I look at Kyle. He shrugs.
“Thank you,” I say, taking the flower from her hand.
Near the main doors we’re stopped again, this time by a group of guys wearing letterman’s jackets. I recognize a few of them from Kyle’s lunch table. They hold flowers too: tulips with stems clamped in little plastic water vials, a paper cone of daisies, a yellow carnation, daffodils. “It ain’t right,” one of them says, “what happened to you. It ain’t Gillette’s way.”
“We got your back,” a tall guy offers. I think his name is Matthew.
“Count on that,” another adds.
I cradle my unexpected bouquet in the crook of my arm, blinking back warm, sudden tears. “Thanks,” I say softly. Kyle looks at me and grins.
Two girls veer for us the second we enter the building. “Welcome back, Aspen!” the nearest one says. She hands me a bright pink rose.
The other girl has a stem of lavender freesia. “I should have told you a long time ago, but I love the way you dress.” She gives me a broad, brace-filled smile. “I’m Terri Knight, in case you don’t know. We’re in Spanish together.”
I stare past Terri, into the school. More people have flowers than not. Kyle and I start for class, though every few steps we’re stopped by people who press a flower into my hand. Some tell me they’re sorry. Others introduce themselves or wish me well. By the time we reach English, flowers spill from my arms.
“You did this,” I say to Kyle like a little scold, but I can’t hide how happy I feel. He nods toward the desk in front of his. Waiting for me there is another large, white hobnail vase. He helps me load it with as many flowers as it will hold, then he kisses my cheek. “Welcome back, girl,” he says.
At lunch I sit with Kyle’s group. Gwen’s there too, picking at her chicken tenders and asking me over and over if I need anything. She interjects her offers with information about Em—the hours of community service she’s been made to do, the way her mom insists what happened was provoked. I say, “I could do without the Em update,” just as someone taps my shoulder.
As I turn round, silence spreads across the lunchroom, jumping from table to table like crickets. My lungs suddenly feel full of mud. Evvie’s there, chewing on her lip, a massive, radiant sunflower in her hand. She holds the flower toward me. “Can we talk?” she asks. “Maybe in the hall. Or wherever.”
Kyle glances at her, then at me. He shrugs. “Up to you,” he says.
“Tell her to go to the devil’s own bat-infested spiky hell,” Gwen whispers loudly. Kyle’s friend, Matthew, says, “You ain’t welcome, Evvie.”
I swallow, hard, and reach for the flower, wrapping my fingers round its rough moist stem. It’s perfect: a mane of bright yellow and orange ringing a brown textured center the size of a salad plate. With nothing to hold, Evvie clutches her elbows, sliding her hands up and down along her arms. It’s brave of her, I decide, talking to me in a room crowded with people who all know what she did. Maybe that’s why I say, “Okay. But Kyle comes too.”
Evvie looks at Kyle from the corners of her eyes.
The minute I stand up I sort of regret my decision. I mean, leading Evvie toward the hall is like walking on a conveyor belt built from gawking curiosity. People twist to see us come and turn round quick to watch us go. I reach up and fiddle with the beads of my mother’s necklace. Evvie’s sunflower dances and sways in my hand. My boots seem too loud against the linoleum until I realize Evvie, Kyle and I are walking in unison.
Once we’re in the hall Kyle stands apart, leaning against a bank of lockers with his left hand shoved in his pocket, listening.
“I wanted to say sorry,” Evvie says. She breathes in and out, studying her fingernails before she looks at me again. “I didn’t know Em would hurt you like that. I . . . I’m not that kind of person.”
“Were you suspended?”
“For a week. They went light on me ‘cause I got in Em’s face. But I have community service. Six months of it.”
I twirl the flower in my hand, round and round. “I guess I owe you for stopping Em.”
Evvie shrugs. She drags her fingers through her wavy blonde hair. “It shocked me. What she did. I didn’t want to be part of it.”
“But you were a part of it,” I say, fixing on Evvie’s startled gaze. “It was okay by you to strip me naked in the hall. It was okay for you to play Em’s little game of calling out my clothes. You’ve been a part of it from the start. You made fun of my name in the parking lot on the first day of school.”
“I didn’t mean anything by that. It was just a joke.”
