Chaste

by Angela Felsted

  Yesterday, I couldn’t turn around without having her body smashed up against mine. It was invigorating at first, feeling all her curves and smelling her soft hair. But then I remembered I couldn’t do anything about it. It turned into a kind of torture where I had to keep my hands to myself while she rubbed against me.

  She had no inkling how it made me ache.

  I tried to walk away, but she hooked her fingers through my belt loops until I felt as if I were carrying an anchor.

  Please let go, Molly. I need to breathe. Even with squeezing through narrow doorways and moving fast on purpose, she never did get the hint. Not until I asked her to let go of my jeans, which she did … right after her eyes filled with tears.

  No, Molly. Don’t cry, please. She reminded me of my mother when she sobbed, so miserable and lonely no matter how I tried to help her. Except in this case, I couldn’t blame other things. Molly’s tears were all my fault. Was it really so terrible to ask for space?

  Then she did something unexpected. She held back her shoulders and tilted up her chin.

  “You’re pushing me away because of Kat,” she accused.

  “No,” I said. “Kat’s just a friend.”

  Friend, wow! Had I just called Kat a friend?

  “She is not! That witch has no interest in your thoughts or opinions. You may think she’ll come to Preston’s house tomorrow, but I’m telling you, you’re wrong. Not only does she think she’s better than us, but she has a reputation. You should steer clear.”

  I blinked. “Molly, what’s gotten into you? We weren’t doing anything but making waffles.”

  “Oh, please. I see how you look at her.”

  I shook my head. “You’re overreacting.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  It was the last thing she’d said before she stormed from the house.

  The sound of a rattling muffler drags me from my thoughts. When I look up, I see Molly’s small Honda pull up to the curb beside Preston and me. It may be cold, but her glare is colder. Seems I’m not the only one thinking about our fight yesterday.

  She steps from the driver’s seat, kicks some pebbles on the pavement with her tennis shoe and then slams the car door behind her.

  “You’ll notice Kat’s not here,” she says icily.

  I glance at my watch. Seven after six in the morning, and the girl is right. That’s the thing about Molly. Even when she’s wrong, she’s right, which makes her rightness harder to swallow, because to stay on her good side, I always have to apologize. It doesn’t matter what problems we’re having, they’re always my fault. Quinn, why didn’t you tell me about Amy? Quinn, that’s not how you hold a baby. Stay away from Kat. If you think she’s your friend, you’re out of your mind!

  As she brushes past me, I try to ignore her shivery silence. Seems I’m in the doghouse again.

  Maybe I should buy myself a leash.

  26

  Katarina

  The moment I see my father sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in his hand and a newspaper in front of him, I know convincing him to let me leave the house early will be a pain in my ass. Normally the man isn’t even around. But this morning he’s made a point of acting all paternal. Yes, I know. After the events of last weekend, I shouldn’t be surprised.

  “Why are you up so early?” he asked as my high heels click on the kitchen floor.

  “I’m studying with a friend before school,” I say, which isn’t completely false. Quinn, after all, is a friend of sorts, and we will be studying. Even if the subject is a cult religion my father can’t stand.

  “Where are you meeting?” he asks, folding up the paper to focus his eyes on me.

  “John’s house,” I lie. “You know John, don’t you?”

  My father rakes a hand through his dark hair, lets out a long breath and smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. My dad likes John, probably because he plays the piano for his Sunday services. I feel a spark of hope. My dad will let me go, I know it.

  “I’ll drive you,” he says.

  Please, no! The spark goes out. I push my urge to whine down to my toes, blink away panic and try to look as if his proposal doesn’t faze me.

  “Why don’t you follow me to his house,” I say in an even voice. “Otherwise I’ll have to get a ride home with Mike after basketball practice.”

  My father freezes at mention of Mike. Let’s see who has the upper hand now? He doesn’t give in.

  “You’re not on the team. I don’t see why you need to go.”

  “I’ve been videotaping the team for the yearbook,” I tell him.

