Little Blackbird (11 page)

“Oh, I have a say, but it makes sense to study law or medicine. Those two professions will definitely make money.”

“Money isn’t everything,” Kate said instinctively, hearing her mama’s voice in her head. The clouds shifted again, and thin rays of moonlight trickled down onto them, outlining their dark forms.

“Isn’t it?” Geoffrey asked. “It gets you what you need.”

“Not everything.”

Geoffrey turned to face her, which made her profoundly aware of how close they were sitting. His body felt too near hers, with his arm against hers, warming her skin, and their hands side by side.

“Yeah? What can’t it get you?” Geoffrey asked.

She leaned away from him, letting particles of air move in between their bodies. “Happiness. Love.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “You don’t think money attracts those things? It can’t
buy
love, but women are attracted to money–”

“Not all women want money,” Kate argued, pulling her knees toward her chest, creating a barrier between them.

“Don’t they? Don’t all women want security? To be taken care of? A house? Nice clothes? The ability to go out and do what they want?” He rotated his body so he faced her, and his knees pressed against her thigh. “You don’t want nice things?”

Kate’s desires tugged inside her, closing her throat. She did want nice clothes like the other girls. She wanted red lipstick and ballet flats in multiple colors. She wanted to fit in so badly. She didn’t have the charm Evan had, but wealth could give her what she needed to belong with them like he had.

What hadn’t Kate thought of giving up in order to be like them, to be a part of their world? She stretched out her legs and stared at Geoffrey’s shadowed face.

“I want nice things,” she whispered. Shame burned through her belly, consuming her. “But at what price? What would I have to give up?”

“What if you didn’t have to give up anything? What if you could have it all?” Geoffrey asked, his voice as quiet as hers.

“No one can have it all.”

He moved one hand to her thigh, and Kate looked down at his thin fingers spanning across her jeans. She paused on an inhale, and she lost feeling in her fingertips as blood rushed to her heart. When she lifted her gaze, he was so close. So close she could hear him breathing.

“What if
we
could?” he asked as he leaned toward her.

“Impossible,” she said, unable to move as she watched him come nearer the way a rabbit watches a wolf approach from across the meadow.
He’s going to kiss me.

“Is it?”

Geoffrey pressed his lips against hers. Warm and gentle. A chaotic crickets’ chorus erupted from the reeds near the eddy. A mockingbird bulleted out a quick, staccato song. Then Kate panicked. She jerked away from Geoffrey, nearly tumbling over backward.

“What? What is it?” he asked, pressing his hand against her thigh to keep her from moving. “Did you hear someone?”

“I–I don’t–I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never kissed anyone,” she blurted. She slapped her hand over her mouth.

Geoffrey laughed, and Kate felt the emotions swell so brutally in her chest that she feared she would crack open. She blinked rapidly because her vision blurred with tears. Her mind screamed,
Get out of here! Get out now before you make a complete fool of yourself!
She tried to stand, but Geoffrey had a firm hold on her thigh and he grabbed her wrist.

“Cool it,” he said. “It’s okay–”

“But you laughed at me,” she said, squirming, looking anywhere but at him.

“Not
at
you. I was just surprised. It’s cute.
You’re
cute.”

She stopped resisting him, and her body sagged forward. She stared out over the water. The moon’s reflection created a thin, wavy line that divided the river in half. “It’s cute that no one has wanted to kiss me?”

“Just because you haven’t kissed a guy doesn’t mean one hasn’t wanted to kiss you.”

Kate made a noise in her throat. “The likelihood that someone has wanted to kiss me is zero. I’m probably the only sixteen-year-old who’s never been kissed.”

“I doubt that.”

The feeble light painted Geoffrey’s face in black and gray. Kate focused her gaze on his eyes. “But out of your friends? Am I the only one?”

“My friends are different. And different doesn’t always mean better either. Plus, it doesn’t take much for a guy your age to have kissed a girl. Guys are willing to kiss the first girl who agrees, regardless of whether or not we really like her. And I like that no one has ever kissed you before. That’ll make me the first.”

Geoffrey slipped his hand from her wrist and grabbed her hand. Kate shivered. His fingers closed around hers. The owl hooted.
Are you approving or disapproving?
she thought, looking across the river toward the tree hollow where she knew the owl liked to perch.

“Kate,” Geoffrey whispered, “stop thinking so hard and look at me.”

Before she could turn her face all the way toward him, he was there, as close as a breath, kissing her. Kate’s thoughts jumbled together.
Am I doing this right?
What
am I doing? Will Mama wake up and find us? Should I–

Geoffrey rubbed his hand up and down her bare arm, awakening sensations in her skin, causing her lower lip to tingle. She leaned into him, drawn toward him like a sunflower to the light. Her fingers ached with a desire she’d never felt. She
needed
to touch him, to see if he was real.

Kate reached up her hand and placed it on his shoulder and then slid it to the summer-warm bare skin on his neck. She felt his pulse quicken beneath her fingers. Her fingertips found his jawline and then his face, where stubble had grown prickly like fresh thorns on a rose bush.

Geoffrey slid his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him. Kate’s breath escaped in a sigh that caused Geoffrey’s hold to tighten. He was too close, invading her space, her thoughts, stealing her breath. A tremble started low in her belly and then shuddered out to every nerve ending. She put her hands on Geoffrey’s chest and pressed.

When the space between them widened, both of them inhaled deeply as though they’d been denied air.

Geoffrey exhaled. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

Kate pressed her lips together and closed her eyes. He tasted minty like peppermint leaves. “Don’t believe what?”

“That you’ve never done that before.” He rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled. “Because I wasn’t even standing up and my legs feel wobbly.”