“Not to me! You only drew your line when you saw blood. That makes you less of a bully. Maybe. But if you’d once considered how I feel we wouldn’t be standing here, right? Being made fun of every day is just as bad as the physical stuff. I’m not so sure you get that.”
Evvie stares at my boots. “I like the way you dress,” she says. “I did from the time I saw you in your dad’s Jeep. It’s so different, though you don’t seem to know it. You don’t know how much people notice you. Or maybe you just don’t care. Em felt attention going your way. She didn’t like it.”
“That doesn’t give her the right to hurt me,” I say.
Evvie looks at me then, her eyes bright green and teary. “I really am sorry for what I did. I hope you believe that. But I’ve been friends with Em since third grade. The stuff we did was normal, you know? I grew up doing it. It took . . . that day in the hall for me to realize Em always hurts the people she feels second to. I never saw it that way, I swear, until we . . . until I attacked you. I know I hurt people, hanging with Em when we were kids. I just taught myself not to see it.” With the edge of her finger, Evvie wipes her tears away. “I guess I’m guilty of hurting a lot of people inside, the way you say I hurt you.”
“I guess you are,” I say.
Evvie sniffs.
We stand there for a moment and I watch her cry. “Maybe you won’t believe this,” I say, “but the easy part for you is right now, standing here, saying you’re sorry. The hard part is the change you’ve gotta make, the one that shows everyone, me especially, that your sorry is real. I need that kind of sorry to really forgive you.”
Evvie’s expression droops, like old snow in warm sun. She nods, but covers her face with her hands. Then she breaks with sobs, her frame slumped and heaving, her body shaking with the strain. Kyle raises his eyebrows the way I’ve seen his dad do.
I toss him my sunflower, then wrap my arms around Evvie’s shoulders. She only cries harder, but I feel better now. I look past her wavy hair to see Kyle’s as surprised as I feel. I don’t know why I thought to hug her, except it’s what my mother would have done.
For me, that’s reason enough.
29
WE’RE WELL INTO the parking lot when I notice a girl I don’t know leaning against Kyle’s truck. “Who’s that?” I ask, as his mouth pulls into a frown. When he doesn’t answer I wonder if his KDT secret is out; I mean, the girl is fiddling with a camera. But as we near her Kyle says, “Hey Carlie,” and she asks, “Can I interview Aspen?” and he says, “Not a good idea.”
I look at him. “Why not?”
My arms, and Kyle’s too, are filled with flowers. He glances at me, his chin dusted yellow with daisy pollen, his eyes crystal blue and serious in the cold air. “Carlie reports for the school paper,” he explains. “Yearbook, too.” He turns to Carlie then and tries to talk her out of writing a story, though I still don’t get why he cares. Carlie adjusts her camera’s lens. Every now and then she interrupts Kyle, saying, “One shot. One shot. One shot.”
I say, “It’s okay. Really.”
Kyle corrects: “It’s okay, if it’s for yearbook.”
Carlie waits until we’ve loaded my flowers into the truck. Then she snaps one picture of me sitting in the cab, the flowers all around me like I’m in a float turned inside out, my new hobnail vase sitting on my lap. She says, “I’ll bet I get this in the local paper,” and scampers off.
&nbs
p; Kyle yells, “Just the yearbook!”
“What’s the big deal?” I ask.
He scrubs his fingers through his hair. “Far as Em’s concerned, there’s not much difference between that picture and a cattle prod.”
I want to ask why he’s worrying about Em; I mean, to me, the whole thing is over. But Kyle’s quiet on the drive to my house. Maybe he’s imagining all the nasty stuff she might do if she sees Carlie’s picture. Or maybe he’s just thinking about the weather. Once or twice he glances at the sky, which is deep with clouds and spitting snowflakes. He backs the Ford into my drive then we race the falling snow, shuttling my flowers into the kitchen. Most we arrange in glasses on the counter, pulling off enough plastic water vials to fill a garbage sack. We set the flowers in rows until we’ve transformed the room into a garden. We leave three full vases on the coffee table and line the entryway with bouquet-filled jars.
It all reminds me, maybe too much, of Mom.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I say. With my white hobnail vase in the crook of my arm, I start up. Kyle’s right behind me, his hands warm on my waist.
