by Gurley, Jan
I smiled back at Bianca, then it faltered. I moved her off to one side and said, “You wanted to see the photos, didn’t you? That’s one of the reasons you took it?”
“Well, if it was your brother, wouldn’t you want know exactly what they were, and who had their hands on them?”
“Yeah,” I said, certain that my face was now a neon, parrot red.
She said to me, her voice low, as everyone else moved to the living room to start watching Serenity. “They’re not obscene photos. Not exactly. If I was Drew, I’d be flattered.”
She sauntered off ahead of me.
Bianca had called him Drew. Somehow, that touched me, and made me feel better — almost as much as everything else she’d done.
Then she said, over her shoulder, “Of course, I’m just guessing, ‘cause he hasn’t seen them,” a wicked sparkle twinkled in her eyes, “yet.”
I plunged into a vortex of nervous horror all over again.
Which only got worse when I carried a pitcher of water from the kitchen to the living room movie-watchers and heard Helena say to Bianca, “See! Now that guy’s definitely a pitt.”
Within moments, the room erupted with pitt! depp! no way! arguments shouted at the screen as every new male character appeared.
When Drew turned and raised an eyebrow at me, I knew Helena had explained exactly whose theory this was — mine.
Two hours later, people were at the doorstep, everyone leaving, shouting good-byes in the spring night. The only person who looked wilted was Gonzo.
“Poor thing,” my mother said. “But you know what they say, the course of true love never did run smooth. Or was that Shakespeare?”
Bianca, Drew and I, the only ones left, stared at her as she left the kitchen to get ready for bed.
Bianca said, “Tio would know,” then fell silent when Drew and I looked at her sharply.
She slipped quickly out the door.
I had been planning this for the last two hours but all the words I’d said over and over in my head, refining them, the tone, the inflection, it all fled. I couldn’t even look at him. I turned sideways, like it was normal to face a round-top, 1950’s refrigerator while you talked to someone on your left. “Those photos,” I said, and swallowed. “I, uh, I don’t want you looking at them.”
I had my head down, but I could see from the corner of my eye that he put his hands in his front jeans pockets, and rocked back on his heels.
“That bad, huh?”
“Depends on what you mean by bad.”
“Ah,” he said, his voice flat like he was trying not to laugh, “so even your photo skills couldn’t make me look good, is that what you’re saying?”
A prickly heat of embarrassment rashed its way up my face. I shook my head while I picked at refrigerator chrome detailing. “Right. Like you need to go begging for compliments.”
His hand touched my shoulder to turn me to face him, and it was like every finger burned on my bare arm.
I looked up at him and realized this was the first time we’d ever been alone together. I was so tall, my mouth reached his chin, and his eyes seemed glued to my hairline. “This means a lot to you?” he said.
Normally a gust of disbelief would have whooshed out of me, but now, for some reason, my insides felt tight and I only said, in a low, vibrating voice, “More than you can know.”
Even as I said it, that cold clear voice in my head was saying, but why — why should it mean so much? Why couldn’t I joke about these pictures and laugh it off, like I would have done if it was any of the other football guys trapped in a photo on that chip?
We stood there, the refrigerator humming and chortling beside us, as he thought about it. I stared at him while I waited. I could feel a warmth coming off him, and a smell of guy, like the tang of redwood needles and earth and it made me aware how close we were standing. I thought I could feel him breathing, a tickle on my face like a shiver that came and went.
I was afraid to move, waiting, hoping.
Then I realized that the reason it was talking so long was because he wasn’t being glib, and wasn’t promising without first deciding whether or not he could keep his promise. If he said he wouldn’t look at the pictures, then he probably wouldn’t.
My heart felt like a bubble in my chest, swelling with hope, and something else. Drew pressed his lips together, the way you do when you’ve decided something, and you’re about to say it — and then the kitchen phone rang, a loud, jarring clatter of sound that made us both jump.
We both knew no one would call at this hour, unless it was an emergency.
