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by Patty Blount

  She grinned. “I’m older than you by ten days.”

  I laughed. “So you were held back?”

  Julie’s eyes faded. “Had all that trouble to cause.”

  Right. Her goth phase. Still, two for two. I didn’t usually have this kind of luck. Panicky thoughts started circling and attacking. Would I return home to find my parents abducted by aliens? Our house under six feet of water?

  Something would happen to balance out this spike in my good fortune.

  It always did.

  You know what, man? You’re right. We should just enjoy it for once.

  I tried to do that, but my thoughts turned to the girl who’d just bared her darkest pain, the one sitting beside me. I extended my hand, waited while she stared at it for a few seconds before she finally took it. I squeezed, a gesture meant to be reassuring but falling way short. “I know you hate this, but I am sorry,” I repeated.

  She waved a hand. “Don’t beat yourself up.”

  I burst out laughing.

  ————

  “Hey,” Julie said and lifted her head off my shoulder a few minutes after—hell, maybe it was hours. “I’m really hungry now.”

  So was I, now that she mentioned it. “I don’t suppose the bag contains two extra value meals, does it?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. Guess you’ll have to take me to lunch.”

  I started the car, visualized my wallet. It held thirty bucks. I could swing lunch at a fast-food place. I left the beach, drove toward home. The silence grew heavy.

  “So how did you actually get your scars?”

  I gasped. “Jesus, Julie.” Where the hell did that come from?

  “Sorry. I just thought…never mind.”

  “What? Tell me?”

  “Well, I thought you might, you know, trust me.”

  Kenny bleeped. Red alert! Red alert!

  Yeah, no kidding. I felt the panic rising up. “I can’t.”

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  I wanted to believe that. I really did.

  I saw a Wendy’s up ahead and pulled in, let the engine run to buy time. “It’s not a matter of trust. It’s one of safety,” I finally said. I turned off the ignition, got out of the car, and walked around to open her door. She wouldn’t look at me.

  Inside, I ordered a few burgers for myself and a salad for Julie. We silently waited for the food. I hoped she understood that I couldn’t say any more than I already had. But, of course, she couldn’t. Nobody could understand it without first knowing the whole story—and the whole story was off-limits.

  I stole a glance at Kenny. He hated talking about it. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, and he just sat, listening, his arms folded over his body. I recognized that posture. Defensive. Wary. As far as Kenny was concerned, what happened in juvie should damn well stay in juvie.

  That’s right. So don’t open your mouth.

  Relax. I won’t. I can’t.

  Sit back and enjoy the attention. The girl likes us. You did something wrong…So what?

  Kenny again sat opposite Julie, just looking at her. It had always been his role to point out my shortcomings, errors, faults, and lack of character.

  You’re doing fine without me. He did not take his eyes off her.

  Yeah. Right. You just don’t want to lose Julie.

  “You have scars on your face.” Julie’s hand moved up, but she quickly lowered it.

  I did. A few.

  “And you can’t tell me—”

  I shook my head. “No. Well, one’s from Jeff, but no, I can’t tell you about them.”

  She frowned at her salad, and I caved in. “Okay. I can tell you this much. I did something wrong. I was punished for it.”

  “Punished? Like in jail?”

  I searched her face for the disgust, but all I saw was concern. I shrugged.

  “That’s it?”

  I blew out a loud breath. “Julie, please stop. I told you. I want to, but I can’t. I have to protect my parents.”

  She chewed her food quietly, avoiding my gaze.

  I changed the subject. “So, your dad. You must miss him a lot.”

  Her hand came up to rub her cheek, and I kicked myself. Well, Kenny did it for me.

  “Not that much anymore.” She shook her head and then squared her shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I followed her to the door, dumped our trash, and unlocked the car.

  I wanted to rub that cheek for her, comfort her. I wanted to touch her so badly it was becoming a compulsion.

