Salvation

by Anne Osterlund

  What? That I’d rather go somewhere else but might get stuck at the same school as him?

  Salva reached for another trap and set it. “I’ll tell him when I know something.”

  “You should tell him now.”

  He scooped up the mail from the table, then turned and yelled, “Talia! Casandra! We’re leaving!” He didn’t wait for their response. Just swung out the back door. And ditched the Princeton envelope in the outside trash.

  17

  RUSH

  Beth was late for her first study “date” in the library—waylaid by her own nerves, the fact that she had forgotten her book of sonnets in trig, and by the bizarre experience of having classmates speak to her who had never spoken to her in their entire career at Liberty. The disaster that was her life had been replaced by a strange realm in which her name was the one being whispered up and down the halls. And in which, during lunch that day, Pepe Real had swapped his M&M’s trail mix for her chocolate milk. Surreal.

  She ducked beneath a drooping crepe paper border in the doorway, then scanned the inside of the library. Salva was sitting at a rectangular table by the window, his back to her, sunlight gleaming on his dark hair. Was this a date? Or a study session? And how would she know the difference? What would he expect from her? Was she supposed to turn into a vapid, giggling study partner?

  Vapidity was not in Beth’s repertoire.

  She adjusted her grip on the book she’d retrieved from trig. Then approached.

  He didn’t notice her. His torso was bent over an open volume as he scribbled notes on a piece of paper. The Mercenary had assigned everyone to select a sonnet and relate it to their own lives.

  Beth peered over his shoulder and recognized the Shakespearean poem on the left-hand page. “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun.” “You’re using that?” she asked.

  He snapped the book shut, slid his chair slightly at an angle, and grinned. “Don’t worry about the sonnet. It’s fine.”

  Fine? He was fine with relating his life and, therefore, his relationship with Beth to Shakespeare’s most derisive love poem? The entire poem was about how flawed the girl was.

  He folded the page of notes and tucked it inside the book, then slid the tome aside. “We have two weeks for that assignment. Let’s drill for the quiz on literary terms.”

  Lines from the derisive sonnet flared in her mind.

  Coral is far more red than her lips’ red…

  If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head…

  I grant I never saw a goddess go…

  Beth rounded the table, then sank into a chair across from him. Obviously, she wasn’t a goddess, but—

  “Literary terms, Beth.” He waved his hand in front of her face. “Are you here?” He opened his folder and yanked out four pages of typed notes with vocab definitions.

  Clearly, as far as Salva was concerned, this was a study session. Not a date.

  She gathered herself and plunged into quizzing him on antagonist, antithesis, and allusion. What had she expected? She didn’t know the first thing about being someone’s girlfriend. How romantic had she thought an hour in the library was going to be? She’d been studying with him all year. Why would this afternoon be any different?

  But at the end of the hour, he carried her book to her locker.

  Then slid his arm around her waist.

  And guided her out the back door of the school. He paused there, his eyes flicking toward the bleachers on the football field, where members of the track team, including his best friend, were hanging out.

  She prepared to stumble through a good-bye.

  But the arm stayed around her waist.

  And Salva walked her down the asphalt path and across the street.

  He’s going to escort me home.

  Panic slammed into her torso, her mind reeling through all the reasons he should not walk her home: the clothes all over the floor, dishes on the counter, papers, books, her mother’s AA materials—

  Get a grip, Beth. He doesn’t have to come in.

  The weeds outside the trailer. Blankets instead of blinds at the windows. The dented walls of her tin-can residence.

  Don’t be stupid, Beth. If he knows where you live, he already knows what it looks like.

  His arm moved from her waist, his fingers threading through hers. Then he ran his thumb along the inside of her palm.

  God. Beth sucked in her breath. She didn’t know how to do this. Her tongue, which had worked well enough five minutes ago when she had ripped apart his definition of tautology, ceased to function.