The silvery light oozing from between my half-open shutters has washed the colors of my room to gray. My closet doors are ajar. This morning I left my pajamas lying like a crime-scene dummy on the floor. I kick them under my bed. “Pretend you didn’t see that,” I say.
“So this is where you sleep.” Kyle takes the vase from my grasp and places it on my desk before he quietly closes the door. “Let me lay you down, girl.” He scoops me up and tosses me on my mattress.
“You’re a naughty boy,” I say, and smile.
With one hand on each heel, Kyle pulls off my boots. I laugh as he hops back and forth, yanking his boots from first his right foot and then his left. He stations all four of them like guards against my bedroom door. Then he climbs on top of me, spreading his legs between mine. He kisses my mouth. His hand slips beneath my sweater and up under my bra. His fingers trace the notch at the base of my throat. “I was made to be naughty with you,” he says.
We kiss for a while, rolling over and under and around each other. I pull his shirt free of his jeans and caress the curve of his back. He unbuckles the latch of his belt. I fumble with the buttons wedged tight between the fabric fly then tug his pants down until I see the buffalo pattern on the band of his boxers.
When he pulls my sweater over my head my hair snaps with static. He digs under me, arching my body toward his as he unclasps my bra. “God, I love you,” he whispers.
“I love you more,” I manage to say. Then I close my eyes.
Love is a lot of things, I know, but right now it’s Kyle. His breathing is the only sound in existence. His smell is the only smell in the world. His skin is my private universe—I unbutton his shirt and send it flying. I’m in the middle of helping him kick free of his jeans when he freezes like he’s been turned to stone.
“What was that?” he says.
“What was what?” I run my hands up his arms to his shoulders. His muscles feel like solid steel.
“Stop a sec,” he says. “I heard something.”
“I was thinking we should just do it. I was thinking it loudly.”
He smiles and his eyes almost twinkle. “Just a few weeks left to mess around. Enjoy it.”
“I don’t care about some arbitrary number! We’re almost buck! Let’s go for it.”
“You hit eighteen girl and trust me. We will.”
“Just come on—”
“Shush! There it is again. I swear, I hear something.”
Three soft knocks sound against my bedroom door. “Aspen,” Dad says. “I’m home.”
Kyle whispers, “Shit.”
Silence, and then the stairs creak—first the third from the top, then the second from the bottom. Through my partially opened shutters I watch as huge snowflakes float like spilled feathers from the sky. Kyle kisses my forehead. “You stay here a while,” he says.
“Where are you going?”
He stands up and pulls on his jeans. His belt buckle clanks until he threads the leather through. “I’ve got you in bed, girl, and in your father’s house. I’m going down to talk to him.”
“Wait!” I sit up, groping the folds of my comforter for my bra. I can’t find it so I pull on my sweater. It’s inside out and backwards. “I’ll go with you.”
Kyle shakes his head. “No.”
“Yes!”
“No. You could fix this, maybe, for the moment. But the bigger picture’s mine. I love you. We’re together, you know? I’m the man who wants to stand by you, across your life. Your dad, he’s the man who’ll always see you as his little girl. This’ll take discussing my intentions, Aspen. It’s for me to set things right with him.”
“But I can’t just wait up here not knowing! What if he goes crazy? What if he throws you out?”
“He won’t do that.”
“How do you know?”
“I’d already be out.” Kyle tugs on his shirt, buttoning it from the bottom up. I tumble off the bed and wrap my arms around him.
“But what if he takes me away?” Tears start into my eyes. “I don’t want to go to Portland. I won’t! I belong here, with you.”
With his thumbs, Kyle wipes the water from my cheeks. “You’re not going to Portland,” he says, and kisses me. “Now finish dressing that hot little body. Comb the passion from your hair. The thought of you up here, all wild and lyin’ on your bed, is enough to keep me from saying what I need to say.” He takes his boots in his hand, pushing mine aside with his foot.
Silently, he opens the door.
30
FOR TWELVE WHOLE minutes I sit on my bed, chewing my fingernails and staring at the clock. Outside my window the snow falls heavily, insulating the world in quiet white.