  Beside the car door, I turned her around to face me. With my knees wobbling, I held out my hand and waited. She watched me, her face the picture of surprise. But slowly, she placed her hand in mine. I had to pull in a great big gulp of air then. Her skin, soft and smooth, was warm and made my hand tingle. I rubbed the knuckles with my thumb, my eyes glued to the sight of her small hand engulfed in my huge one. I stole a cautious glance at her face, saw her expression had gone from wide-eyed surprise to forehead-creasing confusion.

  I wanted more, so much more. Deliberately, I moved closer, put my other hand against her cheek, the same cheek she rubbed whenever she thought of her father. I moved closer still, pressed my lips against the deep groove in her forehead, and heard her sigh. Her hand tightened around mine, and I couldn’t help myself. I knew it was wrong, knew it was a lie, knew I’d burn in hell, but I wanted this. I tilted her face up and kissed her.

  As kisses went, there was nothing tender about it. She was all fire and fury. I outweighed her by a good hundred pounds, and yet, she held me captive with this kiss. Wrong, wrong, God, this was so wrong. That was all I could think while the fire scorched me. I’d thought she was cold after she watched Jeff bully Brandon. Even that was wrong. Julie was a volcano—still and imperial on the outside, but inside…steaming, churning, and surging.

  For me.

  For me?

  I tangled my hand in her hair. Melted gold, pouring between my fingers. I had to pry my lips from hers so I could bury my nose in that scent like some deranged actor from a Febreze commercial, but I was past coherent thought now. Her hands on my face clung to me tightly, rubbed, moved into my hair, tugging me back. Dimly, it registered that I could stand only because we were braced against the car. My body reacted to her at every level—heart thundered, lungs bellowed, legs jellied, eyes shut, skin tingled, blood rushed—and still, it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. My hands traced the lines of her body from toned arms across the smoothness of her back and down the curve of her butt, drawing her closer, molding her to me, wondering if she’d devour me and hoping, praying she would.

  When my ears started ringing, I figured loss of consciousness was only moments away. But Julie’s hands moved to my chest, shoved, and suddenly, she was two feet away from me. Her eyes blazed. Her mouth was slack, and she pressed a hand to her heart. We were both panting like we’d just sprinted a few hundred yards. And then her cell phone buzzed. She dove into the bag, found the phone, and read a text. Her body stiffened, and she snapped the phone closed with tight lips.

  “We should go. It’s…um…getting late.”

  I blinked. It was barely two o’clock, but okay.

  “Julie, please don’t—”

  “Dan, I said we have to go.”

  Fine. With my jaw clenched, I drove home and said nothing.

  Neither did Julie.

  Talking to Yourself Can Be a Good Thing

  When I got home, I was still replaying Julie’s words, trying to figure out where exactly everything turned to crap.

  That text message. It upset her.

  Yeah, no kidding. I let out a loud sigh, dropped my books on the dining room table—I wouldn’t be looking at them until Monday—and headed for the refrige
rator. A sweet smell derailed me. Mom baked cookies.

  Chocolate chip cookies. Yes!

  Maybe she wasn’t so mad at me after all.

  The house was quiet—nobody was home. I grabbed a glass, filled it with milk, stacked half-a-dozen cookies in my hand, and sat down with the mail at one of the gleaming counters. The stack of college brochures in the pile made me wince, but I glanced through them anyway. Quinnipiac. Columbia. NYU. Boston College. USC. Wow.

  Beside me, Kenny whistled. Nice.

  “Yeah,” I answered him out loud. “What a great campus.” I flipped the pages in one of the brochures.

  I was talking about the chicks.

  I laughed and nodded. “Oh. Right. Should have known.”

  So. Kenny got really serious. Do you…you know…think we have a chance at schools like this?

  I ate another cookie, could taste the butter, chocolate, sugar. God, I’d missed these when I was in juvie. Mom used to make them only for special occasions. When I got out, she started making them for no reason at all. I tossed another in my mouth but didn’t chew it. I just let it melt on my tongue. I closed the brochure, stood, and threw the stack in the trash.

  Damn it! Kenny slammed the door to his cave.

