by N. K. Smith
And of course I didn’t tell her.
Something pokes my face on both cheeks. I look up and find Fox right in front of me. He presses my cheeks, and I let the smoke push out from my lungs. “Do you really need to get high, Saigey?”
“Aw, hell,” I say as I take his hands and pull myself off the couch. “Don’t be one of those guys.”
“Which guys?”
“Those guys who have to say crap about getting high. It’s totally not a big deal. I don’t do it all the time, and if you want to get into a debate about why marijuana is illegal but alcohol isn’t, you’ll have to give me a day to mentally prepare to kick your ass on the subject. I mean, I know all the facts, but you know me and arguments. I’ll have to—”
Fox kisses me, and not only do my words stop, my thoughts stop as well. I bring my hands up to his stomach and just press them against his tight abdomen. When he pulls back, I look up, lick my lips, and am transfixed by those eyes.
“Brush your teeth, put that crap in your eyes, and let’s go. I’m trying to make a good impression on your grandmother and showing up late isn’t a good start.”
I smile as I leave him to do exactly what he just said. I brush my teeth, put Visine in my eyes, and take his hand as we leave my apartment.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say when we’re five minutes away from Gramma’s house.
“Yes, I do, but you don’t. You can wait in the car while I charm your grandma into blessing our relationship.”
I have no doubt he’ll be her best friend after today. He’s great with people, but still, the anxiety holds. “I don’t need her blessing for anything. I’m eighteen, I can do what I—”
“But isn’t approval from your family nicer than disapproval?”
I wince a little and tighten my grip on the steering wheel when he says the word family. Gramma is all there is for me. “I gave up wanting her approval a long time ago.”
The leather of his seat squeaks as he repositions himself. He’s angled toward me now, eyes fixed on me. He’s a good study of people, well, maybe. He’s still friends with asshole Gage and a multitude of other popular jerks, but he’s a good study of me. It’s unsettling how he can see into my real thoughts.
I keep my eyes on the road, but he asks, “Why’d you give up? Don’t you want your family to—”
White-hot anger flashes in me. While I’m not normally one to explode in front of other people, especially people I want to like me, I can’t help it. “I don’t have family. It’s just Gramma. My family’s dead, Fox, and all I have left is a woman who will never approve of anything I do because I’m not my mom.”
I pull up to the curb and break a little too hard. We both snap forward, and the tires squeal to a stop. After putting the car in park, I pick at my lips with my fingernails.
“You think she compares you to your mom?”
“I know she does.”
“Is that why you don’t live with her?”
Exhaling loudly makes it all seem overdramatic, but as I let my hands fall into my lap, I realize it can be no other way. “It’s part of it. I moved out when I was fifteen because we couldn’t handle each other. I mean, I’d lived with her since late 2001, and I know it’s not her fault my mom was killed, and I know it wasn’t her fault my dad chose the military over raising me, but I was very angry at everyone in the world.”
“Are you still kind of angry?” he asks as he breaks into my words and thoughts.
I roll my head to look at him and shoot him a narrow-eyed gaze. “Of course I’m kind of angry, have you met me? I’m under no delusion that I’m a good person with well-balanced thoughts and emotions, but my grandma suffocated every piece of goodness out of me. She never let me express my thoughts or opinions. She says that I just look at the situation wrong.”
Fox considers this for a moment, then scrunches up his face as he says, “Did you ever think she might have been onto something?”
I wait because if I open my mouth to ask him to clarify, I might freak out a little.
“I mean, that maybe you were looking at it wrong.”
My whole body is tense as if I hadn’t just smoked a little to relax. “How is an eleven year old supposed to look at her dad coming home in a box with a flag draped over it? Is there some other way to feel but sad and abandoned?”
“At least you had your grandma.”
“Shut up.” It’s immediate, and while I feel a bit bad about saying it so harshly to Fox, I don’t regret it. I don’t have the strength or time to regret it because in the moment, all I feel is the cutting sense of being alone as a child. “You had your dad when your mom went away. I bet he even let you talk about your feelings. I bet he told you how much he missed your mom too and how he hopes she’s better soon. I didn’t have anything like that. I had an emotionally cold grandmother who made it known I couldn’t do anything right.”
He just sits there. I know I’m steamrolling him, but I’m powerless to change my approach. All of the anger I’ve felt for years is just below the surface and boiling in the hot flames of my soul. “She let me move out because I told her I didn’t want to live anymore.”
Fox gets this horrified look on his face. His eyes bulge as the muscles in his cheeks go rigid. He must be clenching his teeth. The expression is so shocked and disturbed I have to look away. I’ve never said that to anyone beyond Gramma, not even Myka.
When he collects himself a little better, Fox asks, “You wanted to kill yourself?”
“Not exactly. I’m not sure I’d ever have enough guts to do something like that, but like I told her, if a Mack truck was speeding toward me as I crossed the street, I wasn’t sure I’d jump out of the way.”
His warm hand covers mine. I fight the urge to pull away. “You don’t still feel like that, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“That’s. . .that’s. . .”
