Don't Touch (19 page)

I didn't realize I even had an opinion about this till now. Maybe it's his choice of the word
crazy
, but I find myself wanting to defend Ophelia. I want Peter to see her the way I do.

“She knows what she's doing,” I say. “Maybe she's out of herself enough not to care, but I think she knows.”

“I think she does too,” Peter says, twisting his torso to smile back at me. “I think she gives the whole kingdom a big ‘F you,' and she breaks all their rules and gets free.”

“And dead,” I say, “don't forget dead.”

“Okay, yes, free and dead. . . .”

Peter wobbles on the rail and drops down, breaking off clods of orange dirt as he slides back to level ground. I stay up on the tracks, but in line with him. He keeps his head down, and we walk quietly like that for a long time.

“When you jumped off that roof,” I say, “did you think you might die?”

Peter barks out a little “Ha” of surprise—maybe he forgot he even told me about it—and then squints at the track where it curves into the woods ahead of us.

“Yeah,” he says, “I guess I did think I might, but I didn't understand what that meant, so I don't think it counts.”

I remember him saying he wasn't even afraid, but how could that be?

“You weren't afraid that you might be making things worse? That it would hurt?”

He twists his lips up in thought, then says, “I guess that's where being impulsive comes in—I didn't think anything could hurt worse than how I was feeling.”

I get Hamlet—I get being afraid to reach out a hand and make something happen because so many bad things might follow. But jumping, not knowing or caring how I might land . . . how does a person get to that place?

“Here we go!” Peter jogs to a point on the tracks beyond the curve, any sense of melancholy instantly gone.

It's a junction where two tracks merge into the one we've been walking. The woods thin between them so both tracks can be seen for a distance beyond this one point.

Peter lies down with his head at the point where the tracks make a “Y,” his arms lax at his sides, and he grins.

“Do you want to be smiling?” I ask, taking aim.

“I guess not.” He tries to steady his expression, but he bursts into laughter that wracks his body so when I snap the picture, the whole line of him arcs and curls.

It's a mistake, and we shoot a lot more, but when Peter finally hops up to see the whole batch, that one makes us both stare. “That's the one, am I right?” Peter says, and I nod.

It's as if the rails are electric and shocking him—his body arched, his mouth wide and gasping but smiling. His eyes focus skyward into some middle distance, open and reaching. Peter's Hamlet has no intention of choosing one direction anytime soon. He is eager for a train to rock the rails and mow him down.

I'd like to find the pool for my Ophelia portrait; it has to be close, but we need to get back to Peter's truck before the sun starts going down. I've got no signal out here, and if Mom beats me home and Jordan tells her I disappeared with a guy . . .

“I bet it's just ahead,” Peter says. “We'll find the pool, and if we need to, we can walk back to the truck along the roads.”

“But we won't know which road.” I hate the whine in my voice.

“We'll find it,” he says. I want to believe him, but I'm also annoyed at him for pushing. I win what wasn't even a fight. We head back to the truck, and the sense of adventure is gone by the time we're back safe in the cab.

“Well, what do you want to do?” Peter asks.

“What do
you
want to do?”

He smiles, but there's a twist in it—I shouldn't have thrown the question back at him.

Instead of answering, he shifts and fixes his eyes on mine. He will lean in, any second, he will lean in close, take my face, hold my cheek in his palm . . .

“Are you cold?” he says, breaking his gaze and reaching into the space behind the long bench seat for his barn jacket.

I was shivering, shaking, still am.

“I'm okay,” but he holds the jacket out for me, waits while I reach one arm in; then he wraps it around, helps me find the next sleeve. He pulls the front closed, runs his hands down the sleeve-ends, and grips the cuffs where they hang several inches below my balled fists. He tugs at those ends like he might wrap me up straitjacket style, but no, he's tugging me forward, slowly closing the distance between us. I could duck my head, let my forehead bump into his chest and stop my forward motion, or lift my face, let go, but instead, I free the sleeves, make a “brrr” sound and throw myself back into my corner of the cab, hugging myself tight.

