Don't Touch (3 page)

“I don't think we're in Kansas anymore,” I say, and Mandy laughs.

“It's like a rainbow exploded in here, right?”

“No, I love it.”

A few students who clearly aren't being oriented camp out by their lockers, playing cards as if they're completely at home.

“What are they doing?” I ask.

Mandy gives me a look. “Playing cards.”

“No, I mean, if school hasn't started yet?”

She shrugs. “Setting up lockers? Helping teachers get stuff ready?” Then she catches on to my confusion. “Most students actually
like
being here.”

“They let people hang out in the halls when school's out?”

“Yeah, what are we going to do? Start an art riot?”

Mandy spots a tall guy at his locker and makes a face.

“Hold on a sec. Me and Peter have talking to do.”

Mandy mentioned boy trouble. Could this be the guy?

Peter's red-brown hair falls over his glasses—the hip, nerdy kind with the plastic frames. He's wearing a paint-spattered T-shirt, cargo pants, and work boots. He's broad-shouldered, not huge, but there's something about how he stands. Peter takes up space and doesn't seem to mind.

He's at home in his skin.

I feel like I
know
him or like I'm
supposed
to know him, but I'm sure we've never met. Mom's always said she's a little bit psychic—that every time she's met someone who's going to be important in her life, she's known at first sight. I don't really believe in all that, but there's some kind of energy shouting at me.

Crazily, I find myself hoping that Peter's
not
Mandy's guy—a stupid hope because it's not like
I
could be with Peter. Being with a guy generally involves touching a guy.

My pulse picks up and I feel a bit hot, but I don't think that's only from fear.

When Peter sees Mandy coming, he holds up his hands as if to say “don't shoot,” and he smiles, guilty and loving it, totally game. Mandy steps close to him, and even though Peter's at least a head taller, the way she gathers herself into one charged column makes them seem equally matched.

“You. Do. Not,” she says, each word a barb, “touch my car.”

From the tirade that follows, I pick up the facts. Peter is
not
Mandy's boyfriend; that's Drew—yes, from the rehearsal room hookup. Drew lives across the street from the Birmingham Country Club. Last weekend when Mandy was at Drew's, Peter attached a winch to her car and towed it out of the driveway and onto the golf course—into a sand trap.

The more Mandy gets in his face, the wider Peter smiles.

“Drew's the one who gave me the idea,” he says, and the air around Mandy sizzles and sparks.

For my benefit, Peter says, “Mandy wouldn't stop complaining about having to ride in Drew's truck.”

His “ride” comes out “rahhhd.” The most common Birmingham accent squeezes vowels into nasal diphthongs, but Peter's vowels take up wide-open spaces, true Southern drawl.

“That truck is an eyesore!” says Mandy.

“Ah-ah-ah.” Peter holds up one finger. “Watch what you say or it's back to the sand trap for you, missy.”

She pinches her fingers and thumb together like a beak and jabs his chest just below the collarbone. He groans, still laughing, and puts up a hand in defense.

“She should be thanking me,” Peter says to me, “for settling the fight. See, she needed Drew's truck to tow her out, but he wouldn't do it until she said the magic words: ‘Your badass truck is superior to my lame-ass car in every way, and I will never complain about it again.' Problem solved.”

She goes for another jab, but he catches her wrists and holds her at bay so her kicks miss his shins. Mandy laughs too, but she doesn't stop kicking.

I step back and steady myself at the wall, ready to bolt if they swing around toward me.

In one swift reversal, Peter catches Mandy in a bear hug, pinning her back to his chest. Our eyes meet—Peter's eyes are green—and for one second it's me he's holding tight.

My breath catches. That kind of touching is definitely. Not. Allowed.

Mandy wrenches out of Peter's grip, and only then, when Peter's eyes drop, do I realize I'd been frozen. It couldn't have been more than a second, but it feels like so much longer that I couldn't look away.

I try to steady my breathing.
Each breath is enough. There is no need to struggle for air.

Mandy and Peter face each other in a standoff.

“Truce?” Peter says.

“Payback,” says Mandy, “when you least expect it.”

“I live for danger.”

Peter catches me staring and stares back as if we know each other well enough for that to be okay.

It's unnerving.

“Caddie,” he says, like he's testing it out. I can't think how he knows my name, but I like the way it sounds in his voice. Does he have this effect on everyone?

He takes a step toward me—
Don't touch!

“Excuse me,” Mandy says, “I've got to check my hair for lice,” and she stalks to the bathroom a few yards down the hall.

“I think she just said I've got cooties,” Peter says. “That is so fourth grade.”

“For us it was third,” I say, surprising myself with how fast something flirty comes out of my mouth.

“So you were advanced. Way ahead of me.”

He steps closer. I back up. No words come.

It's not comfortable holding eye contact for this long, but it's not safe to look away, either, not with him standing so close. I have no script for talking to Peter.

“So, do you do that a lot?” I say finally. “Steal people's cars? You could have gotten arrested.”

Peter looks back over his shoulder. I can't tell if he's already bored with me or embarrassed by talking about himself, or maybe he's actually afraid the cops are listening. He seems like a guy who might have earned a spot on Birmingham's most-wanted pranksters list.

“I get a lot of great ideas,” Peter says, looking back at me. “I'm just not always good at sorting out which ones are, you know, legal.” Peter smiles the way cats stretch, easily and with his whole self.

“Hey, how did you know my name?” I ask.

“You know mine,” he says.

“I . . . I heard Mandy say your name.”

He raises one finger toward me and closes the distance between us. I step back and stumble.

“Maybe it should say, ‘My name is Jumpy,'” he says.

His finger, too close, points at the nametag I'd forgotten I was wearing. There's space between us, but I
feel
the threat of his touch, potential energy between the tip of his finger and my heart.