Before the second ring, my mother churned in from the back room, her eyes soft and vulnerable-looking without her make-up on. She picked up the phone, listened for a second and handed it, wordless, to me.
“I’m no fool,” Celia said. “So I’m assuming you must be, to think I’d just disappear after you handed me an empty camera.” [handed?! My mind shrieked in disbelief] “But this camera’s not worthless, now is it? Not in the right hands, anyway. See, you’ve made a very serious mistake. You forgot that I’m made up of 100% lawyer genes, generations of it, in fact. In a way, I was bred for exactly this kind of situation. So here’s the way I see it. If I were to take this camera in to the police, I’ve got the Dog’s and Bianca’s fingerprints all over it. Either you give me those photos, or I’m going to be forced to explain that I discovered the Dog bragging about having the camera at a sleazy Academy party,” [sleazy?!?] “and I had no choice but to grab it so I could return it to its rightful owner.”
I stood there, my breath loud against the receiver of the phone. Drew must have seen something on my face, or heard her voice, because he mouthed, “Celia?” at me.
I gave a short nod and he said a very bad word.
I walked until I reached the end of the extension cord, so I could lean my forehead against the wall. “Meet me Monday at lunchtime at the redwood trees at the edge of the Uni and Academy fields,” I said to her, then hung up. Whether Celia knew it or not, Drew was turning eighteen soon, which meant he could get adult charges filed against him, and adult prison terms. She could ruin not just Drew’s college, but his life without even realizing it.
A part of me wanted to go sob at all I had nearly destroyed with those stupid pictures, that stupid camera, but there wasn’t time. I turned and put my head back on the wall as I dialed one number after the other, calling the Greenbacks with my shoulders hunched in shame, disturbing their sleep, asking them to meet me at the usual pre-dawn time Monday at the trees.
When I hung up, the Dog was gone.
***
Sunday was a form of torture that’s probably banned in civilized countries. I pretended to do a ton of homework, performed my re-animated corpse act whenever I was forced to move around the house, and pantomimed sleeping for at least three times as many hours as I actually did sleep.
Monday, I went to my trees in the pitch black this time, needing my flashlight to get there safely. I flopped face-down on the stump with my arms out in the hug position, but before very long I curled on my side, as though the stump was cradling me. I couldn’t close my eyes, like I didn’t want to miss a second of the few Celia-free hours that were left to me and the fairy circle.
Way up above, the treetops stroked the sky, a slow, soothing movement back and forth. One tree lost more needles than the others — a steady drizzle of twigs like teardrops. I flicked on the flashlight and saw a cuff of thicker needles at its base.
It was a drought year, so maybe we Greenbacks could set up a rotation to deep-water that one tree every so often.
As I sat there, twisted to look at the tree, I heard a sound behind me, a louder snap than the usual morning scufflings. I jerked around, and at the edge of the circle was Drew.
He stood in deep shadow, no flashlight, wearing ripped jeans and a black tee-shirt, tight across the upper part of his chest.
My heart started thudding so hard I could feel it like a taste in my mouth. He wal
ked forward, more careful than he needed to, like I was a gazelle who might startle.
I couldn’t see his eyes until he sat beside me on the stump, his face exaggerated in shadow.
He said, “You fit here.”
I tilted my head up to look at the top and said, “Redwoods.” In the silence, I realized the word had sounded kind of obscene and breathy. I cleared my throat and looked sideways at him. But he had looked up too, his gaze now fixed away from me.
Like a movie montage, I saw in my mind all the times he’d done that. He could, with a gesture, a move, only a few genius words, put people at ease. I was the kind of person who yammered and cajoled, and talked around and around, and he could, with a swipe of his hand at Gonzo, with a movement towards Tio, with a shrug in class, with a chin-nod of respect to Alex and Robin, change the people around him, make them feel confident, and warmed, usually without them even knowing why. He’d weathered the scorn of pottery, the humiliation of band, the starvation of his first week in Academy without complaint and he’d persevered until everyone around him respected him.