I belong in a strait-jacket.

“Thanks for the coat,” I say.

“Caddie . . .”

There's an abandon in Peter that I caught in the picture. Too much of it can be dangerous, but not enough . . . that can be dangerous too.

I speak before Peter can ask what's wrong with me. “We're losing light fast,” I say. “Let's see if we can make it to the pool.”

We drive in silence, only talking when we have to figure out which way to turn.

When we hit the curved drive that leads down toward the pool, it's a shock how familiar it is. It feels wrong, in a way, to bring Peter here, like we really have traveled through time and I can't promise safe passage back. As we twist down through the woods, the sinking light shoots through tree branches and blinds us. Peter takes the curve fast, and it's like we're in one of my nightmares where a car flies off the road, except we stay on track, make it down to the base of the hill.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask.

“Why would I be mad?”

His smile looks real but sad, too, and tired.

I know every inch of this place, where the aquamarine slide cracked and had to be patched with white caulk, where fuzzy caterpillars crawled all over the chain-link fence in the summer. But everything has changed.

The pool's been drained, but it's not empty. For what must have been months, leaves and pine needles have collected in soggy puddles across the bottom of the shallow end, and several feet of stagnant water fill the deep end. All the pool chairs are gone; there's a single sawed-off pipe where the slide used to be.

The pool house is chained shut and marked with a plastic-wrapped permit. There's a huge sign on the fence with a construction company's logo and, on top of that, a
NO TRESPASSING
sign.

Peter walks across the blacktop with me to the low fence that rings the baby pool. On the far side of the pool house, a part of the main pool's concrete wall has been blasted. “It looks like they started and ran out of money,” he says, “or never had enough money to begin with. How long since you've been here?”

The tears catch me off-guard. It's been longer than I realized. “Four years, maybe five. I used to love coming here, and then after we stopped . . .”

“You didn't even think about it,” Peter says. He doesn't reach toward me, doesn't try to comfort me, and why would he? I'm a fricking porcupine. I turn away so he won't see my face.

I shake my head. “Wow, I'm sorry, I didn't realize it would hit me like this.”

“This is good for your picture,” Peter says, his voice soft, and he swings his leg over the chain link and hoists himself up.

“What are you doing?”

“You want to go in, don't you?”

“What if someone comes?”

“Does it look like anybody spends much time here?”

Peter's all the way in by now, and he steps into the empty baby pool. It's surreal to see him stride across it like a giant. I kick one leg up and push myself onto the fence. Peter takes a step toward me, but I say, “I've got it,” and he backs away—fast. My voice came out harsher than I wanted. Of course I wobble and have to start over, but he doesn't try to help again.

My jeans catch on the top of the fence, and I have to bounce on the other foot while I work them free. Peter keeps his distance and watches me struggle.

“I don't know how you're not screaming in pain right now,” Peter says.

“What I lack in height, I make up for in flexiness.”

“Is flexiness one of your superpowers?” Peter says.

“What?”

“The gloves.”

With both feet safely down, I rest with my hands on my thighs like I need to catch my breath. Peter's never mentioned my gloves.

“I can't figure out why you wear them,” he says, his voice careful, “except that you're secretly some kind of superhero.”

When I trust my face, I straighten up, force a silly expression. “Don't tell anybody, or I'll have to kill you.”

“I thought that was spies. Superheroes don't kill innocent people.”

“You're not innocent,” I say, and I walk to the gated fence that separates the baby pool from the big people pool. There's a lock, but the gate is even lower than the outer fence and easy to climb.

Swinging up and over gives me a thrill. Maybe Peter's impulsivity is catching.

Peter follows me. We could walk straight down the steps at the shallow end into the pool. It's like a dream I'll forget upon waking.

“Where does Ophelia want her picture taken?” he asks.