  Yeah, I hear ya.

  “Now why would you throw those away? You planning to flip burgers for a living?”

  I whirled, spilling some of the milk from my glass, and saw my grandfather leaning against the door frame. “Pop,” I managed with a stiff nod.

  What the—

  He didn’t smile. He didn’t make eye contract. He strode to the kitchen trash can. He was as tall as I was but moved with a silent purpose that shouldn’t have been possible for a guy in his mid-seventies. He rescued the college brochures from the can, tossed the pile at me. I fumbled the catch, tracking him as he moved around the kitchen. He poured a glass of milk for himself, sat on the stool across from the one I’d just left.

  “Sit.”

  When a man who hasn’t talked to me in ages tells me to sit, I sit. And wait. Swallow another cookie. Drink some milk.

  With my grandfather.

  “I hear you at night sometimes. Talking to yourself.”

  I choked. He reached around, pounded my back.

  “Talkin’ to yourself can be a good thing, you know.”

  I doubted that. With my face burning, I glued my eyes to the crumbs on my plate and felt every molecule of oxygen leave my body.

  “Look at me, son.”

  My stomach clenched and twisted, but I looked.

  “Yes or no, did you mean for that boy to die?”

  The words hung in the air between us, echoing in my ears. How, Kenny whispered. How could he ask that?

  “Answer me.”

  “No.” It was no more than a whisper.

  “What?”

  “No.” Stronger now.

  “No what?”

  I erupted. “No. Goddamnit, I didn’t mean to kill him. What the hell difference does it make, Pop? He’s still dead. Jesus. Why would you even ask me that question? Do you hate me that much?”

  His lips pressed into a tight line, and he glared at me for what felt like decades.

  “When I was the age you are now, I was pointing a gun at the Chinese for control over a little mound of dirt. You study the Korean War yet?”

  I opened my mouth but couldn’t squeeze a sound out of it. I nodded once.

  “Then you’ve heard of Suicide Hill.” He ran a finger across his lip. “I was there after we’d taken control of it the first time. Hundreds of guys got killed that summer because the Chinese just kept coming and coming and wouldn’t let up. One of my company, this hillbilly named Darrell, was a real piece of work. Arrogant smartass, funny as hell, and had a real way with the ladies. After all that fighting, we were exhausted, hungry, and terrified. The Chinese were rallying, and we knew it.” He spun the glass slowly, letting it scrape against the granite. The squeak drew goose bumps from me. “Darrell was out of water. I’d just swallowed the last of mine. He got testy with me, like I was supposed to save it for him. Guess I should have. I just never thought to ask him if he needed any. He got real mad at me, and before I could stop him, he climbed out of our foxhole and stood up straight. He was shot through the head under his helmet.” Pop pointed to the base of his skull. “He died in my arms.”

  The cookies and milk—so comforting a few minutes ago—roiled in my stomach. Pop ate another cookie, swallowed the last of his milk, and cocked his head at me.

  “You think nobody understands. Nobody gets it. You’re wrong. I understand. I get it.”

  “Yeah? Really? You understand?” I repeated, the words tasting as bitter as they sounded. “You get it? Then where the hell were you all this time?” I didn’t wait for his answer. I shoved away from the counter, tossed my plate and glass into the sink with too much force, and the glass shattered. I muttered a curse, reached in to start cleaning up the broken shards when two strong hands grabbed my shoulders and spun me around.

  “You wanna know where I’ve been? I’ve been waiting for you take your head out of your ass, son. Instead, you just crawl deeper up your own butt. You walk around moping every day, letting your soul decay a bit more than the day before, and I’m supposed to just pat you on the head? Where’s the boy I used to know?” He shook me hard enough to rattle my teeth. “Since the day you were born, you were hell on wheels, Ken. Nobody told you what was what. You followed your own gut and now you let this—”

  “This what?” I knocked his hands off me. “This mistake? This ordeal? This error in judgment? I’m sick to death of people trying to underplay it, Pop. I killed a kid! I didn’t just forget to share some water with a GI. I killed somebody. You don’t know the meaning of guilt like that.”

