These Gentle Wounds

by Helene Dunbar

  She squeezes my hand. “It isn’t stupid at all.”

  I follow her lead as she straightens out her sleeping bag, and then we each climb into our own.

  “Sarah … ” I know I have to ask the question, but I don’t want to sound like an idiot.

  She rolls on her side, putting her arm around me and her head on my shoulder. “Hmmm … ” she murmurs into my neck.

  “There are a million people you could have invited. Why me?” I blurt out.

  She looks at me with the same expression Kevin gives me when I’ve said something he thinks is crazy.

  “I’ve invited Laura a few times, but camping isn’t her thing, and, honestly, I don’t know. You’re just unlike anyone I’ve ever met. I mean, you’re so good at hockey and really smart in class, but … ”

  The sleeping bag bunches in my hand as it contracts, and I finish her sentence for her. “But I’m a freak?”

  She picks up her pillow and hits me with it.

  “No. It’s just … ”

  “Why?” I close my eyes and try not to pay attention to the list that’s running through my head. The one that says I’m just some charity case, or that Luke is forcing her, or …

  She squeezes my arm. “Gordie.”

  I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. So I open my eyes.

  “You’re different. You’re interesting. You’re so quiet, it’s like you’ve got a whole other life going on in your head. All last summer, I wanted to talk to you.” Even in the darkness, I swear I see her cheeks flush. “And you’re cute.”

  “I am?”

  She nods. “Yeah. And you pay attention to me. I mean, you really listen to me like what I’m saying matters.”

  “It does,” I say, and she smiles. I can see her eyes sparkle. “It really does.” I want her to believe me so, so, so badly, and my heart is beating even more unevenly than it did when we were kissing earlier. “It does.”

  She laughs and then I do too, even as I realize that it works both ways. She pays attention to me, too, and not just because she’s waiting for me to fall apart.

  “I like that you make me laugh,” I say.

  She leans back down and takes up her position against me again. “I like that I make you laugh, too.”

  As amazing as it was to kiss her, there’s something strange, and safe, and totally wonderful about lying next to her with the weight of her arm across me. It’s like she’s holding me down, keeping me here. Keeping me from flying off someplace else.

  At the same time, I can feel her heart beating against my side and it’s both the most dizzying and the most comforting thing I can imagine. I don’t remember the last time anyone held me close like this, and I don’t want to waste a minute of it.

  I try to stay awake. I do math in my head. I count the raindrops as they fall. I run my hand in ever more complicated

  patterns along Sarah’s arm, recreating hockey plays, spelling out bits of remembered poetry.

  I think this feeling might be something that other people get all the time. But then I’m sure I’m wrong. How could anyone function if they felt like this? How do they get up and go to school and to work? How do they walk away?

  I watch the designs that the blowing branches make against the side of the tent. Sarah’s breath is warm and even on my neck, making the hair on my arms stand straight up, running shiver after shiver through me until I think I might burst from sheer happiness.

  I realize I have no words for what I’m feeling. Pain, loneliness, fear ; those I know. Those I can name from miles away. I can see them coming like long-lost friends in the dark. But not this. I grasp at the words parading through my head. Safety. Warmth. Protection. Want. Need. None of them even come close.

  I take a deep breath, inhaling that lilac smell that’s no longer the scent of a flower but the scent of a girl. I hold my breath until I think my lungs will explode with it. Until Sarah props herself up on her arms, laughing.

  “I thought you were so tired.” Her eyes are bright despite their obvious sleepiness.

  “I am,” I say. “I just … ” I turn my head so she can’t see me blushing even though the darkness of the tent is darker than anyplace I’ve ever been, even darker than the river, where daylight danced across the top of the water, drawing me toward it.

  She props herself up on my chest and even in this non-light I can see the flirtatious glint back in her eyes.

  “You just what?” she asks expectantly.

  I want to know how to do this. How to flirt back. But it isn’t something I can ask her to teach me so I bite the inside of my cheek and stay silent, my mind a snarl of thoughts and emotions I don’t know what to do with.

  She reaches up and brushes my hair back off my forehead. I’m glad I’m lying down, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to stay upright with her touching me like that.

  “Talk to me,” she whispers. “Talking is always less scary in the dark.”

  She’s right; everything feels safe here, but that doesn’t mean that I want to spend our time talking. I swallow down the lump in my throat and try to figure out what’s most pressing: my hungry need to kiss her again, or all those things that remain hidden that I don’t want to—but think I should—share.

  “I love watching you in goal,” she says. “I’ve never seen anyone so focused.”

  “Yeah,” I try to joke. “I’m good at focus.”

  She rewards me with a giggle. “Is that what you want to do for real? Play hockey?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I admit, but it’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud. “He did, though. My father. Until he got kicked off his college team for hurting someone.”

  I haven’t thought about that in a long time. All the stories I heard about him checking one of his own players during practice. About the other kid ending up paralyzed.

  I try really hard to stop thinking about it and to think about nothing but her hand running through my hair, over and over and over until I can’t take it anymore.

