Jalen drives with his right arm slung over the top of the wheel and his eyes steady on the shimmering black highway. We make small talk for a while, and then I kick off my sneakers, tuck my legs under me, and use my backpack as a pillow against the car door. Almost immediately, I doze off.
When I open my eyes, my neck is cramped and I’m starving. There isn’t a single other car in sight, and on either side of the road, thirsty brown earth stretches for miles, dotted with bushes that look like earth’s razor stubble. In the far distance, pale pink-rock mountains rise like gigantic pieces of freeform art.
Sitting up, I push a clump of loose hair behind my ear and wipe my mouth in case I’ve drooled. “Where are we?”
He smiles and points to a sign so far in the distance it looks half-buried in the dirt. “Almost there.” The smile widens. “I was beginning to think you were going to sleep through the whole thing.” The smile is something new—he’s teasing me.
“I guess it’s the company,” I tell him and then pretend to yawn. “How long was I out?”
“A couple of hours.”
A couple of hours? I feel self-conscious for being out that long. But then, I didn’t sleep much last night. Having someone tell you that you’re going to die is a pretty good reason for insomnia. “It felt good.”
“You look better.”
We drive a while farther, and just as I’m beginning to wonder where we’re going, twin, beaker-shaped concrete pillars flanking a sign come closer. The sign reads, “Welcome to the Navajo Nation.”
We flash past it, and I feel a rush of excitement. Even with all the restorations my father has done, we’ve rarely been inside land under Native American jurisdiction. Why is Jalen bringing me here? Clearly it’s not a date. Probably he’s trying to make up for yesterday, the whole “friends” thing. He catches me studying him.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not kidnapping you.”
“Oh, darn,” I say, as if disappointed, and then because the loose ends are driving me crazy, I pull my hair out of its elastic. I feel him watching me, although he turns his head the minute I look at him.
We pass a large, modern-looking concrete structure with a sign identifying it as a visitor’s center. A colorful flag with a red, yellow, and blue rainbow hangs from a flagpole in the parking lot.
We stop for gas and sandwiches at a convenience store. A Native American woman in a black dress cinched at the waist with a silver Concho belt takes Jalen’s cash. Her black eyes peer out of a weathered, round face the color of nutmeg.
Back in the car, we continue down the highway, and it’s like the little convenience store never existed and we’re climbing a series of mountains, giving us dazzling views of the canyons below us. Beneath us, the old truck’s engine downshifts. We barely go ten miles an hour as we maneuver the turns.
We pass clusters of civilization—villages, farmlands dotted with herds of sheep or cows, and numerous mobile homes, small as metal shoeboxes tucked into the landscape.
After another twenty minutes, Jalen turns down an unpaved road. Almost immediately the underbrush and sand cover up the path. We hear them scrape the underbelly of the truck.
I almost think we’ve lost the road completely when I see a structure in the distance. It sits alone on a patch of sparse grassland almost invisible in the enormity of the land.
As we get closer, it takes shape, the octagonal sides and mud covering defining it as a traditional hogan. Jalen pulls the truck to a bumpy stop. He turns off the ignition and stares at the house.
“We’re here,” he says.
The place looks long abandoned. What probably once was a garden is now a patch of dry earth dotted with spindly, yellow weeds.
“Come on,” Jalen urges, already at my side of the truck, pulling the creaky truck door open.
He holds my hand, but I’m not sure he’s even aware of it as we step through the front door. The one-room interior smells musty and old and feels as if it’s been empty for a long time. There are no windows. A stone fireplace sits in the middle of the room.
Whatever this place is, it means something to Jalen. I can see it in the way his gaze travels almost tenderly around the empty space, as if he’s seeing the room not as it is, but how he remembers it.
“There was sheepskin on the floor, and they kept Pendleton blankets over there,” he says, pointing. “A lantern hung on that hook and all the kitchen utensils were on that wall.” His face is rapt. “And here,” he points to a spot near the fireplace, “is where my grandmother made kneeldown bread.” He closes his eyes, smiles. “Sometimes she made it with bacon. It was so good.”
“You grew up here?”
He shakes his head. “No. My father and uncle.”
It’s so small it’s almost impossible to imagine a family living in what is essentially smaller than my mother’s garage. There’s no electricity, much less a bathroom or running water.
“I came here about twice a month on the weekends,” he says. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but back then…” He shakes his head, as if wondering how to put it into words. “My grandmother made the best blue corn pancakes, and Grandfather… We went on long walks. The places here—the canyons and the monuments…”
I wonder if he realizes he’s different here. The strong planes of his face seem to soften, and there’s a look in his eyes—a sureness, maybe contentedness?
“What do you think of it?” He comes to stand next to me.
“Just that this is so different than our house in New Jersey. I can’t imagine living here.”
Almost instantly his mouth tightens and his eyes harden into onyx. “You don’t like it.”
