by E. M. Kokie
I push my legs together and try reasoning.
But it’s not like she’s helping.
She pushes her candy against the roof of her mouth. Her cheeks cave in a little. My pulse pounds all the way through me.
“You sure?”
Shit. She has no clue. Except . . . she’s not looking away. She’s staring right at me. Playing with that candy. But she can’t know . . . she’d be totally grossed out.
I pull the road atlas onto my lap. Study the roads. This is about to get monumentally embarrassing. Every time she sucks on that candy hard enough to make a noise, the sound vibrates down my spine and pushes me closer to the edge.
All the voices in my head tell me to run, except for the one telling me she’d taste like grape and that her mouth would be wet and warm.
I try conjugating Spanish verbs, the few I can remember. Sing the alphabet song in my head.
The couch creaks and dips and then she’s moving closer. I beg for anything to get me out of this without her knowing.
I try to think about disgusting things — open sores, roadkill, what my puke would look like if I threw up right now. If she figures it out . . . if she sees . . . God, I’d never be able to look at her again if she knew how often . . .
“OK, I think I’ve found somewhere to stay.” She moves even closer, putting the computer right in front of me and leaning over my arm. “They have a youth hostel. The one in Madison . . .”
I try to pretend everything’s OK, but when I look at her, I can see down her shirt all the way to her bra. Light blue and shiny. Alarms bounce off my skull.
I bolt.
Leaning against the back of the closed bathroom door, I try everything. But none of the usual things are working. Cold water: handfuls in my face, and then over my wrists. Holding my breath. Usually making my lungs fight for air will work, but even when I’m seeing spots and ready to pass out, no dice. I dig my thumbnail into the skin between my thumb and finger for as long as I can stand it. Still at attention.
Then Shauna’s phone in the next room plays the theme song for the Wicked Witch of the West: Stacy’s calling. And just the thought of Stacy, calling now, how she’d look if she came home and found me here — if she knew right now I was in her bathroom with a raging hard-on for her sister — does it.
Still uncomfortable, but good enough for now, I walk back into the living room. Shauna’s still on the phone.
“Sure. No problem.” She rolls her eyes and uses her free hand to make a talking head. “Stacy, it’s fine. They love cookies and ice cream for breakfast. Take your time.”
The table’s been cleared. My map and her computer are there, but everything else is gone. Like it was never here.
“Stacy, I’m kidding.” Didn’t sound like Shauna was kidding. “Really. We’ll be fine.”
Shauna put the TV on again, but on mute. I flip channels without sound, looking for something decidedly not sexy. C-SPAN. Sharks. Professional bowling. I finally settle on competitive fishing, without sound. Perfect.
“OK, good night.” Shauna snaps her phone shut. “Man, she is such a pain.”
I’ve heard Shauna brawl with Stacy before. This one sounded like nothing. And Shauna doesn’t really look all that pissed.
“Checking in?” I ask, testing her mood, and how much she got of what just happened.
“More like checking up. She thinks she knows everything about everything.” Shauna rolls her eyes. She’s fine. “You OK?” She gathers up her hair, then seems to remember she doesn’t have a hair band and just lets it all fall again.
No. “Uh, yeah.”
“You sure?” Shauna plays with her phone, snapping it open and shut, not looking at me.
“Yeah, just, uh, maybe that third beer was too much, or uh . . .” Maybe she’ll think I got the runs, or puked or something; anything’s less embarrassing than the truth.
“Want a ginger ale?” She won’t look at me. Shit. Maybe she did get it?
“Yeah, that’d be great.”
Normalness, even faking it, is good. I move her computer in front of me and look at what she’s found.
“Here you go.” She plunks a glass down to my right and then curls herself back into the far corner of the couch.
“Oh, sorry, I was just looking at what you found,” I say, moving away from the computer, and from her.
“No, feel free. Go ahead.” She sips her soda. Watches. But doesn’t make eye contact. Feels like I’m in some dream, like this is a dream version of Shauna, a dream where I don’t know the rules and things can change on a dime.
