by Gail Giles
I looked at him now.
“Don’t make up your mind yet. Come back with me. We won’t talk about guns. I’ll earn your trust. I’ll get to know you better. Find out all the Ames stuff I don’t know. Okay? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. But never think I’ll hurt you. That’s not going to happen.”
Marc’s eyes bore into mine. Liars can’t look you straight in the face, right? Not like he was.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m not promising anything.”
I went back with him. We talked. He talked. And he talked. He didn’t break me. He gentled me. He called the dark thing in me. He sang its song.
The next day we were sanding the metal window grates in preparation for painting. Dad was on the computer and, being a man of no follow-through, he occasionally left Marc and me alone together.
We sanded in silence but I finally sighed, dusted off my hands, and spoke to the air in front of me.
“I’m sorry about running out of the house and all that drama.”
He stopped sanding. Listened.
“I won’t tell anyone about what I saw. I understand how it makes you feel safe. Sometimes you need something… outside of yourself to feel safe.” I felt like I was talking to myself now. “Something kind of dangerous and bigger than you. Something you’ve never had experience with before. Because everything and everybody you know has let you down.”
I turned to look at him. I was shocked — I could swear that Marc had tears in his eyes. He waved me off — as if telling me not to try to comfort him — then nodded for me to continue.
I waited a second or two. Yanked up a handful of grass. “So, your secret is safe. I want you to protect me. I need that.”
Marc didn’t respond.
“My parents abandoned me, so I promise not to do that to you. But there’s two things I want you to promise me.”
He ground the sandpaper against a metal bar. “Okay.”
“You don’t know what they are,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, okay.”
“When you creep a house, I want you to promise it will never be me or Chrissy.”
Marc stared at the ground. “Don’t you know it never could be? Never.” His voice was trembling.
“I do now.” I paused.
“So what’s the second thing?” he asked gently.
Somehow saying it felt like I was telling my deepest secret. My voice was hushed.
“After you creep a house, I want you to tell me about it. Every detail.”
“I told you that I knew you,” Marc whispered. “From the first hour, I knew you.” He said it with his eyes closed. Like a prayer.
Em called a couple of times and she e-mailed me constantly, but I now put her in the Them category. Em and I used to be the Us against Them, but now she was the voice of disapproval, the critic. When I told Marc about it, all about Em, he kind of hemmed and hawed.
“What?” I asked.
“Em called you ‘Tweety Bird’ and she kind of always ran the show, right?”
“Yes, but —”
“Sounds like she was always making herself the big authority. She went to shrinks so she knew how your mom was going to start acting about money. She was the one doling out the information about your father.”
“Sure, but Earl was the one who —”
“So wasn’t she always more or less controlling you, and now that you’re not doing what she wants you to do — she’s acting like she’s the cop and you’re the criminal?” Marc shrugged. “I’m not sure she was ever much different than your parents.”
I thought a minute and was still shopping for an answer when he delivered the final blow.
“It always bothered me,” Marc said.
“What?”
“When Emily sent Chrissy that box of bears. Why didn’t she send you anything? Just some little thing to make you feel better. She knew you had to be in the dumps. Why not a prepaid cell phone? She’s got that kind of cash, right?”
Why hadn’t she?
I even had a card from Robin waiting for me when I got to Brokedown Palace. But I had to go wagging after Em first.
I stopped answering Em’s e-mail. If I couldn’t avoid her calls, I didn’t say much and ended them as quickly as I could. Marc and I were Us now, and everyone else was Them.
* * *
Two days later my cell rang, late. I was groggy when I answered.
“I did it. Last night,” Marc said. His voice was harsh and breathy like when we had sex.
“Did what?”
“Creeped a house. With the gun. The sawed-off.”
The dark thing raced up my neck. I rubbed my arms where the gooseflesh appeared. “Tell me.”
“Big house. Rich neighborhood. He’s a frickin’ traffic court judge. They think they are so untouchable that the back door was unlocked and the security system was off. Being rich must make you stupid.”
I thought back to the times we had gone to bed without checking the locks. We often left the security system unarmed because we had been the only ones to trip it.
“Just tell me,” I said.
“I went in the back. It was like a changing room for the pool, then a hall. I cruised around and eyeballed their stuff. All kinds of crystal and stuff in special cabinets. They even had a library with shelves all the way to the ceiling. Why didn’t they just wallpaper the place with money if they needed to impress people so bad?”
My mouth was dry. Em’s house had a library like that. We used to play on the ladder that rolled along the floor.
“Did you watch them sleep?”
He groaned. “Ahh, you so should have been there. I’ve never had a rush like that. Full body flight then dive into ice water, stick your finger in the light socket, mix a handful of heavy drugs, bang the headboard sex total turn-on.”
I was certain sex with me had never met those qualifications.
“I went in the girl’s room first, but she was too ugly or something about her didn’t give me any electricity. It’s like she was practically dead anyway, so what was the point?”
Practically dead anyway. Anyway?