  Not a total lie, but not the truth either. The reason I’ve been taping the team is to bring me closer to Roland by helping me remember how he used to move on the court. It occurs to me that the truth may work better on my father than a lie about the yearbook, but since my brother is the last person I want to talk about, I stick to my lame-ass story.

  He sighs. “Fine, I’ll follow you there.”

  When I show up at John’s house at six o’clock in the morning, he doesn’t greet me with a smile. Instead he almost takes my head off when I step inside.

  “What are you doing here?” he demands.

  When I answer his question, he says I should leave Quinn alone and that I brought this situation on myself. Nice, John, like I asked for your opinion.

  “You owe me big time, Kat.”

  We wait for at least fifteen minutes before my father pulls away from the curb, and in those minutes I learn everything I didn’t want to know about John—like how he sleeps in boxers and smells like a bear first thing in the morning, and like how Debbie broke up with him last night, leaving him totally depressed.

  “I’d planned on skipping school today,” he says.

  “You can’t do that now,” I tell him, pointing out the window to my father’s BMW.

  “No. And thanks for that,” he says sarcastically. When did John turn into such a grouch?

  I burn a ton of rubber on my tires on the way to Preston’s house. So you’d think Mr. Nice would be happy to see me. Instead I sense there’s something wrong as I walk through the door.

  Molly’s back goes stiff. Preston smiles as if he’s trying to hide a bite of breakfast behind his teeth. The tall dark man (who I assume is Preston’s father) shakes my hand with a rigid grip.

  “I’m Brother Parker,” he says. “You must be Sister Jackson.”

  My fingers feel clammy as I sneak a peek at Quinn, who’s glancing at me with one raised eyebrow. A fair response, since I almost didn’t make it this morning. His eyes go from me to Molly as the air in the room grows thicker by the second. Preston’s dad leads me to the seat next to his son. Firelight throws eerie shadows against the wall behind us. My hands start shaking, and I shove them in my pockets.

  Forget what John said about the bet. What Quinn doesn’t know can’t possibly hurt him. Not that I care if anything hurts him. Caring really isn’t the point, I tell myself, and I almost believe it.

  “We were just talking about King Benjamin,” Brother Parker says, pointing to a white board where he’s written something about charity.

  I’ve no idea who King Benjamin is, only that Molly is scooting her chair closer to Quinn’s and whispering something in his ear.

  She puts her hand over his, and the tension drains from his shoulders. When she squeezes his fingers, the stress in the room vanishes.

  I feel sick.

  Their house, their rules. Brother Parker has seated me as far away from my lab partner as possible. Preston is the first barrier. The space between our table and Quinn’s table is the second one. Add the way Brother Parker walks back and forth in that small space, and we might as well be on separate sides of a divided highway.

  Hey, hold on a second. I’m their guest! They should be welcoming me, smiling, letting me sit wherever I choose. I didn’t lie to my father and get lectured by John to be ignored and shoved into a corner. Quinn had better take his eyes off his girlfriend
and take a minute to notice I’m here. Scooting closer to nerd boy, I put a hand on his knee.

  Preston isn’t my type. His hair sticks up from his head like a scarecrow’s, his clothes are too big and he needs to shave. But he’ll do just fine for making Quinn jealous.

  “Preston,” I whisper at the base of his neck. “I’m lost. Who’s King Benjamin?”

  His breath hitches when I linger near his skin, and I feel a heady rush of power.

  “Come on, Preston,” I breathe into the silence.

  “Urg … ahem,” he says.

  What is it with guys and grunting? No wonder scientists think humans come from apes.

  “Sister Jackson,” says Preston’s dad.

  “Huh?” Great, now I sound like a teenage boy.

  “What would you do?” he asks.

  I feel Quinn’s and Molly’s eyes on me. How do I answer a question I didn’t hear? If I stick with “I don’t know,” I’ll sound like a brain-dead idiot. Then again, something honest like “What was the question?” will make me look like a jackass.

  “Better to remain quiet and feel like a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt,” Molly says.