Jesus. When Fox is lost for words, it can’t be good. “Shit,” I say as I pop open the car door and get out. I wait for him on the sidewalk and glance at his face to get an idea of what he’s thinking. He’s wearing a mask of worry and concern.
I try to grab his hand and lead him to the house, but he takes me, hands on my waist, and twirls me around. Pressing me against the car, he leans in close, lips at my ear. My breathing quickens, as does my heart. “If you ever feel like that again, you tell me.”
The depth of his voice force my eyes closed. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt someone’s emotions like this.
“Please?” he says.
I nod against him, but I think about the fleeting nature of love, and how we might not even see the end of summer together. No one can predict what’s going to happen.
He adds, “No matter where you are or what we’re doing, tell me if you feel like that again.”
“What would you do?” I hear myself whisper the question.
“What wouldn’t I do for you?” The sharp pause he makes sticks into my heart. “Remind you of how horrible the world would be without you. Kiss you until you can’t think of anything other than happy thoughts of love and joy. Let you know that people like you; that people love you.”
I don’t want to hear anymore, so I bring my hands to his chest and gently push. He won’t let go, but he does give me a little breathing room. “Promise me, Saige.”
All I can see are his lips – those damned perfect lips, so close. Lifting onto my toes, I touch those lips with mine. Fox’s arms tighten and once again I’m pressed to him. Losing myself in his kiss isn’t difficult, and I find myself blissful for the moment,
But when he pulls away, he says again, “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He curves his lips up as he takes my hand. Together, we walk up the sidewalk to Gramma’s house.
“Let’s get this over with,” I mumble.
“I can’t wait!” Fox’s voice is so bright it matches his orange shirt.
With one hand on the doorknob, I turn to him. “You’re going t
o enjoy this aren’t you?”
“So much.”
I hesitate, so he puts his hand on top of mine, twists, and pushes open the door. “Gramma, we’re here!” he calls into the house as he shoots me a devilish smile. In a hushed tone, he says, “Don’t worry, she’s going to love me.”
My grandmother appears in the foyer just as I close the door behind us. As usual, she’s elegantly dressed which makes me feel inelegant and unstylish. Fox doesn’t wait for me to introduce him. Before I know it, he drops my hand and strides forward to meet her. “I’m Fox Harrington; it’s lovely to meet you.”
Instead of holding out his hand to shake hers, he sweeps her into a big hug—something I’m sure she’ll hate, until I see the smile in her eyes and the way her lips upturn as she pats him on the back.
“It’s a pleasure,” she says. Her eyes capture mine. “Saige doesn’t share much about her life with me, so you must be special to her.”
“I am,” Fox says as he stands up straight and keeps a hand on her arm. “And she’s special to me.”
“And to me,” Gramma adds.
“So we’re practically family already.”
I feel tight and on edge as they laugh at Fox’s words. I guess I should be happy it’s not a stupid joke, but there’s just something strange being a third-party participant in this introduction. Gramma is being warm to him. Why couldn’t she be like that with me? Or at least, why couldn’t she have been warm when I was a kid and needed her to be.
Finally, when they’re finished becoming instant BFFs, my grandmother turns to me, her arms outstretched. “You look lovely.”
Even if I don’t want to, I’ll always go to her when she offers a hug. Fox steps back, and I step in. Her perfume is light and familiar. The way she wraps her boney arms around me is the best luxury I could ever ask for.
But then she pulls away, threads her arm through Fox’s, and leads us out of the foyer and into the formal dining room where lunch is waiting.
***
“But it wasn’t that bad, right?” Myka asks about Gramma and Fox’s meeting yesterday as she swirls the coffee around in the paperboard cup.
“No, but it was weird.”
Myka deftly moves out of the way of some guy with the septum and the bridge of his nose pierced. I am too taken by the size of the gauges in the guy’s ears to dodge him, so I’m pushed forward into another girl with brilliant red hair. “Sorry,” I say as she turns around, but she’s not upset. She’s probably too Zen to be upset.
All the people at poetry readings have a thing, and they’re all really good at that thing. The unnatural redhead girl’s thing has to be calm and peace, because that’s what she gives out. I don’t think I have a thing, but maybe I need one. All I have is a generic nose ring. It doesn’t make me anymore of an individual than the nose ring on the girl next to me or the girl next to her. Maybe I can cultivate something, like calm or naturalism or body modification or. . .
“Weird how?” Myka brings me back to the conversation we’d been having.
“Well, I mean, she was so friendly to him.”
“Hate to break it to you, Saige, but your grandma’s friendly. She’s always been kind to me.”
“But not to me, and yesterday she was, like, all supportive and stuff.”
Myka opens her mouth to speak, but someone climbs up on the raised platform and taps the microphone. I grip my notebook. I told Myka I’d read tonight, but I’m not so sure anymore. This isn’t exactly a slam. It’s more of an open mic, so it’s not like I feel pressure to recite something from memory. Still, my stomach flutters and my blood races when I think about taking a step onto that platform and reading something I’ve written in front of all these people. These people with their things – the specialness about them that puts them in a whole other level.