I look at the pages on the hostel. It’s perfect. Cheap. Looks better than the other places we found that didn’t require a credit card. Shauna’s cousin is hooking me up with a community college ID anyway, so an ID to register is no big deal. But no credit card required, and probably lots of kids stay there. “This looks great. Thanks for finding it.”
She buffs her nails on her shirt and then blows on them. “Yes. My Google-fu is strong.”
I click over to one of the other pages, showing a map of Madison. Then another, a link to somewhere at the university: the library where Celia works. Shauna’s been busy.
I couldn’t have found half this stuff without her — I’d probably still be sitting on my ass, trying to figure out where to start looking. I owe her big-time, even before the car. And the car is what is really making this possible. Whatever the hell is going on, she’s still got my back. Like she always does. Saving my ass.
“Shaun.” I look at her and again forget what I was gonna say. Because she’s watching me over the rim of her glass. I have no idea what the hell she’s thinking, but the look scares the shit out of me. Too intense. And all of it coming at me. Like heat.
She takes a sip. Then another. Her cheeks flush darker and she looks up, staring straight at me. Grins. And I feel myself smiling back — I can’t help it.
She bites the edge of her lip. I can’t figure out what the hell it all means. Nothing makes sense, least of all that look. But it feels important, like by smiling wider I’m agreeing to something. But I have no idea what.
She’s all mischief again. I can’t help but keep smiling — it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her like this. Maybe never like this, exactly. But . . .
I’ve never seen her like this, not with me.
It’s like getting sucker punched. Everything goes loose and lost, and for a second I can’t breathe.
The shirt. The makeup. The beer. The perfume. Not for Michael. Or anyone else.
Holy fuck.
She stares at me. Her eyes narrow to dark slits. She puts the glass on the table and begins to move closer.
I stare at the map.
The couch creaks, cushions shift.
Pulse pounds in my ears and dick.
Fuck, she’s right there. Still smells good, too good, ’cause now I can smell the grape, too. And I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I’m dizzy and so fucking hard.
I turn my head. Her mouth is right there. All I’d have to do is lean.
Her fingers squeeze my arm.
I can’t move.
What if I’m wrong? What if this isn’t really happening? What if . . .
“Matt . . .”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“It’d be fun. You. Me. Road trip?”
“Huh?”
“I’ll come with you,” she says, her breath warm on my cheek. “I don’t have any finals after Tuesday, just take-homes. I’ll get them done early and then I can come with you.”
Her fingers squeeze my arm. My dick throbs.
“We’d be away from here . . . together . . .”
Fuck.
“Shaun . . .” As soon as I say her name, she knows. Her face changes, confused, pale. And she leans a little away.
I swallow hard, shift away from her until she lets go of my arm. Can’t think. Can’t talk. My mouth flaps like a guppy.
She shakes her head. “I want to help —”
&nb
sp; “No.” I cringe at her flinch. “I mean, I know you want to help. And I really appreciate it. But I really want to do this alone.”
She stares. Shudders. Turns so she’s not facing me, hugs herself and nods, like it’s no big deal.
“I need to do this by myself. This, it’s sort of . . . the last thing I can do for T.J. And it doesn’t feel right to bring a friend along to —”
“Fine.” She jumps up. Her bottom lip quivers and she won’t look at me. “Sure.” She nods again. Tugs at the shirt. All of the teasing gone. “I just thought . . . but . . . if you don’t want . . .”
“Shaun . . .”
The bathroom door slams behind her. Kid feet scurry across the floor upstairs.
“Aunt Shauna?” Jessica whispers down. I don’t answer, not sure whether to hide or just stay still. But before I can decide, the footsteps retreat back across the upstairs.
I stand in the middle of the living room, not sure what I’m supposed to do.
When I asked if I could borrow her car — like, asking to take it, not asking her to bring it — I thought she understood. I thought she got that I needed to do this alone.
