St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (14 page)

take his keys out of his pocket. He threw open the

front door and we walked inside, dusk glowing

through the north-facing windows. He flipped a

light switch and the sitting room lit up. Thankfully,

there weren't any dead animals hanging from the

rafters.

"Want lemon pie?" Rafael asked, and went into the

kitchen.

I stared after him, incredulous. I knew he had one

monster of a sweet tooth, but the timing was pretty

inopportune.

A few seconds later and he emerged uncertainly

from the kitchen, no pie in sight.

"Should I take a shower or something?"

I pointed at his bedroom door.

"Right, sorry," he muttered, and skulked away.

I breathed deeply, silently. Calm down, I told

myself. It's Rafael. It's okay if it's Rafael. It's

always okay with Rafael.

I followed him into his bedroom and found him

sitting on the edge of his bed. His back was bent

forward, his hands folded. He looked distracted.

I set the plastic shopping bag on the floor. Not an

easy task: From old paperback novels to

neglected sketchbooks to unwashed laundry,

Rafael's room was incredibly cluttered. I fished

around inside the bag and took out Rafael's library

books. And...you know. The other stuff.

"Are you sure--"

I shot him a silencing look. It was very effective.

I sat next to Rafael on the bed. He sat up straight,

his back stiff. It occurred to me just how tense he

was. I ran my hand up and down his back, rubbing

his tight muscles. I felt him relax.

His hand rested on my knee.

Tentative, I lifted my hand; Rafael's eyes jumped

and followed its path. I slipped the glasses off his

face. I folded them up and set them aside, on a

stack of books at the foot of the bed.

He tucked a braid behind his ear. He paused,

realizing--as I did--that there was already a pencil

stub tucked back there. I laughed softly. Bashful,

he dropped the pencil to the floor. It rolled under

the mattress, far from sight.

Again I lifted my hand. Again he watched me. I

touched the side of his face. My fingertips trailed

down his skin, soft and brown, to the square line of

his hard jaw.

He took my hand in his. He kissed my open palm,

his lips warm. He kissed the underside of my

wrist. The blood in my veins singed, tingling; I

felt it in my knees.

I hooked my thumbs around the folds of his gray

jacket. I slid his jacket down his shoulders and

hung it on the bedpost.

He raised his fingers, haltingly, to my shirt buttons.

My throat felt like it was caving in, burning from

the inside out. My heart felt cold and heavy in my

chest, each breath weighted with ice. I didn't want

him to take my clothes off. I didn't want him to

look at me. I wasn't much to look at. I was pale,

thin, swimming in freckles; my chest was so flat, it

was almost concave. I was repulsive. I wasn't

sure what Rafael found appealing in me.

"You're not."

I looked at him.

"You're not," Rafael said. His voice was low and

quiet. His eyes were trained on mine.

It might sound crazy. I'm sure it will. But I felt as

though no physical barrier existed between us

two. No skin. No clothes. Nothing but he and I.

And really...when you have a safety net like that,

the fall just doesn't look so scary.

"When you're finished, turn your paper over and

put your pencil down. If you cheat, I'll know about

it. I've got eyes in the back of my head."

Mr. Red Clay walked up and down the rows of

tables and handed out stacks of paper. Otherwise

the schoolhouse was silent, save for the reedy

cackling of the grackles outside the windows.

Occasionally a cloud covered the weak autumn sun

and cast the whole room in darkness.

Mr. Red Clay set an unmarked test paper on the

table in front of me. I smiled at him. He returned

it, to my surprise, while he continued down the

table to the At Dawn Twins.

Rafael's knee was pressed against mine, the

warmth of him seeping through the fabric of his

jeans.

"You may begin," Mr. Red Clay announced.

I turned over my test paper and read the first

couple of questions. I read them a second time; a

third. They didn't really sink in. I couldn't focus

on anything except for Rafael, Rafael's knee on

mine, Rafael's jacket sleeve rolled up over his

tattooed arm, Rafael's long hair brushing the aged

surface of the wooden table.

The clouds covered the sun again. The room

delved into shadow. Rafael's hand brushed against

mine beneath the table. I tangled our fingers

together, his palm curving into mine. I found it

awfully convenient that he wrote with his left hand

while I wrote with my right.

Aubrey started jabbering the moment Mr. Red Clay

let us leave for the day.

"The autumn pauwau was extraordinary this year!

The Hopi told their creation story. Did you

know? The Hopi believe that every time human

beings muck things up on Earth, God destroys the

whole world and starts over with a new one. This

is the fourth Earth."

"It's rather disconcerting, if you think about it,"

Annie said serenely, unaffected. "Shall we go to

the grotto?"

We walked the dirt path out to the woods. We

veered off the beaten path, Annie at the lead, and

sat together by the mouth of the cave. I watched

the trickling water carry the fallen autumn leaves

out to the right-tributary.

"I wonder where Zeke is," Annie said.

"Wherever he is, I'm sure we'll hear about it in

excessive detail," Aubrey said gently.

Rafael pulled his math book and a pencil out of his

worn gray backpack.