I nod, rattled, like he's picked me up by the shoulders and shaken me. “I should check on Mandy.”

I step far around him, keeping him in my sights as I make my way down the hall and back through the bathroom door. I take extra time and when Mandy and I finally emerge, the coast's clear. Peter's gone.

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Dad taught me about potential energy.

It's the energy waiting to get used when a still object finally moves. A glass that's about to slip from a hand, a ball set to roll downhill, a car tipping over the edge of a cliff all have potential energy.

Dad had it on the day he left. He stood in the den with his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels, back and forth, as if he were standing in sand with the tide coming in.

All the tension, resentment, and whatever else made my parents split up sloshed around him like a wave and spilled closer to me, pooled.

The air felt unnaturally still—conditioned and vacuum-sealed to keep June outside. Dust motes hovered in the air as if frozen in time, caught by the afternoon rays angling through the back woods and the den's big bay windows.

A body in motion remains in motion. That was Dad, going away to do research in physics at the University of Virginia.

A body at rest remains at rest unless something makes it move. That was me, not about to hug Dad good-bye. I didn't want any part of that bad-feeling wave. That's when the magic words crept back in:
Don't touch.

Any second, Dad might have tipped forward, crossed the couple of feet between him and me, and taken my hand, wrapped me up in a hug.

But he didn't.

And I didn't budge from my seat in the big chaise lounge with its pillows stacked up like sandbags, its high, wide arms two barricades. I felt powerful keeping my distance while Dad hugged Mom good-bye.

She sobbed, but not Dad. Not me. Mom says I'm “emotionally contained” just like him.

My brother, Jordan, on the other hand, exploded. He screamed in Dad's face, broke a vase, and ran into the woods, not to return until Dad was long gone.

It probably confused Dad that I wasn't clinging to him, begging him to stay. I thought,
Let him be confused.
Even if I tried to hold on, he's stronger than me. And even if he weren't, a person can't hold on to another person forever. At some point, their muscles give out, or the authorities get called.

Would he try to kiss me good-bye, squeeze my hand? Better not.

Or what?

Or this pain sloshing back and forth between us will be permanent, suck us all down. Touch another person's skin, and Dad will never come home. There will never again be enough air. This family will stay broken, drown.

Dad said, “Well, sweetie, this is it,” and patted the chaise a few safe inches away from my feet. Even that felt too close, but I'd built a wall between us that he couldn't cross.

“Have a good drive,” I said.

Dad looked surprised, maybe even relieved, at my calm. He didn't force things, didn't make me stand up and give him a hug. I almost wished he would.

The game might have been over as soon as it started.

But Dad didn't need a hug from me. He just waved.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

“Was it okay?” Mom wants to know as soon as I get in the car. She reaches over and squeezes my thigh.

Clothes make it safe.
I take a deep breath. Touching through clothes makes me nervous, but it can't wreck the game; it's important to stick to that rule.

“It was good.”

“How's your stress?” she says lightly, as if that's a question every mother asks.

“Not too bad.”

It's not entirely a lie. I managed to keep breathing.

I return Mom's touch by placing my hand on her sleeve. She could suddenly shift, but it's a calculated risk. Mom would notice if I never touched her at all.

“How were the dog portraits?”

“Furry,” Mom says with a grimace.

Mom has a small business photographing weddings, senior portraits, and, yes, dogs. She used to do artistic photography, too, but it's been ages since she did her own work.

Even though Mom shouldn't have meddled, I say, “Thank you for getting Mandy as my Peer Pal.”

“I didn't do that,” she says, turning onto the steeply curving road that will take us back down the hill. “I might have if I'd thought of it. That's lucky!”

Could Mandy have requested
me
? The idea makes me floaty.

The heat and humidity have been working up to a fight all day, one big pressure cooker. By the time we pull into the driveway, heat lightning's started lashing out and thunderclouds have a chokehold on the sun.

The trees whip and creak with the wind. Almost every year during hurricane season, one of the big trees surrounding our house topples over. Dad would always trim them back to protect the roof and power lines, but every once in a while, the wind helps them do damage anyway.

In the den, Jordan's watching a wrestling match in the dark. Mom goes straight for the lamps, and Jordan cringes from the light like a vampire.

“Jordan, what have we said about food on the couch?” Mom says, and he glares at us over a bag of potato chips. It's almost cute how his floppy hair and the bag frame his glower. Almost.

“Dad eats on the couch.” Leave it to Jordan to defend himself with one of Mom and Dad's ongoing power struggles.

“Nice try,” says Mom. “Dad's not here.”

She goes for the bag, but Jordan pulls back and it rips at the top. Yellow, greasy crumbs fly all over Mom's upholstery and the Oriental rug.

For a moment, there's a crease in Mom's brow—maybe she's going to let Jordan have it. Then she sighs the crease away.

“This is your mess to clean up,” Mom says, heading for the kitchen.

“I
am
cleaning up,” Jordan says as he picks potato chip crumbs off his shirt and eats them.

I flop down as far from Jordan as the sofa will allow, and he tucks his feet more tightly under himself. Sometimes, I think he can sense that I need extra space. More often, I think it's his own thing, his line in the sand that no one, not even me, is allowed to cross.

Mom returns with the mini-vac like I knew she would.

“I thought you were going to spend the night over at Connor's,” Mom says.

“I was.”

“And?”

“His brother goes back to college soon. They're going hunting, them and their dad.” His face couldn't be more flat, but he's watching the wrestlers with an intensity that gives me the creeps, as if he'd like to try those moves on Connor—or maybe on us.

“You couldn't go?” Mom says. “I would have let you go.”

“It's a
family
thing,” Jordan says. He's being manipulative, but it works. Mom doesn't even fuss at him to take his feet off the table as she runs the vac under his legs.