Holly Black (50 page)

“Wow,” Leta said, matching the urgent quiet of Agnes’s tone. “Did y’all do anything else?” She wanted to know. She didn’t want to know.

“Not yet,” Agnes giggled, and Leta felt the words like two quick gunshots. “We have to get you a boyfriend, Leta.”

Leta zipped her hoodie up over her mouth. “I’m working on it,” she said, her voice sweatshirt-muffled.

The bathroom rumbled with flushing, and the girl came out of the stall with her head down. She rushed for the bathroom door, not even stopping to wash her hands.

“Gross,” Agnes said. “Seventh graders. What can you do?”

WILD AND UNTAMED THING

Wednesday afternoons Leta spent at the Popcorn Players Community Theater—“where the play’s the thing!” The theater was housed in the city civic center, a big drum of a building with an indoor walking track around the perimeter on the second floor. When Leta walked in, Cawley was perched on a ladder in the center, attaching papier-mâché flowers with a staple gun.

Seeing her, he bellowed, “Juliet! Forget thy father and refuse thy name!”

“Cawley!” Leta hissed, embarrassed. She dropped her jacket and purse on a folding chair. “What did I miss?”

Cawley hopped off the ladder and squinted up at the civic center’s walking track, where two older ladies race-walked in circles, their jewelry glinting under the harsh fluorescent lighting. “Well, those blue-hairs in the matching pink track suits have gone around about fifteen times now. I think they’re going for the gold. Oh, hey, look what I found in the props box.” He pulled out a gold lamé tuxedo jacket. “I know it’s not exact, but I thought you could use it for
Rocky Horror
. I mean, it’s sorta close to Columbia’s.”

Leta slipped it on. The jacket was a man’s and too big, but it could work. “This is great. Thanks.”

“Sure.” Cawley pulled a package of vanilla wafer cookies out of his backpack and offered one to Leta. “So, where’s Agnes today?”

“With Roger at some motocross thing.” The force of the words sent wet cookie fluff flying from her mouth to her cheek.

“She’s into motocross now?”

“No. She’s into Roger.” Leta thought of Agnes’s confession in the girls’ bathroom. It made her stomach hurt. “I need some milk.”

They took the stairs to the dark cool of the civic center’s basement where the wheezing vending machines lived. Leta pushed A7 and a plastic carton of milk ka-thunked its way into the tray below. She gulped it greedily, but her insides still burned.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Leta began. “Agnes let Roger finger her.”

Cawley’s eyes widened. “Whoa.”

Leta buried her face in her hands. “God, I shouldn’t have told you that—she’d kill me! Don’t say anything! Promise me!”

“I promise. Are they doing it?”

“No! Gah, Cawley. Don’t be gross.”

“Sorry.” Cawley tucked his hair behind his ear. “So…have you ever, you know?”

Leta felt the blush to her toes. She laughed too loud. “No! God, no. I mean, not…I mean, no.”

“I wasn’t trying to say that you did or anything or, you know, I was just—well, since you said that about Aggie…”

He let the words die and they each took another swig of their drinks. Leta stared hard at the sign on the wall that said
MAINTENANCE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
.

“What about you?” she heard herself ask. “Have you ever, you know,
done that
with anybody?”

“Huh-uh,” Cawley said, and his hair fell forward again, covering his face.

“Actually, I’ve never been kissed.” Leta didn’t know why she said it, but she couldn’t take it back now.

Cawley let his hand rest on top of hers. “I’d kiss you. If you want.”

Leta had imagined this moment. She’d imagined it with Tom. Tom breaking form in marching band to pull her to the field, where he would gaze into her eyes, kissing her passionately while the marching band formed a perfect heart around them. She did not imagine this: strange, quirky Cawley with wafer cookies on his breath offering to kiss her as some sort of charity mission, like he could collect karma points for it to post into some little karma booklet and trade it in for prizes later.

Leta pulled her sweater down over the roll of softness around her middle. “Um, thanks, but…”

The metal stairs clanged with the arrival of the senior-citizen exercisers. Cawley took Leta’s hand, leading her quickly into the dark of the rarely used men’s restroom down the hall.

“The door has a lock,” he said, and she heard it click. It occurred to Leta that she should probably be a little scared, but it didn’t seem like this was really happening to her.

“Okay, here goes,” Cawley said.

