Skin (21 page)

“I guess. At least we don’t have the draft anymore. We won’t wind up in the middle of a war like the characters in this book.”

“We have to figure out what it all means anyway, Sep, no matter where we are.” He hooks his thumbs through his backpack straps and hikes the pack up his back a little. “Besides, we sort of are in the middle of a war. All of us. The same big war. ’Cause all these wars, they’re all connected.”

“You’re lecturing me now.”

“Sorry.” He shrugs. “I’m bad at apologies. Here I go offending you when the book’s supposed to be an apology.”

“For what?”

“For last time. I understand you feel lousy, even if you don’t want to tell me about it. You’ve got things to figure out—like we were saying. I’m sorry I tried to minimize it. I was stupid enough to think that might help.”

I feel off-balance. I’m the one who was in the wrong—but Owen actually understands why I acted so bad. I want to thank him profusely. But I know if I try, I’ll get all sappy. And something’s already too sad in this conversation. Without a word, I slip off my backpack, slide in the book, and sling the pack back on.

“So how’s it going, Sep?”

“I can’t complain.” Which isn’t true. I complain all the
time. But Owen’s just getting the conversation going again. The least I can do is try to be cooperative. “What about you? Spending a lot of time at that website? The one of the political genius?”

“Chomsky dot info. Have you looked at it?”

“No.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“I’ll look. I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“You and Joshua—how’s that working out for you?”

There’s something in his voice that makes it seem like a challenge. “Why do you want to know?”

“Uh, let’s see. We’ve been friends for years and something new and major happens in your life. Could that be it?”

“We’re getting along good.”

“That’s great.”

We come out on the other side of the condos and turn up Milton Street.

“But we won’t be together for long.”

“What do you mean?” says Owen.

“Things happen. Accidents. Like you said, you can’t do anything about accidents.”

“Could you be a bit more edifying?”

“No.”

“Am I supposed to guess?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You brought it up.”

“So I’m burying it.”

“Well, I’m still above ground. Remember that later.”

“What’s that mean, Owen?”

“You’re smart; figure it out.” The corner of his mouth twitches, as though he’s fighting to control himself. He turns at his street without a farewell. His shoulders are squared, like he’s marching away.

I stare after him. Owen. He’s the first one I bounce ideas off, especially school stuff that Devin would hate talking about. He’s always there. We’re good friends. But this year is different. And he just gave me a gift—a used book, but a gift anyway. I swallow. In that text message when I apologized for being such a jerk, he wrote, “I still love you.” I say it to him all the time, but he never says it back. Only he did in that message. Oh my God, anyone else in the world would have figured it out long ago: Owen likes me. That way. And all along I thought I understood him—I thought he was so easy to understand.

An enormous sadness weighs me down.

I touch my lips. They’re cinnamon red today. Devin gave me a new lipstick out of the blue on Sunday, when I borrowed the sex novels. She’s wearing lipstick to school these days, too. Solidarity.

I put on lipstick the first day of school and Joshua came
after me full throttle. Oh, I responded all right. But he initiated it. And lipstick just might have been the ignition.

But then Melanie—it felt like she was flirting with me—or almost—’cause why would she offer to walk home together when she doesn’t even know if I live near her—unless she does know, which means she had to find out.

And now Owen.

And I don’t think lipstick is what’s making Melanie or Owen notice me.

It’s like being with Joshua has changed me. Maybe I’m giving off a signal that says “come hither.” Pheromones, like a moth or a hamster. I’m even walking different—that’s what Becca said in the locker room. Is that what sex does to you, make other people perceive you differently?

Well, I don’t want this. I want Joshua. I want whatever can happen with Joshua before my world turns to slime. But I don’t want anyone else’s attentions. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Not Melanie’s. And not Owen’s. Never, never Owen’s.

I’M READING POETRY BY Langston Hughes. Oh, poet, where have you been all my life? We’ve got ten poems in our school textbook, but Mr. Batell told us to hit the library and find more and memorize our favorite one, because he’s going to call on some of us at random to recite. Which means, of course, that we all hit the Internet instead, and we’ll probably all come in with the same poem tomorrow. But that’s okay. I can stand to hear any one of Langston Hughes’s poems twenty times, a hundred times, nine hundred times.

And some of us actually made it into the library. I did.

Langston Hughes wrote novels and short stories and plays, too. But I don’t want to read them. I mean, they might be as fantastic as his poetry, but it would kill me if they were. His poetry is diamond hard. The only thing that keeps me from bleeding out entirely is the brevity.

So maybe I couldn’t survive hearing one of his poems nine hundred times, after all.

I started out by reading his collection
Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz
. I chose it because I’m the only one of my friends who calls her mother Mamma, though Langston Hughes spells it with one M.

That Hughes collection is okay. More than okay. And jazz influenced this poet, that’s for sure. You hear it in the rhythms. An improvisational air. But other poems of his do more for me. Like “Dream Deferred”—that poem turns me inside-out. It dares you to be honest.

Honest.

What I honestly want is to enjoy what Joshua and I have together while I can. I haven’t hurt anyone.

But I might. If I keep this up.

That’s the honest truth.

I put my notebook back in my bottom drawer and walk through the house searching for Mamma. She’s in her study, taking laundry out of the dryer. Mamma doesn’t
like us to use the dryer. She says things like, “What’s the sun for?” and makes us all hang the laundry out.