  Please, please, don’t let me make a mistake. What was it she had told him that day in the park? Admitting she had been afraid he would never notice her. And now that he had, her sense of inadequacy was ten times worse. How would she ever measure up to Char Mendoza? Or the other girls he had dated? Before the performance in the cafeteria, Beth had never even seriously kissed a guy. Not that that had been a problem in the park. At least it hadn’t appeared to be one. But sooner or later he was bound to discover her ineptitude.

  He didn’t seem to mind her silence. Or to feel compelled to improve on it.

  They walked without speaking for almost four blocks, doubt swirling in a blur within her head. Then he stepped off the street and started winding through a weed-covered lot in front of an empty gray house. Cheatgrass and fiddleneck stretched for her ankles as he guided her around a FOR SALE sign so old the S had peeled away. The gray shingles on the building’s side curled from age and neglect. “Salva, what are we—”

  Moments later, her spine was up against the back of the building, his hands on her waist. His mouth on hers.

  Dear God, this didn’t happen, did it? You didn’t spend your whole life crushing on the same guy and then suddenly find him crushing right back. “Salva,” she blurted. “I know I shouldn’t have to ask. But are we…metaphorically speaking, are we…?”

  “Dating?” he murmured, dropping his forehead to her own. “Yeah.”

  Okay, that was good to confirm.

  Again his mouth came down to hers.

  Aren’t we supposed to go out first? To places like the movie theater and the pizza parlor? Not that there were any in this town. But there were rules, weren’t there? “Um…” she stammered. “Isn’t this kind of…fast?”

  “No.” He buried his head in her T-shirt. “I should have asked you out last fall.”

  Last fall?

  He met her gaze, then tangled his fingers within her hair. “‘I never saw that you did painting need,’” he whispered. “‘And therefore to your fair no painting set.’”

  The sonnet. Her stomach flipped.

  “‘I found, or thought I found, you did exceed,’” he continued. “‘The barren tender of a poet’s debt.’” Only it wasn’t the sonnet she had thought he was working on. He leaned in close and whispered against her ear. “‘And therefore have I slept in your report.’”

  She was caught. Totally and completely snagged.

  “‘How far a modern quill doth come too short’”—his thumb traced her cheek—“‘speaking of worth…’”

  She forgot where she was. Forgot what she was doing. Forgot everything except that thumb edging its way along her skin.

  “‘This silence for my sin you did impute.’”

  The hell with movies.

  His thumb slid to the bottom of her lip. “‘There lives more life in one of your fair eyes than both your poets’”—his dark gaze glanced up toward heaven—“‘can in praise devise.’”

  And the hell with pizza.

  She kissed him, living and reliving a thousand dreams. Rules didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was interested in kissing her. And she had never been interested in kissing anyone else.

  When he broke away, she wasn’t anywhere near ready for the separation.

  “Beth”—he still had his hands in her hair—“the truth is I’ve been thinking about this forever. Since homecoming.”

  Five mo
nths definitely wasn’t forever. But she understood now why that first kiss in the park had been so intense. Because for so long they’d both been denying their feelings. She bit her lip, glanced down at the weeds, then confessed. “Salva, I’ve been imagining this since the eighth grade.”

  He pulled upright, staring at her.

  Maybe the admission had been too pathetic.

  “Well, not all that time,” she amended. “It’s just I had a huge crush on you that year, and I kept waiting for you to notice me, which I know was stupid, but—”

  “Don’t say that.” His eyebrows furrowed. “You aren’t stupid, Beth. You’re one of the most intelligent people I know.” He thrust his hands in his pockets, then shook his head slightly and took a step backward. “But eighth grade…I never…I barely remember that year.” He took another step, then turned and began heading toward the street.

  If she was so smart, why was he pulling away?

  “You don’t forget anything,” she challenged, following him along the side of the building, through the weeds. Not calc formulas or deadlines or details on the periodic table.