  I curl my hands into fists. Little-Miss-Perfect obviously thinks she’s the smartest one in the room. If I thought Quinn would forgive me, I’d punch her in the mouth. See how smart she feels while making whistling sounds through broken teeth.

  “Molly, don’t be mean,” Quinn says, raising his hand to get Brother Parker’s attention. He looks much too comfortable next to that cheating brat.

  “Brother Walker,” Preston’s dad says, pointing to my lab partner.

  “It doesn’t matter if he stands in the same spot every day and holds up traffic on the Duke Street ramp,” Quinn says. “If the homeless man needs money, you should give it to him.”

  “But he’ll blow it on booze,” Molly says.

  “We don’t know that, do we?” Quinn asks. “I mean, Brother Parker said he waits at the top of the exit ramp and asks for cash. But he has no proof that he spends it on alcohol. As far as we know, he could be using it to feed his family.”

  Mr. Nice holds his hands palms up as if appealing to common sense. Maybe I should rename him Mr. Gullible because that’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.

  Molly snorts. “You think he has a family?”

  I bite my tongue. Rude as that was, she’s right. The man would not be living on the street if he weren’t an alcoholic. If he could handle a family, he wouldn’t be begging. Don’t misunderstand me. People end up homeless for different reasons. Some are addicts, some fall on hard times, others are crazy. But everyone knows the man on Duke Street is an alcoholic.

  “He keeps a garbage bag next to a tree behind the guard rail,” Brother Parker says. “Filled to bursting with empty liquor bottles.”

  “That doesn’t mean the dollar you gave him was spent on alcohol, though. Maybe he used it to buy himself a burger or a cup of hot chocolate,” Quinn says.

  Preston slaps a hand on his knee and laughs. “You’re kidding me, right bro? Please tell me you’re not one of those bleeding-heart liberals.”

  “We’re talking about King Benjamin.” Quinn rolls his eyes. “You know, the man who said we’re all beggars. What right do we have to deny anyone, to judge someone poor when we’re beggars ourselves?”

  “Exactly, Quinn,” says Brother Parker. He walks to the white board, takes out a red marker and circles the word beggars. “We’re all beggars. God gave us life regardless of how we use it. And in the book of Mosiah we’re commanded to give without strings. What the homeless man does with the money isn’t my concern.”

  Fire crackles in the silent room. The air feels electric as Molly and Preston exchange a look. A piece of wood shifts and rolls out onto the mantle. Preston’s dad grips the poker, prods the log back into the fireplace and then squats down and blows into the heat. Flames rise, embers glow, changing from black to sooty red. The fire comes alive.

  “You’re wrong,” I say.

  Brother Parker turns. All eyes fall on me. I’ve never been one to voice my opinion on this kind of thing. Not when it means offending someone good like Quinn and certainly not in the company of a girl who hates me, but something inside me strains to come out, to be heard and seen and above all to be known. That’s when it hits me.

  No one knows me anymore.

  They know the girl I pretend to be, the one who projects a badass image.

  They know the strong girl who shoulders the grief. The friend who never cries and the siren who uses her power to turn heads.

  They know the pastor’s daughter, who has her father pull strings for her, but not the girl with this rage inside, this fear, this guilt, this constant regret.

  No one knows who I really am. I’m too damn good at putting on an act.

  With Quinn’s eyes on me, my façade chips. Some things need to be said.

  “You may think you’re being charitable,” I tell them. “But your kindness hurts him. He drinks because he can. By giving him money, you’re killing him.”

  It’s the tip of the iceberg. Roland was drunk when he climbed into his car that night. When he ran into a tree, he was drunk.

  Worse, I’d known he would be.

  Even though I’d nagged him about the party for days, he didn’t take me out of the goodness of his heart. He took me to be his designated driver, to be the one responsible for keeping him alive. And I made him stop the car so I could storm away in anger. Too selfish to care about his safety. Too selfish to think of anyone but myself.

  The moment my shoes hit the pavement, I killed him.