He said, to the tops of the trees, not seeming to hear the storm of thoughts that thundered inside me. “Me? I’m more of a sugar-pine guy.”
A breeze shifted the trees. He gave a loose, free laugh.
He knew.
That’s when it happened. It struck me the way lightning takes out a trunk. Everything changed. One blow of realization and only smoldering shards remained.
I knew, in that very moment, there all I would ever have was a destroyed stump where something should have grown, a worm-riddled shell that would inevitably disintegrate into dust around me. Even though I now, finally recognized what it felt like, this yearning, this ache, I could never tell or show him how I felt about him.
Because he was the Dog, Andrew Petruchio-Bullard, the star of University. And I was a geeky weird tall girl from Academy, with used clothes and a scary tree obsession. It was laughable to everyone who saw us.
And because I made a deal with his mother to be his supervisor, to badger and hound and torture him.
And I could never even hope he might ever, even a little, like me, not even as a friend. Not once he learned the truth.
Because he thought I made a deal, yoking myself to him, to keep from being expelled, when really I made it for money.
Because he would, sooner or later, see those pictures I took. The ones I also did for money.
Because he might, some day, find out how we’d plotted behind his back to manipulate him.
Because I couldn’t ever let him find out what the money was for. He couldn’t know that I would do everything I could to destroy the school’s chances of getting this tiny piece of land. He could never know, especially now, now that I knew he might love trees too. Because he would lose his entire future if he was involved in even one single, tiny, school violation before June. And the trees would be cut by June if we didn’t do something.
I sat in the semi-dark, feeling the heat of dawn creeping into the air, looking at the curve of his neck as he stared up. But all I felt was a chill, a permanent coldness, and dew-tears on my face, clinging to my hair.
I’d never really liked a guy. Ever. And when I finally found one, precious and worthy, everything was doomed before it began.
He sensed something because he turned to look at me. I sprang up from the stump and backed away.
“Geez, you act like I’ve got cooties or something. Here, I’ll move,” Drew said.
“No.” It exploded out of me. “You don’t have to. There’s no reason,” My voice cracked and I cleared my throat. “No reason to move away.”
I sat at the edge of the opposite side of the stump, my back straight, my fists on my knees. The minutes blossomed into day, my trees shifting and sighing.
***
The Greenbacks straggled in while it was still dim. Maybe they always arrived that early, but I didn’t know because I didn’t see them until I finished my time with the trees. This morning, maybe it was the tension radiating off me, or the fact that Drew was here, silent and awkward, for the first time, or maybe it was the threat of Celia hanging over us all, but for the first time, no one sat. Everyone stood, not putting down a bag, not smiling or talking, instead shifting in place like the trees. Alex and Robin wore knee-length cargo khakis, draggy tee shirts and tennis shoes. They both wore their hair with a teensy-tight miniature-broom-looking ponytail in the back. It was what I expected, but my heart still sunk to see them back to dressing like bookends. But then I noticed Alex had dangly earrings, and Robin wore a wide leather wrist-cuff. Maybe not so perfectly matching, after all.
The big surprise was when Bianca drifted in with Tio.
She looked up, her hair falling back to her waist. “This is so cool,” she said.
Gonzo and Viola were last. Viola stood just behind Gonzo and patted Gonzo’s shoulder from time-to-time, the way a mom pats a fussy baby’s back without thinking about it. Gonzo seemed fixated on his shoes, not taking his eyes off them.
Finally, he said, “I still have to do the photo shoot with Celia, you know. You guys, you ought to know, she’s, well…”
We waited, feeling the ache coming off him, like day-heat seeping into the circle.
“I mean, she’s different,” he looked up, eyes anguished, “like us.” He darted a gaze between Drew and Bianca, and it was clear we Greenbacks all had the same thought, different like us, except for Bianca, and Drew.
Bianca stepped forward, one hand on her hip, “Well I can tell you one thing. I don’t feel one bit sorry for her.”