But shit. She’s pissed. No, worse. Hurt? Any other time, a road trip with Shauna, especially . . . fuck, I’d give choice body parts for that. But this is about T.J. — for T.J. Can’t she see that I couldn’t say yes?
But this was real, right? She dressed up. In date clothes. For me.
I spin in a circle. Trying like hell to make the last few hours make sense.
I could have totally kissed her, right? When she leaned close? Before she said that stuff about coming with me? I could have . . . then . . . she . . .
Shit, if I had just moved in then, I’d be on that couch making out with her, right now.
The room tilts. She . . . likes me. Or liked me. Maybe that was it — my chance. I could have totally kissed her.
A drawer slams, loud even behind the closed door. Then another.
A noise upstairs.
Footsteps in the hall near the steps. I move to the kitchen, out of view from the stairs. Footsteps on the top steps.
“Aunt Shauna?”
They’re not going back to bed.
I know I shouldn’t take off until she comes back out here. But if Stacy finds out I was here, or about the beer . . . Shit, I can’t be here if they come down here.
I grab my shoes and backpack and make a run for it.
Standing in my socks on the front walk, I don’t know what to do.
Should I wait and go back in?
Call? I could try to explain, and . . .
Shit. No. No way she wants to talk to me right now. Maybe not for a few days.
And what if she changes her mind? Without her car . . . What if she says I can’t have it? Or I can’t have it unless she can come, too?
Or, fuck, forget the car. What if this is it? Not just no to more . . . what if this is it for anything, for us, like . . . we’re not even friends anymore?
“Fuuuck!” I groan, clenching my hands in frustration.
I’ve seen Shauna pissed at guys before. I’ve seen her eradicate them from the face of the earth, at least as far as she’s concerned. Invisible. And now she’s pissed at me.
SHAUNA’S ANGRIER THAN I’VE EVER SEEN HER. AT ANYONE.
I tried calling her when I got home Saturday night. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. Ever. When I tried to apologize, she hung up on me.
She wouldn’t talk to me at all on Sunday.
Monday, I pretended nothing had happened. For a while that worked, but when I tried to get her to laugh, she seemed to get even more pissed at me — like being able to pretend everything was fine somehow made me a bigger jerk than she already thought I was, even though it’s what she said she wanted. But I didn’t try to point that out.
By yesterday after school, we were back to her not talking, at all, but she took me to get my money from Mr. Anders anyway, like she promised. She didn’t say a word the whole way there, at least not to me — she seemed to be arguing with someone in her head. The whole time I was in with Mr. Anders, I kept wondering if I’d come back out to find she’d left me there, stranded across town, just out of spite. When I got back into the car, she was looking at the map again.
I waved my pay envelope at her.
“So, you’re all ready to go?”
Took me a few seconds to answer, because it sounded more like an accusation than a question. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
She traced my route across the map. Her finger followed the orange highlighter across the spiderwebs of roads and ghostly state lines, past landmarks and cities, over rivers and mountains, snaking along the bottom of two huge patches of lake blue before pressing down over Madison, Wisconsin, like she could make me forget by hiding the destination.
“What if your dad decides you have to turn it in tomorrow instead of Thursday?”
“He won’t. Early day at a site out by Johnstown. He’ll be gone early and home late. Hopefully.”
Her hand was still on the map, hiding Madison and its star. “You know this sucks, right?”
I didn’t try to answer. I knew many things sucked right now, but I wasn’t gonna try to figure out exactly which one she meant, especially since I was starting to get a little pissed off myself. Why couldn’t she see that I needed to do this alone? But I just let her fume and kept my mouth shut — I’d had enough practice at that with Dad. I needed the car.
Eventually, she slid the map closed and turned in the seat to face me. She held it to her chest and we had a staring contest, but eventually she handed it over.
