Skater Boy (Patchwork House Book 1)

by Mary Catherine Gebhard

  Out my window, autumn was almost over, the conflagration atop the trees fading. It would soon be that ugly time just before winter when all the trees were naked and shivering and waiting to be covered in a blanket of snow.

  “What are you going to tell her?” Daniel asked. “How does it figure into your happily ever after?” I picked at my nail.

  Maybe I didn’t have a happily ever after planned.

  Maybe all I’d ever have was now.

  I kept staring out my window until after he left. Until the sun set across the mahogany ramp. Even until Tweetie appeared, ready to shred.

  Holy shit.

  I scrambled to my feet, moved closer to my window to get a better look.

  What did she call that move? I’d followed her career, seen the few underground VHS tapes she’d released, but it was nothing to the real thing.

  She was magnetic.

  She lifted up her shirt, exposing a tight stomach. Sweat beaded her abdomen, dripped between the valley of her muscles, down where I couldn’t see. Then her eyes locked with mine and she dropped her shirt, startled. But she didn’t look away.

  I stifled my laugh. Years later and Tweetie still didn’t back down. If that wasn’t hot as hell, I didn’t know what was.

  I leaned back against the bed, listening to her wheels grind like meditation.

  Hours later, I’d pulled the blanket off the bed, fallen into a limbo of almost-sleep. When there was a knock on the door, I figured it was Daniel again, coming to try and convince me what I was doing was insane.

  “Go away asshole.”

  The door pushed open slightly, and Tweetie stood in the frame. Tangerine softly flamed her dewy skin and she ducked to avoid the sun’s glare. Her eyes narrowed, probably wanting to know why I was asleep on a makeshift bed on the floor when a perfectly good one was just above my head.

  I sat up. Coughed. Scratched my neck. “I thought you were someone else.”

  She worked her jaw, hiding her eyes beneath the bill of her cap like she wasn’t sure of her decision. “King told me to stay away.”

  Of course he did. “You should have listened.”

  I had a black eye from earlier and I assumed more bruises had formed since I’d last checked. She studied me without anger, and instead looking confused. Sitting in the dark of my room, the setting sun lighting a poster of me from the early eighties ablaze, it was like a time capsule.

  I looked caught in the past.

  I felt it.

  She rubbed her neck. “Will you tell me what I did? Last night.”

  After I’d removed my lips from her neck, Tweetie had run, but later in the night, when the music was loud and the lights were low, she’d found me. Drunk.

  Drunk Tweetie was always adorable, always handsy.

  “Flip,” she’d said, enunciating the P with too much air. “I used to have a crush on you. Why couldn’t you be all cocky and broody in my life back then?” Then she fell forward so I had to catch her. “I had a poster of you…I miss it.”

  That’s when I realized I liked honest Tweetie a hell of a lot more than handsy Tweetie.

  Never thought that would happen.

  I stood, ignoring the twinge at my ribs, and went to her.

  “I was just fucking with you,” I said. “You didn’t do anything.”

  She eyed me like she wanted to press but changed the subject, gesturing to my black eye. “You knew that would happen.”

  I nodded.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why give me this”—she gestured to the mark on her neck—“when you know that it’s just going to end up in a fistfight?” I didn’t expect the question to make me pause and stumble over my words, but it was so innocent and so perfectly highlighted the knowledge disparity between us.

  I’d fight to the death for her.

  I’d give up everything—I did give up everything—for her.

  A fistfight was nothing.

  I thumbed the tears at her lids, ones I knew she would never let fall publicly. She swatted away my hand, so I slammed it on the wall by the side of her head. She inhaled sharply.

  “You still don’t understand the situation you’re in.” She found me through light, feathery lashes. “You belong to me. You’ve always belonged to me.”

  Her eyes widened. “But I don’t even know you.”

  “This…” I grazed the small, reddish purple mark on her neck and her flesh rose to mine. “Is just the beginning.” I let my thumb linger until the goose bumps dissipated, then walked to my bed, situating myself with one arm on my knee.