Dad and Kyle’s voices rise from the study below my room, but it’s impossible to make out what they’re saying. When I can’t take it anymore I dress, pull my hair into a knot, then work my way down the stairs, creeping along the hardwood like a timid fox, avoiding the creaky places I know will give me away. I sit on the bottom step just as Kyle says, “You’re kidding.” He and Dad burst out laughing.
“We never told Aspen,” Dad manages. I swear he slaps his knee.
Men. Why I felt one second of fret I’ll never know. I pick at the seam of my jeans, annoyed with both of them.
Dad grows silent. Kyle, too. Then Dad says, “There’s a lot we never told her.”
“Makes sense.” Kyle laughs, again. “I can think of a few things she’ll never tell you.”
“No, I suppose not. And I ask you keep this private, but we never even told her the truth of how we met. In high school Aspen’s mom dated an abusive guy. He full-blown punched her, twice. A part of me still wants to kill that little shit.”
Tears sting my eyes and without thinking, I sniff. My mom was strong. She knew herself so completely. I thought she’d always been that way; that she’d always been happy.
Kyle asks, “Why’d you keep it secret?”
“From Aspen? Think about it. Your children will never know Em beat on you. Aspen will never tell her daughter how Em kicked her bloody in a school hall. No parent reveals their full past: the things their kids will misinterpret or worse, view as weak. But seeing Aspen cut and bruised. It brought back some pretty dark memories.”
“So you want to take her,” Kyle says.
“Of course I want to take her.” Dad sounds mad and tired, both. “And I probably should. The problem is I risk my relationship with her if I do. She knows what she wants and in a few weeks she’ll be eighteen and free to get it. I can’t watch over her every minute of the day. I can’t chain her to some wall. If I take her, chances are she’ll run for you, alone. What if she broke contact? What if something happened to her along the way?”
“I don’t think she’d make the choice to be in danger,” Kyle says. “And anyway, she’ll be okay here. She isn’t alone.”
Dad thumps something against his desk.
A pencil, maybe. “When I started dating Aspen’s mother her ex would ambush me. It happened a lot. I came home a bloody mess more nights than I can remember, now. A broken nose. Trips to the hospital. Stitches. Most people looked the other way. Times were different. We were two guys fighting it out over a girl. What you’re in is dangerous, by my standards. Em uses her gender against you. And she’s calculating. Who knows what she’ll do next?”
“Maybe nothing,” Kyle says.
“Don’t bank on it.” The castors of Dad’s chair roll a bit. “I don’t want Aspen facing the kind of stuff I went through. I spent a good six months nursing injuries. And looking back, I was lucky.” Papers rustle on Dad’s desk. A drawer shuts. “Maddy’d never forgive me if she knew I’d even let it get this far.”
“Maddy?”
“Aspen’s mother. People used to ask me if she was worth it. I couldn’t put into words how I knew she was, but she was. Loving her was hardwired in me, and defending her was part of that. I felt born to be with her. Fighting for the right to make it real was something I did out of pure instinct. Once we were together nothing came between us, ever. Not even Aspen.”
“Then you understand,” Kyle says softly, “how I feel for your daughter.”
My heart wants to fly, for hearing that.
“What I understand is how she feels for you,” Dad replies. “She picked you, Kyle, and over a lot of other guys in Portland, some who’ve tracked me down looking for her. She won’t even bother to return their calls. Hell, arguing to stay here with you was pretty much the first thing she did, lying battered in her hospital bed.”
Kyle says, “I saw Aspen a couple of weeks before school started up. I fell in love with her there and then. Every day I’m around her, I love her more. You should know it’s mutual, how we want our lives together. I feel I’m hers, body and soul. She’s my girl. I need her with me. I can’t bear the thought of us being separated.”
I grin like a crazy fool and pull a daisy from the jar on the stairs next to me.
“You two barely know each other,” Dad says, and the smile in his voice makes me angry. “But I guarantee she finds you remarkable. And I’ll admit, now that I know you better, I see some of what she sees. You come from good people. You own your actions, as a man should. You speak your heart. But for all of that, I still wonder if you have what it takes to stand by my daughter and see this through. I mean no offense, but you have a miserable track record with Em. She’s not done with this. Of all people, you’ve gotta know that. I want to believe you can deal with it. But I don’t want Aspen caught in the middle.”
Painted Boots Page 14
