by Cora Brent
He didn’t even consider the idea. He shook his head. “No. I’ll stay in Emblem. It’s home.”
I watched him as his eyes toured the landscape to the south. There was nothing but brown dust, a few hardy cacti and some ordinary homes. But the look on his face was affectionate. It meant something to him, the sight of the desert. To me it was just dry, ugly land I was anchored to for now. To Ryan it was beautiful.
I didn’t notice that he’d started digging around in his back pocket until he withdrew his wallet and plucked an item out.
“Here.” He extended his hand. A silver object rested in his palm. “I want you to have this.”
I reached out and accepted the thing. My skin touched his for half a delicious second and I trembled. I stared at the oval piece of silver. “What is it?”
“A St. Christopher medal. My mom gave it to me years ago. I used to wear it on a chain underneath my shirt. When I stopped wearing it she insisted that I keep it clipped to the sun visor in my car but I got sick of it falling off so I stuck it in my wallet.”
The slightly grimy charm became the most beautiful gift ever handed to me. A few drops of silver polish were badly needed but I could clearly make out the engraved image of a man with a shepherd stick, carrying a child on his back. My silence must have made Ryan think he needed to explain better.
“St. Christopher protects travelers. Or something like that. Wherever you go he’ll try to keep you safe, Leah.”
A warm tenderness spread in my chest. “I’m not Catholic.”
“I’m not really Catholic either.” He looked at me oddly, perhaps thinking I was unhappy. “Do you want it?”
My hand had already closed around the medal. “I want it.”
“Just do something for me, okay?”
Anything. Anything. Anything.
“What’s that?”
“Those assholes we were talking about? There’s too many of them in the world and they’ll eat you alive if you let them get to you. Look out for yourself first, okay?”
“Okay.” I was smiling. I might never stop smiling. Nothing he’d said or done was romantic. Yet it was everything. “Thank you, Ryan.”
Ryan grinned and I had a flashback.
I was five years old. It was my first day of kindergarten. Daisy had grudgingly marched me from Emblem Elementary back to an empty house and then disappeared into her room. My father was undoubtedly working at the bar and my mother’s whereabouts were unknown. I wandered the empty house alone for a little while until I spotted Ryan Jedson from a window. I liked Ryan. And he seemed to tolerate me better than my sister did so I didn’t hesitate to run outside and find out what he was doing. He smiled at me and asked if I wanted to help him look for buried treasure. His uncle lived in Miami and would send him odd, expensive gifts for no reason and that was how he’d come by the metal detector in his hand. We searched the gritty desert floor for hours, pausing only when his mother came home and called us inside for a snack of banana bread and milk. We found nothing impressive. Some rusty bottle caps, a few coins with the faces nearly worn off. The day was certainly long since forgotten by him. But to me it was the best of adventures.
That was a long time ago, long before Ryan grew into this work of art facing me in the twilight. Now he made me think about things I’d never done, things I wanted very badly to do. I wanted to have other adventures, all of them with him.
“So what are your plans now?” I asked, thinking I might be bold and ask him to drive me to town for a shake at the diner. He might even do it.
“Now?” He paused and stared down at the blood-stained shirt he’d balled up and stored under his arm. A strange look crossed his face, an expression that was both young and world weary at the same time. “I need to go take care of some shit.”
“Oh.” If disappointment were a word it would be that one. Oh.
His eyes searched me with sudden intensity. “Hey Leah, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Sure we are,” I said and almost blurted I love you because I didn’t care about the age difference between us or how he’d never looked at me the way I wanted him to or about the fact that he was covered in someone else’s blood for some unknown reason. He was Ryan. He was the boy next door. He was ten thousand of my favorite fantasies and someday I’d tell him so.
But not now. For now I couldn’t be anything more than the high school girl who secretly worshiped him. A day would come when I’d be more than this. And goddammit, he’d notice.
Ryan shifted and seemed embarrassed suddenly. “Look, I’m not saying there’s a reason to worry but if you could keep this visit to yourself I’d appreciate it.” He swallowed and grimaced again at the shirt in his hand. I got the feeling he wanted to bury it. Or watch it spontaneously combust. “And don’t mention anything about the blood, or what I told you about Harry, to anyone.”
“You mean to your mother?”
“To anyone.” He jerked his head toward the trailer where Celeste kept a container garden of half dead tulips. “I’m just going to clean up and get out of here.”
I didn’t want him to go. “Do you need help? I mean, can I help you? Please?”
He shot me another of his devastating grins. “You did help me.”
“I’m glad.” I brushed some dust off my shorts. “I guess I should go back in the house now. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do.”
I had nothing to do. Nothing. I wanted him to tell me to stay.
“See you later,” he said.
I hoped he would at least stare after me as I walked away. He didn’t. I looked over my shoulder to see him retrieving the key Celeste always left beneath the third terra cotta pot on the right. I knew exactly where that key was kept because Ryan’s mother had long allowed me to hang out at her place while she was at work. She understood that I didn’t enjoy being home, although I never could have told her the worst reasons. She’d known my mother longer than anybody but Celeste did not realize what kind of person her best friend was.