Gonzo said, his ears red and his mouth going tight, “That’s not what I meant.”
I stood up and he stopped talking. “No one ought to feel sorry for Celia. Feeling sorry is the worst thing possible. But I can promise you, she’s not getting away with this. I’ve got an idea how to handle this, but you guys are going to have to trust me. If I explain it, it’ll look staged and hokey. The question is — today at lunch — will you follow my lead?” I stopped, my shoulders rigid, my chest aching, thinking that all I had left was this, to keep going and stop Celia and save the trees, and save Drew.
They looked at each other and I realized they were thinking about it. Was I going to mess things up — again?
No longer was I the leader of the Greenbacks. We were, instead, a group of people, who chose to be together, who disagreed and argued and hurt each other’s feelings. But (and my stomach tightened at this thought) hopefully, still, chose to be together.
In the silence, Viola said, her voice admiring, “Oooh, Kate. You’re so Joan of Arc today.”
With a snorting laugh, I plopped down to the stump, like I didn’t have the strength to hold myself up any more, and dropped my head in my hands. I heard people shift closer and a hand patted my shoulder, then another one.
Eventually Helena said, “Kate, sweetie, tell us what the plan is. As much as you can.”
I sat up to find them staring at me, worried looks on their faces, even Drew’s.
“Celia’s coming to the circle at lunchtime.” There were looks of anger and distaste all around, like I’d violated a rule by telling her to meet us here, without asking the others. Silence fell again.
“And?” said, Phoebe.
“I’m going to talk her into not doing this.”
There were cries of that’s the plan? you’ve got to be kidding, no way, this is Celia we’re talking about.
“Let me at least try.” I said it with too much feeling and my voice cracked again and the whole circle went silent at once.
Bianca said, “Is there anything we can do?”
Here was the ugly part, where I knew Drew would hate me even more. I hadn’t planned to do this, but now that Bianca was here, I couldn’t risk losing everything by not having Bianca help us.
“The wild card in all this,” I said, “is Curtis and Nate. They can back our story, or back Celia. And Celia’s going to go to them, and ask for their help. Pretty soon, Curt
is and Nate will figure out, really fast, that they have a lot of power. If, that is, they’re willing to pit us against Celia and see who offers them something interesting for their support.”
Bianca gave me a knowing smile, “Oh, yes,” she said. At the same time, the Dog rose like Godzilla behind me, his breath snorting in the sudden quiet. Tio turned a ticking-bomb glare at me and looked like the only reason he didn’t instantly explode was because he thought death would be too clean and quick a punishment for someone like me. And he may have had a point.
“Sit down,” Bianca said to the Dog.
“You are so not going to — “
“Are we starting this again, where you act like I’m a skank? What do expect, that I’m going to — ack — “ (she made a shoving her finger down her throat gesture) “give Nate a back-rub or something?”
Phoebe said, “Girl’s got a point. Seems like she can take care of herself. And a million other people at the same time. With one hand tied behind her back. Besides,” Phoebe added, her hand curling into a tight, white-knuckled fist, “come lunchtime, if all else fails, I can beat the crap out of Celia.”
We froze. Helena said to Gonzo, her voice low and careful. “Um, Gonz, how long?”
Gonzo did a quick calculation and answered, his voice filled with horror, “Over eight weeks.”
Bianca said, “What?” At the same time that Drew said, “Let me get this straight, am I thinking what you guys think you’re thinking?”
Everyone turned to him in confusion.
“She blows, right? There’s a guy like that on the team, a tackle. Too long without a sack and he loses it.”
Bianca looked totally baffled, Phoebe was shifting her jaw right and left with her eyes half-closed, like she was debating the merits of not waiting until lunchtime, and, instead, going after one of us for discussing her like this.
I gave a careful nod in Drew’s direction.
Drew stood, shook his head in disbelief and almost shouted. “Explain to me — again — why none of you people do sports?”
