Don't Touch (23 page)

It's a rush, these
possibilities
that aren't possible at all, just some lies I made up to punish myself.

“Okay,” Peter's voice crashes in, scattering my thoughts. “I get it.”

He's looking straight ahead, not at me, and I'd give anything to hear what he's thinking but not saying out loud.

“It's embarrassing,” I say. “You must think I'm incredibly lame.”

“It's not embarrassing,” he says, sounding almost angry, but
for
me, not
at
me. “A lot of people kiss, and more, just for the sake of doing it. I think it's nice that you haven't been hooking up with a bunch of random guys you don't care about.”

His defense of me takes me by surprise, and before I can gather my thoughts, he keeps going. “You could make out with any guy you wanted. I mean, Oscar, for one, would be all over you—he's already all over you, and you're not even nice to him.”

I make a face at just the thought of kissing Oscar, and Peter laughs.

“Don't feel bad about it,” he says. “I'm sorry if I reacted badly. I thought . . .”

“You thought that the idea of kissing you grossed me out.”

He grins. “Something like that. So, it doesn't?”

The imaginary finger poised at my throat has moved down, a gentle stroke to the center of my heart. This is not where I meant for this conversation to go.

“It. Does not. Gross me out.”

Peter could eat seven onions, eight garlic cloves, and a frog, and I'd still want to kiss him, but he doesn't need all the gory details.

“I understand.” Peter nods to himself. “Who wants their first kiss to be onstage?”

“Right? It's not even real. Kissing you would not be a chore. Far from it. But I don't want to look back and remember the first time I kissed a guy was because our teacher made us, and it was super awkward, and public, and awful.”

“Sure. I'm glad you talked to me about it,” he says. “It did kind of bum me out, I'll be honest.”

“I know, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry I didn't think of telling you right away, instead of stopping the scene like that.”

“No, no worries. All right.”

His “all right,” I figure, means case closed, get out of my car so I can get out of here, please, but when I say, “All right, well, I'll see you tomorrow,” and open the door, he says, “Wait,” like I took him by surprise.

He reaches for me, but I scamper out faster and farther than he can reach. I stand on the pavement with the door open to let him speak.

“We don't have to talk about it now, but we can figure something out,” he says.

Yes, a way to get around doing the kiss in the scene. I nod.

“I've been wanting to kiss you for a while, now, Caddie. I'm glad the first time will be real.”

A tremor chases up from my stomach all the way to my fingers and toes. Peter's smile is so big—he knows he caught me by surprise—but his gaze is steady.

“See you soon,” Peter says. He reaches across and pulls my door closed, starts the truck, and zooms off down the hill.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

ME: Crap, crap, crap, crap. Peter wants to kiss me.

MANDY: And the problem is? You don't want to kiss him? LIAR.

That's how it will go if I text Mandy. I want her advice, but I can't handle all the questions she'll have.

“How was rehearsal?” Mom asks when I get home.

“Bad,” I say, and go straight to my room.

“Caddie,” she calls after me.

“What?”

“Your dad called. He wanted to talk about your show.”

Such good timing he has, calling just when I stand a great chance of getting kicked out.

I make my face blank and head back to the den. “What did he say?”

“He'll have to find someone to cover his Friday class, but he thinks he can swing it.” I must let some reaction slip because she says, “Caddie, he called of his own accord.”

Maybe now that the divorce is a sure thing, he's trying to be Superdad. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”

“Mom made me talk to him instead,” Jordan says from where he's sunk into the couch, “but for some reason he didn't like it when I called him a tool.”

Mom stifles a smile at that, then says to me, “Do you want to call him back? He was sorry he missed you.”

“No, maybe I'll call him later, from my cell.”

“All right. Your call.” She catches her accidental pun, and goes, “Ba-dom-dum!” with a big smile on her face. “Cheer up, babe,” she says. “We're having tacos for dinner. Nothing some chips and salsa can't cure.”

“Right.”

“Now, your show, it's just Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, right? No Sunday?”

“No.”

“Oh, phew, I thought that was right. That Sunday's going to be my Goblet show.”

I nod. “Yeah, everything will be over by then, so it should be okay. It sounds cool, Mom. I can't wait.”

I almost ask whether she's invited Dad. Since he'll be in town for my show, he could see hers, too. But the show feels like something that belongs only to Mom—Mom post-Dad. Maybe she wouldn't even want him there.

Maybe she knows he wouldn't be able to appreciate it the way she'd want him to.

It seems wrong that something so important to Mom could go on without involving Dad at all. But I guess that's what divorce means. You get to stop pretending to care about the other person's interests, stop worrying about their feelings.

I wonder if that's a relief, or if it's sad.

Rather than ask, I leave Mom to her good mood.

I'm on my bed doing homework when my phone buzzes.

I'm afraid to look, afraid it's Peter calling to set up our “real-life” kissing scene. It's Mandy, but that doesn't make my fears go away.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” she says back, then nothing.

“What's up? You called me.”

“No, I know.” Something's wrong, in her voice, I can tell. “Caddie, there's something you should know.”

She's going to tell me that she and Nadia talked. It's not a kissing scene they want, it's a full-on hookup, undies only, something edgy for the jurors from the Bard . . .

“You know Nadia and I talked after rehearsal,” she says.

“Uh-huh.”

“She's worried.”

Of course she is. How could she not be?

“Okay.”

“She's afraid you might drop out,” Mandy says, then quickly adds, “I told her you wouldn't.”

“Okay.”

Another long pause.

“Mandy, just tell me.”

“She asked me to be your understudy,” she says.

My heart drops.

“It makes sense,” she goes on, “because I'm there every day, and because I had some stuff memorized at the audition,” she says. “It doesn't mean she thinks I'm good for the part or anything. I'm just there.”