  ***

  As I drive Quinn to school, I tell him the story. Not how I knew Roland would drink, or how I could have saved him, but how my brother and I got into a nasty fight that night.

  I tell him about how Roland didn’t approve of my dating Mike. I explain how I walked to the Springfield metro in the dark after my brother dropped me at the curb and laid down some rubber. I tell him why I drive a Jeep, about my father building Roland’s house and the reasons my parents force me to see the school counselor.

  It takes so long that I drive at a snail’s pace, take wrong turns and pretend I’m lost.

  It takes so long that my left leg starts to fall asleep. When I glance at Quinn, I know I’ve affected him.

  His fingers keep creeping over the edge of the seat, hovering like he wants to hold my hand. He doesn’t dare, of course, because he keeps pulling his fingers back. But the empathy is there and the need to take away my pain. I see it in the way his eyes soften when he looks at me, in the creases that spread from the corners of those sea-blue eyes. He cares.

  I hadn’t planned on spilling my guts to Mr. Gullible this morning, especially not after guilt-tripping him away from Molly. But something about telling him feels right. It isn’t just that he’s easy to talk to, or that I went through a patch of unease at Preston’s house. It isn’t just about the bet either, even though it should be.

  I tell myself he needs to think I’m letting him in, to think I have feelings behind my tough-girl image. If I’m going to keep my camera and my reputation, he needs to see I have a heart. Love is the ultimate draw. I learned that from Mike.

  A little voice in the back of my mind tells me I’m making rationalizations. It asks me to stop and be honest with myself, but I shove it down and tell it to shut up. Quinn Walker means nothing to me.

  “I’m sorry you lost your brother,” he says.

  It’s the understatement of the century. I’d much prefer he hold my hand or give me a nice soft kiss on the forehead. Maybe let his lips travel to my cheeks and lips. I wonder if he’ll use his tongue when he kisses me. Then I remember Little Miss Know-It-All.

  “So,” I ask. “Is Molly your girlfriend?”

  She held onto him so tight at seminary, I’m surprised he still has circulation in his fingers.

  “I don’t know,” he says, dragging a hand through his curly hair. �
�Let’s not talk about Molly, okay?”

  I nod and wish I could see into that brain of his, figure out what he means by “I don’t know.” The thought of him with that hypocritical redhead makes me want to throw up in the bushes. Not that I should care. Technically, Molly is irrelevant to the bet. So what if I cause more collateral damage than I planned? It really shouldn’t matter.

  Except it does.

  When I pull into the parking lot two minutes before school is supposed to start, I’m in such a rush that I don’t see Mike guarding the entrance like some bulky security guard. At least, not until I smack into his chest. Try as I might, I can’t get around him. Alarm bells go off in my head. With the back of my hand, I motion for Quinn to run ahead.

  “We need to talk,” Mike says, grabbing my shoulders too hard. His fingernails dig into my muscles until they ache and scream with pain.

  I pray Quinn’s gone, but when I turn my head, he’s still standing silent as a shadow in the hall.

  “I need to get to class,” I say, narrowing my eyes at my stubborn ex-boyfriend. I wiggle my shoulders, but Mike won’t let go. Damn the man. He’s holding me at arm’s length. Close enough that I can’t squirm away, far enough that my knees won’t make contact if I try to kick him in the nuts. The bell rings. The hallway goes quiet. It’s unbearably hot; I can’t breathe.

  “Why don’t you return my calls?” he asks.

  “We’re done, Mike. There’s nothing to talk about.” His fingers dig in harder. Pain shoots down my arm.

  “You’re hurting me. Let go!”

  His grip loosens, but his eyes turn hard as polished stones.

  “You’re sleeping around.”

  “That’s a lie. The only person I’ve slept with is you. Not that it matters. You cheated on me, remember?”

  I smell the coffee on his breath as his face gets closer. Dread runs down my spine.

  “You can’t end what we have without my consent.”

  I’ve never seen Mike this crazy when he’s sober. It’s scaring the hell out of me. Time to end this conversation.