” he said. It sounded to me as if his speech was slightly slurred. I thought perhaps he had a concussion.

“Is there a doctor we can take him to see?”

“Nah, his mom is a nurse,” Hog Boy said. “She’ll know
what to do.” He turned onto a street marked Bluebell. Ahead of us I saw Pete on the motorbike steering into a driveway.

Hog Boy parked the truck on the street in front of the house. “Shit,” he said, “Ben’s parents aren’t home. Their car is missing.”

Ben’s eyes fluttered open. “Hey, Hog Boy,” he said. Then, “Lala, you’re here. That’s good.”

He groaned and brought his hand up to his temple. “My head hurts,” he said again.

“We need to take him to a doctor,” I repeated, and this time Hog Boy looked concerned, as well.

Pete opened the passenger door carefully and put a hand on Ben’s shoulder to prevent him from tipping out.

“His folks aren’t here,” he said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Hog Boy. “Now what?”

I sat trapped in the middle of the truck’s cab, and now that we were still it was heating up quickly.

“Where is the closest doctor?”

“Reno,” said Pete. “Dr. Evans, he was retired but still sewed people up once in a while if they got hurt, he left town three days ago.”

Looking up and down the street, I saw that more houses appeared vacant than occupied. The entire place was closing in on itself, crumbling.

“Then we should take him inside, where it is cool,” I said.

The boys nodded, seeming glad that someone else was making the decisions for them. When they parted ways with Ben, they were going to have quite an adjustment to make.

That was their problem, for later. Now, we needed to take Ben inside and lay him down.

I left Hog Boy and Pete to carry him and I strode up the front walk to see if the front door had been left unlocked. It was, and it pushed open into a small, dark hallway. A tower of boxes labeled
Kitchen
kept the door from opening completely.

“Who are you?”

I blinked, allowing my eyes to adjust after coming in from the bright sun. A boy stood in a doorway down the hall, light from the window behind him making him look like a shadow.

“I am Lala White,” I said. “I have brought you your brother.”

Then Hog Boy and Pete stumbled in behind me, crashing into the boxes and toppling the two highest ones. I heard the sound of glass breaking.

“Oh, shit,” moaned Hog Boy, still struggling under Ben’s weight. “Now Mrs. Stanley’s gonna be pissed at me, too.”

“Put him on the couch,” said James. Hog Boy and Pete moved to obey immediately; there was something compelling about the boy’s voice. He, like his brother, was a leader, this much I could clearly see.

They carried him awkwardly into the family room, a brown-carpeted box of a room that had been stripped of all but the essentials in preparation for the move. All that was left was the couch, a reclining armchair, a rectangular coffee table, and an old television on a stand in the corner.

They tried to put him down gently, that much I will say. He landed with something of a thud and swore.

“What the fuck—”

“Hey!” said Hog Boy, cheerfully. “You’re sounding like yourself again!”

“My head hurts.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” said Pete.

James left the room without a word and reappeared quickly with some pills and a glass of water, as well as a towel full of ice cubes. He thrust the pills into his brother’s hand.

Ben tossed the pills in his mouth without looking to see what they were and then drank the entire glass of water.

He leaned his head back and lay very still.

James watched his brother swallow the pills before pressing the ice against his temple. I watched James. He was attentive, and seemed older than the twelve years I knew him to be. His body had the same look of athleticism as his brother’s, though less muscled; he was a fine-looking boy and would surely grow into a handsome man. Neatly dressed in pants and a shirt of light fabric, clearly he cared about how he looked. His hair, much like his brother’s in coloring and texture, was neatly combed and freshly trimmed.

“Do you want some water or something?”