Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (17 page)
So this was what it felt like to fall in love. Stupid and giddy and floating, unfailing, invincible. But mostly stupid.
Dad inspected me in silence. I had the feeling he knew exactly what was going through my mind. There was very little I could hide from him.
Dad checked his wristwatch and stood up. "The ice cream should be ready now," he said.
We retrieved the ice cream from the cellar and sat at the kitchen table. Two spoonfuls in and I was ready to hurl. Dad choked and spat his out. "Oh, God," he said, wiping his mouth. "Did we forget the vanilla?"
"What did you do to my kitchen?!"
Granny was home.
Dad and I cleaned up around the kitchen while Granny supervised, eyeing us distrustfully. I took a quick bath and changed my clothes. I realized I hadn't checked my e-mail in a while; I went into the front room and turned the computer on. Balto had tired of his outdoor excursion and lay curled up by the closet door. I gave him a quick pat on the head.
My first e-mail was from Annie.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Sales
Hi, Skylar! Guess what? Sales have picked up. I don't know what did it, really. (Log in and see for yourself!)
What do you think we should do with the money now that Mr. Takes Flight is all better? I suppose we could keep it. It might be nice to have some pocket cash without bothering the tribal council. Meet me at the grotto tonight and I'll give you your share.
Love,
A
The next was from Kaya, my friend from the Navajo reservation.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: package
thanks for the cookies. you're a doll.
p.s. do you have mary GL's phone number?
And my most recent e-mail was from Rafael.
From: [email protected]
Subject: (no subject)
hey
ok i cant figur ot how this thing woks
wors
works
nhyway the shinny tourament is cokming up soon and if you're gonna play you need to be on a team
your dad sad somethng about playing togethe or whatever
ayway i play with holly and daisy ad when we can get mre people we compete
10 people=team
so you me holly daisy your dad=5
we ned 5 more
aubreys always taken hes the best player
dont ask asnnie she sucks ive seen her play
my grandma coud kick her ass and shes dead
ahwyay yuo should come to the lake tmroeow
tomoreow
tomorrow
fck
this isk stupid im coming over
Coming over? Wait. When?
The knock at the front door served as my answer. I looked toward the door, baffled. I turned off the computer monitor, rose from my chair, and opened it.
Rafael was wearing a lightweight gray jacket and black jeans. I liked it when he wore gray. A single, thin braid hung alongside his temple, knotted at the bottom with a dove's feather. His square glasses rested low on the bridge of his nose; he pushed them up with his index finger. The early evening sky was rosy and gold over his shoulder. I took a moment to admire the sky; but mostly I was admiring Rafael. I stepped back and let him inside. I closed the door.
The air crackled with heat. Of course, the hearth was lit. But the way Rafael looked at me, his eyes eddying storms, expressive and all-consuming, I wasn't so sure.
"Your hair's wet," Rafael said.
I don't know which of us reached for the other first. He locked me fiercely in his arms and I buried my fingers in his shirt. I kissed him like my life depended on it. He kissed me back, hard, bruising, his sharp teeth scraping against the inside of my mouth. The feel of him; the taste of him; I drank him up, intoxicating as he was, and my heart thundered and blissfully ached. I kissed him until I couldn't breathe; and when I couldn't breathe, I kissed him still.
My hands rested on his chest where I felt his pulse racing beneath my palms. His lips, hot, rested on my forehead. It was scary, I thought, to love somebody this much. To fall into him so completely, I couldn't remember who I was, unless, in that moment, I was a part of him.
I loved him, I thought. Good thing I could never tell him. I wasn't much for humiliating myself.
The next afternoon was mild and chilly. Dad and I went down to the lake, Balto following, sniffing at the soil, and we met up with Rafael and the At Dawn twins. I don't know if you've ever seen those weird, theatrical Tragedy and Comedy masks--the one mask bawling its eyes out, the other mask cackling at its twin's plight--but they could have been lifted wholesale off of Holly and Daisy's faces.
"What the hell is she doing here?" Rafael asked.
I'd brought Annie with me.
Annie drew herself up with indignation. "Oh, I'm not wanted, am I?"
I gave Rafael a pleading look. I knew he'd said that Annie wasn't any good at sports, but how was I supposed to tell my best friend to sit on the sidelines and watch? Besides, I didn't know that I was any good at sports, either. I'd never even heard of shinny until a few months ago.
Sulkily, Rafael relented.
"Hi, you guys!" Daisy said brightly. "I've got the tapikolo."
She held up a buckskin sack filled with what I thought were pine nuts.
I'm sure you've heard of hockey before. Well, it turns out the Shoshone have been playing it long before anyone else.
Shinny is a high-speed game played between two teams of ten people. In the days of the buffalo, only women were allowed to play--probably because the Shoshone society used to be so female-oriented--but nowadays anyone of any age can participate. The objective of the game is to get the tapikolo across the enemy team's white line. The first team to succeed wins. In that regard, it sounds like a simplified form of hockey. But actually, as I learned that afternoon, shinny is much, much harder. A tapikolo doesn't roll like a ball or slide like a puck: It's up to the player to smack it along the ground with little or no traction. The stick you use to hit the tapikolo isn't J-shaped, like a hockey stick, but straight as a ruler, which makes it even harder to strike your target. And if you bust open the tapikolo or knock it into the lake, your whole team loses.
The five of us went into the woods to pick out our sticks--because as it happens, the "stick" you play shinny with is just whatever branch you find lying around on the forest floor. We regrouped by the lake some minutes later and started practicing.
