by R. K. Ryals
“If I didn’t know you, Moretti, I’d say that sounded dirty,” a voice teases.
Our heads shoot up.
Kagen Raddock, hair tousled, his letterman’s jacket open over a white T-shirt, leans against the side of the house, a hand in his blue jean pocket.
“Matthew isn’t here,” Christopher says, mouth tight.
Kagen nods, his gaze passing between us, darkening when it lands on me. “I noticed.” His head cocks. “I see they let the crazies out on Sunday.”
“Stuff it, Kagen!” Christopher spits.
Maybe it’s everything I’ve been through the past few days, the stronger friendship I know I have with Gracie, or the things Matthew has said to me, but suddenly I’m so tired of it all. “Even ‘crazies’ need fresh air and exercise.”
Kagen’s eyes narrow, startled by my response, his gaze roaming my frame. Up. Down. Up. “Touché.”
We face off, saying nothing, in a silent battle I know I’ll win because silence is my ally.
He blinks first. “So you spend a lot of time over here?”
“Dude, she lives right there!” Christopher says, gesturing at my house.
At the same time, I reply, “No!”
Leaving the wall, Kagen glances from my house to me. “Whatever.” He doesn’t sound like the guy from school, his screwed up features full of uncertainty. “Living this close, you were bound to bleed this way one day.”
Kagen doesn’t know I’ve been over? Turns out Matthew has secrets.
“Do you care?” Christopher asks.
Anger at Kagen and his teasing cruelty lances through me, hot and wild.
“You know …” I begin. Matthew’s voice is suddenly inside my head, filling it with advice, confessions, and truth. Kagen is an ass, but I’ve been equally as bad.
“Would you want to help?” I ask.
Kagen pauses, touches his brow, and shades his eyes. “Help?”
I nod at the hoop. “With basketball.”
Christopher collects the ball, glaring. “You don’t want to play with him.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Kagen blurts.
His outburst steals the thunder, and we freeze.
Kagen’s brows furrow. “I could help.” Walking toward me, he ruffles Christopher’s hair on passing. “Much better than this punk.” His eyes twinkle.
“Whatever,” Christopher grumbles.
Kagen takes the ball from my hands, peers down at me. He’s nearly as tall as Matthew. “You trying to make a fashion statement?”
I’m in a pink long sleeve shirt and overalls, my hair balled up in the back of my head. “Didn’t realize basketball had a dress code.”
Kagen dribbles the ball, gives me his back, and then throws it over his head. “He shoots, he scores. Raddock doesn’t even look, and he still makes it in the basket. The crowd goes wild!”
“Was that before or after his ego made his head explode?” Christopher asks.
“You’re cute, Moretti.” Collecting the ball, Kagen returns to me, and places it in my hands. “Try the same throw you did with Christopher, only this time aim a little more to the right and don’t squint so hard. Relax. Otherwise, you’re overthinking it.”
Facing the hoop, I prepare to shoot. “You know I kind of hate you, right?”
“Yeah,” Kagen answers after a moment. “I know.”
I shoot. The ball bounces off the backboard so hard it returns to me, headed straight for my face.
Kagen catches it. “If that’s what anger does to you, maybe I should call this a game and leave.”
I spin, eyes flashing. “Why do you do it? Why do you say all of the terrible things you say?”
Tucking the ball beneath his arm, he leans forward. “Because you don’t deny them.”
“That’s it? You say them because you know I won’t fight?”
“No, I say them hoping you will.”
I freeze.
“Here.” Kagen hands me the ball, removes his jacket, and throws it on the ground, revealing muscled arms and a broad chest.
“Last I checked basketball didn’t require undressing,” Christopher says. He retreats to the patio, his narrowed gaze on Kagen.
“It does tonight,” Kagen replies, eyes on me.
Which is exactly how Matthew finds us. Kagen, jacket off, eyes flashing a challenge. Me, holding a basketball in overalls, hair falling out of the knot it’s in, eyes glaring.
We never even hear his van pull in, the door slamming.
“What’s going on?”
Matthew appears, the button-up shirt I’d seen in the video untucked, the hem wrinkled where it lays against his jeans. He unbuttons the top two buttons and loosens the collar.
“I’m not quite sure,” Christopher answers him, his gaze passing between us. “I think they may be having a pissing contest minus a penis.”
“Do you even feel bad about it?” I ask, ignoring Christopher.
Kagen taps the ball in my hands. “For goading you. Not a damn bit. For some of the things I goaded you with, maybe.” He flicks his gaze to the basketball hoop. “Try the shot again. Less anger, better aim.”
“What the hell?” Matthew mumbles.