It isn’t what I mean at all. I put my hand on his forearm. “My mom’s house is bigger, that’s true. We have four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, a finished basement, and a two-car garage.” I pause because it’s important he gets this. “And you know what? We were all miserable there. There’s no smell of blue corn pancakes, and we stopped taking long family walks when I was ten. Even before my dad left, there was this…quiet. We all pretended it wasn’t there. It took me a long time to figure out it was the sound of everything falling apart. You think I wouldn’t trade that for a house with the kind of memories you have?”
He looks at me a long moment, sighs, and then brushes back my overgrown bangs. “Let’s eat,” he says.
He spreads an orange-and-blue-striped blanket on the floor near the hearth and unpacks the sandwiches from the convenience store. He hands me a ham-and-cheese and asks about what it’s like to live in New Jersey.
I tell him about life in the ‘burbs—a world where everyone spends way too much money and time trying to seem totally perfect.
“There’s a lot of pressure,” I tell him, “to have the right look, the right clothes, the right friends.” I shake my head. “People judge you all the time. Sometimes I would get so sick of that—but most of the time you try to be like everyone else so you don’t get talked about.”
Jalen nods. “It was important to my father that my brother and I fit in at school. He encouraged us to try out for just about every sport.”
I pass him a slice of orange. “What’d you play?”
“Everything—football, baseball, basketball.” He shakes his head. “It always seemed like a big waste of time.”
“What did you want to do?”
He takes a long swallow of water, recaps the bottle, and gives me a guilty grin. “Study.”
My brows shoot up. “Study? You’re a secret nerd?”
He shrugs the way people do when they’re really good at something but don’t want to admit it. “I want to go to college and double major—Native American Studies and political science. After that, law school.”
Law school. For a moment it’s hard to picture him in a suit and a tie, but then I look into his eyes and know this is exactly right for him. He’s quiet, but he misses nothing and he thinks things through. His mind works differently than mine, which takes all
sorts of weird leaps and turns.
“You’ll be an amazing lawyer,” I tell him. “I can see you doing great things for people.”
His gaze drops. “Thanks. I hope so. We’ll see. How about you?”
I sigh and tell him about my childhood spent following my father around the desert, how I once dreamed of becoming an archeologist, but then saw what my dad’s crazy hours and obsession with the past did to our family.
“I didn’t want to be like him, but nothing else ever felt right, either.” I tell him then about Stuart and my mother, and that I deliberately failed health class and tanked my SATs.
He says that what’s happened isn’t as important as what I do next, how I handle things now. I know he’s exactly right, only it’s complicated. There are so many things I don’t know—how to talk to my mother about Stuart, how to go back to New Jersey and put everything behind me. And there’s Jalen. How exactly does he fit into my future?
I’ve been quiet a long time. That’s another great thing about Jalen. He never rushes you to say anything.
“I think I want to go to college and study archeology, but what if I’m not as good as my father? Everyone’s going to compare us.”
Jalen shakes his head. “Who cares what people think? You should go for it if that’s what you want.”
Like it’s that simple. Like failure is a word that doesn’t exist.
Lunch is over, and we gather our trash and put everything back in the paper bag. “What scares you most?” I ask as we rise to our feet.
He takes his time folding up the blanket. Finally he lifts his gaze to mine. “Wanting the wrong thing,” he says.
Looking into his eyes, I know I am the wrong thing.
THIRTY-TWO
Paige
After lunch, we hike through the heat, dry grass, and brush to a creek near the house. It’s little more than a watering hole, but reminds me of all the springs and ponds where Emily and I used to play. I kick off my sneakers and wade knee-deep into the water. The mud oozes between my toes, stirring the water into silt.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooling off.” I bend over, splash some water on my arms. “It feels good.” Without straightening, I watch him take a step closer until the water laps at the edge of his work boots.
I wait until he’s within range, and then I grab as much water as I can and splash him. He jerks as it pelts him. Even as he shakes it free from his eyes, I scoop frantically and splatter him over and over, laughing as he steps into the creek without even pausing to take off his boots.
Bending, he throws water at me, and all at once it’s war. We both launch as much water as we can at each other. We keep it up, splashing until we’re out of breath, completely soaked, and laughing so hard we can barely stand.
“Enough,” Jalen says, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
Our eyes meet. I see the small beads of water caught in his long, black lashes and a softening of his lips. My heart beats faster, and as the moment lengthens I think he’s going to kiss me, but then he lifts his arm and wipes his face.
“You’re soaked,” he points out.
“So are you.”
“I know.”
The sun is hot on my skin. His face is unsmiling, set in strong, proud lines. Nothing is going to happen between us, and it’s time I accept this, stop being so obvious about what I want from him. I watch the rise and fall of his chest and will my face to a blankness that won’t say anything to him. I will myself not to feel anything at all.
“We should go,” he says.
We should, but I don’t move. Instead, I keep my gaze locked on his. “Why don’t you ever say my name? Why don’t you say, ‘Let’s go, Paige?’”
He blinks, and even in his still face something seems to freeze and I sense how uncomfortable I’ve made him. “What are you talking about?”
My hands go to my hips. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. You don’t speak to me unless we make eye contact. The only time you’ve ever said my name was the day Jeremy attacked me. Remember? You called my name. You said, ‘Paige, are you okay?’”