In the dark, Leta sensed Cawley’s face homing in on hers from above. He was a good four inches taller than she was, and Leta had to angle her head up and to the side. There was a bit of ticklish fuzz on his upper lip, and his breath was warm and vanilla-cookie sweet. They went in for the kiss at the same time and bumped noses hard.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” Cawley said.

“It’s okay.” Leta rubbed the sting away.

Cawley touched her arm. “Try again?”

This time, Cawley angled her face slightly sideways, a slight adjustment that avoided another nose collision. His lips mashed against hers. Leta held perfectly still and wondered what she was supposed to do now. Was she supposed to be overcome with passion? Was it supposed to come naturally or did you have to practice? God, she should have tried Frenching her pillow like Agnes told her to, because now, here she was in the community theater men’s bathroom trying to kiss a boy and feeling nothing but embarrassed and slightly repulsed. His hand found her waist and she flinched at his touch.

Cawley pulled away. “Sorry. Did I get your boobs?”

“No!” Leta laughed in embarrassment.

“’Cause I wasn’t trying to, I swear.”

“No, it’s fine if, um…it’s okay.”

Cawley’s mouth pressed against hers again. His hand slipped back to her waist and Leta tried sucking in her stomach but then she didn’t have enough air to actually kiss and she had to let it go. His tongue lay on hers like a piece of fish she hadn’t decided whether she wanted to eat or eject. Should she do something with it? If so, what? Maybe she should dart it in and out quickly, cobra-style?

Cawley stopped. “Not so wide,” he whispered.

“Sorry,” Leta said. She’d opened her mouth big like going to the dentist, in order to give his tongue room. Now, she closed it, and it was a little better. They kissed for a few more seconds and Leta broke away. Her face was warm and her upper lip was sweaty; she had the overwhelming desire to escape. “We should probably get back before somebody comes in.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll go first and you can follow. But not too closely, okay? Count to twenty. No, count to fifty. Okay? Fifty?”

“Your wish is my command,” Cawley joked.

While Cawley was counting to fifty in the bathroom, Leta made a beeline for the smoke-filled theater management office to ask if she could stuff envelopes for the upcoming pledge drive instead of painting flats. The manager, Mr. Weingarten, handed her a fat stack, and Leta wedged herself in a far corner between a file cabinet and an enormous fake plant where she couldn’t be seen. The kiss was a letdown, not at all like the kisses she saw on TV. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to do it again. Leta spent the rest of the hour licking away the memory of it until her tongue was dry as cotton. At five o’clock, she bolted, but Cawley caught up with her at the civic center’s front doors.

“Sorry,” Leta said, her words rushing out on a weak stream of breath. “Weingarten made me stuff envelopes.”

“Drag-a-mundo.” Cawley smiled. “Hey, thanks, you know, for earlier.”

Leta’s face grew hot. “Sure. Well, I gotta go. My mom’s waiting.”

Cawley leaned in, and Leta practically fell through the doors, running for the safety of her mother’s car.

“Hey, see you over at the Frankenstein Place,” Cawley called after her.

Leta pretended not to hear.

HOT PATOOTIE—BLESS MY SOUL!

“Did he kiss you? Oh, my god—details!” Agnes squealed into the phone.

Leta pulled the phone cord as far as it would allow onto the back patio, closing the door to a small crack. The concrete was cold under her bare feet. Through the window she could see her mother on the couch reading a biography of one of the presidents, her hair in rollers and her mouth set into a hard line, as if the book were disappointing her somehow but she was determined to read till the end.

“Yes. Sorta. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Did y’all kiss or not?”

“We…did?”

Agnes screeched on the other end so that Leta had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Oh, my god! I can’t believe you kissed Creepy Cawley!”

“He is not creepy. He’s actually pretty funny. And nice.”

“For a weirdo.”

“You know what? Forget I said anything. God.”

“I’m sorry,” Agnes said, but she was still laughing a little, and Leta wasn’t sure she really meant it. “So, tell me—was he any good? Oh, my god, did he try to feel you up?”

“No?—”

“Did you know he’s adopted? Like he thought his grandma was his mom but it turns out his Aunt Susie in Oklahoma is his
real
mom. She gave him up to his grandmother so she could go to college and get on with her life. I guess he found it out last year. He asked his mom—his real mom—if he could come live with her in Oklahoma, and she said no.”