Another thing Celeste did not know is that sometimes I’d stretch out on the lumpy mattress in the closet-sized bedroom where her son used to sleep. She would have been shocked to discover how I’d hug the lone bed pillow to my chest and breath in the vague remaining traces of his smell, that I’d unbutton my shorts and imagine it was his hand sliding between my legs and that the hissing of the swamp cooler was his voice promising me I was beautiful.
Ryan had disappeared inside without a backward glance. I remained suspended halfway between the house and the shed, not excited to return to the house where an encounter with Luanne was possible.
A soft breeze skated across the desert, lifting my long hair, and I shivered. Beyond the three acres owned by my father was a crude moonscape that had been crookedly carved into property parcels but the homes were few and far between. This street was the last frontier before giving way to the more rural neighborhoods that were knitted together with dirt roads that sometimes became impassible during the summer storm season. It wasn’t an interesting sight but I never hated Emblem, not like Daisy did by the time she sprinted toward the first road out of town when she turned eighteen. I would be leaving too. My guidance counselor had big ideas about what kind of scholarships I’d rake in and, like most of Emblem’s best and brightest, I’d find better opportunities out there than I’d find here. But ultimately and triumphantly, I’d return. I’d be somebody Ryan couldn’t help but see. And want.
A door slammed shut and instinct sent me scampering back to the safety of the shadows. I knew where that sound came from. I knew who was coming.
Earlier this evening she was already halfway through a bottle of chardonnay when I crept into the kitchen to fix an early dinner of a bowl of cereal. For five days I’d managed to avoid running into her, a sad kind of record. What kind of girl hated her own mother?
The kind who knew her mother hated her.
Luanne Brandeis was standing beside the sink with a crystal wine glass in one hand and her turquoise phone
in the other. She often drank wine but she’d happily fill her glass with any alcoholic beverage nearby and tote it around like a prop as if it somehow made her classier, more interesting, a heroine in her own tragic story.
Her red and white dress was an intentional size too small to showcase the figure that was still enviable even after she hit the big four oh. There was no reason for her to dress up. I doubted she’d be going anywhere except maybe the Dirty Cactus. She had nothing but contempt for the bar and nearly everyone who crossed its threshold, however when her ego needed a few minutes of stroking she’d strut across the crowded floor and revel in the way men’s eyes followed her. Then she’d plant a dry kiss on the cheek of her beaming husband. After all these years with her he still assumed she was the most wonderful creature on the planet. My father was a fool. It stung to acknowledge that.
“Leah.” She’d greeted me in the kitchen using a withering voice that warned an insult was on the way. “Is that really the best you can do?”
“Apparently,” I muttered, pouring some cornflakes into a bowl and hoping she’d just return her attention to her wine and leave me alone. There was no way to win with her. If I wore makeup and a dress then I was accused of cultivating a ‘desperate look’. But trying to fly under the radar in cutoff shorts and an Aerosmith t-shirt left behind by Daisy wasn’t good enough either.
I’d escaped from the kitchen before she could notice something else to complain about and then I hadn’t seen her for hours, not until now. I remained silent in my shadows as she stalked past within yards of where I sat.
Perhaps she’d noticed Ryan’s truck. The clunker with the peeling paint would have been visible if she happened to glance out one of the windows in the back of the house. She was probably parading out here to order him off her property. Celeste was one of the very few people on earth my mother tolerated. They’d been best friends since girlhood and though they were a mismatched pair I coveted their level of friendship. I had no friends like that.
However, as much as my mother adored Celeste, she’d never had much use for her best friend’s son. And now Ryan’s rough ways and criminal connections would definitely render him persona non grata in Luanne’s world.
She was only ten feet away from the trailer when he opened the door and froze. There was no sign of his shirt or of the blood. He must have already scrubbed all the evidence away.
“I didn’t know you were around,” he mumbled, trying to sidestep her. “I was just about to leave.”
“And here I thought you showed up because you missed me.” Her voice did not sound like I expected it to. It was wheedling, coquettish, strange.
“If I’d missed you I would have let you know, Luanne.” He also didn’t sound like himself. He was wary and inexplicably angry.
She stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Are you all right, Ryan?”
The question disturbed him. He ran a hand over his face and I could see he was not all right, that whatever had happened tonight with the blood and the man named Harry had rattled him to the core.
He didn’t answer her. She didn’t really want an answer anyway. She wanted something else.
“Remember this?” she purred and with a silent gasp of revulsion I saw my mother’s mouth land on his, noticed her hand grasping the zipper of his jeans.
“Cut it out,” he growled, escaping her grip. My mother was tipsy and she stumbled in her heeled sandals, cursing as her ankle twisted.
Ryan looked away like the sight of her embarrassed him. In the bleak light that spilled from the trailer his profile was wickedly handsome, almost dangerous. I thought of one of the words from my SAT practice book. Malevolent. That was him right now. Dark anger reigned in his face. I hoped that anger would never land on me. Its power was frightening. This boy, the one I’d known all my life, the one I’d fantasized about and shadowed and lusted after, wasn’t the same one who’d shown me how to pick up a scorpion without being stung. He was an unknown man who people whispered about in town, who showed up with blood on his clothes and couldn’t hide the lump that appeared in his pants when my mother touched him.