  He stood at eye level with me, the storm swirling in his brown eyes, the muscle clenching in his jaw. “You didn’t kill anybody, Ken. You said so yourself. I killed sixteen. Sixteen times, I pointed a weapon at someone’s skull and pulled the trigger. Counting Darrell, it’s seventeen. Don’t you tell me I don’t know guilt.”

  “That was war, Pop. Nobody arrested you for those deaths. Nobody put you in jail. Nobody carved you up like a freakin’ jack-o’-lantern, and nobody put your name on a list with rapists and perverts.” Spittle hit his face when I popped a P. My chest burned from the acid my words stirred up. We stared at each other, waging our own war. Disgust against disappointment, guilt versus grief, revulsion fighting rejection.

  Slowly, he nodded. “So that’s it then. You plan to just roll over, go through the motions, while life passes you by.” He turned away, looked out the kitchen window. “What about this girlfriend of yours? She likes you enough even though you insist on calling yourself a murderer and a pervert.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.” The acid in my gut ignited a path to my throat, and I gulped it back down. “Besides, she doesn’t know the whole story.”

  He took a step back and looked at me like it was the first time we’d met. “So you’re lying to her too.” His lips twisted in disgust.

  “What choice do I have? Telling her the truth risks Liam’s dad coming after us again, not to mention the media.”

  “The Kenny I know would never take this bullshit from anybody. He’d fight. He was the kid who begged me, ‘Pop, let’s go to the city and find all the people buried under the buildings.”

  I remembered that. September 11. The images on TV broke my heart. I was too little to understand what was really going on. But I understood that some things were beyond my control, beyond my ability to fix. This wasn’t. I was fighting. There was a brand society carved into my forehead like the scars in my skin, a scarlet word that told the entire word what I did. What I was. How come he couldn’t see that? How come he couldn’t understand I didn’t want to be Daniel Ellison? I
had to be!

  “You think I’m not fighting?” I forced the words through gritted teeth. “I fight every goddamn day to keep Mom, Dad, and you safe from the narrow minds out there who think I peep on little girls and grope old ladies. I’ve been fighting for years.”

  Pop stalked out of the room.

  I dragged the trash bin to the sink, angrily chucked pieces of the broken glass inside, and cursed out loud when one cut me.

  Apparently, I hadn’t bled enough for one lifetime.

  “Bud, what’s up?”

  I jerked, found my father standing in the kitchen door, staring at the blood streaming from my hand. “Hey, Dad. Didn’t know you were home.”

  “Wasn’t until five minutes ago. What’s with all the shouting?”

  “Pop finally decided to talk to me. It, uh, didn’t go so well.”

  Dad took off his coat, tossed it on the kitchen table, and opened the cabinet where Mom kept the first-aid kit. He ran my hand under the faucet for a minute and squinted. “Doesn’t need stitches. Let me just tape it up.”

  Sure. Why not? What’s one more scar?

  “So you guys talked, huh? What about?” He took out some gauze and a roll of tape.

  “Let’s see. Killing people. I’m a lying scumbag. Oh, and I’ve got my head up my ass.”

  My dad’s eyes snapped to mine. “Not funny, Dan.”

  “Wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  Dad tore open the gauze package and sighed. “Okay. Start with the killing people.”

  “Pop figures the sixteen guys he killed in Korea means he understands what I’m going through.”

  Compassion flickered in Dad’s eyes. “Did he tell you about Darrell?”

  I shrugged. “Only that he was a smartass and got pissed off that Pop didn’t save him any water. He got shot, died.”

  Dad huffed out half a laugh and shook his head. “Figures.” He folded the gauze around my finger. “Did he mention he spent years after that war with his lips glued to a bottle of booze until your grandmother tossed his sorry butt out?”

  “No. Guess it slipped his mind.” Light penetrated the fog, and I could see things a bit more clearly. “Did he drink to forget Darrell or the others?”