When she dropped me off, I thought she was gonna say something else. But she didn’t. When I reached for the handle to open the door, she laughed, but it was a bitter, awful sound. Made me panic.
I left her two messages last night, but she didn’t call back. Until I got her text this morning — I said id be there — I wasn’t sure she was gonna show up. I’m still not entirely sure.
It’s actually kind of amazing she’s still letting me borrow her car. Assuming, of course, that she is, that she shows up this morning and then hands over the keys.
I’m ready to go — as soon as Dad leaves. He should have been long gone by now.
I read Shauna’s last text again, for the tenth time, just to be sure. Still pissed.
I hear Dad’s footsteps on the stairs from the second floor. Panic burns up my throat. If he calls me upstairs, I could bolt out the side door. But if he comes charging down here, there’s nowhere to go.
His feet around the kitchen. The refrigerator door.
I’m a sitting duck.
When I hear his steps near my door, I grab the strap of my backpack, ready to run. But he keeps going. I don’t breathe until the front door slams shut. Then I race to get my stuff together.
I wait for the sound of his truck pulling out of the driveway. Picture him turning toward the center of town. Past the gas station. Each likely turn until I’m sure he has to be near the highway. Then I text Shauna.
When she picks me up, we don’t even talk. Her eyes are red and puffy, and there’s nothing left for me to say.
A block from school, she pulls onto a side street, just as we planned. But instead of turning the car off or unbuckling her seat belt or making any move to get out, she just sits there, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that they look melded to the gray vinyl. Each second she just sits there, I’m more sure she’s changed her mind, or that she’s already confessed everything to her mom. Something.
“I hate this.” She hurtles out of the car.
At least she said “this” and not “you.” Unless she really means me.
Outside the car, she hesitates just a few seconds before dropping the keys into my hand. Then she reaches into her backpack and pulls out an envelope. She thrusts is at me, hitting me in the chest.
“Here.”
“Huh?”
“Take it.”
It’s too t
hick to be a letter. I squeeze it and start shaking my head. Don’t need to open it to know it’s full of money.
She holds her hands behind her back. “It’s only what I had on hand from my birthday and babysitting, so not that much, but there’s no way you’d make it back with what you have.”
“I’m not taking your money.” But even with the words out of my mouth, I know I will. I need it way too much.
“You can pay me back. Later.” She looks into my eyes. “You’ll pay me back. After you come home.”
“I will.” I cradle it close. “Thanks. For everything. I mean it. I —”
“You’d better go.”
She tries to leave but I grab her arm. “Shauna . . .” I don’t know what to say. But I don’t want to leave like this.
She shakes free and wraps her arm around her middle. “Look, whatever happens, or . . . whatever you decide to do, just call me, OK? Every day? Because I’m going to worry, and probably be grounded, and it’s going to suck and . . .” Her hard eyes scare me. “Just promise, OK?”
“Yeah.” I barely gasp the word out. My chest feels tight.
“Every day.”
I cover my heart with my hand.
She lets out a long, shaky breath and then moves away from the car, not even looking at me.
“Shaun.”
When she turns back, her eyes are already filling up. “Just go.”
And then she’s gone. Walking away. I turn to get in the car, but she grabs me from the side in a quick, awkward hug, too quick for me to even get my arms around her to hug back. She makes this sound in the back of her throat. Then she’s gone again. This time I watch her until she rounds the corner out of sight. She never looks back.
Flying up the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I swallow over and over, trying not to puke. Acid churns around the rocks in my gut.
Every dark truck in the rearview mirror is Dad, racing after me. Every state trooper, a trap waiting to grab me. I’m driving like a maniac, practically begging to get caught.
The panic evaporates as soon as I hit I-80 and actually start heading west. My shoulders and arms lose the steel tension that made me cling to the steering wheel. I pull my fingers off the sweat-slick wheel, and shake and flex them in turn until they work again. Even the burning in my gut starts to cool. When I finally sink back into the seat, my shirt is soaked, but I can relax and just drive.