“I followed the old man’s snores. Door was open and I strolled in, my sawed-off hanging down my side, just watching them sleep. The woman was toned-looking, and the guy was a whale. Full-scale orca. On his back, mouth open, sounding like he was cutting wood then gargling on the sawdust.”
I could picture them.
“I got me a little souvenir, too,” Marc bragged.
“You took something?”
“I got a traffic ticket a few months ago. Totally bogus. So I went to court. This judge wouldn’t even listen. So I wanted something of his.”
“Wait, you knew this guy?”
“Yeah, I just said. Judge that ruled on the ticket. Pay attention.”
“Sorry, what did you take?”
“A gold key chain, shaped like a stop sign and says STOP on the front. On the back in fancy script it says Go Get ’Em, Judge. I found it still in its box pushed into the back of his desk drawer. I guess he didn’t like it,” Marc said.
“Marc, you’ll get someone else in trouble.”
“Who? Like I care?”
“They’ll blame the housekeeper or her kids or their kids’ friends,” I said.
Silence. “You know you’re bringing me down? Just shut up if you want to hear. If you want to be your mother, I got better people to talk to.”
“No,” I said before he could hang up on me. “Please, Marc, I want to hear. Forget what I said.”
Marc didn’t speak, but he didn’t hang up. Finally — “This judge has it in for me. Just like the police do. If I go one mile over the limit, they ticket me. They know what happened in California.”
“I thought your record was sealed in California?”
Again there was a long silence on the line.
“Sorry. Tell me more about the creeping.”
“It was awesome. Thinking they don’t kno
w they are inches from death. I can blast them to hell and back and they won’t even know. I have total power.”
I thought when he told me all of this that my heart would still. That it would stop drumming for a moment. Instead it hammered, pounded, and thrummed. It sang mad music in Dorian mode. Slightly atonal. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart’s new, strange melody.
I thought I fell in love with Marc. I did fall. Maybe it was a kind of love. But it had nothing to do with Marc. But fall… yeah, that’s what I did.
PASSIVE IS THE LIE
Mom went nuts the next day. “Ames, get in here now!” First I rolled my eyes, then I rolled out of bed. She was pointing at her basket of clothes I’d left in her room. “Look at those.”
“Why, are they doing tricks?”
The slap whipped my chin all the way to my collarbone.
“Do NOT try to be funny with me. I’m not in the mood to be disrespected.”
“Couldn’t happen,” I said. Slow and cold, imitating Marc in his cobra stage. “I’d have to respect you first.”
This time I caught her left hand in the air before it landed on my face. I squeezed it hard, making her rings bite into her flesh.
“Don’t touch me again,” I said. I saw a hesitation and possibly a flicker of fear in Mom’s eyes, but it was soon replaced with rage.
“You ruined all of my delicates!” she screeched. She grabbed a wad of her underthings, expensive silk, lace, wisps of finery, the pale tones grayed and the fabrics wrinkled and waddled like an old woman’s skin.
“If it makes you feel any better, mine are like that, too. The woman at the Laundromat said that commercial washers and dryers aren’t made for stuff like that.”
“You aren’t hand-washing them? You should have been washing all this by hand.” Mom was still in screech mode.
I stared at her. “Wash your underwear by hand? Wash your own underwear, bitch.”
I spun on a heel and was gone before she could grab me. I ran straight into Dad’s body block.
“What did you call your mother?” he asked.
“Nothing you haven’t,” I dared him.
“Go to your room and stay there,” he said.
Pretty day. Pretty family.
I slammed into my room and onto my bed, grabbed my phone. Chrissy was curled up, pressing the pillow against her ears.
“You don’t have to answer to them anymore,” Marc seethed after I told him what happened. “They were told not to touch you. They gave up all rights to you by laying a hand on you. Get that?”
I touched my cheek. I got that. I’d gone from someone they loved to someone they used to someone they hated. Yes, I got that.
“Don’t fight with them. If you don’t want to do something, don’t. Act like you’re listening and are agreeing to do what they say, then walk away and don’t do it. Passive aggressive.”
“I’m not big on passive,” I said.
“Passive is the lie, aggressive is the truth,” Marc said.
* * *
I woke up to scratching on my window screen. Marc. I opened the screen and climbed out. We went to his truck and then to his house. Marc unzipped his pants and resentment stirred in me. I had to perform like a circus seal before he would even talk to me? Didn’t it matter to him that I didn’t like the sex?
After, he rolled off me and rooted around in his nightstand. “Close your eyes and put out your hand.”
Something cold and metallic coiled into my palm.
“Okay, you can look.”
A key chain. Gold. A stop sign on the end.
“I want you to have it. It gives me a total buzz just to look at it. Makes me feel, like, indestructible knowing I stood over those people and held their lives in my hands. I want you to feel that kind of power. If you ever feel… confused or get scared or weak… get this out and hold it. We’ll be connected.”
I knew what it meant to him. It was practically like he was giving me an engagement ring.
“Marc… thank you.”
“Goes without saying, no one else can see it. I could go to jail if anyone recognizes that thing.”
“You can trust me,” I said.