  “That’s not what I…” He reached the road. “It’s not about memory. It’s…my life…what happened.”

  What had happened? Beth skidded on loose pavement as she struggled to sort through the conversation.

  He picked up his pace, walking so fast she would have assumed he was rejecting her except he kept heading toward her home.

  But then he turned.

  Which wasn’t needed. The fastest way to the Courant trailer was straight ahead through the cemetery.

  His life. In the eighth grade.

  His mother had died that fall.

  How could he say Beth wasn’t stupid? She had known. Of course she had known. His loss of his mother was one of the reasons Beth had been drawn to him. Though when she was thirteen, she hadn’t understood. Because back then she hadn’t lost anyone. She had felt sorry for him, yes. Had thought it was terrible that someone their age might lose a parent to cancer. But she had not fathomed, at the time, how it must have impacted him. To have a person he loved, maybe the person he loved more than anyone else, maybe the person who loved him more than anyone else—suddenly gone. Absent.

  “Salva…” She caught his elbow. He hadn’t been running from her. He was running away from that loss. She did understand now. “If you ever want to talk about that year…about your mother…”

  He shuddered. “I-I’m sorry…I just can’t.”

  This time Beth was the one to take his hand. “It’s okay,” she whispered. Though it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay if he still couldn’t bring himself to visit his mother’s grave four and a half years after her death.

  Salva couldn’t seem to hang on to anything. April was like a time warp, sucking him in at the beginning and spitting him out at the end. Every minute blitzed by. Tosa was scheduled to fly out for basic training the week after graduation. Pepe had pre-season practice in July and was talking about going down in June if he could find a place. And Beth?

  Salva’s relationship with Beth was like drowning. Their time together was never enough. Either for homework—he’d somehow drawn the massive job of attorney for the defense in the upcoming mock trial for cit/gov—or for her. He snagged every minute he could alone with her, usually behind the abandoned building on their walk home. But as soon as they touched, they were kissing, and then it would be time for her to leave or for him to pick up his sisters.

  She deserved better: chocolate or jewelry or a real date, but he didn’t have any money. Talia had come home from school with a note saying she needed glasses. Even if he had had the cash, he didn’t have transportation to take Beth out. Doubling with Pepe and Char was about as appealing a thought as sitting through another one of Papá’s lectures.

  At the end of the month, though, Linette threw another party. Salva wanted to go because he didn’t know how many more chances he was going to get with all the people who mattered. Including Beth. Who wasn’t interested in coming. So Salva invited Luka. Who invited Nalani. Who begged her best friend to come as her own social support.

  Which meant Beth arrived at the party at eight o’clock, her hair all swirled on top of her head and twined with a pink ribbon Salva was sure wasn’t hers. And which he had an instinctive desire to remove. But there was also a look on her face—a look he was certain, even from clear across Linette’s family room, had nothing to do with the salsa music or flowing alcohol or couples dancing in the middle of the floor.

  She blew right through them, engulfing him in a fierce hug. “I got in!” she shouted over the music.

  He didn’t have to ask—didn’t have to question or wonder or doubt. He knew instantly that she’d been accepted at Stanford. And it wasn’t a surprise. At some point in the middle of knowing her, he had come to believe she could do anything. “I knew it!” he shouted back.

  And she looked up, laughing. “You are such a liar, Salva Resendez!”

  But he wasn’t lying. And he wasn’t upset, though he had been during the previous week when he’d had to throw away his most recent acceptance letter—Harvard this time. Her face was alive, her eyes shining, the joy bursting from them. She deserved to go where she wanted. And she wanted the best.

  He wouldn’t have needed her if she hadn’t.

  Beth wasn’t exactly sure how they wound up in the storage room. She’d been careful not to enter a bedroom with Salva, either here at the party or anywhere else over the past four weeks, though it had helped that the trailer was such a mess she’d have died of embarrassment before letting him through her own front door. But somehow, with the excitement of the acceptance letter, her defenses had lulled.