  Eyes locked.

  Eleven

  Street skateboarding: Skating on the streets.

  FLIP

  Tweetie was in the kitchen, face in my jar of rousong, when I came down the next morning. I stopped on the stairs, still obscured by the wall. She looked left and right like she was doing something wrong, then pulled out some dried pork on the tip of her finger. She sniffed, small nose twitching, then with a cautious tongue, tasted it. Immediately her face scrunched, and she shoved the jar back into the pantry.

  I couldn’t help my smile.

  I was about to make myself known when another beat me to the punch.

  “Oh, Tweetie—” King stopped short in the kitchen. I paused, stepping back up to where I’d been.

  “King.” Tweetie slammed the pantry shut. “Hi.”

  “Hey.”

  Tweetie pressed herself against the pantry. King stayed frozen in the doorway, his eye eggplant in the morning sun. Probably hurt like hell. I know mine did.

  An awkward silence bloomed.

  “Do you…?” Tweetie scratched the back of her neck. “Do you have time to talk?” Her voice had changed so much from the little girl I’d known. She’d been bright and happy and cute, like her eyes. Now every word was measured and even, steady and calming and smooth.

  King looked over his shoulder. “It sounds like the kids are waking up.” The kitchen was silent save for them.

  “We can’t just keep acting like nothing happened,” Tweetie said. My jaw clenched. I knew something went down between them the night she left.

  King ignored that, turning round the way he’d come.

  Tweetie lifted off the pantry, arm reaching. “King—”

  He left.

  I stayed hidden by the shadows, watching her. She gripped the counter, breathing heavily. No tears though. I waited another minute, watching heavy breaths push her body up and down, then I cleared my throat loudly.

  Her head sprang up, eyes bright and wide, shooting in my direction.

  I walked to her and grabbed her hand wordlessly, tugged her toward the back door. We were almost there when she came to her senses and tried to yank it out of my grasp, but that only made me pull harder.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, planting her heels into the hardwood. Tweetie was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, barely five foot four. It was futile.

  “Where are we going?” she tried again.

  “Outside.”

  “That. Doesn’t. Answer. My. Question.” She tugged on my grip, enunciating each word with a breath.

  Outside the air was chilly, the sky white. Winter was almost upon us. We were nearly to the front when Tweetie yanked herself away with a final, hard pull.

  “Flip!” She almost fell over with the inertia. After a few hard breaths, she looked at me. I could tell when she’d focused on my bruises, because the anger in her eyes melted away.

  I put a hand to my forehead, pretending to block out the sun so I could cover it. I’d wanted to distract her from whatever made her grip the sink so hard, not this. The way her eyes pinched and her brows creased ripped away layers.

  Soft. Light.

  I jolted at the sensation. Tweetie touched just beneath my eye, exploring the bruises. They were sorer from the night, from healing. My heart pounded with uncertainty, locked on her.

  She focused hard on my cheek.

  “Last night…” She lightly danced alon
g the bruise.

  “What about it?” I tried to be easy. I thought she would ask me a question I couldn’t answer. Why am I so certain when I barely know her? What did I know that she didn’t? Last night I’d once again let too much slip.

  Her fingers paused. “Are you okay?”

  “What?”

  “I was worried about you,” she said, hand falling to her side.

  She was worried about me? She wanted to know if I was okay? I didn’t know how to process that.

  So of course I shrugged it off with a smile. “Never been better.” Her brows furrowed; I could see the new questions forming.

  I gripped her hand again, dragging her toward the front yard while changing the subject. “You need some fun. It’s still a week before the comp, you shouldn’t be so stressed.”

  I think she knew I knew that wasn’t why she was so wound up, but she didn’t call me out.

  “There’s only one thing that cures any ailment,” I continued over my shoulder. “Skating.” That had her perking up. Her entire face lit up.

  “You’re going to skate?” she asked, breathless.