As we sit down, the guy with the piercing takes the stage.
“This is called ‘Wrought and Righteous,’” he says. He shifts his weight, strikes a pose like it’s a practiced posture, and begins.
“what have you wrought?
a haze of pain as intuitions crawl.
once we sipped of bliss,
virginal and untainted,
but your affection soured.
a feverish pool of lust and love-
memories follow bone, bone follows flesh, flesh proceeds remembrance,
love consumed.
in a deluge of sorrow,
i still love you.”
Everyone claps when we figure out he’s finished. He gives a solitary nod, rolls up his composition notebook and leaves the stage.
Myka’s hand comes down like a cuff on my wrist and with strength I never knew she had, she hoists me up out of my seat. “We’re next. Me first, then you. You’re doing this, Saige.” She drags me to the stage where I choke back my fear. “You’re doing this,” she says again before climbing up to the stage.
All she says by way of introduction is, “‘A Steampunk Valentine, part deux.’”
Myka rolls her shoulders back and holds the sheet of purple paper out in front of her, but she doesn’t need it.
“My love for my gizmologist is so keen,
my clockwork heart ticks for him through thick meat and metal.
The sharp ache within me grows,
weeps, pistons til my lime spectacles catch sight of him.
His beauty is vintage, timeless,
his mind an iron cage,
My heart ticks faster,
Until next to him I am,
In his arms, stampeding like stock through a field.”
When finished, she jumps down, her face alight with the applause of the crowd. She’s awesome at stuff like this. I want to say her presence was fantastic, but she pushes me up onto the stage so fast I don’t have time to protest.
Thank God there’s no spotlight, but there are lights all around. I squint out into the sea of people. Jesus. Is that guy recording this with his cell? Damn. Shit. Damn.
I have two choices. I can either step up to the microphone and say my poems or I can run off like a scared baby. Myka would give me that patronizing look of hers if I run off. It’s the look that tells me how sorry she feels that I lack the requisite cool to do stuff like this.
My poems aren’t long. I can do this and get the hell out of this cramped bookstore in under five minutes if I deliver it correctly. So I step up to the microphone. I have two untitled items I scan quickly. I don’t know why I brought either of them.
I am a blade
silver and sharp
I jab
I stick
I take your breath away
I maim and leave you for dead
I am your cold, hard love
My second poem sucks just as much, but I read it to myself anyway.
abandonment
black and gray
jagged as a knife.
bitter and tangy
dark as a the world at night.
sour, foul, and rotting
piercing, jabbing, clawing, jerking
my heart seizes at the thought
I can’t embarrass myself with either of those, even though it might be less painful than the one tucked away in my back pocket. I pluck it out with care and unfold the hand written poem.
“This is called Ground Zero.
“I remember the day
The moment of madness
The chaos and corruption
As we soulfully searched
To find the truth
In the rubble of ruin
The soot and ash
The fallout of the forgotten
The missing buried alive
The images of people jumping
As flaming towers tumbled
Families and friends
Crying out for love lost
The windows to my world
Shock shaken
Cloudy
Misty
Watching the horror
Waiting impatiently
For
hope to arrive
So helpless
Then tales of courage
And selfless sacrifice prevailed
Out of the gray ash rising
This hallowed ground
Ground Zero
Somber
Sacred
Etched in hearts and minds
Forever
Never forgotten”
Myka claps first, but the others follow. I keep my head bowed because looking at those people who just sat there and listened to the poem I wrote while I remembered my mother would be too much.
“Thanks,” I say, soft and hop offstage without waiting. They’re clapping. Clapping for me. My face burns from embarrassment. They’re just being polite. My poems are crap. They’ve always been crap. I’m out the door, heading to the subway, but stop when I feel a hand on my shoulder.
Myka’s smiling when I turn around. “It only took you three years to do it.” I open my mouth to speak, but she hugs me instead. “I’m so proud! You’re like a little mechanical birdy, flittering off with your metal wings. Fly, little windup bird! Fly away from Mama!”
I push her but can’t push back the laugh. “Whatever.”
“Tell me it didn’t get your heart pumping.”
“Oh, it’s pumping all right,” I say as I head down the subway steps. It’s thumping right out of my chest.
“God, it’s such a rush to go in front of—”
I stop listening. I feel overstimulated as is. When I’m on the train, I go to text Fox, but stop myself when I remember he prefers other means of communication. I call him.
“Oh, my God, Saige, why aren’t you here with me?” he asks instead of saying hello.
“What are you doing?” My voice is light, like I don’t have any cares in the world; like I didn’t just read poetry for a bunch of poets.
“I’m driving.”
“Good thing I didn’t text you then. You’re not supposed to answer the phone while you’re—”
“It’s fine, worrywart. I’m driving with my knee.”
“Fox!”
“Just kidding. I’ve got a firm grip on the steering wheel. I’m heading toward the city to tag another bridge.”
I smile when the memory of that night sweeps back into my mind. I might’ve been scared about the destruction of property part, but the kiss after was worth it. “I’m on the subway.”