  “Sarah.” Her name escapes my lips with a breath, but without any plan on my part. I think she knows that, because before I have to think about saying anything she’s leaning down and we’re kissing again.

  My hands reach up, clenching gently around the fabric of her top, pulling her to me with an urgency like wings battling against a breeze, pushing forward, afraid to stop, afraid to fall.

  For the first time I can remember, I feel solid and so tethered to now that I almost believe the last five years were nothing more than a bad dream.

  Seventeen

  “Morning, sunshine,” Sarah whispers, kissing me quickly. I reach up and touch my tingling lips. I don’t even think about the fact that she’s watching me, and for some reason it makes her laugh. “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah, really well,” I say, realizing that for once it’s completely true. We both pull ourselves up so that we’re sitting in our bags.

  “Good. I wish we could stay out here for the day, but Jessie has some cheerleading thing.” She says “cheerleading” like some people might say “leper.” “Man, I can’t wait until I can drive.”

  My stomach twists when she talks about leaving. I feel like all the good stuff is going to stay in the woods without us. I’m worried she’ll think back and realize I really am a nutcase and won’t want anything to do with me tomorrow in school. I mean, the Moby Dick project is done, so we don’t have to work together in class. And now camping is over and she kind of had to let me come after she’d already invited me, so …

  My hand starts spasming at my side and my thoughts race until I’m convinced that this is the last good minute I’ll ever have.

  “Gordie.” Sarah squeezes my arm. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie. I jam my hand under my leg.

  “Bull.” She tugs on my arm and p
ulls my hand out from underneath me. She wraps her own hand around it, but it flops like a dying fish. I wish I could control it.

  “Is this from what happened?” she asks.

  It’s funny—most people don’t. They might look at me like I’m nuts or like I have something they can catch, but they don’t ask. Adults never ask. Only little kids usually have the guts to try to find out the answers to things that puzzle them.

  I pull my hand back and rub it self-consciously. Even though I can feel the jolts and see it jumping, my hand doesn’t really feel like a part of me. “Yeah, I guess,” I say. “That’s when it started, anyhow.”

  My hand slides automatically back under my leg, but she shakes her head. “Stop. You don’t need to hide it.”

  I let her words straighten themselves out in my head. I want to ask her if she means it, and if she can teach me how not to hide. Everything I’ve done over the past five years has been about trying to bury all the bruised things that make me different.

  She holds my eyes with such intensity that I have to fight not to look away. I take a deep breath. When I pull my hand back out and cradle it in my lap, we both sit watching it until the spasms ease.

  Then she puts something into my hand. Her necklace.

  “I’ve seen you looking at this. It’s a picture I took last year. I had it developed in black-and-white and then I colored it with pencils.”

  My hand clenches around it. “It’s beautiful,” I tell her, then move to give it back.

  “You can keep it.”

  “What?” I don’t think anyone has ever given me a gift like this. Something they made. Something that wasn’t for my birthday or Christmas. Only Sarah.

  She takes it from me and slips the long chain over my head.

  I smile at her.

  The smile she gives me back, the one I want to fall into and imprint onto my screwed-up brain, is like sunlight glistening on water.

  I feel like I’ve landed on an alien planet when I open the front door to the house. Everything’s the same as it was yesterday morning when I left, but it’s like I’m looking at it through those glasses that make things stretched or kaleidoscopic.

  Jim must be out, and Kevin is probably upstairs, and the inside of my head is uncomfortably quiet. I stand and stare at the phone, wishing I could pick it up and have Sarah’s voice fill all the empty spaces.

  I know she isn’t home yet because they’ve just pulled out of the driveway, but I already miss her so much I can feel it inside, in some organ I didn’t know I had.

  I wrap my hand around the bird charm.

  I’m still standing like that when Kevin comes downstairs. “You didn’t get eaten by a bear?”

  I hear his words but don’t really make any sense of them. “What?”

  Kevin smirks. “Never mind. So how was it?” He throws himself on the couch, taking up all the room so I have to go and sit in Jim’s lounge chair.

  “Good,” I say. “It was good.”

  Kevin stares at me. I know he’s expecting more. I always tell him everything, but I don’t know how to put any of the last twenty-four hours into words. How do I tell my brother how safe it felt to sleep with Sarah’s arm across me and how my lips are still buzzing from her kiss? How do I tell him how empty my hand feels without her squeezing it, like she did the whole way home in the car?

  I can’t explain to him why I feel like I can trust her, and how each kiss felt like a bandage to a wound somewhere deep inside me.

  Kevin sits up and wraps his arms around his legs and doesn’t even blink. I end up having to look away because it feels like his eyes are stapling me to the back of the chair.

  “And?” he asks sharply.

  I get up and start rifling through my bag. “It rained,” I say as I pull out my damp shirt and jeans, followed by underwear and socks and a certain amount of grass and clumped-up mud.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It did here too.”

  I ignore the suspicion in his voice and walk through the kitchen to stuff my clothes in the washer. Just seeing them makes me think of the towel in Sarah’s hand, the cloth running over my chest. I shiver. It feels really strange not to be with her. I don’t understand that. I’ve only really been aware of her for two weeks, but I’m not sure I remember how it felt to not know her.