Today, though, it rained hard, and even when it stopped, the air hung wet everywhere. So Mamma relented.

“Is it really your week to do the laundry?” I frown. “I thought it was mine.”

“It probably is. Come help me.”

“Later. After we get back from the mall.”

Mamma sticks her tongue in her cheek and I can tell she’s chewing on it. “We’re going to the mall?”

“Please?”

“It’s Wednesday. I thought that was a Thursday routine. After seeing Dr. Ratner.”

“We’re not going back to Dr. Ratner till the middle of next month, remember? I can’t wait that long.”

She shakes out one of Dante’s T-shirts and smooths it on her belly, then folds slowly. “Mr. Weisskopf caught a couple of teens in his gazebo last night. Do you know anything about that?”

“Is that all he told you?”

“He thought the girl might have been you. But he didn’t get a good look.”

“Is that what he said? That he didn’t get a good look?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Weisskopf is more discreet than I’d have guessed. “I’ve got nothing to add.”

“Hmmm. I’m doing my best not to get angry here, Pina.”

“The mall, Mamma.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“That is the subject. The mall. Can we go? I’ll fold all the rest of this when we get back. Promise.”

“How many lipsticks do you own now, Pina?”

“What do you care? I buy them with my babysitting money.”

“I don’t care about the money. I care about you.”

“I’m not going to buy more lipstick.”

“What are you going to buy?”

“Do I really deserve this third degree?”

“I don’t know, Pina. Do you?”

“Okay, I’ll walk to the mall.”

“You’re grounded, remember.”

“You let me go to the mall last week.”

“It’s too late. You’ll never make it back in time for dinner.”

“Unless you drive me.”

Mamma picks up another T-shirt and chews on her tongue. Then she throws the shirt back on the pile and slaps a hand on her forehead. It stays there a long moment. “Get the keys.”

I knew it. Mamma has no experience at being a prison guard. I actually feel sorry for her right now.

Once at the mall I ditch Mamma at the drugstore and make a beeline for Slinky’s cosmetics counter.

“Hey,” she calls. “Come to show it off?”

“What?”

“The tattoo. Or is it tattoos?”

“I chickened out.”

“Good for you. With a tattoo, you’d have never been able to get a job with the CIA.”

“I never want a job with the CIA.”

“It’s just an example, kiddo. Imagine holding out your tattooed hand for a shake at a job interview. The interviewer would fumigate his office after you left. You dodged the bullet, sweetie. There are better ways to be cool.”

“Don’t be such a mother,” I say with more force than I intended.

“Sorry. I just mean, if you need to express yourself, you could think of other ways. So what’s up?”

“Are you married, Slinky?”

“Slinky?” She smiles and tilts her head. “Are you kidding? You know I have a boyfriend.”

“I mean, were you?”

“What is it you really want to ask?”

“Well, you have a child and everything.” I shrug one shoulder. “That must have been an accident?”

“A surprise. There’s a difference. I get the feeling you’re still not asking what you want.”

“Slinky, I’ve been thinking of jumping my boyfriend.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her face changes, but I can’t read it. The smile is gone.

“I sort of already jumped him. But not completely, you know.”

“I guess I do.” She leans on the counter. “So… are you asking me whether it’s worth the risk of pregnancy?” Her voice is very soft.

“I don’t think I’m really asking anything. I just want someone to know.”

“I’ve been there before. Listen up: telling me doesn’t make me share the responsibility.”

How she can cut straight to the quick like that astonishes me. I was right to come to her. “You’re really a hard ass, Slinky.”

“Is that why you’re telling me? So I can be hard on you?”

“I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Who?”

“My boyfriend.”

She pulls back and her eyebrows go up. “You think
you’ll hurt him by sleeping with him? That’s a new one. Isn’t he in high school?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re telling me there exists a high school boy who’s not dying to score?”

“I don’t think this one is.”

“Is he gay?”

“No way.”

“Is he healthy?”

“He plays football.”

“Oh, come on. This guy is dying to score.”

“He’s not the typical football player.”

“What, you’re buddies with the whole team? I wouldn’t have pegged you for that.”

“He’s special.”

“Sure. Everyone is. Let me tell you a secret.” She leans even closer. “There’s really only one question that’s relevant to whether or not a high school football player wants to score.”

“What’s that?”

“Is he alive?”

I laugh, though I know it’s not true.

But I let myself believe Slinky about Joshua—not in general, just with respect to me. I let myself believe it because I need to. Joshua wants to score with me, no matter
what happens after that. Just like me, he’s going to feel that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all—yup, that’s exactly what he’ll feel.

This is the belief I can run with.

THE FOOTBALL GAME THIS week was Friday again. I stayed home, still grounded, and finished all my homework for the weekend. But I took this babysitting gig on Saturday.

Here I am, holding an umbrella in one hand and ringing the Harrisons’ doorbell with the other, looking like an ordinary honest person, like the person I used to be. Joshua will be coming over within a half hour. Mamma didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.

“Hi, Pina.” Mrs. Harrison opens the door and steps back. Mr. Harrison stands beside her and blinks. I wonder if he’s confused that she just called me Pina when he seems
to know I call myself Sep. “There’s a plate of treats in the refrigerator. For you and Joshua.”