  “No,” I clarified. “You are.”

  Her face fell. “Why won’t you skate?”

  I shrugged. “Not in the mood.” She gave me a look, one I was beginning to understand meant she knew I was lying.

  “Well, the ramp is the other way,” she said.

  “We’re not going on the ramp, Tweetie.” I coaxed her like a scared foal. “We’re going to the streets.”

  Her eyes grew in excitement as I grabbed a bike lying in the front yard. She picked up her board. Together, we headed out.

  It was like the first night I’d skated street with her, when she was just sixteen and I was much too old for her but fate had once again thrust us together. I’d been behind her then too as she skated down the median, sandwiched by angry cars. Her reckless laughter and brilliant skill, all I could focus on.

  It was the first time I really felt the intensity of my affection.

  It was no different now.

  We stopped at an abandoned railroad, so old the tracks had been filled with pebbles to make a walkway. Tweetie kicked up her board, holding it beneath her arm. My touch came to her board without thought. The grainy, galactic black. For a brief, fleeting second the idea of skating didn’t fill me with dread.

  I wondered if Tweetie could sense it—my yearning—because she asked, “Wanna turn?”

  I dropped my hand. “Let’s take a break.” I didn’t wait to see how my response sat with her, settling against a bright turquoise and fuchsia steel beam. A moment or two later, she followed.

  For a few minutes the only sound was our breathing, the chilly breeze. In the summer, the trees would bloom with bright blossoms. Now they were raw.

  “Flip…” She took a breath. “When did you live at Patchwork? Why did you leave?” Here it was. I knew this was coming. I’d been preparing for this, rehearsing my answer over and over in my head.

  “I never actually lived at Patchwork.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Then why do you have a bedroom?”

  “The media was always hounding me, making up shit. Every house I ever had they found. I met King by coincidence. I paid him to let me store stuff there, things I didn’t want anyone to find. I told him to keep it under wraps and not let anyone inside.” I waited, staring into the distance, trying to be nonchalant.

  Tweetie nodded, seeming to accept the answer, and I breathed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She’s sorry? “It must have really sucked not having any privacy.”

  I’m such an asshole.

  “You have so many tattoos,” Tweetie said, shifting topics. I lifted my arm a fraction. Not compared to King or Romeo, but compared to someone like Daniel, yeah.

  “What do they mean?” she asked.

  “Gonna have to be more specific.”

  “This one.” She touched the Chinese script inking my forearm, the end visible past the sleeve of my hoodie. “What does it say?” Her finger traced the lines. While she studied the black ink, I studied her. The sun was setting on her face and, if it was possible, she was growing more beautiful.

  My voice was rough. “It’s Eastern philosophy you wouldn’t understand, too difficult to translate into English.”

  Her eyes shot to mine, wide.

  My mouth lifted slightly. “Penis.” She slapped me and I laughed. Damn, it felt good to laugh for real. So many of my laughs were hollow.

  “Is the one on your ribcage a dick joke too?” The one on my rib was for her. I’d gotten it the two years we were apart.

  I settled back against a beam, watching the sun set through branches and beams. “Yeah.”

  A pause. “So technically you’re covered in dicks.”

  I bit my lip on a laugh. “Yeah, okay.” When I smiled with Tweetie, it wasn’t hollow or plastered. It was real. And it was so goddamn refreshing.

  We settled into another comfortable silence. That’s what Tweetie was: comfort.

  “Why don’t you sleep in a bed?” she asked quietly. I caught her sunny image in my peripheral. How long had she been watching me?

  I tensed, jaw tight. “Just don’t.”

  “Does it have anything to do with your fear of spiders?” My brow furrowed. When had she seen that? “I noticed when we were in the closet.”

  I rubbed my lip, focusing on the pebbles ablaze in the sunset. Tweetie looked forward. She wasn’t going to press. She wasn’t going to force it out of me, but did she honestly want to get to know me?