  When I turn back around, Kevin is standing there watching me, looking concerned.

  “Ice? Talk to me.”

  I turn one of the chairs and lean a leg on it. I don’t know what to say. I’ve never wanted to avoid talking to him before. But I feel like if I tell him everything that happened it won’t be ours anymore. Sarah’s and mine. My chest feel like it’s going to burst open, full of the concept of “ours.”

  “What did you do when it was raining?” he asks.

  “We played Scrabble,” I say honestly. “And we took a walk.”

  “In the rain?” he asks, shaking his head. He knows how unlikely it would be for me to do that normally.

  “Yeah. We ended up under this huge tree. It had branches like an umbrella,” I tell him, but it only brings words into my mouth that I can’t let escape my lips, so I force them together to keep everything private inside.

  As I turn, I feel the bird charm swipe across my chest. He leans over and inspects it, then lets it fall back hard.

  “What’s that?”

  I shrug out of his grip and shove the charm into my shirt. “It was a present, and I’m fine. Really. I went camping. I didn’t jump off the Empire State Building.” Kevin’s face goes pale. “I didn’t jump off of anything,” I say, hoping it will put his mind at rest. But I know Kevin better than that, so it’s no surprise when he doesn’t stop.

  “So, you and Sarah?”

  “I don’t have to tell you everything,” I snap. And then, because the words sound so strange coming out of my mouth and because Kevin’s face falls in a way I’ve never caused it to fall before, I apologize. “Sorry, I didn’t mean … ”

  “No, that’s fine.” Kevin’s voice teeters between hurt and anger, like it did when we were kids and my father would make some unreasonable demand or insist he give up something that really mattered to him. “You’re right. You don’t have to tell me anything at all.”

  His words are razor-sharp and I can feel each one stab into my skin. I’m overcome with waves of guilt and I know I need to catch him before he’s out the door.

  “Wait.”

  He turns around and his expression is hard and defensive. “It’s fine. Really. I’m glad you had a good time.”

  I need to toss him something to keep him from walking out. I need to give up something of value, because he’ll see through my words and know if what I’m telling him is just something to try to make him stay.

  “She kissed me,” I force out. “I mean … we kissed.”

  His harsh expression cracks slowly into a smile and he nods his head slightly. “Is that all?”

  I can feel the blood rushing to my face. “Yes. God … ”

  Kevin’s shoulders fall and he starts laughing. I look away in embarrassment and because guilt is still sitting like a rock in my stomach.

  “Did you like it?”

  Before I can think about it, I get caught up in the way we usually are, Kevin and me. And I tell him everything. When I’m done I feel a little empty, like the words took something with them when they left my mouth. But it’s okay. Kevin and I are okay. And that’s all I’ve ever needed.

  Eighteen

  Monday morning hits me like a train. My muscles ache, and I have months before summer hockey camp starts and I can really work them out. I decide to hit the public rink after school, and that’s all I can think about until I get to English and Sarah drops a little paper swan onto my desk.

  I twist to look back at her. She smiles and makes a motion like she wants me to unfold the swan. I don’t r
eally want to. It’s pretty intricate and very cool, made of paper the blue-green of the ocean with little flecks of silver running through it.

  I look back at her again to make sure she really wants me to ruin her work.

  But when she nods again, I do it.

  Inside the swan, looking like it was swallowed, is a note: Meet me at my locker after last period. I have to talk to you.

  I rationally know that most people wouldn’t deliver bad news in a paper swan. At the same time, in my experience, no one ever says they need to see you in advance unless it’s about something that’s going to suck.

  I look back at her again, and I’m pretty sure she can see my fear because she gives me a big smile and rolls her eyes.

  Her smile should put me at ease, but it doesn’t. I’m not even sure what I’m afraid of, but I can’t concentrate on Mr. Brook’s pop quiz even though I know all the answers. When I try to write them down, the letters come out all wrong and I have to keep scratching things out.

  Mr. Brooks stops next to my desk before sitting on the edge and putting his hand over mine.

  I look down. I hadn’t noticed that I was clicking my pen.

  “Do you need to take a break?” he asks.

  I look back at Sarah, who’s busy writing down her answers.

  “I … ” I start, and then my voice breaks in two and I clamp my mouth shut to avoid embarrassing myself.

  “It’s okay, you can make the test up tomorrow,” Mr. Brooks whispers.

  I wish I could crawl under my desk. I want to say “no” and stay sitting here, but if I can’t control it, everyone is just going to be watching me, waiting for me to lose it in class. It’s better, I’ve learned, to just get up and hope they go back to their own papers.

  I feel like I’m sleepwalking as I pick up my books and cram them into my bag.

  Mr. Brooks motions me to follow him to the back of the room, which is like a million miles from everyone else. This room is actually three classrooms in one separated by dividers that can be opened or closed. I know whatever we say back here won’t be overheard by anyone else and Mr. Brooks is awesome. But I’d rather not have the conversation I know is coming.