  And now here she was, in the dark, with only the flicker of the electric furnace to shed light on the fact that she was propped up against a stack of cardboard boxes, Salva’s mouth on hers, his chest against her own. His arms, his skin, his touch.

  God, it was like heaven.

  His hand slid to her side, then up under her shirt.

  Oh, this was not a good idea.

  The sensation of that hand running up her flesh sent a thousand nerves pulsing. “No,” she finally mouthed against his lips.

  And the hand stopped, withdrew. “Beth, I promise I won’t…” His voice was hoarse, pleading.

  The problem was that she couldn’t promise. When they were together, alone, everything went so fast and felt so right. She was certain if he asked for more, it would still feel right, all the way around the bases and back again. She was not going to end up like her mother. “I can’t, Salva,” Beth whispered.

  “Jesús.” He said it in Spanish, then sank back into the flickering dark, his hands running through his hair. “I don’t know what happens when I’m with you. I never plan. It’s just—we start, and I can’t quit.”

  Except he could. He just had.

  Her breath was still coming ragged. “It’s not only you,” she said, “but I don’t want…to ruin—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “We both want a future, Beth. Neither of us wants to risk that.” There was a pause. “Do we?”

  Was he asking if she wanted to have sex?

  “No,” she replied, her heart speeding up as if he’d actually said the words. For a heartbeat, silence stretched between them, and then she whispered, “Do you think, though, that maybe I should go to the clinic and ask for—”

  “Yes.” Suddenly, he was clear across the room. “We should both get checked out and invest in protection.”

  Her heart was racing around the block.

  “Just in case we screw up,” he added.

  Well, that was romantic.

  Salva left the party early—around eleven P.M.—grateful for the escape. Beth had already split, right after he’d admitted that he was afraid of having sex with her. At least he’d admitted his fear to himself. Or rather how easy it would be to have sex with her. And risk wrecking his entire life. He wasn’t like Pepe. If Salva messed up, he wasn�
�t going to be able to walk away. Of course he hadn’t managed to explain that to Beth. Had probably just offended her. Good one, Resendez. Real smooth.

  For some reason his best friend, who was Salva’s alibi, had wanted to get away from the party as well.

  The sports car was flying down the highway at about ninety.

  Salva leaned back against the leather passenger seat. “What’s up, man?”

  “Char.”

  Of course.

  “She said she had a headache.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s the fifth friggin’ headache she’s had this month.”

  Char had always had migraines, Salva knew, but she wasn’t bad at faking them either. Maybe she’d actually listened to his advice to slow things down. His mind snagged on the irony. “Don’t worry,” he told his best friend. “I’m sure she’s still interested.”

  Pepe swerved around a pickup that was probably clocking eighty. “Who’s worried? I just wasn’t aware we were going backward. She’s all freakin’ out because she bombed the state test again. As if that has anything to do with us. What’s she think?”

  “She’s thinking she’s not going with you.”

  Silence. Darkness swam around the headlights. There was almost nobody around here, especially at night.

  Pepe took the next turnoff, one of those that didn’t lead anywhere—just some scenic viewpoint. A good place to make out if you hadn’t screwed your chances. The car shot to the edge of a cliff. And stopped. Then Pepe turned off the engine. “So…Stanford, huh?” he asked at last.

  When had Beth entered this conversation?

  “That’s a pretty tough school,” Pepe added.

  Salva messed with the visor above the windshield. “She deserves it.”

  “She’s pretty smart then.”

  “Yeah.” He left the visor up.

  “So where are you going?” The question hit him in the chest.

  Salva turned and stared at his best friend. “What?”

  Pepe was gazing out into the wide black emptiness that was the scenic view at night. “Look, Resendez, I ain’t stupid. I figure if Beth Courant’s getting into Stanford, then you’re getting into somewhere a hell of a lot better than Regional, huh?”