Christopher snorts. “Did you know she actually made a shot with a granny throw? Who even does that anymore?”
“Short people!” I call, spinning.
Kagen moves up behind me, but I step away.
Throwing his hands up, he gives me my space.
Eyeing the basket, I suck in my cheeks, curse, throw … and miss.
“Shit!”
Kagen laughs, the sound short. “Got to drop the anger on the court.”
I can’t help it, I explode. “Give me the damn ball again!”
He huffs. “You get it!”
Four houses down, my back door opens.
Aunt Trish steps from the house. “Dinner!” she calls.
I don’t look at her. “One moment!”
The Morettis’ screen door snaps, and their mother walks out onto the patio, a dishtowel in her hands. “What’s going on?”
Aunt Trish makes her way across four yards, my Uncle Bobby, who’d been doing work on the front of the house, joining her.
“The ball!” I hiss.
Kagen doesn’t budge.
“Whatever!” Christopher stomps into the grass, picks up the ball, and holds it between us. “I mean, how hard is that?”
I snatch it from him.
“Less anger,” Kagen directs.
“Less anger, my ass!”
“Reagan!” Uncle Bobby scolds.
Aunt Trish places a hand on his chest. “Hush, Bobby! I think we’re having a breakthrough.”
“More like a breakdown,” Kagen growls.
That’s it!
I throw the ball at him. Catching him by surprise, it slams him in the chest.
“Let me tell you something, Kagen Raddock! I am not crazy! I am not going to have a breakdown!” My hand replaces the ball on his chest. One push. Two. “You don’t know shit about me, and you know even less about my mother. You don’t even deserve to breathe the same air as my mom! She sees things you couldn’t even fathom, and is one of the smartest people I know. Is she different? Yes! Because … just because.”
Leaning down, I pick up the basketball. Spin. Shoot.
Score.
“I’m pretty sure the anger worked for her,” Matthew breathes.
My brain doesn’t belong to me anymore. I know this because, if it did, I wouldn’t have done what I did next.
Heart on my sleeve, anger swirling in my gut, and desperation breeding in my blood, I march to Matthew Moretti, and right there in front of everyone, I kiss him.
Full on, stand on my tiptoes, pull his head down, kiss him.
It’s not my first kiss, and I prove it.
My hands frame his face, the end of my fingers touching his hair. It’s just as soft as I thought it would be.
He doesn’t kiss me back. I don’t give him time to.
Releasing him, I run, rushing to my house as fast as I can, cheeks flaming.
“Was that the breakthrough?” Uncle Bobby asks.
“Shut up, Bobby,” Aunt Trish replies.
I think I want to die.
Instead, I go upstairs to hide in my room, tearing up every origami heart I’ve ever made. One by one. Then I make new ones.
LATER THAT NIGHT, I go downstairs to find Aunt Trish sitting in the living room, the television turned down low. She has a candle burning on the end table, and the entire place smells like pumpkin spice.
“I wrapped up your dinner,” she tells me when I walk through.
I start to leave, embarrassment a very real thing, but then stop. “Hey, Aunt Trish?”
She turns to look at me, her make-up removed for the night, her hair up in clips.
“You ever heard of The Outsiders?” I’d Googled the book in my room because, unlike Matthew, I’d never read it.
“The book or the movie?” she asks.
“The movie.” Oh, the power of Google.
“One of my favorites,” she replies, smiling. “I was so in love with Matt Dillon.”
“Can we get it?”
“Now?” She glances at a clock on the wall just above my uncle’s recliner. Her gaze returns to me, and maybe it’s the expression on my face, but she stands, walks into the hall, grabs her purse off of the hutch, and says, “Let’s go. Your Uncle Bobby will hear your mom if she wakes.”
Housecoat, clips, and all, she takes me to three different stores before we find the classic movie in a five-dollar bin.
We’re headed home, headlights throwing a glare over damp streets and black-cloaked trees, the tires clicking over cracked asphalt and the occasional rumble strip. Heated air blasts from the vents, cocooning us, and Christmas music plays faintly from a CD Trish keeps in the player even though we still haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving. Aunt Trish is in love with Christmas.
I glance at Aunt Trish, at her makeup-less profile, and find myself murmuring, “Tell me about Mom and Dad.”
Her gaze leaves the road, her face washed out by the lights in the dashboard. “How they met?”
“Sure.”
She smiles. “Your mom was in college. Idealistic and young. Your dad was a construction worker helping out on a Habitat for Humanity house your mother volunteered to help build for extra credit in her sociology class.” A giggle escapes her. “Your mom was a disaster with a hammer. She managed to put a nail right through your dad’s hand. It was love via a trip to the emergency room.”