Marc sighed. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. We need to have a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Sure. This can go on for a while. Maybe a long time, but sooner or later, we’re going to get caught. I won’t let your parents break us up.”
“How could they do that? They already told us we can’t see each other. That’s working out really well for them.” I kissed his flat stomach.
“They could send you away,” he said. “If they checked and found out how old I am they could send me away. To prison.”
I sat up. “What can we do?”
Marc put both hands behind his neck. “Let’s not worry about that right now. It’s complicated. There’s no reason for your dad to suspect that I’m not seventeen, right?”
Em knows, I thought. But she’d never tell Dad that… “No, you look like one of those guys the feds would put in a high school to work narc duty. Baby face.”
“Careful, I’ve smashed a guy’s teeth out with a piece of pipe for calling me that.” He smoothed my hair back and kissed my forehead. “I do have a plan. If it gets bad and your parents come down on us — threaten us or something — we have to get serious and strike before they can. At the first sign of trouble, tell me. The first night possible you wait until they go to sleep, then call me on the cell. Unlock the back door. I come and take care of them, and then you, the munchkin, and me take off for parts unknown. Canada, maybe, or better, Mexico.”
“Take care of them?” I asked.
Marc grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. “This isn’t a game. When they get tired of batting you around, they’ll start on your little sister.”
I was stunned to silence. He dug his fingers into my flesh and shook me. “Are you strong enough to do something to stop it?”
I felt panic at his sudden fury, but his words about Chrissy shoved me over the edge. I clutched the key chain to my chest.
“If they try to separate me from you or me from Chrissy — they deserve anything they get.”
ANYTHING THEY GET
The end came in two acts. Two nights. The first night the phone rang in the living room. Dad answered. I heard his voice, first in a hushed murmur, then getting louder.
My cell vibrated. “I’m parked on the street just out your window. Come play,” Marc said.
It was a risk, knowing that Dad was awake, but I boosted out of the window and into the truck anyway. Marc had me out of my cutoffs by the time our first kiss was over. We were making love when I heard him.
“Ames!”
Marc and I looked up, scrambling, to see Dad framed in my bedroom window. He was screaming my name. Roaring like a wild, wounded beast.
“Ames!”
He lurched away from the window and appeared at the truck before I could struggle back into my clothes. Marc was back in the driver’s seat, but I was still groping for clothes and it was easy for Dad to jerk me out of the truck.
I fell onto the asphalt pavement, and the loose gravel and rough surface cut and scraped my naked lower half.
“This isn’t over. I know all about you. I know how old you are. I know about your record!” Dad shouted, jabbing one finger at Marc. “Get the hell out of here!” He slammed the truck door. Marc backed up then sped away, tires squealing.
I thought he was supposed to protect me…?
When we got into the house, Dad went ballistic.
“That kid isn’t a kid. He’s twenty-two years old.”
I finally had my clothes on, but my blush was not about my nakedness.
“You knew!” he accused.
“So what?” I shouted back.
Mom wasn’t shouting, though. Her words were so tentative I almost didn’t recognize her voice. “Ames, you’ve been… intimate with this… man?” She sounded bewildered. And sad.
<
br /> “This man,” Dad spat, “has a sealed juvenile record, but he was out of juvie when he was eighteen, and when he was nineteen he went to trial for statutory rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. The father dropped the charges and refused to testify when they found their dog’s body on their front porch. Their cocker spaniel had fifteen bullet holes in her.”
He watched my reaction. “You didn’t know that, did you?”
I wouldn’t look at him.
“Marc’s mother kicked him out because she was scared of him. She never wants him near her or her younger children again. His stepfather says he’ll shoot him on sight.”
“You’re making all this up,” I said. But I wasn’t shouting. Wasn’t I sure?
“Call Earl. Ask him yourself.”
Em. Em had to have talked to Earl. Given him Marc’s name and asked him to check him out. How many people would betray me?
Mom’s voice was calm and… full of something I couldn’t recognize. “Ames, go shower and wash those cuts carefully.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she shook her head and I saw tears in her eyes. “Ames, please. Go.”
I was prepared for her anger. Dad’s rage was easy to counter with my own. I might even understand Mom freezing me out, refusing to speak to or look at me, but I didn’t understand this abrupt personality spin.
I showered and put some medicine on the cuts and scrapes I could reach. Mom came in. She took the tube and turned me around to attend to the cuts on the back of my thighs. “Ames, this is over with Marc. Your father is angry, but… I think I know what you were searching for. I’m sorry… that… you couldn’t find it here.”
Mom was saying she was sorry? Had she ever said she was sorry? What was going on?
She sighed. She was uncomfortable. Fiddling with the ointment tube. Searching for words. She sat on the closed toilet and pulled up her legs until she rested her chin on her knees. “I looked for… security and called it love before, too.” She slid her eyes toward the door. Toward Dad. “I thought for a long time that it was love.” She shifted her attention back to me. “I didn’t realize what you’d been going through. Not until tonight.” She covered her mouth with one hand and closed her eyes. She looked like someone in pain. Then she stretched her legs back out and squeezed ointment onto her finger.