“Oh,” Leta said. She didn’t like that Agnes knew something about Cawley that she didn’t.

“Jay McCoy told me they got drunk once in a field and Cawley got quieter and quieter, and then, all of a sudden, he stood up and started screaming at the top of his lungs and hitting at this old oil drum. Remember last year when he broke his hand and he said it was a botched alien probe? Well, that’s what really happened.”

Leta could see Cawley in her mind then—the uncooperative blond hair, the crooked smile, the gap between his two front teeth, the secondhand-store bowling shirt he wore that said “Eugene” on the pocket. All those things she’d always found comforting about him now seemed turned; he’d gone from dorky-cute to intolerable in one phone call, and she couldn’t seem to reverse it.

“Roger and I almost did it today,” Agnes said suddenly.

Leta sank to the ground out of sight of the window. “You
what
?”

“I want to do it with him,” Agnes said as if she were planning a class trip.

“Are you sure you want to have…” Leta lowered her voice to a whisper. “
Sex
with him?”

“Who are you on the phone with?” Leta’s mother appeared on the porch, startling her.

“The Kremlin!” Leta snapped, her heart beating wildly.

“You shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing. You never know who’s listening in.”

“What’s your mother’s problem now?” Agnes snarled on the other end.

“She thinks the FBI’s tapped our phones.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Agnes whistled.

“Give me the phone.” Her mother made a swipe for it, but Leta dodged her. “It’s nearly ten o’clock, Leta Jane. Tell Agnes good night.”

“I’m not finished.”

“It’s late!”

“I’m not finished!” Leta held fast to the phone.

“Well, don’t stay on too long. It’s a school night,” her mother said. She padded silently to her room and closed the door with a soft
thwick
. Leta knew she’d won this round, but suddenly, she wished she hadn’t. It didn’t feel safe; it was like she’d taken her first steps in space only to find that her line wasn’t anchored to anything and she was hopelessly adrift.

“I better go,” Agnes said. “My dad just got home.”

“We have to talk, though,” Leta insisted. “Do you wanna go to the mall tomorrow?”

“Can’t. I’m going to Roger’s.”

“Oh,” Leta said. “Okay.”

“Not for
that
,” Agnes scoffed. “I’m sitting in on his band’s rehearsal.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I know! Isn’t that so cool?”

“Wow,” Leta said again.

“Don’t let your mother drive you too crazy.”

“I won’t.” When Leta hung up, she realized they’d never finished talking about her sort-of-maybe first kiss, and all her unasked questions settled inside her, heavy as sand.

That night, Leta embraced her pillow, imagining Tom’s face in the whiteness above her. “I love you,” she said, because you were supposed to say that when you kissed. She pressed her lips to the pillow. Her tongue ventured out, meeting with an unwelcoming, cotton starchiness that robbed her mouth of all moisture.

With a sigh, she flipped the pillow over, wet spot down, and stared at the wall. In the next room, Stevie’s TV was on. She could hear the drone of it, all the shows and commercials blurring into one another. Stevie was talking, too, saying words that she knew didn’t match—cat when he meant house, football instead of man. She wondered if it made any sense to him and if it mattered that no one else understood. Was it lonely not to be able to communicate with other human beings, or was it a relief to stop trying?

Across the hall, soft, strangled cries came from her mom’s bedroom. It reminded Leta of a nature show she’d seen once where a bear cub had caught its foot in a trap. It cried for help, and when none arrived, its cries became a muted yelp it used to comfort itself until sleep came. Leta turned away from the sounds in her mother’s room. She pressed herself closer to the wall and let the TV’s soft, repetitive noise lull her to sleep as if she were five and her parents were having a dinner party, their muffled voices in the living room a soothing wall of sound that stood between her and the rest of the world.

Leta awoke to the sound of Stevie screaming and her mother shouting. Still dazed, she stumbled into her brother’s room. Her mother had him pinned to the bed, but she was no match for him. His arm caught her across the face and she flew back, blood pooling at her lip. Stevie shook for a second and settled.

“It’s over,” Leta said, but she was trembling.

“I didn’t sign up for this.” Her mother stifled a sob. She held up a blood-smeared hand. “I need to change him now.”

Leta knew this was her cue to leave, so she turned on the little TV again, working the rabbit ears until the image was clear, letting the soft constant sound numb them all into a sleepful waking.