He shakes his head and then suddenly takes great care to wring the water from the hem of his T-shirt. “So what?”
“Say my name.”
He looks up, jaw tight. “We should go. It’s a long ride back.”
“Say, ‘It’s a long ride back, Paige.’”
His eyes turn dark, scornful. “I’m not a parrot.”
I know I should let it drop, but I can’t. “I want to hear you say my name. Friends use each other’s names, Jalen.”
He hesitates, muscles in his jaw clenching and unclenching. I know I’m ruining the moment, the fun we were having just moments ago, but I need to know. And so I hold his gaze and hope he can see that his answer is important to me. Finally, he sighs.
“Words have power,” he says.
“Exactly. It feels impersonal when you don’t use my name. It feels like you either don’t know it or you’ve forgotten it or I’m not important enough to you to use it.”
He scowls. “It’s none of those things. You don’t understand.”
He’s right—I don’t.
“Okay,” he says, “I’ll give you an example. In the winter, we don’t say the word ‘bear.’ To say the word is to call the bear to you.”
I don’t blink. “I’m not a bear.”
“I know.”
But to say my name might call me to him, and he doesn’t want this. Sweat rolls down my face like tears, but I’m more angry than sad. “You’re never going to say my name, are you?” I can’t hide the bitterness in my voice. I don’t want to be the girl he simply calls “Hey, you.”
He shrugs, and his eyes slide away from mine.
A flash of hurt passes through me. “Fine.” I walk away from him, picking my way barefoot along the water’s edge, welcoming the pain of rocks and pebbles sharp as shells.
“Wait,” he calls.
“Oh, were you talking to me?” The good feelings I had for him in the hogan and in the water are gone, replaced by hurt and anger and a selfish desire to hurt him back.
“Wait,” he calls more loudly, but I keep going. I would walk all the way back to my father’s house if I could.
“Wait, Paige,” he says.
My feet stop of their own accord.
“Paige,” he says again, softer now, drawing the word out, gooseflesh rising all over me, as if he has breathed the word onto me.
I turn slowly. He’s standing about six feet away, an expression on his face I have never seen before. He wants me, he cares for me, yet this comes at a cost for him.
I move toward him so he doesn’t have to be the one to take this next step. When our faces are inches apart, I look into his eyes.
“Paige,” he says again.
He takes my face in his hands, carefully moves my hair, and then his lips close over mine. He kisses me deeply, as if everything he’s been holding back has finally broken through. I taste a trace of orange and something I can’t describe that belongs to him. I close my eyes, feel like I’m dissolving inside. The muscles in his back strain, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that this is real, that it isn’t just a crush—that he would not be kissing me like this if it were something he could help.
When we finally stop, we hold each other for a long time. I search his eyes for a trace of regret and see, instead, amusement.
“That’s why,” he says gently. “Why I couldn’t say your name.”
I feel his heart thumping under his shirt and am suddenly aware of how tightly I’m gripping his neck. How I never want to let go of him. “Jalen,” I whisper because if a name has power, I want to call him to me again and again and again.
“I’ve wanted to do this since I saw you,” he whispers, showering my throat with kisses that leave me breathless.
“You filled my water bottle for me that day, didn’t you?” I wind my fingers into the silk of his wet hair, feel the heat of his
scalp.
“I saw you watching me. I wanted to do something for you.”
“You didn’t even look at me.”
“I saw you.” A shy expression forms in his eyes as he fits his gaze to mine. “I saw you, Paige.” His voice is low and very serious. “I see you even when I’m not with you.”
I kiss him again. I can’t help it. “And the time with your uncle—you didn’t introduce me…”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t sure what he’d say to you. And I kept thinking that if I kept my distance, you’d be safer.”
I see the sudden shadows creep into his eyes and kiss him again. “Nothing is going to happen to me. You don’t even know if I’m the girl in your uncle’s dream.”
He pulls back. “It’s not like I have feelings for a lot of girls.”
Something silvery goes through me. He cares about me. He wants to protect me. I am falling in love, and maybe he is, too. “And have there been a lot of girls?”
He smiles and his eyes are so black it must be a trick of the light. “Oh, dozens and dozens. So many I’ve lost count.”
He’s joking and I punch him lightly on the arm. “The truth.”
“Just you,” he says.
We kiss for a long time, and this time there’s the joy of knowing that there’s no one else in his mind or life but me. That all this time he’s been hiding these feelings for me. He hasn’t said he loves me, but I feel it.
Even after the kiss ends, we don’t let go of each other. For the rest of the afternoon, as we hike the area near his grandparents’ hogan, some part of us is always touching.
We stay until late afternoon and he says it’s time to take me home. Holding hands, we walk slowly back to the truck. With its rusted paint and dented sides, it blends in perfectly with the abandoned house and garden of scraggily yellow weeds. It looks as if it belongs there, and in a crazy kind of way, it feels like now Jalen and I belong to this place, too.
Bone Deep Page 18