“Right. I get it.”

“I told her you don't need an understudy, Caddie, that you're going to be fine.”

It takes me a minute to find my voice. “Thanks for saying that,” I say.

“I need you to know it's not something I'm excited about.”

“Sure,” I say, but my mean thoughts that she planned a kissing scene to freak out her friend with the gloves seem less far-fetched now.

“Caddie, can we talk about this?”

“We've been talking about it,” I say.

“No, I know but . . .”

“It's okay, Mandy,” I say. “It isn't your fault I'm a screwup.”

“You're not a—”

“I've got to go, okay?” I can't breathe and talk to her at the same time. “I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Caddie, if you'll tell me what's going on, maybe I can—”

“Good night, Mandy. I'm sorry, I have to go.”

“Okay. Good night, Caddie.”

If I want to keep my part, and I do—
I so want to keep it—
I have to get okay with touching people.

I have to let this stupid fear go.

I cross through the bathroom to Jordan's room. “Can I come in?” My face is pressed to his door. On the far side of that is a chasm; across that, my only sibling.

He grunts, and I open the door to find him huddled in his beanbag chair, slaying orcs.

“Are you winning?” I ask.

“This isn't a game where you win. It's a game where you kill things.”

I watch him play for a while—the Berserker Orcs are harder to kill than the Guard Orcs, and the Shaman Orcs hit you with fireballs, but Jordan kills them quickly.

“It looks too easy,” I say.

“This is a baby world,” he says. “It's fun to kill stuff fast.”

“You pretending they're Dad?”

“No,” he says, and he pauses the game, looks at me hard. “That's not funny.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to be. I've been feeling pretty angry since Dad left.”

Jordan smirks and says, “Join the club.”

This is where I should reach out and ruffle his hair, but touching hair's too much like skin. I need a baby step.

“Jordan. I want to ask you a favor. Will you try something with me?”

“I'm playing.”

“No you're not. You're acting out your aggression.”

He sighs and hits pause. “Fine, what is it?

“Okay. This is going to seem weird, but . . . I want you to pass me the controller.”

Our hands will come close to touching, but we shouldn't
have
to touch. It's a manageable risk. He frowns, but he goes along, holding the controller out to me.

I pull off my gloves.

“Those things are looking tired,” Jordan says, and it's true. I've washed the gloves in the sink, but even that caused the color to bleed. They're too delicate for the washing machine.

But I can't allow myself to buy a new pair. That would be like giving in to gloves for life.

Jordan holds still while I reach forward and pinch the controller between my finger and my thumb.
Don't touch, don't touch,
ricochets, but I tell myself it's okay.

My hands feel wrong, too exposed to the air, the skin stretched and raw.

Jordan was just touching the controller. Touching it might be like touching him. I breathe, push that thought away. I'm already living in a bubble. If I start worrying about touching things other people have touched, I'll need to be vacuum-sealed.

Jordan's skin is so close, heat energy rolls off his hand in waves, burning mine. That's how it feels in my head. If there's anything real to my fears, Jordan's at risk too. Maybe this experiment isn't safe, isn't fair to
him.

“Caddie!” he says, and his other hand clamps on my wrist, the feeling of skin touching skin and the shock of a burn, both at once. He shoves the controller up into my hand and away. “There. Are you happy?”

I bite the inside of my lip and catch a few short breaths—can't let him see that I'm fighting to breathe.

“Caddie, what's your deal?” Jordan asks. He's annoyed, but he looks concerned, too. I don't like to think of Jordan worrying about me on top of everything else. I drop the controller—“Careful! They're breakable!”—and get out of his room, leave the gloves on the floor. No good touching them until after I've washed all the danger away.

I shut Jordan's door to the bathroom and wash under the bathtub faucet, where I can scrub all the way up my arms several times without soaking the floor.

The water hits my hand, runs between my fingers and down, and I rest my cheek on the side of the tub. Nothing's saner than clean, white porcelain. This is my life. Caddie Finn, here and now. There is nothing to fear. Nothing to do but keep breathing.

Except that this moment can't last. Another one's coming, and I have to keep going, keep doing, keep touching, messing up, getting messed with. What would those moments feel like, to drown like Ophelia, skirts billowing at her sides so she floats for a time before getting dragged down? Only that one moment left. Nothing to fear coming after.

They say that Ophelia died singing.

The water's running warm, so I stop up the drain and let the tub fill. Splashing around in the faucet won't wash away this fear—I've got to go under.

I roll over the side and let myself drop, not even feeling the water at first, only the warmth as it soaks through my clothes—jeans heavy and stuck to my skin—the warmest warm blanket swallows me whole.

This is the last moment.

I imagine it's true, try to feel like Ophelia would feel.

This is the moment. No, wait, no—this one.

My body's too long to drown in a tub, except Mom always said you can drown in even one inch if you fall asleep. I bend my knees, slide down so the water can cover my face. It's too hot at first, makes me want to come up for air, but I hold on.

My pulse thumps in my chest, in my brain,
knock, knock, Caddie, come up,
but I fight.

Ophelia's death is described as so peaceful, but real drowning wouldn't be. Bodies fight to stay alive. What if you breathe in the water, choose it, tell your body to let go?

I bet it still hurts.

A bang on the door rattles me, and up I come, gasping. No conscious thought from my brain to my body, just instinct, popping me up and out.

“Can I get in there?” Jordan calls.

My heart thuds so hard it hurts, and its echo—it pounds from inside. I can't hear right.

“I'll be a while,” I yell back. “Use the guest bath.”

My lungs breathe on their own, fast. They don't need any help. It's almost like hyperventilating, but this time I
need
the air.

If Jordan hadn't banged on the door . . . What was I playing with?

I might be crazy, but I'm not suicidal.