Nervous energy caused Kate to laugh. She covered her mouth, smiling against her fingers. Then she sat up straight, held her head up, and looked at him. “I’ll get better,” she said plainly.

Then Geoffrey laughed, and it bounced across the water, skipping like a polished pebble, before it shook the trees on the opposite bank. The owl hooted again. Geoffrey pulled her against him into a quick hug before setting her upright again. “If you get better, my heart might stop.”

I’ll give you mine.

“We can test that theory though, if you want,” he said, moving closer again.

“Y
OU NEED TO get out of this house,” Kate’s mama said. “Get out there and help your dad. Move the wood pile around. Plant those asters.
Anything
. Just get out of the house.”

Kate was in the process of re-alphabetizing the books on her shelf. She’d paused long enough to open her worn copy of
Peter Pan
and read her favorite passage. Now, she gaped at her mama. “Ma’am?”

Her mama created swirling patterns in front of her with her hands. “The air is pink and purple and shot with electricity.
Every
where, Little Blackbird. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I can barely
breathe
in this house with you. You’re sucking up all the oxygen.”

Kate lowered her hands, and
Peter Pan
brushed against her hip. “I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be sorry, just get outside. Get that restless energy out of your system. Shoo,” her mama said, swooping into Kate’s room and pushing her out the doorway. “And don’t come back inside until it’s gone.”

What if it’s never gone?
Kate wondered as she walked into the backyard. Did she even
want
it to be gone,
it
being her snarled emotions for Geoffrey? She couldn’t stop thinking about him kissing her. Kissing her until her lips were too pink and he’d imprinted himself there. She touched her fingertips to her lips, and even though it was days later, she felt the ghost of him still lingering.

A patch of sunflowers exploded into bloom, shooting golden petals from their heads like missiles. The petals twirled through the air before landing at Kate’s feet, leaving the sunflower heads naked and trembling. Kate inhaled sharply. She scooped up the petals and ran from the yard, intent on hiding the evidence.

Kate ran all the way through the forest until she reached the divide where her family’s land ended and the state park’s began. She wandered through the pines, dropping sunflower petals like Gretel had dropped bread crumbs. She reached the edge of the valley inside the park and leaned against a tree trunk, looking down at the sun-soaked, green land. She’d hiked down to the valley’s basin numerous times with Evan, but today she only wanted to sit on the edge and see if the energy would leak out of her, see if the wind would take more and more of it from her body on each exhale.

She thought about the time she and Evan had been hiking in the basin the summer before he left for college. They’d been laughing because Evan had tripped and fallen into stagnant water and smelled like a dung pile. Then she’d collapsed, still as death beneath a premonition.

Kate opened her eyes. Evan leaned over her, his face blotting out the sun. He slipped one arm beneath her back and pushed her into a sitting position.

“Quick! Don’t think. What did you see?”

They’d been playing this game since her tenth birthday. Evan had ways of making the detestable easier to swallow. He made her ability seem less like a curse and more like a gift.

“A tombstone in the sunlight. New and shiny. An angry cat stuck in a tree in Mr. Parker’s yard. Some guy with dark hair eating birthday cake.”

Evan laughed. “Wow, those are tough to piece together. Let’s see
…
The cat went for a walk in the cemetery and then decided it was time to go home. Home is Mr. Parker’s house, of course. He has a fat cat named Gertrude. But it’s Mr. Parker’s birthday, and he wanted to eat his cake in peace, so he refused to let Gertrude in, and now she’s mad as fire and hissing at him from the tree.”

Kate chuckled and rubbed her eyes with fisted hands. When she lowered her hands, she blinked at Evan. Her throat squeezed and tears swirled in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, dropping down beside her, “what are those for? You didn’t like my story?”

Kate shook her head. “No. I mean, yes, I did, but it’s not that. It’s
…
you’re leaving.”

“For college, not forever.”

Kate frowned. “It’ll feel like forever. I won’t have anyone when you leave.”

“You have this whole town.” He smiled at her.

Kate huffed. “This whole town thinks I’m your weird baby sister.”

Evan laughed. “First of all, it’s obvious you’re not a baby anymore. You do have that habit of blubbering and whining like one–” He winced when Kate hit his arm. “Okay, okay, I wasn’t serious, but you’re wrong. No one has ever told me they thought you were weird.”

Kate stood and brushed herself off. She wiped at her eyes. “No one is going to tell
you
that. I just know it. Everyone likes you.”

Evan stood and squared his shoulders. “What can I say? I’m irresistible.”

Kate rolled her eyes. “And humble.”

Evan laughed and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “You’ll always have me, and you should give the town a chance. You might see they aren’t so bad.”

“But what about
…
about, well, you know.”

“Your gift?”

“Curse.”

“Gift,” Evan said and squeezed her shoulder. “They’ll probably think it’s the coolest superpower they’ve ever heard of.”

Kate scoffed. “You always look on the bright side.”

“Is there another side?”

“You are so irritating when you’re optimistic,” she teased. “And you smell like a cow patty.”

“I aim to please.”

Kate looked at him, and they both laughed. The sun warmed their cheeks, and she prayed for the summer to stretch on forever.

A twig snapped behind Kate and snatched her from her memory. She glanced over her shoulder. A young man skidded down the slope, flailing his arms and knocking into low branches. He barely stopped himself from landing flat on his back, not more than thirty feet away from her. Kate jumped to her feet.

“Geoffrey?” Her hand flew to her chest. “Are you okay?” She rushed over to him, too surprised to see him to register the way her whole body thrilled at the sight of him. “Why are you out hiking in your brace?”