“Go home, Luanne,” he told her, hatred thick in his voice.
She only laughed with glee and slid the right strap of her dress down, exposing one breast. “I’ve missed you.” She pulled her other strap down. “They both have.”
I crammed my fist into my mouth to stifle the eruption of a scream.
She pressed her naked breasts against his chest. “You can’t tell me your first wasn’t your best.”
“You weren’t my first.”
She laughed again. “Liar. I remember how you were. So eager you couldn’t stand it. Oh, I knew you’d probably been blown a few times by those high school sluts but that was all. I gave you everything you wanted. You couldn’t get enough.”
“Luanne, fuck! That’s been over for ages and it’s nothing I’m proud of.”
“It’s a wonder your mother never suspected.”
His anger rose, his hands clenched into fists. “You keep her the hell out of this.”
“Calm down, honey.” She backed off, soothing him by layering her words with fake sweetness. “I won’t tell Celeste what you did. It would hurt her and I’d never hurt her. She’s my best friend, remember?”
“Bullshit. You’re no one’s friend.”
She clucked her tongue and then groaned. “How many times do you think we did it? In your bed. In my bed.”
“Knock it off.”
“We even fucked once in Leah’s bed. Just because we found ourselves in the house all alone and we could. Do you remember that?”
NONONONO!!!!
She moaned at the memory. My soul died.
“I rode you so hard I thought I’d come apart and my god, you loved it. My hands were on your chest, feeling your heartbeat when you came. No one ever got me so wet.”
This wasn’t happening. This was one of those nightmares I swore I didn’t have.
“You’re sick,” he spat. “You know that? Fucking sick.”
“No, I’m honest. You should be honest too. You want me just as much as you ever did.” She sank to her knees, her mouth trailing over his chest on the way down until she started fumbling with the snap of his jeans and I was newly horrified to realize he was going to let her, that the way he let out a groan and wrenched her hair into one fist as she worked his zipper meant this was going to happen right in front of me.
And I was frozen, an immobile spectator staring from twenty yards away. I could have ended this with one shout. At the sound of my voice they’d break apart with shock and shame, or at least a hint of guilt. And yet I could do nothing except listen to my heart crack.
Ryan was the one who stopped it. He pulled free and I saw him, all of him, everything I’d been dreaming about for years and now I gagged into my palm at the sight of him. Hard. Enormous. Newly extracted from my mother’s mouth.
“Get up,” he growled, tucking himself back into his jeans as my mother flailed around in the dirt and cursed him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she sputtered, now truly angry. “It’s too fucking late for you to decide you’re a good guy.”
He shook his head, closed his eyes. “I don’t think I’m good at all. And you should go home to your family.”
“My family,” she mocked with an avalanche of crazy laughter. Then she realized he was serious and her attitude changed, the laughter failing. “You can’t forget about me. I know you can’t.”
“I already have.”
“Ryan.” She was still kneeling, still naked from the waist up. “That’s not true.”
“Don’t beg, Luanne. It only makes you more pathetic.”
He could have called her disgusting. Nasty. Mean. Those things would have all been true. And none would have stung her half as much as being referred to as pathetic.
Luanne Brandeis got to her feet and pulled her dress back where it belonged. She became remarkably controlled. “Don’t you dare come aro
und here anymore. I have a young daughter still living at home. I don’t want you anywhere near her.”
Ryan didn’t respond. He watched as she swaggered all the way back to the house and shut the front door. I’d clamped my hand over my mouth but a choking sob managed to escape anyway. He heard. He was startled, looking this way and that. Then a pained look crossed his face and he lowered his head.
“Leah?” he called, his voice hoarse. “Are you out there?”
The moonless night was rapidly folding over the desert but the light filtering from the cheery window of the Jedsons’ trailer had given me the opportunity to see too much. I hated that particular window now. And that light. And him.
“Leah?” he tried again. “Please say something if you’re there.”
“Go the fuck away!” I shouted and I hated how much I sounded like my mother. Full of rage and bitterness.
He flinched but didn’t move. The more the seconds ticked by the more afraid I was. This wasn’t the boy who’d hunted desert treasures with me once upon a time. This was a man with blood on his hands who spoke casually about someone’s death, and who’d been touched by my mother while it was clear they’d done so much more a hundred times before tonight. This was someone I didn’t know.
Then he sighed heavily and tipped his head back to watch the stars. As if they cared how he felt. As if I cared. I would never care about him again. I would never lie down on his bed and imagine that one day years from now he’d look my way and understand that we were meant to be together. The medal of St. Christopher, the one I’d been clutching with such reverence a few minutes ago, was now burning a hole in my palm. I wanted to fling it into the dirt. I wanted to hurt him with it.
“I’m so very sorry,” he said. “I wish to god you hadn’t seen that.”
“I hate you,” I replied, low enough to be unsure whether or not he heard me. In any case he climbed into his truck and drove off, leaving me alone to sob out my heartbreak.
I stayed outside for so long I thought my mother would have long since finished her bottle of wine and passed out.
I had miscalculated.