Rafael was right about Annie's skills, or lack thereof. A minute into the game and she whacked the tapikolo up into a tree.
"Is that good?" Annie asked excitedly.
I didn't know for sure, but my gut instinct was, "No." I gave her a thumbs up anyway. I hated to see her disappointed.
Two minutes into the game and the tapikolo splashed into the lake. Dad fished it out of the shallow, muddy bank.
"Maybe you should aim left next time," Dad awkwardly advised Annie.
She did--and the buckskin sack rocketed through the air and slapped Rafael across the face. He staggered. Holly cheered up.
Annie
, I signed.
Be gentler with the thing. Pretend it's Joseph and you're trying to get him to go to bed.
"Are you suggesting that I hit my little brother with a stick?"
The rest of the practice session didn't really deviate. The highlight of the afternoon was when Balto ripped the tapikolo out from under Holly's feet and tore it open, pine nuts spilling on the ground. Holly frowned at him. "He's off the team," she declared.
Daisy clapped her hands when we had finished playing. "Okay!" she said. "That was...good...? But we still need four more people, or we can't compete. Same time tomorrow!"
Annie, Daisy, and Holly split up and went home. Rafael lingered.
"Mr...uh...Looks Over?" Rafael scuffed at the ground with his shoe. "My uncle wants to know if you can look at our basement. He had to pull up the floor and he thinks the joists are rotted."
Dad looked a little surprised. "Of course," he said. "He's home during the afternoons?"
"Yeah, he hunts in the morning. He should be home now."
"I'll pay him a visit, then."
I waved after Dad as he walked through the trees and left us.
Rafael grabbed my arm and leaned over urgently.
"It's bull," he said. "I know my uncle. He just wants to talk about you."
Me? My eyebrows knitted together.
"You and me, dummy."
Well, that made more sense.
"Yeah, so guess what? He sat me down last night and gave me a big talk. He doesn't have a problem with you being a guy. He has a problem with you being you."
It was the last thing I'd expected Rafael to say. I couldn't help but feel a little hurt. I liked Gabriel. I'd assumed he liked me, too.
"Not that," Rafael said. "Just... He thinks it's weird. Because of my dad. And your mom."
Oh, I thought.
No, wait. What did our parents have to do with anything? We weren't our parents. We shouldn't have to carry around their stigmata for the rest of our lives. Especially in deciding who we loved.
I thought: I love Rafael. I don't know that he feels as strongly as I do. He doesn't have to love me back.
Somehow that hurt worse than Gabriel's reproach.
"He's like...'I thought you were just friends.' You
are
my friend. You're my best friend. Why doesn't he get that? Anyway... I think he wants your dad to rally with him. I'm pretty sure he doesn't give a damn about the dry rot in the basement."
I quirked the corner of my mouth dubiously. Dad rallying with Gabriel was pretty unlikely, considering the lengths he had gone to in proving his approval.
Rafael took one look at me, horrified, and I knew we were on the same wavelength. He whispered: "If your dad gives my uncle the safe sex talk..."
I was tempted to run after him and make sure he didn't.
The community gathered around the firepit for dinner as they did every evening. Annie caught my eye and I nodded. I ate quickly and followed her out to the grotto with Rafael and Aubrey, Balto loping after us. The sky was dark, but the cave was darker; we sat in the cave and lit candles. I kept a wary eye over Balto as he strode in and out at his own discretion. Thrusting his curious nose into the middle of a burning flame was exactly the kind of thing the little ditz might do.
Rafael and Annie were feuding. Rafael maintained that Annie was a lousy shinny player and Annie told him, very evenly, where he could shove his shinny stick if he so deigned. Aubrey, bless his heart, was oblivious.
"I got three offers already!" Aubrey jabbered. "I don't know which team to go with this year. Then again, Lorna's built like an ox, she's bound to win--"
"No, she's not," Annie said. Her eyes were sparkling. "I'm going to win."
Oh, Annie. I reached sideways and hugged her.
"Oh?" said Aubrey, rising to the challenge. "Is that so, Miss Little Hawk?"
"Yes, it is, Mr. Takes Flight." She leaned in close. "And you had better watch yourself out there; I won't be giving you any special favors."
Rafael stuck his finger in his mouth, mockingly, but actually wound up gagging.
Shinny fever abounded even at home. Dad had yet to return from his trip to Gabriel’s house. Granny took me into the kitchen and showed me how to make ice cream the right way. "Because your father's filled your head with enough nonsense in one lifetime," she said. Happily, the ice cream tasted a lot better with Granny at the helm. Maybe Dad and I really had forgotten the vanilla. We sat by the hearth, chilly as it was outside, and ate together, and Granny told me all about her own forays with shinny.
"When I was a girl," Granny told me, "I was the best player on the reservation." An irritable expression crossed her face. "Second best," she stipulated, rather like the words were poison. "That little Betty Thorn Bush always had to show me up; the nerve of her... Anyway, I could kick the ball from the lake all the way out to the flourmill, and that's no tall tale!"
Talking about the past made me think back to Granny's great-grandmother. The smile slipped slowly from my face. I reached across the rocking chair and squeezed Granny's hand. I meant to lift the burden from her heart, or to provide some solidarity...but Granny wasn't as well-versed in body language as Dad and Rafael were.
"Very well," she said sternly, drawing herself up with magnanimity, a true Indian princess. "I will join your team."