I laugh, and then sober. “Dad smelled like wood stain and herbs, didn’t he?”
Aunt Trish nods. “Yes, he did.”
“I remember that.”
We don’t say another word.
Upon reaching the house, Aunt Trish turns on the movie, and we stay up most of the night watching it.
I cry, but most of all, seeing it makes me feel closer to Matthew.
“Well?” Aunt Trish asks when the credits roll.
Knees pulled up to my chest, I stare at the television. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand.”
“What’s that?”
“Why the girl liked Dally more? It was obviously Ponyboy who got it, you know?”
In the movie, Dally was the bad boy with enough mystery to make him interesting. As if there was more to him than met the eye. Ponyboy wasn’t all that mysterious, but he was real. I liked the way he saw things.
Aunt Trish looks thoughtful. “I guess it depends on the girl. You just have to ask yourself if you’re a Dally kind of girl or a Ponyboy one.”
“Yeah.” I know exactly which one I am.
“Reagan?”
I glance at Aunt Trish.
She smiles. “Don’t let your mom hold you back from discovering things. With her, you can see the world, but out there,” she nods at the front hall, “you can feel it.”
Standing, I return her smile. “Maybe. Thank you for watching it with me, Aunt Trish.”
She takes my hand, squeezes it, and then releases. “Goodnight.”
Before I go to my room, I sneak into my mother’s, kneel next to her bed, and say, “His name is Matthew Moretti, and he’d like to travel with us again. I think anyway. After today, I’m not quite sure, but I’d like him to.” Lowering my voice, I hiss. “I kissed him, Mom. I’m not even sure why.” I touch my lips, remembering. “Maybe to show him I’m listening to him. That I hear him. That I’d rather watch sunsets than fight with fire.” My words hang in the air, heavy and real. “Goodnight, Mama.”
When I climb in bed, I try very hard not to be afraid of tomorrow.
I DREAM ABOUT a paper house. In it, I’m walking from room to room, touching the walls. The paper gives way, and I fall, from one paper space to another.
Inside each room, there’s a stamp, the kind they use on passports.
I pick one up, testing its weight, and then I press it against the paper walls. Names stain the house. Red and bleeding.
One name stands out, but before I can get a good look at it, the house crumples.
I wake up to a thwap,thwap against my bedroom window. It startles me, and I stare at my ceiling, heart racing, before climbing out of bed.
Barefoot and in nothing more than a sleep shirt and a pair of panties, I push my window up.
Matthew Moretti leans against the side of the house below me, his jacket pulled close over a shirt I can’t see. Grey sweatpants rest over a pair of sneakers. Faint light from a streetlamp down the road throws a golden glare over Matthew’s dark head. Like a halo.
White air puffs from his mouth.
I don’t say anything, but I’m not sure he expects me to.
“I think about you,” he says suddenly.
One sentence, and it’s an awful good sentence. It strikes me—hard and swift—right in the chest.
He thinks about me. Better yet, he thinks about me in the middle of the night.
I think about him, too.
I can’t breathe.
I think about him too much despite everything.
What is he doing to me?
“Okay,” I reply, because I’m afraid to say anything else.
I’ve never had a broken heart. The romantic kind of broken anyway. I’ve never liked anyone enough for my heart to break, but I’m beginning to think Matthew has the potential to destroy mine if given the chance.
“Do you ever look at things the way your mother does?” he asks.
I lean against the window.
The cold air circles me, bitter and unfriendly, and I leave him to grab the quilt off of my bed, wrapping it around my shivering frame before resuming my stance.
“I don’t think I know how,” I tell him honestly. “Or maybe I do. It’s just that I don’t know how to do it the way she does. I see it in other ways.”
“With paper?” He hasn’t moved, and he never looks up at me.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He exhales warm white crystals on cold air.
Tugging the quilt tighter around me, I swallow hard. “So, I asked my aunt to watch The Outsiders with me tonight.”
“Oh yeah?” He shifts, on edge, but he still doesn’t look up. “What did you think?”
“I like Ponyboy.”
His shoulders slump, visibly relaxing, as if he was expecting a different answer and is relieved I didn’t give it. “Why?”
He had to ask me that.
I’m quiet for too long, and he pushes away from the wall.
“Because he sees beauty, but he sees beneath it, too,” I blurt, afraid he’s leaving. “I like that he’s able to do that. To be attracted to something beautiful while desiring to know more about it.”
Matthew pauses. “It’s not easy, huh?”
“What?”
“Talking,” he replies. “Sometimes it’s hard to say things, you know?”
My brows furrow, but before I can ask him what he means, he leaves, feet crunching on dead vegetation across th
e yards, to disappear into his house.