  “It’s dumb,” I said. Her head tilted slightly, not making eye contact but giving me her full attention. “When my mom left, she told me to wait up and not to go to bed until she came back. She never came back. I dunno, it just stuck with me. As I got older, I stopped thinking about it.”

  Tweetie’s eyes met mine, giving me her full attention.

  “I was by myself for awhile and the house was filled with spiders. It was probably worse in my head, but it felt like they were everywhere. It didn’t get any better when I went to the group home.”

  “On Angel’s Wings?” she asked. I nodded. “Don’t blame you,” she whispered. “That place is hell. One of the caretakers rapped my hands with a ruler and stole my only picture of my dad when I kept my elbows on the table at dinner, telling me I could have it back when I learned manners.” Half the people at Patchwork had been at that group home at one time or another.

  No one stayed long.

  “I didn’t know you also stayed there,” she said. She shifted, and our thighs barely touched, our shins and shoes still apart. Tweetie kept her legs straight like she was nervous to touch me completely.

  I watched her sneakers, waiting for her to fall into me.

  “I have one good childhood memory,” I said. “My grandma. She lived in Taiwan but came to visit when I was a kid before she died.” On my mother’s side. I don’t know shit about my father’s family.

  Her head swiveled to mine, but I couldn’t decipher what was in those blue eyes. I quickly looked away. I’d shared too much.

  Way too much.

  “Your competition is coming up,” I said. “You excited?”

  She paused, then said, “Yeah.”

  Our legs in the sunset made a painting, the white, rubbery tip of her sneaker inching closer to me.

  I had the urge to drop my shoes the rest of the way.

  Instead I said, “Tell me about your first one.”

  Her face dropped. “It was like all of them. I did everything right. I was better than all of them. And I still lost.”

  “The good parts,” I clarified. The sun dropped, the sky lingering in a dusky afterglow, the heat gradually disappearing with it. Her legs finally fell to mine, jeans warm in the dark. Tweetie looked away and hummed to herself like nothing happened.

  Inside I triumphed.

  “I remember someone from that day,” she said. “He was dressed in all black. He was the same guy who told
me to sign up. It felt like he was a guardian angel.”

  She saw me?

  I coughed. “Anything else?”

  “A boy called the house. That was also the last time a boy ever called the house. I vividly remember King’s growl, asking my honors math buddy who the fuck gave him our number. I jumped for the phone, but King was too tall.”

  I smiled.

  “Once the guys figured out it was for me, they all had so much fun keeping the phone from me and grilling him at the same time, sounding mean and scary, trying to live up to the Patchwork name—” She stopped speaking when I shrugged out of my hoodie and put it on her legs. Tweetie looked at the dark gray fabric, mouth frozen.

  “What happened?” I prompted.

  “He—he hung up.”

  She moved some of the jacket over to my legs, patting it into place. The simple action had my chest thumping.

  “So…boys at school,” I said in an awkward segue, trying to lead into what I really wanted to know. She scrunched her face at me. “Did you have a lot of friends before Patchwork?”

  Tweetie laughed. “I never fit in with anyone in school, even before the accident. The boys didn’t want to play with me, the girls didn’t want to play with me. There was only one boy who ever did.”

  One boy.

  Me.

  My breath seized. This was why getting to know Tweetie was so damn dangerous. I should have recognized the warning signs and quit while I still had oxygen, but I just wanted to dive deeper.

  “What about you?” she asked

  “Me?”

  “What was school like for you?”

  “I went to a fancy-ass boarding school. It was shit.”

  “You went to a fancy boarding school?” Her brows caved. “How?”

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  “I…had another family. For a brief period of time.”

  “Oh.” I could see her trying to work the puzzle out. “Who—”

  I stood up quickly, cutting her off. “It’s getting cold.” I gave her my hand and a smile. “Let’s warm each other up.”

  We skated for hours, until we wound up a few houses from Patchwork, between the abandoned Victorians that made up the ironically named Patchwork Court, cloaked in shadows.