We were supposed to be studying Cartesian

coordinates--whatever that means. I was too busy

studying Rafael. I studied his lightless black hair

as it spilled over his shoulder, his blue wire

eyeglasses perched on the bridge of his flat nose. I

studied his square jaw as it pulled, then relaxed,

while he erased his botched equations and wrote

them anew. I studied the dimples in his cheeks, the

way they deepened when he chewed on his bottom

lip. I studied the fingers wrapped around his

pencil, short and hard and firm, and the clipped

fingernails and the dove's feather hanging next to

his pierced ear.

I tried to be discreet about it. I really did. But I

saw the way his mouth flickered, like he was

struggling not to smile. He knew I was watching

him.

"I really don't understand this graph," Annie said.

"Here," Aubrey offered, "you can look at mine."

Rafael closed his textbook, his pencil marking his

place. He set his book on the ground and stalked

off around the willow tree. I got up and followed

him a second later.

We walked between the alder trees, the sounds of

the creek growing distant behind us. I raked my

eyes across the contours of his back, around the

memorized curves of his broad shoulders.

"Ran out of orange," he murmured, and flaked the

alder bark with his fingertips. Rafael liked to

draw in his spare time. Ground alder bark makes

for a good orange ink.

Leaves crunched under the soles of my sneakers.

Rafael turned around to face me, his back against

the tree trunk.

A blue moon isn't really blue. But when it's late at

night, and there's a blue moon hanging over your

roof, you can see the clouds as clear as day, silver

and glowing in a dark blue sky.

That's how Rafael's eyes looked to me. Dark blue,

cloudy, but emanating with a hidden light. I

thought about how his eyes had looked when he

was draped across me; how wide and distorted the

blacks of his eyes were, the most incredible thing

I'd ever seen. I thought about the chain tattoo

running up his right arm, and its twin wrapped

around his right leg, ending inside his thigh.

I laid my hands against his arms and folded into

him. I smiled at him, a dare behind my smile; and

when he smiled back I saw his sharp, lupine teeth

and the tooth missing at the back of his mouth, his

innocence, his heart.

It was second nature to kiss him, to lay my body

against his and feel his hands on my hips, his hip

digging into mine. I pressed close enough to him

to feel every sinew of his body, every ghost of a

breath gliding across my lips, every rough and

imperfect angle beneath the soft stitches of his

worn clothes. It was like heaven; it was like

home; and there was a sort of perfection to that

imperfection, something like a missing puzzle

piece that was meant to fit into me, just me, mine

alone. And at some point, we blurred together, he

and I, and there was only one of us, and I didn't

know which one of us that was.

It may sound strange to you, but there's no word for

"love" in the Shoshone language. The closest

equivalent is
shundahai
, which more or less

means "to be one and the same." In the old days, if

a Shoshone man wanted to tell his wife he was in

love with her, he would say "I am you," or "You

are me." I think I understand that now.

Rafael buried his face against the crook of my

neck, tickling me; I laughed, and he must have felt

it, because he laughed too, his chest rippling under

the palm of my hand, his mouth moving against my

skin in warm kisses. I fitted my leg between his,

subtly, and felt him tense against me, his broad

back stiff beneath my hands; I felt him breathe

against me, a great big sigh that seemed to contain

within itself a thousand smaller sighs; I took his

face between my hands, his coarse hair sliding

through my fingers, and brought his mouth back to

mine, where it belonged.

My train of thought--insofar as I actually thought--

was interrupted by the sound of a loud yip.

Rafael and I broke apart. I looked around for the

source of the noise, but didn't find it.

"Over there," Rafael said, and pointed toward a

copse of barberry bushes.

The red autumn tendrils rustled on the ends of their

thick brown shoots. I worried about that;

barberry's perfectly edible, if a little tangy--in fact,

it's a good remedy for a stomachache--but the

bushes generally have thorns, which means it's not

a good idea for a wild animal to poke his nose into

one. I drew a little closer to see what had gotten

tangled up in the shrubs.

Nothing had gotten tangled up in the shrubs. But

Balto came padding through the bushes and

stopped right in front of me.

It was like he had grown even more since the last

time I'd seen him, almost the size of a full-blooded

wolf. I scarcely remembered anymore what he had

looked like as a baby, but I knew it was him by the

gray on the tip of his golden ear. His eyes, too,

were unmistakable, dark and black, worlds wiser

than any human'll ever be.

Immediately I began to worry. Grown coywolves

don't travel without their packmates. Why wasn't

Balto in a pack yet?

He sprinted north.

"Maybe he was looking for you," Rafael said.

I didn't know whether that was true. If it was, I

couldn't leave him hanging. I ran after him; and I

heard Rafael behind me and knew he was

following, too.

Balto took us through the beech trees and back to

the forest road. A pair of siblings on their way

east pointed, puzzled, at the three of us. Balto

outstripped the siblings, and it was all that I could

do to keep up. Rafael, slower, crashed through the

forest brush yards behind us.

The forest opened up onto a clearing, and then the

lake. I stopped to catch my breath. Rafael caught

up with us minutes later, none the worse for wear.

"The hell is going on?" Rafael said.

I followed his gaze to the lake. I stood up straight

and frowned.

A woman in a black coat and suit stood flanked by