It makes sense to take a picture of Ophelia by water. But the extremity of how she finally lets go is a part of her I don't understand.

I walk around the wall of the pool toward the deep end. Peter goes straight down the steps and in. He walks across the pool's bottom for as long as he can before the floor slants and he hits standing water. The trees around the pool have thinning branches, leaving clumps of dead leaves on the water—we've fast-forwarded to fall.

I lie down along the edge of the pool wall and stretch my hand down toward the dirty water. The numbers along the wall here say 10
FT
, so even with several feet of water pooled up, it's a long way down.

“That looks good, the reaching,” Peter says, “but I can't see your face.”

I look up and try not to focus on any particular thing, but I can't stop catching sight of the camera—it makes me feel stupid. It's all so contrived, safe, and planned out, like every other thing I do.

“What do you want to show?” he says.

“That she's choosing to fall,” I say, “like she's choosing to let it all go.”

“Well, right now you just look spaced out.”

I kick up to standing and jog around to the diving boards. The higher one stands fifteen feet or more above the pavement, more from the base of the pool. I grab hold of that ladder and hoist myself up, stepping on the yellow tape that crisscrosses the steps.

“What are you doing?” Peter says.

“Impulse!”

“Caddie, that doesn't look safe.” He makes a move to step closer but stops when water seeps up through the mess of pine needles and leaves. It only gets deeper from there.

“I'm pretty sure it isn't safe.” I step onto the board and grip the rails—there's no way I could fall off, but everything is slippery. The rails are slick under my gloves, the board thin and mean.

Peter's wavering, not sure whether he should stay where he has a good shot or climb out of the pool and up the ladder to pull me back to safety. This is where my being a porcupine pays off—Peter stays away.

“I don't like this,” he says.

“Oh no, sad clown.”

“We can get a good picture on the side of the pool.”

I shake my head. I don't want it to look safe, don't want it to
be
safe. I can't touch Peter's skin, but I can stand fifteen feet over concrete and stretch my arms out to the sky. I step to the edge of the handholds, standing over the deep end. If I fell, I would break both my legs, maybe my neck. I take one step out, one step forward, and my legs wobble.

“This is so dumb,” I say. “Look at my legs shake.” The shaking's supposed to protect me, I guess, make me turn back, but it only makes things more dangerous.

“Caddie, I don't like this,” Peter says. “Will you please get down?”

“Hold on,” I say, and I will my legs to be quiet, calm. I can't make them still any more than I can make my hands or lips stay still and be touched. “Ah, I hate this!”

“So get down.”

“No, I mean, I hate being afraid.”

“You're afraid for a good reason. You're standing on a narrow board over concrete that can kill you. If you weren't afraid you'd be dumb.”

I stand with my arms at my sides for a good minute, but my legs won't feel normal.

“Am I taking a picture or what?” Peter says.

I take one last breath, breathe in the broken fence, the wrecked aqua hole in the ground, the shape of a place I can never come back to, and then I turn around.

“This isn't right anyway,” I say.

Trying to make Ophelia brave in the moment she lets go, it's not true. I think she's more like Peter on his roof. She doesn't choose to fall because she isn't afraid, but because not falling is worse.

Peter and I don't talk much on the drive home. There's no mention of ice cream socials, no talk of my unfinished picture or let's do this again.

He asked, with his arms and his hands as he wrapped me up tight in his jacket, he asked.

I said no—without talking, I said it.

And then I scared him, acted reckless and loud—why would a girl who does that be afraid of touching him?

He won't ask again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

The sun's low by the time Peter drops me at home, but the house is dark. For a second, I think maybe they've gone. The problem wasn't ever between Mom and Dad. The problem was me, my obnoxious disorders, my selfish insistence on getting my way. Mom's taken Jordan away to Virginia to move in with Dad. They'll let me live here to finish high school—a kindness, for old time's sake—and when I graduate, they'll shut it down, cut off all ties.